they are camels.' 'Not at all; they are windmills.' Thus we talked in our excitement. On that morning our little party were more restless than usual, and the horrible noise of the boiler was nothing in comparison with the exclamations of joyous enthusiasm with which we amazed the other passengers. 'Do you see the frogs?' we asked our dear stuffer of birds and beasts. 'I see a few,' he replied, but I think they have turbans on.' For our naturalist has only one defect: he is as near sighted as all the moles of the Thebaid. Everything—the ship and the pilot included-was right, and we found ourselves all of a sudden in the midst of the magnificent port behind which rises the city of Alexandria. The first exercise that I recommend to all Europeans on landing is a gymnastic encounter, aided by a cane, a stick, or the palm of the hand, with the natives who swarm about the ship, if he does not wish to see his luggage carried away in as many different directions as it consists of packages. Adha Anna, who had been cook to our chief during his first campaign in Egypt, simplified our landing and that of our luggage for us; and after he had rendered us this inestimable service, it did not take us very long to pass off our cartridges as English preserves, and perform our toilet at the hotel.

We were impatient to find ourselves in those narrow streets where people roll about like stones in a torrent; where everyone treads on everyone's feet on principle, and everyone bumps up against everyone as a religious observance; where asses, camels, and dromedaries keep the footway to themselves, and the middle of the road belongs freely to the male foot passengers, and to women bundled up in long blue garments, who are either carrying incomprehensible loads, or dragging after them a crowd of children, who hang to their rags like bunches of grapes. We procured at the hotel two Europeanbuilt carriages, which would have looked well at a wedding at a mairie; and as our party should properly have filled three, we strongly resembled a noce as we started off at a great pace to see everything interesting which remains to be seen in Alexandria, notwithstanding the efforts of its inhabitants to turn it into a copy of Marseilles. The straight streets, the houses with green blinds, the photograph frames, and the red signature of Nadar,' are calculated to strike a chill to one's first ideas of an Egyptian city so full of historical memories. After we had traversed some portions of the city which were certainly more pic-"

1 A well-known Parisian advertisement.

turesque, but in which the police must have a busy time of it, we came to the foot of the classic Pompey's pillar. Thirty-nine yards in height, and nine yards in circumference, this monolithic column is in red granite, and of doubtful Corinthian style. Hold! Enough!

The consul-prefect Publius had it erected one fine day, in a burst of admiration for the Emperor Diocletian. Incontestably the most remarkable feature of this column, as a work of art, is the collection of beggars at its base, who sell, with piercing yells, fabulous fragments of the almost intact monument. But there is a red granite quarry not far off, and collectors of historical fragments may be happy yet for a long time

to come.

Having accomplished this pious pilgrimage, we went on foot to an encampment of Bedouin Arabs, who had halted near Alexandria. It was our first sight of these strange types, whom we were to study more profoundly during our excursion into the Desert. The greediness which led us to taste this pleasure by anticipation was punished by our perceiving, in the course of the evening, that we had imported some irritating little strangers into the haunts of civilization. After our visit to the camp we regained our

THE MAHMOUDIEH CANAL.

7

All the ships of

carriages, and drove to the borders of the great Mahmoudièh canal. This immense work was executed by order of Mahomet Ali. Egypt pass through it, and it is the chief artery which connects Cairo with Alexandria. Its commercial importance is of the first class, and, thanks to it, the exportation of grain and the importation of Western products are effected on a colossal scale. But it is not only an inexhaustible source of commercial wealth; it is also the gayest and prettiest site which we had as yet explored. Here we saw, for the first time, those treasures of exotic vegetation whose absence had made us believe that the Thousand-andone Nights had never really happened. Interminable alleys of tamarind and lemon-trees shade the banks of the canal; princely villas seem to have met by appointment beside this oriental lake, and mix their vivid stripes and patterns of blue, red, and yellow, with the infinite variety of the verdure, from the pearl-grey of the aloes to the emerald-green of the bananas. Along these enchanted shores are placed splendid boat-houses, in which are kept the pleasureboats and barges used by the princes and pachas for their excursions on the Nile, of which, indeed, the great canal is only a navigable branch. The long

gaily-coloured dahabichs seem to touch the sky with the points of their slender masts, while rafts of antique construction are towed along by oddly-assorted animals. Now an ass and a camel are yoked together, anon a finely-shaped horse pulls in company with a lumpish buffalo. Innumerable flocks of pigeons seem to be the owners of the place, and might safely compete with Parisian sparrows in the effrontery with which they perch themselves on the animals and boldly take toll of their food.

We were lost in admiration of the crowds of equipages, the avalanches of asses, ornamented by riders bumping up against one another in all directions, the long strings of dromedaries, which made us forget the gas-lamps in the Square of the Consulate, where, in honour of the Viceroy, a merry-go-round with wooden horses was provided for the pleasure of the public, just as on the esplanade of the Invalides.

We passed almost by chance through the street in which Cleopatra's Needles are, and observed that to the traveller only one of those monuments is perceptible. The first is literally buried under rubbish of every description, and the second Needle, which is half-buried, looks as if it had fallen into its cellar while in search of its companion. The hieroglyphs