148 
DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
saders, was set on fire by its weak prince Shuwar, 
The renowned Saladin, who retrieved the disas- 
ters of the Arabs, founded the castle of Cairo, and 
the walls which surround the city, about eight 
years after the destruction of Fostat.* Though 
Cairo has lost its former splendour, and the opu- 
lence it enjoyed before the discovery of the pas- 
sage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, its 
population is still considerable, and, in 1785, was 
estimated by Volney, at two hundred and fifty 
thousandf inhabitants. It is still the emporium 
of the trade of Eastern Africa, and maintains a 
considerable intercourse with Arabia, Morocco, 
and various districts of th'e Levant. 
The traveller, ascending the Nile, soon after his 
departure from Cairo, approaches the narrowest 
part of the valley of Egypt, where the Arabian 
and Libyan mountains seem closing to prevent his 
farther progress. At the intervals of the palm- 
trees which cover the baiiks of the river, he is 
struck with the regularity of the immense rocky 
masses which emerge, in detached spaces, from 
the sandy plaint of Libya, and is astonished to 
perceive that they exhibit the vestiges of human 
art. As he observes the! solitary desert stretch- 
ing beyond the Plain of the Pyramids, he seems 
* Abulfedae Excerpt. Hist. Univ. p. 23. ad fin. Bohadini 
Hist. Saladini a Schultens. 
