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[Page 26]
introduced to the piastres, & the Gyppos, this was the shop for oranges we fairly lived on them while laying here waiting our turn to go through the Canal, we were fruit hungry after being so long without it, we also bought a lot of Turkish delight the real stuff not like some of that what you get in Australia.
While we were waiting, here a big fleet of Indian transports came in & very fine they looked with the setting sun behind them.
On the 2nd we went through the canal, & just at the entrance a fine French battleship was laying as we passed her the bugles sounded "attention", & every man sprang to it while our band played the "Marseillese" didn't the Frenchmen come tumbling
up on the deck when they heard that tune, & they cheered us, & we returned the compliment, by 4 oclock that afternoon we had fairly entered the Canal, you could throw a stone from the deck, to either sides, it seemed very funny such a small stream of water carrying enormous boats & the desert on either sides stretching for hundreds of miles, & nothing but sand, sand, wherever you looked, with the exception of a few small clumps of date palms scattered here & there we steamed about 6 miles an hour through the canal & every here & there we would pass some enormous French dredger, we went through of a bright moonlight night, & I & a few others stopped up most of the night for it was a most beautiful scene at night