The Mediterranean by Grant Allen

The bleak and barren shores of the Nile Delta -- Peculiar shape of the city -- Strange and varied picture of Alexandrian street life -- The Place Mehemet Ali -- Glorious panorama from the Cairo citadel -- Pompey's Pillar -- The Battle of the Nile -- Discovery of the famous inscribed stone at Rosetta -- Port Said and the Suez Canal.

It is with a keen sense of disappointment that the traveller first sights the monotonous and dreary-looking Egyptian sea-board. The low ridges of desolate sandhills, occasionally broken by equally unattractive lagunes, form a melancholy contrast to the beautiful scenery of the North African littoral farther west, which delighted his eyes a short time before, while skirting the Algerian coast. What a change from the thickly-wooded hills gently sloping upwards from the water's edge to the lower ridges of the Atlas range, whose snow-clad peaks stand out clear in the brilliant atmosphere, the landscape diversified with cornfields and olive groves, and thickly studded with white farmhouses, looking in the distance but white specks, and glittering like diamonds under the glowing rays of the sun. Now, instead of all this warmth of color and variety of outline, one is confronted by the bleak and barren shores of the Nile Delta.