IF one has only three weeks' holiday, and desires sunshine for his body,
let him spend the time upon the Riviera, where he will get a few degrees
higher temperature and a little more sunshine than in Cornwall--with
worse food and a more treacherous climate--and if he rather desires
inspiration for his mind, let him go to Florence; but in any case let
him understand that there is no place in Europe where one can get equal
good both for mind and body, and no place where one can escape winter.
Upon this matter doctors dream dreams and invalids fondly talk against
facts, for the cold in Florence, say, in the month of February, is quite
monumental for its piercing quality, and bad weather on the Riviera is
more cheerless than a wet day in the West Highlands, since in the latter
case you can get a decent fire during the day, and in the evening
you may have a sunset to remember for life. If, however, through any
conjunction of favourable circumstances, a man has six weeks at his
disposal in winter time (it is not likely he will have this very often
in the present vale of tears), then let him take his courage in both his
hands, and go to the Nile. Suppose he had three months, and were a good
sailor, then he ought to join a P. and O. liner at London, and go the
long sea voyage, for there is a chance, even in December or January,
that he might have summer weather on the fickle Mediterranean, and--such
things have happened--across the Bay. But with half that, time his plan
is to go by the special boat express to Marseilles, and join his steamer
there for Port Said; or, if he be hopelessly in fear of the sea, and
wishes to save every hour for Egypt, to take the Brindisi mail, and
cross to Port Said by one of the two passenger torpedo boats which make
the passage between Italy and Egypt in about forty-eight hours either
over the sea or through it.
Until it has been completely rebuilt after Western fashions, and
electric trolley cars are running down a widened Mooskee, and the men
have given up the tarboosh and the women their veil, Cairo will always
fascinate a European by its Eastern atmosphere. Sitting on the verandah
before his hotel, and looking over the heads of a herd of dragomen,
guides, pedlars, and beggars, he will see a panorama pass. A Pasha's
carriage, with a running footman in front, and the great man within,
mourning the restraints of European government; a camel from the
outlands laden with fresh green grass; a water-seller with his
leather barrel upon his back; a company of Egyptian soldiers, marching
admirably, and looking as if they could go anywhere; working women in
dark blue, with only their eyes visible, which are said to be the single
beautiful feature they possess; a closed carriage, with two ladies of
a great man's harem; a miscellaneous crowd of sellers of many articles,
shouting their goods, and workmen of many trades carrying things they
have made; a Bedouin from the desert in his white flowing robes, tall
and stately, and a Nubian as black as ebony from up country, with people
of all shades between white and black, and in all colours; here and
there a European tourist looking very much out of place in his unsightly
garments, and a couple of Highland soldiers looking as if the whole
place belonged to them. And if one desires to bathe in the life of
the place, then he can spend a day drifting up and down the Mooskee,
plunging down side alleys, attending native auctions, watching street
dramas, bargaining in bazaars, and visiting mosques; but the wise man
who is seeking for rest will not abide long in Cairo. Its air is close
and not invigorating, its smells innumerable and overpowering, its
social occupations wearisome and exacting, and its fleas larger,
hungrier, more impudent, and more insinuating than those of any other
place I have ever known. When the visitor has seen the citadel--and
sunset from the citadel is worth the journey to Cairo--and half a
dozen of the grander mosques, and the Pyramids and the great Museum of
Egyptian Antiquities, then, although it may be difficult to resist the
delightful hospitality of the English community, military and civil, the
traveller had better start by the Nile for Upper Egypt.
Nothing surely can be so restful as life on a Nile boat, where one lies
at his ease upon the deck with some book like _Pyramids in Progress_ in
his hand, and watches the procession along the banks of men, women, and
children, donkeys, camels, cattle, and occasionally horses, which
goes on from Cairo to Assouan, and, so far as I know, to Khartoum, and
looking into the far distances of the desert, across the strip of green
on either side of the river, and listening to the friendly sound of the
water wheels which distribute the Nile through the parched ground, and
then standing to see the blood-red sunset fade into orange and green
and violet, while the river turns into that delicate and indescribable
colour which, for want of some other word, is known as water-of-Nile.
The river itself takes hold of the imagination, whose origin has been
a historical mystery, on whose rise and fall the welfare of a country
depends, which carries the fertility of Egypt in its bosom, and on which
nations depend for their very life. No wonder it runs as a blue streak
through the frescoes in the tombs, and is never away from the thoughts
of the painters, for the Nile runs also through the life of the people.
It is the great highway up which the native boats sail their skilful
course driven by the north wind, down which they drop laden with produce
or pottery. It gives them the soil they till, which is rich enough to
bear twelve harvests a year, if crops could be ripened in a month. Upon
its banks the people sit as at their club; they bring down their
cattle to water at it, they wash in the Nile, both themselves and their
clothes, they swim and dive in the Nile as if they had been bom in it,
and they drink its thick, brown, sweet water with such relish that a
native Egyptian resents the idea of a filter because it takes away from
him the very joy of taste, and laughs at the idea of danger from his
loved Nile, which may give typhoid fever to Western tourists, but will
never do any injury to its own children.
After sugar cane and doora, the chief product of the steaming, prolific
Nile valley is the Fellaheen, who are not the descendants of the ancient
Egyptians, a lineage justly claimed by the Copts, but who are the
Egyptian people of to-day. The Fellah is the absolute creature of his
environment, an offspring of Nile mud, and when he is working on his
field, in the garments nature gave him, can hardly be distinguished
from the soil. He is brown, well-built, enduring, with perfect teeth and
excellent health. His home is a mud hut, with one room where he and his
family eat, and another where they sleep, and a courtyard inhabited by
the livestock of goats, donkeys, cocks and hens, pigeons, and a dog. It
is thatched with palm branches or doora straw, and on the roof the dog
will promenade in the daytime with great dignity, and from the roof,
when the moon is shining, and thoughts occur to his mind, he will
express himself to the other seventy-six dogs of the village who are
on their roofs, and are also moved to speech, with the result that no
European can sleep in the vicinity. Add a few vessels and mats by way
of furniture to the inside of the hut, and build a mud jar on the top
of the courtyard wall where the baby of the family can be put in safety,
and the household equipment of the Fellah is complete. He is very
ignorant, is not very keen about his religion, has no principles, except
a habit of industry and a keen sense of property, and he has not one
comfort or luxury of civilization, and not one political or national
ambition. But he has all the clothes he needs, which certainly is not
very much; he has plenty to eat, and for drink the endlessly delightful
Nile water; he is very seldom cold, and he has sunshine from January to
December, and from morning to night. Thanks to England, he is no longer
dragged away to work upon canals and public enterprises without wages
and without food, and to perish through toil and disease as his father
did, but is now paid and cared for when working for the community. He is
no longer in terror of the lash, and he is not robbed by his rulers; he
gets justice at the courts, and is now being delivered from the hands
of the money-lender, that terror of the East, by the excellent national
bank which has been recently established, and which advances him money
on reasonable terms. We pity him as we pass, toiling at his shadoof,
or coming like a rabbit out of his burrow, because he works so hard
and lives so plainly, and has no books and no vote, and no glass in his
windows, and no cheap trips. But perhaps we had better reserve our pity
for the home land. One does not see in the Arab village the ignoble
squalor of a town slum, nor the dreary, hopeless poverty, nor the evil
look of degraded people, nor the miserable intemperance. The Fellah does
not stand very high in the evolution of society, and neither his wife
nor his child is particularly fortunate; one would not wish to be a
Fellah, but, at any rate, he does not know the pinch of want, he is
on good terms with everybody, he has a ready joke, which perhaps it is
better you do not understand, and a quick smile; he is a well-fed and
contented animal.
The Fellah can be studied near at hand in your donkey boy, who is simply
a Nile peasant quickened by contact with Europeans. Within five minutes
he sizes you up with unerring judgment, and knows whether he can get
baksheesh from you by annoyance, or will fare better by leaving you in
peace; whether he can do as he pleases with you in the matter of speed,
or whether it will be better to do as you tell him. Once you are on
good terms with him--have learned the name of the donkey, approved the
donkey's excellence and his own, and settled whether you are going to
race or not--he settles down to make the journey agreeable both for
himself and you. He will make jests about every little incident, join
in the chorus of English songs, give information, such as he can, on
antiquities, and delight to teach you Arabic. Suppose you have a long
wait somewhere, and time is dragging, two of the junior donkey boys
will improvise a play. They will get up a fight, and after cuffing one
another in a way that would almost deceive you into the belief that they
were serious, one will knock the other down, and the fallen hero will
look as dead as Rames es the Great. A crowd will gather round him,
lifting a leg or an arm, which falls heavily to the ground, raising his
head, which rolls helplessly to the side. Horrified, they will then look
at one another, and shake their heads; they will cover the dead man's
face, and proceed to carry him home. By-and-by they will have a funeral,
and convey the corpse to the cemetery with wailing and weeping, and
after it has been solemnly laid to rest there will be a rapid and
delightful resurrection. The mourners will turn a set of somersaults
with extraordinary rapidity, the murderer and his victim will give
a gymnastic exhibition, and then the whole company, having raised an
enthusiastic hip, hip, hurrah! in applause for their own drama and as
a genial tribute to the Anglo-Saxon race, will stand opposite you in a
body with the most solemn countenance and demand baksheesh.
Like other folk, the donkey boys have their own trials, and I am still
sorry for Hassan, who attended me for four days at Luxor, and with whom
I became very friendly. His donkey was called Telephone, and was very
strong, handsome, and well caparisoned, and had, indeed, only one vice,
and that was that he would not go slowly, although the thermometer
stood at 130 degrees in the sun, but insisted on leading the procession.
Hassan had just married, and was never weary of describing the beauty
and goodness of his sixteen-year-old bride, and he was greatly lifted
when I sent home to her by his own hand a present of a silk headdress--I
think at least that was what the silk would be used for--such as I was
assured by a native friend the young women of that ilk greatly loved.
Hassan parted with me in high spirits when I went up the river, and I
promised that, on my third visit to Egypt, which will likely never take
place, I would ride no other donkey but “Telephone,” and have no other
footman but Hassan. And then tidings reached me at Assouan that the poor
bridegroom had been drawn for the army. For thirteen years he would have
to serve, partly in the regular forces, partly in the police, and for
half the time he would be entirely separated from his wife, and perhaps
for it all, and at the thought thereof and the terror of the army, and
the unknown places and duties before him, there was great lamentation in
Hassan's little home. So Hassan is by this time being drilled at Cairo,
and soon will be a smart soldier in the Egyptian army; but up at Luxor
his young wife will be mourning for him, and, alas! for an Eastern
woman, she will be aged before Hassan returns. This is the shadow which
hangs over the life of a Fellah.