all uncommon. He winds up with an account of a commercial gentleman in the next cabin who had delirium tremens all last voyage, and required a strait waistcoat, Sam, and three supernumeraries to keep him quiet.

one might cut with a silver knife. He | cides (they had one for each of their demands my tongue, and when, with first five voyages) and burials, not at an immense effort I show it to him, "Oi wish oi'd got wan so clane," says he regretfully. He orders me milk and lime water and a visit on deck, neither of which prescriptions I have the faintest idea of obeying. He tumbles out of my cabin like au amateur actor pretending to be extremely drunk, and I fall again to intermittent dozing.

I wake at six in the morning to find a strange man on his knees moving his hands mysteriously over the floor. He says he is searching for my boots to clean them. He describes it as a nasty morning again and bitterly cold.

In the afternoon I am seized with a passionate desire to see the face of this restless, storm-lashed Atlantic. I begin by sitting up in my berth for the Monday afternoon. However Sam first time for three days. My head managed to get me up on deck, I don't feels full of molten, swimming, clang- know. To me it was like stumbling ing lead; my legs, on the other hand, about inside a kaleidoscope, every obas I dangle them impotently over the ject going through a constant shifting side of my berth, are as pieces of and wondrous sea-change. I have a string. I fall on my knees, grown recollection of his holding me by the leaden now instead of my head (which arm and sliding me into a deck-chair. feels light and bobbing as a cork), and Now, he says, the deck-steward will with the help of the basket-work chair see after me. When he leaves me I which slides to my aid, drag myself like feel as though I have lost my only a shot rabbit to the opposite berth friend on board, and that I am about to below the portholes. How high above shed the bitterest tears of my life. I me it seems, and now how low! Up I open my eyes and see a sailor in a sou’clamber and look out through the gush-wester dropping a thermometer overing, boiling porthole. Waves, green board and pulling it up again to and curling hollows, slabs, terraces, troughs of water, broken and tumbling. White ridges and manes, and vast, deep pits where the sea appears clean Then comes to me the deck-steward. sliced into polished sides of the richest He produces the menu from his inside verd-antique. Not a ship, nor a bird; jacket-pocket and holds it under my only the low grey sky, with its masses nose. I look at it blankly and drearily. of slowly shifting cloud; only the I see beef and mutton and things grandiose, breaking seas. Tempestu- fricasséed. Then I look at him and his ous as the seascape is, its very silence dumb, entreating eye. My white lips strikes me as ominous. It is like murmur something inarticulate; neither watching a man in a fit of dumb, in- of us speaks, but, thank heaven, he articulate rage. It reminds me of see- understands me and goes. ing people dance, through a window, when you don't hear the music.

examine the temperature of the water. That is, I believe, to discover whether there be icebergs in the neighborhood.

Healthy, hearty people walk sturdily up and down the deck, talking and In the evening Sam persuades me to laughing. I get hideous whiffs of their sit in the basket-work chair while he tobacco, and the end of my deck-chair makes my bed. I sit in a limp heap, is occasionally knocked in a way that like Irving in the last act of Louis XI. moves me to blind fury. If I had a Sam entertains me, meanwhile, with gun handy, there are two young men stories of vessels which break their I should certainly shoot. They wear machinery when (just as we are) three Norfolk jackets and flannel trousers, days out; the rest of the voyage is they appear to enjoy the cold and the made laboriously under sail, and lasts motion, the wind envelops me with three weeks. Also he tells me of sui-occasional clouds of the horrible mix

3

ture they are puffing at. I try to attract | sitting opposite in the luncheon car, the attention of the captain, who is the woman with her vivacious monwalking up and down with a pretty key face, cunning and shrewd, but girl, assuring her that he will get her to New York on Thursday afternoon; I have an idea that he will put those two young men in irons if I ask him to, properly.

not unpleasant; the man, handsome aud sulky, with his common hands and thick legs. I set her down as a trapézienne, and he as the strong man who stands below steadying the rope, The deck is so bitterly cold that, to watching her gyrations with affected avoid being frozen and affecting the palpitations of terror. She read thermometer which the man in the "Belle-maman" when she was not sou'-wester pulls up and down and ex- quarrelling with him, and he had a amines carefully every half hour, I crumpled copy of "Gil Blas." And the drag myself miserably into the library. American ladies, in diamond earrings The library (owing perhaps to the and tight sealskin jackets, chattering quantity of light literature it contains) of the London shops and hotels while is even more unsteady than the deck. the pleasant English landscape slid I close my eyes and listen to two past, with the ploughing teams on the American girls chaff a fat young Dutch-brown uplands, the solitary figures man in a yachting cap and a reach- trudging along the roads, the broad me-down mackintosh with capes. He fields greenly shimmering with the amuses them so much that they carry winter wheat. And the wind in Livhim off down to the saloon for after-erpool, yelling through the docks, and noon tea.

I feel that if I don't speedily get below again I shall disgrace myself and my good friend Sam. I have a vision as I lurch along cabin-wards of leaping brass handrails and a long twining firehose, twisting like an empty snake. Fortunately, Sam is sitting in the passage amusing himself with a highly colored American comic paper. I fall shuddering into his arms; he undresses me like a child and puts me back into the familiar berth. He looks at me mournfully, and says he will see me again presently. Tuesday. Nothing but shipwreck will induce me to rise, and even then I shall insist on being the last person to leave the vessel. The doctor looks at me and says to Sam, "Fwhat shall we do to get um on deck? Shall we put powder under um ? "

All day long I lie and read, not unpleasantly. I have "Half Hours of the best American Authors," which I took out of the library before we started, and Hardy's "Return of the Native," bought at Crewe. What years ago it seems since we left London in the special, since I jumped out at Crewe and bought the book. How like a dream it seems to recall the two French people

the first sight of the Gigantic; and the sheaf of kindly telegrams waiting in the box in the saloon; and the steward, looking in his Eton jacket like a huge schoolboy, marking off our places for dinner and handing us each a number. How far off they all seem to me now tumbling in mid-Atlantic, how far off and yet how clear.

Wednesday. As I stand looking at the sea, with a faint, wavering smile, a gentleman in a heavy ulster and a cap says cheerfully, "You've had a very bad time, haven't you?" He introduces himself as the man who suffered so much in the next cabin. His face is plaster-white and tightly drawn; his eyebrows have gone up into his hair; his eyes are criss-crossed with a tangle of premature wrinkles. Really, if I looked like that, I should conceive it my duty to remain in my berth till I improved.

As I haven't been shaved since last Thursday, I tumble below (I am rapidly getting my sea-legs now) with a sort of sham hearty "Come aboard, sir!" air, down into the barber's shop. There I find our member of Parliament, who addresses me remarks of the courteous-foolish order. pears to be one of those gentlemen (not

He ap

altogether uncommon in the House of and when one knows that in other

Commons) who mistake dulness for parts of the ship the old, the sickly, the weight, and slowness of speech for badly clothed and badly fed are sufferevidence of sagacity. Like Mr. Chick, ing a thousand times more, without a he believes in making an effort when single comfort or attention to alleviate on board ship; he never gives way, he their misery. I stood upon the narrow says; he forces himself to get up on bridge that runs above the part of the deck; he forces himself down into the ship given over to the steerage passensaloon to eat. Which, being inter-gers, and looked down upon them, preted, simply means he isn't seasick; grouped about in the chilly dusk and in for if any man tells me the trouble can the light that fell from their saloon be overcome by mere strength of will, door. Bare-headed women, wrapped I have no hesitation in proclaiming in shawls like factory girls, came aud him liar, of the second or self-deceived order.

went busily with tin pannikins; gaunt men like drovers stood about talking and quarrelling; children tied up in shawls ran backwards and forwards, screamed at by their mothers as they stand screaming at their frowsy, Whitechapel doors. A cook came out in his white jacket and threw a paper of sawdust over the side. The wind carried the sawdust back like a cloud among the women and children, and I saw a mother cover her child's eyes quickly

When I am in the barber's chair, facing me in the glass I find a thin, white old man, with a short, dark beard, a stubby moustache, a blank, hollow eye, a wrinkled forehead. When I turn my head I see who it is; the object does the same; he mimics all my gestures; he gets shaved just as I do. When I look up at the barber for an explanation of the phenomenon, he says in a guttural German-American with her hands, caring nothing for tone, "Well, I never tink see you herself, anxious only to protect her again. You look pretty sick, mein child. In front of the door an old goodness! Woman was sitting on a tin box, uncared for and unnoticed. The light fell on her face, ravaged by care, and age, and sickness. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ventured out to take the air since leaving Liverpool, and she sat there, like a weather-beaten statue, out of which time and trouble had gradually worn all semblance to joy, to life, and even hope. Age, and exile, and sickness, every human misery seemed to beat its bat-wings round that impassive, suffering face. Later in the evening when again I looked down from the bridge, she was still sitting there, alone.

In the afternoon, as the day grows finer, I venture down into the saloon for a cup of tea. The sun blazes in upon the gilding, lavish as a lord mayor's barge. There is a group round the piano, practising for the concert. A young man in a light. suit and a dull penny-reading baritone moans through "In Days of Old when Knights were Bold." He goes through the song three times, and each time misses the high note by half a tone. He doesn't seem to have a notion he's flat, though the lady accompanying him hits the right note significantly. There are good people, I believe, who will sing flat in heaven without any idea that they are spoiling the general harmony. But, after all, how absurd it seems to complain of three or four days' seasickness when one remembers what people must have suffered in the old days of sailing vessels and paddle steamers; how unmanly, when on the Gigantic one is surrounded with every attention and comfort, even luxury,

I

Thursday. -Land-ho! It's half past eleven, and Fire Island is in sight. look out of the library window and see a long, low sandy shore, just like the last I saw of Lancashire, only that it is patched and painted with snow. I see a lighthouse, from whence they will telegraph our arrival to New York, and a wreck, heaped broken among the sand-dunes. We don't go very fast because of the fog; we keep blow

ing our great horn like a Triton, but | teer officers of 1860, and he writes rapwe expect to be at the quay-side at five idly, holding the pen between the first o'clock. Lunch is really rather a pleas- and second fingers.

As I go down the gangway a crowd of faces look up at me from the dock. A twinkling Irishman darts at me with a telegraph form and a pencil; he leaves them with me with a sweet, wistful smile, and rushes away after others. My luggage is all waiting for me under my initial in the huge shed; I have to open every trunk and bag, and watch large, dirty hands play over my clean linen. Sam comes to shake hands with me again, and gets me an Irishman and a truck to take my luggage to a fly. An Irishman opens the door, an Irishman drives me; the first shop I see is Michael Feeney's saloon bar.

ant meal on board these huge Atlantic There's Bartholdi's gigantic statue at liners. The member of Parliament last, and there are the piers and swing hopes with a conciliatory smile I am of Brooklyn Bridge. Sam has fastened 66 none the worse for my resurrection." up all my luggage, and we shake hands He regards me as he regards every one heartily. I shall never forget him and else on board as a constituent, a pos- the oranges he brought me, stuck on a sible voter, some one to be won over fork. by the irresistible charm of his manner. The pretty American girl opposite remarks pointedly, "It's vurry strange how folk turn up on board at the last moment whom one hasn't noticed before." That's said partly for fear that I should flatter myself I had been noticed, and partly in revenge for a smile I couldn't help our first evening at some rather startling Americanism of hers. The table steward talks to me in the low, cooing voice one uses to an invalid; he calls me by my name (no one says "sir "" on the Gigantic), and brings me the menu every two minutes. My handsome neighbor gives me an account of her sufferings (nothing to mine), and presses on me a lemon soufflé she and her companion have had specially made. They seem to travel in considerable luxury, for their last act before leaving Liverpool was the purchase of a number of chickens for their private consumption en route.

cable-car

I drive jolting over tramway lines, under elevated railways, between piles of snow as high as the early walls of Rome. I sce an unmistakable Irish policeman, in a helmet with a turneddown brim, regarding with admiration a colored lady sauntering through the slush of the sidewalk in goloshes. We are nearly smashed by a slinking along, ringing a funereal, clanging bell. I see a disused lamppost; with a dark-red letter-box fastened to it; next, a tall, black, electric light pole. On the lamp-post I read, on one side, Fifth Avenue; on the other, East 26th Street. On the top of a huge building there's a huge skysign, "Admiral Cigarettes, Opera Lights." On the face of it three large clocks tell the time in London, New York, and Denver. As we jolt past, up Fifth Avenue, I read on a board, "Oh, mamie, won't you take your honey boy to see Peter F. Dailey in A Country Sport"? This is New

How fast the last hours on board fly in compensation for others so torturingly slow. Here's Staten Island and New York harbor; here's the George P. Flick, a ferry boat ornamented with a large gilt eagle, lumbering alongside, and bringing a Customs House officer in a peaked cap. He reminds me I have a fan and a silver box to smuggle. I dispose them about my person with considerable trepidation, and go down into the saloon to sign a paper declaring I have nothing dutiable in my luggage. No more I have; they are both in my pockets. I regard with interest the Customs House officer, the first American I have seen on native soil, and can scarcely answer his questions for staring. He is a handsome, weary York. man, exactly like one of Leech's volun

From The Nineteenth Century. THE PROPOSED NILE RESERVOIR.

I.

THE DEVASTATION OF NUBIA.

IN an article which appeared in the last number of this review, Sir Benjamin Baker, a distinguished engineer, has done his best to vindicate the proposed scheme of turning Lower Nubia into a reservoir for the benefit of Middle and Lower Egypt. He discreetly confines his estimate of the damage which the execution of this plan will cause to the loss of the temples and inscriptions at Philæ, and most of his adversaries have been content to confine their opposition to the same ground.

But, as Sir Benjamin Baker and his friends say, they court "the fullest and most unbiassed discussion," it is well to insist that the loss to archæology and the violation to sentiment caused by the submerging of Philae are not the only elements in the question, as was stated last month in the adjoining article- the whole of Lower Nubia will be put under water. The flourishing little town of Shelal, containing perhaps one thousand people, with their houses, stores, farms, palm-trees, etc., must be sacrificed; so must all the dwellings and little farms on both sides of the Nile for fifty miles at least, and haps as far as the turn of the river

at Korosko.

per

There is not one word in Sir Benjamin Baker's article about the ruthless expatriation of the inhabitants of all this district. And for what purpose? For the enriching of the population of another province ! What is to be done with all these poor Nubians? They cannot be driven up into the desert, nor is it shown where any new land can be found for them; if they are to be quartered on the inhabitants of Middle or

Lower Egypt, the discontent of both exiles and hosts will go far to counterbalance the advantages of a larger water supply. Moreover, with submerging of houses and farms will follow the ruin of many other temples,

1 LIVING AGE, No. 2607, p. 748.

upon which the article in question is silent. What about Debot, Dakkeb, Kalabsheh, Gartass, Tehfa, Dendur, at all of which are picturesque, historic ruins, not thoroughly explored, and inscriptions not yet adequately copied ? In the same country there are, doubtless, many inscribed stones, and in the tombs of Coptic Christians many papyrus rolls of the greatest value, yet to be discovered. All this area, so precious to archæology, is to be sunk under the water. The material mischief, however, both actual and prospective, will be enormous quite apart from questions of sentiment. A considerable number of harmless people are to be turned out of their homes, without any provision being proposed for their support, not to say any consideration taken of their feelings.

And for what? Our author tells us

that

As to the absolute necessity for the construction of a reservoir with the least possible delay no shadow of doubt was expressed by any member of the Commission.

Fortunately, he goes on to explain this absolute necessity. Will the reader believe that it amounts simply to this: an estimated gain to the State of 750,0001. yearly, and of ten times that amount to the cultivators of Lower Egypt? It is not pretended that this population is in want; it is not true that there is any want in Egypt; the people never were so prosperous since Ptolemaic times; the absolute necessity of the engineers is simply the standpoint of greed on the part of the State, perhaps of certain bondholders, doubtless of the farmers in Lower Egypt, of whom Sir Benjamin Baker naïvely tells us that after the perfecting of the barrage near Cairo, and the consequent enormous increase of water supply during the last few years: "Notwithstanding this, the demand for water by the cultivators is as great as ever, and no means exist for satisfying their wants" by storing up

sell water, and so increase its revenues, such a statement might pass for mere

more water, etc. If the State did not