Back on board the Regina Margherita, and on the way to Jaffa (Joppa).
Early Sunday morning we land at Alexandria, say Mass in the
Franciscan Church there, and at 11 a.m. take the train for Cairo,
which we reach some three hours later. The distance is about 140
miles. We are traversing perhaps the most fertile tract of country
in the world, along the delta of the Nile. It is one vast plain as
far as the eye can see, from edge to edge of the horizon, green with
growing crops of wheat and cotton. On all sides are groves of
acacias and lines of stately palm, while long caravans of camels,
passing parallel to the line of railway, lend an added
picturesqueness to the landscape. Egypt, to the intellect a land of
mystery, is to the eye a land of beauty--land of the evergreen. And
yet one misses the snow-capped mountains which make of Italy, and
still more of Switzerland, a fairyland of romance. Here it is always
summer, and the crops keep growing perennially; as many as four crops
are raised in the year. Little rain falls, and the tiller of the
soil would wish it were less than that little, for the waters of the
Nile irrigate the land, and it is the hot sun out of a cloudless sky
that favours growth. I have said the tiller of the soil when I
should have rather said the owner, who is generally a Jew or a Turk.
Your Arab Fellah gets his pittance of four piastres (about twenty
cents) a day, and is better off with that than he was before the
English came in, when the Khedive sent his servants to take heavy
toll of the ripened crops.
The Arab subdued the Copt, lineal descendant of the ancient
Egyptians, and was in turn subdued by the Turk. He is a picturesque
figure, with his white turban or red fez, his flowing robes, his
sandalled, oftentimes bare, feet. The women are veiled up to the
eyes, with a curious covering on the nose, which seems to serve no
particular purpose and is certainly not an ornament. The young of
the male sex are for the most part of a pleasing appearance. But
with advancing years the features of these people take on a hard and
somewhat repulsive look, half of submission, half of hopelessness,
not unlike that which one sees in the eyes of that much abused beast
of burden, the ass, which for six decades of centuries has borne the
whips and scorns of his master, man. It is the fatalism of the race
that finds expression in that look--the feeling that it is of no use
kicking against the pricks of a relentless destiny. And so the Arab
goes his way, bearing the burden of life sadly but submissively. His
whole philosophy is summed up in the one word malesh (a as in "ma," e
as in "edge," both vowels long drawn out,) which is forever on his
lips: "It doesn't matter"--nothing matters in a world where so much
is amiss and so little can be mended. We spend two days in Cairo,
during which we visit Matarieh, Old Cairo, the citadel and famous
mosque of alabaster, the museum with its mummies, and the pyramids.
At Matarieh is the well of sweet water which gushed forth, tradition
has it, when the Holy Family came into Egypt, and the sycamore which
gave them shelter. The present tree is more than three hundred years
old. At Old Cairo is shown the site of the cottage in which dwelt
the Holy Family. It is in the crypt of an ancient basilica, the
style of which bespeaks the fifth or sixth century. The place is in
the hands of the Schismatical Copts; it was the daughter of the
Coptic priest who unlocked the door for us. In Old Cairo one sees
the Arab in the primeval environment of the unchanging East. All is
primitive here. Bedouin and Jew, camel, donkey, and goat move along
pell-mell, jostling one another in the narrow, crooked, foul-smelling
streets. I would not advise a visit to the market-place just before
dinner--it might spoil one's appetite. There is some very ancient
dirt in Old Cairo--and some that is not so ancient. Newman says
somewhere that no dirt is immortal, but he is speaking of another
sort of dirt, and, anyhow, he never set foot in this Egyptian town,
laved but washed not by the waters of the Nile.
In striking contrast to the lowly ass, is that other beast of burden,
the lordly camel. With what lofty disdain it sniffs the air as it
looks down upon its mean environment--pigmy man included. It is a
proud creature--proud even of the hump on its back. It has been
tamed by man after a fashion, but not subdued, and its eyes belie the
obedience that it outwardly yields to its puny master.
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