And on the right side or south-south-western inside claw, we read ANNO VIII AVGVSTI CAESARIS BARBARVS PRAEF AEGYPTI POSVIT ARCHI TECTAN TE For this information, and for the accompanying sketches, I have to thank Messrs. W. E. Hayns and Willoughby Faulkner. They add that all the feet of the remaining crab have been mutilated, and that the place of at least two of these supports has been supplied by rubbish of rough stone, set in mud and bad lime. As the obelisk is raised some eight inches clear of the socle, the whole weight rests upon the masonry and the metal support; hence the needle has a "cant" seawards, or to the north and west; the stone props are cracked, and the venerable relic will presently fall unless steps are taken to arrest and repair damages. Let us hope that it will not share the fate of the old Orotava Dragon-tree, in Teneriffe, whose proprietor, worried by perpetual and conflicting advice, did nothing to save it. In South European inscriptions these enlarged T's would represent a date. Mr. Hayns holds them to result from mere clumsiness on the part of the workman. + Neither my correspondents nor Mr. W. Dixon make it clear whether two crabs or only one crab remain. According to Mr. Hayns, the wall adjacent to the obelisk yielded, when destroyed, a cippus or section of a column containing a fragmentary Latin inscription in a frame. It seems also to date om the days of Augustus Cæsar, and thus confirms the writing on the crab. We read upon the top EIA Obelisk followed by some undecipherable letters, and at the base AVG LIB. One of the first wants which the traveller remarks at Alexandria and Cairo are Humane Societies. The people generally are neither savage nor brutal, as are certain of their northern neighbours, but they are thoughtlessly cruel, like children, who inflict pain without knowing it. The hackcarriages and cattle are here notably superior to those of Cairo; and wherever Europeans are numerous, even the Hammár (donkey-boy) has learned that the Infidel generally prefers an ass with the least possible amount of "raw," and a four-legged C to a triped carriage-horse; yet, even here, we often see needless thrusts and blows, which disgust the least humane; and the use of the whip, especially when the driver appears in the semi-bestial negro shape, is universally excessive. Many amateurs, especially ladies, have proposed to check the abuse by legal means. His Highness has expressed approval of the undertaking, and his officials are universally in favour of establishing civilised societies. Yet nothing has been done. The steps evidently required are to send round a subscription list; to apply for a delegate from London-a professional man of experience, who would reside in Egypt for a time; and to obtain orders that the police should arrest, and summarily visit with corporal punishment, all scandalous cases of cruelty to animals, brought to their notice by residents who are known to be of good repute. After a short course of such training, we should see evident improvement amongst a people who are docile as they are intelligent. The Europeans, and especially the English, of Alexandria are fortunate in having their own station "Ramleh" (the Sand-heap). This was old Juliopolis and Nicopolis, the Roman Camp, and it is now separated only by four short miles of unoccupied ground from the city, which formerly extended some four leagues eastward to the Cape Zephyrion of Abú Kír (Aboukir), and which, we can readily believe, lodged three millions of souls. A railway, working between early morning and midnight, runs parallel with the Roman chariot-road, passing over a heap of ruins which now serve as stone quarries; and winding through pottery mounds, montes testacei, the Kerámia of the Greeks. Few finds have been made, probably because there has been no regular search; and what is found is not preserved. For instance, the little Doric Heröon, an ædicula-in-antis upon the Ramleh shore, cut out of the sandstone rock and cemented with the hardest shell-mortar, has been reduced from eleven to three columns; whilst the funerary Christian chapel of the fourth century, sunk in the southern flank of the Karmús-plateau, at the other side of Alexandria, has been hopelessly despoiled.* The French occupied the highest levels of the Ramleh Railroad, "on the memorable first of March, 1801," and made the fatal mistake of abandoning a position of command, strengthened with batteries, whilst the English were disadvantageously posted upon "Cæsar's Camp," between Casa Grace and the Station. The battle was fought upon the strip of loose sand parting the sea and the pretty lakelet El * Editors of new guide-books-especially the coming “English Bädecker"-will consult the two admirable papers by Dr. Néroutsos-Bey, in the Bulletin de l'Institut Egyptien, 1874-5, No. 13, Alexandrie, Mourés, 1875. In p. 20 there is a ground-plan of the funerary chapel. |