FOR two days after the sand-storm, it gives us pleasure to write,
the weather was cold, raw, thoroughly unpleasant, resembling dear New
England quite enough to make one homesick. As late as the twenty-eighth
of March, this was. The fact may be a comfort to those who dwell in a
region where winter takes a fresh hold in March.
We broke up our establishment on the dahabeëh and moved to the hotel,
abandoning I know not how many curiosities, antiquities and specimens,
the possession of which had once seemed to us of the last importance. I
shall spare you the scene at parting with our crew. It would have
been very touching, but for the backsheesh. Some of them were faithful
fellows to whom we were attached; some of them were graceless scamps.
But they all received backsheesh. That is always the way. It was clearly
understood that we should reward only the deserving, and we had again
and again resolved not to give a piastre to certain ones of the crew.
But, at the end, the obdurate howadji always softens; and the Egyptians
know that he will. Egypt is full of good-for-nothings who have not only
received presents but certificates of character from travelers whom
they have disobliged for three months. There was, however, some
discrimination in this case; backsheesh was distributed with some regard
to good conduct; at the formal judgment on deck, Abd-el-Atti acted the
part of Thoth in weighing out the portions, and my friend took the rôle
of Osiris, receiving, vicariously for all of us, the kisses on his hand
of the grateful crew. I shall not be misunderstood in saying that
the faithful Soudan boy, Gohah, would have felt just as much grief in
bidding us good-bye if he had not received a penny (the rest of the
crew would have been inconsolable in like case); his service was always
marked by an affectionate devotion without any thought of reward. He
must have had a magnanimous soul to forgive us for the doses we gave him
when he was ill during the voyage.
We are waiting in Cairo professedly for the weather to become settled
and pleasant in Syria—which does not happen, one year with another, till
after the first of April; but we are contented, for the novelties of
the town are inexhaustible, and we are never weary of its animation and
picturesque movement. I suppose I should be held in low estimation if
I said nothing concerning the baths of Cairo. It is expected of every
traveler that he will describe them, or one at least—one is usually
sufficient. Indeed when I have read these descriptions, I have wondered
how the writers lived to tell their story. When a person has been for
hours roasted and stifled, and had all his bones broken, you could
not reasonably expect him to write so powerfully of the bath as many
travelers write who are so treated. I think these bath descriptions are
among the marvels of Oriental literature; Mr. Longfellow says of the
Roman Catholic system, that it is a religion of the deepest dungeons and
the highest towers; the Oriental bath (in literature) is like this; the
unwashed infidel is first plunged in a gulf of dark despair, and then he
is elevated to a physical bliss that is ecstatic. The story is too long
at each end.
I had experience of several different baths in Cairo, and I invariably
found them less vigorous, that is milder in treatment, than the Turkish
baths of New York or of Germany. With the Orientals the bath is a
luxury, a thing to be enjoyed, and not an affair of extreme shocks and
brutal surprises. In the bath itself there is never the excessive heat
that I have experienced in such baths in New York, nor the sudden change
of temperature in water, nor the vigorous manipulation. The Cairo bath,
in my experience, is gentle, moderate, enjoyable. The heat of the rooms
is never excessive, the air is very moist, and water flows abundantly
over the marble floors; the attendants are apt to be too lazy to
maltreat the bather, and perhaps err in gentleness. You are never
roasted in a dry air and then plunged suddenly into cold water. I do not
wonder that the Orientals are fond of their bath. The baths abound,
for men and for women, and the natives pay a very small sum for the
privilege of using them. Women make up parties, and spend a good part
of the day in a bath; having an entertainment there sometimes, and a
frolic. It is said that mothers sometimes choose wives for their sons
from girls they see at the baths. Some of them are used by men in the
forenoon and by women in the afternoon, and I have seen a great crowd
of veiled women waiting at the door at noon. There must be over
seventy-five of these public baths in Cairo.
As the harem had not yet gone over to the Gezeereh palace, we took the
opportunity to visit it. This palace was built by the Khedive, on what
was the island of Gezeereh, when a branch of the Nile was suffered
to run to the west of its present area. The ground is now the seat
of gardens, and of the most interesting botanical and horticultural
experiments on the part of the Khedive, under charge of competent
scientific men. A botanist or an arboriculturist would find material
in the nurseries for long study. I was chiefly interested (since I half
believe in the malevolence of some plants) in a sort of murderous East
Indian cane, which grows about fifteen to twenty feet high, and so
rapidly that (we were told) it attains its growth in a day or two. At
any rate, it thrusts up its stalks so vigorously and rapidly that Indian
tyrants have employed it to execute criminals. The victim is bound to
the ground over a bed of this cane at night, and in the morning it has
grown up through his body. We need such a vengeful vegetable as this in
our country, to plant round the edges of our city gardens.
The grounds about the palace are prettily, but formally laid out in
flower-gardens, with fountains and a kiosk in the style of the Alhambra.
Near by is a hot-house, with one of the best collections of orchids
in the world; and not far off is the zoological garden, containing a
menagerie of African birds and beasts, very well arranged and said to be
nearly complete.
The palace is a square building of iron and stucco, the light pillars
and piazzas painted in Saracenic designs and Persian colors, but the
whole rather dingy, and beginning to be shabby. Inside it is at once a
showy and a comfortable palace, and much better than we expected to see
in Egypt; the carpenter and mason work are, however, badly done, as if
the Khedive had been swindled by sharp Europeans; it is full of rich and
costly furniture. The rooms are large and effective, and we saw a good
deal of splendor in hangings and curtains, especially in the apartments
fitted up for the occupation of the Empress Eugénie. It is wonderful, by
the way, with what interest people look at a bed in which an Empress
has slept; and we may add awe, for it is usually a broad, high and
awful place of repose. Scattered about the rooms are, in defiance of
the Prophet's religion, several paintings, all inferior, and a few busts
(some of the Khedive) and other pieces of statuary. The place of honor
is given to an American subject, although the group was executed by an
Italian artist. It stands upon the first landing of the great staircase.
An impish-looking young Jupiter is seated on top of a chimney, below
which is the suggestion of a house-roof. Above his head is the point of
a lightning-rod. The celestial electrician is discharging a bolt into
the rod, which is supposed to pass harmless over the roof below.
Upon the pedestal is a medallion, the head of Benjamin Franklin, and
encircling it, the legend:—Eripuit coelo fulmen. 1790. The group looks
better than you would imagine from the description.
Beyond the garden is the harem-building, which was undergoing a thorough
renovation and refurnishing, in the most gaudy French style—such being
the wish of the ladies who occupy it. They are eager to discard the
beautiful Moorish designs which once covered the walls and to substitute
French decoration. The dormitory portions consist of passages with rooms
on each side, very much like a young ladies' boarding-school; the rooms
are large enough to accommodate three or four occupants. While we were
leisurely strolling through the house, we noticed a great flurry and
scurry in the building, and the attendants came to us in a panic,
and made desperate efforts to hurry us out of the building by a
side-entrance, giving signs of woe and destruction to themselves if we
did not flee. The Khedive had arrived, on horseback, and unexpectedly,
to inspect his domestic hearths.
We rode, one sparkling morning, after a night of heavy rain, to
Heliopolis; there was no mud, however, the rain having served to beat
the sand firm. Heliopolis is the On of the Bible, and in the time of
Herodotus, its inhabitants were esteemed the most learned in history of
all the Egyptians. The father-in-law of Joseph was a priest there, and
there Moses and Plato both learned wisdom. The road is excellent and
planted most of the distance with acacia trees; there are extensive
gardens on either hand, plantations of trees, broad fields under
cultivation, and all the way the air was full of the odor of flowers,
blossoms of lemon and orange. In luxuriance and riant vegetation, it
seemed an Oriental paradise. And the whole of this beautiful land of
verdure, covered now with plantations so valuable, was a sand-desert as
late as 1869. The water of the Nile alone has changed the desert into a
garden.
On the way we passed the race-course belonging to the Khedive, an
observatory, and the old palace of Abbas Pasha, now in process of
demolition, the foundations being bad, like his own. It is said that
the favorite wife of this hated tyrant, who was a Bedawee girl of rank,
always preferred to live on the desert, and in a tent rather than a
palace. Here at any rate, on the sand, lived Abbas Pasha, in hourly fear
of assassination by his enemies. It was not difficult to conjure up the
cowering figure, hiding in the recesses of this lonely palace, listening
for the sound of horses' hoofs coming on the city road, and ready to
mount a swift dromedary, which was kept saddled night and day in the
stable, and flee into the desert lor Bedaween protection.
At Mataréëh, we turned into a garden to visit the famous Sycamore tree,
under which the Virgin sat to rest, in the time of the flight of the
Holy Family. It is a large, scrubby-looking tree, probably two hundred
years old. I wonder that it does not give up the ghost, for every inch
of its bark, even to the small limbs, is cut with names. The Copt, who
owns it, to prevent its destruction, has put a fence about it; and that
also is covered all over. I looked in vain for the name of “Joseph”; but
could find it neither on the fence nor on the tree.
At Heliopolis one can work up any number of reflections; but all he can
see is the obelisk, which is sunken somewhat in the ground. It is more
correct, however, to say that the ground about it, and the whole site
of the former town and Temple of the Sun, have risen many feet since the
beginning of the Christian Era. This is the oldest obelisk in Egypt, and
bears the cartouche of Amenemhe I., the successor of Osirtasen I.—about
three thousand b. c., according to Mariette; Wilkinson and Mariette are
only one thousand years apart, on this date of this monument. The wasps
or bees have filled up the lettering on one side, and given it the
appearance of being plastered with mud. There was no place for us to sit
down and meditate, and having stood, surrounded by a swarm of the latest
children of the sun, and looked at the remains as long as etiquette
required, without a single historical tremor, we mounted and rode
joyfully city-ward between the lemon hedges.
In this Spring-time, late in the afternoon, the fashionable drive out
the Shoobra road, under the arches of sycamore trees, is more thronged
than in winter even. Handsome carriages appear and now and then a pair
of blooded Arab horses. There are two lines of vehicles extending for a
mile or so, the one going out and the other returning, and the round
of the promenade continues long enough for everybody to see everybody.
Conspicuous always are the neat two-horse cabriolets, lined with gay
silks and belonging to the royal harem; outriders are in advance, and
eunuchs behind, and within each are two fair and painted Circassians,
shining in their thin white veils, looking from the windows, eager to
see the world, and not averse to be seen by it. The veil has become with
them, as it is in Constantinople, a mere pretext and a heightener of
beauty. We saw by chance one day some of these birds of paradise abroad
in the Shoobra Garden—and live to speak of it.
The Shoobra palace and its harem, hidden by a high wall, were built
by Mohammed Ali; he also laid out the celebrated garden; and the
establishment was in his day no doubt the handsomest in the East. The
garden is still rich in rare trees, fruit-trees native and exotic,
shrubs, and flowers, but fallen into a too-common Oriental decay.
Instead of keeping up this fine place the Khedive builds a new one.
These Oriental despots erect costly and showy palaces, in a manner that
invites decay, and their successors build new ones, as people get new
suits of clothes instead of wearing the garments of their fathers.
In the midst of the garden is a singular summer-palace, built upon
terraces and hidden by trees; but the great attraction is the immense
Kiosk, the most characteristic Oriental building I have seen, and a very
good specimen of the costly and yet cheap magnificence of the Orient.
It is a large square pavilion, the center of which is a little lake, but
large enough for boats, and it has an orchestral platform in the
middle; the verandah about this is supported on marble pillars and has a
highly-decorated ceiling; carvings in marble abound; and in the corners
are apartments decorated in the height of barbaric splendor.
The pipes are still in place which conveyed gas to every corner
and outline of this bizarre edifice. I should like to have seen it
illuminated on a summer night when the air was heavy with the garden
perfumes. I should like to have seen it then thronged with the dark-eyed
girls of the North, in their fleecy splendors of drapery, sailing like
water-nymphs in these fairy boats, flashing their diamonds in the mirror
of this pool, dancing down the marble floor to the music of soft
drums and flutes that beat from the orchestral platform hidden by the
water-lilies. Such a vision is not permitted to an infidel. But on such
a night old Mohammed Ali might have been excused if he thought he was
already in El Genneh, in the company of the girls of Paradise, “whose
eyes will be very large and entirely black, and whose stature will be
proportioned to that of the men, which will be the height of a tall
palm-tree,” or about sixty feet and that he was entertained in “a tent
erected for him of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds, of a very large
extent.”
While we were lounging in this place of melancholy gaiety, which in the
sunlight bears something the aspect of a tawdry watering-place when the
season is over, several harem carriages drove to the entrance: but the
eunuchs seeing that unbelievers were in the kiosk would not permit
the ladies to descend, and the cortege went on and disappeared in the
shrubbery. The attendants invited us to leave. While we were still
near the kiosk the carriages came round again, and the ladies began to
alight. The attendants in the garden were now quite beside themselves,
and endeavored to keep our eyes from beholding, and to hustle us down a
side-path.
It was in vain that we said to them that we were not afraid, that we
were accustomed to see ladies walk in gardens, and that it couldn't
possibly harm us. They persisted in misunderstanding us, and piteously
begged us to turn away and flee. The ladies were already out of the
carriages, veils withdrawn, and beginning to enjoy rural life in the
garden. They seemed to have no more fear than we. The horses of the
out-riders were led down our path; superb animals, and we stopped to
admire them. The harem ladies, rather over-dressed for a promenade, were
in full attire of soft silks, blue and pink, in delicate shades, and
really made a pretty appearance amid the green. It seemed impossible
that it could be wrong to look at them. The attendants couldn't deny
that the horses were beautiful, but they regarded our admiration of them
as inopportune. They seemed to fear we might look under, or over, or
around the horses, towards that forbidden sight by the kiosk. It was
useless for us to enquire the age and the breed of the horses. Our
efforts to gain information only added to the agony of the gardeners.
They wrung their hands, they tried to face us about, they ran hither and
thither, and it was not till we were out of sight of the odalisques that
they recovered any calmness and began to cull flowers for us, and to
produce some Yusef Effendis, as a sign of amity and willingness to
accept a few piastres.
The last day of March has come. It is time to depart. Even the harem
will soon be going out of town. We have remained in the city long enough
to imbibe its atmosphere; not long enough to wear out its strangeness,
nor to become familiar with all objects of interest. And we pack our
trunks with reluctance, in the belief that we are leaving the most
thoroughly Oriental and interesting city in all the East.
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