ort in the morning and see the glittering, tumbling, blue
sea alongside. On this occasion the blue is capped with many soft white
horses chasing south, and the serrated barren hills of Egypt are
slipping away north. They are coloured various tints of pale, faded
leather, light buff, and light red, and the sun glares brilliantly over
all, "drying up the blue Red Sea at the rate of twenty three feet per
year," this from the Orient-Pacific Guide; you can yourself almost fancy
you hear the sea fizzling with the heat. The Arabian shore is almost the
same as the Egyptian, with a larger margin of swelling stretches of sand
between the sea and the foot of the hills.

"Gaunt and dreary run the mountains,
With black gorges up the land
Up to where the lonely desert
Spreads her burning, dreary sand."

There are occasions when circumstances make it really a pleasure to be
an artist, to-day for example; the air is so full of colour, the sea
deepest turquoise, with emerald showing when the crests burst white and
mix with the blue, and there is a glint of reddish colour reflected from
the Arabian sand, and the shadows in the clefts in the sand-hills to the
north are as blue as the sea. I was trying to put this down when my
friend from the West Country, who helps the engines, told me he had got
me one of these exquisite classic earthenware vases from Port Said,
which he decorates with cigar labels and blue and gold enamel. I had a
chat with him in his rather nice cabin--made a study of the flagon,
_i.e._ drew its cork. It was full of deep purple Italian wine, like
Lacrima Christie or Episcopio Rosso; the wine was good enough, but its
deep rose colour with the bright blue reflected on it through the port
was splendid. He didn't like it himself, said "it drew his mouth," and
he gave me both the bottle and the wine as a present because of our love
for Dalriada, and I have to give him a "wee bit sketch" for his cabin.

I will smuggle the jar under our table--G. and I both like Italian
wine--and we will use it as a water bottle afterwards, for we have only
one decanter at our table amongst eleven thirsty people.

It was just such dark red wine as this, I suppose, that Ulysses and his
friends in these seas took in skinfuls to wash down venison, an
excellent menu I must say, but it would have been more seamanlike if
they had slept off the effects on board, instead of lying out all night
on the beach; then, when Morning the