The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-05-19
Copyright. 1895. by S. S. Mcclure.
LiniteG)

+. and !. is good to look upon. This
iIrIle railway runs from Port Said to
lsmailia, less than q hundred miles.
The guage is not even three feet,
which seems 10 be a sort of standard
for narrow guage railways every
where. 1t is only thirty inches. The
locomotives are ike toy engines. but
good ones, and the carriages are beau
tiful-perfect little palaces. They are
not only neatly designed and artist
icalIy constructed, but scrupulously
clean and very comfortable. They
are narrow. of course. but ample
room is given 10 each passenger.
They are so arranged that the whole
ear may be opened UP allowing one
10 pass through il from end TO end.
! had no time TO inform myself re-
garding the roads history, but l was
told that it had been built and was
being operated by a French company.
I hope so, for the J. & ]. has rather
disgraceel France. The rail, which
rests on metallic cross-ties, looks TO
he about thirty pounds to the yard.
The road runs, for the greater part,
along the Suez canal, with the sea on
the other side, and the ride from Port
Said, if the sand is not blowing, is an
interesting one.
In the shallow sea to the right are
riads of sea birds of every con-
able kind, and farther out hun
dreds of sleepy-looking little ships,
with one sail. whose masts lean back
ike slender palms in g. steady wind.
To the left is the canal, upon whose
narrow waters one sees the flag of al
most every civilized country, some
perhaps the stars and stripes, which,
somehow, one seldom sees in the
Orient or anywhere else for that
matter Even at Constantinople, the
nag at the embassy flies only on high
days and holidays. and not very high
then.
With all their enterprise. this COM
pany makes one serious mistake.
Tnev refuse to paste" baggage
through from Port Said TO Cairo, and
at Ismalia the voyager must hunt
out his luggage, nave = re-weighed
and re-registered. The P. & o..
beautiful new steamer Caledonia"
bound for india. had unloaded an
English excursion party the day
went down, and it took nearly two
hours that night TO re-weigh TIE bag
gage. where we left the smart little
railway and boarded the Egyptian
line.
The Egyptian State railways are not
bad, not very good. but they answer
fair. their cars are of the usual Egyp-
tan style, shore and light They
make very good time, too, for such
slow country: but one must travel nfst
class always in Egypt, to avoid
smoke filth and dirt Of every kind
the quick and the dsadt
The Universal brotherhood OF Sec
ton Hands.
If the reader has ever ridden on
the rear end of an American railroad
train, and is Of an observing turn. he
has noticed that the moment that the
train passes a gang of section men,
they all fall too as vigorously as
though they were repairing wash
oar, and were holding the presidents
snecial. Poor fall0ws says the
synpathetic traveller "how they
work He does no. observe that
every Irish son of them has one eye
an The track and the other On the rear
car. looking for The road-mas:er.
Arabs did it on the Jaffa * Jerusalem;
iusr as the Gilman ~ do in California,
and the negroes in Texas. Human
nature is much the same the world
over.
Opposite the English barracks in
Cairo you can see bare-Gooted negroes
playing football with 4 cocoa-nut. At
stopped I saw 1o little girls. dark
children of the Orient sitting by the
track One of them about twelve
years old, was dandling her doll-a
black stick with bunch OF wool On
one end of it-whUe her sister, year
or two older, with her doll lXlpg IN
The sand al her si7e, was dandling her
haFy. These dolls ara dear 10 these
children-dear as the gaudy dC}ls Of
France are to the children of the re-
rublic-but how early hey are
weaned. poor things!
Another thing 1 noticed was that
there were four flies in the upper left
hand corner of the child's right eye.
Neither the mother nor the child made
any effort 10 brush them away-Egyp-
tians never do--and the result is that
one eve is literally eaten out OF the
head of 10 per cent. of the children
along the valley of the Nile. Poor
children. At fourteen they are sold
into slavery, or matrimony. which is
fhe same in the east-and while still
wondering who, and why they are
find a LADY in their arms, with only
a vague notion of how il all came
about The pretty saying the Moham-
medans have-from the Koran, of
course-"From your mother TO your
husband, from your husband to the
grave" came in all right here.
I arrived at Cairo at midnight, and
wer- straight to bed. When 1 awoke
the next morning it was because birds
were singing near my window, end
fountains were playing not far away.
In truth. [ had to walk about my
room to assure myself that l was still
or earth and these things were real,
auC the marble maidens hid about in
sheltered hooks were only marble,
and the little Iove-gods and angels
were nothing but stone ingeniously
wrought to fool people.
The PIeasantest Hotel On Earth,
with Reasonable Rates.
When 1 had dressed, had my pre-
njer deieuner''-or first breakfast-in
nv apartments, and walked out into
the hotel, I found myself in a, palace,
and instinctively touched my right side
to see If my letter OF credit was there,
I expected to leave this place long in
experience, but financially short. Ev-
erything was on such a kingly scale
that I eelt afraid at first, but as
mounted the great staircase leading TO
the first floor where are the ladies' sa-
looms, the private concert and ball
rooms and the apartments especially
reserved for royalty and distinguished
persons, ] forgot that I was not royal,
rich or distinguished, and began to
lose myself in the wonders of my sur
roundings II was very early, and /
bud II al 70 myself All the poetry of