The Suez Canal and Red Sea. 255 



Lake Menzaleh, and the snow-white sea fowl, as we pass, are 

 in patches so plentiful that the expanse looks like a shimmer- 

 ing plain, variegated by beds of daisies. In the distance 

 the graceful latteen sails of the native feluccas flash and 

 fade. Here comes our first camel along the sandy path by 

 the canal. The Arab who leads it wears the universal turban 

 and striped calico robe to his knees, with continuations of 

 unadorned shanks ; and the young Bedouin's white teeth 

 gleam out of their copper casket when he observes that I 

 have my field glass levelled at him. The camel is, to be 

 accurate, a dromedary, laden with firewood grubbed out of 

 the grudging desert ; the solemn beast passes on with swing- 

 ing noiseless stride. Next behold a group of fellahs sitting 

 in the sand on the margin of the water. They are naked, 

 save a bit of blue cloth round the loins, and as imperturbable 

 of aspect as their passing friend the dromedary. So our 

 vessel crawls on between sand-banks at first low, but by-and- 

 by varying in height. In one stage they cannot be less than 

 forty feet high. You descry an occasional dromedary, or 

 ass, with natives in attendance ; and so joyless is their ex- 

 pression that they increase rather than enlighten the general 

 desolation. 



M. de Lesseps has said that not even a fly lives in this 

 desert ; and that may well be. There are telegraph poles 

 and wires, however, on one side, and on the other posts on 

 which the distances are marked every tenth of a mile. Here 

 and there a hut may vary the prospect, or one of the stations 

 where the signalman lives ; that is the extent of the outlook 

 for miles. At Kintara, where the road to Jerusalem crosses 

 the water, and where a score or so of negroes and Arabs 

 were sitting, motionless as statues, on the Syrian side, the 

 station-house is pretty, and the neatness of the village a great 

 relief to the jaded eye. 



