250 By Stream and Sea. 



In a small way, here you may consider yourself to be on 

 the threshold of the east; from the moment your ship leaves 

 her moorings in Port Said harbour the strangely-fascinating 

 life of the land of the morning sun begins to unfold itself. 

 The very dreariness of the outlook will probably be a 

 striking, if not welcome, change to the Englishman who may, 

 for the first time in his life, really know how to appreciate 

 the sweet shady lanes, lovely woods, and fair meadows of his 

 native land. More than this, spite of the notorious sterility 

 of the isthmus, the man who makes fair use of his powers of 

 observation may enjoy some effective and many curious 

 sights. 



No doubt he must be somewhat of an optimist to do this, 

 for it is more than likely that the majority of travellers will 

 opine that a little — a very little— of the Suez Canal is enough 

 and to spare. The man of business, for example, firmly 

 believing in the creed that time is money, will regard every 

 moment of delay beyond the two days which should be the 

 duration of the fortunate voyageur's transit, as an experience 

 against which it would not be unreasonable to rail ; every 

 day beyond this limit will be a hardship grievous to be 

 borne, since by that time all the novelty will be worn 

 threadbare, and camels, Arabs, and landscape will have 

 lost all their picturesqueness, and become execrated objects 

 in a wide picture of desolation. 



Sometimes a ship is eight days passing through the canal, 

 but this, of course, is an extreme case. The steamer in 

 which I myself performed the trip was two days in making 

 the first forty miles, and the vessel which preceded us was 

 delayed six days and nights in the canal through the eccen- 

 tricities of a Dutch trader, which manifested a perpetual 

 desire to thrust her snub nose into one bank, and her bald 

 round stern into the- other, leaving any ship that followed 



