The Hotel d'Orient, while not as fashionable as Shepard's or the Grand
New, was a most comfortable house and set one of the best tables of the
many that we encountered on the trip. It faced a big circular open space
from which half a score of thoroughfares diverged like the spokes of a
wheel, and was accessible from all parts of the city. In the big public
garden opposite one of the Khedive's bands was playing at the time of
our arrival, and on every hand were to been the open doors of cafes,
bazaars, gambling hells and places of amusement, while the jargon of
many tongues that surrounded us made confusion worse confounded. We were
too tired the first night of our arrival to attempt much in the
sight-seeing line, and contented ourselves, with a quiet stroll about the
streets radiating from the circle, and a peep into some of the bazaars
and gambling houses, gambling, then, as I presume it is at the present
time, being conducted on the wide-open plan, and roulette wheels being
operated within full view of the crowded streets. There is nothing that
is known to any other city in the world that cannot be found in Cairo,
and there are representatives of every nation in the world to be found
among its denizens. Seen in the gloom of the evening, its towers and
minarets showing in the moonlight, its streets pervaded with the dull
red glow of the lights that gleam in the adjacent bazaars and cabarets,
and with its white-walled buildings towering in the darkness, Cairo
looks like a scene from the Arabian Nights, but viewed by daylight the
picture is not so entrancing, for the semi-darkness serves to hide from
the eye of the traveler the squalor and filth that the sunlight reveals
and that is part and parcel of all oriental cities and towns.
As no arrangements had been made for a game the day following our
arrival, the members of our party were at liberty to suit themselves in
the matter of amusement, and the majority of them overworked the patient
little donkeys before nightfall. I am in a position to testify that I
met many a little animal that afternoon bestrode by a long-legged ball
player who looked better able to carry the donkey than the donkey did to
carry him, but for all that both boys and donkeys seemed to be enjoying
themselves. In company with Mrs. Anson and others of the party the day
was spent in sight-seeing, we taking carriages and driving through the
Turkish, Moorish, Algerian and Greek quarters of the town and over
narrow streets paved with cobblestones and walled in by high buildings,
with overhanging balconies, where the warm rays of the sun never
penetrated. The rich tapestries and works of art to be found in all of
these bazaars were the delight and the despair of the ladies, who would
have needed all the wealth of India to have purchased one-half of the
beautiful things that they so much admired. We then drove over the
bridge that spans the Nile to the Khedive's gardens, the roadway being
lined with magnificent equipages of all kinds, for this is the
fashionable drive of Cairo and one of the sights of the place, the
gorgeous liveries of the coachmen and outriders, the gaily-caparisoned
and magnificent horses and the beautiful toilettes of the ladies all
combined to make a picture that entranced the senses. One of the
Khedive's palaces, and, by the way, he has half a dozen of them in
Cairo, is situated at the far end of these gardens, which are finer than
any of our parks at home, and their palaces being built in the Egyptian
style of architecture, are a delight to the eye.
The day passed all too quickly, and when night came and we returned to
the hotel, we had not seen half as much as we wished.
That evening after dinner, wishing to see how Cairo looked by gaslight,
Mrs. Anson and I drove out in search of a theater, which I naturally
thought it would be no very difficult matter to find, though which of
the many we wished to go to we had not made up our minds. The driver,
unfortunately, could not understand a word of English, that being the
trouble with half of the beggars one encounters in a strange land, and
so as we drove down by the Grand Hotel and French Opera House and came
to a palatial-looking building, with brilliantly lighted grounds and
colored awnings extending down to the sidewalk, and looking the sort of
a place that we were in search of, I stopped the carriage and tried to
find out from the driver as best I could what sort of a theater it was.
His answer sounded very much like circus, and I thought that it would
just about fill the bill that evening, as far as Mrs. Anson and I were
concerned. Helping my wife to alight we passed under the awning and by
liveried servants that stood in the doorway, the music of many bands
coming to our ears and the scent of a perfumed fountain whose spray we
could see, to our nostrils.
"This is a pretty swell sort of a circus, isn't it?" I said to my wife,
who nodded her head in reply.
Through the open door we could catch glimpses of large parties of ladies
and gentlemen in full dress, but it had never occurred to me that it
could be anything but what I had understood the driver to say it was, a
circus, and I began to look around for a ticket office in order that I
might purchase the necessary pasteboards. At last, running up against a
dark-complexioned and distinguished-looking man in full uniform, I asked
him if he could tell us where the tickets could be bought.
"Tickets! What tickets?" he asked, in very good English, but in a rather
surprised tone.
"Why, the tickets to the circus here," I answered, nervously, for I
began to fear that I had make a mistake. "There is no circus here, my
friend," said the stranger, as he turned away his head to hide a smile,
"this is my private residence. I am Commander-in-chief of the Egyptian
Army, and am simply entertaining a few friends here tonight. I would be
much pleased if you would remain and--"
"Don't say a word, sir," I replied, feeling cheaper than I had ever felt
in my life, "it is my mistake and I hope you will excuse me," and bowing
my self out as best I could we drove back to the hotel, where Mrs.
Anson, who had been laughing at me all the way back, had of course to
tell the story, the result being that I was guyed about my experience
"at the circus" for some days and weeks after Cairo had become only a
memory. That evening in the office of the hotel the following bulletin
was posted:
"Base-ball at the Pyramids. The Chicago and All-America teams,
comprising the Spalding base-ball party, will please report in the hotel
office, in uniform, promptly at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. We shall
leave the hotel at that hour, camels having been provided for the
All-Americas and donkeys for the Chicago players, with carriages for the
balance of the party. The Pyramids will be inspected, the Sphinx
visited, and a game played upon the desert near by, beginning at 2
o'clock."
The next morning at half-past nine the court of the Hotel d'Orient held
what it had never held before, and what in all probability it will never
hold again, twenty of the best-known exponents of the National Game that
America could boast of having congregated there in uniform and in
readiness to play ball in the presence of the countless ages that look
down from the summits of the Pyramids and the imprint of whose fingers
is seen in the seamed and scarred face of the Sphinx. In front of the
hotel lay a dozen long-necked camels, saddled and bridled, and
contentedly chewing their cuds, while about them stood as many more of
the patient little donkeys that became so familiar to so many of the
visitors to the Streets of Cairo during the World's Fair days at
Chicago. The dragoman in charge had provided all the donkeys necessary
for the occasion, but other donkey boys managed to get mixed up in a
general melee, and when the boys had mounted the wrong donkeys and went
to get on the right ones a row followed that would have put a Donnybrook
Fair melee to shame, the disappointed donkey boys biting and scratching
their more fortunate competitors and the policemen laying about them
with their bamboo staffs. At last we were all in the saddle, the
All-America team being mounted on the camels and the Chicago boys on
the donkeys and with the ball players leading the way and the carriages
following we moved through the streets of Cairo, past the residence of
the American Minister, where we cheered the old flag that floated over
his quarters, thence over the bridge of the Nile and down through the
Khedive's gardens, the "ships of the desert" lurching along with their
loads like vessels in an ocean storm, and the donkeys requiring an
amount of coaxing and persuasion that proved to be a severe tax upon the
patience of their riders.
The road leading to the Pyramids was a beautiful one running beneath an
avenue arched with acacias until it reached the lowlands of the river
across which it winds until it arrives at the edge of the desert upon
which these great monuments of the kings and queens dead and gone for
centuries are built. Half way to our destination an interchange of
camels and donkeys was made by the members of the two teams, an exchange
that, so far as the Chicagos were concerned, was for the worse and not
for the better. At two o'clock we arrived at our destination and partook
of the lunch that had been prepared for us in the little brick cottage
that stood at the foot of old Cheops. After lunch we found ourselves
surrounded by a crowd of Bedouins and Arabs numbering some two hundred,
who besought us to purchase musty coins and copper images that were said
to have been found in the interior of the huge piles of stone that
surrounded us, and more persistent beggars than they proved to be it has
never been my misfortune to run against. After visiting the big Pyramids
and the Sphinx, and having our pictures taken in connection with these
wonders of the world, we passed down to the hard sands of the desert,
where a diamond had been laid out, and where, in the presence of fully a
thousand people, many tourists coming to Cairo having been attracted to
the scene by the announcements made that we were to play there, we began
the first and only game of ball that the sentinels of the desert ever
looked down upon. This game was played under difficulties, as when the
ball was thrown or batted into the crowd the Arabs would pounce upon it
and examine it as though it were one of the greatest of curiosities, and
it was only after a row that we could again get it in our possession.
On this occasion Tener and Baldwin both pitched for Chicagos before the
five innings were over, and Healy and Crane for the All-Americas. Both
sides were exceedingly anxious to win this game, but fortune favored the
All-Americas and we were beaten 10 to 6, for which I apologized to the
Sphinx on behalf of my team after the game was over. To this she turned
a deaf ear and a stony glance was her only answer. After the game we
returned to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, looking them over more at our
leisure and trying to fathom the mystery of how they were built that has
been a puzzle for so many ages.
It was seven o'clock in the evening when we returned to Cairo, well
satisfied with our sight-seeing experience, but a little disappointed to
think that the only ball game that had ever been played in the shadow of
the Pyramids had not been placed to the credit of Chicago.
There was nothing to do the next day and night but to stroll about
Cairo, as the Khedive, before whom we had offered to play, was out at
his Nile palace, and to have visited him there and given an exhibition,
as he invited us to do, would have taken more time than we had at our
disposal. The Mosques of Sultan Hassan and of Mohammed Ali were visited
by many of us during the day. They stood upon the highest point of the
city, and though the former is fast crumbling to ruins, the latter,
which is the place where the Khedive worships, is fairly well preserved.
From the citadel, which is garrisoned by English soldiers, we obtained
an excellent bird's-eye view of Cairo, the broad surface of the Nile and
the Pyramids of Cairo and Sakarah, the latter of which are twenty miles
distant.
I believe that had we remained in Cairo for a year we could still have
found something to interest and amuse us, though I should hardly fancy
having to remain there for a life-time, as the manners and customs of
the Orient are not to my liking. The line of demarcation between the
rich and the poor is too strongly drawn and the beggars much too
numerous to suit my fancy, and yet while there both my wife and myself
enjoyed ourselves most thoroughly, and the recollections that we now
entertain of it are most pleasant.
Our departure from Cairo was made on the morning of February 11th.
Ismalia, a little city on the banks of the Suez Canal, about half way
between Suez and Port Said, being our destination, and here we arrived
late in the afternoon, and at five o'clock boarded the little steamer
that was to take us to Port Said, where we were to catch the steamer
across the Mediterranean, to the little Italian town of Brindisi.