P. AND O. STEAMER “TANJORE”—ARRIVAL OF THE MAIL AND
PASSENGERS—ANCIENT BRINDISI—BRINDISI TO ALEXANDRIA— ALEXANDRIA
PAST AND PRESENT—ITS TRADE.
I arrived at Brindisi at 10 p.m. and was straightway driven off to the
quay, was soon on board the P. and O. steamship _Tanjore_, commanded by
Captain Briscoe, and not many minutes afterwards in my berth and fast
asleep. My slumber was disturbed at 6 a.m. by the arrival of the Indian
mail and a large number of passengers, who produced a great commotion
over-head quite incompatible with sleep. I therefore turned out, and
was soon on deck watching the busy scene. Some little time after I had
breakfasted I discovered two of the party which I was to accompany,
Messrs. F. L. James and E. L. Phillipps. We were to meet three more at
Cairo, and one at Suez, to complete the party.
No one would care to remain very long in Brindisi, as it is a most
uninteresting place notwithstanding its antiquity. I remember once, in
1877, spending a few hours there, and was then very glad when my train
left for Naples. Brindisi (ancient _Brundusium_) was, if I remember
rightly, the birth-place of Virgil. It is a sea-port and fortified town
45 miles from Taranto. In ancient times it was one of the most important
cities of Calabria. It is said by Strabo to have been governed by its
own kings at the time of the foundation of Tarentum. It was one of the
chief cities of the Sallentines, and the excellence of its port and
commanding situation in the Adriatic were among the chief inducements
of the Romans to attack them. The Romans made it a naval station, and
frequently directed their operations from it. It was the scene of
important operations in the war between Cæsar and Pompey. On the fall of
the Western Empire it declined in importance. In the eleventh century
it fell into the possession of the Normans, and became one of the chief
ports of embarkation for the Crusades. Its importance as a sea-port
was subsequently completely lost, and its harbour blocked. In 1870 the
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company put on a weekly line
of steamers between Brindisi and Alexandria for the conveyance of Her
Majesty’s eastern mails, and at the same time made it a post of transit
for goods brought from India by these steamers to be forwarded to the
north of Italy by rail. From this cause the imports of Brindisi have
suddenly risen in importance.
About 12 mid-day on the 21st November, we got under way with 110
first-class passengers on board, the weather was fine, much warmer than
in Turin and Milan, and the sea smooth, which I was thankful for; 22nd
the same; 23rd fine and sea smooth until about 4 p.m., when the sea
became rough, and I very uncomfortable, undesirous of dinner and very
desirous of being quietly settled in my berth, which I sought without
loss of time, knowing by a past bitter and sour experience that I should
ere long present a pitiable spectacle. During the night the sea became
so rough that the port-holes of the cabins had to be closed, so that in
addition to feeling excessively sick I was almost suffocated, as the
weather was very warm. On the morning of the 24th, at 10 o’clock, we
landed at the far-famed city of Alexandria.
Even in sunny Italy I had felt the weather, in the neighbourhood of
Turin, Milan, and Bologna, cold and frosty enough in the morning for an
overcoat. At Brindisi it was not so cold, but as we neared the African
coast the sky grew warmer and warmer, and tinged, so to speak, with a
reflection of the Libyan desert, a soft purple hue, rather than the deep
blue of Italy. Only those who have witnessed sunset in Africa can form
any conception of the beautiful tints reflected from the rocks and sands;
there you see the soft purple, lovely crimson, pale gold, rose and violet
colours all shading off into one another in the most charming manner. I
have never seen anywhere such glorious sunsets as in Africa.
Having but a short time to stay in Alexandria, I made good use of it in
exploring the place. Through what strange vicissitudes has this ancient
city passed. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, B.C. 332, on
the site of a village called Rakôtis, or Racoudah. Its founder wished to
make it the centre of commerce between the east and west, and we know how
fully his aspirations have been realized. It stood a little to the south
of the present town, was 15 miles in circumference, and had a population
of 300,000 free inhabitants, and at least an equal number of slaves. So
distinguished was it for its magnificence, that the Romans ranked it next
to their own capital, and when captured by Amru, general of the Caliph
Omar (A.D. 641), it contained 4,000 palaces, 4,000 baths, 400 theatres
or places of amusement, 12,000 shops for the sale of vegetables, and
40,000 tributary Jews. But we are getting on a little too fast. As I
said before, it was founded B.C. 332, by Alexander the Great, who is
said to have traced the plan of the new city himself, and his architect,
Dinarchus or Dinocrates (the builder of the temple of Diana at Ephesus)
directed its execution. The city was regularly built, and traversed by
two principal streets, each 100 feet wide, and one of them four miles
long. Campbell says: “He designed the shape of the whole after that of a
Macedonian cloak, and his soldiers strewed meal to mark the line where
its walls were to rise. These, when finished, enclosed a compass of 80
furlongs filled with comfortable abodes, and interspersed with palaces,
temples, and obelisks of marble porphyry, that fatigued the eye with
admiration. The main streets crossed each other at right angles, from
wall to wall, with beautiful breadth, and to the length (if it may be
credited) of nearly nine miles. At their extremities the gates looked out
on the gilded barges of the Nile, of fleets at sea under full sail, on a
harbour that sheltered navies, and on a lighthouse that was the mariner’s
star and the wonder of the world.”
One-fourth of the area upon which it was built was covered with temples,
palaces, and public buildings. Conspicuous upon its little isle was the
famous lighthouse of Pharos, the islet being connected with the city by
a mole. Under the Cæsars, Alexandria attained extraordinary prosperity;
large merchant fleets carried on a reciprocal commerce with India and
Ethiopia, and its industrial population were chiefly employed in the
weaving of linen, and the manufacture of glass and papyrus.
The Alexandrians were turbulent, and several times revolted under the
Ptolemies and the Romans. Cæsar was obliged, in B.C. 47, to put down
a terrible insurrection in this city. Under the emperors, Alexandria
suffered a series of massacres, which gradually depopulated it. In 611,
Chosroës, King of Persia, seized it, but his son restored it to the
emperors. In 641, Amru—whom I spoke of just now—took it by storm, after
a siege of 14 months, and a loss of 23,000 men. The Turks captured it in
868 and 1517.
So from time to time Alexandria has been the scene of the greatest
splendour, adorned by marble palaces, temples, and obelisks, also of
great squalor, and covered with mud huts; passing under the sway of
Persian, Greek, Roman, and Turk, and at the time I am writing this
(March, 1884) I think I may safely say under the _sway_ of Great Britain,
although not belonging to this country.
In the early part of this century, under the vigorous, but most
unscrupulous, rule of Mehemet Ali (who was appointed Pasha of Alexandria,
and afterwards of all Egypt), Alexandria became again a thriving and
important place.
It is said that in the character of the population, at least, there
still remains a strong resemblance to the ancient city of the
Ptolemies. Sullen-looking Copts replace the exclusive old Egyptians,
their reputed ancestors. Greeks and Jews, too, swarm as before, both
possibly changed a little for the worse. The mass of Levantines and
(with, of course, honourable exceptions) Franks, who make up the sum of
the population, may, I think, without any exaggeration, be designated
as the off-scourings of their respective countries. The streets swarm
with Turks in many-coloured robes, half-naked, brown-skinned Arabs,
glossy negroes in loose white dresses and vermilion turbans, sordid,
shabby-looking Israelites in greasy black, smart, jaunty, rakish Greeks,
heavy-browed Armenians, unkempt, unmasked Maltese ragamuffins, Albanians
and Europeans of every shade of respectability, from lordly consuls down
to refugee quacks, swindlers, and criminals, who here get whitewashed and
established anew. Here you see a Frank lady in the last Parisian bonnet,
there Egyptian women enveloped to the eyes in shapeless black wrappers,
while dirty Christian monks, sallow Moslem dervishes, sore-eyed beggars,
and naked children covered with flies, present a shifting and everlasting
kaleidoscope of the most undignified phases of Eastern and Western
existence.
The great square, or Grande Place, is the chief place of business and
resort. It is a quarter of a mile long, and 150 feet wide, paved on each
side, with a railed garden in the centre, planted with lime-trees, and
having a fountain at each end. Here are the principal shops and hotels,
the English consulate and church, banks, offices of companies, &c. The
buildings are all in the Italian style, spacious and handsome, or,
rather, were when I visited it. Most of the ancient landmarks are fast
disappearing. The site of Cleopatra’s Palace is now occupied by a railway
station for the line to Ramleh, seven miles distant, overlooking the
bay of Abaukir, the scene of Nelson’s victory over the French fleet in
1798. Of course, I could not be in Alexandria without paying a visit to
Pompey’s pillar, or, more properly, Diocletian’s pillar. It is a grand
column, and occupies an eminence 1,800 feet to the south of the present
walls; its total height is 98 feet 9 inches. It is a single block of red
granite on the mounds overlooking the lake Mareotis and the modern city.
An account of the ancient and modern history of Alexandria would fill a
volume of the most stirring interest. I, however, will be content with
giving to my readers a very small portion of a volume on Alexandria, as I
shall have a good deal yet to say on Cairo and neighbourhood, and still
more to say on the Soudan.
It was to Alexandria that science, fostered by the munificence of the
Ptolemies, retired from her ancient seat at Heliopolis. “The sages of the
Museum, who lodged in that part of the palace of the Lagides, might there
be said to live as the priests of the Muses, taking the word in its wide
sense, as the patronesses of knowledge. They had gardens, and alleys,
and galleries where they walked and conversed, a common hall where they
made their repasts, and public rooms where they gave instruction to the
youth who crowded from all parts of the world to hear their lectures.”
This museum, a unique establishment in literary history, was founded
by Ptolemy Soter, King of Egypt, who died B.C. 283, and was greatly
enlarged by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus and the succeeding Ptolemies.
In connection with the museum was the Alexandrian Library, the most
famous and the largest collections of books in the world, and the glory
of Alexandria. Demetrius Phalereus, after his banishment from Athens, is
said to have been its first superintendent, when the number of volumes,
or rolls, amounted to 50,000.
If the other Ptolemies were as unscrupulous in obtaining books as
Energetes is said to have been, it is no wonder that the library
increased in magnitude or value. We are told that he refused to sell
corn to the Athenians during a famine unless he received in pledge the
original manuscripts of Aschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These were
carefully copied, and the copies returned to the owners, while the
King retained the originals. Various accounts are given of the number
of books contained in the library at its most flourishing period, when
Zenodotus, Callimachus, the poet Eratosthenes, of Cyrene, and Appolinius
Rhodius were its librarians. Seneca states the number at 400,000; Aulus
Gellius makes it 700,000. Some reconcile the discrepancy by making the
statements refer to different periods, while others believe that the
larger figure includes more than one collection. That there were more
than one collection is known. The original, or Alexandrian library _par
excellence_, was situated in the _Brucheion_, a quarter of the city
in which the royal palace stood; and besides this there was a large
collection in the Serapeion, or temple of Jupiter Serapis, but when or by
whom this was founded we do not know. The former was accidentally burned
during the Julius Cæsar’s siege of the city, but was replaced by the
library of Pergamus, which was sent by Antony as a present to Cleopatra.
The Serapeion library, which probably included the Pergamean collection,
existed to the time of the Emperor Theodosius the Great. At the general
destruction of the heathen temples, which took place under this emperor,
the splendid temple of Jupiter Serapis was set upon and gutted (A.D. 391)
by a fanatical crowd of Christians at the instigation of the Archbishop
Theophilus, when its literary treasures were destroyed or scattered. The
historian Orosius relates that in the beginning of the fifth century only
the empty shelves were to be seen.
A valuable collection was again accumulated in Alexandria, but was doomed
to suffer the same fate, being burned by the Arabs when they captured
the city under the Caliph Omar in 641. Amru, the captain of the Caliph’s
army, would have been willing to spare the library, but the fanatical
Omar disposed of the matter in the famous words:—“If these writings of
the Greeks agree with the Koran, there could be no need of them; if
they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed;” and they
were accordingly used for heating the 4,000 baths in the city. Just
before the time of Mehemet Ali, Alexandria was a miserable place of a few
thousand inhabitants, cut off from the valley of the Nile by the ruin of
the ancient canal. Under his rule it greatly revived in political and
commercial importance, and the re-opening of its canal has restored to
its harbour all the trade of Egypt.
The principal articles of export are cotton, beans, peas, rice, wheat,
barley, gums, flax, hides, lentils, linseed, mother-of-pearl, sesamum,
senna, ostrich feathers, &c.
Those who are not given to pedestrian exercise can easily avail
themselves of a cab or donkey, and they will find the streets, which are
spacious and handsome, very pleasant to traverse, as they are all well
paved in the city; but the dust outside the walls covers the ground from
four to six inches deep, and in combination with the intense glare of the
sun, and the wretched hovels of the natives, produces the ophthalmia so
common, especially among the Arabs. Owing to the want of proper drainage,
what would otherwise be a salubrious site is subject to malarious disease
and the plague.
I have spoken of the Alexandrian library; quite as much may be said of
the Alexandrian school; combined, they may be justly considered the first
academy of arts and sciences.
The grammarians and poets are the most important among the scholars
of Alexandria. These grammarians were philologists and literati, who
explained things as well as words, and may be considered a sort of
encyclopedists. Such were Zenodotus the Ephesian, who established
the first grammar school in Alexandria; Eratosthenes, of Cyrene;
Aristophanes, of Byzantium; Aristarchus, of Samothrace; Crates, of
Mallus; Dionysius the Thracian; Appolonius the sophist; and Zoilus. To
the poets belong Appolonius the Rhodian, Lycophron, Aratus, Nicander,
Emphorion, Callimachus, Theocritus, Philetas, Phanocles, Timon the
Philasian, Scymnus, Dionysius, and seven tragic poets, who were called
_Alexandrian Pleiads_.
The most violent religious controversies disturbed the Alexandrian church
until the orthodox tenets were established in it by Athanasius, in the
controversy with the Arians.
Among the scholars are to be found great mathematicians, as Euclid, the
father of scientific geometry, and whose work, I distinctly recollect,
was a great bore to me in my younger days; Appolonius, of Perga, in
Pamphylia, whose work on conic sections still exists; Nichomachus, the
first scientific arithmetician; astronomers, who employed the Egyptian
hieroglyphics for marking the northern hemisphere, and fixed the images
and names (still in use) of the Constellations, who left astronomical
writings (_e.g._, the _Phœnomena_ of Aratus, a didactic poem; the
_Spherica_ of Menelaus; the anatomical works of Eratosthenes, and
especially the _Magna Syntaxis_ of the geographer Ptolemy), and made
improvements in the theory of the calendar, which were afterwards adopted
into the Julian calendar; natural philosophers, anatomists, as Herophilus
and Erasistratus; physicians and surgeons, as Demosthenes Philalethes,
who wrote the first work on diseases of the eye; Zopyrus and Cratenas,
who improved the art of pharmacy and invented antidotes; instructors
in the art of medicine, to whom Asclepiades, Loranus, and Galen owed
their education; medical theorists and empirics, of the sect founded by
Philinus. All these belonged to the numerous association of scholars
continuing under the Roman dominion and favoured by the Roman emperors,
which rendered Alexandria one of the most renowned and influential seats
of science in antiquity. With this passing glance at Alexandria, we will
journey on to Cairo.