26 THE VOYAGE FROM NAPLES TO EAST AFRICA. 



growing warmer — brought Col. Roosevelt to Port Said, the meeting 

 place of the Occident, the Orient and the tropics. While the ship 

 was coaled here by the sweating, naked, chattering, odoriferous 

 natives running back and forth, up and down, like ants on an ant 

 hill, the ex-President was escorted ashore and shown the sights, the 

 canal offices, the native quarters, the public buildings and new ho- 

 tels. 



I would rather go with you up some of the queer side streets, 

 poking into some of the queer shops, looking at some of the queer 

 people — and there are such extraordinary specimens of the human 

 race walking tranquilly about, as if they were quite at home here, 

 and as if we were the abnormal species and not they. Nubians, 

 black and shiny, Sudanese of many colors and tribes, Egyptians, 

 Arabs from the bare red mountains of the Holy Land, all wearing 

 the tints of the rainbow, so harmonized and blended as to make a 

 wild, rhythmical symphony of color, and with the glare of the earth 

 and sky as a clamorous chorus. 



NEW RACE OF TEDDY DONKEYS. 



Every resident of Port Said, black and white and yellow, was 

 out to see the great American whose name is known the world over. 

 And after his visit a new race of Teddy donkeys sprung up in Egypt, 

 each one guaranteed to future visitors as being the only one ex- 

 President Roosevelt rode. Jeering, cringing, importuning, clamor- 

 ous, the children of the desert, the scum of Arabia and Africa 

 pressed about him. And when night fell and they sat in groups 

 about the glowing charcoal of their braziers, cooking coffee or kous- 

 kous under the vast spaces of the starry Egyptian night, they related 

 stories of meeting with the ex-President, of how he looked and 

 walked, what he wore, etc. — stories which will in time grow into 

 fables and myths among the people, where story tellers still take 

 the place of books and newspapers. 



Nothing in his whole voyage probably was more interesting 

 to the ex-President than his trip through the Suez Canal. He is 

 parent of the Panama Canal. It was perhaps his favorite among 

 the great undertakings of his administration, and his personal in- 



