great canal of Alexandria, where we saw numerous large boats bringing merchandise from Cairo, and towed along by men, as barges are by horses in England. In the course of our ride we passed the elegant palace and gardens of Moharram Bey, and returned by Pompey's Pillar to the city.

Sunday, Nov. 1).

VI. There is a Protestant chapel at Alexandria, which I found but scantily attended. In the afternoon I paid a visit to Mr. Wallace, the Pasha's principal engineer, whose house, situated near the Latin convent, is said to be a kind of grave, almost every individual who has taken it having fallen a victim, as is supposed, to malaria. Date groves*, *. in

* Most of the villas erected on the site of the ancient city are in the same predicament; but the date trees are evidently not the cause. All this part of the suburbs of the modern Alexandria is built over the cisterns which of old supplied the inhabitants with water; and as many of these are now choked up and unknown, the water stagnating in them corrupts the air, and the damp rising from below penetrates even through the stone floors, generating a fever from which few recover. The modern town, occupying no portion of the ancient site, and possessing no old cisterns, is free from this evil. Hirtius, in his History of the Alexandrian War, has given an excellent account of these excavations: "Alexandria est fere tota suffossa; specusque habet ad Nilum pertinentes, quibus aqua in privatas domos inducitur, quæ paulatim spatio temporis liquescit ac subsidit. Hac uti domini ædificiorum atque eorum familia consueverunt: nam quæ flumine Nilo fertur, adeo est limosa atque turbida, ut multos variasque morbos efficiat: sed ea plebs ac multitudo contenta est necessario, quod fons urbe tota nullus est." - De Bell. Alexand. c. 5. Water-drinkers still regard the water brought by the canal to Alexandria as unwholesome, until the earthy particles held in solution have subsided; and even then, it is somewhat brackish; so that those persons who desire a pure beverage have their water brought from Rosetta in casks.

the midst of one of which the house stands, are thought at Alexandria to be highly insalubrious, being covered, morning and evening, it is said, with a dense cloud of vapour, which they nourish and maintain perpetually. This may possibly be the case near the sea, where the air is moist and heavy, but it would seem to be otherwise up the country; since, both in Upper and Lower Egypt, all the towns and villages are surrounded by palm groves; yet the people, though short-lived, are not unhealthy, or particularly liable to intermittent fevers or to typhus. I should, in fact, consider a wood of date palms to be the least unhealthy of all groves, the trees being planted at regular distances, forming vast avenues, as of columns, between which, from the absence of all boughs, excepting at the top, the air circulates freely. Here I observed, for the first time, the Egyptian system of irrigation, which comprehends three different methods. When the surface of the river is about four or six feet below the ground to be irrigated, the lever and basket and the Persian wheel are used; the former worked by men, the latter by cattle. But as the waters decrease, and greater power is required to bring up equal quantities in like times, they make use of the common mechanical contrivance called a sakia, in principle the result of the experience of ages; but generally so defective in construction, that much water or labour is lost. Four Persian wheels, each turned by two oxen, are able, in twenty-four hours, when the water is four feet

below the surface of the ground, to raise sufficient water for the ordinary purpose of irrigating one thousand five hundred fedans* of land. Windmills for raising water, and chain pumps, have been introduced into Egypt; but as these are machines which require some regard to the principles of good workmanship, they are by no means fitted for general use. Once up, they are certainly of great advantage so long as they require no repairs; but when they go wrong, the Arab is unable to put them to rights. For the service of a sakia, there are required, in general, eight good oxent, the feeding of which, with the wages of the persons who attend upon them, amounts to about thirty piastres per day. One man commonly attends upon several sakias; so that in a farm where thirty or forty oxen are employed in the business of irrigation, four or five men would suffice. The oxen or cows are driven by boys or women. however, the government, with a due regard to its own interests and the happiness of the people, should ever entertain the ambition of acquiring an accession of territory at home, and would make the requisite outlay in repairing and enlarging the existing canals, and forming new ones, sufficient water might be retained in them, after the inundation, for the service of the whole year, without the labour of a single ox.

* A fedan is an acre and one eighth.

If,

The price of a common ox is about 700 piastres, or 77. 15s.; that of a superior one about 1000 piastres, or 117. The present value of the piastre is something short of three-pence sterling.

IRRIGATION.

15

The construction of the necessary sluices would be the principal expense; for there is perhaps no country in the world where a canal may be dug so cheaply as in Egypt. Mr. Wallace has seen in the Said a canal six miles in length, and of that great breadth and depth which are so peculiar to the canals of this country, the whole expense of forming which did not exceed 1400 ardebs of wheat, at thirty piastres the ardeb. The labourers employed in such works have no tools, no wheelbarrows, none of the aids derived from mechanics in Europe. All over Egypt, from Rosetta to Es-Souan, there are officers appointed by government to inspect the state of the canals, dikes, embankments, and the general face of the country after each inundation; and it is their business to report the nature and amount of the damage done by the river, with the ways and means of repairing them, to the mamoors of the provinces, who, in their turn, lay the matter before the Pasha; for every thing comes before him. But these district engineers are all miserable Arabs, extremely ignorant in every branch of their profession, so that no good can possibly originate from them, as is but too clearly proved by the general appearance of the country; vast tracts of which—a fifth, perhaps, of the whole-have been, by their neglect, allowed to lie uncultivated, and gradually to become a prey to, and mingle with, the desert. The nature of the soil of Egypt seems to be better adapted for the purposes of irrigation than that of

any other country; for the particles composing the general mass of alluvial matter are so fine, so close, so compact, that little or no loss is experienced from infiltration by water running along its surface. Thus we see the water raised by a sakia on the banks of the Nile sent in a small stream to the distance of several miles, with no apparent loss from infiltration. The surface of the ground to be irrigated is laid out in small oblong squares, divided from each other by diminutive ridges of earth. Those nearest the watercourse are of necessity first overflowed, the quantity of water being according to the season of the year and the nature of the cultivation; and when those have been allowed a sufficient time for imbibing the requisite moisture, the water is turned successively into all the others, the tiny bank of separation being broken down by the foot.*

Monday, Nov. 12.

VII. The greater part of this day was spent in examining a collection of small Egyptian idols, scarabæi, and bronze Ptolemaic medals, possessed by Mr. Harris, a merchant of Alexandria, who unites with his commercial pursuits an enlightened taste for

* From a passage in the Pentateuch we discover that this is precisely the practice which prevailed of old. "The land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven." Deut. xi. 10, 11.