ally increased until at present the
bottom width is ninety-seven and a half feet. In 1870 there passed
through the canal four hundred and eighty-six ships, whose gross
tonnage was 654,914. Last year 3,795 ships used the canal, and their
total tonnage was over 19,000,000. Truly this is one of the world's
greatest conveniences!

[Illustration: PILLARS OF THOTHMES III., KARNAK, EGYPT, WITH TWO YOUNG
MEN ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BUSINESS. THEY ARE BOTH WORTHY OF EVERY
ENCOURAGEMENT]

These reminiscences take me back again to Alexandria, as it was there
that an original seaboard bank was founded. Its first president was
Katchaskatchkan, a nephew of King Ram's. The old man saw to it that
all the "squeeze" from the corn crop money was deposited here and that
it held the margins on Joseph's grain corner. "Katch" broke his neck
by falling into the wheat pit, but the incident was soon forgotten in
the advancing prosperity of the bank. The place is in ruins, but we
saw the "paying teller's gun," which was a decorated club with spikes
on it; it lay unnoticed in a nook in the big amalgamated copper vault,
covered with papyrus books and records of the bank. Some of the old
past due notes on the shelves were still drawing interest and you could
hear it tick like the clanking cogs when a ferry boat makes her
landing. The writer fairly shudders at what the interest on those
notes would now amount to, computed at five per cent. (the prevailing
rate paid for call loans in that historic corner), remembering that the
interest on a penny compounded at this rate since the dawn of the
Christian era would now represent fourteen millions of globes of
eighteen-karat gold, each globe the size of our earth! We could not
help philosophizing on the change which had taken place in banking
principles and methods since those old days; and the whole inspection
was very interesting.

[Illustration: OBELISK OF THOTHMES I AND QUEEN HAPSHEPSET XVIII
DYNASTY. TWO FINE OBELISKS IN THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK--A LITTLE
TOPSY-TURVY LOOKING AND VERY MUCH IN NEED OF REPAIRS]

I am reluctant to leave Egypt without saying a word about the "teep,"
as this land is the very home, the embodiment--the Gibraltar, so to
speak, of the wide-open palm for services rendered--or even when they
are not rendered. Egypt is not the only place, however, of which this
can be said; there are others. But no matter where the dear American
tourist lands he "gets it" both coming and