THE MORNING LAND. THE PORT OF EGYPT. ALEXANDRIA, October 25. COMING to Alexandria fresh from Turkish territory, I seem to have passed from stagnation and decay to active life and progress. In estimating the worth of this impression, I must fairly make allowance for the condition of mind and body in which I landed at Alexandria. Almost any place in the world-say Hull itself-would have looked bright and cheerful after you had been confined for days in a sort of floating Black Hole of Calcutta. In the second place, I must fairly own that the Alexandria I have seen as yet has not much more pretension to be called an Eastern city than Boulogne-sur-Mer has to be considered a French watering-place. The Alexandria of which I write is a thriving Franco-Italian town, planted as an exotic on the shores of Africa. Still, on the other hand, Pera was often pointed out to me as a proof of Ottoman progress. Alexandria is surely as much an Egyptian as Pera is a Turkish city; and, after all, it is something to say for a country that foreign residents have succeeded in establishing comfortable quarters within it. If the "genius loci," which in the East I take to be the spirit of dirt and indolence, had been as powerful on the Nile as on the Bosphorus, Alexandria could never have been called into being. Could the sandbanks which line the coast of Belgium be baked for a score of years under such a sun as the Flamands can but faintly conceive in the hottest of the dog days, the shore between Ostend and Blankenberghe would bear a close resemblance to that of Egypt as seen from the Mediterranean. Out at sea you behold the masts and pillars of Alexandria rising out of the water long before you recognise the low strip of sand on which the city stands. The port as we entered it was, perhaps, exceptionally crowded. The Aigle was lying there at anchor, with the Imperial standard flying at her sternthe Empress having made a very quick passage, and reached Alexandria on Friday morning. There were the Italian ironclads, which have come here as an escort for Prince Amadeus. An English man-of-war is also stationed here; and the Egyptian ironclads, which |