The time consumed by a
steamboat in this transit might be averaged at five hours. What is
the time now consumed in the transit through Egypt by the voyager
from England to Bombay? and what is the nature of the transit?
Passengers, packages, and letters, after being landed at Alexandria,
are now conveyed by the Mahmoudie Canal forty miles to Atfeh, on the
Nile. This consumes twelve hours, and is performed by a track-boat,
attended by numerous inconveniences. The passengers, goods, and
letters are landed at Atfeh; they are there reshipped, and carried
by steamboat from Atfeh up the Nile to Boulac, a distance of 120
miles. This water transit consumes eighteen hours. At Boulac, which
is the port of Cairo, the passengers, goods, and letters are again
unshipped, and have a land transit of two miles before they arrive
at Cairo. At that capital a stoppage of twelve hours, which is
considered indispensable to travellers, occurs. A fourth transit
then takes place to Suez from Cairo, across the Desert. This is
performed by vans with two and four horses, donkey-chairs (two
donkeys carrying a species of litter between them for ladies and
children,) and is often attended, owing to the scarcity of good
horses, with great inconveniences. The distance of this land transit
is eighty-four miles, and consumes thirty-six hours. The whole
distance by the present line is thus 246 miles; by the projected
line it is 80: the transit by the present line consumes _four days_;
the transit by the proposed line would not consume more than _five
hours!'_.
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