hey did
not tumble down overcome by unconsciousness. It is supposed that all
travelers visit them, but we came away more punished than entertained or
interested in the senseless exhibition.

A week was all too brief a period to pass in the Queen City of the East,
but at its close we started by rail for Ismailia, the little town which
is located exactly midway on the great canal between the two seas, at
the Bitter Lakes, through which the canal runs. It is a pretty and
attractive place of four or five thousand inhabitants, and is a creation
of the last sixteen years. Here we observed gardens filled with flowers
and fruit trees; vegetation being in its most verdant dress, promoted by
irrigation from the neighboring fresh-water canal. The place has broad
macadamized streets, and a capacious central square ornamented with
large and thrifty trees. It was here that the representatives of all
nations met on the occasion of the inauguration ceremony on the
completion of De Lesseps' grand canal. We took a small mail steamer at
Ismailia through the western half of the canal to Port Said, which is
the Mediterranean terminus of the great artificial river. It was a night
trip, but had it been by daylight would have afforded us no views. We
passed onward between two lofty hills of sand, the sky only visible
overhead, and no vegetation whatever in sight; no birds, no animals,
nothing to vary the monotony, but an occasional dredging machine, when
we stopped at what are called watering-stations. The reader needs hardly
to be told that this successful enterprise of cutting a canal across the
Isthmus of Suez has proved a vast and increasing advantage to the
commerce of the world. Large as it is, and under the best of management,
it has already proved insufficient for the business which it has
created, rendering a second parallel water-way imperatively necessary,
plans for which are now under consideration. At present, so large is the
demand upon its facilities that "blocks" and serious delays are of daily
occurrence. That there will be ample and remunerative business for two
canals is easily demonstrable by the statistics of the original company,
which show a most remarkable annual increase. It is a singular fact
worthy of mention, that, with all our modern improvements and
progressive ideas, the Egyptians were centuries before us in this plan
of shortening the path of commerce between the East and the West, or, in
other words, of connect