IN CAIRO.
Covered with dust, parched with thirst, exhausted with hunger, burnt up
with heat, I am landed at the charming Hôtel du Nil, in the gardens of
which, filled up with American rocking-chairs, and trees bearing gorgeous
red flowers and bananas and palms, and eucalyptus and banyan-trees all
around, I realize as I have never done before something of the splendour
and the wondrous beauty of the East. It must have been a fairy palace at
one time or other, this Hôtel du Nil, with an enchanted garden. In the
day it is intolerably hot, but the mornings and evenings are simply
perfection. If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this. I feel
inclined to pitch my tent here, and for ever bid adieu to my native land.
The dinners are all that can be desired, the bedrooms large and lofty,
and the servants, who, with the exception of the German waiters, are
Soudanese—tall, white-robed, with a girdle round the middle—seem to me to
be the best and most attentive in the world. There is nothing they will
not do for me, and they are honest as the day. Apparently the dark boys
have a good deal of the negro in their blood. I walk out to see the fine
buildings and palaces which lie between me and the railway-station, but I
cannot stand the bustle and confusion of the street, and soon beat a
hasty retreat. The infirmities of old age follow me into this land of
perpetual youth.
[Picture: General view of Cairo]
I walk outside the narrow and sombre lane which leads to the hotel in the
quaint and ancient street Mousky. Let me attempt to describe it, and it
will give the reader an accurate idea of Oriental life. The Mousky is
the busiest street in all Cairo. Here meet Greek and Syrian,
Anglo-Saxons, American or English, Armenian and Turk, Maronite and Druse,
Italians, French, Russians, German, Dutch, and Belgian, and the vast army
of residents, men, women, and children, of all shades and complexions,
from the ebony-black Soudanese to the olive-tinted Arab, walk its length,
penetrate its dark and confusing bazaars, and there [Picture: A street in
Cairo] is nothing more for you to see. Donkey drivers, who beset me at
every step, and the guides on the look-out for their prey, are a
perpetual nuisance, even though they assure me they like the English and
are glad to see them here.
Crowded together are nooks and corners where native merchants ply their
trades, and the gloom of some dark recess is lit by the glowing blue and
scarlet and purple of Persian rugs, and the glare of polished and
embossed brass. In the street the modern descendant of Tubal Cain is
hard at work, and the tailor plies his needle, and the cigarette-maker
rolls up his tobacco in its thin wrapper of paper, and the weaver bends
over his loom, differing in nothing from that used by his forefathers a
thousand years ago. Eatables and drinkables of strange flavour and
colour are exposed for sale, and pedlars meet you at every turn uttering
hoarse and discordant cries. There is quite a buzz of conversation, but
I cannot understand a word. Why, I ask, did not Leibnitz carry out his
grand idea and give us a universal language? It would have saved some of
us a good deal of trouble. The pavement is too narrow for anyone to walk
on, as the shopkeeper sits outside smoking his cigarette, while the
customers also do the same, and the street is completely blocked. You
are obliged to get into the narrow way where carriages and donkey and
luggage waggons meet you at every step.
Women abound, all clad in black, with a black cloth over their faces,
leaving only the eyes and nose visible, and a cheek of pallid skin. The
nose is covered with a little gilt ornament, I suppose they call it,
coming from the forehead, so that you really see nothing of it. Now and
then you pass a coffee-house where smoking and gambling seem to be going
on all day. In the course of my ramblings I came to a street lined with
scribes on stones writing letters for their clients, and was struck with
the firm, clear hand in which their letters are written—all in Arabic, of
course. Every now and then a swell passes me in his carriage, with a
running footman to clear the way with a white or black staff. I expect
to be knocked down every minute. To walk the Mousky in peace and safety,
you require to be as deaf as a post and to have a pair at least of good
eyes at the back of your head.
[Picture: Tomb of the Caliphs of Cairo]
Wearied, I return to the quiet and shady groves of the hotel, a large
pile of buildings streaked red and yellow, with a grand bit of garden
ground at the back, and a wooden tower, from which you may see all Cairo
at a glance. All the houses are flat-roofed, and many of them look
unfinished, though not in reality so. I sink into a rocking-chair, light
my pipe, and talk of the future of Cairo. I say I want to visit a Coptic
Church, the church which was held heretical by the Orthodox Church, as
they were said to have held imperfect ideas of the dual nature of Christ.
One gentleman tells me I had better keep away, as the priests will pick
your pockets in the very church. He has 300 Copts in his employ, and
gives them all a very bad character. I ask as to the Khedive; everyone
gives him a bad character, though he has discovered one wife is enough
for any man. ‘He has the bad blood of his father and grandfather,’ says
an Englishman to me. He has a thin veneer of civilization, but he is
weak and ignorant, eaten up with ambition, and over head and ears in
debt, though his allowance is £100,000 a year, a sum which should go far
in a city where the price of labour is from two piastres to five, the
piastre being valued at twopence halfpenny.
The people live exclusively on maize-corn, certainly not an expensive
article of diet. The intelligent people are all in favour of the English
Government, but, alas! the majority does not in Cairo, as I am told it
does at home, represent the enlightened opinions of an intelligent
people. I hear the shilly-shally policy of the English Government
bitterly condemned. We are here, and must remain here. As it is, the
people know not what to expect. There is no progress, but a terrible
paralysis all over the city. ‘I like you English,’ said an intelligent
native; ‘but you are here to-day and may be gone to-morrow, and then we
who have adhered to England will all have our throats cut. We are like a
boat between two shores, and know not whither we are going. The English
must either stop or go.’ Our stay is to the lasting advantage of all the
European nations.
We have wonderfully improved the condition of the fellaheen, who,
according to all I hear, are not too thankful for the liberty we have
gained for them. I met an intelligent old Greek, who deeply resented
that we had abolished flogging—a little of it now and then, according to
him, did the natives good. Manual labour is so cheap that it is used in
every department. At the hotel I note that they bring the coals in in
baskets, and in the railway-station I see a native employed in laying the
dust, with a skin of water, which he carries on his back, using the neck
as a water-spout.
Of all the cities I have known—and, like Ulysses, I am ever wandering
with a hungry heart—I infinitely prefer Cairo, and am not surprised that
it is becoming more and more the winter residence of the English
aristocracy. It was a delight to live when I was there, and as I took my
breakfast _al fresco_ in the beautiful grounds of the Hôtel du Nil, with
tropical plants in full flower all round me, a bright sun and unclouded
blue sky above, the question whether life was worth living seemed to me
an absurdity. But, alas! no one can look for perfect happiness—at any
rate, on earth. In Cairo there are the flies, not so bad as I have seen
them in Australia or America, but a terrible infliction nevertheless.
One of my companions, Mr. Willans, the popular proprietor of the _Leeds
Daily Mercury_, suffered much from them, and had for a time to give up
reading and writing, and to wear coloured glasses, but I was let off more
easily. In Cairo, for the first time, I realized what a luxury it was to
have dates to eat. We at home, who buy dates at the grocer’s, have no
idea how juicy the date of Cairo is. [Picture: Donkey Boy, Cairo] Then
the heat is great, and walking far is out of the question. But what of
that? Directly you turn into the street the donkey-boy comes up to offer
you a ride; and the Cairo donkey is lively, large, and white, and well
groomed, sure of foot, swift in speed, and beautiful to look at. An
English coster’s moke is not to be named on the same day with the Cairo
donkey, on which you can have a ride for a trifling sum.
Life and prosperity seem everywhere to prevail, and the station at Cairo
conducts you at once into a fine city, with broad streets, well watered,
and shaded by trees, handsome shops, fine hotels, beautiful gardens, and
the inevitable statue of Mohammed Ali, who did so much to develop modern
Egypt. Palaces of all kinds attract the eye, one of the finest of these
being the residence of Lord Cromer. Cairo is distinctly a society place,
though, perhaps, not so much so as Cannes or Nice, and living is dear,
though cheaper than it used to be. French seems the language principally
used, though the guides, who pester you at every corner, and the
donkey-boys, who are equally persistent, have a confusing smattering of
English. The resident English colony is chiefly composed of the
diplomatic and Consular bodies, or of those connected with the different
Consular departments, and of officers of the garrison. You meet many
English soldiers whose appearance is creditable to the country, and
amongst the birds of passage are many Americans. There are two good
clubs for visitors—the Khediveal and the Turf, the latter chiefly
supported by army officers. The theatre, where French plays and Italian
operas are performed, is a very fine building. In the same neighbourhood
is also a _café chantant_ in the gardens. All day long, under the bright
blue sky, the scene is very animated.
But the visitors, although a welcome addition, do not entirely make up
Cairene society. The gaiety begins and is mainly kept up by the
residents, especially the British civil and military, who are always most
hospitable at the winter time of year. Cairo is no doubt a court and
capital, the residence of the sovereign to whom diplomatists are
accredited from all the civilized Powers. But it is also a British
military station, and it owes much of its present liveliness to the
British officers and civil servants.
It was the British garrison that established the Cairo Sporting Club,
where good polo is played, and very fair cricket, ‘squash’ rackets, and
lawn-tennis; where there are monthly race-meetings, and officers ride
steeplechases on their own horses. The big lunches, the pleasant
afternoon teas, the dances and flirtations so constantly in progress, are
essentially British.
Out at Mena, under the shadow of the Sphinx, there is a golf-course, and
the caddie is an Arab boy in a long blue bed-gown, and you can aim your
ball from the putting-green straight at the Pyramid of Cheops. Out at
Matarieh, just where Mr. Wilfrid Blunt lives the life of an Arab
patriarch, under tents, surrounded by his flocks and herds, there is a
training stable, and the British sporting subaltern keeps his ‘tit’
there, and comes out to give him his gallops at early dawn.
But it is as you get away from the broad streets of new Cairo, and plunge
into the bazaars and the narrow streets, that you realize what a
bewildering place old Cairo is. The city of Cairo covers an area of
three square miles, and greatly exceeds the limit of the old walls. On
the south stands the ancient citadel, on a rock, memorable for the
massacre of the Mamelukes. Of the most perfect of the old gateways still
remaining is the Gate of Victory. Above the archway is an Arabic
inscription: ‘There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.’ The
streets are narrow and irregular, and badly paved, while the white
houses, with their overhanging windows, are, at any rate, picturesque.
The bazaars are of all sorts: the leather-sellers have one, the
carpet-dealers another, silk-merchants another, and everywhere purchaser
and buyer seem to spend a great deal of time in smoking cigarettes. The
gold bazaar is so narrow that three persons can scarcely pass; there, and
at the silver bazaar, you see the artificers constantly at work. Coptic
churches and mosques you meet everywhere. There is a good attendance at
the English Church; there are also a Presbyterian Church, and two Roman
Catholic churches. I saw the bishop of one of them, who was to preach,
driving along in very grand style. The Wesleyans have also a chapel.
The howling dervishes have also their sanctum, where they exhibit their
peculiarly unpleasant powers. I decline to go and see them, as everyone
tells me they are a fraud; and if I want to be deceived, there is the
Egyptian conjuror always ready with his little tricks. He comes daily to
the hotel to give a performance; also daily resort there the Egyptian
minstrels, whose performances we all greatly applaud.
The English have a party paper called the _Sphinx_, which, however, I
fancy has little influence in the formation of public opinion. In
Alexandria a daily English paper is published, which reaches Cairo about
eight in the evening, but which gives little general news, and is chiefly
devoted to trade and commerce. It was with a heavy heart I left Cairo
and its bright and busy life for the gray skies and bleak winds of my
native land. My consolation is that we breed better men than they do in
southern climes—a fact of which the Roman Cæsars were aware when they
drew their best troops from Britain or Northern Gaul.
The French complain bitterly of English influence in Egypt—a country for
which we have done much, and which, if it ever becomes prosperous, will
owe its prosperity to England alone; and yet it is the fact that the
Englishman in Egypt lies under peculiar disadvantages, and that as much
as possible English enterprise is discouraged and destroyed. It ought
not to be so. We who have made Egypt what it is, who have fought its
battles, developed its resources, improved the condition of its people,
destroyed its corrupting and enervating influences, put its finances in a
healthy condition, may be expected to have, at any rate, fair play there.
That this is not so, the case of Mr. Fell, of Leamington, one of the few
men who have raised themselves from the ranks and become honoured far and
near, is a notorious illustration. In 1890 he obtained a concession from
the Egyptian Government giving him the right to make tramways in the city
of Cairo. The particular department of the Egyptian Government which has
to do with such affairs has at its head a Secretary of State—at that time
the office was held by Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff—and a financial adviser
appointed by the Egyptian Government on the recommendation of the English
Government. Mr. Fell went to Egypt, had the whole city surveyed, and the
plans drawn, a difficult task which occupied a considerable amount of
time. In August of the same year he bought the steel rails, ordered the
cars to be built, and did all he could to hasten the fulfilment of his
contract, and, as a security, deposited with the Egyptian Government
twenty-two Egyptian bonds of the value of £100 each. To still further
strengthen his position, he had a letter from Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff
to the effect that he was quite satisfied that Mr. Fell had complied with
legal requirements.
So far all was straight sailing, but in April the Egyptian Government
confiscated the bonds Mr. Fell had deposited with them, and also declared
the contract null and void, on the ground that he had failed to comply
with the conditions under which the contract was made. Mr. Fell had a
long correspondence with the Egyptian Government of a very unsatisfactory
character. In 1893 he returned to Egypt, and interviewed the
authorities. Lord Cromer advised him to go to law. In his action
against the Government, he was defeated on the plea that the letters
written by Sir Scott Moncrieff, as Secretary of State, were not valid.
In the meanwhile, the Egyptian Government advertised for a new concession
in July, 1894, for which Mr. Fell again tendered, depositing a thousand
guineas. In compliance with a request from the Egyptian Government, Mr.
Fell again returned to Egypt, but found, on his arrival, that the
contract had been given to a Belgian firm, who frankly admitted that they
had paid so much for the concession that it was scarcely worth having.
‘My loss in consequence,’ said Mr. Fell to me, ‘is at least from £17,000
to £20,000, and this all through French intriguing.’
Such is a brief outline of a case of hardship, not to an individual, but
the whole nation. Practically speaking, there is no British capital
invested in Egypt except what was there previous to 1882. In the railway
department, for instance, of late years all the works have been carried
on by French and Belgian—to the exclusion of British—contractors. All
the contracts for bridges which have recently been let have been let to
Belgian contractors. The only companies that thrive in Egypt are French
companies. Everything is in their favour. The law officers of the Crown
are exclusively foreign, principally Corsicans, and they are able to
control the native tribunal, notwithstanding the fact that there are
English judges upon it; and to these Corsican law officers it is due that
so much anti-English feeling exists in Egypt at this present time.
Assuredly, Egypt makes us but a poor return for the money and blood we
have spent in its behalf. We have a right to expect better treatment.
If John Bull stands this sort of thing, he must be a poor creature
indeed.
Anthony Trollope gives us an amusing illustration of the official life of
Cairo in his time. He was sent there by the English Post-Office to
accelerate the mail-service to Suez, and it took him two months to do his
business. ‘I found, on my arrival,’ he writes, ‘that I was to
communicate with an officer of the Pasha, who was then called Nubar Bey.
I presume him to have been the gentleman who lately dealt with our
Government as to the Suez Canal shares, and who is now well known as
Nubar Pasha. I found him a most courteous gentleman, an Armenian. I
never went to his office, nor do I know that he had an office. Every
other day he would come to me at my hotel, and bring with him servants
and pipes and coffee. I enjoyed his coming greatly, but there was one
point on which we could not agree,’ and that was as to the rate of speed
with which the mails should be carried through Egypt. The Post-Office
said it must be done in twenty-four hours. The agent of the Egyptian
Government contended that it would take forty-eight hours at the least.
For a long time they could come to no agreement. Both were equally
obstinate. It was impossible, said Nubar, that the mail could be carried
at such a rate. It might do for England, but would not do for Egypt.
The Pasha, his master, he said, would, no doubt, accede to any terms
demanded by the British Post-Office, so great was his reverence for
anything British. In that case, he, Nubar, would at once resign his
position and retire into private life. He would be ruined, but the loss
of life and bloodshed which would follow would not rest on his head.
Nevertheless, he gave way after many days’ delay and a good deal of
smoking and coffee-drinking. The twenty-four hours gained the day. It
is to be hoped that official business is done more quickly now. A two
months’ stay in Cairo over such an affair may have been pleasant. It
certainly was expensive, and someone other than Mr. Trollope had to pay
the bill.
Lord Cromer’s latest report of the state of matters in Egypt is cheering.
The finances are better. The income from railways, customs, and tobacco
has improved. A great boon has been conferred on the fellaheen by the
experimental money advances made by Government to tide them over till
their cotton-crop is ripe. Hitherto they have had to borrow from Greeks,
who, however admirable in the character of liberators, are not so lovely
as money-lenders. They charge from 20 to 30 per cent. for their loans,
and, in addition, always take back an Egyptian pound, equal to £1 0s.
6d., for the pound sterling. This is really more than an extra 2½ per
cent., for the loans are not for a whole year. There are Mohammedan
lenders, too. Their religion forbidding usury, they take it out of the
fellaheen in cotton. The Government in their experimental loans have
charged a half per cent. per month, or 6 per cent. per annum. The
experiment was successful. Of nearly £8,000 lent between February and
July, all but £20 had been repaid with interest by the end of November.
The benefit that an agricultural bank would be to the smaller cultivators
has been in this way realized by Lord Cromer, who suggests that private
bankers should take the experiment in hand.
The Government has also been checkmating the money-lenders by sending
them good seed at 58 pounds Turkish an ardeb, payable in three
instalments, upon finding out that the usurers were advancing inferior
seed at 70 to 100 pounds Turkish, payable at cropping-time.
The land-tax is now got in with certainty, whereas formerly the
Government never knew what to estimate for arrears; the post-office
revenue is improving; exports and imports have gone up by about two
millions; the cotton-crops are better; the sugar industry is rapidly
increasing in Upper Egypt; the railway receipts are the highest on
record; railway extension is going on, and plans and surveys for light
railways are well advanced; agricultural roads are constructed; there are
electric tramways and lighting in Cairo. The light dues will be
decreased this year. The only relic of forced labour is a yearly
diminishing amount for the protection of the Nile banks during the period
of flood. Crime is diminishing, and sanitary reform is progressing.
Education is advancing as far as possible, considering the deficiency of
funds, and slavery is kept under.
As to the question when our work shall be done, and we English shall
retire from Cairo, it is impossible, says Sir A. Milner, to give a
definite answer. It would be difficult to over-estimate what that work
owes to the sagacity, patience, and fortitude of the British Ambassador.
The contrast between the Egypt of to-day and the Egypt as it was when he
first took it in hand is the best testimony to his efficiency and wisdom.
All writers on Egypt agree in this. ‘There is not a native,’ writes Mr.
Wood, ‘that does not recognise at heart the benefits of the British
occupation’—a remark which seemed to be to a certain extent true; but not
quite to the extent Mr. Wood suggests. ‘It is quite an anachronism,’ Sir
A. Milner remarks, ‘to suppose that the interest of Egyptian finance
centres in the debt, and that the financial authorities of the country
are the mere bailiffs of the bondholders.’ As a matter of fact, now that
it has been established that the resources of Egypt can bear the interest
of the debt at its present rate, the last people whom an Egyptian Finance
Minister need trouble himself about are the bondholders. Except when an
occasion presents itself to reduce the interest by the legitimate method
of conversion, the debt need no longer have a foremost place in his mind.
‘Even the Commissioners of the Caisse,’ writes Sir A. Milner, ‘who only
meet to protect the creditors, and who from time to time, to justify
their existence, get up a little fuss about some supposed danger to
interests which in their hearts they know to be perfectly secure—even the
Commissioners of the Caisse, I say, are more occupied now-a-days with
employing their reserve fund in developing the wealth of the country than
with needless anxieties about the coupon.’ Sir A. Milner has no doubt
well weighed his words. Of all the romances of finance there are few to
be compared with the borrowings of Ismail, to whom is due the honour of
having originated the Egyptian National Debt.