The map shows Port Said dumped at the end of a lean streak of sand flanking the Canal. For half the distance from Ismailia the train sweeps along this tract. There is the Canal on your right, rich-blue between its walled banks and foiled by the brown heat-hazed world east; and on your left are the interminable shallows exuding the stink of rank salt, and traversed drearily by fishing-craft. Port Said at the approach much resembles Alexandria: the same brown, toppling irregularity, and the multitude of masts protruding. The Canal at its city mouth is fretted with rectangular berthing-basins crammed with craft, very busy and noisy. A network of railways threads the quays. The green-domed Canal company's offices tower above the smoke and din, redeeming them; they make a noble pile. All the shipping is on the west bank; the east is bare, but for some sombre stone houses and a Red Cross hospital in the sand, and a self-contained Armenian refugee camp south of the city-level. The Canal mouth is stuffed with cruisers and commercial ships anchored between the two stalwart stone sea-walls. They protrude two miles into the Mediterranean, keeping the channel. That on the west is crowned by the de Lesseps monument. The lean sand-neck that you traversed by rail from Ismailia takes a right-angled turn at the head of the de Lesseps mole and runs seven miles west into the Mediterranean. It begins with a fine residential quarter standing behind the firm beach and the horde of bathing-boxes; west still, and safely segregated from the decency of the city, is the seething Arab quarter, of enormous dimensions and smelling to heaven; and beyond Arab Town the promontory bears the city's burial-ground, lying desolate in the sand-neck; and then peters out dismally in the shallows. A new-comer takes in the straightforward geographical scheme of the place at a glance. It's a small city, lying, as it does, midway on the sea-road linking the East and West worlds. Its atmosphere is intensive rather than extensive. It is highly charged with busyness. The little area of the city is thickly peopled with every nationality (excepting German and Austrian), promenading or sitting at the open cafés. The shipping is congested to a degree that is apparently unwieldy. And the period of war has taken nothing from the atmosphere of bustle. This is the main supply base for the whole of the Canal defences and for a good deal of Upper Egypt too. An enormous levy is made daily on railroad and on Canal barges for transport of Army supplies. The supply depôt has commandeered half the Quay space and receives and disgorges day and night without intermission.