54

428 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

of spirit, they reminded one of blooded horses. It was the month of February
and the water by no means warm, but these people seemed about as much at
home in the water as on the land and gave us some fine specimens of their
swimming and diving ability. Passengers would throw small coins into the
water for the interest of seeing them dive for them, and this they did with
almost fish-like swiftness and never failed to bring from the bottom the cov-
eted sixpence or franc, as the case might be, and to show it between their
white teeth as they came to the surface.

Slowly and carefully moving through the Canal an impressive scene was
presented to the eye. Nothing in my American experience ever gave me such
a deep sense of unearthly silence– such a sense of vast, profound, unbroken
sameness and solitude, as did this passage through the Suez Canal, moving
smoothly and noiselessly between two spade built banks of yellow sand,
watched over by the jealous care of England and France, two rival powers,
each jealous of the other. We find here, too, the motive and mainspring of
English Egyptian occupation and of English policy. On either side stretches
a sandy desert, to which the eye, even with the aid of the strongest field
glass, can find no limit but the horizon; land where neither tree, shrub. nor
vegetation of any kind, nor human habitation breaks the view. All is flat,
broad, silent, dreamy and unending solitude. There appears occasionally
away in the distance a white line of life which only makes the silence and
solitude more pronounced. It is a line of flamingoes– the only bird to be
seen in the desert– making us wonder what they find upon which to subsist.
But here, too, is another sign of life, wholly unlooked for and for which it is
hard to account. It is the half naked, hungry form of a human being, a young
Arab, who seems to have started up out of the yellow sand under his feet, for
no town, village, house or shelter is seen from which he could have emerged;
but here he is and he is as lively as a cricket, running by the ship's side up
and down the sandy banks for miles and for hours with the speed of a horse
and the endurance of a hound, plaintively shouting as he runs, "Backshish!
Backshish! Backshish!" and only stopping in the race to pick up the pieces
of bread and meat thrown to him from the ship. Far away in the distance,
through the quivering air and sunlight, a mirage appears. Now it is a splendid
forest and now a refreshing lake. The illusion is perfect. It is a forest without
trees and a lake without water. As one travels on, the mirage travels also, but
its distance from the observer remains ever the same.

After more than a day and a night on this weird. silent and dreamy
Canal, under a cloudless sky, almost unconscious of motion, yet moving on
and on without pause and without haste, through a noiseless, treeless, house-