Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/27

palace" is, of course, another matter. There you can hardly be said to leave the habits, or even the appliances, of your daily life on land behind you, and the "City man" almost expects to find his daily paper every morning on the breakfast-table, if not a Stock Exchange in the smoking saloon. And on any longer voyages it is well known that another process of demoralisation sets in. After anything more than "a week of it" at sea the contented frivolity of the traveller, the vacuous repose of mind in which he has hitherto been lapped, give way in most cases to a feeling of acute unrest. The infinite bores him as much as ever, but the finite, at any rate in its more innocent forms, has ceased to distract. He has read his novel; the mild recreations of the deck interest him no longer; the regularly recurring summons to the groaning, and possibly rolling, board has lost its power to awaken a responsive thrill in his breast. It is more than probable that he is bilious; it is tolerably certain that