the towing-path; from a patch of firm ground a camel rears its melancholy head; and, by Jove! there goes a pelican! We passed, for some miles, along a causeway that separates the salt-water Lake Maadee from Lake Mareotis, and nothing can be more desolate than the aspects of these two lonely lakes, stretching with their low swampy shores, away to the horizon. If Alastor, or the spirit of solitude, was fond of yachting, these waters would be the very place for him to cruise in undisturbed, except by the myriads of wild fowl, that kept wheeling, shrieking, and whistling round us. These lakes seem to have been born for one another; but the Pharaohs, like poor-law guardians, saw fit to separate them; their object, however, the reverse of the said poor-law, was to make Mareotis fruitful. A vast mound was raised, which kept the salt lake at a respectful distance; and, until the English invasion in 1801, or at least until the eighteenth century, the greater part of Mareotis was a fertile plain. Buonaparte, after having defeated the Mamelukes at the Pyramids, had taken possession of Cairo. Having denied Christ in Europe, he acknowledged Mahomet in Asia; having butchered his prisoners at Jaffa, he was defeated by the Butcher* Pasha and Sir Sydney Smith, at Acre; having poisoned part of that army whom he called his "children," he started for Paris, and left the remainder to encounter those "Storms that might veil his fame's ascending star." ↑ That remainder occupied Cairo, under the gallant and ill-fated Kleber. He had accepted, and was preparing to act upon, terms of capitulation from the Turks, which Lord Keith had however, refused to ratify. The moment Sir Sydney Smith learned the English admiral's determination, he took upon himself to inform Kleber of the fact, and advised him to hold his position. The Turks exclaimed against this chivalrous notice as a treachery, and there were not a few found in England to echo the same cry; *Djezzar, Arabic for "butcher." ↑ Sir J. Han mer. but the spirit which dictated the British sailor's act was understood in the deserts-a voice went forth among the tents of the Bedouin and the palaces of the despot, that England preferred honor to advantage. Battles, since then, have been fought, and been forgotten-nations have come and gone, and left no trace behind them-but the memory of that noble truthfulness remained, expanding into a national characteristic; and our countrymen, at this hour, in the streets of Cairo, may hear the Arabs swear "by the honor of an Englishman." Kleber was assassinated by a fanatic, instigated by those priests whose faith he had offered to profess. The incapable Menon succeeded to the command. Abercrombie anchored in Aboukir Bay on the 2nd of March, 1801, but was prevented from disembarking, by a continued gale of wind, until the 8th. Soon after midnight, a rocket from the admiral's ship gave the signal for landing, and the boats, crowded with 6,000 troops, formed in such order as they could maintain on the yet stormy sca. Then, through the clear silence of the night, the order was given to advance, and the deep murmur of a thousand oars made answer to the cheer that urged them on. It was morning before they approached the shore, which blazed with the fire of the French troops and their protecting batteries; but on they went, reckless as the breeze that wafted them, till the boats took ground, and then they leapt upon the bayonets of the French, advancing through the surf to meet them. The foam soon changed its color as they fought among the very waves, but nothing could stand the British onset long. The 23rd, and the flank companies of the 40th, drove the enemy before them, and received and broke a charge of cavalry with the bayonet. The sailors, harnessing themselves to the field artillery, dragged it through the heavy sands, under the fire of the French batteries, to whose roar they replied with loud and triumphant cheers. The British troops rushed on to the mouths of the enemy's cannon, swept the artillerymen from their posts, carried the batteries with the bayonet, and stood conquerors on the Egyptian shore. On the 13th, a sanguinary engagement took place, without any result of importance. On the 21st, the English occupied a line, extending from the spot we are now sailing over to where the sea glistens yonder, about a mile away. The right flank was covered by a flotilla of gun-boats, under Sir Sydney Smith -the left, by redoubts. The French had partly restored the ancient lines of circumvallation, near Alexandria, which Sir Ralph Abercrombie was preparing to storm, when the enemy's confidence and impetuosity induced him to abandon his strong position, and advance to meet the British in yonder plain, where a few palm trees still mark the ground they occupied. I need not tell the results of that glorious day: the 42nd Highlanders and the gallant 28th regiment there won the proud name which they have since borne stainless through many a bloody field: the seaman there fought side by side in generous rivalry with the soldier in a word, there Abercrombie conquered, and there Aber crombie fell : "Sweet in manner, fair in favor, Mild in temper, fierce in fight; The command devolved upon Lord Hutchinson, a worthy successor of his gallant friend. The powerfully written, manly, and feeling despatch, in which he announced the victory of Aboukir, and the death of Abercrombie, is, perhaps, as fine a composition as our military records can supply. On the arrival of Sir David Baird from India, by Cosseir and the Nile, Lord Hutchinson advanced upon Alexandria, which capitulated, and soon afterwards Egypt was abandoned, both by conquered and conquerors, to the Moslem. It was in this last advance that the embankment was cut by the British army. Six dykes were opened, the intermediate banks soon gave way, and the sea burst freely into lake Mareotis, submerging forty Arab villages with their cultivated lands. It was seventy days before the cataract subsided into a strait. The sea is now once more banked out by the causeway on which the Mahmoudieh canal is carried to Alexandria, and Mehemet Ali intends to drain the lake, and again to restore it to cultivation; but it will take many years to repair the ruin which a few hours were sufficient to effect. Gentle reader, we have done with war-and if you should add, "time for us," I can only say, that I felt bound to account for this unpleasant-looking lake, on whose banks I have so long detained you; and, more truly, that I was fain to add my pebble to the cairn upon Abercrombie's grave. It was midnight when we arrived at Atféh, the point of junction with the Nile; and a regular African storm, dark and sav age, was howling among the mud-built houses, when we disembarked there, ankle-deep in slime. A crowd of half-naked, swarthy Arabs, with flaring torches, looked as if they were Pluto's police ready to escort us to the realms of darkness, jabbering and shouting violently, in chorus with the barking of the wild dogs, the roaring of the wind, and the growling of the camels, as a hail storm of boxes and portmanteaus was showered on their backs; donkeys were braying, women shrieking, Englishmen cursing sonorously, and the lurid moon, as she hurried through the clouds, seemed a torch waved by some fury, to light up this scene of infernal confusion. My friend and I fought our way through the demon crowd, gave some of the ban-dogs reason for their howling, and losing our way in an enclosure, stumbled over one of the only two pigs in the land of Ham. These unclean animals are kept by a Frenchman, who magnanimously prefers pork to popularity, and is about to establish an hotel in the most diabolical village it has ever been my lot to enter. Marvelling whether we should ever be restored to any of our luggage, we groped our way through sleeping Arabs and kneeling camels, and found, to our pleased surprise, that our baggage, which appeared to scatter as widely and as suddenly as a burst rocket, was piled upon the deck uninjured, and our big-breeched servants were smoking on pyra mids of portmanteaus as apathetically as two sphinxes. We are now upon the sacred river-but it is too dark to see its waters gleam, and the shrieking of the steamer prevents us from hearing its waters flow. Alas!-What a paragraph! And, is it possible, ye Naïads of the Nile, that your deified stream must now be harrowed up by a greasy, grunting steamship, like the parvenues rivers of vulgar Europe? That stream -that, gushing from beyond the Emerald Mountains, scatters. gold around it in its youth-that has borne the kings of India to worship at ancient Meröe—that has murmured beneath the cradle of Moses, and foamed round the golden prow of Cleopatra's barge! Unhappy river! Thou, who, like Ixion, in thy warm youth hast loved the gorgeous clouds of Æthiopia, must thou now expiate thy raptures on the wheel? Yes, for thy old days. of glory are gone by; thy veil of mystery is rent away, and with many another sacrificial victim of the ideal to the practical, thou must, forsooth, become useful, and respectable, and convey cock. neys. They call thy steamy torturer the Lotus, too-adding insult to deep injury; for this, thy sacred flower, is begrimed with. soot, and carries fifty tons of Newcastle coal in its calyx ! We were soon fizzing merrily up the stream; and after a night spent upon the hard boards in convulsive but vain attempts to sleep, we hurried on deck to see the sun shine over this renowned river. Must I confess it? We could see nothing but high banks of dark mud, or swamps of festering slime; even the dead buffalo, that lay rotting on the river's edge, with a pretty sprinkling of goitrous-looking vultures, scarcely repaid one for leaving Europe. In some hours, however, we emerged from the Rosetta branch, on which we had hitherto been boiling our way to the great river, and henceforth the prospect began to improve. Villages sheltered by graceful groups of palm-trees, mosques, santons' tombs, green plains, and at length the desert-the most imposing sight in the world, except the sea. The day passed slowly; the view had little variety; the wild fowl had ascertained the range of an English fowling-piece; the dinner was as cold as the climate would permit; the plates had no knives and forks, and an interesting-looking lady had a drum-stick between her teeth, as I pointed out to her the scene of the battle of the Pyra mids which now rose upon our view. That sight restored us to good humor; we felt we were actually in Egypt; the bog of Allen, the canal-boat, the cockney steamer itself, failed to coun * The Delta is seldom visited by travellers, who hurry over the less interesting objects on their arrival, and are pretty well tired of Egypt on their return. Nevertheless, many ruins, and some boar-shooting, will well repay the antiquary and the sportsman in their respective vocations. |