The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 259 



The liveliest audience was at the Cafe Chantant, where 

 there were a little ballet dancing of a free and easy character, 

 and one of the most dismal comic singers that ever earned 

 a living by public performances. The only comical thing I 

 saw during the comic man's infliction was the blank astonish- 

 ment of an English sailor who fourid he had to pay four 

 shillings for a bottle of Bass's beer, and who uttered an 

 exclamation so touching and so loud that the soi-disant 

 disciple of Momus, beholding perchance a dangerous rival, 

 looked stage daggers at him. There was a short ballet 

 (faction very well done by three small boys and two fat young 

 women, and the glasses on the tables were set ringing again 

 by the boisterous applause of a party of officers from a 

 French corvette lying in the lake. 



A bal masque was going on somewhere, for we saw a pro- 

 cession of devils, monks, crusaders, and mummers frisk by 

 just as a silent file of dromedaries laden with wood stalked 

 in from the outlying desert. The two oddly-contrasted 

 parties passed each other in the narrow thoroughfare, the 

 dromedaries snorting viciously at the outrageous figures, of 

 which we may be sure they had never dreamt in their 

 philosophy. 



"And doth not a meeting like this make amends?" 

 soliloquized my companion. It did make amends, and we 

 proceeded straightway to our boat. 



After Lake Timsah the canal becomes a trifle more inte- 

 resting. Tamarisks and less graceful shrubs are trying to 

 grow around the ponds and lagoons flanking the southern 

 corner, and there is quite a copse of the species of wild 

 broom under which the prophet Elijah is said to have taken 

 his repose in ages gone by. In the matter of shelter the 

 prophet might certainly have done worse ; and lo, as if to 

 make the remembrance of the seer complete as we pass, a 



