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Whenever possible, these have been omitted frcm filming/ II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajout^es lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela ^tait possible, ces pages n'c.it pas 6t6 filmees. □ Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur n Pages damaged/ Pages endommag^es I I Pages restored and/or laminated/ Pages restaur^es et/ou pellicul^es Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages d^colordes, tachet^es ou piqu^es □ Py, / /^ ,^ ' <^^'-€,..'4''i^. C^-C^/^L^, BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER A™,oa 0, "Mr s™^ „ . o..„..v "B.ck.Lo. Sx™„,'. „c. 7>^ TORONTO, ONT : BELFORD BROTHERS, MDCCCLXXVI. ,. I I ,.. ^. Commander of the Faithful, Egypt is a compound of Hack earth %nd green plants, between a pidverized mountain and a red sand Along the valley descends a river, on which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and the morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. According to the vicissitudes of the sea- tons, the face of the couniry is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow 0/ a golden harvest. From Ararou, Conqueror of Egypt, to the Khalif Omar. I i PREFACE. ♦ ^ y^IIERE is ill the Accademia at Venice a picture, ^painted by _^W Paris Bordonc representing what was considered at the time a miracle. A poor fisherman of the Lido, hauling his net one morning, took a fish that had in his stomach the gold ring with which the Doge had wed the Adriatic a few months before. The honest fellow carried the ring, thus miraculously rescued from the maw of the sea, to the Doge, and the council considered the event so remarkable and of such propitious augury that they ordered it to be commemorated n\ canvas. The picture represents the Doge upon his chair of state, surrounded by that gorgeous company of fine gentlemen with whom Paul Veronese has made ua familiar, and the poor fisherman is ascending the steps of the throne and presenting the ring. I have no doubt the event happened. For the like had occurred before. It is related that Polycrates of Samos had so much good fortune tliat his friend Amasis, king of Egypt, sent him a message and warned him that such prosperity was perilous : "I would rather choose," he said, "that both I and those for whom I am solicitous, should be partly successful in our undertakings and partly suffer reverses," and, accordingly, to avert divine jealousy, he advised him to cast away that which he valued most. Polycrates took his advice. The most precious thing he possessed was a seal, made of ar. emerald, set in gold, the cunning workmanship of a Samian named Theodorus. Having manned his fifty-oared galley, he put out a considerable distance from the island, and taking off his seal, threw it into the sea. Six days thereafter a fisherman having caught a very large and beautiful fish, presented it to Polycrates ; and his servants upon opening the fish found the ring. When he learned of this piece of good fortune, Amasis withdrew his friendship from Polycrates, satisfied that a man so prosperous could not come to a good end. VI. PREFACE. Wo shall look in vain for any new thing. The traveller in the Orient I suppose, always hopes to find the precious ring or the seal, a long time lost : if he should chance upon it, its story would have been already narrated. Can one expect then to say anything new about Egypt ? IIow many volumes, (luring two thousand years, have had this mysterious land for their theme I The Amasis of whom I have spoken sent a corselet to Cncsus, made of linen, with many figures of animals inwrought, and adorned with gold and cotton* wool ; eacii thread of this corselet was worthy of admiration, for though it was fine, it contained three hundred and sixty threads, all distinct. A piece of linen found at Memphis liad in each inch of warp five imndred and forty threads, or two hundred and seventy double threa- Plunder of the Tombs-Exploits of the Great Sesostris-Gigantic Statues and their Object-Skill of Ancient Artists-Criticisms ^ —Christian Churches and Pagan Temples— Soci«^ty-A Peep "ito an Ancient Harem— Statue of Memnon— Mysteries- Pictures of Heroic Girls— Women in History 178 CHAPTER XVIT. KARNAK. An Egyptian Carriage-Wonderful Ruins-The Great Hall of Sethi -The Largest Obelisk in The World-A City of Temples and ^^^"^^^ 196 CHAPTER XVIII. ASCENDING THE RIVER. Ascending the River-An Exciting Boat Race-Inside a Sugar Factory-Setting Fire to a Town-Who Stole the Rockets ?- Striking Contrasts-A Jail-The Kodior Judge-What ^e saw at Assouan-A Gale-Ruins of Kom Ombos-Mysterious Move- ment— Laud of Eternal Leisure 201 CHAPTER XIX. PASSING THE CATARACT OF THE NILE. Passing the Cataract of the Nile-Nubian Hills in Sight-Island of Elephantine-Ownership of the Cataract -Difficulties of the Xll. CONTENTS. PAQE. Ascent — Negotiations for a Passage — Items about Assouan — Off for the Cataracts — Our Cataract Crew — First Impressions of the Cataract — In the Stream — Excitement — Audacious Swimmers — Close Steering — A Comical Orchestra — The Final Struggle — Victory— Above the Rapids— The Temple of Isis— Ancient Kings and Modern Conquerors 216 CHAPTER XX. ON THE BORDERS OF THE DESERT. Ethiopia — Relatives of the Ethiopians — Negro Land — Ancestry of the Negro— Conversion Made Easy — A Land of Negative Bless- ings — Cool air from the Desert — Abd-el-Atti's Opinions — A Land of Comfort — Nubian Costumes — Turning the Tables — The Great Desert— Sin, Grease and Taxes 235 CHAPTER XXI. ETHIOPIA. Primitive Attire— The Snake Charmer— A House full of Snakes— A Writ of Ejectment— Natives— The Tomb of Mohammed- Disasters — A Dandy Pilot — Nubian Beauty— Opening a Baby's Eyes— A Nubian Pigville 244 CHAPTER XXII. LIFE IN THE TROPICS — WADY HALFA. Life in the Tropics— Wady Haifa— Capital of Nubia— The Centre of Fashion- -The Southern Cross— Castor Oil Plantations — Jus- tice to a Thief— Abd-el-Atti's Court— Mourning for the Dead — Extreme of our Journey — A Comical Celebration — The March of Civilization 258 CHAPTER XXIII. APPROACHING THE SECOND CATARACT. Two Ways to See It— Pleasures of Canal Riding— Bird's Eye View of the Cataracts— Signs of Wealth — Wady Haifa — A Nubian Belle — Classic Beauty — A Greek Bride — Interviewing a Croco- dile—Joking with a Widow — A Model Village 267 ^ CONTENTS. Xlll. CHAPTER XXIV. GIANTS IN STONE. PAOE. ; The Colossi of Aboo Simble, the largest in the World — Bombast — Exploits of Rameses II. — A Mysterious Temple — Feting Ancient Deities — Guardians of the Nile- -The Excavated Rock — The Te mple — A Row of Sacred Monkeys — Our Last View of The Giants 275 CHAPTER XXV. FLITTING THROUGH NUBIA. Learning the Language — Models of Beauty — Cutting up a Croco- dile — Egyptian Loafers — A Modem David — A Present — Our Menagerie — The Chameleon — Woman's Rights — False Prophets — Incidents — The School Master at Home — Confusion — Too Much Conversion — Charity — Wonderful Birds at Mecca 283 CHAPTER XXVI. MYSTERIOUS PHIL^. Leave ** well enough " Alone — The Myth of Osiris — The Heights of Biggeh — Cleopatra's Favorite Spot — A Legend — Mr. Fiddle — Dreamland — Waiting for a Prince — An Inland Excursion— Quar- ries — Adieu 298 CHAPTER XXVII. RETURNING. Downward Run — Kidnapping a Sheykh — Blessed with Relatives — Making the Chute — Artless Children — A Model of Ir.c€,3rity — Justice — An Accident— Leaving Nubia — A Perfect Shame .... 309 CHAPTER XXVIII. MODERN FACTS AND ANCIENT MEMORIES. The Mysterious Pebble — Ancient Quarries — Prodigies of Labor — Humor in Stone — A Simoon — Famous Grottoes — Naughty At- tractions—Bogus Relics — Antiquity Smith 320 XIV. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIX. THE FUTURE OF THE MUMMy'S SOUL. PAGE. Ancient Egyptian Literature— Mumuiies — A ViBit to the Toraba— Disturbing the Dead — The Fuaeral Ritual — Unpleasant Ex- plorations — A Mummy in Pledge — A Desolate Way — Buried Secrets— Building for Eternity — Before the Judgment Seat — Weighed in the Balance — The Habitation of the Dead — Illumi- nated — Accommodations for the Mummy — The Pharaoh of the Exodus— A Baby Charon— Bats 334 CHAPTER XXX. FAREWELL TO THEBES. Social Festivities — An Oriental Dinner — Dancing Girls — Honored by the Sultan — The Native Consul — Finger Feeding — A Dance — Ancient Style of Dancing — The Poetry of Night — Kamak by Moonlight— Amusements at Luxor — Farewell to Thebes 350 CHAPTER XXXI. LOITERING BY THE WAY. " Very Grammatick" — The Lying-in-Temple — A Holy Man — Scare- crows — Asinine Performers — Antiquity — Old Masters — Profit and Loss — Hopeless ** Fellahs" — Lion's Oil — A Bad Reputation —An Egyptian Mozart 361 CHAPTER XXXII. JOTTINGS. Mission School — Education of Women — Contrasts — A Mirage — Tracks of Successive Ages — Bathers — Tombs of the Sacred Bulls — Religion and Grammar — Route to Darfour — Winter Residence of the Holy Family — Grottoes — Mistaken Views — Dust and Ashes — Osmaa Bey — A Midsummer's Night Dream — Ruins of Memphis — Departed Glory — A Second Visit to the Pyramids of Geezeh — An Artificial Mother 379 ■i CONTENTS, CHAPTER XXXIII. THE KHEDIVE. XV. rAOE, At Gezereh — Aboo Yusef tho Owncx' — Cairo Again —A Queatiou- The Khedive — Solomon and the Viceroy — The Khedive's Fami- ly Expenses — Another Joseph — Personal Government — Docks of Cairo— Raising Mud— Popular Superstitions— Leave-Taking 398 CHAPTER XXXIV. THE WOODEN MAN. Visiting a Harem — A Re jeption— The Khedive at Home— Ladies of the Harem — Wife of Tiifik Pasha— The Mummy — Tho Wooden Man — Discoveries of Mariette Bey — Egypt and Greece Compared— Learned Opinions 411 CHAPTER XXXV. ON THE WAY HOME. Leaving our Dahabeeh — The Baths in Cairo — Curious Mode of Exe- cution — The Guzeereh Palace— Empress Eugenie's Sleeping Room — Medallion of Benjamin Franklin in Egypt — Heliopolis — ^The Bedaween Bride — Holy Places — The Resting Place of the Virgin Mary — Fashionable Drives — The Shoobra Palace — Forbidden Books- -A Glimpse of a Bevy of Ladies — Uncom- fortable Guardians 421 CHAPTER XXXVI. BY THE RED SEA. Following the Track of the Children of Israel — Routes to Suez — Temples — Where was the Red Sea Crossed ? — In sight of the Bitter Lakes — Approaching the Red Sea — Faith — The Suez Canal — The Wells of Moses — A Sentimental Pilgrimage — Price of one of the Wells — Miriam of Marah — Water of the Wells — Returning to Suez — A Caravan of Bedaweens — Lunch Baskets searched by Custom Officers — The Commerce of the East 429 ** .-. XVI. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXVII. WESTWARD HO. rxM. Leaving Suez— Ismailia— The Lotiis— A Miracle— Egyptian Steamer' —Information Sought— The Great Highway —Port Said— Abd- el-Atti again— Great Honors Lost— Farewell to Egypt 440 tiVi -— ,± m lihvvw a >■' CHAPTEH I. AT THE GATES OF THE EAST. ^HE Mediterranean still divides the East from the "West. Ages of traffic and intercourse across its waters have not changed this fact ; neither the going of armies nor of embassies, Northmen forays nor Saracenic maraudings, Chris- tian crusades nor Turkish invasions, neither the borrow- ing from Egypt of its philosophy and science, nor the stealing of its precious monuments of antiquity, down to its bones, not all the love-making, slave-trading, war-waging, not all the con\- merce of four thousand years, by oar and sail and steam, have sufficed to make the East like the West. Half the world was lost at Actium, they like to say, for the sake of a woman ; but it was the half that, 1 am convinced, we never shall gain — for though the Romans did win it, they did not keep it long, and they made no impression on it that is not, compared with its own individuality, as stucco to granite. And I suppose there is not now and never will b3 another woman in the East handsome enough to risk a world for. There, across the most fascinating and fickle sea in the world — a feminine sea, inconstant as lovely, all sunshine and tears in a moment, reflecting in its quick mirror in rapid succession the skies of grey and blue, the weather of Europe and of Africa, a sea of romance and nausetv — lies a world in everything unlike our own, a world perfectly known, yet never familiar and never otherwise than strange to the European and American. I had supposed it otherwise ; I had been led to think that modem civilization had more or less transformed the East to its own likeness ; that, for instance, the railway up the Nile had prac- tically done for that historic stream. They say that if you y I8 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. run a red-hot imil through an omn^o, tlit; fruit will keep its freshness and remain unchanged a long time. The tln-usting of the iron into Egypt may arrest decay, but it does not appear to change the country. There in still an Orient, and 1 believe there would be if it were all canaled, and railwayed, and converted ; for I have great faith in habits that have withstood the influence of six or seven thousand years of changing dynasties and religions. "Would you like to go a little way with me into this Orient 1 The old-fashioned travellers liad a formal fashion of setting before the reader the reasons that induced them to take the journey they described ; and they not unfrequently made poor health an apology for their wanderings, judging that that ex- cuse would be most readily accepted for their eccentric conduct. " Worn out in body and mind we set sail," etc. ; and the reader was invited to launch in a 8oi*t of funereal bark upon the Medi- terranean and accompany an invalid in search of his last rest- ing place. There was in fact no reason why we should go to Egy|jt — a remark that the reader will notice is made before he has a chance to make it — and there is no reason why any one indis- posed to do so should accompany us. Jf information is desired, there are whole libraries of excellent books about the land of the Pharaohs, ancient and modern, historical, archaeological, statistical, theoretical, geographical ; if amusement is wanted, there are also excellent book-a, facetious and sentimental. I suppose that volumes enough have been written about Egypt to cover every foot of its arable soil if they were spread out, or to dam the Nile if they were dumped into it, and to cause a drought in either case if they were not all interesting and the reverse of dry. There is therefore no ontts upon the travel- ler in the East to-day to write otherwise than suits his humour ; he may describe only what he chooses. With this distinct un- derstanding I should like the reader to go with me through a winter in the Orient. Let us say that we go to escape winter. It is the last of November, 1874 — the beginning of what proved to be the bitterest winter ever known iii America and Europe, and I doubt not it was the first nip of the return of the rotary glacial period — that we go on board a little Italian steamer in the harbour of Naples, reaching it in a row-boat and I AT THE GATES OF THE EAST. 19 in a cold rain. The deck is wot and diHinal ; VoHiiviuH is in- vinible, and the whole sweep of the bay in hid by a slanting mist. Italy has been in a shiver for a month ; snow on th(! Alban hills and in tlie Tusculan theatre ; Home wjis as chilly as a stone tomb with tlie door left open. Naples is little hotter; Boston, at any season, is better than Naples — now. Wo steam slowly down the harbour amid dripping ships, los- ing all sight of villages and the lovely coast ; only C.apri comes out comely in the haze, an island cut like an antique cameo. Long after dark we see the light on it and also that of the Punta della Oampanella opposite, friendly beams following us down the coast. We are off Pajstum, and I can feel that its noble temple is looming there in the darkness. This ruin is in some sort a door into, an introduction to, the Ejist. Psestum has been a deadly marsh for eighteen hundrcid years, and desei^ted for almost a thousand. Nettles and unsightly brambles have taken the place of the " roses of Pa^stum " of which the Roman ])oets sang; but still, as a poetic memory, the cyclamen trails among the df'fyt'is of the old city ; and the, other day I found violets waiting for a propitious season to bloom. The sea has retired away from the site of the town and broad- ened the marsh in front of it. There are at Pa^stuni thret; Greek temples, called, no one can tell why, the T6ni})le of Nep- tune, the Basilica, and the Temple of Ceres ; remains of the old town walls and some towei*s ; a tumble-down house or two, and a wretched tavern. The whole coast is subject to tremors of the eaiiih, and the few inhabitants hanging about there ap- pear to have had all their bones shaken out of them by the fever and ague. We went down one raw November morning from Naples, driving from a station on the Calabrian railway, called F3atti- poglia, about twelve miles over a black marshy plain, relieved only by the bold mountains, on the right and left. Tliis })lain is gradually getting reclaimed and cultivated ; there is raised on it inferior cotton and some of the vile tobacco which the Government monopoly compels the free Italians to smoke, and large olive-orchards have been recently set out. The soil is rich and the country can probably be made habitable again. Now, the few houses are wretclied and the few people sqnalid. Women were pounding stone on the road we travelled, even i1 20 MUMMIKS AND MOSI-liMS. young gii'iu uuioii>{ tliuiii wioldiug tlio iioavy liuiiiiiKnN, utnl all of thorn very thinly clad, thoir one nleazy Hkirt giving little protoirtion against tlio koen air. Of couiho tho women were hard-fe.itunMl and coar.se-hantled ; and both tiusy and tlie men have tho swarthy complexion that may l)etokon a more Eastern origin. Wo fancied that tlnjy had a brigandish look. Until recently this plain has been a favourite iield for brigands, who spied the rich traveller from the height of St. Angolo and pounced upon him if he was unguarded. Now, soldicus are tpuirtered along the road, patrol the country on horseback, and lounge about tho ruins at Ptcstum. Perhaps they retire to some height for tho night, for the district is too unhealthy for an Italijm even, whose health may bo of no consoipienco. They say that if oven an Englishman, who goes merely to shoot woodcock, sleeps there one night, in tho right season, that night will be his last. Wo saw the ruins of Paistum under a cold grey sky, which harmonized with their isolation. We saw them best from tho side of the sea, with the snow-sprinkled mountains risint, be- hind for a background. There they stood out, imjjressivo, ma- jestic, time-defying. In all Europe there are no ruins better worthy the study of tho admirer of noble architecture than these. The Temple of Neptune is older than tho Parthenon, its Doric sister, at Athens. It wius probably built before tho Per- sians of Xerxes occupied the Acropolis and saw from there the flight of their ruined fleet out of the Strait of Salamis. It was built when the Doric had attained tho acme of its severe ma- jesty, and it is to-day almost perfect on the exterior. Its material is a coarse travertine wliich time and the weather have honeycombed, showing the jjetritications of plants and ahells ; but of its thirty-six massive exterior columns not one has fallen, though those on the north side aie so worn by age that the once deep fluting is nearly obliterated. You may care to know that these columns, whi^h are thirty feet high and seven and a half feet in diameter at the base, taper symmetri- cally to the capitals, which are the severest Doric. At first we thought the temple small, and did not even realize its two hundred feet of length, but the longer we looked at it the larger it grew to the eye, untU it seemed to expand ^i AT THE GATES OF THE EAST. 31 into jpij^ntic hizo ; ap«l from whatever point it was viewed, it« ImrmoniouH |no|K)itionH were an iiiereaHin^' delight. The l)eauty Ih not in any oniamimt, for even t]u) pediment iH and always was vacant, but in its admirable lines. The two other temples are fine H|>eciinen8 of Greek architec- ture, also Doric, pure and without fault, with only a little ten- dency to de[mrt from severe simplicity in the curve of the capitals, and yet they did not interest us. Tliey are of a periooverty. It is difficult to estimate the jioverty of those fortunate children to whom the generous sun gives a warm color for clothing, who have no occupation but to sit in the same, all day, in some noisy and picturesque thorough- fare, and stretch out the hand for the few paras sufficient to buy their food, who drink at the public fountain, wash in the tank of the mosque, sleep in street-corners, and feel sure of their salvation if they know the direction of Mecca. And the Mohammedan religion seems to be a sort of soul-compass, by ■which the most igiiorant believer can always orient himself. The best-dressed Christian may feel certain of one thing, that he is the object of the cool contempt of the most naked, ophthal- mic, flea-attended, wretched Moslem he meets. The Oriental conceit is a peg above oura — it is not self-conscious. In a fifteen minutes* walk in the streets, the stranger finds all the pictures that he remembers in his illustrated books of Eastern life. There is turbaned Ali Baba, seated on the hind- quai-ters of his sorry donkey, swinging his big feel in a constant effort to urge the beast forward; there is the one eyed calender who may have arrived last night from Bagdad ; there is the water-carrier, with a cloth about his loins, staggering under a full goat-skin — the skin, legs, head, and all the members of the brute distended, so that the man seems to be carrying a drown- ed and water-soaked animal ; there is the veiled sister of Zobeide riding a grey donkey astride, with her knees drawn up (as all women ride in the East), entirely enveloped in a white gar- ment which covers her head and puffs out about her like a balloon — all that can be seen of the woman are the toes of her pointed yellow slippers, and two black eyes; there is the seller of sherbet, a waterish, feeble, insipid drink, clinking his glasses; and the veiled woman in black, with liungry eyes, is gliding about everywhere. The veil is in two parts, a band about the forehead, and a strip of black which hangs underneath the eyes and terminates in a point at the waist; the two parts are con- nected by an ornamented cylinder of brass, or silver if the wearer oan afford it, two and a half inches long and an inch in diameter. This ugly cylinder between the restless eyes, gives x> i WITHIN THE PORTALS. 33 fA the woman an imprisoned, frightened look. AcrOHS the street from the hott'l, ui)oii the stone coping of the public square, is squatting houi* after hour in the sun, a row of these forlorn crea- tures in black, impa-ssive and waiting. We are told that they are washerwomen waiting for a job. I never can remove the impression that these women are half stifled behind kheir veils and the shawls which they draw over the head ; when they move their heads, it is like the piteous dumb movement of an uncom- plaining animal. But the impatient reader is waiting for Pompey's Pillar. We drive outside the walls, through a thronged gateway, through streets and among people wretched and picturesque to the last degree. This is the road to the large Moslem cemetery, and to-day is Thursday, the day for visiting the graves. The way is lined with coffee-shops, where men are smoking and playing at draugh ts \ with stands and booths for the sale of fried cakes and confections; and all along, under foot, so that it is difficult not to tread on them, are private markets for the sale of dates, nuts, raisins, wheat, and doora; the bare-legged owner sits on the ground and spreads his dust-covered untempting fare on a straw mat before hiia. It is more wretched and forlorn outside the gate than within. We are amid heaps of rubbish, small mountains of it, perhaps the ruins of old Alexandria, perhaps only the accumulated sweepings of the city for ages, piles of dust, and broken pottery. Every Egyptian town of any size is sur- rounded by these — the refuse of ages of weary civilization. What a number of old men, of blind men, ragged men — though rags are no disgrace ! What a lot of scrawny* old women, lean old hags, some of them without their faces covered — even the veiled ones, you can see, are only bags of bones. There is a derweesh, a naked holy man, seated in the dirt by the wall, reading the Koran. He has no book, but he recites the sacred text in a loud voice, swaying his body back- wards and forwards. Now and then we see a shrill-voiced, handsome boy also reading the Koran with all his might, and keeping a laughing eye upon the passing world. Here comes a novel turn-out. It is a long truck-wagon drawn by one bony hoi'se. Upon it are a dozen women, squatting about the edges, facing each other, veiled, in black, silent, jolting along like so many bags of meal. A black imp stands in front, driving, 3 34 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. Thoy carry baflketH of food and flowern, and are going to the cemetery to spend the tlay. Wo pa«H the cemetery, for the Pillar is on a little hillock overlooking it. Nothing can be drearier than this burying- grouud — unless it may be some other Moslem cemetery. It is an uneven plain of sand, without a spear of grass or a gi*een thing. It is covered thickly with ugly stucco, oven-like tombs, the whole inconceivably shabby and dust covered ; the tombs of the men have head-stones to distinguifli them from the women. Yet, shabby as all the details of this crumbling cheap place of sepul- ture are, nothini; could be gayer or more festive than the scene before us. Although the women are in the majority, there are enough men and children present, in colored turbans, fezes, and gowns, and shawls of Persian dye, to transform the graveyard int(3 the semblance of a pai*terre of flowers. About hundreds of the tombs are seated in a circle groups of women, with their food before them, and the flowers laid upon the tomb, wailing and how hag in the very excess of dry-eyed grief. Here and there a group has employed a " welee " or holy man, or a boy, to read the Koran for it — and ihese Koran-readers turn an honest para by their vocation. The women spenu iiearly the entii'e day in this sympathetic vis't to their departed friends — it is a custom as old as history, and the Egyptians used to build their tombs with a visiting ante-chamber for the accommodation of the living. I should think that the Knowledge that such a group of women were to eat 'theii* luncheon, wailing and roost- ing about one's tomb every week, would add a new terror to death. The Pillar, which was no doul; erected by Diocletian to his own honor, after the modest i;»f,Qion of Romans as well as Egy ptiaixs, is in its present surroundings not an object of en- thusiasm, though it is almost a hundred feet high, and the monolith shaft was, before age affected it, a fine piece of pol- ished syenite. It was no doubt a few thousand years older than Diocletian, and a remnant of that oldest civilization ; the base and capital he gave it are not worthy of it. Its principal use now is as a surface for the paint-brushes and chisels of distin- guished travellers, who have covered it with their precious names. I cannot sufficiently admire the navvetS and self-depre- ciation of those traveller who paint and cut their names on such I WITHIN THE PORTALS, 35 t monumf'titR, knowing as tliey must ti:at the first sensible person who reads the Hanie will say, *' This is an ass," We drive, still outside the walls, towards the Mahmoodeeh canal, passing amid mounds of inibbish, and getting a view of the desert-like country twyond. And now heaves in sight the unchanged quintessence of Orientalism — there is our first camels a camel in use, in his native setting and not in a menagerie. Thei-e is a line of them, loaded with building-stones, wearily shambling along. The long bended neck apes humility, but the supercilious nose in the air oxpi*esses perfect contempt for all modern life. The contrast of this haughty " stuck-up-ativo- ness " (it is necessary to coin this word to express the camel's ancient conceit) with the royal ugliness of the binite, is awe-in- spiring and amusing. No hinnan royal family dare be uglier than the camel. He is a mass of bones, faded tufts, humps, lumps, splay-joints, and callosities. His tail is a ridiculous wisp, and a failure as an ornament or a fly-bnish. His feet are simply big sponges. For skin covering he has patches of old Butfalo robes, faded and with the hair worn off. His voice is more disagreeable than his appearance. With a reputation for patience, he is snappisli and vindictive. His endurance is over- rated — that is to say he dies like a sheep on an expedition of any lengthj if he is not well fed. His gait moves every muscle like an ague. And yet this ungainly creature carries his head in the air, and regards the world out of his great brown eyes with disdain. The Sphinx is not more placid. He reminds me, I don't know why, .of a pyramid. He has a resemblance t'^ a palm-treo. It is impossible to make an Egyptian picture with- out him. What a Habsburg lip he has ! Ancient, royal ! The very poise of his head says plainly, ** I have come out of the dim past, before history was ; the deluge did not touch me; I saw Menes come and go ; I helped Shoofoo build the great pyramid ; I knew Egypt when it hadn't an obelisk nor a tem- ple ; I watched the slow building of the pyramid at Sakkara. Did I not ti'ansport the fathers of your race across the desert ? There are three of us ; the date-palm, the pyramid, and myself. Everything else is modern. Go to !" Along the canal, where lie dahabeehs that will by and by make their way up the Nile, are some handsome villas, palaces ^nd gardens. This is the favorite drive and promenade. In 36 MUMMIES AMD MOSLEMS. the gardens that are open to the public, we find a profusion of tropical trees and flowering shrubs ; roses are decaying, but the blossoms of the yellow acacia scent the air ; there are Egyptian lilies ; the plant with crimson leaves, not native here, grows as high as the arbutiloa tree ; the red passion-flower is in bloom, and morning-glories cover with their running vine the tall and slender cypresses. The finest tree is the sycamore, with great gnarled trunk, and down-dropping branches. Its fruit, the sycamore fig, grows directly on the branch, without stem. It is an insipid fruit, sawdusty, but the Arabs like it, and have a saying that he who eats one is sure to return to Egypt. After we had tried to eat one, we thought we should not care to return. The interior was filled with lively little flies ; and a priest who was attending. a school of boys taking a holiday in the grove, assured us that each fig had to be pierced when it was green, to let the flies out, in order to make it eatable. But the Egyptians eat them, flies and all. The splendors of Alexandria must be sought in books. The traveller will see scarcely any remains of a magnificence which dazzled the world in the beginning of our era. He may like to see the mosque that marks the site of the church of St. Mark, and he may care to look into the Coptic convent whence the Venetians stole the body of the saint, about a thousand years ago. Of course we go to see that wonder of our childhood, Cleopatra's Needles, as the granite obelisks are called that were brought from Alexandria and set up before a temple of Caesai* in the time of Tiberius. Only one is standing, the other, muti- lated, lies prone beneath the aoil. The erect one stands near the shore and in the midst of hovels and incredible filth. The name of the earliest king it bears is that of Thothmes III., the great man of Eg^-pt, whose era of conquest was about 1,500 years before St. Mark came on his mission to Alexandria. The city which has had as many vicissitudes as most cities, boasting under the Caesars a population ot half a million, that had decreased to 6,000 in 1800, and has now again grown to over two hundred thousand, seems to be at a waiting point ; the merchants complain that the Suez canal has killed its trade. Yet its preeminence for noise, dirt, and phabbiness will hardly be disputed j and its bazaars and streets are much more interesting^ perhaps because it is the meeting-place of all races, than trav- ellers usually admit. WITHIN THE PORTALS. 37 We had scaicely set foot in our hotel when we were saluted and waited for by dragomans of all sorts. They knocked at our doors, they waylaid us in the passages ; whenever we emerged from our rooms half a dozen rose up, bowing low ; it was like being a small king, with obsequious attendants waiting every motion. They presented their cards, they begged we would step aside privately for a moment and look at the bundle of recommendations they produced ; tliey would not press them- selves, but if we desired a dragoman for the Nile they were at our service. They were of all shades of color, except white, and of all degrees of oriental splendor in their costume. Tliere were Egyptians, Nubians, Maltese, Oreeks, Syrians. They speak well all the languages of the Levant and of Europe, except the one in which you attempt to converse with them. I never made the acquaintance of so many fine fellows in the same space of time, AU of them had the strongest letters of coinmendation from travellers whom they had served, well-known men of letters and of affairs. Travellers give these endorsements as freely as they sign applications for government appointments at home. The name of the handsome dragoman who walked with us through the bazaars was, naturally enough, Ahmed Abdallah. He wore the red fez (tarboosh) \vdth a gay kuffia bound about it ; en embroidered shirt without collar or cravat ; a long shawl of checked and bright-colored Beyrout silk girding the loins, in which was carried his watcL and heavy chain ; a cloth coat ; and baggy silk trousers that would be a gown if they were not split enougli to gather about each ankle. The costume is rather Syrian than Egyptian, and very elegant when the materials are fine ; but with a suggestion of effeminacy to Western eyes. The native bazaars, which are better at Cairo, reveal to the traveller, at a glance, the character of the Orient ; its cheap tinsel, its squalor, and its occasional richness and gorgeousness. The shops on each side of the narrow street are little more than good-sized wardrobes, with room for shelves of goods in the rear and for the merchant to sit cross-legged in front There is usu- ally space for a customer to sit with him, and indeed two oi* three can rest on the edge of the platform. Upon cords stretched across the front hang specimens of the wares for sale. Wooden shutters close the front at night. These little Cubbies are noc only the places of sale but bf manufacture of goods. Every- 38 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. thing goes on in the view of all the world. The tailor is stitch- ing, the goldsmith is blowing the bellows of his tiny forge, the saddler is repairing the old donkey-saddles, the shoemaker i» cutting red leather, the brazier is hammering, the weaver sits, at his little loom with the treadle in the ground — every trade goes on, adding its own clatter to the uproar. What impresses us most is the good nature of the throng, under trying circumstances. The street is so narrow that three or four people abreast make a jam, and it is packed with those moving in two opposing currents. Through this mass, comes a donkey with a couple of panniers of soil or of bricks, or bundles of scraggly sticks ; or a camel surges in, loaded with building-joists or with lime ; or a Turkish officer, with a gayly caparisoned horse impatiently stamping ; a porter slams along with a heavy box on his back ; the watter-carrier with his naoty skin rubs through ; the vendor of sweetmeats finds room for Lxa broad tray ; the orange-man pushes his cart into the throng ; the Jew auctioneer cries his antique brasses and more antique raiment. Everybody is jostled and pushed and jammed ; but everybody is in an imperturbable good humor, for no one is really in a hurry, and whatever is, is as it always has beer^ and will be. And what a cosmopolitan place it is. We meet Turks, Greeks, Copts, Egyptians, Nubians, Syrians, Armenians, Italians; tattered derweeshes, "welees" or holy Moslems, nearly naked, presenting the appearance of men who have been buried a long time and reoefttly dug up ; Greek } -iests, Jews, Persian Parsees, Algerines, Hindoos, negroes from Darfoor, and flat-nosed blacks from beyond Khartoom. The traveller has come into a country of holiday which is perpetual. Under this sun and in this aii' there is nothing to do but to enjoy life and attend to religion five times a day. We look into a mosque ; in the cool court is a fountain lor washing ; the mosque is sweet and quiet, and upon its clean matting a row of Arabs are prostrating themselves in prayer towards Ihe niche that indicates the direction of Mecca. We stroll along the open streets encountering a novelty at every step. Hci'd is a musician, a Nubian .playing upon a sort of tambour on a frame; a picking, feeble noise he produces, but he is accompanied by the oddest character we have seen yet. This is a stalwart, wild-eyed son of the sand, coal-black,, with a WITHIN THE PORTALS. 39 great mass of uncombed, disordered hair hanging about his shoulders. His only clothing is a breech-cloth and a round shaving-glass bound upon his forehead ; but he has hung about his waist heavy strings of goats* hoofs, and those he shakes, in time to the tambour, by a tremulous motion of his big hips as he minces about. He seems so vastly pleased with himself that I covet knowledge of his language, in order to tell him that he looks like an idiot. Near the Fort Napoleon, a hill by the harbor, we encounter another scene peculiar to the East. A yellow-skinned, cunning- eyed copjurer has attracted a ring of idlers about him, who squat in the blowing dust, u^ider the blazing sun, and patiently watch his antics. The conjurer himself performs no wonders, but the spectators are a study of color and feature. The cos- tumes are brilliant i*ed, yellow, and white. The complexions exhaust the possibilities of human color. I thought I had seen black people in South Carolina ; but I saw a boy just now standing in a doorway who would have been invisible but for his white shirt ; and here is a fat negress in a bright yellow gown and kerchief, whose jet face has taken an incredible polish ; only the most accomplished boot-black could raise such a shine on a shoe ; tranquil enjoyment oozes out of her. The conjurer is assisted by two mites of children, a girl and a boy (no clothing wasted on them), and between the three a great deal of jabber and whacking with cane sticks is going on, but nothing is performed except the taking of a long snake from a bag and tying it round the little girl's neck. Paras are collect- ed, however, and that is the main object of all performances. A little further on, another group is gathered around a story- teller, who is reeling off one of the endless tales in which the Arab delights ; love-adventures, not always the most delicate, but none the less enjoyed for that, or the story of some poor lad who has had a wonderful career and finally married the Sul- tan's daughter. He is accompanied in his narrative by two men thumping upon darabooka drums, in a monotonous, sleepy faphion, quite in accordance, however, with the everlasting leisure that pervades the air. Walking about are the vendors of sweets, and of greasy cakes, who carry tripods on which to rest their brass trays, and who split the air with their cries. It is color, color^ that makes all this shifting panoi'ama t^Q 40 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. ! fascinating, and hides the nakedness, the squalor, the wretched- ness of all this unconcealed poverty; color in flowing garments, color in the shops, color in the sky. We have come to the land of the sun. At night when we walk around the square we stumble over bundles of rags containing men who are asleep, in all the cor- ners, stretched on doorsteps, laid away on the edge of the side- walk. Opposite the hotel is a casino, which is more Frank than Egyptian. The musicians are all woiron and Germans or Bohemians ; the waiter-girls are mostly Italian ; one of them says she comes from Bohemia, and has been in India, to which she proposes to return. The JiahiMea are mostly young Egypt- ians in Frank dress except the tarboosh, and Italians, all effemi- nate fellows. All che world of loose living and wandering meets here. Italian is much spoken. There is little that is Oriental here, except it may be a complaisance toward anything enervating and languidly wicked that Europe has to offer. This cheap concert is, we are told, all the amusement at night that can be offered the traveler, by the once pleasure-loving city of Cleopatra, in the once brilliant Grreek capital in which Hypatia was a star. 1 11 CHAPTER III. EGYPT OF TO-DAY. ^GYPT has excellent rsilways. There is no reason why it should not have. They are made without difficulty, and easily maintained in a land of no frosts; only where they touch the desert an occasional fence is necessary against the drifting sand. The rails are laid, without wooden sleepers, on iron saucers, with connecting bands, and the track is firm and sufficiently elastic. The express train travels the 131 miles to Cairo in about four and a half hours, running with a punc- tuality, and with Egyptian drivers and conductors too, that is unique in -^gypt. The opening scene at the station did not promise expetiition or system. We reach the station three quarters of an hour before the departure of the train, for it requires a long time — in Egypt, as everywhere in Europe — to buy tickets and get baggage weighed. The officials are slower workers than our treasury-clerks. There is a great crowd of foreigners, an'^ the baggage-room is piled with trunks of Americans, * boxes' of Englishmen, and chests and bundles of all sorts. Behind a high counter in a smaller room stand the scales, the weigher, and the clerks. Piles of trunks are brought in and dumped by the porters, and thrust forward by the servants and dragomans upon the counter, to gain them preference at the scales. No sooner does a dragoman get in his trunk than another is thrust ahead of it, and others are hurled on top, till the whole pile comes down with a cre^h. There is no system, there are neither officials nor police, and the excite(? travelers are free to fight it out among themselves. To venture into the melee is to risk broken bones, and it is wiser to leave the battle to luck and the dragomans. The noise is something astonishing. A score or two of men are yelling 42 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. at the top of their voices, screaming, scolding, damning each other in polyglot, gesticulating, jumping up and down, quiver- ing with excitement. This is your Oriental repose ! If there were any rule by which passengers could take their turns, all the trunks could be quickly weighed and passed on ; but now in the scrimmage not a trunk gets to the scales, and a half hour goes by in which no progress is made and the uproar mounts higher. Finally, Ahmed, slight and agile, handing me his cane, kuffia and watch, leaps over the heap of trunks on the counter and comes to close quarters with the difficulty. He succeeds in getting two trunks upon the platform of the scales, but a trav- eller, whose clothes were made in London, tips them off and substitutes his own. The weighers stand patiently waiting the result of tho struggle. Ahmed hurL off the stranger's trunk, gives its owner a turn that sends him spinning over the bag- gage, and at last succeeds in getting our luggage weighed. He emerges from the scrimmage an exhausted man, and we get our seats in the carriage just in time. However, it does not start for half an hour. The reader would like to ride from Alexandria to Cairo, but he won't care to read much about the route. It is our first ex- perience of a country living solely by irrigation — the occasional winter showers being practically of no importance. We pass along and over the vast shallows of Lake Mareotis, a lake in winter and a marsh in summer, ride between marshes and cot- ton-fields, and soon strik 3 firmer ground. We are travelling, in short, through a Jersey flat, a land black, fat, and rich, with- out an elevation, broken only by canals and divided into fields by ditches. Every rod is cultivated, and there are no detached habitations. The prospect cannot be called lively, but it is not without interest ; there are ugly buffaloes in the coarse grass, there is the elegant white heron, which travellers insist is the sacred ibis, there are some doleful-looking fellaheen, with don- keys, on the bank of the canal, there is a file of camels, and there are shadoofs. The shadoof is the primitive method of irrigation, and thousands of* years have not changed it. Two posts are driven into the bank of the canal, with a cross-piece on top. On this swings a pole with a bucket of leather sus- pended at one Cud^ which is outweighed by a ball of clay at the h EGYPT OF TO-DAY. 43 h other. The fellah stands on the slope of tho baftk and, dipping the bucket into the water, raises it and pours the fluid into a sluiceway above. If the bank is high, two and sometimes three shadoofs are needed to raise the water to the required level. The labor is prodigiously hard and back-straining, continued as it must be constantly. All the fellaheen we saw were clad in blitck, though some had a cloth about their loins. The work- man usually stands in a sort of a recess in the bank, and his color harmonizes with the dark soil. Any occuimtion more wearisome and less bene*icial to the mind I cannot conceive. To the credit of the Egyptians, the men alone work the shadoof. "Women here tug water, grind the com, and carry about babies always j but I never saw one pulling at a shadoof pole. There is an Arab village ! We need to be twice assured that it is a village. Kaised on a slight elevation, so as to escape high water, it is still hardly distinguishable from the land, cer- tainly not in color. All Arab villages look like fuins ; this is a compacted collection of shapeless mud-huts, flat-topped and irregularly thrown together. It is an aggregation of dog-ken- nels, baked in the sun and cracked. However, a clump of palm-trees near it gives it an air of repose, and if it possesses a mosque and a minaret it has a picturesque appearance, if the observer does not go too near. And such are the habitations of nearly all the Egyptians. Sixty-five miles from Alexandria, wc cross the Bosetta branch of the Nile, on a fine iron bridge — even this portion of the Nile is a broad, sprawling riv-sr : and we pass through several respec- table towns which have an appearance of thrift — Tanta especi- ally, with its handsome station and a palace of the Khedive. At Tanta is held three times a year a great religious festival and fair, not unlike the old fair of the ancient Egyptians at Bubabtis in honor of Diana, with quite as many excuses, and like that, with a gramme of religion to a pound of pleasure. '* Now," says Herodotus, " when they are being conveyed to the city Bubastis, they act as follows: — ^for men and women em- bark together, and great numbei-s of both sexes embark in every barge : some of the women have castanets on which they play, and tJhe men play on the 'flute during the whole voyage ; and the rest of the women and the men sing and clnj) their hands together at the same time." And he goes on to say that when 44 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. i« 11 they camo to any town they moored the barge, and the women chaflfed those on shore, and danced with indecent gestures ; and that at the festival more wine was consumed than ail the rest of the year. The festival at Tanta is in honor of a famous Mos- lem saint whose tomb is there; but the tomb is scarcely so attractive as the field of the fete, with the story-tellers and the jugglers and booths of dancing girls. We pass decayed Benha with its groves of Yoosef-Effendi oranges — the small fruit called Mandarin by foreigners, and preferred by those who like a slight medicinal smell and taste in the orange ; and when we are yet twenty miles from Cairo, there in the south-west, visible for a moment and then hidden by the trees, and again in sight, faintly and yet clearly outlined against the blue sky, are two forms, the sight of which gives us a thrill. They stand still in that purple distance in which we have seen them all our lives. Beyond these level fields and these trees of sycamore and date-palm, beyond the Nile, on the desert's edge, with the low Libyan hills falling off behind them, as delicate in form and color as clouds, as enduring as the sky they pierce, the Pyramids of Geezeh ! I try to shake off the impression of their solemn antiquity, and imagine how they would strike one if all their mystery were removed. But that is impossible. Thti imagination always prompts the eye. And yet I believe that standing where they do stand, and in this atmosphere, they are the most impressive of human structures. But the pyramids would be effective, as the obelisk is not, out of Egypt. Trees increase in number ; we have villas and gardens ; the grey ledges of the Mokattam hills come into view, then the twin slender spires of the mosque of Mohammed Ali on the citadel promontory, and we are in the modern station of Cairo ; and before we take in the situation are ignominiously driven away in a hotel-omnibus. This might happen in Europe. Yes; but then, who are these in white and blue and red, these squat- ters by the wayside, these smokers in the sun, these turbaned riders on braying donkeys and grumbling dromedaries ; what is all this fantastic masquerade in open day 1 Do people live in these houses 1 Do women peep from these lattices 1 Isn't that gowned Arab consciotiB that he is kneeling and praying outdoors 1 Have we come to a land where all our standards fail, and people are not ashamed of their religion 1 t^ CHAPTER lY. CAIRO. CAIRO ! Cairo ! Masr^l-Kaherah. Tlie Victorious ! City of the Caliphs, of Salah-e'-deen, of the Memlooks ! Town of mediaeval romance projected into a prasaic age ! More Oriental than Damascus, or Samarcand. Vast, sprawling city, with dilapidated Saracenic architecture, preten tious modern barrack-palaces, new villas and gardens, acres of compacted, squalid, unsunned dwellings. Always picturesque, lamentably dirty, and thoroughly captivating. Bhall we rhapsodize over it, or attempt to describ^i it 1 For- tunately, writers have sufficiently done both. Let li enjoy it. We are at Shepherd's. It is a caravansary through which the world flows. At its table (V hote are all nations ; German princes, English dukes and shopkeepera, Indian officers, Ameri- can sovereigns; explorers, 8avam,t8, travelers; they have come for the climate of Cairo, they are going up the Nilo, they are going to hunt in Abyssinia, to join an advance military party on the White Nile; they have come from India, from Japan, from Australia, from Europe, from America. We are in the Frank quarter called the Ezbekeeh, which was many years ago a pond during high water, then a garden with a canal round it, and is now built over with European houses and shops, except the square reserved for the public garden. From the old terrace in front of the hotel where the traveller used to look on trees, he will see now only raw new houses and a street usually crowded with passers and rows of sleepy donkeys and their voluble drivers. The hotel is two stories only, built round a court, damp in rainy or cloudy weather (and it is learning how to rain as high up the Nile as Cairo), and lacking the comforts which invalids require in the 46 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. I winter. It is kept on an ingenious combination of the Ameri- can and European plans ; that is, the traveller pays a fixed sum per day, and then gets a bill of particulars besides, which gives him all the pleasures of the European system. We heard that one would be more Orientally surrounded and better cared for at the H6tel du Nil ; and the Khedive, who tries his hand at everything, has set up a New Hotel on the public square ; but, somehow, one enters Shepherd's as easy as be goes into a city gate. They call the house entirely European. But there are peli- cans walking about in the tropical garden ; on one side is the wall of a harem, a house belonging to the Khedive's mother, a harem with closed shutters, but uninteresting, because there is no one in it, though ostriches are strutting in its paved court ; in the rear of the house stretches a great grove of tall date palms standing in a dusty c(f^6W»-strowri field — a lazy wind is always singing through their tops, and a sakiya (a cow impelled water-wheel) creaks there day and night ; we never lock the doors of our rooms ; long-gowned attendants are always watching in the passages, and, when we want one, in default of bells, we open the door and clap the hands. All this, with a juggler performing before the house ; dragomans and servants and merchants in Oriental costume ; the monoto- nous strumming of an Arab band in a neighboring cafe ; brick- layers on the unfinished house jopposite us, working in white night-gowns and turbans, who might be mistaken at a distance for female sleep- wrdkers ; and from a minaret not for away, the tenor-voiced muezzins urging us in the most musical invi- tation ever extended to unbelievers, to come to prayer at day- light — this cannot be called European. An end of the dinner-table, however, is occupied by ft loud party of young Englishmen, a sprinkling of dukes and earls and those attendants and attentive listeners of the no- bility who laugh inordinately when my lord says a good thing, and are encouraged when my lord laughs loudly at a sally of theirs, and declares, " well, now, that's very good ;" a party who seem to regard Cairo as beyond the line of civilization and its requirements. They talk loud, roar in laughing, stare at the ladies, and light theii* cigars before the latter have with- drawn. My comrade notices that they call for champagne be- - CAIRO. 47 fore fish ; we could overlook anything but that. Some trav- ellers who are annoyed at their boisterousneBS speak to the landlord about them, without knowing their rank — supposing that one could always tell an earl by his superior manners. These young representatives of England have demanded that the Khedive shall send them on their hunting tour in Africa, and he is to do so at considerable cost ; and it is said that he pays their hotel bills in Cairo. Thi; desire of the Khedive to stand well with all the European powei-s makes him an easy prey to any nobleman who does not like to travel in Egypt at his own expense. (It ought to be added that we encountered on the Nile an Englishman of high rank who had declined the Khedive's offer of a free trip). Cairo is a city of vast distances, especially the new part which is laid out with broad streets, and built up with isolated houses, having perhaps a garden or a green court ; open squares are devoted to fountains and flower beds. Into these broad avenues the sun pours, and through them the dust swirls in clouds ; everything is covered with it ; it imparts its grey tint to the town, and sifts everywhere its impalpable povder. No doubt the health of Cairo is greatly improved, and epidemics are lessened, by the destruction of the pestilent o'.d houses and by running wide streets through the old quarters of twisting lanes and sunless alleys. But the wide streets are uninterest- ing, and the sojourner in the city likes to escape out of their glare and dust into the cool and shady recesses of the old town. And ho has not far to go to do so. A few minutes' walk from the Ezbekeeh brings one into a tangle like the crossing paths of an ants'-nest, into the very heart of the smell and colour of the Orient, among people, among shops, in the presence of man- ners, habits, costumes, occupations centuries old, into a life in which the western man recognizes nothing familiar. Cairo, between the Mokattam hill of limestone and the Nile, covers a great deal of gi-ound — about three square miles — on which dwell somewhere from a third to a half of a million of people. The traveller cannot see its stock sights in a fortnight, and though he should be three months, he will find something novel in the street-life daily, even though he does not, as Mr. Lane has so admirably done, make a study of the people. And *' life " goea on in the open streets to an extent which always 48 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. \m Burpriaes us, howover familiar wo may be with Italian habits. Peopl(5 oat, smoke, pray, sleep, carry on all their trades in the sight of the passers-by — only into the recesses of the harem and the faces of the women one may not look. And this last mystery and reserve almost outweighs the openness of every- thing else. One feels as if he were in a masquerade ; the part of the world which is really most important — womankind — appears to him only in shadow and Hitting phantoms. What danger is he in from these wrapped and veiled figures which glide by, shooting him w'th a dark and perhaps wicked eye ; what peril is he in as he slips through these narrow streets with their masked batteries of latticed windows ! This East- ern life is all open to the sun ; and yet how little of its secrets does the stranger fathom. I seem to feel, always, in an East- ern town, that there is a mask of duplicity and concealment behind which the Orientals live ; that they habitually deceive the traveller in his "gropings after truth." The best way of getting about Cairo and its environs ' on the donkey. It is cheap and exhilarating. The donl *8 easily mounted and easily got oflf from ; not seldom he will weaken in his hind legs and let his rider to the ground — a sinking operation which destroys your confidence in life itself. Sometimes he stumbles and sends the rider over his head. But the good donkey never does either. He is the best ani- mal, of his size and apjjearance, living. He has the two qualities of our greatest generals, patience and obstinacy. The good donkey is easy as a rocking-chair, sure-footed as a cha- mois ; he can thread any crowd, and stand patiently dozing in any noisy thoroughfare for hours. To ride him is only a slight compromise of one's independence in walking. One is so near the ground, and so absent-mindedly can he gaze at what is around him, that he forgets that there is anything under him. When the donkey, in the excitement of company on the open street, and stimulated by the whacks and cries of his driver, breaks into the rush of a galop, there is so much flying of legs and such a general flutter, that the rider fancies he is getting over the ground at an awful rate, running a breakneck race ; but it does not appear so to an observer. The rider has the feeling of the swift locomotion of the Arab steed without its danger or its expense. Besides, a long-legged man, with at, m jCAIRO. 49 am- two The cha- cork liat and a flying linen " duster," tearing madly al(»ng on an animal an big an a ubeep, in an amusing spectacle. The donkey is abused, whacked, beaten till ho is raw, sad- dled so that all the strajis gall him, hard-ridden, left for hours to be assailed by the flies in the street, and ridiculed by all men. I wish we could know what sort of an unimal contui-iea of good treatment would have made of him. Something no doubt quite beyond human deserts ; as it is, he is simply indis- pensable in Eastern life. And not seldom he is a pet ; he wears jingling bells and silver ornaments around his neck ; hia hair is shaved in spots to give him a variegated appearance, and his mane and tail are dyed with henna ; he has on an em- broidered cloth bridle and a handsome saddle, under which is a scarlet cloth worked with gold. The length and silkiness of his ears are signs of his gentle breeding. I could never under- stand why he is loaded with such an enormous saddle ; the pommel of it rising up in front of the rider as big as a half- bushel measure. Perhaps it . thought well to put this mass upon his back so that he will not notice or mind any additional weight. The donkey's saving quality, in this exacting world, is in- ertia. And yet he is not without ambition. He dislikes to be passed on the road by a fellow ; and if one attempts it he is certain to sheer in ahead of him and shove him off the track. " Donkey jealous one anoder," say the drivers. Each donkey has his driver or attendant, without whose presence, behind or at the side, the animal ceases to go forward. These boys, and some of them are men in stature, are the quickest- witted, most importunate, good natured vagabonds in the world. They make a study of human nature, and accu- rately measure every traveller the moment he appears. They are agile to do errands, some of them are better guides than the professionals, they can be entrusted with any purchases you may make, they run, carrying their slippers in their hand, all day oeside the donkey, and get only a pittance of pay. They are, however, a jolly, larkish set, always skylarking with each other, and are not unlike the newspaper boys of New York ; now and then one of them becomes a trader or a drag- oman, and makes his fortune. If you prefer a carriage, good vehicles have become plenty of 50 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. hite years, since there are broad streets for driving ; and some very handsomo equipages are seen, especially towards evening on the Shoobra road, up and down which people ride and drive to be seen and to see, as they do in Central or Hyde park. It is en rkgle to have a sais running before the carriage, and it is tiie " swell thing" to have two of them. The running sais before a rapidly driven carriage is the prettiest sight in Cairo. He is usually p. dlender handsome 'black fellov. , probably a Nu- bian, brilliantly dressed, graceful in every motion, running with perfect eace and able to keep up his pace for hours without apparent fatigue. In the days of narrow streets his services were indispensable to clear the way ; and even now he is useful in the frequented ways where every one walks in the middle of the street, and the chattering, chaflSing throngs are as heedless of anything coming as they are of the day of judgment. In red tarboosh with long tassel, silk and gold embroidered vest and jacket, colored girdle with ends knotted and hanging at the side, short silk trousers and bare legs, and long staff, gold- tippti, in the hand, as graceful in running as Antinous, they are most elegant appendages to a fashionable turnout. If they could not be naturalized in Central Park, it might fill some of the requirements of luxury to train a patriot from the Green Isle to run before the horses, in knee-breeches, flourishing a shillalaii. Faith, I think he would clear the way. Especially do I like to see the sais coming down the wind before a carriage of the Toyal harem. The outriders are eunuchs, two in front and two behind ; they are blacks, dressed in black clothes, European cut, except the tarboosh. They ride fine horses, English fashion, rising in the saddle ; they have long limbs, lank bodies, cruel, .weak faces, and yet cunning ; they are sleek, shiny, emasculated. Ha,ving no sex, you might say they have no souls. How can these anomalies have any virtue, since virtue implies the opportunity of its opposite 1 These semblances of men seem proud enough of their position, however, and of the part they play to their masters, as if ttiey did not know the repugnance they excite. The carriage they attend is covered, but the silken hangings of the glass windows are drawn aside, revealing the white-veiled occupants. They indeed have no constitutional objections to being seen; the thin veil enhanoas their charms, and the observer who sees their CAIRO. 51 hey hin leir painted faces and bright langiiiahing eyea, no doubt gives them credit for as much beauty as they possess ; and as they flash by, I suppose that every one is convinced that he has seen one of the mysterious Circassian or Georgian beauties. The minute the traveller shows himself on the hotel terrar^e, the donkey-boys clamor, and push forward their animals upon the sidewalk ; it is no small difficulty to select one out of the tangle ; there is noise enough used to tit out an expedition to the desert, and it is not till the dragoman has laid vigorously about him with his stick that the way is clear. Your nation- ality is known at a glance, and a donkey is instantly named to suit you — the same one being called, indifferently, ** Bismarck" if you are German, " Bonaparte" if you are French, and " Yankee Doodle" if you are American, or " Ginger Bob" at a venture. We are going to Boulak, the so-called port of Cairo, to select a dahabeeh for the Nile voyage. We are indeed only getting ready for this voyage, and seeing the ^city by the way. The donkey-boys speak English like natives — of Egypt. The one running beside me, a handsome boy in a long cocton shirt, is named, royally, Mahmoud Hassan. " Are you the brother of Hassan whom I had yesterday T "No. He, Hassan not my brother; he better, he friend. Breakfast, lunch, supper, all together, all same, all same money. We friends." Abd-el-Atti, our dragomar., is riding ahead on his grey don- key, and I have no difficulty in following his broad back and short legs, even though his donkey should be lost to sight in the press. He rides as Egyptians do, without stirrups, and uses his heels as spurs. Since Mohammed Abd-el-Atti Effendi first went up the Nile, it is many years ago now, with Mr. Wm. C. Prime, and got his name prominently into the Nile literature, he has grown older, stout, and rich : he is entitled by his posi- tion to the distinction of " Effendi." He boasts a good family, as good afe' any ; most of his relatives . re, and he himself has been, in government employ ; but he left it because, as he says, he prefers one master to a thousand. When a boy, he went with the embassy of Mohammed Ali to England, and since that time he has travelled extensively as courier in Europe and the Levant and as mail-courier to India. Mr. Prime described 52 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. him as having aomewha^ the complexion and features of the North American Indian ; it is true, but he has a shrewd rest- less eye, and very mobile features, quick to image his good humor or the reverse, breaking intx) smiles, or clouding over upon his easily aroused suspicion. He is a good study of the Moslem and the real Oriental, a combination of the easy, pro- crastinating fatalism, and yet with a tindery temper and an activity of body and mind that we do not usually associate with the East. His prejudices are inveterate, and he is an un- forgiving enemy and a fast, self-sacrificing friend. Not to be driven, he can always be won by kindness. Fond of money and not forgetting the last piastre due him, he is generous and lavish to a fault. A devout Moslem, he has seen too much of the world not to be liberalized. He linows the Koran and the legendary history of the Arabs, and speaks and writes Arabic above the average. An exceedingly shrewd observer and reader of character, and a mimic of other's peculiarities, he is a good raconteur, in his peculiar English, and capital company. It is, by the way, worth observing what sharp observers all these Eastern people become, whose business it is to study and humor the whims and eccentricities of travellers. The western man who thinks that the Eastern people are childlike or effete, will change his mind after a few months' acquaintance with the shrewd Egyptians. Abd-el-Atti has a good deal of influence and even authority in his sphere, and although his executive ability is without system, he' brings things to pass. Wherever he goes, however, there is a ripple and a noise. He would like to go to Nubia with us this winter, he says, " for shange of air." So much is necessary concerning the character who is to be our companion for many months. No dragoman is better known in the East ; he is the sheykh of the dragomans of Cairo, and by reason of his age and experience he is hailed on the river as the saltan of the Nile. He di-esses like an Eng- lishman, except his fez. The great worry of the voyager in Egypt, from the moment he lands, is about a dragoman ; his comfort and pleasure depend very much upon a right selection. The dragoman and the dahabeeh interest him more than the sphinx and the great pyramids. Taking strangers up th6 Nile seems to be the great CAIRO, 53 ling- Lent liire and reat reat business of Egypt, and all the intricacies and tricks of it are slowly learned. Ignorant of the language and of the character of the people, the stranger may well be in a maze of doubt and perplexity. His gorgeously attired dragoman, whose recom- mendations would fit him to hold combined the offices of Presi- dent of the American Bible Society and caterer for Delmonico, often turns out to be ignorant of his simplest duties, to have an inhabited but uninhabitable boat, to furnish a meagre table, and to be a sly knave. The traveller will certainly have no peace from the importunity of the dragomans \intil he makes his choice. One hint ci<,n be given ; it is always best in a Mos- lem country to take a Moslem dragoman. We are on our way to Boulak. The sky is full of white light. The air is full of dust ; the streets are full of noise, color, vivid life, and^motion. Everything is flowing, free, joy- ous. Naturally people fall into picturesque groups, forming, separating, shifting like scenes on the stage. Neither the rich silks and brilliant dyes, nor the tattered rags, and browns and greys are out of place ; full dress and nakedness are equally en rhgle. Here is a grave, long-bearded merchant in full turban and silk gown, riding his caparisoned donkey to his shop, followed by his pipe-bear v ; here is a half-naked fellah seated on the rear of his sorry-eyed beast, with a basket of greens in front of him ; here are a group of women, hunched astride their donkeys, some in white silk and some in black, shapeless in their balloon mantles, peeping at the world over their veils ; here a handsome sais runs ahead of a carriage with a fat Turk lolling in it, and scatters the loiterers right and left ; there are porters and beggars fasfc asleep by the roadside, only their heads covered from the sun ; there are lines of idlers squatting in all-day leisure by the wall, smoking, or merely waiting for to-morrow. As we get down to Old Boulak the Saturday market is en- countered. All Egyptian markets occupy the street or some open place, and whatever is for sale here, is exposed to the dust and the sun ; fish, candy, dates, live sheep, doora, beans, all the doubtful and greasy compounds, on brass trays, which the people eat, nuts, raisins, sugar-cane, cheap jewelry. It is difficult to force a Avay through the noisy crowd. The donkey-boy cries j.erpetually, to clear the way, " ya," take care, " shimalak I " to 54 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. I I the left, " yemenak I " to the right, ya ! rigldk ! look out for your left leg, look 'out for your right leg, make way, boy; make way old woman ; but we joggle the old woman, and just escape stepping on the children and babies strewn in the street, and tread on the edge of mats spread on the ground, upon which provisions are exposed (to the dust) for sale. In the narrow, shabby streets, with dilapidated old balconies meeting overhead, we encounter loaded camels, donkeys with double panniers, hawkers of vegetables ; and dodge through, bewildered by colour and stunned by noise. What is it that makes all picturesque 1 More dirt, shabbiness, and nakedness never were assembled. That fellow who has cut armholes in a sack for holding nuts, and slipped into it for his sole garment, would not make a good figure on Broadway, but he is in place here, and as fitly dressed as anybody. These rascals wUl wear a bit of old carpet as if it were a king's robe, and go about in a pair of drawers that are all rags and strings, and a coarse towel twisted about the head for turban, with a gay insoucicmce that is pleasing. In fact I suppose that a good, well-fitting black or nice brown skin is about as good as a suit of clothes. But O ! the wi'inkled, flabby-breasted old women, who make a pretence of drawing the shawl over one eye ; the naked, big- stomached children with spindle legs, who sit in the sand and never brush away the circle of flies around each gummy eye ! The tumble-down houses, kennels in which the family sleep, the poverty of thousands of years, borne as if it were the only lot of life ! in spite of all this, there is not, I venture to say, in the world beside, anything so full of color, so gay and hiza/rre as a street in Cairo. And we are in a squalid suburb. At the shore of the swift and now falling Nile, at Boulak,' are m(X)red, four or five deep, the passenger dahabeehs, more than a hundred of them, gay with new paint and new carpets, to catch the traveller. There are small and large, old and new (but all looking new) ; those that were used for freight during the summer and may be full of vermin, and those reserved ex- clusively for strangers. They can be hired at from sixty pounds to two hundred pounds a month ; the English owner of one handsomely furnished wanted seven hundred and fifty pounds for a three-months' voyage. The Nile trip adds luxury to itself every year, and is getting so costly that only Ame- ricans will be able to afford it. CAIRO. Si make , big- Id and eye! leep, only y, i» za/rre ^ulak,- Imore rpets, new luring 3d ex- I sixty ler of fifty ixury lAme- After hours of search Wt; settle upon a boat that will suit us, a large boat that had only made a short trip, and so new that we are at liberty to christen it ; and the bargaining for it begins. That is, the bargaining revolves around that boat, but glances off as we depart in a rage to this or that other, until we appear to me to be hiring half the craft on the river. We appear to come to terms ; again and again Abd-el-Atti says, " Well, it is finish," but new difficulties arise. The owners were an odd pair : a tall Arab in soiled gown and turban, named Ahmed Aboo Yoosef, a mild and wary Moslem ; and Habib Bagdadli, a furtive little Jew, in Frank dress, with a cast in one of his pathetic eyes and a beseeching look, who spoke bad French fluently. Aboo Yoosef was ready to come to terms, but Bagdadli stood out ; then Bagdadli ac- quiesced, but Aboo made conditions. Abd-el-Atti alternately coaxed and stormed ; he pulled the Arab's beard ; and he put his arm round his neck and whispered in his ear. " Come, let us to go, dis Jews make me mad. I can't do any- thing with dis little Jews." Our dragoman's greatest abhorrence is a Jew. " Where is this one from ]" I ask. " He from Algiers." The Algerian Jews have a bad repu- tation. " iVb, 7M), m67i8ieur,pa8 Algiers" cries the little Jew, appealing to me with a pitiful look ; " I am from Bagdad." In proof of this there was his name — Habib Bagdadli. The bargaining goes on, with fine gesticulation, despairing attitudes, tones of anger and of grief, violent protestations and fallings into apathy and dejection. It is Arab against Arab and a Jew thrown in. " I will have this boat, but I not put you out of the way on it ;" says Abd-el- Atti, and goes at it again. My sympathies are divided. I can see that the Arab and the Jew will be ruined if they take what we offer. I know that we shall be ruined if we give what they ask. This pathetic- eyed little Jew makes me feel that I am oppressing his race ; and yet I am quite certain that he is trying to overreach us. How the bargain ii+ finally struck I know not, but made it seems to be, and clinched by Aboo reluctantly pulling his purse from his bosom and handing Abd-el-Atti a napoleon. That binds the S<5 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. bargain ; instead of the hirer paying something, the lessor gives a pledge. Trouble, however, is not ended. Certain alterations and additions are to be made, and it is nearly two weeks before the evasive couple complete them. The next day they offer us twenty pounds to release them. The pair are always hanging about for some mitigation or for some advance. The gentle Jew, who seems to me friendless, always excites the ire of our dragoman ; " Here comes dis little Jews," he exclaims as he encounters him in the street, and forces him to go and fulfil some neglected promise. The boat is of the largest size, and has never been above the Cataract ; the owners guarantee that it can go, and there is put in the contract a forfeit, of a hundred pounds if it will not. We shall see afterwards how the owners sought to circumvent us. The wiles of the Egyptians are slowly learned by the open- minded stranger. gives and ■e the er us aging jentle ►f our i& he some e the IS put . We it US. open- m. h'x CHAPTER V. IN THE tiAZAAR. jUR sight-seeing in Cairo is accomplished under the superintendence of another guide and dragoman, a cheerful, willing, good-natured and careful Moslem, with one eye. He looks exactly like the one-eyed calender of the story ; and his good eye has a humorous and inquiring twinkle in it. His name is Hassan, but he prefers to be called Hadji, the name he has taken since he made the pilgrimage to Mecca. A man who has made the pilgrimage is called " the hhagg," a woman " the hhaggeh," often spelled and pronounced " hadj " and " hadgee." It seems to be a privilege of travellers to spell Arabic words as they please, and no two writers agree on a single word or name. The Arabs take a new name or discard an old one as they like, and half a dozen favourite names do duty for half the inhabitants. It is rare to meet one who hasn't somewhere about him the name of Mohammed, Ahmed, Ali, Hassan, Hosayn, or MahmoudL People take a new name as they would a garment that strikes the fancy. " You like go bazaar V asks Hadji after the party is mount- ed on donkeys in front of the hotel. " Yes, Hadji, go by the way of the Mooskee." The Mooskee is the best known street in Cairo, and the only one in the old part of the town that the traveller can find un- aided. It runs straight, or nearly so, a mile perhaps, into the most densely built quarters, and is broad enough for carriages. A considerable part of it is roofed lightly over with cane or palm slats, through which the sun sifts a little light, and, being watered, it is usually cool and pleasant. It cannot be called a 58 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. good or even road, but carriages and donkeys pass over it with- out noise, the wheels making only a smollicied sound : you may pass through it many times and not discover that a canal runs underneath it. The lower part of it is occupied by European shops. There are no fine shops in it like those in the Ezbekeeh, and it is not interesting like the bazaars, but it is always crowded. Probably no street in the world offers such a variety of costumes and nationalities, and in no one can be heard more languages. It is the main artery, from which branch off the lesser veins and reticulations leading into the bazaars. If the Mooskee is crowded, the bazaars are a jam. Different trades and nationalities have separate quartei*s, the articles that are wanted are far apart, and one will of necessity consume a day in making two or three purchases. It is an achievement to find and bargain for a piece of tape. In one quarter are red slippers, nothing but red slippers, hundreds of shops hung with them, shops in which they are made and sold ; the yellow slippers are in another quarter, and by no chance does one merchant keep both kinds. There are the silk bazaars, the gold bazaars, the silver bazaars, the brass, the arms, the antiquity, the cotton, the spice, and the fruit bazaars. In one quarter the merchants and manufacturers are all Egyptians, in another Turks, in another Copts, or Algerines, or Persians, or Armenians, or Greeks, or Syrians, or Jews. And what is a bazaar 1 Sijnply a lane, narrow, straight or crooked, winding, involved, interrupted by a fountain, or a mosque, intersected by other lanes, a congeries of lanes, roofed with matting it may be, on each side of which are the little shops, not much bigger than a dry-goods box or a Saratoga trunk. Frequently there is a story above, with hanging balco- nies and latticed windows. On the ledge of his shop the merchant, in fine robes of silk and linen, sits cross legged, pro- bably smoking his chibook. He sits all day sipping coffee and gossiping with his friends, waiting for a customer. At the times of prayer he spreads his prayer-carpet and pursues his devotions in sight of all the world. This Oriental microcosm called a bazaar is the most charac- teristic thing in the East, and affords most entertainment ; in these cool recesses, which the sun only penetrates in glints, is all that is shabby and all that is splendid in this land of violent IN THE BAZAAR. 59 contrasts. The shops are rude, the passages are unpaved dirt, the matting above hangs in slireds, the unpainted baloouien are about to tumble down, the lattice- work is grey with dust ; fleas about ; you ai-e jostled by an unsavory throng, may be ; run against by loaded donkeys ; grazed by the dripping goat-skins of the water-c.;rriers ; beset by beggars ; followed by Jews offering old brasses, old cashmeres, old armor ; squeezed against black backs from the Soudan ; and stunned by the sing-song cries of a dozen callings. But all this is nothing. Here are the perfumes of Arabia, the coloui-s of Paradise. These narrow streets are streams of glancing colour ; these shops are more brilliant than any picture — but in all is a softened harmony, the ancient art of the East. We are sitting at a corner, pricing some pieces of old brass and arms. The merchant sends for tiny cups of coffee and offers cigarettes. He and the dragoman are wrangling about the price of something for which five times its value is asked. Nc't unlikely it will be sold for less than it is worth, for neither trader nor traveller has any idea of its value. Opposite is a shop where three men sit cross-legged, making cashmere shawls by piecing old bits of India scarfs. Next shop is occupied only by a boy who is reading the Koran in a loud voice, rocking forwards and backwards. A stooping seller of sherbet comes along clinking his glasses. A vendor of sweetmeats sets his tray before us. A sorry beggar, a dwarf, beseeches in figurative language. " What does he want, Hadji 1" " He say him hungry ; want piece bread ; 0, no matter for he." The dragomans never interpret anything, except by short cuts. What the dwarf is reaUy saying, according to Mr. Lane, is, " For the sake of God ! ye charitable. I am seeking from my lord a cake of bread. I am the guest of God and the Prophet." As we cannot content him by replying in like strain, " God enrich thee," we earn his blessing by a copper or two. Across the street is an opening into a nest of shops, gayly hung with embroideries from Constantinople, silks from Broussa and Beyrout, stuffs of Damascus ; a Persian rug is spread on 6o MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. ■ * h : ■ \ fc [ the mustubah of the shop, swords and inlaid pistols with flint locks shino amid the rich stuffH. Looking down this street, one way, is a long vista of bright colour, the street passing under round arches, through which I see an old wall painted in red and white squares, upon which the sun falls in a flood of white light. The street in which we are sitting turns abruptly at a little distance, and apparently ends in a high Moorish house, with queer little latticed windows, and balconies, and dusty re- cesses full of mystery in this half light ; and at the comer opposite that, I see part of a public fountain and hear very distinctly the ♦* studying" of the school over it. The public fountain is one of the best institutions of Cairo, as well as one of the most ornamental. On the street it is a rounded Saracenic structure, highly ornamented in carved marble or stucco, and gayly painted, having in front two or thr^je faucets from which the water is drawn. Within is a tank which is re- plenished by water brought in skins from the Nile. Most of these fountains are charitable foundations, by pious Moslems, who leave or set apart a certain sum to ensure the yearly sup- ply of so many skins of water. Charity to the poor is one of the good traits of the Moslems, and the giving of alms and the building of fountains are the works that will be rewarded in Paradise. These fountains, some of which are Tery beautiful, are often erected near a mosque. Ov.er them, in a room with a vaulted roof and open to the street by three or four arches with pillars, is usually a boys' school. In this room on the floor sit the master and his scholars. Each pupil has before him his lesson written on a wooden tablet, and this he is reading at the top of his voice, committing it to memory, and swaying incessantly backwards and forwards — a movement that is supposed to assist the memory. With twenty boys shouting together, the noise is heard above all the clamour of the street. If a boy looks off or stops his recitation, the stick of the schoolmaster sets him going again. The boys learn first the alphabet, then the ninety-nine epi- thets of God, and then the Koran, chapter by chapter. This is the sum of human knowledge absolutely necessary ; if the boy needs writing and arithmetic, he learns them from the steelyard weigher in the market ; or if he is to enter any of the profes- IN THE BAZAAR. 6l in son of [tly iist tise off lim • )i- lis iU- sions, he ha« a repriilar course of study in the Mosqii© el Ezher, which haa thousands of students, and is the great University of the East. Sitting in the bazaar for an hour one Avill see strange sights ; wedding and funeial processions are not the letust interesting of them. We can never get accustomed to the ungainly camel, thrusting his huge bulk into these narrow limits, and stretch- ing his snake nock from side to side, his dark driver sitting high up in the dusk of the roof on the wooden saddle, and sway- ing to and fro with the long stride of the beast. The camel ought to be used in funeral processions, but I believe he is not. We hear now a chanting down the dusky street. Somebody is being carried to his tomb in the desert outside the city. The procession has to squeeze through the crowd. First come a half dozen old men, ragged and half blind, harbingers of death, who move slowly, crying in a whining tone, " There is no deity but God ; Mohammed is God's apostle ; God bless and save him." Then come two or three schoolboys singing in a more lively air verses of a funeral hymn. The bier is borne by friends of the deceased, who are relieved occasionally by casual passen- gers. On the bier, swathed in grave clothes, lies the body, with a Cashmere shawl thrown over it. It is followed by female hired women, who beat their breasts and howl with shrill and prolonged ululations. The rear is brought up by the female mourners, relations — a group of a dozen in this case — whose hair is dishevelled, and who are crying and shrieking with a perfect abandonment to the luxury of grief. Passengers in the street stop and say, " God is most great," and the women point to the bier and say, " I testify that there is no deity but God." When the funeral has passed and its incongruous mingling of chanting and shrieking dies away, we turn towards the gold bazaar. All the goldsmiths and silversmiths are Copts ; through- out Egypt the working of the precious metals Ls in their hands. Descended from the ancient Egyptians, or at least having more of the blood of the original race in them than others, they have inherited the traditional skill of the ancient workers in these metals. They reproduce the old jewelry, the barbarous orna- ments, and work by the same rude methods, producing some- times the finest work with the most clumsy tools. The gold-bazaar is the narrowest passage we have seen. Wo 62 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. stop down !-.to its twilight from a broafler street, [t is in fact about three feet wide, u lane; with aii uneven floor of earth, often slippery. On each side are the little shops, just large enough for the dealer and his iron sjife, or for a tiny forge, bel- lows and anvil. Two people have to make way for each other in squeezing along this alley, and if a donkey comes through he monopolizes the way, and the passengers have to climb ui)on tlie mustubahs either side. The mustubah is a raised seat of stone or brick, built against the front of the shop and level with its floor, say two feet and a half high and two feet broad. The lower shutter of the shop turns down upon the mustubah and forms a seat ui)on which a rug is spread. The shopkeeper may sit upon this, or withdraw into his shop to make room for cus- tomers, who remove their shoes before drawing up their feet upon the carpet. Sometimes three or four persons will crowd into this box called a shop. The bazaar is a noisy as well as a crowded place, for to the buzz of talk and the cries of the itinerant vendors is added the clang of the goldsmiths' ham- mers ; it winds down into the recesses of decaying houses and emerges in another direction. \Ye are to have manufactured a bracelet of gold of a pattern as old as the Pharaohs, and made with the same instruments that the canning goldsmiths used three thousand years ago. While we are seated and bargaining for the work, the goldsmith unlocks his safe and shows us ne laces, bracelets, anklets, and earrings in the very forms, bizarre but graceful, of the jewelry of which the Israelites spoiled the Egyptian women. We see just such in the Museum at Boulak ; though these are not so fine as the magnificent jewellery wliich Queen Aah-hotep, the mother of Amosis, attempted to carry with her into the under- world, and which the scientific violators of her tomb rescued at Thebes. In the shop opposite to us are squeezed in three Egyptian women and a baby, who have come to spend the day in cheap- ening some bit of jewelry. There is apparently nothing that the Cairo women like so much as shopping — at least those who are permitted to go out at all — and they eke out its delights by consuming a day or two in buying one article. These women are taking the trade leisurely, examining slowly and carefully the whole stock of the goldsmith and deliberating on each bead IN THE BAZAAR. 63 fact arth, largo , hii\- othor ^h he upon sat of [with The [1 and r may )r CU8- ir feet crowd ill as a of the ' ham- les and pattern iments :a ago. dsraith its, and lewelry e see not so [ep, the under- !ued at and (liop of a necklace, glancing slily at iih and tho paRfinT*H-!.y out ol" tiiuii' dark eyes muuntinit?. Tliey havci brought cakes of bread for lunch, and the baby is publicly f(Ml as often as ho desires. These women have the power of sitting still in one spot for hours, squatting with perfect patience in a j)osture that would give a western woman the cramp for her lifetime. We are an hour in bargaining with the goldsmith, and are to return late in the afternoon and see the bracelet made before our eyes, for no one is expected to trust his fellow here. Thus far the gold has only been melted into an ingot, and that with many precautions against fraud. I first count out the napoleons of which the bracelet is to be made. These are weighed. A tire is then kindled in the little forge, the cnicible heated, and I drop the naix)leon8 into it, one by one. We all carefully watch the melting, to be sure that no gold is spilled in the charcoal and no base metal added. The melted mass is then run into an ingot, and the ingot is weighed against the same number of napoleons that compose it. And I carry away the ingot. When we return the women are still squatting in the shop in the attitude of the morning. They show neither impatience nor weariness; nor does the shopkeeper. The baby is sprawled out in his brown loveliness, and the purchase of a barbarous necklace of beads is about concluded. Our goldsmith now re- moves his outer garment, revealing his fine gown of striped silk, pushes up his sleeves and prepares for work. His only tools are a small anvil, a hammer and a pair of pincers. The ingot is heated and hammered and heated and hammered, until it is drawn out into an even, thick wire. This is then folded in three to the required length, and twisted, till the gold looks like molasses candy ; the ends are then hammered together, and the bracelet is bent to its form. Finally it is weighed again and cleaned. If the owner wishes he can have put on it the gov- ernment stamp. Gold ornaments that are stamped the gold- smith will take back at any time and give for them their weight in coin, less two per cent. On our way home we encounter a wedding procession ; thi« is the procession conducting the bride to the house of the bridegroom, that to the bath having taken place two days be- fore. The night of the day before going to the bridegroom is if 64 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. called the " Night of Henna." The bride has an entertainment at her own house, receives presents of money, and has her hands and her feet dyed with henna. The going to the bride- groom is on the eve of either Monday or Friday. These pro- cessions we often meet in the streets of Cairo ; they wander about circuitously through the town, making all the noise and display possible. The procession is a rambling affair, and gene- rally attended by a rabble of boys and men. This one is preceded by half a dozen shabbily dressed musi- cians beating different sorts of drums and blov/ing hautboys, each instrument on its own hook ; the tune, it there was one, htya become discouraged, and the melody has dropped out ; thump, pound, squak, the music is more disorgani?!ed than the procession, and draggles on in noisy dissonance like a drunken militia band at the end of a day's " general training." Next come some veiled women in black ; and following them are several small virgins in white. The bride walks next, with a woman each side of her to direct her steps. This is necessa- ry, for she is covered from head to feet with a red cashmere shawl, hanging from a sort of crown on the top of her head. She is in appearance simply a red cone. Over her and on three sides of her, but open in front, is a canopy of pink silk, borne on poles by four men. Behind straggle more musicians, piping and thumping in an independent nonchalance, followed by gleeful boys. One attendant sprinkles rose-water on the spectators, and two or three others seem to have a general direction of the course of the train, and ask backsheesh for it whenever a stranger is met. The procession gets tired occasionally, and sits down in the dust of the road to rest. Sometimes it is accompanied by dancers and other performers to amuse the crowd. I saw one yesterday which had halted by the roadside, all the women ex- cept the bride squatting down in patient resignation. In a hollow square of spectators, in front, a male dancer was exhib- iting his steps. Holding a wand perpendicularly before him with both hands, he moved backwards and forwards, with a mincing gait, exhibiting neither gi'aoe nor agility, but looking around with the most conceited expression I ever saw on a human face. Occasionally he would look down at his legs with the most approving glance, as much as to sty, " I trust, God IN THE BAZAAR. 65 lent her ride- pro- nder and Tcne- oavisi- boys, } one, out; n the mken them ,, with jcessa- hmere • head, md on t silk, icians, lUowed n the eneral for it being great, that you are taking particular notice of those legs ; it seems to ino that they couldn't l>e imj)rove(l," The fellow enjoyed his dancing if no one else did, and it was impossible to get him to drsist and let the procession move on. At last the cortege made a detour round the man, who seemed to be so popu- lar with himself, and left him to enjoy his own performance. Sometimes the expense of this zeffeh, or bridal procession, is shared by two parties, and I have seen two brides walking under the same c&,nopy, but going to difierent husbands. The public is not excluded from an interest in these weddings. The house of a bridegi'oom, near the Mooskee, was illuminated a night or two before the wedding, colored lanterns were hung across the street, and story-tellers were engaged to recite in front of the house. On the night of the marriage there was a crowd which gi-eatly enjoyed the indelicate songs and stories of the hired performers. Late in the evening an old woman ap- peared at a window and proclaimed that the husband was con- tented with his wife. An accompaniment of a bridal procession which we some- times saw we could not understand. Before the procession proper, walked another, preceded by a man carrying on his head a high wooden cabinet, with four legs, the front covered with pieces of looking-glass and bits of brass; behind him were musi- cians and attendants, followed by a boy on horseback, dressed richly in clothes too large for him and like a girl's, It turned out to be a parade before circumcision, the friends of the lad having taken advantage of the bridal ceremony of a neighbor to make a display. The wooden cose was merely the sign of the barber who walked in the procebsion, and was to perform the operation. " I suppose you are married 1" I ask Hadji, when the pro- cession has gone by, " Yes, sir, long time." ** And you have never had but one wife T "Have one. He quite nuff for me." " How old was she when you married her ?" " Oh, I marry he, when he much girl 1 I tink he eleven, maybe twelve, not more I tink." Girls in Egypt aie marriageable at ten or eleven, and it ia said that if not married before they are fourteen they have an, 5 i v» ' r*"' 66 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. excellent chance of being old maids. Precocious to mature, they are quick to fall away and lose their beauty ; the laboring classes especially are ugly and flabby before eighteen. The low mental, not to say physical, condition of Egyptian women is no doubt largely due to these early marriages. The girl is married and is a mother before she has an opportunity to educate her- self or to learn the duties of wife or mother, ignorant of how to make a home pleasant and even of housekeeping, and when she is utterly unfit to have the care and training of a child. Ignor- ant and foolish, >xnd, as Mr. Lane says, passionate, women and mothers can nev^er produce a great race. And the only reform for Egypt that will give it new vitality and a place in the world must begin with the women. The Khedive, who either has foresight or listens to good ad- vice, issued a firman some years ago forbidding the marriage of girls under fifteen. It does not seem to be respected either in city or country ; though I believe that it has some influence in the city, and generally girls are not married so young in Cairo as in the country. Y et I heard recently in this city of a man of sixty who took a wife of twelve. As this was not his first wife, it could not be said of him, as it is said of some gi*eat geniuses, that he struck twelve the first time. CHAPTER Yl. MOSQUES AND TOMBS. j^HAT we in Cairo like most to do, is to do nothing in the charming winter weather — to postpone the regular and necessary sight-seeing to that limbo to which the Arabs relegate everything — bookra, that is, to-morrow. Why not as well go to the Pyramids or to Heliopolis or to the tombs of the Memlooks to--7iorrow ! It is to be the same fair weather ; we never plan an excursion, with the proviso, " If it does not rain." This calm certainty of a clear sky adds twenty-five per cent, to the value of life. And yet, there is the Sirocco ; that enervating, depressing south wind, when all the sands of the hot desert rise up into the air and envelope everything in grit and gloom. I have been on the Citadel terrace when the city was only dimly out- lined in th( thick air, and all the horizon and the sky were veiled in dust as if b; a black Scotch mist. We once waited three days after we had set a time to visit the Pyramids, for the air to olear. The Sirocco is bad enough in the town, the fine dust pe itrates the closed recesses of all apartments ; but outside the c v it is unbearable. Indeed any wind raises the sand disagree bly; and dust is the great plague of Egypt. The streets of Cairo, except those that are sprinkled, are seldom free from clouds of it. And it is an ancient dust. I suppose the powdered dead of thousands of years are blowing about in the air. The desert makes itself apparent even in Cairo. Not only is it in the air, but it lies in wait close to the walls and houses, ready to enter at the gates, sifting in through every crevice. Only by constant irrigation can it be driven back. As soon as we pass beyond the compact city eastward, we enter the desert, 68 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. iji unless \re follow the course of some refreshing canal. The drive upon it in a favorite one on summer nights. I have spoken of the desert as hot; but it is always cool at night ; and it is the habit of foreigners who are detained in Cairo in the summer to go every night to the desert to cool off. The most conspicuous object in Cairo, from all points, is the Citadel, built on a bold spur of the Mokattam range, and the adjoining Mosque of Mohammed Ali in which that savage old reformer is buried. The mosque is rather Turkish than Sara- cenic, and its two slender minarets are much criticised. You who have been in Constantinople are familiar with the like slight and graceful forms in that city ; they certainly are not so rich or elegant as many of the elaborately carved and more robust minarets of Cairo which the genius of the old architects reared in the sun-burst of Saracenic architecture ; but they are very picturesque and effective in their position, and especially against a poetic evening sky. When Salah-e'-deen robbed the pyramids to build the Cita,- del, he doubtless tLought he was erecting a fortification that would for ever protect his city and be an enduring home for the Sultans of Egypt. But Mohammed Ali made it untenable as a fort by placing a commanding battery on the Mokattam ledge ; and now the Citadel (by which I mean all the group of build- ings) useless as a fort (except to overawe the city) and aban- doned as a palace, is little -more than a ghost-walk of former splendors. There are barracks in it ; recruits are drilling in its squares ; the minister-of-war occupies some of its stately apart- ments ; the American General Stone, the chief officer of the Khedive's army, uses others; in some we find the primitive presses and the bureaus of the engineers and the typographical corps ; but vast halls and chambers of audience, and suites of apartments of the harem, richly carved and gilded, are now vacant and echo the footsteps of sentries and servitors. And they have the shabby look of most Eastern architecture when its first freshness is gone. We sat in the room and on the pKtform where Mohammed Ali sat when the slaughter of the Memlooks was going on ; he sat motionless, so it is reported, and gave no other sign of nerv- ousness than the twisting of a piece of paper in his hand& And yet he must have heard the cries under his window, and, MOSQUES AND TOMBS. 6<) The have and L the a the i the re old Sara- You 3 like e not more litects ay are jcially 1 Cita- a that for the ^ble as ledge ; build- aban- brmer in its apart- lof the litive iphical lites of now And when Immed ; he nerv- lands. r, and, of course, the shots of the soldiers on the walls who were exe- cuting his orders. We looked down from the balcony into the narrow, walled lane, with its closed gates, in which the five hundred Memlooks were hemmed in and massacred. Think of the nerve of the old Turk, sitting still without changing coun- tenance while five hundred, or more, gallant swash-bucklers were being shot in cool blood under his window ! Probably he would not have been so impassive if he had seen one of the devoted band escape by spurring his horse through a break in the wail and take a fearful flying leap upon the rubbish below. The world agrees to condemn this treacherous and ferocious act of Mohammed Ali and, generally, I believe, to feel grateful to him for it. Never was there a clan of men that needed ex- terminating so much as the Memlooks. Nothing less would have suited their peculiarities. They were merely a band of robbers, black-maUers, and freebooters, a terror to Egypt. Dislodged from actual power, they were still greatly to be dreaded, and no ruler was safe who did not obey chem. The term Memlook means " a white male slave," and is still so used. The Memlooks, who originally were mostly Circassian white slaves, climbed from the position of favorites to that of tyrants. They established a long dynasty of sultans, and their tombs yonder at the edge of the desert are among the most beautiful specimens of the Saracenic architecture. Their sovereignty was overthrown by Sultan Selim in 1517, but they remained a powerful and aristocratic band which controlled governors, cor- rupted even Oriental society by the introduction of monstrous vices, and oppressed the people. I suppose that in the time of the French invasion they may have been joined by bold adven- turers of many nations. Egypt could have no security so long as any of them remained. It was doubtless in bad taste for Mohammed Ali to extend a friendly invitation to the Memlooks to visit him, and then murder them when they were caught in his trap ; he finally died insane, and perhaps the lunacy was providentially on him at that time. In the Citadel precincts is a hall occupied by the " parlia- ment " of the Khedive, when it is in session ; a parliament whose members are selected by the Viceroy from all over Egypt, in order that he may have information of the state of the country, but a body that has no power and certainly not so much influence in the state as the harem has. But its very 70 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. ^' I RHsemblage is an innovation in the Orient, and it may lead in time to infinite gab, to election briberies and multitudinous legislation, the accompaniments of the highest civilization. We may yet live to see a member of it rise to enquire into the expenses of the Khedive's numerous family. The great Mosque of Mohammed Ali is in the best repair and is the least frequented of any in Cairo. Its vast, domed interior, rich in materials and ambitious in design, is impressive, but this, like all other great mosques, strikes the Western man as empty. On the floor are beautiful rugs ; a tawdry chandelier hangs in the centre, and the great spaces are strung with lanternc. No one was performing ablution at the handsome fountain in the marble-paved couii; ; only a single worshipper was kneeling at prayer in all the edifice. But I heard a bird singing sweetly in the airy height of the dome. The view from the terrace of the mosque is the finest in Egypt, not perhaps in extent, but certainly in variety and objects of interest ; and if the atmosphere and the light are both favorable, it is the most poetic. From it you command not only the city and a long sweep of the Nile, with fields of living green and dark lines of palms, but the ruins and pyramids of slumberous old Memphis, and, amid the yellow sands and backed by the desolate Libyan hills, the dreamy pyramids of Geezeh. Wr are advised to get this view at sunset, because then the light is soft and ail the vast landscape has color. This is good advice so far as the city at our feet is concerned, with its hundreds of minarets and its wide expanse of flat roofs, palm- tops and open squares ; there is the best light then also on the purple Mokattam hills ; and the tombs of the Memlooks, north of the cemetery, with their fairy domes and exquisite minarets and the encompassing grey desert, the whole bathed in violet light, have a beauty that will linger with one who has once seen them forever. But looking beyond the Nile, you have the sun in your face. I should earnestly entreat the stranger to take this view at sunrise. I never saw it myself at that hour, being always otherwise engaged, but I am certain that the pyramids and the Libyan desert would wake at early morning in a glow of transcendant beauty. We drive out the gate or Bab e' Nasr beyond the desolate Moslem cemetery, to go to the tombs of the Cii-cassian Memlook Sultans. We pass round and amid hills of rubbish, dirt, and MOSQUES AND TOMBS. 71 seen le sun take jeing imids glow broken pottery, the dumpings of the city for centuries, and travel a road so sandy that the horses can scarcely drag the heavy carriage through it. Tae public horses of Cairo are sorry beasts and only need a slight excuse for stoppi. g at any time. There is nothing agreeable about the great Moslem cemetery ; it is a field of sand-heaps, thickly dotted with little oven-shaped stucco tombs. They may be pleasanter below ground ; for the vault into which the body is put, without a coffin, is high enough to permit its occupant to sit up, which he is obliged to do, whether he is able to sit up or not, the first night ql his stay there, in order to answer the questions of two angels who come tQ examine him on his religious practices and views. The Tombs of the Sultans, which are in the desert, are in fact vast structures, — tombs and mosques united — and are built of parti-colored stone. They are remarkable for the beautiful and varied forms of their minarets and for their aerial domes ; the latter are covered with the most wonderful arabesque carving and tracing. They stand deserted, with the sand drifting about them, and falling to rapid decay. In the interiors are still traces of exquisite carving and color, but much of the ornament- ation, being of stucco on rude wooden frames, only adds to the appearance of decay. The decay of finery is never respectable. It is not correct, however, to speak of these mosque-tombs as deserted. Into all of them have crept families of the poor or of the vicious. And the business of the occupants, who call them- selves guardians, is to extract backsheesh from the visitor. Spinning, knitting, baking, and all the simple household occu- pations go on in the courte and in the gaunt rooms ; one tomb is used as a grist-mill. The women and girls dwelling there go unveiled ; they were tattooed slightly upon the chin and the forehead, as most Egyptian women are ; some of the younger were pretty, with regular features and handsome dark eyes. Near the mosques are lanes of wretched homes, occupied by as wretched people. The whole mortal neighborhood swarms (life out of death) with children j they are as thick as jars at a pottery factory ; they ai'e as numerous as the flies that live on the rims of their eyes and noses ; they are as naked, most of them, as when they were born. The distended condition of their stomachs testifies that they have plenty to eat, and they tumble about in the dirt, in the lull enjoyment of this delicious climate. People can affoi*d to be poor when nature is their friend, i CHAPTER YII. « MOSLEM WORSHIP. — THE CALL TO PRAYER. SHOULD like to go once to an interesting city where there are no sights. That city could be enjoyed ; and conscience — which never lei ves any human being in peace until it has nagged him into a perfect condition morally, and keeps punching him about frivolous little details of duty, especially at the waking morning hour — would not come to insert her thumb among the rosy lingers of the dawn. Perhaps I do not make myself clear about conscience. Con- science is a kind of gastric juice that gnaws upon the very coatings of a person's moral nature, if it has no indigestible sin to feed on. Of courfee I know thsA neither conscience nor gastric juice has a thumb. And, to get out of these figures, all I wish to say is, that in Cairo, when the traveller is aware of the glow of the morning stealing into his room', as if the day were really opened gently (not ripped and torn open as it is in our ow^n cold north) by a rosy-fingered maiden, and an atmosphere of sweet leisure prevails, then Conscience suggests remorselessly : " To-day you must go to the pyramids," or, " You must take your pleasure in a drive in the Shoobra road," or " You must explore dirty Old Cairo and its Coptic churches," or " You must visit the mosques, and see the Howling Derweeshes." But for this Conscience, I think nothing would be so sweet as the coming of an eastern morning. I fancy that the cool wind stirring in the palms is from the pure desert. It may be that these birds, so melodiously singing in the garden, are the small green birds who eat the fruits and drink the waters of Paradise, and in whose crops the souls of martyrs abide until Judgment. As I lie quite still, I hear the call of a muezzin from a minaret MOSLEM WORSHIP. n he as id at ill ie, it. et not far otf, the voice now full and clear and now faint, as he walks aronnd the tower to send his entreaty over the dark roofs of the city. I am not disturbed by this early call to the un- converted, for this is not my religion. With the clamor of morning church bells in Italy it is different ; for to one born in New England, Conscience is in the bells. Sometimes at midnight I am dimly conscious of the first call to prayer, which begins solemnly. " Prayer is better than sleep." But the night calls are not obligatory, and I do not fully wake. The calls during the night are long chants, that of the daytime is much shorter. Mr. Lane renders it thus : *' God is most great " (four times repeated). " I testify that there is no deity but God " (twice). " I testify that Moham- med is God's Apostle " (twice). " Come to prayer " (twice). " Come to security " (twice). " God is most great " (twice). " There Ls no deity but God." The muezzin whom I hear when the first faint light appears in the ease, has a most sonorous and sweet tenor voice, and his chant is exceedingly melodious. In the perfect hush of that hour his voice fills all the air, and might well be mistaken for a sweet entreaty out of heaven. This call is a long one, and is in fact a confession and proclamation as well as a call to prayer. It begins as follows : " [I extol] the perfection of God, the Existing forever and ever " (three times) : " the perfection of God, the Desired, the Existing, the Single, the Supreme : the perfection of God, the One, the Sole : the perfection of Him who taketh to Himself, in his great dominion, neither female companion nor male part- ner, nor any like unto Him, nor any that is disobedient, nor any deputy, nor any equal, nor any offspring. His perfection [be extolled] : and exalted be His name. He is a Deity who knew what hath been before it was, and called into existence what hath been : and he is now existing, as He was [at the first]. His perfection [be extolled] : and exalted be His name." And it ends : " O God, bless and save and still beatify the beatified Prophet, our lord Mohammed. And may God, whose name be blessed and exalted, be well pleased with thee, our lord El-Hasaan, and with thee, O our lord El-Hoseyn, 1 74 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. f and with thee, O Aboo-Farrag, O Sheykli of the Aral).s, and with all the favorites [* the weleeB '] of God. Amen." The mosques of Cairo are more numerous than the churches in Rome ; there are about four hundred, many of them in ruins, but nearly all in daily use. The old ones are tlie more interesting architecturally, but all have a certain attraction. They are always open, they are cool quiet retreats out of the glare of the sun and the noise of the street; they are democratic and as hospitable to the beggar in rags as to the pasha in silk ; they offer water for the dusty feet of the pilgrim and a clean mat on which to kneel ; and in their hushed walks, with no image to distract the mind and no ritual to rely on, the devout worshipper may feel the presence of the Unseen. At all hours you will see men praying there or reading the Koran, uncon- scious of any observers. Women I have seen in there occasionally, but rarely, at prayer ; still it is not uncommon to see a group of poor women resting in a quiet corner, perhaps sewing or talking in low voices. Tht itward steps and open courts are refuges for the poor, the friendless, the lazy, and the tired. Especially the old and decaying mosques, do th» poor frequent. There, about the fountains, the cJiildren play, and under the stately colonnades the men sleep and the women knit and sew. These houses of God are for the weary as v/cil as for the pious or- the repentant. The mosques are all much alike. We enter by a few or by a flight of steps from the stre'et into a large paved court, open to the sky, and surrounded by colonnades. There is a fountain in the centre, a round or octagonal structure of carved stone, usually with a fanciful wooden roof; from lancets in the exterior, water runs into a sunounding stone basin about which the worshippers crouch to perform the ablutions before prayer. At one side of the court is the entrance to the mosque, covered by a curtain. Pushing this aside you are in a spacious room lighted from above, perhaps with a dome, the roof supported by columns rising to elegant arches. You will notice also the »)eculiar Arabic bracketing- work, called by architects " penden- tive," fitting the angles and the transitions from the corners below to the dome. In decaying mosques, where the plaster has fallen, revealing the round stick frame-work of this bracket- ing, the perishable character of Saracenic ornament is apparent. I I MOSLEM WORSHIP. 75 the The walls are plain, with the exception (>f gilded texts from the Koran. Above, on strings extending acroRB the room, ar** little lamps, and very oft< i hundreds of ofltrich eggs are 8U8j)ended. These eggs are almobt always seen in Coptic and often in Greek churclies. What they signity I do not know, unless the ostrich, which can digest old iron, is a symbol of the credulity that can swallow any tradition. Perhaps her »'gg8 represent the great " cosmic egg " which modem philosophers are trying to teach (if we may be allowed the t'xpreasion) their grandmothers to suck. The stone pavement is covered with matting and perhaps with costly rugs from Persia, Smyrna, and Tunis. The end to- wards Mecca is raised a foot or so ; in it is the prayer niche, towards which all worshippers turn, and near that is the high pulpit with its narrow steps in front ; a pulpit of marble carved, or of wood cut in bewildering arabesque, and inlaid with pearl. The oldest mosque in Cairo is Ahmed ebn e' Tooloon, built in 879 A.D., and on the spot where, according to a tradition (of how liigh authority I do not know), Abi-aham was prevented from offering up his son by the apj)earanoe of a ram. The modem name of this hill is, indeed, Kalat-el-Kebsh, the Citadel of the Bam. I suppose the tradition is as v/cU based as is the belief of Moslems that it was Ishmael and not Isaac whose life was spared. The centre of this mosque is an open court, surrounded by rows of fine columns, five deep on the east side ; and what gives it great interest is the fact that the columns all support pointed arches, and exceedingly graceful ones, with a slight curve of the horse-shoe at the base. These arches were constructed about three centuries before the introduction of the pointed arch into Europe ; their adoption in Europe was pro- bably one of the results of the cmsades. • In this same court I raw an old nebk tree, which grows on the spot where the ark of Noah is said to have rested after its voyage. This goes to show, if it goes to show anything, that the Flood was " general " enough to reach Egypt. The mosque of Sultan Hassan, notwithstanding^ its ruined and shabby condition, is the finest specimen of pure Arabic archit>*H5ture in the city ; and its lofty and ornamented porch is, I think, as fine as anything of its kind in the world. One may probably spend hours in the study of its exquisite details. I ;6 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. often found my«elf in front of it, wondering at the poetic invention and sonsitivenoas to the beautLful in form, which enabled the builderH to reach the same etfticts that their Gothic succeasora only produced by the aid of images and auggestions drawn from every department of nature. We ascend the high steps, pass through some dilapidated parts of the building, which are inhabited, asid come to the threshold. Here the Moslem removes his shoes, or street- slippers, and carries them in his hand. Over this sill we may not step, shod as we are. An attendant is ready, however, with big slippers which go on over our shoes. Eager, bright little boys and girls put them on for us, and then attend us in the mosque, keeping a close watch that the slipj)ers are not shuffled off. When one does get off, leaving the unholy shoe to touch the gi'ound, they affect a sort of horror and readjust it with a laugh. Even the children are beginning to feel the general relaxation of bigotry. To-day the heels of my shoes actually touch the floor at every step, a transgi-esaion which the little girl who is leading me by the hand points out with a sly shake of the head. The attention of this pretty little girl looks like affection, but I know by sad experience that it means " back- sheesh." It is depressing to think that her natural, sweet, coquettish ways mean only that. She is fierce if any other girl seeks to do me the least favor, and will not permit my own devotion to her to wander. The mosque of Sultan Hassan was built in the fourteenth century, and differs from most others. Its great, open court has a square recess on each side, over which is a noble arch ; the east one is very spacious, and is the ^ place of prayer. Be- hind this in an attached building, is the tomb of Hassan ; lights are always burning over it, and on it lies a large copy of the Koran. When we enter, there are only a few at their devotions, though there are several groups enjoying the serenity of the court ; picturesque groups, all color and rags ! In a far comer an old man is saying his prayers and near him a negro, perhaps a slave, also prostrates himself. At the fountain are three or four men preparing for devotion ; and indeed the prayers begin with the washing. The ablution is not a mere form with these soiled laborers — though it does seem a hopeless task for men of \ MOSLEM WORSHIP. 71 of the color of tli'*se to Hcrub thomHelvoH. They hatho the hftaH to estiihlish as the most probably correct. This pyramid was about four hinidred and eighty leet high, and the length of a side of its base was about seven hundred and sixty- four feet ; it is now four hundred and fifty feet high and its base line is seven hundred and foi-ty-six feet. It is big enough yet for any practical purpose. The old pyramid pi Sakkara is believed to have been built by Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first dynasty, and to be the oldest monument in the world. Like the mounds of the Chaldeans, it is built in degiees or stages, of which there are five. Degraded now and buried at the base in its own rubbish, it rises only about one hundred and ninety feet above the ground. It is a drive of two hours from Cairo to the Pyramid s of Geezeh, over a very good road ; and we are advised to go by carriage. Hadji is on the seat with the driver, keeping his Mingle twinkling eye active in the service of the hawadji. The driver is a polished Nubian, with a white turban and a white gown ; feet and legs go bare. You wouldn't call it a stylish turnout for the Bois, but it w^oald be all right if we had a gor- geous sais to attract attention from ourselves. We drive through the wide and dusty streets of the new quar- ter. The barrack-like palace, on the left of a broad place, is the one in which the Khedive is staying just now, though he may be in another one to-night. The streets are the same animated theatre-like scenes of vivid color and picturesque costume and indolent waiting on Providence to which we thought we s^ auld never become accustomed, but which are already beginning to lose their novelty. The fellaheen are coming in to market, trudging along behind donkeys and camels loaded with vege- tables or freshly cut grass and beans for fodder. Squads of soldiers in white uniform pass; bugle notes are heard from Kasr e' Neel, 0. barrack of troops on the river. Here, as in Europe, the great business most seriously pursued is the dril- ling of men to stand straight, handle arms, roll their eyes, march with a thousand legs moving as one, and shoot on sight other human beings who have learned the same tricks. God help us, it is a pitiful thing for civilized people. The banks of the Nile here above Boolak are high and steep. We cross the river on a fine bridge of iron, and drive over th« level jplain, opposite, on a raised and winding embankment. 6 82 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. i ri <, hundred feet fitting the stain- They master the This is phmted on each side with lebbekh and sycamore trees. Part of the way the trees are large and the sh:uh) .•ini])h^ ; the roots going down into moist ground. Much of the way the trees are small and kept alive by constant watering. On the right, by an noble avenue, are approached the gardens and the palace of Gezeereh. We pass by the new summer palace of Geezeh. Other large ones are in process of construction. If the viceroy is measured for a new suit of clothes as often as he orders a new palace, his tailors must be kept busy. Through the trees we see green fields, intersected with ditches, wheat, barley, and beans, the latter broad-sown and growing two to three feet high ; here and there are lines of palms, clumps of acacias ; peasants are at work or asleep in the shade ; there are trains of camels, and men ploughing with cows or bufialoes. Leaving the squalid huts that are the remains of once beautiful Geezeh, the embankment strides straight across the level country. And there before us, on a rocky platfr*' higher that the meadows, are the pyramiu , less blue of the sky with their sharp lines, eye when we are an hour away, and as we approach they seem to recede, neither growing larger nor smaller, but simply with- drawing with a grand reserve. I suppose there are more "emotions" afloat about the j^yra- mids than concerning any other artificial objects. There are enough. It becomes constantly more and more difficult for the ordinary traveller to rise to the height of these accumulated emotions, and it is entirely impossible to say how much the ex- citement one experiences on drawing near them results from reading and association, and how much is due to these simple forms in such de«olate surroundings. But there they stand, enduring standards, and every visitor seems inclined to measure his own height by their vastness, in telling what impression they produce upon him. They have been treated sentiment- ally ofT-handedly, mathematically, solemnly, historically, hu- morously. They yield to no sort of treatment. They are noth- ing but piles of stone, and shabby piles at that, and they stand there to astonish people. Mr. Bayatd Taylor is en**" ■ 'y "^i-^^lbt when he says that the pyramids ai'e .ind will rensvi < )'oebteoj;e(. and unapproachably impressive, however modern liii? )i\i.j 4iwQf about them, and though a city should creey bout tiu "^ m ■•<». THE PYRAMIDS. 83 trees. 3 ; the ly the )n the id the [ace of action, ften as hrough wheat, two to mps of lere are iflfaloes. eautiful e level red feet le stam- per the ey seem ly with- le lyra- lere are for the lulated the ex- Its from simple stand, leasure )ression Itiment- fiy, ^^- [•e noth- |y stand -5 "flit |.y mxpr ^ Perhaps they do not appear so gigantic when the visitor is close to them as he tliought they would from their mass at a distance. But if he stands at the hase of the great pyramid, and casts his eye along the steps of its enormous side and up the dizzy hight where the summit seems to pierce the solid blue, he will not complain of want of size. And if he walks around one, and walks from one to another, wading in the loose sand and under a midday suu, his respect for the pyramids will in- crease every moment. Long before we reach the ascent of the platform we are mej; by Arab boys and men, sellers of antiquities, and most persist- ent beggars. The antiquities are images of all sorts, of gods, beasts, and birds, in pottery or in bronze, articles from tombs, bits of mummy-cloth, beads and scaraoaei, and Roman copper coins ; all of them at least five thousand years old in appear- ance. Our carriage is stuck in the sand, and we walk a quarter of a mile up the platform, attended by a rabble of coaxing, im- ploring, importunate, half-clad Bedaween. "Look a here, you take dis ; dis ver much old, he from mummy ; see here, I get him in tomb ; one shillin ; in Cairo you get him one pound ; ver sheap. You no like 1 No antec ka, no money. How much?" " One penny." "Ah," ironically, "ket'-ther khayrak (much obliged). You take him sixpence. Howadji, say, me guide, you want go top pyramid, go inside, go Sphinkee, allee tomba?" Surrounded by an increasing swarm of guides and antiquity- hawkers, and beset with offers, entreaties, and opportunities, we come face to face with the gi-eat pyramid. The ground in iront of it is piled high with its debris. UjK)n these rocks, in picturesque attitudes, some in the shade and some in the sun, others of the tribe are waiting the arrival of pyramid climbers; in the intense light their cotton garments and turbans are like wl.ite paint, brilliant in the sun, ashy in the shadow. All the shadows are sharp and deep. A dark man leaning on his spear at the corner of the pyramid makes a picture. At a kiosk near by carriages are standing and visitors are taking their lunch. But men, carriages, kiosk, are dwarfed in this great pre^sence. It is, as I said, a shabby pile of stone, and its beauty is only MJ !>; \^ IV ! 1 ii J! 84 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. that of mathematical angles; but then it Ls so big, it casts such a shadow ; we all beside it are like the animated lines and dots which represent human beings in the etchings of Callot. To be rid of importunities we send for the sheykh of the pyramid tribe. The Bedaween living here have a sort of ownership of these monuments, and very good property they are. The tribe suppoi-ts itself mainly by tolls levied upon visi- tors. The sheykh assigns guides and climbers, and receives the pay for their services. This money is divided among the families ; but what individuals get as backsheesh or by the sale of antiquities, they keep. They live near by, in huts scarcely distinguishable from the rocks, many of them in vacant tombs, and some have shanties on the bordei*s of the green land. Most of them have the appearance of wretched poverty, and villain- ous faces abound. But handsome, intelligent faces and finely developed forms are rot ra^o, either The Sheykh, venerable as Jacob, respectable as a New Eng- land deacon, suave and polite as he traditionally should be, wears a scarf of camel's hair and a brigiit yellow and black kuffia, put on like a hood, fastened about the head by a cord and falling over the shoulders. He apportioned his guides to take us up the pyramid and to accompany us inside. I had already sent for a guide who had been recommended to me in the city, and I found Ali Gobree the frank, manly, intelligent, quiet man I had expected, handsome also, and honesty and sincerity beaming from his countenance. How well-bred he was, and how well he spoke English. Two other men were given me ; for the established order is that two shall pull and one shall push the visitor up. And it is easier to submit to the regulation than to attempt to go alone and be followed by an importunate crowd. I am aware that every one who writes of the pyramids is ex- pected to make a scene of the ascent, but if I wei'e to romance I would rather do it in a fresher field. The fact is that the ascent is not difficult, unless the person is very weak in the legs or attempts to carry in front of himself a preposterous stomach. Tiiere is no difficulty in going alone; occasionally the climber encounters a step from three to four feet hi'^h, bat he can always flank it. Of courfie it is tire«om«^ to go up-staira, and the great pyramid needs an " elevator" ; but a person may THE PYRAMIDS. 85 H such J dots of the lort of r they •n visi- ves the ig the he sale carcoly tombs, Most villain- t finely w Eng- iild be, I black a cord ides to I had me in ligent, >y and Ired he were II and to the by an is ex- bmance lat the in the tterous [onally Ih, but [stairs, III may leisurely zig-zag up the side without great fatigue. We went straight up at one corner ; the guides insisting on taking me by the hand ; the boosting Arab who came behind earned his money by grunting every time we reached a high step, but he didn't lift a pound. We stopped frequently to look down and to measure with the eye the mass on the surface of which we were like fties. When we were a third of the way up, and turned from the edge to the middle, the height to be climbed seemed as great as when we started, 1 should think that a giddy person might have unpleasant sensations in looking back along the corner and seeing no resting-place down the sharp edges of the steps short of the bottom, if he should fall. We measure our ascent by the diminishing size of the people below, and by the widening of the prospect. The guides are perfectly civil, they do not threaten to throw us off, nor do they oven mention backsheesh. Stopping to pick out shells from the nummulitic limestone blocks or to try our glasses on some distant object, we come easily to the summit in a quarter of an hour. The top, thirty feet square, is strewn with big blocks of stone and has a flag-staff. Here ambitious people Bometiiii«« breakfast. Arabs are already here with koollehs of water and antiquities, W}>en the whole party arrives the guides set u[> a perfunctory cheer; but the attempt to give an air of achieve- ment to our climbing performance and to make it appear that we are the first who have f»ver accomplished the feat, is a failure. We sit down upon the blocks and look over l-gypt, JiS if we were used to this sort of thing at home. All that is characteristic of Egypt is in sight ; to the west, the Libyan hills and the Umitless stretch of yellow desert sand ; to the p n-th, desert also and the ruined pyramid of x^boorojUh ; to the .uuth, thiit long necroj* lis of th«* desert marked by the pyramids of Aboose6r, Hakkarah, and Dashiwr ; on the east, the Nile and its broad meadows, widenii^ into the tlim Delta northward, the white line ol (Wro under the Mokattam hillH, and the grey desert beyond. Kgypt is a ribbon of green betw^een two deserts. Canals and Hues of tmm h(i ipo tlu* grecm of the foregrcHind ; white sails flicker H«Mithwai'd along the river, wnnging their way to Nubia ; tho citach)! ami iLu uuiwpiM shine in tibe mai. , t fi ' 86 MUMMIES AND MOSLEMS. An Arab offers to run down the side of this pyramid, climb the second one, the top of which is still covered with the original casing, and return in a certain incredible number of minutes. We decline, because we don't like to have a half- clad Arab thrust his antics between us and the contemplation of dead yet mighty Egypt. We regret our refusal afterwards, for there is nothing people like to read about so much as facta of this sort. Humanity is more interesting than stones. I am convinced that if Martha Rugg had fallen off the pyramid in- stead of the rock at Niagara Falls, people would have looked at the spot where she fell and up at the stairs she came bobbing down with more interest than at the pyramid itself Never- theless, this Arab and another did, while we were there, climb the second pyramid like a monkey ; he looked only a black speck on its side. That accidents sometimes happen on the pyramids, I gather from the conversation of Hadji, who is full of both information and philosophy to-day. " Sometimie man, he fool, he go up. Man say, ' go this way,' Fool, he say, 'let me lone.' Umbrella he to(;k him, threw him off; he dead in hundred pieces." As to the selling of scarabaei to travellers, Hadji inclines to the side of the poor : — " Good one, handsome one, — one pound. Not good for much — but what to do 1 Gentleman he want it ; man he want the money." For Murray's Guide-Book he has not more respect than guides usually have who have acted as intei'preters in t!ie col- h)ction of information for it. For " interptet" Hadji always says " spell.'' " Wh«in I|m» Murray (tome \w\v, I spell it to the man, the man to Murray and him put it down. He don't know any- tliliig l»nfurn. He told me, ^vhat is this 1 1 told liifn what it Ifl. Souietliing," with a knowing nod, " be new afeo})lti he build a houHt^ Plenty men to work, make it dear," I have never seen Hadji's dwel- ling, but it is probably of the style of those that he calls — THE PYRAMIDS. 8; |//f) SO (orent, )eople *lenty dwel- lalls — when in the street we ask liim wliat a specially shah>by miid- wall with a ricketty tloor in it is — *' a brivate house." About the Great Pyramid haa long waged an archfeological war. Years have been spent in fjtudying it, measuring it in- side and outside, drilling holes into it, speculating wliy this stone is in one position and that in another, and constructing theories about the purpose for which it was built. Books have been written on it, diagi'ams of all its chambei*s and passages, with accurate measurements of every stone in them, are i)rinted. If I had t!ontrol of a restless genius who was dangerous to the peace of society, I would set him at the Great Pyramid, certain that he would have occupation for a lifetime aiul never come to any useful result. The interior has peculiarities, which dis- tinguish it from all other pyramids ; and many think that it was not intended for a sepulchre mainly ; but that it was erected for astronomical purposes, or as a witness to the true north, east, south, and west, or to serve as a .standard of mea- sure ; not only has the passage which descends obliquely three hundred and twenty feet from the opening into the bed-rock, and permits a view of the sky from that depth, some connection with the observation of Sirius and the fixing of the Sothic year; not only is the porphyry sarcophagus that is in the King's Chamber, secure from fluctuations of temperature, a fixed standard of measure ; but the positions of various stones in the passages (stones which ceHainly are stumb'-ng-bloeks to \\w), aie there) are full of a mystic and uvea iellgioua signification. It is most restful, however, to the mind to look upon this pyramid as a toiiili, and that it was a Htv^mlchre like all the others is the opinion of most scholars. Whatever is wiis, it is a most unpleasant place to go into. But we wanted one idea of Cimmtuiau darkness, and the sei)sa- tion of being buried alive, and we didn't like to tell a lie when asked if \no had been in, and therefore we went. Von will /jot understand where we went without a diagram, and you never will have any ide.i of it until you go. We, with a gui of tombs, expecting the break of day, since a i)eriod that is rost in the dimness of tradition. All the achievements of the race, of which we know anything, have been enacted since that figure was carved. It luis seen, if its stony eyes could see, all the procession of history file before it. Viewed now at a v#i ^"' IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A V m?^ IL ""^ 1.0 I.I 15 '»"«» If 1^ 1.25 18 iliU 11.6 :^ w. ^/ ^^^ •mi. ^> O / m-. 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