city. Many things conspired to make it at once a great
commercial emporium. In the first place, it was the depot of export for
all the surplus grain and other agricultural produce which was raised in
such abundance along the Egyptian valley. This produce was brought down
in boats to the upper point of the Delta, where the branches of the
river divided, and thence down the Canopic branch to the city. The city
was not, in fact, situated directly upon this branch, but upon a narrow
tongue of land, at a little distance from it, near the sea. It was not
easy to enter the channel directly, on account of the bars and
sand-banks at its mouth, produced by the eternal conflict between the
waters of the river and the surges of the sea. The water was deep,
however, as Alexander's engineers had discovered, at the place where the
city was built, and, by establishing the port there, and then cutting a
canal across to the Nile, they were enabled to bring the river and the
sea at once into easy communication.

The produce of the valley was thus brought down the river and through
the canal to the city. Here immense warehouses and granaries were
erected for its reception, that it might be safely preserved until the
ships that came into the port were ready to take it away. These ships
came from Syria, from all the coasts of Asia Minor, from Greece, and
from Rome. They brought the agricultural productions of their own
countries, as well as articles of manufacture of various kinds; these
they sold to the merchants of Alexandria, and purchased the productions
of Egypt in return.

The port of Alexandria presented thus a constant picture of life and
animation. Merchant ships were continually coming and going, or lying at
anchor in the roadstead. Seamen were hoisting sails, or raising anchors,
or rowing their capacious galleys through the water, singing, as they
pulled, to the motion of the oars. Within the city there was the same
ceaseless activity. Here groups of men were unloading the canal boats
which had arrived from the river. There porters were transporting bales
of merchandise or sacks of grain from a warehouse to a pier, or from one
landing to another The occasional parading of the king's guards, or the
arrival and departure of ships of war to land or to take away bodies of
armed men, were occurrences that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or
as perhaps the people then would have said, to adorn this scene of
useful industry; and now