Africa 269 



Canal time passes easily for a most extraordinary conjurer 

 stays on the boat and goes back and forth, entertaining. 

 His principal trick is to take a little chicken, seize it by 

 the wings, give it a sharp snap and, lo and behold, he has 

 two chickens instead of one. He is called the gilly-gilly 

 man. 



On one occasion we fetched up across the Canal and 

 were about to get in the sleeping car — in fact all the fe- 

 male members of the outfit had turned in and I was in the 

 passport control office — when the officer suddenly spotted 

 the fact that my daughter Julia, having had a birthday a 

 few days before, had reached an age when she should have 

 a separate passport of her own. This, of course, it was 

 impossible to get and, after a lot of talking, he agreed meta- 

 phorically to turn the calendar back a few days, else that 

 trip would have had to be called off. 



From El Kantara the train runs to Haifa, but if you go 

 to Jerusalem you get off at Lydda and take a branch line. 

 One passes in sight of the Cave of Macpelah and across the 

 stony draw where David smote Goliath. I think the thing 

 that is most striking about Palestine is its tininess. You can 

 stand on the Mount of Olives and look down and see the 

 Dead Sea on one side and the whole city of Jerusalem 

 spread out on the other. 1 am not going to discuss visiting 

 the Holy Places. Some of the sites provoke deep emotions, 

 a real stirring of the soul, while others are quite the re- 

 verse, and in summer the dark covered tunnels which 

 serve as streets stink awfully. One afternoon we drove 

 down to the Dead Sea Valley. The children and Peggy 

 Porter went in bathing. We sat and mopped our brows for, 

 in spite of being in a region where drought is unbroken, 



