"Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries ago of her natural properties, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians and at length the race of Tartars distinguished by the name of Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes purchased as slaves, and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and selected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is no less extraordinary; they are replaced by slaves, brought from their original country." (_Volney's Travels, Vol. I, page_ 74). Gibbon, another infidel, states, "The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Beyite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four and twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants." (_Decline and Fall, chap. xlix_). It is needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the nominal Christians of Egypt nor the Mahometans allow images among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's travel forty dry water courses will be crossed {143} in the delta of the Nile; and the traveler needs to carry water with him, who explores the ruined cities through which once floated Greek and Roman navies. Again, it was prophesied, "It shall be the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations, for I will diminish them that they shall no more rule over the nations." (_Ezekiel, xxix_, 15). Every traveler attests the truth of this prediction. The wretched peasantry are rejoiced to labor for any one who will pay them five cents a day, and then quickly hide the treasure in the ground from the rapacious tax-gatherer. "In Egypt there is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants nor land-holders. A universal appearance of misery arrests the attention of the traveler and points out to him the rapacity and oppression as well as the ignorance of the inhabitants, who are equally unable to perceive the cause of their evils or to apply the necessary remedies. Ignorance diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of moral and physical knowledge." Babylon was to be reduced to utter barrenness and desolation, Egypt to slavery and degradation; but a different and still more incredible doom is pronounced in the Bible upon Judea and its people: "I will make your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a {144} sword after you: and your land shall be desolate and your cities waste." (_Leviticus_, _xxvi_, 31-33.) "The generation to come of your children and the stranger from a far land shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus to this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?"