It is difficult to estimate how far these coral reefs have changed since ancient days; there is a lagoon at Berenice which looks as if it had been the ancient harbour with a fort at its extremity. Now there are scarcely two feet of water over the bar across its mouth; but all ancient accounts bear testimony to a similar difficulty of navigation down this coast. At the same time, it is manifest that this coast-line is just the one to have tempted on the early mariners from point to point, with its rapid succession of tiny harbours and its reefs protecting it from heavy seas. More especially must this have been the case when the boats were propelled by oars, and in one's mind's eye one can picture the fleets of the Egyptian Queen Hatasou and of King Solomon from Eziongeber creeping cautiously along this coast and returning after three years' absence in far distant regions laden with precious freights of gold, frankincense, and spices. In later days Strabo and Pliny tell us how flotillas of 120 ships proceeded from Myos Hormos to Okelis in thirty days on their way to India, going together for fear of the pirates who marauded this coast, and in those days the settlements on the Red Sea must have presented a far livelier aspect than they do now. On both shores we find a curious instance of the migration and adaptation of an entirely foreign kind of boat. Some Arabs who have lived in Singapore--and Singapore is as favourite a point for Arab emigration as America is for the Irish--introduced 'dug-outs' in their native harbours, and these have been found so useful in sailing over the shallow coral reefs in search of pearls, that they now swarm in every Red Sea port, and steamer-loads of 'dug-outs' are brought from the Malay peninsula. The Arabs call them 'houris'--why, I cannot think--for a more uncomfortable thing to sit in, when half full of water in a rolling surf, I never found elsewhere, except on a South-East African river.