range until the hot weather begins. My bedroom records have purposely been taken in a north room with door wide open, never visited by the sun, unoccupied at night, and unwarmed by artificial light. This, therefore, gives the greatest cold to which a patient can be subjected, unless he opens his bedroom windows. A prudent invalid would, of course, eschew a north room, and would warm the air by lamp or candles on going to bed. Thus he would raise my minimum results some four degrees, and reduce the range of temperature considerably. It is interesting to note that my minimum results, within two or three degrees, correspond with the mean temperature of the month. During April and May it is, of course, easy to refrain from going out at the hottest time of the day. Thus it is evident that patients can spend six months in Cairo in a temperature which need only vary from 63° to 80°.

"The shortest days in December give us ten hours daylight, or three hours longer than in England."

The mere fact, that, for one absolutely cloudless winter day in the British Islands—even in the sunniest region of the South Coast-there are ten or a dozen in Upper Egypt, means more, however, to the non-scientific reader than whole columns of meteorological readings and cli

matic statistics. In short, the Upper Nile boasts of the most wonderful and salubrious climate of any known winter resort in the world available to phthisical patients. There is, of course, no ideal climate on the surface of the globe,—no hygienic Utopia where "the consumptive can draw in healing influence with every breath;" but the climate of Upper Egypt is the nearest approach, within ten days of London, to Tennyson's legendary land of Avilion, "Where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly."

Though the weather is popularly supposed to be the Englishman's staple topic of conversation, the ignorance of the veriest a, b, c of meteorology found among ordinarily well-informed and observant travellers is extraordinary. In Egyptian books of travel and magazine articles one occasionally finds the very quality in which the climate of Egypt is so deficient equability of temperature -singled out, along with its undeniable dryness, for special praise.

Messrs. Hermann Weber, Burden Saunderson, F. M. Sandwith, and other physicians who have devoted considerable attention to the hygienic and climatological aspects of Egypt are agreed that Egypt is particularly suitable for most forms of lung disease, for incipient pulmonary consumption, chronic bronchitis, asthma, anæmia, chronic rheumatism, and, speaking generally, convalescents from acute diseases. But patients suffering from advanced heart disease, or, in short, very advanced disease of any organ, or from fever, should not be sent to Egypt. Persons subject to obstinate insomnia will also find the climate unsuitable.

With regard to the best way of reaching Egypt, though most travellers arrive by way of Port Said or Ismailia, this route is less preferable than via Alexandria for those who are wintering abroad for their health. The Egyptian tour

ist traffic is of slight importance compared with that of India and Australia, in the eyes of the directors of the great liners; and passengers who have rashly decided to disembark for Cairo at Ismailia often find themselves landed at this half-way house in the middle of the night, with no means of reaching the capital till the next day. What is merely a passing inconvenience to the robust traveller might naturally be a serious matter for the invalid. The light railway which now runs from Port Said to Ismailia can, no doubt, be made use of if the steamer arrives early in the day at Port Said; but the service is slow and infrequent. Though dignified by the name of railway, it is little more than a miniature steam tramway with a gauge of no more than two feet six inches. What is wanted is a railway from Port Said to Damietta, only forty miles west, whence there is direct railway communication to Cairo and Alexandria. There are no physical difficulties in the construction of this much-needed railway. The real difficulty is the jealous opposition of Alexandria. Then, too, the Egyptian Government is not inclined to regard the scheme favourably, as the increased harbour dues would fall into the coffers of the Suez Canal Company, and not into the Government treasury. The fact remains, that, as an ordinary commercial harbour, Port Said is of trifling importance. It is mainly an international port and coaling station. Though Alexandria should be the port of arrival for delicate persons, unfortunately the great passenger steamship companies, such as the Peninsular and Oriental, Orient, and North German Lloyd, make Port Said and not Alexandria, their port of call in their through services. Since 1895, however, an Egyptian service via Constantinople and Alexandria has been established by the Sleeping Car Company, in connection with the weekly Orient express. By this service, Alexandria can be reached from London, via Ostend, in five and a half days, with only one change be

tween Ostend and Alexandria. But this route is only for those to whom expense is no object, costing, with extras, about thirty pounds. Health seekers of moderate means would have to be content with the services of the Messageries Maritimes, the Austrian Lloyd, or the Italian Navigation Company, sailing from Marseilles, Trieste, and Genoa, respectively.

IN

CHAPTER VIII.

CAIRO IN ITS SOCIAL ASPECT.

N some respects, so far as concerns the permanent residents as distinct from the mere hivernants, to use a convenient gallicism to describe those dwellers in Northern climes who winter in the South, for which we have no exact equivalent, Cairo society resembles that of Simla, Naini Tal, and other fashionable haunts of Indian society, so large is the infusion of the official and military element. For society here has a decidedly official tone, and introductions are advisable if English or American visitors wish to take part in the social life of the place, with its innumerable gaieties and entertainments of all kinds, — from moonlight donkey-rides to the Pyramids, to bicycle gymkhanas at Ghezireh, and fancy-dress balls at Shepheard's and the Continental. In Cairo, however, the visitors at the principal hotels form a society of their own.

The hotel element, too, in Cairo is a factor of greater importance in the social life of the foreign community (for the obvious fact that the Anglo-American winter colony are foreigners is too often ignored) than at Cannes, Monte Carlo, Beaulieu, Pau, Algiers, Florence, and other fashionable winter resorts, partly because the class of visitors who at these stations would be inclined to live haughtily aloof from the cosmopolitan crowd who throng the hotels in isolated villas, at Cairo frequent the fashionable hotels. Villas, indeed, at Cairo are so scarce as to be practically unobtainable, as the only available ones are, as a rule,