Egyptians, when he was obliged to depart from Egypt: Your Nile loads you with blessings every day; it is for you only that it runs from such a distance. Alas! in removing from you, my tears will flow as abundantly as its waters: you are to continue in the enjoyment of its sweetnesses, while I am condemned to deprive myself of them against my will. If you look, added my father, towards the island that is formed by the two greatest branches of the Nile, what variety of verdure! What enamel of all sorts of flowers! What a prodigious number of cities, villages, canals, and a thousand other agreeable objects! If you turn your eyes on the other side, up towards Ethiopia, now many other subjects of admiration! I cannot compare the verdure of so many plains, watered with the different canals of the island, better than to brilliant emeralds set in silver. Is not Grand Cairo the largest, the most populous, and the richest city in the universe? What a number of magnificent edifices, both public and private! If you view the pyramids, you will be filled with astonishment: you will stiffen at the sight of these masses of stone of an enormous thickness, which rear their heads to the skies! You will be obliged to confess, that the Pharaohs, who employed such riches, and so many men in building them, must have surpassed in magnificence and invention all the monarchs that have appeared since, not only in Egypt, but in all the world, for having left monuments so worthy of their memory: monuments so ancient, that the learned cannot agree upon the time of their erection; yet such as stand to this day, and will last to the end of time. I pass over in silence the maritime cities of the kingdom of Egypt, such as Damietta, Rosetta, Alexandria, where innumerable nations come for various sorts of grain, cloth, and an infinite number of other things calculated for the accommodation and delight of men, I speak of what I know; for I spent there some years in my youth, which, as long as I live, I shall always reckon the most agreeable part of my life.