PRESENT-DAY EGYPT By Frederic Courtland Penfield, Former American Diplomatic Agent and Consul-General to Egypt. Secretariat du Khédive Ras-el-Teen Palace , Alexandria , 4th November, 1899 Frederic C. Penfield, Esquire , Manhattan Club, New York. My dear Sir: I am commanded by H. H. The Khedive to acknowledge the receipt of the copy of your book "Present-Day Egypt," which you have so kindly forwarded for his acceptance. I am to say that His Highness has read it with much pleasure and interest,

If books of travel were not written the stay-at-home millions would know little of the strange or interesting sights of this beautiful world of ours; and it surely is better to have a vicarious knowledge of what is beyond the vision than dwell in ignorance of the ways and places of men and women included in the universal human family. The Great East is a fascinating theme to most readers, and every traveler, from Marco Polo to the tourist of the present time, taking the trouble to record what he

When historical novels and "purpose" books dealing with great industries and commodities cease to sell, the vagrant atoms and shadings of history ending with the opening of the two world-important canals might be employed by writers seeking incidents as entrancing as romances and which are capable of being woven into narrative sufficiently interesting to compel a host of readers. The person fortunate enough to blaze the trail in this literary departure will have a superabundance of material at c

A modern man of business might believe that Bishop Heber of Calcutta wove into irresistible verse a tremendous advertisement for Ceylon real estate, but repelled investors by a sweeping castigation of mankind, when he wrote: In tens of thousands of Christian churches the praises of Ceylon are thus sung every Sunday, and will be as long as the inhabitants of America and Great Britain speak the English language. Some of the divine's statements, to be acceptable as impartial testimony, require modi

The bed of the Gulf of Manar, the arm of the Indian Ocean that separates Ceylon from India, has given the world more pearls than all other fisheries combined, for it has been prolific as a pearling-ground for thousands of years. Pearling in the gulf was an occupation hoary with age before the dawn of Christianity, for history tells us that Mardis, admiral of Alexander the Great, when returning from a voyage having to do with the Indian invasion, traversed the strait separating Ceylon from the co

From Colombo it is but seventy-five miles to Ceylon's ancient capital, and the journey thither is picturesque almost beyond description. For fifty miles the railway leads through the rich vegetation of the lowlands, with groves of cocoanut palms seemingly as boundless as the sea. In a suburb of Colombo the sacred Kelani River is crossed, at a point not remote from the Buddhist temple claimed to be contemporary with Gautama himself. The valley of the Kelani is vivid with rice-fields of green. The

When good Kandyans discourse in flowery vein, they say Kandy is only forty miles from heaven. Visitors who have fallen under the charm of the place are more likely to wonder at their moderation than question their ability to measure celestial distances. If Gautama Buddha's "eternal rest" were to be had on earth, Kandy would surely be the reward of Nirvana promised those who have acquired merit. The beauty of Kandy is based upon naturalness; it is not grand like Taormina in Sicily, nor produced b

The Parsee is the only sect holding religious tenets strange enough to stamp them as "peculiar people" who amount to much in the material affairs of life. Every country possesses groups of people having religious beliefs and practices which attract to them a curious interest; but Bombay's Parsee colony is the only illustration of a brotherhood following strange lives who shine resplendently in the financial and social worlds. Everything in Bombay is dominated by the Parsee element, and every pub

Thousands of travelers make the pilgrimage to India, a land hoary with age, and when weary of overwrought temples and tombs, when arid plains and malodorous towns lose their power to interest, they journey north to Rajputana to revel in Jeypore, the unique—at least, lovers of Kipling do. And the effect on jaded senses is like a cooling draught after a parching thirst. Kipling called Jeypore "A pink city, to see and puzzle over," It surely is pink, all of it that is not sky-blue, and for various

A Mogul ruler who did things was Shah Jahan, and he came of a race not content with ordinary achievements. His grandfather, Akbar, was probably the greatest personage ever born in India. He it was "whose saddle was his throne, the canopy of which was the vaulted dome of heaven." Akbar made Eastern history, made it fast, blazoning it with proud records of conquest and empire extension. Akbar was the grandest man who ever ruled Central India, and it was he who developed the Mogul Empire to the lof

Unique among Indian cities is Benares, and for the Hindu the sacred capital on the Ganges has a significance similar to that of Mecca for the Mohammedan, and a greater attracting power than Jerusalem has for the Christian. Benares is the home and shrine of the complex religion that binds the Hindu nations, and is the very soul and heart of Hinduism. No other place where men congregate can compete with deified Benares in the matter of divine merit that may be conferred on the pilgrim entering its

Kipling, who has gracefully lured roamers to India by saying, "It is good for every man to see some little of the great Indian Empire and the strange folk who move about it," obligingly prepares those entering by the gateway of Calcutta for an olfactory affront. The stenches of Calcutta are numerous and pervading, surely; but the tourist who has crawled up the Bay of Bengal in a caravel of the Peninsular & Oriental Company cheerfully accepts them. The "P. & O." line is one of Bri

If one be a sufferer from anglophobia, a tour of the globe by conventional paths may produce rather more irritation than is good for man—to such a traveler the British Empire is a chronic nightmare, for the red flag is everywhere. Every harbor seems choked with English shipping, if not guarded by a British warship; and Tommy Atkins is the first man met ashore. If your prejudice against Great Britain be unjustly conceived, you will probably revise your judgment before the earth is half circled; a

It is a steamboat journey of but ninety miles up the estuary of the Pearl River from Hong Kong to wonderful Canton, and a traveler in Asia who fails to see the city that is the commercial capital of China misses something that he may think and talk of the remainder of his life. Historians profess to trace the origin of Canton to a period antedating the Christian era, when, it is somewhere recorded, the thirty-fourth sovereign of the Chan dynasty, by name Nan Wong, who ruled for nearly sixty year

A prettier marine journey than from Canton to Macao, is not possible in the Orient, and it is of only eighty miles and accomplished by daylight with convenient hours of departure and arrival. As on all passenger-carrying craft plying the great estuary having Hong Kong and Macao for its base and Canton its apex, you find the native passengers on your boat confined below the deck whereon the state-rooms and dining saloon of European travelers are located, and you perceive racks of Mausers and cutl

Having no voice in the controversy leading to the war, Germany should have remained neutral throughout the bitter Russo-Japanese conflict. Germany was neutral so far as official proprieties went; but in sympathy and numberless unofficial acts she aided and abetted Russia to a degree unsurpassed by the Bear's plighted ally, France. It is a fact incontrovertible that from the commencement of hostilities the German Emperor was as pro-Russian as any wearer of the Czar's uniform, and most German bank

A nation has risen in the Far East that is earning high place among enlightened governments, and in all probability the new-comer may already be entitled to permanently rank with the first-class powers of the earth. Japan is day by day a growing surprise to the world. That the diminutive Island Empire should have been able to humble the Muscovite pride was no greater marvel than that she should in a brief half-century advance from the position of a weak and unknown country to the station of a hi