EXTRACTS. Travels into various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D. Part II. Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land Section Second, 4to. pp. about 850. Price 41. 14s. 6d. Cadell and Davis. 1814, Section Third. To which is added a supplement, respecting the Author's journey from Constantinople to Vienna; containing his Account of the gold mines of Transylvania and Hungary, 4to. pp. 750 Price 41. 14s. 6d. 1816. [The two volumes contain (including maps and charts) 56 engravings of the full size, and 48 vignettes.] [From the Eclectic Review.] The first volume of Dr. Clarke's splendid performance traced him across the Russian empire, from north to south, and left him at the metropolis of the Mahomedans. Thence the narration in the second volume, carried him to the Troad, to Rhodes, to Egypt, to Cyprus, and to the Holy Land, and left him at Acre on his return towards Egypt, in which region of wonders we find him occupied through nearly half the third volume, which is the largest of the series. It commences with a prefatory miscellany of notices and observations, respecting the rules of selection which he has observed, and the improvements that have been made during the progress of the work; respecting the disputed site of Heliopolis; and also the reluctance in certain quarters, to admit the evidence, still regarded by him as quite decisive, that the splendid and interesting antiquity brought from Alexandria, and now in the British Museum, is actually what Egyptian tradition has represented it to be the tomb, which once contained the body of Alexander the great. The preface is followed by Remarks,' by Mr Walpole, on the Libraries of Greece,' and a catalogue of the books in the monastery of Patmos. Dr. Clarke and his companion quitted Acre for the last time; reached Aboukir about the time of the surrender of Cairo by the French; and passing several days on board one of the ships appointed to convey the prisoners to France, witnessed, and has vividly described, the wretched, squalid, motley appearance, and the mirthful, farcical, and profligate character, of the wrecks of the French army. The author and his associates entered Egypt by the Rosetta mouth o the Nile, in one of the boats called Djerms, with imminent hazard of life from the dreadful surf upon the bar. He says there is hardly a more formidable surf any where known than that at the entrance of the Nile into the Mediterranean, and that it was even asserted that the loss of men at the mouth of the Nile, including those both of the army and navy, who were here sacrificed, was greater than the total of our loss in all the engagements that took place with the French troops in Egypt.' The Arab boatmen defied the peril, and desperately drove through the furious turbulence, in which they saw at the very moment, another djerm swamped and wrecked just at their side. Among a variety of curious notices of Rosetta, we have a description of "A most singular exhibition of the Serpent-Eaters, or Psylli, as mentioned by Herodotus, and by many ancient authors. A tumultuous throng, passing beneath the windows of our house, attracted our attention towards the quay: here we saw a concourse of people following men apparently frantic, who, with every appearance of convulsive agony, were brandishing live serpents, and then tearing them with their teeth; snatching them from each other's mouths, with loud cries and distorted features, and afterwards falling into the arms of the spectators, as if swooning; the women all the while rending the air with their lamentations. Pliny often mentions these jugglers; and as their tricks have been noticed by other travellers, it is only now necessary to attest the existence of this extraordinary remnant of a very ancient custom,' With some difficulty a djerm was hired, and provisions were purchased, for a voyage up the Nile to Cairo. It was in August, and therefore at the time of the inundation, a season which affords a singular advantage for the navigation of the river; for at that time there regularly prevails a powerful wind from the north and north-west; so that by means of the immense sail peculiar to the large boats of the Nile, the voyager can advance with great rapidity against the utmost force of the current, to Cairo, or any part of Upper Egypt; and then for returning, with even greater rapidity, it is only necessary to take down mast and sails, and leave the vessel to be carried against the wind by the powerful current of the river. It is thus possible to perform the whole voyage, from Rosetta to Bulâc, the quay of Cairo, and back again, with certainty, in about seventy hours; a distance equal to four hundred miles. In this passage towards Cairo the author was struck with the populous appearance of the banks of the river, the villages being in almost uninterrupted succession. He also dwells with admiration on the prodigious fertility of the soil of the Delta, of which the best watered portions produce three crops a year, the first of clover, the second of corn, the third of rice; and then there are 'never-ending plantations of melons and of all kinds of garden vegetables; so that, from the abundance of its produce, Egypt may be deemed the richest country in the world.' But never was superlative applause more completely neutralized by an account of the other parts of the character, than in this instance. 'But to strangers, and particularly to inhabitants of northern countries, where wholesome air and cleanliness are among the necessaries of life, Egypt is the most detestable region upon earth. Upon the retiring of the Nile, the country is one vast swamp. An atmosphere impregnated with every putrid and offensive exhalation, stagnates, like the filthy pool over which it broods. Then the plague regularly begins, nor ceases until the waters return again. General Le Grange assured us that the ravages in the French army, caused by the plague during the mouth of April, at one time amounted to a hundred men in a single day. Throughout the spring, intermitting fevers universally prevail! About the beginning of May certain winds cover even the sands of the desert with the most disgusting vermin. Lice and scorpions abound in all the sandy desert near Alexandria. The latest descendants of Pharaoh are not yet delivered from the evils which fell upon the land when it was smitten by the hand of Moses and Aaron: the "plague of frogs," the "plague of lice," the "plague of flies, the murrain, boils, and blains," prevail, so that the whole country is "corrupted," and "THE DUST OF THE EARTH BECOMES LICE, UPON MAN AND UPON BEAST, THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND OF EGYPT." This application of the words of scripture, affords a literal exposition of existing facts, such a one as the statistics of the country do now warrant. Sir Sidney Smith informed the author, that one night, preferring a bed upon the sand of the desert to a night's lodging in the village of Etko, as thinking to be cure from vermin, he found himself entirely covered with them.' Drinking the water of the Nile during the period of its overflow, is apt to produce a disorder called" prickly heat," which often terminates in those dreadful wounds alluded to in scripture by the word "boils, and blains." "Such an effect will not be wondered at after hearing what are the ingredients of the potion. The torrent is every where dark with mud;' a ladle or bucket dipped into it will bring up a quantity of animalculæ; tadpoles and young frogs are so numerous that, rapid as the current flows, there is no part of the Nile where the water does not contain them.' Putting however, the drinking out of the question, and regarding the river as an element to float and journey upon, Dr. C. says it affords a most delightful contrast to the heat, the sand, the dirt, and the vermin, which co-operate to plague almost out of his life the traveller by land. At the time the djerm reached Bulâc, the travellers were roused early in the morning from their cabin, with the intelligence that the pyramids were in sight, and never will the impression made by their appearance be obliterated. By reflecting the sun's rays they appeared as white as snow, and of such surprising magnitude, that nothing we had previously conceived in our imagination, had prepared us for the spectacle we beheld. The sight instantly convinced us that no power of description, no delineation can convey ideas adequate to the effect produced in viewing these stupendous monuments. The formality of their structure is lost in their prodigious magnitude: the mind elevated by wonder, feels at once the force of an axiom which, however disputed, experience confirms-that in vastness, whatsoever be its nature, there dwells sublimity. Another proof of their indescribable power is, that no one ever approached them under other emotions than those of terror; which is another principal source of the sublime. In certain instances of irritable feeling, this impression of awe and fear has been so great as to cause pain rather than pleasure. Hence, perhaps, have originated descriptions of the pyramids which represent them as deformed and gloomy masses, without taste or beauty. Persons who have derived no satisfaction from the contemplation of them, may not have been conscious that the uneasiness they experienced was a result of their own sensibility. Others have acknowledged ideas widely different, excited by every wonderful circumstance of character and situation;—ideas of duration, almost endless; of power, inconceivable; of majesty, supreme; of solitude, most awful; of grandeur, of desolation, and repose.' At Cairo, and in its most interesting vicinity, about three weeks were spent by our author, in the incessant activity and research by which he is always so meritoriously distinguished. By means of a canal which intersects the city, the Englishmen visited the different quarters of it, and were somewhat the less sensible, from the prevalence of water, of its being the dirtiest metropolis in the world.' There was, however, great superabundance of diseases and plagues, the ophthalmia, dysentery, and" boils of the Nile," with all manner of vermin that crawls or flies. • Such a plague of flies covered all things with their swarms, that it was impossi ble to eat without hiring persons to stand by every table with feathers or flappers, to drive them away.' Lizards were crawling about in every apartment equally in the houses of rich and poor, and could fasten themselves on pendent mirrors and the glass of the windows. * There was at the time, encamped on the isle of Rhouda, under the command of general Baird, a strong detachment from the *This curious phenomenon is accounted for by sir Everard Home, in a paper laid before the Royal Society of London, Feb. 22, 1816. Ed. An. Mag. It is well known, (says he) that the house-fly is capable of walking upon the ceiling of rooms, in which situation its body is not supported on the legs; but the principle upon which it does so has not been explained, because the animal is too small for the feet to be anatomically inves tigated. Sir Everard was not aware that any animal, of a much larger size, was endowed with the same power, till sig Joseph Banks told him that the Lacerta Gecka, a native of the island of Java, was in the habit of coming out of an evening, from the roofs of the houses, and walking down the smooth, hard, polished chunam walls, in search of flies that settle upon them, and then running up again. Sir Joseph, while at Batavia, was in the habit of catching this animal, by standing close to the wall, with a long flattened pole, which, being male suddenly to scrape its surface, knocked it down. He procured sir Everard a specimen of a very large size, weighing five ounces three quarters, avoirdupois weight, which enabled him to ascertain the peculiar mechanism by which the feet of this animal can keep their hold of a smooth, hard, perpendicular wall, and carry up so large a weight as that of its own body. Sir Everard particularly described the anatomy of the foot of this lizard, which is so constructed as to enable it to produce a number of small concavities, which act like so many capping glasses, and atmospheric pressure retains him in his position. The author, having ascertained the principle on which an animal of so large a size as this, is enabled to support itself, in progressive motion, against gravity, felt himself more competent to examine into the mechanism by which the common fly supports itself, with so much facility, in still more disadvantageous situations. An account was then given of the structure of the fly's foot, which showed that it possessed concave surfaces, capable of acting in the same manner as those of the Lacerta Gecko: and that, therefore, its progressive motion against gravity was effected by the same means. Journal of Science and the Arts, pp. 116, 117. army in India. It had come up the Red sea, and across the desert |