rkish sailors, and freight-handlers
who come from whatever places it has pleased Heaven they should be born
in. The freight is variegated, and the third-class passengers are a
motley crowd.

A glance at the forward main-deck shows Egyptians in white cotton, and
Turks in the red fez, and Arabs in white and brown, and coal-black
Soudanese, and nondescript Levantines, and Russians in fur coats and
lamb's-wool caps, and Greeks in blue embroidered jackets, and women in
baggy trousers and black veils, and babies, and cats, and parrots. Here
is a tall, venerable grandfather, with spectacles and a long gray beard,
dressed in a black robe with a hood and a yellow scarf; grave,
patriarchal, imperturbable: his little granddaughter, a pretty elf of a
child, with flower-like face and shining eyes, dances hither and yon
among the chaos of freight and luggage; but as the chill of evening
descends she takes shelter between his knees, under the folds of his
long robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a
running comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the
unspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and
then, with the flicker of a resistless smile.

Here are two bronzed Arabs of the desert, in striped burnoose and white
kaftan, stretched out for the night upon their rugs of many colours.
Between them lies their latest purchase, a brand-new patent
carpet-sweeper, made in Ohio, and going, who knows where among the hills
of Bashan.

A child dies in the night, on the voyage; in the morning, at anchor in
the mouth of the Suez Canal, we hear the carpenter hammering together a
little pine coffin. All day Sunday the indescribable traffic of Port
Said passes around us; ships of all nations coming and going; a big
German Lloyd boat just home from India crowded with troops in khaki,
band playing, flags flying; huge dredgers, sombre, oxlike-looking
things, with lines of incredibly dirty men in fluttering rags running up
the gang-planks with bags of coal on their backs; rowboats shuttling to
and fro between the ships and the huddled, transient, modern town, which
is made up of curiosity shops, hotels, business houses and dens of
iniquity; a row of Egyptian sail boats, with high prows, low sides, long
lateen yards, ranged along the entrance to the canal. At sunset we steam
past the big statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, standing far out on the
break-water and pointing back with a dramatic g