While the French furnished the brains and the money for the construction of the Canal, it is at present chiefly owned by Great Britain, Disraeli having bought up a great part of the stock, when considerably below par, for 4,000,000 pounds. Since that time, however, the value has increased to nearly 11,000,000 pounds. It was, therefore, a paying investment. Out of every one hundred vessels passing this way, seventy-five of them belong to England. The Canal is jealously guarded by English forts and English men-of-war. The British Lion has laid his paw upon Egypt, and ere long a change will come over the spirit of somebody’s dreams. Passing through the land of Goshen, where Israel dwelt, then through a series of lakes, and finally by the town of Suez, we enter the Red Sea. There is more life in or on this sea than around its waters. Nevertheless, it is of surpassing interest to the students of sacred and profane history. The place where Moses led the children of Israel across the sea can not be determined with certainty. The authorities are about equally divided between each of two places. Pharaoh and his host were swallowed up by the sea, and no one has ever thought enough of them even to fish for their chariot wheels. A thinking man, with a devout heart in him, trembles as he stands upon the shore of this sea, and reads the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Exodus, and especially when in the vicinity of Mount Sinai he reads the nineteenth and twentieth chapters. Returning to Suez, we find a rude contrivance, by courtesy called a train, which makes occasional trips to Cairo. It is by all odds the most uncomfortable “clap-trap” I have ever been in. It is constructed much after the order of our cattle-cars. During the trip, we encounter a sand storm and are almost suffocated. I suppose, however, I should do like other folk, and praise the bridge that brings me over safely. At all events, I am now in Egypt, the oldest country in the world, the cradle of civilization. It is here that the god of thought first waved his enchanted wand, and separated intellectual light from the long night of ignorance. I am in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, and, next to Damascus, the most exclusively Oriental city in the Levant. It is still the city of “Arabian Nights.” It is as Eastern and as odd now as when “Raselas” roamed through its streets. I should like to describe Cairo, with its mosques and minarets, with its flower gardens and palm groves, with its narrow streets and curious bazaars, thronged and crowded with a moving mass of turbaned men and veiled women.