Nile notes of a Howadji

Preface

S"

When the Persian Poet Hafiz was asked by the Philosopher Zenda what he was good for, he replied : " Of what use is a flower ?"

" A flower is good to smell," said the philosopher. " And I am good to smell it," said the poet.

c

A foutra for the world and worldlings base, I sing of Africa and golden joys."

King Henry IV., Part ii.

" -•> or I described

Great Egypt's flaring sky, or Spain's cork groves."

" If it be asked why it is called the Nile, the answer is, because it has

beautiful and good water."

Werne's " White Nile."

" What, then, is a Howadji 1" said the Emperor of Ethiopia, draining a beaker of crocodile tears.

11 Howadji," replied the astute Arabian, " is our name for merchants ; and as only merchants travel, we so call travellers."

" Allah-'hu Akbar," said the Emperor of Ethiopia. " God is great." Linkum Fidelius's il Calm Crocodile, or the Sphinx unriddled."

" He saw all the rarities at Cairo, as also the Pyramids, and sailing

up the Nile, viewed the famous towns on each side of that river."

Story of Ali Cogia, in the Arabian Nights.

" Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus

heareth strange voices."

Sir Thomas Browne.

" There can on© chat witk mummies in a pyramid, and breakfast

on basilisks' eggs. Thither, then, Homunculus Mandrake, son of the great Paracelsus ; languish no more in the ignorance of those climes, but abroad with alembic and crucible, and weigh anchor for Egypt."

Death's Jest Book, or the Fool's Tragedy.

Contents

PAGE

I. — Going to Boulak, . . . . 1

II. — The Drag-6-men, ... .10

I. Going To Boulak

In a gold and purple December sunset, the Pacha and I walked down to the boat at Boulak, the port of Cairo. The Pacha was my friend, and it does not concern you, gracious reader, to know if he were Sicilian, or Syrian ; whether he wore coat or kaftan, had a hareem, or was a baleful bachelor. The air was warm, like a May evening in Italy Behind us, the slim minarets of Cairo spired shiningly in the brilliance, like the towers of a fairy city, under the sunset sea.

These minarets make the Eastern cities so beautiful. The heavy mound-like domes and belfries of western Europe are of the earth, earthy. But the mingled mass of building, which a city is, soars lightly to the sky, in the lofty minarets on whose gold crescent crown the sun lingers and lingers, making them the earliest stars of evening.

To our new eyes every thing was picture. Vainly

the broad road was crowded with Muslim artisans 1 home-returning from their work. To the mere Muslim observer, they were carpenters, masons laborers, and tradesmen of all kinds. We passed many a meditating Cairene, to whom there was nothing but the monotony of an old story in that evening and on that road. But we saw all the pageantry of oriental romance quietly donkeying into Cairo. Camels, too, swaying and waving like huge phantoms of the twilight, horses with strange gay trappings curbed by tawny, turbaned equestrians, the peaked toe of the red slipper resting in the shovel stirrup. It was a fair festal evening. The whole world was masquerading, and so well that it seemed reality.

I saw Fadladeen with a gorgeous turban and a gay sash. His chibouque, wound with colored silk and gold threads, was borne behind him by a black slave. Fat and funny was Fadladeen as of old; and though Fermorz was not by, it was clear to see in the languid droop of his eye, that choice Arabian verses were sung by the twilight in his mind.

Yet was Venus still the evening star ; for behind him, closely veiled, came Lalla Rookh. She was wrapped in a vast black silken bag, that bulged like a balloon over her donkey. But a star-suffused evening cloud was that bulky blackness, as her twin eyes shone forth liquidly lustrous.

Abon Hassan sat at the city gate, and I saw Haroun Alrashid quietly coming up in that disguise of a Moussoul merchant. I could not but wink at Abon, for I knew him so long ago in the Arabian Nights. But he rather stared than saluted, as friends may, in a masquerade. There was Sinbad the porter, too, hurrying to Sinbad the Sailor. I turned and watched his form fade in the twilight, yet I doubt if he reached Bagdad in time for the eighth history.

Scarce had he passed, when a long string of donkeys ambled by, bearing, each, one of the inflated balloons. It was a hareem taking the evening air. A huge eunuch was the captain, and rode before. They are bloated, dead-eyed creatures, the eunuchs — but there be no eyes of greater importance to marital minds. The ladies came gaily after, in single file, chatting together, and although Araby's daughters are still born to blush unseen, they looked earnestly upon the staring strangers. Did those strangers long to behold that hidden beauty? Could they help it if all the softness and sweetness of hidden faces radiated from melting eyes ?

Then came Sakkas — men with hog skins slung over their backs, full of water. I remembered the land and the time of putting wine into old bottles, and was shoved back beyond glass. Pedlers — swarthy fatalists in lovely lengths of robe and turban, cried their wares. To our Frank ears, it was mere Babel jargon. Yet had erudite Mr. Lane accompanied us, Mr. Lane, the eastern Englishman, who has given us so many golden glimpses into the silence and mystery of oriental life, — like a good genius revealing to ardent lovers the very hallowed heart of the hareem, — we should have understood those cries.

We should have heard " Sycamore ligs — O Grapes" — meaning that said figs were offered, and the sweetness of sense and sound that " grape" hath was only bait for the attention ; or " Odors of Paradise, O flowers of the henna," causing Muslim maidens to tingle to their very nails 5 ends ; or, indeed, these pedler poets, vending water-melons, sang, " Consoler of the embarrassed, Pips." Were they not poets, these pedlers, and full of all oriental extravagance ? For the sweet association of poetic names shed silvery sheen over the actual article offered. The unwary philosopher might fancy that he was buying comfort in a green water-melon, and the pietist dream of mementoes of heaven, in the mere earthly vanity of henna.

But the philanthropic merchant of sour limes cries, " God make them light — limes" — meaning not the fruit nor the stomach of the purchaser, but his purse. And what would the prisoners of the passing black balloons say to the ambiguousness of " The work of the bull, O maidens !" innocently indicating a kind of cotton cloth made by bullmoved machinery? Will they never have done with hieroglyphics and sphinxes, these Egyptians ? Here a man, rose-embowered, chants, " The rose is a thorn, from the sweat of the prophet it bloomed" — meaning simply, " Fresh roses."

These are masquerade manners, but they are pleasant. The maiden buys not henna only, but a thought of heaven. The poet not water-melons only, but a dream of consolation, which truly he will need. When shall we hear in Broadway, " Spring blush of the hillsides, O strawberries," or "Breast buds of Venus, milk." Never, never, until milkmen are turbaned and berrywomen ballooned.

A pair of Persians wound among these pedlers, clad in their strange costume. They wore high shaggy hats and undressed skins, and in their girdles shone silver-mounted pistols and daggers. They had come into the West, and were loitering along, amazed at what was extremest East to us. They had been famous in Gotham, no Muscat envoy more admired. But nobody stared at them here except us. We were the odd and observed. We had strayed into the universal revel, and had forgotten to don turbans at the gate. Pyramids ! thought I, to be where Persians are commonplace.

In this brilliant bewilderment we played only the part of Howadji, which is the universal name for traveller — the " Fores tiero" of Italy. It signifies merchant or shopkeeper ; and truly the Egyptians must agree with the bilious Frenchman that the English are a nation of shopkeepers, seeing them swarm forever through his land. For those who dwell at Karnak and in the shadow of Memnon, who build their mud huts upon the Edfoo Temple, and break up Colossi for lime, can not imagine any travel but that for direct golden gain. Belzoni was held in the wiser native mind to be a mere Dousterswivel of a treasure-hunter. Did not Hamed Aga come rushing two days' journey with two hundred men, and demand of him that large golden cock full of diamonds and pearls ? Think how easily the Arabian Nights must have come to such men ! Sublime stupidity ! Egyptians.

And so advancing, the massively foliaged acacias bowered us in golden gloom. They fringed and arched the long road. Between their trunks, like noble columns of the foreground, we saw the pyramids rosier in the western rosiness. Their forms were sculptured sharply in the sunset. We knew that they w r ere on the edge of the desert ; that their awful shadows darkened the sphinx. For so fair and festal is still the evening picture in that delicious climate, in that poetic land. We breathed the golden air, and it bathed our eyes with new vision. Peach-Blossom, who came with us from Malta, solemnly intent " to catch the spirit of the East," could not have resisted the infection of that enchanted evening.

I know you will ask me if an Eastern book can not be written without a dash of the Arabian Nights, if we can not get on without Haroun Alrashid. No, impatient reader, the East hath, throughout, that fine flavor. The history of Eastern life is embroidered to our youngest eyes in that airy arabesque. What, to even many of us very wise ones, is the history of Bagdad, more than the story of our revered caliph ? Then the romance of travel is real. It is the man going to take possession of the boy's heritage, those dear dreams of stolen school-hours over wild romance ; and in vain would he separate his poetry from his prose. Given a turban, a camel, or a palm tree, and Zobeide, the Princess Badoura and the youngest brother of the Barber step forward into the prose of experience.

For as we leave the main road and turn finally from the towers, whose gold is graying now, behold the parting picture and confess the East.

The moon has gathered the golden light in he* shallow cup, and pours it paler over a bivouac of camels, by a sheik's white-domed tomb. They growl and blubber as they kneel with their packs of dates, and almonds, and grain, oriental" freight mostly, while others are already down, still as sphinxes. The rest sway their curved necks silently, and glance contemptuously at the world.

The drivers, in dark turbans and long white robes, coax and command. The dome of the sheik's crumbling tomb is whiter in the moonlight. The brilliant bustle recedes behind those trees. A few Cairenes pass by unnoticing, but we are in desert depths. For us all the caravans of all Arabian romance are there encamping.

The Howadji reached at length the Nile, gleaming calm in the moonlight. A fleet of river boats lay moored to the steep stony bank. The Nile and the Pyramids had bewitched the night ; for it was full of marvellous pictures and told tales too fair. Yet do not listen too closely upon the shore, lest we hear the plash and plunge of a doomed wife or slave. These things have not passed away. This luxuriant beauty, this poetry of new impressions, have their balance. This tropical sun suckles serpents with the same light that adorns the gorgeous flowers. In the lush jungle, splendid tigers lurk — ah !

in our poetic Orient beauty is more beautiful, but deformity more deformed. The excellent EfFendi or paternal Pacha has twenty or two hundred wives, and is, of necessity, unfaithful. But if the ballooned Georgian or Circassian slips up, it is into the remorseless river.

Yet with what solemn shadows do these musings endow the Egyptian moonlight. They move invisible over the face of the waters, and evoke another creation. Columbus sailed out of the Mediterranean to a new world. We have sailed into it, to a new one. The South seduces now, as the West of old. When we reach one end of the world, the other has receded into romantic dimness, and beckons us backward to explore. The Howadji seek Cathay In the morning, with wide-winged sails, we shall fly beyond our history. Listen ! How like a pedler-poet of Cairo chanting his wares, moans Time through the Eternity — " Cobwebs and fable, O history!"

II. The Drag'-o-men

As we stepped on board, we should have said, " In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful." For so say all pious Muslim, undertaking an arduous task ; and so let all pious Howadji exclaim when they set forth with any of those " guides, philosophers, and friends," the couriers of the Orient — the Dragomen.

These gentry figure well in the Eastern books. The young traveller, already enamored of Eothen's Dhemetri, or Warburton's Mahmoud, or Harriet Martineau's Alee, leaps ashore, expecting to find a very Pythias to his Damon mood, and in his constant companion to embrace a concrete Orient. These are his Alexandrian emotions and hopes. Those poets, Harriet and Eliot, are guilty of much. Possibly as the youth descends the Lebanon to Beyrout, five months later, he will still confess that it was the concrete Orient ; but own that he knew not the East, in those merely Mediterranean moods of hope and romantic reading.

The Howadji lands at Alexandria, and is immediately invested by long lines of men in bright turbans and baggy breeches. If you have a slight poetic tendency, it is usually too much for you. You succumb to the rainbow sash and red slippers. " Which is Alee ?" cry you, in enthusiasm ; and lo ! all are Alee. No, but with Dhemetri might there not be rich Eastern material and a brighter Eothen ? Yes, but all are Dhemetri. " Mahmoud, Mahmoud!" and the world of baggy breeches responds, " Yes, sir."

If you are heroic, you dismiss the confusing crowd, and then the individuals steal separately and secretly to your room and claim an audience. They have volumes of their own praise. Travelling Cockaigne has striven to express its satisfaction in the most graceful and epigrammatic manner. The " characters" in all the books have a sonnet-like air, each filling its page, and going to the same tune. There is no scepticism, and no dragoman has a fault. Eecords of such intelligence, such heroism, such perseverance, honesty and good cooking, exist in no other literature. It is Eothen and the other poets in a more portable form.

Some Howadji can not resist the sonnets and the slippers, and take the fatal plunge even at Alexandria. Wines and the ecstatic Irish doctor did so under our eyes, and returned six weeks later to Cairo, from the upper Nile, with just vigor enough remaining to get rid of their man. For the Turkish costume and the fine testimonials are only the illuminated initials of the chapter. Very darkly monotonous is the reading that follows.

The Dragoman is of four species : the Maltese, or the able knave, — the Greek, or the cunning knave, — the Syrian, or the active knave, — and the Egyptian, or the stupid knave. They wear, generally, the Eastern costume. But the Maltese and the Greeks often sport bad hats and coats, and call themselves Christians. They are the most ignorant, vain, incapable, and unsatisfactory class of men that the wandering Howadji meets. They travel constantly the same route, yet have no eyes to see nor ears to hear. If on the Nile, they smoke and sleep in the boat. If on the desert, they smoke and sleep on the camel. If in Syria, they smoke and sleep, if they can, on the horse. It is their own comfort — their own convenience and profit, which they constantly pursue. The Howadji is a bag of treasure thrown by a kind fate upon their shores, and they are the wreckers who squeeze, tear, and pull him, top, bottom, and sideways, to bleed him of his burden.

They should be able to give you every information about your boat, and what is necessary, and what useless. Much talk you do indeed get, and assurance that every thing will be accurately arranged; but you are fairly afloat upon the Nile before you discover how lost upon the dragoman have been all his previous voyages.

With miserable weakness they seek to smooth the moment, and perpetually baffle your plans, by telling you not the truth, but what they suppose you wish the truth to be. Nothing is ever more than an hour or two distant. They involve you in absurd arrangements because " it is the custom ;" and he is a hardy Howadji who struggles against the vis inertiae of ignorant incapacity and miserable cheating through the whole tour.

Active intelligence on the Howadji's part is very disgusting to them. If he scrutinize his expenses, — if he pretend to know his own will or way-— much more to have it executed, the end of things clearly approaches to the dragomanic mind. The small knaveries of cheating in the pjdce of every thing purchased, and in the amount of bucksheesh or gratuity on all occasions, are not to be seriously heeded, because they are universal. The real evils are the taking you out of your way for their own comfort, — the favoring a poor resting place or hotel, because they are well paid there, — and the universally unreliable information that they afford. Were they good servants, it were some consolation. But a servile Eastern can not satisfy the western idea of good service.

Perhaps it was a bad year for dragomen, as it was for potatoes. But such was the result of universal testimony.

Nero found a Greek at Alexandria, whose recommendations from men known to him were quite enthusiastic. He engaged him, and the dragoman was the sole plague of Nero's Egyptian experience, but one combining the misery of all the rest. There were Wind and Rain, too, whose man was a crack dragoman, and of all such, oh ! enthusiastic reader, especially beware. They returned to Cairo chanting " miserere — miserere" — and in the spring, sought solace in the bosom of the scarlet Lady at Jerusalem. For which latter step, however, not even irate I, hold the dragoman responsible.

Mutton Suet's man furnished his Nile larder, at the rate of eight boxes of sweet biscuit, and twenty bottles of pickles to two towels — a lickerous larder, truly, but I am convinced Mutton Suet's man's palate required sharp stimulants.

The little Verde Giovane and Gunning changed their dragoman weekly while they remained at Cairo. The difficulty was not all on one side. The dragoman wanted to be master, and Verde knew not how to help it, and Gunning was ill of a fever. Those excellent Howadji did not recover from the East without a course of a half-dozen dragomen.

But most melancholy was the case of a Howadji, whom we met wandering in the remote regions of the Nile. He was a kind of flying Dutchman, always gliding about in a barque haunted by a dragoman, and a reis or captain, who would not suffer him to arrive anywhere. The moons of three months had waxed and waned since they left Cairo. Winds never blew for that unhappy boat, currents were always adverse, — illness and inability seized the crew. Landing at lonely towns the dragoman sold him his own provisions, previously sent ashore for the purpose, at an admirable advance. Gradually he was becoming the Ancient Mariner of the Nile. He must have grown grisly, — I am sure that he was sad.

One day as the fated boat or dahabieh came spectrally sliding over the calm, our dragoman told us the story with sardonic smiles, and we looked with awful interest at the haunted barque. I saw the demoniac dragoman smoking by the kitchen, and the crew, faintly rowing, sang the slowest of slow songs. The flag, wind-rent and sun-bleached, clung in motionless despair to the mast. The sails were furled away almost out of sight. It was a windless day, and the sun shone spectrally.

I looked for the mariner, but saw only a female figure in a London bonnet sitting motionless at the cabin window.

The dragoman-ridden was probable putting on his hat. Was it a game of their despair to play arriving, and getting ready to go — for the lady sat as ladies sit in steamers, when they near the wharf — or was this only a melancholy remembrance of days and places, when they could don hat and bonnet, and choose their own way — or simply a mood of madness ?

They passed, and we saw them no more. I never heard of them again. They are still sailing on, doubtless, and you will hear the slow song and see the unnecessary bonnet, and behold a Howadji buying his own provisions. Say " Pax vobiscum" as they pass, nor bless the* dragomen.

I heard but one Howadji speak well of his dragoman, and he only comparatively and partially. At Jerusalem the Rev. Dr. Duck dismissed his Maltese, and took an Egyptian — which was the Rev. Dr. Duck's method of stepping from the pan into the fire. At the same time, Eschylus, not our Greek, but a modern man of affairs, and not easily appalled at circumstances, banished his brace of Maltese, and declared that he was wild with dragomen, and did not believe a decent one could exist.

Yet Eschylus, in sad seriousness of purpose to accomplish- the East, took another dragoman at Jerusalem, a baleful mortal with one eye, and a more able bandit than the rest. For this man Eschylus paid twenty piastres a day, board, at the hotel in Jerusalem. Polyphemus requested him with a noble frankness not to give the money to him, but to pay it directly to the landlord in person — meanwhile he delayed him, and delayed, in Jerusalem, until at parting, the landlord with equal frankness told Eschylus, that he was obliged to refund to the dragomen every thing paid for them, as otherwise he would discover that some cat or dog had twitched his table cloths, and destroyed whole services of glass and china — and this best hotel in the East, was to be discontinued for that and similar reasons. For the landlord had sparks of human sympathy even with mere Howadji, and the dragomen had sworn his ruin. All Howadji were taken to another house, and it was only by positive insistance that we reached this.

Of all the knavery of Polyphemus, this book would not contain the history. At the end Eschylus told him quietly, that he had robbed him repeatedly — that since engaging him he had heard that he was a noted scamp, — that he had been insolent to Madame Eschylus — that, in short — waxing warm as he perorated, that he was a damned rascal. Then he paid him, — for litigation is useless in the East, where the Christian word is valueless, — informed him that all English Howadji should be informed of his name and nature, after which, Polyphemus endeavored to kiss his hand !

Then consider Leisurelie's Domenico Chiesa, Sunday Church, " begging your pardon, sir, I am il primo dragomano del mondo, — the first dragoman in the world."

" Domenico," said Leisurelie one day in Jerusalem, " where is Mount Calvary ?" You know, my young friend of fourteen years, that it is in the church of the holy sepulchre — but il primo dragomano del mondo waved his hand vaguely around the horizon, with his eyes wandering about the far blue mountains of Moab, and " O begging your pardon, sir, it's there, just there."

Such are our Arabic interpreters, such your concrete Orient. Yet if you believe all your dragoman says — if you will only believe that he does know something, and put your nose into his fingers, you will go very smoothly to Beyrout, dripping gold all the way, and then improvise a brief pean in the book of sonnets. But if the Howadji mean to be

THEDEAGOMEN. 19

master u*:. romance will unroll like a cloud wreath from tl-ot j.oetic tawny friend, and he will find all and more than the faults of a European courier, with none of his capacities.

O, golden-sleeved Commander of the Faithful, what a prelude to your praises. For Mohammed was the best we saw, and so agreed all who knew him. Dogberry was already his Laureate. Mohammed was truly " tolerable and not to be endured." He was ignorant, vain, and cowardly, but fairly honest, — extremelv good-humored, and an abominable cook. He was i devout Muslim, and had a pious abhorrence of ham. His deportment was grave and pompous, blending ihe Turkish and Egyptian elements of his parentage. Like a child he shrunk and shrivelled under the least pain or exposure. But he loved the high places and the sweet morsels ; and to be called of men, Effendi, dilated his soul with delight. He was always well dressed in the Egyptian manner, and bent in awful reverence before " them old Turks" who, surrounded by a multitudinous hareem, and an army of slaves, were the august peerage of his imagination.

His great glory, however, was a golden -sleeved bournouse of goat's hair, presented to him at Damascus by some friendly Howadji. This he gathered about him on all convenient occasions to create an impression. At the little towns on the Nile, and among the Arabs of the desert, how imposing was the golden-sleeved Commander ! Occasionally he waited at dinner in this robe — and then was never Jove so superbly served. Yet the grandeur, as usual, was inconsonant with agility, and many a wrecked dish of pudding or potatoes paid the penalty of splendor.

So hercour commander of the faithful steps into history, goldenly arrayed. Let him not speak for himself. For, although his English was intelligible and quite sufficient, yet he recognized no auxiliary but " be" and no tense but the present. Hence, when he wished to say that the tobacco would be milder when it had absorbed the water, he darkly suggested, " He be better when he be drink his water ;" and a huge hulk of iron lying just outside Cairo, was " the steamer's saucepan ;" being the boiler of a Suez steamer. Nor will the Pacha forget that sunny Syrian morning, when the commander led us far and far out of our way for a " short cut." Wandering, lost, and tangled in flaunting flowers, through long valleys and up steep hillsides, we emerged at length upon the path which we ought never to have left, and the good commander lighting his chibouque with the air of a general lighting his cigar after victory, announced impressively, u I be found that way by my sense, by my head!" Too vain to ask or to learn, he subjected us to the same inconveniences day after day, for the past disappears from the dragomanic mind as utterly as yesterday's landscape from his eye.

The moon brightened the golden sleeve that first Nile evening, as the commander descended the steep bank, superintending the embarking of the luggage ; and while he spreads the cloth and the crew gather about the kitchen to sing, we will hang in our gallery the portrait of his coadjutor, Hadji Hamed, the cook.

III. Hadji Hamed

I was donkeying one morning through the bazaars of Cairo, looking up at the exquisitely elaborated overhanging lattices, wondering if the fences of Paradise were not so rarely inwrought, dreaming of the fair Persian slave, of the Princess Shemselnihar, the three ladies of Bagdad, and other mere star dust, my eye surfeiting itself the while with forms and costumes that had hitherto existed only in poems and pictures, when I heard suddenly, " Have you laid in any potatoes ?" and beheld beaming elderly John Bull by m) r side.

"It occurred to me." said he, " that the long days upon the Nile might be a little monotonous, and I thought the dinner would be quite an event."

"Allah!" cried I, as the three ladies of Bagdad faded upon my fancy, " I thought we should live on sunsets on the Nile."

The beaming elderly Bull smiled quietly and glanced at his gentle rotundity, while I saw bottles,

HADJI HAMED. 23

boxes, canisters, baskets, and packages of all sizes laid aside in the shop — little anti-monotonous arrangements for the Nile.

"I hope you have a good cook," said John Bull, as he moved placidly away upon his donkey, and was lost in the dim depths of the bazaar.

Truly we were loved of the Prophet, for our cook was also a Mohammed, an Alexandrian, and doubtless especially favored, not for his name's sake only, but because he had been a pilgrim to Mecca, and hence a Hadji forever after. It is a Mohammedan title, equivalent to our "major" and " colonel" as a term of honor, with this difference, that with us it is not always necessary to have been a captain to be called such ; but in Arabia is no man a Hadji w T ho has not performed the Mecca pilgrimage. Whether a pilgrimage to Paris, and devotion to sundry shrines upon the Boulevards, had not been as advantageous to Hadji Hamed as kissing the holy Mecca-stone, was a speculation which we did not indulge ; for his cuisine was admirable.