aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

FROM INDIA TO ARABIA.— ADEN AND THE ARABS. 269
must have been an incorrigible sinner, if the peace principles
of Jesas are divine.
SUEZ AND ITS
SANDS.
Mostly a straggling mass of low mud houses, this
city of
ten thousand inhabitants, including some three hundred
Europeans, is surrounded by a desert region, and naturally
repulsive to an American. One good hotel, the " Suez," with
any number of disreputable ones, a tall mosque tower, a
square with no shrubbery, and bazaars full of Oriental goods,
with Copts and Arabs ^
for salesmen, tell the story of the
place. Not to mention fleas and lizards, one becomes disgusted
while looking at the sand-clad children who brush
the flies from their sore, gummy eyes, to look upon the traveler,
and cry " Backsheesh !
" Evidently the glare of the
noonday sun, and the flying sand, have as much to do with
the eye-diseases of Egypt, as syphilis and other scrofulous
taints. Begging is a profession in Suez. Healthy Arab lads
will follow you, shouting, " Backsheesh !
" while old men,
hoary, ragged, and toothless, hobble along after one, muttering,
" Backsheesh !
" It is not strange that the Israelites
wanted to leave this part of the country.
THE SUEZ CANAL.
Just previous to dropping anchor at Suez, our eye caught
a glimpse of a faint blue thread stretching away into the
desert toward the north. It was that modern triumph of
genius, the Suez Canal. Observing ships dragging slowly
around the coast of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, and
through the Indian Ocean, for the East, that enterprising
French engineer, M. F. de Lesseps, proposed to .Mohammed
Said to re-open the ancient canal of Sesostris. Be it remembered
that two, three, and five thousand years ago, when
Europe had no history, Egypt not only had her canal through
the lakes across the isthmus, — remnants of the ruins still
remaining, — but proud old Egypt had other canals, with an
extensive commerce.