ts,
excepting the hyena and jackal, which are occasionally met with. Here
and there, at long intervals, an oasis of green is seen, like a smile
breaking over the arid face of nature. Once or twice we see a cluster of
palms beside a rude well, hedged in by a little patch of green earth,
about which a few camels or goats are quenching their thirst or cropping
the scanty herbage. Some Arabs, in picturesque costumes, linger hard by.
The tents pitched in the background are of the same low, flat-topped,
camel's-hair construction as have been used by these desert tribes for
many thousands of years.

Egypt has only her ruins, her antiquity, her Bible associations to give
her interest with the world at large. Japan is infinitely to be
preferred; China even rivals her in natural advantages; and India is
much more inviting. In looking at Egypt we must forget her present and
recall her past. The real Egypt is not the vast territory which we find
laid down by geographers, reaching to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and
embracing equatorial regions; it is and was, even in the days of the
Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the valley of the Nile, from the First Cataract
to the Mediterranean Sea, hemmed in by the Libyan and Arabian deserts,
whence there came to the rest of the world so much of art, science, and
philosophy. The fellah or peasant, he who tills the soil, is of a fine
and industrious race, well built, broad chested, and lithe of frame. He
is the same figure that his ancestors were of old, as represented on the
tombs and temples of Thebes, and on the slabs one sees from Gizeh, in
the museum of Cairo. He still performs his work in the nineteenth
century just as he did before the days of Moses, scattering the seed and
irrigating by hand. He is little seen in the cities,--his place is in
the field, where he lives and thrives. Though his native land has found
such various masters in Greek and Roman, Arab and Turk, he has never
lost his individuality; he has ever been, and is to-day, the same
historic Egyptian.

The next point to which our course will take us is the Island of Malta,
which involves a sail of a thousand miles from Port Said. The city of
Valetta is the capital, having a population of a hundred and fifty
thousand. The island is an English outpost, similar to Gibraltar, and,
in a military point of view, is about as important. It is twenty miles
long and sixteen wide, and has held a conspicuous place in historical
records for n