l about
Cairo, as the Khedive, before whom we had offered to play, was out at
his Nile palace, and to have visited him there and given an exhibition,
as he invited us to do, would have taken more time than we had at our
disposal. The Mosques of Sultan Hassan and of Mohammed Ali were visited
by many of us during the day. They stood upon the highest point of the
city, and though the former is fast crumbling to ruins, the latter,
which is the place where the Khedive worships, is fairly well preserved.
From the citadel, which is garrisoned by English soldiers, we obtained
an excellent bird's-eye view of Cairo, the broad surface of the Nile and
the Pyramids of Cairo and Sakarah, the latter of which are twenty miles
distant.

I believe that had we remained in Cairo for a year we could still have
found something to interest and amuse us, though I should hardly fancy
having to remain there for a life-time, as the manners and customs of
the Orient are not to my liking. The line of demarcation between the
rich and the poor is too strongly drawn and the beggars much too
numerous to suit my fancy, and yet while there both my wife and myself
enjoyed ourselves most thoroughly, and the recollections that we now
entertain of it are most pleasant.

Our departure from Cairo was made on the morning of February 11th.
Ismalia, a little city on the banks of the Suez Canal, about half way
between Suez and Port Said, being our destination, and here we arrived
late in the afternoon, and at five o'clock boarded the little steamer
that was to take us to Port Said, where we were to catch the steamer
across the Mediterranean, to the little Italian town of Brindisi.

CHAPTER XXVIII. UNDER THE BLUE SKIES OF ITALY.

The night we left Ismalia and started for Port Said, the port of
entrance at the northernmost end of the Suez Canal, was a glorious one,
the full moon shining down upon the waters and turning to silver the
sands of the vast desert that stretched away to the horizon on either
side. This canal through which we had passed had a mean depth of 27 feet
and varies from 250 to 350 feet in width, its length from sea to sea
being 87 miles. The banks on both sides were barren of verdure and there
was but little to be seen save the Canal itself, which is an enduring
monument to the brains of Ferdinand de Lesseps. Every now and then our
little steamer passed some leviathan of the deep bound for Suez, and the
Red Sea, and the music of our mandol