ons of
tributary subjects, [132] or twenty millions of either sex, and of every
age: that three hundred millions of gold or silver were annually paid to
the treasury of the caliphs. [133] Our reason must be startled by these
extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume
the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from
the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle
of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues,
compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France. [134] A more accurate
research will justify a more reasonable estimate. The three hundred
millions, created by the error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent
revenue of four millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which
nine hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers. [135]
Two authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century, are
circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand seven
hundred villages and towns. [136] After a long residence at Cairo, a
French consul has ventured to assign about four millions of Mahometans,
Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible, scope of the
population of Egypt. [137]

[Footnote 128: A small volume, des Merveilles, &c., de l'Egypte,
composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and translated
from an Arabic Ms. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published by Pierre Vatier,
Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild and legendary; but the
writer deserves credit and esteem for his account of the conquest and
geography of his native country, (see the correspondence of Amrou and
Omar, p. 279-289.)]

[Footnote 129: In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet
had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre ii. particularly
p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre ix.) From a college
at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a
keener glance:--

What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,

Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed,

From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,

And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings:

If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,

The dusky people drive before the gale:

Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.

That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.

(Mason's Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]

[Footnote 1