e when you stand, and sitting, their lowest
edge stirs up your hair. These velvet rugs have white cotton covers on
them now that they are being used, so the general effect at dinner-time
is of a huge laundry in a gale, with beautiful laundresses in low
dresses sitting at table under a world of wildly flapping linen; with
the lamps lit, and our black coats for a foil, the colours are really
extremely pretty, though the discomfort is great. Men and women are all
getting a little brown with the sea air, and the ladies have a little of
the blush of spring now, instead of the pallor of winter with which they
came on board.

[Illustration]

Egypt in sight, and this morning we tubbed in the water of the river
that floated Moses, and that has been bathed in and drunk since by such
a number of people we know, or have read about. Sea and Nile are
meeting in blue, and green, and brownish stripes, blending to a general
absinthe colour as we get closer to the flat delta; little level rows of
cloud throw purple shadows across the crisp small waves, and over the
horizon there's a flight of white lateen sails.

What a bustle there is on board to-day; people running up and down
stairs with letters hurriedly finished, addressed and stamped to the
children at home. No use writing to the man who waits out there, for we
carry the mail. It is touching, the wife looking forward and back at the
same time--the bull must pass--and the young girl too, leaving the old
life for the new married life in a new country; it must take courage.

My notes at Port Said seem to have disappeared, possibly I did not write
any. I remember that there was so much to see in the morning; and the
change of colour in the water, the absinthe colour of the Nile with pale
blue reflections winding in currents in distinct streams into the sea,
would, with the blue ocean, need very subtile painting. I remember the
fearful jabber, which I suppose has gone on and always will, since Port
Said was invented. I got a glimpse of Lesseps's statue at lunch through
the port-hole; he points with right hand twice life size up the harbour
with a heroic expression, and seems to say to the steamers that come in
from the sea, "Higher up there S.V.P.--try a little higher up." We
watched the often described black men coaling in black dust, singing and
working, the sun's rays making shafts of light stream through the clouds
of black coal dust; and the same pandemonium at night in the flar