These are the white town and the black town, apparently broken by an
inlet of sea, and based upon a strip of yellow sand. The sea is
most unwholesome and stagnant. The houses of Port Said looked like
painted wooden toys. The streets were broad, but the shops were full of
nothing but rubbish, and were surround by dogs and half-naked, dark-brown
gutter-boys. There is a circular garden in the centre of the European
part, with faded flowers, and a kiosk for the band to play in. The most
picturesque and the dirtiest part is the Arab town, with its tumble-down
houses and bazar. The people wear gaudy prints and dirty mantles
bespangled with gold. There were a great many low-class music-halls and
gambling- and dancing-saloons. Port Said is in fact a sort of Egyptian
Wapping, and I am told the less one knows about its morals the better.
While we were strolling about the Arab part, my German maid, who was in
an Eastern place for the first time, came upon a man filling a goat-skin
with water. She saw a pipe and the skin distending, and heard the sound.
She often heard me say how cruel the Easterns were to animals; and
knowing my tenderness on that point, she ran after me in a great state
of excitement, and pulled my arm, crying out, "_O Euer Gnaden_! The
black man is filling the poor sow with gas! Do come back and stop him!"
The next morning early we began to steam slowly up the long ditch called
the Canal, and at last to the far east we caught a gladdening glimpse of
the desert--the wild, waterless Wilderness of Sur, with its waves and
pyramids of sand catching the morning rays, with it shadows of mauve,
rose pink, and lightest blue, with its plains and rain-sinks, bearing
brown dots, which were tamarisks (manna trees).
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