We have spoken of Alexandria as the capital of the Jewish world in the West. Antioch was,

indeed, nearer to Palestine, and its Jewish population - including the floating part of it - as

numerous as that of Alexandria. But the wealth, the thought, and the influence of Western

Judaism centred in the modern capital of the land of the Pharaohs. In those days Greece was

the land of the past, to which the student might resort as the home of beauty and of art, the time

hallowed temple of thought and of poetry. But it was also the land of desolateness and of ruins,

where fields of corn waved over the remains of classic antiquity. The ancient Greeks had in

great measure sunk to a nation of traders, in keen competition with the Jews. Indeed, Roman

sway had levelled the ancient world, and buried its national characteristics. It was otherwise in

the far East; it was otherwise also in Egypt. Egypt was not a land to be largely inhabited, or to

be `civilised' in the then sense of the term: soil, climate, history, nature forbade it. Still, as now,

and even more than now, was it the dream-land of untold attractions to the traveller. The

ancient, mysterious Nile still rolled its healing waters out into the blue sea, where (so it was

supposed) they changed its taste within a radius farther than the eye could reach. To be gently

borne in bark or ship on its waters, to watch the strange vegetation and fauna of its banks; to

gaze beyond, where they merged into the trackless desert; to wander under the shade of its

gigantic monuments, or within the weird avenues of its colossal temples, to see the scroll of

mysterious hieroglyphics; to note the sameness of manner and of people as of old, and to watch

the unique rites of its ancient religion - this was indeed to be again in the old far-away world,

and that amidst a dreaminess bewitching the senses, and a gorgeousness dazzling the

We are still far out at sea, making for the port of Alexandria - the only safe shelter all along the

coast of Asia and Africa. Quite thirty miles out the silver sheen of the lighthouse on the island of

Pharos2 - connected by a mole with Alexandria - is burning like a star on the edge of the

horizon. Now we catch sight of the palmgroves of Pharos; presently the anchor rattles and

grates on the sand, and we are ashore. What crowd of vessels of all sizes, shapes and

nationalities; what a multitude of busy people; what a very Babel of languages; what a

commingling of old and new world civilisation; and what a variety of wares piled up, loading or

Alexandria itself was not an old Egyptian, but a comparatively modern, city; in Egypt and yet

not of Egypt. Everything was in character - the city, its inhabitants, public life, art, literature,