To archæological students and Egyptologists Rosetta is a place of the greatest interest, as it was in its neighborhood that the famous inscribed stone was found which furnished the clue--sought in vain for so many years by Egyptian scholars--to the hieroglyphic writings of Egypt. Perhaps none of the archæological discoveries made in Egypt since the land was scientifically exploited by the savants attached to Napoleon's expedition, not even that of the mummified remains of the Pharaohs, is more precious in the eyes of Egyptologists and antiquarians than this comparatively modern and ugly-looking block of black basalt, which now reposes in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. The story of its discovery is interesting. A certain Monsieur Bouchard, a French Captain of Engineers, while making some excavations at Fort St. Julien, a small fortress in the vicinity of Rosetta, discovered this celebrated stone in 1799. The interpretation of the inscription for many years defied all the efforts of the most learned French savants and English scholars, until, in 1822, two well-known Egyptologists, Champollion and Dr. Young, after independent study and examination, succeeded in deciphering that part of the inscription which was in Greek characters. From this they learnt that the inscription was triplicate and trilingual: one in Greek, the other in the oldest form of hieroglyphics, the purest kind of "picture-writing," and the third in demotic characters--the last being the form of hieroglyphics used by the people, in which the symbols are more obscure than in the pure hieroglyphics used by the priests. The inscription, when finally deciphered, proved to be one of comparatively recent date, being a decree of Ptolemy V., issued in the year 196 B. C. The Rosetta stone was acquired by England as part of the spoils of war in the Egyptian expedition of 1801.
At Rosetta the railway leaves the coast and goes south to Cairo.
If the traveller wishes to see something of the agriculture of the Delta, he would get some idea of the astonishing fertility of the country by merely taking the train to Damanhour, the center of the cotton-growing district. The journey does not take more than a couple of hours. The passenger travelling by steamer from Alexandria to Port Said, though he skirts the coast, can see no signs of the agricultural wealth of Egypt, and for him the whole of Egypt might be an arid desert instead of one of the most fertile districts in the whole world. The area of cultivated lands, which, however, extends yearly seawards, is separated from the coast by a belt composed of strips of sandy desert, marshy plain, low sandhills, and salt lagunes, which varies in breadth from fifteen to thirty miles. A line drawn from Alexandria to Damietta, through the southern shore of Lake Boorlos, marks approximately the limit of cultivated land in this part of the Delta. The most unobservant traveller in Egypt cannot help perceiving that its sole industry is agriculture, and that the bulk of its inhabitants are tillers of the soil. Egypt seems, indeed, intended by nature to be the granary and market-garden of North Africa, and the prosperity of the country depends on its being allowed to retain its place as a purely agricultural country. The ill-advised, but fortunately futile, attempts which have been made by recent rulers to develop manufactures at the expense of agriculture, are the outcome of a short-sighted policy or perverted ambition. Experience has proved that every acre diverted from its ancient and rational use as a bearer of crops is a loss to the national wealth.