, 1888-03-23
DOWN THE RED SEA.
Between Two UntamabIe Deserts-Scsne
at cath Gate of Weeping"

Between Two Untamable Deserts-Sespes
ut ea-Th Gate of Weeping"
The famous epitaph: 'Here lies Me-
thuselah Tompkins, aged .12 months"
was not more ~splendidly ironical than
the complimenting of n of the most
scorched and barren spots on the face of
the earth (where water must be paid for
at the rate of 1925 per tom with the
name of the Garden of Eden. Alden or
Alden being only another form of the
same word. But with all the inhospit-
able sternness of its outward aspect, Eng
lands renowned Arabian colony is o
place well worth seeing, and forms a
very appropriate climax to the long pan
Drama of striking spots and picturesque
landscapes which has kept pace with our
five days voyage down the Red sea.
In truth, despite its unfortunate posi-
ton between two of the most savage and
untamable deserts in existence, it is won
derful how many objects of interest the
Red Sea has to show. The panorama
begins with Suez itself, where, far away
beyond the flat, lifeless waste of the
Arabian sands, roll up in endless waves
of shadowy purple the rocky hills that
divide the Gulf of Suez from that of
Akaba. Further on there looms darkly
against the western sky the grim head
Land of Ras Attakah, which saw in dim
prehistoric ages the whole chivalry of
Egypt swallowed up by the hungry
waves, and looked thousands of years
later upon the rush of the advancing tide
from which the first Napoleon then on
the very threshold of his wonderful ca
reer) extricated himself with a cool cour-
age unparalleled in history.
The next sunrise kindles into living
fire the stern gray b%arrenness of those
craggy mountains, through a single gap
in whose frowning rampant you may at
times catch a passing glimpse of the
mighty mass of Sinai. Then stretching
gauntly along the opposite shore you see,
blurred and broken by the quivering film
of intense heat that hovers along the
horizon, the Jagged outline of the stony
ridges of Nubia, among which lie mol
dering the bones of many a gallant fellow
who died vainly in England's tardy effort
to rescue her bravest man, "Chinese
Gordon"
Little by little the shores on either side
fade away, the clustering islands melt
into the fast falling shadows of night,
and by dawn on the following morning
WE were far out of sight of land, while
around us, for nearly 100 miles on either
side, the lonely brightness of the blue
tropical sea lies outstretched in all its
splendor. And then, for two days to
come, it is all sky and sea, sea and sky
porpoises plunging and gamboling in the
sparkling waters, seabirds sweeping down
into the foam and darting off again with
fish wriggling in their beaks, and wide
winged vultures poised like lowering
clouds far up against the warm, dreamy
blue of the African sky.
Another day comes, and beneath the
silent sunrise the long funera train of
the Zebayir Islands, grim and joyless
amid the universal brightness hat beams
over sea and sky, cast the gloomy shadow
of their black volcanic rocks far over the
sunny waters. A little further, and the
land reappears on either side, the African
and Arabian coasts gradually converging
toward the same point from east and
west. Presently Mocha displays its tall,
tapering minarets and flat roofs and
small white houses and gray, crumbling
ramparts, clustering along the flat, sandy
shore of ''Yemen the Happy" Then,
far in the distance, the rocks of Bah ell
Mandeb Gate of Weeping) loom ghost
like against the hot, cloudless sky, and
the southern gateway of the Red sea
opens before us.-David Ker's Abria
Letter in New York Times.