Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. FROM ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO BY RAIL. Cairo, March 16. THE old route from Alexandria to Cairo, by steam or rail, along the Mahmoudieh Canal to Atfeh, and up the Rosetta arm of the Nile, is a thing of the past. Instead of twelve hours on the steamer, or three to six days on a dakabiytk, the express trains now make the intervening hundred and thirty miles in exactly four hours and a half, and carry the traveller across the rich inland levels of the Delta, which he never saw in former years. All authorities, guidebooks included, warn you solemnly against taking the ordinary trains, on the ground that they never obey the time-table and may be delayed for hours on the way. For us. however, the express was too punctual, because too fast. I did not consider an additional hour and a hall any too much for an entirely new route, and was not particularly satisfied when the predictions proved felse and the train kept its exact time. At the Alexandria station, a large dusty building beyond the canal, there was certainly, at the start, an atmosphere of great repose and indifference. The ticket-seller at the open window counted sold piemfor about five minutes before attending to my demand, and the officials in the baggage-room discussed a va riety of topics while weighing and registering our two small trunks. The first-class fare is a little less than six dollars, which, with one franc for baggage, is not an excessive charge. A dozen persons were gathered in the shabby waiting-room, while the native passengers, third and fourth-class, came forth as a large multitude from their separate den. The first and second-class can were made after the English model, the former with comfortable leather seats, but without curtains to the windows. The conductor and his subalterns spoke Eng... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.