JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTION TO AFRICA.Arrival at Alexandria—The Landing—My First Oriental Bath—The City—Preparations for Departure.
Arrival at Alexandria—The Landing—My First Oriental Bath—The City—Preparations for Departure.
I left Smyrna in the Lloyd steamer,Conte Stürmer, on the first day of November, 1851. We passed the blue Sporadic Isles—Cos, and Rhodes, and Karpathos—and crossing the breadth of the Eastern Mediterranean, favored all the way by unruffled seas, and skies of perfect azure, made the pharos of Alexandria on the evening of the 3d. The entrance to the harbor is a narrow and difficult passage through reefs, and no vessel dares to attempt it at night, but with the first streak of dawn we were boarded by an Egyptian pilot, and the rising sun lighted up for us the white walls of the city, the windmills of the Ras el-Tin, or Cape of Figs, and the low yellow sand-hills in which I recognized Africa—for they were prophetic of the desert behind them.
We entered the old harbor between the island of Pharos and the main land (now connected by a peninsular strip, on which the Frank quarter is built), soon after sunrise.The water swarmed with boats before the anchor dropped, and the Egyptian health officer had no sooner departed than we were boarded by a crowd of dragomen, hotel runners, and boatmen. A squinting Arab, who wore a white dress and red sash, accosted me in Italian, offering to conduct me to the Oriental Hotel. A German and a Smyrniote, whose acquaintance I had made during the voyage, joined me in accepting his services, and we were speedily boated ashore. We landed on a pile of stones, not far from a mean-looking edifice called the Custom-House. Many friends were there to welcome us, and I shall never forget the eagerness with which they dragged us ashore, and the zeal with which they pommelled one another in their generous efforts to take charge of our effects. True, we could have wished that their faces had been better washed, their baggy trousers less ragged and their red caps less greasy, and we were perhaps ungrateful in allowing our Arab to rate them soundly and cuff the ears of the more obstreperous, before our trunks and carpet-bags could be portioned among them. At the Custom-House we were visited by two dark gentlemen, in turbans and black flowing robes, who passed our baggage without scrutiny, gently whispering in our ears, “backsheesh,”—a word which we then heard for the first time, but which was to be the key-note of much of our future experience. The procession of porters was then set in motion, and we passed through several streets of whitewashed two story houses, to the great square of the Frank quarter, which opened before us warm and brilliant in the morning sunshine.
The principal hotels and consulates front on this square The architecture is Italian, with here and there a dash of Saracenic,in the windows and doorways, especially in new buildings. A small obelisk of alabaster, a present from Mohammed Ali, stands in the centre, on a pedestal which was meant for a fountain, but has no water. All this I noted, as well as a crowd of donkeys and donkey-boys, and a string of laden camels, on our way to the hotel, which we found to be a long and not particularly clean edifice, on the northern side of the square. The English and French steamers had just arrived, and no rooms were to be had until after the departure of the afternoon boat for Cairo. Our dragoman, who called himself Ibrahim, suggested a bath as the most agreeable means of passing the intermediate time.
The clear sky, the temperature (like that of a mild July day at home), and the novel interest of the groups in the streets, were sufficient to compensate for any annoyance: but when we reached the square of the French Church, and saw a garden of palm-trees waving their coronals of glittering leaves every thing else was forgotten. My German friend, who had never seen palms, except as starveling exotics in Sorrento and Smyrna, lifted his hands in rapture, and even I, who had heard tens of thousands rustle in the hot winds of the Tropics, felt my heart leap as if their beauty were equally new to my eyes. For no amount of experience can deprive the traveller of that happy feeling of novelty which marks his first day on the soil of a new continent. I gave myself up wholly to its inebriation.Et ego in Africâ, was the sum of my thoughts, and I neither saw nor cared to know the fact (which we discovered in due time), that our friend Ibrahim was an arrant knave.
The bath to which he conducted us was pronounced to bethe finest in Alexandria, the most superb in all the Orient, but it did not at all accord with our ideas of Eastern luxury. Moreover, the bath-keeper was his intimate friend, and would bathe us as no Christians were ever bathed before. One fact Ibrahim kept to himself, which was, that his intimate friend and he shared the spoils of our inexperience. We were conducted to a one-story building, of very unprepossessing exterior. As we entered the low, vaulted entrance, my ears were saluted with a dolorous, groaning sound, which I at first conjectured to proceed from the persons undergoing the operation, but which I afterward ascertained was made by a wheel turned by a buffalo, employed in raising water from the well. In a sort of basement hall, smelling of soap-suds, and with a large tank of dirty water in the centre, we were received by the bath-keeper, who showed us into a room containing three low divans with pillows. Here we disrobed, and Ibrahim, who had procured a quantity of napkins, enveloped our heads in turbans and swathed our loins in a simple Adamite garment. Heavy wooden clogs were attached to our feet, and an animated bronze statue led the way through gloomy passages, sometimes hot and steamy, sometimes cold and soapy, and redolent of any thing but the spicy odors of Araby the Blest, to a small vaulted chamber, lighted by a few apertures in the ceiling. The moist heat was almost suffocating; hot water flowed over the stone floor, and the stone benches we sat upon were somewhat cooler than kitchen stoves. The bronze individual left us, and very soon, sweating at every pore, we began to think of the three Hebrews in the furnace. Our comfort was not increased by the groaning sound which we still heard, and by seeing, through a hole in the door, five or six nakedfigures lying motionless along the edge of a steaming vat, in the outer room.
Presently our statue returned with a pair of coarse hair-gloves on his hands. He snatched off our turbans, and then, seizing one of my friends by the shoulder as if he had been a sheep, began a sort of rasping operation upon his back. This process, varied occasionally by a dash of scalding water, was extended to each of our three bodies, and we were then suffered to rest awhile. A course of soap-suds followed, which was softer and more pleasant in its effect, except when he took us by the hair, and holding back our heads, scrubbed our faces most lustily, as if there were no such things as eyes, noses and mouths. By this time we had reached such a salamandrine temperature that the final operation of a dozen pailfuls of hot water poured over the head, was really delightful. After a plunge in a seething tank, we were led back to our chamber and enveloped in loose muslin robes. Turbans were bound on our heads and we lay on the divans to recover from the languor of the bath. The change produced by our new costume was astonishing. The stout German became a Turkish mollah, the young Smyrniote a picturesque Persian, and I—I scarcely know what, but, as my friends assured me, a much better Moslem than Frank. Cups of black coffee, and pipes of inferior tobacco completed the process, and in spite of the lack of cleanliness and superabundance of fleas, we went forth lighter in body, and filled with a calm content which nothing seemed able to disturb.
After a late breakfast at the hotel, we sallied out for a survey of the city. The door was beleaguered by the donkeys and their attendant drivers, who hailed us in all languages atonce. “Venez, Monsieur!” “Take a ride, sir; here is a good donkey!” “Schœner Esel!” “Prendete il mio burrico!”—and you are made the vortex of a whirlpool of donkeys. The one-eyed donkey-boys fight, the donkeys kick, and there is no rest till you have bestridden one of the little beasts. The driver then gives his tail a twist and his rump a thwack, and you are carried off in triumph. The animal is so small that you seem the more silly of the two, when you have mounted, but after he has carried you for an hour in a rapid gallop, you recover your dignity in your respect for him.
The spotless blue of the sky and the delicious elasticity of the air were truly intoxicating, as we galloped between gardens of date-trees, laden with ripe fruit, to the city gate, and through it into a broad road, fringed with acacias, leading to the Mahmoudieh canal. But to the south, on a rise of dry, sandy soil, stood the Pillar of Diocletian—not of Pompey, whose name it bears. It is a simple column, ninety-eight feet in height, but the shaft is a single block of red granite, and stands superbly against the background of such a sky and such a sea. It is the only relic of the ancient Alexandria worthy of its fame, but you could not wish for one more imposing and eloquent. The glowing white houses of the town, the minarets, the palms and the acacias fill the landscape, but it stands apart from them, in the sand, and looks only to the sea and the desert.
In the evening we took donkeys again and rode out of the town to a café on the banks of the canal. A sunset of burning rose and orange sank over the desert behind Pompey’s Pillar, and the balmiest of breezes stole towards us from the sea, through palm gardens. A Swiss gentleman, M. de Gonzenbach,whose kindness I shall always gratefully remember, accompanied us. As we sat under the acacias, sipping the black Turkish coffee, the steamer for Cairo passed, disturbing the serenity of the air with its foul smoke, and marring the delicious repose of the landscape in such wise, that we vowed we would have nothing to do with steam so long as we voyaged on the Nile. Our donkey-drivers patiently held the bridles of our long-eared chargers till we were ready to return. It was dark, and not seeing at first my attendant, a little one-eyed imp, I called at random: “Abdallah!” This, it happened, was actually his name, and he came trotting up, holding the stirrup ready for me to mount. The quickness with which these young Arabs pick up languages, is truly astonishing. “Come vi chiamate?” (what’s your name?) I asked of Abdallah, as we rode homeward. The words were new to him, but I finally made him understand their meaning, whereupon he put his knowledge into practice by asking me: “Come vi chiamate?” “Abbas Pasha,” I replied. “Oh, well,” was his prompt rejoinder, “if you are Abbas Pasha, then I am Seyd Pasha.” The next morning he was at the door with his donkey, which I fully intended to mount, but became entangled in a wilderness of donkeys, out of which Ibrahim extricated me by hoisting me on another animal. As I rode away, I caught a glimpse of the little fellow, crying lustily over his disappointment.
We three chance companions fraternized so agreeably that we determined to hire a boat for Cairo, in preference to waiting for the next steamer. We accordingly rode over to the Mahmoudieh Canal, accompanied by Ibrahim, to inspect the barks. Like all dragomen, Ibrahim had his private preferences, andconducted us on board a boat belonging to a friend of his, a grizzly raïs, or captain. The craft was a smallkangia, with a large lateen sail at the bow and a little one at the stern. It was not very new, but looked clean, and the raïs demanded three hundred piastres for the voyage. The piastre is the current coin of the East. Its value is fluctuating, and always higher in Egypt than in Syria and Turkey, but may be assumed at about five cents, or twenty to the American dollar. Before closing the bargain, we asked the advice of M. de Gonzenbach, who immediately despatched his Egyptian servant and engaged a boat at two hundred and twenty-five piastres. Every thing was to be in readiness for our departure on the following evening.