more but I looked beyond the Orient, to those elder lands of India and Cathay, where the sun of Egypt and of Greece first rose. Long before the outward-bound passengers had finished their rambles in the Alameda, I went out the watergate of the town, and the sunset-gun found me impatiently
pacing the deck of the Haddington.
Our voyage up the Mediterranean was a dreary one, and without any incident worthy of being recorded. There were a hundred and seventy passengers on board, and the cabins fore and aft were stowed as closely as the steerage of an emigrant ship. The raw, gusty weather we encountered, made our quarters doubly disagreeable, while, owing to the comfortable indifference of the officers, nothing was done to alleviate the annoyance. In fact, it required symptoms of incipient ships fever, and the strong protest of a few resolute passengers, to procure for us the simple relief of a wind-sail in the cabin. The fare resembled that of the Pacific Mail Steamers, during the first year of their establishment; and the price of passage was in about the same ratio. The Peninsular and Oriental Company, like all great monopolies, is a model of meanness.
We ran along, under the lee of the Spanish Mountains, to Cape de Gatte, then crossed to the Barbary Coast, which we skirted to Cape Bon, catching now and then a rainy glimpse of the distant Atlas, touched at Malta, and after a voyage of eleven days-time enough to have crossed the Atlantic-took a pilot off Alexandria, at daybreak on the 8th of December. I looked upon the crowd of windmills on the Cape of Figs, the light-house on the island of Pharos, and Pompey's Pillar in the distance, with almost the feeling of one returning to his native land. A clear, balmy Egyptian morning welcomed