THE JOUKXEY TO IXDIA. 9 



the city, we sped quietly along the eastern shore of Lake Mareotis 

 for several miles, then turned off to cross the flat and fertile delta 

 of the Nile. Although it was mid-winter, the fields were green 

 with young crops of wheat, save those which had been newly 

 ploughed ; and for a gi'eat part of the journey, the landscapes re- 

 minded me strongly of the level green prairies of Northern Illinois 

 near the southern shore of Lake Michigan. 



For a number of miles the railway runs along the bank of an 

 irrigation canal, the space between the two being used as a pubhc 

 highway. As the railway ti*aveller flies along, he is treated to an 

 endless moving panorama of tiu-baued men, women, and children, 

 riding donkeys or plodding along on foot ; groups of laborers, 

 idlers, beggars, and strings of laden camels. And so we rattled on, 

 past the gTeen fields ; across muddy canals ; across the iron viaduct 

 over the Eosetta branch of the Nile ; past mud villages, with their 

 miserable peasant inhabitants squatting on the sunny side of their 

 huts, fighting the flies ; past ruined villages — mere round hillocks 

 of mud — across the splendid iron tubular bridge at Benha, over 

 the Damietta branch of the Nile ; across bits of desert, wider or 

 narrower ; in sight of the Pyramids ; in sight of Cau'o ; through 

 clouds of sand and dust, and at last into the grand old city itself. 



We took up quarters at the Grand New Hotel, and immediately 

 began to gather in specimens. But it wouldn't do, and we might 

 have known it before going there. The high-toned guests of the 

 hotel wondered too much and looked too much scandalized when we 

 began to buy ibex skulls, stuffed mastigures, polypterus, and other 

 queer animals, and carry them upstairs to our rooms. A naturalist 

 who intends to accomplish anything has no business to stop at a 

 grand hotel, where he must stand upon ceremony and do nothing 

 remarkable. He must jDut up at the small hotels, where, being a 

 guest who pays cash for everything, the landloi'd wiU be his warm- 

 est friend and abettor in whatever he undertakes, will give him 

 every accommodation the house affords, and allow him to tui-n its 

 best room into a taxidermist's shop if necessary. Being compelled 

 to realize this, we moved to the Hotel de I'Europe, where the land- 

 lord gave us all the rooms on the lower floor, and in those we bar- 

 gained with natives, sorted and packed specimens, sawed and ham- 

 mered at our boxes, and were happy. 



In this day of modem improvements and European innovations 

 upon the ways and means of the oriental races, there ai*e two Cairos, 

 the old and the new. The latter is the foreign — or, more properly, 



