There is nothing beautiful or pleasant in the present Alexandria, but a handsome street of modern houses, where a very active and intelligent number of merchants live upon the miserable remnants of that trade, which made its glory in the first times.
It is thinly inhabited, and there is a tradition among the natives, that, more than once, it has been in agitation to abandon it all together, and retire to Rosetto, or Cairo, but that they have been withheld by the opinion of divers saints from Arabia, who have assured them, that Mecca being destroyed, (as it must be as they think by the Russians) Alexandria is then to become the holy place, and that Mahomet's body is to be transported thither; when that city is destroyed, the sanctified reliques are to be transported to Cairouan, in the kingdom of Tunis: lastly, from Cairouan they are to come to Rosetto, and there to remain till the consummation of all things, which is not then to be at a great distance.
Ptolemy places his Alexandria in lat. 30° 31′ and in round numbers in his almagest, lat. 31° north.
Our Professor, Mr Greaves, one of whose errands into Egypt was to ascertain the latitude of this place, seems yet, from some cause or other, to have failed in it, for though he had a brass sextant of five feet radius, he makes the latitude of Alexandria, from a mean of many observations, to be lat 31° 4′ N. whereas the French astronomers from the Academy of Sciences have settled it at 31° 11′ 20″, so between Mr Greaves and the French there is a difference of 7′ 20″, which is too much. There is not any thing, in point ofsituation,
