with anxious mothers, whose
dusky and grimy offspring are engaged at a rudimentary school for
cookery in the mud of the road. Sailors, as a rule, don't note such
items.

August 25th, to-day, after a rather short stay, we looked our last, for
some years, on "the fair isle"--St. Paul's Melita.

CHAPTER IV.

"Yet more! the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast
They hear not now the booming waters roar,
The battle thunders will not break their rest."

PORT SAID.--THE SUEZ CANAL.--VOYAGE DOWN THE
RED SEA.--ADEN.

The voyage from Malta to Port Said was accomplished without any notable
event, except that the heat goes on steadily increasing.

August 31st, to-day, we made the low-lying land in the neighbourhood of
Port Said, and by noon had arrived and moored off that uninteresting
town. Coaling at Port Said is effected with great rapidity, for ships
have to be speedily pushed on through the Canal to prevent a block,
thus, by the following afternoon, we commenced our first stage of the
Canal passage, under the escort of one of the Company's steam tugs, for
ships of our size may not use their own engines for fear of the "wash"
abrading the sandy banks.

The character of the scenery soon changes, and we seem to have an
intuitive perception that we are in the land of the Pharaohs. On the
one side, far as the eye can reach, and for hundreds of miles beyond, a
desert of glistening sand is spread before us, for the most part level
and unbroken, but occasionally interrupted by billow-like undulations,
resembling the ground swell at sea. Here and there a salt pond breaks
the monotonous ochre of the sand. These ponds are, in the majority of
cases, quite dry, and encrusted with a beautiful crystalline whiteness
resembling snow, making even the desert look interesting. On the
Egyptian side, a series of gem-studded lagoons stretch away to the haze
of an indistinct horizon, the mirage reproducing the green and gold of
the thousand isles in the highly heated atmosphere.

By 6 p.m. we had reached the first station, or "Gare," when we brought
up alongside a jetty for the night. When darkness had set in, the wild
melancholy howl of the jackal was borne across the desert by the evening
breeze, a sound sufficiently startling and inexplicable if you don't
happen to know its origin. What these animals can find to eat in a
parching desert is, and remains to me, a