A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8471, 24 June 1907, Page 7

A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

By ALBERT DORRINGTON. of "Along tho Castiereagh," "Children of the Gully," etc.) (Published by special arrangement —Copyright reserved.) NO. 15.-EGYPT AND THE FELLAHEEN-A SIDE GLIMPSE.

It is the fashion among travellers who visit Egypt to buy up all the guide-book information dealing with the dead Pharaohs and serve it up again with embellishments in the »of travel notes. Suez we got our first of tho desert and the Holy Land, as viewed from the deck of an ocean liner. The hand of man hns' pushed back the wilderness from Suez. His electric globes and motor installations illuminate the ancient track of the Israelites, ■<s■ and he has converted many sand "\ neaps into marine esplanades and * dancing pavilions. Here, the eye travels east and west across the wido Gulf to catch some trace of herbage or wooded headland. There is none. The scimitar-shaped bays recall many of the sand-shrouded inlets within the Gulf of Carpentaria. A clump of dying, sand-blighted palms mark the hallowed spot where Moses drew water from the earth when the weary feet of his followers touched the opposite bank. The sea hawks drowse and cry above in the morning stillness as though chanting a requiem over the centuries buried The Gulf of Suez is crowded with vessels of all nationalities waiting to pass through the Canal. Ther? are big-beamed German tramps and Dago luggers heading for the Levant. Crowds of Egyptian fruit brats hover round the incoming mail-boats waiting for the doctor's report ere they launch themselves over the vessel's rails. The medical inspection at Suez is a stupid farce. No one can explain " why Australian ships are held up for inspection. Suez itself is a town of no particular morals, neither is it renowned for its sanitary conditions. , It would be impossible for passing vessels to introduce any fresh disease " within its plague-stricken boundaries. The afflicted Fellaheen and the sore-smitten Arab wander at large exhibiting their evil maladies to the passing Australian. If one-tenth of the time spent in examining ships were dedicated to the cleaning-up of the native quarters of the town much real service would be rendered to civilisation. Tho Canal itself and the approaches thereto/are master-strokes in the way of desert-cutting and engineering. To the inexperienced eye this narrow glittering stretch of water is a perfect dividend-earner and a joy for ever to its shareholders. Yet it maintains an army of unseen workers. Every foot of the Canal is ever-shifting, banks have to be watched by flying gangs of dredgers and navvies. The eternal sand-drift problem and the worry of its shifti ing bed turns the average Canal official bald long before his thirtieth ft vear - The outlook while passing through the Canal is not lovely. Here and there a garey official has erected a cottage between the drifts, and the wind from the desert piles mountains of sand and fine shell-dust over his devoted little garden. There is nothing on earth so penetrating as this fine shell-dust driven across a steamer's deck by the northwest monsoon. It finds its way into your cabin and trunks; it binds up your hair, and fills your • ears with ' parts of the Afncanjinterior. From the moment wo entered the Canal a continuous sneezing was heard all over the ship. It took us fifteen hours to pass through the narrow water-way. The dawn showed us the Bitter Lakes and more glittering sand wastes. About every thirty minutes the desert wakes up and blinds you on principle. The sun rises hereabouts in a perfect Stream of fire that turns the sea into | a vast plain of opal with currents of i - "' wine-red running towards a coppery shore-line. A lonely Mqor," swathed from brow to heel in white garments, prances on his pony through the red drifts towards the Canal head. Other sheeted forms steal across the desert's rim; an ass bearing a veiled Egyptian woman commands' the middle distance, a troop of camels hurrying Ishmaliawaids crimson the morning air with their hoof-driven dust. The east is brick-red, but in the matter of colobr there are many prophets. We called at Port Said. New Zealanders and Australians complain bitterly of the fiendish way the black dust is flung aboard. A thousand Fellaheens tear up and down narrow planks waving their baskets of coalgrit against the wind. The decks are ankle deep in slack and black mud, and the saloon passenger emerges from his cabin with coal in his hair and dust in his voice. Everyone admits that they did things better in ancient China. It is safe to say that no self-respecting Chinese port would allow such an abominable system of coaling to exist. We are told that Port Said is not so filthy as it used to be. The news made us feel glad we did not stay long enough to inquire what had become of the garbage. A railway from Port Said runs through the dust to Cairo, but the time allowed by P. and 0. and Orient steamers does not permit uf a visit to Khartoum or the Lower Nile. For those who are fond of the dead centuries, Egypt is a place to visit, are enough dead kings strewn ''"about the Nile Valley to fill Australia's churchyards. To be sure, there is colour in Egypt, enough purple and amber to glut the artistic eye. There is tradition old as the world itself and a river, whose name was a rhymeword among the Goths and the early Romans. the New Zealander and Australian are not so impressed by the tombs and the pyramids as the travelling Englishman. We met parties of Cook's tourists near Memphis, who t i entered the ancient sepulchre with > bared heads and subdued voices. The semi-worship of the age-blown Pharaohs and monstrous obelisks of stone is often child-like in its reverence. Gazing into dark corridors in quest of The Sacred Remains is not so invigorating as buck-jumping or

even burgling'. And one would rather meet the vandal who chopped off the Sphinx's nose than the sepulchreite sneezing over the dust of Rameses 11. (To be continued.)