SUEZ TO CAIRO—ALEXANDRIA—ON BOARD THE “MONGOLIA”—PASSENGERS ON BOARD—HIBERNIAN HUMOUR—VENICE—THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK—THE CAMPANILE—THE PIAZETTA—THE ZECCA, OR MINT—THE PALACE OF THE DOGES—ST. MARK’S—THE ARSENAL.

April 27th.—Heads and skins had to be sorted out, turpentined, packed and sent by sea from Suez, together with Mahoom and Girgas, the latter an Abyssinian whom Mr. Phillipps is taking home with him as a servant. On the 28th we left Suez for Cairo, arriving there at about 5 p.m., where I found several letters awaiting me—some of rather old dates. Of course the wildest reports of our massacre had reached Cairo, and been the topic of the day at the time. Our stay in Cairo was of short duration this time, as we found the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamboat Mongolia would[316] be leaving Alexandria on the 4th May. Messrs. Colvin and Aylmer went on to India, but the rest of us started for England.

Leaving Alexandria on the 4th, with a goodly number of passengers, about 120, we had a pleasant voyage to Venice, passing on the 5th the Morea, Navarino, and Caudia, on the 6th Xante and Cephalonia, and on the 7th arrived at Brindisi, viewing Montenegro and Corfu in the distance. There we got rid of the mails, and fully half the passengers, and at 6 p.m. on the 8th steamed up the grand canal, and soon arrived at Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, the home of poetry and song. How pleasant it was to find myself, after all this Arab life, comfortably housed at the Hotel d’Italie, amongst civilized people, I will leave the reader to judge. There were a great many notables on board, amongst them several ladies connected with officials in Cairo. We knew that matters were a little unsettled in Egypt at this time, and so drew our own conclusions. These ladies were being sent out of the way, and within 3 or 4 weeks after I had seen the last of the great square in Alexandria it was in ruins. There were on board big men and little men, both in stature and in their own estimation. There were fat men and thin men, agreeable and chatty men, disagreeable and morose men, humble[317] and meek men, busy and sleepy men, easy-going looking men, one or two of the “Ah! I see, thanks, I’ll not twouble you” kind of fellows, Colonels, Lieut.-Colonels, and other officers, Governors and Judges returning home on leave of absence, and genial, good-hearted, jolly sort of fellows. I acted here, as I always do at home, avoided the starchy “Ah! I see—not-twouble-you kind of fellows,” full of their own importance, whose brains are concentrated in their nicely-polished boots, &c., and fraternised with the sociable, sensible, good-hearted kind. Amongst them was one of my own profession, brimful of Hibernian humour and mirth. He was a brigade-surgeon in the 68th in India, where he had been for 25 years, and was now on leave of absence. Dr. Kilkelly and I conceived a mutual regard for one another. He and I, with a Judge from Cawnpore, a Colonel and Lieut.-Colonel, generally got together on the deck, enjoying ourselves very comfortably until we parted. I cannot remember all the jokes and witticisms of our friend, Dr. Kilkelly, but I do remember one circumstance that amused us all immensely, and caused great laughter, as much in the way of saying it as the thing that was said. We had been having a great talk about the Soudan. When I happened to say “Two of our party are going on from Cairo[318] to India, and will not be in England until this time next year,” the doctor exclaimed, “Sure, ye don’t say they are going on there now? I could not have thought a man in his senses would be going to India now. Do ye know what it is like this time of the year?”

“Hot, I suppose,” said I, whilst the others smoked their pipes and looked amused, evidently expecting some “rale Irish joke.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell ye,” said our humorous friend, with a merry twinkle in his eye, and a really comic aspect; “d’ye know, docthor, when I have been in India this time of the year I have often made the natives dig a grave for me to lie in, half fill it with grass and pour buckets of cold wather on me to keep me from melting. I’ll tell ye another thing—cholera is so bad at this time of the year, that, by the Viceroy’s orders, coffins of all sizes are kept ready at the railway stations, and when the ticket-collector goes round, saying, ‘Yere tickets, plase,’ he finds a poor divil in the corner who does not respond; looks at him, finds him dead, pulls him out, finds a coffin the right size, puts him in, and by St. Pathrick he’s buried before the sun sets. Now what d’ye think of that? That’s what India’s like this time of the year.”

Of course we all roared with laughter at the[319] voluble and comical way in which this was said, and I mentally made a note that I should not start for India in May for my first visit.

Amongst our passengers were two sons of Sir Salar Jung, the Prime Minister of the Nizam of Hyderabad, on a visit to England. The elder one, though young, was a very Colossus, and an extremely intelligent, agreeable fellow, who spoke English fairly well, and was very chatty. He invited me, if I visited India, to visit him, and promised I should have some tiger-hunting. Whether I shall ever do so, or he would remember his promise, I don’t know—probably not. Dr. Kilkelly and I put up at the same hotel (the H?tel d’Italie), and spent a few days very pleasantly. I cannot say I should like to live in a place where, if I enter my front door, I must step out of a gondola, or if I want to visit a friend I must cross the street in a gondola; but it is a charming place to pay a visit to for a few days, especially for a person with a romantic and poetic turn of mind, and although romance has, to a great extent been knocked out of me, I still have sufficient of the poetic temperament to have been highly pleased with my visit to Venice, short though it was.

Pursuing the course I have hitherto adopted, I will not leave Venice without a brief sketch of it[320] and my visits to various places of great interest, although, perhaps, repeating an oft-told tale. The man who ventures on a description of a visit to Venice ought to be thoroughly imbued with romance and poetry ere he can do justice to his subject. Under such circumstances I cannot hope to rival many another; but, as the Yankees say, “I’ll do my level best.” On the evening of my arrival, I met, by appointment, one of the officers of the Mongolia, whom I accompanied to St. Mark’s Place. The side of the Piazza facing St. Mark is a line of modern building erected by the French, somewhat in the style of the Palais Royal at Paris, but yet having some sort of keeping with the edifices on the south side. They are termed the Procuratie Nuove, and form the south side, the Procuratie Vecchie the north side. The end is composed of a French fa?ade uniting the two. Near the east end of the Procuratie Nuove, just by the point where it makes an angle with the Piazetta, stands the Campanile of St. Mark. It is, in fact, the belfry of the Cathedral, although it stands some considerable distance from it. The separation of the belfry from the church is very common in Italy, and there are a few instances of it in our own country. On the summit of the Campanile is a large open belfry to which you ascend in the inside by means of a series of inclined[321] planes. The sides of the belfry are formed by sixteen arches, four facing each quarter of the heavens. A gallery with a parapet runs round the outside. I was told that the First Napoleon ascended the inclined plane by means of a donkey. I, however, had to walk it, and was well recompensed for my trouble by the magnificent view obtained from the summit. Southward lies the noble Adriatic, with the Pyrenees to the right; northward the Tyrolese Alps; immediately spreading round this singular post of observation lies the city of Venice, map-like, with its canals and neighbouring isles; and just under the eye, to the east, is St. Mark’s Church, considerably below, with its fine domes, its four bronze horses, its numerous pinnacles, and in front of it its three tall, red standards.

It is impossible to describe the effect produced on the mind, on a summer’s evening, as the sun is going down in his glory over the mainland beyond the lagoons, lighting them up with his parting rays, while the murmurs of the crowd assembled in St. Mark’s Place ascend like the hum of bees around the hive door, and the graceful gondolas are seen noiselessly gliding along the canals. Traversing the Piazza, we find ourselves in the Piazetta running down from the east end of the great one by St. Mark’s Church to the water-side, where the eye[322] ranges over the lagoons and isles. The next side of this open space contains a continuation of the walk under arcades, which surround St. Mark’s Place. The upper part exhibits a specimen of the Italian style, designed by Sansovino. The whole belonged to the royal palace, or Palace of the Doges, which extends along the south and west sides of the Piazza. Turning round the west corner of the Piazetta, on the Mole, with the canal in front, we see another of Sansovino’s works, called the Zecca, or Mint, from which the gold coin of the Republic derived the name of Zecchino. In front of the open space and landing steps of the Piazetta are two lofty columns, which appear so prominently in the pictures of that part of Venice. They are of granite, and came from Constantinople—trophies of Venetian victories in the Turkish wars. The right hand column, looking towards the sea, is surmounted by a figure of St. Mark, standing on a crocodile. The left hand is surmounted by the lion of St. Mark. The west front of the ducal palace forms the east side of the Piazetta; the south front runs along the whole, and looks out upon the sea. They are its most ancient portions. The front, overlooking the Piazetta, is composed of two rows of arcades, one above the other; the lower a colonnade, the upper a gallery, surmounted by a very[323] large and lofty surface of wall of a reddish marble, pierced by fine large windows. One gentleman says of it,............