The traffic on the Canal has increased during the last few years, and especially during the last few months; on an average four or five ships passed through every day.  To-day they took 6,000_l_. at the Suez Office alone.  They have an excellent plan of the Canal there, and little models of ships, which are arranged according to the telegrams constantly received, so that the chief officers at each end of the Canal know exactly where every ship is.  Instant information is of course sent of any stoppage or any accident, but these occur comparatively seldom.  Some time ago M. Lesseps bought a small canal partially stopped up leading from the Nile at Cairo to Ismailia.  It has been widened and deepened, and was opened a few weeks ago with great ceremony and grand doings.  Now any vessel not drawing more than fourteen feet can go direct from Suez or Port Said to Cairo.  If we had had time, we might have done it in the yacht, and lain at anchor almost under the shadow of the Pyramids of Cheops.  The special object of the new canal is to make Cairo and Ismailia Egyptian ports as well as Alexandria, thereby saving much land carriage and labour of shifting.  Already several ships laden with grain, from Upper Egypt, have availed themselves of this new means of communication.

Friday, April 27th.—­Another glorious sunrise.  The pilot was on board at 5 a.m., and the Dhebash with fish, strawberries, and fresh vegetables.  This is a beautiful climate, though there is scarcely any rain; only one very slight shower has occurred during the last three years at Suez, but the soil of the desert after the Nile overflow brings forth tenfold.

The ‘Sunbeam’ was to start at eight o’clock, as soon as a large vessel had passed up from Port Said.  There are only certain places in the Canal where vessels can pass one another, so one ship is always obliged to wait for another.  We landed at half-past seven.  The sun was already blazing with a burning fury, and we found it very hot riding up to the hotel on donkeys.  We had an excellent breakfast at the same comfortable hotel, paid a very moderate bill, and left by the eleven o’clock train for Cairo.  We stopped at Zag-a-zig for an hour for luncheon in a nice cool dark room, and started again about three o’clock.  The change in the face of the country since we were here eight years ago is something extraordinary.  A vast desert of sand has been transformed into one large oasis of undulating fields of waving corn, where there used to be nothing but whirlwinds of sand.  All this has been effected by irrigation.  The wealth of Egypt ought greatly to increase.  How the people managed to live before is a mystery.  Now every field is full of labourers reaping and stacking the corn, women gleaning, and in some places the patient, ugly black buffaloes ploughing the stubble for fresh crops.