able occupations of agriculture than now engage it. But the influence of the barrage on the internal commerce of Egypt, and the facilities it will suggest for extending the foreign trade of the country, will soon be discovered to be even more important than the benefits it will confer on agriculture. Though less apparent to Mohammed Ali and the inhabitants of Egypt, they are equally evident and far more interesting to the world at large.

The level of the Nile being raised by the barrage, it will be generally retained at a height of about eighteen feet above the lowest level to which the waters fall at present. This will make the level of the river above the barrage, at least thirty-four feet higher than the level of the sea at Alexandria, and about nine feet higher than the level of the Red Sea at low water. The completion of the barrage would therefore immediately suggest the necessity of turning off some of the surplus water at the height of the inundation into the Wady Tomlat, along the traces of the canal which about one thousand years ago, carried a branch of the Nile to the neighbourhood of Suez, Of this fact we have the testimony of a British monk, who sailed from Babylon (old Cairo) to the Red Sea on the waters of the Nile, about the year A.D. 765, just before it was finally closed by the Caliph Al Mansour.*

* Quanquam in libris alicujus auctoris fluminis Nili partem in Rubrum mare exire nequaquam legimus, tamen affirmans Fidelis frater meo magistro Suibneo narravit coram me, quod, adorationis

Two great canals, or rather new branches of the Nile, one leading directly to Alexandria, and the other to Suez, are necessary corollaries of the barrage. These two new canals will, undoubtedly, ultimately become the leading mouths of the Nile, and supplant the branches of Rosetta and Damietta, just as the branches of Rosetta and Damietta, which were themselves originally artificial canals, supplanted the seven ancient mouths of the Nile in size and utility. The Nile himself first instilled into mankind the utilitarian spirit, and from the most ancient times he has submitted to its trammels with becoming docility.

After all, in spite of our wonderful discoveries and boundless self-complacency, we have still something to learn concerning the mechanical and useful arts from ancient Egypt. No modern work conveys so high an idea of mechanical skill and gigantic power as the relics of the stupendous granite statue of Rameses 2nd in the Memnonium of Thebes ;" there is none which equals the Pyramids in size, nor

causa, in urbe Hierusalem clerici et laïci ab Hibernia usque ad Nilum velificaverunt. Deinceps, intrantes in naves in Niló flumine, usque ad introitum Rubri maris navigaverunt. Dicuili liber de Mensura orbis terræ, c. vi. 3.

Recherches, geographiques et critiques, sur le livre de Mensura, etc., composé en Irelande au commencement du neuvieme siècle, par Dicuil. Par A. Letronne. Paris, 1814, p. 24.

* This statue, consisting of a single block of syenitic granite, weighed about 887 tons 5 hundredweight. The distance from the quarries at Syene to Thebes is 124 miles.

any which approaches the Lake Moëris in extent and utility.

We may feel assured that at no very distant period we shall see steamers announced to leave Alexandria regularly once a week along the new branches of the Nile direct for Suez. Even at present the water of the Nile would flow to within. thirty-six miles of the Red Sea, if it had not been prevented from entering the valley of Abousuer by the Pasha of Egypt, when he dug the new canal for the irrigation of the Wadi Tomlat. At the end of the month of February, the author saw a strong stream flowing to the eastward beyond Ras-elWadi.

Present State of the Transit of Mails, Passengers, and Goods through Egypt.

The transit through Egypt is carried on in a very ill-organised manner, and travellers are compelled to pay enormous prices in order to support an ill-managed business. It is, however, capable of immediate improvement. Last year the Transit Company was an English society, which possessed a monopoly, and charged Indian passengers 157, each for their conveyance from Alexandria to Cairo, exclusive of hotel expenses. Mohammed Ali, the most rapacious merchant in the habitable world, has now taken the business into his own hands. He has maintained the monopoly, but reduced the charges. So much for the liberality of

English mercantile principles, beyond the direct control of a prospective rival establishment.

A very few details concerning the manner in which this monopoly has been conducted, will be sufficient to show the necessity of the British Government paying some slight attention to the proceedings both of its officials and its subjects abroad. For whether in the hands of an English company, or as a branch of the Egyptian administration, the manner of conducting the transit business will remain essentially the same as long as it remains a monopoly. It ought not to escape the attention of our Government too, that it is quite as much the duty of Ministers to protect individual Englishmen against the rapacity and extortion of powerful societies of their own countrymen by direct interference, as against monopolies of Mohammed Ali, or Sultan Abdul Meschid, by diplomatic notes or commercial treaties.

The author has been a suffering witness of the disorderly manner in which the Indian passengers are conveyed from Alexandria to Cairo. On that occasion he witnessed the very worst steam-boat arrangements which have ever fallen under his notice, with the exception of those on the Rhone between Lyons and Avignon. In the boats on the Nile there is an attempt made to preserve some order in the management of the vessel, and to prevent the Indian passengers getting at the filtered water, when there happens to be a Turkish grandee

and a few Alexandrian merchants on board; but in the steamers on the Rhone it is what the Italians very scientifically term "una vera republica."

The distance from Alexandria to Cairo, is 170 miles, and the passage usually occupies thirty-two hours. The fare paid was 37. 10s. or 5d. a mile. Now the rate of fare on board the French and Austrian steamers in the Levant, is only a franc for a marine league, which is little more than 31d. a mile. The French steamers furnish you with a good room, a bed, clean linen, and a toilet table. The Egyptian Transit Company allows its passengers, if female, a common hall below stairs, and if male, a plank on the deck. We were transferred from the canal boats at Atfeh to the larger steamers on the Nile in the dark. A Maltese speaking English, with a large lantern, declared that we should lose our passage, if we did not jump on board a steamer indicated, where we should find our baggage conveyed by magic. Scarcely had we placed our foot on board when away we went. baggage followed some time after, but having been placed with the goods in the better boat, we found that it had arrived at Cairo before us. The comfort and the health of the passengers is sacrificed in this shameful way to gain some hours for transferring the goods. The canopy of heaven, on a damp night, was our only covering, our neighbours' sides our only pillows, our remedy against ophthalmia, a morning wash in a ship's bucket. A bad

Our