he lies under the palm trees by the wells of El
Teb."

CHRISTMAS IN CANADA.

In Canada the severe and long-continued frosts convert a good deal of
land and water into fields of ice, and skating is a very popular
amusement of Christmastide. Sleighing is also very fashionable, and
the large tracts of country covered with snow afford ample scope for
the pastime. The jingle of the sleigh bells is heard in all the
principal thoroughfares which at the season of the great winter
festival present quite an animated appearance. The ears of the sleigh
drivers are usually covered either by the cap or with a comforter,
which in very cold weather is also wrapped over the mouth and nose.

"Christmas Day," says an English Colonist, "is spent quietly in our
own houses. New Year's Day is the day of general rejoicing, when every
one either visits or receives their friends: and so, thinking of the
merry times we have had in Old England, and comparing them with the
quietness of to-day, we feel more like strangers in a strange land
than ever before.

"As a special treat, we are to have a real English Christmas dinner
to-day, and our housekeeper has made a wonderful plum-pudding. The
turkey is already steaming upon the table, and we soon fall to work
upon him. He is well cooked, but there seems to be something wrong
with his legs, which are so tough and sinewy that we come to the
conclusion that he must have been training for a walking match. The
rest of the dinner passes off very well, with the exception of the
plum-pudding, which has to be brought to the table in a basin, as it
firmly refuses to bind.

"After dinner we retire to the sitting-room, and sit round the stove
talking, while those of us addicted to the fragrant weed have a quiet
smoke. Thus passes Christmas afternoon.

"Tea-time soon comes round, and after we have refreshed ourselves, we
resolve to end the day by paying a visit to a neighbour who possesses
an American organ, and Christmas evening closes in to the music of
those sweet old carols which that evening are heard over the whole
world wherever an English colony is to be found."

CHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA.

Christmas festivities in Australia are carried on in what we should
call "summer weather." There is no lack of good cheer and good living,
but cold and snow are at this season unknown, and skating and
snowballing, as a consequence, are sports unheard of at Christmastide
by the youth in the Antipodes. Large p