Thus we go, thus we stay, in the delicious weather, encouraged now and again by a puff of southern wind, but held back from our destination by some mysterious angel of delay. But one day the wind comes, the sail is distended, the bow points downstream, and we move at the dizzy rate of five miles an hour.
It is a day of incomparable beauty. We see very little labor along the Nile; the crops are maturing. But the whole population comes to the river, to bathe, to sit in the shallows, to sit on the bank. All the afternoon we pass groups, men, women, children, motionless, the picture of idleness. There they are, hour after hour, in the sun. Women, coming for water, put down their jars, and bathe and frolic in the grateful stream. In some distant reaches of the river there are rows of women along the shore, exactly like the birds which stand in the shallow places or sun themselves on the sand. There are more than twenty miles of bathers, of all sexes and ages.
When at last we come to a long sand-reef, dotted with storks, cranes and pelicans, the critic says he is glad to see something with feathers on it.
We are in full tide of success and puffed up with confidence: it is perfectly easy to descend the Nile. All the latter part of the afternoon we are studying the False Pyramid of Maydoom, that structure, older than Cheops, built, like all the primitive monuments, in degrees, as the Tower of Babel was, as the Chaldean temples were. It lifts up, miles away from the river, only a broken mass from thedebrisat its base. We leave it behind. We shall be at Bedreshayn, for Memphis, before daylight. As we turn in, the critic says, “We've got the thing in our own hands now.”
Alas! the Lord reached down and took it out. The wind chopped suddenly, and blew a gale from the north. At breakfast time we were waltzing round opposite the pyramids of Dashoor, liable to go aground on islands and sandbars, and unable to make the land. Determined not to lose the day, we anchored, took the sandal, had a long pull, against the gale, to Bedreshayn, and mounted donkeys for the ruins of ancient Memphis.
When Herodotus visited Memphis, probably about four hundred and fifty years before Christ, it was a great city. He makes special mention of its temple of Vulcan, whose priests gave him a circumstantial account of the building of the city by Menes, the first Pharaoh. Four hundred years later, Diodorus found it magnificent; about the beginning of the Christian era, Strabo says it was next in size to Alexandria. Although at the end of the twelfth century it had been systematically despoiled to build Cairo, an Arab traveler says that, “its ruins occupy a space half a day's journey every way,” and that its wonders could not be described. Temples, palaces, gardens, villas, acres of common dwellings—the city covered this vast plain with its splendor and its squalor.
The traveler now needs a guide to discover a vestige, a stone here and there, of this once most magnificent capital. Here came Moses and Aaron, from the Israelitish settlement in the Delta, from Zoan (Tanis) probably, to beg Menephtah to let the Jews depart; here were performed the miracles of the Exodus. This is the Biblical Noph, against which burned the wrath of the prophets. “No (Heliopolis, or On) shall be rent asunder, and Noph shall have distresses daily.” The decreewas“published in Noph”:—“Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant;” “I will cause their images to cease out of Noph.”
The images have ceased, the temples have either been removed or have disappeared under the deposits of inundations; you would ride over old Memphis without knowing it, but the inhabitants have returned to this fertile and exuberant plain. It is only in the long range of pyramids and the great necropolis in the desert that you can find old Memphis.
The superabundant life of the region encountered us at once. At Bedreshayn is a ferry, and its boats were thronged, chiefly by women, coming and going, and always with a load of grain or other produce on the head. We rode round the town on an elevated dyke, lined with palms, and wound onward over a flat, rich with wheat and barley, to Mitrahenny, a little village in a splendid palm-grove. This marks the central spot of the ruins of old Memphis. Here are some mounds, here are found fragments of statues and cut stones, which are preserved in a temporary shelter. And here, lying on its side, in a hollow from which the water was just subsiding, is a polished colossal statue of Rameses II.—the Pharaoh who left more monuments of less achievements than any other “swell” of antiquity. The face is handsome, as all his statues are, and is probably conventionalized like our pictures of George Washington, or Napoleon's busts of himself. I confess to a feeling of perfect satisfaction at seeing his finely chiseled nose rooting in the mud.
This—some mounds, some fragments of stone, and the statue,—was all we saw of Memphis. But I should like to have spent a day in this lovely grove, which was carpeted with the only turf I saw in Egypt; reclining upon the old mounds in the shade, and pretending to think of Menes and Moses and Menephtah; and of Rhampsinitus, the king who “descended alive into the place which the Greeks call Hades, and there played at dice with Ceres, and sometimes won, and other times lost,” and of the treasure-house he built here; and whether, as Herodotus believed, Helen, the beautiful cause of the Iliad, really once dwelt in a palace here, and whether Homer ever recited his epic in these streets.
We go on over the still rich plain to the village of Sakkarah—chiefly babies and small children. The cheerful life of this prairie fills us with delight—flocks of sheep, herds of buffaloes, trains of dromedaries, hundreds of laborers of both sexes in the fields, children skylarking about; on every path are women, always with a basket on the head, their blue cotton gown (the only article of dress except a head-shawl,) open in front, blowing back so as to show their figures as they walk.
When we reach the desert we are in the presence of death—perhaps the most mournful sight on this earth is a necropolis in the desert, savage, sand-drifted, plundered, all its mounds dug over and over. We ride along at the bases of the pyramids. I stop at one, climb over thedébrisat its base, and break off a fragment of stone. The pyramid is of crumbling limestone, and, built in stages or degrees, like that of Maydoom; it is slowly becoming an unsightly heap. And it is time. This is believed to be the oldest structure in the world, except the Tower of Babel. It seems to have been the sepulchre of Keken, a king of the second dynasty. At this period hieroglyphic writing was developed, but the construction and ornamentation of the doorway of the pyramid exhibit art in its infancy. This would seem to show that the Egyptians did not emigrate from Asia with the developed and highly perfected art found in the sculptures of the tombs of the fourth, fifth, and sixth dynasties, as some have supposed, but that there was a growth, which was arrested later.
But no inference in regard to old Egypt is safe; a discovery tomorrow may upset it. Statues recently found, representing persons living in the third dynasty, present a different type of race from that shown in statues of the fourth and fifth dynasties. So that, in that period in which one might infer a growth of art, there may have been a change of the dominating race.
The first great work of Mariette Bey in Egypt—and it is a monument of his sagacity, enthusiasm, and determination, was the unearthing, in this waste of Memphis, the lost Serapeum and the Apis Mausoleum, the tombs of the sacred bulls. The remains of the temple are again covered with sand; but the visitor can explore the Mausoluem. He can walk, taper in hand, through endless galleries, hewn in the rock, passing between rows of gigantic granite sarcophagi, in which once rested the mummies of the sacred bulls. Living, the bull was daintily fed—the Nile water unfiltered was thought to be too fattening for him—and devotedly worshipped; and dying, he was entombed in a sepulchre as magnificent as that of kings, and his adorers lined the walls of his tomb with votive offerings. It is partly from these stelæ, or slabs with inscriptions, that Mariette Bey has added so much to our knowledge of Egyptian history.
Near the Serapeum is perhaps the most elegant tomb in Egypt, the tomb of Tih, who lived in the fifth dynasty, some time later than Cheops, but when hippopotami abounded in the river in front of his farm, Although Tih was a priest, he was a gentleman of elegant tastes, an agriculturist, a sportsman. He had a model farm, as you may see by the buildings and by the thousand details of good management here carved. His tomb does him great credit. In all the work of later times there is nothing so good as this sculpture, so free, so varied, so beautiful; it promises everything. Tih even had, what we do not expect in people of that early time, humor; you are sure of it from some of the pictures here. He must have taken delight in decorating his tomb, and have spent, altogether, some pleasant years in it before he occupied it finally; so that he had become accustomed to staying here.
But his rule was despotic, it was that of the “stick.” Egyptians have never changed in this respect, as we have remarked before. They are now, as then, under the despotism of some notion of governance—divine or human—despotic and fateful. The “stick” is as old as the monarchy; it appears in these tombs; as to day, nobody then worked or paid taxes without its application.
The sudden arrest of Egyptian art was also forced upon us next day, in a second visit to the pyramids of Geezeh. We spent most of the day in the tombs there. In some of them we saw the ovals of all the kings of the fourth dynasty, many of them perfect and fresh in color. As to drawing, cutting, variety, liveliness of attitude and color, there is nothing better, little so good, in tombs of recent date. We find almost every secular subject in the early tombs that is seen in the latest. In thousands of years, the Egyptians scarcely changed or made any progress. The figures of men and animals are better executed in these old tombs than in the later. Again, these tombs are free from the endless repetitions of gods and of offerings to them. The life of the people represented is more natural, less superstitious; common events are naively portrayed, with the humorous unconsciousness of a simple age; art has thought it not unworthy its skill to represent the fact in one tomb, that men acted as midwives to cows, in the dawn of history.
While we lay at Geezeh we visited one of the chicken-hatching establishments for which the Egyptians have been famous from a remote period. It was a very unpretending affair, in a dirty suburb of the town. We were admitted into a low mud-building, and into a passage with ovens on each side. In these ovens the eggs are spread upon mats, and the necessary fire is made underneath. The temperature is at 100° to 108° Fahrenheit. Each oven has a hole in the center, through which the naked attendant crawls to turn the eggs from time to time. The process requires usually twenty-one days, but some eggs hatch on the twentieth. The eggs are supplied by the peasants who usually receive, without charge, half as many chickens as they bring eggs. About one third of the eggs do not hatch. The hatching is only performed about three months in the year, during the spring.
In the passage, before one of the ovens, was a heap of soft chickens, perhaps half a bushel, which the attendant scraped together whenever they attempted to toddle off. We had the pleasure of taking up some handfuls of them. We also looked into the ovens, where there was a stir of life, and were permitted to hold some eggs while the occupants kicked off the shell.
I don't know that a plan will ever be invented by which eggs, as well as chickens, will be produced without the intervention of the hen. If one could be, it would leave the hen so much more time to scratch—it would relieve her from domestic cares so that she could take part in public affairs. The hen in Egypt is only partially emancipated, But since she is relieved from setting, I do not know that she is any better hen. She lays very small eggs.
This ends what I have to say about the hen. We have come to Cairo, and the world is again before us.
0436
0437
WHAT excitement there is in adjacency to a great city! To hear its inarticulate hum, to feel the thrill of its myriads, the magnetism of a vast society! How the pulse quickens at the mere sight of multitudes of buildings, and the overhanging haze of smoke and dust that covers a little from the sight of the angels the great human struggle and folly. How impatient one is to dive into the ocean of his fellows.
The stir of life has multiplied every hour in the past two days. The river swarms with boats, the banks are vocal with labor, traffic, merriment. This morning early we are dropping down past huge casernes full of soldiers—the bank is lined with them, thousands of them, bathing and washing their clothes, their gabble filling the air. We see again the lofty mosque of Mohamed Ali, the citadel of Salàdin, the forest of minarets above the brown roofs of the town. We pass the isle of Rhoda and the ample palaces of the Queen-Mother. We moor at Gezereh amid a great shoal of dahabeëhs, returned from High Egypt, deserted of their passengers, flags down, blinds closed—a spectacle to fill one with melancholy that so much pleasure is over.
The dahabeëhs usually discharge their passengers at Gezereh, above the bridge. If the boat goes below with baggage it is subject to a port-duty, as if it were a traveler,—besides the tax for passing the draw-bridge. We decide to remain some days on our boat, because it is comfortable, and because we want to postpone the dreaded breaking up of housekeeping, packing up our scattered effects, and moving. Having obtained permission to moor at the government dock below Kasr-el-Nil, we drop down there.
The first person to greet us there is Aboo Yusef, the owner. Behind him comes Habib Bagdadli, the little Jew partner. There is always that in his mien which says, “I was really born in Bagdad, but I know you still think I am a Jew from Algiers. No, gentlemens, you wrong a man to whom reputation is everything.” But he is glad to see his boat safe; he expresses as much pleasure as one can throw from an eye with a cast in it. Aboo Yusef is radiant. He is attired gorgeously, in a new suit, from fresh turban to red slippers, on the profits of the voyage. His robe is silk, his sash is cashmere. He overflows with complimentary speech.
“Allah be praised, I see you safe.”
“We have reason to be grateful.”
“And that you had a good journey.”
“A perfect journey.”
“We have been made desolate by your absence; thank God, you have enjoyed the winter.”
“I suppose you are glad to see the boat back safe also?”
“That is nothing, not to mention it, I not think of it; the return of the boat safe, that is nothing. I only think that you are safe. But it is a good boat. You will say it is the first-class of boats? And she goes up the cataract all right. Did I not say she go up the cataract? Abd-el-Atti he bear me witness.”
“You did. You said so. Habib said so also. Was there any report here in Cairo that we could not go up.”
“Mashallah. Such news. The boat was lost in the cataract; the reïs was drowned. For the loss of the boat I did not care; only if you were safe.”
“Did you hear that the cataract reises objected to take us up?”
“What rascals! They always make the traveler some trouble. But, Allah forgive us all, the head reïs is dead. Not so, Abd-el-Atti?”
“What, the old reïs that we said good-bye to only a little while ago at Assouan?”
“Him dead,” says Abd-el-Atti. “I have this morning some conversation with a tradin' boat from the Cataract. Him dead shortly after we leave.”
It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that one of these tough old Bedaween could die in the ordinary manner.
But alas his spirit was too powerful for his frame. We have not in this case the consolation of feeling that his loss is our gain; for there are plenty more like him at the First Cataract. He took money from Aboo Yusef fornottaking us up the Cataract, and he took money from usfortaking us up. His account is balanced. He was an impartial man. Peace to his colored ashes.
Aboo Yusef and the little Jew took leave with increased demonstrations of affection, and repeated again and again their joy that we had ascended the Cataract and returned safe. The Jew, as I said, had a furtive look, but Aboo is open as the day. He is an Arab you would trust. I can scarcely believe that it was he and his partner who sent the bribe to the reïs of the Cataract to prevent our going up.
As we ride to town through the new part, the city looks exceedingly bright and attractive; the streets are very broad; the handsome square houses—ornamented villas, with balconies, pillared piazzas, painted with lively figures and inbizarrepatterns—stand behind walls overgrown with the convolvulus, and in the midst of gardens; plats in the center of open spaces and at the angles of streets are gay with flowers in bloom—chiefly scarlet geraniums. The town wears a spring aspect, and would be altogether bright but for the dust which overlays everything, houses, streets, foliage. No amount of irrigation can brighten the dust-powdered trees.
When we came to Cairo last fall, fresh from European cities, it seemed very shabby. Now that we come from Upper Egypt, with our eyes trained to eight hundred miles of mud-hovels, Cairo is magnificent. But it is Cairo. There are just as many people squatting in the dust of the highways as when we last saw them, and they have the air of not having moved in three months. We ride to Shepherd's Hotel; there are twenty dragomans for every tourist who wants to go to Syria, there is the usual hurry of arrival and departure, and no one to be found; we call at the consul's: it is not his hour; we ride through the blindest ways to the bankers, in the Rosetti Gardens (don't imagine there is any garden there), they do no business from twelve to three. It is impossible to accomplish anything in Cairo without calm delay. And, falling into the mode, we find ourselves sauntering through one of the most picturesque quarters, the bazaar of Khan Khaléel, feasting the eye on the Oriental splendors of silks, embroidered stuffs, stiff with gold and silver, sown with pearls, antique Persian brasses, old arms of the followers of Saladin. How cool, how quiet it is. All the noises are soft. Noises enough there are, a babel of traffic, jostling, pushing, clamoring; and yet we have a sense of quiet in it all. There is no rudeness, no angularity, no glare of sun. At times you feel an underflow of silence. I know no place so convenient for meditation as the recesses of these intricate bazaars. Their unlikeness to the streets of other cities is mainly in the absence of any hard pavement. From the moment you come into the Mooskee, you strike a silent way, no noise of wheels or hoofs, nor footfalls of the crowd. It is this absence of footfall-patter which is always heard in our streets, that gives us the impression here of the underflow of silence.
Returning through the Ezbekeëh Park and through the new streets, we are glad we are not to judge the manhood of Egypt by the Young Egypt we meet here, nor the future of Egypt by the dissolute idlers of Cairo and Alexandria. From Cairo to Wady Halfeh we have seen men physically well developed, fine specimens of their race, and better in Nubia than in Egypt Proper; but these youths are feeble, and of unclean appearance, even in their smart European dress. They are not unlike the effeminate and gilded youth of Italy that one sees in the cities, or Parisians of the same class. Egypt, which needed a different importation, has added most of the vices of Europe to its own; it is noticeable that the Italians, who emigrate elsewhere little, come here in great numbers, and men and women alike take kindly to this loose feebleness. French as well as Italians adapt themselves easily to Eastern dissoluteness. The French have never shown in any part of the globe any prejudice against a mingling of races. The mixture here of the youths of the Latin races and the worn-out Orientals, who are a little polished by a lacquer of European vice, is not a good omen for Egypt. Happily such youths are feeble and, I trust, not to be found outside the two large cities.
The great question in Egypt, among foreigners and observers (thereisno great question among the common people), is about the Khedive, Ismail Pasha, his policy and his real intentions with regard to the country. You will hear three distinct opinions; one from devout Moslems, another from the English, and a third from the Americans. The strict and conservative Moslems like none of the changes and innovations, and express not too much confidence in the Khedive's religion. He has bought pictures and statues for his palaces, he has marble images of himself, he has set up an equestrian statue in the street; all this is contrary to the religion. He introduces European manners and costumes, every governmentemployéis obliged to wear European dress, except the tarboosh. What does he want with such a great army; why are the taxes so high, and growing higher every day?
With the Americans in Cairo, as a rule, the Khedive is popular; they sympathize with his ambition, and think that he has the good of Egypt at heart; almost uniformly they defend him. The English, generally, distrust the Khedive and criticise his every movement. Scarcely ever have I heard Englishmen speak well of the Khedive and his policy. They express a want of confidence in the sincerity of his efforts to suppress the slave-trade, for one thing. How much the fact that American officers are preferred in the Khedive's service has to do with the English and the American estimate, I do not know; the Americans are naturally preferred over all others, for in case of a European complication over Egypt they would have no entangling alliances.
The Americans point to what has actually been accomplished by the present Viceroy, the radical improvements in the direction of a better civilization, improvements which already change the aspect of Egypt to the most casual observer. There are the railroads, which intersect the Delta in all directions, and extend over two hundred and fifty miles up the Nile, and the adventurous iron track which is now following the line of the telegraph to distant Kartoom. There are the canals, the Sweet-Water that runs from Cairo and makes life on the Isthmus possible, and the network of irrigating canals and system of ditches, which have not only transformed the Delta, but have changed its climate, increasing enormously the rainfall. No one who has not seen it can have any conception of the magnitude of this irrigation by canals which all draw water from the Nile, nor of the immense number of laborers necessary to keep the canals in repair. Talk of the old Pharaohs, and their magnificent canals, projected or constructed, and their vaunted expeditions of conquest into Central Africa! Their achievements, take them all together, are not comparable to the marvels the Khedive is producing under our own eyes, in spite of a people ignorant, superstitious, reluctant. He does not simply make raids into Africa: he occupies vast territories, he has absolutely stopped the Nile slave-trade, he has converted the great slave-traders into his allies, by making it more their interest to develope legitimate commerce than to deal in flesh and blood; he has permanently opened a region twice as large as Egypt to commercial intercourse; he sends explorers and scientific expeditions into the heart of Africa. It is true that he wastes money, that he is robbed and cheated by his servants, but he perseveres, and behold the results. Egypt is waking out of its sleep, it is annexing territory, and population by millions, it is becoming a power. And Ismail Pasha is the center and spring of the whole movement.
Look at Cairo! Since the introduction of gas, the opening of broad streets, the tearing down of some of the worst rookeries, the admission of sun and air, Cairo is exempt from the old epidemics, the general health is improved, and even that scourge, ophthalmia, has diminished. You know his decree forbidding early marriages; you know he has established and encourages schools for girls; you see what General Stone is doing in the education of the common soldiers, and in his training of those who show any aptitude in engineering, draughting, and the scientific accomplishments of the military profession.
Thus the warmest admirers of the Khedive speak. His despotism, which is now the most absolute in the world, perhaps, and least disputed, is referred to as a “personal government.” And it is difficult to see how under present circumstances it could be anything else. There is absolutely in Egypt no material for anything else. The Khedive has annually summoned for several years, a sort of parliament of the chief men of Egypt, for information and consultation. At first it was difficult to induce the members to say a word, to give any information or utter an opinion. It is a new thing in a despotic government, the shadow even of a parliament.
An English gentleman in Cairo, and a very intelligent man, gives the Khedive credit for nothing but a selfish desire to enrich himself, to establish his own family, and to enjoy the traditional pleasures of the Orient.
“But he is suppressing the slave-trade.”
“He is trying to make England believe so. Slaves still come to Cairo; not so many down the Nile, but by the desert. I found a slave-den in some desert tombs once over the other side the river; horrible treatment of women and children; a caravan came from Darfour by way of Assiout.”
“But that route is cut off by the capture of Darfour.”
“Well, you'll see; slaves will come if they are wanted. Why, look at the Khedive's harem!”
“He hasn't so many wives as Solomon, who had seven hundred; the Khedive has only four.”
“Yes, but he has more concubines; Solomon kept only three hundred, the Khedive has four hundred and fifty, and perhaps nearer five hundred. Some of them are beautiful Circassians for whom it is said he paid as much as £2000 and even £3000 sterling.”
“I suppose that is an outside price.”
“Of course, but think of the cost of keeping them. Then, each of his four wives has her separate palace and establishment. Rather an expensive family.”
“Almost as costly as the royal family of England.”
“That's another affair; to say nothing of the difference of income. The five hundred, more or less, concubines are under the charge of the Queen-mother, but they havecarte blanchein indulgence in jewels, dress, and all that. They wear the most costly Paris modes. They spend enormous sums in pearls and diamonds. They have their palaces refurnished whenever the whim seizes them, re-decorated in European style. Where does the money come from? You can see that Egypt is taxed to death. I heard to-day that the Khedive was paying seventeen per cent, for money, money borrowed to pay the interest on his private debts. What does he do with the money he raises?”
“Spends a good deal of it on his improvements, canals, railroads, on his army.”
“I think he runs in debt for his improvements. Look again at his family. He has something like forty palaces, costing from one half-million to a million dollars each; some of them, which he built, he has never occupied, many of them are empty, many of those of his predecessors, which would lodge a thousand people, are going to decay; and yet he is building new ones all the time. There are two or three in process of erection on the road to the pyramids.”
“Perhaps they are for his sons or for his high officers? Victor Emanuel, whose treasury is in somewhat the condition of the Khedive's, has a palace in every city of Italy, and yet he builds more.”
“If the Khedive is building for his children, I give it up. He has somewhere between twenty and thirty acknowledged children. But he does give away palaces and houses. When he has done with a pretty slave, he may give her, with a palace or a fine house here in town, to a favorite officer. I can show you houses here that were taken away from their owners, at a price fixed by the Khedive and not by the owner, because the Viceroy wanted them to give away with one or another of his concubines.”
“I suppose that is Oriental custom.”
“I thought you Americans defended the Khedive on account of his progressive spirit.”
“He is a man who is accomplishing wonders, trammelled as he is by usages thousands of years old, which appear monstrous to us, but are to him as natural as any other Oriental condition. Yet I confess that he stands in very contradictory lights. If he knew it, he could do the greatest service to Egypt by abolishing his harem of concubines, converting it into—I don't know what—a convent, or a boarding-school, or a milliner's shop, or an establishment for canning fruit—and then set the example of living, openly, with one wife.”
“Wait till he does. And you talk about the condition of Egypt! Every palm-tree, and every sakiya is taxed, and the tax has doubled within a few years. The taxes are now from one pound and a half to three pounds an acre on all lands not owned by him.”
“In many cases, I know this is not a high tax (compared with taxes elsewhere) considering the yield of the land, and the enormous cost of the irrigating canals.”
“It is high for such managers as the fellahs. But they will not have to complain long. The Khedive is getting into his own hands all the lands of Egypt. He owns I think a third of it now, and probably half of it is in his family; and this is much the better land.”
“History repeats itself in Egypt. He is following the example of Joseph who, you know, taking advantage of the famine, wrung all the land, except that in possession of the priests, from the people, and made it over to Pharaoh; by Joseph's management the king owned, before the famine was over, not only all the land, but all the money, all the cattle, and all the people of Egypt. And he let the land to them for a fifth of its increase.”
“I don't know that it is any better because Egypt is used to it. Joseph was a Jew. The Khedive pretends to be influenced by the highest motives, the elevation of the condition of the people, the regeneration of Egypt.”
“I think he is sincerely trying to improve Egypt and the Egyptians. Of course a despot, reared in Oriental prejudices, is slow to see that you can't make a nation except by making men; that you can't make a rich nation unless individuals have free scope to accumulate property. I confess that the chief complaint I heard up the river was, that no one dared to show that he had any money, or to engage in extensive business, for fear he would be 'squeezed.'.rdquo;
“So he would be. The Khedive has some sixteen sugar-factories, worked by forced labor, very poorly paid. They ought to be very profitable.”
“They are not.”
“Well, he wants more money, at any rate. I have just heard that he is resorting to a forced loan, in the form of bonds. A land-owner is required to buy them in the proportion of one dollar and a half for each acre he owns; and he is to receive seven per cent, interest on the bonds. In Cairo a person is required to take these bonds in a certain proportion on his personal property. And it is said that the bonds are not transferable, and that they will be worthless to the heirs. I heard of this new dodge from a Copt.”
“I suppose the Khedive's friends would say that he is trying to change Egypt in a day, whereas it is the work of generations.”
When we returned to the dahabeëh we had a specimen of “personal government.” Abd-el-Atti was standing on the deck, slipping his beads, and looking down.
“What has happened?”
“Ahman, been took him.”
“Who took him?”
“Police, been grab him first time he go 'shore, and lock him up.”
“What had he been doing?”
“Nothing he been done; I send him uptown of errand; police catch him right out there.”
“What for?”
“Take him down to Soudan to work; the vice-royal he issue an order for the police to catch all the black fellows in Cairo, and take 'em to the Soudan, down to Gondokora for what I know, to work the land there.”
“But Ahman is our servant; he can't be seized.”
“Oh, I know, Ahman belong to me, he was my slave till I give him liberty; I go to get him out directly. These people know me, I get him off.”
“But if you had no influence with the police, Ahman would be dragged off to Soudan to work in a cotton or rice field?”
“Lots of black fellows like him sent off. But I get him back, don't you have worry. What the vice-royal to do with my servant—I don't care if he Kin' of Constantinople!”
Sure enough, early in the evening the handsome Abyssinian boy came back, none the worse, except for a thorough scare, eyes and teeth shining, and bursting into his usual hearty laugh upon allusion to his capture.
“Policetyeb?”
“Moosh-tyeb” (“bad”), with an explosion of merriment.
The boy hadn't given himself much uneasiness, for he regards his master as his Providence.
We are moored at the dock and below the lock of the Sweet-Water Canal which runs to Ismailia. A dredge-boat lies in the entrance, and we have an opportunity of seeing how government labor is performed; we can understand why it is that so many laborers are needed, and that the great present want of Egypt is stout and willing arms.
In the entrance of the canal and in front of the lock is a flat-boat upon which are fifteen men. They have two iron scoops, which would hold about a gallon each; to each is attached a long pole and a rope. Two men jab the pole down and hold the pot on the bottom, while half a dozen pull leisurely on the rope, with a “yah-sah” or other chorus, and haul in the load; when it comes up, a man scrapes out the mud with his hand, sometimes not getting more than two quarts. It is very restful to watch their unexhausting toil. It takes several minutes to capture a pot of sand. There are fifteen men at this spoon-work, but one scoop is only kept going at a time. After it is emptied, the men stop and look about, converse a little, and get ready for another effort, standing meantime in liquid mud, ankle deep. When they have rested, over goes the scoop again, and the men stand to the rope, and pull feebly, but only at intervals, that is when they sing the response to the line of the leader. The programme of singing and pulling is something like this:
Salee ah nadd (voice of the leader).
Yalee, halee (chorus, pull altogether).
Salee ah nadd.
Yalee, halee (pull).
Salee ah nadd.
Yalee, halee (pull).
And the outcome of three or four minutes of hauling and noise enough to raise a ton, is about a quart of mud!
The river panorama is always varied and entertaining, and we are of a divided mind between a lazy inclination to sit here and watch the busy idleness of the population, or address ourselves to the much that still remains to be seen in Cairo. I ought to speak, however, of an American sensation on the river. This is a little steam-yacht—fifty feet long by seven and a half broad—which we saw up the Nile, where it attracted more attention along the banks than anything else this season. I call it American, because it carries the American flag and is owned by a New-York art student, Mr. Anderson, and an English-American, Mr. Medler; but the yacht was built in London, and shipped on a large steamboat to Alexandria. It is the first steam-vessel, I believe, carrying anything except Egyptian (or Turkish) colors that has ever been permitted to ascend the Nile. We took a trip on it one fine morning up to Helwân, and enjoyed the animation of its saucy speed. When put to its best, it makes eighteen miles an hour; but life would not be as long on it as it is on a dahabeëh. At Helwân are some hot sulphur-springs, famous and much resorted to in the days of the Pharaohs, and just now becoming fashionable again.
Our days pass we can hardly say how, while we wait for the proper season for Syria, and regard the invincible obstacles that debar us from the longed-for desert journey to Sinai and Arabia Petra. The bazaars are always a refuge from the heat, a never-failing entertainment. We spend hours in lounging through them. We lunch at the shops of the sweatmeat makers, on bread, pistachio-nuts, conserve of roses, I know not what, and Nile-water, with fingans of coffee fetched hot and creamy from the shop near by. We give a copper to an occasional beggar: for beggars are few in the street, and these are either blind or very poor, or derweeshes; and to all these, being regarded as Allah's poor, the Moslems give cheerfully, for charity is a part of their religion. We like also to stand at the doors of the artisans. There is a street where all the workmen are still making the old flint-lock guns and pistols, and the firearms with the flaring blunderbuss muzzles, as if the object was to scatter the charge, and hit a great many people but to kill none. I think the peace society would do well to encourage this kind of gun. There are shops also where a man sits before a heap of flint-chalk, chipping the stone with a flat iron mallet, and forming the flints for the antiquated locks.
We happen to come often in our wanderings, the distinction being a matter of luck, upon a very interesting old city-gate of one of the quarters. The gate itself is a wooden one of two leaves, crossed with iron bands fastened with heavy spikes, and not remarkable except as an illustration of one of the popular superstitions of the Arabs. The wood is driven full of nails, bits of rags flutter on it, and human teeth are crowded under the iron bands. It is believed that if a person afflicted with headache will drive a nail into this door he will never have the headache again. Other ills are relieved by other offerings, bits of rag, teeth, etc. It would seem to be a pretty sure cure for toothache to leave the tooth in this gate. The Arabs are called the most superstitious of peoples, they wear charms against the evil-eye (“charm from the eye of girl, sharper than a spike; charm from the eye of boy, more painful than a whip”), and they have a thousand absurd practices. Yet we can match most of them in Christian communities.
How patiently all the people work, and wait. Complaints are rare. The only reproof I ever received was from a donkey-boy, whom I had kept waiting late one evening at the Hotel Nil. When I roused him from his sleep on the ground, he asked, with an accent of weariness, “how much clock you got?”
By the twenty-third day of March it is getting warm; the thermometer is 81°. It is not simply the heat, but the Khâmaseen, the south wind, the smoky air, the dust in the city, the languor. To-day it rained a few drops, and looked threatening, just as it does in a hot summer day at home. The outskirts of Cairo are enveloped in dust, and the heat begins to simmer over the palaces and gardens. The travelers are leaving. The sharp traders, Jews from Bagdad, Syrians, Jews from Constantinople, Greeks, Armenians from Damascus, all sorts, are packing up their goods, in order to meet the traveler and fleece him again in Jerusalem, in Beyrout, in Damascus, in Smyrna, on the Golden Horn. In the outskirts, especially on the open grounds by the canal, are the coffee-booths and dance-shanties—rows of the disreputable. The life, always out of doors even in the winter, is now more flamboyantly displayed in these open and verandahed dwellings; there is a yielding to the relaxation of summer. We hear at night, as we sit on the deck of our dahabeëh, the throbbing of the darabookah-drum and the monotonous song of the dissolute ones.
0450
0451
THE Khedive and his court, if it may be so called, are not hedged in by any formidable barriers; but there are peculiarities of etiquette. When his Highness gives a grand ball and public reception, of course only the male members of his household are present, only the men of the Egyptian society; it would in fact be a male assembly but for the foreign ladies visiting or residing in the city. Of course there cannot be any such thing as “society” under such circumstances; and as there are no women to regulate the ball invitations, the assembly is “mixed.” There is no such thing as reciprocity with the Arabs and Turks; they are willing to meet the wives or the female friends of all foreigners; they never show their own.
If a lady visiting Cairo wishes to visit one of the royal harems, it is necessary that her husband or some gentleman of her party, should first be presented to the Khedive. After this ceremony, notice is received through the chamberlain of the Viceroy that the lady will be received on such a day and hour, in a palace named, by her Highness So So. Which Highness? That you can never tell before the notice is received. It is a matter of royal convenience at the time. In a family so large and varied as that of the Khedive, you can only be presented to a fragment of it. You may be received by one of his wives; it may please the Queen, mother, who is in charge of his largest harem, to do the honors or the wife of the heir-apparent, or of one of the younger sons, may open her doors to you. I suppose it is a good deal a matter of whim with the inmates of the harem; sometimes they are tired of seeing strangers and of dressing for them. Usually they are eager to break the monotony of their lives with a visit that promises to show them a new costume. There is only one condition made as to the dress of the lady who is to be received at a royal harem; she must not wear black, there is a superstition connected with a black dress, it puts the inmates of the harem in low spirits. Gentlemen presented to the Khedive wear the usual evening dress.
The Khedive's winter-residence is the Palace of Abdeen, not far from the Ezbekeëh, and it was there that Dr. Lamborn and myself were presented to his highness by Mr. Beardsley, our consul-general. Nothing regal could be more simple or less ceremonious. We arrived at the door at the moment fixed, for the Khedive is a man of promptness and I imagine has his entire day parcelled out in engagements. We first entered a spacious entrance-hall, from which a broad stairway leads to the first story; here were thirty or forty janizaries, gentlemen-in-waiting, and eunuchs, standing motionless, at the sides, and guarding the approach to the stairway, in reception attitudes. Here we were received by an attendant who conducted us to a room on the left, where we were introduced to the chamberlain, and deposited our outer coats and hats. The chamberlain then led us to the foot of the stairs, but accompanied us no further; we ascended to the first landing, and turning to another broad stairway saw the Khedive awaiting us at the head of it. He was unattended; indeed we saw no officer or servant on this floor. The furniture above and below was European, except the rich, thick carpets of Turkey and Persia.
His Highness, who wore a dress altogether European except the fez, received us cordially, shaking hands and speaking with simplicity, as a private gentleman might, and, wasting no time in Oriental compliments, led the way to a small reception-room furnished in blue satin. We were seated together in a corner of the apartment, and an animated talk at once began. Dr. Lamborn's special errand was to ascertain whether Egypt would be represented in our Centennial, about which the Khedive was well informed. The conversation then passed to the material condition of Egypt, the development of its resources, its canals and railroads, and especially the new road into Soudan, and the opening of Darfour. The Khedive listened attentively to any practical information, either about railroads, factories, or agriculture, that my companion was able to give him, and had the air of a man eager to seize any idea that might be for the advancement of Egypt; when he himself spoke, it was with vivacity, shrewdness, and good sense. And he is not without a gleam of humor now and then,—a very hopeful quality in a sovereign and especially in an Oriental ruler.
The Khedive, in short, is a person to inspire confidence; he appears to be an able, energetic man of affairs, quick and resolute; there is not the slightest stiffness or “divine right” pretence in his manner. He is short, perhaps five feet seven or eight inches in height, and stout. He has a well-proportioned, solid head, good features, light complexion, and a heavy, strong jaw, which his closely-trimmed beard does not conceal. I am not sure that the penetration of his glance does not gain a little from a slight defect in one eye—the result of ophthalmia in his boyhood.
When the interview had lasted about fifteen minutes, the Khedive ended it by rising; at the head of the stairs we shook hands and exchanged the proper speeches; at the bottom of the first flight we turned and bowed, his highness still standing and bowing, and then we saw him no more. As we passed out an order had come from above which set the whole household in a flurry of preparation, a running hither and thither as for speedy departure—the sort of haste that is mingled with fear, as for the command of a power that will not brook an instant's delay.
Exaggerated notions are current about harems and harem-receptions, notions born partly of the seclusion of the female portion of the household in the East. Of course the majority of harems in Egypt are simply the apartment of the one wife and her children. The lady who enters one of them pays an ordinary call, and finds no mystery whatever. If there is more than one wife, a privileged visitor, able to converse with the inmates, might find some skeletons behind the screened windows. It is also true that a foreign lady may enter one of the royal harems and be received with scarcely more ceremony than would attend an ordinary call at home. The receptions at which there is great display, at which crowds of beautiful or ugly slaves line the apartments, at which there is music and dancing by almehs, an endless service of sweets and pipes and coffee, and a dozen changes of dress by the hostess during the ceremony, are not frequent, are for some special occasion, the celebration of a marriage, or the entertainment of a visitor of high rank. One who expects, upon a royal invitation to the harem, to wander into the populous dove-cote of the Khedive, where languish the beauties of Asia, the sisters from the Gardens of Gul, pining for a new robe of the mode from Paris, will be most cruelly disappointed.
But a harem remains a harem, in the imagination. The ladies went one day to the house—I suppose it is a harem—of Hussein, the waiter who has served us with unremitting fidelity and cleverness. The house was one of the ordinary sort of unburnt brick, very humble, but perfectly tidy and bright. The secret of its cheerfulness was in a nice, cheery, happy little wife, who made a home for Hussein such as it was a pleasure to see in Egypt. They had four children, the eldest a daughter, twelve years old and very good-mannered and pretty. As she was of marriageable age, her parents were beginning to think of settling her in life.
“What a nice girl she is, Hussein,” says Madame.
“Yes'm,” says Hussein, waving his hands in his usual struggle with the English language, and uttering the longest speech ever heard from him in that tongue, but still speaking as if about something at table, “yes'm; good man have it; bad man, drinkin' man, smokin' man, eatin' man not have it.”
I will describe briefly two royal presentations, one to the favorite wife of the Khedive, the other to the wife of Mohammed Tufik Pasha, the eldest son and heir-apparent, according to the late revolution in the rules of descent. French, the court language, is spoken not only by the Khedive but by all the ladies of his family who receive foreigners. The lady who was presented to the Khedive's wife, after passing the usual guard of eunuchs in the palace, was escorted through a long suite of showy apartments. In each one she was introduced to a maid of honor who escorted her to the next, each lady-in-waiting being more richly attired than her predecessor, and the lady was always thinking thatnowthis one must be the princess herself. Female slaves were in every room, and a great number of them waited in the hall where the princess received her visitor. She was a strikingly handsome woman, dressed in pink satin and encrusted with diamonds. The conversation consisted chiefly of the most exaggerated and barefaced compliments on both sides, both as to articles of apparel and personal appearance. Coffee, cigarettes, and sweets without end, in cups of gold set with precious stones, were served by the female slaves. The wife was evidently delighted with the impression made by her beauty, her jewels, and her rich dress.
The wife of Tufik Pasha received at one of the palaces in the suburbs. At the door eunuchs were in waiting to conduct the visitors up the flight of marble steps, and to deliver them to female slaves in waiting. Passing up several broad stairways, they were ushered into a grand reception-hall furnished in European style, except the divans. Only a few servants were in attendance, and they were white female slaves. The princess ispetite, pretty, intelligent, and attractive. She received her visitors with entire simplicity, and without ceremony, as a lady would receive callers in America. The conversation ran on the opera, the travel on the Nile, and topics of the town. Coffee and cigarettes were offered, and the sensible interview ended like an occidental visit. It is a little disenchanting, all this adoption of European customs; but the wife of Tufik Pasha should ask him to go a little further, and send all the eunuchs out of the palace.
We had believed that summer was come. But we learned that March in Cairo is, like the same month the world over, treacherous. The morning of the twenty-sixth was cold, the thermometer 60°. A north wind began to blow, and by afternoon increased to a gale, such as had not been known here for years. The town was enveloped in a whirlwind of sand; everything loose was shaking and flying; it was impossible to see one's way, and people scudding about the streets with their heads drawn under their robes continually dashed into each other. The sun was wholly hidden. From our boat we could see only a few rods over the turbulent river. The air was so thick with sand, that it had the appearance of a yellow canvas. The desert had invaded the air—that was all. The effect of the light through this was extremely weird; not like a dark day of clouds and storm in New England, but a pale, yellowish, greenish, phantasmagoric light, which seemed to presage calamity. Such a light as may be at the Judgment Day. Cairo friends who dined with us said they had never seen such a day in Egypt. Dahabeëhs were torn from their moorings; trees were blown down in the Ezbekëeh Gardens.
We spent the day, as we had spent other days, in the Museum of Antiquities at Boulak. This wonderful collection, which is the work of Mariette Bey, had a thousand times more interest for us now than before we made the Nile voyage and acquired some knowledge of ancient Egypt through its monuments. Everything that we saw had meaning—statues, mummy-cases, images, scarabæi, seals, stelae, gold jewelry, and the simple articles in domestic use.
It must be confessed that to a person uninformed about Egypt and unaccustomed to its ancient art, there is nothing in the world so dreary as a collection of its antiquities. The endless repetition of designs, the unyielding rigidity of forms, the hideous mingling of the human and the bestial, the dead formality, are insufferably wearisome. The mummy is thoroughly disagreeable. You can easily hate him and all his belongings; there is an air of infinite conceit about him; I feel it in the exclusive box in which he stands, in the smirk of his face painted on his case. I wonder if it is the perkishness of immortality—as if his race alone were immortal. His very calmness, like that of so many of the statues he made, is an offensive contempt. It is no doubt unreasonable, but as a living person I resent this intrusion of a preserved dead person into our warm times,—an appearance anachronistic and repellant.
But as an illustration of Egyptian customs, art, and history, the Boulak museum is almost a fascinating place. True it is not so rich in many respects as some European collections of Egyptian antiquities, but it has some objects that are unique; for instance, the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, a few statues, and some stelæ, which furnish the most important information.
This is not the place, had I the knowledge, to enter upon any discussion of the antiquity of these monuments or of Egyptian chronology. I believe I am not mistaken, however, in saying that the discoveries of Mariette Bey tend strongly to establish the credit of the long undervalued list of Egyptian sovereigns made by Manetho, and that many Oriental scholars agree with the director of this museum that the date of the first Egyptian dynasty is about five thousand years before the Christian era. But the almost startling thought presented by this collection is not in the antiquity of some of these objects, but in the long civilization anterior to their production, and which must have been necessary to the growth of the art here exhibited.
It could not have been a barbarous people who produced, for instance, these life-like images found at Maydoom, statues of a prince and princess who lived under the ancient king Snéfrou, the last sovereign of the third dynasty, and the predecessor of Cheops. At no epoch, says M. Mariette, did Egypt produce portraits more speaking, though they want the breadth of style of the statue in wood—of which more anon. But it is as much in an ethnographic as an art view that these statues are important. If the Egyptian race at that epoch was of the type offered by these portraits, it resembled in nothing the race which inhabited the north of Egypt not many years after Snéfrou. To comprehend the problem here presented we have only to compare the features of these statues with those of others in this collection belonging to the fourth and fifth dynasties.
The best work of art in the Museum is the statue of Chephron, the builder of the second pyramid. “The epoch of Chephron,” says M. Mariette, “corresponding to the third reign of the fourth dynasty of Manetho, our statue is not less than six thousand years old.” It is a life-size sitting figure, executed in red granite. We admire its tranquil majesty, we marvel at the close study of nature in the moulding of the breast and limbs, we confess the skill that could produce an effect so fine in such intractable material. It seems as if Egyptian art were about to burst its trammels. But it never did; it never exceeded this cleverness; on the contrary it constantly fell away from it.
The most interesting statue to us, and perhaps the oldest image in Egypt, and, if so, in the world, is the Wooden Man, which was found at Memphis. This image, one metre and ten centimetres high, stands erect, holding a staff. The figure is full of life, theposeexpresses vigor, action, pride, the head, round in form, indicates intellect. The eyes are crystal, in a setting of bronze, giving a startling look of life to the regard. It is no doubt a portrait. “There is nothing more striking,” says its discoverer, “than this image, in a manner living, of a person who has been dead six thousand years.” He must have been a man of mark, and a citizen of a state well-civilized; this is not the portrait of a barbarian, nor was it carved by a rude artist. Few artists, I think, have lived since, who could impart more vitality to wood.
And if the date assigned to this statue is correct, sculpture in Egypt attained its maximum of development six thousand years ago. This conclusion will be resisted by many, and on different grounds. I heard a clergyman of the Church of England say to his comrade, as they were looking at this figure:—
“It's all nonsense; six thousand years! It couldn't be. That's before the creation of man.”
“Well,” said the other, irreverently, “perhaps this was the model.”
This museum is for the historian, the archaeologist, not for the artist, except in his study of the history of art. What Egypt had to impart to the world of art was given thousands of years ago—intimations, suggestions, outlines that, in freer circumstances, expanded into works of immortal beauty. The highest beauty, that last touch of genius, that creative inspiration which is genius and not mere talent, Egyptian art never attained. It achieved wonders; they are all mediocre wonders; miracles of talent. The architecture profoundly impresses, almost crushes one; it never touches the highest in the soul, it never charms, it never satisfies.
The total impression upon myself of this ancient architecture and this plastic art is a melancholy one. And I think this is not altogether due to its monotony. The Egyptian art is said to besui generis; it has a character that is instantly recognized; whenever and wherever we see a specimen of it, we say without fear of mistake, “that is Egyptian.” We are as sure of it as we are of a piece of Greek work of the best age, perhaps surer. Is Egyptian art, then, elevated to the dignity of a type, of itself? Is it so to be studied, as something which has flowered into a perfection of its kind? I know we are accustomed to look at it as if it were, and to set it apart; in short, I have heard it judged absolutely, as if it were a rule to itself. I cannot bring myself so to look at it. All art is one. We recognize peculiarities of an age or of a people; but there is only one absolute standard; to that touchstone all must come.
It seems to me then that the melancholy impression produced by Egyptian art is not alone from its monotony, its rigidity, its stiff formality, but it is because we recognize in it an arrested development. It is archaic. The peculiarity of it is that it always remained archaic. We have seen specimens of the earliest Etruscan figure-drawing, Gen. Cesnola found in Cyprus Phoenician work, and we have statues of an earlier period of Greek sculpture, all of which more or less resemble Egyptian art. The latter are the beginnings of a consummate development. Egypt stopped at the beginnings. And we have the sad spectacle of an archaic art, not growing, but elaborated into a fixed type and adhered to as if it were perfection. In some of the figures I have spoken of in this museum, you can find that art was about to emancipate itself. In all later works you see no such effort, no such tendency, no such hope. It had been abandoned. By and by impulse died out entirely. For thousands of years the Egyptians worked at perfecting the mediocre. Many attribute this remote and total repression to religious influence. Something of the same sort may be seen in the paintings of saints in the Greek chambers of the East to-day; the type of which is that of the Byzantine period. Are we to attribute a like arrest of development in China to the same cause?
It is a theory very plausibly sustained, that the art of a people is the flower of its civilization, the final expression of the conditions of its growth and its character. In reading Mr. Taine's ingenious observations upon art in the Netherlands and art in Greece, we are ready to assent to the theory. It may be the general law of a free development in national life and in art. If it is, then it is not disturbed by the example of Egypt. Egyptian art is not the expression of the natural character, for its art was never developed. The Egyptians were a joyous race, given to mirth, to the dance, to entertainments, to the charms of society, a people rather gay than grave; they lived in the open air, in the most friendly climate in the world. The sculptures in the early tombs represent their life—an existence full of gaiety, grace, humor. This natural character is not expressed in the sombre temples, nor in their symbolic carvings, nor in these serious, rigid statues, whose calm faces look straight on as if into eternity. This art may express the religion of the priestly caste; when it had attained the power to portray the rigid expectation of immortality, the inscrutable repose of the Sphinx, it was arrested there, and never allowed in any respect to change its formality. And I cannot but believe that if it had been free, Egyptian art would have budded and bloomed into a grace of form in harmony with the character of the climate and the people.
It is true that the architecture of Egypt was freer than its sculptures, but the whole of it together is not worth one edifice like the Greek temple at Pæstum. And to end, by what may seem a sweeping statement, I have had more pleasure from a bit of Greek work—an intaglio, or a coin of the best period, or the sculptures on a broken entablature—than from anything that Egypt ever produced in art.