Morning journal and courier., 1884-06-21

| VAB20Bs
 ALEXANDRIA, Egypt May 16. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND CoURIER:
 1 How sweet and refreshing is the atnos- phere of this Egyptian seaport as compared 1 with that which have but just left behind l In Cairo In the capital city I tossed for twice seven nights upon bed, the indispen- l sable mosquito curtains of which only served | to make the air less brsatheable, in tenn psrature not even second to that of India for | torridness, being due to the setting-in of the Khamsin, or desert hot-blast, which prevails for fifty days in April and May. Last night I slept here under two blankets, and the at
 mosphere is actually raw and chilly this l morning. cannot say whether it is fair to l judge of the ordinary climates of the two cities by this experience of few days in each.
 As write I can hear the perpetual swash of the blue Mediterranean as it laps the | shore just to the north of the hotel where am stopping. Looking out of another wins dow contemplate the dire ruin wrought ! here by fire in 1882, when the British bonn. | berded Alexandria, and shot and shell crsa- | ted a magnificent but terrible confsgration. Whole acres of mighty crumbling walls at test the completeness with which the work was done. The streets have been opened up l again, even where no attempt has been made | to rebuild the blocks, the debris being piled l up in the doors and windows so as to wall up | the front of the first story and thus prevent injury to pedestrians from possible ''slides. '' Here and there 8 single room has been fitted | up on 8 lower floor by some enterprlsing | merchant The effect of business being | thus transacted under labyrinth of frown- | ing broken walls is grotesque indeed. Some parts of the city, not excluding some of the ! finest, were uninjured, and the buildings still stand in all their former integrity and mas | siveness Stone and plaster are the principal 1 materials. The monotony of colorlng IS l thus promptly noticed by the stranger, and mars the general effect produced upon the 1 eye by the architecture of the city.
 | AS Shanghai is the commercial emporium l of China, and Bombay is the entrepot to h. ! dia so on . smaller scale Alexandria Is the | seaport and postal center of Egypt. Such, l despite the catastrophe of 1882, it still re- ! mains and as such it 4sl doubtless slowly rise Phoeaix-like from its present ashes, and | regain all or much of it's former greatness. Here in Alexandria for the first time in my life have seen street cars running without | the aid of rails of any kind The cars are like our ordiaary open, summer ears, thougR little shorter, and are drawn by two horses. The wheels are about twice the usual dlame- ter, projecting up through the floor quite conspicuously. They gre of wood with iron tires AS the streets of Alexandria are paved with smooth blocks of stone, about two feet Tor q by one foot wide in such way that the l lines of contiguity cross the street halfway diagonally, and then reverse, they are special ly adapted to the locometlon of these cars. The cars must be light-built, and I judge okl1 pkGCF FrNr them. They move along at decent speed and are not altogether uncomfortabls
 As at Cairo, the cafes are great feature. There must be hundreds of them, and what is more remarkable, they seem to be full pretty nearly all the time. There are one or two principal ones that seldom have vacant seat, and must accommodate tive or three
 hundred persons at 8 time. Among the signB-whieh are all in French of course-l read 'tGlace LAmericaine' quite frequent ly, whatever that may mean. Mocha coffee (without milk is the favorite beverage, and from experience can pronounce 1t delicious.
 So are also the waiter girls who serve It. Some of the cafes are provided with pipe or
 gans, with brass band accompaniment, the
 whole being wound up and then set in opera ton.
 AS the glory of Alexandria has d,parted Ca
 portion of it being now on exhibition in Gen.
 tral Park, New York;, there is little to be
 
 cordinely devote the chief part of this letter
 to few remarks on the Suez canal, which
 seems to be the unhappy object of a great
 deal of agitation off and on. When l read
 at home of the length of the Suez canal from
 Suez to Port Said being but ninety-six
 miles, including the passage through several
 lakes which did not have to be widened or
 deepened, used to regard it as an under
 taking the magnitude of which has been over
 estimated. Now that I am on the ground.
 and can see what obstacles were overcome, I ana amazed that human ingenuity ever had
 the audacity to attempt such a work; l can
 almost excuse the English for opposing the scheme SO obstinately on the ground of phi
 Ianthrophy in behalf of the compulsory and
 unpaid labor of the Egyptians, and for their
 disgraceful intrigues with the Sultan to throw
 obstacles in the way of the work. Doubt
 less it was jealousy of the French, and not
 philanthrophy, that actuated the English. Be that as it may, no people are to-day reap- ing so much benefit from this no longer new route to India, China, Japan and the colonies
 as are the English. Since Great Britain
 bought up the stock belonging to the Khe-
 dive 16O, QUO of the 400, GOO shares. I be-
 lieve) it may almost be said that she owns
 the canal One day while I was at Suez
 was told that sixty ships had passed down
 through the canal the day previous. AS only twelve working hours are allowed day, and
 the ships must go in fleets so as to meet ships
 going in the opposite direction at the right
 points, it may be guessed how busy this
 would keep the force of men who regulate in
 various capacities the navigation of the ca nal, and how it would strain the facilities of
 the canal This, however, was an exception
 al day was told. Nevertheless, have nev- CT seen strings of less than ten or twelve
 steamers The boats accumulate during the
 night. great bugbear exploded WAS the fancied diff ference in level between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, by which it would be neces- sary to introduce locks in the canal Even had this fear been ell grounded presume the brain of NJ. de Lesseps would have been equal to the emergency. Then another was raised-thet the hopeless quicksands at the Suez end and the centuries of Nile ooze at the other extremity would render the scheme doubly impossible. The second of these diff faculties vanished when it was discovered that below the shelly mud and Nile ooze was substratum of clay, which would make sol i'd enbankment when thrown up. Experi- encs has come forward to disprove the other buebear. There are only about five miles of the canal upon which the fierce siroccos of the desert make encroachments, and this only to the extent of two yards or go per month. As fast as this sand accumulates it is dredged away by special machines con- strueted for this purpose. Some new ones have just arrived from London, which it is thought will do the work even more efica- ciously than it has been done in the past. Despite all these real and apparent dangers, the waters of the Mediterranean and the Red sea mingled on the 18th of August, 1869, af ter Herculean labors for ten years. As an it. lustration of the obstacles surmounted, it may be cited that ten gigantic steam dredg- ing machines had to be first invented and then constructed at cost of $50, GOO each, and twenty five steam barges for carrying away the dirt as it was excavated at a cost of $50, ,OO0 each These were all built by the contractors SD cially for this work.
 For four hours after leaving Suez it is as if
 you were sailing right through desert on your ocean steamer, as indeed you are. The range of vision is obsoured, however, by the piles of excavated dirt on either side. Along the top of ths western embankment extend the line of telegraph poles sustaining the