One would think that Egypt ought to receive a big revenue for the right of way through her country and for the canal which her money and her people practically built. By the original concession with Said Pasha she was to receive fifteen percent of the net profits for the entire term of the concession, which was ninety-nine years. But after Ismail Pasha was deposed, the Egyptian government, finding itself without money or credit, sold this claim on the canal profits to the Crédit Foncier of France for a little more than four million dollars, and the only interest it now has in the canal is in the trade which the ships passing through bring to the country. Had Egypt retained that fifteen per cent. it would have been receiving millions of dollars a year from the tolls, and within a short time it could have recouped itself for all Ismail Pasha’s extravagances. During the term of the concession it could easily have repaid its debt to Turkey, and could have made itself one of the richest countries of the world. As it is, the canal, with all its property, becomes the possession of Egypt in 1968, when the receipts at the present ratio of increase will be so enormous as to make it, in proportion to its population, a Crœsus among the nations of the world. I spent all of last night on the Suez Canal. It was afternoon when our ship left Port Said, and as the darkness came on we were in the heart of the Arabian Desert. The air was clear, and the scenes were weird but beautiful. The stars of the tropics, brighter by far than our stars at home, made the heavens resplendent, while a great round moon of burning copper turned the famous waterway into a stream of molten silver. As we ploughed our way through, we could look out over the silent desert of Arabia, and now and then see a caravan of long-legged camels with their ghost-like riders bobbing up and down under the moon. Our own pathway was made brighter by electric lights. We had one blazing globe at our masthead, fed by a dynamo on deck, and another at our prow. The latter threw its rays this way and that across the channel in front of the steamer, making the waters an opalescent blue like that of the Blue Grotto of Capri. We passed many ships. In the distance they appeared only as two blazing eyes—the reflectors which all vessels are required to keep lighted as they pass through. As the ships came nearer they rose up like spectres from the water, the masses of hulls and rigging back of the fiery eyes making one think of demons about to attack. The trip through the canal is slow, for the ships are allowed to go only five or six miles an hour. Now and then they have to tie up to posts, which have been set along both sides of the canal all the way from Port Said to Suez. The canal rules require that when two ships meet one must stop and hug the bank until the other has passed by.