On the Indian Hills

THE first thing I noticed was the sand. We plunged in ankle-deep before we had made half a dozen steps. Toiling through it anyhow, we gained a long well-lit boulevard with innumerable cafes and taverns all about. We visited one where some French women on a stage were singing and playing -- both very badly -- and tried some lager beer, which tasted much like the rinsing of old ale barrels, and for which we paid something like a shilling a glass. After listening to two or three songs, we went out and up the principal street in the town to make some purchases, for which purpose we accepted the services of a very diminutive Arab boy with a very large reed basket, who offered to carry our things.

Port Said is strong in shops where tobacco, cigars, jewelry, and photographs of the neighborhood are sold. These are generally kept by Frenchmen, who did not appear to be overflowing with superabundant respectability. The tobacco sold is usually Turkish and fairly good, though much better can be got in London; it is, however, cheaper, as there is no duty or very little. The photographs of the Canal with which every shop is stored being very novel and interesting, nearly every one buys some to send back to England. But much cannot be said for the sham Turkish jewelry; it is, first of all, remarkably ugly in design, never made of the material it lays claim to be, and more expensive than that which can be bought any day in Regent Street.

Two of us, myself and a huge Scotchman from the very far north, started off into the native quarters in search of Arab curiosities.

Luckily the moon was shining brightly and bathing the upper parts of the whitewashed houses in silvery light, though it made the narrow streets below even more dark by comparison. As we went along through the deserted roads ankle-deep in sand, we disturbed innumerable dogs -- disgusting animals, employing themselves in eating all the day's refuse and garbage of the town. They seemed to have a particular hatred of "pale faces," and snarled or howled as we went by in an unpleasant manner. One gaunt mangy animal came slouching after us for a long way, slinking along in the shadows behind, and barking when we stopped. The houses in the poorer parts seemed very nondescript, partly French, partly Italian, with Turkish arabesques in places; their open raised courts and circling balconies reminding one a little of Moorish villas. They were nearly all two storied, painted grey or drab to the top of the door, and the rest whitewashed.

We found a few native shops, but, as we might have guessed, they were chiefly food stores for the poorer classes, who seemed to have little superfluous cash, or inclination to spend it on ornaments or fine raiment.

These shops were nothing more than recesses under the houses, with counters across them; and upon innumerable shelves, nails, etc., on the walls, were dried fish, tomatoes, melons, and artichokes, stored or hung, in great profusion. In one of these we spied some particularly fine water-melons hanging on a peg -- beautiful great fruits with cool pale-green rinds, striped with darker green. Unfortunately, although the shop was quite open, there was no one to be seen in it; but when we thought of the flaring sands of the Canal tomorrow, and then of a week of roasting in the Red Sea, we determined to have some at any cost; so we went boldly in, and we were just arranging that W--- should climb up and get them down, after which we would leave some change on the counter, when we caught sight of something wrapped up in a blue burnoose with a faint resemblance to the human form, lying under a table in the corner. I gave it a poke with my stick, and it promptly started up, showing the black face of a curly-headed Nubian. The fellow had perhaps been dreaming of the bastinado, and thought we were the Khedive's officers come for him; at all events, he rubbed his eyes and took a long time to wake up and understand