NOTES ON TRAVEL 241 



" We drove to the landing-stage, where Kruger was to dis- 

 embark at 10.30, drew up about ten feet from the line the pro- 

 cession was to take and waited. No crowd. People merely 

 stopped to look. The old ruffian had had his face washed and a 

 clean collar on ; he has grown a moustache and wore dark spec- 

 tacles. I snap-shotted him. There was an attempt at an anti- 

 English song, but the two seedy singers were chivied out of the 

 way by gendarmes and fled. The whole crowd could have been 

 packed into the college quadrangle. In the afternoon, however, 

 there was a row, we heard, for about 300 roughs (paid, it was 

 said, by the proprietor of one of the local papers) made a raid on 

 one of the hotels, where some of our fellow-passengers were. 



Some of these charged them and found their way down to the 

 boat ; but those with ladies were shut up by the landlord and did 

 not reach the Rome till about 11 p.m." 



The voyage was unlike any of these previously taken, 

 which had been mostly northwards, and everything was 

 new and strange. 



Ramsay said that this journey seemed to give him 

 ten extra years of life : certainly it gave richness and 

 colour to it. He was a good sailor and enjoyed every 

 moment of the time. Port Said, the Canal and the 

 strange sights and sounds of the desert delighted him. 

 He never tired of watching the native life. The coaling 

 of the vessel, with the black forms toiling up the gang- 

 ways in the flaring light of torches, and later the strange 

 processions of Arabs, with their grave and solemn camels 

 pacing along the Canal banks, were pictures that he 

 never forgot. Needless to say, he was not idle on 

 either of the voyages. On the voyage out he worked 

 at Urdu, which he had been told would be the most 



