To archæological students and Egyptologists Rosetta is a place of the greatest interest, as it was in its neighborhood that the famous inscribed stone was found which furnished the clue--sought in vain for so many years by Egyptian scholars--to the hieroglyphic writings of Egypt. Perhaps none of the archæological discoveries made in Egypt since the land was scientifically exploited by the savants attached to Napoleon's expedition, not even that of the mummified remains of the Pharaohs, is more precious in the eyes of Egyptologists and antiquarians than this comparatively modern and ugly-looking block of black basalt, which now reposes in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. The story of its discovery is interesting. A certain Monsieur Bouchard, a French Captain of Engineers, while making some excavations at Fort St. Julien, a small fortress in the vicinity of Rosetta, discovered this celebrated stone in 1799. The interpretation of the inscription for many years defied all the efforts of the most learned French savants and English scholars, until, in 1822, two well-known Egyptologists, Champollion and Dr. Young, after independent study and examination, succeeded in deciphering that part of the inscription which was in Greek characters. From this they learnt that the inscription was triplicate and trilingual: one in Greek, the other in the oldest form of hieroglyphics, the purest kind of "picture-writing," and the third in demotic characters--the last being the form of hieroglyphics used by the people, in which the symbols are more obscure than in the pure hieroglyphics used by the priests. The inscription, when finally deciphered, proved to be one of comparatively recent date, being a decree of Ptolemy V., issued in the year 196 B. C. The Rosetta stone was acquired by England as part of the spoils of war in the Egyptian expedition of 1801. At Rosetta the railway leaves the coast and goes south to Cairo.