But the financial situation was desperate; the federal revenue, mostly from customs - which were evaded by extensive smuggling - was not half the expenditure; and Indian revolts in Yucatan (1847-1850) and in the Sierra Gorda had added to the strain.
There are only two towns, Bengazi and Derna, and not half a dozen settlements beside, worthy to be called villages.
If the journals of accounts, the letters and business documents, had come down to us en masse, they would no doubt have yielded to research the history and life of Egypt day by day; but those that now represent a thousand years of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom together would not half fill an ordinary muniment chest.
Monuments of the XIIth Dynasty are abundant and often of splendid design and workmanship, whereas previously there had been little produced since the VIth Dynasty that was not half barbarous.
It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter...
