_The Last Stroll around the Mooskee--Talking to the Donkey-Boys and Dragomen--A Queer Lot--A Pertinacious Customer--The Judge’s
Expedient--A Little Humbug--Rich American Tourists “in a Horn”--The Dragoman’s Salutation “Sing Sing!”--Getting Rid of a
Nuisance--Buying Keepsakes--Out of the Desert into a Garden--Curiosities for Farmers--A Mohammedan Festival--Curious Sights--Snake
Charmers--How they do it--Music-Loving Reptiles--On an Egyptian Railroad--Pompey’s Pillar--A Ludicrous Accident--Alexandria, its
Sights and Scenes--Climbing Pompey’s Pillar--A Daring Sailor--An Arab Swindle--Going on Board the Steamer--Farewell to Egypt._
THE hot wind from the desert made itself manifest early in April, and said in terms that were not to be mistaken “Get out of this.”
I took a farewell stroll around the Mooskee, the Esbekeeah, and the Shoobra road and skirmished for the last time with the donkey
boys and dragomen who infest those places. Among the tribes of ragged, dirty, vagrant urchins who swarm in the streets of Cairo, the
donkey boys head the list. Every traveller knows them and you hear them spoken of as “Confounded rascals” or “Bright little fellows”
according to the luck the Frankish traveller has happened to meet among the species. Occasionally you see boot-blacks with kits
similar to their cousins in more civilized countries, and the two who used to hang around my hotel in Cairo always ready for
“backsheesh” whether they gave my boots a “shine” or not, were the most unprepossessing little gamins I ever met.
One fellow used to annoy two of us greatly with propositions to enter our employ; and half a dozen times every day he used to pester
us with proposals, and we endeavored to hire him to let us alone but all to no purpose. He had performed a slight service for us for
which he would take nothing and he felt that this service entitled him to hang around, and ask us for recommendations, and try to
make a contract with us. We could not shake him off and one day the Judge hit upon a neat expedient.
{679}On the whole I had no regret at parting with the donkey boys and dragomen, particularly with the latter, who hang around the
the hotels at Cairo in great numbers, and were always ready to agree to take you anywhere you wish to go.
[Illustration: 0697]
One of them answered “yes” to my question as to the possibility of accompanying me to the moon, and offered to undertake the job for
thirty shillings a day and furnish everything. As I was not then ready {680}for an aerial voyage I did not pursue the subject, and
as he left me alone after that I conclude that he must have felt offended.
“I shall be much obliged,” said the dragoman, “if you will get me a good party of Americans to go to Jerusalem. I take them cheap
and very well.” And twenty times a day he made this proposal.
One day when we saw him standing on the veranda of the hotel--he had not caught sight of us but was evidently waiting for our
appearance--the Judge walked forward as if he were anxiously looking for the dragoman, and said, “I have a good thing for you. There
may be a party of rich Americans coming down the Nile, and if you can find them and make a bargain with them to pay a high price you
will be lucky.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mohammed, his eyes glistening with delight, “I make good bargain with them, I take them cheap and very well.”
“Never take them cheap. High price, the highest,--fifty shillings a day each, and there ought to be ten of them.”
Mohammed clapped his hands with delight as the Judge continued,
“They will pay fifty, yes sixty shillings a day if they agree to. They are very rich and would like to own half the money in
America.”
“Bismillah! and that be so?”
“Yes, and you must do the thing in style; silver plated camel for the old man, and dromedary with six legs for his daughter the
princess.”
“I give them everything, everything. I take them cheap and very well. They pay me one hundred shillings a day and shall have what
they just want. When they come?”
“I don’t know,” said the Judge doubtfully. “But you had better go to the landing at Boulak and wait for them.”
“No, I waits here in the hotel for them. They come here.”
“Doubtful,” said the Judge, “very doubtful. I don’t know what hotel they will come to and don’t think they will come to this. You
had better go to the landing and wait for them, and then you will be there all the time you stay in Boulak.” {681} “I understand, I
go to Boulak and find ze rich American. And what shall I ask his name?”
“The Grand Duke of Chicago; about fifty years old, lost his left ear in a duel, and wears three pairs of eye-glasses. Was decorated
by the Prince of Hoboken five years ago, and always wears his decoration. You will know him by that--as large as a soup-plate and
twice as greasy. When you see him, step up and say “Sing-Sing,” and he will understand you know all about him. Sing Sing is one of
his palaces.”
“I understand and he pay a hundred shillings a day and extra for ze camels.”
“Yes, a hundred shillings and camels, food, tents, and dragoman extra. Will give five hundred pounds “backsheesh” to you before you
start.”
Mohammed could wait no longer. The prospect of such a mine to explore was too good to be lost. He went to Boulak immediately, and
during the rest of my stay I saw him only once, and then he was walking in the morning toward Boulak to take up his waiting station.
I understood afterward that we really did him a good turn as his stay at Boulak was rewarded with a customer,--not as good as the
Grand Duke of Chicago, but yet a remunerative one.
The day at length arrived for my departure. So I paid a farewell visit to our excellent representative, Consul-General Beardsley,
and to a few other friends and acquaintances, and in other ways made ready for departure.
I spent a last morning in the bazaars and devoted an hour to the purchase of an oriental necklace and a few other trifles. An hour
was the least time in which I could do the necessary bargaining; in London or Paris it would have been all over in two minutes.
In buying the necklace I left the shop four times and gradually beat the fellow down to a decent price; he asked less on each
occasion that I approached him, and if I had devoted half a day to the business I might have done better than I did. I paid him
for my purchase a little more than fifty per cent, of what he demanded at the outset and probably quite as much as he expected
to receive. {682}I left Cairo by the slow train as I wished to see the stations along the road, and was in no hurry to be
whisked through by express. Two of us offered a rupee, (fifty cents,) to the conductor if he would give us the exclusive use of a
compartment, and to make sure that he would carry out his agreement we suggested that we would pay him at the end of the journey.
[Illustration: 9700]
He was entirely content with the arrangement and carried out his part of it to perfection. He came to us at every station to see if
we wanted anything, and when we left the car at places where the stops were long, he carefully locked the compartment and stationed
a brakeman to watch it and make sure that nobody else should enter it. We gave him his rupee at the last station before reaching
Alexandria and saw him no more.
He was an Arab with a good-natured face, and as soon as the money was promised him he appeared to regard it as a sure thing. It
is somewhat uncomplimentary to the natives of this country, that they are more inclined to trust strangers than each other. If an
Egyptian official or merchant had made a promise like ours the conductor would have paid little heed to it as the chances would have
been against fulfillment, but he accepted the word of a stranger without hesitation. {683}Carriage drivers, donkey boys, and boatmen
repeatedly told me “the foreigners always pay what they agree to, but the natives don’t.”
“We like to deal with you even when you make very close bargains because we feel sure of the money, but it isn’t so with the
Egyptians and Turks.”
[Illustration: 0701]
Cairo faded in the distance. We watched the arrowy spires of the Mosque of Mohammed Ali till they became the faintest of lines
against the sky, and then went out altogether; we traced the group of mosques that cover the tombs of the Caliphs and are backed by
the sandy hills of the Mokattam, and we studied the ensemble of mosques and minarets, and palm-trees, as long as study was possible.
Then we turned to the grand old pyramids away on the western horizon, and when these disappeared we fixed our eyes on the course of
the Nile, and the line that marked the termination of the fertile land and the beginning of the Desert.
The Desert soon disappeared, and we rode through the flat plain, carpeted with the richest of verdure, and furrowed here and there
with great and small and medium canals. In some fields the crops appeared half grown; in others they were just beginning, and in
others the plows--rude implements which the most careless farmer in America would disdain--were at work. {684}The plow of Egypt
is the same in appearance, and it may be the same identically, that was in use before the Pyramids were built, and before the
foundation of Thebes, with her hundred gates. It is a billet of wood, pointed at the forward end, and furnished with a beam and
an upright, the latter serving as a handle. A pair of oxen, or buffaloes, are the propelling power, and the yoke that fastens them
together is a straight stick held in place by ropes or wooden pins.
Numerous _sakkiehs_, turned by oxen or buffaloes, were at work, and in nearly every instance the animals were blindfolded with pads
of coarse straw-work over their eyes. Frequently we passed villages with mud walls, and with the general aspect of uncleanliness and
discomfort that I had observed in upper Egypt, and that one observes in nearly all the native villages.
The thermometer stood at 100° in the shade and 118° in the sun, but so long as we kept in the shade it was not uncomfortable. The
dryness of the Egyptian air makes the heat far more supportable than the same temperature in New York. I have suffered more at 85°
on Manhattan Island than in Egypt at 100°, and I found it easier to move about there than in an American atmosphere fifteen degrees
cooler. The natives were at work in the fields without any appearance of discomfort, but I observed that the buffaloes, where at
liberty to do so, had sought the water and were lying there with only their heads visible.
At every station children came out to peddle water, which they carried in _goolchs_, or bottles of porous earth. For half a franc we
bought one of these, _goolch_, water, and all--the girl excepted, though it is quite possible that a franc or two would have secured
her.
Our train was long, and consisted of one first-class, one second-class, and eight third-class carriages. The first and second-class
carriages were only moderately filled, but the third-class were crowded, so that it must have been anything but comfortable to ride
in them. The sides of the third-class coaches are quite open, so that the passengers get the full benefit of dust and rain.
The most important town passed on this line of railway is Tantah, a place with many handsome houses and a viceregal palace, and
known as the capital of one of the Delta {685}provinces. Many of our third-class passengers stopped there and many others joined us,
as it happened to be the time of one of the three fairs or festivals held here each year.
The railway station was crowded with people, the streets were full, and on the outskirts of the town we could see tents, booths,
and crowds, just as one sees them elsewhere at great gatherings of a rural population for a fair that is to last several days. There
were not a dozen Europeans visible in the crowd; all were natives, chiefly from the surrounding region, though many had doubtless
come from Cairo and Alexandria.
The tents were of all sorts, sizes, and colors, and there were horses, donkeys, and camels, picketed around them or grazing in the
meadow close at hand. The people were generally in their best clothes, and there was quite a variety of turbans and flowing robes.
The delay of our train for an hour or more gave us an opportunity to study the crowd and its peculiarities.
January, April, and August, are the months for these festivals, each of which lasts eight days, and brings together sometimes
as many as two hundred thousand people. Ostensibly they come to pray at the tomb of a celebrated saint of Islam, none other than
Seayyid-Ahmed el-Bedawee, a sort of Moslem Big Indian, who flourished about seven hundred years ago, and was buried at Tantah. The
pilgrims recite a few prayers at his tomb, and then attend to fun and business. A large trade is carried on in horses, camels, and
other merchandise, and formerly there was an extensive commerce in slaves. The sound of Oriental music was borne to our ears, and
we strolled through row after row of tents or booths occupied as _cafés_, and the resort of singing and dancing girls, jugglers,
story-tellers, and performers of all kinds.
Among the sights, none seemed to draw larger crowds than the snake-charmers, several of whom were displaying their skill before
admiring audiences.
The snake-charmers of Egypt are much like their confreres of the extreme Orient, but are less famous in the matter of skill and
daring. An Egyptian snake-charmer carries his pets in a bag, and is ready to give a performance whenever and wherever he can secure
a patron. One afternoon, while in Cairo, I was enjoying my after-dinner cigar and strolling through the Esbe{686}keeah Gardens, when
along came a man with a sort of satchel over his shoulder and a girdle confining his frock to his waist. He stopped, and I did
the same. He then took two or three large snakes out of the satchel and hung the empty receptacle on the fence. The snakes slowly
unwound, and to my astonishment I perceived that they were cobras, the dreaded _cobra de capello_ of India, one of the most deadly
serpents on the face of the globe. He struck them with a small stick as they were standing erect with their heads puffed out with
rage, and their tongues darting rapidly from their mouths. He had an attendant who played a sort of rude flute, and the serpents,
who had been trained with the stick, kept an imperfect time to the music in the undulations of their bodies. The performer picked up
the snakes and allowed them to wind around his arms and neck, and when he had put them through their paces he restored them to the
satchel and asked for “backsheesh,” as a reward for his and their labors.
But the show was not over. I observed that his blue cotton frock bulged out just above the girdle; and what do you suppose he
carried there?
He opened the front of his frock or shirt and thrust his hand into the opening and down to his waist. When he withdrew it he had
a dozen or more small snakes in his grasp, and very deliberately placed them on the ground. Then he produced another and another
handful, until a peck or so of small serpents were crawling and wriggling before our wondering eyes!
The snake-charmers I saw at the festival at Tantah went through pretty much the same performance as that I witnessed in Cairo, and a
very few moments sufficed to satisfy my curiosity.
A great deal of wine is consumed at these festivals, and in the evening one can see many things to interest and amuse him, as the
manners and customs of the frequenters of the fair are of a very unrestrained character. It is the right and privilege of a barren
woman to visit the fair at Tantah and pray at the tomb of the saint, and her devotion, continued through the week of the fair, is
generally rewarded as she desires it should be. Her wish to go to Tantah is one that cannot be denied without the violation of a
custom that has existed for many centuries. There are other {687}fairs throughout Egypt similar to the one at Tantah, but none of
them succeed in bringing together such a large number of people.
After leaving Tantah we crossed upon iron bridges the Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile, and sped along over a line of
railway as straight as a sunbeam. There was not much engineering work in building the road, nothing more than to lay down the track
after the construction of a bed high enough to keep the rails above the height of the annual inundation. As we approach the coast
the country becomes more marshy and unproductive, and the scenery is decidedly monotonous. For several miles the track is through
a marsh, and on nearing Alexandria we catch sight, on our left hand, of Lake Mareotis, a shallow body of water much like Lake
Lenzalah, through which the Suez Canal runs after leaving Port Said.
We pass near the bank of the Mahmoodieh Canal, which connects Alexandria with the Nile, and was constructed by order of Mohammed Ali
in less than a year’s time. It cost about three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and employed a quarter of a million men, of whom
twenty thousand died of plague, hunger, and cholera. The average width of the canal is about one hundred feet, and its total length
is fifty miles--a reasonably gigantic operation for less than a twelvemonth.
The canal was full of boats as we passed it; we could not see them on account of the high bank, but their masts and sails were
visible, and so we argued that the boats were there. Near Alexandria the banks of the canal are bordered with pretty villas and
gardens for some distance, and some of the villas are quite picturesque. It has become the fashion for wealthy Alexandrians to have
their residences in this locality, and there is a watering-place and popular resort known as Ramleh about half an hour’s ride from
the city. The Viceroy has a palace there, and generally resides in it during a portion of the summer.
Our train swept toward the city, passing in sight of Pompey’s Pillar, and through a collection of houses that form a sort of
industrial suburb. The station is at the extreme west of the town, and is sufficiently large for all practical purposes, and
contained, at our arrival, the usual array of dragomen, porters, and {688}other hangers-on. The streets are quite a contrast to
those of Cairo, as they are paved with huge blocks of stone that have so worn away in places as to make them very rough, and quite
unpleasant for carriage-driving. The pavement was once excellent, but it has received no attention, and the dust indicates that it
is very rarely swept. The dust flew about in clouds, and my companion said that when he was last here there were some heavy rains,
and where we found dust, he had found a regular Slough of Despond of mud. I can well believe the mud must have been something
frightful, and a ride through it upon a donkey would prove to be something serious.
One of my acquaintances tells me of being pitched head foremost into six or eight inches of it after putting on his best clothes
and starting out to make a call, which he indefinitely postponed and returned to his hotel, where he hung up to dry. He had the
satisfaction--on the ground that misery loves company--of seeing, while on the way back from his mishap, a gaudily-dressed French
woman undergo a similar tumble where the mud was deeper. Her feathers, and flounces, and laces, and general finery were sadly
bedraggled, and when she emerged, with the aid of a couple of Arabs, she resembled a canary bird that has passed through a
street-sweeping machine.
The city founded by and named for Alexander the Great contains very few traces of its former magnificence. Cleopatra’s Needle and
the so-called Pompey’s Pillar are the stock sights; the former is a granite shaft, covered with hieroglyphics, and is far inferior
every way to the obelisks at Karnak and Luxor. More beautiful and better placed is the Pillar, standing on an elevation near the
Mohammedan burying-ground, and consisting of a base, shaft, and capital, the whole nearly a hundred feet high, and the shaft alone
seventy feet long and nearly ten feet in diameter. The shaft is a single piece of red granite, highly polished and elegantly made,
the workmanship being far better than that of base or capital. It is probable that a statue once stood on the pillar, and there are
some old pictures of Alexandria in which the Pillar is represented with a statue upon it. There is no way of reaching the summit
except by a considerable outlay for ropes and ladders, and also for the necessary labor of arranging
{689}
[Illustration: 0707]
{691}them. It has been twice ascended in the present century, once by a party of English sailors, and once by an enterprising woman.
In each instance a string was stretched over the capital by means of a kite; the string was then used to draw up a stout cord, the
cord to draw up a rope, and the rope to draw up a ladder. By the ladder the ascent is easy enough, but it requires a cool head and a
sure grasp.
A paragraph with the heading “Ancient Alexandria” might be about as brief as the famous chapter on the snakes of Ireland. Of the
capital that contained a population of half a million, a library of I don’t know how many thousand volumes, temples, palaces, and
piles stupendous, there are little more than vestiges remaining. Here and there may be found a few relics; walls and foundations of
buildings may be traced in a few localities, and there are some mutilated statues and other fragments that have survived the touch
of Decay’s Effacing Fingers.
From ancient times Alexandria steadily declined, so that at the end of the last century it had a population of six thousand; during
the French and English occupations it began to improve, but it made its greatest progress under Mohammed Ali. The successors of that
prince have continued to foster it, and at the present day it is a busy, bustling city of nearly a quarter of a million inhabitants,
of whom one-fourth are Europeans.
There is an air of commerce everywhere, and when one arrives at the railway station and drives through the streets, he realizes that
he is in a seaport long before he has caught sight of the sea, or of the forest of masts that rise in the harbor.
Near the Great Square you can visit the bazaars or shops, where you will see a reproduction of the sights and scenes of Cairo.
The Great Square is a sort of public park, filled with shade-trees and seats, and having in the centre an equestrian statue of
Mohammed Ali. At each end there is a fountain, and around the square are buildings of a very substantial character, quite worthy of
any great city of modern times. Everything is modern. There is nothing to remind you of antiquity, and even the Arabs that cluster
around the fountains are nearly all boys, and seem more modernized than their brethren at Cairo. {692}As soon as we were quartered
at the hotel, we went to the steamship office to engage our passage, and having paid for our tickets, concluded it would be well to
visit the ship and examine our quarters. We hired donkeys for a ride to the Marine, or landing-place, and away we cantered through
the streets of the Arab quarter. There was a crowd of boatmen that wrangled a long time to secure us, and with such effect that we
found a boat to take us to the ship and back again for sixpence each.
The boatmen were mostly Arabs and Maltese, strong, active fellows, whose rowing abilities are much better than their manners. There
are no docks or wharves to the harbor; the ships must lie out and discharge their cargoes by means of lighters, and passengers must
land and embark in small boats. The harbor is good without being excellent; the entrance is difficult and tortuous, and the sea
frequently rolls in very uncomfortably. There is an outside harbor, where most of the foreign ships lie, as the inner one is rather
shallow for them. The outer one is subject to winds and a heavy sea, but will be greatly improved when the new breakwater, now
constructing, is finished. Hitherto the government has not cared to improve the entrance of the harbor, as a bad entrance is easier
defended than a good one, but a better sentiment prevails at present, and the harbor is to be made as good as possible with a fair
outlay of money.
When we came back to the landing, we had a fair instance of the swindling tendencies of the Arab donkey-drivers. We had left our
beasts there, and as we had not paid for them, we felt that there was no danger that the owners would take them away. The instant we
touched the steps an urchin appeared, and behind him was another, each holding a donkey.
“Your donkeys is gone,” said the foremost, “and you is to ride back on this donkeys.”
We were about mounting in acceptance of this reasonable statement, but took the precaution to look around before doing so. Our own
beasts and drivers were a little distance away, and the story of the boy who announced their departure, proved to be of the most
piscatorial character. The boatmen and donkey-drivers of Alexandria have a worse reputation than those of any other Egyptian city.
{693}On the shore of the Eastern harbor there are several cafés, so as to command the marine air and view. We sat a while in one of
these on our return from the ship, and found the breeze very grateful and refreshing after our hot experience in Cairo and on the
railway. From the covered balcony we could see Cleopatra’s needle on the right, among a lot of houses, while away to the seaward
rose the lighthouse which occupies the site of the ancient “Pharos,” one of the earliest lighthouses known to mariners--the earliest
in fact--and once known as one of the seven wonders of the world. Its name is perpetuated in the appellation of lighthouses in the
French and other languages, (phare,) and its cost at the time of its erection by Ptolemy Philadelphus was something very great.
History says it was a square building, of white marble, several stories high, each story smaller than the one below it, and there
was a road winding round it with so gentle a slope that chariots could be driven to the top. The fair, but imprudent Cleopatra, is
said to have handled the ribbons over a pair of animals somewhat better than omnibus horses, and driven them to the summit of the
Pharos, where she rested a few moments, and then drove them down again. What a pity she did not break her neck in the descent, so as
to save some of us an unpleasant bit of scandal and that horrid story of the asp.
Much care and attention is bestowed upon the gardens, and one of them, belonging to a Greek resident, proved to be exceptionally
handsome. It was adorned with statues, and marble pavements, and in one corner there was a charming little Kiosque where four chairs
around a table suggested a pleasant breakfast or lunch for the master and his family or friends. There are many of these gardens in
and around Alexandria, and they contain a bewildering array of African and other plants.
At the appointed hour we went on board the steamer, and to avoid trouble we made a contract with a fellow to transport our baggage
from the hotel to the ship and ourselves with it. One condition of the contract was that our trunks were not to be opened at the
Custom House; I don’t know how much “backsheesh” he paid to the officials, but he had it arranged beforehand so that nothing was
disturbed. It is forbidden now to take {694}antiquities out of Egypt, and anything of the sort found in the trunk of a departing
stranger is liable to confiscation.
And behold us now on the deck of a Malta-bound steamer, prepared, when she lifts her anchor, to say good-bye to Egypt.
Farewell to the land of the purest sky, and the most lovely winter climate that the world can boast; to the temples and tombs that
tell us of a people far back in the misty past--a people whose mechanical skill surpass that of all those who have followed them,
and before whose monuments we stand with bowed and reverential heads; and to the shrines of Isis and Osiris to whose mystic worship
the most powerful nation of its time was devoted, and for whom the most gigantic temples were erected.
And farewell to the Nile, that mysterious river whose sources are yet unknown, and on whose banks have been written through sixty
centuries many important pages of the world’s history. Mighty and brilliant empires have there risen and fallen; great cities have
flourished and disappeared. Persian and Greek and Roman have come and gone; Pagan and Jew and Christian and Moslem have built their
temples, and have seen the glory and decline of their religions; on its sleepy waters floated the frail bark that held the infant
Moses, and beside them rested the Holy family when it fled from Bethlehem that the Saviour child might escape the fury of Herod.
Farewell to the desert with its glowing sands, and to the rich valley whose fertility six thousand years of assiduous cultivation
have not been able to exhaust; to waving palms and kneeling camels; to the city of the Caliphs, the Mamelukes, and the Khedive,
where the bustle and activity of the Occident have not altogether changed the dignified mien or opened the eyes of the sleepy
Oriental; where he sits to-day as he sat in the time of Haroun Al-Raschid, and waits in his little shop till Heaven chooses to send
a purchaser for his wares.
To the land where Pharaoh ruled, and Cleopatra loved and died; where Past and Present stand face to face, and where the opposing
waves of Eastern and Western civilizations are met we utter a hearty good-bye. When shall we see you again?
FINIS.