CAIRO TO KISUMU

for there was always upon its top a burning fire which was visible for miles over the Mediterranean Sea. The pillar is a massive Corinthian column of beautifully polished red granite as big around as the boiler of a railroad locomotive and as high as a ten-story apartment house. It consists of one solid block of stone, standing straight up on a pedestal.

It was dug out of the quarries far up the Nile valley, brought down the river on rafts and in some way lifted to its present position. In their excavations about the pedes¬ tal, the archaeologists learned of its comparatively modern origin and, digging down into the earth far below its foun¬ dation, discovered several massive stone sphinxes. These date back to old Alexandria and were chiselled several hun¬ dreds of years before Joseph and Mary brought the baby Jesus on an ass, across the desert, into the valley of the Nile that he might not be killed by Herod the King.

This city was founded by Alexander the Great three hundred and thirty-two years before Christ was born. It probably had then more people than it has to-day, for it was not only a great commercial port, but also a centre of learning, religion, and art. It is said to have had the grandest library of antiquity. The manuscripts numbered nine hundred thousand and artists and students came from all parts to study here. At the time of the Caesars it was as big as Boston, and when it was taken by the Arabs, along about 641 a.d., it had four thousand palaces, four hundred public baths, four hundred places of amusement, and twelve thousand gardens. When Alexander the Great founded it he brought in a colony of Jews, and at the time the Mohammedans came the Jewish quarter numbered forty thousand.

At Alexandria St. Mark first preached Christianity to

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