CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE {202}
CAIRO and plague! During the whole time of my stay the plague was so
master of the city, and showed itself so staringly in every street and
every alley, that I can’t now affect to dissociate the two ideas.
When coming from the Desert I rode through a village which lies near to
the city on the eastern side, there approached me with busy face and
earnest gestures a personage in the Turkish dress. His long flowing
beard gave him rather a majestic look, but his briskness of manner, and
his visible anxiety to accost me, seemed strange in an Oriental. The man
in fact was French, or of French origin, and his object was to warn me of
the plague, and prevent me from entering the city.
“Arrêtez-vous, monsieur, je vous en prie—arrêtez-vous; il ne faut pas
entrer dans la ville; la peste y règne partout.”
“Oui, je sais, {203a} mais—”
“Mais monsieur, je dis la peste—la peste; c’est de LA PESTE qu’il est
question.”
“Oui, je sais, mais—”
“Mais monsieur, je dis encore LA PESTE—LA PESTE. Je vous conjure de ne
pas entrer dans la ville—vous seriaz dans une ville empestée.”
“Oui, je sais, mais—”
“Mais monsieur, je dois donc vous avertir tout bonnement que si vous
entrez dans la ville, vous serez—enfin vous serez COMPROMIS!” {203b}
“Oui, je sais, mais—”
The Frenchman was at last convinced that it was vain to reason with a
mere Englishman, who could not understand what it was to be
“compromised.” I thanked him most sincerely for his kindly meant
warning; in hot countries it is very unusual indeed for a man to go out
in the glare of the sun and give free advice to a stranger.
When I arrived at Cairo I summoned Osman Effendi, who was, as I knew, the
owner of several houses, and would be able to provide me with apartments.
He had no difficulty in doing this, for there was not one European
traveller in Cairo besides myself. Poor Osman! he met me with a
sorrowful countenance, for the fear of the plague sat heavily on his
soul. He seemed as if he felt that he was doing wrong in lending me a
resting-place, and he betrayed such a listlessness about temporal
matters, as one might look for in a man who believed that his days were
numbered. He caught me too soon after my arrival coming out from the
public baths, {204} and from that time forward he was sadly afraid of me,
for he shared the opinions of Europeans with respect to the effect of
contagion.
Osman’s history is a curious one. He was a Scotchman born, and when very
young, being then a drummer-boy, he landed in Egypt with Fraser’s force.
He was taken prisoner, and according to Mahometan custom, the alternative
of death or the Koran was offered to him; he did not choose death, and
therefore went through the ceremonies which were necessary for turning
him into a good Mahometan. But what amused me most in his history was
this, that very soon after having embraced Islam he was obliged in
practice to become curious and discriminating in his new faith, to make
war upon Mahometan dissenters, and follow the orthodox standard of the
Prophet in fierce campaigns against the Wahabees, {205} who are the
Unitarians of the Mussulman world. The Wahabees were crushed, and Osman
returning home in triumph from his holy wars, began to flourish in the
world. He acquired property, and became _effendi_, or gentleman. At the
time of my visit to Cairo he seemed to be much respected by his brother
Mahometans, and gave pledge of his sincere alienation from Christianity
by keeping a couple of wives. He affected the same sort of reserve in
mentioning them as is generally shown by Orientals. He invited me,
indeed, to see his harem, but he made both his wives bundle out before I
was admitted. He felt, as it seemed to me, that neither of them would
bear criticism, and I think that this idea, rather than any motive of
sincere jealousy, induced him to keep them out of sight. The rooms of
the harem reminded me of an English nursery rather than of a Mahometan
paradise. One is apt to judge of a woman before one sees her by the air
of elegance or coarseness with which she surrounds her home; I judged
Osman’s wives by this test, and condemned them both. But the strangest
feature in Osman’s character was his inextinguishable nationality. In
vain they had brought him over the seas in early boyhood; in vain had he
suffered captivity, conversion, circumcision; in vain they had passed him
through fire in their Arabian campaigns, they could not cut away or burn
out poor Osman’s inborn love of all that was Scotch; in vain men called
him Effendi; in vain he swept along in Eastern robes; in vain the rival
wives adorned his harem: the joy of his heart still plainly lay in this,
that he had three shelves of books, and that the books were thoroughbred
Scotch—the Edinburgh this, the Edinburgh that, and above all, I
recollect, he prided himself upon the “Edinburgh Cabinet Library.”
The fear of the plague is its forerunner. It is likely enough that at
the time of my seeing poor Osman the deadly taint was beginning to creep
through his veins, but it was not till after I had left Cairo that he was
visibly stricken. He died.
As soon as I had seen all that I wanted to see in Cairo and in the
neighbourhood I wished to make my escape from a city that lay under the
terrible curse of the plague, but Mysseri fell ill, in consequence, I
believe, of the hardships which he had been suffering in my service.
After a while he recovered sufficiently to undertake a journey, but then
there was some difficulty in procuring beasts of burthen, and it was not
till the nineteenth day of my sojourn that I quitted the city.
During all this time the power of the plague was rapidly increasing.
When I first arrived, it was said that the daily number of “accidents” by
plague, out of a population of about two hundred thousand, did not exceed
four or five hundred, but before I went away the deaths were reckoned at
twelve hundred a day. I had no means of knowing whether the numbers
(given out, as I believe they were, by officials) were at all correct,
but I could not help knowing that from day to day the number of the dead
was increasing. My quarters were in a street which was one of the chief
thoroughfares of the city. The funerals in Cairo take place between
daybreak and noon, and as I was generally in my rooms during this part of
the day, I could form some opinion as to the briskness of the plague. I
don’t mean this for a sly insinuation that I got up every morning with
the sun. It was not so; but the funerals of most people in decent
circumstances at Cairo are attended by singers and howlers, and the
performances of these people woke me in the early morning, and prevented
me from remaining in ignorance of what was going on in the street below.
These funerals were very simply conducted. The bier was a shallow wooden
tray, carried upon a light and weak wooden frame. The tray had, in
general, no lid, but the body was more or less hidden from view by a
shawl or scarf. The whole was borne upon the shoulders of men, who
contrived to cut along with their burthen at a great pace. Two or three
singers generally preceded the bier; the howlers (who are paid for their
vocal labours) followed after, and last of all came such of the dead
man’s friends and relations as could keep up with such a rapid
procession; these, especially the women, would get terribly blown, and
would straggle back into the rear; many were fairly “beaten off.” I
never observed any appearance of mourning in the mourners: the pace was
too severe for any solemn affectation of grief. {207}
When first I arrived at Cairo the funerals that daily passed under my
windows were many, but still there were frequent and long intervals
without a single howl. Every day, however (except one, when I fancied
that I observed a diminution of funerals), these intervals became less
frequent and shorter, and at last, the passing of the howlers from morn
till noon was almost incessant. I believe that about one-half of the
whole people was carried off by this visitation. The Orientals, however,
have more quiet fortitude than Europeans under afflictions of this sort,
and they never allow the plague to interfere with their religious usages.
I rode one day round the great burial-ground. The tombs are strewed over
a great expanse, among the vast mountains of rubbish (the accumulations
of many centuries) which surround the city. The ground, unlike the
Turkish “cities of the dead,” which are made so beautiful by their dark
cypresses, has nothing to sweeten melancholy, nothing to mitigate the
odiousness of death. Carnivorous beasts and birds possess the place by
night, and now in the fair morning it was all alive with fresh
comers—alive with dead. Yet at this very time, when the plague was
raging so furiously, and on this very ground, which resounded so
mournfully with the howls of arriving funerals, preparations were going
on for the religious festival called the Kourban Bairam. Tents were
pitched, and _swings hung for the amusement of children_—a ghastly
holiday; but the Mahometans take a pride, and a just pride, in following
their ancient customs undisturbed by the shadow of death.
I did not hear, whilst I was at Cairo, that any prayer for a remission of
the plague had been offered up in the mosques. I believe that however
frightful the ravages of the disease may be, the Mahometans refrain from
approaching Heaven with their complaints until the plague has endured for
a long space, and then at last they pray God, not that the plague may
cease, but that it may go to another city!
A good Mussulman seems to take pride in repudiating the European notion
that the will of God can be eluded by eluding the touch of a sleeve.
When I went to see the pyramids of Sakkara I was the guest of a noble old
fellow, an Osmanlee, whose soft rolling language it was a luxury to hear
after suffering, as I had suffered of late, from the shrieking tongue of
the Arabs. This man was aware of the European ideas about contagion, and
his first care therefore was to assure me that not a single instance of
plague had occurred in his village. He then inquired as to the progress
of the plague at Cairo. I had but a bad account to give. Up to this
time my host had carefully refrained from touching me out of respect to
the European theory of contagion, but as soon as it was made plain that
he, and not I, would be the person endangered by contact, he gently laid
his hand upon my arm, in order to make me feel sure that the circumstance
of my coming from an infected city did not occasion him the least
uneasiness. In that touch there was true hospitality.
Very different is the faith and the practice of the Europeans, or rather,
I mean of the Europeans settled in the East, and commonly called
Levantines. When I came to the end of my journey over the Desert I had
been so long alone, that the prospect of speaking to somebody at Cairo
seemed almost a new excitement. I felt a sort of consciousness that I
had a little of the wild beast about me, but I was quite in the humour to
be charmingly tame, and to be quite engaging in my manners, if I should
have an opportunity of holding communion with any of the human race
whilst at Cairo. I knew no one in the place, and had no letters of
introduction, but I carried letters of credit, and it often happens in
places remote from England that those “advices” operate as a sort of
introduction, and obtain for the bearer (if disposed to receive them)
such ordinary civilities as it may be in the power of the banker to
offer.
Very soon after my arrival I went to the house of the Levantine to whom
my credentials were addressed. At his door several persons (all Arabs)
were hanging about and keeping guard. It was not till after some delay,
and the passing of some communications with those in the interior of the
citadel, that I was admitted. At length, however, I was conducted
through the court, and up a flight of stairs, and finally into the
apartment where business was transacted. The room was divided by an
excellent, substantial fence of iron bars, and behind this grille the
banker had his station. The truth was, that from fear of the plague he
had adopted the course usually taken by European residents, and had shut
himself up “in strict quarantine”—that is to say, that he had, as he
hoped, cut himself off from all communication with infecting substances.
The Europeans long resident in the East, without any, or with scarcely
any, exception, are firmly convinced that the plague is propagated by
contact, and by contact only; that if they can but avoid the touch of an
infecting substance they are safe, and that if they cannot, they die.
This belief induces them to adopt the contrivance of putting themselves
in that state of siege which they call “quarantine.” It is a part of
their faith that metals, and hempen rope, and also, I fancy, one or two
other substances, will not carry the infection; and they likewise believe
that the germ of pestilence, which lies in an infected substance, may be
destroyed by submersion in water, or by the action of smoke. They
therefore guard the doors of their houses with the utmost care against
intrusion, and condemn themselves, with all the members of their family,
including any European servants, to a strict imprisonment within the
walls of their dwelling. Their native attendants are not allowed to
enter at all, but they make the necessary purchases of provisions, which
are hauled up through one of the windows by means of a rope, and are then
soaked in water.
I knew nothing of these mysteries, and was not therefore prepared for the
sort of reception which I met with. I advanced to the iron fence, and
putting my letter between the bars, politely proffered it to Mr. Banker.
Mr. Banker received me with a sad and dejected look, and not “with open
arms,” or with any arms at all, but with—a pair of tongs! I placed my
letter between the iron fingers, which picked it up as if it were a
viper, and conveyed it away to be scorched and purified by fire and
smoke. I was disgusted at this reception, and at the idea that anything
of mine could carry infection to the poor wretch who stood on the other
side of the grille, pale and trembling, and already meet for death. I
looked with something of the Mahometan’s feeling upon these little
contrivances for eluding fate; and in this instance, at least, they were
vain. A few more days, and the poor money-changer, who had striven to
guard the days of his life (as though they were coins) with bolts and
bars of iron—he was seized by the plague, and he died.
To people entertaining such opinions as these respecting the fatal effect
of contact, the narrow and crowded streets of Cairo were terrible as the
easy slope that leads to Avernus. The roaring ocean and the beetling
crags owe something of their sublimity to this—that if they be tempted,
they can take the warm life of a man. To the contagionist, filled as he
is with the dread of final causes, having no faith in destiny nor in the
fixed will of God, and with none of the devil-may-care indifference which
might stand him instead of creeds—to such one, every rag that shivers in
the breeze of a plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. If by
any terrible ordinance he be forced to venture forth, he sees death
dangling from every sleeve, and as he creeps forward, he poises his
shuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing at his
right elbow and the murderous pelisse that threatens to mow him clean
down as it sweeps along on his left. But most of all, he dreads that
which most of all he should love—the touch of a woman’s dress; for
mothers and wives, hurrying forth on kindly errands from the bedsides of
the dying, go slouching along through the streets more wilfully and less
courteously than the men. For a while it may be that the caution of the
poor Levantine may enable him to avoid contact, but sooner or later
perhaps the dreaded chance arrives; that bundle of linen, with the dark
tearful eyes at the top of it, that labours along with the voluptuous
clumsiness of Grisi—she has touched the poor Levantine with the hem of
her sleeve! From that dread moment his peace is gone; his mind, for ever
hanging upon the fatal touch, invites the blow which he fears. He
watches for the symptoms of plague so carefully, that sooner or later
they come in truth. The parched mouth is a sign—his mouth _is_ parched;
the throbbing brain—his brain _does_ throb; the rapid pulse—he touches
his own wrist (for he dares not ask counsel of any man lest he be
deserted), he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goes
galloping out of his heart; there is nothing but the fatal swelling that
is wanting to make his sad conviction complete; immediately he has an odd
feel under the arm—no pain, but a little straining of the skin; he would
to God it were his fancy that were strong enough to give him that
sensation. This is the worst of all; it now seems to him that he could
be happy and contented with his parched mouth and his throbbing brain and
his rapid pulse, if only he could know that there were no swelling under
the left arm; but dare he try?—In a moment of calmness and deliberation
he dares not, but when for a while he has writhed under the torture of
suspense, a sudden strength of will drives him to seek and know his fate.
He touches the gland, and finds the skin sane and sound, but under the
cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves as he
pushes it. Oh! but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence of
death? Feel the gland of the other arm; there is not the same lump
exactly, yet something a little like it: have not some people glands
naturally enlarged?—would to Heaven he were one! So he does for himself
the work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death, thus courted, does
indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been so
well begun; he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the victim, and
lets him rave for a season, but all chance-wise, of people and things
once dear, or of people and things indifferent. Once more the poor
fellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and sees the sun-dial that
stood in his childhood’s garden; sees part of his mother, and the
long-since-forgotten face of that little dead sister (he sees her, he
says, on a Sunday morning, for all the church bells are ringing); he
looks up and down through the universe, and owns it well piled with bales
upon bales of cotton, and cotton eternal—so much so that he feels, he
knows, he swears he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard table
would not slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with;
but it is not—it’s a cue that won’t move—his own arm won’t move—in short,
there’s the devil to pay in the brain of the poor Levantine, and perhaps
the next night but one he becomes the “life and the soul” of some
squalling jackal family who fish him out by the foot from his shallow and
sandy grave.
Better fate was mine. By some happy perverseness (occasioned perhaps by
my disgust at the notion of being received with a pair of tongs) I took
it into my pleasant head that all the European notions about contagion
were thoroughly unfounded; that the plague might be providential or
“epidemic” (as they phrase it), but was not contagious; and that I could
not be killed by the touch of a woman’s sleeve, nor yet by her blessed
breath. I therefore determined that the plague should not alter my
habits and amusements in any one respect. Though I came to this resolve
from impulse, I think that I took the course which was in effect the most
prudent, for the cheerfulness of spirits which I was thus enabled to
retain discouraged the yellow-winged angel, and prevented him from taking
a shot at me. I, however, so far respected the opinion of the Europeans,
that I avoided touching when I could do so without privation or
inconvenience. This endeavour furnished me with a sort of amusement as I
passed through the streets. The usual mode of moving from place to place
in the city of Cairo is upon donkeys, of which great numbers are always
in readiness, with donkey-boys attached. I had two who constantly (until
one of them died of the plague) waited at my door upon the chance of
being wanted. I found this way of moving about exceedingly pleasant, and
never attempted any other. I had only to mount my beast, and tell my
donkey-boy the point for which I was bound, and instantly I began to
glide on at a capital pace. The streets of Cairo are not paved in any
way, but strewed with a dry sandy soil, so deadening to sound, that the
footfall of my donkey could scarcely be heard. There is no _trottoir_,
and as you ride through the streets you mingle with the people on foot.
Those who are in your way, upon being warned by the shouts of the
donkey-boy, move very slightly aside, so as to leave you a narrow lane,
through which you pass at a gallop. In this way you glide on
delightfully in the very midst of crowds, without being inconvenienced or
stopped for a moment. It seems to you that it is not the donkey but the
donkey-boy who wafts you on with his shouts through pleasant groups, and
air that feels thick with the fragrance of burial spice. “Eh! Sheik, Eh!
Bint,—reggalek,—shumalek,” etc. etc.—“O old man, O virgin, get out of the
way on the right—O virgin, O old man, get out of way on the left—this
Englishman comes, he comes, he comes!” The narrow alley which these
shouts cleared for my passage made it possible, though difficult, to go
on for a long way without touching a single person, and my endeavours to
avoid such contact were a sort of game for me in my loneliness, which was
not without interest. If I got through a street without being touched, I
won; if I was touched, I lost—lost a deuce of stake, according to the
theory of the Europeans; but that I deemed to be all nonsense—I only lost
that game, and would certainly win the next.
There is not much in the way of public buildings to admire at Cairo, but
I saw one handsome mosque, to which an instructive history is attached.
A Hindustanee merchant having amassed an immense fortune settled in
Cairo, and soon found that his riches in the then state of the political
world gave him vast power in the city—power, however, the exercise of
which was much restrained by the counteracting influence of other wealthy
men. With a view to extinguish every attempt at rivalry the Hindustanee
merchant built this magnificent mosque at his own expense. When the work
was complete, he invited all the leading men of the city to join him in
prayer within the walls of the newly built temple, and he then caused to
be massacred all those who were sufficiently influential to cause him any
jealousy or uneasiness—in short, all “the respectable men” of the place;
after this he possessed undisputed power in the city and was greatly
revered—he is revered to this day. It seemed to me that there was a
touching simplicity in the mode which this man so successfully adopted
for gaining the confidence and goodwill of his fellow-citizens. There
seems to be some improbability in the story (though not nearly so gross
as it might appear to an European ignorant of the East, for witness
Mehemet Ali’s destruction of the Mamelukes, a closely similar act, and
attended with the like brilliant success), {217} but even if the story be
false as a mere fact, it is perfectly true as an illustration—it is a
true exposition of the means by which the respect and affection of
Orientals may be conciliated.
I ascended one day to the citadel, which commands a superb view of the
town. The fanciful and elaborate gilt-work of the many minarets gives a
light and florid grace to the city as seen from this height, but before
you can look for many seconds at such things your eyes are drawn
westward—drawn westward and over the Nile, till they rest upon the
massive enormities of the Ghizeh Pyramids.
I saw within the fortress many yoke of men all haggard and woebegone, and
a kennel of very fine lions well fed and flourishing: I say _yoke_ of
men, for the poor fellows were working together in bonds; I say a
_kennel_ of lions, for the beasts were not enclosed in cages, but simply
chained up like dogs.
I went round the bazaars: it seemed to me that pipes and arms were
cheaper here than at Constantinople, and I should advise you therefore if
you go to both places to prefer the market of Cairo. I had previously
bought several of such things at Constantinople, and did not choose to
encumber myself, or to speak more honestly, I did not choose to
disencumber my purse by making any more purchases. In the open
slave-market I saw about fifty girls exposed for sale, but all of them
black, or “invisible” brown. A slave agent took me to some rooms in the
upper storey of the building, and also into several obscure houses in the
neighbourhood, with a view to show me some white women. The owners
raised various objections to the display of their ware, and well they
might, for I had not the least notion of purchasing; some refused on
account of the illegality of the proceeding, {218} and others declared
that all transactions of this sort were completely out of the question as
long as the plague was raging. I only succeeded in seeing one white
slave who was for sale, but on this one the owner affected to set an
immense value, and raised my expectations to a high pitch by saying that
the girl was Circassian, and was “fair as the full moon.” After a good
deal of delay I was at last led into a room, at the farther end of which
was that mass of white linen which indicates an Eastern woman. She was
bid to uncover her face, and I presently saw that, though very far from
being good-looking, according to my notion of beauty, she had not been
inaptly described by the man who compared her to the full moon, for her
large face was perfectly round and perfectly white. Though very young,
she was nevertheless extremely fat. She gave me the idea of having been
got up for sale, of having been fattened and whitened by medicines or by
some peculiar diet. I was firmly determined not to see any more of her
than the face. She was perhaps disgusted at this my virtuous resolve, as
well as with my personal appearance; perhaps she saw my distaste and
disappointment; perhaps she wished to gain favour with her owner by
showing her attachment to his faith: at all events, she holloaed out very
lustily and very decidedly that “she would not be bought by the infidel.”
Whilst I remained at Cairo I thought it worth while to see something of
the magicians, because I considered that these men were in some sort the
descendants of those who contended so stoutly against the superior power
of Aaron. I therefore sent for an old man who was held to be the chief
of the magicians, and desired him to show me the wonders of his art. The
old man looked and dressed his character exceedingly well; the vast
turban, the flowing beard, and the ample robes were all that one could
wish in the way of appearance. The first experiment (a very stale one)
which he attempted to perform for me was that of showing the forms and
faces of my absent friends, not to me, but to a boy brought in from the
streets for the purpose, and said to be chosen at random. A _mangale_
(pan of burning charcoal) was brought into my room, and the magician
bending over it, sprinkled upon the fire some substances which must have
consisted partly of spices or sweetly burning woods, for immediately a
fragrant smoke arose that curled around the bending form of the wizard,
the while that he pronounced his first incantations. When these were
over the boy was made to sit down, and a common green shade was bound
over his brow; then the wizard took ink, and still continuing his
incantations, wrote certain mysterious figures upon the boy’s palm, and
directed him to rivet his attention to these marks without looking aside
for an instant. Again the incantations proceeded, and after a while the
boy, being seemingly a little agitated, was asked whether he saw anything
on the palm of his hand. He declared that he saw a kind of military
procession, with flags and banners, which he described rather minutely.
I was then called upon to name the absent person whose form was to be
made visible. I named Keate. You were not at Eton, and I must tell you,
therefore, what manner of man it was that I named, though I think you
must have some idea of him already, for wherever from utmost Canada to
Bundelcund—wherever there was the whitewashed wall of an officer’s room,
or of any other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kick
their heels, there likely enough (in the days of his reign) the head of
Keate would be seen scratched or drawn with those various degrees of
skill which one observes in the representations of saints. Anybody
without the least notion of drawing could still draw a speaking, nay
scolding, likeness of Keate. If you had no pencil, you could draw him
well enough with a poker, or the leg of a chair, or the smoke of a
candle. He was little more (if more at all) than five feet in height,
and was not very great in girth, but in this space was concentrated the
pluck of ten battalions. He had a really noble voice, which he could
modulate with great skill, but he had also the power of quacking like an
angry duck, and he almost always adopted this mode of communication in
order to inspire respect. He was a capital scholar, but his ingenuous
learning had _not_ “softened his manners” and _had_ “permitted them to be
fierce”—tremendously fierce; he had the most complete command over his
temper—I mean over his _good_ temper, which he scarcely ever allowed to
appear: you could not put him out of humour—that is, out of the
_ill_-humour which he thought to be fitting for a headmaster. His red
shaggy eyebrows were so prominent, that he habitually used them as arms
and hands for the purpose of pointing out any object towards which he
wished to direct attention; the rest of his features were equally
striking in their way, and were all and all his own; he wore a
fancy-dress partly resembling the costume of Napoleon, and partly that of
a widow-woman. I could not by any possibility have named anybody more
decidedly differing in appearance from the rest of the human race.
“Whom do you name?”—“I name John Keate.”—“Now, what do you see?” said the
wizard to the boy.—“I see,” answered the boy, “I see a fair girl with
golden hair, blue eyes, pallid face, rosy lips.” _There_ was a shot! I
shouted out my laughter to the horror of the wizard, who perceiving the
grossness of his failure, declared that the boy must have known sin (for
none but the innocent can see truth), and accordingly kicked him
downstairs.
One or two other boys were tried, but none could “see truth”; they all
made sadly “bad shots.”
Notwithstanding the failure of these experiments, I wished to see what
sort of mummery my magician would practise if I called upon him to show
me some performances of a higher order than those which had been
attempted. I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in virtue of
which he was to descend with me into the tombs near the Pyramids, and
there evoke the devil. The negotiation lasted some time, for Dthemetri,
as in duty bound, tried to beat down the wizard as much as he could, and
the wizard, on his part, manfully stuck up for his price, declaring that
to raise the devil was really no joke, and insinuating that to do so was
an awesome crime. I let Dthemetri have his way in the negotiation, but I
felt in reality very indifferent about the sum to be paid, and for this
reason, namely, that the payment (except a very small present which I
might make or not, as I chose) was to be _contingent on success_. At
length the bargain was made, and it was arranged that after a few days,
to be allowed for preparation, the wizard should raise the devil for two
pounds ten, play or pay—no devil, no piastres.
The wizard failed to keep his appointment. I sent to know why the deuce
he had not come to raise the devil. The truth was, that my Mahomet had
gone to the mountain. The plague had seized him, and he died.
Although the plague had now spread terrible havoc around me, I did not
see very plainly any corresponding change in the looks of the streets
until the seventh day after my arrival. I then first observed that the
city was _silenced_. There were no outward signs of despair nor of
violent terror, but many of the voices that had swelled the busy hum of
men were already hushed in death, and the survivors, so used to scream
and screech in their earnestness whenever they bought or sold, now showed
an unwonted indifference about the affairs of this world: it was less
worth while for men to haggle and haggle, and crack the sky with noisy
bargains, when the great commander was there, who could “pay all their
debts with the roll of his drum.”
At this time I was informed that of twenty-five thousand people at
Alexandria, twelve thousand had died already; the destroyer had come
rather later to Cairo, but there was nothing of weariness in his strides.
The deaths came faster than ever they befell in the plague of London; but
the calmness of Orientals under such visitations, and the habit of using
biers for interment, instead of burying coffins along with the bodies,
rendered it practicable to dispose of the dead in the usual way, without
shocking the people by any unaccustomed spectacle of horror. There was
no tumbling of bodies into carts, as in the plague of Florence and the
plague of London. Every man, according to his station, was properly
buried, and that in the usual way, except that he went to his grave in a
more hurried pace than might have been adopted under ordinary
circumstances.
The funerals which poured through the streets were not the only public
evidence of deaths. In Cairo this custom prevails: At the instant of a
man’s death (if his property is sufficient to justify the expense)
professional howlers are employed. I believe that these persons are
brought near to the dying man when his end appears to be approaching, and
the moment that life is gone they lift up their voices and send forth a
loud wail from the chamber of death. Thus I knew when my near neighbours
died; sometimes the howls were near, sometimes more distant. Once I was
awakened in the night by the wail of death in the next house, and another
time by a like howl from the house opposite; and there were two or three
minutes, I recollect, during which the howl seemed to be actually
_running_ along the street.
I happened to be rather teased at this time by a sore throat, and I
thought it would be well to get it cured if I could before I again
started on my travels. I therefore inquired for a Frank doctor, and was
informed that the only one then at Cairo was a young Bolognese refugee,
who was so poor that he had not been able to take flight, as the other
medical men had done. At such a time as this it was out of the question
to _send_ for a European physician; a person thus summoned would be sure
to suppose that the patient was ill of the plague, and would decline to
come. I therefore rode to the young doctor’s residence. After
experiencing some little difficulty in finding where to look for him, I
ascended a flight or two of stairs and knocked at his door. No one came
immediately, but after some little delay the medico himself opened the
door, and admitted me. I of course made him understand that I had come
to consult him, but before entering upon my throat grievance I accepted a
chair, and exchanged a sentence or two of commonplace conversation. Now
the natural commonplace of the city at this season was of a gloomy sort,
“Come va la peste?” (how goes the plague?) and this was precisely the
question I put. A deep sigh, and the words, “Sette cento per giorno,
signor” (seven hundred a day), pronounced in a tone of the deepest
sadness and dejection, were the answer I received. The day was not
oppressively hot, yet I saw that the doctor was perspiring profusely, and
even the outside surface of the thick shawl dressing-gown, in which he
had wrapped himself, appeared to be moist. He was a handsome,
pleasant-looking young fellow, but the deep melancholy of his tone did
not tempt me to prolong the conversation, and without further delay I
requested that my throat might be looked at. The medico held my chin in
the usual way, and examined my throat. He then wrote me a prescription,
and almost immediately afterwards I bade him farewell, but as he
conducted me towards the door I observed an expression of strange and
unhappy watchfulness in his rolling eyes. It was not the next day, but
the next day but one, if I rightly remember, that I sent to request
another interview with my doctor. In due time Dthemetri, who was my
messenger, returned, looking sadly aghast—he had “_met_ the medico,” for
so he phrased it, “coming out from his house—in a bier!”
It was of course plain that when the poor Bolognese was looking at my
throat, and almost mingling his breath with mine, he was stricken of the
plague. I suppose that the violent sweat in which I found him had been
produced by some medicine, which he must have taken in the hope of curing
himself. The peculiar rolling of the eyes which I had remarked is, I
believe, to experienced observers, a pretty sure test of the plague. A
Russian acquaintance of mine, speaking from the information of men who
had made the Turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829, told me that by this
sign the officers of Sabalkansky’s force were able to make out the
plague-stricken soldiers with a good deal of certainty.
It so happened that most of the people with whom I had anything to do
during my stay at Cairo were seized with plague, and all these died.
Since I had been for a long time _en route_ before I reached Egypt, and
was about to start again for another long journey over the Desert, there
were of course many little matters touching my wardrobe and my travelling
equipments which required to be attended to whilst I remained in the
city. It happened so many times that Dthemetri’s orders in respect to
these matters were frustrated by the deaths of the tradespeople and
others whom he employed, that at last I became quite accustomed to the
peculiar manner which he assumed when he prepared to announce a new death
to me. The poor fellow naturally supposed that I should feel some
uneasiness at hearing of the “accidents” which happened to persons
employed by me, and he therefore communicated their deaths as though they
were the deaths of friends. He would cast down his eyes and look like a
man abashed, and then gently, and with a mournful gesture, allow the
words, “Morto, signor,” to come through his lips. I don’t know how many
of such instances occurred, but they were several, and besides these (as
I told you before), my banker, my doctor, my landlord, and my magician
all died of the plague. A lad who acted as a helper in the house which I
occupied lost a brother and a sister within a few hours. Out of my two
established donkey-boys, one died. I did not hear of any instance in
which a plague-stricken patient had recovered.
Going out one morning I met unexpectedly the scorching breath of the
kamsin wind, and fearing that I should faint under the horrible
sensations which it caused, I returned to my rooms. Reflecting, however,
that I might have to encounter this wind in the Desert, where there would
be no possibility of avoiding it, I thought it would be better to brave
it once more in the city, and to try whether I could really bear it or
not. I therefore mounted my ass and rode to old Cairo, and along the
gardens by the banks of the Nile. The wind was hot to the touch, as
though it came from a furnace. It blew strongly, but yet with such
perfect steadiness, that the trees bending under its force remained fixed
in the same curves without perceptibly waving. The whole sky was
obscured by a veil of yellowish grey, that shut out the face of the sun.
The streets were utterly silent, being indeed almost entirely deserted;
and not without cause, for the scorching blast, whilst it fevers the
blood, closes up the pores of the skin, and is terribly distressing,
therefore, to every animal that encounters it. I returned to my rooms
dreadfully ill. My head ached with a burning pain, and my pulse bounded
quick and fitfully, but perhaps (as in the instance of the poor
Levantine, whose death I was mentioning) the fear and excitement which I
felt in trying my own wrist may have made my blood flutter the faster.
It is a thoroughly well believed theory, that during the continuance of
the plague you can’t be ill of any other febrile malady—an unpleasant
privilege that! for ill I was, and ill of fever, and I anxiously wished
that the ailment might turn out to be anything rather than plague. I had
some right to surmise that my illness may have been merely the effect of
the hot wind; and this notion was encouraged by the elasticity of my
spirits, and by a strong forefeeling that much of my destined life in
this world was yet to come, and yet to be fulfilled. That was my
instinctive belief, but when I carefully weighed the probabilities on the
one side and on the other, I could not help seeing that the strength of
argument was all against me. There was a strong antecedent likelihood in
_favour_ of my being struck by the same blow as the rest of the people
who had been dying around me. Besides, it occurred to me that, after
all, the universal opinion of the Europeans upon a medical question, such
as that of contagion, might probably be correct, and _if it were_, I was
so thoroughly “compromised,” and especially by the touch and breath of
the dying medico, that I had no right to expect any other fate than that
which now seemed to have overtaken me. Balancing as well as I could all
the considerations which hope and fear suggested, I slowly and
reluctantly came to the conclusion that, according to all merely
reasonable probability, the plague had come upon me.
You would suppose that this conviction would have induced me to write a
few farewell lines to those who were dearest, and that having done that,
I should have turned my thoughts towards the world to come. Such,
however, was not the case. I believe that the prospect of death often
brings with it strong anxieties about matters of comparatively trivial
import, and certainly with me the whole energy of the mind was directed
towards the one petty object of concealing my illness until the latest
possible moment—until the delirious stage. I did not believe that either
Mysseri or Dthemetri, who had served me so faithfully in all trials,
would have deserted me (as most Europeans are wont to do) when they knew
that I was stricken by plague, but I shrank from the idea of putting them
to this test, and I dreaded the consternation which the knowledge of my
illness would be sure to occasion.
I was very ill indeed at the moment when my dinner was served, and my
soul sickened at the sight of the food; but I had luckily the habit of
dispensing with the attendance of servants during my meal, and as soon as
I was left alone I made a melancholy calculation of the quantity of food
which I should have eaten if I had been in my usual health, and filled my
plates accordingly, and gave myself salt, and so on, as though I were
going to dine. I then transferred the viands to a piece of the
omnipresent _Times_ newspaper, and hid them away in a cupboard, for it
was not yet night, and I dared not throw the food into the street until
darkness came. I did not at all relish this process of fictitious
dining, but at length the cloth was removed, and I gladly reclined on my
divan (I would not lie down) with the _Arabian Nights_ in my hand.
I had a feeling that tea would be a capital thing for me, but I would not
order it until the usual hour. When at last the time came, I drank deep
draughts from the fragrant cup. The effect was almost instantaneous. A
plenteous sweat burst through my skin, and watered my clothes through and
through. I kept myself thickly covered. The hot, tormenting weight
which had been loading my brain was slowly heaved away. The fever was
extinguished. I felt a new buoyancy of spirits, and an unusual activity
of mind. I went into my bed under a load of thick covering, and when the
morning came, and I asked myself how I was, I found that I was thoroughly
well.
I was very anxious to procure, if possible, some medical advice for
Mysseri, whose illness prevented my departure. Every one of the European
practising doctors, of whom there had been many, had either died or fled.
It was said, however, that there was an Englishman in the medical service
of the Pasha who quietly remained at his post, but that he never engaged
in private practice. I determined to try if I could obtain assistance in
this quarter. I did not venture at first, and at such a time as this, to
ask him to visit a servant who was prostrate on the bed of sickness, but
thinking that I might thus gain an opportunity of persuading him to
attend Mysseri, I wrote a note mentioning my own affair of the sore
throat, and asking for the benefit of his medical advice. He instantly
followed back my messenger, and was at once shown up into my room. I
entreated him to stand off, telling him fairly how deeply I was
“compromised,” and especially by my contact with a person actually ill
and since dead of plague. The generous fellow, with a good-humoured
laugh at the terrors of the contagionists, marched straight up to me, and
forcibly seized my hand, and shook it with manly violence. I felt
grateful indeed, and swelled with fresh pride of race because that my
countryman could carry himself so nobly. He soon cured Mysseri as well
as me, and all this he did from no other motives than the pleasure of
doing a kindness and the delight of braving a danger.
At length the great difficulty {230} which I had had in procuring beasts
for my departure was overcome, and now, too, I was to have the new
excitement of travelling on dromedaries. With two of these beasts and
three camels I gladly wound my way from out of the pest-stricken city.
As I passed through the streets I observed a fanatical-looking elder, who
stretched forth his arms, and lifted up his voice in a speech which
seemed to have some reference to me. Requiring an interpretation, I
found that the man had said, “The Pasha seeks camels, and he finds them
not; the Englishman says, ‘Let camels be brought,’ and behold, there they
are!”
I no sooner breathed the free, wholesome air of the Desert than I felt
that a great burden which I had been scarcely conscious of bearing was
lifted away from my mind. For nearly three weeks I had lived under peril
of death; the peril ceased, and not till then did I know how much alarm
and anxiety I had really been suffering.