My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

174 MY LIFEsand-grouse, and sand-larks were occasionally seen.We frequently saw the mirage, like distant trees andwater. Near the middle station the pasha has ahunting-lodge—a perfect palace. The Indian andAustralian mails, about six hundred boxes, as wellas all the parcels, goods, and passengers' luggage,were brought by endless trains of camels, which wepassed on the way. At the eating-places I took a littlestroll, gathering some of the curious highly odoriferousplants that grew here and there in the hollows, whichI dried in my pocket-books, and I also found a fewland-shells. We enjoyed the ride exceedingly, andreached Suez about midnight. It is a miserablelittle town, and the bazaar is small, dark, and dirty.There is said to be no water within ten miles. Thenext afternoon we went on board our ship, a splendidvessel with large and comfortable cabins, and everythingvery superior to the Etixine. Adieu."I have given this description of my journey fromAlexandria to Suez, over the route established byLieutenant Waghorn, which was superseded a fewyears later by the railway, and afterwards by thecanal, because few persons now living will rememberit, or know that it ever existed. Of the rest of ourjourney I have no record. We stayed a day atdesolate, volcanic Aden, and thence sailed across toGalle, with its groves of cocoa-nut palms, and crowdsof natives offering for sale the precious stones of thecountry ; thence across to Pulo Penang, with itspicturesque mountain, its spice-trees, and its waterfall,and on down the Straits of Malacca, with its richlywooded shores, to our destination, Singapore, where Iwas to begin the eight years of wandering throughoutthe Malay Archipelago, which constituted the centraland controlling incident of my life.