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 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 MRS. H. RUSSELL AMORY. 
 
 GIFT OF HER CHILDREN 
 R. W. AND NINA PARTRIDGE 
 
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 L A 1{ D S, 
 
 CLASSICAL AND SACEED. 
 
 BY LORD NUGENT. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET. 
 
 1846.
 
 London : Frinted by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford street.
 
 ( iii ) 
 
 NOTICE 
 
 TO 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The present work is a republication of Lord 
 Nugent's ' Lands Classical and Sacred,' published 
 at the beginning of 1845, in 2 vols., post 8vo. 
 The third chapter of Vol. L, which treated of the 
 political state of Greece in 1843, has been here 
 omitted.
 
 ( V ) 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 Page 
 Arrival in Greece — Patras— Gulf of Corinth — Lou- 
 traclii — Isthmus — Peirseus — Athens — Temple of 
 Theseus — Acropolis — Pnyx — ^Eschines — Hill of 
 Mars— St. Paul 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Athens — Lycabettus — Academus — Colonus — Road to 
 Cephissia — Grotto of the Nymphs — Deceleia — 
 Oropus — Aphidna — Road to Marathon — The Plain — 
 Remarks on the Battle — Return to Athens — Vale 
 of Daphni — Eleusis — Salamis — Sir James Stirling's 
 Remarks on the Battle— Grave of Themistocles. . 26 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Syra— Packet Trade— M. Le Roy— Alexandria —Mah- 
 moudieh Canal — Nile — Cattle crossing — Bpulak — 
 Cairo — Schoubra — Heliopolis— Island of Rhoad— 
 Citadel , 58 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mohammed Ali — His habits and government — 
 ^Egyptian Slavery — Various Reforms introduced by 
 him — Police — Currency — Some inconsistencies in 
 his system— Medical Establishments— Publick Edu- 
 cation—Results of the conduct of other States to- 
 wards him— Recent threat of retirement to Mecca. . 83
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Page 
 
 The great Pyramids of Gizeh — Campbell's Tomb — 
 Sphinx — Necropolis of Ancient Memphis — Abousir— 
 Sakhara — Ruined Pyramid — Dashour — Mitraheeny 
 — Colossal Statue — Magicians of Cairo — Mr. Lane's 
 explanation of the mystery 112 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Preparations for a Journey across the Desert — De- 
 parture — Camels and Dromedaries — their Drivers — 
 Itinerary of the Desert, as far as Khan Younes, on 
 the frontier of Palestine U2 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Wady Gaza — Question concerning Sihor and the River 
 of ^gypt — Gaza — Quarantine — Entrance of the 
 Land of Canaan— Saccarieh—Khoordman Guards — 
 Plain of Duaime — Pass and Mountain of Douras — 
 Hebron — Vale of Mamre 170 
 
 APPENDIX 1. 
 
 Delphi : A fragment of a Journal. From the * Ionian 
 Anthology.' . 189 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Extract of a Letter from Mr. Bonomi to the Secretary 
 of the ^Egyptian Literary Society. . . • 203
 
 LANDS, 
 
 CLASSICAL AND SACRED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Arrival in Greece — Patras — Gulf of Corinth — Loutraclii — 
 Isthmus — Peirseus — Athens — Temple of Theseus — Acro- 
 polis— Pnyx—^schines— Hill of Mars— St. Paul, , 
 
 I OCCUPIED myself for nearly six months, from the 
 beginning of December, 1843, to near the end of 
 May, 1844, in the fulfilment of a wish I had long- 
 formed, that of visiting Athens, -^gypt, the Holy 
 Land, and Syria. On my Avay from Malta to 
 Athens, I passed three very happy days among 
 my old friends at Corfu ; a sojourn made all the 
 more agreeable to me by the hospitality and kind- 
 ness of the Lord High Commissioner, Lord Seaton, 
 — by the opportunity it gave me of forming his 
 acquaintance, and by all which in that short time I 
 saw of ihe measures in progress under his wise and 
 good government for the benefit of a people whose 
 many excellent qualities I so well know, and which 
 deserve to be kindly cherished, frankly acknow- 
 ledged, and affectionately remembered. As I eagerly 
 closed with the warmly expressed invitation I re- 
 
 VOL. I. li
 
 6 ARRIVAL I^^ GREECE— rATRAS. 
 
 ceived again to visit Corfu and the islands on my 
 May back from Syria, I postpone to the account of 
 my return thither all notice of the observations I 
 was enabled to form on subjects so interesting to 
 me. I proceed to the main object of my journey. 
 
 On the 20th of December 1 left Corfu in an 
 Austrian steam-packet for Patras. There, the 
 next morning, I spent a couple of hours with Mr. 
 Crowe, the British consul, breakfasting with him, 
 and afterwards walking with him and his family 
 over the town and the magnificent hill at the back 
 of it, on v/hich its ancient castle stands, and other 
 ground on its outskirts, which he and I had tra- 
 versed together nearly ten years before. About 
 half a mile to the south-westward of the town, on 
 the shore, are a small church and well, dedicated 
 to St. Andrew, near the spot where, according to 
 tradition, that apostle was crucified. "We visited 
 the school of Mutual Instruction (ct^oX^iov a\\r]\o- 
 CLcaatcaXEior), established and conducted by the 
 Greeks themselves, but which has also derived great 
 advantage from the attention bestowed upon it by 
 the daughters of Mr. Crowe, whose hereditary 
 talents " so eminently qualify them for rendering 
 their assistance valuable in the advancement of such 
 objects. 
 
 Patras is famous in the history of the Grecian 
 war of independence, as the place where the vene- 
 
 * Mr. Crowe is son of William Crowe, formerly publick 
 orator of the University of Oxford ; a man whose memory 
 is respected by all who were' admitted to acquaintance with 
 him, and whose taste and learning none are strangers to 
 who have read from his pen some of the best lectures and 
 treatises ever published on the subject of English metrical 
 composition.
 
 PATRA3 — GULF OF CORINTH. 7 
 
 rable Bishop Germanos headed the first revolt 
 against the Turks. Here he reared the banner of 
 the white cross, unsupported but by the enthusiasm 
 of the mountaineers of the surrounding district. The 
 example soon spread to the opposite coast. It 
 kindled a spirit of obstinate resistance at Misso- 
 longhi. This spirit was so organised by the genius 
 of Lord Byron, and conducted by the devoted pa- 
 triotism of Prince Mavrocordato, as to enable a 
 small town hardly walled towards the land side, 
 and almost without means of succour from the sea, 
 to challenge all the means that Turkish ^tolia 
 could bring against it, and, after enduring a siege 
 of eight months, to beat back the Moslem force 
 upon a country which this success had inspired with 
 a kindred confidence, and had called forth to its 
 allotted duties in the cause of Grecian freedom. 
 
 From Patras we stood up the Gulf of Corinth ; 
 scenery not altogether new to me, since, in former 
 times, I had landed from thence at the Scala di 
 Salona (ancient Cirrha), on an excursion to Delphi.* 
 
 We passed the castles of the Morea. We passed 
 Lepanto on our left, which looks down upon the 
 waters famous for that renowned sea-figlit so well 
 placed by Lord Byron as intermediate in history 
 between Actium and Trafalgar. We passed Vos- 
 titza, with its humble pier, its flat-roofed houses, 
 and stupendous plane-tree, on our right ; and, on 
 the same night, having seen a glorious sunset cast 
 all its varied colours on the pine forests, rocks, and 
 snows of the Parnassus range, we anchored at Lou- 
 trachi (the "little bath"), at the north-eastern 
 end of the Bay of Corinth. 
 
 * See Appendix I. 
 
 b2
 
 8 LOUTRACHI. 
 
 The origin of the name of Loutrachi will easily 
 appear to any one who will walk about two hun- 
 dred yards along a low shelf of rocks overhanging 
 the sea to the westward of a small custom-iiouse, 
 which alone marks the site of what was formerly a 
 town. He will there, at the foot of the rocks, find 
 three hot springs, each distant about ten yards from 
 the next to it ; the furthermost, the most power- 
 ful, rising in a narrow cavern, and gushing in a 
 strong stream into the sea. Each of these springs 
 (I did not try them with a thermometer, but only 
 by wading into them, the furthermost reaching 
 nearly to my knee) is of the temperature of cer- 
 tainly more than ninety degrees, I should think 
 somewhere about a hundred, of Fahrenheit. 
 
 From Loutrachi, on the morning of the 22nd, I 
 walked with some of the party from our vessel 
 across the isthmus. Our luggage was carried on 
 cars to Kalamaki, near to the ancient Cenchreiae, 
 on the opposite gulf, where another Austrian 
 steamer waited to receive us. This passage is, in fine 
 weather, much better made on foot than in a car with 
 the luggage, and quite as expeditiously. The track, 
 which is called the Hexamilion (six miles), but 
 which, in truth, is not more than five in length, 
 commands an expanse of rare beauty all along. 
 During the first half of the walk, the Aero Co- 
 rinthus and site of the ancient city stand full in 
 view;* that city, the "friend of Sparta, and rival 
 of Athens," the last stronghold of the Achaian 
 
 * I do not break in upon the order of time in my narra- 
 tive, by describing places which I did not visit till sub- 
 sequently to the time of which it treats. Some months 
 afterwards, I had an opportunity of passing a few hours at 
 Corinth.
 
 ISTHMUS. 9 
 
 league, once famous above all other cities in Greece 
 for the extent of its commerce, the beauty of its 
 coinage, and the skill of its artisans ; — Corinth, the 
 queen of seventy prosperous colonies, and, amidst 
 all the allurements of its own wealth and luxury, 
 and in the days when Grecian liberty was lost, the 
 home and refuge of the ancient philosophy, and the 
 first among the Grecian schools to receive and 
 spread forth among the Gentiles the doctrines of 
 the Christian revelation. 
 
 The latter half of the walk across the isthmus 
 leads down a sandy path, among young fpine-trees, 
 juniper, and cistus, to one of those prospects seen 
 nowhere but in Greece : a range of deep blue 
 ■waters, studded with islands, and bounded on either 
 side by swelling mountains and bold pinnacles, 
 every one of them a time-honoured monument, as 
 it were inscribed with some great name sacred to 
 us from our earliest days ; — the gorge through 
 which Leonidas passed on towards Thermopylae, the 
 hills of Phyle and of Thebes, and those which look 
 down upon Megara, Eleusis, Salamis, and ^gina, 
 as they rise successively over the bay of Cenchrea, 
 and the Saronick gulf on the way to Athens. 
 
 We reached the Peireeus by moonlight. It is a 
 fine bright harbour ; to be entered, as of old, only 
 thro\igh the narrow opening between the pillars of 
 the Lions. The ancient pedestals are still there. 
 The statues with which thej had been adorned by 
 Cimon were carried away by Morosini and his 
 Venetians, who, in a spirit well befitting a Vandal 
 origin, memorized his own shameful plunder by 
 changing the glorious name of Peir^eus into the 
 bastard compound of Porto Leone. But classical 
 as well as moral justice has at last been done be-
 
 10 PEIR^US. 
 
 tween these two famous sea-born republicks of 
 ancient and of modern Europe : Athens, who first 
 framed and established within her ^valls that scheme 
 of popular jurisprudence which has since been 
 applied as the safeguard of personal rights and 
 publick justice in all free states ; Venice, AA'ho in- 
 vested with the symbols of democracy the most cruel, 
 odious, and debauching tyranny of which any his- 
 tory bears record, and who finally, having surren- 
 dered all on purchase, even to the symbols them- 
 selves which she had so long dishonoured, lies 
 chained to the footstool of one of the last remaining 
 arbitrary governments of the world. The lions of 
 the Peirseus are at Venice still. But the Peiraeus 
 is now again a Grecian port, and Athens the capital 
 of a free country, made so by the act of her child- 
 ren ; while Venice, a city of deserted palaces, is 
 but the sepulchre of a proud, vicious ancestry, 
 whose descendants are subjects of Austria. 
 
 The entrance of the Peirseus is extremely ill 
 lighted at night. On each of the pillars is a lan- 
 tern. These are intended to be sea-marks for the 
 coast, as well as guides through a channel where a 
 large ship in passing has but little room to spare 
 on either side. But they are much too dim to an- 
 swer the former purpose well at any time ; and the 
 latter purpose is left unprovided for during the 
 greater number of the dark hours ; for the lanterns 
 are so ill furnished that they begin to '•' pale their 
 ineffectual fires" generally within three or four 
 hours of being kindled, and, through the winter 
 months, when their duty begins early, always ex- 
 pire about midnight. The lighthouse on the head- 
 land anciently called the Promontorj^ of Alcimus, 
 to the southward of the entrance, standing between
 
 ATHEXS. 1 1 
 
 the Peiraeiis and Municliea, answers well the pur- 
 pose of a distant sea-mark. The Peirseus is finely- 
 flanked by this ground on the one hand, and on the 
 other by the high hills which to the northward 
 reach from ^Egaleia to Parnes. It is hollowed out 
 into a gracefully curved basin, deep and clear, of 
 nearly a mile in extent each way, lined at its termi- 
 nation to the east by a newly built and cleanly town, 
 and backed by a distant view of Athens in all its 
 glory at about five miles across the plain. For the 
 first half mile of the modern road to 'Athens, the 
 long walls of Themistocles, completed under the 
 name of the Triple Wall by Pericles, may still at 
 intervals be traced. At about a quarter of a mile 
 to the right of the road, and a mile from the Pei- 
 raeus, is the tomb of Karaiskaki, and of the Greeks 
 and Phijhellenes, wdio fell under the sabres of the 
 Turkish cavalry in the attempt to raise the siege 
 of Athens in 1827. This is the same ground on 
 which, but with a very different issue as respected 
 the freedom of the country, the Athenian garrison 
 under Archelaus the Cappadocian was destroyed 
 by Sylla, at the close of the last struggle made in 
 Greece against the Roman power.' To the same 
 heights too to which Archelaus retired with the 
 mangled remains of those whom he had led. Gene- 
 ral Church effected a masterly retreat, on the even- 
 ing of liis disastrous battle (undertaken, I believe, 
 against his advice), in the face of an overwhelming 
 force which was pouring in from every direction, 
 and covering the whole plain between the Peirseus 
 and the city. 
 
 Nothing has been left undescribed of the general 
 appearance of the city and plain of Athens. Every- 
 body is now familiar with it, even such as know 
 them only through the full and exact details given
 
 1 2 TEMPLE OF THESEUS. 
 
 by Colonel Leake and Dr. Wordsworth, the archi- 
 tectural elevations and restorations of Mr. Cockerell, 
 and the clever and faithful panoramick drawing 
 published a few years ago, from the pencil of Mrs. 
 Bracebridge. Yet there are effects, not of colour- 
 ing and of lights and shadows only, but created by 
 the very outline of the hills and buildings as you 
 shift your ground in approaching them, which no 
 general description can give to the imagination, and 
 even the best drawings must fail to convey to the 
 eye ; but they forcibly impress themselves on the 
 mind when presented in their wondrous reality. 
 
 Of all that architecture has done in this way, I 
 think the Temple of Theseus, every part of which 
 has been so much studied, and so often repre- 
 sented by artists, is what not only the most de- 
 lighted but astonished me in its relation to all 
 that surrounds it. There is a grandeur belonging 
 to its position for which I was quite unprepared. 
 Occupying, as it does, aground so much below even 
 the base of the rock of the Acropolis, still its com- 
 manding height above the whole of the modern, 
 and the site of the ancient city, is what I have never 
 seen a drawing or description which gave me an 
 adequate idea of. From afar, it seems hardly to 
 rise above the plain ; but, as you approach it, and 
 chiefly as you stand under its eastern portico, look- 
 ing down on that part of the city where, of old, a 
 wide street led from it to the Dorick gate of the 
 second Agora, you see in its full majesty the lofti- 
 ness of the station to which you have gradually 
 mounted. And this is in no wise impaired by the 
 much greater height of the Acropolis that over- 
 hangs you. And your admiration of these things 
 does not subside with the first surprise. Far 
 otherwise. The Parthenon, so well said by Dr.
 
 ACROPOLIS. 13 
 
 Wordsworth to be " the finest building in the 
 finest situation in the world," all Athens (I 
 mean not that of the Romans, the Venetians, 
 or the Bavarians, but the Athens of Pericles) 
 grows and improves vastly upon your admiration the 
 oftener you see and the better you know it. As 
 with all that is loveliest in beauty, there is, if such 
 a word may be applied to the forms and colours of 
 architecture and of country, a kind of expression, 
 which, on better acquaintance, gives a charm and 
 dignity beyond what from the first you acknowledge 
 in its faultless symmetry of feature. Each building 
 stands in the best possible relation to all the rest ; 
 and the lines along which Art has arranged that 
 you should approach it are those from which it is 
 to be seen to greatest advantage. As you draw 
 nearer, its proportions become more grand, and the 
 fine mellow complexion of the antique marble, 
 blended rather than contrasted with the rich hues 
 which mantle over the country around, are effects 
 such as no painter can give, and few w ould dare at- 
 tempt to copy faithfully. Standing on the eastern 
 brow of tlie Acropolis, I saw the sun rise over 
 Hymettus, full against the portico of the Parthenon, 
 and lighting up its whole face, in its minutest 
 details, even to the round stains left by the votive 
 shields which hung above the architrave during the 
 second Peloponnesian war. Far behind me, streams 
 of purple and crimson crept along the sides of 
 Parnes and Deceleia, till the white houses and gar- 
 den walls began to sparkle below where once were 
 the villas and stoae of Academus. This was a scene 
 which one who has looked upon it can never de- 
 scribe, and never forget. The same sun has, it is 
 true, at its daily rising, beheld Athens, for nearly 
 
 b3
 
 14 ACROPOLIS. 
 
 three thousand years, an example or a monument 
 of great renown, and has awakened the tints of the 
 same climate around her : but, as you stand on that 
 rock in the morning twilight, till the first gush of 
 the returning dawn pours through the gorges of At- 
 tica and at every moment grows into a broader and 
 warmer gleam, calling forth again from darkness 
 each bright landmark of her heroic history, it is 
 surely not too fanciful or too excited an imagination 
 which can at such an hour exult in it, as in a living 
 type of joyful things,— the sunshine of peace and 
 justice and education restored, after so long a night, 
 to the plains, the courts, and the schools of that 
 noble land, together with the best of human bless- 
 ings. Liberty. 
 
 The long tract of olive grove, stretching along 
 the sites of the Academy and Colonus, and far to 
 the north and south of them, has a very remarkable 
 appearance through the dimness of a morning or 
 evening twilight. The first morning after my arri- 
 val, when I looked out upon them from my window, 
 I was, for a short time, deceived into the impres- 
 sion of there being an arm of the sea spreading itself 
 along the plain before me. And this very much 
 confused my geogTaphical notions of the Plain of 
 Athens. I did not remember then that passage in 
 T>r. Wordsworth's book, to tlie striking trutli of 
 which, after reading it again, I can from experience 
 bear testimony : " The thick wood of olives, still 
 growing on the site of the Academy towards the 
 left, — which looks like a silver sea rippling in the 
 autumnal breeze." 
 
 The view of the Acropolis from the Street of 
 iEolus, one of the two largest streets of the modern 
 city, leading by the Temple of the Winds to the
 
 PARTHENON'. 15 
 
 foot of the rock, is the least advantageous of any. 
 For, on that side, the northern one, neither of tlie 
 porticos of the Parthenon is to be seen, and a few 
 only of the pillars that connected them are left 
 standing since the last bombardment by the Turks. 
 You are so much under the brow, that the Sara- 
 cenick wall which crowns it entirely hides from 
 you the temple of Minerva Polias, which would 
 at a greater distance break the long line facing 
 you. But the side pillars also of the Parthenon 
 being most of them laid low, little is visible from 
 hence save the bluff crag rising behind the houses 
 of the city, crowned with a straight embattled wall 
 whose square towers even do not rise above the 
 flat extent of its top. It is when you have mounted 
 the winding path from the Areopagus on the west, 
 and are within a few yards of where the buildings 
 of the Propyleea rise, to the right of the ascent, 
 that the whole majesty of the edifice is disclosed. 
 Colonel Leake was, I believe, the first to draw at- 
 tention to the mode in which the Greeks managed 
 the entrances of their fortified places, so that the 
 right, the unshielded side of persons approaching 
 them, should always be exposed _^along the whole 
 way. The assailant thus had no defence against 
 the weapons of the garrison, unless he braced his 
 shield on his right arm ; impeding thus the action 
 of his sword, or spear, or sling, or bow. But the 
 most exquisite lines of beauty were studied here as 
 carefully as the useful ones of defence ; and it is 
 very observable, in mounting towards the Parthe- 
 non, how artfully they are combined. At every 
 step from the outer gate, as you approach from the 
 Hill of Mars, or by the ancient Peirsean Way, and 
 from the very beginning of the ascent, for full half
 
 16 ACROPOLIS. 
 
 a mile of ancient road from the opposite side (that 
 of the Ilissus, the Temple of Jupiter Olympius, 
 and the great theatre of Bacchus), your right 
 shoulder is turned towards the walls. And the 
 ■winding course that opposed this difficulty to an 
 enemv. brougfht also the stransrer coming* to admire, 
 and the procession to w^orship and sacrifice, up to 
 the most picturesque angle of each successive build- 
 ing. After you have passed the temple of the Un- 
 winged Victory and the Propylaea, then it is that the 
 Erechthseum, Minerva Polias, Pandrossium, and 
 Parthenon, are in turn presented ; each in its noblest 
 perspective, not full-faced, like the Madeleine of 
 Paris, or like those many monuments of a taste not 
 Attick which line the sides or front the extremities of 
 the wide streets of London. I cannot but believe that 
 the utmost effort of reflection and taste is required 
 to apply successfully an imitation of Grecian archi- 
 tecture, where it is so rarely fitting to climate, ha- 
 bits, or historical associations, in the countries of 
 the north. Nothing surely is plainer than the error 
 committed in building, line for line, upon a Grecian 
 model on any ground or in any scenery dissimilar 
 from that where the original was placed. Even 
 the proportions themselves, after all the measure- 
 ments which these buildings have for so many 
 ages undergone, are a difficulty to our ablest archi- 
 tects, of whom the best are they who feel the most 
 how much on this subject yet remains to be learned. 
 They have long known that all these models differ 
 in the symmetry of their parts according to the 
 height and general cliaracter of the ground on 
 which they stand and over which they are to be 
 approached. They have long learnt that, in these 
 things, as in many others, there is a certain spirit of
 
 ACROPOLIS. 17 
 
 compromise which is not at variance with the 
 strictest principles, wliile it abates tlie liarshness of 
 their applicalion. And, as in musick the tuning 
 of an instrument is a merely mechanical process, 
 whereas the harmonizing of the chords afterwards 
 makes trial of the ear and genius of an accomplished 
 musician, so, in the other arts, taste and genius are 
 required to nicely arrange those modifications which 
 give a charm to the wliole, but are never perceived, 
 except in the general effect. Thus it was left to 
 Mr. Cockerell, and to the Germans who have fol- 
 lowed him in the inquiry, within the last few years 
 to discover that in the Parthenon and Temple of 
 Theseus there is not one straight line. Not only, 
 as any eye will easily detect, the tapering lines of 
 each column, converging from the bottom of the 
 shaft to the top, are curves, no one of which can be 
 described from a single centre, but tlie axes them- 
 selves converge also to assist the perspective of 
 height : and this in different degree, with reference 
 to the different height of the ground the temple 
 covers. Then, again, the ground-plan also is of 
 curves. The columns both of the porticos and 
 sides stand on convex lines. The converging of 
 the axes of the columns is very distinctly shown in 
 the diagrams even of that old but beautiful work of 
 Stewart's. The convex lines of the ground-plan 
 liave been very recently and ably reasoned upon by 
 Mr. Pennethorne,* and may be observed by look- 
 
 * ' Elements and Mathematical Principles of the Greek 
 Architects and Artists,' by John Pennethorne, 1844, Mr. 
 Pennethorne has also, I think, very satisfactorily shown 
 that Vitruvius was aware of this, but that it was not worth 
 the toil or ex( ense of applying these refinements of art to 
 •works done for those who would not have had taste to ap- 
 preciate them.
 
 18 ACROPOLIS. 
 
 ing along the face or side from an angle of either 
 of these buildings. All the lines of the architraves, 
 pediments, and peristyles, are also curved. He 
 who advised his countrymen to employ every hour 
 in studying the " exemplaria Grseca," well knew 
 that any imitation of such models, to be perfect in 
 spirit, required genius little inferiour to that wliich 
 first conceived them. The advice, which had re- 
 ference to the arts of writing and rhetorick, tainted 
 as those arts also were, even in the Augustan age, 
 by the infusions of the Oriental school, was surely 
 not less applicable to the art of arcliitectural design. 
 And it was much required. For, without speaking 
 of the grosser barbarisms of Roman innovation, 
 such as the monumental column with a massive 
 capital made to support nothing but the image of 
 a man placed as far out of sight as invention and 
 labour could hoist it, — without speaking of such 
 gross enormities of taste as these, — there is not a 
 Eoman temple, save those built in the colonies by 
 Grecian artists, which, though perhaps of the ex- 
 actest proportions, does not want that tranquil ma- 
 jesty of composition that distinguishes all the works 
 of that wondrous people from whom Eome plun- 
 dered or learnt all she ever possessed or ever knew 
 Avorthy of fame in art or science. 
 
 Before leaving the Acropolis and the ruins which 
 still adorn it, and the station where once stood that 
 gigantick work of Phidias, the statue of Minerva, 
 the point of whose spear and golden crest seen 
 above the Parthenon served as a sea-mark for ma- 
 riners on their course from Sunium, I cannot but 
 say a few words on that choice and graceful little 
 lonick temple, high upon the right of the entrance 
 of the Propyleeum, the temple of the Unwinged
 
 ACROFOLIS. 19 
 
 Victory, lately disencumbered from the screen of 
 wall and rubbish which concealed it, and now un- 
 dergoing a very judiciously conducted process of 
 restoration ; limited, as it ought to be, to setting- 
 up again in their proper places the columns and 
 such parts of the architrave as had fallen. This 
 was proceeding when I was in Athens, and was 
 nearly completed when I last saw it. This build- 
 ing is eminently worthy of notice ; not less on ac- 
 count of its history Ihan of the singularity of its 
 position and the exceeding beauty of its structure. 
 It was a votive shrine dedicated to Victory, after the 
 defeat of the Persian hosts at Marathon, Salamis, 
 and Platsea, and the final retreat of the army of JMar- 
 donius out of Greece. The goddess was then first 
 worshipped by the Athenians as 'Nlktj Anrspoc, — 
 as having stripped oflf her wings, to remain thence- 
 forward with their city. The basement on which the 
 columns stand was adorned witli a relief of figures, 
 examples of the best style of the best times of 
 Greek sculpture, as is evidenced by the few detached 
 and mutilated fragments which were found buried 
 among the heaps below. Three of these figures, 
 broken and much defaced, are preserved and now 
 placed within the temple. One of them, the most 
 perfect, but deprived of the head and part of the 
 left arm, may, for gracefulness of form and action 
 and perfection of drapery, be placed in rivalry witii 
 the most admired of the Elgii marbles. It is not 
 of more than about half the size of life, and repre- 
 sents Victory, her wings still displayed, but stoop- 
 ing to loose her sandal in token of her intent to 
 sojourn in the midst of the triumphant people. 
 Whatever other important specimens of sculpture 
 have been lately discovered are, with one excep-
 
 20 p^YX. 
 
 tion, preserved in a temporary museum Avithin the 
 Temple of Tlieseus. One statue, eminently worthy 
 of note, remains on its pedestal, in what is now an 
 obscuie court surrounded by mean houses, but 
 where once ran the famous Street of the Statues 
 leading from the foot of the Temple of Theseus to 
 the entrance of the second Ag-ora. It is a figure 
 deprived of head and arms, representing the monster 
 Erichthonius, half man, half serpent. It was dis- 
 i?overed not long ago, and, at the instance of Sir 
 Edmund Lyons, cleared from the rubbish which 
 liad for ages covered it. I will not pause upon, 
 what all have by description become so well ac- 
 quainted with, the majestick columns of the Temple 
 of Jupiter Olympius, at the south-eastern ex- 
 tremity of the ancient city, which overlook the bed 
 of the Ilissus, the Stadium, and ancient entrance 
 from the Peirseus, nor the graceful little Choragick 
 monument of Lysippus, nor the slope of that vast 
 theatre of Bacchus on the southern base of the Acro- 
 polis, where the plays of Aristophanes and the 
 tragedians were represented before an audience, ac- 
 cording to Plutarch, of 30,000 persons, and in view 
 of all those wonders of sun-bright nature and of 
 famous history to which the chorus so often makes 
 appeal. Let us pass by the Musseum hill, and the 
 monument of Pliilopappas, and the tomb of Cimon 
 at its foot, and, leaving the arches of the Temple 
 of Ilerodes Atticus ^n the right, pause upon 
 the site of the upper and lower Pnyx. In the 
 latter of these is the Bema, from which Peri- 
 cles and Lysias spoke the immortal panegy- 
 ricks, and Alcibiades won the hearts of the people, 
 and Demosthenes rallied for awhile their faint- 
 ing spirits in the struggle with Philip for Athe-
 
 .^SCHINES. 21 
 
 nian liberty. And here iEschines contended 
 gloriously, though vanquished, for the crown of 
 eloquence against its mighty master. The perora- 
 tion of ^schines in that great contest may well 
 appear, to one who has not stood upon the spot, and 
 looked round upon the scene where it was spoken, 
 to be inflated declamation ; words only of lofty 
 sound. But when -ZEschines adjured the men of 
 Athens,* first by the land of their forefathers and by 
 the sun which was beaming over it, and next by the 
 attributes of Manly Virtue, and Wisdom, and Edu- 
 cation, in the judgement they should pass between 
 himself and his matchless rival, he was justified by 
 all that they were then beholding together from 
 that place. Sunium, ^gina, the distant Pelopon- 
 nesus, the Acropolis, the mountain range which 
 bounds the Plain of Athens, from Corydallus, 
 all round to where Hymettus and Laurium 
 overlook the sea, all this was present under the 
 brightness of that gorgeous climate. The most 
 famous monuments of ancient valour were in view. 
 The island and straits of Salamis were on the one 
 hand ; on the other the spot consecrated to the me- 
 mory of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, — so revered 
 that no other votive stone was suffered to be placed 
 
 * " ^Eycif fiiv odv, u ytj, xcc) "Kkn, xa) ^A^irh, x-u.) Ivvitn;, x.ou 
 Tlciioua., 'h 'htuyivuffKOfjbiv to, xuXa. xu) to. alcr^ga., /at/3a/iS>i*a, xa< 
 uoYiy.a,' Ka.t ii f/,iv xaXa; xu) a^'ietii roD a.oiK'/if/.a.To; xocT'/iyooriXKy 
 s'/rav u; \fiouXo/icnv' it Ti IvhiiffTi^u;, u; e^£/va^>!V'"-^iEschiues, ill 
 ' Ktesiph. De Corona.' 
 
 " O Earth and Sun, and Manly Virtue, and Intellect, and 
 Education, by whom we distinguish those things which are 
 excellent from those which are infamous, I indeed have 
 given my aid, and have spoken ; and if, in my accusation of 
 this iniquitous man, I have spoken well and suitably, then 
 have I spoken as I wished ; but if imperfectly, still to the 
 best of my ability."
 
 22 HILL OF MARS. 
 
 near their statues :* and the two roads which wound 
 across the plain before them into the mountains 
 were those along which their forefathers had 
 marched to Marathon and Plataea, and had been 
 seen returning victorious to their native city which 
 they had saved. Hard by them were the spaces 
 from the earliest times assigned to public counsel 
 and the tribunals, and, behind these, the sober 
 venerable shades of the Academy. I cannot then 
 believe this to have been mere unmeaning rhap- 
 sody, but a well considered enumeration of all 
 the objects round, the most fitting to excite and to 
 persuade. 
 
 But proceed a little farther, and mount the rocky 
 steps up which Saint Paul was borne by the people 
 to the crest of the Areopagus, and you are there 
 upon a station whence was heard an eloquence 
 more simple far, but far more grand, and alike ap- 
 plying itself to the objects foremost in the sight and 
 reverence of those who heard him. The rhetorick 
 of the apostle was the higher and the bolder. He 
 applied himself to these things, not to flatter but 
 reprove. He appealed not to nature, but straight 
 to Him by whom nature itself was made. He ap- 
 pealed from the stately monuments of Pagan pride 
 and worship to the reasonableness of a spiritual 
 faith and the pure and humble doctrines of the 
 Christian philosophy. The great temple of the 
 
 * " Kai Etxova ffrntTai tuvrov ^ciX;^r,v tipiTfTfou iv ayo^ut oTov 
 stf/.f30vX'/,ra,i tX'/iv 'Tfa.g * Ko[/.ohiov %a.i A^nrroyiiTOVcc." " And tO 
 
 erect a brass equestrian statue of ,him in any part of the 
 Agora (market-place) which they might choose, except near 
 those of Harmodius and Aristogeiton." Part of an honorary 
 decree inscribed on a tablet now in the possession of my friend 
 Mr, Finlay, at Athens, giving leave to raise an equestrian 
 statue in the Agora, any where hut near those of Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton.
 
 ST. PAUL. 23 
 
 tutelary goddess was towering above him where he 
 stood. Below, on his right hand and on his left, 
 the two Agoras were glittering with their fanes and 
 altars, and thronged with a people, who, already too 
 wise and too refined for the coarse and mere ma- 
 terial idolatry of their Roman master, had taken 
 refuge in the adoration of the "Unknown God." 
 Then and there it was that he thus spoke : " Men 
 of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too 
 superstitious. — For, as I passed by and beheld your 
 devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, 
 ' To the Unknown 'God.' Whom ye ignorantly 
 worship, Ilim therefore declare I unto you. God 
 that made the world and all things therein, seeing 
 that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not 
 in temples made with hands." 
 
 I ventured, just now, to say that those who 
 framed the Greek mythology were too wise and 
 too refined for the coarse and mere material idola- 
 try to which the Romans afterwards reduced it. I 
 think I am justified. No one, surely, can have 
 carefully looked at this subject and fail to be con- 
 vinced that what in after-times was, by the vulgar, 
 and by those who formed creeds for the vulgar, 
 debased into an unreasonable polytheism — equi- 
 potent divinities, each claiming the exclusive 
 homage of a distinct class of votaries, and thus dis- 
 tracting the worship of mankind — in its origin 
 was, and continued among the teachers of the Aca- 
 demy to be, a system of attributes. These attributes 
 became personified, to aid the imaginative purposes 
 of the poets, or the corrupt purposes of the priests 
 who served at the several altars, or the ambitious 
 purposes of the conquerors Mho traced a fictitious 
 descent from the several gods thus materialized in
 
 24 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 their essence by the poets and the priests. As the 
 acts which had been done by many successive he- 
 roes for the benefit of mankind in the ruder ages, 
 such as the vanquishing- of robbers, the discovery 
 and colonization of new lands, or the bringing of 
 old ones under profitable culture, were collected 
 together and wrought into a mystic garb of general 
 allegory, to deck out some demi-god for public 
 worship : so also, inversely, such of the manifesta- 
 tions of divine superintendence as could be traced 
 in the operations of nature, or in the influences 
 acting on the human mind, found an allegory in 
 the supposed acts, adventures, or characteristic 
 qualities distributed among many gods.* That 
 
 * The achievements and adventures of the gods and 
 demigods of Greece were originally records, not of violent 
 and ignoble passions, as they afterwards became in the de- 
 generacy of Pagan fable, but either of mystick attributes, 
 or of the deeds of men who, having invented or performed 
 things of publick benefit, were raised to a reputation of 
 divinity : beautiful allegories, capable most of them, if not 
 all, if pursued (and they are allegories worth pursuing), 
 of easy solution. For example, — the Hercules of ^tolia 
 and Acharnania wrestled through a whole summer with 
 Achelous, till he broke off" one of the monster's horns, 
 which he gave to the nymphs, the daughters of Ceres, who 
 next year restored it to the hero filled with fruits and 
 flowers. The river which bears that name descends in one 
 stream to the Ionian sea. But, at a short distance from the 
 shore, a narrow and fertile valley branches off from the 
 river in a more southerly direction, which bears every ap- 
 pearance of having been at some time a second channel cut 
 off" and laid dry by art for husbandry. The Lake of Lerna 
 also has several gorges diverging from it towards the south, 
 overgrown with high reeds and usually dry, but after heavy 
 rains spreading malaria round from the noxious effluvium 
 of the rank mud and water weeds. The Hercules of 
 Argolis severed the necks of the Lernsean Hydra which 
 breathed pestilence. But the water rapidly found its way
 
 MYTHOLOGY. 25 
 
 which was specially received and worshipped as the 
 protecting deity of Athens was perhaps the most 
 splendid of all the Pagan conceptions ;' the attri- 
 bute of Wisdom, never represented as in infancy or 
 tutelage, but perfect in majesty and power, as at 
 the first it sprang, armed, from the brain of Jove 
 himself. It is not then to be wondered at that a 
 people, who had, thus early, preferred such a wor- 
 ship to that of the deities presiding over violence 
 or sensuality, should, alone among the Gentiles, 
 have been found by Saint Paul searching, even in 
 their darkness, after truth, before an altar raised 
 to the " Unknown God." 
 
 again through the embankment, till Hercules commanded his 
 companion tolas to sear the necks with fire, — to burn the 
 reeds which made it insecure. And thus the labour was 
 completed. I cannot, while on this subject, pass by without 
 notice the splendid mythos of Saturn, X^ovo;, Time, — 
 ordained, by the condition which gave him the government 
 of the earth, ever to devour his own offspring. One Being 
 alone was preserved from the general doom, — he who 
 became, under different names, the immortal ruler of earth, 
 and sea, and heaven, and hell, but chief among these, Z-y?, 
 the principle of life, first of the immortal gods. A grand, 
 however imperfect, effort to reach in imagination the idea 
 of an essence not only immortal but pre-existing from au 
 eternity of time.
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Athens — Lycabettus — Academus — Colonus — Eoad to 
 Cephissia — Grotto of the Nymphs — Deceleia — Oropus — 
 Aphidna— Road to Marathon — The Plain — Remarks on 
 the Battle— Return to Athens— Vale of Daphui — Eleusis — 
 Salamis — Sir James Stirling's Remarks on the Battle — 
 Grave of Themistocles. 
 
 The new palace built for the King, according to 
 plans and elevations made at Munich, though con- 
 structed at a vast expense of Pentelican marble, so 
 entirely fails in its general effect, and in all its 
 details, that its appearance, on every side from 
 which it can be viewed, resembles only that of a 
 huge manufactory. Nor are the spaces handsome 
 that are allotted to the apartments within. The 
 only respect in which good taste or judgement has 
 been applied, is in the choice of the situation which 
 it disfigures. It is placed on a gently rising ground 
 outside the' town, and occupies one side of an es- 
 planade, across which it looks down a long street, 
 called the Street of Hermes, that passes the Street 
 of ^olus at right angles. The palace commands 
 a fine view of the town in front. At a few hun- 
 dred yards to its left, backed by the sea and the 
 hills of the Morea, are the tall columns of the 
 Temple of Jupiter Olympius, and, above them, the 
 eastern cliff of the Acropolis, crowned by the Par- 
 thenon. On its right, Lycabettus, with its little 
 cloven rock, the c-^iaTr} Tre-paj at its side, rises
 
 LYCABETTUS. 27 
 
 proudly out of a plain which stretches beyond it 
 for ten or twelve miles to Pentelicus ; and behind, 
 to the east, is the range of Ilymettus, beautiful in 
 all its outlines, and in colours that vary with every 
 gleam and every shadow sweeping along its side. 
 Lycabettus, or Anchesmus (the Lycabettus of 
 Plato, Socrates, and Aristophanes, the Anchesmus 
 of Pausanias, for it is now well established that 
 these are but the more ancient and more modern 
 names of the same hill),* is steep and rugged on 
 all sides ; but the ascent is neither long nor diffi- 
 cult. After about a quarter of an hour's mount- 
 ing, which becomes climbing among the rocks 
 near the top, you arrive at the little church of St. 
 George, on its highest pinnacle : and the view 
 around is striking beyond description. The gene- 
 rally brown and barren hue of the Plain of Athens 
 is agreeably relieved by frequent tracts of olive 
 grove, interspersed here and there with little wdiite 
 villas and farm-houses, and their adjacent gardens 
 and fenced fields of cheerful cultivation. The 
 Grove of Academus, though for the most part par- 
 celled out into inclosures of olive, and, excepting a 
 few fruit gardens and walled orange grounds, con- 
 taining hardly any other trees, is thickly shaded 
 by these, many of which are of venerable age and 
 wild and picturesque forms. The river Cephisus 
 no longer rolls in one single stream through the 
 
 * Dr. Wordsworth's argument (' Athens and Attica,' 
 p. 56) is surely conclusive to show that Lycabettus, assigned 
 by Plato as on the boundary of that part of the city called 
 the Acropolis, " opposite the Pnyx," and by Aristophanes 
 as the hill towards which the clouds flow in their way to 
 Parnes from the Great Theatre, was the same with Anches- 
 mus, on which Pausanias places the statue of Anchesmian 
 Jove.
 
 28 ACADEMUS. 
 
 Academy, but is divided into many small trickling 
 rivulets conducted among different parts for irriga- 
 tion. Yet these are mostly bright and rapid. The 
 Cephisus is the only running water that finds its 
 way thus far on the plain in its course towards tlie 
 sea. For the Ilissus, between Athens and Hymet- 
 tus, is, save for a very short time after heavy rains, 
 a dry ravine ; and the fountain of Callirhoe but a 
 small standing pool, used by the women of Athens 
 as a place for washing linen. 
 
 From the top of Lycabettus you look down on 
 the streets of Athens as upon a map, and trace 
 through the new city, and among the hills and hol- 
 lows and table-land around it, the limits and fea- 
 tures of the old. The inner and outer Ceramicus, 
 Melite, the space connecting the two Agorae, that 
 runs to the east of " Mars' Hill," where Xerxes 
 pitched his tent before the citadel (Herodot. iiii. 
 52) ; the first Agora, here green with early wheat, 
 and there the ploughman and his team slow 
 pacing, where of old the glittering processions 
 wound their way among the temples, or multi- 
 tudes thronged to the Bema's foot to catch those 
 words from living lips which even now are words 
 of fire to the reader in his study ; the second Agora 
 from its western Dorick gate to the Temple of tlie 
 Winds, — all Alliens is in view, except the theatres 
 and those parts of the southern wall which lie at 
 the back of the Acropolis and the Hill of the Mu- 
 saeum. While looking on the thin dry ground, 
 once covered by a great city, where now the worn 
 limestone rocks shoot up above the scanty soil. Dr. 
 Wordsworth aptly cites that fine passage from 
 Plato which describes them (Critia. iii. B.), " oToj' 
 voai](javTOQ awfiarog oara TrepuppijKvtag 7»/c 7>/t'j ,as
 
 ACADEMUS. 29 
 
 the bones of a wasted body through the earth which 
 sinks around them. 
 
 At about half a mile north-east of the Grove of 
 the Academj'-, two small round hills swell gently 
 from the plain, and on the top of the southernmost 
 of these is a small monument of Pentelick marble. 
 These little hills are on the site of the ancient town 
 of Colonus, the birth-place of Sophocles, immor- 
 talized in the tragedy which bears its name along 
 with that of CEdipus, and in which the hero, driven 
 to despair by the wrath of the immortals, lingers 
 here to die. The monument on the hill was raised, 
 a few years ago, to the memory of Professor Miil- 
 ler, and he lies buried beneath it. He had gone 
 from Athens to Delphi to verify some inscriptions. 
 He was in bad health ; and, working with too 
 reckless a zeal through the heat of a mid-day sun, 
 was seized with a fever, and was carried back to 
 Athens but to find his grave among scenes to which 
 his devoted and learned ardour had so fondly at- 
 tached him. 
 
 Pursuing either of the northern roads which" 
 lead along the Plain of Athens, you find them meet 
 at some six miles from the city, near where you 
 cross the Cephisus, at the foot of the small village 
 of Marousi. This place bears in its modern name 
 the record of its ancient one, Amarysia, where 
 Diana was worshipped as the Amarysian Artemis. 
 Dr. Wordsworth cites an inscription on a stone 
 forming part of the church wall, and purporting to 
 fix the limits of the sacred precinct round the 
 temple of the tutelary goddess. (' Athens and 
 Attica,' pp. 229, 230.) He also identifies the 
 village of Calandra, which is near, with the 
 Coleenis, where also Diana was worshipped. (Schol. 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 30 CEPHISSIA. 
 
 to the ' Birds ' of Aristophanes, 874.) Hardly two 
 miles further on is Haracli, evidently the Hera- 
 cleium mentioned by Plato in his will, wherein he 
 bequeaths to his son a farm, and describes it as 
 being near the road which runs to Cephissia and 
 reaches on the south to Heracleium. (Diog. v., 
 Plato iii. 30, as cited by Dr. Wordsworth, p. 
 231.) 
 
 At about three miles north of Marousi is the 
 source of the Cephisus, from which the village and 
 surrounding demus in ancient times derived, and 
 still the village bears, the name of Cephissia- 
 Here was the villa of Herodes Atticus, and here, 
 in the earlier times of Athens, the favourite resort 
 of her wealthy citizens. Even now a few neat 
 farms are on the outskirts of the poor street of clay 
 cottages. At about a furlong beyond the village, 
 in a narrow rocky dell, overshadowed by a wood of 
 ancient olive-trees, is the Grotto of the Xymphs, 
 whence gushes forth the main stream of the Cephi- 
 sus, whose waters flow through the Academy, and 
 on whose banks the disciples of Socrates and Plato 
 learnt the great philosophy which led to the con- 
 templation oi one only invisible God, and of the 
 spiritual immortality of man. 
 
 To the north-east of Cephissia, and at not more 
 than three miles from the village, begins the Pen- 
 telick range. The great quarries are on its southern 
 side, facing Athens. Korth-west from hence, at 
 some ten or twelve miles across the plain, is the 
 gorge of Deceleia, which, though not narrow, is 
 conunanded on the one side by the slopes of Parnes, 
 and on the other by a high and abrupt hill on which 
 the' fortress stood, so renowned in the history of 
 the'second Peloponnesian war as the northern key
 
 DECELEIA APHIDNA. 31 
 
 of Attica, the loss of which was the first event fatal 
 to Athenian independence, when it fell into the 
 hands of Sparta and Thebes. 
 
 In company with Dr. George Finlay, well known 
 as among those adventurous friends of Greece, the 
 early Philhellenes, and since for his topographical 
 researches and antiquarian learning,* I had passed 
 many pleasant and friendly hours in Athens. He 
 Avas good enough to accompany me through two 
 very agreeable days among the northern hills of 
 Attica. We finished our first day's ride at his 
 farm, under what was the Acropolis of the ancient 
 town of Aphidna. For a minute and very able 
 dissertation on this wild but interesting country, 
 and the proofs establishing here, beyond doubt as 
 it appears to me, the place of that once famous 
 fortress, I can do no better than refer to a well- 
 written and ably argued little tract, called ' Remarks 
 on the Topography of Oropia and Diacria,' and 
 published by him at Athens, in 1838. He argues 
 first, from the description given by Herodotus 
 (vi. 100) and by Thucydides (viii. 60), that Oro- 
 pus was on the shore of the Eubccan channel, on 
 the site of what is now called the Scala, or Aghios 
 Apostolos, over against Eretria, now known as the 
 ruins of Castri, in Euboea. He next shows Aphidna 
 to have been a town and fortress of considerable 
 importance, and to have given its name to a ter- 
 ritory composing one of the twelve confederated 
 districts of Attica. That it lay between the Demi 
 of Deceleia and Epacria, and that it must have 
 been in the way leading direct from Deceleia to 
 
 * Author of an admirable work lately published on 
 * Greece under the Romans.' 
 
 c2
 
 32 APHID^'A. 
 
 Marathon, and that, from its forming a central 
 point of refuge for the country between Mount 
 Parnes and Rhamnus, " it must have covered the 
 roads from Tanagra and Oropus which enter the 
 Plain of Athens by the pass of Katiphori, as v/ell 
 as the road which led from the upper Valley of the 
 "Waters of Marathon to the great maritime plain." 
 All these considerations combined point distinctly 
 to the hill I have mentioned. It is, Mr. Finlay 
 truly says, " beautifully situated, standing out in a 
 finely undulated and woody country, with a clear 
 brook even in the dryest summer months flowing 
 at its base. It presents three steep sides, clothed 
 withYalonia oaks towards the roads to Oropos, 
 Athens, and Marathon, while to the north it is 
 connected by a rocky ridge with that part of the 
 Diacrian hills which forms the arable lands about 
 Kapandriti. The vestiges of modern houses and 
 churches on the hill show that it had preserved a 
 considerable population even to a late period. The 
 district round is fertile in grain, and affords excel- 
 lent pasturage, and there are still eight modern 
 villages in the neighbourhood ; but not one of 
 them occupies a position which unites tlie requi- 
 sites for the site of Aphidna. After a careful ex- 
 amination of all the lines of communication through 
 Diacria, I ^have found no other spot to which all 
 the authorities I have noticed in these remarks are 
 applicable, while all seem accurately adapted to 
 the position I have now indicated." 
 
 Aphidna is said to have been the birthplace of 
 Tyrtseus ; and the popular belief that Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton were also born there derives ad- 
 ditional credit from tlie speech of Miltiades before 
 the battle of Marathon, in which he addresses him-
 
 ROAD TO MAHATHON. 33 
 
 self to his colleague, the Polemarch Callhnachus, 
 who was also an Aphidnean, exhorting him by the 
 example of his illustrious fellow-townsmen. (Herod. 
 vi. 109.) Here, also, it is said (Herod, ix. ; Plu- 
 tarch, Vit. Thes. 31 ; Pausanias i. 41—44), ac- 
 cording to the traditions of the more remote and 
 cloudy times of Grecian history, that Helen was in 
 her early youth secreted by Theseus. During his 
 absence in Epirus, Decelos of Deceleia revealed 
 the place of her retreat to her brothers Castor and 
 Pollux, who undertook an expedition against it. 
 Its strength resisted for a considerable time the 
 Dioscuri and their numerous allies. At length, 
 however, the Aphidneans were defeated by the 
 confederates, and Helen was retaken. The history 
 of this contest continued, even as late as the Pelo- 
 ponnesian war, to make so deep an impression on 
 the minds of the Lacedaemonians that, on their 
 invasion of Attica, says Herodotus, they spared the 
 territories of Deceleia, Marathon, and the Aca- 
 demj'-, as belonging to the descendants of Decelos, 
 Marathos, and Academos, who had given important 
 aid to the Dioscuri. Across tlie plain of Aphidna 
 to the westward, the crags of Parnes are seen rising 
 majestically over the forest of Molae. On the three 
 other sides also it is hemmed in by a dark range of 
 woodland ; and narrow paths winding for several 
 miles among venerable evergreen oaks and a high 
 brushwood of juniper and arbutus, and often losing 
 themselves in the rocky beds of brooks, aiford the 
 only approach to a place so well suited to its ro- 
 mantic story. 
 
 The next morning we set forward on our ride 
 towards Marathon, leaving Kapandriti to our left. 
 As we mounted the Heights of Pyrgos, still thread-
 
 34 PLAIN OF MARATHON. 
 
 ing our way through fine greenwood and rocky- 
 scenery, glimpses of pure blue opened between the 
 boles and branches on our left, like the sky ; but a 
 range of dim mountains, higher and more distant 
 on the horizon, told us that we were looking on 
 the sea. It is the northern entrance of the Euri- 
 pus ; and the mountains are those of Euboea. Soon 
 after, we found ourselves on a plain which, wind- 
 ing to the right, leads into a narrow valley. Mount 
 CEnoe was on our right, and the little cave about 
 half Avay up its side, sacred to the worship of Pan, 
 who, on the day of the memorable battle of Mara- 
 thon, wrought good service to the Greeks, con- 
 founding the hearts of the Persian host with that 
 fear which has derived its name from the name of 
 the shepherd god. A short distance further on, 
 and to the left, is the -spillage of Marathona, which 
 has been mistakenly supposed to be the ancient 
 Marathon. The village that bore that name 
 appears to have been at the foot of the mountain 
 pass to the south of the field of battle ; probably 
 on the site of what now is known as Vrana. Ma- 
 rathona is a place of modern times, taking, not 
 giving, the name of the memorable plain beyond. 
 
 The Plain of Marathon now lay before us, a 
 wide and desolate flat, of some three miles across 
 from the eastern hills to the sea, and about twice 
 as much in length from the foot of the Mountain 
 Argaliki, at its southern end, to that of Koraki on 
 the north. Its expanse is thinly spotted, not bro- 
 ken, by a few stunted wild pear-trees and low clus- 
 tering junipers ; and a small river runs across, 
 about midway of its length. 
 
 There are but two objects on the whole surface 
 of the plain on which to fix the eye. The one a
 
 REMARKS ON THE BATTLE. 35 
 
 small heap of jointed marble stones, most of them 
 now displaced and in fragments, the foundation of 
 the monument built by Aristides in memory of 
 Miltiades ; — the other, nearer the shore of the bay, 
 is the great artificial mount reared by the people of 
 Athens to the honour of those whose bones it 
 covers, — their fellow-citizens, who on this ground 
 died for their country — Tovg kv MapaOiovL TrpoKu^- 
 IvvEvcravTaQ riov TrpoySvojv* The most impressive 
 kind of record surely, as the most lasting also, that 
 can be dedicated to the honour of the dead. Struc- 
 tures of marble and of brass decay. Even while 
 they last, their form and construction may be sub- 
 ject of criticism ; so may the inscriptions they bear ; 
 but, where the earth herself is made to change her 
 shape in memory of the acts done there and of the 
 men who wrought them, if the acts or the men be 
 worthy of remembrance, such a monument illus- 
 trated by history alone is surely the most worthy 
 that can be raised by hands. 
 
 The story of this famous battle, though so elo- 
 quently and minutely told by its great historian 
 (Herodotus vi.), has given rise to different opinions 
 as to the probable position taken up by the Grecian 
 army on that day. Of the formation of the host of 
 Darius, in front of its camp, flanked by its ships 
 which lined that part of the bay, and with the 
 marsh in its rear, into which, after the defeat, so 
 many thousands were driven to perish, nothing is 
 left in doubt. Whatever may have been the mili- 
 tary disadvantages of such a disposition, made, too, 
 by the two best generals in his service, Datis and 
 
 * Demosth. pro Coron. " Those of your ancestors who 
 risked their lives formerly at Marathon."
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 -dV^ ?o mr^ 
 
 .Marathon, and Country round
 
 KEMAKKS ON THE BATTLE. 37 
 
 Artapliernes, to whom the command hud been 
 given in the field, it is clearly laid down by He- 
 rodotus ; and indeed the nature of the ground, 
 circumscribed as it is, leaves no other mode of dis- 
 position open for so enormous a body of men. The 
 Greeks, on the other hand, amounting in all to not 
 more than ten thousand, with, according to their 
 own historian, not less than ten times their number 
 opposed to them in front, must have formed on 
 some part of the plain where both their flanks were 
 secured, and from which also they might advance 
 without exposing them to be turned. For He- 
 rodotus expressly says that their first line ran 
 forward the length of a whole stadium and made 
 the first attack. Some have, with this view, sup- 
 posed that they formed an oblique line about 
 parallel with that between the roots of the two 
 mountains Kotroni and Argaliki. But in so doing 
 they must, upon their advance, have made a full 
 wheel to their left, or an oblique movement difficult 
 of execution, liable to a great confusion, and, above 
 all, leaving the whole space open between their 
 right and the sea. Moreover, it appears that there 
 is one capital objection to this formation. It co- 
 vered no road upon which it would have been 
 reasonable or practicable for the Persians to advance 
 in order to reach Athens, their admitted object. 
 The pass by Vrana over Mount Aphorismos is so 
 narrow and rugged, in parts almost precipitous, 
 (and, being formed through natural rock, must 
 always have been so,) that, putting out of consi- 
 deration the labours of the march and the exposure 
 to the attacks of even defeated troops on both sides, 
 no column could have passed with more than eight 
 or \^\\ men in front. And this is the only road to 
 
 c3
 
 38 THE MOUXT. 
 
 Athens ; except the road along the sea-shore by 
 Probalinthus, which is flat and open the whole 
 way, and capable of admitting heavy columns of 
 very formidable front, attended by their ships to 
 give assistance and supplies along the march. If 
 the Greeks had formed in the manner before-men- 
 tioned, the Persians would have had only to en- 
 gage them with half their army in their front, 
 coverinof the march of the other half alono;' the 
 sea-shorC; who must thus have reached Athens un- 
 opposed. 
 
 The probable position of the Greeks appears to 
 be that suggested by Mr. Finlay, and described on 
 the annexed plan. It protects both the roads to 
 Athens, it leaves the proper space open for the 
 Grecian army to advance in a straight line, without 
 endangering either of their flanks, and gives them 
 even in the event of a repulse two roads open, along 
 either or both of which they might, in their retreat, 
 annoy the advancing enemy, and get to Athens 
 before him. Add to all this, that the mount raised 
 over the Grecian slain is on the spot where the 
 main part of the battle Avas fought ; and that this 
 should have been the ground of the main strugole 
 can hardly be accounted for under any other dispo- 
 sition of the troops. 
 
 The mount is large — thirty or forty yards in 
 diameter at the base. Many small bits of flint of 
 a triangular form, and evidently cut or rasped into 
 shape by some instrument, are found on this mount. 
 They are called by the country people there Per- 
 sian arrow-heads. They are clearly much too 
 small to have been used for this purpose ; but as 
 to what tliey have been I have heard no probable 
 supposition.
 
 THE SACRED WAY, 89 
 
 "VVe returned by the way of Mount Apliorismos. 
 Though liardly more than two miles from Vrana 
 to the top of the ridge, it requires full an hour and 
 a half in the ascent with horses. All along the 
 winding road to the top, the view of the Plain of 
 Marathon through the openings of the trees is 
 magnificent. From thence, descending on a wild 
 part of .the Plain of Attica, and leaving Brilessos 
 and the base of Pentelicus to our left, by the way 
 of Cephissia, we reached Athens late at night. 
 
 Of all the roads leading to Athens, that of 
 Eleusis is surely the one of the most striking and 
 various beauty. This is the ancient Sacred Way, 
 along Mdiich the procession passed, once a year, 
 from celebrating the mysterious worship of Ceres. 
 As you go from Athens along this way, the Academy 
 and Colonus are on your left. After leaving the 
 olive woods, at a little more than a mile, you begin 
 to mount by a gentle ascent, from the crest of which, 
 at about two miles further, looking back you have 
 wliat I think must be acknowledged to be the finest 
 view of the city that any part of the surrounding 
 country affords. I have seen it from this point at 
 all times of the day, and under all those efliects of 
 weather which are so many in this climate, and so 
 distinct. In the morning, when the sun was rising 
 behind it ; in the evening, when the level glow of 
 sunset darted across the plain to rest upon the 
 Acropolis and Lycabettus ; at mid-day, when it was 
 sparkling in the light, and the forms of the moun- 
 tains behind it were traced against the deep blue of 
 the serenest sky, — and when dark rolling masses of 
 cloud made the whole stand forward, frowning in 
 dark majesty over plain and woodland, and over the 
 Peirseus and distant waters of the Myrtoan sea ; —
 
 40 VALE AND PASS OF DAPHNI. 
 
 at all these times and in all these seasons I have 
 seen the view from hence, and each time I have 
 thought that effect finer than any of the preceding. 
 Nothing could be more striking than the aspect in 
 which the great city of arts, of philosophy, and of 
 heroes, presented itself to the stranger coming in 
 from Eleusis. 
 
 From the top of these heights, as you proceed 
 westward, the scenery assumes an entirely different, 
 but still very lovely character. You are now in a 
 valley richly clothed on both sides with young 
 pine-trees. Tending away to the left, it gradually 
 deepens and narrows' itself into a gorge through 
 which part of the island and bay of Salamis opens 
 before you, and Eleusis and Mount Kerata in the 
 distance, with the double peak from whence it de- 
 rived its name. This is the Yale and Pass of 
 Daphni. In the midst of this vale stood of old a 
 large temple dedicated to the worship of Apollo ; 
 its site is covered by a very picturesque little church 
 of the early Byzantine style of architecture, now 
 deserted and partly in ruins. Many of the mate- 
 rials, some indeed of the smaller columns of varie- 
 gated marble that stood in the ancient temple, have 
 been worked up into the Christian edifice ; and the 
 outward court and nave, the cupola and roof of 
 which still remain uninjured, are strewed with frag- 
 ments of the old Grecian times, and of those of the 
 lower empire. Nothing remains of the monastery 
 which was attached to it ; it was entirely destroyed, 
 and the church dismantled by the Turks. Close to 
 it are a small Ssvocoxeiov (inn) and guard-house ; 
 and a fine spring well, probably of old the sacred 
 fountain of the temple, is within its precinct. The 
 inner walls of the nave are covered with old fresco
 
 VALE OF DAPIINI. 41 
 
 paintings of saints. Here, as in all the other 
 churches which have not been restored from Turk- 
 ish desecration, the eyes of all the saints are bored 
 througii deep into the white plaster of the wall 
 behind. It is a superstition of the Moslems, that 
 these paintings themselves are evil genii, whose 
 power is destroyed when the eyes are put out. 
 
 The early Byzantine style of architecture, so far 
 from being in conflict with the character and asso- 
 ciations of Grecian scenery, is in perfect harmony 
 with them. These buildings illustrate a very inte- 
 resting though not a glorious portion of the history 
 of Greece, — her history in the middle ages ; and 
 they are so little obtrusive in either size or decora- 
 tion, that their quaintness of form in no way inter- 
 feres, but is rather in pleasing contrast, with the 
 splendid monuments of earlier and purer art, even 
 in Athens itself. In Athens there are many of 
 these churches standing, most of them in the lower 
 parts of the town : and hereafter, if new churches 
 are to be built, I think no more appropriate, more 
 picturesque, certainly no cheaper, construction can 
 l3e adopted than that of the cruciform Byzantine 
 church, with its round arches reared on small clus- 
 tering pillars, resembling those of the Anglo-Nor- 
 man style in England and in France, with its little 
 octagonal or circular nave. What is principally 
 to be deprecated here, as indeed everywhere else, 
 are the spurious attempts to imitate the classick 
 Grecian edifices : but, above all here, in puny con- 
 flict with the inimitable originals. Greece and the 
 Grecian colonies have the prescriptive property of 
 the Dorick and lonick orders. 
 
 From Daphni the road leads down for about a 
 mile between the ranges of Cithseron and Corydallus,
 
 42 ELEUSIS 
 
 whose sides are still shaded with pines, to the 
 water's edge ; then, turning to the right, along the 
 shore of the bay, it crosses a small river, the Kleu- 
 sinian Cephisus. It passes a large mass of marble 
 foundations, probably those of the Temple of 
 Venus, thence leading among plains rich with fine 
 barley land, the fields on which the tutelary goddess 
 of Eleusis first taught the use of the plough and 
 the culture of grain. Far away to the right, 
 Megara is dimly seen through a gap in the north- 
 western hills ; and, as you round the bay, Eleusis 
 (^AevffLva) is in front : — but with every trace of its 
 grandeur gone. Its site is only to be distinguished 
 by the knoll on which the great Temple of Ceres 
 stood. It is a wretched town ; and all the more 
 unsightly because, instead of the flat roofs which 
 at least disguise at a distance the most oflfensive 
 parts in the appearance of a modern town, all the 
 better houses in Eleusis have pents and ridges of 
 blue or red tile. From the hill of the principal 
 temple, if you place your hand so as to exclude all . 
 sight of the houses below, the view is fine. It 
 commands the whole bay and western end of the 
 island of Salamis, and looks up the narrow strait 
 where the most decisive of [all the Grecian battles 
 was waged, and won against the most excessive odds 
 of numbers, that famous sea-fight which baffled 
 Persia in her scheme of universal monarchy and 
 ibrced back from her grasp the whole mainland of 
 Attica and all its cities already in her power. 
 
 But one solitary half of the shaft of a large fluted 
 column remains standing to mark the place of that 
 famous Fane of Ceres, built, says Plutarch, by 
 Corccbus, and finished by Metagenes, where, for six 
 hundred years, those mystick and prodigious rites
 
 BATTLE OF SALAMIS. 43 
 
 had been solemnized which it was death for tlie un- 
 initiated to approach, and which held all Greece in 
 awe. Of the Temple of Castor and Polkix nothing 
 whatever is to be traced. 
 
 There is another and a very interesting way, a 
 circuitous one, by which you may return hence to 
 Athens. Quitting the main road, on the left, up 
 the gorge of Daphni, there is a horse-path before 
 you which leads all along the coast round to the 
 Peirseus. Along tlie whole way you are on the 
 shore of the waters of Salamis, the island rising 
 boldly in varied and strangely-broken forms at the 
 back. On the left is the base of Corydallus, and 
 above, on one of its highest peaks to the eastward, 
 overlooking the strait and the little island of 
 Psytallia at its eastern entrance, is a table-land 
 shown as the place where Xerxes fixed his throne, 
 to view the conflict in which he had hoped to see the 
 small navy of Greece, and her last hopes in that un- 
 equal war, swept away before his countless host 
 winch covered the sea in their pride, but which, 
 before that day closed, encumbered it in tumultuous 
 flight, in carnage and wreck. 
 
 During my stay at Athens and in its neiglibour- 
 liood, it was my good fortune that my friend Sir 
 James Stirling, commanding the Indus, was in the 
 harbour of the Peirseus. He took a deep interest in 
 endeavouring to form an accurate judgement, by 
 personal observation, on some contested questions 
 that have arisen with respect to the position and 
 formations of the fleets at the famous battle of Sala- 
 mis. For several days he occupied himself in visit- 
 ing the straits in his boat, with the narrative of 
 Herodotus as his guide, and his own seamanlike 
 knowledge and a careful examination of bearings
 
 44 REMARKS ON THE 
 
 and soundings to supply the commentar}^ Any 
 opinion respecting the formation of the line of 
 battle must be purely conjectural. But on these 
 subjects, during the time that I was with him, and 
 made by his kind permission the Indus my home, I 
 vras much struck \vith his observations, of which 
 he had, moreover, the great kindness to allow me 
 to avail myself, as follows. 
 
 In the narratives of that achievement which have 
 come down to us, much has been left very defective. 
 We have no precise evidence even as to the posi- 
 tion of the fleets, and little as to the order in which 
 they prepared for the action. The only information 
 we have on these points we derive from Herodotus, 
 and from the very valuable summary contained in 
 the ' Persians ' of ^schylus : — the relation given 
 by the dramatick poet being all the more valuable 
 from his having himself been present and fought 
 in the action. The traditionary particulars collected 
 and added by Plutarch, in his life of Themistocles, 
 are of, little importance for this purpose. "We are 
 left almost uninformed, except by inference, as to 
 wdiat was the effort of science and genius in aid of 
 courage and patriotism, by which this victory was 
 gained ; nor are the dispositions or manoeuvres 
 very clearly defined by the success of which it must 
 have been that the power so greatly superior in its 
 amount of ships and men was defeated by the less. 
 In any attempt to give a probable solution to this 
 question, the circumstantial evidence which con- 
 temporary history aftbrds must be compared, in 
 order to comprehend the designs and plans formed 
 by the great leader to whom the Athenians had 
 intrusted the conduct of their powers. On com- 
 paring his recorded views with the particular
 
 BATTLE or SALAMIS. 45 
 
 circumstances under which he announced them, 
 and with the event, the most remarkable con- 
 currence will be observed. It may be seen, too, 
 that by only one arrangement of the Grecian fleet 
 could these designs and plans have been executed 
 with success. 
 
 For some time before the second invasion of 
 Greece by the son of Darius, the Athenians, under 
 the advice of their best statesmen, had applied all 
 their means to the extension of their naval power. 
 This advice had been confirmed by the famous 
 declaration of the oracle concerning the " Tfooden 
 Walls ; " — a declaration probably procured by the 
 same forethought which first gave the counsel. 
 This policy, hovVever wisely conceived, left the 
 Athenians without the power of offering any effec- 
 tual resistance to the progress of the Persian arms 
 by land, and with no alternative save the abandon- 
 ment of their territory, untenable against so 
 numerous a host, deserted, moreover, by its inhabi- 
 tants, and all its supplies exhausted. In their 
 whole conduct of the war, the Athenians were 
 guided by Themistocles. Early in the year they 
 had conferred upon him the command of their 
 fleet, which at the general assembly of the maritime 
 states of Greece was found to be of an amount 
 rather more than equal to that of all the other 
 powers afloat. A jealousy arose among the rest, 
 which induced them to dispute the supreme authority 
 with the Athenian. He surrendered without dis- 
 pute the title of chief in command ; but still his 
 genius and reputation sustained their natural influ- 
 ence over the direction of the movements. 
 
 The first important action of this new war was 
 that at Thermopylae. Here, after the self-sacrifice of
 
 46 REMARKS ON THE 
 
 Leonidas and his three hundred, and a severe loss 
 on the part of the Persians in forcing that pass, 
 time' became of the utmost importance to the 
 invaders as well as to the invaded ; but the advan- 
 tage of time was seized by the Greeks and neglected 
 by Xerxes. The Persian army advanced slowly 
 into Attica. But every step removed it further 
 from its magazines in Macedonia ; and its generals 
 ^vere obliged to draw subsistence for the troops 
 from the almost wasted country they occupied, and 
 from their own ships. The Plains of Attica, in- 
 sufficient at any time to afford full subsistence to 
 its own people, could ill maintain an enemy, already 
 desolated as it was by invasion ; and the Persians 
 soon became dependent on their fleet alone. By 
 the time they had reached Athens, winter w^as at 
 Land, and the supplies they could draw from their 
 ships became daily more scanty and more precarious. 
 To remain on the ground they then occupied would 
 be to expose themselves to absolute want. To 
 attempt a retreat through a large tract of already 
 wasted country would be sure destruction. And to 
 advance towards the Corinthian isthmus, having in 
 their front an active adversary in possession of all 
 the passes on the shore of the Eleusinian gulf, 
 would be an operation of the greatest hazard. In 
 the midst of these embarrassments, Xerxes consoled 
 himself with the destruction of the Athenian 
 capital. And now the anticipations of Themistocles 
 began to be realized. 
 
 On the fall of Leonidas, the Grecian ships had 
 retired to the island of Salamis, which, as well as 
 Tra^zene in Argolis,* was filled with the expatriated 
 
 * The hospitality of this city -was claimed by many of
 
 BATTLE OF SALAMIS. 47 
 
 people of Attica. Upon learning what had be- 
 fallen Athens, the greater part of the crews Mere 
 seized M'ith consternation, and many of the com- 
 manders urged as a last resource to retreat upon 
 the Corinthian isthmus and the adjacent shores of the 
 Cenchrean Bay. The Spartans, disheartened by the 
 loss of their brave king, and never cordially dis- 
 posed towards their new allies the Athenians, 
 thought only of retiring to secure their own 
 country. But there M^as no security for Sparta 
 against the overwhelming force of Xerxes save in 
 fighting its battles in league with the Athenians 
 and on the sea. 
 
 At a council held in this emergency, Themistocles 
 addressed himself to Euribiades the Spartan, who 
 bore the title of Leader of the Fleet.* And the 
 arguments by which he urged him to abide the 
 issue in the straits assist us in forming a probable 
 opinion as to the position he afterwards took up. 
 He urged, that to fight at the isthmus (and fight 
 they must), would be to do so in an open sea, under 
 all the disadvantage of heavier ships and smaller 
 numbers ; and that, even if all should answer to 
 their wishes, Salamis, Megara, and JtLginsi would 
 have been abandoned to the enemy. By fighting 
 here among the narrows their fleet would be better 
 able to cope with the larger armament opposed to 
 them. That thus also would Salamis be saved, 
 where their wives and families remained, and thus 
 every other object in hand be accomplished. " For 
 by holding this position you will protect the 
 
 the fugitives, on account of its being built throughout of 
 •wood ; interpreting the words of the oracle respecting the 
 wooden walls as having reference to Trcezene. 
 , * Herodotus viii.
 
 48 REMARKS ON THE 
 
 isthmus ; while by sailing thither you would draw 
 the enemy to that coast, which you could not 
 defend. If we be victorious here, which my trust 
 is in the immortal gods that we shall be, the bar- 
 barians will be able neither to advance upon the sea- 
 coast, nor penetrate inwards beyond Attica, but 
 must retire in confusion. We shall thus have pre- 
 served Salamis and Megara from being laid waste, 
 and ^gina too, where the oracle has already 
 promised us success." 
 
 But this appeal failed before the selfishness and 
 irresolution of the other chiefs. Themistocles was 
 therefore fain to address himself to the general 
 assembly of the commanders, and in the tone of a 
 man ready to be answerable for all, so long as the 
 publick safety should not be wantonly endangered 
 by the adoption of a course he knew to be unwise. 
 He told them that by retiring they would be 
 deservedly dishonoured as the betrayers of all 
 Greece ; that in the Athenian fleet was their best 
 and chiefest strength, and that they might be 
 assured that unless they obeyed his counsels he and 
 his Athenians would take their own families on 
 board, and depart with them to Italy ; and that, 
 deprived of such support, Sparta and Corinth 
 would have cause to remember his words. It was 
 now midnight. Before day -break the determination 
 must be come to. 
 
 Thus urged by one whose resolutions they knew 
 were not hastily adopted, governed by superiour 
 judgement and never abandoned, the confederates 
 unanimously engaged themselves to stand the issue 
 by his side ; and the crews on board, when this was 
 announced, prepared for the conflict within the 
 Straits of Salamis.
 
 BATTLE OF SALAMIS. 49 
 
 On comparing tliis declaration of the views of 
 the Athenian leader with what is known of local 
 and territorial circumstances, their conformity is 
 very remarkable. And the following description 
 of the coasts adjacent to the channel which was 
 occupied by the Grecian fleet will show in what 
 respects they gave it means for obstructing all 
 further progress as well of the Persian forces on 
 shore as of those afloat. 
 
 The channel of Salamis is the space between the 
 island of that name and the main. It comprises 
 the Straits of Salamis and of Megara, and the Gulf 
 of Eleusis. The city of Salamis stood about mid- 
 way of the northern shore of the island ; and its 
 communications with the mainland were carried on 
 by means of a ferry, which still exists, leading to 
 the western base of Corydallus. In Salamis the 
 wives and families of the Athenians had taken re- 
 fuge, and from thence the daily supplies of the fleet 
 were derived; for the mainland had been aban- 
 doned to the enemy. In as far then as other con- 
 siderations might permit, the object of the Greeks 
 was to place themselves as near as possible to the 
 city of Salamis, for the convenience of communica- 
 tion, and for mutual protection and assistance. On 
 one of the nearest mountains on the mainland, 
 Xerxes was in person, surrounded by his court, to 
 view tlie next morning's fight, for he knew that the 
 fleets must come to battle within the straits. This 
 he had learnt through the secret agency of The- 
 mistocles himself; for in order that, if his advice 
 should be rejected by his colleagues, they might 
 be driven by necessity into the course in which he 
 knew their only chance of preservation lay, the 
 Athenian had privately despatched emissaries, in
 
 50 REMARKS ON THE 
 
 guise of deserters, to the Persian king-, with the 
 intelligence that the Greeks intended to escape, 
 under cover of the dark, by the western passage. 
 And, accordingly, during the night, two vessels 
 joining the Grecian fleet from the eastward brought 
 news that a Persian detachment of two hundred 
 ships had been seen steering a course for Megara, 
 to intercept all escape that way. 
 
 Two great objects had thus been secured by 
 Themistocles : the certainty of coming to action 
 in the position of his choice, and the withdrawing 
 from the attacking party in his front a portion of 
 their force nearly equal to two-thirds of his own. 
 Twenty triremes from -^gina now joined him, 
 led by the good Aristides, whose personal enemy 
 Themistocles had been ; Themistocles had led the 
 faction that had banished him by ostracism. But 
 in their common zeal for their country's safet}'^ all 
 private resentments were cast aside. On the night 
 before the battle, these two great men were recon- 
 ciled ; and Themistocles, well knowing the honour, 
 courage, and capacity of Aristides, imparted to him 
 the whole of the design by which he was working 
 on the others for the means of victory. 
 
 In addition to other advantages, the part of the 
 strait immediately before Salamis, with the shal- 
 lows on both sides, presented these. In all likeli- 
 hood it enabled the Grecian fleet to arm its larger 
 vessels in their stationary position with heavier and 
 more formidable stores and instruments for close 
 engagement than any the Persians could bring 
 against it by sea ; stones and tackle for grappling 
 and boarding, and fire. It certainly constrained 
 the Persians to contract the front of their attack- 
 ing force to the width of the available passage, the
 
 BATTLE OF SALAMIS. 51 
 
 whole extent of which was occupied by an equal 
 front of Greeks. Besides, the taking up of a post 
 like this, immediately in advance of the narrowest 
 part, gave facilities for the passage of supplies and 
 reinforcements during action, promptly and unim- 
 peded by the enemy, which no other position at 
 hand could offer. 
 
 It may be proper now to advertjto other pecu- 
 liarities belonging to this place. 
 
 The two roads from Athens towards the Pelo- 
 ponnesus, after skirting the western side of Cory- 
 dallus and the northern base of ^galeia, come 
 down upon the shore of the Eleusinian gulf, as I 
 have before mentioned, at the point where the 
 Sacred Way strikes off through the Pass of Daphni. 
 From thence, for several hundred yards, the one 
 road in which they join is hemmed in on the north 
 by rugged hills impassable to heavy-armed troops, 
 and on the south by the sea-shore. And there a 
 few vessels provided with the engines of war then 
 in use would be quite sufficient to obstruct the 
 progress of a large army. On tlie farther side of 
 the gulf, adjacent to the Scironian rocks, there is 
 another pass of like character on the water's edge. 
 So long then as the Greeks could retain command 
 of this navigation, they had it in their power, as 
 Themistocles had told them, to protect the Isthmus, 
 as well as Salamis, Eleusis, and Megara, and pre- 
 vent the invaders from penetrating beyond Attica. 
 To gain the command of this line had become the 
 object of the Persians in equal degree with the im- 
 portance to the Greeks of retaining it. It was to 
 determine this question then, a battle being un- 
 avoidable, that Themistocles had resolved to fight 
 it in the straits. And these considerations assist
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 rian ul the Straits of Salamis, Fiom the Ailniiraity Survey.
 
 REMARKS ON THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS. 53 
 
 in assigning also with probable truth the limits of 
 the space selected for the conflict. For, on the one 
 hand, it is clear that the Greeks had arranged to 
 receive the attack to the eastward of the narrowest 
 passage ; and it is also clear that they could not 
 venture on receiving it at any greater distance to 
 the eastward than just enough to give scope for 
 marshalling their ships. It was necessary for them 
 to occupy the whole navigable width of the chan- 
 nel, in order to secure their flanks ; but most de- 
 sirable not to remove themselves further from the 
 city of Salamis, and from their ships employed in 
 guarding the passes on the sea-shore, than circum- 
 stances should render unavoidable. 
 
 An observation strongly confirmatory of the pro- 
 bability that the line laid down on the annexed 
 plan was the one taken up by the Grecian fleet is 
 this — Themistocles is described by Plutarch as 
 having waited for the time in the morning wdien 
 the strong wind usually prevailing at that time of 
 the year, the south-east wind, ^' from w^ithout the 
 bay," should set in through the straits to " set the 
 stems of his galleys against the Persians." The 
 general course of these straits is from east to west. 
 This wind then w^as a leading wind for the Per- 
 sians, which Themistocles judged rightly was what 
 they would wait for to bring them in. It is well 
 known that, according to the mode of warfare then 
 in use, the first effort of each party w^as so to ma- 
 noeuvre as to give the stem and force the beaks of 
 their ships into the broadside of the enemy. At 
 the headland we have mentioned, and there only^ it 
 would be necessary for vessels going through the 
 straits to luff a little, as Plutarch says the Pcrsimis 
 did, but, as he adds, by this operation '^ laid their 
 
 VOE. I. D
 
 54 REMARKS OX THE 
 
 sides bare to the Greeks, who fiercely assaulted 
 tliem." 
 
 After tliese suggestions as to the nature of the 
 position, it remains to make a conjectural forma- 
 tion of the line of battle in conformity with it and 
 with the narrative founded on the authorities al- 
 ready referred to. 
 
 On a line extending to the south-eastward from 
 tlie mainland, at a few hundred yards to the east 
 of the ferry, it is probable that the Greeks drew up 
 tlieir most efficient ships, the squadrons of the se- 
 veral confederated states under their respective 
 cliiefs. The length of that line to tlie opposite 
 lieadland of Salamis is 1800 yards, affording, there- 
 fore, space for ninety triremes, twenty yards being 
 allowed for each witli its oars ; the van being sup- 
 ported by one or more lines of ships in the rear of 
 it. Tiiis, the main body of the fleet, may have 
 comprised about one hundred and sixty triremes. 
 They had probably detached some smaller vessels 
 to the eastward to observe the motions of the eiiemjr 
 and report his approach. For they were not 
 unaccustomed to night attacks, nor unaware of the 
 opportunities and means of setting fire to fleets. 
 In the rear of the centre of the main body, and at 
 a short but convenient distance, the reserves were 
 stationed, to support and replace upon occasion the 
 disabled vessels. This reserve may have comprised 
 120 triremes. Tlie rear-guard then may have 
 consisted of some forty powerful ships, whose duty- 
 was to occupy the narrowest part of the channel, 
 near the small island of Arpathoni, and maintain 
 tiiat .post to the last, if the main body and its 
 reserves should be compelled to retire ; the pen- 
 teconters and other small vessels of war being
 
 BATTLE OF SALAMIS. 55 
 
 stationed to the north of the strait to observe and 
 obstruct the movements of the Persian land troops, 
 ■whether they should attempt, as Xerxes in the 
 course of the action did attempt, to pass over to tlie 
 island of Salamis, or proceed upon their marcli 
 along the road towards Eleusis. This disposition 
 employs the whole force of tlie Athenians and tlieir 
 allies, as described by Herodotus and iEschylus. 
 The transports and other vessels of burthen were 
 probably stationed in the bays to the west of this 
 strait, and in communication with the town. 
 
 By these dispositions, which entirely accord with 
 the general narrative of Herodotus, the Grecian 
 fleet was in a condition to realize all the objects 
 which Themistocles had set forth. They appear to 
 be such as would have given him the advantages of 
 regularity and combination in his movements, and 
 enabled him to reinforce his battle and withdraw 
 his disabled ships ; while those of the enemy could 
 not retire against the dense columns advancing in 
 their rear and on not a straight course, and occasion 
 inextricable confusion in the movements of the 
 whole. 
 
 i The navy of Xerxes, after sailing through the 
 Euripus, came to the harbour of Phalerum. Here 
 he visited his ships and called a council of his prin- 
 cipal officers, at which it was decided to force tlie 
 straits. The order was given to proceed to Salamis ; 
 and at the mouth, a little in front of the island of 
 Psytallia, where they landed about 300 men during 
 the night, they formed their order'of battle. This 
 also materially confirms the impression that tlie 
 Greeks cannot have taken up their position more to 
 the eastward tlian what has been described. For He- 
 rodotus says that the Persians formed unobserved 
 
 V 2
 
 56 REMARKS ON THE 
 
 by the Greeks and unheard by them. To those 
 who have been present at the formation of a line 
 of row-boats during the night, with every precau- 
 tion that the best discipline can enforce, the im- 
 possibility is clear of forming a body of upwards of 
 a thousand heavy armed and lofty galleys, in a sea 
 too which covers and follows every stroke of the oar 
 with a stream of light, unheard and unseen by an 
 enemy lying in the same reach of a strait, and with- 
 in a short distance of them. 
 
 On the same night the Persian land forces ad- 
 vanced along the road towards the Peloponnesus. 
 At break of day their fleet was seen covering the 
 sea from the mouth of the straits as far Munychia, 
 formed in columns of attack converging towards 
 the east to accommodate its order to the line of 
 coast. On their right wing were the Phoenicians ; 
 the lonians occupied the left ; the centre was led 
 by Ariemenes, brother of the king. 
 
 In stillness both parties must have remained for 
 some hours after sunrise until the usual breeze be- 
 gan to make into the straits. Then the Persian 
 fleet stood in. The king's brother, gallantly lead^ 
 ing the attack, was slain early in the fight. Thence- 
 forth, though the battle lasted till well nigh even- 
 ing, the confusion of the Persians host seems to 
 have been hopeless ; — in a strong breeze and a short 
 broken sea, amid the clashing of oars, the storm of 
 darts and stones and torches, close fight upon their 
 decks, and the crushing of their ships which fell 
 foul of each other. And now the better disposition 
 and discipline of the Greeks took full effect. Their 
 headmost line, well seconded by the rest, seems to 
 have acted with seamanlike skill and method, each 
 ship grappling and boarding one of the enemy's van
 
 BATTLE OF SALAMIS. o7 
 
 as it came up, and forcing the mangled front back 
 upon the mass of vessels which now only impeded 
 and damaged each other. The story of the battle 
 and complete victory need not be pursued, or that 
 of the retreat of Xerxes out of Greece, leaving 
 Mardonius at the head of a part of his host, who 
 afterwards perished amid their final overthrow at 
 Platsea. 
 
 The grave of Themistocles (for it can hardly be 
 doubted, from its site and appearance, that what is 
 now so called is what Plutarch so minutely de- 
 scribes), behind the promontory of Alcimus, is not 
 ■well said by Byron to be " high o'er the land ; " it 
 is hollowed out at the foot of a rock jutting forth 
 into the sea, and so low that the water flows into it 
 even to its surface. There are the '' vast founda- 
 tions " all around on which the altar mentioned by 
 Plutarch probably was raised. Yet low as the 
 grave of Themistocles lies, standing by its side you 
 see from thence, full in view, the great and im- 
 perishable monument of his glory, Salamis.
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Sjra— Packet Trade— M. Le Roy — Alexandria — Mah- 
 moudieh Canal— Nile— Cattle crossing — Boulak — Cairo 
 — Schoubra — Heliopolis— Island of Ehoda— Citadel. 
 
 T LEFT Athens with great regret. But I had tlie 
 prospect of revisiting it on my return towards 
 Corfu and Malta ; and the principal object with 
 which I undertook my journey, that of passing on 
 to Palestine, forbade any longer delay. On the 
 evening of the 20th of January I departed from the 
 Peireeus in a French government steamer for the 
 island of Syra (ancient Scyros), which we reached 
 next day. 
 
 Many circumstances of position have given to 
 this island an importance which on no other account 
 could have belonged to it, and made it considerable 
 as a place of resort for merchant ships, and the ren- 
 dezvous for all the packets bound either way between 
 Greece and the ports of the Levant. In classical 
 literature the name of Scyros is found only among 
 the geographers ; excepting where it is spoken of 
 as the kingdom of Lycomedes, where Achilles was 
 concealed.* The ancient town stands about a mile 
 back from the bight of the bay, on the top of a 
 high conical hill of singular steepness. In front 
 
 ' * Propert. 11; El. 9; Apollodor. iii. c. 13; Homer, 
 Odyss. X. 508; Ovid. Metam. vii. 464; xiii. 156; Fau- 
 sanias, i. c. 7 ; Strabo, ix.
 
 PACKET TRADE. 59 
 
 of it and on the water's edge, a modern town lias 
 witliin the last few years since the revolution, been 
 built, with a commodious quay, custom-house, and 
 lazaretto. It is called by the name of Hermopolis, 
 to designate it as the principal trading port of 
 Greece. Syra was the general place of refuge for 
 the Greek families which during the war of inde- 
 pendence were driven from the adjacent islands ; 
 and, by the mediation of France, an arrangement 
 was made under which this asylum was respected, 
 and never invaded or molested by the Turks. The 
 inhabitants of the new town are almost all recent 
 settlers, from whom those of the old — the indige- 
 nous people of the island — live entirely separate, re- 
 garding them with contempt, as a mere commercial 
 society of strangers, a race unfit to be in mixed re- 
 lations with them. 
 
 The packet trade is entirely in the hands of the 
 French, whose vessels convey all passengers hence 
 to Alexandria, Smyrna, Constantinople, Marseilles, 
 and Athens. From the ports of the Adriatick to 
 Athens it is conducted by the Austrians. Why 
 these interests, which have risen up in this part of 
 the Mediterranean within the last ten years, have 
 been permitted to appropriate the whole of this trade 
 to themselves, -while only twice a month a British 
 packet, the property of a company, crosses these seas, 
 and only once a month one of the smallest class of 
 packets with the Queen's pennant takes a voyage from 
 Malta to Marseilles, Corfu, and Alexandria, and, by 
 reason of the smallness of the vessel, and the great 
 amount of the charge of passage-money, carries but 
 few passengers, is a question which occurs to an 
 Englishman in a rather mortifying shape. Those 
 must answer it who in the administration of the af-
 
 60 M. LE ROY. 
 
 fairs of England determined it to be not worth her 
 while to keep the carrying trade of the Mediterra- 
 nean in English hands ; — not worth her while to 
 maintain a force of steamers there for purposes of 
 mercantile connexion, profitable in peace, to be 
 seen in every port, as the French and Austrians 
 are, and to be ready at any moment of dispute to 
 take in guns at Malta, and show her to be prepared 
 for war ; — not worth her while to continue the im- 
 pression which, till ten years ago, was established 
 in the minds of foreigners, that the best way along 
 the high road of the seas was, by a sort of prescription, 
 to be found in peace, as it had been in war, mider the 
 shelter of the British flag. As late as the year 1835 
 there was only one Austrian steam-packet, plying 
 at uncertain intervals, from Trieste to Greece, but 
 with few passengers, and no French steamer higher 
 than Marseilles. Now, for one British ensign in 
 a Mediterranean packet, there are at least a dozen 
 French and Austrian ; and to these, for every rea- 
 son of commodiousness, frequency, and cheapness, 
 passengers give a ready preference. 
 
 From Syra, if there be any delay, which there 
 sometimes is for two or three days, in the arrival 
 of the mails from Smyrna or Constantinople, you 
 may visit, in an open boat, the islands of Delos, 
 Naxos, Paros, Mycone, Andros, Tenos, Syphnos, 
 Ceos, and Seriphos. 
 
 The passage by steam from Syra to Alexandria 
 is seldom longer than about sixty hours. On board 
 of the steamer in which I embarked were six French 
 nuns, Soeurs de la Charite, proceeding on a mis- 
 sion for the establishment of a school and hospital 
 at Alexandria. They were accompanied by M. Le 
 Roy, a French missionary, who had been for near
 
 M. LE EOY. 61 
 
 twenty years at the head of a convent and college 
 on the western slope of Mount Lebanon, a few 
 hours' distance from Beyrout, to which place he 
 was returning with his chaplain. M. Le Roy is in 
 dress and habit a Syrian ; and, although he is little 
 above forty years of age, his beard, descending 
 nearly to his girdle, is of snowy whiteness. He is 
 a person of engaging manners, well educated, an 
 accomplished linguist, and a fair classical scholar. 
 During our voyage I found his society very agree- 
 able, notwithstanding what was perhaps a some- 
 what too restless solicitude, on his part, for occa- 
 sions of theological controversy. During our 
 conversations on these subjects, conducted by him 
 with great good breeding and a general appearance 
 of frankness and liberality, he gave me the impres- 
 sion of his having been in the habit of applying his 
 reasoning powers to the instruction of persons 
 rather too ready to make large admissions on de- 
 mand ; and his strange misapprehension with regard 
 to tenets supposed by^him to be held by Protestants 
 gave strong confirmation to this general truth, how 
 little to be trusted are the impressions formed or 
 descriiDtions given of any creed among its adversa- 
 ries. To one or two of the opinions which he as- 
 sured me were held by all Protestants, concerning 
 some very important doctrines of the Christian re- 
 ligion, I may in another part of this book have 
 occasion to refer. 
 
 We first caught sight of Alexandria (El Iskan- 
 derieh) an hour or two after sunrise on the third 
 morning from Syra. Although it lies low upon 
 the waters, its appearance from the sea is very im- 
 pressive. Its principal features are strongly marked, 
 and cannot be mistaken. The jutting headland of 
 
 D 3
 
 62 ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 the ancient Pharos, — the Roman tower which has 
 succeeded to its office as a sea-light, visible at a 
 great distance to vessels approaching on any of the 
 three sides, — the ancient and modern harbours, — 
 the Pasha's palace and port, backed by Pompey's 
 Pillar, which rises darkly against the sky, — alone 
 upon the edges of the city and the wilderness, as it 
 were a landmark of history placed between the ruins 
 of her far-stretched greatness and the empire of a 
 much greater and wider desolation ; all this makes 
 the view of Alexandria from the sea a very striking 
 one. The chord of the ancient harbour, Eunostos, 
 is of nearly a mile in extent, and encloses, besides 
 a large number of foreign merchant vessels, the 
 Pasha's three dismantled ships of the line, the largest 
 amount of naval force which, by treaty with the 
 Porte, he is suffered to retain. That of the more 
 modern and larger harbour to the eastward is a span of 
 more than five miles ; but the space within is empty. 
 The impression produced by the first view of the 
 interiour of the city of Alexandria is one of melan- 
 choly, which deepens into deadly weariness on fur- 
 ther acquaintance with its details. The filth of its 
 streets and suburbs, the squalid, unhealthy, and 
 penury-stricken look of its population, the un- 
 finished condition of the new buildings and the 
 ruinous condition of the old, — everything has an 
 air of neglect, of suffering under a discouragement 
 which has quenched all energy, all power and 
 desire to struggle against it. Some incomplete 
 efforts at modern ostentation there are, but few ad- 
 vances towards comfort or prosperity. In the midst 
 of a spacious square near the eastern end of the new- 
 town, into which you suddenly emerge from the 
 narrow dingy lanes of the old, stands a handsome
 
 ALEXANDRIA. 63 
 
 fountain of Oriental alabaster. But no water has 
 yet been conducted to it. On each side is a good 
 and commodious hotel, and the houses of the 
 foreign consuls show a bold and ample front ; and 
 at the further end, the southern, is a large and 
 handsome edifice, the Wekaleh, used as a store- 
 house for merchandise. It is a fine space ; but for 
 many years it has been, and still remains, as when 
 the houses were begun, encumbered with scaffolding 
 and rubbish. 
 
 Overlooking a glorious roadstead, and occupying 
 three sides of a fine harbour, which brings the im- 
 ports of foreign commerce to the very mouths of a 
 mighty river traversing the whole land of -ZEgypt, 
 and receives from it the produce of the richest soil of 
 the world, the city of the Ptolemies ought to be still, 
 as it has been, beautiful and flourishing. But its 
 beauty is gone, and its commerce passes through 
 without enriching its inhabitants. Poor, but with- 
 out enterprise or industry, it has the look of a town 
 lately visited by some heavy calamity, or withering 
 under the arrest of some evil influence which forbids 
 what has been laid waste from being repaired. 
 Such is the air given to Alexandria — a city for 
 which the energy of the Pasha had done much, and 
 was preparing much more, till he was stopped by 
 foreign hands in the progress of his well-directed 
 improvements, — such is tlie air given to Alexandria 
 under the newly-restored Turkish supremacy. The 
 bazaars are ill supplied, the publick ways clogged 
 with masses of impurity. Generally the modern 
 publick edifices, the custom-house, the courts, the 
 houses of the more powerful class, are like so many 
 unfinished barracks or deserted factories. It has 
 neither the cheerful welcome of a populous city,
 
 64 ALEXANDKIA. 
 
 nor the romantick solitude of a ruin or a wilderness. 
 The finest remains of its remote antiquity are de- 
 prived of much of their grandeur by the sordid as- 
 sociations that surround them. Even that noble 
 pillar called Pompey's (the work of ages before the 
 Roman times, and dedicated, as the inscription be- 
 tween the base and shaft declares^ to the honour of 
 Diocletian), reared on a gentle but commanding 
 eminence to the south, between the city and the 
 lake Mareotis, is disfigured, as you draw near to it, 
 by an expanse of crumbling grave-stones, stretching 
 out for a great distance from almost its foot, and 
 beset by troops of wild and howling dogs, who take 
 up their abode by day and night among tlie scarce 
 closed mansions of the dead. 
 
 The obelisks, generally known by the name of 
 Cleopatra's Keedles, originally raised by Tothmes 
 the Third at Heliopolis, and brought here probably 
 ill the time of the later Ptolemies, — one of which 
 yet stands, a mournful and defaced ruin, near its 
 fallenbrother, — are hemmed in, on the southern and 
 eastern and western sides, by an irregular mass of 
 the vilest of mud- built huts, and defiled by all the 
 pestilential filth of their wretched half-naked in- 
 mates. On the north they are enclosed by a long 
 and high sea-wall. The fallen obelisk was, many 
 years ago, offered by the Pasha as a present to the 
 English government. It might have been removed, 
 at a very small expense, along a canal, or on rollers, 
 to the sea-side, within a few hundred yards of which 
 it lies. Indeed the Pasha undertook this, as part of 
 his offer, and whatever trouble and difficulty there 
 might be in delivering it, either on board of a 
 British vessel provided for the purpose, or lashed 
 upon a simple raft in tow. The subsequent charge
 
 ALEXANDKIA. 65 
 
 of transport could not have amounted to one tythe 
 of that which brought the obelisk of Luxor to the 
 Place de la Concorde at Paris. But " Diis aliter 
 visum est." Almost all the disfigurement, even 
 now not much, which has been suffered by its upper 
 side, has happened since the time when it became 
 British property. The inscriptions on the other 
 three sides have probably been preserved by the dry 
 sandy soil which surrounds them, in all their first 
 beauty and freshness. 
 
 The only monuments of the early and glorious 
 age of this famous city which still remain undese- 
 crated and unencumbered by the encroachments 
 and neglect that have since obscured them, are the 
 ruins, and bare and scanty ruins they are, of the 
 Palace of the Ptolemies, which you see to the east- 
 ward as you pursue the road along the coast. That 
 hospitable college, open for so many centuries to 
 the studious of all nations, where the philosophy, 
 learning, and genius of that wondrous land of 
 -^gypt found a home under the encouragement 
 and protection of its princes, from whence the early 
 seeds of science and of art were spread abroad, to 
 rise into a more abundant harvest in Greece ; — 
 that famous library, the destruction of which has 
 swept away so much of the written history of an- 
 cient literature in what may be called its heroick 
 age, — this once mighty depository of immemorial 
 treasure, — all this, as also the Soma, or place of 
 regal burial,' which once contained the " noble dust 
 of Alexander," can now be only traced in mounds 
 of earth and sand, with spacious but broken lines 
 of stone foundation, and here and there a crumbling 
 and almost shapeless fragment of time-worn ma- 
 sonry above ground.
 
 66 MAHMOUDIEH CANAL. 
 
 Yet these at least have the charm of solitude. 
 For they are outside the walls, and stretch forth to 
 wliere they meet the sea. 
 
 As you leave the city on your way southward to 
 the Mahmoudieh canal, which completes the water- 
 communication between it and the Kile, the face 
 of things improves. Kature, which has never 
 ceased or neglected to lavish lier gifts on the fields 
 of ^Egypt, resumes her rights, assisted by careful 
 culture, in that fertile soil and gorgeous climate. 
 The resources of industry, little known among the 
 towns, are actively applied to the agricultural dis- 
 tricts. And the condition of man would improve 
 in equal degree, but for the faults of civil govern- 
 ment, or rather for the tardiness of every advance 
 made by the genius and activity of one ruler, to- 
 wards a reform of the wasteful and depressing 
 system under which ^gypt has languished ever 
 since the overthrow of the dynasty of her Fatimite 
 ICaliphs. Amid smiling groves of orange and 
 pomegranate, and abundant gardens well watered 
 by machinery, and dressed with laborious neatness, 
 the habitations of man are squalid, ruinous, and 
 wretched. Kature is exceeding, bounteous in^dif- 
 fusing all the elements of prosperity. But the curse 
 of monopoly is upon the whole land ; — manifest in 
 the wretchedness of the people, who derive no profit 
 from their toil, — manifest in the embarrassment of 
 the government, which has to abide what no govern- 
 ment can ever deal with advantageously, the vicis- 
 situdes attending the business of mercantile specu- 
 lation, and under the worst of all systems for the 
 welfare of trading enterprise, the system of protec- 
 tion by artificial guards against competition. 
 
 Palm trees bearing the date fruit in profusion,
 
 NILE. 67 
 
 acacias (locusts) of a sort yielding a useful and en- 
 durable wood to the builder and the joiner, and 
 those venerable everGi-reen trees abounding- all 
 through the East under the proper etymological 
 name of sycomores,* line the banks of the canal, 
 which extends to a length of nearly forty miles — a 
 magnificent work, begun and completed within six 
 months by Mohammed Ali Pasha. This canal 
 joins the Nile at Atfeh (the site of the ancient 
 Aphroditopolis), now a straggling mud-built vil- 
 lage. Here you descend, by a lock, upon the 
 bosom of the mighty " father of waters." 
 
 The whole course of the Nile from hence up to 
 Cairo, a distance of 120 miles, and at this time of 
 year about as wide as the Thames at Gravesend, is 
 studded with lofty date palms, with straggling vil- 
 lages, and marabouts (tombs of Moslim saints), the 
 small white cupolas of which group very agreeably 
 with the rest of the scenery. It presents a suc- 
 cession of scenery, as agreeable and as much diver- 
 sified as is consistent with low level banks, and a 
 wide expanse of flat country, swelling only here 
 and there into small sand-hills, whose pervading 
 hue, however, is often broken by patches of rich 
 green corn and rice land, and tinted in the distance, 
 at all times of the day, from sunrise to twilight, 
 with ever-varying gleams of glowing brightness 
 and colour. The water, though never clear, is very 
 sweet and fresh to the taste, and runs, during the 
 months between the falling of the inundation in 
 
 * The Oriental sycomore, so called in the Bible (the fig 
 mulberry, StJxfl^o'aav), wliich bears a dark green leaf and a 
 small wild fig, growing, not from the shoots, but out of the 
 old gnarled bark. This tree is of very picturesque form^ 
 and attains to a great size.
 
 68 CATTLE CROSSING. 
 
 August and its recurrence in June, at the rate of 
 never less than four miles an hour. But the rapid- 
 ity of the stream very much increases, and the water 
 becomes more turbid and clayey, as the season of 
 high flood draws near. 
 
 The shores are covered with cranes and pelicans, 
 and its bosom with fleets of ducks, wild geese, and 
 other water-fowl ; and troops of falcon kites sail 
 and hover in the air above your boat, keeping 
 company with it, and becoming more numerous as 
 you approach Cairo. At intervals the creaking of 
 the water-wheels (Sakhias) gives note of the indus- 
 try with which the work of irrigation is going on 
 upon the fields on both sides of the river. 
 
 Early in the morning of the second day, while 
 our little steamer was aground on one of the vast 
 number of shoals that are always rising up and 
 changing places.and delaying the navigation of the 
 Nile, we saw a proceeding very characteristick of 
 this country. A large troop of bullocks, under 
 the guidance of one swarthy driver, came down to 
 the left bank — brought there, as we supposed, only 
 to drink before their morning's feed. But no. 
 They had crossed the Delta, and were on their way 
 to the opposite side, and from thence probably to- 
 wards Alexandria. They seemed aware of what 
 was required of them. They entered the river, 
 sliding down the muddy bank, without reluctance ; 
 and no sooner were they all fairly in the water, 
 than the driver stripped off his clothes. He then 
 tied them in a bundle on his head, and, addressing 
 a shout to the beasts, which they seemed to under- 
 stand as encouraging them to cross, he followed 
 them ; and the whole party began their swim toge- 
 ther ; the man often seizing one of the bullocks
 
 CAIEO. 69 
 
 by the horn or by the tail, to enable him" to keep 
 pace with the troop. They reached in about ten 
 minutes the opposite side, having crossed this rapid 
 current to a point very little below that from which 
 they started, and then pursued their journey with 
 every appearance of considering the feat they had 
 just performed as an incident of travel which they 
 had been prepared for, and which had taken none 
 unawares. 
 
 Within about twelve miles from Cairo, the great 
 pyramids first appear, on the right, at some nine 
 or ten miles off, and continue in sight, sometimes 
 more in front, sometimes at your side, as the river 
 winds, till you reach the port of Boulak, where 
 you disembark. The whole passage by steam (in 
 the boat of the Transit Company), from Alexan- 
 dria, is of about twenty-six or twenty-eight hours. 
 The same boat returns, down stream, in little less 
 than half that time. Ascending to Cairo in a 
 country boat, — sailing while the wind is favourable, 
 or pulled by oars or towed by the crew when it 
 fails or heads you, — your passage must be expected, 
 under the most favourable circumstances, to last at 
 least four days and nights. A contrary wind, or 
 constant calm, may extend it to eight or ten. 
 
 Cairo opens finely upon you as you approach it 
 from Boulak, along a wide level road, well planted 
 on both sides with sycomores and acacias, for a 
 distance of a mile and a half. The Nvhole upper 
 part of the city stretches along the foot and half up 
 the side of a commanding and beautiful range of 
 hills to the eastward, ending in what is called the 
 Moccatam, a bluflf headland, crowned at the further 
 extremity iDy the citadel and fortified palace of the 
 Pasha. But, when you have crossed the second
 
 70 CAIRO. 
 
 TOW of bridges over the canal (a diy deep ditch, 
 whose bed is choked by all sorts of foetid impurity, 
 except at the time of the inundation, which fills it 
 with the water of the Kile), and when you have 
 passed the Esbekieh, a fine park-line space on the 
 western side of the city, the illusion is much im- 
 paired. The streets, it is true, are generally cleaner 
 and less gloomy than those of any other Turkish 
 or -^Egyptian town I have seen. But, in the very 
 streets, the contrast of luxury and ostentation with 
 abject penur}^, destitution, and suffering, is strange 
 and striking. A great man goes forth, attended by 
 his principal servants, on horseback or on foot, and 
 preceded by his cavashes* to break way for him, — 
 a movinoc stream of silk-embroidered robes and 
 gold and silver horse-trappings, borne along through 
 a dense surrounding throng of squalid nakedness. 
 Tlie want of all provision for the humbler conve- 
 niences of life, and the absence of all system for 
 adapting the means, which are abundant, to com- 
 fort and happiness among the masses of the people, 
 — all this marks in sad characters, in all you see, 
 the demoralising and degrading influences of Mo- 
 hammedan discipline. 
 
 The city of Cairo is under the municipal admi- 
 nistration of Abbas Pasha, the viceroy's grandson, 
 an ill-educated and violent young man. Being in 
 the immediate succession to the vice-royalty— next 
 after the heir-apparent Ibrahim, — he holds his 
 office by prescription ; and is consequently sup- 
 
 * Cavash, or Tschoush, a running footman, generally 
 distinguished by the silver-headed cane he bears ; the 
 length of the cane and the size of its head being increased 
 in proportion to the dignity of the master whom the Cavash 
 precedes.
 
 CAIRO. 71 
 
 ported in his negligences and in his excesses by a 
 party of interested adherents. It is true that he 
 interferes but little with even local regulation while 
 the viceroy is at the seat of government. Mo- 
 hammed Ali's is the power by which all that is 
 good is done at Cairo. The mischief of Abbas' 
 administration arises out of the bad example of his 
 personal habits and disposition, and out of his doing 
 absolutely nothing to second the beneficial objects 
 of his wiser and better chief. Add to this that the 
 praiseworthy efforts of the Pasha towards reform, 
 political and municipal, are in every direction im- 
 peded and trammelled by a religion jealous of all 
 social improvements, particularly of such as are 
 framed upon an European model. The influence 
 of this spirit may be observed in the working of all 
 the best regulations, and in the manners of the 
 people, which, until they shall be brought into con- 
 formity with wholesome institutions, render the 
 best regulations of little effect. The Pasha has 
 appointed medical boards and commissions of sana- 
 tory police; he has made the whitewashing of 
 dwelling-houses matter of law ; he has established 
 companies of firemen, and stations for fire-engines, 
 with supplies of water. Yet plague and conflagra- 
 tion, whenever they break out in Cairo, and they 
 are not infrequent, are visitations against which 
 the people wlio are the victims can hardly be per- 
 suaded to second the efforts of the authorities to 
 check the havock. And, looking at an Eastern 
 city, even the best built and watched, the metro- 
 polis of iEgypt, your wonder is how infection or 
 fire, once kindled, has ever been extinguished. 
 
 Ophthalmia prevails to a dreadful degree, in all 
 its stages, in the ^Egyptian towns. I am persuaded,
 
 72 CAIRO. 
 
 on evidence which daily presents itself, and also on 
 the testimony of all those of the medical profession 
 who have resided there and made this a subject of 
 study, that, whatever be its origin, this disease 
 owes its prevalence mainly to that absence of all 
 precaution which naturally accompanies a belief in 
 fatalism. Whether or no it originates in the in- 
 fluence of the heated sand of the desert (and this 
 is improbable, inasmuch as the eyes of the Bedouin 
 Arabs are very rarely found to be attacked by it), 
 it is communicated from one sufferer to another, 
 and perpetuated by the habits of the towns. In 
 the towns total blindness is very common among 
 adults ; and of the children, generally beautiful in 
 face and form, and in other respects healthy, few 
 there are w hose eyes are not in a state of loathsome 
 disease. The swarms of flies, which collect upon 
 •the open sores of the beggars in the streets, leave 
 them for the eyes of the children, and from thence 
 carry infection from one to another of a people 
 who, from habit, if not from religion, inure them- 
 selves to the attacks of these filthy insects, and 
 appear to have no sense either of torment or dis- 
 gust to induce them to brush away an annoyance, 
 which to any but ^Egyptians Avould be absolutely 
 intolerable. The mosquito is bad enough, in all 
 conscience ; but, at all events, he sets to work with 
 an appetite that to a certain degree must be ad- 
 mitted in extenuation of the outrage. Your blood 
 is his banquet, and he helps himself; and, having 
 satisfied nature's craving, he leaves you. But the 
 unceasing, endless, and objectless importunity of a 
 fly, running across you in one direction, for no 
 purpose, as it appears, unless it be to gain space 
 to run across you in the opposite the moment after,
 
 CAIRO. 73 
 
 leaving the filth and corruption, which is his natural 
 pasture, to rush, full buzz, to your eye, your nose, 
 your mouth, your food ; — and then to see your 
 fellow-creature, the ^Egyptian, offering his whole 
 body patiently as a refuge and college for the en- 
 couragement of these creatures, — really these things 
 call for more than the ordinary stock of patience 
 given to man, and would incline one almost to par- 
 don Domitian many of his vices and his tyrannies 
 in consideration of his unfriendliness to flies. 
 
 The interior glimpses of the town are throughout 
 highly picturesque; and the effects of light and 
 shade, in a brilliant climate, through streets most 
 of them so narrow that the projecting casements of 
 the houses nearly touch those opposite, are strange 
 and striking. Many of the houses and public 
 buildings are, it is true, in ruins ; but the cluster- 
 ing columns, the gateways, and windows, of stone 
 and alabaster, wreathed in the most florid style of 
 Arabesque tracery, are of great and varied beauty ; 
 and here and there a tall slender minaret, of diver- 
 sified shape and colours, shoots up before you, — as 
 a lofty tree, its lower part choked by a close and 
 rambling thicket of mean plants, from which you 
 long to clear it. No impediments of this kind, 
 however, interfere with those stately edifices, mis 
 called the Tombs of the Kaliphs, standing at the 
 eastern extremity of the city. They show their 
 graceful forms and proportions to all the greater 
 advantage towering over the humbler monuments 
 of the burial-ground, upon the side of the spacious 
 and commanding hill from which they rise. The 
 tombs in question, most of them, were raised during 
 the time of the Memlooks, and contain the bodies 
 of sultans of that race.
 
 74 CAIRO. 
 
 The passage through the streets is thronged with 
 hindrances of every kind, in vain combated by a 
 vociferous police. If you are on foot, you are 
 jostled at every step by loaded asses ; and at almost 
 every corner or main gateway a huge camel stretches 
 out his gaunt neck and mild patient face, wdth 
 gentle intimation that his next stride may over- 
 whelm you under an entanglement of long leg and 
 a mass of towering bulk, from which it is hard to 
 escape but by running against some other danger 
 scarcely less great. 
 
 All riders seem to you to have their own way, 
 and to be lords of the thoroughfare, until in your 
 own person you become a rider ; then you find 
 yourself oppressed by another class of perils. 
 Whether mounted on a horse, or on the more fre- 
 quent donkey, you find it almost impossible to free 
 yourself from the attentions of the conductor by 
 your side, your villain regardant, who never lets 
 you choose your own way or your own pace. He 
 is always in the utmost activity of interference by 
 both voice and act. His office is to tease by prods, 
 blows, and shrieks the animal who carries you, and 
 urge him into wildness ; — generally at the very mo- 
 ment when you are exerting yourself by pulling at 
 the bridle to check your advance, for fear of destroy- 
 ing a fellow-creature, or of dislocating your own 
 limbs against the hard swagging load of some beast 
 of burthen, or some low projecting beam or angle 
 of a corner house. The rein is snatched from your 
 hand, or the head of the poor brute you bestride is 
 struck on the one side as a hint to him to turn on 
 the other ; or sometimes your fellow-creature, 
 against whom you have been unwillingly forced, 
 and to whom you would fain apologise, receives a
 
 CAIRO. 75 
 
 blow from your noisy guardian, wliicli, strange to 
 say, is taken as if it were matter of course, and 
 never returned nor resented. 
 
 Services are nowhere so violently thrust upon 
 you as in Cairo, either in forcing you to mount a 
 beast of hire, or in guiding you when you have 
 mounted him. The din of the population is over- 
 powering. Every body seems appealing passion- 
 ately and painfully against some sudden act of 
 oppression : and often, indeed, with reason. Ex- 
 cepting those who are squatting or stretched at full 
 length under the dark shadow of the walls and at 
 the house doors, all are rushing forward in oiDposite 
 directions through the lanes and bazaars. And yet 
 there are no people really more dilatory. The 
 Arab of the town spends his whole time, or as much 
 of it as he can, between devising expedients to put 
 off the moment for beginning what he has to do, 
 and struggling to regain it. 
 
 It is, however, but fair to say that, whilst en- 
 gaged in your service, whether for the month, the 
 Aveek, the day, or the hour, lie is eager, generally 
 too much so, in your interests, and devoted to 
 them. But, when the engagement is concluded, 
 and the season arrives for settlement of accounts, 
 if there be anything he has done by which he has 
 earned a remuneration beyond the mere stipulations 
 of his contract, whether tiie amount of remunera- 
 tion which you offer be less or more than his due, 
 or whether it be the just equivalent, it becomes, as 
 matter of course with him, a subject of remon- 
 strance and debate. I believe that this arises 
 rather from his love of discussion than from any 
 real feeling of discontent. But the effect is the 
 same. Let the rate of payment you propose be
 
 76 CAIKO. 
 
 what it may, the utmost pains are taken to convince 
 you that you are playing the extortioner and the 
 tyrant ; so that, in these cases, you are always left 
 to your own unassisted sense of justice, without 
 encouragement or favour in the sight of men, do 
 what you will. 
 
 There are two of the moral duties whicli the 
 Arab who engages himself in your service never 
 attends to : to " do violence to no man, and be 
 content with his wages." The former prsecept he 
 is in the constant transgression of from zeal for 
 your interests during his engagement, the latter 
 from zeal for his own at its close. 
 
 And does it remain, then, to be asked whence 
 this arises? Surely, from the two evil principles 
 whence most of the bad qualities of national cha- 
 racter arise, — and particularly those two bad quali- 
 ties of slavish subserviency and suspicion ; from 
 bad education and bad government ; training men 
 in the notion which places them, without reference 
 to duty or feeling, at the disposal of those who hire 
 their services, and accustoming them in all cases to 
 suspect that they are practised upon by fraud or 
 tyranny. 
 
 Yet the people generally of j^gy^t, whether of 
 the Egyptian or Arab race, are good-natured and 
 light-hearted ; and, like all idle and ill-educated 
 people, passionately fond of low buffoonery. Day 
 after day, and all day long, groups are seen on the 
 Esbekieh clustering with intense interest round 
 some coarse posture-master or bad conjurer. The 
 party Avhich appeared to me to be the most attract- 
 ive, stationed always under the glow of the same 
 west wall, and always surrounded by a throng of 
 unwearied admirers, consisted of a white-bearded
 
 CAIRO. 77 
 
 old man, with the green turban of a Hadji, who sat 
 on the ground dancing two puppets on a string, to 
 the sound of three little drums of an hour-glass 
 shape, thumped with straps by another man and 
 two veiled women sitting opposite to him. Before 
 these three were conjuring cups and vases, which 
 they occasionally turned up, and out of which 
 would crawl a serpent, or hop forth a tame bird — 
 one should say when least expected, if one judged 
 by the buzz of surprise with which the apparition 
 was always received. But the same event happened 
 so often, and in just the same manner, that there 
 was in truth no moment at which the sf)ectators 
 had not a fair right to expect it. To this party of 
 performers belonged a clown or jester, whose run- 
 ning commentary on the feats of the others was 
 above measure popular. But his principal jest was 
 this : Every now and then he would pick a quarrel 
 with the puppets, and aim a blow at them with a 
 strap or courbash,* apparently with intent to kill ; 
 but always contriving to make the instrument miss 
 his intended victim, and come round with a loud 
 crack on his own shoulders. This was always re- 
 ceived, happen as often it as would, with shrieks of 
 delight by the bystanders, children, women, and 
 men of all ages and all conditions. There was one 
 very venerable and well-dressed old gentleman, in 
 a flowing caftan of yellow silk and ample turban, 
 with a large chaplet of beads round his neck, and 
 a long amber-lipped chibouk, which he silently and 
 gravely smoked, never disturbing it, save as often 
 as this event of the clown's self-castigation oc- 
 curred. This, however, was too much for his 
 gravity, which, from his appearance at all other 
 * A whip made of a strip of the hide of the rhinoceros. 
 VOL. I. E
 
 78 CAIRO. 
 
 moments, T doubt whether anything else ever did 
 or could effect. This never failed. I do not re- 
 member ever passing this group without seeing this 
 same old gentleman always contemplating this per- 
 formance, and his pipe always alight. He was 
 probably some merchant or agent, who daily set 
 forth with intent to cross the Esbekieh on busi- 
 ness, but never could succeed in passing this spot. 
 
 And every night, and throughout the night, 
 these places are occupied by another class of buf- 
 foons, croners of wretched tuneless ballads, and 
 tellers of endless stories, by torch-light, who vary 
 their entertainments about as little, and excite the 
 same unvarying interest in their audience. 
 
 I do not wish to go into any detailed description 
 of the city of Cairo, or of the objects of curiosity 
 within it, of which there are so many worthy of at- 
 tention. These are things with which every one is 
 familiar who has read — and who has not read ? — the 
 able works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson and ]\Ir. Lane, 
 and that more lately published and interesting little 
 book of Mrs. Poole's (Mr. Lane's sister), called 'The 
 Englishwoman in -^gypt.' On the topography of 
 JEtgypt and its towns, and of the manners of its 
 people, nothing remains to be said which has not 
 been dealt with by them so fully and minutely as 
 to exhaust the whole matter, and yet with a taste 
 and judgment that carry on the attention of the 
 reader unwearied through every part. These are 
 subjects, then, on which any other writer does 
 enough when he refers to those works ; unless, in- 
 deed, it be to bear testimony to what every one 
 who now visits any portion of that country must be 
 eager to acknowledge, the scrupulous fidelity with 
 which they have throughout been treated of.
 
 HELIOPOLIS. 79 
 
 The pleasure-grounds of the Pasha at Schoubra, 
 his country residence on the left bank of the Nile, 
 about three miles to the northward of the city, have, 
 within the last two years, been enlarged and more 
 elaborately adorned. They are now, indeed, a very 
 complete sample, and on a magnificent scale, of the 
 most luxurious style of Oriental gardening. Neatly 
 cut hedges of orange, pomegranate, and myrtle 
 lead in all directions to kiosks lined with Oriental 
 alabaster, and terraces rich with the bloom and 
 fragrance of flowers, succeeding each other 
 through all seasons of the year. In the centre 
 of the grounds stands a temple lined within 
 with alabaster, and covering nearly an acre of 
 ground, lately built round a large square bath or 
 pool, into which fountains are constantly playing, 
 supplied with water raised by machinery from the 
 Nile, and filtered on its passage into brightness like 
 that of a natural spring. All round this are ranges 
 of apartments, with divans and ornamental case- 
 ments looking each way on the river, the city, tlie 
 mountains, and cultivated plains. 
 
 At some four or five miles to the north-eastward 
 of Schoubra is the site of the ancient and renowned 
 city of Heliopolis, the On or Aven of the Scriptures, 
 on the south-west border of the Land of Goshen, 
 or the Land of Rameses, where Joseph took to 
 wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah the priest 
 (Gen. xli. 45; xlvi. 20; Ezek. xxx. 17), and where 
 Josephus says was the first settlement of the Jews 
 (' Antiq. Jud.' i. 11. 5). This city was also called 
 Bethshemes, or House of the Sun (Jerem. xliii. 13). 
 
 For nearly two thousand years, from the time of 
 King Osirtasen I. till after the Roman occupation 
 of iEgypt, Heliopolis was a place of great celebrity ; 
 
 E 2
 
 80 ISLAND OF BHODA. 
 
 femoiis for its magnificent Temple of the vSun, 
 famous for its monuments of art, many of which 
 were transported to Alexandria and Rome, (among 
 others what are called Cleopatra's Needles,) and 
 famous for its schools, in which Plato is said to 
 have studied the philosophy of the -Egyptians for 
 thirteen years, under the care of the priests of the 
 sun.* Of all its glories no trace now remains upon 
 the spot, save some extensive mounds of earth, and 
 one fine obelisk, covered with hieroglyphick in- 
 scriptions, and standing in the midst of a large 
 well-cultivated field, where, when I was there, the 
 young wheat was springing up in great luxuriance 
 round it. 
 
 About two miles from the further end of Cairo, 
 and higher up the Nile, is the island of Khoda, 
 where, according to Moslem tradition, it was that 
 the infant Moses was found by the daughter of 
 Pharaoh. At the eastern extremity of it is the 
 famous Nilometer, built, as it seems most probable, 
 by the Abbaside Kaliph Mamoon, in the early part 
 of the ninth century. It is a graduated pillar, 
 standing in a tank or chamber, into which the 
 water of the Nile is admitted ; and hence it is that, 
 during the rising of the river, proclamation is daily 
 made through Cairo of the height to which the 
 waters have risen, until the day when the dams are 
 cut, and the inundation suflPered to cover the land. 
 
 The greater part of the island of Rhoda, towards 
 the west, is occupied by the gardens of Ibrahim 
 Pasha. They are of less extent than those of i 
 Schoubra, and not, like them, adorned with kiosks J 
 or fountains, but laid out more after the European 
 taste, and cultivated with consummate care, under 
 * Plin. V. 9 ; vi. 29 ; Herodot. ii. 138. 
 
 J
 
 ISLAND OF BHODA. 81 
 
 the direction of Mr. Trail, a Scottish gardener, 
 Avho has been for many years in the Pasha's service. 
 It contains exotic plants in great abundance ; 
 among others an extensive assortment of East 
 Indian fruit trees, undergoing what appears to be a 
 successful process of naturalization to the Egyptian 
 climate. The force of the annual inundations has 
 uprooted and destroyed in succession a vast number 
 of the young trees in these gardens. Such as have, 
 for the first three or four years after being planted, 
 resisted this violence, have, from the extraordinary 
 rapidity with which trees grow and strengthen 
 themselves in this soil and climate, established 
 themselves beyond hazard. A better kind of sugar- 
 cane than what is ordinarily found in iEgypt has of 
 late years been introduced on the alluvial soil of 
 the Delta, where it appears to thrive well and 
 increase abundantly from cuttings, promising to be, 
 before long, a profitable article of produce. But 
 in this part of ^gypt, where water is always at 
 command to correct what alone in this climate is 
 unfavourable to vegetation, it appears as if the 
 plants of every other part of the world, from the 
 temperate to the torrid zone, might be cultivated 
 with success. 
 
 The Viceroy often makes a sojourn of several 
 days together at Schoubra, for change of air and 
 the enjoyment of his gardens, receiving strangers 
 for presentation, for audience, or to the hospitalities 
 of his table, equally here and at his palace on the 
 Moccatam. But his principal residence is at the 
 latter place. The citadel is eminently worth seeing 
 for its grandeur and strength, and for the magnifi- 
 cence of the view over the city whicli the palace 
 windows command, of the river, along its course
 
 82 CITADEL. 
 
 both ways, of the whole range of Pyramids to the 
 soutliward from Gizeh to Dashour, and far over 
 the border of the Libyan desert beyond them. This 
 fortress and palace were built, and the stupendous 
 well (of Joseph, as it is called) constructed by that 
 great warrior and statesman, the Sultan Saladin 
 (Yousouf Saleh Eddin), the founder of the Saracen 
 dynasty in ^gypt, Palestine, and Syria. Upon 
 his final overthrow of the empire of the Fatimite 
 Kaliphs in 1163, he removed the seat of tlie 
 j^gyptian government from Fostat, otherwise 
 called Masr el Atakeh (the ancient city of ^gj^pt) 
 to Cairo, Masr el Kahireh (The Victorious).
 
 ( S3 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mohammed Ali— His habits and government — Egyptian 
 Slavery— Various Eeforms introduced by him— Police — 
 Currency— Some inconsistencies in his system — Medical 
 Establishments — Publick Education — Results of the con- 
 duct of other States towards him — Recent threat of retire- 
 ment to Mecca. 
 
 The government of Mohammed Ali Pasha is a 
 system strangely compounded of antagonist quali- 
 ties, good and evil ; in some respects neutralising 
 each other. It is in perfect accordance ^vith the 
 character of its chief, and with his history, — con- 
 taining a great deal more to be praised than cen- 
 sured. It bespeaks the natural sagacity of a mind 
 which has acquired all its knowledge and applied 
 all its ideas for itself, has overcome the disadvan- 
 tages of the only early education it received, in the 
 school of success ; and is far in advance of the 
 general acquirements and understanding of those 
 whom he has to govern. But it bears also evidence 
 of a very imperfect state of information with 
 respect to many principles that have long ceased to 
 be questionable, and are admitted as axioms in all 
 civilised states. 
 
 It has become a common thing to talk of a man 
 having two sides to his character in direct oppo- 
 sition to each other ; a phrase adopted, like many 
 others, without any very distinct meaning. There 
 is many a man in whose system of conduct its dif- 
 ferent parts may in many respects be opposed to
 
 84 MOHAMMED ALL 
 
 each other ; but to say that his motives are so is a 
 plain solecism, and 'only shows that we are very 
 inadequate judges of the motives of other men, and 
 perhaps imperfectly acquainted with the external 
 circumstances on which their conduct has been 
 formed. Throughout the whole system of the 
 Pasha, notwithstanding its many inconsistencies, 
 may be traced the workings of great genius, and a 
 ceaseless activity in applying it to practical objects. 
 Having acquired authority, and maintained it, by 
 the only influences respected in the Eastern world, 
 force and craft, the Pasha has applied arbitrary 
 means to reforming some abuses which have always 
 been tliought the very offspring of arbitrary go- 
 vernments, and to promote some institutions in 
 Mgjpt which have always been found in their 
 tendency elsewhere destructive of the arbitrary 
 principle — commerce and education. He has applied 
 such means to the gradual correction of prejudices, 
 in the midst of which his naturally sagacious mind 
 was reared, and from the taint of which he has not 
 wholly succeeded in redeeming even himself. He 
 is, doubtless, as much misrepresented by those who 
 deem him sl mere selfish tyrant, uninfluenced by 
 any high motives, unscrupulous of means, and 
 addicted to blood, as he is by those who would 
 have him believed to be a disinterested and en- 
 lightened ruler. Usurper, in the only sense in 
 which that term can be used as a rej^roach, he is 
 not, and never was ; and, if a tyrant, he is one Avho 
 has administered with firmness, moderation, and for 
 the general good, the powers originally delegated 
 to him by a feeble and enfeebling tyranny. Unlike 
 the other pashas to whom the Porte has entrusted 
 its provinces, he has so used his authority as to call
 
 MOHAMMED ALL 85 
 
 forth the energies and resources of liis pashalick, 
 and improve its condition to an extent absolutely- 
 unexampled and unparalleled, and with much less 
 cruelty or violence than belongs to any other sys- 
 tem of government known in the East. 
 
 His mode of administration was, while his pro- 
 jects were unchecked and uninterfered with, and is 
 now, unquestionably, not without its faults ; and 
 grievous some of them are. But its faults are those 
 imposed by religion, and by inveterate habits which 
 cannot in the life of one man be entirely reformed ; 
 whilst all its better parts are his own. He keeps 
 the peace and represses crime in iEgypt, (as he did 
 in Syria and Palestine so long as they continued to 
 be annexed to his pashalic,) with a strong but not 
 a barbarous hand, and with very infrequent capital 
 punishments. That his nature has not been one to 
 shrink from bloodshed, when the taking away of 
 human lives is the readiest course to the attainment 
 of a great object of state policy, we have the evi- 
 dence of his well-remembered massacre of the 
 Memlouk chiefs. But, with this notable and dread- 
 ful exception, in times, too, when the publick ene- 
 mies of iEgypt, the Wahabees, were unsubdued and 
 in force upon its frontier, and all within his pashalick 
 was in a state of covert war, his career has been 
 free from all stain of cruelty, as his nature is said 
 by all who know him best to be averse from any 
 cruel passion. And even in that most dreadful 
 instance, the destruction of those men by military 
 execution would, according to all law of military 
 states, have been entirely justified by the right of 
 defence, and by the proofs, which were abundant, 
 of a conspiracy against his person and government. 
 It is only the treacherous mode by M'hich he 
 
 e3
 
 86 MOHAMMED ALL 
 
 enabled himself to effect it that has rendered that 
 act as justly odious at it is memorable. 
 
 Excepting this, since he has administered the 
 affairs of the country he now rules, or while he was 
 at the liead of the provinces of which he has lately 
 been deprived, no act ofseverity^ either in peace or 
 war, can be imputed to him, beyond (hardly equal 
 to) what may be sometimes found in the history of 
 the rulers of far more civilised states. The atroci- 
 ties committed by his son Ibrahim, in command of 
 his armies on foreign service, tlie butcheries of the 
 Morea and Jerusalem, are not with any more colour 
 of justice chargeable to Mohammed Ali than many 
 crimes, I fear, of almost as dark a character, which 
 no good purpose could be answered by particularis- 
 ing, committed under the ostensible authority of 
 more civilised states, can be justly laid to the ac- 
 count of sovereigns who have sometimes entrusted 
 violent and unscrupulous men with power in places 
 at a distance from their own immediate controuL* 
 
 The manners of Mohammed Ali, his mode of 
 receiving, addressing, and conversing with stran- 
 gers, are full of dignity, courteousness, and well- 
 
 * I had one opportunity, -which I did not wish to repeat, 
 of seeing Ibrahim Pasha. His face, carriage, and de- 
 meanour are well in haraiony with what is known of his 
 character. His manner is coarse, and his countenance ex- 
 pressive of more constitutional ferocity and low sensuality 
 than I ever saw depicted in that of any other human being. 
 In one respect only does his appearance do him injustice ; 
 he is known to be a person not without ability. His history 
 bears testimony to his having considerable military talents, 
 and he has pursued objects of publick usefulness in the en- 
 couragement of manufactures and agriculture with no small 
 zeal and perseverance. The expression of his face is inani- 
 mate and stupid : but this is said to be the result only of 
 many years of habitual intoxication with wine.
 
 MOHAMMED ALL 87 
 
 bred ease. He converses with Europeans always 
 through an interpreter, who speaks in the French 
 language, and translates what is said to him into 
 the Turkish, — the only one which the Pasha pro- 
 fesses to understand. Yet the expression of his 
 quick eye and whole countenance, while the person 
 with whom he converses is addressing the interpreter 
 in French, gives often the impression that he under- 
 stands more of that language than he owns to, and 
 prefers, as many official persons in the East do, to 
 communicate through a third person, in order to 
 give himself more time in this double process to 
 consider his replies. His style of conversation is 
 agreeable. He speaks in short terse sentences, 
 often almost epigrammatick, — never without a 
 meaning, even when they are phrases of mere cere- 
 mony. Like all men, he is fond of a little flattery, 
 and invites it. But, like all men of sense, he 
 requires that that little shall be administered with 
 judgment, and is earnest and skilful in searching 
 for subjects on which others are able to answer his 
 inquiries with information ; and on such topics he 
 delights in showing you by no disagreeable inter- 
 ruptions how quickly he has apprehended their full 
 meaning, and how well he could enlarge upon it. 
 Like all persons of high station in the East, he 
 begins the conversation with a phrase or two of 
 compliment and welcome, and answers the first 
 compliment paid to him in return by a sentence 
 which he uses, I believe, to everybody, whatever 
 his age may be, or to whatever European country 
 he may belong, with very little variety : " You are 
 a young man from an old country ; you find me 
 an old man in a young country." Then he gene- 
 rally goes on thus : " I have worked hard to
 
 88 MOHAMMED ALL 
 
 improve this country, and have done something. 
 But all my youth was spent in war. The works 
 of peace take more time than those of war ; and, 
 when I began to govern, my time was too short to 
 do as much as I wished. I had everything to 
 begin. I had weeds to pluck out as well as seed 
 to sow. In your country the ground is prepared 
 for you ; you require only a very light plough. I 
 had to begin with the hand. Then I took to the 
 spade — spade, spade, spade ! I have hardly got to 
 the plough yet." Then he asks his visitor what 
 he thinks of ^Egypt, as far as he has seen of it ; of 
 the country, and of its government : a tolerably 
 compendious question. He desires him to speak 
 up and criticise freely ; and then from his answer 
 he judges of what are the topics on which he is 
 most competent to carry on the conversation. I 
 received a hint, before my first interview with the 
 Pasha, that it would gratify him to be asked his 
 age, and, after he had told it, to be reminded that 
 he was born in the memorable year 1769, which 
 produced also Napoleon and the Duke of Welling- 
 ton. But these are Mcaknesses in which he is a 
 sharer with all other men. It is when the phrases 
 of mere ceremony are past, and conversation has 
 begun, that he shows that he is no ordinary man. 
 He shows that when he challenged a free criticism 
 of the institutions and government of yEgypt, he 
 did it sincerely, and takes in good part a frank 
 compliance with the challenge. Not that, when 
 hard pressed upon what he knows to be wrong in 
 the system, he will not dissemble a little, and 
 endeavour to make you doubt the truth of the view 
 you have taken on the information you have re- 
 ceived. But, when he finds you strong in your
 
 SLAVERY IN /EGYPT. 89 
 
 facts, and that they do not admit of a colourable 
 denial or justification, "in sese redit senex." He 
 taps you on the knee, and with a good-humoured 
 smile makes the best defence he can on the rights 
 of the question. 
 
 I saw a notable instance of this on the question 
 of slavery. He said that the slave-market was now 
 abolished in Cairo. But, when assured, with the 
 frankness he had invited, that though it was true that 
 the old slave-market in the midst of the city was no 
 more, his Highness might satisfy himself, by send- 
 ing to anotlier place within half a mile of his own 
 palace, tliat a new one was established there upon 
 an equally large scale, where Nubians and Abys- 
 sinians, and some Georgians too, were exposed to 
 publick sale, he smiled, the knee was tapped, and 
 he said he disliked the system of slavery as much 
 as any man, but that old institutions, however bad, 
 coidd not be all reformed at once. " You found 
 some difficulty in abolishing slavery in your Ame- 
 rican islands, and were a long time before you 
 'achieved it." Then he proceeded to show that the 
 condition of the slaves in ^gypt was much less 
 severe and degrading tlian ours had been, or than 
 that of the slave States of the American Union is. 
 "When it was suggested to him that, so long as sla- 
 very should exist in any shape, it would be impos- 
 sible to put down slave-importation and the slave- 
 hunts, with all the abominations that belonged to 
 them, he said that the slave-hunts had been abolished 
 universally throughout iEgypt. 
 
 On being informed tliat, altliough his Highness 
 believed it was so, he might be assured, on the 
 testimony of several European gentlemen of honour 
 lately returned from Upper iEgypt, that the sla^■e-
 
 90 SLAVERY IN ^GYPT. 
 
 liunts (" gazouas ") were now in full activity there, 
 and carried on by his own soldiers on furlough, and 
 that, indeed, there were persons who did his High- 
 ness the wrong of inferring from thence that these 
 furloughs, with their licence to hunt down Nubi- 
 ans and Abyssinians, were given to his soldiers in 
 part of pay, the smile came again, and the tap on 
 the knee, and the old story that "old institutions, 
 however bad, could not all at once," &c. &c. &c. 
 The slave-hunts are in truth carried on for the most 
 part by the Pasha's soldiers on furlough. The 
 slaves are brought in by them to their officers, who 
 divide them in due pro23ortion among the captors in 
 lieu of pay. The captors then take their slaves to 
 the merchants who trade in them, and who bring 
 them to the markets at Alexandria and Cairo ; and 
 the " Rafkir," a tax of 200 piastres, is paid to the 
 government on the sale of each slave. Among the 
 resident slave-merchants who carry on this traffick, 
 it is a disgraceful fact that there are many Europe- 
 ans, principally French. I believe, from the best 
 information I have able to obtain, and I hope it is 
 the truth, that among these miscreants there are 
 none British. Representations have been made to 
 the French government respecting the French sub- 
 ects engaged in the trade. The French govern- 
 ment has interfered, and, I trust it may be found, 
 with success.. 
 
 It is true that the physical condition of the slaves 
 in JEgypt is in many respects better than probably 
 in any other country where the heavy curse and 
 crime of slavery exists. They are treated with 
 kindness, are considered as part of the family of 
 their master, and, if they should become old without 
 having obtained their freedom, are, according to
 
 SLAVERY IN ^GYPT. 91 
 
 the commands of the Koran, which are law among 
 all Mohammedans, maintained in comfort till death. 
 If they should fall into the hands of a rich and 
 powerful master, and so behave as to find favour 
 with him, they, after no long time, are emancipated 
 and advanced, and not unfrequently rise to wealth, 
 and sometimes even to the highest posts in the state. 
 But all this is but a feeble apology for the institu- 
 tion, with all the horrors inseparable from it even 
 in ^gypt. The -wars which the slave-trade in 
 Nubia excites among the chieftains there, for the 
 purpose of obtaining prisoners for the markets, — 
 the sale of infants by their parents, — the slave- 
 hunts, — the ambuscades for the purpose of kid- 
 napping children, — the dreadful sufferings and 
 deaths in the journey across the desert, — these are 
 pictures of crime and misery which, with slightly 
 varied circumstances, (such as the middle passage 
 of the ocean, perhaps, instead of the wdlderness,) 
 must always abound wherever slavery exists, and 
 the slave-market, which is a necessary accompani- 
 ment of slavery. 
 
 For these reasons, and for another if possible yet 
 stronger, I cannot bring myself to agree in the 
 mild and almost apologetick tone in which Clot 
 Bey, in his ' Apergu General sur I'Egypte,' speaks 
 of Egyptian slavery.* One part — a very material 
 one — has been left quite without notice in Clot 
 Bey's observations on this subject, — the frequent 
 cases of mutilation of the blacks, and the purposes 
 
 * Clot Bey is a French physician "who has long been in 
 the service of the Pasha, and chief of the medical depart- 
 ment. He has had great merit in suggesting and completing 
 important reforms in his own department, and his book is in 
 many respects a valuable one.
 
 92 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASHA. 
 
 of acknoM'ledged and infamous debauchery that are 
 part of the condition in which ahnost all the white 
 slaves, and many of the blacks, of both sexes, pass 
 the early part of their lives, and into which these 
 unhappy children are sold, — a condition which it 
 were an offence even to define, and of which lan- 
 guage is too poor in words, or the heart too rich in 
 indignation, to express its horror. 
 
 Much has been said, and deservedly, on the sub- 
 ject of the impressment of the Fellahs for the Pasha's 
 publick works. It is a revolting and disgusting 
 sight to see, as one may almost every day in Cairo, 
 troops of labouring men marched in from the vil- 
 lages in chains, and linked together like convicts ; 
 and it is but a poor excuse for such an outrage on 
 publick feeling that these chains are imposed not 
 by the government, but by the '* Sheik el Beled," 
 the chief of the village on whom the requisition is 
 made for so many labourers, and that the indolent 
 inhabitants could not in any other way be prevailed 
 upon to go to a work in which there is no hardship, 
 and at which they are better paid and better fed 
 than if they had remained at home. Such is, how- 
 ever, the truth. And not only tliey appear to feel 
 no unhappiness or degradation in their chains, and 
 march along laughing and singing, but, oddly 
 ^nouo-h, as if the chains were part of the acknow- 
 ledged apparatus for the march, they are travelled 
 home again in the same guise, I know not why, and 
 in the same apparent contentment. Still these are 
 scenes which, if it were only for publick example, 
 should be at once abolished. While innocent men 
 are thus dealt with, and feel it no grievance, the 
 government plainly loses the effect of what might 
 be reserved, under a better state of publick feeling,
 
 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASHA. 93 
 
 as a punishment and a disgrace for those who break 
 the hiws, and so be applied to a certain class of 
 petty offences. 
 
 In Cairo the police is good, and crimes of vio- 
 lence very infrequent. The course of retribution 
 is rapid, and I believe generally pure. I do not 
 speak here of the Mekemeh, or the minor courts in 
 which civil causes relating to property are tried, in 
 which the proceedings are very dilatory, and the 
 presiding judges and their effendis are accused of 
 being generally open to corruption. All judge- 
 ments in criminal matters are given arbitrarily by 
 the Pasha and his officers of publick justice. Great 
 pains are taken in weighing the evidence on which 
 cases are to be determined ; and the judges, from 
 their habit of acting without assistance of counsel, 
 jury, or assessors, are astute in the^cross-questioning 
 of parties and of witnesses. 
 
 ^Vhen speaking of the pure course of criminal 
 justice, I refer only to those parts of ^gypt, gene- 
 rally Lower .^gypt, which are under the imme- 
 diate eye of the Pasha. Although I believe that 
 he is so well convinced of the importance of a pure 
 administration of justice, that, upon any case of 
 misconduct on the part of the judge, from the highest 
 to the lowest, in any part of his dominions, coming 
 to his knowledge, he is impartial and severe in visit- 
 ing the offence. I believe that Dr. Bowring de- 
 scribes truly, in his Report laid before Parliament, 
 1840, the general influence of the criminal courts 
 in this part of the Levant, even where not immedi- 
 ately under the Pasha's observation. " The appli- 
 cation of punishment to offenders," says he, (' Re- 
 port,' p. 122,) "is immediate; and, though often 
 capricious and uncertain, it may be doubted if it
 
 94 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASHA. 
 
 be not in many instances more salutary than the 
 remedial measures employed by more civilized na- 
 tions, in a bad system of prison discipline, transport- 
 ation, and capital punishments. An offender de- 
 tected in the commission of crime is usually sub- 
 jected without delay to a bastonading, more or less 
 se^•ere according to the award of his judge, whose 
 authority he instantly recognises, and to whose in- 
 flictions he unmurmuringly submits. In fact, 
 wherever there is power there is obedience, and 
 obedience to even the injustice which power com- 
 mits." 
 
 Criminals guilty of the higher class of offences 
 are condemned to forced labour for life in the arse- 
 nals, and on the other publick works. The punish- 
 ment of death is generally limited to one offence, — 
 disobedience to the orders of the Pasha ; an offence 
 naturally rated the highest under a purely arbitrary 
 system, where the ruler charges himself with the 
 whole government of the state, and where disobe- 
 dience to his orders deranges the whole fabrick. 
 But I am convinced that the whole amount of capi- 
 tal punishments within any given number of years 
 in Cairo would be found, in proportion to the popu- 
 lation, to be not greater than in any one of the 
 towns or states of Europe : I believe considerably 
 less. 
 
 The w^hole soil of ^gjipt belongs, as is know^n, 
 in fee to the Pasha. Lands, it is true, are some- 
 times granted by him to persons high in favour and 
 confidence, — unoccupied land to many ; but a great 
 part of the produce of these — the greatest part — is 
 subject to duties and prohibitions, which give to the 
 government a general monopoly. Cotton, opium, 
 indigo, and flax, must be sold to the government at
 
 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASHA. 95 
 
 prices fixed by law, and the government retails 
 them at its own. The supply of animal food to the 
 city of Cairo is another government monopoly. 
 This system of monopoly is not so grievous to the 
 producers as disadvantageous to the government 
 itself, which is obliged not infrequently to retail at 
 a rate lower than the purchase price and cost of 
 collection, and whose revenues would be much in- 
 creased by increased encouragement given to pro- 
 duction. The expenses of cultivation are generally 
 paid, as rent is, in produce. Wherever there is 
 water in ^gypt, there is a productive power in the 
 land, assisted by the climate, beyond parallel, I be- 
 lieve, in any other part of the known world. On 
 the banks of the Nile, between the periods of 
 inundation, the land is carefully irrigated b}'^ mul- 
 titudes of sakhias, water-wheels turned by oxen and 
 furnished with buckets. There is a smaller kind of 
 sakhia, worked by the hands and feet of a man sit- 
 ting on a bench fixed near the circumference of the 
 wheel, and facing it. Hydraulick machines, turned 
 by the stream itself, have been partially introduced. 
 But here, as in some more civilized countries, there 
 is a prejudice, hard to be overcome, against the 
 substitution of machinery for labour. In the other 
 parts, wherever there are pools, natural or artificial, 
 the adjacent ground is irrigated by the schadoof, a 
 short post fixed in the ground, and a long pole 
 equally balanced at the top, which has at one end a 
 box or bag made of palm-leaves, in which the water 
 is raised by hand. 
 
 The Pasha has introduced, says Dr. Bo wring, 
 (' Eeport,' p. 12,) not less than 38,000 sakhias in 
 (liflferent parts of ^gypt.* Among other publick 
 
 * This seems a large number in proportion to that of the
 
 96 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASHA. 
 
 works, besides the great 'Mahmoudieh Canal from 
 Alexandria to the Nile at Atfeh, the Pasha has 
 made four large canals, — two dn Lower and two. in 
 Upper ^gypt, — and a great many smaller ones. 
 
 The government has established manufactories, 
 some on^a very large scale, and generally prosper- 
 ing. Anchor forges and large iron founderies at 
 Alexandria and Cairo ; a foundery of brass guns 
 at the latter city ; manufactories of all arms, accou- 
 trements and outjfit for the army ; looms, spinning- 
 jennies, carpet-weaving, wood-engraving, calico- 
 printing, cloth manufactories, potteries, and many 
 other establishments for supplying home consump- 
 tion, and even for limited exportation to Syria and 
 some other parts of the Levant, attest the activity 
 of the Pasha and the increasing powers of the 
 country, independent of those of agricultural pro- 
 duce, if its resources shall continue to be judiciously 
 and diligently called forth. The duties on import- 
 ation of foreign goods are by no means high. They 
 did not amount to a higher rate than a general 
 levy of three per cent, ad valorem on all goods 
 imported. This has since, by the treaty establish- 
 ing a general tariff throughout the dominions of 
 
 proprietors or renters of land in ^Egypt, and also to the 
 joint length of all the rivers of that country. For, even if 
 these sakhias have been all twice renewed by the Pasha, and 
 one-fourth of them placed on the banks of fresh-water pools, 
 which do not abound in ^gj'pt, the remainder of these 
 engines would furnish more than twelve to every mile of 
 water running through cultivable land, the Nile inclusive. 
 In another part of the Report (page 13) Dr. Bowring says, 
 on the authority of Mr. Linant, that there are, in Lower 
 iEgypt only, 50,000 sakhias. Surely there must be the 
 mistake of a cypher here. According to his subsequent 
 estimates,'one-half of the adult male population would hardly 
 more than suffice to work them.
 
 EEFORMS OF THE CURRENCY. 97 
 
 the Porte, been raised to 5 per cent. ; and that 
 worst of all means of raising a revenue of cus- 
 toms, the duty on exports, has been under the 
 same tariff augmented to 8 per cent., under the 
 notion of checking the internal mon6polies ; a pur- 
 pose which will always be and is evaded. This 
 tax, directly bearing on skill and industry, will, I 
 trust, be materially modified, if not abolished, at the 
 end of next year, when the operation of this tariff 
 will cease in JEgy^t. 
 
 A great reform has of late years been made in 
 the -^Egyptian coinage and currency. Formerly, 
 although there was a mint at Cairo, the cash trans- 
 actions among the people of this country were con- 
 ducted chiefly in Turkish coin of a debased stand 
 ard, much clipped and defaced, and often counter- 
 feit, or in European and American dollars, at 
 various and fluctuatingratesof exchange, and never 
 bearing any fixed or easily calculable relation in 
 exchangeable value to the gold in use. This of 
 course deranged all transactions on credit, and the 
 value of all produce also ; inasmuch as the creditor 
 who received a large proportion of his due, and the 
 government which collected a large proportion of its 
 imports, in kind, had the advantage of claiming tliis 
 payment in kind with reference to whatever coin might 
 at the time happen to represent the largest quantity. 
 Witjiin the last few years the Pasha introduced a 
 new coinage of piastres and half piastres of his own, 
 the denomination of money in which all sums are 
 reckoned in this country: and, in 1837, made a 
 large issue of gold pieces of a hundred piastres each 
 =twenty shillings, or a sovereign of English money. 
 These are of finer gold than the standard of the 
 English sovereign, very beautifully stamped, with
 
 98 INCONSISTENCIES OF THE SYSTEM. 
 
 the Pasha's name on the one side and the Sultan's on 
 the other, and bear a premium all over Syria, to 
 the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. Yet, in a 
 spirit quite inconsistent with the wise and honest 
 policy which has given an intrinsically valuable 
 coinage to ^gypt, the Pasha pays all his servants, 
 civil, military, and domestick, from his highest 
 officers of state down to the fellahs who work in his 
 gardens and his fields, in paper assignats which were 
 at a constant discount, while I was there, of about 
 thirty per cent — a policy as short-sighted as it is 
 discreditable ; incapable of making any real differ- 
 ence in his expenses, even if there were no machinery 
 necessary for carrying on the system, and encum- 
 bering all, even the minutest of his money transac- 
 tions, with a machinery which is in itself expensive. 
 
 The services for which he pays at the nominal 
 rate of a hundred piastres, but in paper which is at 
 a discount of thirty, he might of course obtain as 
 easily for seventy piastres paid in silver ; more 
 easily, indeed, because that simple transaction would 
 save the person to whom the payment is made the 
 trouble of going to a merchant to sell paper for 
 money. But it is also clear that when, at the end 
 of the transaction, the Pasha has to take up his bill, 
 he pays, besides the original services which he has 
 estimated at seventy piastres, the merchant's profit, 
 in consideration of which the paper has been dis- 
 counted. 
 
 I saw, one Thursday afternoon, the day before 
 the Musulman Sabbath, the Pasha's labourers re- 
 ceiving their week's wages, as I ^vas going out from 
 the garden-gate of the palace of Schoubra with a 
 party of English gentlemen. The gardeners and 
 their workmen were leaving the garden at the same
 
 SANATORY REFORMS. 99 
 
 time, some forty or fifty of them, and thronged the 
 gateway. I waited to see the process. A clerk 
 was sitting in a little lodge at the gate, writing these 
 assignats in very neat Arabick characters, and seal- 
 ing each of them with a signet ring dipped in ink — 
 some for eight, some ten, some twelve piastres. 
 Each w-as a longish instrument, and took up some 
 time in writino: and sealino;-. Arabs and Turks do 
 nothing quickly, and the Arabick character cannot 
 be very quickly written. Each paper was then 
 folded with great deliberation and given to each 
 separate claimant, who w^as to carry it (but not on 
 the next day, the Sabbath) to some merchant's house 
 to be discounted. The only explanation I could 
 obtain upon inquiry as to why the men were not 
 hired at once at a rate minus the discount, and paid 
 that amount in cash, seemed to be that ready money 
 ran short, that it w^as therefore more convenient to 
 pay in paper, and that it would be deemed unbefit- 
 ting his Highness's dignity to borrow a sum from 
 a merchant on a large bill at a discount to pay 
 them. And yet I could not well understand how 
 his Highness's dignity w-as better consulted by giving 
 a large number of small bills at a discount than one 
 large one ; and it appeared very clear that the ad- 
 ditional time and labour of drawing them out sepa- 
 rately in waiting, and carrying them separately to 
 be discounted, was so much more expense, which, 
 in the end, falls upon the Pasha. 
 
 Mohammed Ali has lately completed a great and 
 very important work, a publick medical school, and 
 a civil hospital upon the Esbekieh in good air, and 
 regulated in all respects upon the European system. 
 This was urgently required, and will be of vast use, 
 not only for the relief of the number of patients it 
 is provided to contain, but also as an exemplary
 
 100 SANATORY REFOEMS. 
 
 triumph over a mass of Mohammedan prejudices 
 which have always interfered with the proper treat- 
 ment of disease, and assisted the spread of such dis- 
 orders as are either infectious or simply contagious. 
 Military hospitals had long been formed on a large 
 scale, and under good regulations. Whether the 
 plague, which makes such havock in these countries, 
 be infectious or contagious, or both, or neither, ap- 
 pears to be a question not yet finally decided among 
 the highest and most experienced medical author- 
 ities. Two things, however, are quite indispu- 
 table : that it is a disease under which the most 
 careful and skilful medical treatment is required 
 to save the patient from death, and that it spreads 
 enormously, and M'ith frightful rapidity, among 
 a population living in filth and close air, and 
 upon unwholesome food. The Pasha has applied 
 himself for many years to collect information 
 from reports of medical commissions upon this 
 important subject, and to cleansing and ventilating 
 Cairo, as far as the indolent habits of his people, 
 and their absolute reliance on predestination, will 
 allow him. 
 
 But even the predestinarian spirit inculcated by 
 the Koran, '• in which is found all wisdom, and 
 there is no wisdom but in it," has been gradually 
 mitigated by the energy of this able ruler, as far 
 as it has a tendency to bring the publick safety into 
 hazard. Besides the discouragement which the pre- 
 judices of their religion give to all precaution 
 against disease, there has been great difficulty in 
 bringing the lower orders of Musulmans to submit 
 even to surgical operations. Now a school of sur- 
 gery has been established in addition to the civil 
 hospitals, subjects are purchased for dissection at 
 less expense, and with less secrecy than was neces-
 
 SANATORY REFORMS. 101 
 
 sary when the government first turned its attention 
 to this subject ; and the care of life and health is 
 no longer in the hands of the barbers, and magi- 
 cians, and dervishes, to whom, some j^ears ago, Mas 
 left almost in monopoly the practice of the heal- 
 ing arts. In furtherance of the objects of these 
 establishments the police is severe in enforcing the 
 sanatory precautions of the government, obliging 
 householders to whitewash their outer walls at fixed 
 times in every year, and to remove all noisome rub- 
 bish from before their doors. The more important 
 subject of cleanliness within is what no police and 
 no government can interfere with in a Moham- 
 medan country, further than by general advice as 
 to its expediency. For, as under a free govern- 
 ment, every citizen's house is his castle, " where 
 the wind and rain may enter, but the king cannot," 
 so, under the otherwise arbitrary despotisms of tlie 
 East, a great portion of every Musalman's house 
 is his hareem, every passage leading to which, nay, 
 even the little dingy court into which its windows- 
 look, is barred to the access of all but its master, 
 the wives of his near relations, some select female 
 friends who are allowed to visit its inmates, and the 
 important personage called in Arabick " Tawashi," 
 to whose guardianship, in all families of the higher 
 order, this part of the establishment is entrusted. 
 
 The Mohammedans, such of them as have fixed 
 dwellings and conform to the discipline of their re- 
 ligion respecting the ablutions, and to the custom 
 general among them of using the warm bath fre- 
 quently, are in their persons tolerably clean. Those 
 who have no home (and great numbers there are 
 who have none, and who sleep nightly on the walks 
 and roads, on the Esbekieh, and among the tombs), 
 
 VOL. r. F
 
 102 SANATORY REFORMS. 
 
 are filthy" to the most loathsome degree, covered 
 with \ermin and with disease communicable by the 
 touch. The very air that surrounds them and 
 blows past them is unwholesome. Of the latter 
 class not a few are begging santons (generally idiots, 
 or crafty idlers feigning idiotism), -vvho are Iield by 
 the Turks to be inspired, and whose grotesque ges- 
 tures and incoherent ravings are treated with a sort 
 of mysterious deference ; though, strangely enough, 
 these poor creatures are often pursued and harassed 
 by the children and other idlers, just as, in former 
 times in England, village idiots were, until humane 
 regulation liad established in most parts of this 
 kingdom publick hospitals for the reception of them. 
 The number of these has, however, been very much 
 diminished by the indirect and secret interference 
 of the Pasha. The Copts and Jews also, and the 
 parts of the city which they respectively inhabit, 
 are exceedingly filthy. 
 
 The advances made, under the government of the 
 Pasha, in the social and commercial condition of 
 JEgypt, were not first introduced by him, as has 
 been the case with many other warlike despots, 
 after tranquillity had been won by the sword, and no 
 triumphs remained to be achieved or cares to be 
 attended to but those of peace. It is his great 
 glory that, even whilst all his military energies 
 were engaged in strengthening the defences of the 
 country, and dealing with enemies on every fron- 
 tier to the east, to the north, and on the sea, — 
 while lending assistance to the Porte in its wars, 
 or afterwards opposing and vanquishing its armies 
 and its fleets sent against him, — his efforts never 
 relaxed, nor was his attention ever drawn a^ay 
 from his well-sustained object of civil improvement.
 
 PUBLICK EDUCATION. 103 
 
 Among these, the importance of publick education, 
 a subject new in the Mohammedan East, until under- 
 taken by him, and requiring a mind capable of cast- 
 ing off the prejudices in which it had itself been 
 reared, and mastering those of others, has always 
 been present and foremost in his. He did not 
 limit his efforts in this- respect to inviting foreign 
 engineers and military officers into ^gypt to in- 
 struct his people in the science and discipline of 
 war, nor to sending young ^Egyptians to Woolwich, 
 to Paris and Marseilles, to learn the systems of 
 European fortification, gunnery, navigation, and 
 tactique. He established elementary schools for 
 general instruction in Cairo and Alexandria. He, 
 by degrees, introduced subsidiary establishments, 
 district schools, wherever local circumstances gave 
 him the means, and placed them in communication 
 with, and under the supervision of a central board 
 at Cairo, at the head of which he placed a Minister 
 of State, with a title new and before unheard-of 
 among Moslems, the Minister of Publick Instruc- 
 tion. This minister, Hekekiem Bey, a person, I 
 believe, of considerable talents antl activity, is con- 
 stantly at work with the board, sitting in a build- 
 ing at the corner of the Esbekieh, near which is a 
 central seminary conducted on the European system 
 of class instruction. I visited this. It is con- 
 ducted with great regularity, and well attended by 
 day scholars as well as boarders, separated into 
 classes, from infant to adult ; many supplied from 
 remote parts of the country — some even from Abys- 
 sinia and from Nubia. 
 
 The discipline and attention maintained among 
 such talkative and indolent races as those from 
 which the learners come is striking. Good me- 
 
 F 2
 
 104 PUBLICK EDUCATION. 
 
 mory, where attention can be secured, is, I believe, 
 a remarkable quality generally among the -Egyptian 
 races. This is very observable among the classes 
 in arithmetick and geometry. In the latter science, 
 if I may venture to judge from two examples that 
 I saw, the power of memory is called into more ac- 
 tivity by the teachers than sound comprehension of 
 the propositions or demonstrations. I saw a boy 
 go through the forty-seventh proposition of the 
 first book of Euclid, with extraordinary rapidity, 
 by a diagram chalked before him on a board. It 
 was a very wondrous effort of memory. But one or 
 two slight oversights which he made in the process 
 gave a suspicion that the lesson had been learnt 
 merely by rote. And so it clearly was. For, 
 when desired unawares to prove the equality of the 
 angles at and below the base of a triangle of equal 
 sides, he was plainly in as much difficulty at the 
 ass's bridge as if he had never before seen the figure. 
 And I am inclined to doubt whether he ever had. 
 Still the conduct of the school and attainments of 
 the boys generally, all allowance being made for 
 :he vanity of the masters who endeavoured to give 
 higher credit to their scholars for their progress 
 than was honestly their due, were very creditable. 
 
 A press is attached to this establishment, to print 
 for general circulation Arabick translations made 
 by the boys of works of history, science, and phi- 
 losophy. Two of the works which were under 
 translation were singularly enough selected for 
 juvenile exercises in a country governed by a 
 pasha : — Montesquieu, ' L'Esprit des Loix,' and 
 Vattel, ' Droits des Gens.' It reminded one some- 
 what whimsically of the lines in the Anti-Jacobin 
 with reference to the ill-success of citations from
 
 PUBLICK EDUCATION. 105 
 
 the latter writer in this same land of " Africa the 
 Torrid."* 
 
 Even female education, on every account a most 
 difficult subject to be dealt with in a country where 
 the discipline of the Koran is under Turkish inter- 
 pretation, has not been neglected among the insti- 
 tutions of this bold and wise reformer. Schools for 
 girls and for female adults are not only formed and 
 maintained at the public charge, but, as I was told, 
 some others also have been established by private 
 teachers for the instruction of young women of the 
 wealthier orders, and are well attended. This, it 
 need not be said, is a revolution promising the most 
 important and beneficial results in its influence on 
 manners and on moral and intellectual advancement 
 in the East. It was begun by the efforts of an 
 English lady. Miss Halliday, who devoted herself 
 to this praiseworthy object under the auspices of 
 a society formed in England, but whose exertions 
 have, from the beginning, been countenanced by the 
 Egyptian government ; to call in the natural 
 affections of men to their aid in their highest and 
 noblest duties, — to qualify Mohammedan wives for 
 being helpmates and advisers, Mohammedan mothers 
 for training up their sons in knowledge and honour- 
 able ambition. 
 
 I had the good fortune to hear this subject dis- 
 cussed on one occasion by the Pasha himself; — dis- 
 cussed in his usual manner, by putting questions 
 without giving any opinion of his own. He asked 
 what political advantage, what advantage besides 
 that of the mere pleasure to be derived from the 
 
 * Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin : ' Elegy on Jean Bon St. 
 Andre',' Stanza ix. et seq.
 
 106 rUBLICK EDUCATION. 
 
 conversation of well-educated women, was gained 
 in Europe from their free admission into general 
 society. The answer obviously was that their free 
 admission into general society carried with it the 
 necessity of such education as should qualify them 
 to adorn it ; that the result was, that, where the 
 minds of women were studiously and highly cul- 
 tivated, if it were only for the sake of the male por- 
 tion of the race, his Highness could not but be 
 aware of the advantage gained to a state by its men 
 being, during these years when the strongest im- 
 pressions are formed for a useful career in future, 
 reared under the care of strong-minded mothers, and 
 afterwards deriving support and counsel in their 
 publick duties from the affection of wise aiKl good 
 wives. Then, after a moment's pause, came the 
 smile and the tap on the knee. For the Pasha, it 
 is very well known, bears the tenderest respect for 
 the memory of his mother, and for that also of his 
 favourite wife, the mother of his children, both of 
 whom were women of naturally very superior qua- 
 lities, and to the early care of the first of whom, 
 and the affectionate counsels and assistance of the 
 other, he always professes to stand indebted for the 
 ascendancy he has since obtained over the minds 
 of other men, and in the affairs of the Eastern 
 World. 
 
 The invariable consequence of an advance in 
 general education is a corresponding advance in all 
 the social charities. I will not use the phrase 
 Religious Toleration, implying a right of inter- 
 ference which no human authority has — but reli- 
 gious Liberty, which, as of plain right, men enjoy 
 in exact proportion with the amount of civilization 
 of the country they inhabit — Religious Liberty is
 
 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 107 
 
 fully acknowledged by the institutions of the Pasha. 
 It is true the Moslems of the old school have still 
 in ^gypt, as elsewhere, a deep contempt for all 
 religions but their own, and hold very severely the 
 doctrine of exclusive salvation. But not only is it 
 not allowed that any religion shall be openly in- 
 sulted, — not only may Christians of all sects, and 
 Jews, roam about, each in the habit of his nation 
 and religion, and ride on horseback at their plea- 
 sure, — that privilege having been formerly reserved 
 for true believers, whilst infidels were never to be 
 seen in street or road, save on their own feet, or on 
 the backs of asses, — not only may they hold pro- 
 perty, and build and occupy places of worship of 
 their own, — but they are admissible to all offices, 
 military and civil. One instance might be suffi- 
 cient to cite as an example, for it is the highest. 
 Boghos Bey, who was for many years prime minis- 
 ter to the Pasha, who died last year in office, and 
 in the highest and most confidential favour with 
 him, and whose death the Pasha deplored as the loss 
 of his ablest servant, was an Armenian Christian, 
 as is also Artim Bey, who has succeeded him. 
 
 Such is the general system of the Pasha's rule. 
 Many are the faults it has not yet corrected, but 
 surpassing are the benefits it confers upon the 
 country he governs, and on all others in their 
 relations with it. From that rule, and from a gra- 
 dual participation in its benefits, Syria, Palestine, 
 and Candia, a considerable portion of the Moham- 
 medan East, have now been severed. On the sub- 
 ject of this severance, of the aggressions which 
 were avowedly threatened and in preparation by 
 the Porte in 1832 and 1833, against Mohammed 
 Ali and his government of those territories which
 
 108 CONDUCT OF OTHER STATES 
 
 he had rescued for the Sultan, — those to the east 
 out of anarchy, and those to the north out of the 
 Lands of a powerful and warlike chief, upon the 
 implied condition in all good faith, securing the 
 joint pashalick in perpetuity to himself and his 
 descendants, — on the subject of the convention of 
 Kiutaya, concluded with him by the Porte wlien 
 lie had defeated its armies and was advancing on 
 Constantinople, by w^hich that annexation of terri- 
 tority was confirmed to him, — on the subject of the 
 consequent interference of two of the powers that 
 had urged that convention between the Sultan and 
 the Pasha, supporting the former in his breach of 
 it, and destroying the towns and army of the latter 
 Avith their cannon, — on these subjects it is useless 
 now to dilate. History will deal with them. But 
 the immediate result has been to add to the weak- 
 ness of the Porte, by adding to it the burthen of 
 possessions it could hardly of late years retain and 
 never could govern but through his means, — and 
 to impede the gradual progress of improvement, 
 social and commercial, along the whole southern 
 coast of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 ^gypt had been degraded from the rank it held 
 under the Kaliphs as an important and wealthy 
 nation, ever since the Turkish conquest and 
 Turkish occupation of it. Syria and Palestine add 
 nothing to the revenue of the Sultan, and cost liini 
 dear in garrisons and in all the other machinery 
 "which can hardly sustain his crumbling dominion 
 there. That he cannot extend protection to fo- 
 reigners, either travelling or residing in those parts, 
 is felt by all who visit them. But a few years ago, 
 the authority of Mohammed gave security entire, 
 where now it can be had only by bargain with
 
 TO MOHAMMED ALL 109 
 
 Arab tribes upon the road, and in the cities is left 
 to the precarious protection of feeble governors and 
 a lawless police. Candia is forced back to the un- 
 natural dependence from which it had dropped off 
 because the mother country was unable to provide 
 for its support ; — Candia, second only to Sicily in 
 its means of wealth, and of which Dr. Bowring 
 truly says in a Report w ritten before it was taken 
 from the Pasha, that, " placed on the confines of 
 Africa and Asia, yet so adjacent and accessible to 
 Europe, itself a garden and a storehouse, it will 
 become by the necessity of things one of the great 
 bazaars of the Old World. It must be a centre of 
 influence, self supported, or depending only on 
 those commercial relations which time will gather 
 round it." 
 
 Nor will history fail to bear this testimony to 
 the singular moderation and magnanimity of the 
 Pasha; that, amid all the transactions of 1840, 
 the destruction of his fortified towns, the separation 
 of his territory, and the carnage of his people, and 
 while one of the important land barriers of British 
 India w^as thus weakened and left in jeopardy, the 
 British merchants at Cairo and Alexandria re- 
 mained unmolested, and the way of the Red Sea 
 open as before, for England to her Eastern empire. 
 He is uniformly kind in his attentions, and in the 
 assistances he gives to travellers of all nations who 
 visit his country. If more to those of one nation 
 than of another, perhaps it is to the English. But 
 he can no longer command for them the facilities 
 and the security they used to enjoy to the eastward 
 of his present frontier. 
 
 Of the numbers of the population of ^gypt 
 there is no estimate that can be relied upon as ap- 
 
 F 3
 
 110 POPULATION OF iEGYPT. 
 
 proaching precision. Kor can any be expected 
 until the change which has already begun in the 
 habits of the people shall have advanced much 
 further. All the Mohammedan customs to which 
 I have adverted are as unfavourable to any process 
 for a general census as they are to sanatory regula- 
 tions. The numbers of sojourners in the towns 
 daily vary, and vastly too, by the influx of Arabs 
 from the desert, and of the fellahs who are brouglit 
 in from the country to the publick works, or bring 
 in provisions and other produce. A large propor- 
 tion of those who dwell in Cairo sleep in the open 
 air, and have no houses appropriated to them. Of 
 these no account can be taken. Every house has 
 its hareem, and the hareem is inaccessible. The 
 births of children are not reported. Besides all 
 these difficulties, perhaps a greater than all the rest 
 is in the jealousy with which the people regard the 
 proposal of any new census, suspecting it to be 
 preliminary to some new impost. Every project 
 of this sort is therefore thwarted and opposed. 
 
 An attempt was made, some years ago, by the 
 Pasha to take a census of the city of Cairo, but it 
 failed. The numbers in Cairo are on a rough 
 estimate calculated at some 200,000. Dr. Bow- 
 ring, in his Report on ^^gypt, and Sir Gardner 
 Wilkinson, in his work on ' Modern ^gypt and 
 Thebes,' differ widely in the numerical estimate 
 they respectively give of the population of the 
 whole country : the former rating it at from 
 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 : while the latter believes 
 it not to exceed about 1,800,000. Sir Gardner, 
 moreover, believes the numbers to be decreasing in 
 all parts excepting Alexandria. Dr. Bowriug's 
 opinion, on the contrary, from the best information
 
 POPULATION OF yEGYPT. Ill 
 
 he could collect, is that they are slowly on the 
 increase. They agree, however, in believing that 
 the amount of the Turkish population in ^gypt is 
 becoming every year less. And, since 1840, in 
 which year Dr. Bowring wrote his Report, their 
 proportional numbers seem to have still farther 
 decreased, and those of other resident foreigners 
 and of the native people to have been augmented, 
 notwithstanding the havock which that year made 
 among the towns and the army of the Egyptians, 
 and the commercial embarrassments consequent 
 upon those events. ;
 
 ( 112 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The great Pyramids of Gizeh — Campbell's Tomb— Sphinx 
 — Necropolis of Ancient Memphis— Abousir — Sakhara — 
 Tiuined Pyramid — Dashour — Mitraheeny — Colossal 
 Statue— Magicians of Cairo — Mr. Lane's explanation of 
 the mystery. 
 
 Naturally, irresistibly, the first impulse which 
 an European stranger feels, after his arrival at 
 Cairo, is to go to the Pyramids. He has from his 
 childhood dwelt upon the contemplation of them as 
 of tilings whose origin and intent lie wrapped in 
 the mystery of ages unnumbered, and of a country 
 far, far remote. He has read of them with wonder, 
 as of prodigies of human labour, vast and unpro- 
 ductive as the desert which they overlook ; prodi- 
 gies of human power, which, unless recalling the 
 memory of worthy acts and of publick reverence, 
 teach but this severe and useful truth, that such 
 monuments will endure only as barren records, long 
 after all knowledge of the men who raised them in 
 their pride shall have fallen into oblivion or disre- 
 gard. He has read of the three great Pyramids of 
 Cheops, of Cephren, and of Mycerinus. He has 
 read of the largest of them as having occupied in 
 its construction the labour of a hundred thousand 
 workmen during twenty years, who were every 
 three months relieved by an equal number; and of 
 as many having been employed for ten years before 
 in making the causeway to the Nile for transport 
 of materials.* And when, amazed at the magni- 
 * Herodot. iii. 16. He, moreover, tells us that such was
 
 TYKAMIDS OF GIZEII. 113 
 
 tude of the structures, he asks wlio were the Iieroes, 
 who the benefactors of the human race, whose 
 renown they were intended to commemorate, he 
 finds that the two first were reared by tyrants and 
 oppressors whom publick indignation would not 
 suffer to occupy them with their dust ; and that 
 the third was the work of a better sovereign than 
 his father or his uncle who had preceded him, — 
 '^ good above all other kings who had ever borne 
 sway in ^gypt ;" * but that he would hardly 
 have been remembered had he not also shared in 
 the folly and vice of misapplying the industry of 
 his people. And therefore Mycerinus is thus 
 known, as having left the fairest character of the 
 three, and the smallest pyramid. 
 
 The Pyramids of Gizeh are, according to the 
 measurements in the beautiful description published 
 by Colonel Vyse, which I believe are admitted to 
 be the most accurate of any yet taken, of tlie fol- 
 lowing dimensions : — 
 
 Area of the base. 
 
 Present length of each Perpendicular 
 face at the base. height. 
 
 Ft. In, Ft. In. Acrs. Rds. Poles. 
 
 Pyramid of Cheops . 746 
 „ Cephren. 649 9 
 
 „ Mycerinus 333 
 
 450 9 
 
 12 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 447 6 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 
 30 
 
 203 6 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 21 
 
 the execration in -which the memory of Cheops, and of his 
 brother and successor Cephren, was held, that the people of 
 -iEgypt gave to the Pyramids raised by these two sovereigns 
 the name of Philitis, a shepherd Mho fed his flocks in that 
 country (ii. 13). Dr. Kussell (' Anc. and Mod. iEgypt,' 
 p. 80) supposes the Pyramids to be contemporaneous with 
 the race of the shepherd-kings, who prohibited the worsliip 
 of bi-ute animals, and occupied the throne of the Pharaolis 
 during part of the interval between tlie birth of Abraham 
 and the captivity of his great-grandson Joseph. 
 * Herodot. ii. 134.
 
 114 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 
 
 And the height and area of each have been consi- 
 derably diminished by large accumulations of sand 
 at the base.* 
 
 The way to the Pyramids lies past the tombs of 
 the Memlook kings and of Mohammed Ali's 
 family ; of Toosoom Pasha and Ismail Pasha, his 
 sons ; of Mohammed Bey Defterdar, his son-in- 
 law ; of Zorah Pasha, his sister ; of his first Avife ; 
 and of Mustapha Bey, his wife's brother. From 
 thence it leads to Fostat, or Old Cairo (Masr el 
 Atekeh), from the destruction of Alexandria till 
 973 of the Christian aera the Capital of -^gypt, 
 
 * In giving Colonel Vyse's measurements of the height 
 and length of the three Pyramids, it is fit to observe upon 
 the remarkable discrepancy in the statements made by his- 
 torians and travellers on this subject. Dr, Russell, in his 
 * View of Ancient and Modem -^gypt/ enumerates them 
 thus : — 
 
 Height of Great PjTamid Length of the side 
 Ancients. ^^ English feet. .; in ditto. 
 
 Herodotus 
 
 
 800 
 
 
 800 
 
 Strabo 
 
 
 625 
 
 
 600 
 
 Diodorus . 
 
 
 600 
 
 
 700 
 
 Pliny 
 
 
 — 
 
 
 708 
 
 Moderns. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Le Brun . 
 
 
 606 
 
 
 704 
 
 Prosper Alpinus 
 
 
 625 
 
 
 750 
 
 Thevenot . 
 
 
 520 
 
 
 612 
 
 Niebuhr . 
 
 
 440 
 
 
 710 
 
 Greaves . 
 
 
 444 
 
 
 648 
 
 Davison . 
 
 
 461 
 
 
 746 
 
 French Savans . 
 
 
 470 
 
 
 704 
 
 Number of layers 
 
 
 Number of layers 
 
 or 
 
 steps 
 
 
 
 or steps. 
 
 Greaves 
 
 20: 
 
 
 Belon . 
 
 . 250 
 
 Maillet . 
 
 205 
 
 S 
 
 Thevenot 
 
 . 208 
 
 Albert Lavenstein 
 
 2GC 
 
 ) 
 
 Davison 
 
 . 206 
 
 Pococke . 
 
 212 
 
 

 
 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEII. 115 
 
 and anciently kno\vn as ^Egyptian Babylon. 
 Except its mosque (the Mosque of Amer) and its 
 old Roman fortress, nothing now remains of its 
 former magnificence. It is on the brink of the 
 Nile. 
 
 On the opposite bank is the village of Gizeh, 
 shaded by tall plumy palm-trees, with also a fort- 
 ress on the water's edge, and two handsome mi- 
 narets. Behind this, at some six miles across a flat 
 cultivated ground redeemed from the desert which 
 stretches forth on all sides beyond them, are the 
 three great Pyramids. The six small ones at their 
 foot, three to the east and three to the west, are at 
 this distance hardly to be discerned, so covered are 
 they by the great ones under whose shadows they 
 lie. 
 
 After passing the river, and the banks and mud- 
 walls which fence in Gizeh at the back, the way 
 lies nearly straight to the Pyramids — at all events, 
 with not more than two or three turnings, that 
 make the track about a mile longer to ride than the 
 direct line along which they are seen from Old 
 Cairo. During the inundation, indeed, you may 
 reach to within a mile or two of them b)^ boat. 
 But, for about three months before the ISIiie is at 
 its full height, and about as long after, the two 
 little rivers you have to cross are so swollen that, 
 if you are riding, you must go round for a long dis- 
 tance to the southward and eastward. 
 
 Most travellers profess to have been disappointed 
 with the apparent size of the Pyramids at tJieir 
 first approach. I speak of my own impressions 
 only. I will not say that they surpassed my ex- 
 pectations, for I do not kno^y that I had formed 
 any very determinate idea of the appearance of such
 
 116 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 
 
 stupendous masses of masonry at near view ; but I 
 can truly say they quite equalled any vague notion 
 I could have formed of them. From a great dis- 
 tance the effect of them may easily be imagined. 
 Every one is well acquainted, by models and draw- 
 ings, with their general form, and, while they are 
 too far off for objects near them to be visible with 
 which the eye can contrast their size, every one 
 may well judge how they must appear. From the 
 Nile, opposite the apex of the Delta, from whence 
 you first catch sight of them at nine miles off, you 
 acknowledge them as things you are well acquainted 
 with, and for which for some hours of your passage 
 up the Nile you had been on the look-out. They 
 have much the same appearance from the heights 
 of the Moccatam or from Old Cairo. But, as you 
 near them on the remains of the old causeway, you 
 are overcome with a sense of their exceeding bulk 
 and grandeur. 
 
 There is an optical effect I should be inclined to 
 think peculiar to the great Pyramids, but at' all 
 events veiy remarkable in reference to them, which 
 I feel sure cannot but strike any one who sees them 
 from the moment his attention shall have been 
 drawn to it. In the models of them every where 
 to be met with, which, though perhaps not taken 
 by very accurate trigonometrical measurement, still, 
 according to their scale, preserve tlie general pro- 
 portions, there is a very distinct difference in their 
 apparent shape from that of the originals. I have 
 seen the Pyramids, I believe, by every light, from 
 sunrise to moonlight ; and I have always observed 
 that they appear, at whatever distance they may 
 be viewed, to form a much sharper angle at the 
 apex, to be much taller in proportion to the width
 
 TYKAMIDS OF GIZEII. 117 
 
 of base, than in the moaels made to scale of mea- 
 surement. I do not attempt to give the solution 
 of tills, not being aware of anything in the decep- 
 tions of perspective or atmosphere that can account 
 for it; — indeed, I should rather have expected 
 it to be the direct reverse. I only state it as it ap- 
 peared to me, and as those persons to whom I made 
 the observation when we were together on the spot 
 have admitted that it appeared to them. 
 
 The table-land of stone, 150 feet above the sur- 
 rounding level, and from which the sides of the 
 Pyramids spring, adds much to their commanding 
 appearance as you approach them. At the distance 
 of a mile or so, you hardly distinguish this great 
 pedestal or platform from the flat desert of the same 
 colour extending to the horizon behind it. 
 
 I visited the Pyramids several times ; the first 
 time, with Lord Mountcharles and his fellow- 
 travellers. On that occasion we were unable to 
 proceed in the Great Pyramid further than what is 
 oalled the King's chamber, which is at the end of 
 the horizontal passages and the inclined galleries, 
 up which is the access between them. We had 
 neglected to provide ourselves m ith a ladder, which 
 is necessary for those M^ho would mount hence into 
 the four upper chambers. I was therefore obliged 
 to postpone this to my second visit. 
 
 However worthy description the interiour of this 
 Pyramid is in all its details, — the ascent of the great 
 gallery at some 230 feet from the entrance, and that 
 magnificent vault to which it leads, the King's 
 Cliamber, lined throughout with polished granite, 
 and the great sarcophagus at the further corner of 
 it, — that deep and mysterious Mell at the lower 
 €nd of the gallery, explored through its three gloomy
 
 118 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 
 
 sliafts by the adventurous and gallant perseverance 
 of Mr. Davison, and, half a century after, by M. 
 Caviglia, — and the smaller passage that branches off 
 into the Queen's Chamber, 498 feet in a perpen- 
 dicular line below the apex of the pyramid, — all 
 these have been so thoroughly and minutely de- 
 scribed in the works of Colonel Vyse, and Sir 
 Gardner Wilkinson, and Dr. Russell, as to forbid 
 repetition. Their labours, and those of all who 
 preceded them, have left, perhaps, little further to 
 be discovered ; nothing certainly which has been 
 discovered undescribed. It is, however, worth 
 observation that, of all the measurements made of 
 the sarcophagus, there are hardly any (I know but 
 of two. Dr. Russell's and Colonel Vyse's) which 
 exactly and to an inch agree. They make the 
 breadth of it three feet three inches ; and Sir Gard- 
 ner makes it only three feet. We measured it, as 
 we believed, with scrupulous exactness, making its 
 breadth three feet two. Other descriptions also 
 vary in this respect. This discrepancy as to the 
 three inches makes all the difference in the question 
 respecting the manner in which this pyramid was 
 constructed. If Sir Gardner's measurement, the 
 smallest, be the correct one, it admits the possibility 
 of the sarcophagus having been introduced by levers 
 or screws all along the ^passages, and through a 
 door of the chamber where it is placed. If, on the 
 other hand, three inches, or two and a half, be 
 added, this is impossible, and the sarcophagus must, 
 it appears, have been deposited here while the floor 
 on which it stands was open to the upper air, and 
 all the remaining superstructure of the pyramid 
 have been afterwards built over it. 
 
 To Colonel Vyse the merit is due of detecting
 
 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 119 
 
 the real purpose of the two small apertures in the 
 side walls of this chamber. He has estab- 
 lished beyond doubt that these were designed for 
 ventilators. Having discovered two holes on the 
 outside of the pyramid, one in the norih face and 
 the other in the south, — that to the north being 
 exactly halfway up from the great entrance 
 to the apex, and the other directly opposite ; he 
 found, I believe by pouring coloured water down, 
 that they communicated with these interiour ones. 
 
 The mouth of the first and outer passage of the 
 Great Pyramid is in its northern face, at a little 
 less than a ninth part of the way up the outer 
 ascent. Above the square entrance are two huge 
 blocks of stone, resting against each other in an 
 angle of some sixty degrees, and forming a kind of 
 pediment ; for the purpose, as is supposed, of a 
 support to the weight of masonry above. In one 
 corner of this pediment. Professor Lepsius has, if 
 it may be allowed to say so of so learned and able 
 a man, with a somewhat questionable taste, carved 
 out a tablet, and adorned it with a long and doubt- 
 less very correct hieroglyphick inscription, in 
 honour of his sovereign King William of Prussia, 
 and of Victoria, Queen of England ; strikingly in- 
 appropriate in that place — an anachronism both in 
 character and composition — illegible to the great 
 mass of mankind — and, to the few learned who can 
 read it, a counterfeit, proclaiming itself to be such ; 
 — a line added to the Iliad in commemoration of 
 Waterloo. 
 
 The entrance of each of the three great pyramids, 
 and of such of the others as have been opened at 
 Abousir, Sakhara, and Dashour, is due north 
 (polar, not magnetick) ; and the passage, leading
 
 120 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 
 
 straight from the mouth, descends in each at the 
 same angle of about twenty-seven degrees from the 
 plane of the horizon, which gives a line of direction 
 not far removed from that point of the heavens 
 ■where the Polar Star now crosses the meridian. 
 Hence Dr. Russell, (p. 116, et seq.,) with great 
 probability, attributes to the pyramids, besides the 
 other purposes for which they Mere designed, that 
 of fixing the measurement of sidereal time by the 
 observation of this or some other star passing the 
 meridian across the mouth of a long tube thus ad- 
 justed to the proper point. Nor is this suggestion 
 rendered at all less probable by showing that, 
 probably at a very early time after the construction 
 of the Pyramids, the mouths of these passages were 
 carefully sealed with massive masonry. If the 
 objects of these astronomical observations Mere in 
 any way connected, as is by no means unlikely, 
 with the religious rites of the Sliepherd-kings of 
 JEgypt, Mho closed the temples and discouraged 
 the observances of the old Egyptian mythology, it 
 is indeed in the highest degree probable that, on 
 the restoration of the old M^orship under the 
 Pharaohs, all access to places built with such an 
 object should have been carefully prevented. It 
 seems verj^ clear tliat tlie pyramids Mere designed 
 for several other purposes besides that of royal 
 sepulture. That of the gnomon, for determining 
 the solstices, and for giving a scale of general mea- 
 surement, on which so much has been Mritten, and 
 with so much learning, cannot be dismissed from 
 consideration ; nor can one fail to be struck M-ith 
 tlie reasoning in that ver}^ ingenious little tract of 
 Mr. AgncM-'s, published in 1840, in Mhich he 
 shows by diagram and calculation how bold and
 
 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 121 
 
 near an approach was made, in the construction of 
 these buildings, towards the quadrature of the 
 circle. 
 
 At all events it seems strange that, notwithstand- 
 ing all the speculations which have for so many- 
 ages been maintained by philosophers and antiqua- 
 rians as to the history and intent of the pyramids, 
 almost all authorities are at variance on the question 
 of fact as to the measurements of sides and angles. 
 An agreement on this point, at least, if it did not 
 lead at once to the true solution, might prevent 
 much waste of time and disputation on improbable 
 theories, and ought surely to be undertaken and 
 established in such a manner as to leave no doubt 
 as to the basis on which all, particularly the astro- 
 nomical, hypotheses must be founded. 
 
 The ascent of the Great Pyramid is accom- 
 plished with no difficulty and little labour. From 
 the platform at its top, it need not be said that the 
 view is extensive and splendid, and, whether with 
 respect to the great distance of the horizon all 
 round, the unbroken circle it forms, and the 
 mighty range of historical associations it contains, 
 unlike any which any other height, natural or arti- 
 ficial, in the world can afford. 
 
 Various inscriptions, principally names of tra- 
 vellers who have been here, are carved and painted 
 on the platform and on the blocks of stone which 
 stand upon it. Among other names is that of the 
 Viscomte de Chateaubriand. He informs us, in his 
 * Itineraire,' that, having been obliged to leave 
 Cairo, on his return to France, without seeing the 
 pyramids, he delegated to M. Caffe, the French 
 consul there, the following commission : " Je 
 cliargeai M. Caffe d'ecrire mon nom sur ces grands
 
 122 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH. 
 
 tombeaux, selon I'usage, a la premiere occasion : 
 Ton doit remplir tour les petits devoirs d'un pieux 
 voyageur ! " (vol. ii. p. 213). M. Caffe, it appears, 
 very naturally declined the vicarious performance 
 of this little duty of a pious traveller ; to wit, the 
 inscribing the Viscomte's name in testimony of his 
 having been where he had not been. Some years 
 afterwards, however, an English traveller thought 
 it a little duty of his own to fulfil, uncommissioned, 
 those intentions of the Viscomte's which M. Caffe 
 seems to have thought were best left unfulfilled. 
 Accordingly there is the name. But a French 
 traveller since has trimmed the balance of truth, 
 by writing in large letters beneath, " Le Yiscomte 
 n'etait pas ici." And thus the record rests for the 
 amusement of posterity. 
 
 I am not satisfied of the wisdom, generally, of 
 what a friend of mine, for the sake of simplicity 
 of diction, calls the " autonymolithographick prac- 
 tice." But, at least, it does occur to one that any 
 person, fond of his own name, and believing it to 
 be of equal interest to the rest of mankind, might, 
 with full as much right and reason, commission, 
 from his own fireside in Paris or London, any tra- 
 velling gentleman to immortalize him thus in any 
 out-of-the-w ay place which he is not able himself to 
 visit ; and that, if this practice were to prevail, the 
 Pyramid of Cheops, even though its sides as well 
 as its top were to be devoted to these memorials, 
 would, before long, be found of inadequate dimen- 
 sions for the purpose. 
 
 The interiour of the second Pyramid of Cephren, 
 laid open by the dauntless enterprise and industry 
 of Belzoni, and since made more easy of access by 
 Colonel Vyse, ought not to be left un visited. I
 
 PYRAMIDS OF GIZEII. 123 
 
 Lad not time enough left to me on the evening 
 when I entered it, to do more than proceed hastily 
 along the main passage, and the spaces where stood 
 the two portcullises of granite described by Belzoni, 
 into the chamber at the end, and view the fine sar- 
 cophagus which is partly let into its floor. 
 
 No one ought to undertake to mount the outside 
 of the second pyramid who is liable to giddiness 
 upon a height ; the last 130 or 140 feet nearest the 
 top being cased with a coat of smooth cement. 
 Holes, it is true, are cut in this part for the hands 
 and feet. But, in descending, you are obliged to 
 look down the face of it sheer on the plain below, 
 to see where the successive holes are in which to 
 place your feet. At all events it is advisable, " si 
 Monsieur n'a pas bonne tete," that the Arabs, or 
 any companion whose head may be trusted not to 
 turn when at the top, should be provided with a 
 rope to be made fast there, by which the gentleman 
 of doubtful nerves may descend with perfect safety 
 and ease. Otherwise he may find himself in a diflS- 
 culty for Mhicli nothing during the ascent had 
 prepared him.^ 
 
 The third pyramid we had not time to enter. 
 The whole of the outside of this pyramid, as also of 
 the first, and probably also of the lower part of the 
 second, was faced with a thick layer of the Syenean 
 red granite from Upper ^gypt, fragments of which 
 lie scattered over a large space around ; — records 
 of the attempts made in diflflerent ages by barbarous 
 princes, some from a superstitious, others from an 
 utilitarian, motive to destroy these mighty monu- 
 ments. But their vastness, and the compact mode 
 of their construction, enabled them to withstand 
 the ravages of force, as they had withstood those
 
 124 THE SPHINX. 
 
 of time, apparently without much reduction of 
 their original dimensions ; certainly without any 
 visible damage to the symmetry of their pro- 
 portions.* 
 
 In a direct line, drawn at right angles, midway 
 from the eastern base of the second pyramid to tlie 
 Sphinx, is that fine tomb, the opening of which 
 was begun by M. Caviglia, and finished by Colonel 
 Vyse, called, from the name of the British consul 
 who was present, and assisted at the work, Camp- 
 bell's Tomb. It is a rectangular chamber, sunk in 
 the natural rock, and surrounded by a wide and 
 deep trench. It contains a large stone case, 
 covering three sides of a splendid basaltick sar- 
 cophagus. 
 
 Pursuing still the same line at right angles with 
 the eastern front of the Pyi-amid of Cephren, and 
 nearly opposite the south-east corner of that of 
 Cheops, and at the distance of nearly a furlong- 
 from each of them, is the Sphinx : of all the mighty 
 
 * Many attempts have been made by the Kaliphs and 
 Sultans to destroy the Pyramids. Towards the end of the 
 twelfth century, and shortly before the fall of the Fatimite 
 Dynasty, the Kaliph Melek Alaziz Othman Ben Yousouf 
 employed a host of labourers at an enormous expense for 
 several months on the work of destroying the Pyramid of 
 Mycerinus. But it was abandoned, leaving no trace on the 
 appearance of this, the smallest of the three pyramids. 
 Several other Kaliphs are stated by Abdulatif to have made 
 the attempt from religious motives ; and the Sultan Saleh 
 Eddin Yousouf (Saladin the Great) instructed his Emir 
 Karrakous Assadi to use the pyramids as a quarry for build- 
 ing the citadel and walls of Cairo. It is .said that the ex- 
 ternal coating of the two largest was applied to this 
 purpose ; but, as appears by the measurements compared 
 with those given by Herodotus, with no very obervable re- 
 duction in the dimensions.
 
 THE SPHINX. 125 
 
 monuments that cover this wondrous plain, that 
 which inspires the deepest interest. Like the fabu- 
 lous Being it represents, it propounds a great 
 problem of its own, a mythological one, now per- 
 haps past all certain solution. The purport of the 
 symbol, and the uses of worship, sacrifice, or 
 sepulture, for which the statue was designed, have 
 been the subject of many different theories, all 
 having equal claim to probability. 
 
 That it was an idol, and that sacrifices were 
 offered before it, there appears abundant proof. 
 Whether, as Strabo concludes, it is hollow, and 
 contained a sarcophagus, is more doubtful ; nearly- 
 certain that the great geographer was in error in 
 supposing it to have been the tomb of Amasis. 
 Like the pyramids, it has resisted not only the 
 silent ravages of many thousands of years, but also 
 the attempts of many Saracenick Kings to destroy 
 it as a record of idolatrous worship. But the very 
 nature of the desert, on whose boundaries it stands, 
 has given its aid to protect it from the work of 
 destruction. The sands that cover the greater part 
 of the figure, and of the temple and altar which it 
 guards, have for ages shrouded it from the view 
 and knowledge of the destroyer. But, inasmuch 
 as the greater part of it has been hidden from 
 research, its whole history has afforded matter for 
 the wildest speculations, and indeed its very form 
 and construction have been described with the 
 strangest incorrectness. 
 
 Dr. Clarke states very incautiously (for a little 
 more inquiry, the means of which were fully at his 
 command, would have made him, as it has made 
 others, aware of his error) that the whole figure 
 and pedestal had been laid open by the savans em- 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 126 THE SPHINX. 
 
 ployed by Napoleon, and that, instead of answering 
 the expectations they had formed, the pedestal 
 " proved to be a wretched substructure of brick- 
 work and small fragments of stone, put together 
 like the most insignificant piece of modern masonry." 
 Of the French savans, M. Denon and M. Gobert, 
 whose valuable works contain all that the labours 
 of that body have brought to light, do not profess 
 to have ever seen the pedestal. The former saw 
 only what is now visible above the sand, the head 
 and neck ; and the latter says, in his Memoir, only 
 that he uncovered the back far enough to determine 
 the measurement of the Leonine part. 
 
 Since the days of Dr. Clarke, the whole has been 
 laid bare by the indefatigable industry of M. Cavi- 
 glia, and remained so long enough for a drawing 
 to be made of the front. The pedestal has no 
 brick-work M'hatever connected with it. The paws, 
 of solid masonry, added on to the natural rock 
 which forms the figure, extend from forty to fifty 
 feet in front of it ; and between them are a temple 
 and altar, part of which is still visible rising up 
 before the chest. Unhappily the sand-drifts, the 
 xjonstant falling-in of which upon the work rendered 
 M. Caviglia's operations so tedious and toilsome, 
 and which of old were kept back only by two 
 iuassive walls enclosing the sacred way that led to 
 the temple, again filled the whole excavation soon 
 after the workmen were removed. When I was 
 there, only a narrow sloping hollow of about fifteen 
 or twenty feet deep remained in front, leaving 
 notliing uncovered lower than about one-third down 
 the chest of the figure, and some five or six feet of 
 the upper part of the altar. 
 
 From this ground the way lies nearly due south
 
 ABOUSIR. 127 
 
 towards where, in the earliest recorded times of 
 ^gypt, stood Memphis, the vast and mighty city 
 of its kings. The site of Abousir, the ancient 
 Busiris (Pliny, xxxvi. 12), marked by its pyramids 
 and the foundations of a ruined temple, is a little 
 more than seven miles from the plain of Gizeh. 
 You pass under the table-land of Abousir, leaving 
 it to the right, and soon reach a pretty village, 
 >vhere are a handsome wely and a large Moslem 
 burying-place. The ground for about a mile round 
 is well watered and cultivated, and shaded by tall 
 date-palms. Turning a little to the right, at the 
 further end of the village, you are again upon the 
 sandy waste, not far from the first, the northern- 
 most of the Pyramids of Sakhara. 
 
 Here is a scene entirely different from that which 
 you have been contemplating on the plain of Gizeh, 
 but hardly less astonishing. You have there left 
 the three great sepulchral wonders of the world, 
 stupendous trophies of death's triumph over the 
 pride and power of monarchs. You enter here 
 upon a tract, a city of humbler tombs, of which 
 you cannot see the boundaries. From Abousir all 
 round to the westward and southward for several 
 miles, you step from grave to grave, and every 
 footfall is on bones and scattered fragments of 
 mummy cloths, which time and the storms of the 
 desert, and the depredations of men seeking for 
 treasure, or wild beasts for food, have scattered 
 among the low sandhills or on tlie flat. Scrape 
 away the sand where you will, and at the depth of 
 but a few feet you are among the sculptured and 
 painted walls of some funeral chamber, recording 
 all the history of its dead, whose very name per- 
 liaps, throughout the last three thousand years of 
 
 G 2
 
 128 ABOUSIR. 
 
 the world's existence, has never been pronounced 
 to human ear ; — here some great achievement of 
 his life shown forth in allegory, whose meaning 
 now is hardly to be understood ; — here the proces- 
 sion carrying his body across the sacred stream to 
 its last resting-place ; — and here his children offer- 
 ing up the flesh of animals, and bread, and fruits, 
 and flowers, to his manes. 
 
 Most of these records are preserved by the dry 
 and stainless sand which has encased them, fresh in 
 colour and in outline as from the artist's hand. 
 Indeed, to one who has been used elsewhere to look 
 with reverence on the rich lichen tints of the wall 
 or column, the rough oxide which encrusts the 
 brazen arms and tablets, or the patina which 
 enamels the coins of ancient Greece, there is in 
 these -^gj^tian relicks, of an antiquity far more 
 remote, something wanting, for which, as it appears 
 to me, their freshness ill compensates ; the warranty, 
 as it were, traced by time upon the brow of age. 
 They are things starting from the tombs of thirty 
 centuries ago, with the sharpness and gloss of yes- 
 terday upon them. 
 
 But how strangely do these unsoiled and gaudy 
 sepulchres contrast with the charred bones and cere- 
 ments of pitchy rag which they have cast forth upon 
 the surface ; relicks of mortality which they were 
 built to guard and honour, and of which the very 
 arts applied to save them from natural decay have 
 only preserved the hideousness that otherwise, by 
 the law of nature, would have crumbled away in 
 dust. 
 
 The pits containing the Ibis mummies are well 
 worth examination. The largest of them, a little 
 to the M^estward of the largest Pyramid of Abousir,
 
 ABOUSIR. 129 
 
 is about twenty feet deep. Its sides slope enough, 
 and only just enough, to allow you to descend 
 without the aid of a rope. The floor, for probably 
 a depth of many feet, is covered with heaps on 
 Iieaps, and layers on layers, of coarse earthen jars, 
 the lids cemented down, containing each the body 
 of an ibis, preserved with bitumen, and enclosed in 
 numerous folds of narrow bandages of the same sort 
 of cloth in which the human mummies are wound. 
 The top of the jar must be broken off in order to 
 reach the mummy, which is sometimes found in a 
 state of admirable preservation,— black and charred, 
 and incapable of being taken whole out of the ban- 
 dages, — but all the bones, the heads, and all the 
 feathers entire. Whether these animals, which are 
 known to have been held in the highest sanctity, 
 were thus embalmed and brought to these place 
 of burial whenever found dead, or whether collected 
 here only as objects of worship, is a question of 
 which no ancient authority assists in the solution. 
 But it appears as if the former supposition were the 
 more probable ; — first, on account of the enormous 
 number of them that lie buried together ; and, 
 secondly, because there is no trace of these pits 
 having been appropriated to any purpose of adora- 
 tion or sacrifice, but closed when incapable of hold- 
 ing any more of these jars, which seem to have been 
 placed in them without any regularity or arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 The Necropolis of Memphis, in the midst of 
 which is the tract containing these pits, Strabo 
 says, extended half a day's journey each way from 
 tlie great city. The decrease which, for some cen- 
 turies, has been going on in the population of 
 -^gypt, assisted also by some other natural causes
 
 1 30 SAKHARA. 
 
 as yet unexplained, has admitted very large en- 
 croachments of the desert from all sides, on what 
 once was cultivated ground. It has covered the 
 sites of what were formerly large villages, at Aboo- 
 roash and Abousir, surrounded, doubtless, once, as 
 all which remain are now, with garden land and 
 pasture, and shaded with trees. On this subject, 
 and, on the other hand, on that of the vast altera- 
 tion in the level of what is now cultivated country 
 all the Avay from Cairo to' the sea, particularly in 
 the Delta, (caused by the accumulation of alluvial 
 deposits from the Nile, as evidenced by the buried 
 state of all the fallen monuments of antiquity and 
 the height to which the ground has risen up the 
 base of those which still are standing,) there is an 
 ingenious chapter in Clot Bey's ' Aper9u General 
 sur I'Egypte.' 
 
 The village of Sakhara, like the other to the east 
 of Abousir, stands cheerfully in a little oasis of 
 palms and corn-fields, and has a marabout and 
 burying-ground of its own. 
 
 There is a ruined pyramid on the brow of a 
 range of sand-hills, which shut in the village of 
 Sakhara from the wilderness. From the top of 
 this ruin is, I think, the finest general view of the 
 country of the pyramids, over which it looks, 
 standing nearly midway between those at the ex- 
 treme points, about fifteen miles apart, of Gizeh 
 and Dashour. To the north-west, to the west, and 
 to the south, is the desert, trackless, and unbounded 
 to the horizon. Far away to the north-east are the 
 minarets of Cairo and the beetling redoubts of the 
 Moccatam, at the foot of which the Nile rolls down, 
 like the stream of Time itself, from Upper ^gypt, 
 from Thebes and Dendyra, along its course to the
 
 DASIIOUR. 131 
 
 City of Alexander, of the Ptolemies, the Caesars, 
 the Kaliphs, and the Sultans ; sweeping mournfully 
 past the site of the once glorious Memphis in 
 the south-east, whose walls and palaces and tem- 
 ples are no more, but in their place a tract of 
 marshes peopled only by the kite and pelican. 
 
 To the northern border, the pyramids of Gizeh, 
 and to the southern those of Dashour, close the 
 view ; and below for several miles around lies the 
 City of the Dead, the resting place of countless 
 generations of those who dwelt in the metropolis of 
 the Pharaohs ; — tombs beyond number and without 
 a name. 
 
 From hence you may count five-and-twenty py- 
 ramids, besides that on whose ruined top you stand : 
 at Gizeh nine; six at Abousir ; five at Sakhara; 
 and five at Dashour. The largest pyramid of Sak- 
 hara, about a mile to the north-eastward, is of sin- 
 gular shape and construction, made of unburnt 
 brick, and in only four successive stages. It is 
 also remarkable as containing a chamber with a 
 kind of vaulted roof, here and there braced by large 
 beams of sycamore wood. 
 
 But, next after the great pyramids of Gizeh, the 
 one perhaps which best deserves attention is the 
 small unfinished pyramid, the northernmost of 
 those of Dashour ; since it appears to fgive the- 
 real solution of that phrase so often quoted of 
 Herodotus concerning the pyramids having been 
 built " from the top downwards." 
 
 I subjoin in the Appendix an extract of a letter 
 on this subject addressed by the ingenious and 
 pains-taking Mr. Bonomi to the Secretary of the 
 -dCgyptian Literary Society at Cairo, which that
 
 132 MITRAHEENY. 
 
 gentleman was kind enough to give me.* The 
 solution is simple, and appears satisfactory and 
 complete. .' 
 
 Mitraheeny, about seven miles to the south- 
 eastward from hence, occupies, as all the best au- 
 thorities on ^gypt seem to agree, the centre of the 
 ancient city of Memphis, which, taking its girth, 
 as described by Diodorus, at about 150 stadia, or 
 17 English miles, must thus have reached on the 
 one side, to the river's bank, and, on the other, to 
 the sand-hills on the edge of the desert. 
 
 Here is still, with a few smaller fragments of 
 idols and capitals of columns near it, the colossal 
 basaltick figure of Remeses II., who is believed on 
 good ground by Sir Gardner Wilkinson (' Modern 
 ^gypt and Thebes,' i. 372) to have been identical 
 with Sesostris. He also believes this to be one of 
 the two great statues mentioned by Herodotus and 
 Diodorus, as having been placed by Sesostris be- 
 fore the Temple of Vulcan, or Pthah. It lies, 
 prone, in the pit from which the earth was re- 
 moved when it was first discovered, and in which 
 the crater covers some eight or ten inches of the 
 lowest part of the face and chest and legs. A vil- 
 lage path runs close past it, leading among palm- 
 groves and rice-grounds. The fellahs of the vil- 
 lage speak of this great statue as of the work of 
 the genii. " Its place knoweth it no more." 
 
 It was discovered by M. Caviglia and Mr. Sloane, 
 w ho have given it, with the consent of the Pasha, 
 to the British Museum. But that ill-directed 
 spirit of what is called economy in England, 
 (which, while it sometimes allows millions of 
 * See Appendix II.
 
 MAGICIANS OF CAIRO. 133 
 
 publick money to be lavished upon works reflect 
 ing little credit on the national taste, grudges a 
 few hundreds to adorn our country with such a 
 relick as this of ancient art,) has shrunk from the 
 expense of removing it. And when the barbarism 
 or bigotry of the next successors of Mohammed 
 Ali in the government of ^gypt shall perhaps 
 have revoked the permission he has given, and 
 shall perhaps have broken up this fine statue and 
 burned it into lime, then, as Sir Gardner Wilkin- 
 son truly says, " it will be regretted." 
 
 Before I leave the subject of Cairo and of 
 JEgypt, I will advert to one which has occasioned 
 much speculation and controversy : more certainly 
 than it appears to be entitled to ; I mean that of 
 the magicians. I take no shame to myself in say- 
 ing that some of the narrations concerning them 
 which found their way to Europe had excited ray 
 curiosity, as I believe they have that of many, 
 long before I had the expectation of ever visiting 
 ^gypt. To deny the truth of any hidden proper- 
 ties or powers in nature for no better reason than 
 that they have never come within our limited ex- 
 perience, and appear to us incapable of any satis- 
 factory solution, is hazardous and somewhat arro- 
 gant ; nor surely does the holding our belief in 
 balance with respect to such things, vouched by 
 the testimony of honourable men, argue any weak 
 credulity. Many facts have of late years been 
 related of a class of magicians in the East, who, 
 like those of old, profess to have the power of 
 presenting the apparitions of persons absent or 
 dead, whom they have never seen or before heard 
 of, and of whose look or habits, therefore, they can 
 have no previous knowledge. That the apparition 
 
 G 3
 
 134 MAGICIANS OF CAIRO. 
 
 is shown, not to him who desires the magician to 
 summon it, but to some young boy whom the party 
 desiring it to be summoned shall choose ; and that 
 then this boy, after certain incantations performed 
 by the magician, describes accurately the absent or 
 the dead, the former in the occupation in which at 
 that moment tliey may be engaged. 
 
 Among the persons of high credibility who have 
 borne witness to this, in a manner to excite our 
 wonder and keep our judgement in suspense, is Mr. 
 William Lane, the able waiter on Modern ^gypt, 
 who describes in his book some remarkable exhi- 
 bition of this sort which he saw, and for which he 
 was unable to account. On the other hand. Sir 
 Gardner Wilkinson accounts for it all by referring 
 it to collusion between the magician and the boy ; 
 observing also that, on such occasions, the street 
 before the house is generally thronged with boys, 
 probably placed there by the magician ; and that 
 thus whichever of them may be called in, under the 
 impression of his being totally disconnected with 
 the arrangements, is, in truth, an actor w^ell pre- 
 pared for his part in the fraud. This, be it ob- 
 served, may afford the means of collusion, but in 
 no respect helps towards accounting for the de- 
 scription of the absent person in his proper like- 
 ness being successful. 
 
 On the first occasion on which I saw this sort of 
 exhibition, the party who were assembled, and who 
 were numerous, guarded themselves against the kind 
 of arrangement which Sir Gardner suspects by send- 
 ing to a long distance off for a boy who we were con- 
 vinced knew not, until he entered the room, for what 
 purpose he was brought there, and could have had 
 no previous instructions from the magician. Tlie
 
 MAGICIANS OF CAIRO. 135 
 
 magician began, in the manner Sir Gardner Wil- 
 kinson describes, by casting powders into a pan of 
 charcoal near him ; by placing a paper, covered 
 with some written characters, upon the boy's brow, 
 under his cap, and then pouring ink into his hand, 
 into which he desired him to look attentively. 
 Lastly, he asked him a string of leading questions 
 as to certain preparatory phantoms for which the 
 boy was desired to call, and which were to assist 
 in the incantation. These the boy professed to see 
 in the ink in his hand. These are always the 
 same ; such as of persons pitching a tent, sweeping 
 it, spreading a carpet, and cooking provisions, and 
 then of kings entering the tent preceded by flags. 
 I have no doubt that the magician, who was all the 
 time muttering fast and incessantly in a low tone^ 
 gave the boy to understand that he should receive 
 part of the bakshish, or reward, if he took obedi- 
 ently the hints he should give him as to what he 
 must profess to see. 
 
 When these preparatory ceremonies had been 
 gone through, four persons residing in England 
 were successively called for. The description of 
 each was an entire and ludicrous failure. Among 
 others, an English gentleman was called for who 
 is distinguished by wearing the longest, probably, 
 and most bushy beard to be found in these our days 
 within the British Islands. This gentleman was 
 described by the boy quite wrong as to figure and 
 usual dress, and as having a chin very like that of 
 the youngest person in company. Lord Mount- 
 charles, who was much amused at a resemblance 
 he so little expected. Being informed, that, so 
 far, he had not been fortunate, the magician told 
 us that perhaps it might be more satisfactory to us
 
 136 MAGICIANS OF CAIRO. 
 
 if we called for somebody whose person might be 
 easily recognised by the having lost a limb. We 
 said that the gentleman already mentioned might 
 be easily distinguished from most others, — more 
 easily than by the mere loss of a limb. But in 
 conformity with his last suggestion, we desired 
 that Sir Henry Hardinge should be made to ap- 
 pear. 
 
 After the boy had described Sir Henry Hard- 
 inge as being tall, and with moustaches, we asked 
 him whether he could clearly see his eyes and his 
 feet ; from which question it was evident the magi- 
 cian inferred that the person we had called for had 
 lost either an eye or a leg. The boy accordingly 
 said that he was sitting with his side turned towards 
 him, so that he could see only one side of his face, 
 and that his papouches (slippers) were hidden by 
 a large gown or trouser, he could not tell which. 
 What coloured gloves had he ? White. — Had he 
 his gloves on ? Yes ; he saw them plainly, /or his 
 hands were crossed on his breast. 
 
 At the end the magician, informed that he had 
 totally misdescribed all the persons called for, ex- 
 cused himself by charging the boy with lying, — an 
 imputation I have no doubt true, but which was 
 not the real cause of the ill success ; and by also 
 accusing the interpreter of having mistranslated his 
 Arabic, which he spoke so rapidly that none of our 
 party but the interpreter had that language suffici- 
 ently at command to follow him in it. 
 
 This, however, as we afterwards heard, was not 
 the magician highest in repute at Cairo. The 
 next trial which I saw was more conclusive on the 
 question, and led to what appears to be the real 
 solution of the whole mystery. Major Grote, who
 
 MAGICIANS OF CAIRO. 
 
 137 
 
 had not been present on the former occasion, and 
 who likewise wished, after all he had heard and 
 read of these pretended powers, to satisfy himself 
 as to their truth or falsehood, Mas with me, a few 
 days after, at the house of Mr. Lane. In general 
 conversation, the story arose of the failure which 
 had taken place on the other evening. With some 
 difficulty we persuaded Mr. Lane (who at first was 
 
 Tlie Mas,ncian Abdel Kader. 
 
 reluctant, his authority and that of his book having 
 been so much used, and beyond what was just, in 
 support of the general belief in these efforts of 
 magic) to see, along with us, Abdel Kader the
 
 138 MAGICIANS OP CAIRO. 
 
 magician, whose performances liad formerly so much 
 excited his astonishment, and that of several other 
 Europeans whose unimpeachable testimony and ac- 
 knowledged soundness of judgment had had great 
 influence in making this a subject of serious inquiry 
 with others. We were the more anxious that Mr. 
 Lane should be with us on this occasion, because 
 we should have in him not only a witness who, 
 from the impression previously left on his mind, 
 would not suffer us to draw inferences unjustly dis- 
 favourable to the magician, but who also, from his 
 perfect and familiar knowledge of the Arabic lan- 
 guage, would be an interpreter in whose honour, 
 and in whose skill also, we might have entire trust. 
 The trial promised much. The magician evidently 
 acknowledged in Mr. Lane a person in whose esti- 
 mation he was eager not to lower the impression he 
 had formerly produced. The failures, the repeated 
 and uniform failures, were not only as signal, but, 
 if possible, more gross than those of the other 
 magician on the previous occasion. It is enough 
 to say, that not one person whom Abdel Kader de- 
 scribed bore the smallest resemblance to the one 
 named by us ; and all those called for were of 
 remarkable appearance. All the preparations, all 
 the ceremony, and all the attempts at description, 
 bore evidence of such coarse and stupid fraud, as 
 would render any detail of the proceeding, or any 
 argument tending to connect it with any marvellous 
 power, ingenious art, or interesting inquiry, a mere 
 childish waste of time. 
 
 How, then, does it happen that respectable and 
 sensible minds have been staggered by the exhibi- 
 tions of this shallow impostor ? I think that the 
 solution which Mr. Lane himself suggested as
 
 MR. lane's explanation. 139 
 
 probable is quite complete. When the exhibition 
 was over, Mr. Lane had some conversation with 
 the magician, which he afterwards repeated to us. 
 In reply to an observation of Mr. Lane's to him 
 upon his entire failure, the magician admitted that 
 he had been told he had " often failed since the 
 death of Osman Eifendi ;" — the same Osman EfFendi 
 whom Mr. Lane mentions in his book as having 
 been of the party on every occasion on which he 
 had been witness to the magician's art, and whose 
 testimony the ' Quarterly Review ' cites in support 
 of the marvel, which (searching much too deep 
 for what lies very near indeed to the surface) it 
 endeavours to solve by suggesting the probability 
 of divers complicated optical combinations. And, 
 be it again observed, no optical combinations can 
 throw one ray of light upon the main difficulty, — 
 the means of producing the resemblance required 
 of the absent person, 
 
 I now give Mr. Lane's solution of the whole 
 mystery, in his own words, my note of which I 
 submitted to him, and obtained his ready permission 
 to make publick in any way I might think fit. 
 
 This Osman EfFendi, Mr. Lane told me, was a 
 Scotchman formerly serving in a British regiment, 
 who was taken prisoner by the -^Egyptian army 
 during our unfortunate expedition to Alexandria in 
 1807 ; that he was sold as a slave, and persuaded to 
 abjure Christianity and profess the Musulman faith ; 
 that, applying his talents to his necessities, he 
 made himself useful by dint of some little medical 
 knowledge he had picked up on duty in the regi- 
 mental hospital ; that he obtained his liberty, at 
 the instance of Sheik Ibrahim (M. Burckhardt), 
 through the means of Mr. Salt ; that, in process oJf
 
 140 MR. lane's explanation. 
 
 time, he became second interpreter at the Bri- 
 tish consulate ; that Osman was very probably- 
 acquainted, by portraits or otherwise, with the 
 general appearance of most Englishmen of cele- 
 britvj and certainly could describe the peculiar 
 dresses of English professions, such as army, navy, 
 or church, and the ordinary habits of persons of 
 different professions in England ; that, on all 
 occasions when Mr. Lane was witness of the magi- 
 cian's success, Osman had been present at the 
 previous consultations as to who should be called to 
 appear, and so had probably obtained a description 
 of the figure wdien it was to be the apparition of 
 some private friend of persons present ; that on 
 these occasions he very probably had some pre- 
 arranged code of words by which he could commu- 
 nicate secretly with the magician. To this must 
 be added that his avowed theory of morals on all 
 occasions was that " we did our whole duty if we 
 did what we thought best for our fellow -creatures 
 and most agreeable to them." Osman was present 
 when Mr. Lane was so much astonished at hearing 
 the boy describe very accurately the person of M. 
 Burckhardt, with whom the magician was unac- 
 quainted, but who had been Osman's patron ; and 
 Osman also knew well the other gentleman whom 
 Mr. Lane states in his book that the boy described 
 as appearing ill and lying on a sofa ; and Mr. Lane 
 added that he had probably been asked by Osman 
 about that gentleman's health, whom Mr. Lane 
 knew to be then suffering under an attack of rheu- 
 matism. He concluded therefore by avowing that 
 there was no doubt on his mind, connecting all these 
 circumstances with the declaration the magician had 
 j,ust made, that Osman had been the confederate.
 
 ^ MR. lane's explanation. 141 
 
 Thus I have given, in Mr. Lane's words, not 
 only with his consent, but at his ready offer, what 
 he has no doubt is the explanation of the whole of 
 a subject which he now feels to require no deeper 
 inquiry, and which has been adopted by many as a 
 marvel upon an exaggerated view of the testimony 
 that he offered in his book before he had been 
 convinced, as he now is, of the imposture. I 
 gladly state this on the authority of an enlightened 
 and honourable man, to disabuse minds that have 
 wandered into serious speculation on a matter 
 which I cannot but feel to be quite undeserving of 
 it.
 
 ( 142 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Preparations for a Journey across the Desert — Departure—, 
 Camels and Dromedaries — their Drivers — Itinerary of 
 " the Desert, as far as Khan Younes, on the frontier of 
 Palestine. 
 
 During the last few days of our stay at Cairo, 
 Major Grote and I were employed together, in our 
 preparations for the desert.* We had made every 
 effort to reduce the amount of our luggage within 
 the smallest compass consistent with our wants, 
 and with a prudent provision for what might be re- 
 quired in the chance of casual illness or accident, 
 during a journey which would lead us often to a 
 distance of very many days away from all assistance 
 and all resources, save such as we might carry with 
 us. Besides the entire agreement which I was so 
 fortunate as to find subsisted between us in our 
 objects of travel, I am inclined to believe that each 
 very soon discovered that the other was very little 
 disposed to trouble himself or his companion with 
 
 * Whilst these sheets were going through the press, I was 
 deeply shocked at receiving the sad news of the sudden 
 death of Major Grote, who had been my intimate friend 
 and constant companion in the whole of my journey through 
 the desert, through Palestine, and in Syria ; a man whose 
 gentle manners and equal temper, whose firmness and spirit 
 in moments of difficulty, and kindness of heart at all times,, 
 made his companionship truly valuable, and the loss of him,, 
 by any who had opportunities such as I had for knowing his 
 good qualities, sincerely to be deplored.
 
 PREPARATIONS FOR THE DESERT. 143 
 
 any redundancy of those things which are always 
 recommended to travellers as " comforts," but 
 which for the most part become in a short time 
 mere incumbrances, heartily to be regretted. I 
 believe all experience in foreign travelling — I am 
 sure all tlie experience I have ever had — cries out 
 aloud, " (Economize with the utmost jealousy, 
 count to the smallest fraction, and weigh even to the 
 scruple, every item of what is presented to you under 
 the name of ' portable,' and trust as much as pos- 
 sible to what you may find where and when it may 
 be wanted.'* And this is true, to a much greater 
 extent than most people think, in the desert. 
 
 I suppose it can hardly be necessary to warn any 
 man against ever contemplating such an act as car- 
 rying with him one of those mechanical contrivances 
 called " portable bedsteads," or " portable can- 
 teens," unless he have some inscrutable reason for 
 desiring to employ an excessive number of beasts 
 of burthen in carrying things which are sure to be 
 broken or get out of order, which are sure to re- 
 tard his progress intolerably, to make a great 
 deal of labour, and waste a great deal of time in 
 packing and unpacking, and to occasion a thousand 
 annoyances, which he escapes who limits himself in 
 respect of personal baggage to what may fairly be 
 called necessary. And by what may fairly be 
 called necessary,, I mean a knife, fork, spoon, and 
 cup ; a saucepan, a gridiron, and a small plate, 
 with a hole in the rim by which to hang it to the 
 saddle ; a rug and a blanket ; and that very great 
 luxury, a hammock, to be slung in manner herein- 
 after described, to preserve him from the hardness 
 of the ground, or its dampness in case of rain, and 
 from all creeping things ; — and no more, excepting
 
 144 TREPARATIONS FOR THE DESERT. 
 
 his changes of clothes, brushes, towels and soap, 
 and portfolios. Yet, in spite of the utmost care 
 which two persons unacquainted with the desert 
 could take not to burthen themselves with any un- 
 necessary equipment, and after we had peremptorily 
 rejected some, and very much reduced many other 
 articles of outfit which were described to us at 
 Cairo as being absolutely indispensable, we could 
 not bring the number of camels and dromedaries 
 required for carrying ourselves and our two servants, 
 drogoman, tents, bedding, food, fuel, and water- 
 skins, to a smaller number than eleven. 
 
 We had, it is true, at first, two small tents with 
 us, the larger of which we afterwards parted with, 
 retaining but one of eleven feet long, with two 
 short poles capable of hanging two hammocks be- 
 tween them, on hooks, one above the other, and 
 leaving space for the two servants to spread their 
 rugs and blankets commodiously below. This is 
 the kind of tent which, on account of its portable- 
 ness, general comfort, and power of throwing off 
 wet and resisting wind, I strongly recommend. 
 Ours was lined, inside the Russia duck it was made 
 of, with the light stuff of which the Arabs make 
 their haick cloaks, which is very warm, and turns 
 both the rain and the dew better than anything I 
 know of applicable to this purpose. 
 
 Our limit of time obliged us to forego the pro- 
 ject we had at first entertained of going by the Red 
 Sea, Sinai, and Petra. But, as we wished to re- 
 serve to ourselves the power of taking which way 
 we might find most interesting and practicable after 
 we should have quitted the Hadj road to Jerusalem, 
 our bargain with the sheik of the party of Arabs 
 from whom we hired our beasts of burthen, and
 
 DEPARTURE. 145 
 
 who was to accompany us, was made, not as usual 
 by the journey only, but also with a reserved stipu- 
 lation by the day. Our agreement with the sheik, 
 Mohammed Sceatt Mabruch, was that he should be 
 paid one hundred and sixty piastres (about \L I2s.) 
 for each camel or dromedary, (one-half of the sum 
 to be paid before starting-,) to take us from Cairo 
 to Jerusalem, along the Hadj road; the journey 
 being calculated at from thirteen to fifteen days. 
 But, in case of our quitting the Hadj road, twelve 
 piastres (about 2s. 6d.) more was to be the price 
 for each camel or dromedary every day beyond the 
 fifteen. We were to pay only half price for days of 
 rest ; and the sheik was to provide for himself, for 
 the camel-drivers, and the beasts. I mention these 
 things only to show the rate which I believe to 
 be the fair one at which these agreements should 
 be made. 
 
 On the evening of the 12th of February we left 
 Cairo, by the " Bab el Nasr," or " Gate of Suc- 
 cour." We had sent our servants on with the bag- 
 gage-camels to Matarieh, only two hours from 
 Cairo, and about a couple of miles to the eastward 
 of Heliopolis. Here we pitched our tent for the 
 night. It is the usual course for travellers, at 
 the outset of a long journey, to halt for the first 
 night near the city, in order that if then, or at 
 starting from thence on the following morning, any 
 part of the necessary arrangements shall be found 
 to have been neglected or forgotten, they may be 
 able to send back for supplies. 
 
 In describing each day's journey between Cairo 
 and Jerusalem, I will give the calculation of the 
 distance by hours, as I kept the account of them 
 from point to point. I do this because our line, as
 
 146 DROMEDARIES. 
 
 far as Hebron, was not 'that which was taken by 
 Dr. Robinson, whose detail of distances, measured 
 by time, in his voluminous work entitled ' Biblical 
 Hesearches in Palestine,' I found, wherever we fell 
 into his track, to be the most correct of any that 
 I had met with. The pace of the loaded camel 
 must be taken at about two miles and a half an 
 hour. Dr. Robinson rates it at a little less. But, 
 if taken inclusive of the halt of half an hour to 
 rest the camels half way in each day's journey, the 
 average distance we are able to travel from sunrise 
 to sunset will be found generally to agree with 
 what he allows to an equal number of hours. I 
 believe the rate of pace we assumed for each hour, 
 reckoned separately, to be nearer the truth. 
 
 Some delay was occasioned in our first morning's 
 start from Matarieh, not only in settling the order 
 of packages for each subsequent day's march, but 
 also in making ourselves masters of the art and 
 mystery of riding on the seat we were hencefor- 
 ward for so many days to occupy on the dromedary's 
 back, — " Res dura, et regni novitas." 
 
 The operation of mounting the beast, and his 
 operation of rising, in three motions, from the sit- 
 ting posture in which he receives you, are as odd, 
 and require as different a school from the ordinary 
 one in the art of riding, as can well be imagined. 
 The first movement of his rising on his knees, ge- 
 oerally performed a moment or two before you are 
 established in the saddle, gives you all the inclina- 
 tion, which must be resisted, of slipping back over 
 his tail. Movement the second, of hoisting him- 
 self, from the double joints of his hocks, upon his 
 hind feet, makes it necessary for you to beware of 
 going over his ears. The third effort places you,
 
 DROMEDARIES. 147 
 
 ■with a jerk, upon a level seat of some nine feet 
 from the earth. And this strange struggle is all the 
 more difficult to you if, as you are always advised 
 to do, you substitute for your accustomed mode of 
 sitting — astride, the Arab position of camel-riding, 
 your legs crossed over the high projecting pummel, 
 which you are fain to pinch with your calves (or, 
 in the process of learning, more commonly with 
 both hands) to preserve your balance. But all this 
 is an art which, like that of swimming or moving 
 on skates, become a knack, never forgotten and of 
 no difficulty after the first successful achievement. 
 The gait of the beast is as tiresome to the rider 
 as anything can be which is not physically fati- 
 guing. It is a very proud and important-looking 
 stride, of vastly slow progress, to every step of 
 which, regular as the pendulum of a clock, the 
 rider, perched aloft on a pack-saddle, which is 
 perched aloft on a hump, is fain to bend as it w^ere 
 in respectful acknowledgement. The effect of this 
 is, at first, very ludicrous, even to the performer. 
 But, after thus stalking and bowing for a certain 
 time across the dead flat of a desert, without a 
 chance, exert himself as he will, of mending his 
 pace, it becomes exceedingly tiresome to him ; par- 
 ticularly, oppressed as he is, in beginning his 
 journey at sunrise, with the sense that that pace 
 must continue, unimproved and unvaried, till the 
 setting of the same. To call the camel or the 
 dromedary the "ship of the desert " is a great in- 
 justice to the ship of the ocean, whose every move- 
 ment carries with it a feeling of life and sense, 
 tempered by obedience ; while the gait and man- 
 ners of the other leave a notion only of the invo- 
 luntary and mechanical.
 
 148 DROMEDARIES. 
 
 I spoke, awhile ago, of the patient, long-suffer- 
 ing expression of the earners face ; but your 
 opinion of the camel will, I think, change, as mine 
 did, upon further and more intimate acquaintance. 
 The truth is, he is but an ill-conditioned beast 
 after all. AYhat you took for an expression of 
 patience becomes one of obstinate, stupid, profound 
 self-sufficiency. There is a vain wreathing of the 
 neck, a self-willed raising of the chin on high, a 
 drooping of the lack-lustre eye, and sulky hanging 
 of the lower lip, which to any who have faith in 
 the indications of countenance and action betoken 
 his real temper. Then that very peculiar roar of 
 his, discordant beyond the roar of any other beast, 
 which continues during the process of his being 
 loaded, from the moment that the first package is 
 girded on his back to when he clumsily staggers 
 up upon his feet to begin his lazy journey, is a 
 sound betraying more of moral degradation than 
 any I ever heard from any other four-legged 
 animal : a tone of exaggerated complaint and of 
 deep hate, which the shape of his open mouth well 
 assorts with. The dromedary is said to be to the 
 camel what the thorough-bred horse is to the hack. 
 But he who has ridden a dromedary will never 
 again profane the qualities of the thorough-bred 
 horse by using his name in any such company. 
 The dromedary, it is true, is lighter than the 
 camel, and capable of going much faster ; but in 
 temper and spirit he differs from him in nothing 
 but in being even more obstinate. Though able 
 to go at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, (and 
 some are made to do it by dint of a rough educa- 
 tion,) the dromedary who has not been from his 
 early youth in the hands of a Tatar, or of an Arab
 
 DKOMEDARIES. 149 
 
 of one of those tribes whose trade is war and 
 plunder, cleaves to his favourite pace of two miles 
 and a half. You cannot, do what you will, make 
 friends with him, or coax him out of what" he 
 seems to consider as his privilege of thwarting and 
 annoying his rider. He always goes slow, and, 
 whenever he can, goes wrong. If you strike him 
 for any misconduct, he bellows, turns round, and 
 lies down. If you, as the term is, " make much 
 of him," he behaves like an animal who cannot 
 take delight in any thing. He is never young. 
 The yearlings, of whom you see large troops pas- 
 turing by the sides of their dams wherever there 
 is a patch of scanty verdure in the desert, never 
 frisk. They have the same look, the same ac- 
 tion, they aspire to the same roar with those of the 
 caravan. 
 
 The epithet bestowed upon one of them by 
 Major Grote's Belgian servant, a good-humoured 
 and lively fellow, was perfect. His dromedary had 
 put his temper to the test in every way. The 
 beast had been going at an unusually slow place. 
 He had thrust his head or his body directly in the 
 way of every camel who seemed disposed to go 
 faster than himself. He had jammed Antoine's 
 knees alternately against every camel he could find 
 loaded with an angular box or a tent pole. An- 
 toine had tried in vain to establish a friendly under- 
 standing with him. At last, moved beyond 
 endurance, he struck him with the end of the 
 halter. The brute turned his gloomy face right 
 round upon his rider, bellowed, and prepared to 
 lie down. He was set a-going once more by th.e 
 driver, and we overheard Antoine thus addressing 
 him — " Eh bien done, mon cher, il faut te laisser 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 150 CAMEL DRIVERS. 
 
 faire. Mais, convenons, tu es une triste moiiture !"* 
 A dromedary is a " triste monture." 
 
 And now a few words about his driver. The 
 Arab of the desert, or the Fellah working in the 
 fields, is, in many respects, higher in the social 
 scale than the Arab of the town. The Bedouin, 
 while he is among the sandy wilds which are to 
 him a home, is independent of all controul, save of 
 his wants, which are few, and his superstitions, 
 which are many. Often, with travellers and with 
 caravans of travellers, he is in a station of high 
 trust, which naturally raises him in his self-respect. 
 This establishes for him a certain code and sense 
 of honour, rarely violated while in trust, but 
 never having reference to any engagement save 
 what he has formed with those to whom his services 
 and good faith are formally pledged. These spe- 
 cial engagements, and the general duty of hospi- 
 tality to strangers in the desert of which he is 
 master (a duty, I believe, hardly ever betrayed or 
 neglected), are his only moral obligations." 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the spirits whicb 
 rise in obedience to the influence of a boundless 
 range of horizon, and of the driest, purest, lightest 
 air in the world, should be excited on entering 
 upon this waste of sand. No one can fail to feel it 
 there. It is a salt air like that of the sea, unmixed 
 with any effluvium of vegetation or decay ; but it 
 is also free from any charge of damp. Even under 
 the heat of a burning sun, and with no breeze 
 abroad, it is still a bracing and exhilarating afr. 
 But there are other impressions also under which 
 ihfl ^Y^ of ^i>6 Bedouin kindles, and his step be- 
 - * Ah veil, my dear, you must'do as you like. But b(i- 
 tween ourselves you are but a sorry beast
 
 CAMEL DRIVERS. 151 
 
 comes more elastic, and his mien a prouder one, 
 ■when he quits the city where he has sojourned in 
 search of employ, and sees the far-stretched horizon 
 of the desert around him. He has left subjection 
 and restraint for freedom, adventure, and command ; 
 — he has cast off all submission to the capricious 
 discipline and hard exactions of Eastern police, to 
 enjoy again the wide inheritance of Ishmael, and 
 emancipation from all but the ceremonial law which 
 is between the Prophet and himself. This he 
 observes with rigid punctuality; and he, who, 
 unless when his hospitality or his bond is appealed 
 to, permits himself any violence or any treachery 
 for gain, is strict in his prayers and prostrations, 
 and Avould starve rather than eat, or even touch, 
 the flesh of the unclean thing. 
 
 Every Arab, whether of the town, or the fields, 
 or the river, or the desert, is an indefatigable 
 talker. He is lazy about business ; but his real 
 relaxation from labour, and his comfort while 
 labour is going on, is in loud and rapid talk, ac- 
 companied with the most painfjdly restless gesticu- 
 lation. All day, if travelling, his joy is to double 
 himself up upon the top of the other burthens his 
 camel has to bear, and there, with his pipe in one 
 hand, and his beads in the other, to mutter and 
 crone himself into a comatose state. While he is 
 walking at his camel's tail, he pours forth an end- 
 less dreary song, always composed by himself for 
 the occasion, always to the same air, if air it can 
 be called, and relating to the number of travellers 
 and place of destination. For the first day or two 
 we thought it was some sacred canticle, or prayer. 
 It had a tone of psalmody. But all our respect 
 for it was at an end when our drogomen thus 
 
 II 2
 
 152 CAMEL DRIVERS. 
 
 translated it : — " We are twelve — four are Hawad- 
 jis — go on, camels, to Gaza — why should we not 
 go on to Gaza ? — we are twelve — four are Hawad- 
 jis." K.r.X. This, set to never more than three 
 bars of very sad music, the singer repeats over and 
 over again, to the selfsame tune and words in which 
 his companions alternately relieve liim through- 
 out the day. 
 
 But when the season of natural repose arrives, 
 and every thing invites to it, when the bread has 
 been baked, and the rice boiled, and the evening 
 repast concluded, and more fuel collected, and the 
 fires made up for the night, and the groups of men 
 and camels are well and snugly established round 
 them, and the Hawadji, or travelling gentleman 
 within the tent, is wrapped up in that chrysalis 
 state in which every man who feels he has a ham- 
 mock or a blanket hopes after a long day's ride that 
 he may remain undisturbed, at least from midnight 
 till sunrise — 'tis then, sad man ! that his Arabs who 
 surround him have fairly entered upon active life. 
 They shout, they sing, at the highest pitch their 
 voices can attain. If there is a pause, it is that one 
 of them may tell a long story about nothing at all, 
 a dozen times over ; beginning, continuing, and 
 ending, each time, to the same effect, and in the 
 same words ; how certain travellers, or how a cer- 
 tain sheik or pasha, or how a certain camel — but no 
 matter what — the whole troop applauding as voci- 
 ferously as if the whole story was a new one, -which 
 it never is, or had a point in it, which it never has. 
 And thus they go on, sometimes breaking off for a 
 firing of pistols and muskets and a general howl, to 
 inform the desert that they have arms. Then comes 
 morning, and then the preparations to renew the
 
 CAMEL DRIVERS. 153 
 
 journey. Then, after the violent debate, which 
 every morning recurs, about how the camel loads 
 are to be re-adjusted (an operation on which daily 
 discussion and practice have been expended in vain), 
 those who ride fall asleep, as the day before, and those 
 who walk resume the former chaunt about the num- 
 ber of the party, and where they are going, and the 
 question — why should they not go there ? 
 
 Your Arabs never know what time of day it is, 
 — nor care, so that the journey be ended at sunset. 
 Throughout the day their effort has been to defer 
 as much as possible the act of doing any thing ne- 
 cessary or profitable. They " take no note of time 
 but by its loss." Agree with an Arab in all he 
 propounds or proposes, — give way to him in all his 
 demands, and still something will be wanting to 
 content him — something to talk about — something 
 on which, as the late Mr. Curran so well phrased 
 it, to " air his vocabulary." While the Arabs are 
 disputing as to which of the camels shall carry the 
 water-skins, and which the tent, you naturally sup- 
 pose, from the rapidity of the discourse and the 
 energy of it, that blood must flow : but not a bit of 
 it. The result of all this tyranny of voice and ges- 
 ticulation is the natural one ; that the wrath pro- 
 duces no effect but what, in truth, is the great ob- 
 ject and enjoyment of an Arab — the waste of as 
 much as possible of the allotted time of human 
 life. 
 
 The English language is said to be the one 
 which, in the present state of tlie habitable globe — 
 what with America, India, and Australia— is spoken 
 by the greatest number of people ; — always ad- 
 mitting what usually passes for such in most parts 
 of Scotland and the United States to come under
 
 154 THE CHIBOUK. 
 
 tliat name. But I will answer for it that in tlie 
 number of words spoken from year's end to year's 
 end the Arabick beats the English hollow. 
 
 Those of the higher classes throughout the East 
 are much too proud to wrangle, and too well bred 
 to chatter. But they, after a different fashion, 
 equally fulfil the great business of Eastern life, 
 that of exhausting the largest amount they can of 
 minutes and hours for the least apparent purpose. 
 The chibouk is a powerful instrument to this end ; 
 and, between the very long drawn whiffs into which 
 practice enables them to oeconomise each gulp of 
 tobacco smoke, it is wondrous how well in like 
 manner they manage each topick as it arises, and 
 linger out a conversation on one childish truism, 
 or one washy compliment. Then, how is it that 
 the forefathers of these men, who thus burn the 
 lamp of life to waste, and by whom their manners 
 have been preserved in all things to the present day 
 with such fidelity, were they who ennobled the 
 countries they occupied by great works of inven- 
 tion, of history, and of philosophy, and with the 
 most gorgeous and useful monuments of science 
 and industry ? It would require a very long di- 
 gression indeed from the narrative of a journey be- 
 tween Cairo and Jerusalem to attempt to answer 
 this question. I believe its solution would be found 
 in the slow but certain influence of Turkish insti- 
 tutions, over the habits and character of the abo- 
 riginal founders of the Eastern power. 
 
 I return to our route from Matarieh on the morn- 
 ing of the 13th of Februar}^ At the end "of the 
 first hour, leaving Khanka* and the Tell Yahoud, 
 
 * At Khanka the Viceroy founded a large military 
 school in 1826, and a few miles from it, at Abouzabel, one
 
 ITIIVEKAKY OF THE DESEilT. 155 
 
 (the Hill of the Jews,) to the northward, and cross- 
 ing the battle-field where Kleber, with ten thou- 
 sand French, defeated full six times that number of 
 the army of the Grand Vizir, we arrived at the 
 Birket el Hadj, (the Pool of the Pilgrims,) where, 
 in the midst of an agreeable plantation of pines, 
 date-palms, and sycomores, stands a well-built 
 house, M'ith commodious stabling, constructed by 
 the Pasha, and called the Khan el Hadj. Here the 
 Moslem Pilgrims, on the annual procession with 
 the gifts to the Prophet's tomb at Mecca, make 
 their first halt until the caravan has assembled in 
 sufficient force to face the desert. And here the 
 two great tracks part ; the one leading to Suez, and 
 thence on to Mecca, the other to Gaza and Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 We proceeded, that day, no further than Zoamel, 
 six hours beyond, where good wells, and the shade 
 of a thick clump of date-trees, at a convenient dis- 
 tance from a few poor cottages, offer a tempting 
 place for encampment. We are now near the 
 easternmost extremity of the land of Goshen, or 
 Gessen, the territory given by Joseph to his father 
 (Genesis xlvii. 27), where the children of Israel 
 afterwards dwelt in their bondage, and from whence 
 they were led out by Moses, after the permission, 
 twice revoked, had been for the third time given to 
 them by Pharaoh, to depart out of the land of 
 ^gypt. The lake Menzaleh and the sea were at 
 some five-and-twenty miles from us, tlie ground on 
 which stood the city of Rhameses about ten, and 
 Damietta about five-and-forty north. This country 
 seems to have stretched no nearer to Memphis, on 
 
 of the two great preparatory ||scL cols of general educatioD. 
 The other is at Alexandria.
 
 156 BELBEIS — CANAL OF TRAJAN. 
 
 the south-west, than Heliopolis, or On. Three 
 hours from Zoamel, on our road next morning, is 
 Belbeis, formerly Pharboeus, where the great canal 
 of Trajan joined that made by Nekhao and Darius, 
 which ran from the Kile at Bubastis to the Ery- 
 thraean Gulf.* 
 
 Belbeis is still a good village, with a prosperous- 
 looking bazaar. It was famous, in the Crusade of 
 the twelfth century, as the first town taken from the 
 Saracens, and held by the invading army as a for- 
 tified magazine for supplies during the advance on 
 Palestine. In more modern times it was occupied 
 by Napoleon in his Egyptian campaign, for keep- 
 ing open his communications between Cairo and 
 the coast, M'hen the winds, or the British fleet, or 
 the plague, or a revolt, might make the way of the 
 Nile and Alexandria insecure. 
 
 Four hours further, we pitched our tent for tlie 
 night, under some pine-trees on the edge of a 
 Turkish burying-ground, near the village of Snecca, 
 situate on the first rising ground at the end of along 
 dreary line of marshes and embankments. It is, 
 hoM'ever, a good halting place, with very tolerable 
 water, and ponds hard by for washing and bathing. 
 
 The next day's march was of eight hours, along 
 a bare expanse of sand, the beginning of the desert, 
 or rather the frontier of the cultivated part of 
 Lower -^gypt to the north-east. For still there 
 were some straggling patches of cultivation before 
 us, and here and there, at many hours' distance, a 
 cluster of roofless hovels, still known by name as a 
 
 * Ptolemy made a communication, says Lebau, between 
 a salt lake, into which this canal ran, and tlie Eed Sea. It 
 was repaired and restored by Amvou and the Kalif Oma:*, 
 and still carries the water as far as the Lagoon of Scheib.
 
 SESTERIEH — GRINDING BARLEY. 157 
 
 village. Such is Sesterieh, our place of encamp- 
 ment for the night, where is a pretty little wood of 
 date-palms, near some ponds, and two wretched 
 cottages which alone remain to mark the spot 
 where, for many centuries, stood a large and flou- 
 rishing village, destroyed l3y Kleber in his second 
 advance on Cairo. Two or three hundred yards to 
 the eastward of the cottages is a marabout, and 
 little shrine, dedicated to the Moslem saint who is 
 buried there. In a niche of it is a narrow deep 
 hole, containing a stone jar, always kept full of 
 cool and sweet water, which the inhabitants of the 
 cottages are appointed to fetch daily from some 
 ancient tanks, at about an hour's distance. This 
 welcome supply was established by the present 
 Pasha, in honour of the saint, and for the relief of 
 travellers. Here we bought a stock of barley to 
 carry on with us for our camels ; and the process 
 of grinding it we saw for the first time performed 
 by two women, in the manner so usual in all parts 
 of Palestine, and which, I believe, every traveller 
 in the East has cited in illustration of the saying of 
 our Saviour, '' Two women shall be grinding at a 
 mill," &c. One of them sits on the ground work- 
 ing the hand-mill with the left hand by a stick 
 fixed in the upper stone, while with the right she 
 pours in the barley from a sack lying near her. 
 The other woman separates the chaff from the 
 flour with a sieve. I never saw any but women 
 employed in this primitive operation, nor more 
 than two together. 
 
 One day more brought us fairly to our fare- 
 well of cultivated land. In three hours and a 
 quarter from Sesterieh, we turned to the left, 
 about a mile to Salakieh, to fill our water 
 
 II 3
 
 158 SALT POOLS. 
 
 skins, and give our camels a copious draught in 
 preparation for the journey of" the next few days. 
 The springs are in the midst of a clump of pine 
 and date trees, surrounded by gardens of barley and 
 Indian corn — a sort of little oasis ; for Sesterieh 
 is far over the edge of the desert upon which we 
 had ridden from the south-westward since sunrise. 
 That night we pitched our tents in a dell, five 
 hours further on, between sloping mounds of smooth 
 sand, which sheltered us very agreeably from the 
 blaze of a glowing sunset. From the top of the 
 sand-banks, on our left, were to be seen, at a great 
 distance west, two of the easternmost of the Pelu- 
 siack mouths of the Nile, and a glimpse of the 
 lake Menzaleh, and open sea beyond. 
 
 Next morning, two hours and a half brought us 
 among salt marshes and pools, and to three narrow 
 gullies, which run nearly parallel, for some miles 
 inward, to the sea. One of these is crossed by a 
 small ancient bridge, near which is a good bathing- 
 place. The salt pools in this part of the desert, as 
 well as those we met with further on, whether 
 more or less near to an arm of the sea, or to the 
 open sea-side, are independent of any junction with 
 the sea water, unless by subterraneous filtration 
 through the sand, which, however, does not seem 
 to be the case. For, instead of being at all fresher, 
 as they would be rendered by filtration, they are 
 much more strongly impregnated with salt, and, 
 moreover, intensely bitter and acrid. Upon ana- 
 lysis this water is found to contain, besides other 
 mineral salts, a large proportion also of carbonate 
 of soda, forming a deposit of, not I believe what is 
 now called natron, but of the compound which 
 probably was known to the ancients under that
 
 GATIEH, THE ANCIENT '* CASlUxM." 159 
 
 name. Rain water, exposed upon the sand, in 
 these parts of the desert, we were told by the Arabs, 
 very soon becomes brackish, and afterwards salt in 
 the course of a few hours. But this fact we were 
 obliged to take on the faith of our informants ; 
 there being two things necessary for the experiment, 
 neitlier of which we could spare for it ; time and 
 fresh water. The pools are bright and exceed- 
 ingly cold, even under the heat of the midday sun. 
 They form excellent baths. 
 
 This country stretching out from hence imme- 
 diately to the sea, and for some leagues eastward 
 along the shore, was formerly 
 
 " That great Sirbonian bog 
 Where armies whole have perished." 
 
 In six hours and a half more, we halted for the 
 night under some sand-hills to the right of our 
 direct course. 
 
 In four hours and a half from this place, next 
 day, we reached Gatieh, improperly marked on 
 some maps as Catieh. This was, in the middle 
 ages, a large town, called by the Roman geogra- 
 phers " Casium," and was held for some time as a 
 military post by Amaury, king of Jerusalem, in 
 the crusade of 1169. It was also considered as of 
 some importance by Napoleon, during his cam- 
 paign of 1799. He established magazines here 
 after he had got possession of El Arish, and made 
 strong works to complete his communications be- 
 tween that fortress and Cairo. Upon the evacua- 
 tion of El Arish by the French, and the commence- 
 ment of their retreat, Gatieh was utterly destroyed 
 by them, in order that it might not afford the same 
 means to the Turks and English. There is not
 
 160 ITINERARY OF THE DESERT. 
 
 now SO much as a single inhabited cottage at 
 Gatieh, hardly the ruins of a wall. Some date- 
 trees still remain, surrounded by a hedge of prickly- 
 pear, within a dreary hollow hard by to the right, 
 marking where inhabitancy and cultivation had 
 been. 
 
 To the left, on a gently rising bank, is a bur^dng- 
 ground, with a handsome tomb of a San ton. At a 
 few hundred yards in front are long stone troughs, 
 and deep tanks of brackish water. This is one of 
 the stations on the line formed by Mohammed Ali, 
 while master of Syria, for a supply of water to the 
 camels of caravans travelling between that country 
 and ^gypt. It is now deserted. But still the 
 ropes and buckets remain for drawing water ; and 
 no travellers or wanderinof- Arabs steal or damasre 
 what the hospitality of the wilderness offers to 
 assist the wayfarer in his need. 
 
 Although a camel can endure the drought for 
 many days, still the sad and ghastly spectacle of 
 death all along the caravan tracks shows that the 
 desert has its hardships even for him. As far as 
 you pursue the ordinary hadj route, the sand is 
 strewed with the carcases and skeletons of beasts of 
 burthen. The Arabs, in their journeys or their 
 wanderings, never delay the march or waste provi- 
 sion of water by tending a sick or foundered 
 animal. He dies where his powers first fail to be 
 useful to his master, and thus, of course, it must be 
 expected that a great multitude of these remains 
 should be found by the wayside. But, if the 
 activity of the vultures, jackals, and hyaenas, be 
 taken into account in disposing of them during the 
 process of decay, so that, of all those which lie 
 along your path, none can have been for many days
 
 SONG OF CAMEL DRIVERS. 161 
 
 dead, the number that are continually perishing 
 must be enormous. 
 
 During our halt at Gatieh we had the relief of 
 hearing' a certain variation both in the words and 
 air of the song of our camel drivers, though, in- 
 deed, there was no great improvement in the spirit 
 either of the poetry or music. But, as an Arab 
 always accompanies every work he sets himself 
 about with a song describing the nature and details 
 of it, so these men no sooner found themselves 
 fairly engaged in the operation of drawing water 
 from the wells and pouring it into the troughs, 
 than they began to hum a new tune, and mutter 
 new words, which became louder and louder, and 
 more and more articulate, till they swelled into the 
 following canticle, in which four performers joined, 
 two at the same time drawing, and two pouring out 
 for the camels : — Drawers. " Ana bisil, wa anti 
 hott" — "I draw, and you take it." Pourers. 
 " Douga bi alif "— " To fill the stomach." Tuffi. 
 " Nachma bi sogal misa jemal, wa jemal misa 
 nachma" — ''We work for the camels, and the 
 camels for us :" — da capo ; and so on till the opera- 
 tion ceased. 
 
 At four hours and a half beyond, we arrived at 
 a hollow, with a few stunted trees and bushes, 
 where we encamped. 
 
 At the end of four hours and three quarters 
 from hence, next day, we descended into a level 
 plain of hard sand, about a mile in length, in which 
 are two small narrow plashes of water, as salt and 
 bitter as those of two days before. But the whole 
 appearance of the plain is different from any we 
 had till then seen. It forms a very regular iso- 
 sceles triangle of about half a mile deep from the
 
 162 SALT I^'CPvUSTATIO^'S. 
 
 apex to the base along which you ride. It is 
 bounded on all sides by low abrupt sandbanks, 
 which have in parts become covered with scanty 
 brushwood, and is coated throughout with curious 
 incrustations of salt, looking and feeling under the 
 foot like a thin sheet of frozen snow, some of which 
 we brought away. They proved, upon analysis, to 
 be of the same component parts, and differing very 
 little in the proportions of them with the deposits 
 we had found in the salt pools three days before in 
 the country near Sesterieh. On mounting the 
 bank at the further angle, the open sea appeared 
 at not more than ten or twelve miles to our left. 
 
 In four hours and a half more, over gentle un- 
 dulations of ground, during which we had suffered 
 some inconvenience from a strong land-breeze 
 blowing the sand sharply against our faces and 
 eyes, is another flat enclosed plain, abounding with 
 bushes ; and here we encamped. During these 
 last two days and nights we had been free from any 
 attacks of flies and mosquitos. It seems as if they 
 were banished by the influence of the dry and salt 
 air, which in this, as in every other respect, was so 
 agreeable to us. 
 
 On the following morning, at the end of the first 
 two hours and a half, we saw a few long-ago ruined 
 and deserted cottages on a rising ground to our 
 left, with the remains of a large marabout, which 
 has also been abandoned to entire decay. In this 
 place was formerly one of Mohammed All's camel 
 stations, which was removed a short way further 
 on, and to the right. Here are tanks of brackish 
 water, under what cannot be called the shade, but 
 at the foot of a clump of seven almost withered 
 palms, near which stands a small mosque of old
 
 ITINERARY OF THE DESERT. 163 
 
 Saracenick workmanship. The place is called Abul 
 Bana. The range of the Jebel el Khalal (Moun- 
 tain of Justice), which forms part of the chain over 
 Acaba, and whose tops were occasionally visible 
 yesterday, now appeared in its whole extent, some 
 thirty or forty miles away to the south-east. 
 
 From thence we proceeded on an uninterrupted 
 rise for two hours and a quarter more, when we 
 had again a fine view of the Mediterranean to the 
 north-west, over a succession of salt marshes. The 
 desert had now become in parts more broken by a 
 growth of low shrubs. We descended again for an 
 hour and a quarter, and again rose, again catching 
 sight of the sea, with occasional salt plains. At 
 the end of three hours more we reached a tract of 
 what seemed to be cultivable ground. And here,, 
 under a sandy bank, whose crest was thickly set 
 with bushes and patches of asphodel, now coming 
 into fine bloom, under which the limestone rock 
 jutted forth (the first appearance of this kind we 
 had seen during the last eight days of our journey), 
 we pitched our tent for the night. The scanty 
 green, the grey rock, and flowers, were a great 
 refreshment to our eyes after the almost unbroken 
 glare on which they had of late been resting through 
 the whole of each of these days relieved only by 
 the hues of sunset and the darkness when night set 
 in. The midday sky, though gloriously serene,, 
 had not been of pure blue. The heat, even at this 
 early time of the year, though very agreeable to 
 the feel, had filled the air with a trembling hazy 
 light, which dazzled without brightness. The wea- 
 ther had, except at night, been very warm ever 
 since we left Cairo. 
 
 At two hours and three quarters further, next
 
 164 EL AKISH. 
 
 day, of track still varied with appearances of stone 
 and vegetation, we came to a hollow, shaded by- 
 some fine palm-trees, under which is a well for the 
 camels. But, except by camels, the water cannot 
 be drunk. Here we rested. The country before 
 us was again as wild and arid as that of two days 
 before. It seemed that strong winds had lately 
 heaped up the sand in huge drifts, which liad so 
 changed the face of the country that the camel- 
 drivers proceeded slowly, and with doubt and hesi- 
 tation. In vain did they endeavour to find the 
 track of any living creature, so valuable as a guide 
 where dangerous descents and impassable rocks 
 abound. But the instinct which hardly ever fails 
 the Arab, however beset with the fear of losing 
 his way, prevailed. After loud lamentations and 
 much bewilderment for about an hour, we again 
 proceeded. We had strayed somewhat from our 
 track, but not far. 
 
 In two hours and a quarter more we came in 
 sight of El Arish, a place whose site in all times 
 (and, in the later history of iEgypt, under the name 
 it now bears) has been connected with great events. 
 It is by all the old historians and geographers 
 called Ehinocorura, or Rhinocolura, an appellation 
 adopted by the Greeks and Romans, with but some 
 slight variation from that which it had borne under 
 its earlier masters. It has always, since the days 
 of the first Ptolemy, been in the hands of the 
 ^Egyptian rulers, as their frontier town on the 
 Syrian side, after they extended their limits across 
 the small Arabian Desert. It is improperly de- 
 scribed by some writers as belonging to Palestine 
 — a misapprehension arising probably out of what 
 appears to be the mistaken course often assigned to
 
 EL ARISH. 165 
 
 the boundary river called by the ancient geogra- 
 phers the Flumen ^gyptiacum. We in vain 
 looked for any trace of this river in the Wady El 
 Arish, along which most of the modern maps give 
 its course to the sea, south-west of the town. 
 
 Approaching the town in that direction, and at 
 about half a mile from it, we crossed, it is true, a 
 small sandy valley. This, however, can at no time 
 have been the course of any stream ; for, not only 
 was there no channel traceable in the sand (in the 
 month of February, a time of the year when it 
 would neither have been laid dry, after the winter's 
 rains, nor filled in by the drift of the simooms), 
 but there is a continuous line of bank running 
 across the valley, effectually barring, at all seasons, 
 all outlet to the sea. D'Anville and Norden, whose 
 accuracy may generally be trusted in all things, 
 have avoided this error, into which others, less 
 cautious, have fallen ; some of whom, in all likeli- 
 hood, have contented themselves with copying from 
 each other. M. de Salle also (' Peregrinations en 
 Orient,' i. 431) admits the absence of the river at 
 El Arish. 
 
 At El Arish the representative of the Pasha is 
 a governor at the head of a wretched garrison of 
 some sixty or eighty soldiers. The only officer on 
 his civil staff is a very gentlemanlike Italian, who 
 is chief of the department of health, and whose 
 forlorn duty it is to reside here in charge of a 
 mock quarantine establishment, by which it is pro- 
 fessed that jEgypt is gviarded from all approach of 
 Syrian travellers not having clean bills of health ; 
 such persons being, however, able at any time, and 
 easily, to pass this barrier on either side, either by 
 the open sea or open wilderness. It is a most
 
 166 EL AUISH. 
 
 dreary and desolate town, on a small eminence, 
 surrounded, as far as the eye can reach, by sea and 
 sand. Close under its walls on the one side is a 
 large but mean cemetery, looking out in the dis- 
 tance upon a long gleam of sea. On the other side 
 it is protected by a large square castle with four 
 flanking towers, a fortress built by the French in 
 1798, and now furnished with only two four- 
 jDOunders, one of which is dismounted. In the 
 Crusades it was a considerable place of arms in the 
 possession of the Christians. King Baldwin died 
 within its walls. In the wars of Kapoleon it was 
 twice taken, after very sliort sieges. It was sur- 
 r-endered to him by the Turks, when it had been 
 but a few days invested, upon a capitulation which 
 became memorable in consequence of the violation 
 of it by the Turkish garrison, who, having been 
 afterwards found in arms against him, contrary to 
 tlie terms on which they had been allo\\'ed to march 
 out, were punished by that dreadful military exe- 
 cution so well known in history as having taken 
 place near Jaffa ; — a transaction which will con- 
 tinue probably to the end of time to be described 
 in so different a spirit by different historians ; — by 
 some as a ferocious and wanton massacre, by others 
 as a well-deserved chastisement \Ahich Napoleon 
 was justified in inflicting, as a lesson required for 
 the safety of his own army against a savage and 
 faithless enemy. 
 
 El Arish, — where there is no good water, whose 
 roadstead affords no safe anchorage, except with 
 tlie wind well off shore, and from whence on the 
 land side it appears hard to command such a coun- 
 try as that to the southward and eastward of it, too 
 wild and wide to be held by a small force or to
 
 LEAVE EL ARISII. 1G7 
 
 give subsistence to a large one, — El Aiisli was 
 nevertheless described by Napoleon, in his pub- 
 lished despatches, as "one of the keys of ^Egypt, 
 as important to him as Alexandria" at the other 
 end of the sea-board. He had, it is true, as we 
 find also from his despatches, intended to form a 
 connecting line of posts, parallel with the coast, 
 between these two places, to be a base for his opera- 
 tions. Still, to one who has passed along that line 
 and seen the difficulties with which nature has 
 beset it, the project must seem almost impracticable, 
 unless with the command of the sea. 
 
 At the end of three hours from El Arish, we 
 encamped on but bad ground. The sand had ga- 
 thered round us again. Neither bush for fuel, nor 
 slope for shelter. But we could proceed no fur- 
 ther. We had been detained some hours at El 
 Arish by our camel drivers, in search of barley to 
 buy for their beasts. Night had long set in, and 
 our camels were wearied. But, fortunately, there 
 was no wind upon the desert. 
 
 On the next day, after four hours and a half, 
 our track turned a little to the left, crossing a long 
 wide range of hill, under Avhich is an extensive salt 
 plain, with some palm-trees, and large pools of 
 brackish water in a valley about two miles further 
 off at a right angle to our course, and bearing 
 north-west from us. Among these palms are two 
 wells of fine water, wliich however we passeci, 
 resuming the straight line of our route, for a sup- 
 ply from them is daily carried to a small Marabout 
 (or rather Wely, for this is the name which you 
 find given to the saints' tombs as you approach the 
 Holy Land and Syria) surrounded by a few huts, 
 which lay, at no great distance, directly before us.
 
 168 KHAN YOUNES. 
 
 Here also we found an agreeable shade of palms, 
 under which we rested for an hour, in enjoyment 
 not only of the first cool, clear, sweet water we 
 had tasted for many days, but of some excellent 
 melons too, brought to us by the Bedouins who 
 inhabited the huts. We were obliged to pay a 
 sum of fifty piastres as backshish, or tribute, to the 
 new tribe on whose country we were now entering. 
 This is the country of the Philistines. The general 
 name of Palestine seems to have been given to the 
 whole district between Arabia and Syria Proper, 
 from the land of Philistia, or Philistina, which 
 forms its south-western boundary. 
 
 At the end of four hours and a half more of very 
 dreary flat, we arrived, after night-fall, at some 
 variety of undulating ground, where at intervals 
 the limestone rock began again to appear. Traces 
 of ancient cultivation are to be seen on either side 
 of a track which in parts is paved and gradually 
 leads to a range of gardens fenced off by artificial 
 banks and hedges of prickly pear. We were on 
 the outskirts of the village of Khan Younes (the 
 " Inn of Jonas"), according to D'Anville, the 
 ancient Jenissus. This may be truly called the 
 frontier town of Palestine, although no guard, or 
 quarantine picket, or other station indicative of a 
 frontier line between two countries, is to be found, 
 till you arrive at Gaza, full twelve English miles 
 beyond. 
 
 On a burial-ground adjoining the village of Khan 
 Younes we pitched our tent, and got a plentiful 
 supply of good water, and of goat's milk, eggs, and 
 a couple of very lean fowls, from the hospitable 
 inhabitants. Of the eleven days of journey which 
 had now elapsed, inclusive of the afternoon on
 
 WATER IN SKINS. 169 
 
 which we quitted Cairo, the last seven had been 
 passed in the desert. We had hitherto departed 
 but little from the ordinary hadj route leading to 
 Jerusalem, and had met with no difficulty and 
 undergone no inconvenience whatever, excepting 
 the want of good water during four or five days. 
 During that time the little we could .carry in the 
 skins had become very brown ; not foetid, but very 
 nauseous. * 
 
 Boil Russia leather into a pretty strong decoction ; 
 let this get half cool ; and you will have a fair 
 specimen of the water to be drunk on a desert 
 journey. It is a flavour that does not improve 
 upon acquaintance with it. I do not know that 
 even a filtering stone w^ould do much to remedy 
 this. But, if it did, the additional burthen of even 
 the smallest of these machines, where it is so im- 
 portant to reduce as far as possible the w eight of 
 the camel loads, would increase the delays of the 
 journey so much as to be a hinderance not balanced 
 by the luxury. I repeat, therefore, the moral, of 
 the truth of which I was well convinced even before 
 leaving Cairo : the fewer '' portable comfort§,'' the 
 fewer will be the annoyances on such a journey. 
 Whatever inconveniences there may be (and there 
 are none worth thinking of, unless in case of being 
 disabled by injury or bodily accident), push on and 
 get through tiiem as rapidly as you can. Do not 
 protract them by any cumbrous devices, very inef- 
 fectual to mitigate what, after all, are very trifling 
 grievances.
 
 ( no ) 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 "VVady Gaza— Question concerning Sihor and the River of 
 iEgypt — Gaza — Quarantine — Entrance of the Land of 
 Canaan — Saccarieh — Khoordman Guards — Plain of 
 Dualme— Pass and the Mountain of Douras — Hebron— 
 Vale of JNIamre. 
 
 The desert was now passed. Here was more 
 variety of ground ; and the small and favoured re- 
 treats, in which the cheerful influences of Xature 
 seemed to have intrenched themselves against the 
 wide empire of the waste, were becoming more 
 frequent as we advanced, and here and there they 
 joined in tracts of verdure and shade. The " plea- 
 santness of Gath and of the land of the Philistines'* 
 was before us. The whole country, as we entered 
 on our next day's journey, wore an air, not of in- 
 habitancy, but at least bespeaking that it had once 
 been " pleasant " as the abode of man. 
 
 In four hours and a half we entered upon a fine 
 plain, covered with ranunculus, anemone, asphodel, 
 and wild mignionette, in full bloom. It is bounded 
 to the east by the mountains of Ghor, to the east- 
 north-east by those of ISIoab, and to the north by 
 the softer outlines of the hills of Judah. At an 
 hour further is the dry channel of a river, with 
 small pools of muddy water, and the ruins of an 
 ancient bridge a few yards to the left of where the 
 track descends into the river's bed. This, which 
 runs along the course of the Wady Gaza, and which
 
 WADY GAZA. I7l 
 
 D'Anville, a high authority, has determined to be 
 the Sihor of the Bible, is, I am much inclined to 
 think, also the Flumen ^gyptiacum of the Roman 
 times, which has been carried in some of tlie mo- 
 dern maps several geographical leagues too much 
 to the south-west.* 
 
 * This agrees with Sir William Drummond's boundary 
 line of Arabia or "Arab," -which ■word, <.^.js, signifies 
 ** The West." According to him the ancient frontier runs 
 pretty much as the modern one, from the desert of Sur, 
 passing by the southern shore of the Dead Sea, and passing 
 a very little to the south-west of Gaza into the Mediter- 
 ranean ('Origines,* iii. 251). Sir W. Drummond's map is 
 one of the very few (D'Anville's is almost,, the only otlier) 
 which do not commit the error of making a river fall into 
 the Mediterranean close to the south of El Arish. 
 The word •* Wady " originally signified " water," and 
 seems to have no reference, as has been fancifully supposed 
 by some, to the Latin word " vadus." The Arabs applied it 
 generally to denote a river or mountain-stream ; pronounced 
 
 by the Moors " Guadi." Thus " Guadalquibir " for <^j]* 
 jAuCiU " Guadi al Kebir, "The Great River" (Id. "253). 
 ' It has been a point long controverted among the learned," 
 says Dr. Shaw, ;" whether the Nile, or a supposed rivulet at 
 Khinocorura, was the western boundary of the Holy Land." 
 It does not, however, appear that Rhinocorura or Rhinoco- 
 lura, or any town thereabouts, was known till long after the 
 time of the wars of Joshua. Nor does Strabo, JNIela, 
 Pliny, or any of the old historians or geographers, after it 
 was built and became of note, make mention of any river 
 or torrent in these parts. Eratosthenes alone, as quoted by 
 Strabo, speaks of the rivers of Rhinocorura and Cassius 
 (Gatieh). But Strabo discredits the whole account, " oU 
 entice, I' si <7rdu\us il^nKtv" (lib. xvi.); and, enumerating the 
 remarkable places on the ^Egyptian and Syrian side of 
 Rhinocorura, takes not the least notice of any river. Dio- 
 dorus Siculus says that the town was "in a barren country, 
 deprived of all the necessaries of life." That " without the
 
 172 RIVER OF iEGYPT. 
 
 In one hour move we were under the walls of 
 Gaza, and were there challenged by a quarantine 
 picket of some twenty men, armed with long lances, 
 who had their tents piched on both sides of the road, 
 across v/hich they stood. Like every quarantine 
 establishment I have ever known or heard of, that 
 of Gaza is quite powerless to guard against the in- 
 troduction of disease, but fruitful in annoyances 
 to travel and to trade, and in petty connivance, 
 compromise and corruption. 
 
 The chief of the department, a French medical 
 officer in the Turkish service (for we had now passed 
 from the Pashalick of JEgypt into that of Acre), 
 was sent for, to meet us on the outposts. The 
 usual questions were put, the usual difficulties 
 
 walls " (which must have been to the northward, towards 
 the sea) " there were salt pits," and that " within, the wells 
 yielded only a bitter, corrupted water" (Bibl, p, 55). 
 Herodotus, in Thalia, says that in the whole of the desert 
 coast, to the distance of three days' journey from Cassius 
 and the Sirbonick lake, x'^^'^'^ uvShoov icrn hivu;, St. Je- 
 rome, I know not on what authority, places the Torreus 
 ^gypti near Ehinocolura. But there is no reason to 
 believe that he was ever there, and it may therefore be 
 assumed that he took this on hearsay. He also makes 
 Sihor the Pelusiack branch of the Nile. But Dr. Shaw, 
 who inclines to the opinion that the Egyptian river was 
 the Pelusiack Nile, at all events clearly shows that Sihor 
 and the Egyptian river, wherever they were, are the same. 
 (See Dr. Shaw's Travels, quarto, vol. ii. chap. 2.) The 
 position of the Flumen jEgyptiacum has always, in late 
 times, been a contested question, which it would be difficult 
 now to determine with any show of probability. Indeed, it 
 seems not unlikely that the name of the River of Egypt 
 may have been given, at different times, to more than one 
 river, as at successive periods the frontier line of that 
 country was pushed on further to the eastward. All that 
 appears certain from the best written testimony, and from 
 the course and formation of the ground, is it that could not 
 have been at El Arish.
 
 GAZA. 173 
 
 started. As usual on such occasions, we were told 
 that all was irregular, owing to our not having had 
 our passports examined and backed on the frontier, 
 where there is no officer or establishment of any 
 sort placed for that purpose. As usual, we were 
 told that there was no remedy but a nine days' 
 quarantine. These observations were, of course, 
 met by us with the suggestion that the alternative 
 was a simple one — tliat of returning one day's jour- 
 ney, and passing the frontier at any point a few 
 miles to the eastward. Finally, as usual, the health 
 officer was persuaded, tinder the circumstances, into 
 mitigating the time of purgation from nine days 
 into twelve hours, into ratifying the compromise 
 over a large glass of rum (glass is a non-conductor 
 of infection), and into giving free pratique next 
 morning, accompanied by a certificate of a clean 
 bill of health, which supersedes all further ques- 
 tion throughout all the range of Palestine and 
 jSyria. 
 
 Here, then, we rested under our tents for the re- 
 mainder of that evening, and received next mornino- 
 leave to go for^^'^ard. 
 
 C4aza is surrounded by well-cultivated gardens of 
 tamarisks, figs, and olives. Its princijDal mosque is 
 modern, and so are the walls and houses, with the 
 exception of the eastern corner of the town, which 
 is of about the time of Saleh ed Dhein (Saladin), 
 1190, and some of the large stones of the eastern 
 wail, which are probably of a very much earlier 
 date. Gaza is memorajjle, in later times than 
 those of the achievements of Samson and Joshua, 
 for the siege laid to it by Alexander the Great ; 
 and also for another siege hardly less worthy of 
 record, conducted by another, less famous, Alex- 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 174 DISAGREEMENTS. 
 
 ander, suriiamed Janneas, the Asmodean king. 
 Yictorious like his renowned namesake, like him 
 he tarnished the glory of his success by the infamous 
 barbarity with which he treated the valiant gar- 
 rison he had subdued. The city had been defended 
 with exemplary courage by Aretas, king of Northern 
 Arabia, assisted by Apollodotas the Grecian. It 
 surrendered not until both the chiefs had been slain ; 
 the one by the besiegers on the last shattered wall ; 
 the other by treachery. The senators, to the num 
 ber of five hundred, had taken sanctuary in the 
 temple of Apollo, from whence they were dragged 
 forth and murdered. Nor did the slaughter 
 cease until all the population had perished. The 
 women and children were put to the sword by their 
 own husbands and fathers, to save them from 
 a 'more cruel fate at the hands of the relentless 
 victors. 
 
 Our object was to leave the more ordinary route 
 by Ascalon, and, turning to the eastward, to ap- 
 proach Jerusalem by Canaan, the country of Esh- 
 kol, and Hebron. This arrangement, although 
 more beneficial to our camel drivers (as securing 
 to them, according to stipulation, four days' more 
 pay), was yet made by them matter of objection and 
 dispute ; partly for the sake of debate, a thing 
 never to be foregone by Arabs ; and partly in order 
 to enhance our sense of the value and merit of their 
 services. 
 
 They spoke of the danger of the enterprise, a 
 danger all the more awful from its indistinctness 
 and incapacity of definition. They spoke, and 
 spoke all together, of the sum to be paid them ,by 
 the day and hour for undertaking such a journey 
 with us, beset, as we should be, with perils from
 
 ROAD TO JERUSALEM. 175 
 
 robbers, and the difficulties of a road with which 
 they, as untruly, said they were unacquainted* 
 They spoke of complicated fractions of pay not to 
 be solved by any system of arithmetick they knew 
 of. If thirteen days of hire for each camel 
 amounted to 156 piastres, how many piastres for 
 each camel would seventeen days and a half amount 
 to ? Then, it being shown that by the terms of 
 their engagement they would forfeit the whole sum 
 agreed for, in case of their refusal to accompany 
 us, they consented to go by the way of Hebron, on 
 the understanding, however, that the discussion 
 should be renewed on the way. At length we pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 Having cleared the lanes and gardens on the 
 eastern outskirt of the town, for an hour our road 
 lay through an open grove of picturesque old olives. 
 Then, turning to the right from the track which 
 leads toward Ascalon, we struck across a fine and 
 fertile plain on the eastern confines of the country 
 of Gath, leaving the village of Beth-Haroun on 
 our right hand, and, in an hour more, that of 
 Dimrah on our left. In an hour beyond, the vil- 
 lage of Nidjith appeared, on a high bank close upon 
 the right of our track ; and on the other side, and 
 on a hill less abrupt and somewhat more distant, 
 that of Tsimsim, originally so called, according to 
 the Arab tradition, from the name of Samson. But 
 why the Philistines, the men of Gath, should have 
 dedicated one of the towns within their frontier to 
 the destroyer of their people, does not appear. 
 TherO seems, however, to be a probability of its 
 being part of the country known as that of the 
 Zamzumims, inhabitants of Zamzum, and so men- 
 tioned in Deuteronomy ii. 20, 21: ^'A people 
 
 I 2
 
 176 TORRENT OF ESHKOL. 
 
 great and many, and tall as the Anakims," and to 
 whom the Anakims " succeeded and dwelt in their 
 stead." The sons of Anak lived in the country 
 between this and Hebron. 
 
 We now found ourselves on the brink of a nar- 
 row ravine, which we crossed twice within the 
 next half hour. This, which is dry except imme- 
 diately after the autumnal rains, is the " Brook 
 of Eshkol." We were now on the borders of the 
 plain of the same name, and of the land of 
 Canaan. 
 
 Three-quarters of an hour after, we passed the 
 village of Brair, and, after another hour, over a 
 high and commanding ridge of fertile ground ; 
 grass, with limestone rock, showing itself but 
 rarely and in small patches above the soil. From 
 hence is a fine view of wide-stretched green vales 
 to the east. To the south-east are the barren 
 plains of Acaba and mountains of Edom. At the 
 distance of about a couple of miles to the right are 
 five artificial -looking hills, having the smooth and 
 conical appearance of the English barrows, but of 
 large size. Of these we could learn nothing either 
 from the people who were working in the fields 
 here, or from those whom we saw, next day, on the 
 confines of Judah, except that they went by the name 
 of the " Hills of the coast of Hebron," and that 
 the Jewish and Mohammedan traditions agree in 
 selecting them as the place to which Samson car- 
 ried the gates from Gaza, " up to the top of a hill 
 that is before Hebron " (Judges xvi. 3). 
 
 In one hour more we reached Saccarieh, our 
 resting-place for the night ; a village of some 
 twenty or thirty mud houses, under the shadow of 
 a low semicircular hill, on which is a mean build-
 
 KHOORDS. 177 
 
 ing", surrounded by a sort of abbattis, and used as 
 a barrack, with a detached guard-house. Here 
 was quartered a picket of Khoords, the only troops, 
 I believe, of that nation maintained by the Porte 
 in this part of the Syrian continent. We had 
 fallen in with a vidette at about a mile from the 
 village, who rode with us to the main guard ; — a 
 very picturesque-looking person, clad in a steel cap 
 and jacket of mail, armed with lance, musket, 
 sabre, pistols, and dagger, and mounted on a very 
 well-shaped blood-like Arab. Irregularly armed 
 and habited, these warriors, though nominally in 
 Turkish pay, subsist themselves by means still 
 more irregular. But having been engaged by a 
 small bribe to enter into our special service for the 
 few hours during which we should remain with 
 them, the only annoyance the Khoordish garrison 
 caused us, was by rushing past our tent among the 
 cords and pegs, half-a-dozen times in the night, in 
 their way to the brow of the hill looking to the 
 northward, where, with many words and strange 
 bowlings, they kept up for some minutes a very re- 
 spectable fire of musketry at some indeterminate 
 object on the plain, and then returned, stumbling 
 again over the tent cords, again to go through the 
 same ceremony as soon as half an hour's silence 
 should have enabled us to seek refuge in sleep from 
 the alarums of war. And all this merely to im- 
 press us with a sense of their restless zeal in pro- 
 tecting us from danger, from which, indeed, we 
 had sufficiently secured ourselves by purchasing 
 their forbearance ; there being, I believe, no rob- 
 bers within many miles of us but themselves. At 
 all events we should have been very glad to make 
 full acknowledgement of their vigilance and fidelity
 
 178 ENTER JVBMA. 
 
 at a less expense than that of the sleepless night 
 inflicted on us by our friends. These heroes, 
 though in other respects variously dressed, all wore 
 the chain armour, which, with the lance and sabre, 
 had descended to them, certainly by tradition, if 
 not by inheritance, from those tribes of their an- 
 cestors who were called in from the hill country to 
 the north of Syria, to take their part on either side 
 in the wars of the Crusades. 
 
 At the end of the first hour's journey, next 
 morning, having crossed the plain, we entered 
 upon the hill country of Judaea, gently swelling 
 ground, which, like that of the day before, was 
 covered with a fine natural turf, broken only by 
 spots of smooth roundheaded rock, Jiardly rising 
 above the level of the thick grass. Here and 
 there were tracts of rich corn-land, which the pea- 
 sants were ploughing with yokes of well-shaped 
 but very small oxen, and with the same light pri- 
 mitive plough which is used all over ^gypt and 
 Syria. Here, however, the camel is never used 
 for this purpose, whom one so often sees in .^gypt 
 and nearer the frontier fastened singly to the 
 plough by his tail. But, unlike the fellahs of 
 -(Egypt, all the labourers are armed with a gun 
 and a knife. In about half an hour more, descend- 
 ing by an easy slope into a long and narrow valley, 
 we passed a very deep well at the foot of the bank 
 on our left, where the plunging of a stone dropped 
 in, sounded as if there was a great depth of water 
 standing, although at perhaps more than a hundred 
 feet from the mouth. The depth of the rope- 
 marks worn in the rock all round the opening 
 gives token of its antiquity. But no ropes or 
 means of drawing water are left. The country
 
 PLAIN OF DUAIME. 179 
 
 people call this place Sissames. At about a quar- 
 ter of an hour further there is another well which 
 seems as if it were sunk to the same level, likewise 
 through natural rock. Both of these had evidently 
 been much used in former times, and on this 
 account, and also from their being so near to each 
 other, look as if they had belonged to some large 
 town ; of which, however, we could see no remains 
 either on the hill side or in the valley. At an 
 hour and a half's distance beyond, this gorge opens 
 on the plain of Duaime, into which we entered 
 from under the branches of a venerable sycomore, 
 whose gnarled trunk and amply spreading foliage 
 cast a regular unbroken shadow of many yards 
 upon the turf around. The view of the plain 
 which lay before us is broken into glades by wood- 
 land thicket, and where it opens more widely be- 
 yond is tufted with ancient timber, forming an 
 open grove of greenwood, very much resembling 
 the park scenery of North Devon or the New 
 Forest ; more resembling the former in the occa- 
 sional mixture of rock, but only wanting its rushing 
 water. 
 
 From hence, coming out upon small fields ter- 
 raced in gradation on the slopes, we found the 
 plough again at work among boles of olives and 
 fig-trees, or upon the sunny bed of the valley be- 
 low. This is portioned out, not by fences, but 
 boundary stones, among the proprietors, a people 
 industrious, peaceful, and hospitable, and armed 
 only to protect themselves and their goods against 
 wandering robbers, from whose incursions the 
 weak and bad government into whose hands they 
 are surrendered gives them no security. This was 
 the land of " the giants, sons of Anak," (Numbers
 
 ISO PLAIN OF DUAIME. 
 
 xiii. 33,) and of the '' dwellers among the tents of 
 strife," the land first seen by the messengers whom 
 Moses sent, of each tribe of the children of Israel 
 one, from the wilderness of Paran. Somewhere 
 hereabouts, among the south-westernmost corn- 
 lands of Judah, must have been the great threshing- 
 floor of Atad, where Joseph, and those who came 
 from the land of Goshen with the body of Jacob, 
 mourned seven days. (Genesis 1. 10, et seq.) It 
 is said to be " beyond Jordan," which must here 
 mean to the westward of it, for it is distinctly de- 
 scribed as being in the land of the Canaanites, and 
 in the way to Hebron. 
 
 On the next brow the remains are to be seen of 
 an ancient city, crowning the whole, and covering 
 a large space. But neither tradition nor specula- 
 tion has assigned to it a name. On the eastern 
 descent, but still near the top, are a vast number 
 of artificial excavations and vertical holes, lighting 
 large chambers which run under and parallel to 
 the surface of the rock. At the bottom of this 
 slope, across a woody ravine to the left, is the site 
 of another ancient town, apparently not much 
 smaller. The ground now becomes more bare, 
 and cultivation more scanty, till, at the end of 
 about an hour from the first entrance of the plain 
 of Duaime, you arrive at the foot of a wild and 
 steep mountain -pass, finely clothed with brushwood 
 on each side. The track is narrow and rough, and 
 the rocks and brakes shoot up on either hand ab- 
 ruptly to a great height. Here we were halted by 
 our camel drivers that we might be informed that 
 we were come to the part of the road which they 
 had mentioned to us at Gaza as being the most to 
 be dreaded for its dangers, it being an accustomed
 
 DOUBAS. 181 
 
 harbour for robbers, who attack passengers in this 
 steep and difficult pass. This we were convinced 
 was an untruth. The pass is indeed steep, and the 
 road so bad that the camels proceed at a very slow 
 pace, and unquestionably any banditti on foot and 
 with fire-arms might here make an attack with 
 great advantage. But the motive of our inform- 
 ants in what tliey told us of robbers being always 
 on the look-out here was much too apparent to 
 make the invention a successful one. I have no 
 doubt that there was an intention of robbing us. 
 But the danger we were in was of being robbed 
 after a gentler fashion than the one described — and 
 by our friends the camel drivers. After an ascent 
 of nearly two hours we came to the top of the 
 mountain of Douras, the first of the Hebron range. 
 Here is the small village of Douras, and a hand- 
 some wely, the tomb of a santon. From hence is 
 a glorious view, back, to the westward, of the 
 plains of Philistia, and forward, to the east, of 
 those of Canaan, and of the mountains of Edom 
 and Moab. Even to this day the plain of Eshkol, 
 which is seen winding through the gorges to the 
 northward, is full of vineyards, and its vines are 
 still famous through the land of Judah for grapes 
 of exquisite flavour and enormous size, clustering 
 so thickly on the bunch as to justify the astonish- 
 ment with which they were viewed by the strangers 
 of Israel. In three hours and a half more we 
 i^eached the famous city of Hebron, called by the 
 Arabs, in memory of Abraham, " Khalil Kach- 
 raan," the " Friend of the Merciful ;" — as it is 
 said in the Epistle General of James, iii. 23, ''and 
 he was called the Friend of God." We had thus 
 far made our journev, according to our calcula- 
 
 1 3
 
 182 LAND OF PHOMISE. 
 
 tioD, of a little more than 275 miles in 108 hours 
 of travel, and, including our halts, in^ fourteen 
 days. 
 
 We were now within the land appointed of old 
 as the Land of Promise — that part of it from 
 whence the children of Israel, having reached it 
 under the command of their first great chief, were, 
 for their disobedience, turned back once more upon 
 the Desert of the Wandering, till all of that gene- 
 ration but Joshua and Caleb should have perished. 
 This was the Land of Promise to which, after forty 
 years, their sons were led in to possess it, but of 
 the fruits of which the rebellious fathers had been 
 permitted to see only the rich clusters that the spies 
 brought to them. 
 
 The sun, as we drew near to Hebron, was sink- 
 ing behind us in great glory over the hills of the 
 Philistines. To the east were those which fence 
 in the plain called by the name of " Mamre the 
 Amorite, brother of Eshkol and brother of Anak.'^ 
 (Genesis xiv. 13.) There Abraham and his child- 
 ren dwelt, after his kinsman Lot had taken for his 
 portion the cities of the plain of Jordan. (Genesis 
 xiii. 7, ad fin.) Among these valleys it was that 
 he spake with the Lord, and received the promise 
 that in his seed should all the world be blessed. 
 Here David tended his father's sheep, and hence, 
 chosen and anointed to reign over Judah, he bore 
 her lion-standard against the enemies of the Lord, 
 ere long to raise it, even within the gates of Jeru- 
 salem, over the fallen throne of Saul and of his 
 sons. The level light now kindled in succession 
 that variety of glowing hues which no-where shows 
 so deeply bright as against a distance of gi*ey-sione 
 hills. But a straight and lurid line of dark purple
 
 HEBROJT. 183 
 
 cloud hung heavily across their tops. And, as we 
 wound along the road which skirted their sides, 
 that fresh steamy smell arose from the terraced 
 vine-grounds below which gives warning of rain 
 before any instinct but that of vegetable life has 
 note of its approach. 
 
 The husbandmen had already left the fields, and, 
 for more than an hour of our way, till within half 
 a mile of the city, we had not seen a human crea- 
 ture. Here a solitary old man, a Musulman, was 
 bowing himself to the earth in his evening pi-ayer. 
 His garb, the ancient traditionary gown, girded 
 round his loins, and head-gear in \^'hich the old 
 men of the East have been clad through countless 
 generations, his white beard descending to his girdle, 
 and his posture of adoration, forcibly recalled the 
 picture our minds have so often formed of the great 
 patriarch, who among these very hills so often 
 bowed himself before the presence of God. 
 
 As we pitched our tent for the night upon a 
 green knoll partly covered by a Turkish burying- 
 ground, opposite to the southern face of the city, 
 the evening sky became more and more overcast. 
 But it was not till near midnight that the storm 
 began. 
 
 The weather had been calm and fine till now, 
 without interruption, throughout our whole jour- 
 ney. And now we could not have wished against 
 the storm which roared among the rocks of Hebron. 
 It was grand beyond description. The dazzling 
 sheets of lightning that gleamed in quick succes- 
 sion made the whole prospect round as bright as in 
 the day, showing forth the stern and venerable fea- 
 tures of those famous solitudes, and of that ancient 
 city which lay before us, apparently so little changed
 
 184 HEBRON. 
 
 from when it was the abode of David and his host, 
 " those mighty men of w^ar." And the thunder, 
 coming loud and near upon every flash, rolled 
 through the land where of old the voice of the Al- 
 mighty was so often heard articulate. 
 
 The next day was wet and boisterous. But still 
 the dark and massive clouds added grandeur to the 
 scene. Midday was past before the weather per- 
 mitted us to issue forth. 
 
 Hebron, as it was the first Jewish city which we 
 saw, so is it that which among all those of Judah 
 preserves the most of its ancient character un- 
 changed. " Kirjatharba, which is Hebron," (Josh, 
 xiv. 15 ; XV. 13,) " the city of Arba, the father of 
 Anak," took its latter name whefi it was "given to 
 Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance," on 
 the general division of the land of Canaan among 
 the children of Israel. 
 
 It stands on two small eminences rising out of 
 the southern entrance of the vale of Mamre. The 
 Jewish part of the town, occupying the western- 
 most, is modern. The Mohammedan part stands 
 on the site of the ancient city of David. In the 
 lower part of it is the pool still called, after David 
 the king, "Birket El Sultaun," the " king's pool," 
 where he hanged the bodies of Rechab and Baana, 
 who had murdered Ishbosheth, the son of his per- 
 secutor Saul. (2 Sam. iv. 12.) Its position is 
 the only one which the pool of those times couid 
 have occupied, and its size, the form of its con- 
 struction, and the cement with which it is coated 
 throughout, are in accordance with the story of its 
 great antiquity. About a quarter of a mile above 
 it, to the north, and on the pinnacle of the gentle 
 ascent of the town, stands the mosque, jealously
 
 CAVE OF MACHPELAII. 185 
 
 guarded by the Turks, which covers the site of the 
 " cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre," 
 (Gen. xxiil. 19; xxv. 9; xxxv. 27, 29; xlix. 30, 
 31,) " in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the 
 Hittite," the burying-place of Abraham and Sarah, 
 Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. A few yards 
 to the westward of the mosque is the sepulchre in 
 which Abner was laid by David, and in whicli he 
 also placed the head of Ishbosheth, near the ho- 
 noured remains of the most faithful of his fathers* 
 servants. (2 Sam. iv. 12.) This last-mentioned 
 tomb the Christians and Jews are permitted to ap- 
 proach near enough to see it through a hole left 
 open in the gate whicli encloses it. It is but a large 
 unadorned cubick stone. The tombs of the great 
 patriarch and his family are, as we were told, under 
 the four cupolas of the mosque. Under its roof, 
 and nearer the steps than the gateway, none but 
 Musulmans may enter. 
 
 The population of Hebron, according to the ac- 
 count given us by the Jews who flocked round, and 
 undertook to show us this the most ancient city of 
 tlieir nation, amounts to about 6000 of their reli- 
 gion, and 2000 Mohammedans. I should think 
 this is an exaggeration of the number of their people 
 now residing there. Dr. ^Robinson, I find, gives 
 the gross population at not much less than 10,000. 
 But all these calculations must be very vague, and 
 founded on no better authority than the same tes- 
 timony which we received on the spot, that of the 
 remnant of the Israelites there, whose national feel- 
 ing, vanity I cannot call it, in that abject state 
 which is " the badge of all their race," leads them 
 everywhere to give a higher estimate than the true 
 one of their numbers. The Jewish inhabitants of
 
 186 HEBROX. 
 
 the place seem to be living prosperously, and on 
 good terms with the Mohammedans, and to cany 
 on a fair trade among their own brethren and the 
 Christians in the adjacent parts of Judsea, in earthen- 
 ware and coarse cloth, wine which is not bad, oil 
 which is good, and a sort of ardent spirit which is 
 detestable ; to the taste a sort of combination of 
 very bitter peppermint, and the medicine used in 
 England for coughs under the name of paregorick 
 elixir. Nothing can be worse mixed with water, 
 and unapproachable by European lips without. 
 ; . Behind the hills lying immediately to the north 
 of the city, and about four miles from it, across a 
 narrow valley and a not very steep ridge, is the 
 plain of Mamre, where Abraham dwelt, *' and 
 built there an altar to the Lord." (Gen. xiii. 18.) 
 The plain as well as the country all round for 
 several miles is ricldy cultivated, and laid out in 
 enclosures with low Malls. At the corner of 
 almost each of these small properties is a low roof- 
 less stone hovel, raised a little above the wall, 
 where, during the time of harvest, night and day, 
 the cultivator or the person in charge keeps watch 
 against depredation. The husbandmen and herds- 
 men are all Mohammedans. At the entrance of 
 the plain of Mamre, and close to the right of the 
 path, is a small cave in the side of a rocky bank, in 
 which a few steep steps lead down to a fine clear 
 spring of tepid but very sweet water. This foun- 
 tain goes by the name of Ain Ben Ishem, and the 
 cave is said by the Jews to be the j^lace in which 
 Ishbosheth was slain. This seems somewhat at 
 variance with the narrative in the second book of 
 Samuel, (which says that he was lying in a bed, at 
 noon, in his house,) and with Josephus, who gives
 
 PJLAIX OF MAMRE. 187 
 
 the same account. Nor does it appear that the 
 scene of this murder was so near the city of Heb- 
 ron. About a mile and a half further, on a low 
 hill to the left, is the Haram Eame, a large square 
 building made of the same sort of stone with the 
 fences of the fields, but of larger blocks, and to- 
 wards the foundations of the eastern angle of mas- 
 sive masonry, cemented, but bearing every appear- 
 ance of great antiquity — probably as remote as the 
 old Jewish times. This is shown as the dwelling- 
 place of Abraham. Within about a couple of 
 hundred yards of it is a venerable evergreen oak, 
 and, hard by its roots, a small orifice, the opening 
 of a deep well, with water in it. These are called 
 the tree and well of Abraham ; the spot near 
 which he received the three angels. (Gen. xviii.) 
 The well may be of any antiquity, and evidently 
 belonged to the residence of some wealthy possessor 
 in the plain, whose house was near ; for there are 
 no remains hereabouts of a town, and there can be 
 no doubt of the identity of the plain with the 
 Mamre of the Scriptures. The tree is probably of 
 some centuries old ; whether growing from the 
 roots of some much more ancient oak, shading the 
 patriarch's well, would be a hazardous specula- 
 tion. 
 
 On my return to the city, with my two Jewish 
 guides, we entered it further to the north than the 
 side from which we liad begun our walk. We 
 were proceeding through a double gateway, such as 
 is seen in so many of the old Eastern cities, even 
 in some of the modern; one wide arched road, and 
 another narrow one by the side, through the latter 
 of which persons on foot generally pass, to avoid 
 the chance of being jostled or crushed by the
 
 188 " EYE OF THE NEEDLE." 
 
 beasts of burthen coming through the main gate- 
 way. We met a caravan of loaded camels throng- 
 ing the passage. The drivers cried out to my two 
 companions and myself, desiring us to betake our- 
 selves for safety to the gate with the smaller arch, 
 calling it " Es Summ el Kayut," the hole or eye 
 of the needle. If — as, on inquiry since, I am in- 
 clined to believe — this name is applied not to this 
 gate in Hebron only, but generally in cities where 
 there is a footway entrance by the side of the larger 
 one, it may perhaps give an easy and simple solu- 
 tion of what in the text Mark x. 25, has appeared 
 4o some to be a strained and difficult metaphor ; 
 -whereas that of the entrance g'ate, low and narrow, 
 through which the sumpter camel cannot be made 
 to pass unless with great difficulty, and stripped of 
 all the incumbrance of his load, his trappings, and 
 his merchandise, may seem to illustrate more 
 clearly the foregoing verse: — "How hardly shall 
 they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
 Ood."* It also applies itself to several other pas- 
 sages by which our Saviour illustrates a' similar 
 subject : " Enter ye in at the strait gate," &c., 
 >:(Matt. vii. 13, 14,) and others. 
 
 We did not leave Hebron till the next day. 
 
 * The metaphor of the camel and the eye of a needle it 
 has been attempted to render easier by a supposition that 
 the translations from the Greek may be in error, and that 
 the word -was " kxijaXov,'' a " cable," and not '•' KO!.fj(,r,Aov," a 
 " camel," of which, however, there does not seem to be 
 much likelihood. A like figure occurs twice in the Koran : 
 
 ' -' Mw „ ' . 9 ' 
 
 .. t./\^\ , i<'\^\ ^^ Until the camel shall enter 
 
 juto the hole of tire needle."
 
 APPENDIX.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 7. 
 
 DELPHI: 
 
 A FRAGMENT OF A JOURNAL. FROM THE 
 ' IONIAN ANTHOLOGY,' 
 
 No. I. January, IS 34. 
 
 Let the man, ay or the woman either, who would go to 
 Delphi — for persons of either sex may do so with ease, 
 save that those of the less robust should ride the journey, 
 while by 'all means the man should walk, — let the man, I 
 say, or the woman either, who would go to Delphi, un- 
 dertake that pilgrimage in form and manner as herein- 
 after set down, and as it was performed by a party of 
 persons who had three days to devote to it in the autumn 
 of last year. And, to all those who have memory or 
 feeling of what was for many ages so great and glorious, 
 all which their youthful fancy shadowed out will be re- 
 newed and filled up, and all the mystick charm will be 
 justified which hangs upon the name of Dephi. 
 
 Delphi should be approached from the side of the an- 
 cient' Cirrha, " scopulosa Cirrha," * the port of the 
 Oracle, now called the Scala di Salona, which, marked 
 only by a few huts, stands within the depths of a beau- 
 teous bay. Much doubtless depends on the first impres- 
 
 * Lucan. Pharsal.
 
 192 ArPEXDix. 
 
 sions under which you draw near the heights of Delphi. 
 And, to give to these their full advantage, the journey 
 should be made at night. For, as the fatigue is thus 
 avoided of what, in the glare of the midday heat, would 
 be a toilsome march, and the traveller thus escapes the 
 displeasure of arriving wayworn at the threshold of that 
 famous place ; so also is the effect improved by his ac- 
 quaintance with it being begun while the veil of darkness 
 still hangs upon its awful features, to be drawn aside by 
 the gradual advance of the morning. From the bay and 
 Scala of Salona, the road lies over a plain, bounded to 
 the left by the outlines of the mountains over Amphissa, 
 once the capital of the Ozolian Locri, and on the right 
 studded and closed in by an extensive grove of vene- 
 rable olive-trees. This is the vale of Crissa, and it leads 
 to the town still known, by a slight corruption of its 
 ancient name, as Crisso. No traces of temple or of an- 
 cient walls remain. The town is neatly and regularly 
 built ; but a fountain, springing from a rock on the left 
 side of the main street, and descending in a copious 
 stream into a roughly hewn and time-worn basin, is all 
 which is left for even conjecture to point to as a memorial 
 of the city of which Apollo was specially held as the 
 patron, and under the surname, thence derived, of the 
 Crissaean. It lies about midway, in respect of time, 
 between the port and Delphi. The distance of road 
 which remains is much shorter ; but the way is stony and 
 steep, winding along abrupt hills, and sometimes mount- 
 ing them in the still more toilsome form of a Venetian 
 stair. 
 
 As you draw nearer to Delphi the character of the 
 scenery becomes wilder and more strange ; and by star- 
 light if the stars be out, or even by lantern light if the 
 heavens be dark, there is enough visible to betoken that 
 you are within the range of some district set apart, as it 
 were, for the uncommon wonder and worship of man. 
 Tombs, carved in the clefts of the natural rock which on 
 the left overhangs the pass, look forth from beneath its 
 brows into the deep valley of the Pleistus, which winds 
 its course among wood and vineyard and meadow far be-
 
 DELPHI. 193 
 
 low to the right. At the end of about the third hour of 
 your march, you reach the westernmost heights of Del- 
 phi, from whence, if there be any light in the sky, you 
 trace against it the broad and shadowy outline of that 
 double peaked rock which shrouded within its narrow 
 breast the Oracle that gave laws to the world. On 
 either side, bending forward, as it were, to tend the sanc- 
 tuary round which they stand, are seen those huge craggy 
 masses, Ucc^r^ena.h; V a[^a.roi Koov^a.), which, forming part 
 of the range called by one general name as the district of 
 Parnassus," fenced in and crowned a city, whither, from 
 the rude infancy of its fame even to its corruption and 
 decay, the nations flocked in with tribute and adoration. 
 
 Delphi, with all its pride and all its sufferings, with 
 all its sanctity and all its crimes — Delphi, with all the 
 brightness of its pomp and all the gloom of its mysteries^ 
 with all its forepast glories and in all its present bareness 
 — Delphi, in all its silence and solitude, the great, the 
 despoiled, the deserted, the immortal, is before you, be- 
 neath 3^ou, above you, and around you. 
 
 And where is now the city of wonder, of worship, and 
 of spoil ? As the dawn brightens into day, those awful 
 forms, of old renown, of each of which fancy had so often 
 bodied forth an image of its own, now start up before you 
 in successive detail, as the glimmering spectres of famous 
 things long departed and for ever. And are those then 
 right wdio, seeing Delphi, complain that no ruins of 
 man's magnificence are there ? That the w^alls of its 
 once mighty city are sunk, and that now not a time-worn 
 peristyle or portico, no, nor a crumbling column, remains 
 reared to mark where of old stood the great temple of 
 the presiding god, or where stood the attendant fane of 
 Minerva Pronoias, — the spirit of strength and fore- 
 thought, as it were, taking its stand by the shrine of in- 
 spiration ? Are those then right who tell the future 
 traveller that his hopes must needs be chilled when 
 brought face to face with the object they had so long 
 adorned, and who bid him qualify them with this sad 
 'assurance, that he shall see nothing but Delphi as nature 
 ibrmed and man first found it ? Let such men fondly
 
 194 APPENDIX. 
 
 search elsewhere for the traces of mortal and departed 
 power: let them curiously doat upon the relicks of 
 mouldering pomp among the once proud arches of Im- 
 perial Rome, or the tenantless palaces of humbled Ve- 
 nice ; — memorials now of what ? — of but this cheerless 
 lesson, that all the greatness of man must one day sink 
 into the dust, that the monuments of his loftiness will 
 one day but faintly deck a mutilated ruin, and that what 
 the heart of the founder swelled within him to conceive, 
 will one day serve but to furnish forth an imperfect sys- 
 tem to the artist, or to the philosopher a melancholy moral. 
 There are other and, I think, higher feelings which can 
 but uncheerily respond to the appeal of man's handicraft 
 in its decay, and which yet kindle at the view of this 
 place, as nature formed and man first found it, seen as it 
 was when man first believed, from the very outlines as 
 they are now spread before you, that it could have been 
 formed in such beauty and grandeur only for the abode 
 and sanctuary of a God, — where man bowed his head 
 and heart in worship, and came to gather fate from out 
 the doubtful mysteries of a whispered oracle, — where he 
 stored his gifts, and was after to raise towers and temples 
 to blazon forth its renown. And in this state now is 
 Delphi, as when man first imagined a God of light, of poe- 
 try, of prophecy, fixing his throne there in the fancied 
 centre of the habitable world ; its awful caverns, its bright 
 fountains, its glorious crags, lifting their brows into that 
 region of high air above which only the eagle in solitary 
 majesty can soar more nigh to heaven, — a state primaeval, 
 unchanged, and immortal. 
 
 And here, upon this tabled hill where you now stand 
 to view the rising sun, here once stood Brennus with the 
 advanced guard of his invading army, his barbarous 
 legions struggling through the deep defiles and rugged 
 mountain passes behind him ; and, before him, the de- 
 voted city, decked like a majestic and beauteous victim in 
 its sanctity and splendour for the ruthless sacrifice. But, 
 as he gazed, the sanctuary shoiie forth in all its bravery and 
 all its power, bristling with spears, and shadowed from end 
 to end with the hallowed trophies which Greece had here
 
 PELPHI. 195 
 
 from ago to age stored up as records of her long cherished 
 and gloriously defended freedom. The spoils of Mara- 
 thon and of Salamis, the tributes of Lydia, the ensigns of 
 the Amphictyonick Council. 
 
 The angry deity of the place, mounting among clouds, 
 spread his red disk as a protecting shield above it. Loud 
 thunderings were heard, and, says the historian, (but that 
 the kindling spirits of the Delphians at such an hour may 
 have excited in them unreal fancies,) the heroes of long 
 past ages of Greece vrere seen advancing their armed 
 and gigantick forms to lead forth their countrymen to the 
 defence. The earth shook, and lightnings played around 
 the rocks, which toppled on the pinnacles of each sacred 
 hill to crush the assailants. The furious assault began ; 
 and, dismayed no less by the astounding horrors of the 
 scene than by the desperate courage of men standing 
 for their home and their presiding god, the barbarous 
 host gave way. Retreat was ruin, irreparable, hopeless, 
 inevitable ; and the whole invading army, more than 
 160,000 strong, perished with their chief, almost in view 
 of the temple which they had come to plunder and de- 
 stroy. Nor was this the single or the first occasion on 
 which a powerful invader gave way before a small band 
 of Phocians entrenched, as it were, within the fastnesses 
 of that awful sanctuary. From hence, also, had retired 
 the cohorts of Xerxes. Though reeking from the fresh 
 carnage of Thermopylae, the frontier passes of Greece no 
 more a barrier across their path, and its plains thronged 
 with the recruited myriads of his Persian chivalry. . . 
 Athens herself laid waste by fire, and his grasping ambi- 
 tion yet unquenched even by the great day of Salamis, . , 
 from hence retired his Satraps, disheartened, powerless, 
 discomfited, either by the valour of the Delphians, or 
 by the feai's of their own troops, who, with what they 
 had believed an assured conquest before them, yet could 
 not endure the presence of this mystick place clothed in 
 the terrors of a mountain storm. 
 
 With such remembrances as these are the opening 
 glimpses of Delphi fraught. But variously mixed with
 
 196 APPENDIX. 
 
 glory and with shame are those which are recalled bj its 
 nearer details. 
 
 The first and most prominent objects that present 
 themselves are the two cliffs between which the dews of 
 Castalia fall into the Pythia's bath. The Hyampeia and 
 the Nauplia. From the top of the former of these, the 
 westernmost, (not the higher but the more overhanging 
 of the two,) it was that those persons against whom the 
 anger of the god was supposed to be kindled were cast 
 down, thus to expiate their own imprudence or crimes, 
 or, as was oftener the case, to gratify some offended 
 jealousy of the Delphians, or some still baser motive of 
 covetousness disappointed or detected fraud. It was on 
 this brow that ^sop was dragged to a fearful death for 
 counselling his master, Crcesus the Lydian, against the 
 lavishing of his mighty gifts upon a venal oracle. A 
 crime of the Delphick people, which, says the father of 
 Grecian history, drew on them the wrath of heaven, to 
 be appeased only by years of humiliation and atonement. 
 
 And that sweet stream, that deep recess, entered ere- 
 while onl}-^ by the feet of her who, raised above all sense 
 of earthly passion, lived in fancied converse with a 
 deity, — those awful solitudes once dedicated to the 
 sublimest mysteries of" the proudest mythology, what 
 deeds of shame does their later story record ! Avarice 
 and imposture, — the fates of empires doled out at the 
 bidding of a counterfeit enthusiasm, and the will of the 
 gods revealed in barter for gold ! Delphi, from whose 
 seats it was boasted that Homer sang, in whose temples 
 it was recorded that Pindar wrought his deathless verse, 
 — Delphi, on whose gates the Seven Sages wrote those 
 mighty truths which were to be a leading light to men 
 nnd Commonwealths, where the confederate statesmen of 
 Greece sat for her governance, where her heroes and 
 nhilosophers^'sought counsel in life, and after renown in 
 that their names should be inscribed within its fane, — 
 immortal Delphi, with its tutelary genius, become a 
 iiireling of Philip and a mockery to Sylla, and perish- 
 ing at last in its luckless corruption, dishonoured and
 
 DELPHI. 197 
 
 unmourned by the world over which it had so long held 
 sway. 
 
 You approach the rocky cleft of Castalia by a descend- 
 ing road which winds towards the left for a little more 
 than a mile, passing through the village of Castri — the 
 site of the highest and wealthiest part of the city, where, 
 according to Pausanias, stood the great and gorgeous 
 temple of the Delphick god himself. Beyond the vil- 
 lage, you see to the right the terrace of the ancient 
 gymnasium, now crowned with the small church of the 
 Panagia, and leaning forward fi'om the side of the Attick 
 and Boeotian road over the valley of the Pleistus. 
 Alter you pass the village, and short of the turn of the 
 way which leads to the gymnasium, in the hollow of 
 a stony dell, stands a small arched fountain, built in the 
 middle ages, which receives the waters flowing from the 
 sacred spring itself. Higher up, and overhung by the 
 rock Nauplia, within the gorge of the cleft, is the 
 Pythia's bath ; a long rectangular trough of white stone, 
 in many places broken, and the end of which towards the 
 valley is surmounted by a poor shed, dedicated as a chapel 
 to St. John. 
 
 Just above the trough are three small niches, carved 
 in the rock as if to serve as depositaries for votive offer- 
 ings, and over them the brushwood shoots forth at in- 
 tervals, shadowing the face of the cliff to where its very 
 brow and top are backed by the sky ; — the spring in part 
 oozes lazily through the trough, and in part gushes from 
 a small opening in the rock at its foot, trickling down 
 from thence through the lower and modern built foun- 
 tain to the channel which leads it in its course to mingle 
 with the Pleistus ; — and this is the Castalian water, sweet 
 and bright as when within its chill embrace the priestess 
 caught to her bosom that sacred horror which was to 
 prepare her pure frame to receive the breath of the in- 
 spiring god. 
 
 And where is the cavern which in those times was 
 entered only by the Pythia, whence she descended to the 
 bath, and for which Chandler and Hughes (of all modern 
 travellers who have described these parts the most accu- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 198 APPENDIX. 
 
 rate and the most diligent) searched in vain ? It is 
 manifest from the nature of the ground that it could have 
 been in no part of the mountain between the bath itself 
 and the buildings of the city to the west — the only space 
 then which could have contained it is further up within 
 the gorge of the cleft itself. And there, from the second 
 terrace spoken of by Hughes, and high over head, may 
 be seen, rising on either side, the curve, as it were, of a 
 natural arch, which seems as if in later times its crest had 
 been broken down, perhaps by the force of an earth- 
 quake, but had once connected the two cliffs, about one- 
 third up the face of each, forming thereof of a vast cave. 
 I said that the great and gorgeous temple of the Delphick 
 god himself, where the oracle was delivered, was within 
 the space now covered by the village of Castri. Its 
 position appears to have been w^here Hughes is disposed 
 to fix it, and for more reasons than he assigns. Pausanias 
 directs you on your road to it, and, on the spot to wdiich 
 that direction leads you, the clearest indications still re- 
 main to show that there stood a Dorick temple of great 
 size and of the richest workmanship. He says that, en- 
 tering the town from the Boeotian road, you find four 
 temples, of which one was dedicated to Minerva Pro- 
 noias, near to which is the place of publick exercise ; to 
 the left of this road, as you approach the site of the city, 
 may yet be traced the foundations of several temples, and 
 many shafts of large columns, on tabled terraces which 
 stretch forth towards the valley. On one of these ter- 
 races stands now the church of the Panagia, supposed 
 with much reason to be on the foundations of the gym- 
 nasium — its porch is supported by ancient pillars, and 
 here and there small fragments of relief are seen which 
 have been built into its rudely constructed modern walls, 
 and within it is that remarkable inscription of which 
 Hughes speaks as supposing it to refer to the death 
 of Pyrrhus Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles AiKida 
 Xaips :* "If," says Pausanias, "you descend from 
 hence some three stadia, you find the river Pleistus, 
 
 * Farewell, oh descendant of iEacus.
 
 DELPHI. 199 
 
 which flows into the sea at Cirrha, the port of Delphi ; 
 but if, instead, you mount again towards the Temple of 
 Minerva, you will see to your right the fountain of Cas- 
 talia, of which the waters are sweet." "The city of 
 Delphi," continues he, "is on a height from which on 
 all sides you may descend by a gentle declivity : the 
 temple of Apollo contains a large space in the highest 
 part of the town, and many streets lead to it." Now 
 there is but one space which answers this description — 
 the place of the Games (still known by its classick name 
 of the Pentathlon) is described as being beyond the 
 town : but between it and Castalia, (a distance of about 
 a mile,) you cannot fail to see where the main part of the 
 city stood, with, on one hand, the inaccessible crags, and, 
 on the other, the steep valley of the Pleistus. About 
 midway, and on the side of the village of Castri, on rising 
 ground, is a large space, part of which is now built upon ; 
 at the back of which, and near it, in the main street, is a 
 Turkish fountain, which runs copiously ; the only spring 
 of water on that part of the hill. " Returning," says 
 Pausanias, "to the temple, you will see the fountain 
 Cassotis, whose waters, it is said, flow under ground to 
 the most secret sanctuary of the Temple." If further 
 evidence were wanting to show that the site of the 
 Temple was here, it would be afibrded by the appear- 
 ance of the ground, which is full of remains of large 
 columns and elaborate reliefs, executed in the best style 
 of Grecian art, and lying very near the surface. Hard 
 by also is that dark and dismantled building mentioned 
 by Hughes, one of the side walls of which is covered, for 
 near twenty feet in lenglh, and about eight or ten in 
 height, with continuous inscriptions, the letters small and 
 neatly cut, which might, at the cost of some pains and 
 trouble, be copied and deciphered ; a work which has 
 been only partially and desultorily attempted by persons 
 who have at diflerent times visited the building, but the 
 which, if systematically and thoroughly done, could 
 scarcely fail to assist with interesting detailed information 
 concerning the history of the Temple, as well as its pre- 
 cise position and form ; for there can be but little Cjues- 
 
 k2
 
 200 APPENDIX. 
 
 tion that this wall stood within its precincts. It is to be 
 lamented that Mr. Cockerell, whose zeal and genius so 
 eminently qualified him to trace out for the world again 
 some probable plan of this great city as it was in the days 
 of its glory, should have had so little time to devote to 
 this pursuit. 
 
 No one who visits Delphi should fail to give his best 
 attention to this part of the village and the space imme- 
 diately near and around it. It is on a small plot, almost 
 in front of this space, that a person of the nameof Frango 
 is now building a house for himself and for his children. 
 Frango, though a poor man and of humble condition, is 
 one with whom it would it would be interesting to con- 
 verse anywhere. But on his own native ground, and 
 that ground Delphi, and among the rising walls of his 
 own house, and those walls rising in what appears to have 
 been the heart of the Temple itself, he is a person whom 
 not lo converse with before leaving Delphi would he to 
 leave Delphi without holding converse with one of its 
 most interesting living ornaments. He fought gallantly 
 for his country, under several chiefs, during her war of 
 independence against the Turks ; but never in any of 
 those civil wars which, during that renowned struggle 
 and since, have, if not stained its history, at least de- 
 prived it of a part of its otherwise untarnished and blame- 
 less and surpassing glory. No offer of money (and much 
 money has been offered him) has hitherto tempted him to 
 sell any of the remains of art, some of which are very 
 beautiful, that he has discovered, and is continuing to 
 discover, among the foundations of his house. Before 
 the war, he was as rich as any of that middle class to 
 which he belongs, and from which, and from the class 
 below which, always the most faithful and generally most 
 favourable estimate is to be formed of the character of a 
 people. His condition of life was as easy as that of any 
 Greek worthy of his country could be said to be while 
 that country lay under a barbarous yoke. In the war he 
 spent almost his whole substance. With what remained 
 he bought this plot of ground, on which he is working 
 with his own hands. His desire is to embellish his
 
 DELPHI. 201 
 
 house, forming it, as it were, into a little musgeum, dedi- 
 cated by his love of country to his country's renown, 
 where he may leave such relicks as he may have found 
 there of her high and palmy days, undiminished and 
 undivided, to his children. He has already brought to 
 light two large pieces of very fine basso-relievo, parts 
 probably of a frieze, besides some inscriptions and other 
 interesting memorials. May he continue to prosper in his 
 search. Such things can nowhere be so well as in such 
 hands. 
 
 Along the Attick and Boeotian road, which we have 
 left behind us, there is much to engage a diligent scru- 
 tiny, and much to justify minute description ; — from the 
 eastern gate, (which is a little more than half a mile from 
 the village,) one jamb of which is yet standing, and the 
 lintel of which is lying a few yards out of the road on the 
 side of the valley, to the great place of tombs beyond, 
 where is the famous sarcophagus, a beautiful relick, 
 lately excavated. This, from the carelessness of the 
 owner, who will not protect it, and of the government, 
 who as yet have neither protected it nor permitted those* 
 to purchase it who would, is now daily suffering cruel 
 mutilation. It was formed of one entire block of stain- 
 less white marble, more than nine feet long, the material 
 of which is as bright as ever. But, either by the negli- 
 gence of those who discovered and tried to raise it, or 
 by a much less pardonable spirit of mischief since, it has 
 been broken through in the midst, and two large frag- 
 ments from the ends have been taken away. The relief 
 on the front of the sarcophagus represents a boar chase, 
 and the subject appears to have been continued along 
 the two ends. The back is adorned with a scroll-work 
 supported by chimaeras. At a few feet from it lies, half 
 buried in the earth, the slab that formed its covering, on 
 which reposes a female figure of colossal size, wrapped 
 in ample folds of finely sculptured drapery. This was 
 the state in which, at the close of last summer, this fine 
 monument was to be seen. But so rapidly was the spirit 
 of wanton miitilation at work, that it may even by this 
 time be much more defaced, and in all probability the
 
 202 APPENDIX. 
 
 barbarous visitations of a few more idle strangers may- 
 soon reduce it to a mere scalped and shapeless mass of 
 sparkling ruin. Some miles beyond this is the meeting 
 of the roads, the Toiodog, the scene of the bloody tragedy 
 of Laius slain by the hands of his stepson (Edipus. 
 
 But we must now retrace our way, and, again passing 
 through the village, ascend the steep ground which looks 
 down upon it from the west. Here, leaving to the right 
 a large fountain which stands high upon the hill, we see 
 a curious tomb hollowed out from the bank of rock oppo- 
 site the small church of St. Elias, below which, but pro- 
 bably at no great distance from it, stood the theatre. 
 Thence mounting still beyond the remains of a part of 
 the city wall, a line specimen of what is called the second 
 era of Cyclopean workmanship, we reach that lofty brow 
 on which is the Pentathlon, where for ages were cele- 
 brated the Pythian games ; — a glorious memorial, and in 
 a state in which scarcely the ravages of time or of man 
 have had or can have power to efface its traces. They 
 are now fresh and clearly marked, as when on that 
 •ground, in the sight of assembled Greece, was kindled 
 the bold ambition, and were rewarded the hardihood and 
 skill of her sons, and as when the spirits of eloquence 
 and song breathed over it to immortalize those contests 
 by which they had been called forth. The throne of the 
 judges, nearly in its pristine state, is hewn in the rock at 
 the one end of the stadium, which, about fifty yards in 
 breadth, stretches forth to a length of about six hundred 
 yards towards the other end, where the boundary is 
 somewhat less distinct. The side that overlooks the 
 town, on the left hand of the judges, is lined with two 
 rows of seats. These, though the large stones of which 
 they were composed are in many j^arts removed or over- 
 set, retain their general form. In many parts of the 
 cliffs above niches are cut, Mhich, like the recesses of an 
 artificial theatre, all look towards that famous stage 
 where champions, poets, orators, philosophers, contended 
 for the crown which should ennoble at once themselves, 
 their country, and their times. 
 
 To the right, as you face the city, lies the downwai'd
 
 APPENDIX. 203 
 
 path that leads you on your return to Cirrha. On the 
 left a steep road winds to the mountain top, from which 
 to the other side you pass among pine forests on your 
 way to Mount Cory cum and the foot of Parnassus. 
 
 II, 
 
 Vol. I. p. 132. 
 
 Extract of a Letter from Mr. Bonomi to the Secretary 
 of the Egyptian Literary Society. 
 
 My dear Sir, Cairo, August 7, 1843. 
 
 Dr. Lepsius, Mr. Abbikan, and myself, arrived in 
 Cairo from the encampment of the Prussian mission in 
 the Faioum, on the evening of the 20th of last month, 
 to make preparations for the journey to the upper 
 country. 
 
 On the 28th, at the rooms of the ^Egyptian Society, 
 our countryman Lane in the chair. Dr. Lepsius gave a 
 most interesting account of his discoveries to a full 
 meeting of the Society convened for that purpose. 
 After congratulating the members and council on the 
 excellent library which, by their judicious measures, 
 had been collected and arranged, he complimented the 
 late President, Mr. Linant, for his valuable memoir on 
 the Lake Moeris, and then proceeded to explain at full 
 length an obscure passage in Herodotus relating to the 
 manner of building pyramids, producing at each stage 
 of the argument satisfactory evidence taken from the 
 monuments themselves, showing, as the father of 
 history has recorded, that the growth and ultimate
 
 204 APPENDIX. 
 
 casing of those remarkable structures was from the top 
 downwards. 
 
 It being a custom connected with the religion of the 
 Ancient Egyptians to prepare during life an appro- 
 priate and solid abode for the dead, which, in the case of 
 the sovereign, was a work of vast dimensions, it became 
 necessary so to conduct the work that it might be 
 periodically enlarged, and, at the same time, taking into 
 consideration the uncertainty of life, that there should 
 be a reasonable hope of terminating it in the prescribed 
 form during that period. 
 
 At Thebes, Biban Eimaduck, this custom of preparing 
 and enlarging the royal sepulchre during the life of the 
 monarch is still more clearly exhibited, for the tombs in 
 that part of Egypt consist of chambers excavated in the 
 rocks ; and it has been ascertained that those royal 
 sepulchres which contain the greater number of cham- 
 bers belong to Pharaohs, of whom it is known fiom his- 
 tory and other evidences that they enjoyed long and 
 prosperous reigns. 
 
 This double purpose, viz., that of enlarging and com- 
 pleting during the life of the sovereign the royal sepul- 
 chres, was, with regard to pyramids, accomplished in 
 the ibllowing manner : — A building in the form of three 
 or more steps, or, more accurately speaking, three or 
 more truncated pyramids placed on each other, the 
 upper one being the smaller, was first built over the ex- 
 cavation or chamber desired to receive the royal 
 mummy, serving as the nucleus of the future pyramid, 
 and affording convenient spaces or terraces for machinery 
 and scaffolding. This was gradually enlarged by first 
 raising the upper step, and then the next, to the 
 original level of the upper one ; and the last to the 
 height of the second, round the base of which a similar 
 terrace was constructed : thus there remained only to 
 complete the monument in the prescribed form, the 
 filling up of the intervals, and the casing of the whole 
 with fine stone, for which last operation it may be pre- 
 sumed the stones were prepared during the progress of 
 the work.
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF PYRAMIDS. 
 
 205 
 
 H~ 
 
 R 
 
 n 
 
 The Doctor then cited a remarkable pyramid of 
 Dashour as illustrating the mode of construction alluded 
 to by Herodotus, which he had endeavoured to explain. 
 This pyramid is distinguished from other monuments of 
 its class by a more rapid declination of its sides from 
 about half its height, affording a sample also, as the 
 Doctor imagines, of the premature demise of the sove- 
 reign down to the line Vi'hen this more rapid inclination 
 commences, and that it Mas afterwards completed in its 
 present form by the successor, saving, by the deflexion 
 of the angle, more than half the amount of the labour 
 and material it would have cost had the original design 
 been carried out. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 Ui. 
 
 ^ 
 
 k 
 
 
 
 =-\ 
 
 
 II 
 
 "> 
 
 
 
 
 It will be seen by the accompanying diagram that if, 
 contrary to the direct statement of Herodotus and the 
 evidence afforded by the pyramids of Sakhara, Maidour, 
 &c., we were (as has been suggested) to suppose the 
 lower half of this pyramid to have been the first part 
 completed, and consequently that it had been intended 
 to continue it in the same inclination to the apex B, not 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 206 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 only would it differ materially in its proportions from the 
 other pyramids in its vicinity, but also must be relin- 
 quished all the constructional advantages afforded by the 
 terraces or steps. 
 
 The Doctor then exhibited a selection from his folio 
 of beautiful drawings, taken from the tombs of Geezeh 
 and Sakhara, fraught with details of civil and political 
 life, of the most ancient civilization, known to us by 
 monumental evidence. He said that no less than eighty 
 tombs had been drawn by the mission in the vicinity of 
 the pyramid of Cheops, chiefly of princes and officers of 
 the household of that Pharaoh from which might be 
 drawn up a kind of Court Guide of Memphis of the re- 
 mote period. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 J B. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 London : Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.
 
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