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The chapter describing a trip to Egypt was the result of a flying visit paid to that country on the occasion of the official opening of the Suez Canal in November, 1869. Gautier embarked on board the steamship "Moeris," of the Messageries Impériales, at Marseilles. The very first night out he slipped and fell down the companion steps, and broke his left arm above the elbow.
The subscribers to the Mudie of the period had to be considered, and their taste for the marvelous was probably not much inferior to that of our own day. When, therefore, Herodotus describes the reservoir of Moeris as formed for the control of the river floods of Nile-nourished Egypt, and of another constructed by Nebuchadnezzar at Sippara, of 140 miles in circumference, we must make allowances.
The smoked meats of Mendes and the neighborhood of Lake Moeris hung on metal pegs, and in a covered but well-aired room, sheltered from the sun lay freshly-imported fish from the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Every guest at the 'Olympian table' was allowed here to select the meat, fruit, asparagus, fish, or pasty which he desired to have cooked for him.
In the course of a few days they attacked and destroyed the towns of Chinen-su, Pinat, and Kasa, south of Lake Moeris, and they cut down also a caravan of merchants and Egyptian pilgrims returning from the oasis Uit-Mehe. The entire western boundary of the state was in peril, and even from Teremethis inhabitants began to flee.
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