The canal don't go nigh-hand of the moors at all." "The Egyptians," said I, leaning back into the capacious arms of my chair, and epitomizing what I had read, "who live in Lower Egypt put all their beehives into boats and take them on the river to Upper Egypt.
Right up at that end of the Nile the flowers come out earliest, and the bees get all the good out of them there, and then the boats are moved lower down to where the same kind of flowers are only just beginning to blossom, and the bees get all the good out of them there, and so on, and on, and on, till they've travelled right through Egypt, with all the hives piled up, and come back in the boats to where they started from." "And every hive a mighty different weight to what it was when they did start, I'll warrant," said Master Isaac enthusiastically.

"Did you find all that in those penny numbers, Master Jack ?" "Yes, and oh, lots more, Isaac! About lots of things and lots of countries." "Scholarship's a fine thing," said the bee-master, "and seeing foreign parts is a fine thing, and many's the time I've wished for both.

I suppose that's the same Egypt that's in the Bible, sir ?" "Yes," said I, "and the same river Nile that Moses was put on in the ark of bulrushes." "There's no countries I'd like to see better than them Bible countries," said Master Isaac, "and I've wished it more ever since that gentleman was here that gave that lecture in the school, with the Holy Land magic-lantern.

He'd been there himself, and he explained all the slides.

They were grand, some of 'em, when you got 'em straight and steady for a bit.