yond the dull gray docks.

Next morning we went for a route march through Alexandria. We
marched through the dockyards. Gangs of native workmen in native
costume-coloured robes and bare feet, turbans and red fezes--were
working on the transports, unloading box after box of bully-beef and
biscuit and piling them in huge "dumps" on the quays. Rusty chains
clanked, steam cranes rattled and puffed out whiffs of white steam.

But they did not hustle or hurry. They worked under the direction of
English sergeants and officers, loading and unloading.

At last we got outside the zone of awful ugliness which follows the
British wherever they go. The docks were left behind and the change was
sudden and startling.

It was like putting down a novel by Arnold Bennett and taking up the
Koran.

I did not trouble to keep in step or "cover off." My eyes were trying
to take in the splendid Eastern scenes. Here were figures which had come
right out of the Arabian Nights.

Was that not Haroun Al Raschid, Commander of the Faithful, disguised
as a water-carrier, with a goatskin bottle slung over his shoulder, and
great yellow baggy trousers and a striped cummerbund?

Here were veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaar
fronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow streets.
Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs and
dates--a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold. Pitchers
and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered windows and
flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two Jews in black
robes, a band of wild-looking desert wanderers in white with hoods and
veils.

Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe there
could be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?

It was a short march, but we saw much.

So this was the land of Egypt. It was good. What a pity we could see so
little of it...

There were very smartly dressed French women with faces powdered and
painted and scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow parchment
skins all creased and wrinkled squatted on the cobble-stones, smoking
hubble-bubbles and long ivory-stemmed pipes.

Arab boys selling oranges ran about the streets. The heat was
stifling--the shadows purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white on
the buildings and towers and minarets.

Here were curio-shops with queer oriental carvings and alabaster
figures.

It was like a