ABSTRACT
Since I have been here I have had an opportunity of hearing the great question of a railroad across the Desert to Suez much discussed. It would be presumptuous in me to venture an opinion of my own as to its practicability, but I can bear full testimony to its being a most desirable object, not only as regards the commercial interests of England, but in facilitating the progress of the overland travellers to and from India, and converting that which is now the most fatiguing part of the journey into the easiest and most agreeable. It generally happens that the two mails meet here, the steamer belonging to the Transit Company at Alexandria bringing the Indian passengers who have landed there from Southampton, and depositing them at Cairo, where they are allowed a very short time to enjoy themselves, after having been stowed away in the Nile Steamer for thirty-six hours closer than the inmates of a slave-ship. They are then packed into vans provided by the Transit Company, in which they are jumbled across the Desert, and generally reach Suez in the space of twenty-four hours or so, their baggage, provisions, &c. being sent upon camels and asses. At Suez they are at once embarked in the Red Sea steamer, et vogue la galère! The passengers coming from India exactly reverse this line of march, but they are exposed to greater suffering and inconvenience; for, after a long sea-voyage, with its concomitant miseries, they are hurried across the Desert without delay, and such among them as are in too invalid a state to be able to support the rough vans, are put into a sort of sedan chair, which is suspended between two donkeys, and thus they are trotted across the dreary waste.
