It is hard nowadays to realize that not so very long ago the sea route to India lay round the Cape of Good Hope, and the Far East was even farther from Europe than seems possible now. The story of how the isthmus that separates the Mediterranean from the Red Sea was cut through, amidst the aspirations, manoeuvres, and intrigues of statesmen, financiers, and engineers, is one of the great episodes of the nineteenth century in politics, engineering and finance. Mr. Halford Ross, who will tell it, is a worldwide traveller who has just published a record of his wanderings, entitled 'By Devious Ways,' and has long been known as an acute observer of the manners and customs of foreign peoples.