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[ In a twenty years’ residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre ii. particularly p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre ix.) From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance:—
What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
Where Nile, redundant o’er his summer bed,
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o’er Egypt with his watery wings:
If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
The dusky people drive before the gale:
Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
That rise and glitter o’er the ambient tide.
(Mason’s Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]
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[ Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily credit a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a miracle of the successors of Mahomet.]
131 ([return])
[ Maillet, Description de l’Egypte, p. 22. He mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds, that the generality of these villages contain two or three thousand persons, and that many of them are more populous than our large cities.]
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[ Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 308, 311. The twenty millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth of mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of men to women as seventeen or sixteen, (Recherches sur la Population de la France, p. 71, 72.) The president Goguet (Origine des Arts, &c., tom. iii. p. 26, &c.) Bestows twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day.]
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[ Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 218; and this gross lump is swallowed without scruple by D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 1031,) Ar. buthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, p. 262,) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 135.) They might allege the not less extravagant liberality of Appian in favor of the Ptolemies (in praefat.) of seventy four myriads, 740,000 talents, an annual income of 185, or near 300 millions of pounds sterling, according as we reckon by the Egyptian or the Alexandrian talent, (Bernard, de Ponderibus Antiq. p. 186.)]