August 31st, to-day, we made the low-lying land in the neighbourhood of Port Said, and by noon had arrived and moored off that uninteresting town. Coaling at Port Said is effected with great rapidity, for ships have to be speedily pushed on through the Canal to prevent a block, thus, by the following afternoon, we commenced our first stage of the Canal passage, under the escort of one of the Company's steam tugs, for ships of our size may not use their own engines for fear of the "wash" abrading the sandy banks. The character of the scenery soon changes, and we seem to have an intuitive perception that we are in the land of the Pharaohs. On the one side, far as the eye can reach, and for hundreds of miles beyond, a desert of glistening sand is spread before us, for the most part level and unbroken, but occasionally interrupted by billow-like undulations, resembling the ground swell at sea. Here and there a salt pond breaks the monotonous ochre of the sand. These ponds are, in the majority of cases, quite dry, and encrusted with a beautiful crystalline whiteness resembling snow, making even the desert look interesting. On the Egyptian side, a series of gem-studded lagoons stretch away to the haze of an indistinct horizon, the mirage reproducing the green and gold of the thousand isles in the highly heated atmosphere. By 6 p.m. we had reached the first station, or "Gare," when we brought up alongside a jetty for the night. When darkness had set in, the wild melancholy howl of the jackal was borne across the desert by the evening breeze, a sound sufficiently startling and inexplicable if you don't happen to know its origin. What these animals can find to eat in a parching desert is, and remains to me, a mystery. On pushing on the following morning, a quail and several locusts flew on board; interesting because we are now in the region of Scripture natural history. As I was desirous of procuring a specimen of the Scriptural locust, I expressed a wish to that effect, and soon had more of them than I knew what to do with, till, in fact, I thought the Egyptian plague was about to be exemplified. I will here take occasion to thank my shipmates for their kindly and ready assistance, in helping me to furnish a cabinet with natural history specimens. Nothing living, coming within their reach, has ever escaped them; birds, insects, fish, reptiles, all have been laid as trophies before me to undergo that metamorphosis known as "bottling." I verily believe that had an elephant insinuated himself across their path, he would have found his way into my "preserves."