A Trip Through Egypt

       Now we enter Africa. Though a curse was of old pronounced upon those who went down into Egypt for help, it cannot be that the malediction was intended for those who go down into Egypt for help in writing a life of Christ. So I went. Some of our Lord's most important years were spent in Africa. What a morning was the 25th of November, 18S9, for new and thrilling experiences, for then I first saw Egypt. I landed at Alexandria amid a Babel of voices; the boatmen clamoring for our luggage; the Pasha, with his five wives, descending the ladder on the side of the steamer; custom-house officers on the alert; friends rushing aboard to greet friends; Europeans, Asiatics and Africans commingling. After a few hours' wandering about, and looking at Pompey's Pillar which has stood as the sentinel of twenty-six centuries, and through the gardens of the Khedive, and through streets filled with people of strange visage and costume, we sleep an hour to regain equilibrium before taking the train for Cairo.

       Now the train is rolling on through regions watered by canals and ditches that make the Nile the mightiest of aquatic blessings, through a country that otherwise would not yield food for one hungry man in all the land. We find here by irrigation the luxuriance of an American farm just after a spring shower. These Egyptian lands without a drop of rain direct from the heavens, have been drinking until they can drink no more. Thank God for water, canals of it, rivers of it, lakes of it, oceans of it, all the cups of the earth, and all the bottles of the sky at times overflowing! We meet processions of men and beasts on the way home from the day's work. Camels, dromedaries, mules and cattle discharged of their burdens. But alas! for the homes to which the poor inhabitants are going. For the most part, hovels of mud. But there is something in the scene that thoroughly enlists us. It is a novelty of wretchedness, a scene of picturesque rags. For thousands of years this land has been under a very damnation of taxes. Nothing but Christian civilization will ever roll back the influences which are "spoiling the Egyptians." There are gardens and palaces,  but they belong to the rulers. This is the land in which Joseph and Mary and Christ were fugitives.

• The Holy Family Flee to Egypt
• The Holy Family's Flight Into Egypt from theWordamongus
• Flight to Egypt - Study pages by Ferdinand Funk

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