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We had no need of hiring the country boats which ply on the Mahmoodieh Canal to Atfeh, where it joins the Nile, but were accommodated in one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's fly- boats; pretty similar to those narrow Irish canal boats in which the enterprising traveller has been carried from Dublin to Ballinasloe.
The time consumed by a steamboat in this transit might be averaged at five hours. What is the time now consumed in the transit through Egypt by the voyager from England to Bombay? and what is the nature of the transit? Passengers, packages, and letters, after being landed at Alexandria, are now conveyed by the Mahmoudie Canal forty miles to Atfeh, on the Nile.
Towards evening we arrived at the town of Atfeh half land, half houses, half palm-trees, with swarms of half-naked people crowding the rustic shady bazaars, and bartering their produce of fruit or many-coloured grain. Here the canal came to a check, ending abruptly with a large lock. After all, it is something to have seen these red waters.
This consumes twelve hours, and is performed by a track-boat, attended by numerous inconveniences. The passengers, goods, and letters are landed at Atfeh; they are there reshipped, and carried by steamboat from Atfeh up the Nile to Boulac, a distance of 120 miles. This water transit consumes eighteen hours.
Some red-coated bedlamites, unfortunately infatuated with wine, had to be held from jumping overboard. The ramping and stamping, and roaring and scrambling for room to sit or lie, was horrific. At last the day dawned, when matters were not quite so bad; but we moved over our fifty miles of ditch-water to Atfeh in a manner the most uncomfortable any poor sinners ever suffered.
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