ings.

The siding we have just passed is one of the largest in the canal, and
three ships can lie up there together if necessary. It is here that the
Syrian caravans cross over into Africa.

Next morning we are up on deck in good time, as we want to see all we
can of the canal. We are by this time out in the wide water of the
Bitter Lake, where we can go at a good speed, then the canal itself
begins again and we pass one of the little station-houses where the
signalmen live; it looks as if it was built out of a child's bricks, and
stands on the arid banks with only a few scanty palms near. It must be a
dreary sort of life for ever signalling to ships which are going onward
to all countries of the world, while you yourself remain pinned down in
the same few square yards of land.

This narrow waterway that passes down between Asia on the one side and
Africa on the other is stimulating to the imagination.

We catch a glimpse of Suez afar off and run by a tree-shadowed road that
leads to a peninsula, where are the P. & O. offices and a row of houses
inhabited by the men whose work in life it is to look after the canal.
Notice that buoy on the port side of the ship, it is about as far from
the bank as a man could throw a cricket-ball, yet through that strip of
water, which marks the deepest channel, every ship has to pass either on
entering or leaving the canal. Think of it! Between five thousand and
six thousand ships steam through in a year, they are of all sizes, of
many nations, carrying many kinds of cargo. There are the mail ships and
passenger ships of the European countries, there are pilgrim ships from
Russia and Turkey, there are transports carrying our own khaki-clad
soldiers; you can always recognise one of these transports, for she is
painted white and carries a large white number on a black square at the
stem and stern. Then there are merchant ships innumerable; it is true
that the heavily laden Australian ships go home round the Cape, as the
distance (from Sydney) is much the same, but those stored with teak wood
from Burma, with tea, cotton, spices, and silk from China, Ceylon, and
India come through here. If a boy were to sit on the verandah of one of
those houses and hear the names, destinations, and freight of all the
vessels he saw, he could learn the geography and commerce of half the
world with hardly an effort!

[Illustration: IN THE SUEZ CANAL, THE NARROW WATERWAY BETWEEN ASIA AND
AFRICA.]

Tha