We had no need of hiring the country boats which ply on the
Mahmoodieh Canal to Atfeh, where it joins the Nile, but were
accommodated in one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's fly-
boats; pretty similar to those narrow Irish canal boats in which
the enterprising traveller has been carried from Dublin to
Ballinasloe. The present boat was, to be sure, tugged by a little
steamer, so that the Egyptian canal is ahead of the Irish in so
far: in natural scenery, the one prospect is fully equal to the
other; it must be confessed that there is nothing to see. In
truth, there was nothing but this: you saw a muddy bank on each
side of you, and a blue sky overhead. A few round mud-huts and
palm-trees were planted along the line here and there. Sometimes
we would see, on the water-side, a woman in a blue robe, with her
son by her, in that tight brown costume with which Nature had
supplied him. Now, it was a hat dropped by one of the party into
the water; a brown Arab plunged and disappeared incontinently after
the hat, re-issued from the muddy water, prize in hand, and ran
naked after the little steamer (which was by this time far ahead of
him), his brawny limbs shining in the sun: then we had half-cold
fowls and bitter ale: then we had dinner - bitter ale and cold
fowls; with which incidents the day on the canal passed away, as
harmlessly as if we had been in a Dutch trackschuyt.
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