JOUENEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION TO AFRICA.

Arrival at Alexandria—The Landing—My First Oriental Bath-The City—Preparations for Departure.

I LEFT Smyrna in the Lloyd steamer, Conte SturmeVj on the first day of November, 1851. We passed the blue Sporadic Isles—Cos, and Rhodes, and Karpathos—and crossing the breadth of the Eastern Mediterranean, favored all the way by unruffled seas, and skies of perfect azure, made the pharos of Alexandria on the evening of the 3d. The entrance to the harbor is a narrow and difficult passage through reefs, and no vessel dares to attempt it at night, but with the first streak of dawn we were boarded by an Egyptian pilot, and the rising sun lighted up for us the white walls of the city, the windmills of the Ras el-Tin, or Cape of Figs, and the low yellow sandhills in which I recognized Africa—for they were prophetic of the desert behind them.

We entered the old harbor between the island of Pharos and the main land (now connected by a peninsular strip. on which the Frank quarter is built), soon after sunrise