260 By Stream and Sea. 



few ravens, representatives of the Heaven-sent messengers 

 who at another period of his life preserved him from starva- 

 tion, rise noisily from a hillock and make in haste for the 

 shores of the lake. 



Bold scarified highlands appear rising steep out of the 

 billows of eternal sand, and we are delighted with a placid 

 lake fringed with nodding palms and other poetical trees. 

 Alas ! though the mountainous piles of sterility are real, the 

 rest is nothing but mirage. Coarse grass, as we proceed, 

 begins to grow by the deep, green water, and sometimes you 

 may actually see straggling sheep and exiled goats browsing 

 upon it. A dozen or so of white-robed Arabs and a string 

 of camels move across the plain in single file, two of the 

 men in advance carrying matchlocks that must have been 

 taken out of some collection of singularly antique armour. 

 Huts are more frequent ; at one station a few women and 

 children, all huddled together on the sand, cover their faces 

 till we are out of sight. 



The Bitter Lakes are forty leagues in circumference, 

 allowing you the luxury of proceeding at full speed for a few 

 miles. The water, as the name implies, is frightfully salt, 

 almost as salt as that of the Mormon lake, which, I believe, 

 yields one pail of salt to three pails of water. The canal 

 water, also, is so impregnated that it leaves a white line of salt 

 where it trickles, and, as every engineer who loves his boilers 

 knows to his cost, encrusts everything it touches. Both the 

 Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah were mere sand basins until 

 the canal was opened ; they gave the excavators a good deal 

 of trouble, and to this day require continual dredging. From 

 the Bitter Lakes to Suez Bay the sand is as sandy as before ; 

 but tall cliffs and a ridge of rugged tableland that, as the 

 hours wear on, receive a succession of umbers, browns, and 

 greys from the sun, and in the evening display dark purple 



