are known, and to them, as often as a patriarch is required, does Egypt, according to ancient rule, ever turn to supply the vacancy. [Sidenote: TROPICAL HEAT.] In reality the colony of Gimsah, when approached from the sea, did present quite the appearance of a monastic settlement in the heart of a desert. Caverns were hewn in all directions, in order to work the veins of gypseous spar containing the sulphur, and amongst them lay a row of twelve hexagonal little houses, which were the kilns, built after the Sicilian fashion, and which might at first be mistaken for the cells of pious monks. To crown the denial and privation of this existence, the Company, under the pretext of maintaining discipline, order, and morality among the miners, had peremptorily banished all women from the sulphur coasts. This restriction was especially irritating to the French, and as a refinement of cruelty was as intolerable as those poisonous fumes of pitch and sulphur which were here set free from the bowels of the earth. Nevertheless it would seem to have answered well, for young and old, Arab and European, went through their work with a diligence such as is rarely to be observed in other tropical regions. Only when the sun’s heat after midday was most insupportable, was there a cessation of labour. At 12 o’clock, when the _employé_ of the Suez Canal, in his period of repose, sauntered into the coffee-house to take an ice or to enjoy a game at billiards, the untiring director began his daily circuit of inspection; and seldom has a quotation seemed to me more apt than that in which he said that the hour was come in which he must surrender himself to the sulphurous and torturing flames. After staying twenty-four hours in the harbour at Gimsah, the ‘Prince Mohammed Tawfik’ continued its voyage to Djidda, where it arrived on the fourth day. At that season, when no pilgrims were coming or going, we found the harbour all but deserted; only one French and two Egyptian men-of-war were in the security of the roadstead. I easily obtained an open Arab boat, which I hoped, under favourable gales, should convey me to Suakin. On account of the prevalence of north-winds through the greater part of the year, navigation in the Red Sea is nearly always as easy in this direction as it is difficult in the contrary. This accounts for European sailing vessels so rarely reaching Suez; they proceed only as far as Djidda, and that only when coming from India or at the time of the pilgrimage.