And now we are in the much-dreaded and famous Red Sea. Dreaded it justly is on account of the terrible heat there during the summer months. A captain now on another station told me that when on this line he sometimes lost passengers (most of them invalids, probably) at the rate of one or two every day. Why the heat is so intolerable is not very clear, as the actual temperature by the thermometer is never remarkably high—nothing like so high as in many other places where heat is not much complained of. Fortunately, we are too early in the season to suffer from it, and it is scarcely so hot as before reaching Aden. The strong north-westerly breeze too, which almost always blows down the sea, meets us and refreshes us. How the navigation was ever performed before the days of steam is a marvel. One of the steamers once fell in with a sailing-ship bound from Aden to Suez, and _seventy-five days out_ from the former place, all the crew ill or dead with heat, and only the master and one boy available for duty. The narrowness of the sea and the dangerous coral reefs which lie on either side, and on which so many fine steamers have been stranded, make all vessels keep to one uniform course straight up the centre of it, out of sight of land on either side. Every day some huge steamer—more often there are two or three—passes with its living freight. For the first time we fully realise what a mighty highway of the world it is. Year by year the long sea-passage by the Cape to India, is less and less followed. Even troops now often take the overland route, and if ever the Suez canal is opened to vessels of large tonnage, the change will be greater still. After centuries of disuse, the old, old road from Europe to India is open again with a hundred times the traffic and importance that it ever had before. Once only does our vessel pause. A suffering invalid, hoping in vain to reach home alive, has died during the night. In the morning the burial-service is read over the coffin wrapped in a Union-jack, and from a large port on the saloon-deck forward it is lowered gently into the sea; and after scarce five minutes’ interval, the engines throb again, and the screw revolves, and the resting-place, unknown and unmarked, is left behind.