have carried our parcels and trotted after our donkeys.
Then we take a seat by the window, to watch for the last time the flying
Egyptian landscape--the green plain, the tawny Nile, the camels on the
bank, the villages, and the palm-trees, and behind them the solemn line
of the desert.

At sunset the steamer passes down the harbor, and, pushing out to sea,
turns westward. A faint crescent moon becomes visible over the
Ras-et-Teen palace. It is the moon of Ramadan. Presently a cannon on the
shore ushers in, with its distant sound, the great Mohammedan fast.

CORFU AND THE IONIAN SEA

[Illustration]

Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour;
Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle!"

--_Translated by Andrew Lang._

Not long before Christmas, last year, I found myself travelling from
Ancona down the Adriatic coast of Italy by the fast train called the
Indian Mail. There was excitement in the very name, and more in the
conversation of the people who sat beside me at the table of a queer
little eating-house on the shore, before whose portal the Indian Mail
stopped late in the evening. We all descended and went in. A dusky
apartment was our discovery, and a table illuminated by guttering
candles that flared in the strong currents of air. Roast chickens were
stacked on this table in a high pile, and loaves of dark-colored bread
were placed here and there, with portly straw-covered flasks of the wine
of the country. No one came to serve us; we were expected to serve
ourselves. A landlord who looked like an obese Don Juan was established
behind a bench in a distant corner, where he made coffee with
amiability and enthusiasm for those who desired it. It was supposed
that we were to go to him, before we returned to the train, and pay for
what we had consumed; and I hope that his trust in us was not misplaced,
for with his objection to exercise, and his dim little lamp which
illuminated only his smiles, there was nothing for him but trust. The
Indian Mail carries passengers who are outward-bound for Constantinople,
Egypt, and India; his confidence rested perhaps in the belief that
persons about to embark on such dangerous seas would hardly begin the
enterprise by crime. To other minds, however, it might have seemed the
very moment to perpetrate enormitie