TO GRAND CAIRO. 5; 
the bananas and sycamores around them. But chap. 
strangers, and especially the inhabitants of . 
Northern countries, where wholesome air and 
cleanliness are among the necessaries of life, 
must consider Egypt as the most detestable 
region upon earth. Upon the retiring of the 
Nile, the country is one vast swamp. The at- 
mosphere, impregnated with every putrid and 
offensive exhalation, then stagnates, like the 
filthy pools over which it broods. Then, too, Diseases. 
the plague regularly begins ; nor ceases, until 
the waters return aofain'. Throu2fhout the 
spring, intermitting fevers universally prevail. 
About the beginning of May, certain winds 
cover even the sands of the desert with the most 
disgusting vermin". The latest descendants of 
Pharaoh are not yet delivered from the evils 
which fell upon the land, when it was smitten 
by the hands of Moses and Aaron: the "plague 
(1) General Lc Grange assured us, when on board the BrauTtel, that 
the ravages in the French army, caused by the plague, during the 
month oi Jpril, at onetime amounted to an hundred men in a single 
day. 
(iJ) Sir Sidney Smith informed the author, that one night, pre- 
ferring a bed upon the sand of the desert to a night's lodging in the 
village of Etko, as thinking he should be more secure from vermin, he 
found himself, in the morning, entirely covered by them. Lice and 
scorpions abound in all the sandy desert near Jle.randria. 
