ELIZA IN EGYPT
I
When the lively and somewhat spiteful Mrs. Eliza Fay landed at Alexandria in the summer of 1779 that city was at her lowest ebb. The glories of the antique had gone, the comforts of the modern had not arrived. Gone were the temples and statues, gone the palace of Cleopatra and the library of Callimachus, the Pharos had fallen and been succeeded by the feeble Pharillon, the Heptastadion had silted up; while the successors to these—the hotels, the clubs, the drainage system, the exquisite Municipal buildings—still slept in the unastonished womb of time.
Attached to Mrs. Fay was her husband, an incompetent advocate, who was to make their fortunes in the East. Since the boat that had brought them was owned by a Christian, they were forbidden to enter the Western Harbour, and had to disembark not far from the place where, in more enlightened days, the Ramleh Tramway was to terminate. All was barbarism then, save for two great obelisks, one prone, one erect—"Cleopatra's Needles," not yet transferred to New York and London respectively. They were met in this lonely spot by the Prussian Consul, a certain Mr. Brandy, who found them rooms, but had bad news
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