Читать книгу Eastern Life - Harriet Martineau - Страница 7

On the 25th of November, we left Alexandria, rising by candlelight at six, and seeing the glorious morning break by the time we were dressed. Our days were now nearly eleven hours long; at the shortest, they would be ten. We were not struck, as we expected to be, by the shortness of the twilight. Instead of the immediate settling down of darkness, after the disappearance of the sun, I found that I could read small print for half an hour after sunset, in our most southerly latitude.

I do not remember to have read of one great atmospheric beauty of Egypt – the after-glow, as we used to call it. I watched this nightly for ten weeks on the Nile, and often afterwards in the Desert, and was continually more impressed with the peculiarity, as well as the beauty, of this appearance. That the sunset in Egypt is gorgeous, everybody knows; but I, for one, was not aware that there is a renewal of beauty some time after the SUB has departed and left all grey. This discharge of colour is here much what it is among the Alps, where the flame-coloured peaks become grey and ghastly as the last sunbeam leaves them. But here everything begins to brighten again in twenty minutes; – the hills are again purple or golden, – the sands orange, – the palms verdant, – the moonlight on the water, a pale green ripple on a lilac surface: and this after-glow continues for ten minutes, when it slowly fades away.

Mr. E. had brought with him his noble dog Pierre, which created a far greater sensation in Alexandria than we did. European men and women are seen every day there; but so large a dog had probably never been known in that region. Women and children, and even men, fled into their houses, or behind walls, at Pierre's approach, every morning during our walks. Pierre was not safe. Between the jealousy of the native dogs, the fears of the Arabs, and the perils of the desert, Pierre had little chance of secure travelling; and so his master sent him home. We left Alexandria without Pierre: but we had a much better servant in the dragoman engaged there by Mr. E., – Alee Mustafa, – who travelled with us till we reached Alexandria again the next May, and did his duty by us admirably. He is a native Egyptian, young and strong, able and experienced in his work, and faithful and correct in his money transactions. We met with other travelling parties as content with their dragomen as we were with ours: and I at present remember only one which was cursed with a bad attendant. When we consider what qualifications are requisite in the office, we must see that the dragomen must be a superior class of people. It was one of my amusements to study all whom I met; and when I saw what their knowledge of languages was, – what their efficiency in daily business, their zeal in travelling, their familiarity with the objects en route wherever we went, their temper in times of hurry and disaster, their power of command co-existing with their diligence and kindliness in service, – I felt that some of us might look very small in our vocations in comparison with our dragomen.

We proceeded in an omnibus to the Mahmoudieh Canal, where we went on board the boat which was to carry us to Atfeh, at the junction of the canal with the Nile. The boat was taken in tow by a smaller steamer, named by a wag »the little Asthmatic.« We heard a good deal of her ailments, – the cracks in her boiler, and so forth; so that we hardly expected to reach Atfeh in due course. The villas in the neighbourhood of Alexandria are pleasantly surrounded with gardens, and fenced by hedges or palings hung with the most luxuriant creepers; but the houses are of glaring white, and look dreadfully hot. The villages on the banks are wretched-looking beyond description: the mud huts square, or in bee-hive form; so low and clustered and earthy, that they suggest the idea of settlements of ants or beavers, rather than of human beings. Yet we were every few minutes meeting boats coming down from the country with produce, – various kinds of grain and roots, in heavy cargoes. Some of these boats were plastered with mud, like the houses; and so thickly that grass grew abundantly on their sides. On the heaps of grain were squatted muffled women and naked children: naked men towed the boats, – now on the bank, and now wading in the mud; and muffled women came out of the villages to stare. To-day there seemed to be no medium between wrapping up and nakedness; but it became common, up the country, to see women and girls covering their faces with great anxiety, while they had scarcely any clothing elsewhere.

We saw the other extreme of dress in a passenger on board our boat, – the chief eunuch of the royal hareem at Cairo. Neither his beautiful dress, – of the finest cloth, amply embroidered, – nor his attendants and appliances, could impress me with the slightest sense of dignity in the case of this extraordinary-looking being. He was quiet in his manners, conversed with apparent ease, said his prayers and made his prostrations duly on the top of the kitchen, telling his beads with his long and skinny fingers; but his emaciation and ugliness baffled all the usual associations with the outward signs of rank. I could not think of him as an official of high station.

This is the canal which, as everybody knows, cost the lives of above twenty thousand people, from the Pasha's hurry to have it finished, and the want of due preparation for such a work in such a country. Without tools and sufficient food, the poor creatures brought here by compulsion to work died off rapidly under fatigue and famine. Before the improvements of the Pasha are vaunted in European periodicals as putting European enterprises to shame, it might be as well to ascertain their cost, – in other things as well as money; – the taxes of pain and death, as well as of piastres, which are levied to pay for the Pasha's public works. There must be some ground for the horror which impels a whole population to such practices as are every day seen in Egypt to keep out of the reach and the ken of government: – practices such as putting out an eye, pulling out the teeth necessary for biting cartridges, and cutting off a forefinger, to incapacitate men for army service. The fear of every other sort of conscription, besides that for the supply of the army, is no less urgent; and it is a common practice for parents to incapacitate their children for reading and writing by putting out an eye, and cutting off the forefinger of the right hand. Any misfortune is to be encountered rather than that of entering the Pasha's army, the Pasha's manufactories, the Pasha's schools. This can hardly be all baseless folly on the part of the people. If questioned, they could at least point to the twenty-three thousand deaths which took place in six months in the making of the Mahmoudieh Canal.

The Pasha is proud of this canal, as men usually are of achievements for which they have paid extravagantly. And he still brings his despotic will to bear upon it, in defiance of nature and circumstance. I was told to-day of his transmission of Lord Hardinge by it, when Lord Hardinge and everybody else believed the canal to be impassable from want of water. This want of water was duly represented to the Pasha: but as he still declared that Lord Hardinge should go by that way and no meaner one, Lord Hardinge had only to wait and see how it would be managed. He went on board the steamer at Alexandria, and proceeded some way, when a bar of dry ground appeared extending across the canal. But this little inconvenience was to be no impediment. A thousand soldiers appeared on the banks, who waded to the steamer, and fairly shouldered it, with all its passengers, and carried it over the bar. The same thing happened at the next dry place, and the next; and thus the Pasha is able to say that he forwarded Lord Hardinge by his own steamer on his own great canal.

Nothing can be more dreary than the scenery till within a short distance of Atfeh. The field of Aboukeer was nothing but hillocky desert, with pools in the hollows: and, after that, we saw little but brown mud banks, till we came to the acacias near Atfeh. It is a pity that other parts of the canal banks are not planted in the same way. Besides the beauty of the trees, – to-day very pretty, with the light pods contrasting with the dark foliage, – the shade for man and beast, and the binding of the soil by vegetation, would be valuable.

It was dusk before we reached Atfeh. Some moonlight mingled with the twilight, and with the yellow gleams which came from sordid windows, seen through the rigging of a crowd of small vessels. There was prodigious bustle and vociferation while we were passing through the lock, and getting on board the steamer which was to carry us to Cairo. But by seven o'clock we were fairly off on the broad and placid Nile. The moonlight was glorious; and the whole company of passengers sat or lay on deck, not minding the crowding, in their enjoyment of the scene, till the dews became so heavy as to send down all who could find room in the cabins. I have a vivid recollection of that first evening on the Nile, – an evening full of enjoyment, though perhaps every other evening I spent on it showed me more. I saw little but the wide quiet river, – the broadest, I believe, that I had ever been on; and a fringe of palms on the banks, with here and there a Sheikh's tomb⁵ hiding among them, or a tall white minaret springing above them.

Two ladies kindly offered me a place in their inner cabin, where I could lie down and have the benefit of an open window; but the place was too unclean for rest. At 3 A.M. we went aground on a mud bank. I saw the quivering poles of the Arab crew from my window, and was confounded by the noise overhead, – the luggage being shifted with all possible outcry. We just floated for a minute and then stuck fast again. By the cessation of the noise, I presently found that the matter was given up till daylight; and I slept for above an hour, – a very desirable thing, as these groundings made it appear uncertain whether we should reach Cairo before another night.

When I went on deck, before seven, I found we were opposite Sais. But there was nothing to be done. No one could go ashore; and the best consolation is, that there is nothing to be seen there by those who can only mourn over the mounds, and not penetrate them. A mob of Arabs was brought down to our aid; and a curious scene was that of our release. On deck our luggage was piled without any order; and blankets were stuffed in among trunks and bags. From these blankets emerged one fellow-passenger after another, till the set of unshaven and unwashed gentry was complete. In the river was a long line of naked Arabs, tugging and toiling and screaming till the vessel floated. When we were once more steaming towards Cairo, and the deck was cleared, and the wondrous atmosphere assumed all its glory, and the cool wind breathed upon our faces, we presently forgot the discomforts of the night, and were ready for a day of novelty and charm.

Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning; and greatly was it enjoyed by one of the passengers, – a Catholic lady of rank, who was travelling absolutely alone, and shifting for herself very successfully. She helped herself to an entire chicken, every bone of which she picked. While doing so, she was disturbed by the waiters passing behind her, between the two tables; and she taught them by vigorous punches what it was to interfere with her elbows while they were wanted for cutting up her chicken. Immediately after this feat, she went to the cabin, and kneeled down to her prayers, in the face of as many who chose to see. Between this countess and the eunuch, there was more religious demonstration on board than we had been accustomed to see in such places.

Till 3 P.M. there was little variety in the scenery. I was most struck with the singular colouring – the diversity of browns. There was the turbid river, of vast width, rolling between earthy banks; and on these banks were mud villages, with their conical pigeon-houses. The minarets and Sheikhs' tombs were fawn-coloured and white; and the only variety from these shades of the same colour was in the scanty herbage, which was so coarse as to be almost of no colour at all. But the distinctness of outline, the glow of the brown, and the vividness of light and shade, were truly a feast to the eye. – At three o'clock, when approaching Werdán, we saw large spreading acacias growing out of the dusty soil; and palms were clustered thickly about the town; and at last we had something beyond the banks to look at – a sandy ridge which extends from Tunis to the Nile. – When we had passed Werdán, about 4 P.M., Mr. E. came to me with a mysterious countenance, and asked me if I should like to be the first to see the Pyramids. We stole past the groups of careless talkers, and went to the bows of the boat, where I was mounted on boxes and coops, and shown where to look. In a minute I saw them, emerging from behind a sandhill. They were very small, for we were still twenty-five miles from Cairo; but there could be no doubt about them for a moment, so sharp and clear were the light and shadow on the two sides we saw. I had been assured that I should be disappointed in the first sight of the Pyramids; and I had maintained that I could not be disappointed, as of all the wonders of the world, this is the most literal, and, to a dweller among mountains, like myself, the least imposing. I now found both my informant and myself mistaken. So far from being disappointed, I was filled with surprise and awe: and so far was I from having anticipated what I saw, that I felt as if I had never before looked upon anything so new as those clear and vivid masses, with their sharp blue shadows, standing firm and alone on their expanse of sand. In a few minutes, they appeared to grow wonderfully larger; and they looked lustrous and most imposing in the evening light. This impression of the Pyramids was never fully renewed. I admired them every evening from my window at Cairo; and I took the surest means of convincing myself of their vastness by going to the top of the largest; but this first view of them was the most moving, and I cannot think of it now without emotion.

Between this time and sunset, the most remarkable thing was the infinity of birds. I saw a few pelicans and many cormorants; but the flocks – I might say the shoals – of wild ducks and geese which peopled the air, gave me a stronger impression of the wildness of the country, and the foreign character of the scenery, than anything I had yet seen. – We passed by moonlight the spot where the great experiment of the Barrage is to be tried; and here we could distinguish the point of the Delta, and the junction of the other branch, and knew when we had issued upon the single Nile. – Soon after, the groves of Shoobra – the Pasha's country palace – rose against the sky, on the eastern shore. Then there were glimmerings of white houses; and then rows of buildings and lights which told of our approach to Boolák, the port of Cairo. The palace of Ismael Pasha, who was burnt at Sennaar twenty-nine years ago, rose above the bank; and then there was a blaze of cressets, which showed where we were to land. A carriage from the Hotel d'Orient awaited our party; and we were driven, under an avenue of acacias, a mile or two to Cairo. By the way, we saw some truly Arabian dwellings by torchlight, which made us long for the morrow.

In the morning I found that my windows looked out upon the Ezbekeeyeh, – the great Square, – all trees and shade, this sunny morning, and over the tree tops rose the Pyramids, apparently only a stone's throw off, though in fact more than ten miles distant. A low canal runs round the Square, just under my windows; and on its bank was a striking group, a patriarchal picture: an Arab leading down his flock of goats to water. The sides of this canal were grass-grown; and the interior of the Square, the area of 400,000 feet within the belt of trees, was green with shrubs, field-crops, and gardens. While I was gazing upon this new scene, and amusing myself with the appearance and gestures of the people who went by on foot, on asses, or on camels, Mr. Y. and Mr. E. were gone to Boolák, to see about a boat which we had heard of as likely to suit us for our voyage up to the First Cataract. At breakfast they brought us the news that they had engaged the boat, with its crew. We afterwards mounted donkeys, and rode off to Boolák to examine this boat, which has the reputation of being the best on the Nile.

As our thoughts and our time were much engaged with the anticipation of our voyage and with preparations for it, so that we did not now see much of Cairo, or open our minds thoroughly to what we did see, I shall say nothing here of the great Arabian city. With me it stands last in interest, as latest in time, of the sights of Egypt: and any account that I can give of it will be the more truthful for coming in its right place, – after the cities of the ancient world.

We found on board our dahabieh the old Armenian merchant to whom it belongs, his tawny finger graced by a magnificent diamond ring. The Rais – the captain of the crew, who is responsible for the safety of the boat – was in waiting to take directions from us about some additional accommodation. We liked this man from first to last. His countenance struck me this morning as being fine, notwithstanding a slight squint. It had much of the pathetic expression of the Arab countenance, with strong sense, and, on occasion, abundance of fire. His caution about injuring the boat made him sometimes appear indolent when we wanted to push on; and he, seeming to indulge us, would yet moor within half an hour: but he worked well with the crew at times, taking an oar, and handling the ropes himself. For many an hour of our voyage he sat on the gunwale, singing to the rowers some mournful song, to which they replied in a chorus yet more mournful. The manners of this man were as full of courtesy and kindness as we almost invariably found the manners of the Arabs to be; and there was even an unusual degree of the oriental dignity in his bearing.

The boat was so clean that there was no occasion for us to wait for the usual process of sinking – to drown vermin. The few additions and alterations necessary could easily be made while we were buying, our stores; and, in fact, we were off in five days. Our deck afforded a walk of twelve paces, when the crew were not rowing; and this spacious deck was covered with an awning. The first cabin was quite a saloon. It had a continuous row of windows, and a deewán along each side; on the broadest of which the gentlemen's beds were made up at night. We had bookshelves put up here; and there was ample closet accommodation, – for medicines, pickles, tools, paper and string, etc. In the inner cabin, the narrow deewáns were widened by a sort of shelf put up to contain the bedding of Mrs. Y. and myself. The floor and ceiling were painted blue, orange, and green, and the many windows had Venetian blinds. It was a truly comfortable chamber, which we inhabited with perfect satisfaction for many weeks.

The bargain made, the gentlemen and Alee were much engaged every day in laying in stores. Mattresses and spices, wine and crockery, macaroni, camp-stools, biscuits, candles, a table, fruit, sponges, saucepans, soap, cordage, tea, and sugar; – here are a few items of the multitude that had to be attended to. Every morning, the gentlemen were off early to the stores; and the time they gave to sight-seeing with Mrs. Y. and me was accepted as a great favour. Active as we thought them, it was an amusement to us to see that it was possible to be more active still. A young Scotchman who was at our hotel, with a sister and two friends, was always before us, however early we might be, and obtained the first choice of everything, from the dahabieh herself to the smallest article she carried. And all this activity and shrewdness lay under a pale young face, a quiet voice, and languid manner, betokening poor health, if not low spirits. On the night of our arrival at Cairo, we did not go to bed till past midnight; and our gentlemen were out at five to see about the dahabieh, knowing that the competition for boats was then very keen: but the Scotchman had been out at four, and had seen and declined the dahabieh before my friends reached Boolák. Whenever we bought any article, we found that our Scotch neighbour had had his choice before us. We seldom went into the store where we obtained almost everything but he was sitting there, tasting wines or preserves, or handling utensils as if he had been a furniture-monger all his life. It was presently apparent that he was bent on getting off before us, on obtaining a good start up the river; and it is not to be denied that this roused the combativeness of some of our party; and that our preparations were pressed forward with some view to the question whether the English or Scotch party would get the start. The expectation was that the Scotch would sail on Tuesday, December 1st, and an American party the same day; while we could not get off till the Wednesday morning, though taking up our abode on board our dahabieh on the Tuesday evening. We were advised to do this, that we might not depart unfurnished with some essential but forgotten article, as was the case with a party who set sail with a fair wind, and were carried exulting up the river for twenty miles, when they found they had no candles. To our surprise, the Scotch party appeared at the late dinner on Tuesday; and when we accompanied the ladies to their rooms afterwards, to see the shady bonnets they were making for tropical wear, we found they were waiting for the washerman, who had disappointed them of their clothes. So we left the hotel before them.

It was bright moonlight when we set off for Boolák, a curious cavalcade. Of course, we were on donkeys; as were such of our goods as had not been removed before. The donkey boys carried – one, my desk, another, the arrowroot, and a third, the chocolate. It was a merry ride, under the acacias, whose flickering shadows were cast across the road by the clear moon. The tea-things were set in the cabin when we arrived. There was less confusion on board than might have been expected; and we had a comfortable night.

Our crew consisted of fourteen, including the Rais. Of these, five were Nubians, and the rest Cairenes. We had, besides, our dragoman, Alee, and his assistant, Hasan; and the cook, a grotesque and amusing personage. The hire of the boat and crew, who provided themselves with food, was £ 40 per month. Times are changed since some acquaintance of ours went up to the Second Cataract, two years since, for £ 12. Those of our crew who afforded us the most amusement were some of the Cairenes: but we liked best the quiet and peaceable Nubians. When we set off, the whole crew messed together, sitting on their haunches in a circle round their pan of lentile or dourrha pottage. But before we returned, the Cairenes had all quarrelled; and the five Nubians were eating together, as amicably as ever, while each Cairene was picking his bread by himself.

When I came on deck in the morning, I found that we were not to start till the afternoon, and that we must put up with extraordinary confusion till then. There was abundant employment for us all, however, and after breakfast the gentlemen went up to the city, to make some more purchases, and Mrs. Y. and I sat on deck, under the awning, making a curtain for the cabin, a table-cover, etc. The doings of the Arabs on shore were amusing and interesting enough. Among others, I saw a blind man bringing, as he would say, his donkey down to drink; but the donkey led the man. The creature went carefully down the steep and rough bank, and the man followed, keeping his hands on its hind quarters, and scarcely making a false step. – The Scotch party came down in the course of the morning, and presently put off, and went full sail up the river. The American boat was, I believe, already gone. Soon after three, Alee announced that the last crate of fowls was on board; the signal was given, and away we went.