Since these were very small, our suction dragged at them cruelly. As a
usual thing four vociferous figures clung desperately to a rope passed
around one of the snubbing-posts ashore, while an old man shrieked
syllables at them from the dhow itself. As they never by any chance
thought of mooring her both stem and stern, the dhow generally changed
ends rapidly, shipping considerable water in the process. It must be
very trying to get so excited in a hot climate.

The high sandbanks of the early part of the day soon dropped lower to
afford us a wider view. In its broad, general features the country was,
quite simply, the desert of Arizona over again. There were the same
high, distant, and brittle-looking mountains, fragile and pearly; the
same low, broken half-distances; the same wide sweeps; the same
wonderful changing effects of light, colour, shadow, and mirage; the
same occasional strips of green marking the watercourses and oases. As
to smaller detail, we saw many interesting divergences. In the
foreground constantly recurred the Bedouin brush shelters, each with its
picturesque figure or so in flowing robes, and its grumpy camels. Twice
we saw travelling caravans, exactly like the Bible pictures. At one
place a single burnoused Arab, leaning on his elbows, reclined full
length on the sky-line of a clean-cut sandhill. Glittering in the
mirage, half-guessed, half-seen, we made out distant little white towns
with slender palm trees. At places the water from the canal had
overflowed wide tracts of country. Here, along the shore, we saw
thousands of the water-fowl already familiar to us, as well as such
strangers as gaudy kingfishers, ibises, and rosy flamingoes.

The canal itself seemed to be in a continual state of repair. Dredgers
were everywhere; some of the ordinary shovel type, others working by
suction, and discharging far inland by means of weird huge pipes that
apparently meandered at will over the face of nature. The control
stations were beautifully French and neat, painted yellow, each with its
gorgeous bougainvilleas in flower, its square-rigged signal masts, its
brightly painted extra buoys standing in a row, its wharf--and its
impassive Arab fishermen thereon. We reclined in our canvas chairs, had
lemon squashes brought to us, and watched the entertainment steadily and
slowly unrolled before us.

We reached the end of the canal about three o'clock of the afternoon,
and dropped anchor off the low-lying sho