THE CANAL FINANCES.

45

P.L.M.; that a simple flagstaff for signalling has been known to get through a thousand pounds. It sticks, say these cavillers—somewhere, somehow the money sticks. Be that as it will, it is at least strange that the Canal's British directors do British interests so little good. A dozen years or so back there were plans for a competitive canal; only instead, the existing company took new directors, gave them stock, and promised certain reforms, such as doubling the width of the channel and giving precedence to mailsteamers. It promised, but nothing came. It will not come in the lifetime of old de Lesseps, said optimists—and it has not come since his death either.

Then go down for the sunset to the stretch of sandy loam they call the cricket-ground. It is crowded with people walking up and down-turbaned Arabs, or Greeks and Italians with wives and children. All look down the gulf, and look you down too, for such an intoxicating draught of colour your Western eye has never tasted yet. In front of you

shines the sapphire of the sea or the turquoise of the sky; to your right, where the sun is sinking behind them, the Egyptian mountains loom black-purple under flame - orange and liquid gold; to your left the mountains of Arabia catch up the last rays and distil them to a flood of rosy crimson. But what is the use of naming colours? There are no names for colours! Who shall Who shall say, for instance, whether the African mountains are black or violet, or does the dying sun-he is turning to scarlet now out of flame, and the edges of the scarlet are cooling to carmine-does the sun take all the colour out of everything else? You must see colours, not read about them, and see them at Suez. So rich are they, so pure, so gloriously intense, as if they shone with their own light, a prism of suns.

That was colour; that was the East.

But never mind that. I am going back to Suez, and as there is nobody looking, why not take a donkey? Suez is decrepit certainly, but it is very oriental - the last clinging foothold of the East, now beaten out of

THE LAST FOOTHOLD OF THE EAST. 47

Egypt. The mosques here are more Indian than Saracenic in appearance-low, broad, white squares, with small domes set in the middle of them. In the bazaar they mostly talk their own languages and sell their own products-tin-ware hammered in a sort of cupboard rather than a shop, dates, big turnips, and fowls carried all day alive by the legs. For a town that is hopelessly played out, Suez is contented enough-perhaps all the more so that it is hopeless, and need make no more exertion.

MOSQUE OF EL AZHAR-A PROFESSOR AND HIS PUPILSTHE MOSQUE OF MAHOMET ALI THE PEOPLE - TOMMY ATKINS.

December 22.-Grand Cairo ! And Grand Cairo, even after such towns as Port Said and Suez, is a bitter disappointment.

Port Said and Suez may not be much; they may amuse you or they may not; but, at least, they stand for something - the Levant and the East, and, whatever they are not, they are at least themselves. Cairo, on a superficial view, is not itself-seems to have no self to be. Out of your rather shabby firstclass carriage, you alight in the gathering darkness at a rather shabby station of Conti

INSIDE SHEPHEARD'S.

49

nental type. There is the usual fight for your body between hotels, the usual fight for your baggage among porters. Then you are out in a broad square, crowded with carriages, donkeys, and people, and carpeted with two inches of mud. The other side of the square seems to be a dishevelled railway siding; its centre a stopping - place for electric trolleyThen, before you know where you are, you have driven through a couple of narrow streets and you are at Shepheard's Hotel.

cars.

Inside Shepheard's Hotel you will find just the Bel Alp in winter quarters. All the people who live in their boxes and grand hotels, who know all lands but no languages, who have been everywhere and done nothing, looked at everything and seen nothing, read everything and know nothing-who spoil the globe by trotting on it. And outside is the native complement of them-guides and donkeyboys, hawkers of matches and piastre toys, rigged up in Bedouin garb as bogus as the wares they purvey or-on commission-persuade tourists to buy, every variation of touts

D