ecoming a European city; but its Europeans are
from Greece and the Levant! "Auri sacra fames!" is the motto of
modern Greece. Of Alexandria it should be, "Auri fames sacrissima!"
Poor Arabs! poor Turks! giving way on all sides to wretches so much
viler than yourselves, what a destiny is before you!

"What income," I asked a resident in Alexandria, "what income
should an Englishman have to live here comfortably?" "To live here
_comfortably_, you should say ten thousand a year, and then let him
cut his throat first!" Such was my friend's reply.

But God is good, and Alexandria will become a place less detestable
than at present. Fate and circumstances must Anglicize it in spite of
the huge French consulate, in spite of legions of greedy Greeks; in
spite even of sand, musquitos, bugs, and dirt, of winds from India,
and of thieves from Cyprus.

The P. and O. Company will yet be the lords of Egypt; either that
or some other company or set of men banded together to make Egypt a
highway. It is one stage on our road to the East; and the time will
soon come when of all the stages it will neither be the slowest nor
the least comfortable. The railway from Alexandria to Suez is now
all opened within ten miles; will be all opened before these pages
can be printed. This railway belongs to the viceroy of Egypt; but
his passengers are the Englishmen of India, and his paymaster is an
English company.

But, for all that, I do not recommend any of my friends to make a
long sojourn at Alexandria.

Bertram and Wilkinson did not do so, but passed on speedily to Cairo.
They went to the Pharos and to Pompey's Pillar; inspected Cleopatra's
Needle, and the newly excavated so-called Greek church; watched the
high spirits of one set of passengers going out to India--young men
free of all encumbrances, and pretty girls full of life's brightest
hopes--and watched also the morose, discontented faces of another set
returning home, burdened with babies and tawny-coloured nurses, with
silver rings in their toes--and then they went off to Cairo.

There is no romance now, gentle readers, in this journey from
Alexandria to Cairo; nor was there much when it was taken by our two
friends. Men now go by railway, and then they went by the canal boat.
It is very much like English travelling, with this exception, that
men dismount from their seats, and cross the Nile in a ferry-boat,
and that they pay five shillings for their luncheon instead of
sixpence.