Perth Amboy evening news., 1923-05-15
Geographic News
Bulletins by the
National Geographic Society
THE "ropsY CITY, OF EGYPT

! moves under the spell or $500 years
ago, Egypt has a city, Port Said,
! which possesses no more OF a pas
than TOpsy, writes Maynard owen
Williams, staff correspondent of the
National Geographic Society, from
Egypt.
Port Said is a city without roots,
whose sand foundations were spued
up by dredges and whose buildings
and population were dropped off by
passing ships. 1t has neither ances-
1.-The city Is as nondescript as its
population. The high iron fence
which separates the parade from the
canal marks the boundary line be-
tween cool l~aziness and feverish &C
tivity.
Ccasclcss Song of Toll
IN the harbor, small, powerful
tugs snort here and there amid
the traffic, white rowboats with plain
fiat awnings move like palsied shut
ties between gang plank and customs
quay, trim cutters from the British
men-o'-war suggest order in the
midst of chaos, and always the cool
les coaling the liners trot up the
steep planks, singing a ~ceaseless song
of c~easeless toll.
although these grimy dredges
do not belong to the nobility. Port
Said owes them much, for this city
not only protects n end or the
jugular vein or hamstring of the
Empire from envious wolves but has
the more profitable, II less pictur-
esque honor of being the worlds
greatest coaling station.
I'm such tiny, obscure ports as
Otaru, ships can be coaled in short
order by machinery. But the day of
coaling machinery in Port Said is
just now dawning.
CoaIing and the Coolie
Before the mail boats are Sc
curely tied up, night-black barges
covered with night-black men with
milk white eyes have attached them
selves to their staunch TANKS and
the fuel is pouring aboard in an end
less line of limp baskets borne on
the shoulders of sweating men whose
limbs, deeply coated with coal dust
seem made of oxidized metal.
1.-THE baskets are not passed from
hand to hand. Each man shoulders
his load and trots with it up the
steep plank, soon disappearing tt
jump down into the dusky depths oil
the barge.
Steamer to barge-barge to pile
pile TO barge-barge to leviathar
or tramp; one would think that hall
the sooty fuel would be lost through
frequent handling. But no one car
teach Port Said anything about coal
ing-unless 1t be the coolie.
During night coaling, a plank
With six coolies on it dropped will
a thud to the barge deck and for
weeks the coolies refuse to coal al
night, except those ships that have
side ports.
This was an awful sacrilege! 1t is
even limited that the mail was de-
layed. But the p. and o. liners have
side ports and it was not one oil
them, so Jove withheld his thunder
bolts. The coolies gave the excuse
that they were tired.
Never fIurry-Except for Drinks
But that takes you to the other
side of the iron fence. There the
people are always tired. Tennis is
a game in which the ball hovers in
the air like a white-breasted gull.
Bathing is even less strenuous, be-
ing conducted according to Graeco-
Roman rules. Golf moves with dig
nifty rather than incandescent Ian
guage. But the drink steward has
developed winged heels while carry
Ing libations to the gods of the YER
anda.
1.-THE main attraction of Port Said
aside from the lighthouse, whose
beams sweep the shipping safe to
port and the ships where cigarettes.
novels by Kitchens and Kipling, os-
trich feather fans, kimonos, sun
helmets, Japanese and Syrian Ia
mascene, Oriental silks, Persian post
cards and cosmetics, and Abyssinian
weapons. Is the de Lesseps monu-
ment, situated near the inner end
of the western breakwater.
"a Canal Service dredge in action
develops a squeal that reminds one
of Circe's captives, frantic with re-
morse and inconsistencies. But the
humble and complaining dredge is
the protector of traffic and as long
as the squeal continues the process
sion will go by.
'It is thought that when Kipling
wrote of thirst culture and the
equality of nan east of Suez' he
misplaced Port Said, for the only
thing the curio dealers do not keep,
nor their customers ask for. are the
Ten Commandments. And when
the missionary ashore from a China
boat depIores conditions in his So
Geological discussions with q red
capped NJ. p, that weary individual
to whom even murder would be a
relief, duly answers:
"'You think Port Said is bad?
You ought to have seen it before the
war;"