CHAPTER IX.
The Author returns to Alexandria, in company with Mr. Wynne and Mr. McNamara—Proceeds to Rosetta—Coast of the Delta—Deserted hamlet—Brackish water—Misery of the Peasantry—Mouth of Lake Brulos—Dews of Egypt pernicious—Brulos—Melons—Egyptian encampment—Quail-snares—Arrival at Damietta—Honours paid by the Pasha at Cairo to Lady Hester—Description of Damietta—Rice mills—Large oxen—Salt tanks—Papyrus—Literary Society—Abûna Saba—Lady Hester arrives at Damietta—Tents and baggage—Servants—Fleas, &c.—Departure from Damietta—El Usby—Sameness of scenery in Egypt—Naked children—Increase of the Delta denied—Martello towers—Iachimo hired—We sail for Syria—List of the party—French Mamelukes—Wages of servants in the Levant—Arrival at Jaffa—Customs in seaports—Costume of Egyptian women.
The Author returns to Alexandria, in company with Mr. Wynne and Mr. McNamara—Proceeds to Rosetta—Coast of the Delta—Deserted hamlet—Brackish water—Misery of the Peasantry—Mouth of Lake Brulos—Dews of Egypt pernicious—Brulos—Melons—Egyptian encampment—Quail-snares—Arrival at Damietta—Honours paid by the Pasha at Cairo to Lady Hester—Description of Damietta—Rice mills—Large oxen—Salt tanks—Papyrus—Literary Society—Abûna Saba—Lady Hester arrives at Damietta—Tents and baggage—Servants—Fleas, &c.—Departure from Damietta—El Usby—Sameness of scenery in Egypt—Naked children—Increase of the Delta denied—Martello towers—Iachimo hired—We sail for Syria—List of the party—French Mamelukes—Wages of servants in the Levant—Arrival at Jaffa—Customs in seaports—Costume of Egyptian women.
I had not been long at Cairo when the alarming indisposition of an English lady at Alexandria was the cause of my returning thither. She was a bride, and on the day of her marriage had fallen so ill as to induce her husband to send off to Cairo for a physician. Of those who were applied to, none chose to go withoutan exorbitant remuneration: and Lady Hester, feeling for the situation of the patient, asked me to take the journey. Mr. Wynne was on the point of his departure for Alexandria on his way to England; and the next morning I embarked with him on the Nile in hiskanje, which is a pleasure barge, covered in with a pent roof like the others, but of a more light and elegant construction, and calculated for expedition. Mr. Wynne had likewise invited to be of his party Mr. McNamara, an English gentleman who had made a short excursion into Egypt from Malta to satisfy a rambling disposition. The passage down the Nile was very rapid; and the time passed agreeably. It was on the third day that we reached Rosetta, where we found lodgings with an Italian, named Dannese, whose house had been converted into an inn for the accommodation of travellers: but in a few hours we departed for Alexandria by the same route that I have described on a former occasion.
On arriving there, I had the happiness to place the sick lady out of all immediate danger: and having, by the end of the month, restored her to convalescence, and learning from Cairo that Lady Hester was on the point of quitting that city for Damietta to be there by the beginning of May, I lost no time, but quitted Alexandria for Rosetta, where I hired beasts of burden to proceed to Damietta, by land, across the foot of the Delta.
I had with me a Turkish servant named Mohammed,by birth an Egyptian, who had quitted his country with the French army, in which he had served several years as a drummer. He was deformed, drunken, and of a bad character. Accompanied by Mohammed and a guide, I prepared to depart the following day for Damietta, when, early in the morning, I was informed that the pasha had passed through Rosetta in the night, and that one of my horses had been pressed for his service, although, as he was expected, they had been by precaution ferried over to the opposite bank of the Nile the preceding night. This created some delay; for Mr. Lenzi, the English agent, was some time before he could find another to replace it, as almost all the cattle of the town had gone off with the suite of the pasha. It was, therefore, about ten o’clock before I left Rosetta.
Having crossed the Nile, we gained the sea-side immediately, and continued along the sands until about four in the afternoon, having on our right, between us and the interior of the Delta, a slip of waste ground in sand hillocks, within which I could figure to myself the fertile fields and meads of the Delta, although I could not see them. The date-trees grew down to the seashore. About four o’clock in the afternoon, we took a path that inclined inland, and passed for an hour through sand hillocks, barren and unsightly, among which grew scattered date-trees. It was evident, after a time, that my guide had lost his way. At last we beheld some cabins, of a sugar-loaf shape,to the number of ten or twelve, built of sunbaked bricks. We naturally expected to find in them inhabitants, and with them water, of which we and our animals were much in want: but, on coming up close, we discovered that they had been recently deserted.
It was now sunset, and there was no prospect of bettering ourselves: so my servant spread my mat, and arranged my bed as well as he could on the sand; for I objected to sleeping inside the huts through fear of vermin. In the mean time, I observed the guide scraping with both his hands, like a rabbit in the sand; and in a few minutes he called to Mohammed to bring him a cup, or whatever he had, to lade out water. On approaching the place, I found that he had made a hole of not more than five feet in depth, at the bottom of which water oozed out plentifully enough for us to water the horses with it, and to drink ourselves; but so brackish was it, that nothing but great thirst could induce a person to swallow it, and not even that could render it palatable. Thinking that its nauseous taste might be disguised by coffee, I boiled some; but, so far from benefiting by the change, it seemed as if all the saline particles were set afloat in it, and it was not possible to drink it. With bread, therefore, and such few provisions as we had brought in our knapsacks, I made a poor supper, and slept through the night. The dew was heavy, and by morning our coverings were as if dipped in water.
This hamlet (as the guide told me) had beendeserted to avoid the extortions of the proprietor of the land: for it is not uncommon in Turkey to fly from the oppression of a master as the only means left of resisting his encroachments; since, if he does not wish his fields to lie waste, he is necessitated to lower his demands and recall the peasantry. These emigrations from spot to spot are easy in such a climate; and a very little provocation drives them to it, where the whole household furniture of a family is only the load of a camel or an ass.
We proceeded early next morning on our journey; and my guide, as if apprehensive of losing his road a second time, regained the seashore as soon as possible. The sameness of the prospect rendered it a very dull day; and, after twelve hours’ continued march, we arrived, after sunset, at the mouth of Lake Brulos, on the opposite side of which we observed many lights as of a village or a town. But the ferrymen, who are accustomed to ply there, were already retired to their homes; and we were obliged, after bawling a long time in vain, to look about for a place where we might pass the night. On the edge of the lake we found a fisherman’s hut, large enough to hold one or two persons: this was given up to me. There was, fortunately, in it a large jar of water, which was looked on as a treasure. The provisions were dried up by the sun, and I again made as bad a meal as I had done the preceding evening: for then, if the provisions were good, the water wasbrackish, and now the change in the water was counterbalanced by the bad state of the provisions.
However hot the days may be in Egypt, the nights never fail to be cool; and the dews are exceedingly pernicious, whenever the body, heated by the sun or by exercise, is too suddenly exposed to a check of perspiration. In the morning, when I awoke, I was surprised to see myself near the foot of a fortress built of brick; it served, or perhaps its time was gone by and it had served, to defend the entrance of the lake, which is narrow and deep. Some ferrymen came soon to carry us over, which, from the smallness of their boat, was a work of some time and difficulty.
Brulos stands close to the sea and the mouth of the lake: it shows marks of having been a much larger town than at present; it has a pretty look at a distance, from two or three white cupolas of mosques, and as many minarets. The old town, or what remained of it, was brick; the bricks of Egypt are of a deep red cast approaching to black. The modern houses were sugarloaf-shaped, of sun-dried bricks. Brulos is celebrated for its melons.
We made no stay there, having a long day’s journey to accomplish. Although the soil was mostly sandy, uncultivated, and barren, still the road was more pleasing than that by the seashore. We saw, soon afterwards, the ruins of a large village. Towards noon, at a turning in the road, a most agreeableand novel sight presented itself; which was no other than a small encampment, probably of some lord of a village come to levy contributions. These lords were formerly the Mameluke beys, and, under the present pasha, some of his officers. The chief’s tent was conspicuous from its treble compartments, connected with each other by small corridors: it was of green, ornamented with stars and flowers. The other tents, though smaller, were coloured. In front of the encampment were tethered the horses, all stallions, whose neighings very pleasingly broke the stillness of mid-day, sometimes as profound in hot climates as that of midnight. None of the horsemen were out; but some were seen lying at full length in the tents, taking their afternoon’s nap.
We proceeded onward; and nothing occurred, excepting that we passed occasionally among ploughed fields. Towards evening, we came upon a large sandy plain, two or three leagues over, where we observed strait rows of reeds, planted on a broad circular base, and narrowing to a point where they were tied. Some of these rows seemed to run for a mile or two, each bundle at ten or fifteen yards’ distance, I was informed that within them there were snares; and that, whenever a cloud passed over the sun, the quails, which at certain seasons of the year frequent the plain, immediately run to hide themselves in these places, where they are caught. I had no time to examine them, that I might ascertain the truth of thisstory. At sunset we reached the banks of the Damietta branch of the Nile, and were immediately ferried over. I was received very courteously by a native gentleman named Airût, who was already apprized of Lady Hester’s intention of coming to Damietta, and had vacated his house for her reception.
During my absence from Cairo, it appeared that the pasha, anxious to do honour to Lady Hester Stanhope, had reviewed his troops before her, and had presented her with a charger magnificently caparisoned. This horse was afterwards sent to his R.H. the D. of York. Abdhu Bey, who was the flower of the pasha’s court, and was said to be a very aspiring nobleman, likewise gave her a fine horse, which was, at the same time with the other, sent to the Viscount Ebrington. Mr. B. received a handsome sabre from the Pasha, and a fine cashmere shawl from Abdhu Bey.
Damietta is a large town, on an elbow of the Nile, on the eastern bank, about seven or eight miles from the sea. The houses are principally of brick: those upon the river enjoy an agreeable coolness, and command the most amusing prospect of any city in Lower Egypt; since the passage of large vessels over the bar of the river up to the wharfs affords a change of scene not observable elsewhere. The Christian quarter is at the south end of the city, and has the peculiarity, observable at Alexandria, of okels or quadrangular buildings for the Franks. The Franks, however,were few in number at Damietta at the time I speak of; consisting only of a medical practitioner and a dragoman attached to the English consul; although there were several other persons who were denominated agents for different European nations, and, as such, were entitled to many of the privileges of Franks.
Rice mills are the main source of wealth to this city as well as to Rosetta. These mills were formerly the property, and under the direction, of individuals, who enriched themselves greatly by them; but, as the pasha of Egypt meddled with everything whereby money was to be gained, he had also recently monopolized the mills, allowing none but his own to work, by which means he sold the rice at what price he pleased. We must except that of Mr. Surur, the English agent at Damietta, who obtained a licence for one year (as I had heard) by a present of fifteen purses, equal to nearly £400 sterling.
A rice-mill is generally a spacious brick building, divided into a stable for the oxen, granaries for the rice, a room for the mill-wheel, and, lastly, rooms where the hammers beat the husk off the rice. Rice, when brought from the fields, somewhat resembles barley; but the grain is pale and smaller: it may be called an aquatic plant; since, from the moment it is sown until it is harvested, it remains almost continually under water, every irrigation covering the soil to the depth of six inches.
The whole machinery of the rice-mill seemed roughand simple. A pair of oxen turn a wheel, the beam or axis of which passed through a hole in the wall into another room, where it had, at two, three, or four intervals, strong wooden cogs projecting from it, but not in the same line. These cogs, as the beam went round, pressed, one after the other, upon the ends of wooden levers, which were from ten to fifteen feet long, and suspended, not in the middle, but at a third part of their length from where the pressure was made; so that, when that pressure was taken off, they, by their own weight, fell down with great force. To this heavy end, in the manner a hammer is fixed to its handle, were fixed the rice-huskers, which were hollow cylinders of iron with sharpened edges, two and a half or three inches in diameter, much the same in form as a saddler’s punch. Where the hammers fell there were small bins, holding about a bushel of rice; and with the rice was mixed a proportion of salt. Every two hammers, with their bins, were generally so near that a man could sit between them, and, with either hand, reach one and the other.
The cogs then, pressing alternately on the ends of the hammer handles, bore them down, and consequently raised into the air the end to which the cylindrical pestle was attached. At this moment, the man seated by the bin gave the rice a rake with his hand, so as to heap it up just where the pestle would strike, which, losing its pressure at the short end, fell down with great violence on the rice. The second hammerwas now up, and the man’s second hand performed the same office for the second bin; and so, alternately, for one and the other. No one, on entering a rice dairy (for so the mills are called in Arabic), could view the situation of the man who plied at the bins without horror. A moment’s forgetfulness, either to remove his hand in time or to hold himself in an upright posture, subjected him to have his arm crushed to atoms; and the noise of the pestles was worse than the din of any engine I ever heard.
But there were mills where the pestles were raised by men’s feet; one man pressing alternately, with his two feet, first on one lever and then on the other.[21]
Some of the oxen employed in the rice-mills were of a prodigious size. I measured the largest of Mr. Surur’s, and found it to be eight feet long from between the horns to the edge of the os ischyi, near the tail, andsix feet one inch high from the ground to the withers: but they were not so fat as in England.
The environs of Damietta were, like those of Rosetta, covered with orchards, rice grounds, and corn fields. Towards the sea were some extensive salt tanks, from which Egypt and Syria are supplied with that useful condiment, and salt consequently formed an important article of export: they were about a league and a half from the town, in a north-east direction. On arriving at the spot, a vast number of shallow pits were observable, with a trench leading to each. At a certain time the sea water is let into them; and, when of a proper depth, they are left to evaporate for a sufficient number of months, until the evaporation is completed, when the salt is scraped up, and carried to the quays of the river on asses.
Close to these salt-pits, we were told, grew the papyrus. M. Basil Fackhr, the French agent, was obliging enough to send a man, with another gentleman and myself, who were curious to see this plant, to the pool of water where it grew. I found it to resemble the bulrush, with a cylindrical velvety head on a long stalk, and thought it to be such a rush as I had frequently seen in England. I brought away with me two or three.[22]
There were some literary men in Damietta. Travellers are too hasty in forming their opinions ofLevantines and the other subjects of the Turkish empire, when they fancy them to be grossly ignorant of book-learning. It will surprise many persons to know that, at Damietta, there was a small society of Christian merchants, at the head of which was M. Basilius Fakhr, who met for the purpose of reading and translating into Arabic such European works as they judged to be wanted in that language. They had already made versions of fifteen volumes upon different subjects; among which I recollect Lalande’s work on Astronomy, Tissot’s Avis au peuple, Volney’s Ruines de l’ancien monde; but the others have escaped my memory. Their meetings were held at each other’s houses in the evening. One of the members was a learned monk, named Saba, whom a ten years’ residence in the Società de Propaganda Fide, at Rome, had made perfect master of the Italian language. He had been called by his clerical duties into Syria, where he was chosen superior-general of the monasteries of the schismatic Greeks, to whom he belonged. It was to his scientific acquirements that the little society was chiefly indebted for the treatise on Astronomy by Lalande: and his loss was severely felt by it.
The day after my arrival, Lady Hester, Mr. B. and Mr. Pearce, reached Damietta. Great additions had been made to the retinue and baggage. There were six green marquees, ornamented with flowers. Several light coffers had been purchased, for the purposeof mule carriage, of the peculiar manufacture of Egypt; being made of a slender frame of date-tree laths, as tough almost as metal, and yet light and spongy.[23]Nothing that could serve to render travelling in Syria agreeable had been neglected.
My servant, Mohammed, had been guilty of some trifling peculations, and I was under the necessity of dismissing him. The other servants, who had been hired at Alexandria, gave little satisfaction; but the country afforded no better. It will be seen hereafter that they were only making a convenience of their mistress, in order to get a passage to Syria and a sight of Jerusalem.
The first and most urgent business after Lady Hester’s arrival was to visit two or three vessels on the river, and to examine how far they were fit for our passage to Syria. Our misfortune at Rhodes had made us timorous; and, although the gales of wind, customary in the winter season, had ceased to blow,our fears were yet awake to the risk of embarking in Levantine ships. A three-masted polacca was at last hired.
Our stay at Damietta was not long: for the fleas, musquitoes, and flies, engendered by the neighbourhood of the rice-marshes, rendered the place, during the spring of the year, insupportable as a residence. Some altercation had likewise taken place with our host, Maalem Ayrût, and this rather served to hasten our departure. On the 11th of May, therefore, we embarked on board the polacca, and sailed down as far as the bar of the river. Here all our luggage was transferred from the ship to flat-bottomed barges, and, the tents being pitched on the sands, we passed the night in them.
In descending from Damietta to the mouth of the river there are several villages, hamlets, and single cottages to be seen on its banks. The last place is El Usby, on the east bank, where the Christian merchants often go to recover their health when labouring under chronic maladies. It has the benefit of being near the sea; otherwise, it is a town just like the other towns of Egypt. Variety from hill or valley, wood or lawn, is looked for in vain in a country where the soil is one uniform level, subject to one uniform culture, and with productions which differ very little from province to province.
Naked children, both girls and boys, were seen running along the edge of the river, begging for biscuitfrom the ships that were entering and going out; but they generally know that ships from long voyages have little to give away, and they rather follow those which, coming from Syria, may have laid in provisions for five days, and perhaps have run their passage with a fair wind in two. El Usby had a fortress with large cannon upon it, and, we were told, barracks for a great number of men.
The river, when it has reached the sea, turns suddenly to the east, so that vessels were obliged to keep close to the shore for nearly a mile before they were properly clear of the bar. Just at this turn are the foundations of a fortress at a small distance in the sea, which once guarded the entrance. I know not of what age this fortress may be, but certainly its present position is no proof of the inroads that the land is said to make on the sea, for I question whether it would be possible, at the present day, to lay the foundations of a structure farther in the water than where this one stood, and hence we may presume that the sea has rather gained on the land, since the architect would not have exposed his work to the effects of water when he could have lost no advantage of defence by placing it a few yards more inland.
When crossing the Delta, I was remarkably struck by the nature of the sea-coast about Brulos, and likewise both before arriving at it and after having passed it. Immediately at the back of Brulos there was a sand hill of a conical shape close to the sea: it was,if I rightly recollect, bare not only of trees, but of shrubs also. To the east of it were others, and they continued to some distance. Similar eminences existed elsewhere along the coast of the Delta. Such were Mutro, a high land between Rosetta and Brulos, and Ras el Kebryt, between the latter place and Damietta. Now if the soil of the Delta is to be considered as a gradual deposition, from the earliest times, of the alluvions of the Nile, the phenomena would, most likely, every year, or every score of years, or every century, be the same; we therefore should expect to see that these lofty sand hills would be but one of many other similar chains that had succeeded each other in the course of ages. But, although I have never seen the interior of the Delta, yet, as far as I learned by general inquiries, its surface is a perfect level. It would therefore be more reasonable to suppose that the elevations were once the sites of buildings, and (if we do not allow them a more solid basis, in giving a natural instead of an adventitious one) that they are heaps of ancient ruins, which, forming a nucleus for the sand, have since swollen to their present magnitude. If, then, they are heaps of ruins, and of an unknown date, it is evident that the soil has not gained on the sea, for the sea touches the foot of them; and if the soil has made no advance in twenty years, allowing its encroachments to be gradual, why should it in a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand?
At the mouth of the Damietta branch of the Nile the French constructed two martello towers, or circular fortresses of brick, which command it entirely, one on either side. We passed a very agreeable afternoon in our little encampment. The arrangement of the tents, which now were pitched on service for the first time, was an amusement of an hour or two. To this succeeded the games of some Greek sailors, whose vessels lay near ours, and who danced, played at hop-step-and-jump, and wrestled in front of the tents, in expectation of a present from Lady Hester. Their games brought to our notice a young Ragusan, named Iachimo, who was about to sail in one of the Greek vessels for I know not where, but, hearing that we wanted a servant, came and offered himself. He was the voucher for his own character, and was immediately engaged at twenty-five piasters per month, and, as he had been a sailor the greatest part of his life, we were certain in him of a helper that would not be sick on board, a matter not always sure when all the servants are landsmen.[24]
The next morning, the ship, now light, crossed the bar, and the moment she was well over and anchored, we followed her in sailing barges, together with our luggage. The land wind, opposed to the current of theriver, caused some roughness in the sea, and much reciprocal bumping was exchanged between the ship and the lighters. We sailed that evening.[25]We were accompanied by two of the corps of the French Mamelukes, of whom mention was made in the last chapter, who, with the approbation of the viceroy and of the French consul, had engaged themselves to Lady Hester as guards.[26]Their names were Selim and Yusuf; such, at least, were their Turkish appellations, and each had with him his groom, or, as they are called in Arabic,säys. We were in all thirteen persons, of which six were men servants.
In England, where servants work well, and one pair of hands does a great deal, six men servants would be considered a numerous retinue, and their cost would be considerable; but in Turkey it is not so, for wages were generally not more than ten shillings and sixpence a month for grown persons, and for boys or lads a meal a day and a few rags to clothe them in was as ample a recompense for their services as they could claim. Hence, in the house of a common merchant,it is not unusual to see six or seven men and boys who are his servants, or porters, or errand boys; and his wife will have as many maids to her share.
Our voyage to Syria lasted five days, and was not disturbed by any accident. The captain and his crew were obliging and civil, which was all that was to be expected from them. The ship had no pump, but only a well, from which the water, in case of a leak, was drawn up by a bucket; and this is generally the practice throughout the Levant.
It was about four in the afternoon that we approached Jaffa, and in an hour’s time we anchored close to the port. Boats immediately came off.
Before we dismiss the subject of Egypt, a few words may be said on the costume of the common people. The poorer sort of women in Egypt were dressed in a blue shift made something like a smock frock, the sleeves being very large. These shifts have at the sides two slits in the place of pocket-holes, so long that it not unfrequently happened in bending themselves forward that their naked skin was seen. Over their faces was a slip of black cotton or silk (according to the means of the wearer) tied round the head by a fillet or tape. From the centre of this, in a perpendicular line, pieces of silver or gold, or sometimes pearls, were hung. Over the head passed a long blue or black veil, one end of which had its two corners stitched together for about three inches, and, the corner so stitched being put under the chin, the facecame out as through an oval opening in it. The sleeves of the shift, which tapered down to a point, were often, when the women were employed, tied by the points behind the back. The arms, thus left bare up to the shoulders, showed sometimes as much symmetry of form as would enchant a statuary or a painter. Their feet were very well formed: their skins were of a deep brown, and sometimes of a light polish: their eyes were universally of a dark colour.