ABSTRACT
Two trains start from Port Said to Suez every day, one in the forenoon and one in the evening. The line as far as Ismailia is a narrow tramway having a gauge of 2ft. 8in.; the cars are consequently both narrow and uncomfortable, and take about three hours to do the journey. On my bidding good-bye to the dragoman I had engaged, he assured me that he was far too devout a Muslim to fleece so pious a pilgrim as myself, and he would not accept a centime more than five francs for the boat, the carriage, and his special services. It was from him that I first heard of the outbreak of cholera in Arabia—a report that was unfortunately confirmed at Suez, whither I journeyed in the discomfort of a dust-storm and a hot easterly wind. We arrived at Ismailia at one o’clock, or thereabouts, having left Port Said at a quarter to ten o’clock. This place, when the canal was being cut, was the headquarters of the workmen; but now it has sunk in importance, many of the buildings having actually fallen in ruins. Some of the managers of the company, however, are still living there, and the best houses in the town are at their disposal. Employment is provided on the canal for some hundred and twenty pilots, most of whom are Greeks and Frenchmen, though a few Englishmen have been recently added to the staff. The railway from Cairo to Suez, which belongs to the Egyptian Government, passes through Ismailia and picks up the passengers for Suez who have travelled so far by the Canal Company’s toy line. Henceforward the journey was made in comfort, for the line, though a single one, is a standard British gauge and the train provided with an excellent waggon-restaurant. Nearly all the passengers on board were Arabs and low-class Europeans in the third-class compartments. We stopped at three stations on the way, and every time it happened we were greeted by a weird chorus of Arab song, of which the burden was the “Wondrous names of God and the virtues of His Prophet.” I was somewhat amused to hear the words, “Not I, by God!” in reply to my inquiry as to whether or not a certain Arab would be good enough to fetch a bottle of soda water for me. For I, being unused to the climate, had suffered tortures from thirst in the scorching heat and driving dust-clouds, the intervals between the stages being extremely long and tedious—in fact, it took the train seven hours and a quarter to cover the hundred miles that separate Port Said from Suez. Nor was the prospect of a sort to slake the thirst of the weary pilgrim. All along the line hugs the right bank of the canal, and nothing is to be seen except the soft white sand of the glowing desert, unless it be an occasional patch of green grass or a cluster of date trees, irrigated by the fresh-water canal newly cut in order to conduct the much-needed water from a spot near Cairo to Port Said and Suez, the latter a place which stands in sore want of the cleansing and refreshing element.
