THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL came on we were in the heart of the Arabian Desert. The air was clear, and the scenes were weird but beautiful. The stars of the tropics, brighter by far than our stars at home, made the heavens resplendent, while a great round moon of burning copper turned the famous waterway into a stream of molten silver. As we ploughed our way through, we could look out over the silent desert of Arabia, and now and then see a caravan of long-legged camels with their ghost-like riders bobbing up and down under the moon. Our own pathway was made brighter by elec¬ tric lights. We had one blazing globe at our masthead, fed by a dynamo on deck, and another at our prow. The latter threw its rays this way and that across the channel in front of the steamer, making the waters an opalescent blue like that of the Blue Grotto of Capri. We passed many ships. In the distance they appeared only as two blazing eyes—the reflectors which all vessels are required to keep lighted as they pass through. As the ships came nearer they rose up like spectres from the water, the masses of hulls and rigging back of the fiery eyes making one think of demons about to attack.

The trip through the canal is slow, for the ships are al¬ lowed to go only five or six miles an hour. Now and then they have to tie up to posts, which have been set along both sides of the canal all the way from Port Said to Suez. The canal rules require that when two ships meet one must stop and hug the bank until the other has passed by.

Parts of the banks are walled with stones to prevent the sand from falling in and filling up the canal, but notwith¬ standing this the dredges have to be kept at work all the year round. Not far from Port Said I saw great steam pumps sucking the sand from the bottom of the channel 215