Читать книгу An Australian Ramble; Or, A Summer in Australia онлайн

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Little of life is to be seen anywhere, but a few men are engaged in cutting away the sand, while camels bear it far away. They are ugly beasts, and never seem happy. They are, however, docile, and kneel down while the men fill the panniers with sand, when they rise up and walk away; or we come to a ferry where they are waiting to cross, and display the same patient, forbearing, half-starved look. The Egyptian donkey seems to me a far livelier animal. Now and then a dog displays itself on the bank, but he is rarely a favourable specimen of his race. Small steamers and barges, occupied in connection with the improvement of the canal, are also met, but the crew take little note of the white man, who, however, after all, has got such a hold on the land that it is questionable, whatever statesmen say at Westminster, whether it can ever be removed. It seems as if Egypt could never be let alone. True, it was a great country once, but that was long ago.

Again, we leave the Timseh, or the Crocodile Lake, behind, and make our way to the Bitter Lakes, through many miles of Canal. The lakes, history tells us, are the remains of a dried-up arm of the sea, where once flourished the ancient port of Arsinoe. Here we meet the slight tides of the Red Sea—that awful sea, whose waters at some seasons range to a temperature of a hundred. It was hot as we entered Port Said, it is hotter as we leave the Canal at Suez—the new port of which, with its modernized hotel, its rows of trees, and its modern warehouses, looks pretty from the water. Old Suez, a mile and a half from the new town, is visible long before we reach the fort. It is almost a pity that the steamers do not stay here a day or two. The old town is the most characteristic of old Egypt, and the rail will run you up there in a few minutes. It was the centre of the highway between Asia and Africa. All around is the desert, while mountains famed in history for ages are to be seen from afar. Egyptians tell me that Suez is preferable to Cairo as a health resort. One gentleman whom I met with told me that he wintered there every year. As we picked him up on my return, I was obliged to tell him that he did not look so well as when he went ashore a few months previously. In excuse he owned that he had suffered from a severe attack of rheumatic fever. It may be that Suez had nothing to do with that. Perhaps at Cairo they would have told me Suez was not a good place to go to. The water, however, is good, as we took a good many tons of it on board. It was well that we did so. At Aden, our next stopping-place, we found there had been no rain for nearly three years.