Eau-de-Nil. A chronicle

Front matter

E AU-DE-N I L E AU- D E-N I L. J\ Chronicle B. E. C. HOPE-EDVVARDES. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, Publishers in CPrbinarg to Her /Rajcstg the (Quten. SHREWSBURY : H. CHANCELLOR, 14, HIGH STREET. 1882. TO MY mother: PREFATORY NOTE. These pages need but brief introduction. Last winter my brother — who appears as St. L. — was ordered to Egypt for his health, and with him went myself (E.) and my maid (W.). We sent home a journal, which appears here nearly as it was written. Its watery nature is confessed in the title it bears, and the only reason for publishing it is that we seem, by comparison with other pleasure-tourists, to have had an unusual amount of talk with les indigenes, and to have observed some lesser detads of their ways and thoughts, and on so interesting a subject it is perhaps a pity to waste even the smallest contribution of information.

All topics connected with Ancient Egypt I have let alone as much as possible, feeling that here I could only retail facts gathered from books or conversation, and often perhaps imperfectly understood. It was, however, impossible to leave out such subjects altogether. PREFA TOR Y NOTE. VIII I have altered the names of the dahabieh, the dragoman, and a few others, thinking that in such a personal record a slight disguise was discreet, though not necessary, as we had in each case scarcely anything but good to record and praise to bestow. The spelling of Arabic words is, in theory, phonetic, but in practice I must own to many shortcomings ; such as having often used ' i ' and ' ee ' indifferently to represent the same sound, and also ' ou ' and ' oo.' The conversations are all from notes taken at the time, or immediately afterwards, and are, I think, very literally given. E A U-D E-N I L :■*.-

Chapter I

December 2nd, 1880. — This morning, when daylight appeared at about six a.m., we found ourselves nearing the harbour of Alexandria, and observed with pleasure that the sea had become consider ably smoother during the night. As we had been told that the entrance of the harbour often presented difficulties, and that the last P. and 0. boat had been kept tossing outside for eighteen hours, we did not feel quite happy as to our own fate, and were much relieved, after steaming slowly on for four hours, to be told that the crucial point was passed ; and soon after ten a.m. we were well over the bar. We had been able to inspect the town well as we got near it, and thought it imposing from its size, though very low and flat. Several forts and light- E A U-DE-NLL. 2 houses stood out in the foreground, and there were numerous windmills on the low hills behind.

The general effect of the city was nearly as white as Algiers. Of course we tried to think of Alexander, of Cleopatra, of St. Mark, of Am er, of Napoleon, and Abercrombie ; but, even before we came to a standstdl, thought became impossible in the ever growing noise and confusion. The passengers who were going on to India, and those who were landing here, all clamoured at once to have their affairs first attended to, and their luggage sorted. We were not struck by the arrangement of the latter- — the baggage for Egypt, which was wanted at the top for immediate disembarkation, having to be fished up from the lowest depths of the hold, with heavy loss of temper and time. A steam-tender came up to take the mads, and we fondly thought it would also take us all ashore, but found this was not allowed.

While I was sitting apart, crushed by this blow, a very ill looking Arab, with one eye and marked by small pox, came up and asked me if we would go ashore in his boat. I said a cautious ' Yes,' and went to find St. L. When we came back, he produced a much finer man, evidently a dragoman, and pushed him towards us, saying emphatically : ' Good man — good man !' LANDLNG. 3 The good man, who was portly and middle-aged, in plum-coloured robes, with a white sash, red fez, and yellow turban and boots, promptly produced his book of testimonials, pointing out two which he evidently considered his trump cards, from one of the Barons Rothschdd, and Sir Watkin Wynn. It was no moment for examining them, jostled as we were by an irritating crowd, so we resigned ourselves into his hands, and he hunted up our luggage with success, and at length handed us into a boat.

On the way to land, he recommended an hotel in a mysterious whisper ; but we thought this was a fitting moment for a spark of independence, and firmly, though quite unreasoningly, chose another. He spoke English fairly, with an exuberance of A's worthy of a Board School. On landing he asked for our passports, which are required here, and then passing his arm through mine, led me at a trot to the Custom House, St. L. and W. following, convulsed with merriment at the sight. They let us off with the inspection of one box, and we got into an open carriage, with two weedy, long-tailed horses, and were truly glad to be de posited at Hotel de l'Europe, on Place Mehemet Ah, the principal square in Alexandria. Our old friend assisted in our choice of rooms ; 1—2 and finally, coming up to us as we stood looking from the window, he put an arm affectionately round each of us, and asked what refreshment we would like, strongly recommending us to choose lemonade.

Having had no breakfast, I begged for coffee and © * ©© bread and butter as well ; but the lemonade, made with freshly-gathered lemons, and brought in a large jug, was very good too. He then left us to rest, promising to come again in the afternoon to take us out. So about two p.m. we started in a carriage, and made a little tour of the city, which has the cha racter of being uninteresting, and containing little to see, the ancient Alexandria being almost entirely destroyed. To Western eyes, however, of course the everyday Oriental scenes, set in whatever frame work, are amusing enough. Like most seaports it is a medley of nationalities ; the Egyptian and Turkish quarters were the gayest and most noisy. Here the streets, though not architectural or even old-looking, were picturesque from their narrow ness ; and the crowds in varied costumes, chattering and bargaining at the entrances of the Bazaars, were quite bewildering.

The contents of the Bazaars were as varied as the purchasers. There were piles of all sorts of odd little pots, pans, and baskets ; amber, brass, heaps of gourds and tomatoes; strings ALEXANDRLA. 5 of dried herbs and seed-pods ; and whole stalls of a pink and white sweetmeat which seems a very fashionable food. Numberless children flitted about in indescribable todettes, more or less scanty (generally more), of flimsy flowery stuffs of bright pink, green, and yellow; and always with bare feet. We worked our way slowly through this populous part, and then took an execrable road which led us to Pompey's Pdlar ; now over a hillock which we cleared with a bump ; now through a hole which we sank into with a flop ; now across a marshy place standing partly under water. The pillar is on a raised bare expanse of hard sand ; this empty space is most becoming to it, and it deserves a fine surrounding, for it is a beautiful shaft of red granite seventy-three feet high, not including the capital and base, which are of different workmanship, and look much rougher and newer.

It was put up not to, but by, Pompey, and should be called Diocle tian's Pillar, being erected in his honour. We next went to the Viceroy's garden, and ap preciated its deep shade ; for I must mention, in passing, that it was quite a hot afternoon, and we were stdl in the warm clothes we had been wearing on the steamer. There were lovely poinsettia-trees here in brilliant scarlet bloom, also datura, mimosa, the tree daisy, and many others I did not know. There were some enormous old sycamore fig-trees, something like ilexes in form and foliage, and bearing a fruit like a pinkish-purple fig, growing in clusters straight out of the trunk and limbs. These, old Ali told us, were two thousand years old ! — but we found his scale of thousands and hundreds was indistinct, and that he also referred indifferently to the time of Moses and that of the Romans.

The road to this garden was pretty, and shaded by large trees, carob, sycamore, and mimosa ; it lay mostly along the bank of the Mahmoudieh Canal, which joins the Nile. We saw a pelican fishing near the bank, and some buffaloes drinking. Ali took us on board a dahabieh which was moored on the canal, as we wanted to see what it was like ; but it disappointed us both a little to find it so like a steamer in its arrangement of cabins, berths, etc., as we were too fresh from our crossing to view anything ever so remotely reminding us of it with other than a jaundiced eye. St. L. in quired some particulars from the rais, or captain, amongst other things, the price ; on hearing which, Ali, evidently a friend of the proprietor's, said, in a loud sidewhisper : ' Berry sheap.' St. L.'s last question had been as to what facilities there were for keeping meat; and meditating awhde on the words, he repeated reflectively: 'Bury sheep V COSTUMES— ALTS BLLL. 7 I suppose referring them to some plan for keeping mutton during the excursion. © We then went home, and ended our first Egyptian day by looking from the windows, whence we saw many pedestrians and asinestrians, but very few horses or carriages.

The prevailing colour of the costume is blue for both men and women — not white, as at Algiers. The women wear dark-blue vefls, with a band across the forehead, an interval for the eyes, and a long narrow baglike strip of black over the lower part of the face, the upper and lower face-coverings being joined by a brass orna ment clown the nose, like a row of thimbles inside one another. Ali brought us his bill at the end of the clay, made out in strange language. One item was ' cara © O O bagag ;' and this represented the carrying of our luggage from the Sumatra to the hotel. He charged eight shillings for his own responsibilities and ser vices. One of his attentions was, at each crossing or step, to seize me by one elbow with both hands, and he once or twice nearly overturned me in his zeal to assist.

He also gave us mysterious hints from behind his hand as to our behaviour — when to accept flowers — when a franc was expected of us, etc. 3rd. — I took a short walk with W. and the old EA U-DE-NLL. dragoman, and looked into the Greek church, which is modern and very gorgeous, with a central dome. Inside, over the archway into the inner sanctuary, a large eye is painted ; this, I believe, is not unusual in Greek churches. Being Friday, the streets were unusually full. Ali presented me with a beautiful bouquet of roses and poinsettia. He said he had been to his mosque and offered two prayers — ' one for brother, and one for you ' — on his beads brought from Mecca, whither he had twice been on pilgrimage ; once for his father, who died without going, and once for him self. He asked me some searching questions, as Mussulmans often do, about the differences of faith among Christians ; not that they themselves are at all immaculate on the score of division, but I did not remember the names of their sects well enough © to retaliate.

In the afternoon we drove to the Palace of Ras et-Teen, outside the town, buflt on a promontory jutting into the sea, and used by the Viceroy on public occasions. It was of enormous size, and splendidly furnished : all the furniture was European — yellow satin brocade, massive chan deliers, etc., etc. They insisted on our sitting, or rather reclining, on the Viceroy's seat — a luxurious corner-couch, in a room with a divan all round. DEPARTURE FOR CAIRO. 9 They gave us bouquets when we came away. We went on to another garden of the Viceroy's, open only on Fridays, when a band plays, and the Alexandrian gay world resorts thither, we decided that it consisted chiefly of Greeks and Italians. There was a pretty view from this garden, over Lake Mareotis and a snipe-marsh, to Ramleh, three or four miles off, where people go in summer for coolness.

Italian seems to be the most generally spoken language here. The waiters all speak it, and the people in the shops, and many of the natives understand it a little ; no doubt this is partly owing to their trade and connection with Venice. The hotel is fairly comfortable, and has no pecu liarities in food, except fresh dates at each meal ; they are like long red plums, and not very good we thought. 4th. — This was, like yesterday, a hot day, and we spent the morning in a hot occupation; namely, preparing for our journey to Cairo — rather elabor ately on Ali's part, for he appeared early with a heavy coil of new rope, and insisted on double cording all the boxes, in addition to their own straps and locks. He wished to show his prudence and skill in every way, as he retained hopes to the last that we should engage him for the winter.

E AU-DE-NIL. 10 He showed us a letter from a former ' client,' in which he was called 'the King of Dragomans,' and this he thought would move us. He further tried informing me privately that he was always particularly kind to the ladies of his party ; ' and the ladies always like me berry well — they like my eyes,' he added, sentimentally. But we had been so much advised to take no step till we got to Cairo, that we should have been proof against his blandishments, even if we had not thought him somewhat grasping. The eyes in question twinkled keenly when it came to the final settle ment ; and elaborate summing, reckoning on fingers, and counting of piastres took place. In the emotion of parting he unaccountably forgot to bring us two shillings change which he owed us ; but, otherwise, we detected him in no fraud.

Once, indeed, he failed to take our part in a rather unkind way — when St. L. found the hotel people had charged a higher rate of exchange than was right according to ' Murray.' The man who brought us the bill appealed to Ali to corroborate him ; and Ali said, ' Oh yes, it was all right ; that was the proper rate.' But after the man was gone, he said to us, ' I tell you something ; only you must keep it here,' — laying his finger impressively on a region not held in Europe to be the special ALEXANDRLA TO CALRO. 1 1 repository of confidences — ' dey charge one franc more in the hotel than at other places ; but I not like to 'fere with these Italian men, so I let them say what they like.' At 2.15 he came with us to the station; we took our tickets, printed in Arabic ; got into the rather disagreeable radway carriage, with windows just too high up to be able to look out of with comfort, and started for Cairo.

It was a perfectly flat country, with intervals of marshy land and frequent lakes ; one, Lake Mareotis, just outside Alexandria, was quite a large one. As usual, out of England, there were no hedges. The vegetation looked rich and was of a vivid green. The chief crops we knew by sight were maize, already gathered, and lying in heaps ; cotton, still standing, and its white tufts showing ; and onions. One or two we did not recognise, we thought might be rice and indigo. People were thickly sprinkled all along, working in the fields ; and numerous camels and buffaloes were helping, and standing out picturesquely against the sky. We frequently came to mud villages, in which the houses were, for the most part, mound-shaped, with a funnel at the top ; some, however, were square. On the tops of many of them, cocks and hens were walking about feeding ; or dogs, generally lean, EA U-DE-NLL. 12 white, or yellow ones, sitting on their haunches, watched us go by.

Some of the houses had wooden bars sticking out from their sides, to serve as perches for the pigeons. At the stations, numbers of girls ran up with water-jars on their shoulders, and offered them at the windows ; and others brought oranges and roasted maize. We passed many palm-groves, generally clustered near a village or a mosque. We were disappointed with the one buffet of the journey (Kafr-es-Zyat), which occurred about five p.m., and suggested a wish for tea or coffee ; after running, as it seemed to us, about a quarter of a mile along the platform to reach it, we found only a small dish of sponge-cakes — and cafe noir could be brought if wanted — we hastily seized all there was to seize, and ran back again. About sunset we crossed the Nile. It was very broad and calm ; but I did not care to see it, for the first time, from a railway bridge and out of a train window, so only just glanced at it.

We quite expected our arrival, in the dark, at Cairo to be very turbulent and perilous ; and to involve the need of a sharp look-out after our small ' bagages.' But no ; all was calm and well-ordered. A com missionnaire, from Shepheard's Hotel, met us, and heralded us to a vast empty omnibus, captured our SHEPHEARDS LLOTEL. 13 eleven ' colis,' and landed us safelv at the hotel at 8.30. It is an immense long low building, only one story high, and with the broadest of corridors, and very clean airy rooms. The waiters are chiefly Greeks and Arabs. We had telegraphed for rooms, and they gave us west ones with a sitting-room ; the latter, however, we soon gave up. We found mosquito-curtains to our beds, and they were by no means unnecessary ; though, in the daytime, there were but few mosquitoes. There are no bells, but hand-clapping answers the purpose, and always produces a friendly genie. E A U-DE-NLL. 14

Chapter II

5th, Sunday. — We awoke to the sight of the one thing we least expected in Egypt — a fog ! This, with a familiar sound of rooks cawing, almost made me think I was dreaming, and must be still in England. Soon, however, the tops of the palm-trees loomed out, and the rooks proved to be Egyptian crows, parti-coloured black and grey ; and before long the sun quite won the day. We spent a very European day — settling ourselves in our rooms and discussing our winter plans ; for we had not yet decided whether to go up the Nile or to spend all the time in Cairo and its neighbourhood. Our only achievement was to go to the English church, a new little building, where the Dean of Shanghai is acting as chaplain during this winter. The road to it is along an unfinished street, broad enough to cut up into six Arab thoroughfares, and presenting no Eastern feature but a few stalls at the corner, where sugar-cane cut in pieces was FLRST DAY AT CALRO. 15 offered for sale, and to one of which a tame monkey was tied.

A young man in a red fez, who sat close behind us in church, and with whom we exchanged civilities on the subject of hymn-books, came up, when we got outside, and began to talk in broken English. He said he was a Copt, and had been at an American mission-school, and liked going to the English service. He was anxious, he said, to improve in speaking ; and there was certainly room for it, though he had a great stock of words, and did not pronounce badly. He gave us his name, and promised to call when he had a spare afternoon ; and also offered to take us to a service at the Coptic cathedral. He was about eighteen, rather under sized, with soft short-sighted black eyes, and very white teeth. On coming in, we received a call from Mr. George, to whom St. L. had an introduction, one of the chief people in the Telegraph Department, and an old resident in Cairo, and an excellent adviser to the ignorant.

He gave us much kind counsel, and seriously inclined us to the taking of a dahabieh for the winter, after a short preliminary stay in Cairo. He told us this last had been a ' mild ' summer, and there had been ' a good Nile ' (as we should say, a good harvest), but that the fever in August had been very prevalent, and he thought the accounts of it in England had alarmed many intend ing tourists, and that it would be an empty winter ; the fever was now, however, quite over. 6th.— To-day we took a drive to Old Cairo, the ancient Fostat, about three miles from the quarter we are in. AVe were driven by a negro or Sou danee, who knew a few words of English, and understood a few of our Arabic, and we made the most of this common ground in using him as a cicerone. The drive was through a long scries of © © streets with shops, then across a sandy tract and past a stone aqueduct to the old town.

St. L. went into a shop, and I was much amused, as I sat waiting for him, by the stream of passers. I had often heard of the picturesque street-life of Cairo, yet it struck me with all the force of novelty as I watched the figures gliding by, as if in a pano rama, on the soft, noiseless soil of the street — atoning, however, with their tongues for the silence of their feet. In European cities the talking never occurs to you as an element in the din, which appears to consist entirely of ' the car rattling o'er the stony street ;' but in Cairo, all that you hear is pure human talk, unless varied by the bray of a donkey or the groan DONKEYS. 17 of a camel. Donkeys pass you by twenties at a time, and are not only naturally beautiful, but have their charms heightened by artificial treat ment, being dyed with different colours.

Now a black one goes by, with a pink nose and stomach ; now a grey one, with bands of yellow ; now a mdkwhite one, with a few beauty-spots of magenta ; and they are also beautifully dressed in embroidered saddle-cloths and bridles worked with shells and brass ornaments. Cairo contains 264 mosques, and I saw several in this cpiarter, all small ones, with tall minarets, and built in bands of red and white, with honey combed cornices. At Old Cairo, we went first to the Mosque of Amer, the oldest in Cairo, but it is supposed that not much is left of the original building founded O © by Amer in a.d. 643 ; the guide, however, showed us one marble column at which .Mohammed himself is said to have worked. The whole place is in ruins, but is tolerably whole as a shell. There is a great quadrangle, about the size of the garden in Port man Square, with rows of stone columns, five or six deep, all round it; in the centre is the lavatory, with one tall palm beside it.

At one place are two columns very close together, concerning which they have a legend that only true believers can pass through ; but they account for this no longer hold ing good, by saying that now the mosque is not used for worship, all such proofs of special sanctity are withdrawn. We rather prided ourselves on grasping all this from the pantomime of the old Arab who showed us round. The few words we know being Algerian Arabic, are about as different from Egyptian as broad Scotch is from London English, and gene rally produce no effect but amusement on the listener, while their eloquence is equally wasted on us. We next went to see one of the Coptic or early Christian churches. I cannot quite make out why the Christians of Egypt are called Copts, but as I was assured to-day that there are also Mohammedan Copts, I begin to conclude that the question of religion is only a coincidence ; but I shall inquire further from our young friend when he comes to see us.

The church we went to see to-day was in a very curious place. We drove up to the walls of an enormous pile of building, full of irregular angles, strange little windows, and small overhanging balconies like swallows' nests against the wall. It looked like a great monastery. We entered it by a small low door, partly sunk in the ground ; and COPTLC QUARTER. 19 when we got inside, found, to our surprise, that in stead of being in a single building, we were in a © © ©' little town — a labyrinth of narrow streets opening out before us, and high walls, like fortifications, closing us in, so that the whole place was in dim light. o It seemed to be thickly peopled ; and numerous children were coming round us to offer to guide us, © © ' and ask for money. The street we were in was of houses four or five stories high, each story pro jecting beyond the one below, till at the top, in some places, they actually touched their opposite neighbours.

In others, there was just a cranny of dazzling blue sky visible between the two ; these overhanging stories were mostly fronted with the windows of delicate latticed woodwork, com mon in Moorish houses. The children showed us to a church, which we identified on our plan of Cairo as that of Sitt Miriam (the Lady Mary), which is the traditional Church of the Holy Family on their Flight into Egypt, and contains, in a subterranean chapel, two niches in which they are said to have rested ; the Virgin and Child in one, and S. Joseph in the other. The approach to the church is through a long winding passage with many turns. It appears to 2—2 EA U-DE-NIL. 20 be very small and dark as you enter, but this is owing to its being divided into various sections by screens of elaborate woodwork, and there is no place from which you get anything like a general view of the building.

The idea of these sections © seems to be, a set of gradual approaches to the Holy Place. This is shut off from the rest of the church by a magnificent solid screen of wood richly inlaid with ivory ; two little windows in it, through which the priest gives the Communion to the laity ; and between them a doorway, across which hangs a silk curtain, embroidered with a cross of peculiar shape. Looking in, we saw the Altar; and behind it, in a semicircle, seven degrees or steps of white marble, and the wall above covered with lovely mosaic of coloured marble and gems and mother-of-pearl let in at intervals. Along the top of the ivory screen was a row of twelve pictures of the Apostles, on gold grounds ; and at the sides, some most curious little wood-carvings in panels : one was of S. George and the Dragon.

We were taken clown into the subterranean church by a little girl who did not look more than four years old, and who made a very effective picture as she stood in the entrance to one of the niches, holding a candle on high in one small HELLOPOLLS. 21 brown hand, and the light making a halo round her pretty little soft face and scanty pink tunic. When St. L. gave her a piastre, she took his hand and put it first to her lips and then to her forehead. The old man at the Mosque of Amer had been much less gratified by a whole franc ; he said, ' Enta tayib ' (you are good), but continued to hold out his hand for more with much persistency. 7th. — There was a strong, almost cold, wind to-day, a shower in the afternoon, and heavy rain at night. In the morning we sat in a large new garden close to the hotel, called, after this quarter of the town, the Esbekeeyeh Garden.

In the afternoon we drove to Heliopolis, about ten miles off. We got, of course, quite into the country, and felt more distinctly that we were in the Egypt we had read and thought of than we had previously clone. We had desert on both sides of us — sand, full of loose stones, stretching away as far as we could see : not that that was very far, as the view is bounded by low, flat topped hills, crowned with windmills, and of the same sand-colour as the plain. We saw to our right the great cemetery of Cairo, commonly called the Tombs of the Caliphs, and this, too, was of the same hue as all the rest : its tall, slender minarets and carved domes standing out in one shade of yellow-brown relieved against a background just a degree darker. There was something very cap- © tivating in the colouring of this harmony in auburn.