In the days of the Pitts we have invariably a “Relation” of Egyptian travellers who embark for a place called “Roseet” on the “River Nilus.”  Wanderers of the Brucean age were wont to record their impressions of voyage upon land subjects observed between Alexandria and Cairo.  A little later we find every one inditing rhapsodies about, and descriptions of, his or her Dahabiyah (barge) on the canal.  After this came the steamer.  And after the steamer will come the railroad, which may disappoint the author tourist, but will be delightful to that sensible class of men who wish to get over the greatest extent of ground with the least inconvenience to themselves and others.  Then shall the Mahmudiyah-ugliest and most wearisome of canals-be given up to cotton boats and grain barges, and then will note-books and the headings of chapters clean ignore its existence.

I saw the canal at its worst, when the water was low; and I have not one syllable to say in its favour.  Instead of thirty hours, we took three mortal days and nights to reach Cairo, and we grounded with painful regularity four or five times between sunrise and sunset.  In the scenery on the banks sketchers and describers have left you nought to see.  From Pompey’s Pillar to the Maison Carree, Kariom and its potteries, Al-Birkah[FN#1] of the night birds, Bastarah

[p.30]with the alleys of trees, even unto Atfah, all things are perfectly familiar to us, and have been so years before the traveller actually sees them.  The Nil al-Mubarak itself-the Blessed Nile,-as notably fails too at this season to arouse enthusiasm.  You see nothing but muddy waters, dusty banks, a sand mist, a milky sky, and a glaring sun:  you feel nought but a breeze like the blast from a potter’s furnace.  You can only just distinguish through a veil of reeking vapours the village Shibr Katt from the village Kafr al-Zayyat, and you steam too far from Wardan town to enjoy the Timonic satisfaction of enraging its male population with “Haykal! ya ibn Haykal!  O Haykal!-O son of Haykal[FN#2]!” You are nearly wrecked, as a matter of course, at the Barrage; and you are certainly dumbfoundered by the sight of its ugly little Gothic crenelles.[FN#3] The Pyramids of Khufa and Khafra (Cheops

[p.31]and Cephren) “rearing their majestic heads above the margin of the Desert,” only suggest of remark that they have been remarkably well-sketched; and thus you proceed till with a real feeling of satisfaction you moor alongside of the tumble-down old suburb “Bulak.”

To me there was double dulness in the scenery:  it seemed to be Sind over again-the same morning mist and noon-tide glare; the same hot wind and heat clouds, and fiery sunset, and evening glow; the same pillars of dust and “devils” of sand sweeping like giants over the plain; the same turbid waters of a broad, shallow stream studded with sand-banks and silt-isles, with crashing earth slips and ruins nodding over a kind of cliff, whose base the stream gnaws