those different nations I could induce to walk with me; and, as I constantly spoke Arabic, was taken for a [1] Bedowé by all sorts of people; but, notwithstanding the advantage this freedom gave me, and of which I daily availed myself, I never could hear a word of this monument from either Greek, Jew, Moor, or Christian.
Alexandria has been often taken since the time of Cæsar. It was at last destroyed by the Venetians and Cypriots, upon, or rather after the release of St Lewis, and we may say of it as of Carthage, Periére ruinæ, its very ruins appear no longer.
The building of the present gates and walls, which some have thought to be antique, does not seem earlier than the last restoration in the 13th century. Some parts of the gate and walls may be of older date; (and probably were those of the last Caliphs before Salidan) but, except these, and the pieces of columns which lie horizontally in different parts of the wall, every thing else is apparently of very late times, and the work has been huddled together in great haste.
It is in vain then to expect a plan of the city, or try to trace here the Macedonian mantle of Dinochares; the very vestiges of ancient ruins are covered, many yards deep, by rubbish, the remnant of the devastations of later times. Cleopatra, were she to return to life again, would scarcely know where her palace was situated, in this her own capital.
- ↑ A peasant Arab.
