MR. PEASLEY AND HIS FINAL SIZE-UP OF EGYPT
On the morning of our hurried pack up and get away from Luxor we lost
Mr. Peasley. It was a half-hour before the sailing of the boat, and we
were attempting to lock trunks, call in the porters, give directions as
to forwarding mail, and tip everybody except the proprietor all at the
same time.
This excruciating crisis comes with every departure. The fear of
missing the boat, the lurking suspicion that several articles have been
left in lower drawers or under the sofa, the dread of overlooking some
worthy menial who is entitled to baksheesh, the uneasy conviction that
the bill contains several over-charges--all these combine to produce a
mental condition about halfway between plain "rattles" and female
hysteria. And then, to add to the horror of the situation, Mr. Peasley
had disappeared.
All hands were needed--one to boss the porters, another to round up the
tippees, another to audit the charges for "extras," another to make a
final search for razor strops and hot water bags (of which we had left
a trail from Chicago to Cairo). Instead of attending to these really
important duties we were loping madly about the hotel looking for
Peasley. We asked one another why we had invited him to join the
party. We called him all the names that we had invented on the trip to
fit his unusual personality. One of these was a "flat-headed fush." I
don't know what a "fush" is, but the more you study it and repeat it
over to yourself, the more horrible becomes the full significance of
the word. Also we called him a "swozzie," which means a chump who has
gone on and on, exploring the furthermost regions of idiocy, until even
his most daring companions are left far behind. We called Mr. Peasley
a "wall-eyed spingo," the latter being a mullet that has lost all sense
of shame. Ordinary abuse and profanity became weak and ineffective
when pitted against words of this scathing nature.
Reader, if you have a life-long friend and you feel reasonably sure
that you never could quarrel with him or be out of patience with him or
find fault with any of his small peculiarities, go on a long trip with
him in foreign lands. You will be together so much of the time that
finally each will begin to hate the sight of the other. There will
come off days, fraught with petty annoyances, when each will have a
fretful desire to hurl cameras and suit cases at his beloved playmate.
Suppose your lifelong friend has some little eccentricity of manner or
speech, some slight irregularity of behaviour at the table, or a
perverted and stubborn conviction which reveals itself in every
controversy. You may have overlooked this defect for years because you
meet him only at intervals, but when you begin to camp with him you
discover every one of his shining faults. And how they do get on your
nerves! Next to matrimony, perhaps travelling together is the most
severe test of compatibility.
[Illustration: _You discover every one of his shining faults_]
We liked Mr. Peasley. Looking back over the trip, we can well believe
that the expedition would have been rather tame if deprived of his
cheering presence. But he was so full of initiative and so given to
discovering byways of adventure that he was always breaking in on the
programme and starting little excursions of his own. He was a very
hard man to mobilise. If we had solemnly agreed to get together for
luncheon at one o'clock, three of us would be waiting at the food
garage while Mr. Peasley would be a mile away, trying to buy a
four-dollar Abyssinian war shield for $2.75.
And where do you suppose he was on the morning we were making our
frenzied departure from Luxor? We found him in the barber shop, having
his hair cut. A native stood alongside of him, brushing away the
flies. The barber, a curly Italian, had ceased work when we came in,
and, encouraged by the questions of Mr. Peasley, was describing the Bay
of Naples, pointing out Capri, Sorrento, Vesuve, and other points of
interest, with a comb in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.
This barber had made an indelible impression on Mr. Peasley, because of
his name, which was Signor Mosquito. Mr. Peasley said he didn't see
how anyone with a name like that could live.
We lined up in front of Mr. Peasley and gazed at him in withering
silence. He was not feazed.
[Illustration: _He was not feazed_]
"Talk about oriental luxury," he said. "Little did I think twenty
years ago, when I was measurin' unbleached muslin and drawin' New
Orleans syrup in a country store, that one day I'd recline on a spotted
divan and have a private vassal to keep the flies off of me. To say
nothing of bein' waited on by Signor Mosquito."
I tried to hold down the safety valve of my wrath.
"We have just held a meeting and by unanimous vote we have decided that
you are an irresponsible fush, a night blooming swozzie, and a
vitrified spingo," I said.
"Thanks," he replied. "I'll do as much for you sometime."
"Are you aware of the fact that the boat departs in twenty minutes?"
asked No. 2.
"The boat will not leave its mooring until Peasley, of Iowa, is safely
aboard," he replied. "Why is it that you fellows begin to throw duck
fits every time we have to catch a boat or train? Kindly send my
luggage aboard, and as soon as Signor Mosquito has concluded his
amputations, I shall join you."
Words failed us. We hurried to the boat, feeling reasonably certain
that he would follow us to Assouan by rail. When it came time to cast
off, Mr. Peasley had not appeared, and our irritation was gradually
softening into a deep joy. The warning whistle blew twice, and then
Mr. Peasley came down the bank, carrying a Nubian spear eight feet long
over his shoulder. By the time he had arrived on the upper deck the
gangplank was drawn and we were swinging in the current.
He bestowed on us a cool smile of triumph, and then removed his hat.
His hair had been given a shellac finish and smelled like the front
doorway of a drug store.
"Signor Mosquito is well named," said Mr. Peasley. "When he got
through with me he stung me for fifteen piastres."
For several hours we refused to speak to him or sit near him on deck,
but finally we needed him to fill out a four-handed game of dominoes
and he was taken back on probation. While we were engaged in a very
stubborn session of "double nines," we noticed that most of our fellow
passengers, and especially those of English persuasion, were making our
little group the target for horrified glances. Some of them actually
glared at us. We began to wonder if dominoes was regarded as an
immoral practice in Egypt.
"These people keep on looking at us as if we were a happy band of
burglars," said Mr. Peasley. "We think we are travelling incog., but
our reputation has preceded us."
Then we heard one old lady ask another if there would be any evening
services in the dining saloon, and Mr. Peasley, who was reaching into
the "bone yard," suddenly paused with his hand up and
exclaimed:--"Sanctified catfish! Boys, it's Sunday!"
[Illustration: "_Boys, it's Sunday!_"]
It was. We had been sitting there among those nice people throughout
the calm Sabbath afternoon playing a wicked game of chance. After two
weeks among the Mohammedans and other heathen, with every day a working
day and the English Sunday a dead letter, we had lost all trace of
dates. Mr. Peasley said that if anyone had asked him the day of the
week he would have guessed Wednesday.
This unfortunate incident helped to deepen and solidify the dark
suspicion with which we, as Americans, were regarded by the contingent
from Great Britain. If our conduct had been exemplary we could not
have cleared away this suspicion, but after the domino debauch we were
set down as hopeless. The middle class English guard their social
status very carefully, and you can't blame them. It is a tender and
uncertain growth that requires looking after all the time. If they
didn't water it and prune it and set it out in the sunshine every day
it would soon wither back to its original stalk.
Did you ever come across a bunch of melancholy pilgrims from the
suburban villas and the dull gray provincial towns of dear old England?
Did you ever observe the frightened manner in which they hold aloof
from Germans, Americans, Bedouins, Turks, and other foreigners? They
fear that if they drift into friendly relationship with people they
meet while travelling, later on some of these chance acquaintances may
look them up at Birmingham or Stoke-on-Trent and expect to be
entertained at the foundry.
A large majority of our fellow passengers from Luxor to Assouan were of
elderly pattern. We estimated the average age to be about
eighty-three. Mr. Peasley said an irreverent thing about these
venerable tourists.
"Why do these people come all the way to Egypt to look at the ruins?"
he asked. "Why don't they stay at home and look at one another?"
We rebuked him for saying it, but somehow or other these rebukes never
seemed to have any permanent restraining effect.
Our boat arrived at Assouan one morning accompanied by a sand storm and
a cold wave. The Cataract Hotel stood on a promontory overlooking a
new kind of Nile--a swift and narrow stream studded with gleaming
boulders of granite. We liked Assouan because the weather was ideal
(after the sand storm ran out of sand), the hotel was the best we had
found in Egypt, and there were so few antiques that sightseeing became
a pleasure. Besides, after one has been to Luxor, anything in the way
of ancient temples is about as much of a come-down as turkey hash the
day after Thanksgiving.
Here, on the border of Nubia, we began to get glimpses of real Africa.
We rode on camels to a desert camp of hilarious Bisharins. They are
the gypsies of Nubia--dress their hair with mud instead of bay rum and
reside under a patch of gunnysack propped up by two sticks. On the
hills back of the town we saw the barracks where the English army
gathered itself to move south against the Mahdists. We were invited to
go out in the moonlight and hunt hyenas, but did not think it right to
kill off all the native game.
The big exhibit at Assouan, and one of the great engineering
achievements of modern times, is the dam across the Nile. It is a
solid wall of granite, a mile and a quarter long, 100 feet high in
places and 88 feet through the base, and it looks larger than it
sounds. We went across it on a push car after taking a boat ride in
the reservoir basin, which is said to contain 234,000,000 gallons of
water. This estimate is correct, as nearly as we could figure it. The
dam is about four miles above the town. We rode up on a dummy train,
with cars almost as large as Saratoga trunks, and came back in a small
boat. We shot the rapids, just for excitement, and after we had caved
in the bottom of the boat and stopped an hour for repairs we decided
that we had stored up enough excitement, so after that we followed the
more placid waters.
The black boatmen had a weird chant, which they repeated over and over,
keeping time with the stroke. It was a combination of Egyptian melody
and American college yell, and ran as follows:--
Hep! Hep! Horay!
Hep! Hep! Horay!
Hep! Hep! Horay!
All right! Thank you!
This effort represented their sum total of English, and they were very
proud of it, and we liked it, too--that is, the first million times.
After that, the charm of novelty was largely dissipated.
Many people visit Assouan because of the kiln-dried atmosphere, which
is supposed to have a discouraging effect on rheumatism and other
ailments that flourish in a damp climate. Assouan is as dry as
Pittsburg on Sunday. It is surrounded by desert and the sun always
seems to be working overtime. The traveller who does much rambling out
of doors gradually assumes the brown and papery complexion of a royal
mummy, his lips become parched and flaky, and he feels like a grocery
store herring, which, it is believed, is about the driest thing on
record.
We did love Assouan. Coming back from a camel ride, with a choppy sea
on, gazing through the heat waves at the tufted palms and the
shimmering white walls, we would know that there was ice only a mile
ahead of us, and then our love for Assouan would become too deep for
words.
Burton Holmes, the eminent lecturer and travelogue specialist, was
lying up at Assouan, having a tiresome argument with the germ that
invented malaria. He had come up the Nile in a deep draught boat and
had succeeded in finding many sand bars that other voyagers had
overlooked. Just below Assouan the boat wedged itself into the mud and
could not be floated until thirty natives, summoned from the
surrounding country, had waded underneath and "boosted" all afternoon.
When it came time to pay the men the captain of the boat said to Mr.
Holmes: "What do you think? They demand eight shillings."
"It is an outrage," said Mr. Holmes. "Eight shillings is two dollars.
Even in America I can get union labour for two dollars a day. There
are thirty of them. Couldn't we compromise for a lump sum of fifty
dollars?"
"You do not understand," said the captain. "We are asked to pay eight
shillings for the whole crowd. I think that six would be enough."
Whereupon Mr. Holmes gave them ten shillings, or 8 1-3 cents each, and
as he sailed away the grateful assemblage gave three rousing cheers for
Mr. Rockefeller.
When we left Assouan we scooted by rail direct to Cairo, to rest up and
recover from our recuperation.
[Illustration: Important! Rush! Egyptian news!]
It is customary in winding up a series of letters to draw certain
profound conclusions and give hints to travellers who may hope to
follow the same beaten path. Fortunately, Mr. Peasley had done this
for us. He promised a real estate agent in Fairfield, Iowa, that he
would let him know about Egypt. One night in Assouan he read to us the
letter to his friend, and we borrowed it:--
Assouan, Some time in April.
Deloss M. Gifford,
Fairfield, Iowa, U.S.A.
My Dear Giff:--
I have gone as far up the Nile as my time and the letter of credit will
permit. At 8 G.M. to-morrow I turn my face toward the only country on
earth where a man can get a steak that hasn't got goo poured all over
it. Meet me at the station with a pie. Tell mother I am coming home
to eat.
Do I like Egypt? Yes--because now I will be satisfied with Iowa. Only
I'm afraid that when I go back and see 160 acres of corn in one field I
won't believe it. Egypt is a wonderful country, but very small for its
age. It is about as wide as the court house square, but it seems to me
at least 10,000 miles long, as we have been two weeks getting up to the
First Cataract. Most of the natives are farmers. The hard-working
tenant gets one-tenth of the crop every year and if he looks up to see
the steamboats go by he is docked. All Egyptians who are not farmers
are robbers. The farmers live on the river. All other natives live on
the tourists. I have seen so many tombs and crypts and family vaults
that I am ashamed to look an undertaker in the face. For three weeks I
have tried to let on to pretend to make a bluff at being deeply
interested in these open graves. Other people gushed about them and I
was afraid that if I didn't trail along and show some sentimental
interest they might suspect that I was from Iowa and was shy on
soulfulness. I'll say this much, however--I'm mighty glad I've seen
them, because now I'll never have to look at them again.
Egypt is something like the old settler--you'd like to roast him and
call him down, but you hate to jump on anything so venerable and weak.
Egypt is so old that you get the headache trying to think back. Egypt
had gone through forty changes of administration and was on the down
grade before Iowa was staked out.
The principal products of this country are insects, dust, guides, and
fake curios. I got my share of each. I am glad I came, and I may want
to return some day, but not until I have worked the sand out of my ears
and taken in two or three county fairs. I have been walking down the
main aisle with my hat in my hand so long that now I am ready for
something lively.
Americans are popular in Egypt, during business hours. Have not been
showered with social attentions, but I am always comforted by the
thought that the exclusive foreign set cannot say anything about me
that I haven't already said about it. Of course, we could retaliate in
proper fashion if we could lure the foreigners out to Iowa, but that
seems out of the question. They think Iowa is in South America.
I shall mail this letter and then chase it all the way home.
Give my love to everybody, whether I know them or not. Yours,
PEASLEY.
P.S.--Open some preserves.
Not a comprehensive review of the fruits of our journey and yet fairly
accurate.
THE END