Is there anything so perverse, so whimsical, so tantalising, and so full of surprises as our old friend the weather? When the warm sunshine trickled down our backs in Naples we rejoiced and said, "At last we have found summer." We looked forward to three balmy days on the blue Mediterranean, and even began to remember where we had packed the summer clothes at the bottom of the trunk. During the first night out we passed between Scylla and Charybdis. They sound like a team of acrobats, but really they are the promontories guarding the narrow Strait of Messina. It was pitch dark when we passed, and we had turned in, but we read about them in Baedeker next morning and were much gratified to know that we had been so near them. Not that we can describe them, but hereafter we can refer to them. After we rounded the south coast of Italy and pointed for Alexandria, we ran into a mess of weather that had lost its bearings and wandered down from the north Atlantic. The wind blew a gale. We sat huddled in our heaviest wraps. The good ship pitched and pitched, and then pitched some more. And this was the Mediterranean! We had promised ourselves to lie basking in the gentle warmth and count the lateen sails as they went drifting by. We had expected to see the whole surface of the Mediterranean almost as busy as State and Madison, or Broadway and Forty-second--craft of all descriptions criss-crossing the blue ripples, a continuous aquatic bioscope. As a matter of fact, we rode for three days across waters as lonesome and empty as those of the north Pacific, where the course is so clear that the captain, after putting to sea, can tie the wheel and go below and play dominoes. Our chilly voyage from Naples to Alexandria has suggested a few reflections on travel in general. Why the Anglo-Saxon passion for gadding about? Cairo to-day is absolutely congested with Americans. The continent of Europe is two days away by speedy boat; Paris is two days more, and London less than a week by ordinary modes of travel. America lies three thousand miles beyond the most remote European city and across stormy waters, and yet America seems to claim a plurality of all the transients. If an Egyptian began to pack up his things to take a four thousand mile jump to look at the stock yards of Chicago or the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, his friends would have him consigned to some Mohammedan institution for the treatment of those mentally deranged. But the Americans are here in flocks, droves, coveys--decrepit old people; blooming debutantes, boys just out of college, tired-out business men, women who have been studying Egypt at their clubs, and, of course, the 8000 (more or less) newly married couples. And most of them are working like farm hands to generate some real enthusiasm for tombs and hieroglyphics. Hard pulling, but they will make it if their legs hold out.