received pay and leave for three months, and was ordered to
convey the boxes by "long sea."

On May 10th we left Cairo in company with our friend Mr. Garwood,
C.E. At Alexandria a great repose fell upon my spirit; it was
like gliding into a smooth port after a storm at sea. All the
petty troubles and worries of Cairo; the cancans, the intrigues,
the silly reports of the envious and the jealous, with the buzz
and sting of mosquitoes; the weary waiting; the visits of
"friends" whose main object in life seemed to be tuer le ver; and
the exigencies of my late fellow-travellers, who, after liberal
pay and free living for four months, seemed determined to quarter
themselves upon the Egyptian Government for the rest of their
natural lives;--all these small cares, not the less annoying
because they were small, disappeared like magic at the first
glimpse of blue water. I had barely time to pass an afternoon at
Ramleh, "the Sand-heap," with an intimate of twenty-five years'
standing, Hartley John Gisborne, an old servant of the Egyptian
"Crown," for whom new men and new measures have, I regret to see,
made the valley of the Nile no longer habitable.

The next Sunday placed us on board the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd's
screw-steamer Austria (Capitano Rossol). As usual, the commander
and officers did all they could to make their voyagers
comfortable; the Company did the contrary. At this spring season,
true, the migratory host of unfeathered bipeds crowds northwards;
even as in autumn it accompanies the birds southwards. But when
berths are full, passengers should be refused; and if the
commercial director prefers dead to live goods, travellers should
be duly warned. The accommodation would have been tolerable in a