EGYPT MAY SOON BE REACHED IN TEN DAYS.[10] This is almost incredible; still more so, when we add that it may be accomplished without fatigue, hardship, or self-denial. The traveller even now embarks at Southampton in one of the Oriental Company's magnificent steamers, and finds himself landed at Alexandria in fifteen days, having visited Gibraltar and Malta, besides having travelled three thousand miles in as much comfort as he would have enjoyed at Brighton, with far more advantage to his health and spirits, and but trifling additional expense. For our own parts, we believe that, before long, sea voyages, instead of sea shores, will be resorted to, not only by the invalid, but by the epicurean and the idler. The floating hotels of our ocean steamers afford as comfortable quarters as any of their more stationary rivals, with the additional advantage of presenting a change of air and of scenery every morning that the "lodger" rises.
[10] By the leviathan steamers now building for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Company. They are calculated to make from sixteen to eighteen miles an hour, which would reduce the sea-going part of the voyage to eight days two hours.
The autumn--the later the _better_--is the _best_ period for visiting Egypt. October is, on the whole, the best month for beginning the ascent of the Nile. We will suppose the traveller landed at Alexandria: he achieves the lions of that suddenly-created city (except Aboukir Bay) in a few hours, and is ready to start for Cairo in the mail steamer, with the India-bound passengers who accompanied him from England. The country in which he now finds himself, by so sudden a transition, is full of apparent paradoxes; amongst others, he may be surprised to find that the canal on which he travels to Atfeh winds considerably, though no engineering obstacles whatever oppose themselves to a straight course. The reason of this sinuosity was thus explained to us by Mehemet Ali himself:--"You ask why my canal is not straight: Ya, Wallah! it is owing to a bit of bigotry. The dog who made it was a true Believer, and something more. He said to himself, 'Ya, Seedee, thou art about to make what Giaours call a canal, and Giaours in their impiety make such things straight. Now, a canal is made after the fashion of a river--(Allah pardon us for imitating his works!)--and all rivers wind: Allah forbid that my canal should be better than His river; it shall wind too.'"