Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/532

 480 NOETH-EAST AFEICA. when they are at their lowest level. In spite of the extensive operations carried out by the engineers employed by Mohammed Ali, it was found impossible to drain Lake Mariut, which the English had created in 1801 by opening three or four channels in the intervening strip of coast skirting the west side of Lake Abukir. It required sixty-six days to flood this depression, which in certain places has a present depth of seven feet. It will certainly prove an arduous undertaking to recover for agriculture a district 150,000 acres in extent, lacustrine in its lowest parts, swampy round its margin, where 150 villages are said to have stood before the irruption of the waters which converted Alexandria into an insular city. After the marine floods have been drained off it will be necessary to get rid of the excessive saline particles by drenching all the depressions of the basin with fresh water drawn from the Mahraudieh Canal. At the time of Strabo the Mareotis vineyards yielded one of the choicest wines throughout the whole of the Mediter- ranean seaboard. In this lake a port had been excavated for shipping all the produce brought down by the Nilotic canals from the interior of the country. At present the basin is no longer available for navigation, and the Mahmudieh Canal, instead of discharging into it, skirts its shores between two embankments. The " European City," stretching west and south of the Turkish quarter, occupies very nearly the exact site of the city built by Dinocrates and the Ptole- mies. Its broad straight streets form a regular and compact mass of buildings, merging towards the north-east in some modern suburbs, whose chief thoroughfare is the old Canopic highway leading direct to Rosetta. But within the limits of the modern city no traces are any longer visible of its ancient predecessor. All that still survived at the close of the last century, when the population had dwindled to scarcely more than six thousand souls, has been demolished by the builders of the new quarters that have since sprung up, since the revival of its former prosperity. A few fragments of sculptures have alone been rescued and preserved in public or private collections. The site of the Soma, the magnificent tomb of Alexander, and the position of the famous observatory, associated with the illustrious names of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy the geographer, are subjects of discussion among archajologists. The traces are vainly sought of the no less renowned museum and library, where Euclid and Erasistratus taught, which were frequented by Theocritus, Aratus, Calliraachus, and Lucian, and where had been accumulated as many as seven hundred thousand volumes, all consumed during the wars of Caesar in Egypt. Another equally famous library stood near the Temple of Serapis, beyond the limits of the present city. But it is matter of history how the fanatical Egj-ptian monks, armed with the edict issued by the Emperor Theodosius, proceeded in Alexandria and throughout the whole of Egypt to systematically destroy the temples, overthrow the statues, and commit to the flames all the paptri and treasures of art inherited from the remotest antiquity. Thus perished the library, in which had been carefully collected all the masterpieces of Hellenic science and poetry.