DEPARTURE FROM MALTA.

37

pomegranates, and lemons, nectarines, figs, grapes, and melons in every variety to the bargain, and I was simple enough to try the experiment; but I found to my cost, that the statement was part of the nonsense sometimes mentioned by very judicious travellers.

The sun had set as usual in Mediterranean splendour beyond description, and the evening gun had just been fired, when the Ripon weighed anchor. As Malta was reckoned the most southern land in Europe, although its soil, climate, people, and language are African or Arabic, I felt as if I was now leaving the utmost verge of my fatherland, and about to dash, like a leap in the dark, into the Levant, and to me at least, its unknown regions of the eastern world. With regret I left Malta, and its long sweep of bastions and batteries. I regretted the close of such a holiday, where I had enjoyed myself in the gayest scenes by land and by water I ever beheld. I regretted thus to bid adieu to the last and best British standard I would see floating for many a week. I regretted the leaving of some voyaging friends on shore, who required to go no farther in the meantime. And especially, I was sorry to part with the kind and pious Mr. Mayers, a converted Jew, who was going as a Missionary to Adrianople. More than all this, the feeling now sunk into my heart that I was soon to be separated from my married daughter, and my son, whom I was accompanying so far on their way to Calcutta; where Mr. Joseph Bray, my son-in-law, dear to me as either of those, was engaged in constructing the Experimental Railway. I felt anxious too, as to how I might accomplish my journey alone in Egypt, in the Holy Land, and in Asia Minor. And I was afraid that some important changes might happen at home ere I re

38

DEPARTURE FROM MALTA.

turned. But I cast my cares upon God, and made

wants

my known to Him with prayer, and earnest supplication, believing that He alone could sustain me.

The distance from Malta to Alexandria is eight hundred and fifty miles. We had a strong and favourable breeze, and we ran it in grand style. But little land is seen on the African coast, and that much the same as what was seen before when passing Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. It only remains for me therefore to bid a heartfelt adieu to the Ripon, and her amiable and very intelligent Captain Moresby. May every voyage for the future be to him, his officers, passengers, and crew, as pleasant and profitable as this has been to me and mine. Farewell for a while to the Mediterranean, on whose waves I enjoyed so much rational excitement, and real gratification! Farewell to the islands of our fatherland, and to the shores of civilization and Christianity! And welcome for a while Egypt and its Desert, its River and the Red Sea, and dearly welcome the Holy Land, its Jerusalem and Jordan; and welcome also the far distant shores of Asia Minor, the birth-place of St. Paul, the prison of St. John, and the site of the Seven Churches of old! Welcome the Plains of Troy, and Constantinople, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, and Greece, and Sicily, and Italy, and France, when homeward bound.

Now for a word or two as to money matters,-travelling economics. The fare from Southampton by Gibraltar and Malta to Alexandria is forty pounds; say three more, or five if very extravagant, for the steward, the music on board, and the incidental expenses on shore at Gibraltar and Malta; including the purchase of a few trinkets. Ten or twelve pounds may be saved by taking the route to Trieste; but the

TRAVELLING ECONOMICS.

39

sight of Gibraltar is worth all the difference. Should the traveller go by Paris and Marseilles, he saves three days, and joins the P. and O. steamer at Malta. And should he sail a few days before the 20th of the month, on the 17th I believe, he will be taken to the principal coast towns in Spain and Portugal, and carried on to Gibraltar in time to meet the steamer of the P. and O. Company. This Company is one of the most active and successful in the known world. It has given general satisfaction to the passengers; and any attempt to supplant it would decidedly turn out to be a public calamity. I merely give the good advice which I got from everybody: "GO BY THE RIPON, AND CAPTAIN MORESBY." I got also from my friend, Mr. M'Intosh of Lamanca, an introduction to Captain Ingledue, the active superintendent at Southampton. In saying this much of others, it would be unjust and ungrateful to omit mentioning how much I and my friends were indebted to the kind and business-like attention of Mr. William Bowie, East Indian and Colonial Agent, St. David's Street, Edinburgh; who made our arrangements as to our passage to Alexandria. In fact,

I cannot do my readers in Scotland a greater service, than to recommend them to apply to Mr. Bowie when bound for the lands of the morning.

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT, ALEXANDRIA, AND GRAND CAIRO.

SITTING in the Ripon on Sunday the 4th of May, after sermon and an early dinner, the cry came down from the deck that land was in sight. All ran up the gangway as fast as hands and feet could carry them,-all but the Captain and his intelligent officers, who asserted that Egypt would not be seen for two hours, and till we were within a few miles of our reaching the shore. Accordingly, it was soon discovered that whatever the sight might be, it was not land; simply because it seemed to move as if sometimes nearer, and often to a greater distance. "It is the mirage of eastern countries," said the Captain; and a very interesting exhibition it was. Before me was a level-lying like shore with hills rising up behind, and then a fine lake of water would appear, and trees growing on its banks, some of them with their heads downward. But all this was atmospheric deception. I observed to the left, and perhaps thirty miles across the Levant, a stately English ship of war; but instead of riding on the waves, her native element, she was sailing apparently high and dry up among the clouds, so that I distinctly saw her deck and different tiers of guns fifteen or twenty feet apparently above the horizon: whereas

by all the rules of seeing ships far off at sea, I should scarcely have discerned her shrouds. Whilst we were all talking and wondering at sights so strange, we were told to exercise a little patience when we would see the mirage often, and far more perfectly in the Desert.

But by and bye even the Captain gave out that the land of Egypt was in sight. In its natural features it had nothing imposing, being merely a low, long, dark line of coast, as flat as that of Holland, with sandhills and solitary palm-trees here and there; but the thought that this was Egypt made the sight very imposing after all. We were approaching Alexandria, the ancient capital, and still the key of Egypt,—the connecting link of the eastern and western world,—for eighteen hundred years the emporium of commerce, the city of the Ptolemies and of Cleopatra,—the burial-place of its founder, Alexander the Great, and the best monument modern times can produce of the extraordinary sagacity of that warlike Macedonian of old. Here too was collected in ancient times the greatest library the world ever produced, and which was burnt on the principle that if it contained only what was in the Koran it was superfluous, and if it contained anything else it was dangerous, and ought to be destroyed. Here the Septuagint translation of the Bible, one of the noblest works of man upon earth, was effected. Here too stood the ancient lighthouse, the famous tower of Pharos, said to be one of the seven wonders of the old world.

As I neared the harbour, what a panorama of gigantic monuments of grandeur and of antiquity were already before me! The double harbour is in the form of a crescent. How spacious it is, and so exactly fitted for the purpose. There, on that horn of it, stands the palace of the Pacha

D