The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-24 00:00:00

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE,

:THEBES. Fes. S.
I arrived here a day or two ago from Nubia.
On my way up from Cairo, I passed, near Minieh,
a large boat, laden with wheelbarrows, planks, &e.
I fancied that the Pacha might be going to construct
a railway, in conoexiun with his sugar manufactory
and other works at Minieh. But I was wrong; the
barrows, &c., were for Thebes. The Pasha, it seems,
has engaged a French gentleman, M. Ataunier, to
excavate about all the temples in Egypt, and has
given him a carte blanche to employ as many
men as he considers necessary, and to take
the temples successi'ely in any way he may
deem best. He has commenced at Luxor.
Already several portions of the magnificent
temple there have been cleared out, and the
excavators have just uncovered to their bases two
fine Corinthian columns, which stood on either side
of a Roman altar. The walls of the church—for the
i chamber had evidently been used as a church--are
I covered with paintings, in good preservation, of the
Evangelists, the Apostles, Sze. On breaking otf the
plaster the walls exhibit the usual Egyptian hiero-
glyphics, with any account of which I need not
trouble you. The men employed are impressed, each
village being required to supply its quota. Sixty
men are at work at one time. They are required to
labour fifteen days successively, without any pay or
rations whatever. They are then released, and 60
,others take their places.
The excavations are being made for the Pacha,
who, praiseworthily I think, wishes to form an
Egyptian museum in Egypt. Nothing, however, has
yet turned up but a statue in black granite or basalt,
of a priest and his wife. The hieroglyphics have
been touched up by M. Maunier. I should have pre-
ferred their having been left as they were found.

It is amusing to see the poor fellahs (fellaheen)
handle the barrows. Never using any thing in the
tilling of the ground but an adze to loosen
and their bare hands to turn over or re.
move the soil; accustomed to nothing in the
removing of rubbish but a basket on their heads;
and having the most unconquerable prijadice
against the introduction of any machinery whatever;
it may be readily conceived what a painful task the
barrow is to them, and how awkward they feel when
harnessed to the handles. Their arms are as stiff as
lamp-poets, and they waddle like ducks. Besides
which, the barrows are not one-sixth filled ; but M.
Mauuier assured me that the men could not manage
more. I remember that one of the English engi-
neers at work on the railway near Cairo told me
that the men would not wheel the barrows, but
absolutely preferred carrying both barrows and rub-
bish on their heads. Three thousand ran away in
ono day. M. Meunier calculates that it will take
him at least ten years to excavate this district alone.
On visiting the tombs of the kings in the Valley
of Beban-el-Molook, I felt altogether unnerved to
see the unpardonable mutilations that are constantly
being perpetrated. Since I was last (two years ago)
in Belzoni', tomb (No. 17), the beautifully painted
coatings of entire columns have been chiselled oft;
and that too in the rudest manner. Not a chamber,
not a cornice, scarcely a wall, has escaped. The
floors are covered with fragments. A few years
more and, if the same amount of destruction shall go
on, the finest tomb in Egypt will be no more,
but will have been transmogrified into a com-
mon cave. When Mehemet Ali was some
years since remonstrated with for pulling down
temples to build cotton factories, he replied, " You
Franks complain of me for destroyitg temples, and
yet there is not ono of you who visits Egypt but
does the same." How severe and yet how just the
remark.

When at Assouan, I found the place full of sol-
diers. They were going, 800 strong, to Cartoon, in
Southern Nubia, as the people had refused to pay
any more taxes to the Pacha. Until conquered by
Ibrahim Pacha, the Nubians were an independent
people, having no prime ruler, and acknowledging
allegiance to no one. They were conquered. Mehe-
met Ali made them pay a tax of ninety piastres for
every shakeyiah, or water-wheel, used for irrigation,
and subsequently raised it to three hundred. As a
shakeyiah will only irrigate four feddans (feddaeen)
of land, and as there is, in addition to the shakeyiah
tax, a tax of a piastre on every date palm tree, the
total tax amounts to upwards of 20s. an English
acre. This, for a rocky country like Nubia, is far too
much, especially when it is considered that, in days
of yore, every Nubian was his own freeholder. The
result is that the country is fast depopulating. Whole
villages are deserted, and the desert on both sides the
river, meeting with no resistance from man, is in-
cluding large tracts of rich soil within its grasp.
This is my third visit to Egypt. Each time I have
closely observed the condition of the people, and I
can assert, without fear of contradiction, that the
state of all below Assonan is infinitely more pros-
perous than it was six years ago, in Mehemet Ali's
time. While the Nubians never taste wheaten
bread, but live almost entirely on eggs, milk, vege-
tables, and dates, with occasional doura cakes, the
&nabs (fellaheen) of Egypt have their wheat and
barley, and are able to live in comparative luxury.
Though their land is far more fertile than that of
Nubia, and though the desert steals not upon them its
deadly marches, yet they are not taxed so heavily as
the Nubians are. They are nehree to the great
markets both for home consumption and far ex-
portation ; they have their boats, their mer-
chants, their camels, and their horses; and,
notwithstanding that they are not free, are
greatly better off than were thousands of labourers in
England prior to the repeal of the corn laws. The
bow is, however, quite tight enough. One strain
more, and it would snap; while, were it only in a
small degree relaxed, it would assume an elasticity
which would ultimately tend to the increased wel-
fare of the people, and to the enriching of the Pacha's
treasury. That the Pacha wishes the prosperity of
the country I firmly believe; and I need give no
other proof of this than that he if everywhere
having the old canals for irrigation deepened and
reopened.
It is rumoured here that when the railway from
Alexandria to Cairo is completed, the Pacha purposes
having one constructed from Thebes, or Resell, to
Koseayr ; thus opening a communication with the
Red See. But I fancy people only report es they
would wish it to be.

SEIZURE OF A PORTUGUESE SLAVER BY
THE DOMINICAN GOVERNMENT.

SANTO DOMINGO, Fat. 20.

Some short time since the Portuguese schooner
Ceres, a well-known slaver, and companion of the
Venus, presented herself at Curacao. Her true na-
ture was immediately suspected ; but the local go-
vernment, in spite of existing treaties, satisfied itself
with warning her off. She proceeded now to Porto
Plata, the northern seaport of the Dominican repub-
lic, with intentions to await there a new equipment
from Trinidad de Cuba. However, the authorities
of that small place acted with most praiseworthy
zeal and energy. As soon as she was suspected
General Pelletier, the Commandant of Arms, visited
her, and, his suspicions being confirmed, she was
laid under an embargo, although one of the Spanish
mercantile houses established there endeavoured to
facilitate the vessel's escape during night. The
su-
preme government of the republic, having received
information of these circumstances, despatched one
of their men of war to Porto Plata, and conveyed the
I Ceres to the city of Santo Domiogo, where the
master and his crew were arraigned before the Su-
preme Court, and found guilty of having been en-
gaged in the traffic of slaves, declared piracy by the
laws of the republic. The captain, who calls him-
self Tomassini, has been sentenced, with his mate
and pilot, to two years' primon, and the mat of the
crew to one year. The vessel is claimed by the
Dominican government as a prize.
The proceedings of the court, which arc volumi-
nous, have been published, and it is much to be
regretted that Senor Jose Maria Pando, commercial
agent of the Spanish government at Curacao, occupies
such a questionable place in these proceedings.
Among the rums, a letter from that functionary
was found, informing Senor Augustin Ginebre, mer-
chant at Porto Plain, " that the Ceres proceeded to
Porto Plata, with the object of awaiting orders from
the owners in Trinidad de Cuba, and that mean-
while Senor Giuebra was to make the requisite ad-
vances."

The Dominican government deserve grett praise
for the decibion with which they have acted in this
difficult and delicate questisn which the government
at Curacao, much to the regret of philanthropists,