Lands that have made or witnessed history possess peculiar fascination; and when to their historical qualities are added those of the mysterious and the beautiful, their charm is boundless, for then they touch the realm of the imagination, that is to say, the infinite.

Egypt in these respects is unsurpassed. Historically, she is the eldest born of Time; the mother of all subsequent civilizations; the longest lived among the nations of the earth; the teacher of art, philosophy, and religion before Greece and Rome were born. When everywhere else rude huts and primitive tents were mankind's highest forms of architecture, Egypt was rearing her stupendous pyramids and temples, which still remain the marvel of the world.

An Egyptian Landscape.

It stirs the blood merely to read the names of the great actors in that mighty drama of the past, whose theatre was the valley of the Nile. For Egypt is the land of Rameses and the Pharaohs; of Joseph and of Moses; of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies; of Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra, - a land beside whose awful ruins the Colosseum of Rome, the Parthenon of Athens, and even the Temple of Jerusalem, are the productions of yesterday.

Harbor Of Alexandria.

Hut Egypt is also a land of mystery. Her history goes back so far that it is finally lost in the unknown, as the Nile Valley gradually gives place to the sands of the Sahara. Her very origin appears at first miraculous. For Egypt has been literally built up by that mysterious river whose sources have, till recently, perplexed and baffled all explorers for five thousand years. Her situation also is unique, - a palm-girt path of civilization walled in by two deserts. Silence broods over her. Solemnity environs her. She is a land in which the dead alone are great: - a temple of antiquity, whose monuments are the eternal Pyramids and Sphinx. Her glory is secure beyond the possibility of loss, embalmed in art and literature like her mummied kings.

What wonder, then, that standing on the shadowy-threshold of prehistoric times, Egypt still charms us by the irresistible attraction of undying fame? What marvel that her vast antiquity and changeless calm possess a power, like that of fabled Lethe, to render us forgetful of the feverish excitements of the western world, and from her silent and enduring monuments to teach us the littleness of gods and men?

Alexandria is the front door of Egypt, as Suez, on the Red Sea, is its portal from the rear. Through this historic city of the Mediterranean the tide of Occidental travel every winter ebbs and flows as surely as the rise and fall of the majestic Nile. Unlike the rest of Egypt, however, Alexandria lacks the flavor of remote antiquity. A century ago a traveler said of it that it resembled an orphan child, who had inherited from his father nothing but his name. Hence it is hard to realize, when one stands within its walls to-day, that twenty centuries ago Alexandria ranked among the largest and most brilliant cities in the world, and was the principal emporium of the East, receiving the products of interior Africa, Arabia, and India, and forwarding them to all other sections of the Roman empire, till the astonished Caesars half believed the assertion that the Alexandrians possessed the power of making gold. This city was, moreover, for centuries the principal seat of Grecian learning; and here St. Mark is said to have proclaimed the Gospel, with the result that Alexandria finally became the intellectual stronghold of Christianity.

Caesar And Cleopatra.

Nor can the tourist forget that this was the favorite city of two conquerors, unrivaled in their way, - the first, its earliest ruler, Alexander; the second, its last queen, the peerless Cleopatra. One subdued empires; the other conquered hearts; for who can think of Alexandria without recalling how the "Enchantress of the Nile" here captivated the world's conqueror, Julius Caesar, and subsequently made the great Triumvir, Antony, her willing slave for fourteen years?

But war and pillage have destroyed the relics of old Alexandria almost as completely as though a tidal wave from the adjoining ocean had swept over it. Its pure white marble lighthouse, Pharos, which surpassed the Pyramids in height, and was considered one of the seven wonders of the world, is now no longer visible. The mausoleum of Alexander the Great, in which the youthful conqueror's body lay in a sarcophagus of pure gold, has also passed away. The immense Alexandrian library, - the largest of antiquity, - has long since vanished in flame and smoke. The magnificent Museum of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which, two and a half centuries before Christ, was the acknowledged meeting-place of scholars and sages from all lands, and the focus of the intellectual life of the world, has so effectually disappeared that no one can determine with certainty its ancient site. Even in modern times Alexandria has suffered spoliation. Until quite recently, the traveler saw upon its shore - one prostrate, one erect - the obelisks known as Cleopatra's Needles, which were hewn from the quarry thirty-five hundred years ago. But these have been conveyed to distant lands, - one of them standing now beside the Thames in London, the other in Central Park, New York. From the earliest times the obelisks of Egypt have fascinated travelers. The Assyrians and Persians carried some of them away. Rome has eleven in her streets to-day. Another stands in Constantinople; while, beside the Seine, the obelisk of Luxor rebukes with its solemnity the whirl of gaiety in the modern capital of pleasure. Only one great memorial of the past remains in Alexandria. It is the stately monolith of red granite, misnamed Pompey's Pillar. For ages it was supposed that this imposing shaft, which with its capital and pedestal attains a height of more than a hundred feet, had been erected here in memory of Caesar's mighty rival, who, fleeing southward after the battle of Pharsalia, was murdered on the Egyptian coast. But the name Pompeius, sculptured on its pedestal, is merely that of the Roman prefect who reared this magnificent column to the Roman emperor Diocletian, in the third century after Christ, perhaps in gratitude for a gift of grain that he had sent to Alexandria. The statue which adorned its summit long since disappeared, leaving no trace behind to tell us whom it represented; and whether or not this noble column once formed part of an Egyptian temple founded long anterior to the Romans, is still a matter of dispute. Beyond all question, however, is the fact that its shadow falls to-day upon a dreary Arab cemetery, - pathetic symbol of the buried glories of the city it once adorned.