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Marched up the spur of the Muree Hill to Dewul, where we found a room in a mud fort converted into a halting-place for travellers, reached by a series of break-neck ladders, and looking very much like a cell in a prison, with its two chairs and clumsy wooden table.
We found at our halting-place a party of about twenty servants and camel-drivers belonging to the Turkish army at Mekka, who had left that place secretly to escape the embargo laid by Mohammed Aly upon all persons of their description.
A few years before this time, Hernan Cortes had conquered Mexico, then called New Spain, and a business between Old Spain and New Spain soon developed. The harbor of Havana made a convenient halting-place on the voyages between the two, and the settlement assumed a steadily increasing importance.
This country must be exceedingly unhealthy during the rainy season, as the soil is extremely rich, and the valleys, surrounded by hills, would become swamps. From the Settite river, at Ombrega, to our halting-place beneath the tamarind-tree, at this spot, is about thirty-five miles south, 10 degrees east."
After our visit to Monte Carlo, we returned to our hotel at Mentone, which we left early on the following day for Genoa, our next halting-place. The country around Ventimiglia, Bordighera, and San Remo, is in many parts grand and beautiful, affording varied and interesting excursions. These three places are filled with visitors. The climate is somewhat more relaxing than at Nice or even Mentone.
In taste it is like lobster and oyster combined, but as tough as pin-wire. We had a great tossing for three days after leaving Berenice, and stopping every night. It is hard to imagine anything more squalid than the Egyptian fortress of Halaib, as it is spelt on the map, or Halei as it is pronounced, which was our next halting-place, and from which we succeeded in getting a little way inland.
At six in the evening we reached the little village of Bir, and fixed our halting-place for the night in a neighbouring stubble- field.
Their halting-place for the day was a large and lofty bamboo-house on a raised terrace of brick, having a broad veranda all round, a large central saloon, and two or three good and well-furnished bed-rooms on each side. This veranda had the advantage also of a noble landscape.
To reach this paradise of the future I had to travel 100 miles by the Superior and Mississippi railroad, to a halting-place known as the End of the Track-a name which gave a very accurate idea of its whereabouts and general capabilities.
Two hours before the opening of the gate for the designated train, Frantz was already at the Lyon station, that gloomy station which, in the distant quarter of Paris in which it is situated, seems like a first halting-place in the provinces. He sat down in the darkest corner and remained there without stirring, as if dazed.
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