V3 3 -^'8 '2 ■■^ .<3 I ^P ■a 12 I -.^8 VOLUMES AtREADY PUBLISHED, Price Is. Gi.m handsome wrapper, or 2s. cloth iHtered. R'AUBIONK'S HISTORY of the REFORMATION In the SIX- ^ TEENTH CENTURY. Complete Edition, 5 vols. (Vol.5. 3s.) flllEEVER'S LECTURES ON THE PILGRIM'S PRP- ^ GRESS, and on the LIFE and TIMES of BUN Y AN. Complete Edition. l?SSAYS AND DISCOURSES BY J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, I-* D D. 'J'ranslatcd from the French. With a Frontispiece. DICK'S CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER: or the Connection of Science and Philosophy with Religion. With Engravings, 2 Volumes. v^PRING'S (Dr. Gardiner) OBLIGATIONS OF THE WORLD ^ TO THE BIBLE. XTINET'S (Professor) VITAL CHRISTIANITY; or thcReligions V of I\Ian and the Religion of God. With a Frontispiece of Lausanne. WYLIE'S (Rev. James A., Edinburgh,) SCENES FROM THE '' BIBLE. nUEEVER'S WANDERINGS of a PILGRIM in the SHADOW ^ of MONT BLANC, and the JUNGFRaU ALP. With a Frontispiece of Mont Blanc. DUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. With the Rev. 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A new Translation, -'- with Life of the Author. nilEEVEll'S (Rev. H. T.)TIIE ISLAND WORLD OF THE ^ PACIFIC, Being the i'ersonal Narrative and Results of Travel through the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands. TTITCHCOCK'S (Professok,) RELIGION OF GEOLOGY, and •^-^ its Connected Sciences. T EYBURN'S (Rev. John-, D.D.) THE SOLDIER OF THE ^ CROSS: a Practical Exposition of Ephesians, vi, 10-lS. raCKINSON'S (Rev. Richard, D.D.) RESPONSES FROM THE ^ SACRED ORACLES; or, the Past in the Present. /ILLIAMS' (Rev. Dr.) RELIGIOUS PROGRESS, and LEC- TURES ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. W PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS OF EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. BY THE EEV. JOSEPH P. THOMPSON. GLASGOW: WILLIAM COLLINS, NORTH MONTROSE ST. LONDON: PATERNOSTER ROW. G L A S G O AV: TllLLIAM COLLINS AND CO., PRINTERS. SRLF YRL PREFACE. In the month of January, 1853, I found myself afloat upon the Nile. Six months before, I had left New York in the uncertainty of pulmonary disease, to try the benefit of a year of travel in more genial climes. The balmy air of Egypt brought healing to my lungs, and with this came an almost boyish gush of life; so that in the soul, as in the outer world, it was the " Season of Vegetation " after the " Season of the Waters." For three months the light of each " morning without clouds " pictured in the mind the scenery of the Nile, the passing scenes of Egyptian life, and the lingering monuments of Egyptian history, in lines that can never be eifaced ; and in the abundant leisure of boat life, these views were transferred from the mind to paper. Each view was taken by the light which itself threw upon the mind; — photograiiiJied by the outward upon the inward, and again transferred from the inward to the outward. These impressions, as taken at the time, were laid by for future reference. A few have been exhibited to friends in public journals and in lectures; and now the whole are bound together in this volume, for whoever cares to look at life pictures of a distant land. If the picture is gay or grotesque, it is because the reality was gay or grotesque; if the picture is sombre, it is because the reality was sombre. If in turning over these leaves, any shall find innocent amusements for a passing hour, the humble copyist of nature will be glad of such a measure of success in transferring her mirthful phases; — if any shall be saddened by these Hfe pictures — why he too was often sad at seeing under the sunniest sky, deeper shadows than clouds can throw; if any shall find instruction in the pictures, he will be thankful that he did not see and study Egypt for himself alone. For this^ his first attempt in the photography of nature, of his- tory, and of human life, his only claim is that the pictures are faithful; — taken as they were, and given as they were taken. As the author knows nothing of the Arabic language, he has been perplexed with the orthography of Arabic words, in which authorities differ. The following are examples of diverse spellings : Tarhouch, tarboosh ; Gaivass, cavasse; Haiuagee, HowaSji; Janissary, Janizary; Chihoque, shebook; Backshish, hucksheesh; Mameluke, Memlook; Ainrou, Amer, Amr; Sheik, sheikh, shekh. In either mode the English sound is but an approximation to the Arabic. New York, 3Iay, 1854:. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE First Impressions-Alexandria, Ancient and Modern, 1 1 CHAPTER n. Preparations for tue Voyage — Donkeys — Cooks — Marketing, ..... 25 CHAPTER m. The Embarkation — Mahmoodeh Canal — The Nile, 33 CHAPTER IV. Nile Comforts — A Nile Boat and Crew, . 38 CHAPTER V. Navigation— Villages— Bazaar—Houses — Children, 49 CHAPTER VI. Occupations of the People — Water Jars — Produc- tions — Tillage — The Shadoof and the Sakia, 57 CHAPTER VII. Tenure of Land —Disposition and Manners of the • People, . . ... 65 CHAPTER VIII. The Desert and the Railroad, . . 70 CHAPTER IX. ''Cairo the Magnificent," . . .74 CHAPTER X. Scenery of the Nile — Dav and Night, . . 81 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. PAGE MiNiEH — A Sugar Factory — Visit to a Bey, . 88 CHAPTER Xn. River Saints, anb Coptic Hermits, ... 93 CHAPTER XHI. Sabbath on the Nile — A Missionary Incident, 97 CHAPTER XIV. Marriage and Mourning, .... 107 CHAPTER XV. Orientauzing — A Village Coffee House, . 110 CHAPTER XVI. Crocodiles, 116 CHAPTER XVII. Denderah — Keneh — A Human Heart, . . 119 CHAPTER XVIII. Trees and Birds, . .... 125 CHAPTER XIX. Negadeh — Salutations — A Coptic Church, . 129 CHAPTER XX. Mother Egypt — Thebes — Temples and Monuments — The Nineteenth Century, . . . . 134 CHAPTER XXI. Memnon still Sounds, 142 CHAPTER XXII. Fragments of Thedan History — Sources — Rosetta Stone — Hieroglyphics — Antiquities, . . 147 CHAPTER XXIII. Chronology op the Bible, . . . . 164 C0>(TENT8. 9 CHAPTER XXIV. PAGE History continued, — CoRHEsroxDENXES with the Bible, 1C8 CHAPTER XXV. Recent Discoveries at Thebes — Memorials op Early Christianity, . . . . . . 175 CHAPTER XXVI. The Tombs of Thebes — Manners and Customs op the Ancient Egyptians, .... 181 CHAPTER XXVII. Gods of the Egyptians — Doctrine of Immortality, 192 CHAPTER XXVIII. Dissolving Views — Panorama of K a rnac, . 199 CHAPTER XXIX. A Chapter of Items — Parting from Thebes — Getting News — The Smocco — Emigration — Inauguration Day, 210 CHAPTER XXX. Girgeh and Abydos — Fertility and Desolation, 219 CHAPTER XXXI. Italians and Copts, 221 CHAPTER XXXII. OsiooT, or Wolf-town — The Old and the New — A Modern Cemetery — Soldier Making — John the Hermit, ....... 229 CHAPTER XXXHI. Antiquity op Art and Science — True Antiquity of Egypt, 238 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIV. PAGE Climate of the Nile — A Chapter for Invalids, 248 CHAPTER XXXV. Cairo again — Shoobra — Rhoda — Old Cairo — The Der WISHES, 256 CHAPTER XXXVI. Mohammedanism — Mosques and Prayers, . 262 CHAPTER XXXVIl. Mohammedan Infidels — Prospects of Evangeliza- tion — Toleration, . . . . . 270 CHAPTER XXXVIII. Early Christianity in Egypt — Persecutions and Triumphs — Destruction of Idolatry, 279 CHAPTER XXXIX. Hope for Egypt — ^The Copts, their History and Ritual — A Plea for Missions, . . 292 CHAPTER XL. Heuopolis, the City of Joseph — The Pyramids and Sphinx — Egypt a Sepulchre, . . . 305 APPENDIX, 313 Religious Chant, . . . . . .315 Table of Egyptian DyNASTiEs, by Poole, . 316 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. CHAPTER I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. The sun rose gloriously over the ancient Pharos, and shone into the very eye of our steamer as she hovered about the harbour awaiting her pilot; a sun that had already wakened Meiunon to his daily music, and had kissed the pyramids upon its way to greet the bounding, laughing sea. The gates of the Orient opened wide before us upon hinges of gold and amber and rubies. Sea -sickness and the dis- comforts of the voyage were in a moment forgotten, and I felt that I would again travel six thousand miles to stand where I then stood. And this is Egypt ! That just expiring light marks the site of one of the seven wonders of the world — the first great light-house that illumined the Mediterranean, when Greece and Rome began to share the commerce of the Orient; and within that rocky headland which guards so well the approach to the long, narrow, egg-shaped harbour, — all along that level shore, now studded with windmills above, and crowded with catacombs beneath, — lies the city of Alexander the Great. 1 look upon the land that in the time of Moses was in its prime, and that has been old and decaying through all the growth and history of the present living world. At this moment a small boat, propelled by eight or ten barelegged rowers in smocks and turbans, comes along side, and two pilots mount the gangway and take their station on 12 EGYTT, PAST AND PRESENT. the wheelbox. They are barelegged like the rest, but they wear leathern sandals, and their turbans are of a better quality, and their smocks are girdled about the waist with a white cord J on the whole they make a very neat appear- ance. They seem deeply impressed with the magnitude of their office, and hold grave consultations together, the result of which is signified by sundry motions of the band to the steersman, accompanied with a spasmodic guttural jargon; — for the familiar "Port" and "Steady" are now uttered in Arabic to a French officer, and by him translated to the man at the wheel. Altogether it is quite a pic- turesque affair — these two Arabs with their unshorn beards, their heads wrapped about with huge white folds crowned with green and crimson, their bodies cased in a single loose frock descending to the knees, and their naked bronze calves terminating in light-coloured sandals withoutstring or buckle, standing in the eye of old Pharos, and guiding into the port of Alexander, a steamer bearing his name, manned and freighted by the " barbaric Gaul." It would require two pilots, one would think, if not twenty, to steer a vessel through all the twists and turnings of this channel, where the waves are dashing over rocks at every twenty rods; and one can accord something to the self-complacent air with which our two turbaned worthies slowly descend to the deck after the signal to let go the anchors. But what a din comes up on all sides from the small boats by which we must be conveyed ashore! At least twenty of these boats with their motley crews, are crowding about the larboard side of the steamer, jostling each other and struggling for the nearest place. In some the crews are half naked; in others decently dressed; but everywhere the bare legs, the single smock, and in lieu of the turban the tarhouch — a close-fitting red Fez ^ cap, with a black silk tassel. Now and then a turbaned head, 1 Fez, so called from the place of its manufacture, Fez, a princi- pal city of Morocco, celebrated for the manufacture of milled woolen fabrics. This is the headdress of soldiers and sailors, and of the common people. It is worn also by the Sultan at Constantinople. It is gradually superseding the turban. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIEJTT AND MODERN. 13 surmountiug a white frock and a pair of loose frilled trowsers of the same material, indicates some superiority in the wearer, who sits leisurely smoking his pipe in the midst of the confusion. Indeed it is one of the comicalities of the scene, that a fellow standing on the prow of his boat and gouging his neighbour into the water in order to make his own boat fast to the gangway, will stop in the very act to take a whiff of the tabacco which he is smoking through a curled paper. Nobody can come on board, nobody can go ashore, till the health officer has gone through with his formalities, nor till the mail has been despatched in a ship's boat under the French flag. Just here, two brawny French sailors pitch headlong down the gangway a troop of Arab boatmen who were climbing up on deck, and the mate dashes over their heads a bucket of cold water. Through the energy of our courier we are the first to put off fvom the ship, which was anchored about a third of a mile from the shore; for here, as at almost every port of the Mediterranean, the whole business of receiving and of landing passengers and freight, is done by means of small boats. The harbour is filled with vessels of every European nation, but the American flag is not represented; there being almost no direct commerce between Egypt and the United States. Some noble men-of-war, from seventy-four guns upward, and one or two war steamers, assert the dominion of the Crescent over the kingdom of the Pharaohs. A few old dismantled hulks are lying in the great dockyard near the palace, and immense piles of timber are stored there for future use. Every thing looks substantial and respectable. Even our own steamer, that just now tumbled about like a cockle-shell, has put on a calm and dignified air in harmony with the surrounding scene; — I mean the scene in the harbour, for there is not much of calmness or dignity here at the quay where we have now arrived. What a confusion of tongues! Arabic, French, Maltese, Italian, and broken English, all rush upon the ear at the same instant, while the language of signs expresses still more emphatically than words the one idea upon every 14 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. tongue; — "Good donkey, sir," ''Want ver fine donkey," " Donkey for hotel, good, English ride my donkey, ver good." About fifty of these little creatures are huddled together on the dock, unmoved by the clamour of their drivers or the punching of their sticks, while all around lazy lumbering camels are sprawling in the mud, or reaching out their gaunt ungainly necks as they deliver their loads of hay or of water-skins. We happily avoid this turmoil by steering for the far side of a stone wall that divides the dock, — but from Scylla we escape into the jaws of Charybdis, for here the custom-house Cawasses await us to see if gentlemen professedly bound for Upper Egypt on a travelling excur- sion, are in reality smuggling contraband goods in their carpetnbags or portmanteaus; — into the jau^s, of a truth, for nothing wags so briskly in Egypt, not even a donkey's tail, jerked every way by its driver, as does that member of an Arab's frame. However, as in Sardinia the franc, and in Tuscany and Rome the paul, and in Naples the carline, so here the jnastre soon settles the question, and our bag- gage passes without even a showing of the keys. But this is not the end of it. The custom-house is just without the precincts of the city, and as we enter the gate another official rushes out and seizes the horses by the head, and insists upon inspecting the baskets, bundles, carpet-bags, etc., that by permission of the first set of officials and in con- sideration of one dollar, we have taken with us. After a long altercation in Arabic between the officers and the driver, the former take a survey of the exterior of each bag, judge hj feeling of its probable contents, and permit us to proceed. This fairly over, a short ride brings us to the Hotel de V Europe, where a prisoner of the sea who has not eaten a meal for four days must be allowed to do justice to a well spread breakfast. This hotel, kept by an Italian, is quite unpromising, even shabby in external appearance and in its general furniture; but its table-d' hole afi"ords good living at about 2 dollars 50 cents a day. It is reputed to be the best, and is situated upon the large parallelogram called the Frank square, where are most of the European shops and offices. With the thermometer at seventy, and ALEXAKDIUA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 15 an abundance of flies and mosquitoes, it is hard to realize that the true date is January 11th. But with the ever-recurring thought that wc were in Egyit, we could not long remain shut up in an Italian hotel, overlooking a modern square surrounded with houses in the Frank style, and with shops displaying English cottons and French perfumery, and covered with French, Greek, Italian, and English signs. We must somewhere find tbe dreamy Orient. After a hasty but hearty breakfast, we set out on foot to visit the Mahmoodeeh canal, at a distance of a mile from our quarters, there to inspect the boats for the Nile. Our road lay through the principal streets to the gate of the Necropolis. Immediately without this gate we came for the first time upon a truly oriental scene. Upon a large open area, camels, sheep, and buffalo oxen were reposing, while their owners were chaffering, pipe in hand; a caravan of camels, laden with merchandise of various sorts, was entering the gate; the tall palm tree lifted its spreading top toward the noonday sun, while groves of acacias lining the roads, offered their cooling shade; on a neighbouring mound stood a solitary Arab, his gaunt figure and turbaned head in bold relief against the sky; the diminutive donkey, urged forward by his driver's prong, went nimbly by; a score of wolfish dogs barked and howled at the approch of strangers; but above their clamour were heard the myriad voices of birds, whose freedom had never been invaded by the sportsman, and whose song was in harmony with the delicious air and the gorgeous drapery in which all nature was enwrap- ped; — to complete the picture,the minaret that overlooks the bazaar, loomed in the distance, and immediately before us Pompey's Pillar reared its stupendous mass of polished gran- ite, in solitary grandeur — a monument of buried empires, a sentinel over recent tombs. This pillar is the one solitary monument of the old city upon its southern front, and answers to the one standing obelisk that is its solitary monument on the north. Of its origin history is as silent as the mummy of Belzoni's tomb; but there is no doubt that "Pomjjeij's Pillar is really a mis- nomer;" for the inscription "shows it to have been erected 1 6 EGYPT, PAST A^'B PRESENT. by Publius, the prajfect of Egypt, in honour of Diocletian,^ who subdued a revolt at Alexaudria by capturing the city, A. D. 296. But whether it was then first hewn from the quarry, or was transported from some decaying temple up the Nile, the Greek lettering does not inform us. If the latter, — which, considering the decline of art and the pilfer- ing propensities of the Romans, is probable — then this now lonely sentinel, an Egyptian column with a Greek inscrip- tion to a Roman emperor, has witnessed in turn the decay of Egypt, of Greece, and of Rome, upon the soil where it still disputes with Time the empire of the Past. To the reader of Gibbon, it may seem strange that a monu- ment should have been reared at Alexandria in honour of a conqueror, who, during a siege of eight months, wasted the city by the sword and by fire, and who, when it finally capitulated and implored his clemency, caused it to feel *nhe full extent of his severity," and destroyed " thousands of its citizens in a promiscuous slaughter." The fact may serve to show the wcrthlessness of such monuments as tes- timonials to character, or as expressions of public esteem. But whatever may be its history or its associations, one cannot look upon this column without a feeling of astonish- ment and awe. Outside of the modern city walls and some six hundred yards to the south of them, away from the present homes of men, but on an eminence that overlooks the entire city, and in striking contrast with the meagre, attenuated style of its present architecture, stands this stupendous column of red granite, ninety-nine feet in height by thirty in circumference, its shaft an elegant monolith measuring seventy-three feet between the pedestal and the capital. It marks the site of an ancient stadium, and as some conjecture, of the gymnasium, which was surrounded with majestic porticos of granite. Now it looks down upon the rude and garish cemetery of the Mohammedans, whose plastered tombs glaring in the sun, crowd around its dis- mantled base. As we slowly sauntered away, the gorgeous memories of the past were broken by the mourning scenes of the 1 Wilkinson, who first deciphered it. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 17 present. Two funeral processions approached the pillar on their way to the burial-ground. First came a group of about twenty boys, ragged, barefoot, and bareheaded, chanting a wailing strain; then followed twice as many men, walking two or four abreast, and uttering the same monotonous wail; these were mostly clothed in turbans, long frocks, and trowsers, and wore a venerable appearance. I noticed in particular several blind men — so common in the East — led by the hand and supported by their staves; next came the bier borne upon the shoulders of four men, the body wrapped in a white cloth, and covered with a shawl, — the turban lay on top to indicate that the deceased was a male; after this, straggling at intervals, came a few women, clothed in the long white veil, covering the face with the exception of the eyes and reaching to the ankles; these uttered a different cry— a piercing slirick or a sus- tained waving howl that blended fearfully with the wailing of the men. The custom here is to bury on the day of death; no coffin is used, but a grave is dug and the body, wrapped only in a cloth, is put into it; the grave is then covered with an arched stone laid in cement. The grave- yard presents the singular appearance of a field of low stone mounds. The second procession consisted only of about twenty persons, in the centre of whom was a man who carried in his arms a dead child wrapped in a shawl, of which it would be divested at the grave, leaving only a light covering of cloth. From Po-mpey's Pillar to Chopatra's Needles is a distance of more than a mile through the city in a north-easterly direction. These obelisks have no more relation to Cleopa- tra than the pillar has to Pompey. Their hieroglyphics date as far back as the Exodus,' and they were brought to Alexandria from the city of Heliopolis or On, about a hun- dred miles to the south. Each pillar is a single block of red granite, about seventy feet high and nearly eight feet in diameter at the base. How such huge blocks were cut from the quarry, transported hundreds of miles, and erected upon their pedestals, is a mystery not solved by any thing ' Thothmcs III. Wilkinson and Lepsius. 62 B 18 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. yet discovered of ancient mechanic arts. But one of the obelisks is standing. The other was taken down to be transported to England, but now lies half bui'ied in the mud and sand. On one side of the standing obelisk the hieroglyphics are distinctly legible, but on the northern or seaward side they are much defaced by the action of the weather. It stands upon the edge of the Great Harbour, in a line with the rock of Pharos that forms the extreme northern point of the horseshoe port. Besides the Pillar and the Needles nothing remains to testi- fy the former splendour of Alexandria; — a capital that once vied with Rome, containing a population equal to that of New York, (three hundred thousand freemen and as many slaves,) and that so late as the seventh century, according to the testimony of Amrou, its Saracenic conqueror, contained " four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetables, and forty thousand tributary Jews." A few ruins are pointed out, but these are fast disappearing with the ravages of time. Its name is the only memorial of its founder; and the long range of catacombs along the shore to the west of the city, the sole vestige of its ancient population. The sagacity of Alexander is apparent in the site of the city, which with its safe and commodious harbour on the Medi- terranean, and its ample harbour on the lake Mareotis, on the south, then fed by canals from the Nile, monopolized the rising commerce of Europe, as well as that of Ethiopia, Arabia, and the Indies. The convenient fiction of a dream sufficed to impart to his sagacity the reputation of a divine prescience. So rapid was the growth of the city, that at the com- mencement of the Christian era, it was ''second only to Rome itself," and " comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles" within its walls. It was a great seat of commerce. "Idleness was unknown. Either sex, and every age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry;" — the blowing of glass, the weaving of linen, manufacturing the papyrus, or con- ducting the lucrative trade oftheport.^ Alexander, fresh from 1 Gibbon. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. ] 9 the conquest of Tyre, boasted that he would here build au emporium of commerce surpassing that which he had ruined, and thus would recreate in his own image the world he had destroyed. The site of Alexandria, more felicitous than that of Tyre, promised to realize his ambitious dream. Its gates "looked out on the gilded barges of the Nile, on fleets at sea under full sail, on a harbour that sheltered navies, and a light-house that was the mariner's star, and the wonder of the world." ^ But neither the felicity of its location, nor the enterprise of its Ptolemaic rulers, nor the wealth of its commerce, nor the learning that gathered to its schools the students of art, of philosophy, of medicine, of science, and of religion, could withstand the march of empire from Asia to Europe, nor the laws of trade that followed in its track. It was the ambition of Mohammed Ali to restore Alex- andria to its ancient rank as a seaport, and to make it the real capital of Egypt. For this purpose he dug a canal to connect it with the Nile, thus re-opening the communication that the sands of the desert had filled up; through the old buildings and the rubbish of centuries, he opened new streets, making them straight, wide, and rectangular, after the manner of modern European cities; he encouraged the building of a railroad from Alexandria to Cairo; he made improvements in the modern harbour, which lies to the west of the ancient port, — the island of Pharos, now annexed to the main land, jutting as a promontory between the old and the new, and still serving as a landmark to the mariner. But the improvements of Mohammed Ali were made by the force of one despotic will, and not by the intelligent progress of the people; and though they have restored to Alexandria something of its former commercial activity, many years must elapse before their benefits will be fully realized by the sluggish natives. The present population of Alexandria is somewhat less than one hundred thousand, — a mixture of all African and oriental races, with many Europeans, though the Jews have dwindled to about a thousand, where they once counted a hundred times that number, and where the Seventy made I CampbelL 20 KGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. the Greek version of the Old Testament at the time when " salvation was of the Jews." Both they and their former oppressors are in the lowest degradation. In the city where the eloquent Apollos was born, and where the learned and astute Athanasius conducted his Theological controversies, where Theodosius by imperial edict destroyed the temple of Serapis, and publicly inaugurated Christianity in place of the outcast divinities of the Egyptian Greeks, — Chris- tianity is now represented by a Greek church, a Roman Catholic church, and a chapel pertaining to the Church of England. A beautiful edifice for the latter is building upon the Frank Square, in the Romanesque style, which I should be glad to see more generally copied in the United States, in preference to the Gothic. In roaming the narrow and dirty streets of the modern city, now occupied with a motley and poverty-stricken popu- lation, in traversing the villages of hovels within the walls, where the Arab lies down with his sheep, his goat, his dog, and his donkey, in a mud inclosure of a few feet square which must be entered by stooping, and in climbing the huge mounds, in part overgrown with date-palms, that are said to cover the ancient capital, it is difficult to realise that here was a school to which the sages of Greece resorted for instruction in philosophy, in science, and in letters, and where Jewish Rabbis and Christian apologists vied with Greek dialecticians in the various pursuits of learning; and that here was a library of seven hundred thousand manu- script volumes, — a British Museum or a Smithsonian Insti- tute boasting the originals or the duplicates of many of the most valuable works of the then current literature, — and which, after the accidental destruction of a part of it in the insurrection against Julius Caesar, and the wilful destruction of another portion in the sanguinary religious wars under Theodosius, yet contained enough of written papyrus to heat for six months the four thousand baths of the city, under the summary degree of Omar; — " If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are per- nicious, and ought to be destroyed." It is difficult amid ALEXANDBIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 21 such surroundings, to realise that here Caesar and Antony dallied with the charms of Cleopatra. It is diificult to realize that where now bigotry, fanaticism, and superstition hold sway over an ignorant and degraded people, were schools of theology, and learned fathers, and astute contro- versialists of the early Christian church; that here Chris- tianity triumphed over Paganism in popular tumults backed by imperial decrees; that here Mark preached the gospel of the kingdom where the Ethiopian eunuch had preceded him with the tidings of the great salvation. And yet that old Alexandria, which began to be in the fourth century before Christ, and of all whose palaces and temples and monuments only two columns arc now stand- ing, was the youngest of Egyptian cities, and was built by the conqueror of Egypt when Thebes, and Memphis, and the university city of Heliopolis, were already in their de- cline. Such is the antiquity that meet us at the threshold of the land of the Nile. The most interesting modern building in Alexandria, indeed the only one worthy of notice, is the palace of Mo- hammed Ali. This stands upon the old Pharos, now united, as I have already said, to the main land by a causeway. The exterior of the palace has no architectural pretension, but in the style and furniture of the interior it is a model of simple elegance, surpassing the palaces of England, of France, and of Italy, in true richness and taste. It com- bines the best points of the oriental and the occidental styles. Instead of walls all bedizened with gold leaf, and tawdry mirrors and pictures such as one sees at Windsor, here are walls covered with the richest silk, of subdued colour and tasteful patterns, and ceilings of a hard and beautiful finish, unbedecked with gaudy and indecent fres- coes; floors of polished wood, inlaid, or exhibiting the grain in beautiful combinations, tables of rich mosaic, every thing in keeping. We all pronounced it the most beautiful palace we had seen. The balcony commands a fine view of the harbour — ^just such a view as enchanted Alexander, and de- termined him here to found a city, — and the garden affords a choice collection of fruits and flowers, and is enlivened 22 EGYPT, PAST, AND PRESENT. by a mtiltitude of songsters of every hue. As the present Pasha resides at Cairo, this palace is only used occasionally for the entertainment of a passing Pasha. A view of Alexandria would be incomplete without a visit to the slave market, which still exists here in open day. The market is an inclosed area of about one hundred feet square, with rows of cells upon three sides, in which the slaves are kept until a purchaser is found for them. They are not kept in close confinement, but may go from cell to cell, and have the range of the yard. Several are huddled together into one apartment, and eat and sleep upon the naked ground. There were but a few slaves in the market, and these were principally women and children. The children, too young to comprehend their condition, seemed happy as children are everywhere, but the adults wore an air of extreme dejection and misery. One in particular interested me exceedingly. She was a Nubian girl of about sixteen, jet black, with coarse features, and hair twisted into coils that stretched across her head about an inch apart, and resembled a rope mat; her only clothing was a piece of blue cotton cloth not made into a garment, which hung from one shoulder about her waist to her knees; she was stout and hearty, but her countenance was as sad as any I ever looked upon, and in her nakedness and degradation, she showed the native modesty of woman, by shrinking from the presence of strangers into the den allotted to her. I asked her price, and was told she could be purchased for 100 dollars. Per- chance she was the daughter of some Nubian chief whose misfortunes in war had doomed his family to slavery; no doubt she had a home, however rude, perhaps father, mother, brothers, sisters, from whom she had been torn away for ever. Slave hunting is still carried on in Nubia and Abys- sinia, and the slave-trade is still active upon the Nile. The principal market is Cairo. No Georgians or Circassians are brought to Alexandria, but these are still to be had at Cairo. Our guide informed us, however, that English gen- tlemen, whom he supposed us to be, would not be allowed to see them, " because English don't want to buy." Had be known the price demanded for the Edmonson girls in the ALEXANDniA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 23 United States, he might have thought differently of the marketable qualities of some fair Circassian in the eyes of some Americans. Ah, but to buy these girls hero and carry them to America, would be piracy by the laws of the United States; and so it is a felony condemned by all nations, to steal them from their homes and transport them to Alex- andria or to Cairo to be sold; but if they could only be smuggled into the slave market in that other Alexandria, and sold to some lustful planter in Georgia or Louisiana, or to some brute in Arkansas, — why, that is quite another matter! But is not the slave-trade as much a crime upon the Mississippi as upon the Nile; at Alexandria on the Potomac, as at Alexandria on the Mediterranean? It is a greater crime there, where there is greater light, and where the slavery is made tenfold worse than anywhere in the East. The respectable and devout Mussulman who attended us to the slave market, told us that before he took up the profession of a dragoman, he used to buy his own people in Nubia and bring them to Alexandria for sale. He had given up the business, not for moral but for pecuniary reasons. I did not see but his conscience stood as well in the matter as the conscience of a certain Presbyterian elder, who sent his female servant — a member of the Baptist church — to the slave market in Alexandria to be sold to the far South. I would not take it upon me to judge either, or to draw the line between the Mahommedan and the Christian! Returning from the market, it was grateful to see a hospital tended by the Sisters of Charity, where the sick and the famishing of every age may find nourishment, medicine, and succour. I noticed some of the Sisters dressing the sores of beggars, and others ministering to the necessities of children. If they may do good in Alexandria, why not some Protestant missionary also? A second Dr. Parker, who should relieve the ophthalmia here universally prevalent, might also open the eyes of some spiritually blind. I do not know, however, that the relief of blindness would be considered a favour by a people of whom multitudes have put out their right eye in order to avoid conscription for the 24 EGYPT, TAST AND PRESENT. army. Many too for the same reason have cut off the fore- finger of the right hand. The sight of sore-eyed children here is most distressing; that of sore-eyed men and women everywhere is as disgusting. I see not why Alexandria would not be a hopeful mis- sionary field, for one who would labour quietly among the foreign population. Incidentally a few Mohammedans might be reached. I asked the guide who showed us about the city, why our dragoman, who has renounced Mohammedan- ism for Christianity, had not had his head taken off; — his reply was, " The governor does not know, and nobody knows," — meaning nobody will tell. Perhaps a silent work of grace might go forward here, as in Tuscany, even in face of the penalty of death. CHAPTER 11. PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. DONKEYS, COOKS, MARKETING. With the thermometer at sixty in the middle of January, and a good mosquito-net to keep off intruders, one could have slept well even upon an indifferent bed, but for the bark- ing of the dogs, and the loud dismal cry of the police, who in challenging each other's wakefulness contrive to keep everybody else awake. But sleep or no sleep we must be up early for the great business of the day. A visit to the banker — usually about the first call to be made in every place — supplies the lack of a "Broker's Board" by the practical discovery that exchange and com- missions are here from three to five per cent., though nominally but one! I never yet saw a banker who charged on paper more than one per cent,, and yet through the thimble-rigging of piastres, I somehow never get but about nineteen pounds sterling on a draft of twenty. The facility with which a pound which is worth ninety-seven piastres in the banker's reckoning on paper, becomes worth a hundred and one or more piastres when he pays it over to you in discharge of said reckoning, would elicit the applause of Signor Blitz — provided he were not the victim. The money transaction settled, the next thing is to arrange for a voyage up the Nile. The little steamboat of the Transit Company will not leave until the 16th — and that will be the Sabbath, — so we decide to take a dahaheeh; and since there is little chance of a steamboat from Cairo up the Nile, we conclude to make our contract from Alexandria to Thebes. And now the all-important business of selecting a boat and laying in a store of provisions for a six weeks' voyage, must receive immediate attention. 26 EGYPT, PAST AKD PRESEKT. It is surprising of how much importance one becomes in an eastern city, if he has any business to transact, or any money to spend, or if he even looks as if he had either. If you step into the street you are instantly surrounded by donkey boys, each recommending his own animal, and abso- lutely thrusting him upon you. I counted ten right about me at the door of the hotel, blocking up the passage and even forcing their way into the court, so that it was only by main strength that I could get into the street. Wherever you go, a troop of donkeys is taggling after you. Then if you stop to make a purchase, a score of persons gather round to witness the whole transaction, watching every motion, giving their opinion, and especially scrutinizing the coin oflered in payment. These are persons who have no connection with the seller of the goods, mere idlers or passers-by, or persons looking for a job in the way of carry- ing home the articles purchased, in their baskets or on their heads, or by directing you to some other shop. It is a great evil in Italy, in Malta, and in Egypt, that in the poorer classes the common charities and courtesies of life are extinguished by the hope of gain; so that one will not answer you the simplest question, tell you the name of a street, the way to the post of&ce, to the bank, to your hotel, without teasing you by actions or by words for a reward. How different from France, where the humblest person will do you a favour with evident satisfaction, and withoutlooking for compensation! Commend me to the French people, above any I have yet seen, for true kindness of heart and inbred politeness. The persistent donkey-boys followed us in hope of an hour's employment for their beasts, and as we found that our tour of inspection would carry us a mile or two along the canal, we were no longer indifferent to their importunity. My first attempt at donkey-riding was a decided failure j the poor brute's saddle-girth was not fast, and no sooner was my weight upon the stirrup than over went rider, saddle, and accoutrements into the mud. Such a fall from a horse might have been of some consequence; but from a donkey two and a half feet high, it was as ludicrous as it was provoking. PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 27 especially as the insignificant creature himself regarded it with the most profound simplicity. It was, however, a great event to the other donkey-boys, who at once clustered around mc, crying, ''That bad donkey; hero good donkey, good saddle." I was soon astride of another, and our cavalcade moved gaily forward. Each donkey is followed by a driver, and obeys his orders instead of his rider's. When you arc walking or gently trotting, an unseen thrust of the driver's stick into the donkey's haunches almost jerks you from your saddle as the poor beast jumps to quicken his pace, and again at the top of his speed, a pull at his tail brings him and you to a dead halt. The natives have a knack of guiding the beast with their heels; but he never minds the bridle, and you have nothing to do but to look out for yourself, especially when in some narrow or crowed street he brings you into the predicament into which Balaam's ass brought his master. The pace of a donkey is generally a very pleasant amble, and he is such a . patient and docile little creature that he would make a desirable addition to the sports of children in our country villages. While awaiting the arrival of the owner of a boat, we sauntered in the garden of an English gentleman whose villa borders upon the canal, where, besides the rich aroma and the gaudy hues of flowers of every clime, the ample shade of sycamores and acacias, and the luscious vista of orange groves, we enjoyed the more familiar vegetable growths that, excepting in the season, reminded us of home. An oriental garden such as this covers hundreds of acres, and is a compendium of the whole vegetable kingdom. At this season, tomatoes, peas, beans, celery, cabbages, cauli- flowers, radishes, turnips, together with vegetables peculiar to the country, are ripe and abundant for the market. Having Concluded a bargain for a boat, we had a donkey race back to the hotel, at the close of which we found our- selves debtors to the extent of tioelve and a half cents each, for animals which with their drivers had been in attendance upon us for four hours. January 12. — The boat engaged, the next thing was to 28 EGYPT, PAST AJTD PRESENT. fit it up with the utmost expedition. Ours was furnished with every requisite for the voyage excepting provisions; beds, bedding, tables, chairs, kitchen utensils, table furni- ture, to be supplied by the owner, we to provide our own cook, our own fuel, and our own food. This is upon the whole the best arrangement — better than to take an unfur- nished boat and have the trouble and responsibility of fitting it up at short notice, and better than to have your drago- man provide for you at so much a day, because it allows you to live as you list. The first item was to engage a cook, and as I had been designated to the post of commis- sary-general, it devolved upon me to examine the creden- tials of sundry candidates. Our choice rested upon one recommended by a recent French traveller, " egalement pour son exactitude, sa bonne volonte, et ses talens culin- aires" — promptness, good-nature, and culinary talent, were three capital qualities in a cuisinier; — but I was attracted to him also by his name, made up of two that I hold in great respect — Ibrahim, Abraham, and Sulliman, pro- nounced Silliman; and if his skill in dietetic chemistry shall prove him at all worthy of his illustrious scientific cognomen, we shall have every reason to be satisfied with our culinary professor. He is modest and respectful, and unlike many of his countrymen has two sound and very beautiful eyes! Other things being equal, it is desirable that your cook should be " good-looking," and I hereby give our professor a certificate to that effect. The item of cleanliness was not overlooked, including an inspection of the digital extremities. For wages we offered a hundred and fifty piastres — about 7 dollars 50 cents a month; Ibra- him wanted two hundred — 10 dollars. We compromised by engaging him at the first sum, with the promise of two pounds sterlingif he should give satisfaction — and especially if he should prove apt in following any instructions of the lady of our party — and the threat of dismissal at Cairo, if he should prove untidy or incompetent; to all which Ibra- him meekly and gratefully assented. From that instant the culinary professor was my devoted attendant; in all my purchases he followed me like a shadow; looking reverently PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 29 into my eyes, catching every sign, touching his hand to his lips and to his foroliead; in short, showing all proper regard for the newly-inaugurated Havxigee. The cook engaged, the dragoman — a native Egyptian who had been in the service of one of the party from Lon- don — accompanied me to l:iy in stores. Knowing the adhesive property of money in an Arab's fingers, we did not dare to trust him to make the purchases alone. It was a new responsibility to calculate how much would be required to sustain a party of four persons, or rather six, including the dragoman and the culinary professor, for a six week's voyage. Mutton, fowls, and occasionally milk, eggs, butter, and vegetables, might from time to time be procured at villages along the way; but groceries and delicacies no- where except at Cairo, four days distant. Much of the trade of Alexandria is in the hands of French and Italian merchants — there are few English, — and in dealing with these there was nothing novel. But for many articles it was necessary to go to the Egyptian bazaar, a quarter con- sisting of narrow and dirty streets, lined on both sides with little stalls, and of one or two squares where goods are displayed in the open air by scores of natives sitting upon stones or divans, pipe in hand. It had rained hard in the morning, as is usual at Alexandria at this season, and the mud was of the consistency of Broadway mud without the relief of a side-walk. Besides the more substantial and bulky articles, our list comprised all manner of fruits, fresh and dried, sauces, pickles, and preserves, ham, tongues, etc. etc. To a taste formed upon the Philadelphia market, and exercised upon the dairies of Orange county, butter was the most difficult article to be supplied. The best quality of butter in Egypt, as in Italy, is made without salt; — this can be got at in- tervals along the Nile. A second quality for cooking, is made by melting down all sorts of butter to the consistency of lard or of carriage grease. I went to the stall of a venerable Arab who sat cross-legged among jars of butter and oil, and empty jars for the accommodation of custom- ers. His butter was the best in market, and to assure me 30 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. of its good quality, he took up a wooden ladle filled with the grease, bit off a lai'ge mouthful, smacked his lips, and dipped the ladle in again to fill my jar. Each time the ladle came out, his great greasy fingers that had just been in oil, were used to scrape it clean, and when the scales were emptied he scooped up what remained with his fingers and wiped them upon my jar, and then sucked them in his mouth. The termination of this disgusting process so moved my risibles that he observed it, laughed also, and repeated the motion. I told him that was not American; to which he replied through the dragoman, that ''an Egyp- tian eats with his whole heart, and does not look at every thing as if he was afraid to put it in his mouth!" In Alexandria almost every thing is sold by weight, — the dim, which weighs about three pounds, being the com- mon standard. Oil, vinegar, and even wine, are sold by the oka; salt is sold in blocks, by weight. Flour of a good quality is dear, and so are potatoes, both being imported from Europe. The Egyptian flour is commonly dark and rank, and makes a coarse black bread. The potato is little used in southern Europe, in Egypt, or in Asia. Good tea is scarce and dear in Alexandria, and the traveller had better bring this from Malta. The native sugar of Egypt is good enough for common purposes, and is comparatively cheap. But the prices of all articles of food are steadily advancing in Egypt, in consequence of the increase of travel, and the stories of the extraordinary cheapness of living here, so far as travellers are concerned, will soon be classed with other oriental legends. A store of charcoal and wood was necessary. This was to be obtained, not as in New York at docks or yards appropriated to storing fuel, but at little shops about eight feet square, in streets about as many feet in width. The vender of wood had his stock cut up into small pieces which he sold by the oka; and if a stick chanced to be too large or too long, he deliberately s(iuatted down upon his haunches, laid it upon a little block before him, and hewed it down to a smaller compass. He had also little bundles of pitch pine splinters for kindling-wood. The wood I bought rREPAIlATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 31 weighed altogether about a hundred and fifty pounds, and cost fifty cents; it was thrown into a large basket — such as are used for packing dates — and one of the supernum- eraries already mentioned, took it upon his back, and carry- ing the rope around h.h forehead, marched off with it to the boat. Nutmegs are cheap in this market — only two cents apiece; and large, fresh, sweet, luscious oranges, that have ripened on the tree, can be bought for fifty cents the hundred. At an orange merchant's I witnessed the persistency of a Mus- sulman in his devotions. The old man with a grey beard, knew doubtless that a customer stood before his door — indeed I was at his very side; but it was his hour of prayer, and he stood facing the East with wrapt attention, gazing upon vacancy, and muttering with inconceivable rapidity, then prostrated himself upon his knees, then kissed the ground, then rose and muttered again, then down upon his knees and thence to the ground, and so on in endless repe- tition. I never entered a Catholic church in Europe, but all eyes were turned from beads and altars and breviaries, — and often too the eyes of priests and their attendants, — to regard the stranger; but this Mussulman did not once turn his eyes from the imaginary point upon which they were fixed, until he had finished his devotions, though he ran the risk of losing a bargain. The dragoman warned me not to speak to him, for if he should chance to reply, " he would have to do it all over again." A dealer in comfortables, afforded a good specimen of oriental trading as it was before the innovations of the Franks. He was a man of fifty, in good condition, wore a handsome turban, a long white jacket with blue bands, gathered in ample folds about his waist, white loose trowsers, legging?!, sandals, and a long flowing scarf. His shop, like the rest, was about eight feet square; he sat in one corner by the door, cross-legged upon a mat, smoking a long pipe, the bowl of which rested in a pan of ashes, and supping a tiny cup of jet black coffee, without sugar or milk, while a little tin pot of the same beverage was steaming at his side. When we stopped at his door, or 32 EGYPT, PAST AXD PRESENT. rather in front of the shop, for the whole front was open to the street, he very deliberately handed his pipe and cup to his servant who stood behind him, then rose and handed us the article for which we inquired. His entire stock amounted to three comforters, three baskets of cotton, and half a dozen small articles of bedding. After we had made our examination and comments, he resumed his deliberate atti- tude as if quite indifferent to the result. The offer of a sovereign in payment of our purchase, led to a general consultation among the bystanders. It was passed from hand to hand, stared over gravely, and its value computed in piastres, when lo, it proved that the whole assembled company could not change the piece, and I was obliged to borrow silver of the dragoman. The money of all countries is current in Egypt; Spanish doubloons, English sovereigns, French Napoleons, dollars Spanish, Austrian, American, Neopolitan, besides the money of Con- stantinople, — the currency of the country being exceed- ingly ill-regulated. It is a great perplexity to a stranger to reduce all these to their valuation in piastres (five cent pieces,) and almost equally so to small shopkeepers, the limited extent of whose resources is illustrated by the fact that 1 seldom found one who was able to change a sovereign. CHAPTER III. THE EMBARKATION MAHMOODEEH CANAL THE NILE. We had searched everywhere for an American flag, but without success; but at length just on the eve of starting, we found a tailor who engaged to make one in two hours for six dollars. As its size would not admit of the entire constellation,we inserted the "glorious old thirteen," which would serve to remind us at once of the original States, and also, by " the digits reversed," of the present number. This flag was voted to the Commissary-General as his per- quisite. It had occurred to us that good Yankee gingerbread would not be amiss upon the Nile; but neither ginger nor " treacle " could be found except at a chemist's, prepared for medical uses ; — the ginger at twenty-five cents an ounce, and the treacle at the same price per pound. I paid a dollar for about three pints of this luxury. Being duly fortified with consular and Turkish passports, — which, without being in the least required by the govern- ment, are forced upon the traveller by a copartnership of the consuls and the local authorities for the plunder of travellers, — the party proceeded to the boat in a carriage with the exception of the dragoman and myself, who re- mained to marshal the cavalcade of provisions. And a most imposing cavalcade it was. Two long, low, narrow waggons, with wheels about eighteen inches in diameter, driven by swarthy men in long frocks and red caps, carried the major part of the stores. These were preceded by a Janissary, or more properly a Cawass, mounted on a don- key; he was dressed in a blue frock reaching to his knees, loose trowsers gathered about his calves, neat leggings and sandals, and a red cap with a black tassel; a long, crooked 62 C 34 EGVrr, PAST AND PRESEKT. sword dangled at his sidej he was a fine looking man^ and regarded the whole cavalcade with a most complacent air. Next followed the writer on a donkey, in the capacity of Commissary-General; then the two waggons, one of them mounted by a stout Nubian in smock and turban, — who was an ofiBcer of the customs, and without whom we could not pass the gate, — and flanked by sundry boys and men, carrying parcels, or testifying their interest in the move- ment; and the rear was brought up by our dragoman and the culinary professor, both mounted on donkeys and wear- ing red caps. The donkey boys ran after us, and as we approached the canal, we put their speed to the test, so as to bring up in proper style before the boat. On the way my attention was arrested by a continuous murmuring and wailing sound, which proceeded from several parties of Mohammedans in the burial ground, repeating prayers for the dead, according to their custom upon Fridayof each week. Dashing by Pompey's Pillar, we were presently at the place of embarkation upon the Mahmoodeeh canal, which was to bear us to the Nile forty miles distant. Everybody knows the story of this canal. It was opened in 1820. Its construction was a part of the scheme of Mohammed Ali for reviving the commerce of Alexandria with the East. Taking as a base the old canal of Fooah, which was yet in use in the time of the Venetians, and following in part the ancient Canopic branch of the Nile, he opened a communication of forty miles between Alex- andria and Atfeh on the Rosetta branch. An army of two hundred and fifty thousand persons was gathered to dig this canal, the dirt being scooped out by the hand or with a common hoe, and all removed in sacks or baskets carried on the shoulders; and so miserable was the provision of food, clothing, and shelter for this multitude of labourers, and so severe were the daily tasks exacted of them, that " no less than twenty thousand are said to have perished by accidents, hunger, and plague." It was the counterpart of the old scenes of brickmaking among the Israelites in bondage. The will of the tyrant made the lives of his subjects as the dirt beneath his feet. THE embaiikation; mahmoodeeh canal. 35 The dead level of the canal presents nothing of interest, A sail of a few hours brings us to the Nile. And now we are fairly afloat upon the most historical, the most fertiliz- ing, the most wonderful river of the world. Just here, at this season — when the waters are receding toward their lowest level — it is about half a mile wide; its banks are low and unrelieved by mounds or trees; its waters are muddy, and its current swift; and its commerce is limited to boats of thirty or forty tons laden with cotton and wheat for Alexandria. But what a dreamy atmosphere is this; bland, bright, pure, dry, the thermometer at nearly seventy in the shade; what a soil is this, ten, twelve, twenty feet deep of rich black alluvial deposit, covering even the borders of the desert with fertility; what au illimitable extent of field without fence or tree or any landmark, clothed with the richest verdure, — the springing wheat, the fresh and fragrant clover, — or upturned by recent ploughing to the cheerful sun; what vast herds of cattle, mingled with flocks of goats and sheep, the patient donkey and the lazy camel stretched upon the sward; what mul- titudes of birds making the air vocal with their song, skimming the surface of the water, and alighting with pleasing confidence upon the deck of our vessel; what numbers of boats descending broadside with the current, now swell the commerce of the Nile to the flat-boat commerce of the Mississippi; how picturesque those villages scattered along the banks, shielded by strong levees from the swift and changeful current; adorned with tall and graceful palms, through which the minaret peeps like the spire of a distant church; their round mud houses resembling from a distance the towers and bastions of a fort, and the bazaar with its litjtle grove of sycamores, like the garden walk of a king; bow majestic is this flood, now widening to a sea, now sweeping through some new made channel and depositing fresh acres upon the opposite bank, ever rolling its alluvial wealth from Nubia to the delta; — from Noah to Moses, from Moses to Herodotus and Strabo, from Herodotus and Strabo until now, the same mighty ceaseless river, whose banks have been the home of patriarchs and the burial- 36 EGYPTj PAST AND PRESENT. place of kings, the seat of empire and its grave, -the treasure-house and the mausoleum of Learning and of Art. This is the Nile, the rich, the glorious Nile. No wonder that more than two thousand years ago the king of Egypt, lying like a dragon in the midst of his rivers, said, '^ My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." ' No wonder that in an age when all blessings were symbolized by objects of worship, the gigantic form of JSilus pouring forth his floods was the adoration of Egypt. I am on the Nile; let me dream awhile of its gorgeous Past, before I look upon its desolated Present, The shrill cadence of the Muezzin call from yonder minaret, has died away; the bark of the village dogs has ceased; the monoto- nous song of the boatmen is ended; the water ripples gently against the vessel's side, and the young moon steals through my curtain, as I lie down to sleep upon the bosom of the Nile. Before me opens the Egypt of four thousand years. I walk with the patriarch of Mamre upon the plains of Miz- raim; I tread with awe the city of Menes, the first of Egypt's kings — the city Abraham saw, now flanked with its stupendous pyramids, and guarded by its mysterious sphinx; from Noph I turn toward On, and through the vista of forty centuries behold the mighty temple of the Sun; amid these monuments I meet the youthful shepherd, brought as a captive to the house of Pharaoh; I see him in his dungeon cheered with heavenly visions; I see him in his chariot of state, the head of all the realm; I behold his venerable father meeting his long-lost son; I see the long funereal train that bears the bones of Jacob to the grave of his fathers; I see the land of Goshen teeming with flocks and herds, and peopled with the seed of Abra- ham; I behold the spreading power of the Pharaohs, and their oppression of the chosen of the Lord; 1 hear the groaning of the people from the sweltering plains; I see the infant Moses floating on the Nile in his bark of reeds; I follow him through all the wealth and pomp of Pharaoh's court, into the grand and solemn wilderness of Sinai, till as ^Ezekiel xxix, 3. THE NILE. 37 the leader of an emancipated nation, he begins the march from the delta of the Nile, to the Red Sea and the Jordan ; I behold the envious and maddened monarch struggling with the returning waves; — the moon expires, and dark- ness comes over Egypt so thick that it can be felt; — my boat sails onward up the Nile : I pass by Dendcrah and its zodiac of Ptolemaic origin, and now I stand before the city of the hundred gates; its twenty thousand chariots of war are gathered in the plain to defy the invading hosts of Persia; Karnak looms grandly through its avenue of sphinxes and its propylon of obelisks and statues, and the colossi raised in huge majesty above the plain, from their seats assert the empire of the world; the Father of song here gathers fresh numbers for his great epic; the Father of history here gathers the treasured learning of the past ; the wealth, the grandeur, the power of the world's kingdoms concentrated thus near its source, now fill the panorama of the Nile; — my boat heads onward to Syene — but Mem- non answers to the Sun — and my dream is broken. The dream is broken, for more mournful than the Muez- zin cry comes the voice of the prophet over the abyss of time, '' Behold I am against thee and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desol- ate, from the tower of Syene even to the border of Ethiopia. . . . . It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations." ^ I look out upon a little mud village, so pic- turesque from a distance, and find it the abode of filth, and squalor, and poverty; the children naked and lying with the dogs; the miserable representatives of a fallen race mixed with the race of their conquerors, without knowledge, without energy, without ambition, held in the iron grasp of Fatalism, and making it a religious virtue to abide in the degradation to which they are born; — dimin- ished in numbers, impoverished, enslaved, indeed " the basest of kingdoms." lEzekielxxix, 10, 15. CHAPTEE lY. NILE COMFOUTS; A NILE BOAT AND CREW. "0 MY eyes! my love! the sun! the moon! my father! my mother! my sister! the river! the pilgrimage to Mecca! the procession of the Sultan! the prophet! the Effendi! Abbas Pasha! Mo- hammed! The hawagee (travellers) are with us! We are going up the Nile!" Such is the senseless song with which our Arab boatmen divert themselves in endless repetition. When labouring at the oar, the reis (captain) leads in each invocation, and the crew keep time with a chorus, which, translated into English, signifies ''Pull, pull away;" when lolling about the deck, while the wind carries the boat forward, they sing it all together, in an unvarying round; and at evening they gather on the deck, and with the accompaniment of a rude tambourine and a reed fife, clapping their palms as in an ecstasy of joy, at every sentiment, they repeat forevermore, " my eyes, and my love, and my father, and my mother, and my sister, and the river, and the sun, and the moon, and Mecca, and the Sultan, and Mohammed!"^ I think I could suggest a variation that would at least have the merit of appealing to the feelings of the hawagee. It would run somewhat after this style: "0 the fleas! the mosquitoes! the bugs! the spiders! the flies! the cockroaches! the wood-lice! the ants! the earwigs! the rats! the braying of the donkeys! the barking of the dogs! Oo-oooh! the fleas! Moham- med! the harvagee are going up the Nile!" Yet it would > The range of this chonis is represented by a very few notes, used also as a religious chant, 'i'he Captain intones the invocation, and the crew respond at every pause. [See music in Appendix.] A Nir.r BOAT ANP CRETW. 39 bcaprofan.ition to sing such a song — so animal — socartlilv — on this celestial night upon the Nile. The sun hna ju3t dipped behind the apex of the great pyramid, which, fur four thousand years, has watched his daily decline, and gath- ered his last rays from the sands of the Lybian Desert; and now the full moon silvers the rippling surface of the river, as our bark skims over it before the wind. The atmosphere is perfectly transparent, and, like the sky of Italy, it has a liquid depth that lures the soul onward and upward to the infinite. Nay, such a sky does not shine on Italy, — so pure, so serene, so resplendent in the radiance of its stars, and the groupings of its constellations. Nor is there in all Europe such a river to give back her lustre to the moon. After all, in keeping with this glorious scene is that closing cadence of the boatman's song, invoking all that to the rude Arab is praiseworthy: *^0! the sun, and the moon, and the river, and the Sultan, and Mohammed!" So " WuUuhJiee hah/saw!" — we are going up the Nile. Our boat is a cross between a sloop and a canal boat. It is about seventy feet long and eiglitcen wide at its greatest breadth, and would measure between thirty and forty tons. From stern to midships is a raised or poop cabin, which is divided into several compartments. The rear-most, a room about seven feet square, is the sanctum of the worthy couple who have domesticated our journey from Paris hither; next to this is a space of nearly equal dimensions, occupied by a wash-room, dressing-room, and pantry; then comes cabin No. 2, seven feet by fifteen, upon the opposite sides of which, behind curtains of coarse cotton cloth, the professor and myself assert our respective rights; in front of this, and facing the deck, is another cabin, six feet by sixteen, which serves as dining and sitting room. These cabins arc furnished on both sides with double sets of sashes, glass and Venetian, and the dining-room is light- ed also from the front. Beyond the dining-room is a cush- ioned verandah two feet in width extending across the boat. Each cabin is furnished with divans (raised benches fast- ened to the sides of the boat) which serve as seats or lounges by day and are converted into beds at night. We have all 40 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. manner of contrivances for writing and for stowing things compactly. The deck in front of the cabins, is occupied by the crew when working the boat, and also serves as the place for their meals and for their devotions. Below this is a shallow hold, not deep enough for a man to sit erect in it, where they stow themselves to sleep when the night is not warm enough for them to lie upoti the open deck. In this also, the heavier stores of the company are kept. In the bow of the vessel is a neat little cubby for culinary purposes^ containing an oven and all sorts of miniature compartments for cooking with a thimble full of charcoal. Over this our newly inaugurated professor of dietetics has absolute control; and so satis- factorily have his " culinary talents" developed themselves, such is his punctuality, his docility, his neatness, and his skill, that I have already assured him of his £2 per month and of an engagement for the desert and for Palestine, and furthermore have volunteered to make honourable mention of him in a certain newspaper in New York; whereat Ibrahim opens his eyes wonderingly, kisses his hand and touches his forehead, laughs till his eyes sparkle, again touches his hand to his lips and his forehead, and dishes up the breakfast " with alacrity." Favoured indeed of the Prophet will that Hawagee be, whose palate is daily tempted from the caboose of Ihrahim Sulliman, and served by his faithful boy Mohammed. Our boat is rigged after a fashion never seen upon the Hudson. In the bow is an enormous lateen-sail, ^ fastened to a spar, which is swung as upon a pivot on the top of a mast, some forty feet in height; the spar is about a hundred feet long, and swings at an angle of forty-five degrees; this position, and the facility of rotary motion bring the sail readily before the wind, so that it fills easily. In the stern of the boat is a sail similarly adjusted, but upon a much smaller scale. Here also is the tiller, which the helmsman 1 A laleen-^?a\ is a triangular sail, extended by a long yard, which is swung about one quarter the distance from the lower end, which is brought do^vn at the tack, while the other end is elevated at an angle of about forty-five degrees. {Webster) Marilime Dictionary. A NILE BOAT AND CUEW. 41 manages from the top of the poop. Twelve banks of oars, and twelve huge poles pointed with iron to be nsed in shal- low water, complete the equipment of the bark " Lotus," of Alexandria, bound for Thebes. From her flagstaff wave the stars and stripes, and from the forward mast the pennon of the senior member of the firm of W , U , T , & Co., the charterers of this present expedition. The boat is manned by a rets (captain,) a steersman, and twelve hands, making our entire company, including the dragoman and the professor culinary, twenty souls. An Arab crew is an interesting study. Ours is a mixture of all the races that inheritance or successive conquests have gathered upon the soil of Egypt. The reis hails from Keneh opposite the ancient Tentyra, and in the vicinity of Thebes. He is a slender, graceful man, of a dark copper colour, with a keen eye, a pleasant expression, and a voice as musical as the Pope's at Vespers in the Sistine chapel. He dresses richly and in good taste, wears a turban of red silk wreathed about a white skullcap, a white gown descend- ing nearly to the knees and terminating in two loose bags fastened about the legs, and a striped silk waistcoat of gay colours, the back being of the same material. His kamees is frilled and filigreed upon the breast, and copiously adorned with buttons, and has wide sleeves reaching below the elbows. When the weather is cool, he throws over all a flowing mantle of blue calico. He has not attained to the dignity of shoes, but goes with the legs bare from the knees. When the wind blows, he sits cross-legged all day long in the bow of the boat, smoking his chibouque as if he were a youthful Hawagec on the look-out for pyramids, sphinxes, and crocodiles; and when the boat is becalmed, he still sits dreamily whiffing, as if the Prophet had given him a fore- taste of his Paradise in Latakia ^ and sleep. But when the boat is aground, an almost daily occurrence — or when the poles, the oars, or the rope must be used to start her on her 1 Latakia, the representative of the ancient Laodicca, is a small town on the coast of Syria, celebrated for its tobacco. The mild flavour of the plant here grown, causes it to be highly prized throughout the Levant. 43 EGYPT, PAST AXD rRESENT. way, tlien the word of command goes fortli with the most violent guttural energy, and in strange contrast, that soft plaintive voice leads in the invocations to the sun, and the moon, and father, and mother, and sister, and the Sultan, and Mecca, and the EfFendi, and Mohammed, while after each comes in the full monotonous chorus, ^' Wulleh ha haly-saw." Nor does the reis disdain at times to lay aside his mantle and his pipe, and in flowing turban, striped vest, and puffing knee-bags, to put his brawny arm to pole and oar, and to follow the invocations of his mate with a " hee-hahj-saw." At early morning and at sunset, and many times in the day, he washes his feet, goes up on the quarter-deck, spreads out his mantle, and turning his face towards Mecca, bows, and kneels, and prostrates himself, and prays, and kisses, and gesticulates, according to the formula, with a gravity and a sincerity that excite at once sympathy and charity. To me this is more impressive than the genefluctions, the marchings and countermarchings of the Pope at High Mass in St. Peter's; and the singsong invocations, which continually remind me of the Pope's re- citatives, are also to unbelieving ears quite as significant in the one case as in the other. Such is our reis on board the boat. But when the boat halts at the little villages along the river, no turbaned head moves with greater dignity and grace than his, as he ex- changes oriental salutations with the chief men, sips of their cofi"ee, and inhales through their amber mouth-pieces, the choicest weed of Syria. Most complacently too doth the reis then smile upon the Hawagee as they saunter through the bazaar, and no doubt he unfoldeth wondrous tales of the Occidental travellers committed to his care; — for it is a pardonable weakness of the Arab to magnify himself by extolling his employers. And well may he be proud of the " Lotus " — a dahabeeh of the largest class, on this her first voyage, with the waving stars and stripes, with three six-footed American ragel-zereef, and especially with an American sit, who is the wonder of all the women and children of the villages. His sense of responsibility some- times keeps him on the watch the livelong night against A NILE no AT AND CREW. 43 robbers at the stopping places. Bating the loss of the fore- finger of his right hand, which has been amputated to avoid impressment in the army, our reis RIarzug may be set down for a complete man. The pay of such a turbaned dignitary, commander, priest, and guard, is tiventy-five cents a day, out of which he feeds himself twice a day with a wooden bowl of black bread stewed with lentils, fills the little earthen bowl of his chi- bouque with the fragrant weed, and his tiny fingan with a decoction of strong hot black coffee. The reis is the char- acter of the boat. AVe have with him a solemn contract, prescribing his duties, and our rights, and giving us power to settle any dispute or to punish any delinquency by citing him before the nearest local governor. I presume that the Arabic version of this important document, sleeps as quietly in his private box as the English does in mine. But the laws of Egypt are very strict towards the captains of the Nile boats. Constructive responsibility is the invariable rule. We lately met the reis of another boat, who was iu great concern lest he should be imprisoned for two years, because by the order of the charterers he had gone forward without a servant of the party, who had wandered from the boat. The reis is answerable for the good conduct of the crew, and for the property of the boat and of its occupants. The other day when an altercation arose between two of our crew, the reis, though far from being a match for either of them physically, cowed them down in an instant by raising his stick, and speaking with authority. When all our party leave the boat every thing is safe, with the key in his hands. Indeed the captain of a travelling boat upon the Nile, though its passengers never exceed half a dozen, nor its crew a dozen persons, is the most important personage upon this ancient river. I doubt whether Cleopatra's barge, with its poop of gold, its oars of silver, and its perfumed silken sails, surpassed a modern dahabeeh in size and stateliness, or in the substantial comforts of American Ilatvogee, whose stores were bought in the Egyptian bazaar of Alexandria. The guiding spirit of our boat is the steersman, Hassan. Tlie reis for dignity, Hassan for power. Always at his 44 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. post, leaning over the tiller with the same steady watchful eye, you would take him for old Nilus in effigy, were it not that when the boat gets fast aground, he leaps upon the deck, and with loudest voice, and stoutest arm, assists to shove her off. Hassan is a Nubian, as black as Egyptian darkness in the days of Pharaoh; of a finely proportioned frame, and wearing upon his shoulders as noble a head as the Anglo-Saxon can boast. His expression is intelligent and kind, and his manner the perfection of natural dignity and grace. He knows his business thoroughly, and sticks to it faithfully. He is not noisy and loquacious like the Arab sailors, but when an extra pull is needed, he shows a wonderful energy and an instinctive capacity to command, which his copper coloured associates as instinctively recog- nize. His teeth are the fairest pearls of the Orient, and most benignly does he smile upon the Haivagee each morn- ing with his " sahal hhayr" (good morning,) to which he often adds, " may your day be blessed." But with many a nod and grin does he greet us when the wind promises fair, and, pointing to the sails, he repeats the Italian " buono, huono" (good, good,) which every Arab has picked up for English. He is withal a natural orator, in every gesture and expression. A noble fellow is Hassan, worth more surely than twelve and a half cents a day. He has depth of character and kindliness of spirit. He never gets into a passion, he never shows signs of weariness. The first object you see in the morning when you go upon deck, is the white teeth of Hassan smiling his morning salutation through his curling black beard; and the last object that fades upon your vision as you enter your cabin for the night, is the blue and white turban, the blue cotton gown, and the naked black legs of the prince of the tiller. If the wind blows from the north he keeps to the tiller the live- long night, and always while the boat is in motion he is there smoking his chibouqe, or scooping out his little dish of stewed bread and beans with one hand upon the tiller. No, not always; for twice a day or oftener does Hassan summon a sailor to his post, then reverently descending the stern of the boat, he washes his feet, and, returning to the A NILE BOAT AND CREW. 46 quarter-deck, faces the east, and bows and prostrates himself toward the tomb of the prophet. In all this, he shows the seriousness of a deep conviction, and the absorption of a rapt devotion ; but if meanwhile the boat gets oflF her course, his prayers ended, he grasps the tiller, and shouts to the men with an energy which shows that with all his fatalism he holds that '' faith without works is dead." Most devout is Hassan of all the crew. Like the shepherd of Salisbury Plain, he meekly expects to-morrow such wind as Allah may please to send. We tried, through our drago- man, to offer him some inducements to go to America, but his answer was that he was " too religious!" The twelve men composing the crew, are of all ages, sizes, and sorts, but chiefly Arabs blind of one eye, or maimed of a forefinger, so as to avoid impressment for the army; — for how can a man take sight if his right eye is gone, or how pull trigger if the forefinger of his right hand is wanting? — but they work well together, and are as jolly as the nature of the Arab will allow. Their usual working dress consists of a coarse cotton shirt descending to the knees, and tied loosely about the waist. When the weather is cold, that is, when the thermometer is about fifty degrees, they put on over this a loose mantle of blue cotton, or of the coarse brown woollen cloth of the country; they wear nothing below the knees, and on their heads, in lieu of the turban, they wear the common tarbouch of red felt, or the still plainer takeea, a close fitting scuUcap of cotton or woollen cloth. Their dress is suited not only to the climate, but also to the navigation of the Nile, in many of whose operations clothes would be a serious incumbrance. Not a native on board regularly sports a pair of shoes except the professor culinaire, who moves delicately from the store- chest to the caboose, in red morocco slippers with pointed toes; and he alone displays a vest of silk, embroidered with threads of gold. Only on great occasions, when stopping for a day at some chief town, do the men bag themselves, and roll endless folds of cotton about their heads, and put on huge coarse-grained red shoes, and then, too, the rets and Hassan having enveloped their heads in coils of purest white, 46 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. grafted upon the crimson takeea, loom majestically in red slippers of pointed toes. Once I saw Hassan bargaining with a peddling merchant who visited our boat, — (all oriental merchants are a sort of peddlars, and hence the name Hawagee " merchant/' is applied to all travellers,) — for a piece of common cotton cloth, evidently of English or American manufacture. Next day the wind was ahead, and the boat laid by; but Hassan was not idle; all day long he sat by his favourite tiUer, cutting and stitching; he hardly stopped for the dish of lentils and bread that was brought to him from the mess on deck; but before evening, I saw his fat black arms and legs emerging from a robe of spotless white. It was his only garment, but, set off by a red turban, it became him admirably, and in make and fit it would have done credit to any " Dorcas Society," or " Ladies' Sewing Circle," not to say any '^ Patent Sewiug Machine," in the United States. Indeed the sculptured toga of the Roman senator is not more graceful than the flowing kirtle of the Nubian steers- man. After all, Hassan can " do" upon twelve and a half cents a day, with corn- bread and lentils, and a cotton shirt made by his own hands. I forgot to say that two piastres and a half, or about twelve and a half cents a day, is the pay of the hands on board the boat, the captain having double wages. While the owners of the boat receive nearly eight dollars a day — an extravagant price, to which at the time we had to submit — the pay of the officers and men all told is hardly two dollars a day. In their living, the crew have a perfect community of goods. As they are obliged to " find themselves " out of their slender wages, it is an object with them to study economy. One of their number acts as purser and cook; and it is an indication of the generous traits of the Arabian character, that they have selected for this office, one who is somewhat deformed, and not capable of heavy work. Their principal diet is bread made from very coarse wheat. Some- times they buy this ready made, at the principal villages, but to save expense they commonly buy the grain, and have it ground and baked to order, or grind and bake it them- A NILE BOAT AKD CREW. 47 solves. Hence it is always stipulated in the hiring of a boat that the crew shall be allowed time, — about thirty-six hours, — at certain places, to bake their bread. Once or twice, in order to take advantage of a wind, wo have paid them the difiference between baking and buying a three days' stock of bread, — about two dollars, or one day's wages for the crew. Their meals arc all prepared in one dish, and with little variation. Their steward takes a quantity of the black bread, that has been cut into small pieces and dried in the sun, and lays it in the bottom of a wooden bowl, holding from six to eight gallons. lie then dips up a jar of muddy water from the river, and pours this over it to cleanse it and soften it. Next he adds a few hard brown beans or lentils, — a kind of split pea, — or perhaps throws in a few onions or greens, with a little salt. The whole is then put into an iron pot, and stirred over the fire till it is reduced to the consistency of a bran poultice, when it is poured back into the wooden bowl. This is then placed in the middle of the deck, or if the boat is tied up, it is set upon the bank of the river, and the men squat in a circle about it, and each dips in his hand and eats by the fist full, carefully sucking his fingers. "When the bowl is emptied, a jar of muddy water is passed round, and each man rinses his mouth and takes a drink. This is the meal at morning and at evening. At noou they lunch apart, upon dry bread and raw onions; but the onions of Egypt arc long, white, tender, and sweet. A piece of sugar-cane is a great luxury. They always seem to enjoy their meal. "When- ever I have chanced to be a spectator, they have smacked their lips and cried " buono/' " teicb,'" and have invited me to partake with them, which I did — once! They cat no flesh except on great occasions. At three or four principal towns along the river it is customary for the voyagers to give the crew a lackshish — a present — in the shape of a sheep, or which is better, of money to the value of a sheep, with which they buy fish, mutton, or what they list. But buy what they will, it all goes into the pot together, is re- duced to one consistency, and then eaten by the fist full from the wooden bowl. Sometimes the wis and Hassan 48 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. have their meals in smaller bowls apart, sometimes they sit together with the rest. After each meal comes the pipe, or more strictly, the pipe which had been laid aside for the meal, is resumed as soon as this is finished. Smoking is to the Arab what coffee, tea, and other stimulants are to the Anglo-Saxon: it is a great part of his nourishment. His tobacco is mild, plenty, cheap, and is his greatest comfort. In point of character these Arab sailors are altogether superior to American sailors or boatmen who are not pledged teetotalers. I would rather trust myself with them, ten times over, than with such crews as I have seen upon the Mississippi. They are not wickedly profane, though they sometimes in sport invoke the prophet's curse upon a passing boat. They are not passionate, for though a storm of words would sometimes indicate great wrath, they seldom come to blows. They have no strong drink of any kind on board the boat, and only once or twice have I seen any of them drink arakee (date-brandy) or beer, at some of the larger towns. The coffee-shop takes the place of the dram-shop, and the chief indulgence of sailors on shore seems to be, lounging about a coffee shop, sipping coffee and smoking the pipe. The sailors on the Nile are not, as is too often true of American sailors and boatmen, a de- graded and vicious set of men. In dress and appearance they are superior to the fellahs or common field labourers. Though looked down upon as an inferior class, they are re- spectable, well-behaved, frugal of their money, and com- paratively free from the grosser forms of wickedness. The crew of the Lotus seem part and parcel of the family. CHAPTER V. NAVIGATION, VILLAGES, BAZAAR, HOUSES, AND CHILDREN. It is difficult to convey to one familiar only with American rivers a definite idea of the navigation of the Nile. There is no river in the United States that corresponds with it. Like the Mississippi, the Nile has a rapid current — about three miles an hour — and its channel is continually changing. But the Nile has no bluffs, — though sometimes the banks rise some twenty feet above the highest watermark, — and it has no wooded islands or bottoms, and no snags or sawyers. In the Ddia the soil varies from ten to fifteen feet in depth, and during the inundation this whole section is over- flowed — the villages being protected by embankments, and communication being kept up by means of boats. The Delta is a triangular piece of land comprised within the Rosetta and the Damietta branches of the Nile, the only two that remain of the original six or seven mouths of the river. The base of this triangle on the sea-coast is eighty-one miles; but it is very narrow at its apes, where the Nile divides into its two branches. The Delta contains about two thou- sand square miles. The northern district of Egypt, extend- ing from the pyramids to the sea, and embracing the Delta with the arable ground upon either side of it, contains four thousand five hundred square miles — a surface equal to the State of Connecticut, or one tenth the size of New York. " The Nile marks on either side the extent of fertility by the measure of its inundations." We entered the Rosetta branch at Atfeh. At this season this branch varies from one half to three quarters of a mile in width, and in some parts it is exceedingly shallow and obstructed by sand-banks, new formed islands, or largo alluvial deposits upon either hand. Unlike the Mississippi, 52 D 50 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. it receives no tributary for more than a thousand miles from its mouth. The Nile is navigable only for boats of fifty or sixty tons, and drawing from three to five feet of water; and all the river boats are built with reference to the canal. The only craft upon the river, are a few steamboats of small dimensions, belonging to the goverment or to the Trans- portation Company, and employed chiefly in its service, pleasure-boats or travelling-boats such as I have described, and freight-boats built upon the same scale for carrying corn, cotton, and earthen-ware. In going up the river every thing depends upon a north wind. Without this but little headway can be made against the current. Sometimes this wind blows almost a hurricane, and blowing against the current lashes the river into a tum- ult that revives the disagreeable sensation of sea-sickness. Then the boat bounds along at the rate of five or six miles an hour, while the current deludes you into the notion that it is running eight or ten; but if such a wind holds, two or three days will carry you to Cairo, and ten or fifteen more to Thebes. But do not deceive yourself with any such expectation. The "Lotus" started from Alexandria with such a wind, and made one fourth the distance to Cairo the first afternoon, but it was nine days before she reached the " Magnificent" capital. Again she left Cairo with such a wind, and as the pyramids faded, Karnac loomed up only ten days ahead, yet it was twenty-seven days before we saw any other than a looming Karnac. The average voyage to Cairo is four days, and from there to Thebes twenty. We were thirty-eight days from Alexandria to Thebes, about six hundred and thirty miles, including a stay of two days at Cairo, and a day and a half at Denderah. In all that time we had but three or four days of the north wind, which at this season is said to p-evail. When there is no wind, the boat can be impelled against the current only by pulling — not with oars, for these are useless in going up stream — but with a long rope which passes through a loop about thirty feet up the mast, and is fastened to the upper deck near the tiller. This rope is taken a&horc, and the crew attach to it small cords, which they bind about their breasts or foreheads. NAVIGATION. 51 and then march wearily in procession, chanting doleful songs, and making four or five miles a day. Sometimes a light wind assists this towing, but it is tedious work. When the wind is ahead, as with us it often was — the south wind prevailing — it is hardly possible to proceed at all, for the tortuous channel of the Nile does not admit of " beating," and the boat must lie by. A huge wooden pin, driven into the ground by a mallet, answers the purpose of a temporary pier, and as there are no wharves along the Nile, every boat carries its own peg. Coming down the stream the boat either sails by the south wind, using the small sail only for safety, floats along with the current, stern foremost, broad- side, anywise, or is propelled by the oars as long as the strength of the crew holds out; but when the north wind blows stiffly she must be tied up to her peg for hours or days. At first one is ready to impute the dilatory progress of the boat to the indolence or the incompetence of the reis and crew. And undoubtedly these have it in their power in various ways to retard the boat for their own interest. With them time is nothing; and the leisurely occupation of a long voyage relieves the monotony of utter idleness at home, while it yields a daily support and the scanty means of dress and of amusement. The traveller should retain in his own hands the authoritative direction of the boat. I have never seen more nimble sailors than the Arabs are when acting under authority. But after all, the Nile must continue to be navigated at about the same dull rate. The same process of tracking and poling is delineated in the sculptures of ancient Egypt. Parties sometimes charter a small steamer for the upper Nile. This is well enough for travellers who are greatly pressed for time. But in order to bring the expenses within reasonable limits, such a party must be made larger than is consistent with comfort in such narrow accommodations, or larger at least than will admit of proper privacy and inde- pendence. Then there is the constant annoyance of heat, vapours, gas, and noise; and besides, the loss of much that is worthy of observation along the river, — for the steamboat 52 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. stops only at prominent points, and does not give opportun- ities for daily walks, and for the near inspection of fields and villages. It would avail but little to sharpen the model of the dahabeeliy for the windings of the river and the numerous sand-bars preclude tacking and beating as expedients for progress. Besides, a sharp built boat carrying much sail, would be apt to capsize in the sudden flaws and whirlwinds >aat sweep over the river. As the waters of the inundation subside, the forming of new islands, the opening of new sluices, and the shrinking of the main channel, make it difficult for those most familiar with the river to avoid run- ning aground. This is a very frequent occurrence; but one for which the sailors are fully prepared. Throwing aside their single garment, they leap over board like dogs, and in puris naturalihus apply their shoulders to the bow, and with a hee-haJy-saw shove and shove until the boat is afloat again. American sailors would not consent to such work as this, or to such a style of dress as it requires. But theoretical boat- ing will not answer here. And if the navigation of the Nile should be " improved," and light clipper jachts should lake the plnce of the dahaheeh, who would care to visit the river of Egypt? Herein at least we must do as Egyp- tians do. I have spoken of a Nile village as a picture; let me now introduce the reader to one as it is. The first that I ex- plored was a very favorable specimen, the village of Negeeleh in the Delta. The houses are built of bricks made of the mud of the Nile mixed with straw, just as it was in the time of Moses, and dried in the sun. Each house is but one story, or about ten feet in height, and consists usually of a court or yard a few feet square, and of two apartments, one of which has a mud chimney for cooking, and the other, raised benches of mud brick, upon which mats are spread for sitting by day and for sleeping by night. There are also mats upon the roof for the same purpose. In the jard the " stock," cows, camels, sheep, goats, donkeys, are huddled by night, and the place is redolent of their ordure. Each house has one or more dog, which lies about the door VILLAGES. 53 or on the roof, and yelps hideously at the approach of a stranger. In this village the houses arc arranged in rec- tangular blocks, and the streets are about eight feet wide. 'No wheeled vehicle ever passes through them. Indeed, except at Alexandria and Cairo, there is not a wheeled vehicle in all Iilgypt, and it is only within a few years that carriages have been introduced into these cities. All bur- dens are carried on the backs of donkeys or of camels. Outside of the village lie heaps of rubbish and filth — the common deposit of the inhabitants; and here, too, are larger folds for the cattle that cannot be accommodated in the house-yards. Along the river is a bazaar, in front of which is a rude garden planted with acanthus trees. The bazaar is a row of stalls, each about six feet square, sometimes not more than three feet front, in which the stock of the village merchants is deposited under lock by night, and in front of which it is exposed for sale by day. The bazaar everywhere wears the same general character. In Cairo, of course, it presents a rich display of goods, and covers an extensive area. In all the larger towns it occupies several of the little winding alleys called streets; but each particular shop is of the same diminutive size, and the entire stock of a bazaar in a town of ten or twenty thousand inhabitants, would hardly fill a respectable store on Broadway. The standard articles exposed for sale are tobacco, lentils, bread in flat loaves as big as one's hand, pipes and pipe bowls, little coffee-cups, onions, dates, slippers, shawls, and turbans. Occasionally you will find articles of beauty or of delicacy, but usually every alternate stall is for tobacco or bread, and interspersed with these are coffee-shops occupying the space of two or three stalls. The bazaar at Ncgeeleh has about forty stalls; in front of each, the proprietor squats upon his haunches, smoking his pipe or sipping his coffee, and waiting for a customer. Two or three dollars a day must be the extent of business done at one of these stalls on an average, even on a market- day; — twenty-five cents profit would doubtless be consid- ered a good day's business, even in many of the larger 64 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. towns. In front of the bazaar a few women veiled with the universal yashmak sat with little piles of bread or a few beans, eggs, or oranges for sale, rarely accosting any one, and hardly exposing their faces when addressed. In one quarter of the village is a little open square plant- ed with palm-trees, and on one side of this a diminutive mosque with a slender minaret — a round tapering tower of brick stuccoed, surrounded with tiers of galleries, and terminating in a ball pointed with a three-pronged rod. There is no bell in the mosque-tower, but from these galleries the hour of prayer is called in a shrill waving voice that resounds far over the plain.^ In all Egypt I never heard a bell of any size or kind, except two little tinkling cow-bells attached to Roman Catholic convents far up the Nile. What a contrast to the perpetual din and ^lash in Malta, and everywhere in Italy. The village I have described was an average specimen. Sometimes the bouses are the merest hovels with but one room, and a hole about two and a half feet high, that answers for a door. Yet even here the poor man's goat or sheep, or the donkey that earns a living for the family while he eats nothing himself, sleeps in the common inclosure. On the upper Nile the houses often have a mere roofing of twisted palm leaves, for in a climate where rain never falls, they need protection only from the sun. Sometimes the palm is gracefully disposed among the houses. In the largest towns are many houses of a better quality, built of burnt brick, two or three stories high, with windows and balconies, and interior courts open to the air. But the streets are seldom more than from six to eight feet wide, and are seldom as regular as at Negeeleh; the houses are crowded together very compactly, and the bazaar, though it may cover a range of a mile, is lined only with the same little shops. In such towns there are gates at the entrances of all the principal streets or quarters, which are closed at night. Towns built on the confines of the desert, are usually surrounded with a crude brick wall mounted with a 1 Al-la-hu ak-bar, Alla-hu ahbar, Al-la-hn ak-bar, Al-la . ." hu ahbar. BAZAAR AND HOUSES. dO palisado of cornstalks, to protect them from the predatory Arabs. Occasionally you will see a rude ornament in the shape of a piece of painted pottery, or some Arabic inscrip- tion, plastered over the door way; but the most pleasing feature of the villages, is the pigeon-houses everywhere seen along the upper Nile. Sometimes these are huge round or square towers built apart from the village, and having their walls perforated with earthen pots, through which the birds enter by thousands; but commonly they are appendages of the dwellings of the people. The squabs are caught inside the cote, and eaten or sold. Pigeons and chickens arc very abundant on the Nile, and the boats make quite a market for them. The mud brick of which the houses are generally built, is a material of sufficient strength and durability, and if painted or whitewashed, houses of this material would be quite neat and comfortable. The narrowness of the streets and the thickness of the walls favour coolness, and the bazaar streets are usually covered with boards or palm leaves as a protection against the sun. There is a great want of clean- liness in the villages and in the houses; but in large towns the bazaar is daily swept, and is sprinkled from skins filled with water, and carried under the arm. The sorriest sight in an Arab village is the children. Boys ten or twelve years old are often seen stark naked, with the exception of a little skullcap, while younger urchins, sport a string of beads upon the simple apparel nature gave them when they came into the world. But this nudity of nature soon ceases to oflfend you as does the studied nudity of Italian art, for you see it everywhere; the labourer on the canal, in the brick field, among the sugar-cane, and at the shadoof, takes lessons in tailoring from our first father; yet, with the natives, this is a matter of course, and so the traveller comes to disregard it. Indeed this scantiness of apparel seems to bo a result of sheer poverty; for often when you are sweltering with the heat, the Egyptian will wrap his woollen garment close about him, if this is all he has. It is not the mere nakedness of the children that annoys you; but their squalor, and the shiftless condition in 56 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. which they seem to grow up; and especially the swarms of flies that cover their eyes, noses, mouths, ears, and turn their faces into running sores. This is probably one cause of ophthalmia, the plague of Egypt. The heads of the boys are shaved, and covered with little caps. The little girls are always clad in some way, and the bo3's don't seem to know the difference. Indeed children vnll be happy somehow, and it is a blessed thing that they can be. But oh for Sabbath schools and boys' meetings in this land of degradation ! It is the thought of what these naked sore-eyed urchins are to be in their condition here, and their destiny hereafter, that makes your eyes water and your heart bleed as you look upon them; — for just now, that destitute and crying child, whose mother soothes it under the folds of her own soiled and tattered mantle, may be more favoured than the best dressed and tended child that no longer knows a mother's love. CHAPTER VI. OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE — WATER JAUS — PnoUUCTIONS TILLAGE THE SHAD001-' AND THE SAKIA. The occupations of people on the Nile are very simple. Those who keep shop in the bazaar, have little else to do but sit on their haunches, smoke pipes, and sip coffee. Walking through the bazaar soon after sunrise, you see the baker busy at his oven — a little round-topped mud oven at his door, which he heats with brush or dried dung, and into which he lays, on iron plates, the thin cakes which he slaps out with fingers dipped in melted butter; you see the barber shaving, not chins, but heads; you see the veiled women squatting on the ground beside their little stock of eggs, bread, lentils, onions, and white unsaltcd butter; and you see the coffee-shops with their tiny cups all ready for use ; — but the ^'merchant princes" have not yet come "down town," and their stalls are unopened. You meet no news- boy or letter carrier, but perhaps a janissary, who, if he does not look daggers at you, thrusts them out from his belt in formidable conjunction with a horse pistol. Later in the day, you will find all the little stalls open; but if you would appreciate the scene, imagine Wall street at one o'clock, instead of being thronged with jabbering brokers and hurrying bank clerks, lined on both sides with gowned and turbaned men sitting on their haunches, before little stalls like that of the soap man who used to stand on the steps of the Exchange, smoking pipes, drinking coffee, and — not reading newspapers, but playing chess or draughts with as much nonchalance as if each man owned the town, while all around the little coffee-shops, or on the divans under the shade of palm-leaf mats stretched over the street, the retired merchant sits languidly discussing neither stocks, estates, nor politics, but pipes, coffee, and draughts, (not 68 EGYPT^ PAST AND PRESENT. drafts.) Your constant wonder is how so many lazy people contrive to live; and yet so far as the mere living is con- cerned, they probably understand the art, and take the comfort of it far better than you. At about five o'clock nearly all the little stalls are closed, and the people gone — I don't know where. They are not riding in their carriages, for there are none; they are not walking in the gardens nor in the promenades, for there are none; they have not gone to balls, theatres, or concerts, for there are none ; they have not taken the ferry, the rail- way, or the omnibus to their country-seats, for there are none of all these; and yet you can hardly imagine that all these turbaned dignitaries, with red slippers and silk shawls, are cooped in the little mud houses one or two stories high that encompass the bazaar and make up the town. Here and there you meet a portable blacksmith's shop — a tiny furnace and a pair of bellows or a fan rigged up on the side of the street; or you see a silk weaver with his hand-loom preparing the exquisite braid of crimson silk, with which even the sailor delights to ornament his cotton shawl. The greater part of the day everybody seems to live out of doors; and around every village you will see groups of men, some well dressed, some ill dressed, sunning them- selves in the morning, and at noon the same groups shading themselves under the palms — after which I suppose they go home to rest. I don't know who they are, nor how they get their living; and I suppose that is none of my business; only the sight of them sometimes makes me laugh, and sometimes makes me cross, because they don't offer to help the poor women with their water jars. They have nothing to read, and they seldom talk; but sit on their haunches, and smoke, smoke, smoke. I don't know but they are transacting important business; I don't know but they are making friendly calls, but it looks very much like doing nothing; and neither dogs nor fleas appear to trouble them. Now and then, as you walk through a narrow village street, you hear the creaking of a great wheel, and prying in at the door crack, you see half a dozen women with little OCCUPATIONS OP THE PEOPLB. 59 baskets of grain upon a mud floor, all bemircd with filth, while a blinded buffalo turns the rude mill to grind their little store. Outside of the villages, a principal occupation of the people is the tending of flocks, and it is a picturesque and beautiful sight at sunrise to see streaming forth from a vil- lage over the neighbouring plain, camels, cows, oxen, sheep, and goats, — sometimes a few of each grouped together, — and then to watch them as they are distributed upon the little patches of grass or grain belonging to their several owners, where they are made fast to pegs in the ground, — for there are no fences — and left in the care of children, or of old men and women. These employ themselves in spinning cotton or woollen yarn for the family, while tend- ing the flocks and herds. Their apparatus for this purpose is of the most simple and primitive form. At sunset, " The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea," and all the cattle are housed in or near the village. If one would see pastoral life in its primitive simplicity, just as it was in the days of Abraham, let him come and look over the plains of Egypt upon such a scene. Yonder is a family tending a mixed flock of sheep and goats. The oldest, a lad of twelve, has not a shred of clothing except a little skullcap; his three little brothers are in the same predicament, except that the youngest is minus the cap also, and has a great string of beads around his neck. Their little sister is done up in blue cotton. They have a reed fife, and are as happy as the lambs with which they are frisking. When a plain^ is very extensive, it is covered with booths, such as Jacob built, to shelter the cattle and those that tend them. Of the productions of the soil I have already spoken. Cotton is raised chiefly in the Delta, but though the staple is excellent, the quantity is comparatively small, and Kgypt can never compete in this respect with the southern States. So we need not dissolve the Union upon that account. Wheat 60 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. is a great staple, and of a fair quality, thougli often strong. While looking upon the luxui-iant crops of wheat, barley, and beans, that even in February are ripe for the sickle, while others are maturing for a later harvest, it is easy to realize that Egypt was once the granary of the world. I do not remember any prairie fields in the West that would compare with these in the strength and fulness of the grain. Large boat loads of wheat and beans are passing daily to Cairo. Indigo is extensively cultivated, and the plant is soaked and beaten out in huge earthen pots. This is quite a business in some villages. Tobacco is very abundant and of a mild quality. The sugar manufacture is a monopoly of the government, and is carried on upon a large scale along the upper Nile. Vast fields of poppies, beautiful in flower, often overspread the plains in well-planted rows. Of agriculture, as we use the term, the Egyptians know but little. Their plough consists of a crooked stick shod with iron at one end, and forked at the other, and a tongue which plays in this fork, and to which the sharpened end is fastened with a sliding peg to regulate the depth of the furrow. It is the same instrument that the sculptures show us was in use four thousand years ago. I have seen a camel and a cow yoked together to such a plough as this. I have never seen any process of weeding or hoeing, though both at times seem necessary, especially in the tobacco fields. The sickle is a rude knife, slightly curved, and as the reaper cuts, the binder follows, and ties up the grain in little bundles; — nor does Ruth, hiding her face in her yashmak, faU. to glean her apron full, after the young men. The lotus, so often represented in the capitals of columns in the ancient temples, and the impyrus that afforded to the ancient Egyptians a material for writing, are no longer numbered among the productions of the soil. The predic- tion of Isaiah, that " the reeds and flags .... and the paper reeds by the brooks" should "wither, be driven away, and be no more," has been literally fulfilled. ^ The general ' Isaiah, xix, 6, 7. WATER JAnS. 61 productiveness of Egypt must also have decreased since the sixth century, when it " exported each year two hundred and sixty thousand quarters of wheat for the use of Con- stantinople/' and "a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from Memphis to IMedina." The one great occupation of the country isthat of getting the water of the river up into the houses, and over the land. The first is the business of the women. Nearly all the water used for drinking and for cooking is brought from the Nile, as there arc few wells in the country. Every morn- ing you will see the women of the village in long rows coming down to the river, each with one or two water jars to be filled for the day's supply. The water jar is of the ancient Egyptian form, just as sculptured upon the tombs of the time of Joseph — an earthen vessel bulging in the middle, and narrow at top, holding from two to ten gallons. It is carried on the head, and sometimes a smaller one also in the hand. The women of the villages universally wear a blue cotton garment unmade, but wrapped about the person, and a cotton headpiece of the same colour, which is fastened about the forehead, and hangs down over the shoulders, and which may be drawn closely about the face. "When they come down to the river, they wade out into the stream, rinse out their jars, and- fill them with the muddy water. They then wash themselves and the soiled parts of their apparel, and lifting the jar to their heads, return in groups to their homes. It is astonishing to see them rise from the ground with a weight of from thirty to fifty pounds on top of the head, and without even steadying it with the hand, climb up a steep and crumbling bank thirty feet high, and walk briskly a quarter of a mile. This gives them their erect stature and upright gait, and counteracts the effect of the bad air of the hovels. At first I used to pity them, and to think their condition worthy the notice of some "Woman's Rights" Convention; but when I peeped into their houses and saw that there were no floors to paint or scrub, no beds to make, no table to set, no knives and forks to clean, no dishes to wash, nothing but 62 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. two dirty rooms to be kept always dirty, and some unwashed naked children to be daily exposed to the sun and the flies, I felt that carrying a jug of water once a day was not a very heavy badge of slavery for the female sex. Besides, do they not see all the neighbours at the river, and talk over all the scandal, or what are they chattering about? Our cook boy, who is picking up a little English, seeing me peering into a native hovel, said, " This, sleep the Arab." And that is pretty much the whole story. An Arab's house is the place for sleeping. He lives out of doors. Hence the cares of a house wife are few. Yet the domestic attach- ments of these poor people are very strong. Only the " Upper Ten" of the cities practise polygamy. And woman is happy in Egypt, even if she does nothing but carry a water jar on her head, and a sore -eyed baby on her shoulders, or in a basket on her crown. I was greatly amused one day, at seeing a little girl not over four years old, strutting along-side of her mother with a tiny water jar on her head, as if she were a new made queen. I don't think " Women's Rights" could do any thing in this generation toward taking off the burden from the heads of their sisters in Egypt. The water jar is rather the prerogative of womanhood. Except during the season of the inundation of the Nile, the land is watered wholly by artificial means. I never could fully comprehend the practicability of this, till I saw it done. For six hundred miles south of Cairo, Upper Egypt is but a strip of alluvium some five or six miles wide, deposited upon both sides of the Nile along the edge of two deserts, or the bases of two parallel ranges of naked lime- stone hills. In the high Nile the river overflows nearly the whole of this, and adds to its richness the wash of the Nubian mountains. For the rest of the year the land is watered from the Nile by machines of various sorts. The simplest and most common of these is the shadoof, which consists of a pole swung between two upright timbers, and having a stone or a ball of mud at one end, and a bucket of skin at the other. A little trench is cut from the river, which feeds a pool below the level of the stream, and from SHADOOF AND SAKIA. ♦ 63 this, the water is dipped up by the bucket, and poured into another trench. If this is at the level of the bank, little branches are cut from it, or rather canals are made by little ridges of earth, and the water is thus distributed over the field; but when the bank is high, a second shadoof, and sometimes a third and a fourth, is erected, and the water is dipped up from trench to trench. This is hard work, and as each landholder must provide his own shadoof, it is the principal work in raising the crops. Another machine is the salcia : for this, a large deep well is dug, which is fed from the Nile; into this a wheel, surrounded with earthen jars, is dipped by the revolution of a cog-wheel moved by oxen, and each jar in turn empties itself into a trench, like the buckets of the elevator in a flour mill. The sakia is so much more expensive than the shadoof that only the larger proprietors, or a combination of smaller proprietors, can aiford to work it. All day long the salcia, which is never oiled, creaks lazily in its round, and the half clad labourer at the shadoof moans his monotonous song. In Egypt all labour groans. It has been computed that there are in Egypt forty thousand saJcias, which would give about four to every square mile of cultivation. But this seems to be an over- estimate. Many erected in Mohammed All's reign, have now fallen into decay. In Nubia each water-wheel is taxed about fifteen dollars per annum, but there is no tax upon the land. In Egypt the land is taxed about three dollars per acre, which is from ten to fifteen per cent, on its cost, but there is no tax on the water-wheel. The large sugar plantations of the Pasha, along the banks of the Nile, as well as the royal and the public gardens at Cairo, are water- ed by means of steam forcing-pumps. The larger plains are watered by great canals that intersect the river at various points, and that are opened to receive the waters of the inundation, and then are closed to retain the waters after the flood subsides. The present inhabitants of Egypt, like the ancients, divide the year into three seasons of four months each, based upon the phenomena of nature. The ancient divi- 64 EGYPT, TAST AND PRESENT. sions were, the " Season of Vegetation," the " Season of Manifestation," and the ^'Season of the "Waters:" the modern divisions are. Winter, Summer, and the Nile, or the Inunda- tion. The latter begins about the period of the summer solstice, and the river attains its greatest height at the autumnal equinox. Then he who casts his bread upon the waters will find it after many days. The peasant has no occasion to watch the clouds; for it is true now, as in the days of Zechariah, that in the land of Egypt there is no rain. I cannot better conclude this chapter than in the words of Amrou to the Caliph Omai\ " commander of the faithful, Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the blessing of the Most High reposes, both in the evening and morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters through the realm of Egypt: the fields are overspread by the salutary flood; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the reception of the various seeds; the crowd of husbandmen who blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the promise of the floweis and fruits of a plentiful in- crease. Their hope is seldom deceived; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those who labour and those who possess. Accord- ing to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden harvest" CHAPTER YIT. TENURE OF LAND DISPOSITION AND MANNEU8 OF TUE PEOl'LE. The tenure of land in Egypt is much the same as Joseph made it when he was prime minister. The fee of the greater part of the soil is in the Pasha, though in various ways much land has gradually passed into other hands. Good land is worth from twenty dollars to twenty -five dollars per acre, and is taxed three dollars a year. Land is divided into very small lots, for grazing and other purposes. The laud is sometimes farmed on shares — the tiller receiving one fourth of the produce; but the mere peasant, or fellah, does not receive over three or four cents a day; while in digging canals, and in other public works for the general good, he is compelled by the sheik to work for nothing and find himself. But then in Egypt there is no road-tax, no poll-tax, no school-tax, only a tax on land, on palm-trees, on every thing that is raised to be consumed. Egypt is a fine grazing country, — especially in the Delta, on the eastern side of which was the land of Goshen. This accords with the allusions in the Bible to the " much cattle" of the children of Israel. There is a breed of oxen called buffaloes, but they answer to our American buffalo only in having a bunch on the shoulders. They are usually black; their heads are long and flat; their horns flat, and curling backwards and inwards, and their whole appearance is one of '' non-resistant" meekness. Some have no horns at all. The milk of the cows is good; but the beef is wretched. Indeed, beef is almost despised in Egypt as an article of food. It is amusing to sec a drove of these cattle swim across the Nile, from a village to a pasture ground on the opposite shore. They plunge into the swift current as if they loved to baffle it, which they do with surprising b2 ^ 66 EGYI'T, I'AST AND lllESEXT. ease. Sometimes the driver will ride over on the back of an animal, stooping on its shoulders and poising his clothes on his head. In the middle of the stream you see only the floatius heads of oxen, with here and there a bundle of clothes peering above the water. Most picturesque is the sight of a herd of cattle standing motionless on the water's edge in a sultry noon. English cattle have been introduced into Egypt, and I have seen some noble specimens. But in general the cattle are stinted; for while the pasture is excellent, there is too little of it in the possession of private owners to allow of the free pasturage of stock. It would be hard to get up an agricultural fair in Egypt, though the spontaneous products of the country would rival those of any clime. Sheep and goats herd together, illustrating another fre- quent allusion of the Scriptures. Both the mutton and the wool of Egypt are of an inferior quality. But the great breed of Egypt is the donkey of all work — just the same dumpish, slender-shanked, long-eared donkey that was sculp- tured in tombs four thousand years ago. The scarcity of wood in Egypt strikes an American eye as a disadvantage. But the people use fuel only once or twice a day for a little cooking, and the canebrake, corn- stalks, palm branches, cactus roots, and the dung of cattle dried in the sun, give them a full supply. In the few days of cool weather, they shrink and shiver under their woollen sacks. Of the people of Egypt generally, I can speak in the most favourable terms. They are simple-hearted and well disposed towards strangers. Sometimes they seem quick tempered and quarrelsome among themselves, but their passion generally expends itself in words and gestures. Once I saw the very impersonation of hate in a lank Arab, with a sunken eye, blazing with fury, a clenched fist jerking violently in the air, teeth chattering, with hoarse raging gutturals that came too fast for utterance, and I looked for a violent onset upon the cause of the provocation — but words, words, words, and when these were spent, savage looks from flashing eyes, like the thunder-cloud retreating without rain. MAKNER8 OP THE PEOPLE. 67 Coiutnonly the people are attracted by the presence of strangers, and pleased with any attention, especially with a few words spoken in their own language. Sailors, who are usually a rough-grained set of men, arc here the merest children. The diversions suited to children are just the thing for them. To salute the captain in Arabic and in the Oriental style, to take a whiff of his pipe, to salute each sailor by name, and then extend the " Salamat" to a live young crocodile on board, to join in the chorus of their songs, any extempore child's play of a moment, gives them a full hour's glee. I suspect that our names will pass per- manently into the choruses of sundry Nile songs. Mr. Stephens bore a similar testimony almost twenty years ago. He says, " For nearly two months I had been floating on the celebrated river, with a dozen Arabs, prompt to do my slightest bidding, and in spite of bugs, and all manner of creeping things, enjoying pleasures and comforts that are not to be found in Europe; and it was with some- thing more than an ordinary feeling of regret that I parted from my worthy boatmen. I know that it is the custom with many travellers to rail at the Arabs, and perhaps to beat them, and have them bastinadoed; but I could not, and cannot join in such oppression of this poor and much abused people. On the contrary, I do not hesitate to say that I always found them kind, honest, and faithful, thank- ful for the smallest favour, never surly or discontented, and always ready and anxious to serve me with a zeal that I have not met in any other people; and when they came up in a body to the locanda to say farewell, I felt that I \\..j parting with tried and trusty friends." I never met with an American traveller on the Nile, who mingled with the people, who did not bear the same testi- mony. They are remarkably susceptible people, open to impressions from strangers, and if released from the fear of the death penalty for a change of religion, they would be promising subjects for missionary labour. From Mussul- men generally, the stories of travellers and the spirit of the Koran had led us to expect uncivil treatment, except where this might be restrained through the hope of employment 68 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. or of trade. But we never received incivility from any quar- ter; and I am persuaded that either the unfavourable im- pressions of some English travellers, respecting the native population of Egypt, are to be traced to the national hauteur which Englishmen are apt to exhibit abroad, or the preju- dices of the common people have been greatly modified by intercourse with foreigners. The term Eaivagee, which is universally applied to Franks or Europeans, I am sure is not commonly used as a term of contempt, to denote the superiority of the Moslem to the Christian, as Sir Gardnei Wilkinson represents it in his ^' Hand-Book for Travellers in Egypt." True, the beggar, in asking alms of a true Mussulman, accosts him " Sidi" (sir) while he calls the Christian foreigner Eawagee, a term meaning " Christian merchant," as distinguished from Ehoivagee, a Moslem mer- chant. This, Sir Gardner thinks, " answers to the French onarchand/' a word sometimes used " to stigmatize the En- glish as a nation of shopkeepers," — a term of affected super- iority and contempt. I have yet to learn, however, that the profession of a merchant is disreputable in the East. The Turkish bazaar at Cairo, with its rich display of silks and jewels, or the long caravan of the Armenian, laden with the riches of Persia, of China, and the Indies, would hardly suggest that idea. Possibly the word Hawagee has a double meaning; or it may, at first, have been applied contemptuously, as perhaps the name " Christian" was first given to the disciples at Autioch as a term of contempt. But this I know, that the captain of our Nile boat, when he calls me indiscriminately Hawagee or Sidi, in his most respectful approaches, does not apply to me a term of con- tempt, and that our dragoman, who has resided in England long enough to learn the usages of English society, does not mean to insult me, when as a native Egyptian speaking to Egyptians, he calls me Eawagee. I must repeat that I have never met with a rebuff from Mussulmen, not even while entering a place of prayer or the tomb of a saint — nor with any expression of contempt. Their houses, indeed are mostly kept inviolate, and their sacred places, like those of the Roman Catholics in Europe, can be entered only by I MANNERS OF TUE rEOPLE. 69 complying with certain customs; but, whatever may be their domestic or religious usages, the Mussulmen ia the villages and towns along the Nile are not uncivil toward Christian travellers. The traveller is a Hawagee, because, from the nature of oriental commerce, the merchant is so frc<|uently a traveller. We have uniformly found the people well disposed, though frequently clamorous for " hacJcshish" — which, like 'apcnny in Ireland, is the universal beggar-cry of Egypt, — some- times a little timid, and sometimes rather indifferent to our most courteous salutations. Only in a few instances have we seen any indications of vice in the villages, or expe- rienced any annoyance that interfered with the general inspection which we had in view. In a few cases there has been a marked disposition to show us kind attentions, espe- cially on the part of the Copts. This is owing partly to the fact that the hated enrolment for the army is now going forward, and these simple-hearted people imagine that the all potent English can somehow do something at head-quar- ters to exempt a husband, a son, or a brother from conscrip- tion. Sometimes, too, our wits are put to the test by appli- cations for medical aid, which one of our party commonly disposes of by a potion of red pepper, disguised in sugar. This never fails to work a cure. CHAPTEE YIIT. THE DESERT AND THE RAILnOAD. The first view of the great Lybian desert, which some fifty miles north of Cairo encroaches upon the very bank of the Nile, impressed us powerfully by its contrast with the rich- ness of soil we had hitherto seen. We went on shore, and began to traverse the sea of sand, hoping to gain a ridge that would command a distant prospect. But the ridge re- ceded as we advanced, and after an hour's walk, we seemed no nearer than when we started, for there was nothing by which the eye could measure distances. However, from a slight elevation which we gained, we saw before us an im- mense arid wacic, stretching as far as the eye could reach, but broken into ridges by sand drifts, where the whirlwind or the sirocco had spent their fury. It was a solemn and impressive sight. Yet even in this waste were signs of life. Here and there a few stinted shrubs marked where the sand was a recent deposit upon a good soil, and the sight of a little girl tending a solitary calf far from any human habitation, showed us how tenacious is the poor Egyptian peasant of every inch of fruitfulness. The feather of an eagle, and the feather of a dove, that lay upon the sand, were suggestive of a life-struggle that had here been waged between the victim and the destroyer. But most affecting was the sight of a whole village de- serted and buried by the sand, even the sycamores and the palms that had been planted and cherished to shield it from the desert, being covered with its drifts. The desert has here advanced upon the Nile, and has buried the old alluv- ium under twenty feet of sand. In some places the grain of this sand is as fine as powder; in others it resembles rather a fine gravel, and is compact and hard. An unceas- THE DESERT AND THE RAILROAD. 71 ing conflict is waged between the desert and the river. A huge trench or canal has been dug and filled with water to preserve what remains of fertility at intervals along the western shore. Upon the opposite bank all is fertility. Is there not here a symbol of that world of human hearts where flows the river of divine mercy — the river of God that is full of water, ever flowing, ever free, bearing in its bosom the riches of infinite, eternal love; — and yet while on one side all is fat and flourishing, upon the other, within reach of the same water, all is dry and desolate; the empty sands ever drifting and drifting, and choking and burying what the river would fertilize and bless. Here and there is a spot redeemed by the river from the desert, and made bright and cheerful amid the surrounding desolation; — but there is many a tract also, once watered by the river, now swallowed up in the desert, — all kindly influences gone, all signs of life extinct, — waste, desolate, appalling! From the desert, the triumph of desolation, we turned to examine upon the opposite shore the embankment of the railroad, the highway of modern civilization from England to the East. What a violation is it of the laws of associa- tion and of poetry, to introduce a railroad into Egypt! But this the Pasha is doing, and literally with the force of an army, for a large detachment of soldiers, suspected of dis- afi'ection, have been ordered to the ignominious field of the fellahs. The railroad from Alexandria to Cairo passes through the Delta, crossing the Damietta branch at its head. The work is in progress at several points along the Delta, the grading being done by hand, and the timber and stone carried on the backs of camels or of men. But the most wonderful pai't of this great work is at the head of the Delta — the bridge by which it is to cross the Nile, which here divides into two great branches. This work was begun many years ago for quite another purpose — as a harnujc or dam, to facilitate the irrigation of the surrounding country during the low stage of the river, and to hold back the water for the same purpose when the river is high. The barrage is already completed over the Damietta branch, and 72 EGYPT^ PAST AND PRESENT. that over the Rosetta branch is nearly so; the former con- sists of sixteen arches, each thirty feet broad by about sixty in height, and a central arch nearly a hundred feet in width; the latter has twenty-four arches of thirty feet, and a similar central arch. The main arches are to be kept always open, but the lateral ones are to be closed when the water is needed to feed the canals for the surrounding region The railroad is to cross by the Damietta bridge, and to be carried up the east bank of the river to Cairo. This work is built very substantially of hewn stone, and is ornamented with slender brick turrets in the minaret style, whose tops and angles are of stone. This style of architecture would be very pretty for factories and other public buildings in the United States. Indeed, some church steeple committees would find a minaret a prettier model than a tadpole. The abutments of this bridge are works of amazing solidity; yet it may be doubted whether in an alluvial soil, with no foundation of rock, they can endure the pressure of a swift and mighty river, forever shifting its current and undermining its banks. The general appearance of the barrage reminds one of the High Bridge at Harlem, though this is a more substantial and a more elegant work than that. The current of the Nile here runs with great swift- ness, fully equal to that of the Piscataqua at Portsmouth, and it is difficult for boats to pass through the arch of the barrage in a strong wind. Going up, they are assisted by a stationary boat furnished with ropes and pulleys. The neighbourhood of this work presented a scene of great activity. A detachment of troops was stationed in barracks on the plain, to preserve order. All the inhabi- tants of the adjacent village seemed to be gathered in an outdoor bazaar, and at the distance of a mile, their chatter- ing could be heard like the confusion of Babel. There was an iron foundry on the bank, and two huge steam pile- drivers were anchored in the river. Gangs of men, of about twenty each, with an overseer to every gang, were carrying earth in baskets on their shoulders half a mile, to raise the railway grade to the level of the bridge. There was not a wheel-barrow or a cart to be seen. All the earth THE DESERT AND THE RAILROAD. 73 used in the construction of this vast pile was carried in half bushel baskets on the shoulders of men, who tramp along to the measure of a monotonous song. In another place half naked men were mixing clay with straw, and shaping it into bricks to be baked in the sun. So no doubt the Israelites laboured under their taskmasters when they built Rameses just hereabouts, more than three thousand years ago. At evening a large company of labourers waded from an island to their homes on the opposite shore, carrying their scanty clothing on their heads. Cairo shone in the setting sun with its lofty minarets and its rock-built citadel. CHAPTER IX. '^CAinO THE MAGN'IFICENT." Nike days of sailing and pulling brought us from Alex- andria to Grand Cairo — the " Cairo of the Caliphs, the superb town, the Holy City, the delight of the imagination, greatest among the great, whose splendour and opulence made the prophet smile." Friends who followed us a week after in the steamer, had reached the capital in twenty-four hours, but they had seen nothing of the Nile. We were satisfied. Mounting donkeys at Boulak, the port of the city, we rode through a broad avenue of sycamores and acacias, for a mile and a half, and passing a guarded gate- way, halted before an English hotel, facing the grand public square and gardens of the capital. A grand square indeed it is, that same Uzbekeeh — an area of forty or fifty acres, adorned with palms, acacias, and gorgeous flowers, and in- tersected by fine broad paths, — all open to the public without restriction. There is no fence about it, but a neat stone trench, about four feet wide and six in depth, sur- rounds it upon all sides, and conveys the water of the Nile, not only to refresh the gardens, but to cool the air of the city. Here the gorgeousness of the East first bursts upon you. The " Arabian Nights' Entertainments" now begin. That which was shadowed forth as you sauntered under the acacias and palms without the gates of Alexandria towards Pompey's Pillar, opens with all its storied magnificence in the Uzbekeeh of Grand Cairo. But you will break the charm if you turn at once into the Frank quarter — if you go over to the corner where Walker sells ginger-nuts, mint candy, and patent English bread, " warranted to keep;" and from there, instead of the bazaar, enter the new street, thirty feet wide, all lined with CAIRO THE MAGNIFICENT. 75 garish French, English, and Italian shops, displaying choice perfumery, and " ready-made linen " from Paris and Lon- don, in a land that to your fancy was always robed in fine linen of embroidered work, and perfumed with the choicest aromatics of the East. Luckily, the sun compels the occupants to roof over this patent new street with mats and palra branches, a la bazaar; and though carriages do dash through it, they have not yet excluded the donkeys and the camels that stubbornly or scornfully stand their ground at the hazard of their shins. And, moreover, since the modern invention of trucks and carts has not yet been fairly palmed upon Cairo, even the patent new street of European shops must be sprinkled by the water carrier spirting the muddy Nile from a goat-skin under his arm. But what a grief and vexation it will be to future travel- lers to find the Grand Cairo transformed into a miniature London, Paris, or New York; — to find Aladdin's lamp dis- placed by corporation gas, and the dromedary run down by the snorting locomotive, " express " from Calcutta with Her Majesty's mails; — to find the beauteous tinted Orient made murky by tall factory chimneys, and " the superb town, the delight of the imagination," graded, and levelled, and squared, and paved by the march of improvement. Is all poetry and all romance to be driven from the world by steam? Is the Bible itself — here the most truthful and picturesque of books — to lose its living freshness, and be- come a mere history of the East that was? Would that this people might have the Gospel without having the " Nine- teenth Century;" that they might live by the spirit and precepts of Christ, and still wear the kaftan and the turban, and sit cross-legged on a divan, and sip cofi'ce out of tiny cups, and trade leisurely and poetically in little cubbies in the bazaar, like children playing shop, without ever seeing the Times or the Daily Neics, or learning the price of stocks and the "very latest telegraphic intelligence from the special agent of the Associated Press." Lack-a-day, what shall the western traveller do, who travels six thousand miles to find the Grand Cairo " improved?" So don't drive round by Walker's corner, but turn your donkey into this 76 EOYPTj PAST AOT) PRESENT. little arch, that you must stoop to enter, and that looks like somebody's front gate, and follow up the alley, turning all the sharp corners, and twisting round and round, and crowding up against the wall, to make room for a donkey or a camel loaded with water-skins, or for a fine lady buried in a huge inflated sack of silk, with a pair of gold or silver eyelets peering through a long white veil of richest lace, and shining slippers, covered with embroidery, peeping out from full laced pantalets, that droop over a saddle of soft, rich Turkey carpets; the whole pile — Turkey carpets, Indian silk balloon, Persian lace. Cashmere scarf, Ophir goggles, and Morocco slippers — preceded and followed by a train of meek attendants, in fancy turbans and glossy beards, prefiguring the inauguration of " Women's Rights," in Bloomer costume, enthroned over universal do7ikey-dova. Now you begin to see the East. But jog along, straining your neck to catch a glimpse of the blue streak of sky, up, up, through the crevice where the overhanging balconies of lattice work and palisaded roofs do not quite meet, and wondering whether within these walls are the marble courts and open fountains, and the double arches resting upon single columns, and the silk divans, and the windows and lanterns of stained glass, and the little black slaves in red and yellow slippers, gliding about with coffee in golden cups upon silver platters, and with rose-scented latakia in nargilehs glistening with rubies — of all which you have read in story-books, but which you never expected to see, and cannot well contrive to see even now. So still jog on, your donkey picking his way among the pipe-bowls of reclining Turks at the gates and by the coffee-houses, till at length you reach that grand repository of Oriental wealth and magnificence — the Turkish bazaar. But no donkey must amble here; and so, dismounting, you walk among piles of silk and cashmere, compressed into little closets, four feet by six, amber mouth-pieces, jewelled pipe-stems and bowls, golden coffee-cups, displayed in little cases of glass, per- fumes of Arabia, gums and spices of the Indies, all ranged before these diminutive stalls, where by day the owner sits cross-legged over his concentrated wealth, and by night CAIRO THE MAGNIFICENT. 77 locks it up with a wooden lock upon a wooden door, and knows that it is safe. Turning into an open, square court, you see all around it a row of stalls filled with rolls of carpet of the softest wool and the richest patterns; but you may not even ask the prices now — for there, upon a carpet spread in the middle of the court, arc the twenty proprietors of all this stock, kneeling in rows, with their faces toward the east, bowing their foreheads to the earth, counting their fingers and their heads, and reciting aft