[Illustration]
The Canal.--If I had not seen Mr Talbot Kelly's book on Egypt I could
hardly have believed it possible that the delicate schemes of colour we
see in the desert as we pass through the canal could be painted and
reproduced in colour in a book. He has got the very bloom of the desert,
and the beauty of Egypt without its ugliness; the heat and sparkle and
brightness in his pictures are so vivid one can almost breathe the
exhilarating desert air--and smell the Bazaars! But Egypt is ugly a
pin's prick beneath its beauty. It is so old and covered with bones and
decayed ideas. The Nile is associated with Moses, and it is long it is
true, but it is also very narrow and shallow, and its banks are
monotonous to a degree; a mile or so of green crop on either side, then
stones, sand, bits of crockery, human bones and rags, then desert
sand--a cross between a cemetery and a kitchen garden. The ruins are
_awfully_ ugly! "Think of their age!" people say, and you look at the
exquisite spirals of shells in the lime stones with which these heaps
are made! But the saddest thing in Egypt is the fine art debased in the
temples, in these ponderous monuments of their officialism; for here and
there in them you see exquisite bits of low relief carving, that a Greek
would have been proud of, hidden away in interminable hieroglyphic
histories spread indiscriminately over grotesque pillars and vast walls,
as regardlessly of decorative effect as advertisements in a newspaper's
columns. The open desert is the best of Egypt, and this thread of blue
canal strung with lakes through its sand is very pretty and interesting
all the way. We come to a swing bridge. It is open and our modern hotel
and modern people slowly steam right through the middle of a Biblical
caravan of Arabs on camels; some have crossed into the Egyptian side,
the remainder are waiting on the Arabian side, their camels are feeding
on the grey-green bushes. The passengers just give them a glance and go
on with their books. Have we not seen it all long ago in nursery books
on Sundays. But, in the nursery in our Sunday books we did not see or
feel the glitter and heat of the day, some of which, children to-day can
get in Mr Kelly's book.
I dared not sketch the desert scenes; it was in too high a key for me,
but I made so bold as to do this sketch of a scene on deck at night: an
effect I have not heard described, though it must be familiar to those
who go this road. I am sorry it is not reproduced here in colour.
[Illustration]
The searchlight on the bow plays on the sandbanks and desert beyond, and
makes the land like a snow-field, and the slow movement of the white
light intensifies the darkness and silence of the desert. In contrast to
the cold blue light and snow-white sand, is the group of figures on
deck in bright dresses, dancing. It made quite an _evident_ subject. The
figure leaning on the rail is not ill. It is only a little Japanese maid
thinking of home perhaps.
Suez was a few lights in the darkness over the glow of our pipes, then
bed, and in the morning we were sailing down the top, west branch, of
the Red Sea, otherwise the Gulf of Suez, with a fresh north wind behind
us.
It is extremely charming and refreshing, as I've already remarked, to
look out of a port in the morning and see the glittering, tumbling, blue
sea alongside. On this occasion the blue is capped with many soft white
horses chasing south, and the serrated barren hills of Egypt are
slipping away north. They are coloured various tints of pale, faded
leather, light buff, and light red, and the sun glares brilliantly over
all, "drying up the blue Red Sea at the rate of twenty three feet per
year," this from the Orient-Pacific Guide; you can yourself almost fancy
you hear the sea fizzling with the heat. The Arabian shore is almost the
same as the Egyptian, with a larger margin of swelling stretches of sand
between the sea and the foot of the hills.
"Gaunt and dreary run the mountains,
With black gorges up the land
Up to where the lonely desert
Spreads her burning, dreary sand."
There are occasions when circumstances make it really a pleasure to be
an artist, to-day for example; the air is so full of colour, the sea
deepest turquoise, with emerald showing when the crests burst white and
mix with the blue, and there is a glint of reddish colour reflected from
the Arabian sand, and the shadows in the clefts in the sand-hills to the
north are as blue as the sea. I was trying to put this down when my
friend from the West Country, who helps the engines, told me he had got
me one of these exquisite classic earthenware vases from Port Said,
which he decorates with cigar labels and blue and gold enamel. I had a
chat with him in his rather nice cabin--made a study of the flagon,
_i.e._ drew its cork. It was full of deep purple Italian wine, like
Lacrima Christie or Episcopio Rosso; the wine was good enough, but its
deep rose colour with the bright blue reflected on it through the port
was splendid. He didn't like it himself, said "it drew his mouth," and
he gave me both the bottle and the wine as a present because of our love
for Dalriada, and I have to give him a "wee bit sketch" for his cabin.
I will smuggle the jar under our table--G. and I both like Italian
wine--and we will use it as a water bottle afterwards, for we have only
one decanter at our table amongst eleven thirsty people.
It was just such dark red wine as this, I suppose, that Ulysses and his
friends in these seas took in skinfuls to wash down venison, an
excellent menu I must say, but it would have been more seamanlike if
they had slept off the effects on board, instead of lying out all night
on the beach; then, when Morning the rosy-fingered turned up, they'd
have been quicker getting under way, and would have got home sooner in
the end. How much superior were the Fingalian heroes; they would sail
and fight all day and pass round the uisquebaugh in the evening at the
feast of shells, and never get fuddled and never feared anything under
water or above land, and were beholden to neither Gods nor men.
But I did once know a descendant of theirs, in their own country who was
overcome by red wine. "It was perfectly excusable," he said, for he had
never tasted it before--or since! He was a fine, tall man called Callum
Bhouie, from his yellow hair when he was a youth; he was old when I knew
him--six feet two and thin as a rake and strong, with the face of
Wellington and an eye like a hawk. He and his friend were going home to
his croft from their occupations one morning early, round the little
Carsaig Bay opposite Jura, where he had a still up a little burn there,
and they fell in with a cask on the sand and there was red wine in it,
port or Burgundy, I do not know. Callum said he knew all about it and it
was but weak stuff, so they took bowls and saucers and drank the weak
stuff more and more. I think it must have been port; and they lay where
they were on the sand and slept till the morning after. When dawn, the
rosy-fingered, found them she must have thought them quite Hellenic; and
the minister followed later, and I would not think it right to repeat
what he thought it right to say. The sands and the bay and the burn are
there to-day, and, as they say in the old tales, if Callum were not dead
he would be alive to prove the truth of the story. The still I've never
seen, but Callum I knew, and his croft; alas the roof of it fell in a
few years ago; and it was the last inhabited house of a Carsaig clachan.
You see the land is "improved" now, for sheep, and it's all in one big
farm instead of small crofts, and little greasy, black-faced sheep climb
the loose stone walls and nibble the green grass short as a carpet where
Callum and his wife lived so long.
May I go on to the end of Callum's story; though it is rather a far cry
from this hot Red Sea to the cool Sound of Jura?
He and his wife were to be taken to the poor house in winter, and on the
long drive across Kintyre they were told that they would be separated,
and there was then and there such a crying and fighting on the road that
they were both driven back to the croft--and I was not surprised, for
where Callum Bhouie was fighting there would not be a stronger man of
his age. So they lived on in the but-and-ben, with the lonely, tall ash
standing over it, and the view of Jura, the sweetest I know, in front,
and he died very old indeed, and his wife followed him in two or three
days, so they were not separated even by death for long.
... Now to my log rolling. It has already been explained by travellers
of repute that the Red Sea does not take its name from its colour; this
statement, I believe, is now generally accepted as being something more
than the mere "traveller's tale." It is not, however, so generally known
that this Sea is peculiarly blue, so blue, in fact, that were you to dip
a white dress into it it would come out blue, or at least it looks as if
it would. It reminds me of a splendid blue silk with filmy white lace
spread over it. Against this the figures on the shady side of the ship
look very pretty; ladies and children and menkind all in such various
bright, summery colours, lying in long chairs or grouped round green
card tables. "The Ladies' Gulf," it should be called now. That used to
be the name for the sea off the N. W. of Africa where you pick up the
North East trades as you sail south. Times have changed and sea routes,
so the name should be passed east to this Gulf of Suez, where ladies and
parasols look at their best and the appearance of a man in oilskins
would be positively alarming.
The Indian judge with the Italian name and myself, are, as far as I can
see, the only passengers who are not engaged doing something. Perhaps
the judge's Italian name and my Vino Tinto respectively account for our
contemplative attitudes. He has pulled his chair well forward to be out
of the crowd, and makes a perfect picture of happy repose; he wears a
dark blue yachting suit, and his hands are deep in his pockets. His face
is ruddy, and his eyes are blue and seem to sparkle with the pleasure of
watching the tumbling blue seas, and the bursting white and green
crests. Just now a rope grummet, thrown by an elderly youth at a tub,
rolled under his legs, and the judge handed it back most politely, and
resumed contemplation. In two minutes another quoit clattered under his
chair, this he likewise returned very politely; at the third, however,
he sighed and gave up his study of the blue and sauntered aft to the
smoking-room--such is life on a P. & O.
The above picture is intended to represent ladies in afternoon dress,
the colours of the intermediate tints of the rainbow--expressions
celestial. It is the witching hour before changing from one costume to
the other, after afternoon tea and just before dressing for dinner. To
the right you may observe an Ayah spoiling some young Britons.[3] You
see in the background a golden sunset on a wine red sea, and our lady
artist, a pupil from Juliens; she is gazing out at the departing
glory.... After sundown the decks are empty, for the people are below
dressing and at dinner; towards nightfall they become alive again with
ladies in evening dresses with delicate scarves and laces, promenading
to and fro--a difficult thing to do in such a crowd. One moment they are
dark shadowy forms against the southern night sky, then they are all
aglow in the lights from the music-room windows and the ports of the
deck cabins.
[3] Make it Anglo Saxons, if you like!
[Illustration]
"The-most-beautiful-lady-in-the-ship," in dark muslin, and the
stalwart-man stand near us to-night; they are in half-light, leaning
against the rail, looking out into the darkness. I wished Whistler
might have seen them; he alone could have caught the soft night
colours--the black so velvety and colourful, blurred into the dark blue
of the night sky, with never the suggestion of an outline, and just one
touch of subdued warm colour on the bend of her neck. Sometimes her
scarf floats lightly across his sleeve and rests, and floats away again.
I suppose they talk of--the weather, and repeat themselves in the dear
old set terms. That is why nature is more interesting than man, it never
repeats itself or displays an effect for more than a minute. Five men
out of any six on board, I believe, would make a fair copy of the
conversation of these two, but only one man who has lived in our times
could have made a fist at that effect of faint lamp-light and fainter
moonlight on the black of the coat against the deep blue-black of the
star spangled southern sky. Only the "Master" could have got the
delicacy and movement of the faintly sea-green veil that sometimes lifts
on the warm breeze and floats an instant across the sky and the
broadcloth; he would have got the innermost delicacy of colour form
purely and simply, without an inch, of conventional paint or catch-penny
sentiment.