cessible from the land. Through the Nile and the old canal of Pharaoh Necho, connecting it with the Red Sea, the commerce of Egypt, Arabia, and India could here be brought to meet the commerce of the Mediter ranean. There are no indications that Alexander set out on this particular excursion through the lake with a view of seeking a city site, but there can be little doubt that the idea was more than the impulse of a moment. Tyre was destroyed. The coast of Egypt offered no convenient harbor suitable to intercourse on a large scale. The encouragement of intercourse and mutual understanding between the nations was already developing as his dominant idea. The Greek element had long since come to make itself felt in the Delta, and Naucratis, a thriving Greek settlement tolerated by Amasis in the sixth century, was only fifty miles to the southeast. The custom introduced in the seventh century, by Psammetichus I, of employing Greek mercenaries to do the fighting, toward which, with the decay of the warrior caste, the Egyptians themselves had become so averse, had served to bring Greeks into the land. What more probable than that Alexander had already framed the plan, and that unexpectedly the discovered site fitted it? In any case, his selection was a good one, as the event proved. PORTRAIT BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, FOUND AT ALEXANDRIA. the Nile, its waters are salt, and the fertility The Alexandria which rose on the spot became speedily a great city, and not by artificial stimulation, though it certainly was most fortunate in its first ruler, Ptolemy Soter, who succeeded Alexander, but through the operation of natural conditions. It proved a convenient exchange for the joint use of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Hence it naturally became the metropolis of the great world of free and open markets which Alexander's conquests created, the capital of the Hellenistic civilization which for three centuries passed current as Greek, and an amalgamation point for the peoples such as the conqueror's dream had desired. Seventyfive years after Alexander's death it had become, after Carthage and Antioch, the greatest city of the Western world. By the year 60 B. C. it had grown to a population, as Diodorus tells us, of three hundred thousand freemen,-that is to say, reckoning the slaves, of approximately half a million,-so that it was commonly regarded the greatest city of the world. In the first century after Christ its population was undoubtedly far greater, perhaps three quarters of a million or more, but for this definite data are lacking. Rome, which in Augustus's time had at least, according to Beloch's conservative reckoning, from eight hundred thousand to one million inhabitants, was the only city which had outstripped it. Up to Alexander's time there had been no monster cities. The city population of Athens proper, together with its harbor town, was probably about 175,000. Syracuse, in the fourth century, was only a little larger. Corinth at the same time had, according to Beloch, who, however, reckons the slave population certainly far too low, about 70,000; Sparta, Argos, and Thebes, from 40,000 to 50,000; Selinus, from 20,000 to 25,000; Tyre and Sidon, not over 40,000 each. By the first century B. C., a time whose literature affords us, through stray allusions, the first means of forming an estimate, the international trade of Alexandria had grown to enormous proportions. From the interior of Africa, from Arabia and India, caravans and fleets of merchant ships brought hither the rarest and most precious products which the new luxury of the West was demanding of all the lands-the spices and perfumes of Araby, gold-dust, precious stones, and fine fabrics from India, pearls from the Persian Gulf, silk from China, gold and tortoise-shell from the coasts of the Red Sea, ivory from Africa, and grain from Egypt. Annually one hundred and twenty ships, on an average, left the inner harbor for the voyage to India alone. The industries of Alexandria were spurred to their utmost to provide wares for the return cargoes. Foremost were the products of the loom, for which the city was famed, and which were distributed far and wide over the world, even to far Britain. Especially were sought the fine linens from SEASIDE VIEW IN MODERN ALEXANDRIA. The photograph was taken before the obelisk called "Cleopatra's Needle" was removed to New York. On the map, page 34, two obelisks are indicated near the south side of the "Great Harbor." These obelisks were brought from Heliopolis about three hundred years after Alexander's death, in the time of Augustus Cæsar, and placed in front of the so-called Cæsar's Temple. The companion obelisk to the one in the picture, which lay on the ground, was removed to London before this was given to New York city. the famous native flax, and the many-colored textures of wool, wrought in artistic patterns and with figures of animals and men-rugs, portières, and tapestries. The manufacture of paper from the native papyrus almost monopolized the trade of the world. Then there were the glass-blowers, whose artistic products commanded a price like that for cups of gold, and perfumers, and makers of toilet-oils and essences, whose repute matched that of the Parisians of to-day. No one in this busy city, so wrote Hadrian in 134 A.D., was without a craft and occupation. Even the blind and the gouty were busy. "Money is their god; him worship Jews, Christians, and all alike." It was a center of learning and culture as well as of industry and trade. About the university, called the Museum, and its famous library, a foundation of the wise Ptolemies, was assembled the best learning of the world. The savant, or philologos, is indeed, so far as Western civilization is concerned, a distinctive and original Alexandrine product. It was through Alexandrine learning, and chiefly in Alexandrine guise, that Rome, and so the European world, received the wisdom and culture of Greece. Letters, philology, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, music, law, medicine, received here their professional mold as branches of skilled and learned activity, and in such mold were transmitted and kept, until the Renaissance brought fresh life from the fountainhead. But we must return to the days of the beginnings. Alexander, after conceiving his scheme, immediately proceeded to mark out the plan of the city, including the sites for marketplace, streets, public buildings, temples of the different deities, each of them being especially assigned, and the circuit of the wall. The basis of the plan were made two main streets crossing each other at right angles, each, so says Strabo, one hundred feet wide, and lined with colonnades. Other streets, running parallel to these, laid out the whole in regular squares covering a length of about three miles and a width of about one. The excavations and investigations conducted by Mahmud Bey and completed in 1867 found the city plan essentially as Strabo describes it. The two broad central avenues-that running east and west called the Canobus avenue, that north and south the Dromos (Corso)· were found with traces of the splendid colonnades which lined them. In the center of these avenues was found still in place a pavement of gray granite blocks forty-six VOL. LVIII.-5. feet wide, which served as the carriageway. In the parallel streets this pavement was only half this width. The private houses were low, flat-roofed, and of stone. The circuit of the city proper was found to be a little less than ten miles. For definite knowledge regarding the location and character of the great public buildings we must await the further revelations of the spade. In the course of the present year (1899) the German Archæological Institute, under direction of Dr. Dörpfeld, is expected to begin the longdesired work. Meantime we must be content with Strabo. Near the center of the city lay the royal buildings, occupying, with their gardens, a fourth of the city's area. Here, besides the palaces, were the Museum and the Sema, the latter the great mausoleum in which lay inclosed in its alabaster coffin the body of Alexander. The site of the Paneum, "an artificial circular mound resembling a rocky hill, to which a winding way ascends," and from which a commanding view of the whole city and its harbors was obtained, can now be identified with the knoll, one hundred and twelve feet above the ordinary city level, which carries the reservoir of the modern Alexandria. Near by, on the Dromos, lay the Gymnasium, stretched out, with its pillared porches, in a length of a stadium (one ninth of a mile). The island of Pharos was joined to the mainland by a wide mole, called the Heptastadium, about three quarters of a mile long, in which were two bridges over channels communicating between the eastern and the western harbors. This mole has now widened out into a neck of land almost a mile in width, on which stands the greater part of the modern city. At the eastern end of the island was built by Ptolemy Soter and his son, and completed about 282 B.C., the famous Pharos, one of the "seven wonders," which became the prototype of all the world's lighthouses. A story of the first rough planning, given by all the sources, may best be presented in Plutarch's statement: "As chalk-dust was lacking, they laid out their lines on the black loamy soil with flour, first swinging a circle to inclose a wide space, and then drawing lines as chords of the arcs to complete with harmonious proportions something like the oblong form of a soldier's cape. While the king was congratulating himself on his plan, on a sudden a countless number of birds of various sorts flew over from the land and the lake in clouds, and settling upon the spot, devoured in a short time all the flour; so that Alexander was much disturbed in mind at |