PORT SAÏD
November 12th.—We reached the end of the Suez Canal about eight o’clock
in the morning, and caught the first glimpse of land, a narrow stretch of
reddish desert land beyond Port Saïd, a town standing on the threshold
of Europe, at the Mediterranean entrance of the Suez Canal. This is
almost home! As soon as we had disembarked we were assailed by a throng
of natives who offered to serve as guides to us. We gave ourselves up to
the care of a gigantic negro, Mustapha by name, clad in a red jersey with
the words, _Mustapha molodetz_, which means in Russian “clever fellow,”
worked in yellow worsted on it.
We had just time enough to run over the town in a tram-car drawn by a
pair of sad-looking mules. There are only two or three streets properly
paved, everywhere else you sink up to the ankle in the sand. The streets
lined with little shops are a mass of moving colour in which swarm a
variety of Arabs, Egyptians, Negros, East-Indians and a few Europeans,
generally in white. We passed small taverns from which floated stray
snatches of music either awfully barbaric or quite modern. Our guide
brought us to the “Eldorado,” a large establishment with a roulette, a
sort of bar. We were ushered into a courtyard pompously named “garden,”
with two or three ricketty trees growing in it, and then entered a
large hall with an estrade on which played a small orchestra composed
of a dozen European girls with painted faces. Thanks to the overheated
temperature, the black paint of their eyes was running down their cheeks.
We tried our luck at the “roulette,” and took part in games where you are
sure to be cheated. I lost two francs and Mr. Shaniawski, who was in a
run of good luck, gained a louis d’or, which afterwards appeared to be a
false coin.
The sharp sound of the syren from the _Océanien_ warned us that it was
time to return to the boat. Towards two o’clock in the afternoon our ship
finished loading coal, and we left Port Saïd on our way to Marseilles.