TO CAIRO
We had no need of hiring the country boats which ply on the Mahmoodieh
Canal to Atfeh, where it joins the Nile, but were accommodated in one
of the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s fly- boats; pretty similar to
those narrow Irish canal boats in which the enterprising traveller has
been carried from Dublin to Ballinasloe. The present boat was, to be
sure, tugged by a little steamer, so that the Egyptian canal is ahead
of the Irish in so far: in natural scenery, the one prospect is fully
equal to the other; it must be confessed that there is nothing to see.
In truth, there was nothing but this: you saw a muddy bank on each side
of you, and a blue sky overhead. A few round mud-huts and palm-trees
were planted along the line here and there. Sometimes we would see, on
the water-side, a woman in a blue robe, with her son by her, in that
tight brown costume with which Nature had supplied him. Now, it was a
hat dropped by one of the party into the water; a brown Arab plunged
and disappeared incontinently after the hat, re-issued from the muddy
water, prize in hand, and ran naked after the little steamer (which was
by this time far ahead of him), his brawny limbs shining in the sun:
then we had half-cold fowls and bitter ale: then we had dinner—bitter
ale and cold fowls; with which incidents the day on the canal passed
away, as harmlessly as if we had been in a Dutch trackschuyt.
Towards evening we arrived at the town of Atfeh—half land, half houses,
half palm-trees, with swarms of half-naked people crowding the rustic
shady bazaars, and bartering their produce of fruit or many-coloured
grain. Here the canal came to a check, ending abruptly with a large
lock. A little fleet of masts and country ships were beyond the lock,
and it led into THE NILE.
After all, it is something to have seen these red waters. It is only
low green banks, mud-huts, and palm-clumps, with the sun setting red
behind them, and the great, dull, sinuous river flashing here and there
in the light. But it is the Nile, the old Saturn of a stream—a divinity
yet, though younger river-gods have deposed him. Hail! O venerable
father of crocodiles! We were all lost in sentiments of the profoundest
awe and respect; which we proved by tumbling down into the cabin of the
Nile steamer that was waiting to receive us, and fighting and cheating
for sleeping- berths.
At dawn in the morning we were on deck; the character had not altered
of the scenery about the river. Vast flat stretches of land were on
either side, recovering from the subsiding inundations: near the mud
villages, a country ship or two was roosting under the date-trees; the
landscape everywhere stretching away level and lonely. In the sky in
the east was a long streak of greenish light, which widened and rose
until it grew to be of an opal colour, then orange; then, behold, the
round red disc of the sun rose flaming up above the horizon. All the
water blushed as he got up; the deck was all red; the steersman gave
his helm to another, and prostrated himself on the deck, and bowed his
head eastward, and praised the Maker of the sun: it shone on his white
turban as he was kneeling, and gilt up his bronzed face, and sent his
blue shadow over the glowing deck. The distances, which had been grey,
were now clothed in purple; and the broad stream was illuminated. As
the sun rose higher, the morning blush faded away; the sky was
cloudless and pale, and the river and the surrounding landscape were
dazzlingly clear.
Looking ahead in an hour or two, we saw the Pyramids. Fancy my
sensations, dear M -: two big ones and a little one -
! ! !
There they lay, rosy and solemn in the distance—those old, majestical,
mystical, familiar edifices. Several of us tried to be impressed; but
breakfast supervening, a rush was made at the coffee and cold pies, and
the sentiment of awe was lost in the scramble for victuals.
Are we so blases of the world that the greatest marvels in it do not
succeed in moving us? Have society, Pall Mall clubs, and a habit of
sneering, so withered up our organs of veneration that we can admire no
more? My sensation with regard to the Pyramids was, that I had seen
them before: then came a feeling of shame that the view of them should
awaken no respect. Then I wanted (naturally) to see whether my
neighbours were any more enthusiastic than myself—Trinity College,
Oxford, was busy with the cold ham: Downing Street was particularly
attentive to a bunch of grapes: Figtree Court behaved with decent
propriety; he is in good practice, and of a Conservative turn of mind,
which leads him to respect from principle les faits accomplis: perhaps
he remembered that one of them was as big as Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But,
the truth is, nobody was seriously moved . . . And why should they,
because of an exaggeration of bricks ever so enormous? I confess, for
my part, that the Pyramids are very big.
After a voyage of about thirty hours, the steamer brought up at the
quay of Boulak, amidst a small fleet of dirty comfortless cangias, in
which cottons and merchandise were loading and unloading, and a huge
noise and bustle on the shore. Numerous villas, parks, and
country-houses had begun to decorate the Cairo bank of the stream ere
this: residences of the Pasha’s nobles, who have had orders to take
their pleasure here and beautify the precincts of the capital; tall
factory chimneys also rise here; there are foundries and steam-engine
manufactories. These, and the pleasure-houses, stand as trim as
soldiers on parade; contrasting with the swarming, slovenly, close,
tumble-down, Eastern old town, that forms the outport of Cairo, and was
built before the importation of European taste and discipline.
Here we alighted upon donkeys, to the full as brisk as those of
Alexandria, invaluable to timid riders, and equal to any weight. We had
a Jerusalem pony race into Cairo; my animal beating all the rest by
many lengths. The entrance to the capital, from Boulak, is very
pleasant and picturesque—over a fair road, and the wide- planted plain
of the Ezbekieh; where are gardens, canals, fields, and avenues of
trees, and where the great ones of the town come and take their
pleasure. We saw many barouches driving about with fat Pashas lolling
on the cushions; stately-looking colonels and doctors taking their
ride, followed by their orderlies or footmen; lines of people taking
pipes and sherbet in the coffee-houses; and one of the pleasantest
sights of all,—a fine new white building with HOTEL D’ORIENT written up
in huge French characters, and which, indeed, is an establishment as
large and comfortable as most of the best inns of the South of France.
As a hundred Christian people, or more, come from England and from
India every fortnight, this inn has been built to accommodate a large
proportion of them; and twice a month, at least, its sixty rooms are
full.
The gardens from the windows give a very pleasant and animated view:
the hotel-gate is besieged by crews of donkey-drivers; the noble
stately Arab women, with tawny skins (of which a simple robe of
floating blue cotton enables you liberally to see the colour) and large
black eyes, come to the well hard by for water: camels are perpetually
arriving and setting down their loads: the court is full of bustling
dragomans, ayahs, and children from India; and poor old venerable
he-nurses, with grey beards and crimson turbans, tending little
white-faced babies that have seen the light at Dumdum or Futtyghur: a
copper-coloured barber, seated on his hams, is shaving a camel-driver
at the great inn-gate. The bells are ringing prodigiously; and
Lieutenant Waghorn is bouncing in and out of the courtyard full of
business. He only left Bombay yesterday morning, was seen in the Red
Sea on Tuesday, is engaged to dinner this afternoon in the Regent’s
Park, and (as it is about two minutes since I saw him in the courtyard)
I make no doubt he is by this time at Alexandria, or at Malta, say,
perhaps, at both. Il en est capable. If any man can be at two places at
once (which I don’t believe or deny) Waghorn is he.
Six o’clock bell rings. Sixty people sit down to a quasi-French
banquet: thirty Indian officers in moustaches and jackets; ten
civilians in ditto and spectacles; ten pale-faced ladies with ringlets,
to whom all pay prodigious attention. All the pale ladies drink pale
ale, which, perhaps, accounts for it; in fact the Bombay and Suez
passengers have just arrived, and hence this crowding and bustling, and
display of military jackets and moustaches, and ringlets and beauty.
The windows are open, and a rush of mosquitoes from the Ezbekieh
waters, attracted by the wax candles, adds greatly to the excitement of
the scene. There was a little tough old Major, who persisted in
flinging open the windows, to admit these volatile creatures, with a
noble disregard to their sting—and the pale ringlets did not seem to
heed them either, though the delicate shoulders of some of them were
bare.
All the meat, ragouts, fricandeaux, and roasts, which are served round
at dinner, seem to me to be of the same meat: a black uncertain sort of
viand do these “fleshpots of Egypt” contain. But what the meat is no
one knew: is it the donkey? The animal is more plentiful than any other
in Cairo.
After dinner, the ladies retiring, some of us take a mixture of hot
water, sugar, and pale French brandy, which is said to be deleterious,
but is by no means unpalatable. One of the Indians offers a bundle of
Bengal cheroots; and we make acquaintance with those honest bearded
white-jacketed Majors and military Commanders, finding England here in
a French hotel kept by an Italian, at the city of Grand Cairo, in
Africa.
On retiring to bed you take a towel with you into the sacred interior,
behind the mosquito curtains. Then your duty is, having tucked the
curtains closely around, to flap and bang violently with this towel,
right and left, and backwards and forwards, until every mosquito should
have been massacred that may have taken refuge within your muslin
canopy.
Do what you will, however, one of them always escapes the murder; and
as soon as the candle is out the miscreant begins his infernal droning
and trumpeting; descends playfully upon your nose and face, and so
lightly that you don’t know that he touches you. But that for a week
afterwards you bear about marks of his ferocity, you might take the
invisible little being to be a creature of fancy—a mere singing in your
ears.
This, as an account of Cairo, dear M-, you will probably be disposed to
consider as incomplete: the fact is, I have seen nothing else as yet. I
have peered into no harems. The magicians, proved to be humbugs, have
been bastinadoed out of town. The dancing-girls, those lovely Alme, of
whom I had hoped to be able to give a glowing and elegant, though
strictly moral, description, have been whipped into Upper Egypt, and as
you are saying in your mind— Well, it ISN’T a good description of
Cairo: you are perfectly right. It is England in Egypt. I like to see
her there with her pluck, enterprise, manliness, bitter ale, and Harvey
Sauce. Wherever they come they stay and prosper. From the summit of
yonder Pyramids forty centuries may look down on them if they are
minded; and I say, those venerable daughters of time ought to be better
pleased by the examination, than by regarding the French bayonets and
General Bonaparte, Member of the Institute, fifty years ago, running
about with sabre and pigtail. Wonders he did, to be sure, and then ran
away, leaving Kleber, to be murdered, in the lurch—a few hundred yards
from the spot where these disquisitions are written. But what are his
wonders compared to Waghorn? Nap massacred the Mamelukes at the
Pyramids: Wag has conquered the Pyramids themselves; dragged the
unwieldy structures a month nearer England than they were, and brought
the country along with them. All the trophies and captives that ever
were brought to Roman triumph were not so enormous and wonderful as
this. All the heads that Napoleon ever caused to be struck off (as
George Cruikshank says) would not elevate him a monument as big. Be
ours the trophies of peace! O my country! O Waghorn! Hae tibi erunt
artes. When I go to the Pyramids I will sacrifice in your name, and
pour out libations of bitter ale and Harvey Sauce in your honour.
One of the noblest views in the world is to be seen from the citadel,
which we ascended to-day. You see the city stretching beneath it, with
a thousand minarets and mosques,—the great river curling through the
green plains, studded with innumerable villages. The Pyramids are
beyond, brilliantly distinct; and the lines and fortifications of the
height, and the arsenal lying below. Gazing down, the guide does not
fail to point out the famous Mameluke leap, by which one of the corps
escaped death, at the time that His Highness the Pasha arranged the
general massacre of the body.
The venerable Patriarch’s harem is close by, where he received, with
much distinction, some of the members of our party. We were allowed to
pass very close to the sacred precincts, and saw a comfortable white
European building, approached by flights of steps, and flanked by
pretty gardens. Police and law-courts were here also, as I understood;
but it was not the time of the Egyptian assizes. It would have been
pleasant, otherwise, to see the Chief Cadi in his hall of justice; and
painful, though instructive, to behold the immediate application of the
bastinado.
The great lion of the place is a new mosque which Mehemet Ali is
constructing very leisurely. It is built of alabaster of a fair white,
with a delicate blushing tinge; but the ornaments are European—the
noble, fantastic, beautiful Oriental art is forgotten. The old mosques
of the city, of which I entered two, and looked at many, are a thousand
times more beautiful. Their variety of ornament is astonishing,—the
difference in the shapes of the domes, the beautiful fancies and
caprices in the forms of the minarets, which violate the rules of
proportion with the most happy daring grace, must have struck every
architect who has seen them. As you go through the streets, these
architectural beauties keep the eye continually charmed: now it is a
marble fountain, with its arabesque and carved overhanging roof, which
you can look at with as much pleasure as an antique gem, so neat and
brilliant is the execution of it; then, you come to the arched entrance
to a mosque, which shoots up like—like what?—like the most beautiful
pirouette by Taglioni, let us say. This architecture is not sublimely
beautiful, perfect loveliness and calm, like that which was revealed to
us at the Parthenon (and in comparison of which the Pantheon and
Colosseum are vulgar and coarse, mere broad-shouldered Titans before
ambrosial Jove); but these fantastic spires, and cupolas, and
galleries, excite, amuse, tickle the imagination, so to speak, and
perpetually fascinate the eye. There were very few believers in the
famous mosque of Sultan Hassan when we visited it, except the
Moslemitish beadle, who was on the look-out for backsheesh, just like
his brother officer in an English cathedral; and who, making us put on
straw slippers, so as not to pollute the sacred pavement of the place,
conducted us through it.
It is stupendously light and airy; the best specimens of Norman art
that I have seen (and surely the Crusaders must have carried home the
models of these heathenish temples in their eyes) do not exceed its
noble grace and simplicity. The mystics make discoveries at home, that
the Gothic architecture is Catholicism carved in stone— (in which case,
and if architectural beauty is a criterion or expression of religion,
what a dismal barbarous creed must that expressed by the Bethesda
meeting-house and Independent chapels be?)—if, as they would gravely
hint, because Gothic architecture is beautiful, Catholicism is
therefore lovely and right,—why, Mahometanism must have been right and
lovely too once. Never did a creed possess temples more elegant; as
elegant as the Cathedral at Rouen, or the Baptistery at Pisa.
But it is changed now. There was nobody at prayers; only the official
beadles, and the supernumerary guides, who came for backsheesh. Faith
hath degenerated. Accordingly they can’t build these mosques, or invent
these perfect forms, any more. Witness the tawdry incompleteness and
vulgarity of the Pasha’s new temple, and the woful failures among the
very late edifices in Constantinople!
However, they still make pilgrimages to Mecca in great force. The
Mosque of Hassan is hard by the green plain on which the Hag encamps
before it sets forth annually on its pious peregrination. It was not
yet its time, but I saw in the bazaars that redoubted Dervish, who is
the master of the Hag—the leader of every procession, accompanying the
sacred camel; and a personage almost as much respected as Mr. O’Connell
in Ireland.
This fellow lives by alms (I mean the head of the Hag). Winter and
summer he wears no clothes but a thin and scanty white shirt. He wields
a staff, and stalks along scowling and barefoot. His immense shock of
black hair streams behind him, and his brown brawny body is curled over
with black hair, like a savage man. This saint has the largest harem in
the town; he is said to be enormously rich by the contributions he has
levied; and is so adored for his holiness by the infatuated folk, that
when he returns from the Hag (which he does on horseback, the chief
Mollahs going out to meet him and escort him home in state along the
Ezbekieh road), the people fling themselves down under the horse’s
feet, eager to be trampled upon and killed, and confident of heaven if
the great Hadji’s horse will but kick them into it. Was it my fault if
I thought of Hadji Daniel, and the believers in him?
There was no Dervish of repute on the plain when I passed; only one
poor wild fellow, who was dancing, with glaring eyes and grizzled
beard, rather to the contempt of the bystanders, as I thought, who by
no means put coppers into his extended bowl. On this poor devil’s head
there was a poorer devil still—a live cock, entirely plucked, but
ornamented with some bits of ragged tape and scarlet and tinsel, the
most horribly grotesque and miserable object I ever saw.
A little way from him, there was a sort of play going on—a clown and a
knowing one, like Widdicombe and the clown with us,—the buffoon
answering with blundering responses, which made all the audience shout
with laughter; but the only joke which was translated to me would make
you do anything but laugh, and shall therefore never be revealed by
these lips. All their humour, my dragoman tells me, is of this
questionable sort; and a young Egyptian gentleman, son of a Pasha, whom
I subsequently met at Malta, confirmed the statement, and gave a detail
of the practices of private life which was anything but edifying. The
great aim of woman, he said, in the much-maligned Orient, is to
administer to the brutality of her lord; her merit is in knowing how to
vary the beast’s pleasures. He could give us no idea, he said, of the
wit of the Egyptian women, and their skill in double entendre; nor, I
presume, did we lose much by our ignorance. What I would urge, humbly,
however, is this—Do not let us be led away by German writers and
aesthetics, Semilassoisms, Hahnhahnisms, and the like. The life of the
East is a life of brutes. The much maligned Orient, I am confident, has
not been maligned near enough; for the good reason that none of us can
tell the amount of horrible sensuality practised there.
Beyond the Jack-pudding rascal and his audience, there was on the green
a spot, on which was pointed out to me a mark, as of blood. That
morning the blood had spouted from the neck of an Arnaoot soldier, who
had been executed for murder. These Arnaoots are the curse and terror
of the citizens. Their camps are without the city; but they are always
brawling, or drunken, or murdering within, in spite of the rigid law
which is applied to them, and which brings one or more of the
scoundrels to death almost every week.
Some of our party had seen this fellow borne by the hotel the day
before, in the midst of a crowd of soldiers who had apprehended him.
The man was still formidable to his score of captors: his clothes had
been torn off; his limbs were bound with cords; but he was struggling
frantically to get free; and my informant described the figure and
appearance of the naked, bound, writhing savage, as quite a model of
beauty.
Walking in the street, this fellow had just before been struck by the
looks of a woman who was passing, and laid hands on her. She ran away,
and he pursued her. She ran into the police-barrack, which was luckily
hard by; but the Arnaoot was nothing daunted, and followed into the
midst of the police. One of them tried to stop him. The Arnaoot pulled
out a pistol, and shot the policeman dead. He cut down three or four
more before he was secured. He knew his inevitable end must be death:
that he could not seize upon the woman: that he could not hope to
resist half a regiment of armed soldiers: yet his instinct of lust and
murder was too strong; and so he had his head taken off quite calmly
this morning, many of his comrades attending their brother’s last
moments. He cared not the least about dying; and knelt down and had his
head off as coolly as if he were looking on at the same ceremony
performed on another.
When the head was off, and the blood was spouting on the ground, a
married woman, who had no children, came forward very eagerly out of
the crowd, to smear herself with it,—the application of criminals’
blood being considered a very favourable medicine for women afflicted
with barrenness,—so she indulged in this remedy.
But one of the Arnaoots standing near said, “What, you like blood, do
you?” (or words to that effect). “Let’s see how yours mixes with my
comrade’s.” And thereupon, taking out a pistol, he shot the woman in
the midst of the crowd and the guards who were attending the execution;
was seized of course by the latter; and no doubt to-morrow morning will
have HIS head off too. It would be a good chapter to write—the Death of
the Arnaoot—but I shan’t go. Seeing one man hanged is quite enough in
the course of a life. J’y ai ete, as the Frenchman said of hunting.
These Arnaoots are the terror of the town. They seized hold of an
Englishman the other day, and were very nearly pistolling him. Last
week one of them murdered a shopkeeper at Boulak, who refused to sell
him a water-melon at a price which he, the soldier, fixed upon it. So,
for the matter of three-halfpence, he killed the shopkeeper; and had
his own rascally head chopped off, universally regretted by his
friends. Why, I wonder, does not His Highness the Pasha invite the
Arnaoots to a dejeuner at the Citadel, as he did the Mamelukes, and
serve them up the same sort of breakfast? The walls are considerably
heightened since Emin Bey and his horse leapt them, and it is probable
that not one of them would escape.
This sort of pistol practice is common enough here, it would appear;
and not among the Arnaoots merely, but the higher orders. Thus, a short
time since, one of His Highness’s grandsons, whom I shall call
Bluebeard Pasha (lest a revelation of the name of the said Pasha might
interrupt our good relations with his country)— one of the young Pashas
being rather backward in his education, and anxious to learn
mathematics, and the elegant deportment of civilised life, sent to
England for a tutor. I have heard he was a Cambridge man, and had
learned both algebra and politeness under the Reverend Doctor Whizzle,
of—College.
One day when Mr. MacWhirter, B.A., was walking in Shoubra Gardens, with
His Highness the young Bluebeard Pasha, inducting him into the usages
of polished society, and favouring him with reminiscences of
Trumpington, there came up a poor fellah, who flung himself at the feet
of young Bluebeard, and calling for justice in a loud and pathetic
voice, and holding out a petition, besought His Highness to cast a
gracious eye upon the same, and see that his slave had justice done
him.
Bluebeard Pasha was so deeply engaged and interested by his respected
tutor’s conversation, that he told the poor fellah to go to the deuce,
and resumed the discourse which his ill-timed outcry for justice had
interrupted. But the unlucky wight of a fellah was pushed by his evil
destiny, and thought he would make yet another application. So he took
a short cut down one of the garden lanes, and as the Prince and the
Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, his tutor, came along once more engaged in
pleasant disquisition, behold the fellah was once more in their way,
kneeling at the august Bluebeard’s feet, yelling out for justice as
before, and thrusting his petition into the Royal face.
When the Prince’s conversation was thus interrupted a second time, his
Royal patience and clemency were at an end. “Man,” said he, “once
before I bade thee not to pester me with thy clamour, and lo! you have
disobeyed me,—take the consequences of disobedience to a Prince, and
thy blood be upon thine own head.” So saying, he drew out a pistol and
blew out the brains of that fellah, so that he never bawled out for
justice any more.
The Reverend Mr. MacWhirter was astonished at this sudden mode of
proceeding: “Gracious Prince,” said he, “we do not shoot an
undergraduate at Cambridge even for walking over a college grass-
plot.—Let me suggest to your Royal Highness that this method of ridding
yourself of a poor devil’s importunities is such as we should consider
abrupt and almost cruel in Europe. Let me beg you to moderate your
Royal impetuosity for the future; and, as your Highness’s tutor,
entreat you to be a little less prodigal of your powder and shot.”
“O Mollah!” said His Highness, here interrupting his governor’s
affectionate appeal,—“you are good to talk about Trumpington and the
Pons Asinorum, but if you interfere with the course of justice in any
way, or prevent me from shooting any dog of an Arab who snarls at my
heels, I have another pistol; and, by the beard of the Prophet! a
bullet for you too.” So saying he pulled out the weapon, with such a
terrific and significant glance at the Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, that
that gentleman wished himself back in his Combination Room again; and
is by this time, let us hope, safely housed there.
Another facetious anecdote, the last of those I had from a well-
informed gentleman residing at Cairo, whose name (as many copies of
this book that is to be will be in the circulating libraries there) I
cannot, for obvious reasons, mention. The revenues of the country come
into the august treasury through the means of farmers, to whom the
districts are let out, and who are personally answerable for their
quota of the taxation. This practice involves an intolerable deal of
tyranny and extortion on the part of those engaged to levy the taxes,
and creates a corresponding duplicity among the fellahs, who are not
only wretchedly poor among themselves, but whose object is to appear
still more poor, and guard their money from their rapacious overseers.
Thus the Orient is much maligned; but everybody cheats there: that is a
melancholy fact. The Pasha robs and cheats the merchants; knows that
the overseer robs him, and bides his time, until he makes him disgorge
by the application of the tremendous bastinado; the overseer robs and
squeezes the labourer; and the poverty-stricken devil cheats and robs
in return; and so the government moves in a happy cycle of roguery.
Deputations from the fellahs and peasants come perpetually before the
august presence, to complain of the cruelty and exactions of the chiefs
set over them: but, as it is known that the Arab never will pay without
the bastinado, their complaints, for the most part, meet with but
little attention. His Highness’s treasury must be filled, and his
officers supported in their authority.
However, there was one village, of which the complaints were so
pathetic, and the inhabitants so supremely wretched, that the Royal
indignation was moved at their story, and the chief of the village,
Skinflint Beg, was called to give an account of himself at Cairo.
When he came before the presence, Mehemet Ali reproached him with his
horrible cruelty and exactions; asked him how he dared to treat his
faithful and beloved subjects in this way, and threatened him with
disgrace, and the utter confiscation of his property, for thus having
reduced a district to ruin.
“Your Highness says I have reduced these fellahs to ruin,” said
Skinflint Beg: “what is the best way to confound my enemies, and to
show you the falsehood of their accusations that I have ruined them?—To
bring more money from them. If I bring you five hundred purses from my
village, will you acknowledge that my people are not ruined yet?”
The heart of the Pasha was touched: “I will have no more bastinadoing,
O Skinflint Beg; you have tortured these poor people so much, and have
got so little from them, that my Royal heart relents for the present,
and I will have them suffer no farther.”
“Give me free leave—give me your Highness’s gracious pardon, and I will
bring the five hundred purses as surely as my name is Skinflint Beg. I
demand only the time to go home, the time to return, and a few days to
stay, and I will come back as honestly as Regulus Pasha did to the
Carthaginians,—I will come back and make my face white before your
Highness.”
Skinflint Beg’s prayer for a reprieve was granted, and he returned to
his village, where he forthwith called the elders together. “O
friends,” he said, “complaints of our poverty and misery have reached
the Royal throne, and the benevolent heart of the Sovereign has been
melted by the words that have been poured into his ears. ‘My heart
yearns towards my people of El Muddee,’ he says; ‘I have thought how to
relieve their miseries. Near them lies the fruitful land of El Guanee.
It is rich in maize and cotton, in sesame and barley; it is worth a
thousand purses; but I will let it to my children for seven hundred,
and I will give over the rest of the profit to them, as an alleviation
for their affliction.’”
The elders of El Muddee knew the great value and fertility of the lands
of Guanee, but they doubted the sincerity of their governor, who,
however, dispelled their fears, and adroitly quickened their eagerness
to close with the proffered bargain. “I will myself advance two hundred
and fifty purses,” he said; “do you take counsel among yourselves, and
subscribe the other five hundred; and when the sum is ready, a
deputation of you shall carry it to Cairo, and I will come with my
share; and we will lay the whole at the feet of His Highness.” So the
grey-bearded ones of the village advised with one another; and those
who had been inaccessible to bastinadoes, somehow found money at the
calling of interest; and the Sheikh, and they, and the five hundred
purses, set off on the road to the capital.
When they arrived, Skinflint Beg and the elders of El Muddee sought
admission to the Royal throne, and there laid down their purses. “Here
is your humble servant’s contribution,” said Skinflint, producing his
share; “and here is the offering of your loyal village of El Muddee.
Did I not before say that enemies and deceivers had maligned me before
the august presence, pretending that not a piastre was left in my
village, and that my extortion had entirely denuded the peasantry? See!
here is proof that there is plenty of money still in El Muddee: in
twelve hours the elders have subscribed five hundred purses, and lay
them at the feet of their lord.”
Instead of the bastinado, Skinflint Beg was instantly rewarded with the
Royal favour, and the former mark of attention was bestowed upon the
fellahs who had maligned him; Skinflint Beg was promoted to the rank of
Skinflint Bey; and his manner of extracting money from his people may
be studied with admiration in a part of the United Kingdom. {3}
At the time of the Syrian quarrel, and when, apprehending some general
rupture with England, the Pasha wished to raise the spirit of the
fellahs, and relever la morale nationale, he actually made one of the
astonished Arabs a colonel. He degraded him three days after peace was
concluded. The young Egyptian colonel, who told me this, laughed and
enjoyed the joke with the utmost gusto. “Is it not a shame,” he said,
“to make me a colonel at three-and-twenty; I, who have no particular
merit, and have never seen any service?” Death has since stopped the
modest and good-natured young fellow’s further promotion. The death
of—Bey was announced in the French papers a few weeks back.
My above kind-hearted and agreeable young informant used to discourse,
in our evenings in the Lazaretto at Malta, very eloquently about the
beauty of his wife, whom he had left behind him at Cairo—her brown
hair, her brilliant complexion, and her blue eyes. It is this
Circassian blood, I suppose, to which the Turkish aristocracy that
governs Egypt must be indebted for the fairness of their skin. Ibrahim
Pasha, riding by in his barouche, looked like a bluff jolly-faced
English dragoon officer, with a grey moustache and red cheeks, such as
you might see on a field-day at Maidstone. All the numerous officials
riding through the town were quite as fair as Europeans. We made
acquaintance with one dignitary, a very jovial and fat Pasha, the
proprietor of the inn, I believe, who was continually lounging about
the Ezbekieh garden, and who, but for a slight Jewish cast of
countenance, might have passed any day for a Frenchman. The ladies whom
we saw were equally fair; that is, the very slight particles of the
persons of ladies which our lucky eyes were permitted to gaze on. These
lovely creatures go through the town by parties of three or four,
mounted on donkeys, and attended by slaves holding on at the crupper,
to receive the lovely riders lest they should fall, and shouting out
shrill cries of “Schmaalek,” “Ameenek” (or however else these words may
be pronounced), and flogging off the people right and left with the
buffalo-thong. But the dear creatures are even more closely disguised
than at Constantinople: their bodies are enveloped with a large black
silk hood, like a cab-head; the fashion seemed to be to spread their
arms out, and give this covering all the amplitude of which it was
capable, as they leered and ogled you from under their black masks with
their big rolling eyes.
Everybody has big rolling eyes here (unless, to be sure, they lose one
of ophthalmia). The Arab women are some of the noblest figures I have
ever seen. The habit of carrying jars on the head always gives the
figure grace and motion; and the dress the women wear certainly
displays it to full advantage. I have brought a complete one home with
me, at the service of any lady for a masqued ball. It consists of a
coarse blue dress of calico, open in front, and fastened with a horn
button. Three yards of blue stuff for a veil; on the top of the veil a
jar to be balanced on the head; and a little black strip of silk to
fall over the nose, and leave the beautiful eyes full liberty to roll
and roam. But such a costume, not aided by any stays or any other
article of dress whatever, can be worn only by a very good figure. I
suspect it won’t be borrowed for many balls next season.
The men, a tall, handsome, noble race, are treated like dogs. I shall
never forget riding through the crowded bazaars, my interpreter, or
laquais-de-place, ahead of me to clear the way— when he took his whip,
and struck it over the shoulders of a man who could not or would not
make way!
The man turned round—an old, venerable, handsome face, with awfully sad
eyes, and a beard long and quite grey. He did not make the least
complaint, but slunk out of the way, piteously shaking his shoulder.
The sight of that indignity gave me a sickening feeling of disgust. I
shouted out to the cursed lackey to hold his hand, and forbade him ever
in my presence to strike old or young more; but everybody is doing it.
The whip is in everybody’s hands: the Pasha’s running footman, as he
goes bustling through the bazaar; the doctor’s attendant, as he soberly
threads the crowd on his mare; the negro slave, who is riding by
himself, the most insolent of all, strikes and slashes about without
mercy, and you never hear a single complaint.
How to describe the beauty of the streets to you!—the fantastic
splendour; the variety of the houses, and archways, and hanging roofs,
and balconies, and porches; the delightful accidents of light and shade
which chequer them: the noise, the bustle, the brilliancy of the crowd;
the interminable vast bazaars with their barbaric splendour. There is a
fortune to be made for painters in Cairo, and materials for a whole
Academy of them. I never saw such a variety of architecture, of life,
of picturesqueness, of brilliant colour, and light and shade. There is
a picture in every street, and at every bazaar stall. Some of these our
celebrated water-colour painter, Mr. Lewis, has produced with admirable
truth and exceeding minuteness and beauty; but there is room for a
hundred to follow him; and should any artist (by some rare occurrence)
read this, who has leisure, and wants to break new ground, let him take
heart, and try a winter in Cairo, where there is the finest climate and
the best subjects for his pencil.
A series of studies of negroes alone would form a picturebook,
delightfully grotesque. Mounting my donkey to-day, I took a ride to the
desolate noble old buildings outside the city, known as the Tombs of
the Caliphs. Every one of these edifices, with their domes, and courts,
and minarets, is strange and beautiful. In one of them there was an
encampment of negro slaves newly arrived: some scores of them were
huddled against the sunny wall; two or three of their masters lounged
about the court, or lay smoking upon carpets. There was one of these
fellows, a straight-nosed ebony- faced Abyssinian, with an expression
of such sinister good-humour in his handsome face as would form a
perfect type of villany. He sat leering at me, over his carpet, as I
endeavoured to get a sketch of that incarnate rascality. “Give me some
money,” said the fellow. “I know what you are about. You will sell my
picture for money when you get back to Europe; let me have some of it
now!” But the very rude and humble designer was quite unable to depict
such a consummation and perfection of roguery; so flung him a cigar,
which he began to smoke, grinning at the giver. I requested the
interpreter to inform him, by way of assurance of my disinterestedness,
that his face was a great deal too ugly to be popular in Europe, and
that was the particular reason why I had selected it.
Then one of his companions got up and showed us his black cattle. The
male slaves were chiefly lads, and the women young, well formed, and
abominably hideous. The dealer pulled her blanket off one of them, and
bade her stand up, which she did with a great deal of shuddering
modesty. She was coal black, her lips were the size of sausages, her
eyes large and good-humoured; the hair or wool on this young person’s
head was curled and greased into a thousand filthy little ringlets. She
was evidently the beauty of the flock.
They are not unhappy: they look to being bought, as many a spinster
looks to an establishment in England; once in a family they are kindly
treated and well clothed, and fatten, and are the merriest people of
the whole community. These were of a much more savage sort than the
slaves I had seen in the horrible market at Constantinople, where I
recollect the following young creature—{2} (indeed it is a very fair
likeness of her) whilst I was looking at her and forming pathetic
conjectures regarding her fate—smiling very good-humouredly, and
bidding the interpreter ask me to buy her for twenty pounds.
From these Tombs of the Caliphs the Desert is before you. It comes up
to the walls of the city, and stops at some gardens which spring up all
of a sudden at its edge. You can see the first Station- house on the
Suez Road; and so from distance-point to point, could ride thither
alone without a guide.
Asinus trotted gallantly into this desert for the space of a quarter of
an hour. There we were (taking care to keep our back to the city
walls), in the real actual desert: mounds upon mounds of sand,
stretching away as far as the eye can see, until the dreary prospect
fades away in the yellow horizon! I had formed a finer idea of it out
of “Eothen.” Perhaps in a simoom it may look more awful. The only
adventure that befell in this romantic place was that Asinus’s legs
went deep into a hole: whereupon his rider went over his head, and bit
the sand, and measured his length there; and upon this hint rose up,
and rode home again. No doubt one should have gone out for a couple of
days’ march—as it was, the desert did not seem to me sublime, only
UNCOMFORTABLE.
Very soon after this perilous adventure the sun likewise dipped into
the sand (but not to rise therefrom so quickly as I had done); and I
saw this daily phenomenon of sunset with pleasure, for I was engaged at
that hour to dine with our old friend J-, who has established himself
here in the most complete Oriental fashion.
You remember J-, and what a dandy he was, the faultlessness of his
boots and cravats, the brilliancy of his waistcoats and kid-gloves; we
have seen his splendour in Regent Street, in the Tuileries, or on the
Toledo. My first object on arriving here was to find out his house,
which he has taken far away from the haunts of European civilisation,
in the Arab quarter. It is situated in a cool, shady, narrow alley; so
narrow, that it was with great difficulty— His Highness Ibrahim Pasha
happening to pass at the same moment— that my little procession of two
donkeys, mounted by self and valet-de-place, with the two donkey-boys
our attendants, could range ourselves along the wall, and leave room
for the august cavalcade. His Highness having rushed on (with an
affable and good-humoured salute to our imposing party), we made J.’s
quarters; and, in the first place, entered a broad covered court or
porch, where a swarthy tawny attendant, dressed in blue, with white
turban, keeps a perpetual watch. Servants in the East lie about all the
doors, it appears; and you clap your hands, as they do in the dear old
“Arabian Nights,” to summon them.
This servant disappeared through a narrow wicket, which he closed after
him; and went into the inner chambers, to ask if his lord would receive
us. He came back presently, and rising up from my donkey, I confided
him to his attendant (lads more sharp, arch, and wicked than these
donkey-boys don’t walk the pave of Paris or London), and passed the
mysterious outer door.
First we came into a broad open court, with a covered gallery running
along one side of it. A camel was reclining on the grass there; near
him was a gazelle, to glad J- with his dark blue eye; and a numerous
brood of hens and chickens, who furnish his liberal table. On the
opposite side of the covered gallery rose up the walls of his long,
queer, many-windowed, many-galleried house. There were wooden lattices
to those arched windows, through the diamonds of one of which I saw two
of the most beautiful, enormous, ogling black eyes in the world,
looking down upon the interesting stranger. Pigeons were flapping, and
hopping, and fluttering, and cooing about. Happy pigeons, you are, no
doubt, fed with crumbs from the henne-tipped fingers of Zuleika! All
this court, cheerful in the sunshine, cheerful with the astonishing
brilliancy of the eyes peering out from the lattice-bars, was as
mouldy, ancient, and ruinous—as any gentleman’s house in Ireland, let
us say. The paint was peeling off the rickety old carved galleries; the
arabesques over the windows were chipped and worn;—the ancientness of
the place rendered it doubly picturesque. I have detained you a long
time in the outer court. Why the deuce was Zuleika there, with the
beautiful black eyes?
Hence we passed into a large apartment, where there was a fountain; and
another domestic made his appearance, taking me in charge, and
relieving the tawny porter of the gate. This fellow was clad in blue
too, with a red sash and a grey beard. He conducted me into a great
hall, where there was a great, large Saracenic oriel window. He seated
me on a divan; and stalking off, for a moment, returned with a long
pipe and a brass chafing-dish: he blew the coal for the pipe, which he
motioned me to smoke, and left me there with a respectful bow. This
delay, this mystery of servants, that outer court with the camels,
gazelles, and other beautiful-eyed things, affected me prodigiously all
the time he was staying away; and while I was examining the strange
apartment and its contents, my respect and awe for the owner increased
vastly.
As you will be glad to know how an Oriental nobleman (such as J—
undoubtedly is) is lodged and garnished, let me describe the contents
of this hall of audience. It is about forty feet long, and eighteen or
twenty high. All the ceiling is carved, gilt, painted and embroidered
with arabesques, and choice sentences of Eastern writing. Some Mameluke
Aga, or Bey, whom Mehemet Ali invited to breakfast and massacred, was
the proprietor of this mansion once: it has grown dingier, but,
perhaps, handsomer, since his time. Opposite the divan is a great
bay-window, with a divan likewise round the niche. It looks out upon a
garden about the size of Fountain Court, Temple; surrounded by the tall
houses of the quarter. The garden is full of green. A great palm-tree
springs up in the midst, with plentiful shrubberies, and a talking
fountain. The room beside the divan is furnished with one deal table,
value five shillings; four wooden chairs, value six shillings; and a
couple of mats and carpets. The table and chairs are luxuries imported
from Europe. The regular Oriental dinner is put upon copper trays,
which are laid upon low stools. Hence J- Effendi’s house may be said to
be much more sumptuously furnished than those of the Beys and Agas his
neighbours.
When these things had been examined at leisure, J- appeared. Could it
be the exquisite of the “Europa” and the “Trois Freres”? A man- -in a
long yellow gown, with a long beard somewhat tinged with grey, with his
head shaved, and wearing on it, first, a white wadded cotton nightcap;
second, a red tarboosh—made his appearance and welcomed me cordially.
It was some time, as the Americans say, before I could “realise” the
semillant J- of old times.
He shuffled off his outer slippers before he curled up on the divan
beside me. He clapped his hands, and languidly called “Mustapha.”
Mustapha came with more lights, pipes, and coffee; and then we fell to
talking about London, and I gave him the last news of the comrades in
that dear city. As we talked, his Oriental coolness and languor gave
way to British cordiality; he was the most amusing companion of the
club once more.
He has adapted himself outwardly, however, to the Oriental life. When
he goes abroad he rides a grey horse with red housings, and has two
servants to walk beside him. He wears a very handsome grave costume of
dark blue, consisting of an embroidered jacket and gaiters, and a pair
of trousers, which would make a set of dresses for an English family.
His beard curls nobly over his chest, his Damascus scimitar on his
thigh. His red cap gives him a venerable and Bey-like appearance. There
is no gewgaw or parade about him, as in some of your dandified young
Agas. I should say that he is a Major-General of Engineers, or a grave
officer of State. We and the Turkified European, who found us at
dinner, sat smoking in solemn divan.
His dinners were excellent; they were cooked by a regular Egyptian
female cook. We had delicate cucumbers stuffed with forced-meats;
yellow smoking pilaffs, the pride of the Oriental cuisine; kid and
fowls a l’Aboukir and a la Pyramide: a number of little savoury plates
of legumes of the vegetable-marrow sort: kibobs with an excellent sauce
of plums and piquant herbs. We ended the repast with ruby pomegranates,
pulled to pieces, deliciously cool and pleasant. For the meats, we
certainly ate them with the Infidel knife and fork; but for the fruit,
we put our hands into the dish and flicked them into our mouths in what
cannot but be the true Oriental manner. I asked for lamb and
pistachio-nuts, and cream- tarts au poivre; but J.’s cook did not
furnish us with either of those historic dishes. And for drink, we had
water freshened in the porous little pots of grey clay, at whose spout
every traveller in the East has sucked delighted. Also, it must be
confessed, we drank certain sherbets, prepared by the two great rivals,
Hadji Hodson and Bass Bey—the bitterest and most delicious of draughts!
O divine Hodson! a camel’s load of thy beer came from Beyrout to
Jerusalem while we were there. How shall I ever forget the joy inspired
by one of those foaming cool flasks?
We don’t know the luxury of thirst in English climes. Sedentary men in
cities at least have seldom ascertained it; but when they travel, our
countrymen guard against it well. The road between Cairo and Suez is
jonche with soda-water corks. Tom Thumb and his brothers might track
their way across the desert by those landmarks.
Cairo is magnificently picturesque: it is fine to have palm-trees in
your gardens, and ride about on a camel; but, after all, I was anxious
to know what were the particular excitements of Eastern life, which
detained J-, who is a town-bred man, from his natural pleasures and
occupations in London; where his family don’t hear from him, where his
room is still kept ready at home, and his name is on the list of his
club; and where his neglected sisters tremble to think that their
Frederick is going about with a great beard and a crooked sword,
dressed up like an odious Turk. In a “lark” such a costume may be very
well; but home, London, a razor, your sister to make tea, a pair of
moderate Christian breeches in lieu of those enormous Turkish shulwars,
are vastly more convenient in the long run. What was it that kept him
away from these decent and accustomed delights?
It couldn’t be the black eyes in the balcony—upon his honour she was
only the black cook, who has done the pilaff, and stuffed the
cucumbers. No, it was an indulgence of laziness such as Europeans,
Englishmen, at least, don’t know how to enjoy. Here he lives like a
languid Lotus-eater—a dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life. He was away
from evening parties, he said: he needn’t wear white kid gloves, or
starched neckcloths, or read a newspaper. And even this life at Cairo
was too civilised for him: Englishmen passed through; old acquaintances
would call: the great pleasure of pleasures was life in the
desert,—under the tents, with still more nothing to do than in Cairo;
now smoking, now cantering on Arabs, and no crowd to jostle you; solemn
contemplations of the stars at night, as the camels were picketed, and
the fires and the pipes were lighted.
The night-scene in the city is very striking for its vastness and
loneliness. Everybody has gone to rest long before ten o’clock. There
are no lights in the enormous buildings; only the stars blazing above,
with their astonishing brilliancy, in the blue peaceful sky. Your
guides carry a couple of little lanterns which redouble the darkness in
the solitary echoing street. Mysterious people are curled up and
sleeping in the porches. A patrol of soldiers passes, and hails you.
There is a light yet in one mosque, where some devotees are at prayers
all night; and you hear the queerest nasal music proceeding from those
pious believers. As you pass the madhouse, there is one poor fellow
still talking to the moon—no sleep for him. He howls and sings there
all the night—quite cheerfully, however. He has not lost his vanity
with his reason: he is a Prince in spite of the bars and the straw.
What to say about those famous edifices, which has not been better said
elsewhere?—but you will not believe that we visited them, unless I
bring some token from them. Here is one:- {2}
That white-capped lad skipped up the stones with a jug of water in his
hand, to refresh weary climbers; and squatting himself down on the
summit, was designed as you see. The vast flat landscape stretches
behind him; the great winding river; the purple city, with forts, and
domes, and spires; the green fields, and palm- groves, and speckled
villages; the plains still covered with shining inundations—the
landscape stretches far far away, until it is lost and mingled in the
golden horizon. It is poor work this landscape-painting in print.
Shelley’s two sonnets are the best views that I know of the
Pyramids—better than the reality; for a man may lay down the book, and
in quiet fancy conjure up a picture out of these magnificent words,
which shan’t be disturbed by any pettinesses or mean realities,—such as
the swarms of howling beggars, who jostle you about the actual place,
and scream in your ears incessantly, and hang on your skirts, and bawl
for money.
The ride to the Pyramids is one of the pleasantest possible. In the
fall of the year, though the sky is almost cloudless above you, the sun
is not too hot to bear; and the landscape, refreshed by the subsiding
inundations, delightfully green and cheerful. We made up a party of
some half-dozen from the hotel, a lady (the kind soda- water provider,
for whose hospitality the most grateful compliments are hereby offered)
being of the company, bent like the rest upon going to the summit of
Cheops. Those who were cautious and wise, took a brace of donkeys. At
least five times during the route did my animals fall with me, causing
me to repeat the desert experiment over again, but with more success.
The space between a moderate pair of legs and the ground, is not many
inches. By eschewing stirrups, the donkey could fall, and the rider
alight on the ground, with the greatest ease and grace. Almost
everybody was down and up again in the course of the day.
We passed through the Ezbekieh and by the suburbs of the town, where
the garden-houses of the Egyptian noblesse are situated, to Old Cairo,
where a ferry-boat took the whole party across the Nile, with that
noise and bawling volubility in which the Arab people seem to be so
unlike the grave and silent Turks; and so took our course for some
eight or ten miles over the devious tract which the still outlying
waters obliged us to pursue. The Pyramids were in sight the whole way.
One or two thin silvery clouds were hovering over them, and casting
delicate rosy shadows upon the grand simple old piles. Along the track
we saw a score of pleasant pictures of Eastern life:- The Pasha’s
horses and slaves stood caparisoned at his door; at the gate of one
country-house, I am sorry to say, the Bey’s GIG was in waiting,—a most
unromantic chariot; the husbandmen were coming into the city, with
their strings of donkeys and their loads; as they arrived, they stopped
and sucked at the fountain: a column of red-capped troops passed to
drill, with slouched gait, white uniforms, and glittering bayonets.
Then we had the pictures at the quay: the ferryboat, and the red-sailed
river-boat, getting under way, and bound up the stream. There was the
grain market, and the huts on the opposite side; and that beautiful
woman, with silver armlets, and a face the colour of gold, which (the
nose-bag having been luckily removed) beamed solemnly on us Europeans,
like a great yellow harvest moon. The bunches of purpling dates were
pending from the branches; grey cranes or herons were flying over the
cool shining lakes, that the river’s overflow had left behind; water
was gurgling through the courses by the rude locks and barriers formed
there, and overflowing this patch of ground; whilst the neighbouring
field was fast budding into the more brilliant fresh green. Single
dromedaries were stepping along, their riders lolling on their hunches;
low sail-boats were lying in the canals; now, we crossed an old marble
bridge; now, we went, one by one, over a ridge of slippery earth; now,
we floundered through a small lake of mud. At last, at about
half-a-mile off the Pyramid, we came to a piece of water some two-score
yards broad, where a regiment of half-naked Arabs, seizing upon each
individual of the party, bore us off on their shoulders, to the
laughter of all, and the great perplexity of several, who every moment
expected to be pitched into one of the many holes with which the
treacherous lake abounded.
It was nothing but joking and laughter, bullying of guides, shouting
for interpreters, quarrelling about sixpences. We were acting a farce,
with the Pyramids for the scene. There they rose up enormous under our
eyes, and the most absurd trivial things were going on under their
shadow. The sublime had disappeared, vast as they were. Do you remember
how Gulliver lost his awe of the tremendous Brobdingnag ladies? Every
traveller must go through all sorts of chaffering, and bargaining, and
paltry experiences, at this spot. You look up the tremendous steps,
with a score of savage ruffians bellowing round you; you hear faint
cheers and cries high up, and catch sight of little reptiles crawling
upwards; or, having achieved the summit, they come hopping and bouncing
down again from degree to degree,—the cheers and cries swell louder and
more disagreeable; presently the little jumping thing, no bigger than
an insect a moment ago, bounces down upon you expanded into a panting
Major of Bengal cavalry. He drives off the Arabs with an oath,—wipes
his red shining face with his yellow handkerchief, drops puffing on the
sand in a shady corner, where cold fowl and hard eggs are awaiting him,
and the next minute you see his nose plunged in a foaming beaker of
brandy and soda-water. He can say now, and for ever, he has been up the
Pyramid. There is nothing sublime in it. You cast your eye once more up
that staggering perspective of a zigzag line, which ends at the summit,
and wish you were up there—and down again. Forwards!—Up with you! It
must be done. Six Arabs are behind you, who won’t let you escape if you
would.
The importunity of these ruffians is a ludicrous annoyance to which a
traveller must submit. For two miles before you reach the Pyramids they
seize on you and never cease howling. Five or six of them pounce upon
one victim, and never leave him until they have carried him up and
down. Sometimes they conspire to run a man up the huge stair, and bring
him, half-killed and fainting, to the top. Always a couple of brutes
insist upon impelling you sternwards; from whom the only means to
release yourself is to kick out vigorously and unmercifully, when the
Arabs will possibly retreat. The ascent is not the least romantic, or
difficult, or sublime: you walk up a great broken staircase, of which
some of the steps are four feet high. It’s not hard, only a little
high. You see no better view from the top than you behold from the
bottom; only a little more river, and sand, and ricefield. You jump
down the big steps at your leisure; but your meditations you must keep
for after-times,—the cursed shrieking of the Arabs prevents all thought
or leisure.
- And this is all you have to tell about the Pyramids? Oh! for shame!
Not a compliment to their age and size? Not a big phrase,- -not a
rapture? Do you mean to say that you had no feeling of respect and awe?
Try, man, and build up a monument of words as lofty as they are—they,
whom “imber edax” and “aquilo impotens” and the flight of ages have not
been able to destroy.
- No: be that work for great geniuses, great painters, great poets!
This quill was never made to take such flights; it comes of the wing of
a humble domestic bird, who walks a common; who talks a great deal (and
hisses sometimes); who can’t fly far or high, and drops always very
quickly; and whose unromantic end is, to be laid on a Michaelmas or
Christmas table, and there to be discussed for half-an-hour—let us
hope, with some relish.
* * *
Another week saw us in the Quarantine Harbour at Malta, where seventeen
days of prison and quiet were almost agreeable, after the incessant
sight-seeing of the last two months. In the interval, between the 23rd
of August and the 27th of October, we may boast of having seen more men
and cities than most travellers have seen in such a time:- Lisbon,
Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malta, Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople, Jerusalem,
Cairo. I shall have the carpet-bag, which has visited these places in
company with its owner, embroidered with their names; as military flags
are emblazoned, and laid up in ordinary, to be looked at in old age.
With what a number of sights and pictures,—of novel sensations, and
lasting and delightful remembrances, does a man furnish his mind after
such a tour! You forget all the annoyances of travel; but the pleasure
remains with you, through that kind provision of nature by which a man
forgets being ill, but thinks with joy of getting well, and can
remember all the minute circumstances of his convalescence. I forget
what sea-sickness is now: though it occupies a woful portion of my
Journal. There was a time on board when the bitter ale was decidedly
muddy; and the cook of the ship deserting at Constantinople, it must be
confessed his successor was for some time before he got his hand in.
These sorrows have passed away with the soothing influence of time: the
pleasures of the voyage remain, let us hope, as long as life will
endure. It was but for a couple of days that those shining columns of
the Parthenon glowed under the blue sky there; but the experience of a
life could scarcely impress them more vividly. We saw Cadiz only for an
hour; but the white buildings, and the glorious blue sea, how clear
they are to the memory!—with the tang of that gipsy’s guitar dancing in
the market-place, in the midst of the fruit, and the beggars, and the
sunshine. Who can forget the Bosphorus, the brightest and fairest scene
in all the world; or the towering lines of Gibraltar; or the great
piles of Mafra, as we rode into the Tagus? As I write this, and think,
back comes Rhodes, with its old towers and artillery, and that
wonderful atmosphere, and that astonishing blue sea which environs the
island. The Arab riders go pacing over the plains of Sharon, in the
rosy twilight, just before sunrise; and I can see the ghastly Moab
mountains, with the Dead Sea gleaming before them, from the mosque on
the way towards Bethany. The black gnarled trees of Gethsemane lie at
the foot of Olivet, and the yellow ramparts of the city rise up on the
stony hills beyond.
But the happiest and best of all the recollections, perhaps, are those
of the hours passed at night on the deck, when the stars were shining
overhead, and the hours were tolled at their time, and your thoughts
were fixed upon home far away. As the sun rose I once heard the priest,
from the minaret of Constantinople, crying out, “Come to prayer,” with
his shrill voice ringing through the clear air; and saw, at the same
hour, the Arab prostrate himself and pray, and the Jew Rabbi, bending
over his book, and worshipping the Maker of Turk and Jew. Sitting at
home in London, and writing this last line of farewell, those figures
come back the clearest of all to the memory, with the picture, too, of
our ship sailing over the peaceful Sabbath sea, and our own prayers and
services celebrated there. So each, in his fashion, and after his kind,
is bowing down, and adoring the Father, who is equally above all. Cavil
not, you brother or sister, if your neighbour’s voice is not like
yours; only hope that his words are honest (as far as they may be), and
his heart humble and thankful.
Footnotes:
{1} Saint Paul speaking from the Areopagus, and rebuking these
superstitions away, yet speaks tenderly to the people before him, whose
devotions he had marked; quotes their poets, to bring them to think of
the God unknown, whom they had ignorantly worshipped; and says, that
the times of this ignorance God winked at, but that now it was time to
repent. No rebuke can surely be more gentle than this delivered by the
upright Apostle.
{2} Thackeray’s drawing is shown at this point in the book.
{3} At Derrynane Beg, for instance.