LONDON, AND VOYAGE TO SINGAPORE 335 



among a crowd of Jews and Greeks, Turks and Arabs, and 

 veiled women and yelling donkey-boys, to see the city. We 

 saw the bazaars, and the slave market (where I was again 

 nearly pulled to pieces for 'backsheesh'), the mosques with 

 their graceful minarets, and then the pasha's new palace, the 

 interior of which is most gorgeous. We passed lots of Turkish 

 soldiers, walking in comfortable irregularity ; and after the 

 consciousness of being dreadful guys for two crowded hours, 

 returned to the hotel, whence we are to start for the canal 

 boats. You may think this little narrative is exaggerated, 

 but it is not so. The pertinacity, vigour, and screams of the 

 Alexandrian donkey-drivers cannot be exaggerated. On our 

 way to the boats we passed Pompey's Pillar; for a day we 

 were rowed in small boats on a canal, then on the Nile in 

 barges, with a panorama of mud villages, palm-trees, camels, 

 and irrigating wheels turned by buffaloes, — a perfectly flat 

 country, beautifully green with crops of corn and lentils ; end- 

 less boats with immense triangular sails. Then the Pyramids 

 came in sight, looking huge and solemn ; then a handsome 

 castellated bridge for the Alexandria and Cairo railway ; and 

 then Cairo — Grand Cairo ! the city of romance, which we 

 reached just before sunset. We took a guide and walked 

 in the city, very picturesque and very dirty. Then to a quiet 

 English hotel, where a Mussulman waiter, rejoicing in the 

 name of Ali-baba, gave us a splendid tea, brown bread and 

 fresh butter. One or two French and English travellers were 

 the only guests, and I could hardly realize my situation. I 

 longed for you to enjoy it with me. Thackeray's ' First Day 

 in the East ' is admirable. Read it again, and you will under- 

 stand just how I think and feel. 



" Next morning at seven we started for Suez in small four- 

 horsed two-wheeled omnibuses, carrying six passengers each. 

 Horses were changed every five miles, and we had a meal 

 every three hours at very comfortable stations. The desert 

 is undulating, mostly covered with a coarse, volcanic-looking 

 gravel. The road is excellent. The skeletons of camels — 

 hundreds of them — lay all along the road ; vultures, sand- 

 grouse, and sand-larks were occasionally seen. We frequently 



