Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 7]
the edge and with their huge single sails towering above all other objects, the native barge-liked boats glide silently through the simple scene with a serene and stately motion akin to the passage of solemn shapes in a dream. Between the canal and the railway line away to the right there is a little railed-in plot of sacred soil where lie the bones of the gallant Britishers who fell in the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, men of the Queens Own, of the Gordon Highlanders and of other famous regiments. Cypress pines are there and palms, and so it comes to be that, in one place, the brave British who died for the Empire, sleep in the shadow of the "Palm and Pine".
The old-fashioned oleander and flaming scarlet hibiscus grow there and bloom amongst the graves. The little pathways are dust, the marble headstones and wooden crosses are bleached and withered, and the intense light that enters so boldly there seems to cheapen these poor attempts of the quick to build a memory for the dead.