Round the Wonderful World
by G. E. Mitton · English · Gutenberg #28783 · 638,773 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Round the Wonderful World
Author: G. E. Mitton
Illustrator: A. S. Forrest
Release date: May 13, 2009 [eBook #28783]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28783
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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND THE WONDERFUL WORLD ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
ROUND THE WONDERFUL WORLD
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
A BOOK OF DISCOVERY
BY M. B. SYNGE
THE WORLD'S STORY
BY E. O'NEILL
[Illustration]
ROUND THE WONDERFUL WORLD
BY G. E. MITTON
AUTHOR OF
"THE BOOK OF LONDON" "IN THE GRIP OF THE WILD WA" ETC.
[Illustration]
WITH 12 DRAWINGS IN COLOUR AND 120 IN CRAYON BY
A. S. FORREST
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, Ltd.
35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
AND EDINBURGH
TO
JIM
CONTENTS
CHAP PAGE
I. WHICH WAY? 1
II. REALLY OFF! 20
III. FIERY MOUNTAINS 36
IV. THE STRANGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 51
V. THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT 65
VI. A MIGHTY MAN 75
VII. THE CITY OF KINGS 85
VIII. ON THE NILE 95
IX. A MILLION SUNRISES 109
X. A WALK ABOUT JERUSALEM 120
XI. THE COUNTRY OF CHRIST'S CHILDHOOD 139
XII. AN ADVENTURE 147
XIII. THE GATEWAY OF THE EAST 153
XIV. THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN 168
XV. A TROPICAL THUNDERSTORM 179
XVI. A SACRED TREE 192
XVII. UNWELCOME INTRUDERS 203
XVIII. THE CAPITAL OF INDIA 218
XIX. TO THE DEATH! 235
XX. A CITY OF PRIESTS 242
XXI. THE GOLDEN PAGODA 250
XXII. THE KING'S REPRESENTATIVE 264
XXIII. THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE 271
XXIV. ON A CARGO BOAT 278
XXV. JIM'S STORY 291
XXVI. THROUGH EASTERN STRAITS AND ISLANDS 304
XXVII. THE LAND OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE 320
XXVIII. IN A JAPANESE INN 332
XXIX. THOUSANDS OF SALMON 345
XXX. THE GREAT DIVIDE 358
XXXI. ON A CATTLE RANCH 371
XXXII. THE GREAT LAKES 382
XXXIII. OLD FRIENDS AGAIN 388
INDEX 395
PLATES IN COLOUR
THE MIGHTY SEATED FIGURES AT ABU SIMBEL _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
SHE IS ON THE POINT OF LEAVING HER COUNTRY, PERHAPS FOR EVER 24
ENGLISH SOLDIERS CLIMBING THE PYRAMIDS 56
JEWS' WAILING PLACE, JERUSALEM 128
SWAYING ITS LEAN UNLOVELY BODY TO AND FRO IN TIME WITH THE TUNE 200
A CARPET SHOP, DELHI 224
THE GOLDEN PAGODA 256
A BURMESE PLAY 288
A VILLAGE BUILT ON PILES, SUMATRA. LITTLE BROWN BOYS PLAY
ABOUT AND FISH 312
OUR DINNER IN A JAPANESE INN 336
INDIANS AS THEY ARE NOW 376
THE FALLS OF NIAGARA 388
[Illustration: STRANGE BRIDGE AT MARSEILLES.]
ROUND THE WONDERFUL WORLD
CHAPTER I
WHICH WAY?
When you have noticed a fly crawling on a ball or an orange has it ever
occurred to you how a man would look crawling about on the earth if seen
from a great height? Our world is, as everyone knows, like an orange in
shape, only it is very much larger in comparison with us than an orange
is in regard to a fly. In fact, to make a reasonable comparison, we
should have to picture the fly crawling about on a ball or globe fifty
miles in height; to get all round it he would have to make a journey of
something like one hundred and fifty miles. It would take a determined
fly to accomplish that! Yet we little human beings often start off on a
journey round the world quite cheerfully, and it is more difficult for
us than for the imaginary fly, because the globe is not a smooth surface
of dry land, but is made up of jungles and deserts and forests and
oceans. There are some places where people can do nothing in the heat of
the day, and others where their flesh freezes like cold white marble in
a moment if they don't take precautions.
To set out on foot around such a world would be folly, and man has
invented all sorts of ingenious machines to carry him,--trains and
steamers, for instance,--and with their help he can do the journey in a
reasonable time. It costs money, of course, but it is a glorious
enterprise.
Here, in our own homes, we see pretty much the same things every
day--green fields and trees, cows and sheep and horses, if we live in
the country; and houses and streets and vehicles, if we live in the
town. Everyone we meet speaks the same language; even if we were to go
up to a stranger to ask a question we are tolerably sure that he would
understand us and answer politely. We have cold days and warm ones, but
the sun is never too hot for us to go out in the middle of the day, and
the cold never so intense as to freeze our noses and make them fall off.
The houses are all built in much the same way; people dress alike and
look alike. Someone catches me up there, "Indeed they don't; some are
pretty and some are ugly and everyone is different!"
Yes, you think that now, but wait until you have travelled a bit, and
seen some of the races which really _are_ different from ours, then
you'll think that not only are British people alike, but that even all
Europeans are more or less so.
You are not likely to travel? Well, I'm not so sure of that, for I'm
going to offer to take you, and, what is more, you need not bother your
head about expenses, and we will have all the time we want. I am going
to carry you away with me in this book to see the marvels of other
lands; lands where the burning sun strikes down on our own countrymen
wearing white helmets on their heads and suits of snowy white as they
walk about amid brown-skinned natives whose bare bodies gleam like
satin, lands where lines of palm trees wave their long fronds over the
pearly surf washing at their roots. We will visit also other lands where
you look out over a glowing pink and mauve desert to seeming infinity,
and see reflected in bitter shallow water at your feet the flames of
such a sunset glory as you never yet have imagined. Or you can ride out
across the same desert lying white as snow beneath a moon far larger and
more glistening than any you ever see here. You shall watch volcanoes
shooting out columns of fire which roll down toward the villages
nestling in their vineyards below, and you shall gaze at mountains which
raise their stately heads far up into the silent region of eternal snow.
You shall see the steel-blue waves rising in great heaps with the swell
of an unquiet sea. You shall talk to the mischievous little Burmese
women and watch them kneeling before their pagodas of pure gold, and
shall visit the little Japs making merry in their paper houses; you
shall find the last representatives of the grand races of North American
Indians in their wigwams. And these are only a very few of the wonders
of the world.
Where shall we begin? That requires some consideration. As the world is
not a solid block of level ground we shall have to choose our track as
best we can along the routes that are most convenient, and we can't
certainly go right round in one straight line as if we followed a piece
of string tied round the middle of the earth. Of course we shall have to
start from England, and we shall be wisest to turn eastward first,
coming back again from the west. The eastern part is the Old World, and
the western the New World, of which the existence was not known until
centuries later. It is natural, therefore, to begin with the older part
first. If we do this we must start in the autumn so as to arrive at
some of the hottest countries in what is their winter, for the summer is
unbearable to Europeans. So much is easily settled.
Have you ever realised that Great Britain is an island? I hear someone
say "Silly!" under their breath; it does seem an absurd question, for
surely every baby knows that! Well, of course even the smallest children
have been told so, directly they begin to learn anything, but to
_realise_ it is a different matter. An island is surrounded by water,
and none of us have ever sailed round our own country and made the
experiment of seeing for ourselves that it is so. You have been to the
sea certainly, and seen the edge of our island home, but have you ever
thought of that long line which runs away and away from your seaside
place? Have you followed the smooth sandy bays and the outlines of the
towering cliffs; have you passed the mouths of mighty rivers and so gone
steadily on northward to the bleak coasts of Scotland where the waves
beat on granite cliffs; have you rounded stormy Cape Wrath, and sailed
in and out by all the deep-cut inlets on the west of Scotland, and thus
come back to the very place from whence you started? If you can even
imagine this it gives you some idea of what being an island means. We
are on every side surrounded by water, and nowhere can we get away to
any other country without crossing the sea.
The very nearest country to us is France, and at the narrowest point of
the Channel there are only twenty-one miles of sea to get over. One way
of starting on our great enterprise is to cross this little strip of
water and take the train across France, right to the other side, there
to meet a ship which will carry us onward. Or we can start in the same
way across the Channel but go much farther on by train, all along Italy
as well as France, and then we can catch the same ship a considerable
way farther on in the Mediterranean.
Or there is another way, the quickest of all, and the newest; by this
means--after crossing the Channel--we can go the whole distance across
Europe, and Asia too, by train, and come out on the other side of the
world, near China, in about ten days! To do this we should have to get
to Russia first by any European line we pleased, and on arriving at the
town of Moscow change into the train which does this mighty journey. It
starts once a week, and is called The International. It is quite a small
train, though the engine is large. There are only half a dozen coaches,
and one of these is for luggage and another is a restaurant. First-class
people are put two together into a compartment. It certainly sounds as
if that would allow plenty of room, but then if anyone has to live and
sleep and move for ten days in a train, he can hardly be expected to sit
cramped up all the time, he must have some space to stir about in. At
night one of the seats forms one bed and another is let down crossways
above it. There is, alas, no bath, but there is a small lavatory for
every two compartments where we can wash after a fashion. There are even
books provided in the restaurant car, some in Russian, some in French,
some in German, and some in English.
The journey itself is not very interesting, and we should be glad enough
to get to the end of it I fancy. No, I am not going to allow you to take
me that way, not even if you begged hard! It is very useful for business
men, whose one idea is to save time, but for us who want to see all we
can of this glorious world it would be folly.
On the contrary, the route I should like to take is the very longest of
all, and that is by sea the whole way, on one of the great liners
running east. The real choice lies between this and the railway journey
across France to the seaport of Marseilles, or Toulon, according to
which of the great British lines of steamships we choose--the Peninsula
and Oriental, known as the P. & O., or the Orient. I am willing you
should decide between these routes. Think well. In order that you may
understand better what the choice means I will tell you what you will
see if we take the railway journey.
[Illustration: AT CHARING CROSS.]
We shall have to start one morning from Charing Cross Station in London.
All around us people are carrying bundles of rugs and magazines. Some,
like ourselves, are going far east and they are parting from those who
love them and will not see them again for a long time. That fair young
man standing by the carriage door looks little more than a big
schoolboy, but he is going out to India to help to govern there. He is a
clever fellow and has passed a very stiff examination to gain this
position, and he eagerly looks forward to all the new scenes in the life
awaiting him. His charming mother and sister are seeing him off; they
are so much alike they might be mistaken for sisters; they are trying to
talk and joke lightly, but you can see how hungrily the mother's eyes
are fastened on her son, as if she could never see him enough. Rightly
too, for when she meets him again, he will not be the boy he is now. His
face will be browned by the tropical sun, and he will have become a man;
he will have an air of command which comes naturally to a man who lives,
often by himself, in charge of a district, and has to rule and judge and
decide for the dark-skinned people.
Close beside us there are several men smoking big cigars, and one of
them says loudly, "All right, old chap, I'll bring one back for you next
week; I shall cross again on Monday." He runs over to Paris on business
every week and thinks no more of it than of going to his office in the
morning. A trip to France is very easy when you have the means to do it
comfortably.
Then we take our seats, and the train steams out of the station, leaving
the crowd on the platform to scatter. After a long run, with no stops,
we reach Dover and go on board a steamer which seems quite large enough
to anyone who is not used to steamers. Our heavy luggage has been sent
on board the big ship which will meet us at Marseilles, so we have only
our handbags to carry. The crossing is quite short, and it is best to
stay on deck if you don't want to be ill. The very first thing to
notice, as we gradually draw away from the land, is the whiteness of the
towering chalk cliffs which stand out prominently near Dover. Often you
must have read of the "white cliffs of Old Albion," and if you live in
the north or away from the sea, you must have wondered what they were;
now this explains it all. When the Romans came over from the Continent
they crossed the sea the shortest way, and in approaching this unknown
island were struck with astonishment at the high gleaming white cliffs,
unlike anything they had seen before; they were so much amazed that ever
after the "white cliffs" were the chief feature of Britain in their
eyes.
There is a break in the cliffs, where Dover now stands, and here the
Romans later on made a port, and a port it has remained to this day.
If we are lucky in getting a fine day for the crossing we can sit on
deck-chairs, looking at the dazzling milky-blue sea and sky until
someone cries out, "There's France!"
[Illustration: NUMBERS OF EAGER LITTLE PORTERS.]
You will not be able to make out anything at all at first, because land
does not look in the least what you expect when you see it first from
the sea. You would naturally search for a long dark line low down on the
horizon, but it isn't like that at all. There is a hazy bluish cloud,
very indistinct, and seemingly transparent, but as we draw nearer it
grows clearer, and then houses and ships can be discerned, and after a
good deal of manoeuvring and shouting and throwing of ropes and
churning up the water with the screw, two bridges are pushed across to
the dock, and numbers of eager little porters, dressed in bright blue
linen suits with very baggy trousers, surround us and implore us to
allow them to carry our baggage.
"Me Engleesh speaking, sir."
"Good me, good man me."
"Baggage carrying me."
They are here, there, and everywhere, so good-natured, so lively, so
different from the stolid English porters. Their eyes are very bright
and they will take money of any kind, French or English, it matters not
to them.
We have had to get our money changed on the boat, and that is the first
thing that makes us feel we are really out of England. In exchange for
an English gold pound we get twenty-five--not twenty--French shillings;
these shillings are called francs and are not unlike our shillings at a
first glance, but they are thinner and lighter. Some have the head of
Napoleon, the last French Emperor, on them--these are old; the latest
new ones are rather interesting, for they have a little olive branch on
one side and a graceful figure of a woman sowing seed on the other, so
one can interpret the meaning as peace and plenty. If you change a franc
into copper you get ten--not twelve--pennies for it, and French pennies
look very much like those of England. There are also half-franc pieces
like little sixpences, and two-franc pieces like smaller florins, and
gold pounds called Louis or Napoleons, and half-sovereigns too, but all
the money seems light and rather unreal when one is accustomed to our
more solid coins.
We walk up the gangway into a large barn-like place, where we meet some
smart-looking men in uniform with pointed moustaches turned up to their
eyes and a fierce expression. They stand behind a shelf, on which all
the baggage from the boat is put, and we approach this with our bags in
our hands.
[Illustration: PASSING THE CUSTOMS.]
The official demands in French if we have anything to declare, meaning,
are we bringing across anything which it is forbidden to sell in France,
such as brandy, matches, or cigarettes, for if so we must declare it and
pay something to the Government for allowing us to bring it. We answer
that we have nothing. "Rien, Monsieur," very politely, hoping to soften
his heart, and as we both have honest faces he believes us and scrawls a
chalk-mark on our bags and lets us pass. We are lucky, for now we can go
straight on to the train and get good places before the crowd follows.
Some unfortunate people, however, are caught. One woman who is wearing a
hat with enormous feathers and very high-heeled shoes, has two huge
trunks.
She tries to slip a five-franc piece into the hand of one of the
custom-house officers. It is a silly thing to do, for it at once makes
him think she is concealing something; very loudly and virtuously he
refuses the money, hoping that everyone notices how upright he is, and
then he insists on the contents of her trunks being turned out on to the
counter. Piles of beautiful underclothing are spread out before all
those men; silk and satin frocks come next; numberless dressing-table
ornaments in silver and gold, and little bottles by the dozen; boots and
shoes and books follow, while Madame begins to weep and then changes to
screaming and raving. She is a Frenchwoman who has been staying in
England, but she did not escape any more than an English-woman. How she
will ever manage to get all her finery stuffed back into those boxes
without ruining it I don't know, and we haven't time to wait to see.
The platform is very low and the train looks in consequence much larger
than an English one, as we have to climb up into it almost from the
ground. It is a corridor train, and the first classes are lined with a
kind of drab cloth, which does not seem so suitable for railway work as
our dark blue colour. The guard sets us off with a little "birr-r-r"
like a toy cock crowing. When we move out of the station at last we find
ourselves going at a snail's pace along a street, and at once we catch
our breath with interest--it is all so strange! Never will you forget
that first glimpse of a foreign land! The very air is different, with a
sharp pleasant smell of wood-smoke in it. Some people say that every
foreign country has its own smell and that they would know where they
were with their eyes shut! This must be an exaggeration, still there is
something in it!
As the train goes slowly forward a clanging bell rings on the engine to
warn the people to get off the lines, which are not fenced in in any
way. On every side you see neat little women wearing no hats, with their
hair done up in top-knots; they are out marketing, and most of them
carry immense baskets or string-bags stuffed with cabbages and carrots
and other vegetables. The children are nearly all dark, with brown skins
and bright black eyes, and they look thin but full of life. The boys
wear a long pinafore or overall of cheap black stuff, and even the
biggest go about in short socks, showing their bare legs, which looks
rather babyish to us. The sun is shining brilliantly, and on most of the
pavements there are chairs set out around small tables where men in
perfectly amazingly baggy corduroy trousers and blue blouses sit and
drink variously coloured drinks. A little boy who was too near the line
is caught away by his agitated mother, who pours out over him a babble
of words, and the child, laughing roguishly, answers her as volubly. Not
one sentence, not one word, can we understand, though we are quite near
and can hear it all. When you remember the painfully slow way you have
learnt _avoir_ and _être_ at school it is maddening to think that this
child, much younger than you, can rattle away in French without any
trouble, and it is still more annoying that when you _did_ think you
knew a little French you cannot make out one single word! French spoken
is so very different from French learnt out of a book! However, for your
comfort you must remember that that little bright-eyed boy, whose name
is probably Pierre or Jacques, would think you very clever indeed to be
able to talk in English.
[Illustration: A LITTLE FRENCH BOY.]
The houses have a strange look; it is chiefly because every single one
of them, even the poorest, has sun-shutters outside the windows, set
back against the wall; they are of wood, mostly painted green and
pierced with slits. In countries where the sun is hot and strong at
midday the rooms must be kept cool by such shutters.
When we are once clear of the town the train soon gets up great speed,
and we race through green fields with hedgerows and trees as in our own
land, and yet even here there is something different. It may be because
of the long lines of poplars, like "Noah's Ark" trees, which appear very
frequently, or it may be the country houses we see here and there, which
are more "Noah's Ark" still, being built very stiffly and painted in
bright reds and yellows and greens that look like streaks. At the level
crossings you see women standing holding a red flag furled, for women
seem to do as much of the work on the railways as men; and waiting at
the gates there is often a team of three or four horses, each decorated
with an immense sheep-skin collar, that looks as if it must be most hot
and uncomfortable. Occasionally we catch sight of what looks like a
rookery in the trees seen against the sky; however, the dark bunches are
not nests at all, but lumps of mistletoe growing freely. Rather a
fairytale sort of country where mistletoe can be got so easily!
We can stay all night in Paris if we like, and travel the next day to
Marseilles, and stay a night there too. That is doing the journey
easily. Many people go right through, running round Paris in a special
train and being carried speeding through France all night. There are
sleeping cars made up like little cabins with beds in them and every
luxury. But it is tiring to travel on continuously in a French train, as
the carriages are made very hot by steam, and French people object to
having the windows open at all, so the atmosphere gets almost
unbearable, according to our ideas.
We shan't have time to see much of Paris if we just stay the night
there, but as we drive through in a taxi-cab we can see how full of life
it is, though at this time of the year people do not sit out at the
little tables on the pavements late in the evening as they do in the
summer. There are taxi-cabs everywhere, and they all pass each other on
the right side, you notice, the opposite side from that which we use;
you will find this in all other foreign countries but Sweden, and in
some Provinces of Austria. Though Great Britain stands almost alone, in
this case she is certainly in the right, for the driver ought to be on
the side near the vehicle he is passing, and also the whip coming in the
middle of the street is less liable to flick anyone than if it was on
the pavement side.
The hotels in Paris are many and magnificent; when we arrive at one all
gilt and glitter, we ask for small rooms, as it is only for one night,
and are taken up to two tiny apartments simply crammed with furniture.
It is enough to make anyone laugh, for there is hardly room to turn
round. Both are alike. In each the bed is covered with a magnificent
yellow satin brocade coverlet; there is a large arm-chair, which quite
prevents the door of the huge wardrobe from opening. The washing-stand,
which has taps of hot and cold water, is crammed into a corner so that
one can hardly get at it. There is a writing-table with ink and
blotting-pad and everything else for writing, but no dressing-table and
nowhere at all to put one's brushes. Above the mantelpiece is a big
mirror, too high for you to look into, though I can peer round that
immense gilt clock to do my shaving. The rest of the mantelpiece is
taken up with heavy marble ornaments--utterly useless--and gilt
candlesticks. There is a telephone on the wall, and down this we can
give our orders into the hall. Luckily I know enough French to ask for
what we want, though if you stand giggling at me every word will go out
of my head when the man below inquires my wishes.
It is by means of this telephone I order breakfast for us both to be
sent up next morning. All we can get is coffee, or tea, with rolls and
butter and two poached or boiled eggs. You'll have to make this do. It
is the custom here. In France people start with only coffee and rolls
and then go off and do a good morning's work, and come back again to eat
a large meal which is a sort of breakfast and lunch rolled into one, at
about twelve o'clock. It all depends on what one is accustomed to, and
certainly we look very hungrily at the small dish of eggs that appears!
Meantime I am getting a little anxious about my boots. I put them out
last night to be cleaned, but this is such a large place, with so many
people coming and going, that I began to wonder if they have been taken
to the wrong room; timidly I ask the waiter, who brings the breakfast,
if he can find them. With a knowing smile he stoops down and opens a
tiny cupboard in the wall near the door, and there, slipped in from
outside, are the boots! "Voilà!" he says triumphantly, as if he had just
brought off a successful conjuring trick. Certainly what with the taps
and telephone and trap-doors for boots this hotel is very much up to
date.
North of Paris we have seen orchards of apple and cherry trees, but
farther south, as we rush along, we get into a land of vineyards, where
rows of little vines are being cultivated on every foot of ground on the
hillsides. By nightfall we reach Marseilles, and if we were going on to
Toulon it would have taken two hours more.
Marseilles is the largest seaport in France, and is second only to Paris
in size and importance.
Do you know those preserved fruits which generally appear about
Christmas-time in oval cardboard or long wooden boxes? Have you ever
wondered if they are real fruit, and where they come from? They _are_
real fruit, boiled and dipped in syrup, though they taste very different
from the same fruit freshly gathered. A great deal of the preserving is
done in France, especially along the south coast, and when we get to
Marseilles we are in the very heart of the business.
After passing the night in an hotel we have time to wander about a bit
before going down to the docks to find our ship.
The sun is shining brightly as we turn out after another breakfast,
which only seems to have given an edge to our keen British appetites.
There is a nasty cold wind blowing round corners and buffeting people.
The pavements are very lively; we see women and girls hurrying about
doing household shopping, and boys in heavy cloth capes and military
caps, so that they look like cadets, this is the uniform worn by
better-class schoolboys in France. The French policemen, called
gendarmes, are also in uniform of so military a kind that unless we knew
we should certainly mistake them for soldiers.
There are stalls set out on the pavements, heaped up with embroidery and
odds and ends, including soap, which is manufactured here very largely.
Bright-eyed girls try to entice us to buy as we pass. One street is just
like a flower garden, lined with stalls piled up with violets and roses
and anemones and other blossoms. Trams follow one another along the
rails in an endless procession. We walk on briskly and turn down a side
street; here at last is what I have been looking for, and well worth
finding it is too! It is a shop with great plate-glass windows; on one
side is every kind of preserved fruit, and on the other a variety of
chocolates, tarts, and expensive sweets. Look at that dainty box filled
with dark green figs, artistically set off by sugared violets pressed
into all the niches! These are rather different from the flat, dry brown
figs which is all that English children recognise under that name.
Another box glows with tiny oranges, mandarins they call them here, and
piled up over them are richly coloured cherries shining with sugar
crystals. In the centre is an enormous fruit like a dark orange-coloured
melon, surrounded by heaps of others, while the plain brown chestnuts,
that don't attract much notice, are really the best of all, for they are
the _marrons glacés_ for which Marseilles is famed, and once you have
tasted these, freshly made, all other sweets will seem insipid to you.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH POLICEMAN.]
Inside the shop there are many carefully dressed ladies, daintily
holding little plates, and going about from one counter to another,
picking up little cakes filled with cream and soaked in syrup. They eat
scores of them, and they do it every day and any hour of the day, in the
morning or afternoon or whenever they happen to pass. No wonder they
look pasty-faced! We are only here for once, so we need have no
compunction about our digestions, especially as there is an empty place
left after that tantalising bacon-less breakfast. We are soon provided
with a plate each and a little implement which looks as if it had
started life as a butter-knife and suddenly changed its mind to become a
fork.
The shop-girls take no notice of what we eat; we can pick and choose
freely, and at the end they trust us to say how many cakes we have had.
We can get here also cups of thick rich chocolate, and, if we wanted
it, some tea, though it is only of late years that French people have
taken to drinking tea at all freely, for coffee is their national
beverage.
Well, come along, tear yourself away, we must get a cab and go down to
our ship which is at the docks.
In the cab we pass what is called the Old Port with picturesque rows of
weather-beaten sailing boats; only the sailing boats are allowed to come
in here. Rising up against the sky at the far end of the port is a
curious bridge quite unlike any other you have seen, for the bridge part
is at a great height and there is nothing below by which people or
vehicles can cross over. How is anyone going to take the trouble to
climb up there? How, above all, are carts or carriages going to manage
it?
You can easily make a rough model to see the principle of this bridge
for yourself. Get a couple of the tallest candlesticks in the house, and
put a stick across them, run a curtain ring on to the stick, and to the
ring attach numerous threads fastened at the lower end to a flat bit of
card or board like a raft. Then, by pushing the ring along the stick,
you can make the raft follow across below. The stick represents the high
bridge, and the raft in reality rests on the surface of the water, and
when the machinery above, represented by the ring, is set in motion, it
rumbles across and draws with it the floating raft, which is large
enough to take a great number of men and vehicles. Every ten minutes or
so this floating bridge passes over from one side to another, and people
pay a sou, which is the French halfpenny, to travel with it. Thus, you
see, when a tall ship comes in she has only to avoid the raft, and she
can sail in beneath the high bridge without any trouble. We could, if we
wished, go up in a lift to the high bridge; but the railings up there
are far apart, and there is a high wind blowing, you are not very big,
and if you slipped between I should have to give up my voyage round the
world; so I think we won't, if you don't mind!
Besides, we have to catch our ship waiting at the docks, and she will be
off very soon.
Now that you have heard what we should probably do and see if we went
across France, will you take this journey or will you start from England
and go right round in the ship?
You answer that though you would like to see the little blue-bloused
porters, and that it would amuse you to think that the little French
boys and girls could speak no English, and though you would certainly
_love_ the _marrons glacés_, you think, after all, having heard about
it, we might just as well go the other way round, though, of course--the
_marrons glacés_----
Sensible boy! Forget about them! We'll go round. In the very next
chapter we'll be up and off in earnest.
[Illustration: OUR OWN POWERFUL AND UGLY IRONCLADS, LIKE BULLDOGS
GUARDING THE FORT.]
CHAPTER II
REALLY OFF!
It is exciting to start on any journey, even if it is only one we have
done before, but to go off round the world that is a real adventure!
There are many lines of steamers we could choose to go by, but we will
select for this first part of the journey the Orient Line. The choice
really lies between that and the P. & O., as we have already decided,
and for many reasons it is best to begin with the Orient and join the
other later. The main reason being that I want you to see a little of as
many European countries as possible, and the Orient ships stop at
Naples, in Italy, while those of the other line do not.
The ships in the Orient fleet all begin with an O; there are the
_Otranto_, _Otway_, and many more, but the boat which suits us and
happens to sail on the date we want to start--in the beginning of
November--is the _Orontes_. She is not the largest ship in the fleet,
having about half a dozen before her on the list, but she is a good ship
and very steady.
Our jumping-off place is London, whence a special train runs from the
station of St. Pancras down to the docks at Tilbury, where the _Orontes_
is waiting for us. The long platform beside the train is covered with
people when we arrive there, so that we have some difficulty in finding
seats. If all these people were coming with us we should have a full
ship indeed, but the one half of them is only seeing the other half off!
The line passes through dreary flat country, and at last we catch sight
of open water and funnels and feel as if we must be right down at the
Thames' mouth, but we are very far from that yet.
[Illustration: THE _ORONTES_.]
The heavy luggage has all been sent on ahead, and passengers are told
only to bring with them what can be carried in the hand; judging from
the piles of boxes that are tumbled out of the train many of them must
have tolerably large hands!
[Illustration: A STEWARD.]
We pass through a great shed, and coming out on the other side find our
ship there, right up against the dock side. It towers above us, blocking
out the sky as a street of six-storey houses would do. In fact, it is
rather like looking up at a street side, and when we see the sloping
ladder leading to the deck, like those used for hen-roosts but on a
giant scale, we feel our adventure is well begun. Hang on to the
hand-rail, for the wind is blowing hard, and if you went down into the
black dirty water between the ship and the dock there would be very
little chance of getting you out again; even as we climb up something
flicks past us and is carried away, and we see it floating far below; it
is an enormous white handkerchief which the man up there on deck has
been waving to his wife in farewell. It is gone, and it is to be hoped
he has another handy, he'll need it to-day. At the top of the ladder a
man in uniform looks at our ticket and calls out the number of our
cabin. He is so smart and has such a dignified manner we might well
mistake him for the captain, but he is an officer, called the purser,
who looks after the passengers. A bright-faced steward, unmistakably
English, takes possession of us and pilots us down some well-carpeted
stairs, through a large room where small tables are laid for lunch, and
into a very long narrow passage shining with white enamel paint. There
are little doors with numbers on them on one side, and about half-way
along the steward stops and ushers us into our cabin. It is a tiny room.
If you lay down from side to side you could touch each wall with head
and heels, and if I lay down from end to end I could do the same, and I
am rather bigger than you! There are two shelves, one above the other,
made up as beds, a piece of furniture with drawers and a looking-glass
in it, a fixed basin such as those you see in bathrooms, and a few pegs
to hang things on, and that is all. Our cabin trunks, which we sent on
ahead, are here before us, and through the open round port-hole we catch
a glimpse of grey water. We are lucky indeed to get a cabin to
ourselves, for in many, not a bit larger than this, there would be a
third bunk or bed, and a stranger would be forced in on us. When we have
settled our things you will be surprised to find how comfortable it all
is, for everything is so conveniently arranged. It is just as well to
put out what we shall want at once while the ship is steady, for once
she begins to roll----
When we have done this we go back to the saloon, encountering many
people rushing wildly to and fro with bags and bundles, still unable to
find their cabins, having come on at the last minute. In the great
saloon, those who are going ashore are hastily swallowing cups of hot
tea, and just as we arrive a bell rings to warn them to get off the ship
if they don't want to be carried away with her.
They flock down the gangway while we stand high above, and many
good-byes are shouted, and some are tearful and some are quite casual
and cheerful. Then the gangway is moved, but just before it goes down
with a run there is a shout, and two policemen hurry along the quay
hauling two shamefaced-looking men who are hustled up into the ship
again. They are stokers who fire the furnaces for the engines far down
below in the bowels of the ship. They had signed on for this voyage and
at the last minute tried to slink away, but have been caught and forced
back to their work.
Now the strip of water widens and very slowly we move from the quay,
being dragged ignominiously backward across the great basin in which we
lie by a diminutive steamer called a tug. We are not out in the river
yet and our own engines have not begun to work. You can understand that
it would be very difficult to load a ship if she stood always in the
river, where there are rising and falling tides, so, to make this
easier, great docks have been built along the river, and in them the
flow of the tides is regulated, so that the water remains always at
pretty much the same level.
The tug that pulls us across the dock on our way out looks absurdly
small, like a little Spitz dog pulling a great deerhound; but it does
its work well, and presently we glide into a narrow cut between high
walls; this is the lock, the entrance to the dock, and the water is held
up by great gates at each end as required, just as it is on river locks
for boats. Once we are inside the great gates behind us are shut, and
presently those at the farther end open and we see two other little tugs
waiting there to take us in charge. We are going out at the top of the
tide, and if we missed it should have to wait for another twelve hours,
or there would not be sufficient water in the river to float the ship
comfortably. We are still stern first, so if we want to see the fun we
must climb up to the top deck at that end. The wind is blowing a perfect
gale and almost drives us off our feet; it catches the side of the ship
and makes it far harder work for the gallant grimy tugs, which are
pulling and straining at the taut ropes till they look like bars of iron
lying between us and them. They churn the water to a fury, and pour
forth volumes of black smoke; inch by inch we feel the ship moving out;
her stern is dragged up-stream, so that when she is finally swung clear,
her bows are pointing seaward and she is ready to go. It is an exciting
moment when the ropes are cast off, and there is a great deal of running
about and shouting, and then our own engines begin gently but powerfully
to do their work. The screws beneath the stern revolve and we have
started on our long, long voyage!
[Illustration: SHE IS ON THE POINT OF LEAVING HER COUNTRY. PERHAPS FOR
EVER.]
There are no waves in the river; only those who are very nervous will
think about being ill yet awhile, and this is a good chance to examine
the great ship which is to be our home for some time.
There is plenty of room to walk about on the decks or to play games when
we reach a more summer-like climate. There are many rooms where we can
shelter in the wet and cold weather, a great lounge with writing-tables,
and a smoking-room--and there is no house on earth kept so spotlessly
clean as a ship!
[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN.]
When we go down to dinner we sit on chairs that swing round like office
chairs, only they are fixed into the floor, and as they only swing one
way, there are some funny scenes till people get used to them. We have
hardly taken our seats when a very magnificent man with a white
waistcoat and gold shoulder straps and much gold lace on his uniform
comes and sits down too, and smiles and bows to everyone. This is the
captain, and we must be more distinguished than we guessed, for we have
been put at his table, where the honoured passengers usually find seats.
Though this captain has such a kindly smile, a captain can be very
terrifying indeed; he is king in his ship, and has absolute authority;
his word is law, as, of course, it must be, for the safety of the whole
ship's company depends on him, and there is the fine tradition, which
British captains always live up to, that in case of any accident
happening to the ship the captain must be the last man to quit her.
Innumerable captains indeed have preferred to go down into the
unfathomable depths with their ships sooner than leave them when they
have been wrecked.
For several days there are very few people to be seen about, and the
rows of empty chairs at the table and on deck are rather depressing, but
as the weather brightens a little people creep out of their cabins;
white-faced ladies come to lie, rolled in rugs, on the sheltered side of
the deck, and the chairs are filled. Yet it is still a little dismal,
though we tramp sturdily up and down and would not admit it for the
world. The strong wind blows endlessly and the great grey waves are
always rolling on monotonously one after another, one after another, in
huge hillocks. So we plough down the English Channel and across the Bay
of Biscay, which is no rougher than anywhere else, though people ask
with bated breath, "When shall we be in the Bay?" "Are we through the
Bay yet?" as if there was no other bay in all the world.
Then comes a day when all at once everyone on board seems to wake up and
become alive again. The sun shines in patches along the decks and the
sea is blue and sparkling. We are passing close beside a steep and rocky
coast, and so near do we go that we can see the white waves dashing
against it and even spouting up in sheets of spray through blow-holes in
the cliffs. What we see is the coast of Spain, so we have set eyes for
the first time on another country than our own. There are many other
steamers in this stretch of water, some small and some as large as ours,
some coming and some going. It is all much more lively than it was.
Soon we have pointed out to us the place where the battle of Trafalgar
was fought, when Britain won a victory that assured her the dominion of
the seas up to the present time--a battle in which our greatest sailor,
Lord Nelson, was killed in the moment of victory!
It is the next morning after this that, when we wake up, we find that
the tossing and rocking motion has ceased; it is curiously quiet, the
iron plates that bind the ship together no longer creak and groan as if
they were in agony. We are bewildered. Then in a moment the meaning of
all this flashes upon us. We have reached Gibraltar!
Coming up on deck we find the scene glorious. The sun is shining out of
a cloudless sky on to a sea so blue that it gives one a sort of pleasant
pain to look at its loveliness. The air is brilliant, as if we were
living at the heart of a crystal. The ship is stealing along so silently
and gently she hardly seems to move, and then she comes to anchor in a
bay that seems to be surrounded on all sides with hills. Some of these
hills, lying rather far away, gleam white in the sunshine; they are part
of the great continent of Africa, and so, though it is only in the
distance, we have set eyes on our first new continent. Towering up
before us, with mighty bulk, is an immense rock, rising bald and rather
awful into the pure sky. Near the summit its sides are completely bare,
seamed by great gashes, and broken by masses of rock that look as if
they might crash down at any moment. Apes live up there, wild
mischievous creatures, who descend to steal from the orchards below, but
are so shy that they are hardly ever seen of men. They are of a kind
called Barbary apes, only found elsewhere in Africa; and it is thought
that perhaps, many ages ago, Europe was joined to Africa at this point,
and that when a great convulsion occurred which broke the two asunder
and let the water flow through the Straits of Gibraltar some of the apes
may have been left on this side, where their descendants still are,
sundered for ever from their kinsfolk by the strip of sea.
About the base of the rock is a little town running up the hill and
brightened by many trees--this is Gibraltar itself, one of the most
famous places in the world. For this alone it is well worth while to
come round by sea.
[Illustration: A BARBARY APE.]
Anyone can see at a glance why it is so important. That little strait,
about a dozen miles across, is the only natural entrance by water into
the Mediterranean Sea, which lies all along the south of Europe. At the
other end men have had to cut a way out by means of a canal. If ever
European nations were at war, the nation which held Gibraltar would be
able to prevent the ships of other countries from getting into or coming
out of the Mediterranean. It could smash them with big guns if they
tried, or blow them up. So that even if the country on each side were
flat this would still be an important place; but nature has made here a
precipitous rock, which is a natural fortress, and by great good luck
this belongs, not to the country of Spain, of which it is the southern
part, but to Great Britain. To find out how this is so you must go to
history. Gibraltar has been held by Britain for many years now, and
though the King of Spain is very friendly with Britain, and has married
an English princess, I think he must sometimes feel a little sore over
Gibraltar.
Lying in a basin on one side of us are some of our own powerful and ugly
ironclads, like bulldogs guarding the fort, and on the other side are
ships of all nations, come on peaceful trading errands or for pleasure
cruises, including a dainty little white French yacht that looks like a
butterfly which has just alighted.
We go ashore in a launch and are met on the quay by a medley of strange
folk and a great clamour of voices! The men and women are nearly all
dark skinned and black eyed, and yet they are all speaking English after
a fashion. A woman offers us a curiously twisted openwork basket of
oranges, with the deep-coloured fruit gleaming through the meshes, a man
implores us to take some of the absurdly neat little nosegays he has
made up, picture postcards are thrust under our noses, and cabmen wildly
beseech us to patronise their open vehicles. It is a brilliant scene,
full of life and colour and warmth, and the people all seem
good-humoured and jolly.
Sitting huddled up against a wall, with some odd-looking bundles beside
them, are a group of very poor people; they are emigrants about to leave
their own country for South America. Out there in the bay is the
emigrant ship, and dipping toward her over the open water are several
boats loaded down to the gunwale going out; others have reached her side
and the people swarm up like flies. This group on the quay are awaiting
their turn. A small boy and girl are rolling about in the sun like
little lizards and laughing gaily. The little girl is called Maria and
is about ten years old; she has a tiny scarlet shawl pinned across her
chest, and her bright black hair shines in the sunlight; in her wee
brown ears are little gilt ear-rings, and she is hugging tightly to her
bosom a large and very gaudy doll. It is not exactly the kind of doll an
English child would care about, because its face is the face of an idiot
and it is made of some sort of poor composition stuff; its clothes are
tawdry material of tinsel and stiff muslin, and are pinned on by pins
with coloured glass heads glittering in the sun. Maria thinks it lovely
and shrieks if her young brother Sebastian lays a finger on it. She is
on the point of leaving her own country, perhaps for ever, to travel for
thousands of miles to a land where everything is different from what she
is used to; but she is as unconscious of this as if she were a little
kitten, and as long as she can roll in the sunshine and hug her doll,
the first she has ever possessed, the thought of the morrow does not
trouble her soul.
Her home lies far away in the interior of Spain, and her parents have
travelled to Gibraltar in carts and then in a marvellous thing called a
train which made the children shriek with delight when it moved off
without horses. Maria and Sebastian were brought up in a hovel with a
mud floor, and only one room, shared with the donkey and the goat. They
were never taught to obey, or to have their meals at regular hours, or
to go to bed at night at a particular time; they ran in when they
pleased, clamoured for something to eat or drink, or else fell down on a
bundle of rags in the corner and were sound asleep in a moment. They
often slept in the heat of the day and were up almost all night
listening to a neighbour playing the guitar, or singing and rollicking
with other children. Their usual drink was sour red wine made from
grapes grown on the neighbouring hillsides after all the best juice had
been already pressed out of them. This the peasants bought in immense
bottles, swollen out below like little tubs, and cased in wicker-work
with handles which made them easy to carry. In every hovel there was a
bottle like this. To match it there was an enormous loaf of
dark-coloured bread, made flat and round as a cart-wheel or a small
table; bits of this were chopped off as required, and when Sebastian and
Maria cried out they were hungry they had a lump of bread and sip of
wine given to them, and then they became quite happy again. Sometimes
they had olives with their bread, or chestnuts, or a salad made from
herbs growing by the roadsides, and they had oranges very often and
goat's milk cheese. On high days and festival days they had sometimes
very thin hot cabbage soup out of a great black pot that boiled over a
few sticks; they dipped their bread into it or supped it up out of large
flat wooden spoons, wrinkling their little noses meantime because it was
so hot. A grand treat was a purple or crimson pomegranate given by a
kindly neighbour.
When Maria was about seven the whole family moved into a town where the
narrow streets were always dark between the tall thin houses. It was
much more exciting here than in the country; there was always something
to see, and in the evenings the whole place was like a bazaar with
people coming and going, and shows and entertainments open half the
night. On festival days the streets were gay with lanterns, and festoons
of coloured paper and flags were waved until the children thought it
like heaven.
Then came a talk of crossing the sea. Some members of the family and
very many friends had already made a journey to a far-away country
called Argentina, and others were thinking of going. It seemed that in
that land, which was as sunny and warm as their own, there was more
money to be made than in Spain, and as party by party made up their
minds and set off in one of the great emigrant ships Maria's father grew
more gloomy and unsettled, until at last, by one means or another, he
had scraped together enough money to pay for their passages, and then
they all started on the great adventure, even a greater one than our
going round the world.
[Illustration: A FLOWER SELLER AT TOULON.]
It is only a couple of days after leaving Gibraltar that we reach Toulon
in good time in the morning. We anchor well outside the splendid bay, as
Toulon is one of the most important French ports, and no prying eyes are
wanted there. In the little steam-launch we run past the huge
battleships _La Verité_, _La Republique_, and others lying solidly in a
row manned by French sailors with little red top-knots on their flat
caps. Then we see the beautiful range of high hills surrounding the bay,
and are landed on the quay. The market is one of the most interesting
things here, and we are lucky to be in time for it. Up a long narrow
street are lines of open-air stalls covered with masses of fruit and
vegetables. The natty little Frenchwomen who sell them almost all wear
blue aprons and black dresses, and have little three-cornered shawls
over their shoulders.
Look at that bunch of celery there, it is monstrous--the size of a
child! Everything seems on a huge scale; there are artichokes on great
stalks, melons gleaming deep orange-red and too large for any but a man
to lift; scattered all about are bunches of little scarlet tomatoes not
much bigger than grapes. But the oddest thing to us are the bunches of
fungi, tawny-coloured, piled up in heaps, and evidently very popular!
There are squares of matting covered with chestnuts, and whelks, like
great snails, sticking out their horns and crawling over each other in a
lively way. A strange medley! The flowers are lovely; you can buy a big
bunch of violets for a son, and sou is the peasant word for a halfpenny.
Gladiolus, anemones, roses, and mignonette fill the air with fragrance.
It is a beautiful place this market.
After lunch we stroll down to the quay again and wander idly about
looking at the people until the launch comes to take us back to the
steamer. There is a huge fat man seated on a low stool cleaning the
boots of another man equally stout. Wedged into the corner beside them,
so that they cannot stir, are two small white boys with thin pathetic
little faces. As we watch we see the boot-cleaning man, who has a cruel,
mean expression, pull hold of the little tunic of the nearer one, and
point to a smear upon it, then deliberately he raises his large hand and
smacks the child hard across the cheek. The little chap makes no effort
to escape,--he evidently knows it is hopeless,--he only crooks a thin
little arm over his cheek as he shrinks back. Deliberately the great man
holds down the thin little arm and strikes him again with savage force.
It is sickening! If we interfere the child will probably only get it
worse afterwards. There are a few brutes like this who make their own
children's lives a misery, though mostly French people are very kind.
The children look so ill and pale, too, they probably don't get half
enough to eat.
"May I get them some sweets?"
Happy thought! We passed a shop a minute ago. Here, wait a second, say
to the father in your best French this sentence--
"Ils sont à vous, ces garçons, Monsieur? Très beaux garçons!"
You see you have put him in a good humour, he is pleased, though the
poor little chaps are very far from being "beaux." They seem almost too
stupefied to understand the sweets, but they know the way to put them in
their mouths.
While we are waiting on the tender before it starts we see a different
set of little boys; one, a delicate, pretty-looking little fellow, about
your age, but not nearly so tall or strong, raises his cap and begins in
English, "Good-day, Monsieur." His little companions sit around in awe
at his knowledge and audacity. His name is Pierre, he tells us, and that
badly dressed sturdy little boy with a sullen face is Louis. Pierre
tries to make conversation in our own language to entertain us. "Are you
to Australie going?" he asks. We tell him we are going first to Egypt.
"Monter au chameau!" he cries excitedly, going off into a gabble of
French and beseeching us to take him with us as "boy." We tell him that
he is too small and that it costs much money. "Have you money--English?"
he asks. He is very much interested when we show him half a crown and
explain that it is equal to three francs of his own money. Then he
catches sight of some English stamps. "Timbres!" he cries, and then,
with a great effort, "I college," meaning "I collect." We give him a
halfpenny stamp, which he carefully puts away in a battered purse
already containing two French pennies. Louis, who has been giving
convulsive hitches to his little trousers, which threaten to part
company altogether with the upper garment, bursts in eagerly, asking us
to give him a penny, adding solemnly: "Ma mère est morte," as if the
fact of his mother being dead entitled him to demand it. We explain that
it is not polite to ask for money. "Cigarette," he then says promptly.
We tell him that in England the law forbids boys under sixteen to smoke,
whereat they all shriek with laughter. So we add that Englishmen want to
grow up tall strong men, and if they smoke as boys they won't, whereupon
they grow grave again and nod their little heads wisely.
The waves are quite wild out in the bay and we have considerable
difficulty in jumping on to the slippery step at the foot of the long
gangway up the ship's side. Hanging on with a firm grip we struggle
upward, and when we reach the top we see the little French boys waving
their good-byes to us from the tender, Pierre bowing gracefully, cap in
hand, Louis with his disreputable air of being a little ragamuffin and
rejoicing in it.
[Illustration: A STREET IN POMPEII.]
CHAPTER III
FIERY MOUNTAINS
Do you learn Physical Geography? I did when I was in the schoolroom, but
it is quite likely to have been given up now, or perhaps it is called by
some other name. It sounds dull, but is not really, at least there was
one part of it that interested me immensely, so much so that that
particular page was thumbed and dirty with being turned over so many
times. This was the page on which volcanoes were described. I never
thought I should see a volcano, but the idea of these tempestuous
mountains, seething with red-hot fire inside, and ready to vomit forth
flames and lava at any time appealed to the imagination. This lava, it
seemed, was a kind of thick treacly stuff, resembling pitch, which ran
down the mountain-sides boiling hot and carried red ruin in its track.
It seems nothing less than idiotic for people to live on the slopes of a
volcano where such an awful fate might overtake them at any time, yet
they not only _did_ so but still _do_.
One of the reasons why we came by the Orient line is to see Naples,
which stands almost under the shadow of one of the best-known volcanoes
in the world--Vesuvius.
[Illustration: VESUVIUS.]
We arrive at Naples early in the morning and are the very first to be up
and out on deck. The bay has been called one of the most lovely to be
seen anywhere, but to-day at least it is disappointing, for there is no
sun and only a dull grey drizzle, which carries our thoughts back to
England at once.
The houses of the town rise in tiers up the hillside, very tall and
straight, and seem to be filled with innumerable windows.
However, it is not the view of Naples itself which is called so
beautiful but rather that of the bay _from_ Naples, especially on a blue
and golden day, and that we have no chance of seeing. On one side of the
bay rises the mighty mountain whose furious deeds have made him known
and respected all over the world. There is a heavy cloud hanging around
his crest so that we cannot see the crater; the cloud looks as if it
were composed of smoke as much as anything else, for even yet Vesuvius
is terribly alive.
We get a hasty breakfast, for though we are going to be here till late
afternoon, there is much to see, and we have no time to spare. Then we
get into a little launch and steam past all the great ships lying at
anchor. On the quay we find ourselves in a great crowd of grey uniformed
soldiers, many of them mere lads, carrying their kit, and drawn up in
lines waiting their turn to march on board the towering troopship
anchored alongside, while some of them wind up the gangway like a great
grey snake. Those already in the ship are letting down ropes to draw up
bottles of wine or baskets of fruit from the women who sell such things.
Within a short time Italy has become mistress of Tripoli, a country in
Africa, and now she is finding she will have to garrison it in order to
hold it; and though it costs her a great deal of money she is sending
out many of her young soldiers to guard the new possession.
We get some money changed on the quay, receiving in exchange a number of
lire; the lira is very like a franc and corresponds with it and the
English shilling, though a little less in value.
This done we walk along the front to the station. Many of the streets
are high and broad with splendid houses lining them. In them are men
busily at work washing away the mud with long hose pipes mounted on
little wheels, so that they look like giant lizards or funny snakes on
legs running across the streets by themselves, and as much alive as the
well-known advertisement of the carpet-sweeper and Mary Ann!
Other streets are very narrow and filled with people buying and selling.
There are swarms of children rolling about in the filth of the roadway;
they are dressed in rags and their bodies show through the large holes.
They are often playing with old bones or pebbles. Their faces are
sometimes quite beautiful, rich golden-brown in colour, and their great
velvety brown eyes look so sweetly innocent you would be easily taken in
by them; but they are terrible little rogues and would beg from you or
steal if they got the chance. Here and there are shops where macaroni is
sold; it is ready boiling in great pans; this and cakes made of a kind
of flour called polenta are the chief food of the Italians. The macaroni
is made out of flour mixed with water to a stiff paste and squeezed
through holes in a box till it comes out in long strings. It used to be
made in all the dust and dirt of the villages, and is still often to be
seen hanging over posts there to dry, but there are now large
manufactories where it is made quite cleanly by machinery; we shall see
some as we pass on our way to Pompeii, where we are going. There is one
pleasant thing to notice, namely, wherever you look you see flowers
growing; the larger and better-class houses have balconies filled with
broad-leaved plants and creepers, and the very poorest people living
high up towards the sky have window-boxes filled with flowers.
At the station we find a little train, like a tram, with red velvet
cushions, and while we sit and wait for it to take us to Pompeii, the
city buried by Vesuvius, the rain falls softly and steadily. Presently
the stationmaster and his assistant step out gingerly along the
uncovered platform, holding umbrellas over their uniforms, and give the
word of command, and very slowly we start, and jolt along, stopping
frequently. We pass through market gardens first and then through
endless vineyards, in many of which the clinging vines are not propped
up on sticks, but merely looped from one poplar tree to another, for the
trees are growing in straight rows and form a natural support. This
ground is particularly good for vines, for the lava which has been dug
into the soil is peculiarly fruitful.
There are little white box-like houses amid the vines, and they are hung
all over with bunches of brilliant scarlet fruit, which, when we get
near enough to see, we find to be tiny tomatoes. Other houses have
pumpkins also and melons and chillies, all hanging out to get dried, so
that they look quite decorative with their strange adornments. Suddenly
our attention is called to a broad strip of black earth, in shape like a
river, flowing down the hillside, but made up of huge blocks as if it
had been turned up by a giant ploughshare. This is a lava bed made by
the last great explosion of Vesuvius in 1906, when the lava ran down in
molten streams, tearing its way through the vineyards and sweeping
across the railway lines; at that time two hundred people were killed.
An enterprising firm has run a little railway to the very top of
Vesuvius, and anyone who cares to do so can go by it and peep into the
awful crater at the summit, and a cinematograph operator has recently
been down one thousand feet into the crater to take films for
exhibition. When Vesuvius is in a bad humour and has growled and
grumbled for some days, people are not allowed to go up to the top lest
he vomit forth his fury even while they are there and overwhelm them.
While we are on the way to Pompeii I will tell you something of the
fascinating story.
Many years ago, long before the people on our islands were civilised,
when Britons ran about dressed in skins and floated in wicker-boats
covered by skins, there were intelligent and refined people living all
round the base of Vesuvius; they knew, of course, that the mountain was
a volcano, but there had never been any very terrible explosion that
they could remember, and, anyway, the slopes of the mountain where the
towns stood extended so far from the crater that no one thought it
possible for any great disaster to happen. The two principal towns were
called Herculaneum and Pompeii. The people there dressed in lovely silks
and satins; they had beautifully built houses filled with statues and
pictures: the women wore costly jewellery; they had plenty of
amusements, for they danced and sang and visited each other, and had
stalls at the amphitheatre, and supported candidates at political
elections, and gossiped and drove in chariots, and lived and loved. They
thought, as we all do in our turn, that they knew everything and that no
one could reach so high a pinnacle of civilisation as they had reached.
This was only about fifty years after Christ's death on the cross, and
the Christians were still a comparatively small and despised band.
Well, one day there was a certain amount of uneasiness felt, for a
curious black cloud had formed over Vesuvius, and it was not quite like
anything that had ever been seen before; people also spoke of strange
rumblings in the bowels of the earth, and there was an oppressiveness in
the air which alarmed the timid. Then came terrifying noises, cracklings
and explosions, and a fine dust filled the air and began settling down
everywhere; no sooner was it brushed off than there it was again; it
penetrated even close shut houses, and filled the hinges so that the
doors would not open easily. The rich people began to make arrangements
to get away, but before they could carry them out awful confusion fell
upon them; day was turned to night, the clouds of dust fell thickly and
chokingly, stifling men as they ran; volumes of lava poured forth,
sweeping like fiery serpents down the mountain-side; they rushed over
Herculaneum, which was not far from Pompeii, so that while the one city
was boiled the other was smothered. Curses and prayers alike were no
avail. Men were caught and choked, houses were silted up, and the whole
district was buried.
Years passed and the tradition of the destroyed cities remained; it was
known that they were thereabouts, but so completely had the mountain
done its work that no one knew exactly where, and it was only
comparatively recently that money was subscribed and the work of
unearthing them began. By the railway we have passed through
Herculaneum, and here we are at Pompeii. Now you shall see what this
city of two thousand years ago was like.
[Illustration: A HOUSE IN POMPEII.]
The station is close to it, and as we step out of the train we go almost
immediately into the gates of the once buried but now uncovered city,
which is one of the wonders of the world, attracting people across
leagues of sea and land.
We find ourselves in a long narrow street lined by roofless houses. The
stones which form the pavement are uneven and much worn, the foot-walks
on each side are raised very high, because in wet weather these streets
were mere torrents and the water rushed down them. Here and there are
stepping-stones, to enable people to cross from one side to the other.
It would have been impossible in most places for two chariots or carts
to pass one another, and we wonder how they managed. As a fact, the
Pompeians did not use wheeled vehicles much, but chairs or palanquins,
and the men went on horseback. There are many open counters beside the
street, showing that these buildings were used as shops, and in one or
two are large marble basins hollowed out where the wine which was sold
was kept cool. Along the side of one house is a gaudily painted serpent,
signifying that an apothecary, or, as we should say, a chemist, lived
here.
We can go into one of the better-class dwelling-houses and we find that
it was built around a courtyard or central hall, and we can peep into
the sleeping-rooms, which, in spite of all the luxury of the
inhabitants, were mere little dark cupboards with no light or air. Well,
so they were in our castles until quite recently! There was a garden
behind the hall in all the better-class houses, and this had almost
always a tank for gold-fish; we can see it still; but all the little
personal things that have been unearthed--the jewellery and household
utensils and even the statues--have been taken to the museum at Naples
for safe keeping, which is a pity, as the streets and living-rooms seem
bare and cold and we need a good deal of imagination to picture them as
they must have been.
Here at last is something that makes us start and brings back the awful
scene of death and dismay. In a deep recess by a doorway are six
skeletons, lying in various attitudes, left exactly as they were found.
These people had been caught; they were hurrying, evidently to get out
of the outer door, and finding it had been silted up by dust and that
they could not open it, had turned back, too late, and been smothered!
There they lie now, nearly two thousand years after, just as then.
There were about two thousand skeletons thus found and taken away--only
these few were left to give visitors some idea of the tragedy that
happened. The sticky dust and ashes which poured down upon the doomed
city reached a depth of twenty-six feet, and they encased everything in
a kind of crust. Dogs and cats were caught in this way, and even little
lizards, such as those that live in the cracks of the walls in Italy to
this day; and though their bodies had decayed away long before they
could be dug out, yet the exact impression remained, and in many cases,
by pouring soft plaster into the holes, men have reproduced to the life
the poor little wriggling body that was caught in such a terrible
prison! You can imagine what great value it has been to historians to
find the things used by people so long ago. In most cases customs change
gradually; the implements and utensils which one generation use are
broken and lost and replaced by new fashions, but here, in one lump,
stamped down hard for ever, are the things caught in a second of time
and held in an iron grip while the years rolled by.
Passing on we find a small temple to the Egyptian god Isis, and this was
the very first object to be discovered. Some men quarrying for stone
struck upon it and thus the long-lost site of the town was found. Then
we see the public baths with all the arrangements for heating the water;
the Pompeians, like the Romans, were very fond of bathing. But it is the
little things of everyday life that impress us most, and we are brought
up suddenly by seeing on a wall a poster of the day advocating the
return of one particular candidate to what was the Pompeian Parliament.
This carries us right back into the midst of them! So does also that
drinking-fountain by the street side, where the marble has been worn
hollow by the hands of those who leaned on it as they stretched forward
to drink at the spout!
We can walk through the market-place where the people bought and sold,
and look down into the great amphitheatre where the shows which they all
loved were held; but as our ship leaves at four o'clock we shall have to
tear ourselves away and hurry back along the little line again, running
round the base of the sullen brooding mountain which may at any time
hurl down his thunder-bolts on the vineyards which still creep up his
sides. Past Herculaneum, now partly unburied, and so to gay Naples,
where the sun is breaking out.
On the quay we see barrows covered with a curious flesh-coloured fruit
about the size and shape of a large pear, and this is quite new to us.
We discover these are called Indian figs; but why Indian? They are grown
here and are a popular native fruit. They are covered by a thick skin,
easily peeled off, and are full of juice and very large pips; they have
a sweetish rather sickly taste, but one can imagine they must be a great
boon to the poor Italians who can get a good refreshing drink for almost
nothing.
Once aboard we discover that something has gone wrong--a propeller has
dropped a blade and the ship will not start for some hours. We might
have stayed longer in Pompeii after all!
There are compensations for everything and soon we find that this delay
is going to be a good one for us, for it will enable us to see two other
volcanoes which otherwise we should have missed in the darkness.
We ask the night-steward to wake us in time for the first, and it seems
as if our heads had hardly touched the pillows when we hear his voice at
the door, "Stromboli in sight, sir!" It is cold and we are very sleepy;
grumbling, we make our way to the front of the deck below the bridge,
and suddenly, in the blackness ahead, there shoots up a short straight
column of fire like that from the chimney of a blast furnace. It
disappears as quickly and quietly as it came, and odd bits of flame,
like red-hot cinders, roll this way and that, then all is black again.
As the sky quickly lightens we see outlined against it a cone or
pyramid, and from the summit there shoots out another column of flame,
to disappear almost instantly.
"Stromboli sky-rocketing," says the voice of one of the officers on the
bridge above.
All the time we are gliding nearer and nearer to the wonderful mountain,
when, with an amazing swiftness, up flashes the sun, sweeping rays of
colour over the sky, changing it from pale primrose to fiery orange, and
there, black against it, is a little island so neatly made that it
appears an exact triangle with a bite out of one side near the top.
Stromboli is one of a group of little islands. What had appeared as
flame in the darkness shows at the next eruption to be a puff of smoke
from which burning lumps fall on the rocky sides and down the
precipices. This happens about every quarter of an hour. The sea
meantime changes to vivid blue. We are quite close now and can see tiny
white houses nestling on the edge of the island amid clusters of green.
What happens to the people if the boiling lava rolls down through their
vineyards and into their houses? There is no one to answer that
question. Perhaps it never gets so far, perhaps Stromboli has not yet
shown himself to be a fierce volcano, but limits his eruptions to angry
splutterings which beat on the scarred precipices of the steep sides
above the dwellings of the people,--anyway, I don't think I should care
to live there, just in case----
We awake suddenly from our intent gazing to find ourselves the
laughing-stock of a crowd of decently dressed men and women who have
come up in the daylight, properly clad, and there are we in
dressing-gowns, not over-long, and slippered feet! But no one minds
these little mishaps on board ship, and with dignity we pass through to
our cabin, smiling and feeling very superior to have seen so much more
than the lie-abeds!
As it happens, it is Sunday morning and a very different day from
yesterday, with bright sun and a clear sky. As a rule there is service
on board ship on Sundays, but to-day we are just going to pass through
the Straits of Messina, and the captain must be on the bridge the whole
time, and there is no clergyman to take the duty for him, so we can't
have it. But we could hardly pass a Sunday better than in admiring the
marvellous beauty which God has given to us in this world for our
delight.
It is about four hours after passing Stromboli that we enter the straits
which separate Sicily, the three-cornered island, from Italy, which
seems to be kicking it away with the toe of its foot. Land begins to
close in on us, and in the dazzling sunshine it appears radiant, while
the sea is a mirror of blue. On both sides we see houses and villages
built on the sloping shores, but the interest heightens when we come
close abreast the great town of Messina which, on the 20th of December
1908, suddenly became world-famous owing to the awful misfortune which
befell it. All educated people knew Messina by name previously, but it
was not until the Italian wires flashed the story of the earthquake
which had wrought destruction so swiftly and dramatically that it will
always be ranked as among the most appalling that ever happened, that
everyone with one consent turned their attention to Messina, and the
eyes of the whole world were focused on it. The suddenness of the
calamity was the most terrible feature of it. It was early in the
morning when the earth shook and heaved and raised itself, and in about
four minutes, what had been a happy prosperous town was reduced to a
smoking ruin, a shambles of dead bodies, and a hell on earth for the
miserable beings who lived in it! Almost all the houses fell together;
whole streets of them collapsed like a pack of cards, and the shock was
so tremendous that in many cases even the bricks and stone of which they
were made were ground to powder. Tens of thousands of people were
buried before they could get into the streets, and their own houses,
where they had been happy and miserable, had been born or married or
suffered, were turned into their tombs. Those who were killed outright
were not the most unfortunate, for others were caught by a limb beneath
falling stones, or crushed and held yet living, and their direful
shrieks of agony added to the horrors, for there was none to help them,
all were in the grip of the same misfortune. To add to the disaster
flames broke out from the ruined houses, and the city was lit by the
lurid light of fire rising to heaven. No one will ever know how many
hapless creatures were burnt to death! There was no possibility of
working the telegraph wires, and the people left alive simply had to
wait for help till help came. And meantime volumes of water, disturbed
by the change of sea-level, rolled in upon the land!
Directly the news startled the whole civilised world, ships of all
nations, which happened to be anywhere near, hastened to the rescue.
Camps were hastily run up and the survivors taken to them, food was
supplied to all who needed it, the wounded and maimed were attended to,
and wherever possible those who were still living in the ruins were dug
out and set free. But, as you may imagine, this was a work of great
danger, because dragging out a beam or stone often sent a shattering
avalanche down on the top of the rescuers.
The number of those destroyed can never be known certainly, but it is
estimated at somewhere about 200,000, for Messina is a large town.
Charitable people sent subscriptions from all quarters; money flowed in;
those children who had lost their parents, and even in some cases their
names and identity, being too small to give any account of themselves,
were placed in kind homes and provided for, and those who were
completely crippled assured of support; others were given the means to
start life once more. It is difficult to imagine that all this happened
only a few short years ago now; even though we are quite close to
Messina, and have the use of a very fine pair of field-glasses, it is
difficult to make out any of the mischief. It appears as if the houses
had been rebuilt, warehouses and chimneys stand as usual, and the great
viaduct spans the valley; but those who know say that this is only a
good face seen from the sea, and that ruins still lie in quantities
behind. In the memories of those who passed through the earthquake there
must be a shuddering horror never to be forgotten, a black mark passing
athwart their lives and cutting them into two parts--that before and
that after the catastrophe.
Farther on more little villages appear, some looking just like a spilt
box of child's bricks tumbled any way down a mountain spur. Then we
catch sight of the great majesty of Etna, the third volcano we have seen
in two days, and we stand lost in admiration of his pure beauty.
The smoothness of the eternal snow glows like a silver shield on the
breast of the giant peak. Far below are vineyards, olive groves,
orchards, and orange and lemon groves, for Sicily is celebrated for
these fruits. Above them are beech-woods, so deep and dark that they are
seldom penetrated even by the peasants; beautiful as the beech is, it is
a poisonous tree and nothing can live beneath its shade.
It is all so smiling and peaceful on this serene Sunday morning that we
can hardly believe that in Etna too there lies the raging demon of
mighty force. Even as we watch a faint puff of pure white smoke, so thin
that it might be mistaken for a wisp of cloud, floats away from the peak
into the infinite blue, and we know by his breath that the demon is not
dead but only sleeping.
"Lucky indeed to get Etna clear of clouds," says one of the passengers
near us. "I've been through the Straits a score of times and I've hardly
ever seen it as you are seeing it for the first time to-day."
Volcanoes and earthquakes are closely connected. There lies within this
world of ours an imprisoned power of vital heat, which now and again
bursts through at weak places in the crust. Geologists tell us that
these weak places may be traced in long lines on the earth's surface,
and along one of them lie the volcanoes we have seen. But the laws which
govern the earthquake and the volcano are hardly yet understood, even
to-day.
After calling at another little Italian port for the mails, we do not
stop anywhere for the next few days, but steam along steadily, making up
for lost time. We have seen something of the southern part of our own
continent of Europe. We have landed in Spain at Gibraltar, we set foot
on French soil in Toulon, where the steamer called to take on passengers
from across France, we have visited Italy at Naples, and these are the
principal countries which line the huge land-locked sea. In old times
the whole civilised world centred around the Mediterranean, and Rome,
which is now the capital of Italy, dominated it all, making one mighty
empire. The dominion of Rome reached far northward to our own islands,
and she was so secure and supreme in her power that it never entered the
heads of the Romans then living that some day the whole empire would be
split up and distributed. Their dominion reached even to Egypt, where we
are now going, and to the Holy Land, which we shall visit afterwards;
their fleets covered the sea, their armies strode hot-footed across the
land, making broad ways that passed over hill and valley without pause
or rest, yet now the empire of Rome is but a name.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV
THE STRANGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
Looking down from the deck of the _Orontes_ it seems as if we were
peering into the folds of a black gauze curtain, between which demons
from the pit rush yelling to and fro. These men are black from head to
foot, with the exception of the gleaming white teeth which show between
their open lips. They are black to begin with by nature, and are further
covered, scanty clothing and all, with a thick coating of coal-dust,
which sticks to their oily skins and dirty rags. They are digging
frantically into the heaped-up coal of a great barge lying alongside,
gathering it into baskets and rushing up planks to deposit it in the
coal bunkers of the steamer, and all the while they shout in a strange
chant at the tops of their voices. When white men are doing severe work
they are silent, as they need all their strength for the task in hand,
but when their dark-skinned brothers work they find it necessary to
shout as loudly as they can, and the harder the work the more noise they
make. At a little distance their confused yelling is like the cheering
of a great crowd at a popular football match.
[Illustration: PORT SAID--STATUE OF DE LESSEPS.]
All the port-holes have been closed to keep out the dust, the ship's
carpets are rolled away, the place looks as if prepared for a spring
cleaning. It is time for us to go, for we have arrived at Port Said, the
principal landing-place for Egypt, and we have to say good-bye to the
_Orontes_ here, though we shall not forget her as the first of the many
ships which carry us on our great adventure.
It is easy enough to get a boat, competition is keen, and the laughing
bright-eyed boys who row us across seem in the best of humour; they make
a brilliant picture, for they are dressed in scarlet and blue for
choice, with bits of orange wherever they can stick them on.
Port Said, where we have landed, is a large town with a big business,
yet it is built on a site which a comparatively short time ago was
nothing but a marshy salt lake. Men of all nations walk in its streets,
and ships of all nations pass through its port. It is a strange
mingling of East and West. Here the two meet, and those who come from
the West for the first time cry with delight, "This is the East!" while
those who have been exiled for many years from their western homes and
are at last returning, exclaim, drawing a long breath, "Now I feel I
really am in sight of home."
We are actually in Africa, that mysterious land which still contains the
greater part of the unexplored territory of the world, and which for
long was described as "The Unknown Continent," though it can hardly be
called that now. Of all the countries which make up Africa, Egypt is the
strangest, indeed, she is the strangest country in all the world--a
weird and mysterious land whose ways are not as the ways of any other
country on earth.
Imagine a land much longer than it is broad, in the shape of an ordinary
hearth-rug, and then lay down lengthwise along this a mighty river which
divides it into two parts. Have you seen the Eiffel Tower? If not, you
have at all events seen pictures of it, well, imagine an Eiffel Tower
lying prostrate along the hearth-rug and you will have a pretty fair
idea of Egypt and its river. The legs of the Eiffel Tower are very near
the bottom and stick out sharply; from the point where they meet the
long body stretches upwards straight as an arrow.
The Nile is like that. Not so far above where it runs into the
Mediterranean Sea it is split up into many channels like the legs of the
tower. It is at the foot of one of these legs we have just landed, and
presently we are going to pass on up to the junction of the many
channels at Cairo, which is the capital town of Egypt. Of course the
Nile is not perfectly straight and rigid like the man-made tower; it
winds and turns, as all rivers do, but, taking it as a whole, the
comparison is a good one.
We have to wait for our baggage to be brought across from the ship so
that we can see it through the custom-house, and here it comes at last;
it is carried by a boy about your age who is simply lost to sight
beneath it. They begin young! He stands grinning, well pleased with
himself. He certainly deserves a good tip, for he is no shirker. We have
just got some Egyptian money from Cook's, so can give it him in his own
coinage, though he would not in the least mind taking English money.
Egyptian money is not very difficult to understand: the principal coin
is a piastre, which is equal to twopence-halfpenny; and half a piastre,
which looks like a silver sixpence, but isn't silver at all, serves the
purposes of a penny, though it is really equal to a penny-farthing.
There are no coppers here. The most useful coin--corresponding to our
shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira--is rather like an
overgrown shilling to look at and equal to five piastres or a halfpenny
more than a shilling.
Now we have only to buy some cigarettes for me and some Turkish Delight
for--well, for us both! Then we can go on to our train. Cigarettes and
Turkish Delight are the two things no one ever fails to buy at Port
Said, for here you get them good and cheap.
It will take us four hours to reach Cairo by rail, and we shan't see
anything of the country, as it is dark. And what a country it is!
You will never get used to it, for it is run on lines of its own. The
part of it lying between the legs of the imaginary Eiffel Tower, in
other words, between the mouths of the Nile, is called the Delta, from
the Greek letter [Greek: Delta], which shape it is. Except in this delta
rain never falls, that is to say, not to speak of. Up in Assouan, one of
the larger towns, which we shall visit, they say, for instance, "Rain?
Let me see--oh yes, we did have a shower, two years ago it was, on such
and such a day at four in the afternoon. Pretty smart shower too; the
roofs of the mud houses got squashy and slipped down on the inhabitants.
Quite funny, wasn't it?"
It seems funny to us that anyone could remember the hour of one
particular shower two years ago! With us if there is no rain for a few
weeks the farmers begin to cry out that their crops are ruined. What a
glorious land Egypt must be to live in when there is no chance of any
excursion being spoiled by the weather!
"But how in the world does anything manage to grow?"
I thought you would ask that. Egypt has a system of its own. Once every
year this gigantic river, which cleaves the land into two parts, rises
and overflows all its banks; it submerges the low-lying flat land near
it and carries all over it a rich fertilising mud. The land is
thoroughly soaked, and when the Nile slowly retires, sinking back into
its channel, the crops are planted in the spongy earth.
For many ages no one knew why this happened, and indeed no one troubled
to ask; the ancient Egyptians thought the Nile was a god, and that this
wonderful overflow was a miracle of beneficence performed for their
benefit. Then Europeans began to penetrate into the heart of Africa and
the mystery was solved. The Nile rises far up in the vast continent
where there are mighty lakes lying in among the hills. The three largest
of these lakes are called Victoria, Albert, and Edward, after our
sovereigns, for the men who discovered them were British and naturally
carried the names of their rulers to plant as banners wherever they
penetrated. These lakes are not in Egypt, but far beyond, in a region
where at one season of the year there is a terrific downfall of rain;
this swells them up and makes them burst forth from every outlet in a
tremendous flood. The Nile carries off most of this water, and some
other rivers, which flow into it up there, bring down masses of water
too, and all this rushes onward, spreading far over the thirsty land of
Egypt and turns the desert into a garden, making it "blossom as the
rose." Wherever the water reaches the land bears fruit, but beyond it is
sandy and sterile desert.
The length of this amazing river from Lake Victoria to the sea is now
reckoned to be between three thousand and four thousand miles, or almost
half the length of the earth's diameter, and for over a thousand miles
it receives no tributaries at all. In almost all rivers we are
accustomed to we see streams and other tributaries running in and
swelling the volume of water as the main river passes down to the sea,
but for all these miles the Nile flows unsupported and unreplenished
beneath the blazing sun. No wonder the Egyptians worshipped anything so
splendid!
The total length of England and Scotland together, from John o' Groats
to Land's End, is eight hundred miles, which gives us a measuring rod to
estimate the length of this splendid highway, which is frequently half a
mile broad.
Though the yearly inundation made cultivation possible, men soon learned
that it was not enough; besides this they must water the crops between
times, and so means were devised for storing up the water; but these
were mostly very simple and primitive until Great Britain went to Egypt
to help the Khedive out of his difficulties and to teach him how to
govern for the good of his people. Then immense works were started for
holding up the water which would otherwise have run away to the sea at
flood-time and been wasted.
We arrive at Cairo very late at night, and when we get to our bedroom we
find both beds looking rather like large meat-safes, for they are
enclosed in white net curtains. These fall from a top or ceiling
resembling that on old four-posters.
[Illustration: ENGLISH SOLDIERS CLIMBING THE PYRAMIDS.]
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE AT CAIRO.]
You stare at them in a puzzled way a minute or so, and then declare,
"What a stuffy arrangement! I'm not going to sleep shut in like that!"
"Please yourself, but you run the risk of having red lumps on your nose
in the morning if a mosquito takes a fancy to you!"
"Oh, they're mosquito-curtains! I've heard of them. What are you going
to do?"
"Run no risks!"
At last, protesting, you agree to do likewise, and climb inside your
meat-safe. You'll soon get used to it, and though it is too cold here
for any mosquito to be very lively, it is safer. In some countries
the curtains are useful for keeping off worse things than
mosquitoes--tarantulas, for instance!
We are only staying one day in Cairo so are out early the next morning,
and find that the town looks on the whole very like a French town.
Indeed, were it not for the red fez or tarboush which so many men wear,
even when they dress otherwise in European costume, and for the turbans
and flowing robes of the native dress, we might be in Paris or
Marseilles.
We go to the top of a very wide main street to await the tram which is
to take us to the Pyramids.
"Poste-carte, sir-r-r-r," says insinuatingly a ragged ruffian, thrusting
vividly coloured picture postcards into our faces as we stand. We turn
away, shaking our heads. He quickly runs round to face us again,
"Poste-carte, sir-r-r," in a tone as if the conversation had only just
begun and he had great hopes of a sale.
[Illustration: "POSTE-CARTE AND BEADES," CAIRO.]
"No, thank you; go away," I say as sternly and emphatically as I can,
for he is not too clean.
"Poste-carte, Cismus cards, nice," he continues with unabated zeal as if
we had not spoken at all. Resolutely we turn our backs on him and are
confronted by a very gorgeous individual in a long loose gown and
turban, with innumerable strings of beads of the cheapest and commonest
"Made-in-Germany" kind, hung in festoons round his neck. "Beades,
sir-r-r," he begins persuasively, and the other chimes in a duet,
"Poste-carte." "Beades," continues the new tormentor, swinging his wares
in our faces. Evidently "no" is a word not understood by these gentry.
They go on at it hard for about five minutes, our stony silence in no
way diminishing their enthusiasm, and then from the corner of my eye I
see a tall man, with an exceptionally handsome face, clothed in a
beautiful long coat of blue cloth cut away to show a great orange sash
underneath.
"You want guide?" he says, hastening to the fray and sending the other
men flying with "Imshi, imshi!" "Me good guide, beest guide in Cairo,
show you Pyramids, all-a sights, verry cheap, sirr, me show you, only
ten shillings, citadel and----"
"I don't want a guide, thank you."
The gentleman's knowledge of English is limited apparently, for he
doesn't understand that. In exactly the same tone in which he has just
spoken he begins again, "Me good guide, showing you all sights, cheap,
verry cheap, Pyramids, telling you all things, bazaar, only eight
shilling----"
By the time he has worked himself through all the grades down to two
shillings, his eye falls on two other newly arrived tourists, evidently
Americans, and he rushes upon the fresh prey. Luckily our car comes in
sight just then, for a second dragoman, as these guides are called, has
just caught sight of us and is racing across the street as fast as his
legs will carry him.
As the tram starts we hear his desperate "Me verry good guide,
best--bazaar----" He is quite willing to risk his life in jumping on to
the moving tram at the smallest sign from us, so we simply hold our
breath and resolve not to wink an eyelid until the danger is past.
[Illustration: THE PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX.]
* * * * *
So those are the Pyramids!
We have arrived after a very cold and rather monotonous run of about an
hour.
Was there ever a time when one had not heard of the Pyramids and
pictured their vast triangles rising out of the desert? But for my part,
I had always imagined them set far off in solitude so that one came upon
them gradually, seeing them first as mere hillocks in the immensity of
the sand. Instead of that they spring upon us suddenly, rearing up on a
height as the tram speeds toward them along a tree-shaded road across a
vast artificial lake.
The lake is picturesque, studded with little islands and promontories
covered with houses and palm trees, so also are the groups of donkeys
and camels with their attendant men waiting at the terminus for
tourists, but these things disperse the mystery to which we had looked
forward. The large and comfortable hotel at the foot of the white
winding road which leads up to the Pyramids is doubtless useful, but----
As we approach on foot we experience surprise to see that the blocks of
which the largest Pyramid is composed are so small they look almost like
bricks. Pictures show them as gigantic blocks up which stout ladies are
being "boosted"--sorry, but there is no other word--by heated dragomans.
As we draw near we see that the blocks _are_ fairly big. Nearer
still--what is that crawling about on the edge of the great cone? Hullo,
it's a man, and there is another and another. They do look small. Why,
there is one who has reached the top; he is not to be compared with a
fly so much as a midge--who would have thought it? We are close under
now and I find that the block by which I am standing is the height of my
shoulder, and I am fairly tall. This must be an exceptional one, but--it
isn't! They are all the same! Watching the men clambering up above,--men
who we now see are English soldiers dressed in khaki,--we can understand
why they seem to find the ascent so difficult--each block is shoulder
high and requires much strenuous exertion to surmount. They cannot
stride from one to the other as on a flight of stairs. One man is
exhausted and gives up half-way, and a cheerful Cockney voice comes down
from above telling him to "put his beck into it!" He'll need it.
Standing thus and looking up we get some idea of the enormous size of
the Pyramid, which makes its blocks look small by contrast. It is
bigger, far bigger than one expected. This is the largest of all, built
anything between 5000 and 6000 years ago, as the tomb of King Cheops. He
built it for himself by cruel forced labour crushed out of starving men;
he intended that his body should lie like the kernel of a nut in this
mighty shell.
As we pass beyond it we see another, farther off in the desert sand, and
yet another. We are accustomed to speak of the Pyramids as if these few
at Gizeh were all, but there are others scattered about Egypt, though
they are less known and visited.
Then, quite unexpectedly, we come upon the Sphinx. It is in a hollow in
the sand like the nest children scoop out for shelter on the seashore,
only vastly greater. As we struggle round the yielding rim, with the
powdery sand silting over our boot-tops, we feel something of the wonder
of it thrilling through us. Let us sit down here facing it by these
broken stones, where we can be a little sheltered from the chilly wind
and gritty sand. We are looking at the oldest thing in Egypt. You will
see farther south many splendid examples of amazing age but nothing to
equal the Sphinx. When Abraham came down into Egypt the Sphinx was old
beyond the memory of man! When King Cheops built his Pyramid the Sphinx
sat with his back turned to it wearing the same inscrutable smile that
it has to-day. It has watched kings succeed and die, it has watched
empires spread and collapse, it has watched civilisations ripen and
wither away. All the known history of mankind has unrolled before it,
not the short history of a few trifling centuries which we call ours,
but the history of the world.
The crouching figure is lion-like in attitude, but how human of face in
spite of its broken nose. It was carven of the solid rock and fashioned
with its face to the sunrise and its back to the desert. No one knows
the thought in the mind of the puny artist who brought it into being and
then shrivelled beside it like a blade of grass. Was it intended to be a
god? It has been silted up by sand and unburied again; it has been
worshipped and hated. It has been reverenced and shot at, so that its
face is chipped and its nose broken away, and still it smiles with
fierce serenity.
Sit silently.
"Poste-carte----"
"Imshi, imshi."
That Arabic word, picked up at hazard from the dragoman, has acted like
a talisman--the pest has actually gone!
There creeps up beside you, very slowly and determinedly, an old, old
man. "Fortune told," he says almost in a whisper, groping for your hard
boyish hand. So be it! He at least does not send the spirit of the place
flying away. Nonsense it may be, but these fellows do know something----
Give him that five piastre piece that looks like a large shilling and
listen to his quaint expressive English.
"Clever head, head very much good, gooder than many men, but an enemy
inside there. You see a long, long road, and you go that road, then
coming hills and that road grow tiresome and you stop and say, 'Not
worth it, I don't care,' an enemy here--slay him!
"Much work lies to your hands to do when they grow large. In many lands
I see them plucking down cities and raising ships from the depths of the
sea. Strange things be waiting for those hands in all the world. Many
tongues you speaking, and many things you gain. But the hand not opening
easily. What it gains it grips, hard and tight; it is a close hand, and
that which comes thereout drops slowly between the fingers to friends
also as to foes. Riches and work and honour hold the hands, and only
death will tear them away. With them all is a bitterness and a glory
greater than the shine of what men count joy. But in that day when you
eat with kings the desire of life shall pass from you!"
Hullo, old boy! He gave you a good shilling's worth, anyhow! Though it
was rather a nasty hit that at your Scottish national character! You
don't believe it surely? Look at the Sphinx and laugh. What does it
matter if we two midges, among all the midges that have crawled about
his paws, don't exactly enjoy ourselves the whole of our brief day?
What is that? How you start! No, it's not a lion roaring, though it's a
pretty good imitation; it's only a camel cursing and snarling with all
his might while his owner piles a few bushels' weight on his back. He
doesn't really mind it, but it is the immemorial custom of camels to
protest with hideousness and confused noise, and if he didn't do it his
trade union would be down upon him.
"Poste-carte----"
Come, let us go!
[Illustration: STRANGE LOOKING BEASTS MINCING ALONG LIKE GIGANTIC
PEACOCKS.]
CHAPTER V
THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT
Of course you have been in a cinematograph theatre, and there, seated
comfortably, have watched the various scenes pass before you. The great
charm of these scenes is that the people really did do the things which
we here see them doing, even down to the smallest gestures. But often
the pleasure is spoilt by knowing that the actors were only making these
gestures for the purpose of being photographed; also the scenes are
sometimes disconnected and scrappy, and seldom indeed is it that they
are represented in colour, and then, though the colour is clever enough,
it is not like that of nature.
To-day we are watching a cinematograph which has none of these
drawbacks. We are seated in a leather-lined railway carriage running
from Cairo southward up the country to a place called Luxor, and passing
before us every minute are vivid pictures of the life of Egypt. The
railway runs along the middle of Egypt, just as the Nile does, but we do
not often see the river from the line, for at this time of the year it
flows low down between its banks. It is on the other side of the railway
that the main interest lies. Here there is a canal as straight as the
line and close beside it, and on the far side of it is a sort of raised
tow-path--the great highway of Egypt. We see it against a fringe of
bushy palm trees at one minute, and the next against a field of tall,
green-growing stuff, which looks exactly like those rushes found on the
banks of our own rivers. This, however, is maize, or, as you probably
know it better, Indian corn, which forms the staple food of the people.
The brown feathery heads wave in the wind, but the corn itself is tucked
away in the thickness of the stalk. You must have seen a "cob" of Indian
corn some time, with all the flat yellow grains nestling in a honeycomb
of little cells. To-day in Egypt you will see everyone eating them; even
the solemn baby seated astride its mother's shoulder picks out the
grains and nibbles them like a little monkey. The straw part of the
plant is used for many things: it feeds the numerous domestic animals of
the Egyptians to begin with--the donkeys, camels, buffaloes, bullocks,
goats--and it forms thatch for the huts and makes bedding.
Notice that man over there in the field; his cotton gown is of the
purest blue, which shows up richly against the vivid green of the maize
stalks. There is another seated far back on the rump of a small donkey
who is tripping along on its stiff little legs. It wears no harness of
any kind beyond a cord round its neck, which enables anyone to catch
hold of it. The man has no saddle and he holds his long legs straight
forward to prevent his feet from touching the ground, and from time to
time he guides or goads the donkey with a little sharp-pointed stick.
Close behind him, walking fast to keep up, is a tall woman in black with
a black shawl covering her mouth, her dress is a mass of grey dust as
far as the waist, and drags up the dust in clouds as she moves. On her
head is a large bundle and on her hip a large baby. She is the wife of
the lordly individual riding so comfortably ahead, and she takes this
state of affairs as a matter of course. The scene arouses anger in the
breast of a nice American with a grey moustache and keen grey eyes, who
shares our compartment.
[Illustration: "MAN AND WIFE."]
"So long as they treat their womenfolk like that they'll never rise to
anything better," he says emphatically. "The higher the civilisation of
a nation is the higher the position of its women. A nation of men who
ride and let the women carry the burdens is bound to be rotten and
flabby."
Next there passes across our window-frame a flock of goats, but they are
not much like those we know--they are dark brown and black, with thick
rough coats and cheeky tufted tails; numbers of kids dance up and down
the steep sides of the tow-path after the manner of kids all the world
over. A small boy, dressed in what appears to be a striped flannel
night-shirt, with a tiny skull-cap on his head, is driving them. He
pulls his single garment up to his waist as he dances and pirouettes as
if the joy of living were almost too much for him. He is enveloped in a
cloud of dust raised by the goats, but he snatches handfuls of the dust
from the ground and flings it in the air around as if he could never get
enough of it!
"The Lady of Shalott," in Tennyson's poem, who watched in her mirror all
who went down to Camelot, cannot ever have seen anything half so
interesting as this.
Presently we meet a long string of fine-looking camels, one of them pure
white; they are fastened by a connecting rope and so covered with loads
of bristling twigs that each looks like a walking bush, out of which the
great padded feet are planted with deliberate steps and the haughty
heads swaying at the ends of the long necks stick out. It is the scrub
of the cotton bush that they are carrying; you will see fields of it
presently, some of it bursting into fluffy pods, for cotton growing is
one of the most extensive and profitable of Egyptian industries. The
twigs and branches are used as fuel by the people, who have a happy
knack of letting nothing be wasted.
"I never!" exclaims the American. "If that isn't like them!" We are
overtaking a second string of camels, precisely similar to the first,
and similarly laden, stepping gingerly and protestingly in the opposite
direction from the first, having just passed them. "Why couldn't they
arrange things better?" demands the American. "If one lot is going this
way and the other that, an exchange would have saved time and labour."
In America labour is costly and all sorts of inventions for saving time
have been invented; in this eastern land time is of no value at all, and
a man working all day in the fields is content to earn a shilling.
Perhaps the contrast with their own country is the reason of the
fascination Egypt has for Americans!
What are those strange-looking beasts mincing along like gigantic
peacocks? As we draw nearer we see that they are camels too, each
bearing a load of sword-bladed leaves, which hang down over their
hindquarters exactly like the folded fan-tail of a peacock. Upon my
word I never noticed it before, but a camel walks just like a peacock,
with the same hesitating "Don't-care-a-hang-for-you" stride. The bundles
so arranged hide the animals' hind legs and bring out the resemblance.
But what is it they are carrying? Not maize stalks this time, nor bushy
cotton twigs, for these stalks are a dull crimson at the upper end. It
is sugar-cane, which grows in quantities here, and forms a more
profitable crop than maize. You will see it sold at the stations; the
people buy it, and, breaking off a joint, eat it with pleasure.
We cannot tear ourselves away from this fascinating window even for a
moment; far in the distance across the green fields and waving palm
trees we see glimpses of the desert, looking pinkish-yellow, and rising
up in it, changing with every mile we travel, are many pyramids, not
only those famous ones at Gizeh we visited yesterday, but others
stretching farther and farther away. You will notice that the favourite
colour for the dress of the peasants, or fellaheen, as they are called,
is a glorious blue, but that all the women are in black--most unsuitable
of hues, as they live and move and have their being amid drab-coloured
dust; khaki would be much better.
As our breakfast, though better than that in France, was nothing so very
wonderful, we begin to feel hungry, and are ready to go along early to
the luncheon-car; we had a good dinner in that one on the train coming
up from Port Said to Cairo, and anticipate something of the same kind.
As we get up the American remarks casually, "Best pull in your belts and
have a smoke--there isn't any."
No luncheon-car! No means of getting any kind of refreshment on the
train! And we, having started at eight, are in for a journey of fourteen
hours! Lively this! It is one of the little incidental discomforts of
travel! The American is in the same plight himself. But he found out
soon after we started that there was no restaurant-car; it only runs
three times a week, for the season hasn't begun yet!
We call the Egyptian attendant to find out if there is any prospect of
buying anything on the way. He stands grinning very affably but doesn't
understand a word of English. Presently, however, he seems to
understand, and dashes off, to return triumphantly with a feather-brush
in his hand with which he violently flops the seats of the carriages and
all our personal belongings until we are choked and smothered with the
dust.
In English fashion we have kept the windows open, not realising that in
this country it is impossible, and that slowly we have been silted up
with a layer of fine soft dust; but we didn't feel the inconvenience of
it much until this idiot stirred it up and made it unendurable.
Having accomplished this great feat he stands still, grinning and
holding out a broad palm. Officials on the trains are probably forbidden
to utter the wicked word "Bakshish," meaning tips, but they can ask
quite as well without it.
Having got rid of him, we turn in despair to the station at which we
have just pulled up. There is a fine mingled crowd on the platform.
Lying in the sun, awaiting their master's pleasure, are two beautifully
kept white donkeys, with their hides clipped in neat patterns, very
superior creatures indeed to what we know as donkeys, more like mules in
size. A group of children, fascinated by our strange faces, draw nearer
and gaze their fill unwinkingly; one poor little mite of about four has
a mass of flies crawling all over its face, especially about the eyes.
It never attempts to brush them off, for long habit has made it callous.
Formerly very many children were so afflicted, and the crawling flies,
carrying disease, made them blind; but since the British took the matter
in hand the evil is much less. Yet so indifferent are the mothers, that
in many cases even when lotion is supplied free for the children's faces
they will not trouble to use it!
There is nothing eatable being sold in the station except fruit, but
there seems plenty of that, and by the time the train starts again we
find ourselves with a fine assortment in rich colours of purple and
orange and scarlet. First there is a packet of dates which looks all
right on the top, but turning them out we find the purple side of one
had been placed carefully uppermost, and the rest are all hard, green,
and unripe, not in the least like the sweet juicy dates we are
accustomed to. The attendant, who is watching, scoops them up and
devours them as if he hadn't been fed for a month. Then comes a bit of
sugar-cane, stringy and sickly, which makes us feel as if we had bitten
into a piece of sweet wood when we try it. That great purple pomegranate
is, like all pomegranates, unsatisfactory and full of seeds, and though
the little green limes are refreshing for the moment while we suck the
juice, after a while our lips begin to smart as if they were raw, and we
both keep on furtively wiping them. It is a tantalising feast, and the
American smiles serenely as he smokes in his corner and refuses to have
anything to do with it. The only thing we do get out of it are some
really good green figs, which cannot, however, be eaten without
shameless messiness, as they are so difficult to peel.
When the afternoon sun grows scorchingly hot the grinning attendant
proves himself for once useful, by showing us that we can pull up
sun-shutters with wooden slats outside the glass ones. He has indeed
been anxious to pull them up all round the compartment ever since we
started, and nothing but physical force has restrained him, for he
cannot conceive how anyone could want to look out. Even now we keep down
those on the sunless side, which grieves him deeply.
So all the afternoon we watch the glorious scenes changing in sunlight;
we see the sailing boats, with their tapering white wings, laden with
cargoes of straw, drifting up the canal, driven by the strong north
wind; we pass innumerable villages, and some larger towns, where
market-day has attracted vast crowds.
The small villages are indeed wonderful, and the first one excited us
all three so much that we had to hurry to the window. Imagine a colony
of last year's swallows' nests under the eaves, or a collection of
ruined pigsties and sheds, only they are not ruins at all, but living,
thriving villages with healthy people in them. The houses are all made
of mud; a few are fashioned out of mud bricks, but many are merely of
mud stuck and moulded together as a child would form a mud house with
his hands. The doors and the holes for windows are crooked and lop-sided
as they would be in a childish attempt. The roof is covered over with an
untidy thatch of straw, thrown on anyhow, with piles of cotton scrub on
the top of it. This scrub is for firing, and it is kept up there in the
Egyptian's only storehouse; it is backed up by cakes of dried buffalo
dung used for the same purpose. As it never rains the fuel is quite safe
from damp.
Every man builds his own house as it pleases him, without regard to the
style or position of his neighbour's, consequently the streets are
narrow crooked passages of uneven levels; there is not a green thing in
them, and the people live in dust and eat it and wallow in it. Here and
there you can see a tray of flat cakes pushed out into the midst of the
dust to bake in the sun and form a playground for the flies and the
microbes, for the Egyptian has no respect for microbes, he is
germ-proof; for generations he and his forefathers have drunk the Nile
water, unfiltered and carried in goat-skins not too well cured. Yet the
people are happy and the children apparently a gay set of youngsters.
Little Gassim or Achmed, in the single unchanged and unwashed garment
that covers their little brown bodies, dance and roll and sing and drive
the loathly black buffaloes to the water and eat scraps of sugar-cane,
and are as happy as the day is long. They work hard, it is true, from
the time they can toddle, but so does everyone else, and all the animals
do their share of toil, day in and day out. "I can't understand why they
don't find a way of harnessing the turkeys," says the American
sarcastically as we pass a lordly camel, stepping, with protest in every
movement, alongside a sturdy bullock who helps to drag a primitive
plough. The plough merely scratches the surface of the ground, but that
is enough, for the Egyptian will never go deeper than he need.
[Illustration: A WATER-CARRIER.]
We are getting very hungry indeed! Six hours more! How are we going to
stand it?
Hurrah! A bit of luck! The American has been along the corridor and come
across some friends who are getting out at the next station. They have
presented him with the remains of a lunch-basket supplied by their
hotel, and he is generously willing to share it with us. Never was
prize-packet opened with greater eagerness; suppose it should only
contain enough for one?
[Illustration]
Amid the white wrappings of the open pannier we find slices of tongue,
rolls of bread, chicken legs, hard-boiled eggs, and a bottle of
soda-water!
Never did food taste better! We sit gnawing the chicken bones and
blessing the American!
Meantime the sun falls and a splendour you never yet have imagined fills
the air. Streaks of flaming colour shoot athwart the sky, bursting up
behind the tufted palms; the eastern sky catches the reflection and
shows softest blues and pinkest pinks in contrast. A veil of amber light
hangs like a curtain overhead and changes to orange and again to apricot
as the afterglow sweeps the sky before darkness falls like the curtain
on a scene at the theatre.
[Illustration: COLUMNS IN THE TEMPLE AT LUXOR.]
CHAPTER VI
A MIGHTY MAN
Our beds face the windows, which open like high glass doors, French
fashion; before retiring we set them wide, and close outside the long
shutters made of slats of wood. In the morning we are awakened suddenly,
almost at the same instant, by a red flame glowing between the slats as
fire glows between the bars of a grate. Springing from our curtains we
fling open the shutters, expecting to see a great conflagration, and
behold, it is the sunrise!
The sun does not greet us in such boisterous fashion in England! Here it
fills the sky with a blood-red radiance and lights up the palm groves
in the garden below, where a mighty congregation of small birds are
shrieking out their joy to greet the god of morning. There is an
intensity in it all, in the flaming sky, and in the thrill of the birds'
clarion that sends exhilaration into our veins and makes us feel it is
good to be alive!
It is not long before we are out and around the garden--and what a
garden! Strange coffee-coloured men in blue garments like smock frocks,
with baggy blue trousers caught tightly round their ankles, appear and
disappear noiselessly, their bare brown feet making no sound on the
sanded paths. There is something unreal about it all, something that
makes one think of the _Arabian Nights_ and an enchanted garden. The
hotel is called "The Winter Palace," and in England we should associate
such a name with a vast artificially warmed glasshouse filled with
broad-leaved plants of dark green; here, right overhead, is a tall bush
covered with masses of sulphur-coloured flowers, shaped like tiny
trumpets, hanging in festoons against a sky of glorious blue. Through
plumed palms we catch glimpses of the spreading fingers of a deep red
poinsettia; there is a pink frilled flower shooting toward the sky, so
decorative that it looks exactly like those made of crinkled paper for
decorations; this is the well-known oleander. The grass is so vividly
green that it seems as if the greenness sprang away from the blades; as
we draw near to it we see that it is not all matted together and
interwoven, as is our grass, but is composed of separate blades, each
one apart and upright, all together standing like a regiment of
soldiers. It has to be sown every year freshly, for no roots can survive
the long drought. Close by is a lawn of bare earth, and a boy of about
your age, with a thin pathetic brown face, runs round and round it,
shouting and waving a flapper to keep off the birds from the newly sown
seed.
We are just going to plunge into a grove of trees--some acacias with
leaves like delicate ferns, and others eucalyptus with long narrow
leaves looking like frosted silver--when we find they are growing in a
swamp, with the earth banked up all round to keep the water in!
Other flowers, familiar to us in England, such as roses, look rather
pale and washed-out here in contrast with the flaming beauty of richest
mauve and brightest orange worn by those which are at home in a hot
country. As the sun gets strong we hear the drone of a swarm of great
creatures like prodigious wasps with legs like stilts, which fly around
the sweet-scented blooms. In ancient inscriptions this wasp, or hornet,
was used as the sign of Northern or Lower Egypt. Across the flower-beds
run miniature canals of stone, by means of which the water from the
life-giving river is carried all over the ground, so that it can be
easily watered; a very large part of the time of the blue-bloused
gardeners is spent in watering. A garden which was watered from the sky
would be a miracle to them.
We come back again to the hotel and pass through to the other or front
entrance, where we catch sight of the majestic Nile, which we could not
see in the darkness of our arrival last night. Standing on a high
terrace, bounded by a parapet covered with riotous masses of magenta
bougainvillea, we see the turquoise-blue river, flecked with boats
carrying high, white, three-cornered sails; on the other side rise calm
hills of orange-yellow. We shall visit those hills, for in them are
buried some of the mightiest kings of Egypt, and the wild fastnesses
form a truly royal burial-place, grander than any ordinary mausoleum or
cemetery could ever be. On both sides of the river at one time stood the
royal city of Thebes, one of the best known of all the capitals of Egypt
which sprang up from time to time in its agelong history.
If ever you "do" the ix. book of the _Iliad_ in your schoolwork, you
will find that Homer speaks of Thebes as having one hundred gates and
possessing twenty thousand war-chariots! It extended for about nine
miles along the river-bank.
After breakfast our first plunge into sight-seeing is a visit to the
temple of Luxor, which faces the river just five minutes' walk along the
street from the hotel. This is the very first Egyptian temple we have
examined and it is astonishing how much we can learn from it. That
mighty row of columns, larger and higher than any cathedral pillars you
have ever seen, makes us feel like midgets. Standing close together the
columns spring right into the clear sky, as there is no roof left. Not
so very long ago they were covered up to the capitals in sand and
débris. The poorer Egyptians had built their mud huts in and around them
for generations, and when one hut crumbled away another was put up on
the top of it, and thus the level of the accumulated earth grew higher
and higher. Then some learned Frenchmen saw the wonder of the buried
temple and bought the people out, persuading them to go elsewhere, and
they gradually cleared away the rubbish until the original beauty of the
temple was visible again. Even now, high up on all sides, you can see
the depth of the earth surrounding it like cliffs, and on the top are
squalid huts with dirty children and fluffy impudent goats and
shrill-voiced, black-clad women, living their daily lives and looking
down into the temple.
The ancient Egyptian writing was by signs--a bird meant one thing, a
flower another, and a serpent another, and so on, but for a long time
the meaning of it had been forgotten, and it was impossible for anyone
to read these wonderful signs. But at the very end of the eighteenth
century a great stone was found which had upon it an inscription written
in Greek and in hieroglyphics, as the sign-writing was called, and also
in another writing which used to be employed by the priests, and from
this, before many years had passed, clever men were able to understand
the language of signs and read the inscriptions on the temples, which
told who had built them and much else. This stone was called the Rosetta
Stone, after the place where it was found. It is now in the British
Museum.
This was long before Luxor was unearthed, and the inscriptions were
deciphered as they came to light; by their help it was found that the
temple had been built chiefly by two kings, Amenhetep III. and Rameses
II. who came after him, though not immediately. Rameses added to the
existing work and carried it on. So far as we know all this was between
three and four thousand years ago. In a village in England people are
proud if they can point to any part of their parish church and say,
"This is Norman work," and yet the Normans only came over to England
less than nine hundred years ago! Go back more than three times that,
and try to realise the age of this temple. And even this, as we know, is
not old compared with the Pyramids! Doesn't it make us feel that, as a
nation, we are rather young after all?
Long before we were a nation these mighty kings flourished in Egypt and
lived in pomp and splendour. They each had a different name, of course,
and more than one, but yet they were all Pharaohs, just as at one time
in the Roman Empire each emperor was a Cæsar.
The Pharaohs had unlimited power in their own dominions, and forced
their subjects to work for them as they pleased without giving them any
payment. By some means we can't understand these mighty blocks of
sandstone composing this temple and many others were brought from a
place farther up the river. It is supposed that they were put on great
rafts and floated down at flood-time, but the handling of them is still
a mystery. The men who dealt with them had no steel tools, no driving
force of steam or electricity at their backs, yet they reared buildings
which we to-day, with all our appliances, think masterpieces.
Rameses II. was called the Great; he reigned for over sixty years, and
he has a peculiar interest for us because he is believed to have been
the Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites, while his son and successor,
Menepthah, was the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
Walk up the great aisle of giant columns into the courtyard at the end,
there, between the pillars, stand massive images of granite, most of
them headless, but one perfect except for the ends of the fingers and
toes.
[Illustration: STATUE OF RAMESES II. AT LUXOR.]
Sit down on this fallen block and look at that marvellous image; it is
the mighty Rameses himself! There is a repressed energy and indomitable
purpose about him that tells in every line of a man who never let go and
never allowed himself to be thwarted. His almond-shaped eyes and full
lips, the proud tilt of his head, are not merely conventional, they are
an actual likeness of the man taken from life. He is every inch a king.
His successor, who was his thirteenth son, was probably of the same
type, and one can well imagine his scornful indignation at being asked
to yield up that nation of slaves, the Israelites, whom he treated as we
would not treat animals nowadays. The miracle is that Moses was not
instantly slain for his boldness in proposing it; he was, of course,
screened by his relationship to Pharaoh's daughter, but that would have
counted little had he not been protected by a power far above that of
the king of Egypt.
Close down under the knee of the standing Rameses is the figure of a
plump woman, his favourite wife, Nefertari. The Egyptians had the rather
childish idea that size meant importance, and to them now, as well as
then, women seemed of much less importance than men, so the wife was
represented as being about as high as her husband's knee. In spite of
this, however, women of royal blood were treated with great deference,
and royal ladies enjoyed a freedom like that of western women to-day.
They gave their opinions and transacted business and were seen in
public. Many a king only sat securely on his throne because his wife had
a better title to it than he had. This did not, however, prevent them
from making women very often quite diminutive in size in their statues,
though in some cases the king and queen are the same size and are shown
seated side by side.
It is very quiet and beautiful here in the temple this Sunday morning;
the natives themselves are not allowed to come in, and visitors only on
production of a ticket costing twenty-four shillings, which admits to
all the temples of Egypt; and, as it happens, there is no one but
ourselves. The sparrows twitter overhead in the holes and crannies of
the pillars, and the great grey and black crows wheel silently against
the blue sky, throwing moving shadows on the honey-coloured columns.
If we walk round the back of these solemn statues we shall see that
there is a quantity of deeply cut hieroglyphic writing on a great plaque
at the back of each. The name of the king himself is always written
enclosed in an oblong space called a cartouche; sometimes this cartouche
is supported by two cobras, who are supposed to defend it. The rest of
the writing tells of the deeds of the king and all the mighty feats that
he performed.
Turning to the walls we find them covered with pictures, not coloured
but done in outline by means of deep-cut clean lines. We see the king
offering fruit to weird-looking beings with men's bodies and animals'
heads--these were the Egyptian gods; there were numbers of them, far too
many to remember, but here are a few: Anubis, the jackal-headed; Thoth,
the stork-headed; Sekhet, a goddess with a lion's head (some say a
cat's). Besides these there were others of great importance: Osiris, the
god of the dead, and Isis, his wife--these were the father and mother of
Horus, the hawk-headed god. But it was to the glory of Amen-ra, the king
or chief of all the gods, who can be recognised in the pictures by two
tall feathers like quills standing straight up on his head, that that
particular temple was built.
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN KING.]
On one of the walls we see a long row of men, all exactly similar, one
behind the other--these are some of the numerous sons of Rameses making
offerings. You soon notice that in spite of the vigorous and excellent
outlines of these pictures there is something funny and stiff about
them. That is because the Egyptians had an odd custom of drawing a
person sideways, with his two feet in a straight line, one behind the
other. No one stands like that in real life, and if you try it you will
find how difficult it is not to fall over! Also, though the people they
drew were invariably shown from the side, yet the artists used to make
them look as if they were squared round in the upper part to show the
chest and both shoulders, so that Egyptians in pictures always look
oddly wedge-shaped, being very broad at the top and narrow below. The
eye was also put into the profile face as if it were seen from the
front! Look at any typical Egyptian picture and you will soon pick out
these peculiarities. It seems rather a pity they kept so rigidly to
these silly notions, as they really drew extremely well; but no artist
was original enough to dare to break away from the established custom!
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN QUEEN.]
Inside the temple walls all these scenes have something to do with the
gods and the offerings made to them by the king, but come outside and on
one of the finest bits of wall still standing you will see a most
spirited battle-scene. Look at the king in his chariot with the plunging
horses! He is drawing his bow and pursuing his enemies, who are dead and
dying under his wheels, and fleeing before him. To show how much more
important he was than the enemies he had himself made very large and the
enemies shown very small. That is not quite our idea of honour and glory
nowadays; we should think it more glorious to overcome enemies larger
and stronger than ourselves! This afternoon we are going to visit a
still larger and more wonderful temple, a mile or two away, called
Karnak, and there you will see pictures of the king of that time holding
the hair of his enemies' heads in the powerful grasp of his left hand
while he prepares to strike off all their heads at one sweep with his
sword.
The original entrance of Luxor temple does not face the river on the
side we came in; to find it we have to scramble over heaps of rubbish to
one end and there we see a great obelisk, a companion to the one which
is now in the principal square of Paris, the Place de la Concorde, and
we see also two huge buildings reared up on each side of the ancient
entrance--these were called pylons and were always built in Egyptian
temples. On festival days they were decorated with flags on tall staves
and made very gay.
Then we go out again into the main street amid all the life of the
place, and see men cantering past on gaily caparisoned donkeys; we note
dancing, capering, gleeful children, guides in gorgeous gowns, shopmen
of some mixed nationality from the Mediterranean, who run out of their
shops and entreat you to come in. "Only look round, no paying, not
wanting you buy," they lie. "Look and be pleased; there is no charge
just only to look."
We stop at last and buy two fly-whisks with short bamboo handles and
long silvery horsehair tails; of course they do look very smart, but we
do not buy them just for that, but because they are useful.
As we have found already, nothing less than physical force suffices to
remove an Egyptian fly, who sticketh closer than his English brother. No
shake or puff will induce him to stir an eyelid, and yet he is quick on
the wing and you rarely get him, sleepy as he appears! He doesn't buzz,
and there generally appears to be only one of him, but if, by the aid of
a fly-whisk, you get rid of him, another takes his place immediately!
[Illustration: THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS.]
CHAPTER VII
THE CITY OF KINGS
I think this is the gayest scene I have ever looked upon in my life. See
those mahogany-coloured boatmen in their brilliant scarlet and white
striped jerseys and blue petticoats, grinning so as to show all their
milk-white teeth. The boats are apple-green and scarlet, and they are
reflected in the clear still water, and the dragoman, who marshals all
the party into them, is a very splendid person indeed, in a long
overcoat of turquoise blue cloth as soft and fine as a glove, with a
striped gown of yellow Egyptian silk underneath.
We are off with a party of Cook's tourists to explore the Tombs of the
Kings on the other side of the river It is a pretty stiff day's work, so
we are up early, and it is only half-past eight now. As we near the
other side of the river we see an excited group of donkey-boys who have
brought their animals over earlier, and now stand expectant, looking
like a fringe of blue beads.
[Illustration: THE FAT LADY ON HER DONKEY.]
"Lily best donkey--Lily name for Americans, Merry Widow for
Engleesh----"
"Come, lady, with me, Sammy best donkey in Egypt, verry good, Sammy my
donkey, best donkey----"
"Kitchener, lady, best donkey in Egypt, me speak verry good Engleesh,
alla way gallop."
And so on in a continuous yell. The dragoman shouts out the numbers of
the donkeys, and helps the ladies of the party to mount. Some ride on
side-saddles, others, unused to any form of riding, prefer to get up
astride, which they find difficult in the tight modern skirts. One
German girl, after a frantic attempt, has to give it up, and sits
wobbling on her saddle with her arms round the donkey-boy's neck,
agonisingly appealing to him not to move! A very stout lady in black is
lifted on to her mount by the united efforts of the dragoman and two
donkey-boys, and, held in position by the boys, moves off, threatening a
convulsive landslide to one side or the other at every step.
We are lucky in securing two fine greyish-white animals, almost as large
as mules and very well fed and kept; yours is named "Sirdar" and has a
single blue bead slung on a string round his neck as a charm, while
mine, "Tommy Raffles," has a rattling chain of yellow and blue beads and
much scarlet wool in his harness. You won't have much difficulty, I
know, as you have been used to a pony since you could walk.
At first the soft powdery sand makes the going stiff, and we have much
difficulty in restraining our boys, who run behind, from smacking or
prodding the donkeys as they plough through. These boys are very proud
and fond of their donkeys and treat them well, but it is the ambition of
every donkey-boy to see his donkey head the cavalcade, and he is ready
to die of envy and mortification if any other boy's donkey gets in front
of him. We pass through clouds of dusty earth and then turn on to uneven
narrow ways between tall green stalks of growing dhurra, stuff which
looks like maize, except that it has a heavy head of grain which is
ground up for making rough bread for the poorest people.
Along by a canal, over a bridge and a railway line we gallop, our
animals going well. Their trot is impossible, as we soon find, but the
easy loping canter delightful. We pass many black-clad women working in
the fields, with crowds of bright-eyed friendly children who murmur
"'Shish" in the vain hope that we may throw them some money. Then we see
herds of black goats in among the cut stalks, and a tethered baby camel,
who looks at us with innocent wondering eyes.
Far off rise up from the plain two mighty seated statues, the Colossi,
set up by Amenhetep III. as part of a temple now vanished. Presently we
all stop to see another temple, interesting enough, but not so
interesting as those already visited at Luxor and Karnak.
The dragoman, whose work is not easy, brings up the rear of the
cavalcade, having managed to keep even behind the fat lady, who has
stuck to the slippery surface of her saddle with many a desperate plunge
firmly resisted by her escort.
[Illustration: BOATMAN.]
The dragoman describes the temple fluently and intelligently, first in
English, then in French, and adds a little explanation in German for the
benefit of two men of that race who have talked loudly in their own
guttural tongue all the time he has endeavoured to make the rest of the
party hear. The dragoman does not reel his words off as if he were
repeating a lesson, as, alas, so many of the guides at our own
cathedrals do. He is a clever man, well educated and capable. It has
taken him years to learn all he knows, and it is only the clever boys
who can become good dragomans. One of our donkey-boys, a bright little
fellow who speaks far better English than most of his companions, tells
us, "I am going to be a dragoman." He says it deliberately, with a pause
between each word to get them correctly. "Thus I speak always with the
English and the Americans. To the English I speak English, which is
what I have learned, but when I am with Americans I can talk to them in
their own tongue too."
Laughing, we mount and are off again.
We are now penetrating into the great hills of sandstone we saw afar off
from the hotel. The road winds into a gorge, and at each turn displays
more vivid beauty. We feel a strange joy rising within us, so that we
would like to sing or shout at the tops of our voices. The brilliance of
the air shows up every line in the great precipices of orange-yellow,
streaked with red and purple, which rise against a sky of thrilling
blue. There is not a blade of grass or a leaf to be seen in these vast
solitudes, only the massive stones, broken and split and scattered, lie
in the fierce sun or black shadow. We can imagine these defiles looking
much the same when three or four thousand years ago the funeral
procession of one of the mighty Pharaohs wound its way into the heart of
the mountains, carrying the man who had never known opposition or denied
himself his slightest wish. They were very magnificent these
processions, composed of hundreds of people who carried all sorts of
things--furniture, chariots, boats, animals, fruit and flowers--with
tremendous ceremony.
It is a longish ride before we alight again, and leaving the donkeys
under a slight straw shelter penetrate into the fastnesses of the hills.
How many of these rock-tombs were made here will probably never be
known, but year by year more are uncovered. The first we step into is
like a large well-lighted cave cut out of a cliff-side, from it opens
another cave-like room, and from that another, each sloping downward and
the whole series giving the impression of a series of puzzle-boxes
fitting into one another and then drawn out. The walls are covered with
pictures, paintings on plaster, not outline pictures like those we saw
in the temples, but filled in with blue and green, orange and
terra-cotta, laid on thickly, and as fresh as the day they were done.
Ever descending we pass on until we reach the last chamber, where the
great sarcophagus or coffin of the king was placed right up against the
face of the rock. The sarcophagus might be a mighty block of granite,
enclosing a wooden case, and that again another case, probably carved
and gilt, and finally, as a kernel, there was the body of the king,
preserved and dried by spices, lying awaiting the final resurrection.
The Egyptians believed in a future world, but they could not imagine a
future world without there being human bodies in it such as we have now,
so they took infinite trouble in preserving the dead body that it might
be ready for its time of call. Most of the sarcophagi from these tombs
have been removed and taken to the museum at Cairo, but in one to which
we penetrate, hewn out at a slope so steep that we have difficulty in
keeping our feet as we slither down, the mummy has been replaced and is
left uncovered.
Lit up by electric light we see King Amenhetep II., with his skin
blackened to a parchment, drawn tightly over his chiselled aristocratic
features. In the dome-shaped forehead, the Roman nose, and the tightly
compressed lips there is an expression of infinite disdain, as if he, in
his time the mightiest ruler in the world and the leader of
civilisation, knew that now he was exposed to the gaze of a party of
outer barbarians whose national histories were but of mushroom growth.
This king struck terror into the hearts of his enemies; he raided the
land of Syria, slew seven chiefs with his own hand and brought them back
to Thebes, hanging head downward from the bows of his boat!
The very day after a king ascended the throne he used to begin hewing
out the sepulchre where he should lie. The scenes drawn on the walls
show what he expected to find in the other world. We see a pair of
scales with the heart of the dead man in one balance and a feather in
the other; a monkey sits on the top and adjusts the weight. The heart
must weigh the feather exactly, for to be over-righteous was as bad as
being wicked! The dead man also had to pass before forty-two judges, who
each examined him searchingly as to whether he had committed one
particular sin. As one of the party remarked in an awe-struck voice,
"And if he did pass them all safely and another started up and asked him
if he ever told a lie he'd be done, for no man could deny that he had
committed any of the forty-two principal sins and remain truthful!"
To accompany the soul to the other world many things used to be buried
in the tombs, clothes and food and utensils and weapons, and, thanks to
this custom, numberless things have been saved to show us how the
ancient Egyptians lived. These, however, have mostly been taken to Cairo
for safe keeping. But here in Amenhetep's tomb one thing has been left.
In a small side chamber, with the light falling full upon them, are
three mummies, each with a hole in the skull and a gash on the breast,
showing that they were the king's slaves, killed in order that their
souls might accompany him and serve him beyond the tomb!
They lie there with their hair still on their heads, and even the false
hair, they used to increase it, showing; on their faces is a ghastly
grin. We wonder if they submitted quietly, proud of having been chosen,
or if each fought fiercely for the life which belonged to him and was
not any man's to take away.
It is very hot and close down in the rock-hewn chamber, and we are glad
enough to stumble up and out again, though we are blinded by the
sunshine as we emerge.
The next part of the day is the hardest of all, for we scramble up a
mountain-side to gain a splendid view of gorges and valleys on one side
and the flat plain spreading to the Nile on the other. The view is
indescribable; from lemon-yellow to orange and saffron are the hills,
with blue-grey shadows in their folds. Right opposite is one absolutely
perpendicular, with immense rounded columns looking like giant organ
pipes rising on its face. A fresh wind is blowing, and when we mount our
donkeys, which have come round to meet us another way, and ride along a
path a few feet wide, with no fence of any kind and a drop of some
hundreds of feet on one side, we are devoutly thankful that the German
girl and the stout lady went round the other and longer way by the
valley!
Over the summit the donkeys are set free to get down the steep descent
as best they may, and they are as sure-footed as goats, but we who
follow find considerable difficulty as the loose stone and sand fall
away in miniature avalanches from beneath our slipping feet and we get
very hot. We are sheltered here from that fresh wind which is such a joy
in Egypt, the sun is at its height, and we have done a good morning's
work already after an early start. There, far below, looking like a
doll's house, is the rest-house where we lunch, and beside it two of the
men of the Mounted Police Camel Corps in khaki on their long-legged
beasts.
Whew! That last bit was tough! I am glad to get a long drink and equally
glad to go on after it to an excellent cold lunch which has been brought
to meet us. Hard-boiled eggs, salad, cold meat and fruit! We try them
all and then rest on the verandah looking at the towering orange cliffs
which hem us in. They seem to hang right over that little temple near,
to which we shall presently pay a visit. That is the temple of Der El
Bahari and was built by Hatshepset, the greatest of Egyptian queens.
Hatshepset was the daughter of one king and the wife of another, and
after her husband's death she ruled for about sixteen years. She made
expeditions to the Red Sea and acted in every way like a man. In the
drawings of her on the temple wall she is represented as a man and is
dressed in man's clothes. When her son-in-law, Thothmes III., who had
married her daughter, succeeded her, he scratched out her name wherever
he found it and chiselled out the pictures of her. He had evidently had
a bad time while she lived, but he must have been a small-minded and
spiteful man to take that petty revenge after her death!
[Illustration: A SOLEMN GIRL-CHILD.]
On the way home across the dhurra fields I see you stop riding suddenly
and stare intently down at something on the ground. I think at first it
is a scorpion you have found on the patch of light-coloured sand, but it
is only an immense black beetle, with a strong horny skin and a horn or
trumpet-shaped excrescence on the front part of its head. He belongs to
the scarabæus, or dung-beetles, and big fellows they are; this one would
just about cover the palm of your hand. The Egyptians called one of
their gods Khepera, or the beetle, and believed him to be the creator of
all things, so they used to make images of these beetles and put them in
their temples; you saw a huge one, you remember, on a pedestal at
Karnak, and any time you are in London you can see them at the British
Museum. There were also tiny images of them made in stone and amethyst
and porcelain, and almost anything else, and these were frequently
buried in the tombs with the mummies. Sometimes they had the name of the
person with whom they were buried inscribed on the back in hieroglyphic
writing, or the name of a god. These scarabs, as they are called, are
bought and worn in rings and ornaments by visitors. The natives quickly
found out that there was a demand for them, and as they could not always
find old genuine ones they set to work to make them! Hundreds of new
ones are palmed off as old in this way on unsuspecting tourists.
"Scarab!"
A solemn girl-child clad in a rust-coloured garment has come up on
seeing our donkeys halt and holds out a brilliant blue scarab for sale
in a hot little hand. She nods violently, repeating, "Scarab! Verry
old." "Found in tombs," says our donkey-boy gravely, willing to help her
to take us in. He picks it up and pretends to examine it carefully,
"Genuine anteekar," he pronounces. Laughing, we hand the "genuine
antique" back to its owner, knowing that it is probably "genuine
Birmingham," and then we canter after the rest of the party.
[Illustration: A NILE STEAMER.]
CHAPTER VIII
ON THE NILE
In my ears is the sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I
hear the agonising scrape of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have
heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a
thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a
concert hall and spring up wildly with the intention of getting outside
until the music begins, but the movement wakes me, and behold I am not
at a concert in London on a dim Sunday afternoon, but in a brilliantly
white two-berth cabin with the sun flooding in through the square
window! Peering out I see we are running smoothly along up-stream close
in to a high mud bank, and that is where the noise comes from. It is
caused by the squeaking of one wooden rod against another as hundreds of
Egyptian fellaheen raise the water from the Nile to moisten their crops.
It is not long before we are both dressed and out to examine the
curious sight. The banks are about the height of a high room, and at the
distance of, it may be, fifty yards, all the way along them there are
deep cuts like miniature denes, or chines, running down to the water. At
the foot of each of these a brown-skinned man stands with his bare feet
at the edge of the water, gripping with his toes to save himself from
slipping in the mud. At this time in the morning he is clothed in a
quantity of garments, mostly mud-colour, but as the sun grows strong he
throws them aside and stands forth a fine bronze statue with his skin
gleaming in the clear light. Just above his head there is a pole
bridging the cut, or chine, and fastened to the middle of it at right
angles is another, which swings up and down upon it like a see-saw.
A huge lump of mud like a swollen football is plastered on to the far
end of this, and at the other end a basket or basin made of skin is
attached to a string. The mud ball is heavy, and when it is allowed to
go free it hangs down to the ground; but the brown man constantly
reaches up and raises it by pulling down the basin, which he dips in the
Nile water, then lets the heavy end swing it up as high as his head,
when he tips it up, and the water from it flows into a pool at that
height. Another man stands on the edge of this pool and he has a similar
arrangement, by means of which he raises the water out of the pool with
a basin like the first, and there may be another above him, and another
again. This primitive arrangement is called a _shaduf_, and by its means
the water from the Nile is lifted up to the surface of the fields, where
it runs away in miniature channels to water the roots of the maize. This
is one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Think of all the
mills in which machinery does delicate work like that of the human hand;
think of the patterns made by the machines, of the newspapers printed
and folded with very little human guidance, and then leap back to this
clumsy device used now by the Egyptian as it was used by his ancestors
thousands of years ago! A few pints of muddy water raised by a weight,
half of it falling out of the badly constructed basin as it goes, and
the same drop of water handled again and again by four men till the tiny
trickle reaches the fields! We watch with amazement. The shrieking and
squeaking of the _shadufs_ goes on, the brown figures stoop down, rise
again, and swing with regularity, minute after minute. We steam on round
the next corner and see more of them and yet more again; how many have
we not seen already in the short time we have been on deck? Multiply
that times without number for all the miles we came up by train and
double it to include both banks! Imagination gives way!
[Illustration: A "SHADUF."]
"I can't bear it," says the nice American who was in the train with us
and has now joined us in the trip up to Assouan in one of Cook's
steamers. "It's maddening! Why can't a whole village form a company and
get some sort of machine to work? It would water all their crops in a
tenth of the time."
As he speaks there comes into view something just a little better. At
the top of one of the deep cuts on the bank two bullocks plod slowly
round and round in a circle as if they were threshing corn; they work a
wheel, which revolves horizontally and is fitted into another which
turns vertically, deep down into the hole it reaches, low enough to
touch the water at the bottom. Earthenware jars are strung all round it
like beads on a necklet, and as each pot dips into the water it brings
up its share, and when it reaches the highest point it tips it into a
little channel, where it runs away. This is called a _saddiyeh_. The
wheels groan and creak, the patient beasts turn in their dizzy circle,
and the youngster seated on the wheel prods them with a sharp-pointed
stick when they slacken. At least the water runs away in a continuous
stream at the top, however tiny.
Then the steamer takes a sharp turn, leaves the bank, and careers across
into midstream! We go up on to the top deck and see three dark-skinned
men, warmly wrapped up in brown coats, sitting in a little glasshouse in
the bows and watching earnestly the channel ahead.
This is the _reis_, or captain, with his two assistants. They know every
turn and dip in the river; but the river changes ever, no two days is it
alike as it falls and washes away a bank or deposits sand so as to make
an island where none was before. So the three men watch intently and
steer the boat to this side and that wherever they can find the deepest
channel. The Nile is low for this time of year and caution is necessary;
when there is any doubt as to there being enough water, one of the crew
below handles a long pole, dipping it in to find the bottom and calling
out the depth as he goes.
There are twenty passengers or so on the boat and they sit about the
sunny decks watching the panorama of the banks and the wonderful
changing scenes ahead, hour by hour. Hardly anywhere would you find a
greater variety of nationalities than on one of these Nile boats, for
Egypt draws people from all parts of the world with her mystery and
beauty. The odd people one meets add to the interest, and the strange
manners, which are not ours, are like flavouring in the dish of travel,
which, if it were composed only of scenes of perpetual beauty, might be
a little insipid.
To begin with, I am English and you are Scottish, we have our friend the
American and four of his compatriots, not by any means so delightful as
he is. He takes care to steer clear of them, we notice! One of them is a
little man who might be any age from twenty to fifty; if we examine him
with field-glasses we shouldn't be able to discover how old he is. His
yellow skin, drawn tightly over a bony face, gives no sign of age or
youth. He eats sweets all day out of a box as large as a child's coffin,
and he is attended by three stout ladies, doubtless "his mother and his
aunts." They are veiled and swathed in wraps, and seem to spend their
time gossiping or asleep in the innermost recesses of the cabin. We
never once catch them admiring the scenery or taking any interest in the
wonders we pass. Then there is a Swiss, a gentle-mannered bronzed man
with a brown beard; he speaks only French, and in an unobtrusive way
seems to have seen a great deal of the world; we discover, for one
thing, that he has lived out in the desert near Tunis for many years.
There are three Russians, mother, father, and daughter, who speak
practically nothing but Russian, with a few words of French; they are
brave to have started out on such a journey so ill-equipped. Coming
across a Russian dragoman in Cairo they trusted him joyfully; he bought
three temple tickets for them at their expense and promised to meet them
somewhere up the Nile. They seem to expect to find him sitting on every
sandbank, and their faith is pathetic; they'll never see those tickets
again, for the man will sell them to the next party of victims. Then
there is a Belgian, also a couple of lively pleasant French people, and
two Germans, a sister and brother, who dress in clothes intended to be
very sporting.
It is an interesting crowd, and it is well kept in hand by the manager,
who looks like a fair-haired, brown-faced boy of two-and-twenty, but has
been everywhere and speaks half a dozen languages fluently. In addition
to this he sketches in water colours, plays the fiddle, and breaks in
horses! You have to travel to come across people like that! Here he is
nothing so out of the way--every dragoman is able to talk in three
languages at least. Doesn't it spur you on to feel how much we have to
learn and how ignorant we are in our stay-at-home villages?
All the morning we sit about and watch the graceful white-sailed boats
coming down with cargoes of every kind. Sometimes we see them stranded
on a hidden sandbank with the crew making frantic efforts to get them
off again. We see the reaches lying ahead glittering like jewels in the
sun, and then we land and ride a short way to a temple, under the care
of the dragoman of the boat. The most moving thing in all that temple is
a set of scenes of a hippopotamus hunt shown with great spirit; the poor
little hippo looks more like a pig when he is at the bottom of the water
with a spear or harpoon sticking in him, but when they haul him up by
means of a noose round one leg the ancient artist represents him
becoming bigger and bigger as he comes to the surface!
The walls are, besides, covered with all the usual scenes of the king
making offerings to the gods, and overriding his enemies, and doing all
those noble things which kings wanted their posterity to know about
them.
A high-pitched voice, speaking in a hyper-refined affected tone, breaks
in on our enjoyment; it belongs to one of the English people from the
boat, a lady who evidently considers it her mission in life to instruct
people; information flows from her ten finger-tips, she cannot help it,
she was born to be a schoolmistress certainly.
"That is the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt," she says, "that the king
is wearing; sometimes you see him with one and sometimes with the other,
here he has both together."
As this is about the first thing a dragoman tells anyone in the first
temple he sees, and as it is repeated at least once at every temple
afterwards, only an idiot could fail to know it. We murmur something
politely and turn away. Round a corner we stop to admire the rich colour
still left in the ceiling, where a heavenly blue, covered with golden
stars, represents the sky.
"When we were here three years ago," says the lady at our elbows, "they
had not uncovered those pillars, but we are told--that----"
The peace and beauty are spoilt! Again we murmur something and make a
dive to get away, but are confronted by a clean-shaven man in glasses.
"When we were here three years ago," he begins, "perhaps my wife has
told you----"
It is rude, but there is nothing for it but to bolt; people like that
would take the effervescence off newly opened champagne! We leave them
confronting each other, and wonder what they do when they are alone
together! Do they force their mixture of guidebook and water on each
other?
[Illustration: THE DAM AT ASSOUAN.]
When we look back upon Egypt these river days will stand out most
clearly, for the glory of them and the interest of them are unfailing.
We have to leave this boat at Assouan, but we shall come back and go
right down the Nile to Cairo on our return journey, so that is something
to look forward to.
At Assouan we are not going to stop but to change on to another steamer,
one belonging to the Government this time, and we shall penetrate
farther into the heart of the land to see something, which, after the
Sphinx, is the most wonderful thing in Egypt.
But we can't step off one steamer on to another, for at Assouan is the
first of the many cataracts that for ages has hindered the navigation of
the Nile. The river, hemmed in between two rocky sides, tears down,
dashing over stones and whirling round corners in a dangerous way. So
the steamer for the upper part of the river waits above the cataract and
we have to make a short train journey of half an hour or so to join it.
Picture the scene at an English railway station of any size, with its
solidly-built platform and its gloomy roof and its row of uniformed
porters drawn up waiting the arrival of the incoming train. I don't
suppose anywhere you could find anything less like this than the station
at Assouan where we await our train this afternoon. There are great palm
trees springing out of the platform itself, not fenced in in any way.
There are masses of scarlet poinsettias growing. And the porters! yes,
they _are_ porters, not criminals waiting to be hanged! There they
stand, a ragged regiment indeed, dressed in any sort of garment that
takes their fancy. Most of them look as if they had collected all the
dish-clouts and dusters which had seen service and piled them on anyhow.
To add to their adornment each man has a double coil of shabby-looking
rope hung round his neck, this is to fasten together the luggage he
hopes to carry. The men are of all sizes and all colours. That
good-looking fellow at the end is not darker than a sun-browned
Englishman, while that stout, round-faced, thick-lipped one next to him
is as black as the polished boot seen in an advertisement. He is a
Nubian, for here we are on the borders of Nubia, now counted part of
Egypt. The porters are making a tremendous hullabaloo, chattering and
quarrelling at the tops of their voices, so a native policeman in khaki
comes along and smacks one of them hard on the side of his face, and
then catches him a crack on the other side to make him keep his balance;
the man does not resent it at all--he rubs his cheek and takes the hint.
Fancy a policeman in our country smacking a porter on the face; what a
row there would be!
Here is the train! The engine-driver and his mate are dressed in shabby
European clothes crowned by turbans which have gaudy orange and red
handkerchiefs twisted round them. They get down on the platform, and
suddenly the fireman sees a rather unpleasant-looking man, with a beard,
standing away from the others; he rushes at him, bows low before him,
and finally kisses both his hands. The man is probably a sheikh of the
Mohammedan church.
The train is a corridor one, and we mount the platform at the end of a
carriage and find ourselves in a compartment thick with dust, where the
seats vary from straight leather-covered benches to comfortable-looking
basket-chairs. The place is crammed with "kit"; dispatch-boxes,
helmet-cases, sword-cases and leather bags fill every corner.
"Allow me," says a pleasant-voiced sunburnt man as he stoops to remove
some of his things to make room for us. "We've come right up from Cairo
and things get a bit scattered," he adds apologetically.
When we get clear of the town we find that in addition to glass windows
and wooden shutters there are also windows of blue glass to keep off the
glare, a splendid idea, as they do not hinder the view. One of these is
up, and peeping through it we get our first real glimpse of the desert,
transformed as if it lay beneath bright moonlight. From the other side
we can see it as it is in its yellow colouring. How fascinating! Its
runs away in sweeping low waves to a line of hills and is crossed by
caravan tracks; even as we watch we see a man riding a small donkey
ahead of a string of camels laden with huge bales. The railway is still
but a small thing in Egypt; it runs right ahead, with few side-lines,
and from it the desert tracks lead off in many directions. The camel,
who has been the bearer of Egyptian traffic for generations, still does
a large share of the transport. A good camel is expensive, but a man who
owns one is sure of a livelihood, for he works backwards and forwards
across the great solitudes, eating his handful of dates or grain, and
drinking the water he carries with him, if he is not lucky enough to
camp near a well. Oddly enough camels are not represented on the
wall-drawings of the ancient Egyptians, and though it is true they were
probably not to be found in the country in the very earliest times, yet
they were certainly introduced as early as the horse, who is often shown
in battle-scenes.
[Illustration: MEN OF THE BISHARIN TRIBE.]
What rivets our attention directly it comes into sight is an encampment
of low mat huts like beehives right out in the midst of the sand.
"Those belong to the Bisharin," says the same fair-haired, keen-faced
man who had first spoken; "tribe of fuzzy-wuzzies! They extend right
away from here to the Red Sea. Live on raw grain mostly. Quaint lot!"
Some of the men from the camp are standing near the railway line, so we
can see them well; they are very tall and extremely handsome, with
well-cut features and well-proportioned figures. Their hair is cut
exactly after the fashion of the palm trees, with a tuft standing up in
the middle and two tufts dropping away from it on each side. These men
are quiet enough now that they have learnt the British power, but not so
long ago they were inflamed with fanatical hatred.
You have heard of the dervishes who were killed in thousands at
Omdurman, outside Khartoum, in the great battle at which Lord Kitchener
won his title when he freed the Soudan from the power of the Mahdi? Now,
having seen the Bisharin, you can imagine what dervishes looked like.
For they dressed their hair in the same way, they wore the same
dirty-white garments, and as they came yelling onward at a run,
brandishing their weapons, it must have taken some courage for the
Egyptian soldiers to meet them steadily.
All the men in the carriage with us are going on up to Khartoum and
beyond. They are soldiers, administrators, and Government officials, men
whose lives are passed on the outposts of civilisation, and who carry
the British ideals of cleanliness, honesty, and straight-dealing far
into the desert; but they do not talk about it, as Kipling says they
speak:--"After the use of the English in straight-flung words and few--"
"Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways,
Baulking the end half won for an instant dole of praise.
Stand to your work and be wise--certain of sword and pen,
Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men."
Khartoum is the capital of the Soudan, but we have not arrived in the
Soudan yet. This great province was won from barbarism and brutality by
the English, who had trained and commanded the Egyptian army for the
purpose through years of heart-breaking work, and it is held jointly by
England and Egypt.
Then we arrive at Shellal, the station where the steamer waits, and in
a moment we are plunged into a turmoil of confusion and shouting.
The red sun is setting in a flame of glory over the great lake-like
expanse studded with black rocks; this is the huge dam or reserve of
water held up for the use of the crops when the Nile goes down. The
scene beggars description; bags, bundles, bales, boxes are pitched out
pell-mell. Gleaming black faces are lit up by the flames of leaping
fires lit on the sand. Petticoated porters thrust metal numbers at us so
that we may be able to recognise them again and reclaim our luggage
safely. We make our way to the steamer and mount to the first-class deck
and look down on the whirl of turbans and red fezes (also called
tarbooshes) below. The perpetual chatter, the long low cries, the
beating shout of men staggering under heavy loads make up a resounding
din. Clamped boxes, camp-chairs, enamel basins, dispatch-boxes,
helmet-cases are carried swinging up the gangway. Here is a man wildly
waving a gun-case which a non-commissioned officer wrenches from him;
another is struggling under a folded tent, the end of which catches on a
post and nearly precipitates him into the water. Black Nubian sailors in
white and blue jumpers are wrestling with an endless series of
mail-bags; third-class passengers, lost under piles of bedding, straggle
into a great barge alongside. In the midst of it all one sailor detaches
himself a little from the rest and drops down on his knees on the quay,
prostrating himself and bowing with his forehead to the ground; he rises
again, stands straight, with head erect, then down he goes again. He is
praying at sunset, as a good Mohammedan is told to do. No one notices
him or ridicules him. What would happen to an English sailor who knelt
to say his prayers on an English dock? We feel that we have something to
learn from this people, who are at all events not ashamed of their
religion.
A man is selling oranges on the quay, another has large round flat
loaves of bread tucked well under his arms and hugged against his body.
A black hand, extended from the lowest deck beneath us, grasps one of
these loaves and begins to finger it with a view to purchase; we cannot
see the owner of the hand, but we can see his fingers feeling cautiously
all around that loaf; he nips it between finger and thumb, he prods it,
kneads it, rubs it, and finally, when no inch of it has been untouched,
he hands over reluctantly a small coin and withdraws with the bread.
"Hope that isn't for us," says the cheerful voice of a young officer
leaning over the rail beside us in the dark. "Think I'll cut off my
crust at dinner to-night on the off-chance, anyway!"
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN SOLDIER.]
CHAPTER IX
A MILLION SUNRISES
It is very cold and quite dark when I wake. The steamer is anchored
close up to the bank and not a sound comes from the still water. My
blankets are very comfortable; it can't be time to turn out yet. It is
an effort even to stretch out a hand and strike a light to see my
watch--5.15! Yes, we ought to go!
You take some waking, and only my threat of, "You'll never get another
chance in your life," brings you out of your bunk at last.
If you've ever done anything nastier than trying to dress against time,
two together in a small cabin on a cold morning in the pitch dark, I'd
like to know it. The electric light is off, because the engines are not
running, and there are no candles. By the time we've got into some sort
of clothing we're both at snarling-point. Twice I've violently tried to
put on your boots, thinking they were mine, and I know you've got my
shirt on, because I couldn't find it and had to drag out a clean one!
A walk along the cold dark deck and across a slippery plank to the mud
bank does not improve matters. Apparently we have this exhilarating
entertainment all to ourselves, for the rest of the fifteen passengers
have not appeared.
The sand is like the softest silk, and it seems sometimes as if we must
be walking backwards so little headway do we make. If it wasn't for this
icy wind I should think I was still dreaming. All the time that red bar
in the east glows steadily brighter, and warns us that if we want to see
one of the grandest sights in the world--Abu Simbel by sunrise--we must
hurry up.
When at last we get clear of the sand we find ourselves on a piece of
ground cut up by cracks wide enough to put a foot in. There is just
sufficient light to keep us from twisting our ankles if we walk along
with our eyes glued to the ground, and so we get along somehow, till
suddenly we stop--sunrise is here!
A considerable distance in front of us and above our level we see three
mighty seated figures and the remains of a fourth in a flat recess
chiselled out of the side of a great rounded cliff. That first touch of
dawn has tinged them with rosy pink, and they sit with their faces to
the sunrise, which they must have seen somewhere about one million times
already. Night succeeding day, day succeeding night, light following
darkness, darkness following light, thus has time flickered before them
throughout their stupendous age. As we creep nearer and climb higher
they seem to rise and rise in size. Silently we seat ourselves on a
stone, forgetting the shivering wind, and we stare and gaze spellbound
at the triumphant eager expression on those mighty features, which, as
the dawn spreads, softens to a deep complacence. Then the pink changes
to a splendour of living gold, which sweeps over like a curtain, and the
full majesty of them strikes us almost like a blow.
Their expression has in it something akin to that of all mighty
time-resisting images set up by man; it is found in the face of the
Sphinx and on that of the Buddhas of the East. It is an expression of
soul-crushing superiority, so without doubt of its own unassailable
dignity that it can afford to be benign. We must make up a word and call
it "supremity"--it is the only one that fits it.
Under the knee of each mighty figure is the plump outline of a little
wife, small it looks from here, but draw nearer still, stand right under
that colossus on the right and you will find that she is twice the
height of a man.
As they tower above us, seeming to grow greater every instant as the
light filters into the crevices, we get some idea of the monster size of
these noble statues, and discover that each foot is nearly as long as a
man! From the broken face of the sloping cliff they have been hewn, not
built and pieced together and brought here from elsewhere, but born full
size, springing to life from out the living rock. They all represent the
king with whom we are already familiar, Rameses II., who caused this
great temple to be made to celebrate his victory over the Kheta, a tribe
of Syrians, living far away by the river Orontes in the north of the
Holy Land.
Two on each side of the temple doorway the statues sit, and between
them, in low relief, is the small figure of the god Harmakhis. Running
above, across them all, is an inscription, part of which signifies--
"I give to thee all life and strength."
Look up at it beyond those towering immovable heads, and from it again
to the rough cliff untouched by tool, and from that to the sky, now of
the purest, softest blue, hanging like a canopy above.
The high black doorway of the temple lies like a gash on the face of the
cliff, and on one day of the year the ray of light from the rising sun
falls through it clean as a shot arrow. The black-robed guardian has
been expecting us, he stands waiting, holding his staff of office, and
admits us to the interior. It is very dark, and even with the light of
the flickering candle he holds up it is difficult to make out those
great columns, each seventeen feet high, carved with an image of the god
Osiris. As for the deep-cut pictures everywhere on the walls we can only
get the merest glimpses of them. We pass on through several halls,
noting how the angles and lines are absolutely plumb and true, and come
to the innermost sanctuary, where we find the king again as one of four
seated statues, not very large, the other three being gods! That was the
idea Rameses had of his own importance!
Then it grows on us with increasing wonder that all this temple--the
walls, the columns, the statues--are cut out of the actual rock, and
that all the stone dislodged in the cutting must have been carried out
through that doorway. How was it achieved? The depth of the temple to
its farthest wall is one hundred and eighty-five feet, or almost three
times a cricket-pitch! Imagine this depth driven in to the rock and
cleared out to a great height without any machine power or modern tools!
And this was accomplished in the reign of one king. Rameses reigned some
sixty years, and his great victory over the Kheta was five years after
his coronation, so perhaps sixty years is the longest we can give for
the construction of the temple, and it was probably much less. The story
goes that in this great battle the king, cut off from his men and alone
in the midst of a hostile army, performed prodigies of valour; he slew
and hewed right and left until he sent the greater part of the Syrian
army flying before him; all this is recorded on the walls. Of course in
the case of kings these doings are apt to be magnified, still, there is
no doubt that this was one of the most memorable occasions of his life,
and he has certainly caused it to be remembered by building this
enduring monument.
[Illustration: A CHILD HOLDS OUT A STRANGE LITTLE BEAST.]
We hear voices, and are joined by half a dozen of our fellow-travellers
from the steamer. As we all walk back together a child sidles up and
holds out a strange little beast with a head like a skull and a long
tail like a rat. It is about as big as your hand. One of the army men
takes it and puts it in the sleeve of his green tweed coat, and as he
walks along carrying it the quaint little beast turns a greenish colour.
It is a chameleon and has the faculty of changing to the colour of its
background whatever that may be; this forms a protection against its
enemies, who cannot easily see it.
"I'll keep it," says the soldier, laughing and giving the child a coin.
"He is a useful little beggar. You should see that tongue of his flick
out and catch an unwary fly half a foot away."
The steamer hoots a warning note and we all scramble on board hastily.
Yes, I _told_ you it was my shirt!
An hour or so later we pass the boundary into the Soudan.
"Now we are out of Egypt," says another of our friends, a Government
official with years of experience behind him. "The Soudan is a greatly
superior place; no one is allowed to bother you here--we don't let them.
The children don't even know the meaning of the word _bakshish_; they
are not allowed to learn it."
This sounds comforting and gives a good prospect for the day we shall
have to spend at our stopping-place, Wady Haifa, before going back on
the steamer to Assouan.
There is no railway between Assouan and Wady Haifa, and so Government
steamers run all the year round to bridge the gap between the two ends
of the railway. In the season Cook runs steamers too, and they give much
more time for passengers to see Abu Simbel and other temples on the way;
unfortunately, as we are too early in the year, we could not take
advantage of them and had to go on a Government boat.
The men we have been with are all passing on by rail from Wady Haifa,
and when we land there we go in the afternoon to see them off at the
station. They are a keen, hard-bitten crew, and make us feel proud of
our countrymen; they are reticent mostly, bearing the unmistakable stamp
of responsibility. Men who "build the Empire" are little apt to "slop
over" or demand sympathy. The boyish vigour remains with them later than
with most men, but it is tempered by a certain hardness outside. The
train is particularly comfortable and well managed, with sleeping-cars
that bear comparison with the best in Europe, and a good dining-car; and
it is necessary, for these men have a journey of a day and a night
before reaching Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan, and the way lies
right across barren desert, where the sand insidiously creeps in at
every chink in spite of the closely shut windows. To some of them indeed
Khartoum is only a jumping-off place. There is one army man who received
orders to leave Cairo at ten days' notice and plunge into Central
Africa, there to hold an outpost as the only white man for hundreds of
miles around. He knows little of what is expected of him beyond the fact
that he is to purchase a year's stores in Khartoum, and that when he has
gone as far as boat and waterway can take him, he will have to march at
least a hundred miles through country where his equipment must be
carried by natives, as it is the haunt of the dreaded tsetse fly whose
bite is fatal to animals. He has a map made up mostly of rivers
"unexplored" and country "unknown." It looks quite full of information
and names when you merely glance at it, but when you begin to handle it
you find a great deal of the print tells you only what is not there. The
owner of it hardly knows what language he will have to speak, but he is
as pleased about it all as a girl going to her first ball. In his own
words, he "has got his chance." When we ask him what he is going to
take with him, he answers with a merry twinkle, "I started with two
dozen tooth-brushes; I should think in their line they would be enough."
So long as England produces men of this metal she need not fear the
decadence of the race.
When we have parted from them all we stroll down the bazaar at Wady
Haifa and are immediately followed by a horde of children of all ages,
sizes, and descriptions, who, whenever we stop and look around at them,
say with growing confidence, "Bakshish, bakshish!" even the tiny fat
babe who can scarcely toddle murmurs "'Shish!"
Still pursued by the horde we make our way to a tea-house, where
numerous natives of Haifa sit out in a little compound surrounded by a
wooden fence and refresh themselves. We order tea, and get it after some
difficulty; but it is more because the attendant guesses what we would
be likely to ask for than because he understands us that we eventually
are provided with a small pot of quite decent tea.
While we drink the children gather from afar; every one in Haifa under
the age of fourteen is there I should say. They glue themselves to the
fence and force their little faces between the posts, or spike their
chins on the top and then watch in solemn deadly earnest the ways of
these strange beings whom fate has so kindly sent to amuse them. The
rest-house attendant does not approve of these manners, so he slips out
of a side-door with a basin of water in his hand and pitches it straight
over the little crew as if they were a flock of intrusive chickens; they
fly, shrieking with delight, and return in thicker swarms than ever
inside of two minutes.
An affable gentleman in a gown seats himself beside us.
"I wish you good-day," he says in English, and we return his greeting.
"I am dragoman here," he continues.
We point to one small girl with a face quite different from that of the
other children, and her hair done in innumerable little tight pigtails,
and ask him who she is. "Nubian," he says. "Eat castor oil, plenty oil,
like it much." We tell him to bring the child to us, but directly he
translates, she flies screaming, is captured by the other children, and
a noise begins like that inside the parrot-house at the Zoo. I explain
that we don't want her to be frightened, but that if she will come and
speak to us she shall have bakshish. The magic word produces instant
calm, the child comes forward at once with coquettish assurance and
when, through the interpreter, we inquire her name, and she tells us it
is "Nafeesa," we give her half a piastre and let her go.
[Illustration: A LITTLE NUBIAN GIRL.]
When we start off again for the steamer the whole crowd follows hard on
our heels, for it is we who provide the free circus to-day. One mite
trotting forward with his eyes glued on us goes smack into a tree and so
hurts his little face that he covers it with a crooked arm and sets off
homewards wailing softly.
This is really a deserving case, even in England it is allowable to
soothe the feelings of a hurt child, so we mutter "Bakshish," and all
the eager crew rush after the little suffering child, yelling,
"Bakshish," and they bring him back triumphantly with the tears already
dried on his hurt face.
So much for the Government official!
Now we are off really! Back down the Nile and good-bye to this glorious
land. Rapidly we fly down-stream, past Abu Simbel, past the sweeps of
deep rich yellow sand seen nowhere south of Assouan in such glorious
colouring; sand that is swept smooth by the wind into great banks and
drifts with sharp edges like snow-drifts; past masses of plum-coloured
rock sticking up out of it; past defiles of stony mountains falling
sheer to the water; hiding here and there in their folds tiny villages
indistinguishable from the rocks without glasses. There is hardly a
_shaduf_ to be seen and very little cultivation, it is either desert or
stony hills on each side. Grand beyond thought is it when seen in the
flaming light of the afterglow!
[Illustration: THE PEOPLE GOING HOME IN THE EVENINGS--WATER-CARRIERS.]
At Assouan we have time for a glimpse at the great dam, extending for
over a mile in length and built of masonry eighty-two feet thick at the
bottom. This banks up the water, we have already seen, among the hills
into a prodigious lake when the great swirl of the river comes down at
flood-time, and thus much of it, which would have rushed away and been
lost, is stored and let out gradually through the sluice-gates as
required.
Then we change on to one of Cook's steamers, and for days we fly
down-stream to Cairo. We see the green fields of maize, and we watch the
people going home in the evenings with the tired oxen and the little
donkeys carrying their provender on their backs. And one day we arrive
at Cairo and take the train for Port Said.
Good-bye to Egypt! Mysterious, beautiful land! Never in all our
wanderings round the globe shall we come upon a country more
interesting.
[Illustration: JERUSALEM.]
CHAPTER X
A WALK ABOUT JERUSALEM
We have passed along the south coast of Europe and have been into a
corner of Africa, and now we are going to set foot on a new
continent--Asia. From Port Said, before we go on eastward, I want you to
see just a little of the Holy Land--the scene of the Bible. The Holy
Land stands by itself, apart, and though it is in Asia it doesn't seem
to belong to it. Someone once said that it is to the world what a church
is to a town--the centre of religion. Anyway, it is curious and
interesting to notice that it forms the middle point where three
continents meet, so that they all share it. I expect you know the
position quite well. At the east end the Mediterranean does not run into
a point as it does at Gibraltar, but comes up against a straight wall of
land which cuts it off squarely, and this straight line is the coast of
Palestine, better known as the Holy Land. If the schoolboys of Palestine
were set to draw a map of their own country, they would find it much
easier than a British boy would if told to make a map of his country.
For all that the Jewish boy would have to do would be to make a fairly
straight line, sloping a little out at the bottom end. There would be
hardly any indentations on it and only one small bay.
Palestine, of course, is the country of the Jews, though people of many
other races and nations live there, and thousands of the Jews are
scattered in all parts of the world. Some people dream of restoring all
the Jews to their own land, but it is difficult to see what good it
would do them. Palestine is held at present by the Turks, but everyone
can visit it when they please. It is not a very large country, only
about the size of Wales, and yet there isn't a country in the world to
equal it in importance. Thousands of people visit it every year in spite
of the fact that it is very difficult to get there. There are no good
harbours, and the landing at Jaffa, which is the principal port for
Jerusalem, has to be done in small boats. As we have to make our visit
in the winter we may find the sea rough and dangerous, and may even be
carried on north of Jaffa and have to come back on another boat as some
friends of mine did. The Holy Land is not great or powerful or even
beautiful nowadays, though in the spring the wild flowers are lovely.
Seen in the winter it is just a rather barren, stony land, with many
hills, and it is inhabited by very poor people. Yet this little country
has been more fought over than any other. For centuries there were
crusaders, or soldiers of the cross, who went out to try to conquer it,
to hold it in Christian keeping, but they did not succeed.
We must leave our heavy luggage at Port Said, to be picked up again on
our return, and only take what we can carry in handbags. The rather
small steamer which is to take us starts in the evening, and it is best
to go straight to bed on board, as we shall have much to go through when
we arrive to-morrow morning. After a rather disturbed night we are glad
to get up and dress and come on deck. The ship is at anchor off Jaffa,
tossing up and down on the grey water, so that we have to clutch at
handrails and hold on to keep our footing on the slippery deck, which is
cumbered up with bags and bundles and people and crates in a most
confusing way.
[Illustration: JAFFA.]
All around the ship are big clumsy-looking boats filled with swarthy
shouting men wearing turbans and immense baggy blue trousers with enough
stuff in them to clothe a whole family! Except that they are not armed
we might imagine we were held up by pirates! In front of us, a little
distance off, are cruel jagged rocks over which the waves pour and dash,
spouting up in cascades as they come slap on the hard surfaces.
One of the boats is close to the ship and the men in her are hanging on
by a rope which they gather up or let out as they rise and fall at the
bottom of the long slippery gangway, much worse than that we climbed at
Toulon. The men in our ship are pitching in bags and bundles very
cleverly as the boat comes up, and among the things we see our own brown
bags. Very soon we shall be pitched in too! How will you like that?
Near us is a very fat Turkish lady, who is so rolled up in clothes, head
and all, that it is quite possible she might be mistaken for a
feather-bed. Two sailors get hold of her and carry her down the
gangway, depositing her neatly in the boat as it swings near.
Before you have quite realised what has happened a muscular man has
caught you up like a sack of potatoes. You are run down the gangway with
his hand on your arm like a vice, the boat comes up, and just at exactly
the right second, when it balances on the crest of the wave, your captor
lets you go and you land on the seat gently and sink away again with the
boat. I follow, but am not so lucky, for the next wave catches the boat
awry and sluices me from neck to heel! However, I have a stout coat on
and do not mind. Then, in the heavily laden boat, with the Turkish lady
and the bags and the bundles, we start for the distant shore.
This is the principal landing-place for Palestine! Babies and bishops,
pilgrims and pigs, pianos and potatoes have all to be pitched into
boats!
Our excitement is not over yet, for as we near the rocks it looks as if
we must be smashed by the heavy waves. The roar of the surf is so great
that we cannot hear each other speak, and the rain and foam bespatter
our faces. We blink and hang on to each other, see-sawing up and down,
and wondering every second if we shall be feeling colder yet when we are
actually in the water, and then the boat swings up on a wave and runs
through into calmer water beyond.
We thread our way in and out of narrow channels, still between rocks,
and see ahead of us a desolate land with a queer flat-roofed town.
When at last we are on firm ground our guide leads us quickly through
some narrow dirty streets, and before we have time to notice anything we
are in a noisy, fussy little train, bound for Jerusalem.
We are actually in the land of Israel, the land where all the Bible
stories happened, not only those of the New Testament but also of the
Old! Here Noah lived when the Flood came, here Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob pitched their tents and pastured their flocks. From here the sons
of Jacob, who was also called Israel, went down to the land of Egypt to
buy corn when there was a terrible famine lasting many years. We know
that they settled there, having found their brother Joseph in great
power; and long, long after they had all been dead their descendants
multiplied into a great people and were treated as slaves by the
Egyptians, so God brought them back again to the land of their
ancestors.
When they arrived here, after wandering many years in the wilderness,
they found the country occupied by stranger races whom they fought and
conquered; among them were the Hivites and Jebusites and Amorites and
Hittites. Then the Israelites became a great nation and had kings of
their own. The second king, David, was of the tribe of Judah, one of the
best of old Israel's sons, and he drove out the people who occupied
Jerusalem and made it his capital. His son, Solomon, built here the most
wonderful temple ever known. But later on trouble came upon the
Israelites, and mightier nations from the east swept down upon them, and
carried them away as slaves. After long years of captivity some came
back to Jerusalem, and they were the descendants of Judah and Benjamin,
but the other tribes returned no more, and no one knows what became of
them; they are spoken of to this day as the Lost Ten Tribes, but the
descendants of Judah were called Jews. These Jews, who returned and
lived again in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, were again
conquered by the Romans, and when the Saviour Jesus Christ was born the
Romans held the supreme power in the Holy Land.
As the train goes on we see a bare and bleak country, which looks as if
giants had had a desperate fight and hurled stones at each other, after
which the stones had lain there ever since. This was the part of the
land inhabited by the Philistines, against whom the Israelites had so
many and such bitter fights. It is quite likely that Goliath of Gath,
whom David fought, once strode among the fields; and we know that the
great Israelitish hero, Samson, the strong man, lived about here and
wandered in among the valleys. Most people are disappointed with the
country unless they come in the spring, but when you get used to it you
find it has a wonderful charm.
It takes nearly four hours in the train to reach Jerusalem station. It
seems quite odd to think of Jerusalem having a station. We have heard
the Bible stories so lo
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