While I lay at the quay, I was astonished at the great number of boats discharging cargoes of grain, which was piled in huge heaps in the open air, not far from the brink of the river;[19] a sight which reminded one of the words of Jacob, "I have heard that there is _corn_ in Egypt." But, with all this plenty, it is a miserable place. The common people enjoy little of its abundance; their condition is the most wretched I ever saw or heard of among civilized nations. The houses of the peasantry are mere hovels, little if any thing better than the Kraals of the wild Hottentots.[20] The inhabitants of the land of Egypt, which was the house of bondage to the children of Israel, now suffer bondage in their own land, little, if at all, interior to that which their ancestors made the Israelites suffer. The government has for a long time been in the hands of Turks or Mamelukes, who are always foreigners, and who rule with rigour; and the inhabitants never take any interest in the affairs of the government, but are entirely passive to every change that takes place. The country abounds with Arabs. The Copts, its original inhabitants, are the fewest in number; they profess Christianity, and are the more liable, on that account, to be oppressed by their Mahomedan masters. The prediction is now fully verified, that Egypt, once the _first_ of nations, should become the _basest_ of kingdoms: Ezek. xxix. 15, 16. It is sunk so low in ignorance and wretchedness, that, if it were not for the many elegant and stupendous remains of antiquity existing in the country, the voice of history, strong as it is, could scarcely be credited, that it was once the _first_ of nations, and the seat of the arts and sciences. It is a land of pestilence and disease. "In Cairo, last year, forty thousand were supposed to be infected with the plague: and many of the French garrison died in that city, although the disease was treated in their hospitals with the greatest ability. In Upper Egypt sixty thousand perished during the same season,"[21] besides those who died of it in other parts of the country. Among the British, the plague was confined to the "hospital and troops stationary at Aboukir, where it broke out on the 12th April, and terminated on the 26th August. Three hundred and eighty, in the course of that time, were affected with it; one hundred and seventy-three died, and two hundred and seven recovered. The deaths chiefly fell on the orderlies, nurses, and other servants of the hospitals."[22] "The plague raged again at Rosetta towards the fall of the year and numbers of the Sepoys died of it."[23] When a person is infected with the pestilence, after the manner of Egypt, (Amos iv. 10,) the disease is indicated by two boils which are commonly in the groin. In addition to the plague, "Leprosy of the worst species, and Elephantiasis, which swells the legs larger than a common bolster," and a number of other diseases are very general. "The number