WE left Suez at eight in the morning by rail, and reached Ismailia in
four hours, the fare—to do justice to the conductor already named—being
fourteen francs. A part of the way the Bitter Lakes are visible, and
we can see where the canal channel is staked out through them. Next
we encountered the Fresh-Water Canal, and came in view of Lake Timsah,
through which the Suez canal also flows. This was no doubt once a
fresh-water lake, fed by water taken from the Nile at Bubastis.
Ismailia is a surprise, no matter how much you have heard of it. True,
it has something the appearance of a rectangular streeted town dropped,
ready-made, at a railway station on a western prairie; but Ismailia
was dropped by people of good taste. In 1860 there was nothing here but
desert sand, not a drop of water, not a spear of vegetation. To-day
you walk into a pretty village, of three or four thousand inhabitants,
smiling with verdure. Trees grow along the walks; little gardens bloom
by every cottage. Fronting the quay Mohammed Ali, which extends along
the broad Fresh-Water Canal, are the best residences, and many of them
have better gardens than you can find elsewhere, with few exceptions, in
Egypt.
The first house we were shown was that which had most interest for
us—the Swiss-like châlet of M. de Lesseps; a summerish, cheerful box,
furnished simply, but adorned with many Oriental curiosities. The garden
which surrounds it is rich in native and exotic plants, flowers and
fruits. On this quay are two or three barn-like, unfurnished palaces
built hastily and cheaply by the Khedive for the entertainment of
guests. The finest garden, however, and as interesting as any we saw
in the East, is that belonging to M. Pierre, who has charge of the
waterworks. In this garden can be found almost all varieties of European
and Egyptian flowers; strawberries were just ripening. We made inquiry
here, as we had done throughout Egypt, for the lotus, the favorite
flower of the old Egyptians, the sacred symbol, the mythic plant, the
feeding upon which lulls the conscience, destroys ambition, dulls the
memory of all unpleasant things, enervates the will, and soothes one in
a sensuous enjoyment of the day to which there is no tomorrow. It seems
to have disappeared from Egypt with the papyrus.
The lotus of the poets I fear never existed, not even in Egypt. The
lotus represented so frequently in the sculptures, is a water-plant,
the Nymphaea lutea, and is I suppose the plant that was once common. The
poor used its bulb for food in times of scarcity. The Indian lotus, or
Nelumbium, is not seen in the sculptures, though Latin writers say it
existed in Egypt. It may have been this that had the lethean properties;
although the modern eaters and smokers of Indian hemp appear to be the
legitimate descendants of the lotus-eaters of the poets. However, the
lotus whose stalks and buds gave character to a distinct architectural
style, we enquired for in vain on the Nile. If it still grows there it
would scarcely be visible above water in the winter. But M. Pierre has
what he supposes to be the ancient lotus-plant; and his wife gave
us seeds of it in the seed-vessel—a large flat-topped funnel-shaped
receptacle, exactly the shape of the sprinkler of a watering-pot.
Perhaps this is the plant that Herodotus calls a lily like a rose, the
fruit of which is contained in a separate pod, that springs up from the
root in form very like a wasp's nest; in this are many berries fit to be
eaten.
The garden adjoins the water-works, in which two powerful
pumping-engines raise the sweet water into a stand-pipe, and send it
forward in iron pipes fifty miles along the Suez Canal to Port Said, at
which port there is a reservoir that will hold three days' supply. This
stream of fresh water is the sole dependence of Port Said and all the
intervening country.
We rode out over the desert on an excellent road, lined with sickly
acacias growing in the watered ditches, to station No 6 on the canal.
The way lies along Lake Timsah. Upon a considerable elevation, called
the Heights of El Guisr, is built a château for the Khedive; and from
this you get an extensive view of the desert, of Lake Timsah and the
Bitter Lakes. Below us was the deep cutting of the Canal. El Guisr is
the highest point in the Isthmus, an elevated plateau six miles across
and some sixty-five feet above the level of the sea. The famous gardens
that flourished here during the progress of the excavation have entirely
disappeared with the cessation of the water from Ismailia. While we were
there an East India bound steamboat moved slowly up the canal, creating,
of course, waves along the banks, but washing them very little, for the
speed is limited to five miles an hour.
Although the back streets of Ismailia are crude and unpicturesque, the
whole effect of the town is pleasing; and it enjoys a climate that must
commend it to invalids. It is dry, free from dust, and even in summer
not too warm, for there is a breeze from the lakes by day, and the
nights are always cooled by the desert air. Sea-bathing can be enjoyed
there the year round. It ought to be a wholesome spot, for there is
nothing in sight around it but sand and salt-water. The invalid who
should go there would probably die shortly of ennui, but he would escape
the death expected from his disease. But Ismailia is well worth seeing.
The miracle wrought here by a slender stream of water from the distant
Nile, is worthy the consideration of those who have the solution of the
problem of making fertile our western sand-deserts.
We ate at Suez and Ismailia what we had not tasted for several
months—excellent fish. The fish of the Nile are nearly as good as a
New-England sucker, grown in a muddy mill-pond. I saw fishermen angling
in the salt canal at Ismailia, and the fish are good the whole length
of it; they are of excellent quality even in the Bitter Lakes, which are
much salter than the Mediterranean—in fact the bottom of these lakes is
encrusted with salt.
We took passage towards evening on the daily Egyptian pocket-boat for
Port Said—a puffing little cigar-box of a vessel, hardly fifty feet
long. The only accommodation for passengers was in the forward cabin,
which is about the size of an omnibus, and into it were crammed twenty
passengers, Greeks, Jews, Koorlanders, English clergymen, and American
travelers, and the surly Egyptian mail-agent, who occupied a great deal
of room, and insisted on having the windows closed. Some of us tried
perching on the scrap of a deck, hanging our legs over the side; but it
was bitterly cold and a strong wind drove us below. In the cabin the air
was utterly vile; and when we succeeded in opening the hatchway for a
moment, the draught chilled us to the bones.
I do not mean to complain of all this; but I want it to appear
that sailing on the Suez Canal, especially at night, is not a
pleasure-excursion. It might be more endurable by day; but I do not
know. In the hours we had of daylight, I became excessively weary of
looking at the steep sand-slopes between which we sailed, and of hoping
that every turn would bring us to a spot where we could see over the
bank.
At eight o'clock we stopped at Katanah for supper, and I climbed the
bank to see if I could obtain any information about the Children of
Israel. They are said to have crossed here. This is the highest point
of the low hills which separate Lake Menzaleh from the interior lakes.
Along this ridge is still the caravan-route between Egypt and Syria;
it has been, for ages unnumbered, the great highway of commerce and of
conquest. This way Thothmes III., the greatest of the Pharaohs and the
real Sesostris, led his legions into Asia; and this way Cambyses came to
repay the visit with interest.
It was so dark that I could see little, but I had a historic sense of
all this stir and movement, of the passage of armies laden with spoils,
and of caravans from Nineveh and Damascus. And, although it was my first
visit to the place, it seemed strange to see here a restaurant, and
waiters hurrying about, and travelers snatching a hasty meal in the
night on this wind-blown sand-hill. And to feel that the stream of
travel is no more along this divide but across it! By the half-light I
could distinguish some Bedaween loitering about; their little caravan
had camped here, for they find it very convenient to draw water from the
iron pipes.
It was quite dark when we presently sailed into Lake Menzaleh, and we
could see little. I only know that we held a straight course through it
for some thirty miles to Port Said. In the daytime you can see a dreary
expanse of morass and lake, a few little islands clad with tamarisks,
and flocks of aquatic birds floating in the water or drawn up on the
sand-spits in martial array—the white spoonbill, the scarlet flamingo,
the pink pelican. It was one o'clock in the morning when we saw the
Pharos of Port Said and sailed into the basin, amid many lights.
Port Said was made out of nothing, and it is pretty good. A town of
eight to ten thousand inhabitants, with docks, quays, squares, streets,
shops, mosques, hospitals, public buildings; in front of our hotel is a
garden and public square; all this fed by the iron pipe and the pump at
Ismailia—without this there is no fresh water nearer than Damietta. It
is a shabby city, and just now has the over-done appearance of one of
our own western town inflations. But its history is a record of one of
the most astonishing achievements of any age. Before there could be any
town here it was necessary to build a standpoint for it with a dredging
machine.
Along this coast from Damietta to the gulf of Pelusium, where once
emptied the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, is a narrow strip of sand,
separating the Mediterranean from Lake Menzaleh; a high sea often breaks
over it. It would have saved much in distance to have carried the canal
to the Pelusium gulf, but the Mediterranean is shallow there many miles
from shore. The spot on which Port Said now stands was selected for the
entrance of the canal, because it was here that the land can be best
approached—the Mediterranean having sufficient depth at only two miles
from the shore. Here therefore, the dredgers began to work. The lake
was dredged for interior basins; the strip of sand was cut through; the
outer harbor was dredged; and the dredgings made the land for the town.
Artificial stone was then manufactured on the spot, and of this the long
walls, running out into the sea and protecting the harbor, the quays,
and the lighthouses were built. We saw enormous blocks of this composite
of sand and hydraulic lime, which weigh twenty-five tons each.
It is impossible not to respect a city built by such heroic labor as
this; but we saw enough of it in half a day. The shops are many, and the
signs are in many languages, Greek being most frequent. I was pleased to
read an honest one in English—“Blood-Letting and Tooth-picking.” I have
no doubt they all would take your blood. In the streets are vagabonds,
adventurers, merchants, travelers, of all nations; and yet you would
not call the streets picturesque. Everything is strangely modernized and
made uninteresting. There is, besides, no sense of permanence here. The
traders appear to occupy their shops as if they were booths for the day.
It is a place of transit; a spot of sand amid the waters. I have never
been in any locality that seemed to me so nearly nowhere. A spot for
an African bird to light on a moment on his way to Asia. But the world
flows through here. Here lie the great vessels in the Eastern trade; all
the Mediterranean steamers call here.
The Erymanthe is taking in her last freight, and it is time for us to
go on board. Abd-el-Atti has arrived with the baggage from Cairo. He has
the air of one with an important errand. In the hotels, on the street,
in the steamer, his manner is that of one who precedes an imposing
embassy. He likes state. If he had been born under the Pharaohs he would
have been the bearer of the flabellum before the king; and he would have
carried it majestically, with perhaps a humorous twinkle in his eye for
some comrade by the way. Ahman Abdallah, the faithful, is with him.
He it was who made and brought us the early morning coffee
to-day,—recalling the peace of those days on the Nile which now are
in the dim past. It is ages ago since we were hunting in the ruins of
Abydus for the tomb of Osiris. It was in another life, that delicious
winter in Nubia, those weeks following weeks, free from care and from
all the restlessness of this driving age.
“I shouldn't wonder if you were right, Abd-el-Atti, in not wanting to
start for Syria sooner. It was very cold on the boat last night.”
“Not go in Syria before April; always find him bad. 'Member what I say
when it rain in Cairo?—'This go to be snow in Jerusalem.' It been snow
there last week, awful storm, nobody go on the road, travelers all stop,
not get anywhere. So I hunderstand.”
“What is the prospect for landing at Jaffa tomorrow morning?”
“Do' know, be sure. We hope for the better.”
We get away beyond the breakwater, as the sun goes down. The wind
freshens, and short waves hector the long sea swell, Egypt lies low; it
is only a line; it fades from view.
End of Project Gutenberg's My Winter on the Nile, by Charles Dudley
Warner