of us went his own way, and I selected for my farewell pilgrimage the Gate of Victory and the Tombs of the Caliphs. To them I owed my first and fairest impressions of travel; of them I took a grateful leave, as the sun sank behind the Pyramids.

PART II.

SKETCH XI.

SINAI, ON DROMEDARIES.

Suez-A Little Piece of Canal Work-Our Official Dromedaries and their Suite-The Red Sea-Aïn Mousa, the Wells of Moses—Our Entry into the Desert.

It was unanimously resolved that we were all to be very serious. We were fully alive to the gravity of this, our second expedition, involving real dromedaries and real desert, and not the smallest restaurant; so that it behoved us to assume quite a different demeanour, a necessity which some of our number regarded with apprehension. As for me, I began to study the Bible, and to practise Hebrew manners and gestures.

The city of Suez was not calculated to disturb our new-fledged gravity, but yet it did not justify the

severity of our good resolutions. We crossed the sands in a railway train, to this dirty little town, which sorely needed the cutting of the isthmus, to give it a little picturesqueness and animation.

Our tents were not to arrive until the following day, with our superb dromedaries, so that we had no resource but to go to the Hôtel Anglais, which is a dépôt for all the travellers for Indo-China and Japan. Unfortunately our arrival coincided with a departure, and the hotel was full. Our dragoman succeeded, after much parley and persistence, in procuring us shakedowns' in the principal sitting room. When we went to take possession of our beds, we found them already occupied by twelve Englishmen, who made room for us with a very bad grace.

The desert which divides Cairo from Suez is very extraordinary in appearance, in consequence of the wonderful mobility of the sands which compose it. This white, impalpable dust undergoes the strangest transformations, as it follows the caprices of the wind. Now it is heaped up into mountains, anon into swelling domes, and the next day the same sand will lie spread out in a flat, monotonous, immense plain. The journey across it is very difficult to travellers, and even to the dromedaries themselves,

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who can only progress very slowly, as they constantly sink in the sand up to their knees.

Now the first stage out of Egypt is simplified by the railroad, but if commerce, and travellers who are in a hurry, have gained by the change, the real lovers of the East have lost one of the most interesting

points of the desert. The sands, extraordinarily white, are strangely affected by the variations in colouring which take place in the sky, during the different sections of the day.

In the morning they are pink, with violet shades; in the afternoon, the full light of the sun restores their brilliant whiteness, softened by tones grey and golden, most exquisitely lovely. In the evening, during the brief twilight, these sands reflect the burning beams of the sun at his setting, like metallic plates; then they are no longer mountains of snow, but mountains of fire. How deeply we regretted that we could not study these different aspects, wedged as we were into a carriage for six persons, while our number was eight. The sand, perpetually in motion, is displaced with startling rapidity. The least stir of the wind produces the effect of the thawing of snow upon the crests of these moving mountains; the sand tumbles down upon itself, and is a gulf and a crater

in one. How many caravans has it not swallowed, and is it not still destined to swallow! Suez, at the period of our visit, was in a disgustingly dirty condition, and it does not possess any historical monument which might induce one to disregard this unpleasant fault. The simple house in which Buonaparte lived is the only excuse in the place for a pilgrimage. We felt impatient to get away, but we would not leave the town without visiting the gigantic works which connect the extremity of the canal with the landing place of Suez. The little pasteboard models which I had seen at the Universal Exhibition in 1867 had certainly not prepared me for the great impression which this marvellous enterprise produced upon me. The canal, which connects the two seas, is unquestionably one of the finest results which human intelligence aided by science has ever obtained. The huge dredges, which fling out on either side with their giant arms the sand which they perpetually dig, are quite monumental. We visited one which was undergoing repair, and the dimensions of these machines, the results which they obtain, gave me an idea of the obstacles which had to be overcome, and of the energy and perseverance which were necessary that