The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 257 



which the great personages who attended the opening of the 

 canal were entertained. Ismailia, from the centre of Lake 

 Timsah, is very inviting. A cool avenue of trees, bordered 

 by thickets of tasselled reeds, twenty feet high, leads you 

 across a small canal, through which the water of the sacred 

 Nile is conducted. Gigantic cacti, tree ferns, and similar 

 growths wave high above the tops of the walls. The shops 

 are good; there is a general air of civilization which is none 

 the worse for being pronouncedly French in the town. 



In the gardens attached to the waterworks, which pump 

 400,000 gallons per day of Nile water into Port Said, I was 

 astonished to find a number of dear old friends geraniums 

 and jonquils in full bloom, a bed of violets, gilliflowers, 

 mignonette, nasturtiums, roses, and many another English 

 flower. The strawberries were nearly gone, though some 

 fruit and blossoms still remained, and the last bunch of 

 grapes had been cut a week before. We wiped our steaming 

 foreheads on the (to us) piping hot January day, and ex- 

 amined the lettuces, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and green 

 peas ; then the courteous manager of the works took us to a 

 little orange grove, and plucked the fragrant fruit for our 

 refreshment It is not every Eastern garden that possesses 

 remembrances of home after this fashion ; but the worthy 

 French gentleman is blessed with an English wife, as the 

 Turks and infidels of Ismailia are proud to tell you. 



At Port Said there were no donkeys ; at Ismailia all the 

 well-known scenes of Cairo and Alexandria were repeated. 

 A wall-eyed Arab boy thought to drive a good business by 

 informing us that his animal was " the Claimant ; " another 

 beast was " Bismarck," and another " Ditchreally," the 

 nearest rendering, apparently, that could be given by 

 native tongues to Disraeli's name. Very few vessels, I 

 should remark, halt in Lake Timsah more than an hour no 



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