The road, for about two miles after leaving the gate of Rashîd, is marked by many vestiges of buildings, but nothing worth observing. There are also many date trees scattered round in the neighbourhood of the canal, and vegetation enough to serve for food for the small flocks of the city. About two miles from Abu-kîr are the ruins of a town, close to the sea, and a part of them under water. There are also some remains of columns. This is what has been remarked as the _Taposiris parva_ of antiquity. Abu-kîr is a village, consisting of few inhabitants. There is near it, however, a small port, and on the point of land which forms it, a fortress, but of little strength. A Tsorbashi resides there, with a few soldiers. He collects a toll from those who pass the ferry near it. It is a place of no trade, and vessels that frequent it come there chiefly for the purpose of avoiding bad weather. We were eight hours and a half in reaching Rashîd, exclusively of the time taken up in crossing two ferries. The latter part of the road, from the seaside to Rashîd, has been all marked with short columns of burned brick, at certain distances from each other. The beauty and fertility of the country round Rashîd deserves all the praise that has been given it. The eye is not, indeed, gratified with the romantic views, flowing lines, the mixture of plain and mountain, nor that universal verdure that is to be observed on the banks of the Rhine or the Danube. But his taste is poor who would reduce all kinds of picturesque beauty to one criterion. To me, after being wearied with the sandy dryness of the barren district to the west, the vegetable soil of Rashîd, filled with every production necessary for the sustenance, or flattering to the luxury of man, the rice fields covering the superficies with verdure, the orange groves exhaling aromatic odours, the date trees formed into an umbrageous roof over the head; shall I say the mosques and the tombs, which, though wholly incompatible with the rules of architecture, yet grave and simple in the structure, are adapted to fill the mind with pleasing ideas; and above all, the unruffled weight of waters of the majestic Nile, reluctantly descending to the sea, where its own vast tide, after pervading and fertilizing so long a tract, is to be lost in the general mass: these objects filled me with ideas, which, if not great or sublime, were certainly among the most soothing and tranquil that have ever affected my mind. There are some few remains of antiquity in the neighbourhood of Rashîd, though the city itself be modern. The castle of Abu-Mandûr stands about two miles from it, higher up the Nile, in a situation very picturesque, as is seen by many drawings of it extant in Europe. Columns are frequently dug up here. My arrival at Rashîd happened in the month Ramadân, a time when it is particularly cheerful. The populace there are esteemed more quiet, and better disposed to civility than those of Alexandria or Kahira.