but if a vessel happens to go aground the pilot is not to blame, and moreover the damage that may be done to the banks of the canal by his running the ship ashore is at once claimed against the owners of the vessel. The cost of going through the canal is nine shillings per ton, and a further charge of nine shillings a head for every one on board except the working hands. Our ship, therefore, cost the sum of £1823. This will give some idea of what it must cost the country to send this expedition through the canal. It must be a nice little item in the total expenditure when the number of ships and number of men are taken into consideration.
The first point of any interest after leaving Port Said is the Lake Menzalah, or ancient Serbonian Bog, where the great plague of the fifth century B.C., which afterwards desolated Athens, originated, and from which too almost all the plagues which swept over Asia Minor and across Europe in the Middle Ages are supposed to have had their origin. The shores of the lake, as well as its shallow waters, are almost always covered with thousands upon thousands of flamingoes, standing all exactly in the same position and in lines
