—“He which hath no stomach to this fight,Let him depart: his passport shall be made,And crowns, for convoy, put into his purse.â€
—“He which hath no stomach to this fight,Let him depart: his passport shall be made,And crowns, for convoy, put into his purse.â€
Precisely similar to the proclamation of the hero of Agincourt was that of the conqueror of Peru. He preferred weakening his force, already far too feeble, to retaining the discontented and pusillanimous. The contagion of bad example had more terrors for him than the hosts of Atahuallpa. And he “would not die in that man’s company whofearedhis fellowship to die withhim.†Only nine of his one hundred and seventy-seven followers availed themselves of the permission, thus boldly accorded them, to retrace their steps. With the residue Pizarro resumed his march.
As the Spaniards advanced, their difficulties and uncertainties increased. Rivers impeded their progress, and they had to construct bridges and rafts. They passed through well-built towns, where they saw large magazines of military stores and rations, and along handsome paved roads, shaded by avenues of trees, and watered by artificial streamlets. The farther they penetrated into the country, the more convinced they were of its resources and civilisation, far beyond any thing they had anticipated, and the more sensible they became of the great temerity of their enterprise. When they strove to learn the Inca’s intentions and whereabouts, the contradictory information they obtained added to their perplexity. The Inca, it was said, was at the head of fifty thousand men, tranquilly awaiting the appearance of the eight-score intruders who thus madly ran into the lion’s jaws. This was discouraging enough. And when the Spaniards reached the foot of the stupendous Andes, which intervened between them and Caxamalca, and were to be crossed by means of paths and passes of the most dangerous description, easily defensible by tens against thousands, their hearts failed them, and many were of opinion to abandon the original plan and take the road to Cuzco, which wound along the foot of the mountains, broad, shady, and pleasant. Pizarro was deaf to this proposal. His eloquence and firmness prevailed, and the Andes were crossed, with much toil, but without molestation from the Peruvians.
It is difficult to understand the Inca’s motives in thus neglecting the many opportunities afforded him of annihilating the Spaniards. His wholeconduct at this time is mysterious and unaccountable, greatly at variance with the energy and sagacity of which he had given proof in his administration of the empire, and wars against Huascar. Nothing was easier than to crush the encroaching foreigners in the defiles of the Cordilleras, instead of allowing them to descend safely into the plain, where their cavalry and discipline gave them great advantages. Perhaps it never occurred to Atahuallpa that so trifling a force could contend under any circumstances, with a chance of success, against his numerous army. In their intestine wars, the Peruvians fought with much resolution. In the battle of Quipayan, which placed the crown of Peru on Atahuallpa’s head, the fight raged from dawn till sunset, and the slaughter was prodigious, both parties exhibiting great courage and obstinacy. And subsequently, in engagements with the Spaniards, proofs of Peruvian valour were not wanting. After the death of Atahuallpa, on the march to Cuzco, more than one fierce fight occurred between Spanish cavalry and Peruvian warriors, in which the former had not always the advantage. When Cuzco was burned, and siege laid to its fortresses, one of these was valiantly defended by an Inca noble, whose single arm struck the assailants from the ramparts as fast as they attained their summit. And when, several ladders having been planted at once, the Spaniards swarmed up on all points, and overpowered the last of his followers, the heroic savage still would not yield. “Finding further resistance ineffectual, he sprang to the edge of the battlements, and, casting away his war-club, wrapped his mantle around him and threw himself headlong from the summit.†Relying on the bravery of his troops, and considering that the Spaniards, although compact in array, and formidable by their horses and weapons, were in numbers most insignificant, it is probable the Inca felt sure of catching and caging them whenever he chose, and was therefore in no hurry to do it, but, like a cat with a mouse, chose to play with before devouring them. This agrees, too, with the account given in an imperfect manuscript, the work of one of the old conquerors, quoted by Mr Prescott. “Holding us for very little, and not reckoning that a hundred and ninety men could offend him, he allowed us to pass through that defile, and through many others equally bad, because really, as we afterwards knew and ascertained, his intention was to see us, and question us as to whence we came, and who had sent us, and what we wanted ... and afterwards to take our horses and the things that most pleased him, and to sacrifice the remainder.†These calculations were more than neutralised by the decision and craft of the white man. Established in Caxamalca, whose ten thousand inhabitants had deserted the town on his approach, Pizarro beheld before him “a white cloud of pavilions, covering the ground as thick as snow-flakes, for the space apparently of several miles.†In front of the tents were fixed the warriors’ lances; and at night innumerable watch-fires, making the mountain-slope resemble, says an eyewitness, “a very starry heaven,†struck doubt and dismay into the hearts of that little Christian band. “All,†says one of the Conquistadores, “remaining with much fear, because we were so few, and had entered so far into the land, where we could not receive succours.†All, save one, the presiding genius of the venture, who showed himself equal to the emergency, and nobly justified his followers’ confidence. Pizarro saw that retreat was impossible, inaction ruinous, and he resolved to set all upon a cast by executing a project of unparalleled boldness. The Inca, who, very soon assumed a dictatorial tone, had ordered the Spaniards to occupy the buildings on the chief square at Caxamalca, and no others, and had also signified his intention of visiting the strangers so soon as a fast he was keeping should be at an end. The, square, or rather triangle, was of great extent, and consisted of a stone fortress, and of large, low, wide-doored halls, that seemed intended for barracks. Upon this square Pizarro prepared to receive his royal visitor.
On the appointed day, Atahuallpa made his appearance, at the head of his numerous army, variously estimated by Pizarro’s secretary and others there present, at from thirty tofifty thousand men. These halted at a short distance from the town; the Inca began to pitch his tents, and sent word to Pizarro that he had postponed his visit to the following morning. The Spanish leader deprecated this change of plan, and said that he fully expected Atahuallpa to sup with him; whereupon the Inca, either from good nature, or lured by the prospect of a feast, entered the town with a comparatively small retinue. “He brought with him,†says Hernando Pizarro, in a manuscript letter, “five or six thousand Indians, unarmed, save with small clubs, and slings, and bags of stones.†In fact, it appears from all accounts that very few of them had any arms at all. Upon a throne of gold, borne on an open litter, by Peruvian nobles in a rich azure livery, the Inca came, and paused in the square. Not a Spaniard was to be seen, save Fray Vicente de Valverde, Pizarro’s chaplain, who, by means of an interpreter, addressed the royal visitor in a homily which, to judge from the multiplicity of subjects it embraced, can have been of no trifling length. Beginning with the creation of the world, he expounded the doctrines of Christianity, talked of St Peter and the Pope, and finally, with singular coolness, requested his astonished hearer to change his religion, and become a tributary of the Emperor. Naturally offended at such presumptuous propositions, Atahuallpa answered with some heat, and threw down a Bible or breviary which he had taken from the friar’s hand. The friar hurried to Pizarro. “Do you not see,†he said, “that whilst we waste our breath talking to this dog, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on at once! I absolve you.†Slay! Slay! mass or massacre. The old cry of the Romish priest, covetous of converts. The sword in one hand, the crucifix in the other; abjuration of heresy, or the blood of heretics. In Smithfield and the Cevennes, on the dread eve of St Bartholomew, and amidst the gentle sun-worshippers of Peru,—such has ever been the maxim of the ministers of a religion of mercy. In this instance the appeal to violence was not unheard. Pizarro waved a scarf, a signal gun was fired from the fort, the barrack doors flew open, and, armed to the teeth, the Spaniards sprang into the plaza, shouting the fierce slogan before which, in Granada’s sunnyvega, the Moslem had so often quailed. “Santiago y à ellos!†St James and at them! was the cry, as the steel-clad cavalry spurred into the crowd, carving, with trenchant blade, paths through the confused and terrified Indians; whilst musketry flashed, and two falconets, placed in the fort, vomited death upon the mob. The exit from the plaza was soon choked with corpses, and the living, debarred escape by the bodies of the dead, could but stand and be slaughtered. The square was soon converted into a shambles.“Even as they fell, in files they lay,â€slain in cold blood, and innocent of offence. At last “such was the agony of the survivors under the terrible pressure of their assailants, that a large body of Indians, by their convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay which formed part of the boundary of the plaza!†And the country was covered with fugitives, flying before the terrible sweep of the Spanish sabre.
“The Marquis,†says Pedro Pizarro, “called out, saying, ‘Let none wound the Inca, under pain of his life!’†Atahuallpa was to be made prisoner, not killed. Around him a faithful few, his nobles and court, fought desperately to protect their sovereign. Unarmed, they grappled with the Spaniards, clung to their horses, and tried to drag them from their saddles. The struggle was of some duration, and night approached when, several of the palanquin-bearers having been slain, the litter was overturned, and the Inca fell into the arms of Pizarro and his comrades. He was carefully secured in an adjacent building, the news of his capture quickly spread, and the whole Indian army disbanded and fled, panic-struck at the loss of their sovereign. The number that fell that day is very variously stated. “They killed them all,†says one authority, a nephew of Atahuallpa, on whose testimony Mr Prescott inclines to place reliance, “with horses, with swords, with arquebuses, as though they were sheep. None made resistance, and out of ten thousandnot two hundred escaped.†This is probably an exaggeration. Other accounts state the number of dead as far smaller, but there appears ground to believe that four or five thousand fell. The example was terrible, and well suited to strike the Peruvians with terror. But the extermination of the whole Indian army would have been of less importance than the single captive Pizarro had made, and whom, agreeably to his promise, he had to sup with him when the fight was done. Deprived of their sovereign, and viewing with a superstitious awe the audacious stranger who had dared to lay hands upon his sacred person, the Indians lost heart, and were no longer to be feared.
The capture of the Inca, although so important and beneficial in its results, occasioned Pizarro some embarrassment. He was anxious to march upon the capital, but feared to risk himself on the roads and mountains with the Inca in his keeping; and as he could not spare a sufficient guard to leave behind with him, he was compelled to wait patiently for reinforcements. Atahuallpa, who did not want for penetration, but in the words of an old manuscript, “was very wise and discreet, a friend of knowledge, and subtle of understanding,†soon found out that the Spaniards were at least as eager to accumulate gold as to disseminate their religion. He offered to buy his liberty, and a room full of gold was the prodigious ransom he proposed. The length of the apartment he engaged to fill is variously stated. The most moderate account makes it twenty-two feet. Hernando Pizarro says it was thirty-five. The width was seventeen feet, and the gold was to be piled up as high as the Inca could reach, which was about nine feet from the ground. A smaller room was to be filled twice with silver. Pizarro having accepted, or allowed his prisoner to infer that he accepted, this very handsome price for his liberty, the captive sovereign took measures to collect the stipulated treasure. Palaces and temples were stripped of their ornaments, and from distant parts of Peru gold was sent to complete the Inca’s ransom. The agreement was that it should not be melted, but piled up in the room in whatever form it arrived, which gave Atahuallpa some advantage. Goblets, salvers, vases, and curious imitations of plants and animals, were amongst the heterogeneous contributions that soon began to rise high upon the floor of the Inca’s prison. “Among the plants, the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the same metal played in the waters at the base.†But the greedy conquerors grew impatient, and thought the gold came too slowly, although on some days a value of fifty or sixty thousandcastellanoswas added to the store. Rumours of a rising of the Peruvians were spread abroad, and Atahuallpa was accused of conspiring against the Spaniards. These, and especially a strong reinforcement that had arrived under Almagro’s orders, became clamorous for the Inca’s death. They had already divided all that had arrived of his ransom, equivalent to the enormous sum of three millions and a half sterling, besides fifty thousand marks of silver. At last the Inca was brought to trial on the most absurd charges, “having reference to national usages, or to his personal relations, over which the Spanish conquerors had no jurisdiction.†Thus, he was accused of idolatry and adultery, and ofsquandering the public revenues, since the conquest of the country by the Spaniards! His death, in short, was decreed, and his butchers were not very nice about the pretext. It was found expedient to get rid of him; and under such circumstances a reason to condemn is as easily found as a rope to hang. Some few honest and humane men there were in the court, who rejected the false evidence brought before them, and denied the authority of the tribunal. But their objections were overruled, and they had to content themselves with entering a protest against proceedings which they justly held to be arbitrary and illegal. Father Valverde was not one of those who leaned to mercy’s side. A copy of the sentence, condemning Atahuallpa to be burned alive,was submitted to him for his signature, which he gave with alacrity, convinced, he said, that the Inca deserved death. Why, it is hard to say, at least at the hands of the Spaniards. But the whole of the circumstances connected with his mock trial and subsequent execution are a disgrace to the conquerors of Peru, an eternal blot upon the memory of Francisco Pizarro. To avoid the flames, Atahuallpa embraced Christianity, and was executed by strangulation, after being duly baptised and shriven by the clerical scoundrel Valverde. Previously he had begged hard for his life, offering twice the ransom he had already paid, and guarantees for the safety of the Spaniards. “What have I done, or my children,†said the unfortunate monarch, “that I should meet such a fate? And from your hands, too,†added he to Pizarro—“you, who have met friendship and kindness from my people, with whom I have shared my treasures, who have received nothing but benefits from my hands.†Adding hypocrisy to cruelty, Pizarro affected emotion. In its sincerity we cannot believe, or that he could not, had he chosen, have saved Atahuallpa. “I myself,†says Pedro Pizarro, ever his cousin’s eulogist and advocate, “saw the Marquis weep.†We believe Pedro lies, or was mistaken, or that the tears were of the sort called crocodile’s. We have no faith in the tenderness of the stern and iron-hearted conqueror of Peru.
Although the Inca’s ransom had not been made up to the full amount promised, Pizarro had acquitted his prisoner, some time previously to his death, of any further obligation on that score. With respect to this ransom, Dr Tschudi gives some interesting particulars, doubtless true in the main, although exaggerated in the details. “The gold which the Inca got together in Caxamarca and the neighbourhood, was hardly sufficient to fill half the room. He therefore sent messengers to Cuzco, to complete the amount out of the royal treasury; and it is said that eleven thousand llamas, each bearing a hundredweight of gold, really started thence for Caxamarca. But before they arrived, Atahuallpa was hung. The terrible news ran like a lighted train through the whole country, and reached the Indians who were driving the heavily laden llamas over the uplands of Central Peru. Panic-stricken, they buried their treasures upon the very spot where the mournful message was delivered to them, and dispersed in all directions.†Eleven thousand hundredweight of gold! If this were true, the cruelty of the Spaniards to their prisoner brought its own punishment. The buried treasure, whatever its amount, has never been recovered, although numerous researches have been made. Either the secret has perished with its possessors, or those Peruvians to whom it has been handed down, persist, with the sullen and impenetrable reserve that forms a distinguishing trait in their character, in preventing their white oppressors from reaping the benefit of it.
With the death of Atahuallpa, the principal danger incurred by the Spaniards in Peru—that, namely, of a combined and simultaneous uprising of the nation—may be said to have terminated. Subsequently, it is true, under the Inca Manco, a terrible insurrection occurred: an Indian army, the boldest, best equipped, and in all respects the most formidable that the Spaniards had seen, boldly assailed them, burned Cuzco, and beleaguered them in the citadel. At one time Pizarro felt the greatest uneasiness as to the possible result of this last effort for Peruvian independence. Seven hundred Christians fell in the course of the struggle. But there were still sufficient left to reduce the insurgents, and inflict a terrible chastisement. Lima had been built, and fortified posts established. And serious as this uprising was, there hardly seems to have been a probability of the extermination of the Spaniards in Peru, or of their expulsion from the country, at any period subsequent to Atahuallpa’s execution. The throne vacant, the rights of succession uncertain, the ancient institutions of the country fell to pieces, and anarchy ensued. Peruvian generals gathered their armies around them, seized upon provinces, declared themselves independent, and were beaten in detail. Difficulties and hardships were still in store for the conquerors; privations, and painful marches, and sharp encounters;but they were strengthened by reinforcements, cheered by success, and urged on by their thirst of gold, which was irritated rather than assuaged by the rich booty they had made. After crowning with his own hands a brother of Atahuallpa, selected in preference to Manco, the legitimate heir to the throne, as more likely to be a docile instrument in his hands, Pizarro marched upon Cuzco, the much-talked-of metropolis of Peru, with a force that now amounted to nearly five hundred men, one-third of them cavalry. After a sharp skirmish or two, in which the Peruvians displayed much spirit and bravery, the conquerors entered the capital. They were disappointed in the amount of booty found there. Their expectations must have been outrageous, for the spoil was very large. The great temple was studded with gold plates; its gardens glittered with ornaments of the same precious metal. In a cavern near the city they found a number of pure gold vases, and ten or twelve statues of women, as large as life, some of gold, others of silver. The stores of food, and of manufactures for clothing and ornament, were very numerous and considerable. And there were women’s dresses composed entirely of gold beads; and “in one place they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver, each piece being twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two or three inches thick.†But the rapacious Europeans were not content, and some of the inhabitants were barbarously tortured to compel them to reveal their hidden stores of wealth. Gold lost its value, and the commonest necessaries of life rose to exorbitant prices. A quire of paper was worth ten golden dollars, a bottle of wine fetched sixty. And the inherent Spanish vice of gambling was carried to a prodigious extent. Many of the conquerors thus lost the whole of their booty. One man had received in his share of spoil a golden image of the sun. “This rich prize the spendthrift lost in a single night; whence it came to be a proverb in Spain,Juega el Sol antes que amanezca, ‘Play away the sun before sunrise.’â€
With the capture of Cuzco, or very soon afterwards, the unity of Spanish conquest in Peru may be said to have ceased. Previously to that event, all were subordinate to Pizarro; none claimed independence of him; he kept his men together, and with his whole force—excepting the small garrison at St Miguel—pushed forward into the heart of the land. It was by far the most romantic and adventurous period of Spanish operations in the empire of the Incas. But now other cavaliers of fortune, good soldiers, and men of experience in American warfare, turned their attention to Peru, eager to share its treasures and territory. Amongst these, the governor of Guatimala, Pedro de Alvarado, one of Cortés’ officers, was conspicuous. Early in 1534, he landed in the Bay of Caraques, at the head of five hundred men, “the best equipped and most formidable array that had yet appeared in the southern seas.†They marched towards the rich province of Quito, which they believed to be still unexplored; but suffered frightfully on the road; and on emerging, with greatly diminished numbers, from the Puertos Nevados, a terrible mountain passage where many of the troopers were frozen in their saddles, they had the mortification to discover the hoof prints of Spanish chargers, proving that they had been forestalled. Benalcazar, governor of San Miguel, had entered the province with one hundred and forty men and some native auxiliaries. He had been met by the Indian general Ruminavi; but the son of the Moor was more than a match for the Peruvian, and after some well-contested fights, the standard of Castile waved over Quito’s capital. Almagro, who had heard of Alvarado’s landing, soon joined Benalcazar, and together they marched to oppose their intruding countrymen. At one time a battle seemed imminent, but matters were finally compromised, Alvarado receiving one hundred thousandpesos de oro, and re-embarking his men.
Amongst the conquerors themselves, dissensions soon broke out. Charles the Fifth, to whom Hernando Pizarro had been sent to give an account of events in Peru, and to submit specimens of its riches and manufactures, had received the envoy most favourably. He confirmedhis previous grants of land to Francisco Pizarro, extending them seventy leagues further south, and empowered Almagro to discover and occupy the country for two hundred leagues south of that. Disputes about boundaries, imbittered by the rankling recollection of former feuds, soon occurred between Pizarro and Almagro; and though a temporary reconciliation was effected, a civil war at last broke out, where both parties fought nominally for the honour and profit of the Spanish king, and in reality for their own peculiar behoof and ambition. “El Rey y Almagro!†“El Rey y Pizarro!†were the battle-cries on the bloody field of Las Salinas, in the neighbourhood of Cuzco, where, on the 26th April 1538, Almagro fell into the hands of Hernando Pizarro, who, from their very first meeting, had bitterly disliked him. “Before the battle of Salinas, it had been told to Hernando Pizarro that Almagro was like to die. ‘Heaven forbid,’ he exclaimed, ‘that this should come to pass before he falls into my hands!’†After such a speech, Almagro’s fate scarce admitted of a doubt. He was brought to trial, on charges that covered two thousand folio pages. Found guilty, he was condemned to death, and perished by thegarrote. He was to have been executed on the public square of Cuzco; but public sympathy was so strongly enlisted on his side, that it was thought more prudent to make an end of him in his dungeon. The chief apparent movers of his death, Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, were amongst the principal mourners at his funeral—thus aping the hypocrisy of their brother Francisco, who had paid similar honours to his victim Atahuallpa. The Marquis himself was on his way to Cuzco during Almagro’s trial, of which he was cognizant. He lingered on the road, and upon reaching the river Abancay he learned his rival’s death. The old farce was played over again. He shed tears, for whose sincerity none gave him credit. Speedily forgetting this mockery of wo, he entered Cuzco in triumph, richly dressed, and with clang of martial music. There can be little doubt of his having secretly instigated and entirely approved the execution of Almagro. The testimony of all the impartial historians of the time concurs in fixing its odium upon him.
But the crimes of this great conqueror and bad man were destined to meet punishment. By the sword he had risen—by the sword he was to perish; not on some well-fought battle field, with shouts of victory ringing in his ear, but in his palace hall, by the assassin’s blade. In his own fair capital of Lima, the City of the Kings, the gem of the Pacific, which had sprung up under his auspices with incredible rapidity—for Pizarro seemed to impart his vast energy to all about him—a score of conspirators, assembled at the house of Almagro’s son, plotted his death. It was on a Sunday in June 1541, at the hour of dinner, that they burst into his apartments, with cries of “Death to the tyrant!†A number of visitors were with him, but they were imperfectly armed, and deserted him, escaping by the windows. His half-brother, Martinez de Alcantara, two pages and as many cavaliers, were all who stood forward in defence of their chief. They soon fell, overpowered by numbers, and covered with wounds. But Pizarro was not the man meekly to meet his death. Alone, without armour, his cloak around one arm, his good sword in his right hand, the old hero kept his cowardly assailants at bay, with a vigour and intrepidity surprising at his advanced age. “What ho!†he cried, “traitors! have you come to kill me in my own house?†And as he spoke, two of his enemies fell beneath his blows. “Rada, (the chief of the conspirators) impatient of the delay, called out ‘Why are we so long about it? Down with the tyrant!’ and taking one of his companions, Narvaez, in his arms, he thrust him against the Marquis. Pizarro, instantly grappling with his opponent, ran him through with his sword. But at that moment he received a wound in the throat, and reeling, he sank on the floor, while the swords of Rada and several of the conspirators were plunged into his body. ‘Jesu!’ exclaimed the dying man; and, tracing a cross with his finger on the bloody floor, he bent down his head to kiss it, when astroke, more friendly than the rest, put an end to his existence.â€
Great indeed have been the changes wrought by three centuries in the world beyond the Atlantic. The difference in the manner of foundation of the English and Spanish empires in America is not more striking than the contrast offered by their progress and present condition. The English, Dutch, and other northern nations, were content to obtain a footing in the new-found lands, without attempting their conquest. Settled upon the coast, defending themselves, often with extreme difficulty, against the assaults of warlike and crafty tribes, they aimed not at the subjugation of empires, or, if visions of future dominion occasionally crossed the imagination of the more far-sighted, the means proposed were not those of armed aggression and sanguinary spoliation, but the comparatively slow and bloodless victories of civilisation. Far otherwise was it with the warlike and ambitious Spaniard of the sixteenth century, when, with a mixture of crusading zeal and freebooting greed, he shaped his caravel’s course for distantEl-Dorado. Not with a log-house, in the wilderness washecontent; it suited not his lofty and chivalrous notions to clear land and plough it, and water the stubborn furrow with his forehead’s sweat. For him the bright cuirass, the charging steed, the wild encounter with tawny hosts, reminding him of the day when, after eight hundred years’ struggle, he chased the last Saracen from Iberia’s shores. For him the glittering gold mine, the rich plantation, the cringing throng of Indian serfs. One day a cavalier of fortune, with horse and arms for sole possessions, the next he sat upon the throne whence he had hurled some far-descended prince, some Inca demi-god, or feather-crowned cacique. And at the period that a few scanty bands of expatriated malefactors, and of refugees for opinion’s sake, flying from persecution to the wilderness, toiled out a scanty and laborious existence in the forests and prairies of North America, and alone represented the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World, Spain was in secure and undisturbed enjoyment of two vast and productive empires. To-day, how great the contrast! The unwieldy Spanish colonies have crumbled and fallen to pieces, the petty English settlements have grown into a flourishing and powerful nation. And we behold the descendants of the handful of exiles who first colonised “the wild New England shore,†penetrating, almost unopposed, to the heart of the country that Montezuma ruled, and Cortés was the first to conquer.
Several years ago, just before the Palmerstonian policy had involved all Asia, from Scinde to Syria, in war and anarchy, a young Englishman of family and fortune, named Sidney, remained at Cairo in spring after all his countrymen had departed for Alexandria in order to avoid the Khamseen winds. The month of April was well advanced in all its heat; and it disputes with May the opprobrium of being the most detestable month of the year from Rosetta to Dongola. The society of Misr the Kaherah (victorious) offered no resources beyond the shabby coffee-houses and the apparitions of Indian travellers. But at that time only a few Griffins and Nabobs were occasionally seen. There was nothing to resemble the hordes which now pass through Cairo in their bi-monthly emigrations, like flights of locusts devouring every thing that comes in their way, from the bread on thetable-d’hôteat theHotel d’Orientto the oranges and melons piled up like ammunition at the sides of the streets. Now, indeed, it may truly be said of these locusts, as it was of the plague of old. “Very grievous are they. Before them there were no such locusts as they; neither after them shall be such.â€
Mr Sidney, in order to escape from the habitual desolation of the Esbekieh, and avoid witnessing the fearful voracity of his countrymen, passed a good deal of his time in a coffee-house in the Mouski. His apology to himself for this idle and unprofitable life was his wish to improve his knowledge of colloquial Arabic. His studies in Arabic literature had been pursued with some industry and profit during the winter, under the guidance of Sheikh Ismael el Feel or the Elephant, so called from his rotundity of carcass and protuberance of proboscis. The love of French brandy displayed by this learned Theban had induced the European consuls to regard him as an oracle of Mohammedan law, and a striking proof of the progress of civilisation in the East. The Elephant repaid their esteem by unbounded affection for their purses and an immeasurable contempt for their persons. Sidney, however, had lost the friendship of the literary Elephant; for the learned Sheik, supposing that he was about to quit Cairo with the rest of his countrymen, had thought fit to absent himself, taking away as a keepsake a splendid new oriental dress just sent home from the tailor.
One day as Sidney was musing on the feasibility of crossing the desert at this unfavourable season, in order to spend his Easter at Jerusalem, two strangers entered the coffee-house in which he was seated. As no Indian mail was expected, he could not help examining them with some attention. One was a little man, not of a very prepossessing appearance, with a pale face and a squeaking voice; the other was a stout Scotsman, at least six feet two inches in height of body, and who, before he had swallowed a cup of coffee and smoked a single sheesheh, indicated that he was of a corresponding height of mind, by reminding his companion that he was a literary man. The strangers, after throwing a scrutinising glance at the inmates of the room, continued their conversation in English. The pale-faced man spoke as a foreigner, though almost as correctly as a native, and with a fluency perfectly marvellous. The tall Scotsman seemed not quite satisfied with the degree of familiarity he assumed even in a Caireen coffee-house.
“Well, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, it is very true I am going to Jerusalem, and so is Mr Ringlady; but I thought you said you intended to go to Mecca, when you joined us at Alexandria in hiring a boat to Cairo.â€
“My dear Campbell,†(here Mr Campbell gave a wince, which showed that he was very ungrateful for the endearment,) “I can’t go to Mecca for three months yet; my Arabic won’t have the pure accent of the Hedjas in a shorter space of time. I mean, therefore, to go round by Jerusalem, join the tribes beyond the Dead Sea, and work my way by land.â€
This was enough for Sidney. He determined to join the party; and was moving out of the coffee-house to take his measures for that purpose, when Aali Bey—a young Osmanlee dandy, who had passed a few months at Leghorn to study European diplomacy—made him a sign that he wished to speak in private. Aali’s story had so long a preface, and was so crammed with flattery and oriental compliments, that Sidney became soon satisfied it would terminate in an attempt to borrow money, if not in robbery and murder. He was nevertheless mistaken; for Aali, after many vain endeavours to shorten his preface, at last stated his real business. It proved deserving of a long-winded introduction, and amounted to a proposition to Sidney to assist in affording Aali an opportunity of carrying off his bride, the daughter of the celebrated Sheikh Salem Abou Rasheed, from Cairo to Syria. Sheikh Salem was a man of great influence at Nablous; and he had been detained by Mohammed Ali as a kind of hostage with all his family, as he was returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca by the easy route of Cosseir and the Nile.
The affair seemed too serious even for the thoughtless Sidney to engage in without some consideration; and he attempted to persuade Aali that his escape was impossible, and that he had better live contentedly with his bride at Cairo, more particularly as it was a very bad season for a lady to think of crossing the desert. Aali, however, informed him, that he was not married, nor indeed likely to be, unless the marriage took place at Gaza; for Sheikh Salem had offered him his daughter Fatmeh, on the condition of escorting her and her mother to Gaza, where the marriage would take place in presence of the Sheikh of Hebron, and other relations of the family. Aali conjured Sidney by every saint, Mussulman and Christian, to aid him in his enterprise, which would raise him to the rank of a chief in Syria. As it appeared that Sheikh Salem had really put some supply of cash at the disposal of the young spendthrift, and Sidney knew well with what difficulty an Oriental parts with the smallest conceivable fraction of coin even to men more prudent than Aali, he now deemed it necessary to let the young Osmanlee know what he had just heard concerning the movements of an English party. It was arranged that Sidney should learn all he could about the new travellers, and inform Aali in an evening walk in the Esbekieh.
Sidney, on finding the travellers resided at theHotel d’Orient, joined thetable-d’hôtethat day. The party consisted of four persons: Sidney; the pale-faced, squeaking-voiced Mr Lascelles Hamilton; the tall Caledonian, Mr Campbell; and a gentleman with a mellifluous voice, and an air which said, Look at me and listen. This gentleman was Mr Ringlady—the celebrated Mr Ringlady, a middle-aged lawyer, innocent of briefs, who had written some works on jurisprudence.
For a short time the Britons of the party looked at Sidney’s Egyptian dress with the supercilious disdain which enables Americans to recognise the inhabitants of the old country, while they are engaged in advertising their own nationality in earnest endeavours to keep their bodies in equilibrium on a single leg of their chairs. The voluble Mr Lascelles Hamilton, however, soon placed every body on a familiar footing. He lost no time in ascertaining Sidney’s name and country from the waiter, and then launched forth.
“I hear, Mr Sidney, you have been five months at Cairo; I am sure you have found it a delightful place. For my part, I have not been five hours; but I could-stay five years, for I have seen five wonders.â€
“As I have not been so fortunate in my five months’ residence,†said Sidney, “you must tell me the wonders you have seen, before I give you my opinion of its delights.â€
“First, then, the donkey on which I made my entry into the city of Saladin, ran away with me. No horse could ever do that, so think I entered Cairo riding on Old Nick! Second, I did knock down two ladies, each one as large as three donkeys and myself, and they did not scream. Third, my donkey did pitch me into the middle of the street, and nobody did laugh. Fourth, I did see Ibrahim Pasha pay his whole household inloaves of sugar—a year’s wages, all in loaves of sugar. And fifth, I do see four Englishmen sit down to a good dinner in Cairo in the month of April, without one of them being on his way to India.â€
Mr Ringlady, who had been watching impatiently during this long speech for an opportunity of displaying the mellifluous voice of which he was so proud, in contrast to the harsh squeak and discordant accent of Mr Lascelles Hamilton, now gave a specimen of his professional turn of mind by remarking in his silvery tone, that he believed the fifth wonder was not quite a perfect miracle, for one of the party was a native of Scotland; and then added, glancing his eye obliquely from Mr Lascelles Hamilton to Sidney, “and perhaps all of us may not have been born in Great Britain.â€
The little man saw the innuendo was directed against him and his accent; so, with the ease of a man of the world, he turned the tables on his assailant by replying in a very innocent tone—
“Yes, indeed, I did suppose you were an American. But it is no matter: we all count as Englishmen at Cairo. I was myself born in India, at Lahore, where my father was a general of cavalry.â€
The lawyer had also hurt the feelings of the literary Scotsman, who fancied his accent was a pure stream of English undefiled. So that he had a wish for revenge, which Mr Ringlady afforded him an opportunity of gratifying by saying with great dignity,—
“My name is Ringlady; it is an old English name well known in our country. Mr Campbell, who is so profoundly acquainted with the history of Britain during the Norman period, must be well acquainted with it.â€
To this appeal Campbell replied very drily: “I assure you I never heard it before I had the honour of meeting you on board the Oriental.†Thus dispersing the county reputation in Norman times and the fame of the works on jurisprudence at one blow.
It was evident that it would be a rich treat to cross the desert with this party; so Sidney led the conversation to that subject. In a short time it was arranged that they should come to a final decision on their plans next morning at breakfast.
Sidney communicated this resolution to Aali in their evening walk, and ventured to predict that the decision would be for immediate departure.
At breakfast next morning, it was accordingly determined to quit Cairo in three days. The literary man considered that it was his duty to employ that time in writing a description of Cairo and the Pyramids on the spot. The party, however, did not succeed in completing their arrangements in less than a week. Mr Ringlady procured the most celebrated Dragoman remaining at Cairo, by paying him enormous wages, and giving him full power to lay in what provisions and take what measures he considered necessary for crossing the desert with comfort. The Dragoman hired was named Mohammed; and he commenced by purchasing double the quantity of stores required and sending half to his own house, as he said his new master looked like a man who would change his mind, and it would be satisfactory, should he return suddenly to Cairo, to find every thing ready for proceeding up the Nile. Mr Campbell and Mr Lascelles Hamilton arranged to hire a servant together, as far as Jerusalem. Sidney was attended by an Arab from Guzzerat, who had been with him for some time, and who, from being a subject of the East India Company, or an Englishman, was in less danger of suffering any inconvenience than a native from the part he was going to take in Aali’s enterprise. He was as black as a coal, but he spoke of Abyssinians, Nubians, and others, a shade lighter than himself, as “them d—n black fellows.â€
It was necessary to make a written contract with the sheikh of the camels for a journey from Cairo to Gaza, and this document required to be prepared at the English consulate. The scene at signing the document was a singular one. After much wrangling, during which the officials of the consulate stoutly defended the cause of the camel-drivers, who brought forward, one after another, nearly a dozen new pretensions, as pretexts for additional extortion, though the termshad been already arranged, the patience of Sidney and the exertions of Achmet el Khindee brought the negotiation to an end, and the treaty was signed. Then the chancellor of the English consulate stepped forward, and, rubbing his hands with great glee, exclaimed, “Now, gentlemen, you have concluded your bargain; let us hear what backshish you are going to give the sheikh?†As this question appeared to imply too close a sympathy between the feelings of the chancellory and the amount of the backshish, Mr Sidney quietly observed, that as he supposed the amount did not require to be registered in the archives of the British consulate, it could be settled at Gaza. Scenes of this kind are constantly repeated at all the trading consulates of the Levant; yet it is prudent for travellers not to enter into the desert, nor even to ascend the Nile, without a written contract at the consular office. Even should they pay something more than they might otherwise do, the surplus serves as an insurance against native fraud and open robbery, as the people recommended by the consulate are at least well known and of Arab respectability.
At the latter end of April, long before daybreak, the party quitted theHotel d’Orient, mounted on donkeys, to join the camels at El Khanka. At the hour of departure, Mr Lascelles Hamilton was no where to be found; but a waiter, roused from sleep, at last informed the travellers that he had left word that he would join them on the road. This event rather discomposed Sidney, who feared that the son of the Indian general of cavalry, in spite of his agreeable manners, universal knowledge, and incessant volubility, might have opened communications with Mohammed Ali to cut off the retreat of Aali. It was certain that all Mr Lascelles Hamilton said could not be received according to the letter, or it would be difficult to understand why he was not governor-general of India, or at least ambassador at St Petersburg.
The camels were found at El Khanka, kneeling on the verge of the desert, near the mosque, at the entrance of the place. The donkeys and the donkey-boys were here dismissed, and the party soon moved onward with the slow monotonous and silent motion of a fleet of desert ships. The baggage, the dragomans, and the singular Mr Lascelles Hamilton, had proceeded to Belbeis to prepare the tents and refreshments; but Aali was found at Khanka, waiting to join Sidney, as the report had been left at Cairo that he was going to Jerusalem as his travelling companion.
The difficulties and dangers of the flight of the fair Fatmeh were now to commence, and Sidney felt that he might be embarked in a perilous enterprise. The plan concerted with Aali was this. Sheikh Salem had sent forward his wife and daughter in a takterwan, or camel-sedan, to Belbeis. Fresh dromedaries were to be found there for the whole party, with which it was proposed to reach Saba Biar in a single day, where horses were to be in waiting. In the mean time it had been announced at Cairo that the whole party was to take the route by Salahieh, and the camels had been hired for that road.
The shades of evening were falling over the renowned city of Belbeis as our travellers approached. High mounds, crowned by dusky walls, set in a frame of waving palm-trees, gave the landscape a splendid colouring; but even the obscurity could not veil the fact that the once renowned city had shrunk into a collection of filthy huts, huddled together on mountains of rubbish.
The tents were found pitched to the north-east of the city, and the camp presented a most orderly appearance. The three tents of the travellers were ranged in a line—the magnificent tent of Mr Ringlady in the centre; behind, stood the cooking tents, and in a semicircle in the rear, the kneeling camels were disposed in groups, side by side. The whole arrangement testified the spirit of order Achmet had imbibed with his Indian education at Bombay. At a short distance to the north, thetakterwanof the ladies was seen with a large caravan of dromedaries.
“Weel, Mr Lascelles Hamilton,†exclaimed Campbell, on scrambling off the back of his kneeling conveyance—the fatigue of a ten hours’ ride,in a dreadfully hot sun, having brought all the beauties of his accent to the tip of his tongue—“Weel, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, I say, ye have played us a pretty trick, mon.â€
“My dear friend, I forgot to tell you yesterday, that I was forced to ride round by Tel el Yahoudi, the last great city of the Jews—a race I honour for their obstinacy and their wealth. They are destined to return to Palestine, when it shall be their lot to recover it, from this place. I promised my friend Benjamin the Banker to bring him a relic from the place, and report if it be a suitable purchase to prepare for the conquest of Syria. I have bought him a bronze goose and a serpent of clay, undoubted antiques; and I shall send him an original report.â€
There was not much society among the travellers that evening. Mr Ringlady had his dinner served in his magnificent tent in solitary dignity. Lascelles Hamilton and Campbell were soon heard snoring from fatigue. Sidney and Aali, however, were too anxious about the success of their project to think of sleep until they had held a long consultation with Sheikh Hassan, the Kehaya of Sheikh Salem Abou Rasheed, and the guide of the takterwan and its escort. Poor Aali had absolutely so little control over the movements of his bride that he hardly dared to turn his eyes in the direction of the cumbrous sedan, which concealed the sacred treasures of the harem.
Sidney, Aali, and Hassan walked to a solitary palm-tree of unusual bulk, standing far from the grove which now marks the utmost limit of cultivation: a proof, among many others around Belbeis, that in the days of its renown, the waters of the Nile were conducted far into the desert, and fertilised whole districts now baked into solid clay. When they were seated under the tree, safe from intruders, who could not approach unseen, Aali commenced the conversation.
“Hassan, we are now safe out of Misr, with one day’s start of any pursuers, for your departure cannot be known. Are you sure all is right at Saba Biar, and that we can reach it to-morrow? The takterwan is not fatigued?†This seemed to be the nearest approach Aali could make, according to Moslem etiquette, to an inquiry after his bride’s health; so Sidney listened to the answer of Hassan with considerable curiosity. But, alas! for romance even in the deserts of Arabia. Hassan replied in the most matter-of-fact tone:—
“We have fresh dromedaries here, and they are excellent. We shall proceed like Beddauwee to-morrow. But can the Ferenks keep up us?â€
“Never mind the Ferenks,†said Sidney: “persuade the Tergiman Mohammed to get the dromedaries along, and their masters must follow.â€
“Is the Ferenk who came on before, thy friend?†said Hassan to Sidney. “He is a wondrous man, and doubtless a learned.â€
“He is a wise man,†quoth Sidney, “though he seemeth somewhat mad; but he will not be the first to lag behind.â€
“But,†interrupted Aali, “how have you arranged, Hassan, with the camel-drivers to change their loads and let us proceed with the dromedaries without exciting suspicion?â€
“It was hard work,†said Hassan, “and it has occupied all day. I began by increasing their loads with the assistance of the Tergiman Mohammed, who stands our friend in this business. I had bundles of straw and sand ready, which I pretend are smuggled goods.â€
“Thou art very prudent, O Hassan!†exclaimed Aali.
“We had a long dispute,†continued Hassan, lighting a fresh pipe. “The sheikh of my dromedaries made a private offer to take the baggage of the Ferenks for half the price they pay to Abdallah, and to share in an adventure of beans—and then the matter only required time.â€
“Thou art very active,†again exclaimed Aali.
“I should have found that no prudence and no activity could have brought matters to a conclusion this evening,†said the straightforward Hassan, “had the Ferenk Sheitan, with a voice like a Kisslar Agassi, and a tongue like a wind-mill, not helped me through. He quarrelled first with one sheikh then withanother; drew a pocket-pistol with seven barrels, and killed seven crows, swore he would go back to Alexandria and bring El Kebir2himself to hang the sheikhs and ride with him to El Arish; and in short, frightened them into an agreement;—for Mohammed Tergiman says he is a Ferenk Elchi in disguise, and as we all know that Ferenk Elchees are always mad, I believe he is right.â€
This last axiom of the prudent Hassan, concerning the unequivocal symptoms of madness displayed by all Ministers Plenipotentiary and Ambassadors Extraordinary, rather astonished Sidney, who was aware that Hassan could not have read the printed certificates of the fact presented to the Houses of Parliament from time to time in the form of blue books. It was announced as a fact generally known in Africa and Asia, from the sands of Sahara to the deserts of Kobi. As there was no time for investigating the organs of public opinion by which European statesmanship had been so unhappily condemned, Sidney deferred the inquiry until he should reach Gaza, where he proposed, if not forestalled by his literary companion, to extract from Hassan valuable materials for a work on public opinion in the deserts of Arabia, with a view of its influence on the ultimate settlement of the Eastern question. He only asked Hassan, for the present, if the Ferenk Kisslar Agassi, as he called him, spoke Arabic. Hassan replied without hesitation—
“Better than I do; he speaks like a learned Moolah.â€
This statement shook Sidney’s faith both in the judgment and the veracity of Hassan. At the same time it decided him on keeping a closer watch over the proceedings of Mr Lascelles Hamilton. He had seen enough of diplomatic society to know that he might have been, or be, a minister plenipotentiary; but still he could hardly give him credit for speaking Arabic as well as Hassan, having heard him pronounce a few common words. Whether he was the son of the general of cavalry of the king of Lahore, as he himself asserted, or a German Jew, as Mr Campbell declared with equal confidence, Sidney pretended not to decide.
The party at the palm-tree at length retired to rest. Sidney, wearing the Egyptian dress, had adopted the native habits in travelling, and attempted to sleep on a single carpet spread on the sand. The attempt was vain. The excitement caused equally by fatigue of body and mind, and the unusual restraint of his clothes, drove sleep from his eyelids; while one train of thought followed another with all the vividness and incoherence of a morning dream. He fancied he saw Mr Lascelles Hamilton rush into the tent of Mr Ringlady and cut off his head, and then, suddenly transformed into a minister of the Prince of Darkness, in full uniform, with a proboscis like an elephant, and a green tail like a boa-constrictor, deliver up the whole party, Fatmeh included, to Mohammed Ali in person.
Jumping up in alarm at this strange vision, he saw to his amazement his companion, Aali, sitting very composedly; while Achmet was engaged in staining his face of a bronze colour, so dark as almost to emulate the ebon hue of El Khindi’s own skin.
“What the d—l are you about, Achmet?†shouted Sidney in emphatic phrase. “Why are you going to make Aali’s face as black as your own?â€
Achmet grinned and replied,—“Very good against the sun, Mr Sidney; me make Aali look a true Beddauwee,—neither white like a boiled golgas, (he meant a yellow turnip) nor sooty like them d——n black fellow. You like, me paint you too.†Sidney, who was quite content to look in the desert like a boiled turnip, turned his back on the painter; and the incident having dispersed his dreams, he fell into a profound sleep.
Long before daylight, the whole party was roused by the indefatigable Hassan. After the usual squabbling, yelling, singing, and bellowing of camels, the caravan was put in motion.They left Belbeïs without the literary Mr Campbell putting his foot within the circuit of the renowned city. Daylight found the party moving forward at what is a very rapid rate of travelling in the desert, whenever half-a-dozen dromedaries are together. They were actually proceeding at the rate of four miles an hour; now the average log of a fleet of camels rarely exceeds two and a half under the most favourable circumstances.
The ground over which they advanced was a flat surface of hard clay, covered with round rough brown pebbles, apparently polished by torrents, and flattened into the soil by some superhuman roller. Far to the right, a range of mountains bounded the horizon; in front, the view was terminated by a gradual elevation of the plain marked by drifts of sand; while some miles to the left, the green valley of the Nile, far as the eye could reach, was skirted by a forest of palm-trees, whose feathered leaves were waving in the breeze. The scene offered no great variety, but it was singularly impressive. Few persons find that the deserts, even of Arabia Deserta, are precisely what they figure to be the quintessence of desert scenery. Where there is sand, a few scraggy shrubs are very often to be found; or else a constant succession of high mounds or hills, disposed in various directions and forms, take away from the monotony of the view. Where the plain is flat and extensive, it is generally covered with strange and beautiful pebbles; and when it rises into mountains, they are grand and rugged in form, and coloured with tints which render the memory of Mount Albano, and of Hymettus, like the timid painting of a northern artist, trembling at the critics, who have rarely seen a sunbeam.
The caravan proceeded for a long time in silence. Now and then a camel-driver essayed to commence one of the interminable Arab songs; but after some flourishes of “Ya Beddouwee! Ya Beddouwee!†which seemed to indicate the fear of some passing elfish spirit, they all abandoned the vain attempt.
Mr Lascelles Hamilton at last took the field, shouting in a voice that brought an expression of comic amaze into the features of the attending camel-drivers.
“Campbell! what do you say? You saw old father Nile was a humbug as we were coming up to Cairo. You must now acknowledge that the desert is a humbug as we are going down to Syria. Multiply some acres of gravel walk by two hundred yards of sea beach in Argyleshire, and you have one half of Arabia Deserta; take a rabbit warren and you have the rest. And as to the Nile, it is only the Thames lengthened and the ships extracted.â€
Campbell was too much distressed by the motion of his dromedary, the form of his saddle, and the difficulty of keeping his position, to feel inclined to contest any opinion maintained by his voluble companion. So he contented himself with growling to Sidney, who was nearest him—
“That fellow is only a speaking machine; he can’t think.â€
Mr Ringlady, however, could not let such opinions pass without notice; so he opened his reply—
“I am not prepared, Mr Lascelles Hamilton, to admit either of your propositions without restrictions.â€
“I knew you would be forced to admit them generally, you are so candid,†was the rejoinder of the voluble gentleman; “you can make as many restrictions as you like at leisure—it will be both amusing and instructive.â€
“But, sir,†interrupted the lawyer—for Mr Lascelles Hamilton having commenced, might have spoken for half an hour without a pause—“you are aware the Arabs call the Nile El Bahr, or the sea.â€
“Perfectly aware of the fact—though they don’t pronounce the word exactly as you do,†exclaimed the speaking machine, “and consider it another proof what a humbug that said Nile is. Why, you may see him at the Vatican with thirty children about him; while after all he has only seven here in Egypt, where you can count their mouths as they kiss the sea.â€
“But, sir, you must take into consideration the fertilising effects of the waters of the river, which made Homer say that they descended from heaven.â€
“Why, so they do: old Homer laidasidehishumbug for once; he knew the effects of a monsoon, and meant to say heavy rain makes rivers swell—so the Nile’s a river and nothing like the sea. Let me ask you now, Mr Ringlady—can you tell me why the Arabs call the Nile the sea, before we proceed?â€
The learned Mr Ringlady was not quite prepared to answer this sudden query; so he replied at random—
“The Arabs think it looks like the sea.â€
“Not a bit of it. They call it the sea because it is not the least like the sea. Just as you call Britain Great because it is not enormously big, and Francela belle, because it’s uglypar excellence.â€
The travellers at last reached the valley called the Wadi Tomlat, which is an oasis running into the desert to the eastward at right angles to the course of the Nile. In ancient times, the waters of the river, overflowing into this valley, and filtering through the sand into the low lands which extend over a considerable part of the Isthmus of Suez, formed the rich pastures called in Scripture the land of Goshen. In this district, the Jewish people multiplied from a family to a nation. Our travellers skirted this singular valley on its southern side, in order to avoid passing through the town in its centre, called Tel el Wadi. And after leaving behind them the utmost boundary of the cultivated fields, they crossed a stream of fresh water even at that season of the year, which, however, soon disappears in a small stagnant lake.
Here the travellers rested to breakfast. But after a short halt, they pursued their way until they reached the ruins of an ancient city. The spot was called Abou Kesheed: here the intolerable heat compelled them again to stop for a couple of hours. Sidney and Campbell, sheltered from the sun by an old carpet hung on three lances, reclined beside an immense block of granite, which had been transported from its native quarry at Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, to be sculptured into three strange figures, and covered with signs and symbols of strange import. Sidney, who had paid some attention to the researches of Champollion and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, considered their authority decisive that the figures were those of Rameses the Great, the Sesostris of the Greeks, placed between the two deities Re and Atmoo. He pointed out the hieroglyphic signet of the mighty monarch, and maintained that the ruins around were the relics of one of the treasure cities, built by Pharaoh to secure the tribute paid by the children of Israel when they dwelt in the land of Goshen.
The banks of the great canal which once joined the Nile and the Red Sea, were visible near the ruins in two long ranges of sandy mounds. This mighty work was said by the Greeks to have been constructed by Sesostris, or Rameses—the very monarch who now sat before them turned into granite with his immortal name wrought into an enigma beside him. Sidney argued that this spot was the Raamses of Exodus; and Campbell declared that as it was only two days’ march from Suez, it was a military point which he thought himself bound to occupy, in a dissertation on the invasion of Egypt by an Indian army from the Red Sea. Mr Lascelles Hamilton, who was very impatient during these discussions, could not lay claim to the poetic lines that may now be seen issuing from the mouth of a magnificent ram-headed god, in Belzoni’s tomb at Thebes—for neither the lines, nor the guide-book which suggested them, were then in existence—“I am, and always have been, Ammon,In spite of all Sir Gardner’s gammon;â€but the speaking machine expressed a similar sentiment a dozen times, clothed in language partaking less of what he himself called humbug.
All these learned cogitations were interrupted by Aali, who came to inform them that Hassan had found that the horses were waiting for them at a neighbouring well. This well, though said to be in the neighbourhood, it took them more than two long hours to reach. The party grew excessively impatient. Mr Ringlady entered into a violent altercation with his accomplished dragoman Mohammed, accusing him of ignorance of the route, and of deception concerning the distance. Campbell declared he could go no farther, saying, “that he did not seewhy they should mak a tile o’ a pleesure.†His pronunciation certified his fatigue; nature got the better of art at this crisis, as happened with Dante’s cat, which, though taught to sit on the table with a candle in its paw, dropped the light on Dante’s fingers when it saw a mouse. The loquacious Mr Lascelles Hamilton was silent, and apparently asleep. Sidney endeavoured to keep up the courage of Campbell, and keep down the wrath of Ringlady, by complaining of his own sufferings.
The well of Saba Biar was not reached until it was dark. Indeed Sidney had all along suspected that Hassan would not approach it by daylight, in order to conceal their movements as much as possible. He had kept the party for two long hours moving in the hollow of the ancient canal, without a breath of air, and suffering the intolerable heat of a bright sun reflected from two parallel lines of sand-hills.
At Saba Biar, it became necessary to hold a council of war; in order to admit all the party into the secret of the flight of Aali and his bride, and propose that they should join in taking horses, and flying all together into Syria. It was therefore announced to Mr Ringlady, that his advice was required concerning the movements of the caravan next day. Pleased with the deference thus shown to his mellifluous voice and large tent, he invited the whole party to discuss the matter over tchibooks and Mocha. The party assembled. Ringlady, Campbell, and Lascelles Hamilton seated on stools, Sidney, Aali, and Hassan squatting on the ground, formed a circle.
Hassan began by a very long speech, which it was needless for Sidney to translate, as it gave them no idea of what he intended to communicate. Aali followed in one quite as long, in what appeared, from the words of which it was composed, to be Italian; but the interminable length of the sentences, and the flowery nature of the diction, rendered it as unintelligible to every one present, as if it had really been in the Farsee of the Ottoman chancery, of which it was a copy. Sidney then stated shortly in English, that the consent of the travellers was wanted to aid in the escape of Aali and his bride from the power of Mohammed Ali, and that it was proposed that they should have horses ready waiting for them and ride all together to Gaza. He treated it as the simplest thing in the world, just as if their pursuit, capture, and murder, in the midst of the desert, by some party of wild Bedoweens despatched from Cairo was not an event to excite a moment’s hesitation.
Mr Ringlady began now to perceive that he was not on the route he had bargained to take, and of which he had, with the assistance of his faithful dragoman Mohammed, compiled a very minute itinerary and description before leaving Cairo. Instead of being at El Gran, he was in the centre of the Isthmus of Suez. He called the faithful Mohammed into the tent, and inquired with desperate calmness the name of the place where they were.
Mohammed replied with the same calm—“El Gran.â€
“Is it El Gran?†repeated Mr Ringlady.
Aali, who thought the inquiry was dictated by the eagerness Mr Ringlady usually displayed in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, innocently said the place was called Saba Biar.
Ringlady sprang from his chair in a paroxysm of rage, and shouted to Mohammed—“How dare you tell a lie, sir? How dare you tell a lie, sir? to me who can dismiss you without a certificate. You have been in my service, sir, and without my certificate no Englishman of rank or fortune would ever employ you.†To all this, the faithful Mohammed listened with perfect nonchalance: his expression seemed to say—My dear sir, when a demand for certificates manifests itself, there are numerous manufactories from which I can obtain an ample supply of the quality required. Mr Ringlady’s rage was very much augmented by the seeming indifference of his dragoman, who evidently considered a master only as a convenience for filling the pockets of his servant.
Mr Campbell, however, gave the discussion another turn, by informing them that he was too much fatiguedto attempt mounting on horseback. Besides, he had an invincible aversion to that mode of conveyance, not being more expert at it than King Louis of Bavaria. The fact of Campbell’s incapacity to keep his saddle having been established, and Mr Ringlady’s rage having been mitigated, it was determined that Hassan, Aali, Sidney, and Lascelles Hamilton, should ride forward and escort the harem; while Ringlady and Campbell proceeded with the empty takterwan and the baggage on dromedaries to Gaza, where Sidney and Lascelles Hamilton were to wait for them.
Before daybreak the horsemen were in motion. As it grew light, three figures in the group excited the attention of Sidney. Two of these figures were composed, to all appearance, of huge bundles of clothing without any definite form. One of the bundles was of prodigious breadth, and was mounted on a beautiful and powerful bay horse. The third figure was close to Sidney’s elbow, clad in a black bornoos, with a head enveloped in an enormous yellow silk shawl. As the figure looked like any thing rather than an Arab of the desert, Sidney recognised his companion. It was evident that the other two bundles concealed the bride of Aali and her mother; and Sidney fancied that Aali was conjecturing in fear and trembling which was the bride and which the mother. If the enormous breadth of cloth on the bay horse concealed the bride, there could be no doubt she was a young lady of great and powerful charms.
Mr Lascelles Hamilton soon addressed Sidney. “You took me for an Arab, I see; this is the way we move in Moultan.â€
“I thought it was some Indian fashion—for it is neither the Arab of the Desert, nor of Algiers, nor of Paris,†replied Sidney. “The turban came from Khan Khaleel of Misr, but the bornoos is from the Boulevard des Italiens. However, it may be a good enough disguise for some Europeans.â€
For once the voluble Mr Lascelles Hamilton became dumb; and Sidney wondered what charm there could have been in his criticism to arrest the movements of a speaking machine.
The rate at which the travellers moved was rapid, generally consisting of a quick amble. A short halt was called at the well of Aboulronkh; and another at a second well, under a mountain of sand, at Haras. Here, as the well had been freshly cleared out, the water, though brackish, was potable. After a halt of a few hours, during the heat of the day, the party again mounted, and some hours after dark reached the palm grove at Ghatieh. The distance they had accomplished was not fifty miles.
Next day they proceeded at the same rate, leaving Bir el Abt and Djanadoul to the left: they watered their horses at a miserable well, and stopped for the night considerably to the south-east of El Massar. Here it was necessary to refresh the horses in order to be prepared for pursuit from El Arish, where Mohammed Ali had a body of Bedoween cavalry.
The journey was resumed two hours after midnight, and El Arish was left behind before the morning dawned. In the forenoon a Khamseen wind set in with a degree of fury that rendered it impossible for the horses to proceed. After repeated attempts to renew the march, both men and horses at last gave it up in despair, and sought shelter from the clouds of dust and parching heat under a low ridge of sand-hills. The hope of the fugitives was, that no pursuers could brave the hurricane they were unable to face. Still there was no saying what a Beddouwee, mounted on a dromedary, could accomplish under the excitement of the promise of a large bakshish from Mohammed Ali. Aali was evidently alarmed, Hassan showed symptoms of anxiety, and even the two bundles appeared to be restless. The larger one took great interest in the feelings of the powerful bay horse, which remained close beside its mistress, and gave the lady evident signs of recognition and of gratitude for her attention. The mouths of the horses were washed with vinegar and water, and they then champed a few shrubs growing in the sand, which, though in appearance very like dry sticks, afforded a considerable supply of moisture.
In this painful position the party remained all day; and it was not till sunset that a lull in the stormenabled them to proceed to the well at Sheikh Zuaideh to water their horses. Here they did not venture to sleep, and at dawn next morning the Khamseen again blew with redoubled violence. The horses staggered along; and the ladies diminished the mass of the envelopes about their bodies to augment the volume about their heads. It was fortunate the whole party was well mounted; for had any one been compelled to lag behind he might have perished in the desert, for it is impossible to see one hundred yards in advance: the sand pervaded the air with the orange-coloured mist of a London fog in an illumination.
With the greatest exertions they reached Hannunis; but before they could seek shelter in the village, both Sidney and Aali fell from their horses utterly exhausted. Next day, however, the violence of the Khamseen rendering it utterly impossible to proceed, Sidney and Aali had time to recruit their strength.
On the sixth day after quitting Saba Biar, not long after midnight, the fugitives rode out of Hannunis towards Gaza. The air was still like a furnace, but it was gradually cooling; and as the dawn approached it became delightfully refreshing. A light breath of air from the north-west brought with it the freshness of a sea-breeze. When the sun arose, every one was in high spirits. Hassan displayed his activity by getting constantly at some distance before the party as if in search of the road. Aali, expecting soon to be welcomed by the relations of his bride as a hero, began to exhibit his skill in horsemanship, in order to attract the admiration of the bundles of cotton cloth. His horsemanship was not of a quality to make the display a very choice exhibition in the desert, and both he and his horse were hardly recovered from the exhaustion of the Khamseen.
Either for the purpose of rebuking the vanity of Aali, or for that of indulging his own, Sidney commenced a game of djereed with the Osmanlee dandy. It was rather an awkward exhibition. While it was proceeding with very little effect, the larger bundle of raiment, rendered nervous by the djereeds flying about in its neighbourhood, had allowed the bay horse to approach the tumult. Sidney and Aali had just launched their weapons, and were turning their horses to escape the blows mutually aimed, when the bay horse, making a sudden bound between the rival cavaliers, the lady caught the two djereeds, one in each hand, and rode quietly back to her female companion. Hassan and the attendants set up a most unbecoming laugh, and the smaller bundle joined in a suppressed but very unfeminine giggle. Lascelles Hamilton, to escape the powerful bay horse, had ran up against Aali, and increased his misfortune by laming his steed.
Poor Aali was utterly confounded; Sidney looked mortally foolish; and Lascelles Hamilton muttered apologies for his awkwardness and random, reflections on the lady’s movements, in a half audible tone. This embarrassment of the party was suddenly relieved by the appearance of a considerable body of Arabs of the desert at some distance to the right. If they had any hostile intent, their position enabled them to bar the road to Gaza. There seemed to be some prospect of a fight.