FROM NAPLES TO CAIRO.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1909.

We leave Rome by the 10 a.m. express and reach Naples at 14.30. Yesterday we came to Rome from Assisi. At Terni I bought a lunch basket which contained (1) a paper napkin, (2) a knife, (3) a loaf of bread, (4) a cake of sweetbread, (5) two slices of meat, (6) a couple of slices of sausage, (7) salt, (8) a bit of chicken, (9) toothpicks, (10) a bottle of wine, (11) an orange, (12) a piece of cheese, (13) some walnuts—all for two francs. I question whether there is any other country in the world where you could buy so much food for so little money.

A facchino, or railway porter, at Naples, plays us a scurvy trick. We hand him over our luggage at the station, and tell him we want to get a carriage to take us on board the Regina Margherita. After a moment's thought, he tells us it is but two minutes' walk, and he will take us on board for four francs—which we think rather too much, but agree to give. He leads us along dirty streets for at least ten minutes, and fetches up finally at a landing place, where he and sundry boatmen engage in a war of words, to which vehement gesticulations lend a sanguinary aspect—all calculated to impress us with the difficulty of getting to our steamer. Presently he motions us to step into one of the boats, which we, in our innocence, do in fear and trembling, while he quickly makes off. But the boatman will not budge till we have paid him four francs. Then he quietly rows us round a ship, and up to a dock, where, to our surprise and great disgust, we behold our Regina Margherita cosily moored! Two Neapolitan ragamuffins extort further tribute for carrying our traps on board. "For ways that are dark and tricks that are—vain" seems hardly the word, and I leave the reader to finish the sentence.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 21.

We awake this morning in the Strait of Messina, scene of the late frightful catastrophe. On our right, but at some distance, is the city of that name, once fair as few cities are, now a corpse, torn and disfigured, with the light of life gone out of it. Farther up the Strait, on our left, is ruined Reggio. At a first glance the ruins are not seen, but closer scrutiny, with the help of a pair of glasses, reveals them. One very large building in the upper part of the town is still on its feet. In many cases the walls are left standing, mute witnesses of the ruin within and without. I cannot discern a single church tower or steeple in all the stricken city. By ten o'clock we are off Cape Spartivento (Split-the-wind), the toe of the Italian boot, and by twelve the last of the tall hills of Southern Italy has faded away on the horizon.

Great is Italian reverence for that which has been and is, an admirable sentiment in its way, but one which tends to conserve in being things that are and ought not to be. For example. I was awakened this morning at five o'clock by a rattling noise which I took to be due to some iron fastening having become loose. I groped my way on deck, but could see nothing. Meeting one of the stewards, I asked him what made the noise, "E il temone—it is the steering-gear," he made answer, and suggested that I could get a room on the lower deck where the noise would not be heard. Going on deck after daylight I found the clatter was caused by a bolt, which kept the rod of the steering-gear in place, having too much play. The ship's smith was busied hard by with mending a windlass, and I drew his attention to the matter. He eyed me in mild wonderment, and with a characteristic shrug of the shoulders, said, "E sempre stato cosi—It has always been like that." So there you are! Hundreds upon hundreds of passengers have been robbed of their sleep by the clatter of this bolt, but what of that? The nuisance must go unabated, because—E sempre stato cosi!

P. S. I must set on record the fact that the thing has since been remedied: for the future, passengers in stateroom No —, of the Regina Margherita may rest in peace.

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FRIDAY, JANUARY 22.

All the afternoon we are chased by a thunderstorm, but manage to keep ahead of it. We do, however, get the wind that goes with it, and there is a deal of motion in the ship, and a deal of squeamishness in certain stomachs. By eight o'clock we have left the storm behind, and by ten have abeam the light on a little island off Crete, or Candia, as it is also called. We think of St. Paul and the hardships he endured along this coast while he was on his way to Rome. The Cretans of his time seem to have been a pretty bad lot, for he cites "a prophet of their own" as saying that they were "always liars, wicked brutes, lazy bellies," and vouches for the truth of the indictment. But there must have been some good ones among them, for he made many converts there, and gave his beloved disciple Titus to be their first Bishop.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 23.

I've had an interesting talk with two Franciscan Fathers, one the Visitor-General of the Order, the other the well-known American author, Paschal Robinson. We are now within ten hours' sail of Egypt—Egypt old in story, of which the Sphinx is fitting emblem, land of many riddles yet unsolved. We shall reach there before dawn to-morrow.

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27.

Back on board the Regina Margherita, and on the way to Jaffa (Joppa). Early Sunday morning we land at Alexandria, say Mass in the Franciscan Church there, and at 11 a.m. take the train for Cairo, which we reach some three hours later. The distance is about 140 miles. We are traversing perhaps the most fertile tract of country in the world, along the delta of the Nile. It is one vast plain as far as the eye can see, from edge to edge of the horizon, green with growing crops of wheat and cotton. On all sides are groves of acacias and lines of stately palm, while long caravans of camels, passing parallel to the line of railway, lend an added picturesqueness to the landscape. Egypt, to the intellect a land of mystery, is to the eye a land of beauty—land of the evergreen. And yet one misses the snow-capped mountains which make of Italy, and still more of Switzerland, a fairyland of romance. Here it is always summer, and the crops keep growing perennially; as many as four crops are raised in the year. Little rain falls, and the tiller of the soil would wish it were less than that little, for the waters of the Nile irrigate the land, and it is the hot sun out of a cloudless sky that favours growth. I have said the tiller of the soil when I should have rather said the owner, who is generally a Jew or a Turk. Your Arab Fellah gets his pittance of four piastres (about twenty cents) a day, and is better off with that than he was before the English came in, when the Khedive sent his servants to take heavy toll of the ripened crops.

The Arab subdued the Copt, lineal descendant of the ancient Egyptians, and was in turn subdued by the Turk. He is a picturesque figure, with his white turban or red fez, his flowing robes, his sandalled, oftentimes bare, feet. The women are veiled up to the eyes, with a curious covering on the nose, which seems to serve no particular purpose and is certainly not an ornament. The young of the male sex are for the most part of a pleasing appearance. But with advancing years the features of these people take on a hard and somewhat repulsive look, half of submission, half of hopelessness, not unlike that which one sees in the eyes of that much abused beast of burden, the ass, which for six decades of centuries has borne the whips and scorns of his master, man. It is the fatalism of the race that finds expression in that look—the feeling that it is of no use kicking against the pricks of a relentless destiny. And so the Arab goes his way, bearing the burden of life sadly but submissively. His whole philosophy is summed up in the one word malesh (a as in "ma," e as in "edge," both vowels long drawn out,) which is forever on his lips: "It doesn't matter"—nothing matters in a world where so much is amiss and so little can be mended. We spend two days in Cairo, during which we visit Matarieh, Old Cairo, the citadel and famous mosque of alabaster, the museum with its mummies, and the pyramids. At Matarieh is the well of sweet water which gushed forth, tradition has it, when the Holy Family came into Egypt, and the sycamore which gave them shelter. The present tree is more than three hundred years old. At Old Cairo is shown the site of the cottage in which dwelt the Holy Family. It is in the crypt of an ancient basilica, the style of which bespeaks the fifth or sixth century. The place is in the hands of the Schismatical Copts; it was the daughter of the Coptic priest who unlocked the door for us. In Old Cairo one sees the Arab in the primeval environment of the unchanging East. All is primitive here. Bedouin and Jew, camel, donkey, and goat move along pell-mell, jostling one another in the narrow, crooked, foul-smelling streets. I would not advise a visit to the market-place just before dinner—it might spoil one's appetite. There is some very ancient dirt in Old Cairo—and some that is not so ancient. Newman says somewhere that no dirt is immortal, but he is speaking of another sort of dirt, and, anyhow, he never set foot in this Egyptian town, laved but washed not by the waters of the Nile.

In striking contrast to the lowly ass, is that other beast of burden, the lordly camel. With what lofty disdain it sniffs the air as it looks down upon its mean environment—pigmy man included. It is a proud creature—proud even of the hump on its back. It has been tamed by man after a fashion, but not subdued, and its eyes belie the obedience that it outwardly yields to its puny master.

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ROME, MARCH 9, 1909.

We returned from the East a couple of weeks ago, and are now getting ready to leave for home. We are to sail from Southampton for New York on the 31st. Of our visit to the Holy Land I write nothing now; I may later, but life is uncertain. Of Egypt I might have written more, but my notes are lost, as ill luck would have it, and I write from memory. Had not those notes been lost—in some such way we used to put it in boyhood's days when spinning sgialachan by the fireside—this letter had been longer.