The
Children Are Prematurely Old; And The Earth, Which Is So Fruitful,
Is Hideous In Its Fertility.
Cairo and its immediate neighborhood
must, I suppose, have been subject to yearly inundation before it
was "settled up.
" At present it is guarded on the shores of each
river by high mud banks, built so as to protect the point of land.
These are called the levees, and do perform their duty by keeping
out the body of the waters. The shore between the banks is, I
believe, never above breast-deep with the inundation; and from the
circumstances of the place, and the soft, half-liquid nature of the
soil, this inundation generally takes the shape of mud instead of
water.
Here, at the very point, has been built a town. Whether the town
existed during Mr. Tapley's time I have not been able to learn. At
the period of my visit it was falling quickly into ruin; indeed, I
think I may pronounce it to have been on its last legs. At that
moment a galvanic motion had been pumped into it by the war
movements of General Halleck; but the true bearings of the town, as
a town, were not less plainly to be read on that account. Every
street was absolutely impassable from mud. I mean that in walking
down the middle of any street in Cairo, a moderately-framed man
would soon stick fast, and not be able to move. The houses are
generally built at considerable intervals, and rarely face each
other; and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid,
on which the mud had accumulated only up to one's ankles.
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