century this new capital of Egypt leaped to the forefront
among the exchanges of the world's commerce, while everything that art
could do was lavished on its embellishment.

Alexandria lay upon a projecting tongue of land so situated that the
whole trade of the Mediterranean centered there. Down the Nile there
floated to its gates the barbaric wealth of Africa. To it came the
treasures of the East, brought from afar by caravans--silks from China,
spices and pearls from India, and enormous masses of gold and silver
from lands scarcely known. In its harbor were the vessels of every
country, from Asia in the East to Spain and Gaul and even Britain in
the West.

When Cleopatra, a young girl of seventeen, succeeded to the throne of
Egypt the population of Alexandria amounted to a million souls. The
customs duties collected at the port would, in terms of modern money,
amount each year to more than thirty million dollars, even though the
imposts were not heavy. The people, who may be described as Greek at
the top and Oriental at the bottom, were boisterous and
pleasure-loving, devoted to splendid spectacles, with horse-racing,
gambling, and dissipation; yet at the same time they were an artistic
people, loving music passionately, and by no means idle, since one part
of the city was devoted to large and prosperous manufactories of linen,
paper, glass, and muslin.

To the outward eye Alexandria was extremely beautiful. Through its
entire length ran two great boulevards, shaded and diversified by
mighty trees and parterres of multicolored flowers, amid which
fountains plashed and costly marbles gleamed. One-fifth of the whole
city was known as the Royal Residence. In it were the palaces of the
reigning family, the great museum, and the famous library which the
Arabs later burned. There were parks and gardens brilliant with
tropical foliage and adorned with the masterpieces of Grecian
sculpture, while sphinxes and obelisks gave a suggestion of Oriental
strangeness. As one looked seaward his eye beheld over the blue water
the snow-white rocks of the sheltering island, Pharos, on which was
reared a lighthouse four hundred feet in height and justly numbered
among the seven wonders of the world. Altogether, Alexandria was a city
of wealth, of beauty, of stirring life, of excitement, and of pleasure.
Ferrero has aptly likened it to Paris--not so much the Paris of to-day
as the Paris of forty years ago, when the Second Empire flouris