Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/527

 TEBBANEH— SA!i8— FUAH. 495 lying in a lugoon whose winding waters discharge therasclvcs into Lake Burlo« ; Tanfah, a city of merchants ; Mahallet-el-Kebir, or the "Grout City," which formerly enjoyed a monopoly of the Egyptian silk industry, and whoso scattered quarters are surrounded by cotton plantations. Of all the towns of the delta, Tantah, capital of the province of Garbieh, occupies the most central position. It stands exactly midway between Cairo and Alexandria, as well as between the Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile. Here converge and intersect each other canals, roads, and highways. To these causes, combined with the great reputation enjoyed by the mosque of Seid-el-Radawi, the greatest saint of the Egyptian Mussulman calendar, is to be attributed the excep- tional im})ortance enjoyed by the annual fairs held at Tantah. In the eyes of the pilgrims the pool which receives the sweepings of the mosque possesses healing properties rivalling those of the Damietta column itself. In population, also, Tantah competes with Damietta for the third place amongst the cities of Egjrpt. Here is also the famous El-Ahmadi School, which, next to that of El-Azhar at Cairo, holds the first nink amongst all the Arab schools in the country. In the year 1877 it numbered as many as 4,885 scholars. Terraneh, Sais, Fuah. On the Rosetta branch, which is skirted for half its course by a line of railway, itself flanked by the first swellings of the Libyan range, the only important town is that from which this channel takes its name. Terraneh, perhaps the ancient Terenuthis, is the chief dep<)t for the natron collected in the saline lake of the Wady- Natrun, near the convent of Saint Macorius. Tnrie/i, which lies farther down, at the outlet of the narrow belt of cultivated lands here stretching between the hills and the left bank of the Nile, has also succeeded to an ancient city whose ruins are visible on the neighbouring Tell-el-Odameh, or " Bone Mound." Kn/r-el-Zaiatf where the railway between Cairo and Alexandria crosses the river on a long bridge of twelve arches, has no old Eg}'ptian remains in its immediate neighbourhood. But about twelve miles farther down, on the same east side of the Rosetta branch, are situated the extensive ruins of Sd, the Sois of the Greeks, and now called Sa-el-IIayar by the fellahin. Sa, which was the capital of Egj-pt at the time of the Persian invasion under Cambyses, is perhaps one of those places which ought to bo held in the greatest veneration by all mankind ; for, according to the legend, from this city set out the colonists who founded Athens, bringing with them the image of the goddess Ncith, who became the Athena of the Greeks and the Minerva of the Romans. From Sa also came the legendary DanaidsD, who first brought under cultivation the thankless soil of Argos, so different from their native plains enriched by the inundations of the Nile. Of the old sanctuaries of Sais little remains except heaps of refuse, and its tombs now yield to the treasure-seeker but few objects of interest. But its enclosure still excites surprise at its enormous proportions. It is no less than