It's like returning to visit an old friend--rushing towards the sea of masts behind the sea of white towers glittering beside the sea of Mediterranean blue. At the first glimpse of that multitudinous shipping you lose interest in the sea of green delta through which you are rushing; the mud-walled village-islands rising from it lose charm in anticipation of the big city you know so well. You remember it with a sort of yearning for its nobility. For noble it is. There is no nobility in Cairo, except seen from the fringe of the Mokattam Hills as you stand on the Bey's Leap at the Citadel looking down on the busy expanse under its wealth of minarets. Cairo is more interesting, because more truly Oriental; it has the charm of utter strangeness. Alexandria is better built, more stately, less evil-smelling; it's the charm of a well-ordered European city that holds you; and there is always the loveliness of that Mediterranean outlook from the clean, generously-broad esplanade. The sea about Cairo is true desert-sand, unending, which is not lovely, except at the dawn and sundown, when the colour leaps up about the far horizon. For three hours, since leaving Cairo, you have been scouring the green plain in a train of the Egyptian State railways, which bears comparison well with most other rolling-stock that a limited knowledge of the travelling world has given you. The Delta is unnaturally rich and almost unnaturally green. Many centuries of Old Nile depositing of fat mud have seemed to concentrate within that Nile Valley all the richness that is in the soil of Egypt. Nor is it a green that is ultra-rich by contrast with a desert background, for as far as you see either way there is no sand; you're in the heart of the crops. There's a monotony of level cultivation which tires you in the end, however rich; a monotony broken only by a monotonous succession of out-cropping palm-groves, sleeping canal, white creeping sail, mud-walled village, and dilapidated mosque. You tire of the regularity of recurrence. There is a hankering after the quiet stir and variety of the city of Alexandria quite as strong upon you as Johnson's fervent passion for the atmosphere of London. There is a simple crudity in the man who persists in being an Englishman to the backbone in the land of Egypt. The Australian enters much more aptly into the spirit of the country--worms his way into the intricacies of the bazaars and markets, and talks much with the Alexandrian denizens, if only in pantomime. He "does as they do" far more consistently than the restrained Tommy--even to the extent of consuming their curious dishes, riding on their beasts and in their vehicles, tasting their drinks and smoking their pipes. The Englishman tends to call always for English beer and for roast beef, and sticks tenaciously to his briar.