8.  Many of the boys in the chief city of Egypt are donkey drivers.  In Egypt donkeys are far more used for riding than horses.  The donkeys are beautiful little animals, and they trot along very quickly.

[Illustration:  {A boy with two donkeys}]

9.  Each donkey has a boy to run after it with a stick, and to shout at it to make it go.  The donkey boys are very jolly little fellows.  They always smile, however far they have to run.

10.  Most donkey boys wear a white or blue gown, and have a red cap, or fez, on the head.  If a donkey boy sees an Englishman coming, he runs to him and says, “My donkey is called John Bull.”  If he sees an American coming, he says that his donkey’s name is Yankee Doodle.

11.  Sometimes the donkey boy will ask the rider,—­

“Very good donkey?”

If the rider says “Yes,” he will then ask,—­

“Very good donkey boy?”

“Yes.”

12.  “Very good saddle too?”

“Yes.”

“Then me have very good present!”

13.  Now let me tell you something that will surprise you.  The people of Egypt in the old, old days thought that their cats were gods.

14.  They prayed to them and built temples to them.  When the family cat died, all the people in the house shaved their eyebrows to show how sorry they were.—­Best love to you all.  Father.

* * * * *

7.  Through the canal.

1.  My dear children,—­I have just sailed through a very wonderful canal.  It joins two great seas together, and is now part of the way to India.

2.  By means of this canal we can sail from England to India in three weeks.  Before it was made the voyage took three months or more.

3.  The canal was made more than forty years ago by a Frenchman.  He dug a great ditch, and joined together a number of lakes.  By doing so he made a waterway from sea to sea.  This waterway is about a hundred miles long.

4.  I joined my ship at the town which stands at the north end of the canal.  There is nothing to see in the town except the lighthouse and the shops.  On the sea wall there is a statue of the Frenchman who made the canal.

5.  As we lay off the town we could see many little boats darting to and fro.  The boatmen were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow—­red, blue, green, and orange.  In one boat there were men and women playing and singing songs.

6.  By the side of our ship men were swimming in the water.  I threw a piece of silver into the water.  One of the men dived, and caught it before it reached the bottom.

[Illustration:  {Side of a ship, with men swimming below}]

7.  On the other side of the ship there were great barges full of coal.  Hundreds of men and women carried this coal to the ship in little baskets upon their heads.  They walked up and down a plank, and all the time they made an awful noise which they called singing.