ABSTRACT
The traveller coming from Europe and passing through the isthmus, for the rst time, may fail to discover at once the charm of those bare horizons whose only attraction is the dazzling light of the sun, the power of whose rays is undiminished by the slightest degree of damp. When one has lived there one becomes gradually accustomed to dream dreams of in nity and to appreciate the variety of lights and shades of the great billowed undulations of that sandy sea whose colours change every hour of the day — here a mirage, with the fantasies, castles, lakes, and forests of the Arabian Nights: there a view which loses itself in the ever-receding horizon towards the unknown worlds of space. Elsewhere are the mountains of Suez, whose re ections gild the waves of the Red Sea. Beyond, one conjures up visions of India, China and Japan, those continents which attract us by an irresistible desire to spread our civilization and to rejuvenate by contact with peoples who illustrate to us what they were before our race had grown up.
