Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/39

that protect the harbour of Port Said from the mud-laden current that would otherwise soon block its mouth, it is difficult to repress a pang of patriotic regret that England— the modern Rome—let slip the chance of adding this more than Roman work to the roll of her great engineering exploits. We, who have spanned continents and bridged oceans, should never have left it to any man of another race to cleave a way through the few score miles of isthmus which had so long obstructed the intercourse of the Eastern with the Western world. There is nothing very imposing, it is true, in that polgylot port—that unspeakable sentina gentium—that meeting-place of every race and every vice which plays janitrix of this Mediterranean gateway. But when a mansion is as spacious and as splendid as that which lies at the end of the passage, who cares about the private morals of the concierge? Say that Port Said is a sordid little Monte Carlo, doubled with a squalid little Corinth: say that it is a nest of silver