last part
of the course was through depths of sand again. The tide on the Red Sea
rises from five to seven feet, and its flow extends about four miles up
the canal.

"Looking ahead, you can see an expanse of water, which means that we are
coming to the end of our canal travel," said the commander. "I suppose
no one will be sorry for it; for we have had all our social
arrangements as usual, and there has been something to see and much to
learn all the way."

"It has not been at all like my canal travel at home," added Uncle
Moses, who was the oldest person on board of the ship by one month, by
which time Dr. Hawkes was his junior, and they were only fifty-four. "I
went from Syracuse to Oswego by a canal boat when I was a young man. The
trip was in the night, and I slept on a swinging shelf, held up by
ropes; and we were bumping much of the time in the locks so that I did
not sleep so well as I did last night. But what water have we ahead,
Captain?"

"It is an arm of the Gulf of Suez, which is itself one of the two great
arms of the Red Sea."

"It appears to be well armed," said Uncle Moses, who could be guilty of
a pun on extreme provocation.

"Like yourself, it is provided with two arms, but it does not shoot with
them," replied the captain. "On our left are the ruins of Arsinoe, which
was an ancient port, once called Crocodilopolis; and, by the way, Lake
Timsah was once Crocodile Lake, and doubtless the saurians formerly
sported in its waters."

"About Arsinoe?" suggested the professor.

"Probably you know more about it than I do, Professor."

"I know little except that it was a commercial city of Egypt, built by
Ptolemy II. The name is that of several females distinguished in one way
or another in the ancient world, and the word is usually written with a
diaeresis over the final _e_, so that it is pronounced as though it were
written Arsinoey. The city thrived for a time, and was the emporium of
eastern Egypt; but the perils of the navigation in the north of the Red
Sea diverted the trade into other channels, and the place went to decay.
It was named by Ptolemy after his sister, who was married at sixteen to
the aged king of Thrace. There is a bloody story connected with her
life, which I will not repeat; but in the end she fled to the protection
of her brother in Egypt, and after the fashion of that age and country,
he made her his wife."

"You have not been in Asia any of you yet, or even as near that