A TRAVELLING HAREM.

5

any bevy of school girls. Two or three though, more advanced, evidently looked down somewhat superciliously on this light behaviour of the rest, and became huffed at it, much as a mother puss would be at the impertinent levity of her kittens.

Could these women ever be happy, thought Ihappy as wives or mothers? Were they fit, either by education or moral worth, to take part in their husband's joys and sorrows-to walk pilgrim-like by his side in life's rough road? Were they helps meet for men? Could they as mothers? But, ere I finished my musings, lo! a fat bloated eunuch, a hideous blear-eyed creature in charge of the women, strode forward, stood at the carriage threshold, and bundled them in. So I saw them no more.

There travelled with me in my compartment two Egyptians and a Dervish. The latter was a wild hairy man, clad in a rough brown tunic and leathern girdle, given now and then to strange maniac mutterings and contortions of face, but who, in lucid intervals (which, on the whole, prevailed), sat quiet in his corner and smoked like a chimney. The two Egyptians, apparently well-to-do Alexandrian shopkeepers on a flying business visit to Cairo, jumped in at the last moment. They had been detained on the threshold by four or five women, wives and daughters, I suppose, who set up a wail of anguish at

their departure. It was pitiful to see the big tears coursing down the cheeks of one of the younger as she played nervously with the heavy necklace hanging over her bosom-a delicately-featured girl whose frame shook with grief. What a tempest for a few days' separation! She was clad, as were the rest, in a simple robe falling straight to the ankles, and wore a veil cast back from her head over the shoulders. A little half-naked urchin clung disconsolately to her knees, taking in evidently one of his earliest lessons in woe. Then there were mutual embracings, kissings, and passionate sobs, and so the train rolled off.

I marked, however, that my companions soon succeeded in consoling themselves. In ten minutes sunshine had chased the shadows. The men had taken kindly to two enormous chiboukes and become hilarious over a game of beans. I wondered, though, whether those left behind were equally happy. Likely enough. They care not to hide their feelings, these children of the East. Whatever comes uppermost is fearlessly shown; but it soon passes. You are constantly, in your wanderings, edified by little bubblings up of affection, anger, spite; and ever are met, now by some touching episode of domestic life, now by an unmitigated quarrel. By-and-by, though, you see that these emotions are too transient to be deep-mere surface agitation-so you get hardened,

PELICANS ON LAKE MAREOTIS.

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economical in you pity; tempests of sorrow cease to affect you; you have become a niggard in sympathy, and almost find it in your heart to be amused.

But we are now scouring across the Delta at the rate of-well, more than ten miles an hour. No Cairo "Express" is as yet known. The most fertile, but least interesting part of Egypt, lies before us; that triangular tract of flat land through which the Nile, formerly by seven, now only by two, diverging branches (the other five being closed), empties itself into the Mediterranean. We first skirt the shores of Lake Marcotis, stretching away to westward, like the lagoon of an inland sea. Those broad patches of dazzling white, on the rushy sandbanks, cropping up here and there through the glassy waters, are flocks of pelicans; their downy plumage glitters in the morning sun; and as they rise in the air-for something has disturbed them (not the train-like cattle, they have become used to that)—it is as though a thick cloud were passing across the heavens, whose far-spreading shadow you see travelling over the fields.

In the midst of the broad green landscape to eastward, where larks are singing above the waving corn, and where, low on the herb, the tremulous heat is dancing as upon a sea, there are dotted here and there, principally on the horizon, straggling clusters

of palm trees. Each shelters a little mud village, the home of the lowest Egyptian peasantry and of fellahs, who till the soil. The road passes through one or two of these.

Doubtless it is a monotonous landscape to look out upon, especially as you have the seven best hours of the summer day thus to spend. However, there is a certain charm about it. Besides, it so happens that the high road from village to village runs immediately parallel with the rail; thus from the window you can survey the passing traffic. Now, even an English country lane, on market-days, will afford amusement, what with farmers' carts, jovial rustics, and buxom housewives trudging homewards with their weekly stores; but this, if you are so minded, much more, for here the wayfarers appear to have walked out of story-books, and there is a string of them too, like the succession of shadows in a phantasmagoria. Perpetual market-day also seems to prevail at one place or another, affording a fair study of Egyptian life-its odd manners and strange dresses-to pass the time.

One of the first things that struck me-and groups illustrative of it often repeated themselves along that high road-was the relative adjustment of labour considered fitting as between man and wife, on their marketing expeditions. Of course a

A WIFE'S POLITENESS.

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donkey was of the party. Every well-to-do Egyptian owns a donkey: it is part of the family. But the husband invariably sat a-straddle thereon, while the wife, with native politeness, followed barefoot behind! Assiduous as she always seemed in driving the beast to that speed her good man desired, you might naturally have argued that such delicate attention would have led him at least to carry the purchases. But no: ordinarily I saw her trudging patiently on—a classic Canephora—a huge basket poised gracefully on her head, steadied by one finelyrounded arm, the other being left free to goad on the ass. As for her turbaned husband, he sat there high and mighty as a peacock, humming a song and complacently swinging his brown legs to the time of the donkey's march; and yet, seemingly, so far as I could judge, the wife took kindly to this She arrangement. went her way-a little dusky boy or girl frolicking by her side, light-hearted and blithesome; always intent, however, on the nod of her more fortunate, if not better "half." "Half," though, would not invariably apply, for more than once I saw two wives following; in which case I presume division would go by thirds.