14 Red Sea Shells. 



shells : and early next morning, after fastening a large Nubian 

 fishing basket round my neck, I sallied forth with a chicken, an 

 orange, and an umbrella, in the direction of Gebel Attaka, a fine 

 bold headland that looms over the gulf about fourteen miles from 

 Suez, and marks the traditional scene of the Israelites passage. 

 1 found myself on a sandy beach a mile or more in breadth, along 

 which, at every step I took, Trochus and Fusus and Scolopax kept 

 thrusting their half buried points into notice, and the naked soles 

 of my feet. The heat was intense; and shade of course there 

 was none : but heat and glare were soon forgotten in the absorbing 

 interest of that wondrous shore. Mile after mile I waded in 

 the warm colourless pools where the shells lay thickest, and as 

 one trochus always led on to another that was rosier but lay a 

 little out of the straight line, my course was somewhat too circuitous 

 to be consistent with progress. 1 longed to reach the Gebel, but 

 the further I got, the further it receded, fading as the sun 

 waxed hotter, from purple to lilac, and from lilac to the faint- 

 est blue, till at last it went out of sight altogether, and what 

 with the sultriness of the air, and the ever increasing weight of my 

 basket, I was fain to lay myself down on the sand and sleep. 

 When I awoke again, it was noon. The shore seemed enchanted : 

 Behind and on either side of me vast quivering floods of mirage 

 stretched far away into the distance. Suez showed like a reef on 

 the horizon, the Gebel had mounted into the air; and for all I saw 

 of the desert at my back, I might have drifted out from shore on 

 some treacherous floating island. In front lay the gulf, bluer even 

 than the intense azure of the sky above it, and beyond, the soft 

 silvery hills of Asia, wearing that exquisite tint which is only to 

 be compared to the bloom on autumn fruit. No sound but the 

 weird cry of the sea gulls, attracted like myself by the abundance 

 of litorinidae, or the rustle of the tiny crabs that chased each 

 other in myriads over the warm red sand. No hint of humanity 

 save three tall Indiamen that lay lazily at anchor in the distance. 

 To crown all, there was the sacred interest of the scenery, 

 the vision of the cleft sea and the crossing host, as one had 

 pictured it from childhood, realized in a solitude like this, as it 

 scarcely can be with a railway whistle in one's ears, among the 

 bales and magazines of Suez : and if I have given you any idea 

 of the beauty and magic of the scene in which I found myself, 

 you will not wonder that I prize my shells for memories which far 

 outweigh their scientific value. 



It was evening when I got back to Schembri's, with very weary 

 limbs and some thousands of live testacea. In vain I tried to 

 sort them on the floor of ray bedroom, they would not keep their 

 ranks, and from the peculiarity of their motion I now perceived, 



