File:Egypt painted and described (1902) (14576748087).jpg

Identifier: egyptpainteddesc00kell (find matches)
Title: Egypt painted and described
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Kelly, Robert Talbot, 1861-1934
Subjects: Egypt -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black
Contributing Library: New York University, Institute of Fine Arts Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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the port of the townof Menzala. As in Damietta, Menzala possesses many features ofinterest. Here also burnt brick takes the place of sun-dried, and, as we have noticed in Damietta, adds varietyto the colour of buildings all more or less dilapidated.The form of the mosque minarets also is peculiar tothis district, their height and beauty showing that at onetime Menzala must have been wealthy and ambitious.On its outskirts are many old tombs, where also aremany beautiful gardens and vine-walks of formergrandees, now hopelessly neglected. Poor to-day andthinly populated, Menzala is a monument of picturesquedecay, and, like most of the extremely pictorial placesin Egypt I have visited, is squalid and insanitary ininverse ratio to its beauty. The town is built on the banks of a canal called the Bahr-es-Soghraieh, which, starting from the Nile atMansurah, serves, in its course of fifty miles or so ofdevious wanderings, to water as many farms and villages, 142 A WATER-SIDE MOSQUE AT MENZALA
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Canal Life in the Delta each of which adds its quota of contamination to thestream. It may be imagined that by the time Mcnzala isreached, the water of the canal is anything but savoury ;yet the people have their houses and mosques builtinto the water, and discharge their drainage into thestream, the drains being frequently close beside thesteps from where the townswomen draw their domesticsupply ! When last there the streets of the town had anunwonted look of cleanliness, a general cleaning-uphaving been ordered by the Omdeh in anticipationof a Government inspection. The accumulated garbageof the streets was, however, calmly and deliberatelyswept into the canal, their only source of water-supply !On being remonstrated with, and the fact pointed outthat such pollution of their water must inevitably resultin disease, the only response vouchsafed by the Omdehwas— Maalaishe ya Bey di min Rubbani, which means, It is not our fault, O Bey, our Lord sends it. Being market-day, we thought w

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