Egyptian sepulchres and Syrian shrines, including a visit to Palmyra

Preface

Circumstances having rendered change of scene and climate imperatively necessary for my sister and myself, we hastily determined, at the close of the year 1858, to leave England for Egypt, believing that we should there find an endless store of deeply interesting subjects for thought and study, unfatiguing travelling, and no society : our hopes of the two former were more than realised, but solitude it is less certain to obtain on the now fashionable and crowded Nile. I had no presumptuous intention of writing an account of our travels over such well-trodden ground, but, when I found that our long residence in the mountains of the Lebanon and at Jerusalem, as well as the unusual visit we had made to Palmyra, had given us opportunities of observation that did not fall to the lot of every traveller in those countries, I could not but wish to share our experiences with the public. Since that, the horrible Syrian war having fixed the attention of England for some time upon that unfortunate country, I have been glad to add my small offering towards appeasing the general desire for further information.

It is impossible for any one who has no personal experience of it, to understand the physical difficulties and impediments under which one’s journals, and notes, are written amidst the fatigues of such travelling : and mine have had the further disadvantage of being re-written in a foreign land, without books or help of any kind. My work is, therefore, only a faithful, unornamented record of what we saw and heard ; the scholar will learn nothing by it save a few facts which I have recorded in hopes of his drawing those deductions from them of which I am myself incapable. I have, in fact, written chiefly for those who, compelled to stay at home, like to draw their chairs to the cheerful coal-fire, to shut out the grey sky and dripping rain of England, and to follow in fancy the footsteps of those who have enjoyed the realities of travel. I not only love to

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PREFACE.

share my pleasure, but I earnestly trust that many may be incited to similar enterprise, by my showing them with what ease and security ladies may travel, even alone, in those countries which have been frequently supposed to be open only to strong and energetic men. In this hope I have endeavoured to supply them with some practical information as to routes, points of interest, and other details gathered from our own experience.

The chapter on Thebes may be useful to those travellers who cannot afford time enough to study the subject for themselves in deeper and more important works. That on ancient Jerusalem contains notices of some facts and recent discoveries which bear on the topography of the ancient City, — for which I am indebted to an able and intelligent gentleman, Signor Pierotti, Captain of Engineers in the Sardinian army, who is now Architect to the Pasha of Jerusalem, — an office which has afforded him several opportunities of studying ancient remains accidentally brought to light ; the results of this study, on which he has been engaged for six years, will be found in his admirable plan of Jerusalem, published in Paris, — a small and rough sketch of which I have given upon the map that accompanies this book.

I have endeavoured to give the names of places in phonetic spelling, or, at least, in spelling more in accordance with the habits of English ears and lips than the now often-adopted rule laid down by Sir William Jones, — as experience has proved to me how very rarely names so written are pronounced by travellers with even an approximation to the Arabic ; and, therefore, in the hope of making my book practically useful to them, I have preferred this to attempting to follow the other, perhaps more accurate, but, as I have found, generally unsuccessful plan.

Valencia, April 1861.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. Fog and Sunshine 1

II. Real Life in Day-Dreams .... 10

Chapter I. Fog And Sunshine

A dense wet fog, varying from every shade of yellow to brown, lasting with few intermissions for about three weeks, and ten days of heavy frost, during which, however, there were some rare glimpses of the sun, which enabled us to distinguish at a hundred yards off the skeletons of that black species of tree peculiar to Hyde Park, — such was our preparation for a draught of warm, delicious air, heavily laden with the scent of orange-blossoms which, seven days after we left London, stole in at our cabin window as we dropped anchor in Yaletta Harbour, at one o’clock on the morning of the 1st of December, 1858. A few hours more and we were basking in the hot sun under the orange-trees, thankful for limonade a la neige , and forgetting the black bricks of London among the magnificent marbles of the church of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, and in the enjoyment of the kindness and hospitality of cordial friends at Malta. Still a few days more of the same cloudless blue sky and unruffled sea, and we landed on the dirty quay of Alexandria on the 10th of December. A boat and a janissary had been considerately sent to deliver us from the crowd of loud-voiced Indian passengers, and to gratify our impatience to tread the soil of old Egypt, though we only exchanged one scene of noisy confusion for another, as we were greeted by a mass of screaming Arabs, in and out of the water, each tumbling and fighting in order to gain possession of one member of the party, for the benefit of his donkey, vehicle, or hotel ; and glad enough we were to mount into the carriage prepared by our stout, grave, silver-sticked janissary, and to settle into a good hotel in the Grande Place.

Here we found it nearly impossible to do anything but look out of the window at the motley crowd, which filled that baking hot, sandy place, with men of every colour of skin and garment that the most vivid imagination could conceive. Arabs of every tribe in Africa, from Morocco to Egypt, and from Abyssinia and Dongola to the Delta ; Syrians, Turks, Greeks, and Italians ; dozens of open carriages in every degree of shabbiness, driven by black Nubians in their white gowns, called sudeyrte , with some bright-coloured stuff wound round the head for a turban, thrashing their fiery black horses; strings of tall, dust-coloured camels, slowly carrying their burdens of stones, winding round corners, while every one waits for the file to pass, or pushing their long necks over the heads of the passers-by ; hundreds of donkeys, each with a horrid-looking goat-skin filled with water on his back, the four legs sticking up into the air, with an uncomfortable deadalive look ; more donkeys still, each carrying a snow-white ovalshaped balloon, with a huge flapping canary- coloured leather boot at each side — these are women, as you may know by the unceasing, shrill, screaming chatter which comes from under the white garment (called an eezar ), to which the donkey-driver never seems to pay the slightest attention; — Turks, Greeks, and Egyptian gentlemen, in various degrees of semi-costume, but all agreeing in the invariable red tarboosh, mounted on fine but small horses, sometimes richly caparisoned; and lastly, handsome European carriages, always preceded by a runnrng sais (who is really necessary to clear a path through the crowd), dressed in graceful white robes, with red or dark blue silk sashes, and sometimes a long stick — the carriages containing ladies dressed in the newest French fashion, or in black silk hdbarahs, with white muslin veils across the face, leaving nothing to be seen but large sparkling black eyes painted with kohhl. As Arabs always appear to be in a violent passion when they speak, and they are endless talkers, it is not possible to describe the noise that rose to our windows from the Place, nor how harsh, shrill, and intensely guttural the various languages of Africa and Turkey sounded to our English ears.

The noise without seemed to us pretty well balanced by the confusion we immediately fell into within ; ladies travelling alone were certainly a legitimate prey to the hosts (I use the word advisedly) of dragomans, old and young, experienced and inexperienced, from the master of eight or ten languages to the stammerer in all but one ; natives of every country within three thousand miles, and of every degree of intelligence or stupidity, who obtruded themselves on our

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notice, at all hours of the day, walking into our talon, or, not finding us there, coming straight into our bedroom without knocking ; as well as cooks and waiters, each with his packet of dirty, thumbed, faded, torn letters of recommendation, which each entreated us to read on the spot at once, — all these creatures besieging us one after another, all day and every day during the whole time we remained in Alexandria.

We found several kind, though new, friends in Alexandria, and were induced by their advice to change our plans and to take a boat at once, instead of waiting till we reached Cairo, which is by far the pleasantest plan ; but we had fixed our minds upon securing a dragoman of whom we had heard much in England, Achmet Adgwa, and he would not separate himself from his own boat, or leave Alexandria until it was let to some one else ; for the latter contingency we could not of course wait, and we therefore put an end to the hopes of all our besiegers and closed with him, after inspecting every boat on the Mah’moudleh Canal fiver and over again, until we were too glad to be obliged to decide finally. And a beautiful boat our dahabieh was ; from first to last we thought her the best and most comfortable boat on the Nile, and only two were larger. She had six cabins : first a saloon, fifteen feet by twelve, containing two divans, fitted with presses underneath them along each side, two book-cases, and a large table ; four sleeping cabins, large enough for comfortable washing apparatus ; and a good-sized back cabin, which we used as a store-room, and a sitting-room for our maid. We had nine windows at each side of the dahabieh, with glass, green wooden shutters, and curtains ; and plenty of shelves, cupboards, and drawers enough to house everything. We saw other dahabiehs, the interior of which were prettier and more tastefully fitted up than ours, but none were more comfortable, bright, and airy.

In front of our saloon, on the lower deck, were two seats, and the table for the servants’ dinner, and an enormous goolleli (a jar of porous clay used for filtering, from which the water was always deliciously fresh) enclosed in a lattice-work of wood prettily painted. On the upper deck we had a comfortable sofa on each side, and the raised skylight of the saloon made a table ; there was, however, room for half-a-dozen tables besides. Beyond the mast, which is placed quite in the bow of the boat, the mysteries of cooking are conducted over a small stove, the sailors preparing their own food at a queer little fire made at one side of the mast, which, about twenty-four feet high itself, supported a lateen yard, 163 feet in length, slung on in a curiously clumsy manner, but which slewed about in the prettiest curves in a high wind. Our great sail was the largest on the river, and I never wearied of watching its graceful motions. There was a small sail on the little mast at the stern, and a platform over the stern cabin, where the sailors performed their ablutions at sunrise and sunset. The dahabiehs on the Nile are all very gaily painted, and have fanciful names, which some keep from year to year ; ours we chose to change, and, after much consideration, we had the words Wandering Maiden painted on her sides — a name the appropriateness of which we found afforded much amusement among our fellow-travellers. We hoisted the British ensign at the stern ; and a white fleur-de-lis on a dark blue ground floated from the end of the long yard, together with a very long streamer of red and white depending to the water, the best distinguishing mark at a long distance. This naming of their boat is an important affair among Nile travellers, and serves sometimes to bring out the odd fancies of people rather amusingly ; some names have become hackneyed into cockneyism on the Nile, but certainly the “ Ibis ” or “ Lotus ” seems more appropriate as a name for such a nineteenth-century affair as a dahabieh, than one raked up from the ashes of a dead Pharaoh. The white bird that still flies over the Nile is a living, though degenerate, descendant of the sacred Ibis of ancient days, and the flower is said still to grow there : and we thought these names prettier than that of one gaily-painted boat we met floating down the river called Sesortasen III. .' It was truly puzzling to imagine what that long-buried hero had to do with the blood-red banner of the Cross, or the French motto that floated from his (mast-) head.

Our crew consisted of the Reis, or captain, the Mestahmel, or steersman, fourteen sailors, and their cook-boy ; besides which our dragoman had his own servant, a boy called ’Ali ; and these, with our cook, our own maid, and German man-servant, made a complement of twenty-three persons on board the Wandering Maiden.

Two or three days were occupied in filling her with the stores required over and above what we had brought from Malta, and in getting the canteen, &c., in order ; but we were rather glad of the delay, which enabled us to see the lions of Alexandria— the quays, the two harbours, Cleopatra’s Needle (as it is absurdly called), and her fallen sister, and the various gates of the city, one or two of which are picturesque. Then we had several pleasant drives along the acacia-shaded roads all round Alexandria. Yery pleasant they are, the trees forming a cool, green barrier on each side between the road and the sandy desert; and along the bank of the Mah’moudleh Canal, by the pretty villas of the European merchants, each with its luxuriant garden, throwing clusters and tangles of magnificent gorgeous-coloured creepers over the walls, such masses of scarlet

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poinsettias and convolvuli of all colours, with blossoms of four and five inches in diameter, so delightful and strange to English eyes. Here and there one comes to a small stone terrace built on the edge of the water, and shaded with beila-sombra or acacia trees ; these are kiosks, where people come out from the city to lounge away the afternoons, smoking and drinking coffee or sherbet. One or two huge palaces are also to be seen, which presented no beauty externally ; but we afterwards visited the Kas-e-teen Palace, belonging to Said Pasha, and built by Muhammed ’Ali, which stands on the north-east side of the principal harbour, that is, on the Island of Pharos, which is connected with the shore by the ancient causeway called the Heptastadium. The rooms are furnished with divans and ornamental tables of great delicacy and richness, but all entirely European, except some fine species of gold and silver damask on the Viceroy’s couches, the chefs-d’oeuvre of Constantinopolitan looms. The best thing in the palace are the parquet floors, which are of various woods inlaid with ivory and mother-ofpearl, exquisitely done, and different in each room ; the palace is also worth visiting for the sake of the fine view from the balcony of the old harbour, Eunostus.

Another day we drove along the shady, sandy roads to see the Pillar erected in honour of the Emperor Diocletian, probably on his taking possession of the city of Alexandria, a.d. 296, which is vulgarly called Pompey’s Pillar; and in returning we passed through an encampment of Bedoueen tents, which certainly did not realise any idea I had formed of them. “ Black as the tents of Kedar” they were indeed, but far from “ comely;” oblongs and squares of the darkest brown and black skins of rudely-tanned leather, with flat tops, and only from two-and-a-half to three feet high. Men and women, wild, dirty-looking, half-naked Arabs, were crawling in and out from under the tents, gathering up their dirtier rags, or attending to about a thousand black donkeys, goats, and sheep, which were standing in the encampment.

Sunday afforded us the opportunity of service in the very handsome English Church which the Alexandrians have lately erected, a privilege all the more valuable, as many a week was to elapse before we should enter another church ; it is prettily built of white and pinkish stone, adorned with arcades and pilasters, and a semicircular apse. In the afternoon every road and street seemed filled with promenaders ; but French fashion predominates, to the destruction of all orientalism or picturesqueness.

At last our preparations were completed, and we took up our abode on board the Wandering Maiden ; one day more was allowed to elapse, on account of the Wednesday, a day of ill-luck, on which the sailors refused to commence a voyage ; but on Thursday the 16th, at daylight, we started before a good breeze down the Mah’- moudieh Canal. About five p.m. we passed through the lock at Atfeh, and were at last floating on the bosom of the grand old Nile ! I shall never forget that evening, when we slipped out of the long, narrow, high-banked canal on to the wide, swiftly -flowing, smooth river,— the low, flat banks made it seem even wider than it was, almost like a sea, and the setting sun gilded the mud-houses of the tarboosh-making town of Fouah opposite, brightening the palm-trees towering above the villages, and tipping the graceful white lateen sails of a score of khandjelis and little boats going down to Eosetta. We stayed on deck till it was quite dark, enjoying the new scene, and our last, for a long time, of fine weather ; one or two tremendous downpours in Alexandria had warned us of what our fate might be, and from that evening, for eleven successive days, we had constant storms of rain and wind, the rain threatening to drown us as it leaked through deck, door, and window, and the wind making us pitch and roll until we were nearly sea-sick. Once, when looking at the magnificently blue sky in Alexandria, so new to English eyes, I made some remark to a gentleman residing there on its beauty : “ Ah,” he said, “ you have not learned yet to loathe this cloudless sky ! We have not had one drop of rain here since the middle of last February, and you cannot understand how one wearies, mind and body, of the changeless expanse, longing for the ever-varying clouds we think so beautiful, because we so seldom see them, and because they bring us so much refreshment and vigour.” We had enough of them now, however ; so much so that to some people our voyage to Cairo might have been tiresome, but to us it was not so. We were glad to rest after the long journey from England, and we had books in plenty ; our boat dried in the first rays of sunshine, and sometimes, when the wind forced us to lie thumping on a bank, we managed to find a sheltered walk in the country, making acquaintance with castor-oil and gum-arabic trees, cotton-plants, and the ever-graceful palm-groves. Sometimes we examined the shadoofs * and sakiyehs, f both on the banks of the river and in the fields, or we ventured into the tents and mud-huts of the

* The shadoof is the very simple machine used for lifting the water of the Nile up to the height of the bank : a man, almost naked and with his head uncovered, holds a long pole balanced horizontally on a perpendicular stick, with a palm leaf or wooden basket at one end and a weight at the other end ; he dips the basket into the river and then throws it up expertly, making it empty itself into a hole or trough, cut to receive it, above his head. If the

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fellaheen (from sing, fellah ), from whence we never failed to bring away many lively and unpleasant souvenirs. The men seemed to have nothing to do but to stand lounging about,, leaving all the work of house and field to the women, whom we always found busy ; they were lively and good-natured, though not by any means attractive in person or deportment. They wear but one garment, a long, dark-blue gown or chemise, thrown round the body in an untidy fashion, exposing generally the legs, always the arms, and sometimes the neck, but drawn over the head, and across the face, when any one is near. Their unkempt locks are thrown back and roughly plaited, their eyelids are painted black with kohl, and their grinning white teeth are set off with stripes or circles on the chin and forehead of blue tattooing. A large silver ring stuck through one nostril, earrings, a dirty silver bracelet or two on each arm, and generally one on each ankle, complete their costume, which is as ugly as it is scanty. I do not think I saw two women in Egypt, out of Cairo, whose appearance did not more or less disgust me. When we went near their huts they always invited us in, and generally insisted on shaking hands with us, laughing all the time, and expressing their wonder at our riches — the only reason they could devise for our putting on so many clothes one over another : and sometimes they would offer us their dhourra bread, or milk, or show us how they were grinding corn, between flat round stones, or making cheese by leaving the milk to drain through mats made of plaited palm-leaves; always asking about how they do the same things in the Howadji’s country.

It is certainly a much less expensive plan to go from Alexandria at once by railroad to Cairo, and there engage your boat; since though you may reach Cairo in four days’ sail, you may also occupy fourteen, as we did, and we heard of persons having been twenty-one days on the way ! But at the same time you have the advantage of knowing your boat, and finding out her deficiencies before you come to the last place where you can buy stores, or get anything

bank is high, another or two more men stand above him with repetitions of the same contrivance.

f The sakiyeh is a huge wheel with earthen jars fixed all round it, which fill as they pass through the river, and empty themselves into a trough as they reach the top. It is turned by a couple of oxen, who pace round and round to the screeching, groaning music of the ungreased crank. This creak of the sakiyeh, with the eternal melancholy song of the shadoof men, half wail, half screech, is the true sound of Egypt : no hour nor half-hour passes without hearing one or the other, and the very name of the country brings the echo of it as distinctly into one’s ears as the remembrance of the yellow sand, or of the broad river, floats before one’s eyes.

altered or improved and you have also some amusement and pleasure in your voyage, while the line of rail is wholly uninteresting and ugly. I contrived to find something for a sketch every day, and doubtless there would have been plenty more subjects to be found with better luck than the unusually bad weather we had. For a sportsman I should think the boat much pleasanter than the land journey ; as game is immensely more plentiful in the Delta than above Cairo, and much less wild. The sandbanks are covered with thousands of wild geese and ducks, and there are wild boars to be hunted in several localities. If, however, people are likely to weary of a long quiet voyage, it is better to go by railway, and have the dahabieh sent up to Cairo to meet them, stipulating that it must arrive within a certain number of days. The dahabiehs are decidedly better and nicer at Alexandria than at Cairo, but also proportionably dearer.

At this time we were slowly tracking against head- winds ; and at Kefr-el-Aesh, where the railway crosses the Nile, the wind increased so much that we were moored two whole days on the east bank. On the second day, when we had lost all patience, and, in spite of our dragoman’s remonstrances, were going to insist on making an attempt to shoot the opening left in the bridge now building for the railway, an unexpected ally came to hand : the superintendent of the station, Ismael Yousry Bey, — may his shadow never be less ! — arrived in a well-rowed boat alongside, saying, that on hearing there were English ladies on board, he had come to see if we stood in need of any assistance. He assured us that it was quite impossible to shoot the bridge, unless by the chance of an exactly favourable wind. “But,” said he, “you English people always want to eat dinner together on your Christmas-day, and you must be in Cairo for that, — I will give you two hundred men to jpull you through, if you like it.” Of course we gladly accepted so obliging an offer, and while his men went off with his orders, the Effendi sat chatting in very good English with us, sipping his coffee and smoking his shibouque. He told us he had been educated at King’s College, London, and afterwards lived a year or two in Kent, and that the English had been so kind to him, and made him so happy, that it was an especial pleasure to have an opportunity of assisting any English person who came to his country.

His pleasure was, however, frustrated ; for, just as the men were all ready, the wind, which had been unsteadily veering about for the last hour or two, suddenly settled into the precisely right point, and blew us through the opening with the Effendi on board, and the two hundred workmen standing ready to assist on the

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bridge, who, however, gesticulated, screamed, and shouted quite as much as if they had really been doing the business themselves.

Our good friend sent us in the evening some excellent milk and turkeys ; on one of which, in consequence of the still unkind and cruel winds, we made our Christmas dinner, moored under a palm grove in the hot sun, the turkey stuffed with pistachio nuts and dates, and a “ plum-pudding ” of biscuit, citron, and dried apricots.

Two days afterwards, as I was watching the rich hues of the setting sun upon the sands and trees, I saw two small triangles, distinct and hard, on the western horizon, which my heart suddenly leaped up to greet : there were the Pyramids at last ! I saw them many times afterwards, in various ways and at various times of day, but they never impressed me more than on that evening, painted in the exquisite lilac hues of sunset, yet golden-tipped, over the straight, flat green bank of the river, far away over line after line of sand — far away, standing sharp and clear against a background of coloured clouds.

Chapter II. Real Life In Day-dreams

We landed on the west bank, before we reached Bonlak, on the morning of the 29th of December, scrambling oyer a forest of dirty boats to make our first essay upon the Arab saddles and Cairo donkeys : the latter are most excellent of their kind, as lively as they are small. The saddles are not uncomfortable; they are simply cushions mounted high on the donkey’s back, with a round hump' across them in front, and they are generally made of gay red leather, while the saddle-cloth is worked in colours with bands of cowrie-shells sewn on in strips : a charm, enclosed in a triangular silver box, is hung round the animal’s neck.

Our road, which lay along a high causeway shaded with fine trees, brought us into the Esbeykiyeh, at the Shoobra corner, close to Shepheard’s Hotel (where we entered the name and distinguishing flag of our boat in the Nile Howadji’s book), and then went on to the English Consulate, and into the Turkish bazaars to buy sugar, sweetmeats, &c., which we wanted in the dahabieh.

Shall I here confess the truth ? that my first view of Cairo absolutely disappointed me ! During our second visit, when I came to know it better, I learned its full beauty and interest ; and now I constantly wish that I could return there to gratify the unsatisfied feeling of not having had enough of its charms. One reads the result of every traveller’s enthusiasm after he has had time to enjoy it and to think about it, and one’s expectations thus become too highly exalted : — whatever it arose from, I certainly was just at first disappointed with the poorness and raggedness and want of solidity in the houses of Cairo. The gay wares in the wooden shops of the bazaars are bright enough, but the shops themselves are of rough, unpainted boards, uneven in size and height, and covered in from the sun with only ragged old