With pockets full of oranges, and hearts full of gratitude that God has graciously permitted us to traverse the Holy Land from Dan to Beersheba, and from the river to the Great Sea, we take shipping at Jaffa for the land of the Pharaohs. The voyage is rendered thoroughly uncomfortable because of a cargo of sheep. The helpless creatures are crowded together almost as if they were cut up and salted down as mutton. During a rough sea, they are so shaken up and jostled together that they, like Peter’s wife’s mother, lie sick of a fever. The fumes arising from these fevered victims have a most distressing effect upon the passengers. But for the sea breeze, we should all go crazy, or should ourselves die of the fever. Night brings no sleep to our pillows, no relief to our throbbing temples. I feel that I would almost be glad to be thrown overboard, like Jonah, and trust to some passing whale to carry me ashore. It is therefore with great pleasure that we step off of this sheep-cursed ship on Egyptian soil, in Port Said, at the mouth of the Suez Canal. Port Said, which now has five to eight thousand inhabitants, has been built since the opening of the Suez Canal which, as the reader knows, connects the Mediterranean and Red seas. It is, perhaps, according to its length, the most important stream or “connecting body” of water in the world. Leaving Port Said on a steamer, I soon find myself gliding through this Canal, whose construction is regarded as one of the grandest triumphs of modern science. Great banks of sand rise on either side, and the blue sky stretches above our merchant ship. We are constantly passing large merchant ships going to south Africa and to India, and meeting others coming from there. Every few hundred yards, we see a dredging machine at work deepening and widening the Canal. The desert sands are ever encroaching upon it. I believe it will finally have to be walled up with rock. The Suez Canal was opened, more than twenty years ago, in the presence of representatives of nearly every civilized government. It is 110 miles long, 26 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 140 feet at the top, and was constructed at a cost of almost one hundred million dollars. “The great advantage of the Canal,” says the _London Times_, “is, of course, the decrease of the distance to be traveled between Europe and India; for, while it is about 11,200 miles from London or Hamburg, by the Cape of Good Hope, to Bombay, by the Suez it is only 6,332. This reduces the voyage by twenty-four days. From Marseilles or Genoa, a saving of thirty days is effected, and from Trieste thirty-seven.” The rates at which steamers are allowed to pass is from five to six miles per hour.