Brown Guano.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1812, 16 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Brown Guano.

A pkofitable source of vile income has latelybeen declared illegal in Egypt. The wise men of the days of the Pharaohs believed that after 3000 years people would return to animate their earthly bodies, which it was theieforo of the highest importance should be preserved for reanimation. Accordingly, while all the wisdom of the most skilful chemists was enlisted in the preparation of wealthy mummies, in case of the poor, the bodies were merely saturated with bitumen, or natron, baked,in an oven, swathed in woollen rags, then tied up in a mat of palm leaves and laid away to rest in the great sepulchres in rows of thousands. While the mighty Pharoahs, their powerful relatives and

haughty priests and nobles, have fchns .been preserved to serve as mummies for {he museums of e>eiy town in the barbarian world ;_are com ci ted into pills aud potions for the' healing of vaiious diseases, or into olKUfloal to bo used in lofining bugar, the most hideous foim of utilitarian de^ecreatiori ha=) baen shown by the do^nerattf Egyptian* of our days in selling the teas and hundreds of thousands of lower elnss mummifcs to merchant vessels at so much per ton to fei tUize foreign field-:. I'roin the innumerable tombs near Memphis, aud in other parts of Egypt, long strings of camels were employed until quite recently in openly carrying this human bone dust to vesselsin the harbor at Alexandria; while large quan titie3 of such human remains, under the name of " brown guano," were brought to the vessel in cargo-boats from the ancient sepulchres and catacombs which honeycomb the rocky ridge near Alexandria itself. The vile trade was carried on without any attempt at concealment or disguise, and visitors could sac human bone 3, glass tear bottles and earthenware lamps that had all been laid away perhaps before the days of Joseph, shovelled up together with the accumulated brown dust, carried up the ship's sides in baskets and dumped into the hold to be conveyed to England where the regular price was £6 10s. per ton— a price that gave the manufacturers of fertilizers a good profit by mixing the stuff with Peruvian guano.