Modern Egypt | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1873

Modern Egypt.

THE land of the Khedive is likely soon to rival in greatness the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies. Modern Egypt cannot, it is true, compare with ancient Egypt in the number of its inhabitants, for Diodorus tells us that the latter contained 30,000 towns and villages, while Herodotus says that in the reign of Amasis there were in Egypt 20,000 cities. What successive sovereigns, however, from Sesostris to the caliphs failed to effect, or accomplish only in part, has been completely achieved under the rule of the Khedive by the opening of the Suez Canal, while Alexandria and Cairo are fast becoming cities of palaces, and the wealth of the country is every day increasing.

Western prejudice attributes the present ignorance of the Mussulman population of Turkey to Islamism, and concludes that the religion of Mohammed is a bar to all human progress. Any one, however, who visited Egypt ten years ago, and could now see the vast improvements that have been and are still being made by the Khedive would at once have his prejudices very much modified, if not altogether removed. He would see the harbor of Alexandria, the finest, probably, in the world, crowded with the shipping of all nations, with a new break-water and new docks in course of completion, warehouses filled with cotton, grain, and other agricultural produce ready for export, railways in operation or in course of construction—everywhere, in fact, the signs of increasing civilization and prosperity. He would see Alexandria itself more like a European than an Eastern city, with its magnificent buildings and its “Place des Consuls,” that exceeds in size and beauty any square to be found in Europe. He would see the land, irrigated by the Nile’s overflow or by means of machinery, everywhere teeming with rich crops of wheat, maize, barley, beans and peas, clover and flax, rice, sugar-cane, tobacco, and cotton, coffee, indigo and madder; the gardens producing apricots in May; peaches, plums, apples, pears and carobs in June; pomegranates, lemons, and dates, in August; oranges in October, sweet lemons and bananas in November, and the mulberry and Seville oranges in January. In olden times, we know there was “corn in Egypt,” now there is also “cotton in Egypt,” and cotton, too, of the best description. Even six years ago there were not less than two hundred steam-ploughs at work in cotton cultivation. Every mechanical aid to production has, in fact, been made use of, and the result is an enormous increase of wealth both to the people and their ruler.

The romance of travel in Egypt is fast disappearing. A new bridge has been recently built by the Khedive over the Nile, so that travelers can now go direct in carriages from their hotel to the pyramids without being obliged, as formerly, to cross the river in boats and finish the excursion on camels or donkeys. The old “dahabeah,” or Nile boat, is giving way to the comparatively luxurious Nile steamer, and the charms of that dreamy epicurean life, floating up and down the great river, will soon become a memory of the past. No more encampments beneath the myriad star and the wondrous sky of an Egyptian night, amidst the labyrinth of pillars, obelisks and fallen temples of Luxor or Karnak. Instead of, as heretofore, passing the night on land under a tent, the traveler now sleeps in his comfortable berth on board the Khedive’s steamer, and “does” the Nile in three weeks, instead of three months as in the palmy days of the dahabeahs. During the winter of 1871, before the steamers began to ply, the price asked for a first-class boat was from $450 to $600 a month for three or four months; while now, the voyage—585 miles—from Cairo to Philae, a few miles above the first cataract, and back again, can be made by the passenger steamers on the Nile belonging to the Khedive administration at a cost of $520, including steamers, living, guides, and all other necessary expense.—N. J. Mechanic.