Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/534

Rh 496 A L E - A L E eighths of a mile from Marabout Island, is about half a mile wide, and has from 25 to 27 feet of water where shallowest. Within the harbour ships may anchor close to the town in from 22 to 40 feet of water. Further im provements, in course of construction by a firm of English contractors (at a cost to the Egyptian government of little short of two millions sterling), will eventually render this one of the finest and most capacious harbours on the Medi terranean. Among these are the formation of a breakwater, extending in a south-westerly direction parallel to the shore for 2550 yards south-west of the lighthouse on Cape Eunostos ; a mole, springing from the shore, and extending in a northerly direction for 1100 yards, and having a width of about 100 feet; and the construction of nearly 3 miles of quays and wharves, for vessels of the largest size, and with railway connection. The foundation-stone of the breakwater was laid by the viceroy on 15th May 1871. The area of deep water, 30 feet and upwards, enclosed within the outer breakwater, is 1400 acres; the area of 28 feet of water, enclosed by the harbour mole, will be 177 acres. The workshops of the company are at the quarries of Mex, about 3 miles west of the town. In the harbour is a magnificent floating dock, nearly 500 feet long and 100 feet broad. The old lighthouse, on the site of the ancient Pharos, having been found insuffi cient, a new lighthouse has been erected on Ras-el-teen (1842), bearing a one-minute revolving light, visible at a distance of 20 miles. The eastern or new port, formerly the only port open to Christians, is now little used, being exposed to the northerly gales, and having very limited space for anchorage. In 1861 the total value of the exports was 2,638,822; and in 1871 this had risen to 10,251,608, of which 7,706,442 was to England. The value of the imports for the latter year was 5,753,020, of which 2,469,026 was from England. The prin cipal articles of export were cotton (6,402,756), cotton seed (1,008,278), beans (753,462), corn (573,766), sugar (379,456), gums (307,932), coffee (122,110), ivory, wool, linseed, senna, and other drugs. The principal articles of import were manufac tured goods (1,695,870), wool (307,495), oils (251,158), wines and liqueurs (239,944), raw silk, fruits. During that year there entered 1841 sailing vessels and 883 steam vessels with cargoes, and 143 sailing vessels and 54 steam vessels in ballast; and there left 1085 sailing vessels and 843 steam vessels with cargoes, and 797 sailing vessels and 62 steam vessels in ballast. The total tonnage of the vessels that entered was 1,262,602; and that left, 1,267,381. The opening of the Suez Canal will no doubt serve to withdraw a portion of the traffic from Alexandria, but the improve ments that are now being made on its harbour, and its direct rail way communication with Suez, must still give it certain advantages over the other route, while it must continue to be the great emporium for the rapidly extending trade of Egypt itself. The population of Alexandria is of a very mixed cha racter, consisting, besides the native Turks and Arabs, of Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, Italians, French, English, Germans, &c. At one time the ancient city is believed to have contained 600,000 inhabitants ; but at the beginning of this century the number probably did not exceed 6000. In 1825 this had increased to 16,000, in 1840 to 60,000, and in 1871 to 219,602, of whom 53,829 were foreigners. ALEXANDRIA, a town of Scotland, in the parish of Bonhill, Dumbartonshire, pleasantly situated on the west bank of the river Leven, about 3 miles from Dumbarton, with which it is connected by a branch railway. It is a place of comparatively recent growth, owing its origin almost entirely to the cotton print and bleaching works of the vicinity, for which there is an abundant supply of excellent water. Population (1871), 4650. ALEXANDRIA, a town and port of entry of the United States, capital of Alexandria county, Virginia, is beautifully situated on the right bank of the Potomac, 7 miles below Washington. It is neat and well-built, with a good har bour, and exports considerable quantities of grain and flour; but its foreign trade has decreased. The Chesapeake and Ohio canal begins here, and the town is connected with Washington by railway. Population (1870), 13,570. ALEXANDRIAN MS. (Codex Alexandrinus}, the name given to a Greek manuscript of the Old and New Testa ments, now in the British Museum. This celebrated MS. is known to biblical scholars as Codex A. This abbreviation of Alexandrinus was first employed by Bishop Walton to indicate the various readings of this MS., ap pended to the text of the Septuagint and of the New Testament in his great Polyglott Bible, and was adopted by Wetstein in conformity with an arrangement, since fol lowed by all editons of the Septuagint and Greek Testa ment, by which the capital letters of the alphabet are applied to designate the uncial MSS. of the Greek Bible. The MS. was presented in the year 1628 to King Charles I. through his ambassador at the Porte, Sir Thomas Rowe, by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople. There seems no good reason to doubt that Cyrillus had brought the document from Alexandria, where he had held the office of patriarch, although Wetstein is of opinion, upon what seems inadequate evidence, that he procured it from the monastery of Mount Athos, where he had resided prior to his coming to Alexandria. It was transferred in 1753 from the king s private library to that of our national museum, where the volume containing the text of the New Testament is now, or was lately, open to public inspection under a glass case. The entire MS. consists of four small folio volumes, three of which contain the text of the Old, and one that of the New Testament. The portion, how ever, containing the Old Testament is more complete than that which contains the New, the lacunce in the former occurring chiefly in the book of Psalms ; while in the New Testament the following portions are wanting viz., the whole of Matthew s Gospel up to chap. xxv. 6, from John vi. 50 to viii. 52, and from 2 Cor. iv. 13 to xii. 6. Occa sionally, also, single letters, as well as the titles of certain divisions, have been destroyed by the operations of the bookbinder. The material of which the MS. is composed is very thin vellum, the page being about 1 3 inches high by 10 broad, containing from 50 to 52 lines in each page, each line consisting of about 20 letters. The number of pages is 773, of which 640 are occupied with the text of the Old Testament, and 133 with that of the New. The characters are uncial, but larger than in the Vatican MS. B. There are no accents or breathings, no spaces between, the letters or words save at the end of a paragraph; and the contractions, which are not numerous, are only such as are found in the oldest MSS., and are indicated by a line drawn over the word which is abbreviated, as 5 for eos. The punctuation consists of a point placed at the end of a sentence, usually on a level with the top of the preceding letter. As regards the date of the MS. very opposite opinions have been held. One critic placed it as low down as the 10th century, but this supposition has been justly characterised by Tregelles as so opposed to all that is known of palaeography as not to deserve a serious refutation. From the circumstance that the MS. does not exhibit any traces of stichomdry a mode of arranging the text in lines consisting of a larger or smaller number of words, at the end of which the reader was to pause, which was applied to the Pauline epistles by Euthalius of Alexandria in the year 458, and which soon came into general use it has been inferred that the MS. is not of later date than the middle of the 5th century. Again, the presence, in the text of the Gospels of the Ammonian sections and Eusebian canons, and of the epistle of Athanasius (who died in 373) to Marcellinus, which is prefixed to the Psalms, shows that it could not be older