ing the Red Sea with that of the Mediterranean
across the Isthmus and through the Gulf of Suez.

Government engineers determined the difference of level between the two
seas by careful processes, and the investigation showed that there was
hardly a perceptible variation between the Mediterranean and the arm of
the Indian Ocean formed by the Red Sea. The same fact has been
scientifically settled regarding the Isthmus of Panama; while
measurements along the Pyrenees have established the same level between
the waters of the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The traveler in
navigating these several waters cannot but realize an interest in such
important physical facts.

The only business of Port Said is that connected directly or indirectly
with the transshipment of vessels to and from the Red Sea by way of
Suez. The town contains nothing of interest, and is a mere sandy plain.
The languages spoken are French and Arabic. There are, counting the
floating population, some eight thousand people here, not more, composed
of every possible nationality; while the social status is at as low an
ebb as it can possibly be. The region is perfectly barren,--like Egypt
nearly everywhere away from the valley of the Nile, which enriches an
extent of ten or twelve miles on either side of its course by the annual
overflow, to an amount hardly to be realized without witnessing its
effect. The question often suggested itself as to how camels, donkeys,
and goats could pick up sufficient nourishment, outside of this fertile
belt, to sustain life. Through that part of the desert which we passed
in coming from Suez one looked in vain for any continuous sign of
vegetation. A peculiarity of the land is the entire absence of woods and
forests; hence also the absence of wild beasts, only hyenas, jackals,
and wolves being found. Here and there, at long intervals, an oasis was
observed like a smile breaking over the arid face of nature upon which a
settled gloom rested nearly all the while. Once or twice there was seen
a cluster of solitary palms by a rude stone wall, hedged in by a little
patch of green earth, about which a few camels and goats were quenching
their thirst or cropping the scanty herbage. Some Arabs, in picturesque
costumes, lingered hard by. The tents, pitched in the background, were
of the same low, flat-topped, coarse camel's hair construction as these
desert tribes have used for thousands of years. Such groups formed true
Egyptia