soon as our treaty of "freedom of commerce and navigation" is worked out, and the Nile is thrown open, I understand that it is the intention of the Peninsular and Oriental Company to place a second steamboat on it, so as to enable passengers to ascend as well as descend the river at the same time, and thus accommodate both travellers to England and India, who now very inconveniently cross each other en route between Suez and Alexandria. A little five-horse power steamer, employed by Mr. Hill, has hitherto been the only available steamboat for passengers on the Nile. This is now refitting with a ten-horse power engine, and will probably be the first in the flood; but it only holds 14 persons. The Pasha long since promised the Bombay Fund Committee to build a station, or reception-house, at Kennah or Luxor, and another at Kosseir, so as to enable travellers arriving from India to enter Egypt at the latter port if they pleased, and (by an easy journey of four days across a country well supplied with water) proceed direct to visit Thebes and the most interesting ruins in Upper Egypt. Passengers proceeding to India also might, if this route were available, enjoy a trip up the Nile, indulge their curiosity with a sight of these far-famed antiquities, and finally embark at Kosseir on board the Victoria, Berenice, or Cleopatra. But, alas, there is much yet to be done, ere this can be counted on. The stationhouses have yet to be built, and the second steamboat placed on the river; but the Pasha shows no inclination to permit either to be done, until his own affairs are settled favorably at Constantinople (a great mistake on his part); then the three steamers on the Red Sea must be replaced by larger ones, ere passengers who stop at Kosseir can expect to find accommodation. Last month the Berenice sailed away leaving four at Suez, having all her berths and sofas full, filled by 20 passengers and 20 more besides stowed on the open deck, hopeless of any better accommodation in the way of couch or canopy!

But, above all, and before all, voyagers from England to India want an extension of accommodation in the time allotted to perform their voyage through Egypt. It is killing work to hurry through the desert night and day to keep up with the mails in their transit from Alexandria to Suez. Each passenger takes eight horses at present, to perform the 90 miles between Cairo and the Red Sea. Ladies complain bitterly, and with justice, of the continuous driving, hurrying, loss of rest, &c. But the mails must go through at the quickest rate. The public service cannot stop for the comfort, the health, or even the lives of ladies and gentlemen; and the steamer at Suez must sail as soon as the mails are on board! The fact is, that travellers require some days in advance to cross the isthmus safely and properly, without leaving their baggage behind, or worrying themselves into a fever. This will require an intermediate steamer from England, properly a passengers' steamer. The present boats (Oriental and Great Liverpool) are mail steamers, and the bags and boxes they bring must go ahead, whoever may be left behind. General Sir John Campbell looked very much surprised, the other day, in Cairo, when he saw a lot of 45 camels, provided to carry the baggage of his party, seized on

tout-à-coup by the Governor of Cairo to expedite the British mail! However, the Governor subsequently seized as many more from somebody else to oblige Sir Colin, otherwise he and his friends would have been left behind and been too late at Suez, notwithstanding the Pasha had lent him his own steamer to ascend the Nile with expedition. Travellers in Egypt are always liable to these things, and the only way to avoid the ill consequences (such as being left to stay a month at Suez, as Mrs. Turton lately was, with her nine children and servants) is to enter Egypt some days in advance. The British and Indian public ought at once to put their shoulders to the wheel, and help the Peninsular and Oriental Company to do this, otherwise the French will do it. They have been beaten out of the Neapolitan line, and will, they know, be soon beaten out of the Grecian and Turkish line (for both Austrians and English are setting to work in competition with them-the former to resume its lucrative occupation of carrying pilgrims, the latter by the mere extension of its already successful efforts in the Mediterranean,) and shortly nothing will remain for them to do in their own " French Lake" but to carry despatches to and from Algiers and Alexandria."

THE PLAGUE AT ALEXANDRIA.

A correspondent of the same journal gives the following description of the city of Alexandria, and of the causes of the plague, which almost always prevails there. The writer considers the plague as not epidemic or contagious, but as a local disease, the offspring of filth, which exists in the most disgusting forms in that city. To this cause alone he attributes the frequent breaking out of this alarming disease in Alexandria.

These occurrences, he says, will have a depressing effect on trav elling and commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean. The quarantine at Malta will be increased to 25 days, the rapid steam communication between Egypt and England deprived of half the advantage that justly attaches to it, and the longings of travellers returning from India to touch their native shores doomed to disappointment and delay almost within hail of friends and kindred. It is a disgrace to civilization that these tedious impediments to free intercourse should be still suffered to exist, when it is admitted by every medical man who knows any thing about the plague or its symptoms, that two days are quite sufficient to allow the peculiar appearances to develope themselves in anybody seized with the disease. The fact of its never being carried into the holy cities by tens of thousands of pilgrims annually, nor into Persia, nor across the desert anywhere, nor even into Upper Egypt, the grand route of the Nile, ought to convince every intelli

gent mind that it is an affair of locality. Whoever looks at the situation of Alexandria and its inhabitants, need not be surprised at its prevalence here; the great puzzle is that it does not prevail every winter.

The modern town is built on the flat sandy beach between the two harbors, and lies so low that drainage is impossible. Even in the great square built by Ibrahim Pasha, for the residence of the Franks, the salt water lies in pools on the spot where the new English church is to be erected, and the waves used to drive into the midst of the square when the north winds prevailed, till the surface was raised towards the beach. The sewers carry off nothing, but merely afford entrances into the great sandy sponge on which the modern city stands; and it is a question whether most of the filth thus soaks away and oozes into the surrounding water of the ever-dirty harbors, or remains until the scorching heat of summer comes to evaporate it. Certainly the plague is found to cease when the sun attains his full power in July, but meantime every obstacle is interposed to retard his purifying influence. The narrow lanes between the rows of bazaars are almost covered with boards for the sake of shade; they are left unpaved, and scavenging is impossible. Then, when the heavy rains come down, (as they did recently,) and the sewers and drains blow up, or rather flow up, under the feet of the everlasting crowds of camels, donkeys, men, and women, the effluvium that is elicited is enough to drive a Frank to go a mile round to avoid it. But the Turks and Arabs sit smoking patiently on their shopboards, or serving customers, resigned to the decree of Providence, and scarcely giving themselves. the trouble to think about "their fate," much less to take any measures to alter it.

The ruins of foundations exposed amidst masses of rubbish in the desert places once occupied by the old city still present splendid evidences of the skill and foresight with which its enlightened founders labored to secure the health of the citizens. Vast sewers, built both of small Roman bricks and hewn stone, with pointed arches, are there to be seen on a level higher than the drawing-room floors of Ibrahim Pasha's buildings in the square, and now serve the degenerate possessors but as quarries from which to draw ready made materials to aid them in squatting down upon a putrid saltmarsh. The conduits, too, which bring under ground from the canal the water used by the inhabitants (for there are no springs,) are all more or less exposed to the infiltration of the city drains, and doubtless bear their part in presenting the cup of disease to their lips. They traverse the city in various directions, and open freely over the tanks in the midst of the roads and streets, presenting many well-holes or traps, into which the blind might fall with the greatest facility, several without even a raised brick to mark their edges, and when the rain descends in floods, all that does not sink into the porous soil finds its way into these tanks, either by the mouths or open-work sides, washing into them all the abominations left upon the surface of the earth, which the air had not been able to carry off. Then, to fill up the picture, I need only mention

that there are some thousands of poor Fellalis dwelling in the rudest clay huts ever formed by human hands, in the deserts of rubbish within the walls, and even close to the gates of the Pasha's palace un Raselteen, so filthy in their mode of life, that, if Alexandria were otherwise a paradise of purity, these human pigs would be sufficient to introduce a pestilence. In the midst of all this, the Pasha has a "board of ornament." Some European residents petitioned for the removal of a pigsty village that lies under the windows of the Frank Hospital, and the stench of which, when the wind blew towards the house, was too much for the olfactory nerves of Europeans, especially when suffering in sickness. The reply they received, translated into plain English, was, that the board was only appointed to attend to ornamental matters, and dare not meddle with dirt.

It is said that the Pasha is not only utterly hopeless of effecting any reformation in the matter, but fearful of attempting it. The Arabs will suffer all the horrors of the conscription, and all the miseries of destitution at his hands, without daring to utter a complaint; but, if he were to enforce habits of cleanliness, it is said that an insurrection might be apprehended. This borders on the incomprehensible, but the Pasha, nevertheless, acts as if it were true! It is a great pity that his ambition did not take a decent, instead of a military turn, and that he did not early in life set himself to conquer the pestilential arrangements which exist in his capital, and the corresponding propensities of the mass of the Arab population. As matters stand, the evil has grown to a pitch that almost defies eradication. The Arab pigsty villages might be levelled in a day, but the wretched inmates have now no other places left wherein to hide their heads; and any attempt to improve the condition of the city would require a thorough re-construction of the houses and streets, as well as sewers. It would be necessary to begin by building the sewers on the present surface of the streets to gain a sufficient fall, and sacrificing the ground floors throughout Alexandria, before a healthful level could be obtained. Even such a labor, Herculean as it might seem, would have been the height of good policy compared with that in which the Pasha has spent his life, reducing surrounding nations to the level of beastly degradation established among his own Fellahs.

NEW METHOD OF PRESERVING MEAT.

Late Paris journals announce the following discovery. The injection of a solution of chloride of aluminium into the aorta or main arterial trunk of an animal will preserve it fresh for an indefinite period, without imparting to it the slightest taste. The chloric acid of the salt renders the gelatine or decomposable part of animal matter incapable of decomposition, perhaps by destroying some alkali for which

the acid has a greater affinity than for aluminium. The latter substance, thus deprived of its acid, becomes an insipid powder. The particulars of this discovery, by M. Gannal, will be found in the Bulletin of the French Academy of Sciences for the sitting of March 22, and in the Literary Gazette report of that meeting. From two to five pounds of the salt, dissolved in about twice or three times its weight of water, is sufficient for an ox. Persons disposed to make experiments on the subject need scarcely be reminded that the smaller animals, such as rabbits or cats, should be employed. Subjects for anatomical dissection should also be prepared in this manner. Here is a new field opened for commerce of a most important description. Thousands of oxen on the coasts of Spanish America are slain for their skins only, the flesh being cast upon the dunghill; it may now be preserved and shipped for the West India markets as fresh meat. ship in future need be provided with salt meat. The health of seamen on long voyages will be preserved, and the comfort of passengers in emigrant ships to Sidney will be materially improved by the application of this important discovery. The table of the Academie des Sciences, on the reading of M. Gannal's memoir, was covered with legs of mutton, fowls, et id genus omne, which had been preserved for many months by the new process. The chlorure of aluminium would be very cheap when made on a large scale for commercial purposes.

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KHÍVAH.

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The late Russian expedition against the Khan of Khívah, has brought to light several descriptions of a country in the centre of Asia, which has been hitherto very little known. The most full and satisfactory of those which has come to our knowledge is entitled, " moir of the Countries about the Caspian Sea, illustrative of the late Russian expedition against Khívah," just published in German by Lieut. Carl Zimmerman, and translated into English by Capt. Moriér, of the British navy. The following notice of the contents of this publication, we copy from the London Times.

Khívah is situated in Tartary, to the east of the Caspian Sea, and to the north-east of the Persian province of Mazanderan. It stands between 41 and 42 degrees of north latitude, and is bounded on the north by the sea, or, more correctly speaking, lake of Aral. It appears from the accompanying map to be connected with the river Oxus by a canal.

To attack Khívah from the north, four routes are available,—

1. By an expedition on the Caspian, as was attempted under Peter the Great in 1715.

2. By the old caravan roads from the lower Ural to the delta of the Amu.