for he never lost sight
of the instructive feature of the voyage. None of his party were
scientists in a technical sense in the studies which occupied them,
though Dr. Hawkes and Professor Giroud were such in their occupation at
home; but they were all well-educated persons in the ordinary use of the
term.

They were not Egyptologists, philosophers, theologians, zoologists,
biblical critics, ethnologists, or devoted to any special studies; they
were ordinary seekers after knowledge in all its varieties. The everyday
facts, events, and scenes, as presented to them in their present
migratory existence, were the staple topics of thought and study. Though
none of the party ascended to the higher flights of scientific inquiry,
the commander endeavored to make use of the discoveries and conclusions
of the learned men of the present and the past.

He was eminently a practical man, and practical knowledge was his aim;
and he endeavored to lead the conferences in this direction. The
building of the piers at Port Said, and the construction of the canal,
as meagrely described by the magnate of the Fifth Avenue, were the kind
of subjects he believed in; and he had a sort of mild contempt for one
who could discourse learnedly over a polype, and did not know the
difference between a sea mile and a statute mile.

"Do you believe in the explanation of that Dutchman you mentioned,
Captain Ringgold?" asked Mr. Woolridge, at the close of the conference.

"What Dutchman?" inquired the commander. "I do not remember that I
alluded to any Dutchman."

"I mean the man who says that Pharaoh's army perished in the lake where
the weeds and papyrus grew," the magnate explained.

"Brugsch? He was not a Dutchman; he was a German."

"It is all the same thing; I have been in the habit of calling a German
a Dutchman."

"If you will excuse me, Mr. Woolridge, I think it is a very bad habit,"
added the commander with a deprecatory smile. "A German is not a
Dutchman, any more than a Dutchman is a German; and I should as soon
think of calling a full-blooded American a Chinaman, as a German a
Dutchman."

"Of course you are right, Captain, though I am not alone in the use of
the word," replied the magnate.

"But it is more common among uneducated people than with people of even
fair education. I do not accept Brugsch's explanation, but cling to the
Bible story as I learned it in my childhood. I don't think Brugsch's
explanation comes under the hea