Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1870-08-24
50 To what Base Uses we may Return
HOratiO

Says the melancholy Hamlet, in the church
yard and then his fancy traces the dust OF
Alexander till he finds its stopping, a bans.-
turned 10 clay, PSdtchTng broken wall
Horatio is Of opinion that +" TO consider 70,
were to consider too curiously " but if he
had read the last bit of news from the city
which Alexander founded at the mouth Of
the Nile, he would have had an example of
mutability as grim and grotesque as Ham
let's. An Eastern traveller, returning from
Syria by way of Alexandra, narrates in p
contemporary a strange sight lately witness
ed in the harbOr Of that place. His ship
was anchored amid the motley feet that al
ways crowds the port and as he watched
its varied life, his attention was taken by a
number of lighters going and coming be
tween the well-knOwn ridge of rock at Arab
Bay and some merchant vessels close 10 his
own. The lighters took their load on board
at the extremity Of the ridge, and were
tOwed one after another alongside the mer-
chantmen then band of fellaheen carried
up the ships sides in baskets the stuff which
had been brought from the shore, and shot
1t pell- nell into the hold. Ii was not sand
for ballast, since there was too much dust
about it, with too many Jumps nor was 1t
grain in bulk. for that looks golden yellow,
while this was a pale brown-and-w white mix
ture. Moreover, the sea-breeze waited an
ancient and weird od0r from the spot to the
nostrils of our understanding musty
and yet not wholly unpleasant, like the
scent of an old cabinet with faded flowers in
il, or chamber which has been locked up
for years.
Load after load of the mysterious pallid
merchandise was brought and transferred to
the ships, and the tourist at last asked what
the commodity might be. lie was informed
that it was known in the trade as '' Egyp-
tian guano," and that it was the dust and
fragments of innumerable mummies and
bodies collected from the ancient catacOmbs
and sepulchres which honeycomb the ridge
of rocks along Alexandria Harbor. extending
underground as far as Pompey's Pillar. For
the last nine or ten months a brisk business
has been going on at the port in thus root
ing up the defunct Egyptians, antique
Greeks, and warlike Macedonians, whose
relics lie, along with sacred ibises, cats, bulls,
and crocodiles, in those subterranean cities
OF the dead. They come to hand in what
patent manure companies would call rather
'' promiscious sample white e-browD dust
of very fine quality, mingled with bones,
pieces of earthen ware lamps, broken
lachrymatories, splinters of mummy cases,
shreds of linen, bitumen and gums. But
the article is rich in phosphates and Ger
tain English firms are glad to buy as much
of it as they can get at six pounds ten shll-
lings ton, for the purpose of mixing II
with the far more expensive bird-guano OF
Peru. Thus compounded, it fetches eapl-
tai price from the British farmers, and goes
to scattered over Norfolk turnip fields and
Yorkshire wolds: the deposit OF Pacific olrds
and the royal remains of Pharoah and Ptole-
my, all stirred up together, and drilled In,
three bushels to the acre, TO make root-crops
and corn-crops for the British householder
And this pale dust, if ancient chroniclers
speak the truth, belonged to an extinct peo-
pie who swathed the inanimate body, and
anxiously stuffed it with spices and precious
gums, in order that it might remain as
much as possible IN stGtu quo until, as they
believed, the wandering soul, having accom-
plished its peregrinations, should return to
make it live and breathe again. Poor an
cient gentlemen and lovely Nile ladies OF
four thousand years ago, what a world OF
useless cost and trouble did you all waste
The priests got their fee, of course, and the
embalmers their pay but, after all, the up
shot of the expensive ceremony was destined
to prepare spurious Peruvian guano Tor the
turnip fields of the barbarous North nal
satire lies in the guano sack where those
who worshipped the sacred birds are heaped
in undistinguishable commixture with the
castings of sea-fowl from Lobos and lchaoo-
noddy -droppings and ibis feathers, worship
pers of the hawk-faced Anubis and oooole;
from the Galapagos-all shaken up together
and fetching ten pounds ton to make man
gold wurzel grow
What sarcasm upon greatness, upon creeds
upon human theories of life and death
might be heard in the careless husoandmanl