Egypt as seen from the car windows was the same Egypt about which so much has been written. The fields were green. The air was clear and generous. The train people were civil. When Arabs gathered at our doors to call for baksheesh in the name of the prophet, Hassan made himself, not without noise and effect, a beneficent influence. The General chatted with Stone about school times at West Point, about friends, about the new days-and one fears the evil days-that have fallen upon his highness the Khedive. Mr. Borie made various attempts to see the Pyramids from the cars, and talked over excursions that some of us had made, and we came near remaining in Cairo for another steamer to enable him to visit the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and the Serapeum at Memphis. But we are late for India, and Mr. Borie would not consent to the sacrifice of time on the General's part, and so we keep on to Suez.

The sun is down, and the lingering shadows of an Egyptian sunset light up the desert and the Red Sea with a variety of tints, and the sky is a dome of glowing light-so intense and clear and vast that it affects you like music-as we come into Suez. There are our friends the dusky boys and Arabs in muslin, and a tall Arab with a turban, carrying a lantern, who leads the way to the hotel. The dogs are out in chorus, and Hassan, having conscripted all the Arabs in sight and made them burden-bearers, puts them in march and gives us his company. We enter Suez walking in the middle of a sandy lane, Hassan, with a stick, in the advance, loudly making his authority known to all. Mrs. Grant and General Stone and the rest of us bring up the rear. As the road is through sand and is rather a long one, Mr. Borie casts reflections upon a civilization which, although boasting of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, does not have hotel omnibuses and coaches like Philadelphia. I mention to my honored friend that this was the place where Moses crossed the Red Sea and Pharaoh was drowned, and that from our hotel you could see the well where the Israelites halted while Miriam sang her song of triumph and joy. But my honored friend does not see why that should keep a people

from having comfortable coaches, and not make visitors tramp and tramp through narrow, sandy lanes. I do not attempt to parry my friend's criticism. I have my own opinions of a civilization which, although it built Karnak, has no omnibuses; and it is not pleasant to tramp and drag through the sand, not ex

actly sure where you are going. In time, however, we came to our hotel to welcome and supper.

The hotel of Suez was, I am told, formerly a harem of one of the Egyptian princes. You can sit on your balcony and look out on the Red Sea-on the narrow line of water which has changed the commerce of the world, and which is the Suez

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Canal. Suez is a small, clean town-clean from an Oriental standard. We drove around it next morning on donkeys, and went through the bazaars. We drove into the suburbs and saw a Bedouin camp, and, having driven all over the town in half an hour, and having nothing else to do, we drove all over it two or three times. The boat which was to carry us to India had not arrived. She was blocked in the canal. We might have to remain all night and the next day. Everybody begins to regret that we had not gone to Cairo and come to Suez on the morrow. But about five in the afternoon the masts of the Peninsular and Oriental steamer "Venetia" began to loom up above the sands. Everything was hurried on the tender. As the sun went down we went on board the steamer, Mr. Farman and General Stone remaining until the last moment to say farewell. About eight in the evening of January 31st the last farewell is spoken, we feel the throbbing of the vessel beneath us, and know that at last we are off for India.

We are the only Americans of the company sailing on the good ship "Venetia," and we form a colony of our own. We have preempted a small claim just behind the wheel, in the stern of the vessel. There is a grating about six foot square a foot above the deck. Here you can lounge and look out at the tumbling waves that come leaping after, or look into the deep ultramarine and learn what the waves have to say. Here, if you come at any hour of the day, and at a good many hours of the night, you will find the members of our expedition. Mrs. Grant sits back in a sea chair, wearing a wide-brimmed Indian hat, swathed in a blue silk veil. There is the sun to fight, and our ladies make themselves veiled prophetesses, and shrink from his presence. The General has fallen into Indian ways enough to wear a helmet, which shields the face. The helmet is girded with a white silk scarf, which falls over the neck. We all have helmets which we bought in Suez, but only wear them as fancy seizes us. Mr. Borie has one which cost him eight shillings, an imposing affair, but no persuasion has as yet induced him to put it on. Dr. Keating wears his so constantly that an impression is abroad that he sleeps in it. This, I fear, arises from

ON BOARD THE VENETIA.

593 envy of the Doctor, who takes care of himself, and comes out of his cabin every morning neat enough to stroll down Chestnut Street, and not, like the rest of us, abandoned to flannel shirts and old clothes and frayed cuffs and cracked, shiny shoes. ship goes on in a lazy, lounging motion. Mrs. Grant looks out of her cloud of blue silk. She has brought up the interesting, never-failing question of mails. That is the theme which never dies, for you see there are boys at home, and if only boys

The

knew the interest felt in their writings what an addition it would be to our postal revenues. Colonel Grant, curled up in a corner, is deep in Vanity Fair. The Colonel is assuming a fine bronzed mahogany tint, and it is suggested that he will soon be as brown as Sitting Bull. You see it is the all-conquering sun who is having his will upon us. I am afraid the General's complexion failed him years ago, in the war days, and I do not see that the sun can touch him further. But the rest of us begin to look like meerschaum in various degrees of hue. What shall we be when we reach India?

The beardless members of the expedition have resolved not to trouble their beards until we reach home. He who touches razor is to pay the others a penalty. This is one of the ways in which people at sea kill time. The Doctor looks as if he regrets the compact, for the truth is that the beardless ones begin to look like hair brushes in various processes of manufacture, and there are several young ladies on board, and a handsome young man like the Doctor would rather not have to depend upon his eyes alone in making his way into the deck society. We try to read. I came on board laden with information cyclopedias, almanacs, guide books, old numbers of New York newspapers. I had laid out for myself a plan of study between Suez and Aden, between Aden and Bombay. I meant, for instance, to tell my readers all about India, about tigers and maharajahs and rupees and pagodas. Somehow one always makes resolutions of this serious kind when beginning long journeys. I am ashamed to say all my useful books are down in my cabin. I looked at them this morning as I was dressing in a ruminatory mood, and thought of readers at home hungering about India, and resolved to begin and cram myself with knowledge. But I looked out the open window, and there was the sea, flushed with feathery tufts of waves; a fresh, cool breeze coming from the shores of Arabia-so cool, so green, so winsome that I could not deny its solicitings, and when breakfast was over I came to our American encampment, and coddled myself around this wooden grating, not to write useful facts about India, but to kill time.

Mr. Borie has fished up a recent copy of the Philadelphia Ledger, and is reading the financial column, and wishes, among other things, that he had some Darlington butter. Somehow, when talk runs low on the question of mails it is apt to drift into butter. The ship butter is not very good, and it is served in jars, out of which you dig it with a knife. Can you imagine anything more distressing to a well-ordered, conservative Philadelphia mind than to have his butter put before him in a jar, and scooped out with a knife or the useless end of a spoon? He knows how much better it is at home-the butter cold and