in the train without once turning into any pleasant mood.  How my pity might have turned into joy, could I only have seen them indulge in a hearty laugh occasionally!  Some of their girls and women of all ages will still ride the donkey, after the oriental style.  The middle and poorer classes of Egyptians will eat little snails and fish fried with the heads, scales and all the appurtenances of their internal structures!  In the East they churn the butter in bags made of untanned goat-skins, having the hair inside.  Moreover, they bring the butter upon the table without doing so much as to comb it, even!

When I had seen these things, and was informed that on account of the cholera which was still raging in Syria, the surrounding nations had interposed a quarantine, so that if I would venture to go on to Joppa (which I could have reached in a few hours), I would become a prisoner, I soon decided that I would rather not see a people (the Syrians) that is more miserable than the Egyptians, even, than be in danger of being obliged to partake of food that could scarcely have failed to make me sick.  Crossing the desert by rail, meeting large caravans of camels, and seeing the palm-trees, the minarets, the mosks, the pyramids, the muddy waters of the Nile, and above all the curious styles of the oriental costume, are interesting enough to one that comes to Egypt with ordinary expectations and correct information in regard to the country; but I did not expect to find the Egyptians a black inferior race, that would fight with each other on the pavements in the largest cities in broad daylight, violently tear my property out of my hands in sight of the finest square in Alexandria, carry naked children upon their shoulders in their large towns, and seat themselves around large dishes of rice and gravy mixing the same with their fingers and conveying it to their mouths in the palms of their hands!  Numbers of them will dine without the use of either knives, forks or spoons, and when dinner is over, there is but one dish to be washed.  Each has two hands and ten fingers to clean, and washing those, ends the whole matter!  These are extreme cases, of course.  Some live decently, too.  Some few of the ruling classes, in luxury, perhaps.  From Cairo I traveled by rail to Ismalia, thence by the Suez Canal to Port Said, where I spent the Sunday (October 3rd).  On Tuesday I reached Alexandria again.  I there put up at a first-class hotel (for travelers from civilized and refined nations can not enjoy themselves at inferior hotels in Egypt), and stayed five days, until the next steamer sailed for Brindisi.  The hotel contained an excellent cafe, where ten intelligent and refined ladies and four gentlemen, all natives of Austria, were engaged to render music every evening for a whole year.  One evening as I sat in the cafe at my supper, a poor boy came in to sell flowers; for what we must pay in this country for a drink, I bought a bouquet almost as large as a bucket, and