Important events follow each other so closely in Egypt that a year-old guide-book is several chapters too short. Last year it was Kitchener’s campaign against the dervishes, and now the French are threatening to interfere with England’s march to the Cape. The dragoman is sometimes as satisfactory as the guide-book, and it is often pleasant to find how soon he is through with his recitation and you are allowed to go alone among the great temples. Earthquakes have shaken some in orderly ruin, as if the unseen hands of the men who built them were quietly and slowly building them up again. [Illustration: A Peddler.] But there is a temptation to grow sentimental over Egypt. It is far more cheerful than it sounds. It is happy and a place for a holiday--a country to make sketches in. These were made between December, 1897, and March, 1898, and I have been asked to help them tell their story of that part of Egypt the tourist is most likely to see, where the old and the new world meet most often. The ancient Egyptian artist must have been very happy. Temples were built with great smooth walls for him to cover with pictures that required very little writing to go with them, seldom more than Pharaoh’s cartouches, and even these he made more like a picture than a name. That must have been very pleasant, and it should have compensated him for all the restrictions imposed upon him by the high priest of those days, who often limited his choice of subject to a king. The choice of subject is now unlimited. There never were so many different kinds of people in Egypt before. But it would be difficult to draw the king now, for there is much difference of opinion as to who he is. I left New York with a small library of Egyptian guide-books, and in nearly every one of them was a good description of a traveler’s feelings upon arriving at Alexandria or Port Saïd. I have been in both places, and about the same sensations will fit either port; and traveling is too personal a matter to describe at length, unless it is done with skill. To give advice is much more simple; and mine is that if you are on a steamer that is going through the Canal, don’t stay on her until she gets to Ismailia, but disembark at Port Saïd and get to Cairo that night all the way by [Illustration: The Slipper Bazaar, Cairo, January 22, 1898.] [Illustration: Egyptian High Life.] rail. You will see as much of the Canal as you want to, and you will not run the chance of being delayed a day, as the _Königin Luise_ was last year by a little tramp steamer that had run foul of a coal-barge.