The Suez Canal -and Red Sea. 261 



tints of inconceivable beauty, add variety to the horizon 

 line, until the Ottaka range becomes clearer and nearer, and 

 the white houses of Suez, glittering in the sun, warn us that 

 the desert lies behind us. 



In leaving the canal I come back to my previous con- 

 clusions — first, that there will not be many travellers eager 

 to deny that a little of the canal is enough ; and, second 

 that the widening of the channel is the chief question 

 for the consideration of the shareholders. Probably it 

 will be urged that the game is not worth the candle ; for to 

 make any improvement scheme final or effective the present 

 width of 72 feet of deep water must be at least doubled, 

 and that would be indeed a costly and troublesome, though 

 not perhaps in these days of scientific triumph, and with no 

 lack of labourers at hand, difficult business. 



The proverb mentions a certain unmentionable person as 

 not so bad as he is painted. I will mention the Red Sea — 

 speaking of seas as I found them — in that conjunction. 

 That it was the cool season in those regions I knew, but I 

 had been led to expect a gradual frying even in January. 

 The temperature, in fact, was extremely enjoyable, as it had 

 been in the main from the time of our entrance into the 

 Mediterranean ; it was not till we were much nearer the 

 equator than the outlet to the Red Sea that we began to 

 know what heat really meant. 



The scenery on either side of the Gulf of Suez is very 

 wild, and at times romantically sterile. One side was as bad 

 (or as good) as the other. It may be, as I have somewhere 

 read, that the Peninsula of Sinai is geographically, geologic- 

 ally, and archseologically one of the most interesting places 

 in the world, but it is not a whit the more attractive to the 

 -general traveller for those intrinsic merits. If the Arabian 

 side was not more fertile in the early days of the world than 



