FRENCH FRIENDS—ON BOARD—COMPARATIVE COMFORT—A QUEER FISH—A DINNER PARTY—A CARGO OF GAZELLES—ROUGH WEATHER—VOYAGE TO SUEZ—AND ARRIVAL.

March 27: Massowah.—I was very ill all night, and this morning I went to the French Company to get myself some clothes, as what I had on were rather curious garments after the journey. I also bought some stores for the voyage, and two fine elephants' tusks, which were evidently not Abyssinian ivory, as they were much too large. The Abyssinian elephants have very small tusks, and the ivory does not command a very high price. I was afraid my donkeys would not come up till after the steamer had sailed, but M. de Sarzec promised me to have all my things packed up and sent on. I may as well tell my readers that eventually everything arrived safe in England, in as good condition as I left it when last I saw it in Abyssinia. I lunched with the French Consul, who entertained us most liberally and produced some very good "tej," which he makes himself. I went to the French Company's house in the afternoon; it overlooked the sea, and observing a boat coming up alongside, I hailed it. An Englishman was sitting in the stern, who turned out to be Mr. Cordock, the engineer of the S.S. Massowah. I asked him to come into the house and speak to me, told him that I was going away by the steamer to Suez, and that I had been very ill. The boat was to sail the next day, so that evening he dined with me at the French Company's, and we went off to the ship together. He gave up his cabin to me, and he was altogether most kind and considerate.

My only fellow-passenger was an ex-French naval captain, who had been sent out by a mercantile house in Paris to look for guano amongst the islands in the Red Sea. He had been cruising about for ten days in an open native boat, called a sambouk, from island to island, but had not succeeded in finding what he wanted, and was now returning to Paris. He happened to have a servant who was an excellent cook. This man was half a Syrian and half a Frenchman, and on the voyage up to Suez he cooked all our meals for us.

March 28, Sunday.—The ship was to sail to-day, but there was an additional quantity of hides to take in. They were gradually crowding up the deck with this stinking cargo, which had been accumulating at Massowah for some time, the government in Egypt not allowing merchants to ship these hides to Suez, as there was cattle disease at the time in Abyssinia. I sat on the deck most of the day, enjoying the cool and pleasant breeze of the harbour. Just before dinner M. de Sarzec came to see me, and I persuaded him to stay and dine with us; he was very entertaining, and he told us a long story of how he had very nearly been murdered by the natives at Fogera, in the south of Abyssinia. This is the place where Consul Plowden, some time before, had been killed. I wrote letters to K., and gave them to Goubasee to take to Adowa. I likewise left some money behind with the French Consul for H., on his return to Massowah.

March 29.—At daybreak the steamer sailed for Suez. I was better to-day, as an Arab doctor of Massowah had given me some opium and ipecacuanha. This had improved me, as also, probably, the change to sea air had a great deal to do with it. The engineer's cabin was on deck, and so I was as comfortable as I well could be on the dirty little steamer. I had laid in a stock of provisions at Massowah, and had also brought down two small sheep from Asmarra; so with the help of the Syrian cook we promised not to fare badly.

March 30.—I was a little better this morning, and during the day, but in the evening after dinner I was taken dreadfully ill, in fact, I believed I was at the point of death. The ship anchored for the night, as is generally the custom with these steamers, the day after leaving Massowah, for they are cruising about amongst coral reefs, which are exceedingly dangerous. Whenever we anchored, the sailors all set to work fishing, catching numbers of peculiar-shaped and strange-coloured monsters.

March 31.—I am better to-day, and we all dined on the upper deck as it was very hot below. We had a most unusual fish for dinner; he was like a perch, only perfectly red, and the spiky fin on his back was of a very beautiful scarlet colour. To-day the French captain showed me the charts of his voyages amongst the islands of the Red Sea, which he had made in an Arab boat with a crew of three men and his servant. There is a very heavy dew at night here, but we all three sat talking till late, Cordock, the engineer, produced some rum, which I am sorry to say I am not allowed to drink, but the French captain seemed to enjoy it very much. The second officer of the ship, an Egyptian of the name of Hassain, is a very intelligent man; he has been with ships several times to London, and he talks a little English.

April 1.—We arrived at Souakim about 9 o'clock in the morning, having anchored, for the night before, inside a reef. I sent for the doctor, Achmet Effendi, who came to see me. He was a very intelligent and clever young man, and he spoke French very well, having been seven years in Paris studying his profession. Ali Effendi, the agent of the steamship company, came off to see me; he is a great friend of A.'s, and seemed a capital good fellow. I gave them all a little dinner in the evening. The table was laid on the forecastle, and was lighted up with about twenty little lamps, which Ali Effendi kindly provided. Our party consisted of Ali Effendi, the company's agent; Achmet Effendi, the young doctor; Mustapha, the captain of the ship; Hassain, the second officer; the French captain; Mr. Cordock, the engineer; and myself. Dinner went off capitally, and our party all seemed to enjoy themselves very much. They drank all the coffee in the ship that was ready ground, and ate a large quantity of sweet things. I sent into the town of Souakim to try and get a minstrel to enliven us, but the musical instrument on which he played was broken, the minstrel was asleep, and the ship's stoker, a Copt, whom I had sent to fetch him, came back quite drunk. After my unsuccessful attempt to entertain the company I went to bed, and I believe the party still went on drinking coffee and smoking cigars ad libitum. We here took on board a number of gazelles and ariels. This is a speculation of an American, named Philipo, who hopes to sell them for large prices in Egypt. The animals are housed in pens on the fore part of the ship and covered over with mats, as what they suffer from most at sea is cold. I am picking up Arabic very fast, and I think, in a short time I should be able to talk like a native. The engineer nurses me and takes the greatest care of me; in fact, I do not know what I should do without him.

April 2.—We left Souakim at eight o'clock in the morning; nothing of importance occurred to-day; we had head winds and a strong sea.

April 3.—It blew rather hard, and the ship swayed about. We dined in the engineer's little cabin amidships, where the motion has not so much effect. Our cook is prostrated with sea-sickness, as well as most of the crew; in fact, all these Arab sailors are generally sick when it comes on to blow. The engineer, the French captain, and myself were the only people who had not succumbed to this malady.

April 4.—At sea to-day it blew very hard, and we made but little way, it was resolved, therefore, that if it should continue to blow to-morrow we would anchor inside Ras Benas, a large headland on the west side of the Red Sea. Here may be seen the ruins of the old Egyptian town of Berenice.

April 5.—We were at anchor south of Ras Benas, and sheltered by the headland, but the captain would not go near the mainland, as the pilot did not know that the entrance into the small harbour is here. This was a great disappointment to me, as I should much have liked to land and see the ruins of Berenice. The country is inhabited, and further inland gazelles and deer are found; there is also some vegetation, including mimosa bushes. Cordock and I went out in the evening in the captain's gig to try to catch some fish, but we only got a good tossing among the reefs, yet I think the fresh breeze was beneficial to me.

April 6.—We are still at anchor under Ras Benas, it is blowing so hard. The captain gave us and his officers a breakfast in Egyptian fashion: it was very good, some of the dishes being quite original to me.

April 7.—We weighed anchor at seven o'clock in the morning, it was blowing very hard, and the captain wished to stay here till the wind dropped, but Cordock induced him to go on, as he knew I was ill and wanted to get home as quickly as possible. The Arabs are dreadful cowards in a storm, and when they find themselves in one they generally begin praying, and doing nothing else. I was a little stronger, but still very ill with a bad diarrhoea.

April 8.—We had no chutney to eat with our curry and rice, so I amused myself to-day by making some. It resulted in a complete success, and proved very good. The principal ingredients were some tomatos which the cook had bought for me at Souakim. At two o'clock to-day we were abreast of the Brothers, two low coral islands, and quite chief features of the Red Sea; the P. & O. Company have put a flag-staff on the larger one. A gale was blowing very hard, and Cordock hoped to make Shadwan that night, which is a large island at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez, with a high mountain on it that can be seen for thirty miles. I hope to arrive at Suez on the 10th. It blew so hard, however, that we could not get on at all, so on the morning of the 9th we anchored at Tur, after having passed a very stormy night. When Cordock came to me in the morning, he informed me that the ship had very nearly been lost off the island of Shadwan; it was blowing tremendously hard at the time, and we were on a lee-shore; the steering-gear gave way, and the ship went round before the wind. All the Arabs lost their heads, but Cordock, with the help of his assistant-engineer and the Syrian cook, put things right. During all this commotion I was sleeping in utter unconsciousness in my cabin, and in the morning I was very glad they had not woke me up. Tur is a little place on the east side of the Red Sea; it is here that pilgrims and travellers disembark, and get their camels to start for Mount Sinai.

I went on shore in the afternoon and bought some provisions at a Greek store there, and by a most unexpected chance found some of Fortnum and Mason's preserved soups at this out-of-the-way place; they had been part of the cargo of a ship that had been wrecked in the Gulf of Suez. The goods had been bought by some Greeks of the Suez Bazaar, then sent down to Tur. I went to see the old Russian gentleman who makes arrangements for all travellers to Mount Sinai. I bought some tortoiseshell from him, and also purchased a pretty good collection of coral and Red Sea shells from a Greek who was hanging about, and who also sold me three beautiful little sponges. Cordock, the French captain, and I walked out to a grove of date-palm trees not far off; the mountains in the distance were covered with a strange purple haze, peculiar to the Red Sea, and afforded a magnificent appearance. These hills reminded me very much of the scenery of the background of some of Gustave DorÉ's illustrations.

April 10.—We weighed anchor at seven o'clock in the morning; but it was still very rough. The P. & O. ship passed us about five P.M. We had just enough coal to last us thirty hours, and we had to run one hundred and twenty-five miles. Thank God! the wind dropped, or I cannot guess where we should have been. We heard at Tur that an English ship was on the Zafarina reef. They also told us that it was blowing so hard that ships' boats could not get ashore from the vessels lying in the roads at Suez.

April 11.—At last I have arrived at the end of my journey, but more by good luck than good management. We dropped our anchor at eight o'clock in the Suez roads, having just got four tons of coal left. If these had run out we should have had to go back to Jidda for coal, or else gone ashore in a boat and trudged up to Suez.

Here my Journal ends. And I hope no other unhappy mortal who may go travelling in search of sport will ever have such a journey home as mine has been.