We only stayed a few days in Bombay, and then took the steamer and went straight acrost the Arabian Sea, stopping at Aden for a little while, and then up the Red Sea; on one side on us, Arabia, and on the other, Africa.
Aden, where we stopped for a short time, is a dreary 251 lookin’ little place with seventy or eighty thousand natives livin’ a little back from the shore, while the few English people there live near the coast. Beautiful ostrich feathers are obtained there from the many ostrich farmers living near, as well as the Mocha coffee, which made over a Jonesville stove by a Jonesville woman has so often cheered the heart and put to flight the worrisome passions of a Josiah. But in most of these tropical countries, where you’d think you could git the best, I didn’t find coffee half so good as I made it myself, though mebby I ortn’t to say it.
We saw some wonderful jugglers here. They will draw out great bunches of natural flowers from most anywhere that you wouldn’t expect ’em to be, and call birds down or out of some place onseen by us; mebby they come from the mysterious gardens of a Carabi’s home, and those great bunches of roses, I d’no from what invisible rose bushes they wuz picked; mebby they growed up tall and stately on either side of the Ether avenues that surround us on every side. Mebby Carabi lives right under the shade of some on ’em, but ’tennyrate some of these flowers they made out of nothin’ I took right into my hands, great, soft, dewy roses, with seemin’ly the same dew and perfume on ’em they have when picked in our earthly gardens. And we saw some wonderful divers there; they did such strange things that it wuz fairly skairful to see ’em. If you would throw a small coin down into the water, they would dive way down, down with both hands full of balls and bring up the coin in their teeth, showing that they picked it up offen the bottom without touching their hands to it. Good land! I couldn’t do it to save my life in our cistern or wash bowl, let alone the deep, deep sea.
As we entered the Red Sea we passed through the narrer channel called The Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, Gate of Tears, named so on account of the many axidents that have happened there. But we got through safely and sailed on towards Suez.
So we went on past the coasts of Abyssinia, Nubia. Fur off we see Mount Sineii, sacred mount, where the Law wuz given to Moses.
Oh, my soul, think on’t! To see the very spot where Moses stood and talked to the Almighty face to face. It is only three hundred milds from Suez.
We sailed directly over the place where the Israelites passed over dry shod whilst their enemies, the Egyptians, wuz overwhelmed by the waters. The persecuted triumphant and walkin’ a-foot into safety, while Tyranny and Oppression wuz drownded.
I wish them waters wuz swashin’ up to-day and closin’ in on the Oppressor, not to drownd ’em, mebby, but to give ’em a pretty good duckin’. But I spoze the walls of water like as not is risin’ on each side on ’em onbeknown to them, and when the time comes, when the bugle sounds, they will rush in and overwhelm the armies of Greed and Tyranny and the oppressed. Them that are forced to make brick without straw, or without sand hardly, will be free, and go on rejoicin’ into the land of Promise.
But to resoom: It is three thousand milds from Bombay to Suez, but it wuz all safely passed and we found ourselves in Cairo in a most comfortable hotel, and felt after all our wanderings in fur off lands that we agin breathed the air of civilization almost equal to Jonesville.