to the ruins of the fortress, said to have been destroyed by fire. The storeys and bricks retain traces of the action of heat. In the distance, on the right, we could see the beach of Pelusium, where Pompey was killed; and on the left, shrouded in mist, Damietta, where St. Louis landed.

January 9th.

We now turned towards Pelusium, near to which are the ruins of the modern Castle of Tineh. Tineh, the Arab word, and Pelusium, the Greek word, have the same signification, and may be translated into English as mud. At the present moment the place is more than muddy, for it has been swamped by the inundation of the Nile. We must, therefore, content ourselves with a view of Pelusium from a distant hill, one of the most important towns of ancient Egypt, but the ruins of which are of little interest. We just sent a passing greeting to the Mediterranean, telling her of the approaching visit of the Arabian Gulf, and then took our leave of her.

Our first survey is completed, and has convinced us of the feasibility of our scheme, which will, I hope, be shortly proved by the reports of the two engineers accompanying me.

We returned to pass the night in the oasis of Bir-elBourj.

January 10th.

The cold is intense, and we walked a little way to warm ourselves, leading our dromedaries by ropes. Then we mounted them again, which is rather an exciting operation. They were fresher than usual, and we soon left the caravan far behind us. Mougel and his donkeys were also distanced by a good stretch. The donkey man's terrors are very amusing: he invokes the Prophet's protection from the attacks of Bedouins; and if an Arab approaches him to ask for a little tobacco or to offer to come and have a cup of coffee in his tent, he thinks his last hour has arrived. He thumps his animals to make them go on faster, and has no peace until he has caught us up. Thinking that the poor fellow would be more uneasy than ever to-day, as we

have seen several armed Bedouins tending their flocks, we halted for a short time at two o'clock.

Mougel, evidently quite absorbed in his calculations, &c., respecting the Canal, and quite unconscious of his attendant's exclamations, soon came up, and 'we at once remounted, skirting along Lake Menzaleh, instead of crossing the desert, as we had done on our way up.

Then we made for the entrance to El Guisr, setting up our tents at five o'clock at the foot of one of the loftiest dunes of the isthmus.

January 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th were occupied by our return journey to Cairo. We halted by a well, and, sheltered by a clump of tamarisks, I jotted down some instructions in pencil for the engineers' report. I read them over to Linant and Mougel, who expressed themselves satisfied with the outline sketched for them to fill in. They wished me, however, to omit the clause requesting them to state their reasons in case of any difference of opinion; but I insisted on retaining it, because, this reservation being made, their agreement, upon which I rely, will have the greater weight.

January 15th.

We started early at a brisk trot, in the hope of reaching Suez at eleven o'clock. On the left we had the chain of mountains beginning with the Mokattam and ending with the Atakah, along the base of which runs the Suez road; and on the right we could make out the minarets of Khanka, amongst its date-trees, and the winding ribbon of vegetation marking the course of the Nile. The morning seemed to me to increase in beauty, and the view spread out before me was positively lovely.

We passed Abouzambel (Ipsambul), and saw the obelisk of Heliopolis, the city of the sun, where Plato studied the archives of the Egyptian priests for seventeen years. It is a mistake to suppose that Joseph, Jacob's son, lived in this town. The Shepherd king on the throne when he was taken to Egypt ruled from San, near Lake Menzaleh, and it was there that Potiphar held the office of prime minister.

A SINGULAR COINCIDENCE.

65

We skirted along the pretty village of Matarieh, surrounded by gardens, amongst which the so-called Tree of the Virgin could be made out. Then we passed Birketel-Haggi (the Lake of the Pilgrims), where the large caravan from Mecca assembles every year to escort the sacred carpet to be laid upon the tomb of the Prophet.

Before us we could distinguish the massive palace of Abassieh, with its 2000 windows, built by Abbas Pacha; and a little farther, on the other side of the Nile, rose the summits of the two Great Pyramids, which have looked down on armies and travellers, not as is commonly supposed for forty centuries, but for more than sixty centuries. And now, on the left, we catch sight of the tapering spires of the mosque, of Oriental alabaster, built by Mehemet Ali within the enceinte of the Citadel, and in which that great man intended to be buried. He had indeed a right to overshadow with his tomb a place in which he overthrew barbarian rule and a country which he regenerated. A singular coincidence now strikes me for the first time.

In 1803 my father was Political Agent for France in Egypt, and Bonaparte, then First Consul, gave him instructions to find a Turkish chief of sufficient energy and intelligence to be proposed at Constantinople for reinvestiture with the dignity, then almost nominal, of Pacha of Cairo. Mehemet Ali, a native of Macedonia, and commander of some thousand Bashi-Bazouks, but who could neither read nor write, became the guest and friend of my father, who aided him with his advice and encouraged him to resist the encroachments of the Mamelukes, who were the enemies of France. Mehemet Ali was worthy of the future in store for him, and manifested so great a superiority to those of his own rank that the French Ambassador at Constantinople (Colonel Sebastiani) used his influence with the Sultan to obtain his investiture with. the Pachalic of Cairo.

Fifty years later the son of Matthew de Lesseps, long the friend of Mehemet Ali's son, advised the latter to undertake a scheme which will render his reign illustrious, and in that very Citadel, which witnessed the violent accession to power of Mehemet Ali, through the massacre of the

Mamelukes, Mohammed Said put the finishing touch to the regeneration of Egypt, by informing the representatives of the European Powers of his intention of uniting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and throwing open the new route to India.

I am convinced that England will profit more than any other country by this new passage; but we must not shut our eyes to the fact that a blow will be struck at the old egotistical policy of Great Britain, and of course the upholders of the time-honoured traditions are already considerably excited.

I expected no less, for, partly from my own experience and partly from what my father has told me, I am better up than most people in the policy pursued on different occasions by the English in Egypt. Why did they do all in their power to prevent the success of Bonaparte's expedition? Why, more recently, did they protect the Mamelukes, who broke up the country, suppressed foreign commerce, and condemned the fertile Valley of the Nile to sterility? Why did they unite with the whole of Europe in 1810 to check the progress of Napoleon and Mehemet Ali? Why did they uphold and encourage Abbas Pacha, that bigoted prince, the enemy of all progress, whom Providence removed just as he was about to complete the disorganisation and ruin of Egypt ?

Because there was a party in England anxious to reduce the Viceroy to the condition of those Rajahs in India, whose vices are encouraged until they have sunk so low that there is nothing left for them to do but to ask for protection or to sell their States.

Fortunately everybody does not think alike in England. No; in that land of liberty there are many men of feeling and intelligence, who will sooner or later win public opinion over to their views.

My letter to Cobden will serve as a pretext, if there should be any need, to wage a crusade against the men of the past.

I have indulged in a political digression at the sight of the Citadel of Cairo; but now let us return to our dromedaries, who needed a few minutes' rest. We stopped near

MALEK-ADEL'S TOMB.

67

the tomb of Malek-Adel, and took refuge from the sun beneath its cupola. You have read Madame Cottin's romance, and will know that Malek-Adel was the brother of Salah-Ed-din (Saladdin), the Caliph reigning in Egypt at the time of the Crusade under Philip Augustus. He is much more of a hero in Madame Cottin's pages than in those of the Arab historians, for the latter do not assign him any special rôle, and do not even mention his love for the Princess Matilda or his marriage in the hermitage of St. Anthony, near Suez.

At last we arrived at the Place de l'Esbékié, and from thence we hastened to the Palace of Foreigners, where I found many friends awaiting me.

XIV.

INSTRUCTIONS TO LINANT BEY AND MOUGEL BEY ON THE SCHEME OF A MARITIME CANAL BETWEEN THE RED SEA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, AND FOR A FRESH-WATER CANAL FED BY THE Nile.

CAIRO, January 15, 1855.

Now that we have completed the survey ordered by his Highness Mohammed Said Pacha, I must call the attention of Linant Bey and Mougel Bey to the chief points to be insisted on in the preliminary and provisional report, which must serve until we are able to present a more complete work, accompanied by maps, plans, sections, estimates, and other documents in support of our plan.

1. State if the present harbour can be made use of for the Red Sea entrance. What works will be necessary, such as jetties, &c.

2. Point out the precise direction of the Canal from Suez to the former basin of the Red Sea, known as the Bitter Lakes.

3. Explain how you propose to utilise these lakes, and if, in passing through them, the maritime canal will require continuous banks or none at all.

4. Give an outline of the course of the Canal as far as Lake Timsah, which is to be used as an inland harbour. 5. State what works will be required to render Lake