“ When the other branches and the Alexandria canal silted up, Rosetta prospered like its sister port of Damietta on the eastern branch; the main trade of the overland route to India passed through it until Mehemet Ali cut a new canal joining Alexandria to the Nile. Rosetta is now much decayed. Its population in 1907 was 16,810, almost entirely Mussulman. A railway joins it to Alexandria. ”