The Tour, a Story of Ancient Egypt (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III NEXT morning, the soft, even light of a tea-rose dawn spread over a magic spectacle, beautiful as a marvellous dream, flimsy as a vision, compelling as an enchantment. The ship had glided past the monumental, marble, nine-storied Pharos into the Great Harbour; and Alexandria lay before the eyes of the delighted travellers, Lucius, Thrasyllus, Catullus, shining pink through diaphanous, mother-o '-pearl gleams and a slowly-lifting silvery mist, like a city of magic and fairy-tale. A long, long row of white palaces, with irregular gables, loomed through the mist and the gleam. On the left, on the rocks of Lochias, the pillars of the former royal palace shone magical and fairylike in the silvery mist. Thrasyllus knew that, since Egypt had become a Roman province, the legate resided there, surrounded with royal honours. Under the palace the little square basin of the palace-harbour showed, gay with the purple sails of the legate's triremes; with the little island of Antirrhodos, behind which pillars and yet more pillars outlined more and more clearly the white theatre; with the bight of the Posidium, where stood the Temple of Poseidon and the great Emporium, the great market of the merchant shippers, while a pier ran into the harbour on which, dainty as a marble ornament, stood the villa of the Timoneum, built by Mark Antony. A riot of luxuriant green gardens, with the stately crowns of palm-trees and the dreamy-delicate crests of tamarisks, flung cool, dark nosegays between all those gleaming white buildings, which began to blink in the ever fiercer sunshine Thrasyllus pointed with his finger, along the harbour, the long row of palaces of the Csesareum, the huge docks and yards teeming all motley with people and industry, to the Heptastadium, the ...