ABSTRACT
The winter days on the sea-coast are often cold and rainy, the climate being not unlike that of Italy at the same time of year. People must wear thick clothing, and must study the barometer before taking their promenades. While Thebes, and even the Pyramids, bask in more or less continual sunshine, the city of Alexandria is lashed by intermittent rainstorms, and the salt sea-wind buffets the pedestrians as it screams down the paved streets. It is almost as incorrect to class the Alexandrian Queen Cleopatra as a native Egyptian as it would be to imagine William Penn as a Red Indian or Warren Hastings as a Hindoo. Cleopatra in Alexandria was cut off from Egypt. The city was also engaged in many other forms of commerce, and in the reign of Cleopatra it was recognised as the greatest trading centre in the world.
