All vestiges of old Tyre are defaced; the ports of Sidon, [56]Berout, Tripoli, and [57]Latikea, are all filled up by the accretion of sand; and, not many days before my leaving Sidon, Mr de Clerambaut, consul of France, shewed me the pavements of the old city of Sidon, 7½ feet lower than the ground upon which the present city stands, and considerably farther back in the gardens nearer to Mount Libanus.
This every one in the country knows is the effect of that easterly current setting upon the coast, which, as it acts perpendicularly to the course of the Nile when discharging itself, at all or any of its mouths, into the Mediterranean, must hurry what it is charged with on towards the coast of Syria, and hinder it from settling opposite to, or making those additions to the land of Egypt, which [58]Herodotus has vainly supposed.
The 20th of June, early in the morning, we had a distant prospect of Alexandria rising from the sea. Was not the state of that city perfectly known, a traveller in search of antiquities in architecture would think here was a field for long study and employment.
It is in this point of view the town appears most to the advantage. The mixture of old monuments, such as the Column of Pompey, with the high moorish towers and steeples, raise our expectations of the consequence of the ruins we are to find.
But the moment we are in the port the illusion ends, and we distinguish the immense Herculean works of ancient times, now few in number, from the ill-imagined, ill-constructed, and imperfect buildings, of the several barbarous masters of Alexandria in later ages.
There are two ports, the Old and the New. The entrance into the latter is both difficult and dangerous, having a bar before it; it is the least of the two, though it is what is called the Great Port, by [59]Strabo.
Here only the European ships can lie; and, even when here, they are not in safety; as numbers of vessels are constantly lost, though at anchor.
Above forty were cast a-shore and dashed to pieces in March 1773, when I was on my return home, mostly belonging to Ragusa, and the small ports in Provence, while little harm was done to ships of any nation accustomed to the ocean.
It was curious to observe the different procedure of these different nations upon the same accident. As soon as the squall began to become violent, the masters of the Ragusan vessels, and the French caravaneurs, or vessels trading in the _Mediterranean_, after having put out every anchor and cable they had, took to their boats and fled to the nearest shore, leaving the vessels to their chance in the storm. They knew _the furniture_ of their ships to be too flimsy to trust their lives to it.