Feb 21

0800 shove off for Port Said on this our last day in "U.S.S. JEEP 111180." North along Suez Canal. 

Drive to station and have our pictures taken under sign "Port Said Station." Drive to edge of old town where houses in many hues and odors lean at crazy angles against each other, and make a sketch surrounded by many very dirty and equally curious natives. Decide to try to make way around North of delta by hard beach, as I was told it could be done, and would mean no retracing. 

 After 15 miles of beach driving along the yellow surf--some of it four-wheel drive business when the sand is soft--we suddenly come to a 75-foot saltwater channel cut right through the narrow spit. Send Snow in for soundings. At half a fathom he sinks deep into soft bottom, which is still falling away. 

Down the Canal once more with the big, beautifully rigged signal masts at regular intervals, bollards every 100 feet, all the way to Ismailia, 

Turn West at Ismailia and follow canal packed with feluccas past rich fields.

At last Cairo, vast, yellow, dusty, noisy, crowded, and over all the sickly odor of the dung of man and beast. 

We roll to a stop. "Let go!" "All gone, Sir." We are at anchor, the voyage--memory.