. r , I ,! ; 11^1 ifw ^BmMimM.iUS • X NOTES OF A JOURNEY C0RNH1LL TO GRAND CAIRO. 1 " ^sr^^P NOTES OF A JOURNEY CORNHILL TO GRAND CAIRO, BY WAY OF LISBON, ATHENS, CONSTANTINOPLE, AND JERUSALEM: PERFORMED IN THE STEAMERS OF THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL COMPANY. BY MR. M. A. TITMARSH, Author of "The Irish Sketch-Book, " &c. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 180 STRAND. MDCCCXLVI. LONDON: VIZETELL* BROTHERS AND CO. PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS, fETERBOROUGH COURT 135 FLEET STREET. TO CAPTAIN SAMUEL LEWIS. OF THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL STEAM NAVIGATION company's service. My Dear Lewis, After a voyage, during which the captain of the ship has displayed uncommon courage, seamanship, affability, or other good qualities, grateful passengers often present him with a token of their esteem, in the shape of teapots, tankards, trays, &c, of precious metal. Among authors, however, bullion is a much rarer com- modity than paper, whereof I beg you to accept a little in the shape of this small volume. It contains a few notes of a voyage which your skill and kindness ren- dered doubly pleasant; and of which I don't think there is any recollection more agreeable, than that it was the occasion of making your friendship. If the noble Company in whose service you command (and whose fleet alone makes them a third-rate mari- time power in Europe) should appoint a few admirals in their navy, I hope to hear that your flag is hoisted on board one of the grandest of their steamers. But, I trust, even there you will not forget the Iberia, and that delightful Mediterranean cruise we had in her in the Autumn of 1844. Most faithfully yours, My dear Lewis, W. M. THACKEEAI. London, December 24, 1845. CONTENTS. PXOE CHAPTER I.— VIGO 1 Vigo — Thoughts at Sea — Sight of Laud — Vigo — Spanish Ground — Spanish Troops — Passagero. CHAPTER II.— LISBON AND CADIZ 13 Lisbon — The Belem Road — A School — Landscape — Palace of Necessidades — Cadiz — The Bock. CHAPTER III.— THE LADY MARY WOOD 2S British Lions — Travelling Friends — Bishop No. 2 — Good bye, Bishop — The Meek Lieutenant — Lady Mary Wood. CHAPTER IV.— GIBRALTAR 41 Gibraltar — Mess-Room Gossip — Military Horticulture — All's Well — A Release — Gibraltar — Malta — Religion and Nobility — Malta Relics — The Lazaretto — Death in the Lazaretto. CHAPTER V.— ATHENS 65 Reminiscences of tutttw — The Peiraeus — Landscape — Basileus — England for ever — Classic Remains — rvmu) again. CHAPTER VI.— SMYRNA— FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE EAST . 81 First Emotions — The Bazaar — A Bastinado — Women — The Caravan Bridge — Smyrna — The Whistler. Viii CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER VII.— CONSTANTINOPLE 97 Constantinople — Caiques — Eothen's Misseri— A Turkish Bath — Constantinople — His Highness the Sultan — Ich mbchte nieht der Sultan Seyn — A Subject for a Ghazul — The Child Murderer — Turkish Children— Modesty— The Seraglio— The Sultana's Puffs — The Sublime Porte — The Schoolmaster in Constantinople. CHAPTER VIII.— RHODES 134 Jew Pilgrims — Jew Bargaining — Relics of Chivalry — Mahome- tanism Bankrupt — A Dragoman — A Fine Day — Rhodes. CHAPTER IX.-THE WHITE SQUALL 150 CHAPTER X.— TELMESSUS— BEYROUT 167 Telmessus — Halil Pasha — Beyrout — A Portrait — A Ball on Board — A Syrian Prince. CHAPTER XL— A DAY AND NIGHT IN SYRIA 184 Landing at Jaffa — Jaffa — The Cadi of Jaffa — The Cadi's Divan — A Night Scene at Jaffa — Syrian Night's Entertainments. CHAPTER XII.— FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 200 A Cavalcade — Marching Order — A Tournament — Rainleh — Road-side Sketches — Rencontres — Abou Gosh — Night before Jerusalem. CHAPTER XIII.— JERUSALEM 207 A Pillar of the Church — Quarters — Jewish Pilgrims — Jerusalem Jews — English Service — Jewish History — The Church of the Sepulchre — The Porch of the Sepulchre — Greek and Latin Legends — The Church of the Sepulchre — Bethlehem — The Latin Convent — The American Consul — Subjects for Sketching — Departure — A Day's March — Ramleh. CONTENTS. IX i*age CHAPTER XIV.— FROM JAFFA TO ALEXANDRIA 237 Bill of Fare — From Jaffa to Alexandria. CHAPTER XV.— TO CAIRO 24!) The Nile— First Sight of Cheops— The Ezbekieh— The Hotel d' Orient — The Conqueror Waghorn — Architecture — The Chief of the Hag — A Street Scene — Arnaoots — A Gracious Prince — The Screw-propeller in Egypt — The "Rint" in Egypt — The Maligned Orient — The " Sex " — Subjects for Painters — Slaves — A Hyde Park Moslem— Glimpses of the Harem — An Eastern Acquaintance — An Egyptian Dinner — Life in the Desert — From the Top of the Pyramid — Groups for Landscape — Pigmies and Pyramids — Things to think of — Finis. PKEFACE. iioilH $frH-f»jfr- Oh the 24th of July, 1844, the writer of this little book went to dine at the Club, quite uncon- scious of the wonderful events which Fate had in store for him. Mr. William was there, giving a farewell din- ner to his friend, Mr. James (now Sir James). These two asked Mr. Titmarsh to join company with them, and the conversation naturally fell upon the tour Mr. James was about to take. The Peninsular and Oriental Company had arranged an excursion in the Mediterranean, by which, in the space of a couple of months, as many men and cities were to be seen as Ulysses surveyed and noted in ten years. Malta, Athens, Smyrna, Con- stantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo were to be visited Xll PREFACE. and everybody was to be back in London by Lord Mayor's-day. The idea of beholding these famous places inflamed Mr. Titmarsh's mind ; and the charms of such a journey were eloquently impressed upon him by Mr. James. " Come," said that kind and hospitable gentleman, " and make one of my family party ; in all your life you will never probably have a chance again to see so much in so short a time. Consider — it is as easy as a journey to Paris or to Baden." Mr. Titmarsh considered all these things ; but also the difficulties of the situation : he had but six- and -thirty hours to get ready for so portentous a journey — he had engagements at home— finally, could he afford it ? In spite of these objections, however, with every glass of claret the enthusiasm somehow rose, and the difficulties vanished. But when Mr. James, to crown all, said he had no doubt that his friends, the Directors of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, would make Mr. Titmarsh the present of a berth for the voyage. PREFACE. XlU all objections ceased on his part: to break his outstanding engagements — to write letters to his amazed family, stating that they were not to ex- pect him at dinner on Saturday fortnight, as he would be at Jerusalem on that day — to purchase eighteen shirts and lay in a sea stock of Eussia ducks, — was the work of four- and- twenty hours; and on the 26th of July, the Lady Mary Wood was sailing from Southampton with the " subject of the present memoir," quite astonished to find himself one of the passengers on board. These important statements are made partly to convince some incredulous friends — who insist still that the writer never went abroad at all, and wrote the following pages, out of pure fancy, in retirement at Putney ; but mainly, to give him an opportunity of thanking the Directors of the Company in question for a delightful excursion. It was one so easy, so charming, and I think pro- fitable —it leaves such a store of pleasant recollec- tions for after days — and creates so many new sources of interest (a newspaper letter from Beyrout, or XIV PREFACE. Malta, or Algiers has twice the interest now that it had formerly), — that I can't but recommend all persons who have time and means to make a similar journey — vacation idlers to extend their travels and pursue it: above all, young, well-edu- cated men entering life, to take this course, we will say, after that at college; and, having their book-learning fresh in their minds, see the living people and their cities, and the actual aspect of Nature, along the famous shores of the Medi- terranean. A JOURNEY IROM CORNHILL TO CAIRO. I. VIGO. ^ ^^^ HE sun brought all the sick people out of their berths this morning, and the indescribable moans and noises which had been issuing from behind the fine painted doors on each side of the cabin happily ceased. Long before sunrise, I had the good fortune to discover that it was no longer necessary to maintain the horizontal posture, and, the very instant this truth was apparent, came on deck, at two o'clock in the morning, to see a noble fidl moon sinking westward, and millions of the most brilliant stars shining overhead. The night was so serenely pure, that you saw them y A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. in magnificent airy perspective : the blue sky around and over them, and other more distant orbs sparkling above, till they glittered away faintly into the immeasurable distance. The ship went rolling over a heavy, sweltering, calm sea. The breeze was a warm and soft one ; quite different to the rigid air we had left behind us, two days since, off the Isle of Wight. The bell kept tolling its half hours, and the mate explained the mystery of watch and dog-watch. The sight of that noble scene cured all the woes and discomfitures of sea-sickness at once, and if there were any need to communicate such secrets to the public, one might tell of much more good that the pleasant morning- watch effected; but there are a set of emotions about which a man had best be shy of talking lightly, — and the feelings excited by contemplating this vast, magnificent, harmonious Nature are among these. The view of it inspires a delight and ecstasy which is not only hard to describe, but which has something secret in it that a man should not utter loudly. Hope, memory, humility, tender yearnings towards dear friends, and inexpressible love and reverence towards the Power which created the infinite universe blazing above eter- nally, and the vast ocean shining and rolling around THOUGHTS AT SEA. — fill the heart with a solemn, humble happiness, that a person dwelling in a city has rarely occasion to enjoy. They are coming away from London parties at this time : the dear little eyes are closed in sleep under mother's wing. How far off city cares and pleasures appear to be ! how small and mean they seem, dwindling out of sight before this magnificent brightness of Nature ! But the best thoughts only grow and strengthen under it. Heaven shines above, and the humbled spirit looks up reverently towards that boundless aspect of wisdom and beauty. You are at home, and with all at rest there, however far away they may be ; and through the distance the heart broods over them, bright and wakeful like yonder peaceful stars overhead. The day was as fine and calm as the night; at seven bells, suddenly a bell began to toll very much like that of a country church, and on going on deck we found an awning raised, a desk with a flag flung over it close to the compass, and the ship's com- pany and passengers assembled there to hear the captain read the Service in a manly respectful voice. This, too, was a novel and touching sight to me. Peaked ridges of purple mountains rose to the left of the ship, — Finisterre and the coast of Gallicia. The sky above was cloudless and shining; the vast A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. dark ocean smiled peacefully round about, and the ship went rolling over it, as the people within were praising the Maker of all. In honour of the day, it was announced that the passengers would be regaled with champagne at dinner; and accordingly that exhilarating liquor was served out in decent profusion, the company drinking the captain's health with the customary orations of compliment and acknowledgment. This feast was scarcely ended, when we found ourselves rounding the headland into Vigo Bay, passing a giim and tall island of rocky mountains which lies in the centre of the bay. Whether it is that the sight of land is always welcome to weary mariners, after the perils and annoyances of a voyage of three days, or whether the place is in itself extraordinarily beautiful, need not be argued; but I have seldom seen anything more charming than the amphitheatre of noble hills into which the ship now came — all the features of the landscape being lighted up with a wonderful clearness of air, which rarely adorns a view in our country. The sun had not yet set, but over the town and lofty rocky castle of Vigo a great ghost of a moon was faintly visible, which blazed out brighter and brighter as the superior luminary re- VIGO. tired behind the purple mountains of the headland to rest. Before the general back- ground of waving heights which encompassed the bay, rose a second, semicircle of undulating hills, as cheerful and green as the mountains behind them were grey and solemn. Farms and gardens, convent towers, white villages and churches, and buildings that no doubt were hermitages once, upon the sharp peaks of the hills, shone brightly in the sun. The sight was delightfully cheerful, animated, and pleasing. Presently the captain roared out the magic words, " Stop her ! " and the obedient vessel came to a stand- still, at some three hundred yards from the little town, with its white houses clambering up a rock, defended by the superior mountain whereon the castle stands. Numbers of people, arrayed in various brilliant colours of red, were standing on die sand close by the tumbling, shining, purple waves : and there we beheld, for the first time, the royal red and yellow standard of Spain floating on its own ground, under the guardianship of a light blue sentinel, whose musket glittered in the sun. Numerous boats were seen, incontinently, to put off from the little shore. And now our attention was withdrawn from the land to a sight of great splendour on board. This was Lieutenant Bundy, the guardian of her Majesty's A 2 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. mails, who issued from his cabin in his long swallow- tailed coat, with anchor buttons ; his sabre clattering between his legs; a magnificent' shirt-collar, of several inches in height, rising round his good- humoured sallow face ; and above it a cocked hat, that shone so, I thought it was made of polished tin (it may have been that or oilskin), handsomely laced with black worsted, and ornamented with a shining gold cord. A little squat boat, rowed by three ragged gallegos, came bouncing up to the ship. Into this Mr. Bundy and her Majesty's royal mail- embarked with much majesty; and in the twinkling of an eye, the royal standard of England, about the size of a pocket-handkerchief, — and at the bows of the boat, the man-of-war's pennant, being a strip of bunting considerably under the value of a farthing, — streamed out. SPANISH GROUND. "They know that flag, sir," said the good- natured old tar, quite solemnly, in the evening after- wards : " they respect it, sir." The authority of her Majesty's lieutenant on board the steamer is stated to be so tremendous, that he may order it to stop, to move, to go larboard, starboard, or what you will ; and the captain dare only disobey him, sua periculo. It was agreed that a party of us should land for half an hour, and taste real Spanish chocolate on Spanish ground. We followed Lieutenant Bundy, but humbly in the providor's boat; that officer going on shore to purchase fresh eggs, milk for tea (in place of the slimy substitute of whipped yolk of egg, which we had been using for our morn- ing and evening meals), and, if possible, oysters, for which it is said the rocks of Vigo are famous. It was low tide, and the boat could not get up to the dry shore. Hence it was necessary to take advantage of the offers of sundry gallegos, who rushed barelegged into the water, to land on their shoulders. The approved method seems to be, to sit upon one shoulder only, holding on by the porter's whiskers ; and though some of our party were of the tallest and fattest men whereof our race is composed, and their living sedans exceedingly meagre and small, yet all were landed without accident upon the juicy A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. sand, and forthwith surrounded by a host of mendi- cants, screaming — "I say, sir! penny, sir! I say, English ! tarn your ays ! penny !" in all voices, from extreme youth to the most lousy and venerable old age. When it is said that these beggars were as ragged as those of Ireland, and still more voluble, the Irish traveller will be able to form an opinion of their capabilities. Through this crowd we passed up some steep rocky steps, through a little low gate, where, in a little guard-house and barrack, a few dirty little sentinels were keeping a dirty little guard ; and by low-roofed, whitewashed houses, with balconies, and women in them, — the very same women, with the very same head clothes, and yellow fans and eyes, at once sly and solemn, which Murillo painted, — by a neat church into which we took a peep, and, finally, into the Plaza del Gonstitucion, or grand place of the town, which may be about as big as that pleasing square, Pump Court, Temple. We were taken to an inn, of which I forget the name, and were shown from one chamber and story to another, till we arrived at that apartment where the real Spanish chocolate was finally to be served out. All these rooms were as clean as scrubbing and whitewash could make them ; with simple French prints (with Spanish titles) on the walls ; a few ricketty half- SPANISH TROOPS. finished articles of furniture ; and, finally, an air of extremely respectable poverty. A jolly, black-eyed, yellow-shawled Dulcinea conducted us through the apartment, and provided us with the desired refreshment. Sounds of clarions drew our eyes to the Place of the Constitution; and, indeed, I had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with mili- tary, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry, — like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still hum- bler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre ; the houses curiously small, with arcades and balconies, out of which looked women apparently a great deal too big for the chambers they inhabited ; the warriors were in ginghams, cottons, and tinsel; the officers had huge epaulets of sham silver lace drooping over their bosoms, and looked as if they were attired at a very small expense. Only the general — the cap- tain-general (Pooch, they told us, was his name: I know not how 'tis written in Spanish) — was well got up, with a smart hat, a real feather, huge stars glittering on his portly chest, and tights and boots of the first order. Presently, after a good deal of trumpeting, the little men marched off the place, 10 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. Pooch and his staff coming into the very inn in which we were awaiting our chocolate. Then we had an opportunity of seeing some of the civilians of the town. Three or four ladies passed, with fan and mantle; to them came three or four dandies, dressed smartly in the French fashion, with strong Jewish physiognomies. There was one, a solemn lean fellow in black, with his collars extremely turned over, and holding before him a long ivory- tipped ebony cane, who tripped along the little place with a solemn smirk, which gave one an indescribable feeling of the truth of Gil Bias, and of those delightful bachelors and licentiates who have appeared to us all in our dreams. In fact we were but half an hour in this little queer Spanish town; and it appears like a dream, too, or a little show got up to amuse us. Boom ! the gun fired at the end of the funny little enter- tainment. The women and the balconies, the beggars and the walking Murillos, Pooch and the little soldiers in tinsel, disappeared, and were shut up in their box again. Once more we were carried on the beggars' shoulders out of the shore, and we found ourselves again in the great stalwart roast- beef world ; the stout British steamer bearing out of the bay, whose purple waters had grown more PASSAGERO ! 1 1 purple. The sun had set by this time, and the moon above was twice as big and bright as our degenerate moons are. The providor had already returned with his fresh stores, and Bundy's tin hat was popped into its case, and he walking the deck of the packet denuded of tails. As we went out of the bay, occurred a little incident with which the great incidents of the day may be said to wind up. We saw before us a little vessel, tumbling and plunging about in the dark waters of the bay, with a bright light beaming from the mast. It made for us at about a couple of miles from the town, and came close up, flouncing and bobbing in the very jaws of the paddle, which looked as if it would have seized and twirled round that little boat and its light, and destroyed them for ever and ever. All the passengers, of course, came crowding to the ship's side to look at the bold little boat. " I say ! " howled a man ; " I say ! — a word ! — I say ! Passagero ! Passagero ! Passage-e-ero ! " We were two hundred yards ahead by this time. " Go on," says the captain. " You may stop if you like," says Lieutenant Bundy, exerting his tremendous responsibility. It is evident that the lieutenant has a soft heart, and 12 A JOUENEY TO CAIEO. felt for the poor devil in the boat who was howling so piteously M Passagero ! " But the captain was resolute. His duty was not to take the man up. He was evidently an irregular customer — some one trying to escape, possibly. The lieutenant turned away, but did not make any further hints. The captain was right; but we all felt somehow disappointed, and looked back wistfully at the little boat, jumping up and down far astern now ; the poor little light shining in vain, and the poor wretch within screaming out in the most heart-rending accents a last faint, desperate — " I say! Passagero-o !" We all went down to tea rather melancholy; but the new milk, in the place of that abominable whipped-egg, revived us again ; and so ended the great events on board the " Lady Jane Wood" steamer, on the 25th August, 1844. IT. LISBON.-CADIZ. GREAT misfortune which befals a man who has but a single day to stay in a town, is that fatal duty which superstition en- tails upon him of visiting the chief lions of the city in which he may happen to be. You must go through the ceremony, however much you may sigh to avoid it; and however much you know that the lions in one capital roar very much like the lions in another; that the churches are more or less large and splendid ; the palaces pretty spacious, all the world over ; and that there is scarcely a capital city in this Europe but has its pompous bronze statue Or two of some periwigged, hook-nosed emperor, in a Roman habit, waving his bronze baton on his broad-flanked brazen charger. We only saw these state old lions in Lisbon, whose roar has long since 14 A JOUENEY TO CAIRO. ceased to frighten one. First we went to the church of St. Koch, to see a famous piece of mosaic work there. It is a famous work of art, and was bought by I do n't know what king, for I do n't know how much money. All this information may be per- fectly relied on, though the fact is we did not see the mosaic work ; the sacristan, who guards it, was yet in bed ; and it was veiled from our eyes in a side chapel by great dirty damask curtains, which could not be removed, except when the sacristan's toilette was done, and at the price of a dollar. So we were spared this mosaic exhibition ; and I think I always feel relieved when such an event occurs. I feel I have done my duty in coming to see the enormous animal — if he is not at home, Virtute med me, dec. — we have done our best, and mortal can do no more. In order to reach that church of the forbidden mosaic, we had sweated up several most steep and dusty streets — hot and dusty, although it was but nine o'clock in the morning. Thence the guide conducted us into some little dusty-powdered gar- dens, in which the people make believe to enjoy the verdure, and whence you look over a great part of the arid, dreary, stony city. There was no smoke, as in honest London, only dust — dust over the gaunt houses and the dismal yellow LISBON. 1 5 strips of gardens. Many churches were there, and tall, half-baked looking public edifices, that had a dry, uncomfortable, earthquaky look, to my idea. The ground-floors of the spacious houses by which we passed, seemed the coolest and pleasantest por- tions of the mansion. They were cellars or ware- houses, for the most part, in which white -jacketted clerks sat smoking easy cigars. The streets were plastered with placards of a bull-fight, to take place the next evening (there was no opera at that season) ; but it was not a real Spanish tauromachy — only a theatrical combat, as you could see by the picture, in which the horseman was cantering off at three miles an hour, the bull tripping after him with tips to his gentle horns. Mules interminable, and almost all excellently sleek and handsome, were pacing down every street : here and there, but later in the day, came clattering along a smart rider, on a prancing Spanish horse; and in the afternoon a few families might be seen in the queerest, old- fashioned little carriages, drawn by then jolly mules, and swinging between, or rather before, enormous wheels. The churches I saw were of the florid periwig architecture — I mean, of that pompous, cauliflower- kind-of- ornament, which was the fashion in Louis the Fifteenth's time, at which unlucky period a 16 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. building mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have been the period in all history when society was the least natural, and perhaps the most dissolute ; and I have always fancied that the bloated artificial forms of the architecture partake of the social disorganisation of the time. Who can respect a simpering ninny, grin- ning in a Koman dress and a full-bottomed wig, who is made to pass off for a hero ; or a fat woman in a hoop, and of a most doubtful virtue, who leers at you as a goddess ? In the palaces which we saw, several court- allegories were represented, which, atrocious as they were in point of art, might yet serve to attract the regard of the moraliser. There were Faith, Hope, and Charity restoring Don John to the arms of his happy Portugal : there were Virtue, Valour, and Victory saluting Don Emanuel; Heading, Writing, and Arithmetic (for what I know, or some mythologic nymphs) dancing before Don Miguel — the picture is there still, at the Ajuda ; and, ah, me ! where is poor Mig ? Well, it is these state lies and ceremonies that we persist in going to see ; whereas a man would have a much better insight into Portuguese manners, by planting himself at a corner, like yonder beggar, and watching the real transactions of the day. THE BELEM ROAD. 17 A drive to Belem is the regular route practised by the traveller who has to make only a short stay, and accordingly a couple of carriages were provided for our party, and we were driven through the long merry street of Belem, peopled by endless strings of mules, — by thousands of gallegos, with water-barrels on their shoulders, or lounging by the fountains to hire, — by the Lisbon and Belem omnibuses, with four mules, jingling along at a good pace ; and it seemed to me to present a far more lively and cheerful, though not so regular, an appearance as the stately quarters of the city we had left behind us. The little shops were at full work — the men brown, well-dressed, manly, and handsome: so much cannot, I am sorry to say, be said for the ladies, of whom, with every anxiety to do so, our party could not perceive a single good-looking specimen all day. The noble blue Tagus accompanies you all along these three miles of busy, pleasant street, whereof the chief charm, as I thought, was its look of genuine business — that appearance of comfort which the cleverest court-architect never knows how to give. The carriages (the canvass one with four seats and the chaise in which I drove) were brought sud- denly up to a gate with the royal arms over it ; and here we were introduced to as queer an exhibition as the eye has often looked on. This was the state- B 2 18 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. carriage house, where there is a museum of huge, old, tumble-down, gilded coaches of the last century, lying here, mouldy and dark, in a sort of limbo. The gold has vanished from the great, lumbering, old wheels and panels ; the velvets are wofully tar- nished. When one thinks of the patches and powder that have simpered out of those plate glass windows — the mitred bishops, the big-wigged mar- shals, the shovel-hatted abbes which they have borne in their time — the human mind becomes affected in no ordinary degree. Some human minds heave a sigh for the glories of by- gone days ; while others, considering rather the lies and humbug, the vice and servility, which went framed and glazed and en- shrined, creaking along in those old Juggernaut cars, with fools worshipping under the wheels, console themselves for the decay of institutions that may have been splendid and costly, but were ponderous, clumsy, slow, and unfit for daily wear. The guar- dian of these defunct old carriages tells some pro- digious fibs concerning them : he pointed out one carriage that was six hundred years old in his calendar ; but any connoisseur in bricabrac can see it was built at Paris in the Regent Orleans' time. Hence it is but a step to an institution in full life and vigour, — a noble orphan school for one thousand boys and girls, founded by Don Pedro, A SCHOOL. 19 who gave up to its use the superb convent of Belem, with its splendid cloisters, vast airy dormi- tories, and magnificent church. Some Oxford gen- tlemen would have wept to see the desecrated edifice, — to think that the shaven polls and white gowns were banished from it to give place to a thousand children, who have not even the clergy to instruct them. " Every lad here may choose his trade," our little informant said, who addressed us in better French than any of our party spoke, whose manners were perfectly gentlemanlike and respect- ful, and whose clothes, though of a common cotton stuff, were cut and worn with a military neatness and precision. All the children whom we remarked were dressed with similar neatness, and it was a pleasure to go through their various rooms for study, where some were busy at mathematics, some at drawing, some attending a lecture on tailoring, while others were sitting at the feet of a professor of the science of shoemaking. All the garments of the establishment were made by the pupils; even the deaf and dumb were drawing and reading, and the blind were, for the most part, set to perform on musical instruments, and got up a concert for the visiters. It was then we wished ourselves of the numbers of the deaf and dumb, for the poor fellows made noises so horrible, that even as blind 20 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. beggars they could hardly get a livelihood in the musical way. Hence we were driven to the huge palace of Necessidades, which is but a wing of a building that no king of Portugal ought ever to be rich enough to complete, and which, if perfect, might outvie the Tower of Babel. The mines of Brazil must have been productive of gold and silver, indeed, when the founder imagined this enormous edifice. From the elevation on which it stands it commands the noblest views, — the city is spread before it, with its many churches and towers, and for many miles you see the magnificent Tagus, rolling by banks crowned with trees and towers. But, to arrive at this enormous building you have to climb a steep suburb of wretched huts, many of them with dismal gardens of dry, cracked earth, where a few reedy sprouts of Indian corn seemed to be the chief cultivation, and which were guarded by huge plants of spiky aloes, on which the rags of the proprietors of the huts were sunning themselves. The terrace before the palace was similarly en- croached upon by these wretched habitations. A few millions, judiciously expended, might make of this arid hill one of the most magnificent gardens in the world; and the palace seems to me to excel LANDSCAPE. V> 1 for situation any royal edifice I have ever seen. But the huts of these swarming poor have crawled up close to its gates, — the superb walls of hewn stone stop all of a sudden with a lath-and-j^laster hitch ; and capitals, and hewn stones for columns, still lying about on the deserted terrace, may lie there for ages to come, probably, and never take their places by the side of their brethren in yonder tall bankrupt galleries. The air of this pure sky has little effect upon the edifices, — the edges of the stone look as sharp as if the builders had just left their work ; and close to the grand entrance stands an outbuilding, part of which may have been burnt fiftv years ago, but is in such cheerful preservation, that you might fancy the fire had occurred yester- day. It must have been an awful sight from this hill to have looked at the city spread before it, and seen it reeling and swaying in the time of the earth- quake. I thought it looked so hot and shaky, that one might fancy a return of the fit. In several places still remain gaps and chasms, and ruins lie here and there as they cracked and fell. Although the palace has not attained anything like its full growth, yet what exists is quite big enough for the monarch of such a little country; and Versailles or Windsor has not apartments more 22 A JOUENEY TO CAIEO. nobly proportioned. The Queen resides in the Ajuda, a building of much less pretensions, of which the yellow walls and beautiful gardens are seen between Belem and the city. The Necessidades are only used for grand galas, receptions of ambassa- dors, and ceremonies of state. In the throne-room is a huge throne, surmounted by an enormous gilt crown, than which I have never seen anything larger in the finest pantomime at Drury Lane ; but the effect of this splendid piece is lessened by a shabby old Brussels carpet, almost the only other article of furniture in the apartment, and not quite large enough to cover its spacious floor. The looms of Kidderminster have supplied the web which or- naments the "Ambassadors' Waiting-room," and the ceilings are painted with huge allegories in dis- temper, which pretty well correspond with the other furniture. Of all the undignified objects in the world, a palace out at elbows is surely the meanest. Such places ought not to be seen in adversity, — splendour is their decency, — and when no longer able to maintain it, they should sink to the level of their means, calmly subside into manufactories, or go shabby in seclusion. There is a picture-gallery belonging to the palace that is quite of a piece with the furniture, where are the mythological pieces relative to the THE NECESSIDADES. 23 kings before alluded to, and where the English visiter will see some astonishing pictures of the Duke of Wellington, done in a very characteristic style of Portuguese art. There is also a chapel, which has been decorated with much care and sumptuousness of ornament, — the altar surmounted by a ghastly and horrible carved figure in the taste of the time, when faith was strengthened by the shrieks of Jews on the rack, and enlivened by the roasting of heretics. Other such frightful images may be seen in the churches of the city; those which we saw were still rich, tawdry, and splendid to outward show, although the French, as usual, had robbed their shrines of their gold and silver, and the statues of their jewels and crowns. But brass and tinsel look to the visiter full as well at a little distance, — as doubtless Soult and Junot thought, when they despoiled these places of wor- ship, like French philosophers as they were. A friend, with a classical turn of mind, was bent upon seeing the aqueduct, whither we went on a dismal excursion of three hours, in the worst car- riages, over the most diabolical clattering roads, up and down dreary parched hills, on which grew a few grey olive trees and many aloes. When we arrived, the gate leading to the aqueduct was closed, and we were entertained with a legend of some respectable 24 A JOUKNEY TO CAIRO. character who had made a good livelihood there for some time past lately, having a private key to this very aqueduct, and lying in wait there for unwary travellers, like ourselves, whom he pitched down the arches into the ravines below, and there robbed them at leisure. So that all we saw was the door and the tall arches of the aqueduct, and by the time we returned to town it was time to go on board the ship again. If the inn at which we had sojourned was not of the best quality, the bill, at least, would have done honour to the first establishment in London. We all left the house of entertainment joyfully, glad to get out of the sunburnt city, and go home. Yonder in the steamer was home, with its black funnel and gilt portraiture of Lady Mary Wood at the bows ; and every soul on board felt glad to return to the friendly little vessel. But the autho- rities, however, of Lisbon are very suspicious of the departing stranger, and we were made to lie an hour in the river before the Sanita boat, where a passport is necessary to be procured before the traveller can quit the country. Boat after boat, laden with priests and peasantry, with handsome red- sashed gallegos clad in brown, and ill-favoured women, came and got their permits, and were off, as we lay bumping up against the old hull of the Sanita boat ; but the officers seemed to take a delight in keeping us there CADIZ. 25 bumping, looked at us quite calmly over the ship's sides, and smoked their cigars without the least attention to the prayers which we shrieked out for release. If we were glad to get away from Lisbon, we were quite as sorry to be obliged to quit Cadiz, which we reached the next night, and where we were allowed a couple of hours' leave to land and look about. It seemed as handsome within as it is stately without ; the long narrow streets of an admirable cleanliness, many of the tall houses of rich and noble decorations, and all looking as if the city were in full prosperity. I have seen no more cheerful and animated sight than the long street leading from the quay where we were landed, and the market blazing in sunshine, piled with fruit, fish, and poultry, under many- coloured awn- ings ; the tall white houses with their balconies and galleries shining round about, and the sky above so blue that the best cobalt in all the paint-box looks muddy and dim in comparison to it. There were pictures for a year in that market-place — from the copper- coloured old hags and beggars who roared to you for the love of heaven to give money, to the swaggering dandies of the market, with red sashes and tight clothes, looking on superbly, with 26 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. a hand on the hip and a cigar in the mouth. These must be the chief critics at the great bull- fight house yonder, by the Alameda, with its scanty trees and cool breezes facing the water. Nor are there any corks to the bulls' horns here as at Lisbon. A small old English guide who seized upon me the moment my foot was on shore, had a store of agreeable legends regarding the bulls, men, and horses that had been killed with unbounded profusion in the late entertainments which have taken place. It was so early an hour in the morning that the shops were scarcely opened as yet; the churches, however, stood open for the faithful, and we met scores of women tripping towards them with pretty feet, and smart black mantilla, from which looked out fine dark eyes and handsome pale faces, very different from the coarse brown countenances we had seen at Lisbon. A very handsome modern cathedral, built by the present bishop at his own charges, was the finest of the public edifices we saw ; it was not, however, nearly so much frequented as another little church, crowded with altars and fantastic ornaments, and lights and gilding, where we were told to look behind a huge iron grille, and beheld a bevy of black nuns kneeling. Most of the good ladies in the front ranks stopped their devotions, CADIZ. 27 and looked at the strangers with as much curiosity as we directed at them through the gloomy bars of their chapel. The men's convents are closed; that which contains the famous Murillos has been turned into an academy of the fine arts; but the English guide did not think the pictures were of sufficient interest to detain strangers, and so hurried us back to the shore, and grumbled at only getting three shillings at parting for his trouble and his information. And so our residence in Andalusia began and ended before breakfast, and we went on board and steamed for Gibraltar, looking, as we past, at Joinville's black squadron, and the white houses of Saint Mary's across the bay, with the hills of Medina Sidonia and Granada lying purple beyond them. There's something even in those names which is pleasant to write down; — to have passed only two hours in Cadiz is something — to have seen real donnas with comb and mantle — real caballeros with cloak and cigar — real Spanish barbers lathering out of brass basins, — and to have heard guitars under the balconies; — there was one that an old beggar was jangling in the market, whilst a huge leering fellow in bushy whiskers and a faded velvet dress came singing and jumping after our party, — not singing to a guitar, it is true, but imitating one capitally with his voice, and cracking his fingers 28 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. by way of castanets, and performing a dance such as Figaro or Lablache might envy. How clear that fellow's voice thrums on the ear even now ; and how bright and pleasant remains the recollection of the fine city and the blue sea, and the Spanish flags floating on the boats that danced over it, and Joinville's band beginning to play stirring marches as we puffed out of the bay. The next stage was Gibraltar, where we were to change horses. Before sunset we skirted along the dark savage mountains of the African coast, and came to the Rock just before gun-fire. It is the very image of an enormous lion, crouched between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and set there to guard the passage for its British mistress. The next British lion is Malta, four days further on in the midland sea, and ready to spring upon Egypt or pounce upon Syria, or roar so as to be heard at Marseilles in case of need. To the eyes of the civilian, the first-named of these famous fortifications is by far the most im- posing. The Rock looks so tremendous, that to ascend it, even without the compliment of shells or shot, seems a dreadful task— what would it be when all those mysterious lines of batteries were vomiting fire and brimstone ; when all those dark guns that THE ROCK. 29 you see poking their grim heads out of every imaginable cleft and zigzag should salute you with shot, both hot and cold; and when, after tugging up the hideous perpendicular place, you were to find regiments of British grenadiers ready to plunge bayonets into your poor panting stomach, and let out artificially the little breath left there ? It is a niarvel to think that soldiers will mount such places for a shilling — ensigns for five and ninepence — a day : a cabman would ask double the money to go half way ! One meekly reflects upon the above strange truths, leaning over the ship's side, and looking up the huge mountain, from the tower nestled at the foot of it to the thin flag-staff at the summit, up to which have been piled the most ingenious edifices for murder Christian science ever adopted. My hobby-horse is a quiet beast, suited for Park riding, or a gentle trot to Putney and back to a snug stable, and plenty of feeds of corn : — it can't abide climbing hills, and is not at all used to gunpowder. Some men's animals are so spirited that the very appearance of a stone wall sets them jumping at it; regular chargers of hobbies, which snort and say — "Ha, ha !" at the mere notion of a battle. c 2 III. THE LADY MARY WOOD. ^gSi^UB week's voyage is now drawing to a close. We have just been to look at Cape Trafalgar, shining white over the finest blue sea. (We, who were looking at Trafalgar Square only the other day !) The sight of that cape must have disgusted Joinville and his fleet of steamers, as they passed yesterday into Cadiz bay, and to- morrow will give them a sight of St. Vincent. One of their steam-vessels has been lost off the coast of Africa : they were obliged to burn her, lest the Moors should take possession of her. She was a virgin vessel, just out of Brest. Poor innocent ! to die in the very first month of her union with the noble whiskered god of war ! We Britons on board the English boat received the news of the " Groenenland's " abrupt demise with grins of satisfaction. It was a sort of national RBITISH LIONS. 8J compliment, and cause of agreeable congratulation. " The lubbers ! " we said ; " the clumsy humbugs ! there 's none but Britons to rule the waves ! " and we gave ourselves piratical airs, and went down pre- sently and were sick in our little buggy berths, It was pleasant, certainly, to laugh at Joinville's ad- miral's flag floating at his foremast, in yonder black ship, with its two thundering great guns at the bows and stern, its busy crew swarming on the deck, and a crowd of obse quious shore-boats bust- ling round the vessel — and to sneer at the Mogador warrior, and vow that we English, had we been in- clined to do the business, would have performed it a great deal better. Now yesterday at Lisbon we saw H.M.S. " Caledo- nia." This, on the contrary, inspired us with feelings of respect and awful pleasure. There she lay — the huge sea-castle — bearing the unconquerable flag of our country. She had but to open her jaws, as it were, and she might bring a second earthquake in the city — batter it into kingdom- come — with the Ajuda palace and the Necessidades, the churches, and the lean, dry, empty streets, and Don John, tremendous on horseback, in the midst of Black Horse Square. Wherever we looked we could see that enormous " Caledonia," with her flashing three S2 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. lines of guns. We looked at the little boats which ever and anon came out of this monster, with humble wonder. There was the lieutenant who boarded us at midnight before we dropped anchor in the river; ten white-jacketed men pulling as one, swept along with the barge, gig, boat, curricle, or coach-and-six, with which he came up to us. We examined him — his red whiskers — his collars turned down — his duck trowsers — his bullion epaulets — with awe. With the same reverential feeling we exa- mined the seamen — the young gentleman in the bows of the boat — the handsome young officers of marines we met sauntering in the town next day — the Scotch surgeon who boarded us as we weighed anchor — every man, down to the broken-nosed mariner who was drunk in a wine-house, and had "Caledonia" written in his hat. Whereas at the Frenchmen we looked with undisguised contempt. We were ready to burst with laughter as we passed the Prince's vessel — there was a little French boy in a French boat alongside cleaning it, and twirling about a little French mop — we thought it the most comical, contemptible French boy, mop, boat, steamer, prince — Psha ! it is of this wretched va- pouring stuff that false patriotism is made. I write this as a sort of homely apropos of the day, and Cape Trafalgar, off which we lie. What business TRAVELLING FRIENDS. 33 have I to strut the deck, and clap my wings, and cry "cock-a-doodle-doo" over it? Some compatriots are at that work even now. We have lost one by one all our jovial company. There were the five Oporto wine merchants — all hearty English gentlemen — gone to their wine- butts, and their red-legged imrtridges, and their duels at Oporto. It appears that these gallant Britons fight every morning among themselves, and give the benighted people among whom they live an opportunity to admire the spirit national. There is the brave, honest major, with his wooden-leg — the kindest and simplest of Irishmen : he has embraced his children, and reviewed his little invalid garrison of fifteen men, in the fort which he commands at Belem, by this time, and, I have no doubt, played to every soul of them the twelve tunes of his musical- box. It was pleasant to see him with that musical- box — how pleased he wound it up after dinner — how happily he listened to the little clinking tunes as they galloped, ding- ding, after each other. A man who carries a musical-box is always a good-natured man. Then there was his grace, or his grandeur, the Archbishop of Beyrouth (in the parts of the infidels), his Holiness's Nuncio to the court of her most faithful Majesty, and who mingled among us like 34 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. any simple mortal, — excej:>t that he had an extra smiling courtesy, which simple mortals do not always possess ; and when you passed him as such, and puffed your cigar in his face, took off his hat with a grin of such prodigious rapture, as to lead you to suppose that the most delicious privilege of his whole life, was that permission to look at the tip of your nose or of your cigar. With this most reverend prelate was his grace's brother and chaplain — a very greasy and good-natured ecclesiastic, whom, from his physiognomy, I would have imagined to be a dignitary of the Israelitish rather than the Romish church — as profuse in smiling courtesy as his lordship of Beyrouth. These two had a meek little secretary between them, and a tall French cook and valet, who, at meal times, might be seen busy about the cabin where their reverences lay. They were on their backs for the greater part of the voyage ; their yellow countenances were not only unshaven, but, to judge from appearances, unwashed. They ate in private ; and it was only of evenings, as the sun was jetting over the western wave, and, comforted by the dinner, the cabin passengers assembled on the quarter-deck, that we saw the dark faces of the reverend gentlemen among us for a while. They sunk darkly into their berths when the steward's bell tolled for tea. BISHOP NO. 2. r i*i At Lisbon, where we came to anchor at mid- night, a special boat came off, whereof the crew exhibited every token of reverence for the ambas- sador of the ambassador of heaven, and carried him off from our company. This abrupt departure in the darkness disappointed some of us, who had promised ourselves the pleasure of seeing Ifis Grandeur depart in state in the morning, shaved, clean, and in full pontificals, the tripping little secretary swinging an incense-pot before him, and the greasy chaplain bearing his crosier. Next day we had another bishop, who occupied the very same berth his grace of Beyrouth had quitted — was sick in the very same way — so much so that this cabin of the "Lady Mary Wood" is to be christened " the bishop's berth " henceforth ; and a handsome mitre is to be painted on the basin. Bishop No. 2 was a very stout, soft, kind-looking old gentleman, in a square cap, with a handsome tassel of green and gold round his portly breast and back. He was dressed in black robes, and tight purple stockings : and we carried him from Lisbon to the little flat coast of Faro, of which the meek old gentleman was the chief pastor. We had not been half an hour from our an- chorage in the Tagus, when his lordship dived down 36 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. into the episcopal berth. All that night there was a good smart breeze ; it blew fresh all the next day, as we went jumping over the blue bright sea; and there was no sign of his lordship the bishop until we were opposite the purple hills of Algarve, which lay at some ten miles distant, — a yellow sunny shore stretching flat before them, whose long sandy flats and villages we could see with our telescopes from the steamer. Presently a little vessel, with a huge shining lateen sail, and bearing the blue and white Portuguese flag, was seen playing a sort of leap frog on the jolly waves, jumping over them, and ducking down as merry as could be. This little boat came towards the steamer as quick as ever she could jump; and Captain Cooper roaring out, " Stop her!" to "Lady Mary Wood," her ladyship's paddles suddenly ceased twirling, and news was carried to the good bishop in the berth, that his boat was almost alongside, and that his hour was come. It was rather an affecting sight to see the poor old fat gentleman, looking wistfully over the water as the boat now came up, and her eight seamen, with great noise, energy, and gesticulation laid her by the steamer. The steamer steps were let down; his lordship's servant in blue and yellow livery, like the ( Edinburgh Review,) cast over the GOOD BYE, BISHOP ! 37 episcoj^al luggage into the boat, along with his own bundle and the jack-boots with which he rides postillion on one of the bishop's fat mules at Faro. The blue and yellow domestic went down the steps into the boat. Then came the bishop's turn ; but he could n't do it for a long while. He went from one passenger to another, sadly shaking them by the hand, often taking leave and seeming loth to depart, until Captain Cooper, in a stern but respect- ful tone, touched him on the shoulder, and said, I know not with what correctness, being ignorant of the Spanish language, " SenorBispo ! Senor Bispo !" on which summons the poor old man, looking rue- fully round him once more, put his square cap under his arm, tucked up his long black petticoats, so as to show his purple stockings and jolly fat calves, and went trembling down the steps towards the boat. The good old man ! I wish I had had a shake of that trembling, podgy hand somehow be- fore he went upon his sea martyrdom. I felt a love for that soft-hearted old Christian. Ah ! let us hope his governante tucked him comfortably in bed when he got to Faro that night, and made him a warm gruel and put his feet in warm water. The men clung around him, and almost kissed him as they popped him into the boat, but he did not heed their caresses. Away went the boat scudding madly 38 A JOURNEY TO CAIEO. before the winds. Bang! another lateen-sailed boat in the distance fired a gun in his honour; but the wind was blowing away from the shore, and who knows when that meek bishop got home to his gruel ? I think these were the notables of our party. I will not mention the laughing, ogling lady of Cadiz, whose manners, I very much regret to say, were a great deal too lively for my sense of propriety; nor those fair sufferers, her companions, who lay on the deck with sickly, smiling, female resignation ; nor the heroic children, who no sooner eat biscuit than they were ill, and no sooner were ill than they began eating biscuit again; but just allude to one other martyr, the kind lieutenant in charge of the mails, and who bore his cross with what I can't but think a very touching and noble resignation. There's a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is disapjj ointment, — who excels in it, — and whose luckless triumphs in his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by the kind eyes above with as much favour as the splendid successes and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men. As I sate with the lieutenant upon deck, his telescope laid over his lean legs, and he looking at the sunset with a pleased, withered old face, he gave me a little account of his history. THE MEEK LIEUTENANT. :>'.) I take it he is iD nowise disinclined to talk about it, simple as it is : he has been seven-and- thirty years in the navy, being somewhat more mature in the, service than Lieutenant Peel, Rear- Admiral Prince de Joinville, and other commanders, who need not be mentioned. He is a very well-educated man, and reads prodigiously, — travels, histories, lives of eminent worthies and heroes, in his simple way. He is not in the least angry at his want of luck in the profession. " Were I a boy to-morrow," he said, " I would begin it again ; and when I see my schoolfellows, and how they have got on in life, if some are better off than I am, I find many are worse, and have no call to be discontented." So he carries her Majesty's mails meekly through this world, waits upon port-admirals and captains in his old glazed hat, and is as proud of the pennon at the bow of his little boat, as if it were flying from the mainmast of a thundering man-of-war. He gets two hundred a-year for his services, and has an old mother and a sister, living in England somewhere, who I will wager (though he never, I swear, said a word about it) have a good portion of this princely income. Is it breaking a confidence to tell Lieutenant Bundy's history ? Let the motive excuse the deed. It is a good, kind, wholesome and noble character. 40 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. Why should we keejD all our admiration for those who win in this world, as we do, sycophants as we are ? When we write a novel, our great, stupid imaginations can go no further than to marry the hero to a fortune at the end, and to find out that he is a lord by right. Oh, blundering lick-spittle morality! And yet I would like to fancy some happy retributive Utopia in the peaceful cloudland, where my friend the meek lieutenant should find the yards manned of his ship as he went on board, all the guns firing an enormous salute (only with- out the least noise or vile smell of powder), and he be saluted on the deck as Admiral Sir James, or Sir Joseph — aye, or Lord Viscount Bundy, knight of all the orders above the sun. I think this is a sufficient, if not a complete catalogue, of the worthies on board the " Lady Mary Wood." In the week we were on board — it seemed a year, by the way — we came to regard the ship quite as a home. We felt for the captain — the most good-humoured, active, careful, ready of cap- tains — a filial, a fraternal regard ; for the providore, who provided for us with admirable comfort and generosity, a genial gratitude; and for the brisk steward's lads— brisk in serving the banquet, sym- pathising in handing the basin — every possible sen- timent of regard and good will. What winds blew, LADY MARY WOOD. 11 and how many knots we ran, are all noted down, no doubt, in the ship's log ; and as for what ships we saw — every one of them with their gunnage, tonnage, their nation, their direction whither they were bound, were not these all noted down with surprising ingenuity and precision by the lieutenant, at a family desk at which he sate, every night before a great paper, elegantly and mysteriously ruled off' with his large ruler? I have a regard for every man on board that ship, from the captain dowm to the crew — down even to the cook, with tattooed arms, sweating among the saucepans in the galley, who used (with a touching affection) to send us locks of his hair in the soup. And so, while our feelings and recollections are warm, let us shake hands with this knot of good fellows, comfortably floating about in their little box of wood and iron, across Channel, Biscay Bay, and the Atlantic, from Southampton water to Gibraltar Straits. D 2 IV. GIBRALTAR. $&*• UPPOSE all the nations of the earth to send fitting ambassadors to re- present them at Wapping or Portsmouth Point, with each, under its own national sign-board and language, its appropriate jr house of call, and your imagination may figure the main street of Gibraltar ; almost the only part of the town, I believe, which boasts of the name of street at all, the remaining house- rows being modestly called lanes, such as Bomb- lane, Battery-lane, Fusee-lane, and so on. In Main-street the Jews predominate, the Moors abound ; and from the Jolly Sailor, or the Brave Horse Marine, where the people of our own na- tion are drinking British beer and gin, your hear choruses of " Garry Owen" or " The Lass I left behind me ;" while through the flaring lattices of the Spanish ventas come the clatter of castanets GIBRALTAR. 43 and the jingle and moan of Spanish guitars and ditties. It is a curious sight at evening this thronged street, with the people, in a hundred different cos- tumes, bustling to and fro under the coarse flare of the lamps ; swarthy Moors, in white or crimson robes ; dark Spanish smugglers in tufted hats, with gay silk handkerchiefs round their heads ; fuddled seamen from men-of-war, or merchantmen ; porters, Galhcian and Genoese; and at every few minutes' interval, little squads of soldiers tramping to relieve guard at some one of the innumerable posts in the town. Some of our party went to a Spanish venta, as a more convenient or romantic place of residence than an English house ; others made choice of the club-house in Commercial-square, of which I formed an agreeable picture in my imagination ; rather, per- haps, resembling the Junior United Service Club in Charles-street, by which every Londoner has passed ere this with respectful pleasure, catching glimpses of magnificent blazing candelabras, under which sit neat half-pay officers, drinking half- pints of port. The club-house of Gibraltar is not, however, of the Charles-street sort ; it may have been cheerful once, and there are yet relics of splendour about it. When officers wore pig- tails, and in the time of Governor O'Hara, it may have been a handsome place ; but 44 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. it is mouldy and decrepit now ; and though his Excellency Mr. Bulwer, was living there, and made no complaints that I heard of, other less distin- guished persons thought they had reason to grumble. Indeed, what is travelling made of ? At least half its pleasures and incidents come out of inns; and of them the tourist can speak with much more truth and vivacity than of historical recollections com- piled out of histories, or filched out of hand-books. But to speak of the best inn in a place needs no apology ; that, at least, is useful information ; as every person intending to visit Gibraltar cannot have seen the flea-bitten countenances of our com- panions, who fled from their Spanish venta to take refuge at the club the morning after our arrival: they may surely be thankful for being directed to the best house of accommodation in one of the most unromantic, uncomfortable, and prosaic of towns. If one had a right to break the sacred confi- dence of the mahogany, I could entertain you with many queer stories of Gibraltar life, gathered from the lips of the gentlemen who enjoyed themselves round the dingy table cloth of the club-house coffee- room, richly decorated with cold gravy and spilt beer. I heard there the very names of the gentle- men who wrote the famous letters from the Warspite MESS-ROOM GOSSIP. 45 regarding the French proceedings at Mogador; and met several refugee Jews from that place, who said that they were much more afraid of the Kabyles without the city, than of the guns of the French squadron, of which they seemed to make rather light. I heard the last odds on the ensuing match between Captain Smith's b. g. Bolter, and Captain Brown's ch. c. Roarer : how the gun room of her Majesty's ship Purgatory had " cobbed" a tradesman of the town, and of the row in consequence: I heard capital stories of the way in which Wilkins had escaped the guard, and Thompson had been locked up among the mosquitoes for being out after ten without a lantern. I heard how the governor was an old , but to say what, would be breaking a confidence ; only this may be divulged, that the epithet was exceedingly complimentary to Sir Robert Wilson. All the while these conversations were going on, a strange scene of noise and bustle was passing in the market-place, in front of the window, where Moors, Jews, Spaniards, soldiers were thronging in the sun ; and a ragged fat fellow, mounted on a tobacco barrel, with his hat cocked on his ear, was holding an auction, and roaring with an energy and impudence that would have done credit to Covent Garden. The Moorish castle is the only building about 46 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. the Rock which has an air at all picturesque or ro- mantic ; there is a plain Roman Catholic cathedral, a hideous new Protestant church of the cigar- divan architecture, and a Court-house with a portico which is said to be an imitation of the Parthenon : the ancient religious houses of the Spanish town are gone, or turned into military residences, and marked so that you would never know their former pious destination. You walk through narrow white -washed lanes, bearing such martial names as are before- mentioned, and by- streets with barracks on either side ; small Newgate-like looking buildings, at the doors of which you may see the Serjeants' ladies con- versing, or at the open windows of the officers' quarters, Ensign Fipps lying on his sofa and smoking his cigar, or Lieutenant Simson practising the flute to while away the weary hours of gar- rison dulness. I was surprised not to find more persons in the garrison library, where is a magni- ficent reading-room, and an admirable collection of books. In spite of the scanty herbage and the dust on the trees, the Alameda is a beautiful walk ; of which the vegetation has been as laboriously cared for as the tremendous fortifications which flank it on either side. The vast rock rises on one side with its in- terminable works of defence, and Gibraltar Bay is MILITARY HORTICULTURE. 47 shining on the other, out on which from the terraces immense cannon are perpetually looking, surrounded by plantations of cannon balls and beds of bomb shells, sufficient, one would think, to blow away the whole Peninsula. The horticultural and military mixture is indeed very queer : here and there tem- ples, rustic summer seats, &c, have been erected in the garden, but you are sure to see a great squat mortar looking up from among the flower-pots ; and amidst the aloes and geraniums sprouts the green petticoat and scarlet coat of a Highlander; fatigue parties are seen winding up the hill, and busy about the endless cannon-ball plantations ; awkward squads are drilling in the open spaces ; sentries marching everywhere, and (this is a caution to artists) I am told have orders to run any man through who is discovered making a sketch of the place. It is always beautiful, especially at evening, when the people are sauntering along the walks, and the moon is shining on the waters of the bay and the hills and twinkling white houses of the opposite shore. Then the place becomes quite romantic : it is too dark to see the dust on the dried leaves; the cannon- balls do not intrude too much, but have subsided into the shade ; the awkward squads are in bed ; even the loungers are gone, the fan-flirting Spanish ladies, the sallow black-eved children, and the trim 48 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. white-jacketted dandies. A fife is heard from some craft at roost on the quiet waters somewhere ; or a faint cheer from yonder black steamer at the Mole, which is about to set out on some night expedition. You forget that the town is at all like Wapping, and deliver yourself up entirely to romance ; the sen- tries look noble pacing there, silent in the moon- light, and Sandy's voice is quite musical, as he challenges with a " Who goes there ?" " All's Well" is very pleasant when sung decently in tune; and inspires noble and poetic ideas of duty, courage, and danger: but when you hear it shouted all the night through, accompanied by a clapping of muskets in a time of profound peace, the sentinel's cry becomes no more romantic to the hearer than it is to the sandy Connaught-man or the bare-legged Highlander who delivers it. It is best to read about wars comfortably in Harry Lorrequer or Scott's novels, in which knights shout their war cries, and jovial Irish bayoneteers hurrah, without depriving you of any blessed rest. Men of a different way of thinking, however, can suit them- selves perfectly at Gibraltar; where there is marching and counter-marching, challenging and relieving guard all the night through. And not here in Commercial- square alone, but all over the huge rock in the darkness — all through the mysterious all's well. 49 zig-zags, and round the dark cannon-ball pyramids, and along the vast rock- galleries, and up to the topmast flagstaff where the sentry can look out over two seas, poor fellows are marching and clapping muskets, and crying " All's well," dressed in cap and feather, in place of honest nightcaps best be- fitting the decent hours of sleep. All these martial noises three of us heard to the utmost advantage, lying on iron bedsteads at the time in a cracked old room on the ground-floor, the open windows of which looked into the square. No spot could be more favourably selected for watching the humours of a garrison-town by night. About midnight, the door hard by us was visited by a party of young officers, who having had quite as much drink as was good for them, were naturally inclined for more ; and when we remonstrated through the windows, one of them in a young tipsy voice asked after our mothers, and finally reeled away. How charming is the conversation of high spirited youth ! I don't know whether the guard got hold of them : but certainly if a civilian had been hiccuping through the street at that hour he would have been carried off to the guard-house, and left to the mercy of the musquitoes there, and had up before the governor in the morning. The young men in the coffee-room tell me he goes to sleep 50 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. every night with the keys of Gibraltar under his pillow. It is an awful image, and somehow com- jjletes the notion of the slumbering fortress. Fancy Sir Robert ' Wilson, his nose just visible over the sheets, his night-cap and the huge key (you see the very identical one in Reynold's portrait of Lord Heathfield) peeping out from under the bolster ! If I entertain you with accounts of inns and nightcaps it is because I am more familiar with these subjects than with history and fortifications : as far as I can understand the former, Gibraltar is the great British depot for smuggling goods into the Peninsula. You see vessels lying in the har- bour, and are told in so many words they are smugglers; all those smart Spaniards with cigar and mantles are smugglers, and run tobaccos and cotton into Catalonia; all the respected merchants of the place are smugglers. The other day a Spanish revenue vessel was shot to death under the thunder- ing great guns of the fort, for neglecting to bring to, but it so happened that it was in chase of a smug- gler ; in this little corner of her dominions Britain proclaims war to custom-houses, and protection to free- trade. Perhaps ere a very long day, England may be acting that part towards the world, which Gibraltar performs towards Spain now ; and the last A RELEASE. S 1 war in which we shall ever engage may be a custom- house war. For once establish railroads and abolish preventive duties through Europe, and what is there left to fight for? It will matter very little then under what flag people live, and foreign ministers and ambassadors may enjoy a dignified sinecure : the army will rise to the rank of peaceful constables, not having any more use for their bayonets than those worthy people have for their weapons now who accompany the law at assizes under the name of javelin-men. The apparatus of bombs and eighty- four pounders may disappear from the Alameda, and the crops of cannon-balls which now grow there, may give place to other plants more pleasant to the eye ; and the great key of Gibraltar may be left in the gate for anybody to turn at will, and Sir Robert Wilson may sleep in quiet. I am afraid I thought it was rather a release, when, having made up our minds to examine the rock in detail and view the magnificent excavations and galleries, the admiration of all military men, and the terror of any enemies who may attack the fortress, we received orders to embark forthwith in the " Tagus," which was to carry us to Malta and Constantinople. So we took leave of this famous rock — this great blunderbuss — which seized out of the hands of the natural owners a 52 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. hundred and forty years ago, and which we have kept ever since tremendously loaded and cleaned and ready for use. To seize and have it is doubt- less a gallant thing; it is like one of those tests of courage which one reads of in the chivalrous romances, when, for instance, Sir Huon, of Bor- deaux, is called on to prove his knighthood by going to Babylon and pulling out the Sultan's beard and front teeth in the midst of his court there. But, after all, justice must confess it was rather hard on the poor Sultan. If we had the Spaniards established at Land's-End, with impregnable Sj:>a nish fortifications on St. Michael's Mount, we should perhaps come to the same conclusion. Meanwhile, let us hope during this long period of deprivation, the Sultan of Spain is reconciled to the loss of his front teeth and bristling whiskers — let us even try to think that he is better without them. At all events, right or wrong, whatever may be our title to the property, there is no Englishman but must think with pride of the manner in which his countrymen have kept it, and of the courage, en- durance, and sense of duty with which stout old Eliot and his companions resisted Crillon and the Spanish battering ships and his fifty thousand men. There seems to be something more noble in the success of a gallant resistance than of an attack, GIBRALTAR. 58 however brave. After failing in his attack on the fort, the French General visited the English Com- mander who had foiled him, and parted from him and his garrison in perfect politeness and good humour. The English troops, Drinkwater says, gave him thundering cheers as he went away, and the French in return complimented us on our gallantry, and lauded the humanity of our people. If w r e are to go on murdering each other in the old-fashioned way, what a pity it is that our battles cannot end in the old-fashioned way too. One of our fellow-travellers, who had written a book, and had suffered considerably from sea- sick- ness during our passage along the coasts of France and Spain, consoled us all by saying that the very minute we got into the Mediterranean we might consider ourselves entirely free from illness; and, in fact, that it was unheard of in the inland sea. Even in the Bay of Gibraltar the water looked bluer than anything I have ever seen — except Miss Smith's eyes. I thought, somehow, the delicious faultless azure never could look angry — just like the eyes before alluded to — and under this assur- ance we passed the Strait, and began coasting the African shore calmly and without the least appre- hension, as if we were as much used to the tempest as Mr. T. P. Cooke. e 2 . 54 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. But when, in spite of the promise of the man who had written the book, we found ourselves worse than in the worst part of the Bay of Biscay, or off the storm-lashed rocks of Finisterre, we set down the author in question as a gross impostor, and had a mind to quarrel with him for leading us into this cruel error. The most provoking part of the matter, too, was, that the sky was deliciously clear and cloudless, the air balmy, the sea so insultingly blue that it seemed as if we had no right to be ill at all, and that the innumerable little waves that frisked round about our keel were enjoying an anerithmon gelasma (this is one of my four Greek quotations, depend on it, I will manage to introduce the other three before the tour is done) — seemed to be enjoy- ing, I say, the above-named Greek quotation at our expense. Here is the dismal log of Wednesday, 4th of September: — "All attempts at dining very fruitless. Basins in requisition. Wind hard ahead. Que (liable allais je /aire dans cette galere ? Writing or thinking impossible, so read letters from the iEgean." These brief words give, I think, a complete idea of wretchedness, despair, remorse, and prostration of soul and body. Two days pre- viously we passed the forts and moles and yellow buildings of Algiers, rising very stately from the sea, and skirted by gloomy purple lines of African MALTA. 55 shore, with fires smoking in the mountains, and lonely settlements here and there. On the 5th, to the inexpressible joy of all, we reached Valetta, the entrance to the harbour of which is one of the most stately and agreeable scenes ever admired by sea-sick traveller. The small basin was busy with a hundred ships, from the huge guard ship, which lies there a city in itself; — merchantmen loading and crews cheering, under all the flags of the world flaunting in the sunshine ; a half- score of busy black steamers per- petually coming and going, coaling and painting, and puffing and hissing in and out of harbour ; slim men-of-war's barges shooting to and fro, with long shining oars flashing like wings over the water ; hundreds of painted town- boats, with high heads and white awnings, — down to the little tubs in which some naked, tawny young beggars came paddling up to the steamer, entreating us to let them dive for halfpence. Round this busy blue water rise rocks, blazing in sunshine, and covered with every imaginable device of fortification : to the right, St. Elmo, with flag and light-house; and opposite, the Military Hospital, looking like a palace; and all round, the houses of the city, for its size the handsomest and most stately in the world. Nor does it disappoint you on a closer inspec- 56 A JOURNEY TQ CAIRO. tion, as many a foreign town does. The streets are thronged with a lively, comfortable looking popu- lation; the poor seem to inhabit handsome stone palaces, with balconies and projecting windows of heavy carved stone. The lights and shadows, the cries and stenches, the fruit shops and fish stalls, the dresses and chatter of all nations ; the soldiers in scarlet, and women in black mantillas ; the beg- gars, boatmen, barrels of pickled herrings and mac- caroni; the shovel-hatted priests and bearded capuchins; the tobacco, grapes, onions, and sun- shine; the sign-boards, bottle-porter stores, the statues of saints and little chapels which jostle the stranger's eyes as he goes up the famous stairs from the water-gate, make a scene of such pleasant con- fusion and liveliness as I have never witnessed before. And the effect of the groups of multitudinous actors in this busy, cheerful drama, is heightened, as it were, by the decorations of the stage. The sky is delightfully brilliant; all the houses and ornaments are stately; castles and palaces are rising all around ; and the flag, towers and walls of Fort St. Elmo look as fresh and magnificent as if they had been erected only yesterday. The Strada Keale has a much more courtly ap- pearance than that one described. Here are palaces, churches, court-houses and libraries, the genteel RELIGION AND NOBILITY. 57 London shops, and the latest articles of perfumery. Gay young officers are strolling about in shell jackets much too small for them; midshipmen are clattering by on hired horses ; squads of priests, habited after the fashion of Don Basilio in the opera, are de- murely pacing to and fro ; professional beggars run shrieking after the stranger ; and agents for horses, for inns, and for worse places still, follow him and insinuate the excellence of their goods. The houses where they are selling carpet-bags and pomatum were the palaces of the successors of the goodliest company of gallant knights the world ever heard tell of. It seems unromantic ; but these were not the romantic knights of St. John. The heroic days of the order ended as the last Turkish galley lifted anchor after the memorable siege. The present stately houses were built in times of peace and splendour and decay. I doubt whether the "Au- berge de Provence," where the Union Club flourishes now, has ever seen anything more romantic than the pleasant balls held in the great room there. The church of Saint John, not a handsome structure without, is magnificent within : a noble hall covered with a rich embroidery of gilded carving, the chapels of the different nations on either side, but not interfering with the main structure, of which the whole is simple, and the details only 58 A JOUBNEY TO CAIRO. splendid; it seemed to me a fitting place for this wealthy body of aristocratic soldiers, who made their devotions as it were on parade, and though on their knees, never forgot then epaulets or their quarters of nobility. This mixture of religion and worldly pride seems incongruous at first ; but have we not at church at home similar relics of feudal ceremony? — the verger with the silver mace who precedes the vicar to the desk ; the two chaplains of my lord archbishop, who bow over his grace as he enters the communion-table gate ; even poor John, who follows my lady with her coronetted prayer-book, and makes his conge as he hands it into the pew. What a chivalrous absurdity is the banner of some high and mighty prince, hanging over his stall in Windsor Chapel, when you think of the purpose for which men are supposed to assemble there ! The church of the knights of St. John is paved over with sprawling heraldic devices of the dead gentlemen of the dead order; as if, in the next world, they expected to take rank in con- formity with their pedigrees, and would be mar- shalled into heaven according to the orders of prece- dence. Cumbrous handsome paintings adorn the walls and chapels, decorated with pompous monu- ments of grand masters. Beneath is a crypt, where more of these honourable and reverend warriors lie, MALTA RELICS. 5$ in a state that a Simpson would admire. In the altar are said to lie three of the most gallant relics in the world: the keys of Acre, Rhodes, and Jeru- salem. What blood was shed in defending these emblems ! What faith, endurance, genius, and generosity ; what pride, hatred, ambition, and savage lust of blood were roused together for their guar- dianship ! In the lofty halls and corridors of the governor's house, some portraits of the late grand masters still remain ; a very fine one, by Caravaggio, of a knight in gilt armour, hangs in the dining-room, near a full-length of poor Louis XVI., in royal robes, the very picture of uneasy impotency. But the portrait of Vignacourt is the only one which has a respectable air; the other chiefs of the famous society are pompous old gentlemen in black, with huge peri- wigs, and crowns round their hats, and a couple of melancholy pages in yellow and red. But pages and wigs and grand masters have almost faded out of the canvass, and are vanishing into Hades with a most melancholy indistinctness. The names of most of these gentlemen, however, live as yet in the forts of the place, which all seem to have been eager to build and christen : so that it seems as if, in the Malta mythology, they had been turned into freestone. 60 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. In the armoury is the very suit painted by Cara- vaggio, by the side of the armour of the noble old La Valette, whose heroism saved his island from the efforts of Mustapha and Dragut, and an army quite as fierce and numerous as that which was baffled before Gibraltar, by similar courage and resolution. The sword of the last-named famous corsair (a most truculent little scimitar), thousands of pikes and halberts, little old cannons and wall pieces, helmets and cuirasses, which the knights or their people wore, are trimly arranged against the wall, and, instead of spiking Turks or arming warriors, now serve to point morals and adorn tales. And here likewise are kept many thousand muskets, swords, and boarding pikes, for daily use, and a couple of ragged old standards of one of the English regi- ments, who pursued and conquered in Egypt the remains of the haughty and famous French repub- lican army, at whose appearance the last knights of Malta flung open the gates of all their fortresses, and consented to be extinguished without so much as a remonstrance, or a kick, or a struggle. We took a drive into what may be called the country ; where the fields are rocks, and the hedges are stones — passing by the stone gardens of the Florian, and wondering at the number and handsomeness of the stone villages and churches THE LAZARETTO. CI rising everywhere among the stony hills. Hand- some villas were passed everywhere, and we drove for a long distance along the sides of an aqueduct, quite a royal work of the Caravaggio in gold armour, the grand master De Vignacourt. A most agreeable contrast to the arid rocks of the general scenery, was the garden at the governor's country house ; with the orange-trees and water, its beautiful golden grapes, luxuriant flowers, and thick cool shrubberies. The eye longs for this sort of refresh- ment, after being seared with the hot glare of the general country; and St. Antonio was as pleasant after Malta, as Malta was after the sea. We paid the island a subsequent visit in Novem ber, passing seventeen days at an establishment called Fort Manuel there, and by punsters the Manuel des Voyageurs ; where government accom- modates you with quarters ; where the authorities are so attentive as to scent your letters with aromatic vinegar before you receive them, and so careful of your health as to lock you up in your room every night lest you should walk in your sleep, and so over the battlements into the sea ; if you escaped drowning in the sea, the sentries on the opposite shore would fire at you, hence the nature of the precaution. To drop, however, this satirical strain ; those who know what a quarantine is, may fancy 62 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. that the place somehow becomes unbearable in which it has been endured. And though the No- vember climate of Malta is like the most delicious May in England, and though there is every gaiety and amusement in the town, a comfortable little opera, a good old library filled full of good old books (none of your works of modern science, travel, and history, but good old useless books of the two last centuries), and nobody to trouble you in reading them ; and though the society of Valetta is most hospitable, varied, and agreeable, yet some- how one did not feel safe in the island, with j^erpetual glimpses of Fort Manuel from the opposite shore; and, lest the quarantine authorities should have a fancy to fetch one back again, on a pretext of posthumous plague, we made our way to Naples by the very first opportunity — those who remained that is, of the little Eastern expedition. They were not all there. The Giver of life and death had removed two of our company : one was left behind to die in Egypt, with a mother to bewail his loss ; another we buried in the dismal lazaretto cemetery n # * • * * One is bound to look at this, too, as a part of our journey. Disease and death are knocking per- haps at your next cabin-door. Your kind and cheery companion has ridden his last ride and DEATH IN THE LAZARETTO. 68 emptied his last glass beside you. And while fond hearts are yearning for him far away, and his own mind, if conscious, is turning eagerly towards the spot of the world whither affection or interest call it — the Great Father summons the anxious spirit from earth to himself, and ordains that the nearest and dearest shall meet here no more. Such an occurrence as a death in a lazaretto, mere selfishness renders striking. We were walking with him but two days ago on deck. One has a sketch of him, another his card, with the address written yesterday, and given with an invitation to come and see him at home in the country, where his children are looking for him. He is dead in a day, and buried in the walls of the prison. A doc- tor felt his pulse by deputy — a clergyman comes from the town to read the last service over him — and the friends, who attend his funeral, are mar- shalled by lazaretto- guardians, so as not to touch each other. Every man goes back to his room and applies the lesson to himself. One would not so depart without seeing again the dear, dear faces. We reckon up those we love : they are but very few, but I think one loves them better than ever now. Should it be your turn next ? — and why not ? Is it pity or comfort to think of that affection which watches and survives you ? 64 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. The Maker has linked together the whole race of man with this chain of love. I like to think that there is no man but has had kindly feelings for some other, and he for his neighbour, until we bind together the whole family of Adam. Nor does it end here. It joins heaven and earth together. For my friend or my child of past days is still my friend or my child to me here, or in the home prepared for us by the Father of all. If identity survives the grave, as our faith tells us, is it not a consolation to think that there may be one or two souls among the purified and just, whose affection watches us invi- sible, and follows the poor sinner on earth ! ATHENS. T feeling any enthusiasm myself about Athens, my bounden duty of course is clear, to sneer and laugh heartily at all who have. In fact, what business has a lawyer, who was in Pump- court this day three weeks, and whose common reading is law reports or the newspaper, to pretend to fall in love for the long vacation with mere poetry, of which I swear a great deal is very doubtful, and to get up an enthu- siasm quite foreign to his nature and usual call- ing in life ? What call have ladies to consider Greece " romantic," they who get their notions of mythology from the well-known pages of " Tooke's Pantheon?" What is the reason that blundering Yorkshire squires, young dandies from Corfu regi- ments, jolly sailors from ships in the harbour, and yellow old Indians returning fromBundelcund, should p 2 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. think proper to be enthusiastic about a country of which they know nothing; the mere physical beauty of which they cannot, for the most part, compre- hend ; and because certain characters lived in it two thousand four hundred years ago ? What have these people in common with Pericles, what have these ladies in common with Aspasia (0 fie)? Of the race of Englishmen who come wondering about the tomb of Socrates, do you think the majority would not have voted to hemlock him ? Yes ; for the very same superstition which leads men by the nose now, drove them onward in the days when the lowly hus- band of Xantippe died for daring to think simply and to speak the truth. I know of no quality more magnificent in fools than their faith ; that perfect consciousness they have, that they are doing virtuous and meritorious actions, when they are performing acts of folly, murdering Socrates, or pelting Aristides with holy oyster shells, all for Virtue's sake ; and a fi History of Durness in all Ages of the World," is a book which a philosopher would surely be hanged, but as certainly blessed, for writing. If papa and mamma (honour be to them!) had not followed the faith of their fathers, and thought proper to send away their only beloved son (after- wards to be celebrated under the name of Titmarsh) into ten years' banishment of infernal misery, REMINISCENCES OF TVTTTO). 67 tyranny, annoyance ; to give over the fresh feelings of the heart of the little Michael Angelo to the discipline of vulgar bullies, who, in order to lead tender young children to the Temple of Learning (as they do in the spelling-books), drive them on with clenched fists and low abuse ; if they fainted, revived them with a thump, or assailed them with a curse ; if they were miserable, consoled them with a brutal jeer — if, I say, my dear parents, instead of giving me the inestimable benefit of a ten years' classical education, had kept me at home with my dear thirteen sisters, it is probable I should have liked this country of Attica, in sight of the blue shores of which the present pathetic letter is written : but I was made so miserable in youth by a classical education, that all connected with it is disagreeable in my eyes; and I have the same recollection of Greek in youth that I have of castor oil. So in coming in sight of the promontory of Sunium, where the Greek muse, in an awful vision, came to me, and said in a patronizing way, " Why, my dear" (she always, the old spinster, adopts this high and mighty tone), "Why, my dear, are you not charmed to be in this famous neighbourhood, in this land of poets and heroes, of whose history your classical education ought to have made you a master; if it did not, you have woefully neglected your 68 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. opportunities, and your dear parents have wasted their money in sending you to school." I replied, (( Madam, your company in youth was made so laboriously disagreeable to me, that I can't at pre- sent reconcile myself to you in age. I read your poets, but it was in fear and trembling; and a cold sweat is but an ill accompaniment to poetry. I blundered through your histories ; but history is so dull (saving your presence) of herself, that when the brutal dulness of a schoolmaster is superadded to her own slow conversation, the union becomes in- tolerable ; hence I have not the slightest pleasure in renewing my acquaintance with a lady who has been the source of so much bodily and mental discomfort to me." To make a long story short, I am anxious to apologise for a want of enthusiasm in the classical line, and to excuse an ignorance which is of the most undeniable sort. This is an improper frame of mind for a person visiting the land of iEschylus and Euripides; add to which, we have been abominably overcharged at the Inn : and what are the blue hills of Attica, the silver calm basin of Piraeus, the heathery heights of Pentelicus, and yonder rock crowned by the Doric columns of the Parthenon, and the thin Ionic shafts of the Erechtheum, to a man who has had little rest, and is bitten all over by bugs? Was THE PHLEUS. G9 Alcibiades bitten by bugs, I wonder; and did the brutes crawl over him as he lay in the rosy arms of Phryne ? I wished all night for Socrates' hammock or basket, as it is described in the "Clouds;" in which resting-place, no doubt, the abominable animals kept per force clear of him. A French man-of-war, lying in the silvery little harbour, sternly eyeing out of its stern port-holes a saucy little English corvette beside, began playing sounding marches as a crowd of boats came pad- dling up to the steamer's side to convey us travellers to shore. There were Eussian schooners and Greek brigs lying in this little bay ; dumpy little windmills whirling round on the sunburnt heights round about it; an improvised town of quays and marine taverns has sprung up on the shore ; a host of jingling barouches, more miserable than any to be seen even in Germany, were collected at the landing-place; and the Greek drivers (how queer they looked in 70 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. skull-caps, shabby jackets with profuse embroidery of worsted, and endless petticoats of dirty calico!) began, in a generous ardour for securing passengers, to abuse each other's horses and carriages in the regular London fashion. Satire could certainly hardly caricature the vehicle in which we were made to journey to Athens; and it was only by thinking that, bad as they were, these coaches were much more comfortable contrivances than any Alcibiades or Cymon ever had, that we consoled ourselves along the road. It was flat for six miles along the plain to the city; and you see for the greater part of the way the purple mount on which the Acropolis rises, and the gleaming houses of the town spread beneath. Kound this wide, yellow, barren plain, — a stunt district of olive-trees is almost the only vegetation visible — there rises, as it were, a sort of chorus of the most beautiful mountains; the most elegant, gracious, and noble the eye ever looked on. These hills did not appear at all lofty or terrible, but superbly rich and aristocratic. The clouds were dancing round about them; you could see their rosy, j)urple shadows sweeping round the clear, serene summits of the hills. To call a hill aristocratic seems affected or absurd; but the dif- ference between these hills and the others, is the difference between Newgate Prison and the Travel- LANDSCAPE. 71 lers' Club, for instance : both are buildings ; but the one stern, dark and coarse ; the other rich, elegant, and festive. At least, so I thought. With such a stately palace as munificent Nature had built for these people, what could they be themselves but lordly, beautiful, brilliant, brave, and wise ? We saw four Greeks on donkeys on the road (which is a dust- whirlwind where it is not a puddle) ; and other four were playing with a dirty pack of cards, at a barrack that English poets have christened the half-way house. Does external nature and beauty influence the soul to good ? You go about War- wickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands, Shakspere must have drunk in a portion of that frank, artless sense of beauty, which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit ? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there; yonder dirty swindling ragged black- guards, lolling over greasy cards three hours before noon, quarrelling and shrieking, armed to the teeth and afraid to fight, are bred out of the same land which begot the philosophers and heroes. But the 72 A JOUENEY TO CAIRO. half-way house is past by this time, and behold we are in the capital of king Otho. I swear solemnly that I would rather have two hundred a year in Fleet-street, than be king of the Greeks, with Basileus written before my name round their beggarly coin j with the bother of perpetual revolutions in my huge plaster of Paris palace, with no amusement but a drive in the afternoon over a wretched arid country, where roads are not made, with ambassadors (the deuce knows why, for what good can the English, or the French, or the Kussian party get out of such a bankrupt alliance as this ? ) perpetually pulling and tugging at me, away from honest Germany, where there is beer and aesthetic conversation, and operas at a small cost. The shabbiness of this place actually beats Ireland, and that is a strong word. The palace of the Basileus is an enormous edifice of plaster, in a square con- taining six houses, three donkies, no roads, no fountains (except in the picture of the inn) ; back- wards it seems to look straight to the mountain — on one side is a beggarly garden — the king goes out to drive (revolutions permitting) at five — some four and twenty blackguards saunter up to the huge sandhill of a terrace, as his majesty passes by in a gilt barouche and an absurd fancy dress; the gilt barouch goes plunging down the sand-hills : the two BASILEUS. 73 dozen soldiers, who have been presenting arms, slouch off to their quarters : the vast barrack of a palace remains entirely white, ghastly and lonely: and save the braying of a donkey now and then (which long- eared minstrels are more active and sonorous in Athens than in any place I know), all is entirely silent round Basileus's palace. How could people who knew Leopold fancy he would be so "jolly green," as to take such a birth ? It was only a gobemouche of a Bavarian that could ever have been induced to accept it. I beseech you to believe that it was not the bill and the bugs at the inn which induced the writer hereof to speak so slightingly of the residence of Basileus. These evils are now cured and forgotten. This is written off the leaden flats and mounds which they call the Troad. It is stern justice alone which pronounces this excruciating sentence. It was a farce to make this place into a kingly capital ; and I make no manner of doubt that King Otho, the very day he can get away unperceived, and get together the passage-money, will be off for dear old Deutschland, Fatherland, Beerland ! I have never seen a town in England which may be compared to this ; for though Heme Bay is a ruin now, money was once spent upon it and houses built ; here, beyond a few scores of mansions 74 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. comfortably laid out, the town is little better than a ricketty agglomeration of larger and smaller huts, tricked out here and there with the most absurd cracked ornaments, and cheap attempts at elegance. But neatness is the elegance of poverty, and these people despise such a homely ornament. I have got a map with squares, fountains, theatres, public gardens, and Places d 'Othon marked out ; but they only exist in the paper capital — the wretched, tumble-down, wooden one boasts of none. One is obliged to come back to the old disagree- able comparison of Ireland. Athens may be about as wealthy a place as Oarlow or Killarney — the streets swarm with idle crowds, the innumerable little lanes flow over with dirty little children, they are playing and paddling about in the dirt every- where, with great big eyes, yellow faces, and the queerest little gowns and skull caps. But in the outer man, the Greek has far the advantage of the Irishman ; most of them are well and decently dressed (if five-and-twenty yards of petticoat may not be called decent, what may ?) ; they swagger to and fro with huge knives in their girdles. Almost all the men are handsome, but live hard, it is said, in order to decorate their backs with those fine clothes of theirs. I have seen but two or three handsome women, and these had the great draw- ENGLAND FOR EVER. 75 back which is common to the race — I mean, a sal- low, greasy, coarse complexion, at which it was not advisable to look too closely. And on this score I think we English may pride ourselves on possessing an advantage (by we, I mean the lovely ladies to whom this is addressed with the most respectful compliments) over the most classical country in the world. I don't care for beauty which will only bear to be looked at from a distance like a scene in a theatre. What is the most beautiful nose in the world, if it be covered with a skin of the texture and colour of coarse whity-brown paper; and if Nature has made it as slippery and shining as though it had been anointed with pomatum ? They may talk about beauty, but would you wear a flower that had been dipped in a grease-pot ? No ; give me a fresh, dewy, healthy rose out of Somersetshire; not one of those superb, tawdry, unwholesome exotics, which are only good to make poems about. Lord Byron wrote more cant of this sort than any poet I know of. Think of " the peasant girls with dark blue eyes" of the Khine — the brown-faced, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, dirty wenches ! Think of " filling high a cup of Samian wine ; " small beer is nectar compared to it, and Byron himself always drank gin. That man never wrote from his heart. He got up rapture and 76 A JOUENEY TO CAIRO. enthusiasm with an eye to the public ; — but this is dangerous ground, even more dangerous than to look Athens full in the face, and say that your eyes are not dazzled by its beauty. The Great Public admires Greece and Byron ; the public knows best. Murray's " Guide Book" calls the latter " our native bard." Our native bard ! Mon Dien ! He Shakspeare's, Milton's, Keats's, Scott's native bard ! Well, woe be to the man who denies the public gods ! The truth is, then, that Athens is a disappoint- ment; and I am angry that it should be so. To a skilled antiquarian, or an enthusiastic Greek scholar, the feelings created by a sight of the place of course will be different ; but you who would be inspired by it must undergo a long preparation of reading, and possess, too, a particular feeling ; both of which, I suspect, are uncommon in our busy commercial newspaper-reading country. Men only say they are enthusiastic about the Greek and Roman authors and history, because it is considered proper and respectable. And we know how gentle- men in Baker Street have editions of the classics handsomely bound in the library, and how they use them. Of course they don't retire to read the newspaper; it is to look over a favourite ode of Pindar, or to discuss an obscure passage in Athenaeus ! Of course country magistrates and CLASSIC REMAINS. 77 members of Parliament are always studying Demos- thenes and Cicero ; we know it from their continual habit of quoting the Latin grammar in Parliament. But it is agreed that the classics are respectable ; therefore we are to be enthusiastic about them. Also let us admit that Byron is to be held up as " our native bard." I am not so entire a heathen as to be insen- sible to the beauty of those relics of Greek art, of which men much more learned and enthu- siastic have written such piles of descriptions. T thought I could recognise the towering beauty of the prodigious columns of the temple of Jupiter ; and admire the astonishing grace, severity, ele- gance, completeness of the Parthenon. The little temple of Victory, with its fluted Corinthian shafts, blazed under the sun almost as fresh as it must have appeared to the eyes of its founders; I saw nothing more charming and brilliant, more graceful, festive, and aristocratic than this sumptuous little building. The Roman remains which he in the towns below, look like the works of barbarians be- side these perfect structures. They jar strangely on the eye, after it has been accustoming itself to perfect harmony and proportions. If, as the schoolmaster tells us, the Greek writing is as complete as the Greek art; if an ode of Pindar is as glittering and G 2 78 A JOUENEY TO CAJKO. pure as the temple of Victory ; or a discourse of Plato as polished and cairn a3 yonder mystical portico of the Erectheum; what treasures of the senses and delights of the imagination have those lost to whom the Greek books are as good as sealed ! And yet one meets with very dull first class- men. Genius won't transplant from one brain to another, or is ruined in the carriage like fine Bur- gundy. Sir Kobert Peel and Sir John Hobhouse are both good scholars ; but their poetry in parlia- ment does not strike one as fine. Muzzle, the schoolmaster, who is bullying poor trembling little boys, was a fine scholar when he was a sizar, and a ruffian then and ever since. Where is the great poet, since the days of Milton, who has improved the natural offshoots of his brain by grafting it from the Athenian tree ? I had a volume of Tennyson in my pocket, which somehow settled that question, and ended the querulous dispute between me and Conscience, under the shape of the neglected and irritated Greek muse, which had been going on ever since I had commenced my walk about Athens. The old spinster saw me wince at the idea of the author of Dora and Ulysses, and tried to follow up her ad- vantage by further hints of time lost, and precious Tf7TT0) AGAIN. 79 opportunities thrown away — " You might have written poems like them," said she ; " or, no, not like them perhaps, but you might have done a neat prize poem, and pleased your papa and mamma. You might have translated Jack and Gill into Greek iambics, and been a credit to your college." I turned testily away from her, "Madam," says I, " because an eagle houses on a mountain, or soars to the sun, don't you be angry with a sparrow that perches on a garret-window, or twitters on a twig. Leave me to myself; look, my beak is not aquiline by any means." And so, my dear friend, you who have been reading this last page in wonder, and who, instead of a description of Athens, have been accommo- dated with a lament on the part of the writer, that he was idle at school, and does not know Greek, excuse this momentary outbreak of egotistic • de- spondency. To say truth, dear Jones, when one walks among the nests of the eagles, and sees the prodigious eggs they laid, a certain feeling of dis- comfiture must come over us smaller birds. You and I could not invent, it even stretches our minds painfully to try and comprehend part of the beauty of the Parthenon — ever so little of it — the beauty of a single column, — a fragment of a broken shaft lying under the astonishing blue sky there, in the midst 8'2 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. Dear Jones, can't you remember the exact smack of the white hermitage, and the toothless old fellow singing " Largo al factotum ?" The first day in the East is like that. After that there is nothing. The wonder is gone, and the thrill of that delightful shock, which so seldom touches the nerves of plain men of the world, though they seek for it everywhere. One such looked out at Smyrna from our steamer, and yawned without the least excitement, and did not betray the slightest emotion, as boats with real Turks on board came up to the ship. There lay the town with minarets and cypresses, domes and castles; great guns were firing off, and the blood-red flag of the Sultan flaring over the fort ever since sun-rise; woods and mountains came down to the gulf's edge, and as you looked at them with the telescope, there peeped out of the general mass a score of pleasant episodes of Eastern life — there were cottages with quaint roofs; silent cool kiosks, where the chief of the eunuchs brings down the ladies of the harem. I saw Hassan, the fisherman, getting his nets ; and Ali Baba going off with his donkey to the great forest for wood. Smith looked at these wonders quite unmoved; and I was surprised at his apathy: but he had been at Smyrna before. A man only sees the miracle once ; though you yearn after it ever so, FIRST EMOTIONS. 83 it won't come again. I saw nothing of Ali Baba and Hassan the next time we came to Smyrna, and had some doubts (recollecting the badness of the inn) about landing at all. A person who wishes to understand France and the East should come in a yacht to Calais or Smyrna, land for two hours, and never afterwards go back again. But those two hours are beyond measure de- lightful. Some of us were querulous up to that time, and doubted of the wisdom of making the voyage. Lisbon, we owned, was a failure ; Athens a dead failure. Malta very well, but not worth the trouble and sea sickness ; in fact, Baden Baden or Devonshire would be a better move than this ; when Smyrna came, and rebuked all mutinous cocknies into silence. Some men may read this who are in want of a sensation. If they love the odd and picturesque, if they loved the Arabian Nights in their youth, let them book themselves on board one of the Peninsular and Oriental vessels, and try one dip into Constantinople or Smyrna. Walk into the Bazaar, and the East is unveiled to you; how often and often have you tried to fancy this, lying out on a summer holiday at school ! It is wonderful, too, how like it is; you may imagine that you have been in the place before, you seem to know it so well ! 84 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. The beauty of that poetry is, to me, that it was never too handsome ; there is no fatigue of sub- limity about it. Shacabac and the Little Barber play as great a part in it as the heroes ; there are no uncomfortable sensations of terror ; you may be familiar with the great Afreet, who was going to exe- cute the travellers for killing his son with a date- stone. Morgiana, when she kills the forty robbers with boiling oil, does not seem to hurt them in the least ; and though King Schahriar makes a practice of cutting off his wives' heads, yet you fancy they have got them on again in some of the back rooms of the palace, where they are dancing and playing on dulcimers. How fresh, easy, good-natured, is all this ! How delightful is that notion of the pleasant Eastern people about knowledge, where the height of science is made to consist in the answering of riddles ! and all the mathematicians and magicians bring their great beards to bear on a conundrum ! When I got into the bazaar among this race, somehow I felt as if they were all friends. There sat the merchants in their little shops, quiet and solemn, but with friendly looks. There was no smoking, it was the Ramazan ; no eating, the fish and meats fizzing in the enormous pots of the cook-shops are only for the Christians. The children abounded; the law is not so stringent THE BAZAAK. 85 upon them, and many wandering merchants were there selling figs (in the name of the prophet, doubtless,) for their benefit, and elbowing onwards with baskets of grapes and cucumbers. Country- men passed bristling over with arms, each with a huge bellyful of pistols and daggers in his girdle; fierce, but not the least dangerous. Wild swarthy Arabs, who had come in with the caravans, walked solemnly about, very different in look and de- meanour from the sleek inhabitants of the town. Greeks and Jews squatted and smoked, their shops tended by sallow-faced boys, with large eyes, who smiled and welcomed you in ; negroes bustled about in gaudy colours; and women, with black nose-bags and shuffling yellow slippers, chattered and bar- gained at the doors of the little shops. There was the rope quarter and the sweetmeat quarter, and the pipe bazaar and the arm bazaar, and the little turned up shoe quarter and the shops where ready-made jackets and pelisses were swing- ing, and the region where, under the ragged awnings, regiments of tailors were at work. The sun peeps through these awnings of mat or canvas, which are hung over the narrow lanes of the bazaar, and ornaments them with a thousand freaks of light and shadow. Cogia Hassan Alhabbal's shop is in a blaze of light; while his neighbour, the 84 A JOUENEY TO CATEO. The beauty of that poetry is, to me, that it was never too handsome ; there is no fatigue of sub- limity about it. Shacabac and the Little Barber play as great a part in it as the heroes ; there are no uncomfortable sensations of terror ; you may be familiar with the great Afreet, who was going to exe- cute the travellers for killing his son with a date- stone. Morgiana, when she kills the forty robbers with boiling oil, does not seem to hurt them in the least ; and though King Schahriar makes a j)ractice of cutting off his wives' heads, yet you fancy they have got them on again in some of the back rooms of the palace, where they are dancing and playing on dulcimers. How fresh, easy, good-natured, is all this ! How delightful is that notion of the pleasant Eastern people about knowledge, where the height of science is made to consist in the answering of riddles ! and all the mathematicians and magicians bring their great beards to bear on a conundrum ! When I got into the bazaar among this race, somehow I felt as if they were all friends. There sat the merchants in their little shops, quiet and solemn, but with friendly looks. There was no smoking, it was the Bamazan ; no eating, the fish and meats fizzing in the enormous pots of the cook-shops are only for the Christians. The children abounded; the law is not so stringent THE BAZAAR. 85 upon them, and many wandering merchants were there selling figs (in the name of the prophet, doubtless,) for their benefit, and elbowing onwards with baskets of grapes and cucumbers. Country- men passed bristling over with arms, each with a huge bellyful of pistols and daggers in his girdle; fierce, but not the least dangerous. Wild swarthy Arabs, who had come in with the caravans, walked solemnly about, very different in look and de- meanour from the sleek inhabitants of the town. Greeks and Jews squatted and smoked, their shops tended by sallow-faced boys, with large eyes, who smiled and welcomed you in ; negroes bustled about in gaudy colours; and women, with black nose-bags and shuffling yellow slippers, chattered and bar- gained at the doors of the little shops. There was the rope quarter and the sweetmeat quarter, and tlie pipe bazaar and the arm bazaar, and the little turned up shoe quarter and the shops where ready-made jackets and pelisses were swing- ing, and the region where, under the ragged awnings, regiments of tailors were at work. The sun peeps through these awnings of mat or canvas, which are hung over the narrow lanes of the bazaar, and ornaments them with a thousand freaks of light and shadow. Cogia Hassan Alhabbal's shop is in a blaze of light; while his neighbour, the 86 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. barber and coffee-house keeper, has his premises, his low seats and narghiles, his queer pots and basins, in the shade. The cobblers are always good- natured ; there was one who, I am sure, has been revealed to me in my dreams, in a dirty old green turban, with a pleasant wrinkled face like an apple, twinkling his little grey eyes as he held them up to talk to the gossips, and smiling under a delightful old grey beard, which did the heart good to see. You divine the conversation between him and the cucumber-man, as the Sultan used to understand the language of the birds. Are any of those cucum- bers stuffed with pearls, and is that Armenian with the black square turban Harun Alraschid in disguise, standing yonder by the fountain where the children are drinking — the gleaming marble fountain, chequered all over with light and shadow, and engraved with delicate Arabesques and sentences from the Koran ? But the greatest sensation of all is when the camels come. Whole strings of real camels, better even than in the procession of Blue Beard, with soft rolling eyes and bended necks, swaying from one side of the bazaar to the other to and fro, and treading gingerly with their great feet. 0, you fairy dreams of boyhood ! O, you sweet meditations of half-holidays, here you are realised for half an hour! The genius which presides over youth led A BASTINADO. 87 us to do a good action that day. There was a man sitting in an open room, ornamented with fine long-tailed sentences of the Koran; some in red, some in blue ; some written diagonally over the paper; some so shaped as to represent ships, dragons, or mysterious animals. The man squatted on a carpet in the middle of this room, with folded arms, waggling his head to and fro, swaying about, and singing through his nose choice phrases from the sacred work. But from the room above came a clear noise of many little shouting voices, much more musical than that of Naso in the matted par- lour, and the guide told us it was a school, so we went up stairs to look. I declare, on my conscience, the master was in the act of bastinadoing a little mulatto boy; his feet were in a bar,' and the brute was laying on with a cane ; so we witnessed the howling of the poor boy, and the confusion of the brute who was administering the correction. The other children were made to shout, I believe, to drown the noise of their little comrade's howling; but the punishment was in- stantly discontinued as our hats came up over the stair-trap, and the boy cast loose, and the bamboo huddled into a corner, and the schoolmaster stood before us abashed. All the small scholars in red caps, and the little girls in gaudy handkerchiefs, 88 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. turned their big wondering dark eyes towards us; and the caning was over for that time, let us trust. I don't envy some schoolmasters in a future state. I pity that poor little blubbering Mahometan ; he will never be able to relish the Arabian Nights in the original, all his life long. From this scene we rushed off somewhat dis- composed, to make a breakfast off red mullets and grapes, melons, pomegranates, and Smyrna wine, at a dirty little comfortable inn, to which we were recommended ; and from the windows of which we had a fine cheerful view of the gulf and its busy craft, and the loungers and the merchants along the shore. There were camels unloading at one wharf, and piles of melons much bigger than the Gibraltar cannon-balls at another. It was the fig season, and we passed through several alleys* encumbered with long rows of fig- dressers, children and women for the most part, who were packing the fruit diligently into drums, dipping them in salt water first, and spreading them neatly over with leaves ; while the figs and leaves are drying, large white worms crawl out of them, and swarm over the decks of the ships which carry them to Europe and to England, where small children eat them with pleasure — I mean the figs, not the worms — and where they are still served at wine parties at the Universities. When fresh WOMEN. 89 they are not better than elsewhere ; but the melons are of admirable flavour, and so large, that Cinderella might almost be accommodated with a coach made of a big one, without any very great distention of its original proportions. Our guide, an accomplished swindler, demanded two dollars as the fee for entering a mosque, which others of our party subsequently saw for sixpence, so we did not care to examine that place of worship. But there were other cheaper sights, which were to the full as picturesque, for which there was no call to pay money, or, indeed, for a day scarcely to move at all. I doubt whether a man who would smoke his pipe on a bazaar counter all day, and let the city flow by him, would not be almost as well em- ployed as the most active curiosity hunter. To be sure he would not see the women. Those in the bazaar were shabby people for the most part, whose black masks nobody would feel a curiosity to remove. You could see no more of their figures than if they had been stuffed in bolsters ; and even their feet were brought to a general splay uniformity by the double yellow slippers which the wives of true believers wear. But it is in the Greek and Armenian quarters, and among those poor Christians who were pulling figs, that you see the beauties; and a man of a generous disposition may lose his H 2 90 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. heart half a dozen times a day in Smyrna. There was the pretty maid at work at a tambour-frame in an open porch, with an old duenna spinning by her side, and a goat tied up to the railings of the little court-garden ; there was the nymph who came down the stair with the pitcher on her head, and gazed with great, calm eyes, as large and stately as Juno's ; there was the gentle mother, bending over a queer cradle, in which lay a small crying bundle of infancy. All these three charmers were seen in a single street in the Armenian quarter, where the house doors are all open, and the women of the families sit under the arches in the court. There was the fig- girl, beautiful beyond all others, with an immense coil of deep black hair twisted round a head of which Raphael was worthy to draw the outline, and Titian to paint the colour. I wonder the Sultan has not swept her off, or that the Persian merchants, who come with silks and sweetmeats, have not kidnapped her for the Shah of Tehran. We went to see the Persian merchants at their Khan, and purchased some silks there from a swarthy black-bearded man, with a conical cap of lamb's-wool. Is it not hard to think that silks bought of a man in a lamb's-wool cap, in a cara- vanserai, brought thither on the backs of camels, should have been manufactured after all at Lyons ? THE CARAVAN BRTDGE. 91 Others of our party bought carpets, for which the town is famous ; and there was one who absolutely laid in a stock of real Smyrna figs, and purchased three or four real Smyrna sponges for his carriage ; so strong was his passion for the genuine article. I wonder that no painter has given us familiar views of the East: not processions, grand sultans, or magnificent landscapes; but faithful transcripts of every day Oriental life, such as each street will supply to him. The camels afford endless motives, couched in the market-places, lying by thousands in the camel square, snorting and bubbling after their manner, the sun blazing down on their backs, their slaves and keepers lying behind them in the shade: and the caravan-bridge, above all, would afford a painter subjects for a dozen of pictures. Over this Roman arch, which crosses the Meles river, all the caravans pass on their entrance to the town. On one side, as we sate and looked at it, was a great row of plane-trees; on the opposite bank a deep wood of tall cypresses : in the midst of which rose up innumerable grey tombs, surmounted with the turbans of the defunct believers. Beside the stream, the view was less gloomy. There was under the plane trees a little coffee-house, shaded by a trellis work, covered over with a vine, and ornamented with many rows of shining pots and water-pipes, for 92 A JOUKNEY TO CAIRO. which there was no use at noon-day now, in the time of Ramazan. Hard by the coffee-house was a garden and a bubbling marble fountain, and over the stream was a broken summer-house, to which amateurs may ascend, for the purpose of examining the river; and all round the plane trees plenty of stools for those who were inclined to sit and drink sweet thick coffee, or cool lemonade made of fresh green citrons. The master of the house, dressed in a white turban, and light blue pelisse, lolled under the coffee-house awning ; the slave, in white, with a crimson striped jacket, his face as black as ebony, brought us pipes and lemonade again, and returned to his station at the coffee-house, where he curled his black legs together, and began singing out of his flat nose, to the thrumming of a long guitar with wire strings. The instrument was not bigger than a soup-ladle, with a long straight handle, but its music pleased the performer; for his eyes rolled shining about, and his head wagged, and he grinned with an innocent intensity of enjoyment that did one good to look at. And there was a friend to share his pleasure : a Turk, dressed in scarlet, and covered all over with daggers and pistols, sate leaning forward on his little stool, rocking about, and grinning quite as eagerly as the black minstrel. As he sang and we listened, figures of women SMYRNA. 93 bearing pitchers went passing over the Koman bridge, which we saw between the large trunks of the planes; or grey forms of camels were seen stalking across it, the string preceded by the little donkey, who is always here their long- eared conductor. These are very humble incidents of travel. Wherever the steamboat touches the shore adventure retreats into the interior, and what is called romance vanishes. It wont bear the vulgar gaze ; or rather the light of common day puts it out, and it is only in the dark that it shines at all. There is no cursing and insulting of Giaours now. If a cockney looks or behaves in a particularly ridiculous way, the little Turks come out and laugh at him. A Lon- doner is no longer a spittoon for true, believers : and now that dark Hassan sits in his divan and drinks champagne, and Selim has a French watch, and Zuleikha perhaps takes Morrison's pills, Byronism becomes absurd instead of sublime, and is only a foolish expression of cockney wonder. They still occasionally beat a man for going into a mosque, , but this is almost the only sign of ferocious vitality left in the Turk of the Mediterranean coast, and strangers may enter scores of mosques without molestation. The paddle-wheel is the great con- queror. Wherever the captain cries " Stop her," 94 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. Civilisation stops, and lands in the ship's boat, and makes a permanent acquaintance with the savages on shore. Whole hosts of crusaders have passed and died, and butchered here in vain. But to manufacture European iron into pikes and helmets was a waste of metal : in the shape of piston-rods and furnace-pokers it is irresistible ; and I think an allegory might be made showing how much stronger commerce is than chivalry, and finishing with a grand image of Mahomet's crescent being extin- guished in Fulton's boiler. This I thought was the moral of the day's sights and adventures. We pulled off to the steamer in the afternoon — -the Inbat blowing fresh, and setting all the craft in the gulf dancing over its blue waters. We were presently under weigh again, the captain ordering his engines to work only at half power, so that a French steamer which was quitting Smyrna at the same time might come up with us, and fancy she could beat the irresistible Tagus. Vain hope ! Just as the Frenchman neared us, the Tagus shot out like an arrow, and the discomfited Frenchman went behind. Though we all relished the joke exceedingly, there was a French gentleman on board who did not seem to be by any means tickled with it; but he had received papers at Smyrna, containing news of Marshal Bugeaud's THE WHISTLER. 95 victory at Isley, and had this land victory to set against our harmless little triumph at sea. That night we rounded the island of Mitylene : and the next day the coast of Troy was in sight, and the tomb of Achilles : — a dismal looking mound that rises on a low dreary barren shore — less lively and not more picturesque than the Scheldt or the mouth of the Thames. Then we passed Tenedos and the forts and town at the mouth of the Dardanelles: the weather was not too hot ; the water as smooth as at Putney ; and everybody happy and excited at the thought of seeing Constantinople to-morrow. We had music on board all the way from Smyrna. A German commis-voyageur, with a guitar, who had passed unnoticed until that time, produced his in- strument about mid- day, and began to whistle waltzes. He whistled so divinely that the ladies left their cabins, and the men laid down then books. He whistled a polka so bewitchingly that two young Oxford men began whirling round the deck, and performed that popular dance with much agility until they sank down tired. He still continued an unabated whistling, and as nobody would dance, pulled off his coat, produced a pair of castanets, and whistling a mazivrka, performed it with tre- mendous agility. His whistling made everybody gay and happy — made those acquainted who had 96 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. not spoken before, and inspired such a feeling of hilarity in the ship, that that night, as we floated over the sea of Marmora, a general vote was ex- pressed for broiled bones and a regular supper party. Punch was brewed, and speeches were made, and, after a lapse of fifteen years, I heard the " Old English gentleman " and " Bright chanticleer proclaims the morn," sung in such style, that you would almost fancy the proctors must hear, and send us all home. TIL CONSTANTINOPLE. HEN we rose at sunrise to see the famous entry to Constantinople, we found, in the place of the city and the sun, a bright white fog, which hid both from sight, and which only disappeared as the vessel advanced towards the Golden Horn. There the fog cleared off' as it were by flakes; and as you see gauze curtains lifted away, one by one, before a great fairy scene at the theatre, this will give idea enough of the fog : the difficulty is to describe the scene afterwards, which was in truth the great fairy scene, than which it is impossible to conceive anything more brilliant and magnificent. I can't go to any more romantic place than Drury Lane to draw my similes from — Drury Lane, such as we used to see it in our youth, when, to our sight, the grand last pictures of the melodrama or pantomime were as magnificent as any objects of nature we have seen with maturer 98 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. eyes. Well, the view of Constantinople is as fine as any of Stanfield's best theatrical pictures, seen at the best period of youth, when fancy had all the bloom on her — when all the heroines who danced before the scene appeared as ravishing beauties, when there shone an unearthly splendour about Baker and Diddear — and the sound of the bugles and fiddles, and the cheerful clang of the cymbols, as the scene unrolled, and the gorgeous procession meandered triumphantly through it — caused a thrill of pleasure, and awakened an innocent fulness of sensual enjoyment that is only given to boys. The above sentence contains the following pro- positions: — The enjoyments of boyish fancy are the most intense and delicious in the world. Stan- field's panorama used to be the realization of the most intense youthful fancy. I puzzle my brains and find no better likeness for the place. The view of Constantinople resembles the ne plus ultra of a Stanfield diorama, with a glorious accompaniment of music, spangled houris, warriors, and winding processions, feasting the eyes and the soul with light, splendour, and harmony. If you were never in this way during your youth ravished at the play-house, of course the whole comparison is useless ; and you have no idea, from this description, of the effect which Constantinople produces on the mind. But CONSTANTINOPLE. 00 if you were never affected by a theatre, no words can work upon your fancy, and typographical attempts to move it are of no use. For, suppose we combine mosque, minaret, gold, cypress, water, blue, caiques, seventy- four, Galata, Tophanna, Ra- mazan, Backallum, and so forth, together, in ever so many ways, your imagination will never be able to depict a city out of them. Or, suppose I say the Mosque of Saint Sophia is four hundred and seventy -three feet in height, measuring from the middle nail of the gilt crescent, surmounting the dome, to the ring in the centre stone; the circle of the dome is one hundred and twenty-three feet in diameter, the windows ninety- seven in number — and all this may be true, for anything I know to the contrary ; yet who is to get an idea of Saint Sophia's from dates, proper names, and calculations with a measuring line ? It can't be done by giving the age and measurement of all the buildings along the river, the names of all the boatmen who ply on it. Has your fancy, which pooh poohs a simile, faith enough to build a city with a foot-rule ? Enough said about descriptions and similes (though whenever I am uncertain of one, I am naturally most anxious to fight for it) : it is a scene not perhaps sublime, but charming, magnificent, and cheerful bevond any I have ever seen — the most 100 A JOUENEY TO CAIRO. superb combination of city and gardens, domes and shipping, hills and water, with the healthiest breeze blowing over it, and above it the brightest and most cheerful sky. It is proper they say to be disappointed on entering the town, or any of the various quarters of it ; because the houses are not so magnificent on inspection and seen singly, as they are when beheld en masse from the waters. But why form expecta- tions so lofty ? If you see a group of peasants picturesquely disposed at a fair, you don't suppose that they are all faultless beauties, or that the men's coats have no rags, and the women's gowns are made of silk and velvet : the wild ugliness of the interior of Constantinople or Pera has a charm of its own, greatly more amusing than rows of red bricks or drab stones, however symmetrical. With brick or stone they could never form those fantastic orna- ments, railings, balconies, roofs, galleries, which jut in and out of the rugged houses of the city. As we went from Galata to Pera up a steep hill, which new comers ascend with some difficulty, but which a porter, with a couple of hundred weight on his back, paces up without turning a hair, I thought the wooden houses far from being disagreeable ob- jects, sights quite as surprising and striking as the grand one we had just left. CAIQUES. 101 I do not know how the Custom House of his Highness is made to be a profitable speculation. As I left the ship, a man pulled after my boat, and asked for backsheesh, which was given him to the amount of about two pence. He was a Custom- house officer, but I doubt whether this sum which he levied ever went to the revenue. I can fancy the scene about the quays somewhat to resemble the river of London in olden times, before coal smoke had darkened the whole city with soot, and when, according to the old writers, there really was bright weather. The fleets of caiques bustling along the shore, or scudding over the blue water, are beautiful to look at ; in Hollar's print London river is so studded over with wherry boats, which bridges and steamers have since destroyed Here the caique is still in full perfection : there are thirty thousand boats of the kind plying between the cities ; every boat is neat and trimly carved and painted ; and I scarcely saw a man pulling in one of them that was not a fine specimen of his race, brawny and brown, with an open chest and a handsome face. They wear a thin shirt of exceed- ingly light cotton, which leaves their fine brown limbs full play ; and with a purple sea for a back ground, every one of these dashing boats forms a brilliant and glittering picture. Passengers squat i 2 102 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. in the inside of the boat; so that as it passes, you see little more than the heads of the true believers, with their red fez and blue tassel, and that placid gravity of expression which the sucking of a tobacco pipe is sure to give to a man. The Bosphorus is enlivened by a multiplicity of other kinds of craft. There are the dirty men-of- war's boats of the Eussians, with unwashed mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds of passengers to the villages; the melon boats piled up with enormous golden fruit ; his Excellency the Pasha's boat, with twelve men bending to their oars ; and his Highness's own caique, with a head like a serpent, and eight- and- twenty tugging oarsmen, that goes shooting by amidst the thundering of the cannon. Ships and steamers, with black sides and flaunting colours, are moored every where, showing their flags, Eussian and English, Austrian, American, and Greek; and along the quays country ships from the Black Sea or the islands, with high carved poops and bows, such as you see in the pictures of the ship- ping of the 17th century. The vast groves and towers, domes and quays, tall minarets and spired spreading mosques of the three cities, rise all around in endless magnificence and variety, and render this water- street a scene of such delightful liveliness and beauty, that one never tires of looking at it. I eothen's misseri. 103 lost a great number of the sights in and round Constantinople, through the beauty of this ad- mirable scene : but what are sights after all ? and is n't that the best sight which makes you most happy ? We were lodged at Pera at Misseri's hotel, the host of which has been made famous ere this time, by the excellent book Eothen, a work for which all the passengers on board our ship had been battling, and which had charmed all — from our great states- man, our polished lawyer, our young Oxonian, who sighed over certain passages that he feared were wicked, down to the writer of this, who, after perusing it with delight, laid it down with wonder, exclaiming, " Aut Diabolus aut" — a book which has since (greatest miracle of all) excited a feeling of warmth and admiration in the bosom of the godlike, impartial, stony Athenaeum. Misseri, the faithful and chivalrous Tartar, is transformed into the most quiet and gentlemanlike of landlords, a great deal more gentlemanlike in manner and appearance than most of us, who sat at his table, and smoked cool pipes on his house top, as we looked over the hill and the Russian palace to the water, and the Seraglio gardens shining in the blue. We confroi) ted Misseri, Eothen in hand, and found, on examining him, that it teas "aut diabolus aut amicus" — but the name is a 104 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. secret; I will never breathe it, though I am "dying to tell it. The last good description of a Turkish bath, I think, was Lady Mary Wortley Montague's, which voluptuous picture must have been painted at least a hundred and thirty years ago ; so that another sketch may be attempted by a humbler artist in a different manner. The Turkish bath is certainly a novel sensation to an Englishman, and may be set down as a most queer and surprising event of his life. I made the valet de place or dragoman (it is rather a fine thing to have a dragoman in one's ser- vice) conduct me forthwith to the best appointed hummums in the neighbourhood; and we walked to a house at Tophana, and into a spacious hall lighted from above, which is the cooling room of the bath. The spacious hall has a large fountain in the midst, a painted gallery running round it; and many ropes stretched from one gallery to another, ornamented with profuse draperies of towels and blue cloths, for the use of the frequenters of the place. All round the room and the galleries were matted enclosures, fitted with numerous neat beds and cushions for reposing on, where lay a dozen of true believers smoking, or sleeping, or in the happy half-dozing state. I was led up to one of these beds A TURKISH BATH. 105 to rather a retired corner, in consideration of my modesty; and to the next bed presently came a dancing dervish, who forthwith began to prepare for the bath. When the dancing dervish had taken off his yellow sugar-loaf cap, his gown, shawl, &c, he was arrayed in two large blue cloths j a white one being thrown over his shoulders, and another in the shape of a turban plaited neatly round his head ; the garments of which he divested himself were folded up in another linen, and neatly put by. I beg leave to state I was treated in precisely the same manner as the dancing dervish. The reverend gentleman then put on a pair of wooden pattens, which elevated him about six inches from the ground; and walked down the stairs, and paddled across the moist marble floor of the hall, and in at a little door, by the which also Titmarsh entered. But I had none of the profes- sional agility of the dancing dervish ; I staggered about very ludicrously upon the high wooden pattens; and should have been down on my nose several times, had not the dragoman and the master of the bath supported me down the stairs and across the hall. Dressed in three large cotton napkins, with a white turban round my head, I thought of Pall Mall with a sort of despair. I passed the little 106 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. door, it was close behind me — I was in the dark — I couldn't speak the language— in a white turban — Mon Dieu! what was going to happen ? The dark room was the tepiclariurn, a moist oozing arched den, with a light faintly streaming from an orifice in the domed ceiling. Yells of frantic laughter and song came booming and clanging through the echoing arches, the doors clapped to with loud reverberations. It was the laughter of the followers of Mahound, rollicking and taking their pleasure in the public bath. I could not go into that place ; I swore I would not ; they promised me a private room, and the dragoman left me. My agony at parting from that Christian cannot be described. When you get into the Sudarium, or hot room, your first sensations only occur about half a minute after entrance, when you feel that you are choking. I found myself in that state, seated on a marble slab ; the bath man was gone ; he had taken away the cotton turban and shoulder shawl : I saw I was in a narrow room of marble, with a vaulted roof, and a fountain of warm and cold water; the atmo- sjmere was in a steam, the choking sensation went off, and I felt a sort of pleasure presently in a soft boiling simmer, which, no doubt, potatoes feel when they are steaming. You are left in this state for A TURKISH BATH. 107 about ten minutes; it is warm certainly, but odd and j)leasant, and disposes the mind to reverie. But let any delicate mind in Baker Street fancy my horror, when, on looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated by them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the most horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horse-hair glove. He spoke in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed through the arched room; his eyes seemed asto- nishly large and bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a bristling top- knot, which gave it a demoniac fierceness. This description, I feel, is growing too frightful ; ladies who read it will be going into hysterics, or saying, "Well, upon my word, this is the most singular, the most extraordinary kind of language. Jane, my love, you will not read that odious book" — and so I will be brief. This grinning man belabours the patient violently with the horse brush. When he has completed the horse-hair part, and you he expiring under a squirting fountain of warm water, and fancying all is done, he reappears, with a large brass basin, containing a quantity of lather, in the midst of which is something like old Miss Mac Whirter's flaxen wig that she is so proud of, and 108 A JOUENEY TO CAIEO. that we have all laughed at. Just as you are going to remonstrate, the thing like the wig is dashed into your face and eyes, covered over with soap, and for five minutes you are drowned in lather ; you can't see, the suds are frothing over your eyeballs ; you can't hear, the soap is whizzing into your ears ; you can't gasp for breath, Miss Mac Whirter's wig is down your throat with half a pailful of suds in an instant — you are all soap. Wicked children in former days have jeered you, exclaiming, "How are you off for soap ?" You little knew what saponacity was till you entered a Turkish bath. When the whole operation is concluded, you are led — with what heartfelt joy I need not say — softly back to the cooling-room, having been robed in shawls and turbans as before. You are laid gently on the reposing bed ; somebody brings a narghile, which tastes as tobacco must taste in Mahomet's Paradise ; a cool sweet dreamy languor takes pos- session of the purified frame ; and half an hour of such delicious laziness is spent over the pipe as is unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most shamefully maligned indolence, calls it foul names, such. as the father of all evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate idleness as these honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when properly cultivated, it bears. CONSTANTINOPLE. 109 The after-bath state is the most delightful con- dition of laziness I ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our little tour. At Smyrna the whole business was much inferior to the method employed in the capital. At Cairo, after the soap, you are plunged into a sort of stone coffin, full of water, which is all but boiling. This has its charms ; but I could not relish the Egyptian shampooing. A hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his art) tried to break my back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could not see the pleasure of the practice ; and another fellow began tickling the soles of my feet, but I rewarded him with a kick that sent him off the bench. The pure idleness is the best, and I shall never enjoy such in Europe again. Victor Hugo, in his famous travels on the Ehine, visiting Cologne, gives a learned account of what he didrit see there. I have a remarkable catalogue of similar objects at Constantinople. I did n't see the dancing dervishes, it was Bamazan ; nor the howling dervishes at Scutari, it was Bamazan ; nor the interior of Saint Sophia, nor the women's apart- ment of the seraglio, nor the fashionable promenade at the Sweet Waters, always because it was Bama- zan ; during which period the dervishes dance and howl but rarely, their legs and lungs being unequal 110 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. to much exertion during a fast of fourteen hours. On account of the same holy season, the royal palaces and mosques are shut; and though the valley of the Sweet Waters is there, no one goes to walk; the people remaining asleep all day, and passing the night in feasting and carousing. The minarets are illuminated at this season; even the humblest mosque at Jerusalem, or Jaffa, mounted a few circles of dingy lamps; those of the capital were handsomely lighted with many festoons of lamps, which had a fine effect from the water. I need not mention other and constant illuminations of the city, which innumerable travellers have described — I mean the fires. There were three in Pera during our eight days' stay there; but they did not last long enough to bring the sultan out of bed to come and lend his aid. Mr. Hobhouse (quoted in the Guide Book) says, if a fire lasts an hour, the sultan is bound to attend it in person ; and that people having petitions to present, have often set houses on fire for the purpose of forcing out this royal trump. The sultan can't lead a very "jolly life," if this rule be universal. Fancy his highness, in the midst of his moon-faced beauties, handkerchief in hand, and obliged to tie it round his face, and go out of his warm harem at midnight at the cursed cry of " Yang en Var ! " HIS HIGHNESS. Ill We saw his highness in the midst of his people and their petitions, when he came to the mosqne at Tophana; not the largest, but one of the most picturesque of the public buildings of the city. The streets were crowded with people watching for the august arrival, and lined with the squat military in their bastard European costume ; the sturdy police, with bandoliers and brown surtouts, keeping order, driving off the faithful from the railings of the Esplanade through which their emperor was to pass, and only admitting (with a very unjust par- tiality I thought) us Europeans into that reserved space. Before the august arrival, numerous officers collected, colonels and pashas went by with their attendant running footmen ; the most active, inso- lent, and hideous of these great men, as I thought, being his highness's black eunuchs, who went prancing through the crowd, which separated before them with every sign of respect. The common women were assembled by many hundreds, the yakmac, a muslin chin cloth which they wear, makes almost every face look the same ; but the eyes and noses of these beauties are gene- rally visible, and, for the most part, both these features are good. The jolly negresses wear the same white veil, but they are by no means so parti- cular about hiding the charms of their good-natured 112 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. black faces, and they let the cloth blow about as it lists, and grin unconflned. Wherever we went the negroes seemed happy. They have the organ of child-loving ; little creatures were always prattling on their shoulders, queer little things in night- gowns of yellow dimity, with great flowers, and pink, or red, or yellow shawls, with great eyes glistening underneath. Of such the black women seemed always the happy guardians. I saw one at a fountain, holding one child in her arms, and giving another a drink — a ragged little beggar — a sweet and touching picture of a black charity. I am almost forgetting his highness the sultan. About a hundred guns were fired off at clumsy intervals from the esplanade facing the Bosphorus, warning us that the monarch had set off from his summer palace, and was on the way to his grand canoe. At last that vessel made its appearance; the band struck up his favourite air; his caparisoned horse was led down to the shore to receive him ; the eunuchs, fat pashas, colonels, and officers of state gathering round as the commander of the faithful mounted. I had the indescribable happi- ness of seeing him at a very short distance. The Padishah, or Father of all the Sovereigns on Earth, has not that majestic air which some sovereigns possess, and which makes the beholder's eyes wink, THE SULTAN. 113 and his knees tremble under him : he has a black beard, and a handsome well-bred face, of a French cast ; he looks like a young French roue worn out by debauch ; his eyes bright, with black rings round them ; his cheeks pale and hollow. He was lolling on his horse as if he could hardly hold himself on the saddle ; or, as if his cloak, fastened with a blazing diamond clasp on his breast, and falling over his horse's tail, pulled him back. But the handsome sallow face of the Refuge of the World looked de- cidedly interesting and intellectual. I have seen many a young Don Juan at Paris, behind a counter, with such a beard and countenance ; the flame of passion still burning in his hollow eyes, while on his damp brow was stamped the fatal mark of pre mature decay. The man we saw cannot live many summers. Women and wine are said to have brought the Zilullah to this state ; and it is whispered by the Dragomans, or Laquais de Place, (from whom travellers at Constantinople generally get their poli- tical information,) that the sultan's mother and his ministers conspire to keep him plunged in sen- suality, that they may govern the kingdom, accord- ing to their own fancies. Mr. Urquhart, I am sure, thinks that Lord Palmerston has something to do with the business, and drugs the sultan's champagne for the benefit of Ptussia. j 2 114 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. As the Pontiff of Mussulmans passed into the mosque, a shower of petitions was flung from the steps where the crowd was collected, and over the heads of the gendarmes in brown. A general cry, as for justice, rose up ; and one old, ragged woman came forward, and burst through the throng, howl- ing, and flinging about her lean arms, and baring her old, shrunken breast. I never saw a finer action of tragic woe, or heard sounds more pitiful than those old, passionate groans of hers. What was your prayer, poor old wretched soul ? The gen- darmes hemmed her round, and hustled her away, but rather kindly. The Padishah went on quite impassible — the picture of debauch and ennui. I like pointing morals, and inventing for myself cheap consolations, to reconcile me to that state of life into which it has pleased heaven to call me; and as the Light of the World disappeared round the corner, I reasoned pleasantly with myself about his highness, and enjoyed that secret selfish satis- faction a man has, who sees he is better off than his neighbour. " Michael- Angelo," I said, "you are still (by courtesy) young : if you had five hundred thousand a-year, and were a great prince, I would lay a wager that men would discover in you a mag- nificent courtesy of demeanour, and a majestic pre- sence that only belongs to the sovereigns of the ICH MOCHTE NICHT DER SULTAN 8EYK. 115 world. If you had such an income, you think you could spend it with splendour; distributing genial hospitalities, kindly alms, soothing misery, bid- ding humility be of good heart, rewarding desert. If you had such means of purchasing pleasure, you think, you rogue, you could relish it with gusto. But fancy being brought to the condition of the poor Light of the Universe, yonder ; and reconcile yourself with the idea that you are only a farthing rushlight. The cries of the poor widow fall as dead upon him, as the smiles of the brightest eyes out of Georgia. He can't stir abroad but those abomin- able cannon begin roaring and deafening his ears. He can't see the world but over the shoulders of a row of fat pashas, and eunuchs, with their infernal ugliness. His ears can never be regaled with a word of truth, or blessed with an honest laugh. The only privilege of manhood left to him, he enjoys but for a month in the year, at this time of Ramazan, when he is forced to fast for fifteen hours; and, by consequence, has the blessing of feeling hungry." Sunset during Lent appears to be his single moment of pleasure ; they say the poor fellow is ravenous by that time, and as the gun fires the dish-covers are taken off, so that for five minutes a day he lives and is happy over pillau, like another mortal. 116 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. And yet, when floating by the summer palace, a barbaric edifice of wood and marble, with gilded suns blazing over the porticoes, and all sorts of strange ornaments and trophies figuring on the gates and railings — when we passed a long row of barred and fillagreed windows, looking on the water — when we were told that those were the apartments of his highness's ladies, and actually heard them whis- pering and laughing behind the bars — a strange feeling of curiosity came over some ill-regulated minds — -just to have one peep, one look at all those wondrous beauties, singing to the dulcimers, paddling in the fountains, dancing in the marble halls, or lolling on the golden cushions, as the gaudy black slaves brought pipes and coffee. This tumul- tuous movement was calmed, by thinking of that dreadful statement of travellers, that in one of the most elegant halls there is a trap- door, on peeping below which, you may see the Bosphorus running underneath, into which some luckless beauty is plunged occasionally, and the trap-door is shut, and the dancing and the singing and the smoking and the laughing go on as before. They say it is death to pick up any of the sacks thereabouts, if a stray one should float by you. There were none any day when I passed, at least, on the surface of the water. It has been rather a fashion of our travellers to A SUBJECT FOR A GHAZUL. 117 apologize for Turkish life, of late, and paint glow- ing, agreeable pictures, of many of its institutions. The celebrated author of "Palm-Leaves" (his name is famous under the date-trees of the Nile, and uttered with respect beneath the tents of the Beda- wee) has touchingly described Ibraham Pasha's paternal fondness, who cut off a black slave's head for having dropped and maimed one of his children ; and has penned a melodious panegyric of "The Harem," and of the fond and beautiful duties of the inmates of that place of love, obedience, and seclu- sion. I saw, at the Mausoleum of the late Sultan Mahmoud's family, a good subject for a Ghazul, in the true new Oriental manner. These royal burial-places are the resort of the pious Moslems. Lamps are kept burning there; and in the antechambers, copies of the Koran are provided for the use of believers; and you never pass these cemeteries but you see Turks washing at the cisterns, previous to entering for prayer, or squatted on the benches, chanting passages from the sacred volume. Christians, I believe, are not ad- mitted, but may look through the bars, and see the coffins of the defunct monarchs and children of the royal race. Each lies in his narrow sarcophagus, which is commonly flanked by huge candles, and covered with a rich embroidered pall. At the head 118 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. of each coffin rises a slab, with a gilded inscription ; for the princesses, the slab is simple, not unlike our own monumental stones. The head- stones of the tombs of the defunct princes are decorated with a turban, or, since the introduction of the latter article of dress, with the red fur. That of Mahmoud is decorated with the imperial aigrette. In this dismal bat splendid museum, I remarked two little tombs with little red fezzes, very small, and for very young heads evidently, which were lying under the little embroidered palls of state. I forget whether they had candles too; but their little flame of life was soon extinguished, and there was no need of many pounds of wax to typify it. These were the tombs of Mahmoud's grandsons, nephews of the present Light of the Universe, and children of his sister, the wife of Halil Pacha. Little children die in all ways; these of the much-maligned Mahometan royal race perished by the bowstring. Sultan Mahmoud (may he rest in glory !) strangled the one ; but, having some spark of human feeling, was so moved by the wretchedness and agony of the poor bereaved mother, his daughter, that his royal heart relented towards her, and he promised that, should she ever have another child, it should be allowed to live. He died ; and Abdul Medjid (may his name be blessed !), the debauched young THE CHILD MUKDERER. 119 man whom we just saw riding to the mosque, suc- ceeded. His sister, whom he is said to have loved, became again a mother, and had a son. But she relied upon her father's word and her august brother's love, and hoped that this little one should be spared. The same accursed hand tore this infant out of its mother's bosom, and killed it. The poor woman's heart broke outright at this second calamity, and she died. But on her death-bed she sent for her brother, rebuked him as a perjurer and an assassin, and expired calling down the divine justice on his head. She lies now by the side of the two little fezzes. Now, I say this would be a fine subject for an oriental poem. The details are dramatic and noble, and could be grandly touched by a fine artist. If the mother had borne a daughter, the child would have been safe ; that perplexity might be pathe- tically depicted as agitating the bosom of the young wife, about to become a mother. A son is born: you can see her despair and the pitiful look she casts on the child, and the way in which she hugs it every time the curtains of her door are removed. The sultan hesitated probably; he allowed the in- fant to live for six weeks. He could not bring his royal soul to inflict pain. He yields at last ; he is a martyr — to be pitied, not to be blamed. If he 120 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. melts at his daughter's agony, he is a man and a father. There are men and fathers too in the much- maligned orient. Then comes the second act of the tragedy. The new hopes, the fond yearnings, the terrified mis- givings, the timid belief, and weak confidence ; the child that is horn — and dies smiling prettily — and the mother's heart is rent so, that it can love, or hope, or suffer no more. Allah is God! She sleeps by the little fezzes. Hark ! the guns are booming over the water, and his highness is coming from his prayers. After the murder of that little child, it seems to me one can never look with anything but horror upon the butcherly Herod who ordered it. The death of the seventy thousand Janissaries ascends to historic dignity, and takes rank as war. But a great prince and Light of the Universe, who pro- cures abortions and throttles little babies, dwindles away into such a frightful insignificance of crime, that those may respect him who will. I pity their Excellencies the ambassadors, who are obliged to smirk and cringe to such a rascal. To do the Turks justice — and two days' walk in Constantinople will settle this fact as well as a year's residence in the city — the people do not seem in the least ani- mated by this Herodian spirit. I never saw more TURKISH CHILDREN. 121 kindness to children than among all classes, more fathers talking about with little solemn Maho- metans in red caps and big trowsers, more business going on than in the toy quarter — and in the At- meidan, although you may see there the Thebaic stone set up by the Emperor Theodosius, and the bronze column of serpents which Murray says was brought from Delphi, but which my guide informed me was the very one exhibited by Moses in the wilderness: yet I found the examination of these antiquities much less pleasant than to look at the many troops of children assembled on the plain to play; and to watch them as they were dragged about in little queer arobas, or painted carriages, which are there kept for hire. I have a picture of one of them now in my eyes : a little green oval machine, with flowers rudely painted round the window, out of which two smiling heads are peep- ing, the pictures of happiness. An otd, good- humoured, grey-bearded Turk is tugging the cart; and behind it walks a lady in a yacmac and yellow slippers, and a black female slave, grinning as usual, towards whom the little coach-riders are looking. A small, sturdy, barefooted Mussulman is examining the cart with some feelings of envy: he is too poor to purchase a ride for himself and the round-faced puppy- dog, which he is hugging 122 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. in his arms as young ladies in our country do doUs. All the neighbourhood of the Atmeidan is ex- ceedingly picturesque — the mosque court and cloister, where the Persians have their stalls of sweatmeats ' and tobacco ; a superb sycamore-tree grows in the middle of this, overshadowing aromatic fountain: great flocks of pigeons are settling in comers of the cloister, and barley is sold at the gates, with which the good-natured people feed them. From the Atmeidan you have a fine view of Saint Sophia: and here stands a mosque which struck me as being much more picturesque and sumptuous — the mosque of Sultan Achmed, with its six gleaming white minarets, and its beautiful courts and trees. Any infidels may enter the court without molesta- tion, and, looking through the barred windows of the mosque, have a view of its airy and spacious interior. A small audience of women was collected there when I looked in, squatted on the mats, and listening to a preacher, who was walking among them, and speaking with great energy. My drago- man interpreted to me the sense of a few words of his sermon : he was warning them of the danger of gadding about to public places, and of the immo- rality of too much talking; and, I dare say, we might have had more valuable information from MODESTY. 123 him, regarding the follies of womankind, had not a tall Turk clapped my interpreter on the shoulder, and pointed him to be off. Although the ladies are veiled, and muffled with the ugliest dresses in the world, yet it appears their modesty is alarmed in spite of all the coverings which they wear. One day, in the bazaar, a fat old body, with diamond rings on her fingers, that were tinged with henne, of a logwood colour, came to the shop where I was purchasing slippers, with her son, a young Aga of six years of age, dressed in a braided frock coat, with a huge tassel to his fez, exceeding fat, and of a most solemn demeanour. The young Aga came for a pair of shoes, and his contortions were so delightful as he tried them, that I remained looking on with great pleasure, wishing for Leech to be at hand to sketch his lordship and his fat mamma, who sat on the counter. That lady fancied I was looking at her, though, as far as I could see, she had the figure and complexion of a roly-poly pudding ; and so, with quite a premature bashfulness, she sent me a message by the shoemaker, ordering me to walk away if I had made my pur- chases, for that ladies of her rank did not choose to be stared at by strangers ; and I was obliged to take my leave, though with sincere regret, for the little lord had just squeezed himself into an attitude than 124 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. which I never saw anything more ludicrous in General Tom Thumb. When the ladies of the seraglio come to that bazaar with their cortege of infernal black eunuchs, strangers are told to move on briskly. I saw a bevy of about eight of these, with their aides-de-camp; but they were wrapped up, and looked just as vulgar and ugly as the other women, and were not, I suppose, of the most beau- tiful sort. The poor devils are allowed to come out, half a dozen times in the year, to spend then little wretched allowance of pocket-money in purchasing trinkets and tobacco ; all the rest of the time they pursue the beautiful duties of their existence in the walls of the sacred harem. Though strangers are not allowed to see the interior of the cage, in which these birds of Paradise are confined ; yet many parts of the seraglio are free to the curiosity of visiters, who choose to drop a backsheesh here and there. I landed one morn- ing at the seraglio point from Galata, close by an ancient pleasure-house of the defunct sultan ; a vast broad-brimmed pavilion, that looks agreeable enough to be a dancing- room for ghosts now : there is another summer-house, the Guide Book cheer- fully says, whither the sultan goes to sport with his women and mutes. A regiment of infantry, with their music at their head, were marching to exer- TFIE SERAGLIO. 125 cise in the outer grounds of the seraglio ; and we followed them, and had an opportunity of seeing their evolutions, and hearing their bands, upon a fine green plain under the seraglio walls, where stands one solitary column, erected in memory of some triumph of some Byzantian emperor. There were three battalions of the Turkish in- fantry exercising here ; and they seemed to perform their evolutions in a very satisfactory manner : that is, they fired altogether, and charged and halted in very straight lines, and bit off imaginary cartridge- tops with great fierceness and regularity, and made all their ramrods ring to measure, just like so many Christians. The men looked small, young, clumsy, and ill- built ; uncomfortable in their shabby Euro- pean clothes ; and about the legs, especially, seemed exceedingly weak and ill-formed. Some score of military invalids were lolling in the sunshine, about a fountain and a marble summer-house, that stand on the ground, watching their comrades' manoeuvres (as if they could never have enough of that delight- ful pastime); and these sick were much better cared for than their healthy companions. Each man had two dressing-gowns, one of white cotton, and an outer wrapper of warm brown woollen. Their heads were accommodated with wadded cotton night-caps ; and it seemed to me from their condition, and from K 2 126 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. the excellent character of the military hospitals, that it would be much more wholesome to be ill than to be well in the Turkish service. Facing this green esplanade, and the Bosphorus shining beyond it, rise the great walls of the outer seraglio gardens ; huge masses of ancient masonry, over which peep the roofs of numerous kiosks and outhouses, amongst thick evergreens, planted so as to hide the beautiful frequenters of the place from the prying eyes and telescopes. We could not catch a glance of a single figure moving in these great pleasure-grounds. The road winds round the walls ; and the outer park, which is likewise planted with trees, and diversified by garden-plots and cot- tages, had more the air of the out-buildings of a homely English park, than of a palace which we must all have imagined to be the most stately in the world. The most common-place water carts were passing here and there ; roads were being repaired in the Macadamite manner ; and carpenters were mending the park-palings, just as they do in Hampshire. The next thing you might fancy would be the sultan walking out with a spud and a couple of dogs, on the way to meet the post-bag and the Saint James's Chronicle. The palace is no palace at all. It is a great town of pavilions, built without order, here and THE SERAGLIO. 127 there, according to the fancy of succeeding lights of the universe, or their favourites. The only row of domes which looked particularly regular or stately, were the kitchens. As you examined the buildings they had a ruinous, dilapidated look, — they are not furnished, it is said, with particular splendour, — not a bit more elegantly than Miss Jones's seminary for young ladies, which we may be sure is much more comfortable than the extensive establishment of his Highness Abdul Medjid. In the little stable I thought to see some marks of royal magnificence, and some horses worthy of the king of all kings. But the Sultan is said to be a very timid horseman: the animal that is always kept saddled for him did not look to be worth twpnty pounds; and the rest of the horses in the shabby, dirty stalls, were small, ill kept, common - looking brutes. You might see better, it seemed to me, at a country inn stable of any market-day. The kitchens are the most sublime part of the seraglio. There are nine of these great halls, for all ranks, from his highness downwards; where many hecatombs are roasted daily, according to the accounts ; and where cooking goes on with a savage Homeric grandeur. Chimneys are despised in these primitive halls ; so that the roofs are black with the smoke of hundreds of furnaces, which escapes 128 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. through apertures in the domes above. These, too, give the chief light in the rooms, which streams downwards, and thickens and mingles with the smoke, and so murkily lights up hundreds of swarthy figures busy about the spits and the caul- drons. Close to the door by which we entered, they were making pastry for the sultanas ; and the chief pastrycook, who knew my guide, invited us courteously to see the process, and partake of the delicacies prepared for those charming lips. How those sweet lips must shine after eating these puffs ! First, huge sheets of dough are rolled out till the paste is about as thin as silver paper: then an artist forms the dough -muslin into a sort of drapery, curling it round and round in many fanciful and pretty shapes, until it is all got into the circum- ference of a round metal tray in which it is baked. Then the cake is drenched in grease most profusely ; and, finally, a quantity of syrup is poured over it, when the delectable mixture is complete. The moon-faced ones are said to devour immense quan- tities of this wholesome food; and, in fact, are eating grease and sweetmeats from morning till night. I do n't like to think what the consequences may be, or allude to the agonies which the delicate creatures must inevitably suffer. The good-natured chief pastrycook filled a cop- THE SULTANAS' PUFFS. 129 per basin with greasy puffs ; and, clipping a dubious ladle into a large cauldron, containing several gallons of syrup, poured a liberal portion over the cakes, and invited us to eat. One of the tarts was quite enough for me ; and I excused myself on the plea of ill health from imbibing any more grease and sugar. But my companion, the dragoman, finished some forty puffs in a twinkling. They slipped down his opened jaws as the sausages do down Clown's throat in a pantomime. His moustachios shone with grease, and it dripped down his beard and fingers. We thanked the smiling chief pastry- cook, and rewarded him handsomely for the tarts. It is something to have eaten of the dainties prepared for the ladies of the harem j but I think Mr. Cockle ought to get the names of the chief sultanas among the exalted patrons of his Antibilious Pills. From the kitchens we passed into the second court of the seraglio, beyond which is death. The guide book only hints at the dangers which would befal a stranger caught prying in the mysterious Jirst court of the palace. I have read Bluebeard, and don't care for peeping into forbidden doors ; so that the second court was quite enough for me ; the plea- sure of beholding it being heightened, as it were, by the notion of the invisible danger sitting next door, 130 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. with uplifted scimetar ready to fall on — present though not seen. A cloister runs along one side of this court; opposite is the hall of the divan, "large but low, covered with lead, and gilt, after the Moorish manner, plain enough." The Grand Vizir sits in this place, and the ambassadors used to wait here, and be con- ducted hence on horseback, attired with robes of honour. But the ceremony is now, I believe, dis- continued ; the English envoy, at any rate, is not allowed to receive any backsheesh, and goes away as he came, in the habit of his own nation. On the right is a door leading into the interior of the seraglio ; none pass through it but such as are sent for, the guide book says : it is impossible to top the terror of that description. About this door lads and servants were lolling, ichoglans and pages, with lazy looks and shabby dresses ; and among them, sunning himself sulkily on a bench, a poor old, fat, wrinkled, dismal white eunuch, with little fat white hands, and a great head sunk into his chest, and two sprawling little legs that seemed incapable to hold up his bloated old body. He squeaked out some surly reply to my friend the Dragoman, who, softened and sweetened by the tarts he had just been devouring, was, no doubt, anxious to be polite ; and the poor worthy THE SUBLIME PORTE. 131 fellow walked away rather crest-fallen at this return of his salutation, and hastened me out of the place. The palace of the seraglio, the cloister with marble pillars, the hall of the ambassadors, the im- penetrable gate guarded by eunuchs and ichoglans, has a romantic look in print ; but not so in reality. Most of the marble is wood, almost all the gilding is faded, the guards are shabby, the foolish per- spectives painted on the walls are half cracked off. The place looks like Vauxhall in the daytime. We passed out of the second court under The Sublime Porte, which is like a fortified gate of a German town of the middle ages, into the outer court, round which are public offices, hospitals, and dwellings of the multifarious servants of the palace. The place is very wide and picturesque ; there is a pretty church of Byzantine architecture at the fur- ther end ; and in the midst of the court a magni- ficent plane tree, of prodigious dimensions and fabu- lous age, according to the guides ; Saint Sophia tower, in the further distance : and from here, per- haps, is the best view of its light swelling domes and beautiful proportions. The Porte itself, too, forms an excellent subject for the sketcher, if the officers of the court will permit him to design it. I made the attempt, and a couple of Turkish beadles looked on very good-naturedly for some time at the pro- 132 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. gress of the drawing ; but a good number of other spectators speedily joined them, and made a crowd, which is not permitted, it would seem, in the seraglio ; so I was told to pack up my portfolio, and remove the cause of the disturbance, and lost my drawing of the Ottoman Porte. I do n't think I have anything more to say about the city, which has not been much better told by graver travellers. I with them could see (perhaps it was the preaching of the politicians that warned me of the fact) that we are looking on at the last days of an empire ; and heard many stories of weakness, disorder, and oppression. I even saw a Turkish lady drive up to Sultan's Achmet's mosque in a Brougham. Is not that a subject to moralize upon ? And might one not draw endless conclusions from it, that the knell of the Turkish dominion is rung ; that the European spirit and institutions once admitted can never be rooted out again ; and that the scepticism prevalent amongst the higher orders must descend ere very long to the lower ; and the cry of the Muezim from the mosque become a mere ceremony ? But as I only staid eight days in this place, and knew not a syllable of the language, perhaps it is as well to pretermit any disquisitions about the spirit of the people. I can only say that they THE SCHOOLMASTER IN CONSTANTINOPLE. 133 looked to be very good-natured, handsome, and lazy; that the women's yellow slippers are very ugly ; that the kabobs at the shop, hard by the rope bazaar, are very hot and good; and that at the Armenian cook-shops they seive you delicious fish, and a stout raisin wine of no small merit. There came in, as we sat and dined there at sunset, a good old Turk, who called for a penny fish, and sat down under a tree very humbly, and ate it with his own bread. We made that jolly old Mussulman happy with a quart of the raisin wine; and his eyes twinkled with every fresh glass, and he wiped his old beard delighted, and talked and chirped a good deal, and, I dare say, told us the whole state of the empire. He was the only Mussulman with whom I attained any degree of intimacy during my stay in Constantinople ; and you will see that, for obvious reasons, I cannot divulge the particulars of our conversation. " You have nothing to say, and you own it," says somebody ; " then why write ? " That question perhaps (between ourselves) I have put likewise; and yet, my dear sir, there are some things worth remembering even in this brief letter : that woman in the brougham is an idea of significance; that comparison of the seraglio to Vauxhall in the day time, is a true and real one ; from both of which L 134 A JOUENEY TO CAIEO. your own great soul and ingenious philosophic spirit may draw conclusions, that I myself have modestly forborne to press. You are too clever to require a moral to be tacked to all the fables you read, as it is done for children in the spelling books ; else I would tell you that the government of the Ottoman Porte seems to be as rotten, as wrinkled and as feeble as the old eunuch I saw crawling about it in the sun ; that when the lady drove up in a brougham to Sultan Achmet, I felt that the schoolmaster was really abroad; and that the crescent will go out before that luminary, as meekly as the moon does before the sun. VIII. RHODES. HE sailing of a vessel direct for Jaffa, brought a great number of passengers together, and our decks were covered with Christian, Jew, and Heathen. In the ►in we were Poles and Russians, French- es 1 men, Germans, Spaniards, and Greeks ; on the deck were squatted several little colonies of people of different race and persuasion. There was a Greek Papa, a noble figure with a flowing and venerable white beard, who had been living on bread and water for I don't know how many years, in order to save a little money to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There were several families of Jewish Rabbies, who celebrated their ' feast of tabernacles ' on board; their chief men performing worship twice or thrice a day, dressed in their pontifical habits, and bound with phylacteries: and there were Turks, who had their own ceremonies and 136 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. usages, and wisely kept aloof from their neighbours of Israel. The dirt of these children of captivity exceeds all possibility of description ; the profusion of stinks which they raised, the grease of their venerable garments and faces, the horrible messes cooked in the filthy pots, and devoured with the nasty fingers, the squalor of mats, pots, old bedding, and foul carpets of our Hebrew friends, could hardly be painted by Swift, in his dirtiest mood, and cannot be, of course, attempted by my timid and genteel pen. What would they say in Baker Street to some sights with which our new friends fa- voured us ? What would your ladyship have said if you had seen the interesting Greek nun comb- ing her hair over the cabin — combing it with the natural fingers, and averse to slaughter, flinging the delicate little intruders, which she found in the course of her investigation, gently into the great cabin ? Our attention was a good deal occupied in watching the strange ways and customs of the vari- ous comrades of ours. The Jews were refugees from Poland, going to lay their bones to rest in the valley of Jehoshaphat, and performing with exceeding rigour the offices of their religion. At morning and evening you were sure to see the chiefs of the families, arrayed JEW PILGRIMS. 137 in white robes, bowing over their books, at prayer. Once a week, on the eve before the Sabbath, there was a general washing in Jewry, which sufficed until the ensuing Friday. The men wore long gowns and caps of fur, or else broad-brimmed hats, or in service time, bound on their heads little iron boxes, with the sacred name engraved on them. Among the lads there were some beautiful faces; and among the women your humble servant dis- covered one who was a perfect rose-bud of beauty, when first emerging from her Friday's toilette, and for a day or two afterwards, until each succeeding l2 138 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. day's smut darkened those fresh and delicate cheeks of hers. We had some very rough weather in the course of the passage from Constantinople to Jaffa, and the sea washed over and over our Israelitish friends and their baggages and bundles ; but though they were said to be rich, they would not afford to pay for cabin shelter. One father of a family, finding his progeny half drowned in a squall, vowed he would pay for a cabin; but the weather was somewhat finer the next day, and he could not squeeze out his dollars, and the ship's authorities would not admit him except upon payment. This unwillingness to part with money is not only found amongst the followers of Moses, but in those of Mahomet, and Christians too. When we went to purchase in the bazaars, after offering money for change, the honest fellows would fre- quently keep back several piastres, and when urged to refund, would give most dismally; and begin doling out penny by penny, and utter pathetic prayers to their customer not to take any more. I bought five or six pounds worth of Broussa silks for the womankind, in the bazaar at Constantinople, and the rich Armenian who sold them, begged for three-halfpence to pay his boat to Galata. There is something naif and amusing in this exhibition of cheatery — this simple cringing and wheedling and JEW BARGAINING. 139 passion for twopence-halfpenny. It was pleasant to give a millionaire beggar an alms, and laugh in his face, and say, " There, Dives, there's a penny for you : be happy, you poor old swindling scoundrel, as far as a penny goes." I used to watch these Jews on shore, and making bargains with one another as soon as they came on board ; the battle between vendor and purchaser was an agony — they shrieked, clasped hands, appealed to one another passionately ; their handsome, noble faces assumed a look of woe — quite an heroic eagerness and sad- ness about a farthing. Ambassadors from our Hebrews descended at Rhodes to buy provisions, and it was curious to see their dealings : there was our venerable Rabbi, who, robed in white and silver, and bending over his book at the morning service, looked like a patriarch, and w T hom I saw chaffering about a fowl with a brother Rhodian Israelite. How they fought over the body of that lean animal ! The street swarmed with Jews — goggling eyes looked out from the old carved casements — hooked noses issued from the low, an- tique doors — Jew boys driving donkies — Hebrew mothers nursing children; dusky, tawdry, ragged young beauties — and most venerable grey-bearded fathers — were all gathered round about the affair of the hen ! And at the same time that our Rabbi 140 A JOURNEY TO CAIEO. was arranging the price of it, his children were in- structed to procure bundles of green branches to decorate the ship during their feast. Think of the centuries during which these wonderful people have remained unchanged ; and how, from the days of Jacob downwards, they have believed and swindled ! The Bhodian Jews, with their genius for filth, have made their quarter of the noble, desolate old town, the most ruinous and wretched of all. The escutcheons of the proud old knights are still carved over the doors, whence issue these miserable greasy hucksters and pedlars. The Turks respected these emblems of the brave enemies whom they had overcome, and left them untouched ; when the French seized Malta they were by no means so delicate. They effaced armorial bearings with their usual hot-headed eagerness ; and a few years after they had torn down the coats of arms of the gentry, the heroes of Malta and Egypt were busy devising heraldry for themselves, and were wild to be barons and counts of the empire. The chivalrous relics at Rhodes are very superb. I know of no buildings, whose stately and picturesque aspect seems to correspond better with one's notions of their proud founders. The towers and gates are warlike and strong, but beautiful and aristocratic : you see that they must have been high-bred gentle- EELICS OF CHIVALRY. 141 men who built them. The edifices appear in almost as perfect a condition as when they were in the occupation of the noble knights of St. John ; and they have this advantage over modern fortifications, that they are a thousand times more picturesque. Ancient war condescended to ornament itself, and built fine carved castles and vaulted gates : whereas, to judge from Gibraltar and Malta, nothing can be less romantic than the modern military architecture ; which sternly regards the fighting, without in the least heeding the war-paint. Some of the huge artillery, with which the place was defended, still lies in the bastions; and the touch-holes of the guns are preserved by being covered with rusty old corslets, worn by defenders of the fort three hundred years ago. The Turks, who battered down chivalry, seem to be waiting their turn of destruction now. In walking through Ehodes one is strangely affected by witnessing the signs of this double decay. For instance, in the streets of the knights, you see noble houses, surmounted by noble escutcheons of superb knights, who lived there, and prayed, and quarrelled, and murdered the Turks ; and were the most gallant pirates of the inland seas; and made vows of chastity, and robbed and ravished ; and, professing humility, would admit none but nobility into their order ; and died recommending themselves to sweet St. John, 142 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. and calmly hojring for heaven in consideration of all the heathen they had slain. When this superb fraternity was obliged to yield to courage as great as theirs, faith as sincere, and to robbers even more dexterous and audacious than the noblest knight who ever sang a canticle to the Virgin, these halls were filled by magnificent Pashas and Agas, who lived here in the intervals of war, and, having con- quered its best champions, despised Christendom and chivalry pretty much as an Englishman despises a Frenchman. Now the famous house is let to a shabby merchant, who has his little beggarly shop in the bazaar ; to a small officer, who ekes out his wretched pension by swindling, and who gets his pay in bad coin. Mahometanism pays in pewter now, in place of silver and gold. The lords of the world have run to seed. The powerless old sword frightens nobody now — the steel is turned to pewter too, somehow, and will no longer shear a Christian head off any shoulders. In the Crusades my wicked sympathies have always been with the Turks. They seem to me the best Christians of the two; more humane, less brutally presumptuous about their own merits, and more generous in esteeming their neighbours. As far as I can get at the authentic story, Saladin is a pearl of refinement compared to the brutal beef-eating Richard — about whom MAHOMETANISM BANKRUPT. 143 Sir Walter Scott has led all the world astray. When shall we have a real account of those times and heroes — no good-humoured pageant, like those of the Scott romances — but a real authentic story to instruct and frighten honest people of the present day, and make them thankful that the grocer governs the world now in place of the baron ? Meanwhile a man of tender feelings may be par- doned for twaddling a little over this sad spectacle of the decay of two of the great institutions of the world. Knighthood is gone — amen ; it expired with dignity, its face to the foe : and old Mahometanism is lingering, about just ready to drop. But it is unseemly to see such a Grand Potentate in such a state of decay: the son of Bajazet Ilderim insolvent; the descendants of the Prophets bullied by Calmucs and English and whippersnapper Frenchmen ; the Fountain of Magnificence done up, and obliged to coin pewter! Think of the poor dear houris in Paradise, how sad they must look as the arrivals of the Faithful become less and less frequent every day. I can fancy the place beginning to wear the fatal Vauxhall look of the seraglio, and which has pur- sued me ever since I saw it : the fountains of eternal wine are beginning to run rather dry, and of a questionable liquor ; the ready-roasted meat trees may cry " Come, eat me," every now and then, in a 144 A JOUENEY TO CAIEO. faint voice, without any gravy in it — but the Faithful begin to doubt about the quality of the victuals. Of nights you may see the houris sitting sadly under them, darning their faded muslins : Ali, Omar, and the Imaums are reconciled and have gloomy consultations : and the Chief of the Faithful himself, the awful camel-driver, the supernatural husband of Kadisheh, sits alone in a tumble -down kiosk, thinking moodily of the destiny that is impending over him ; and of the day when his gardens of bliss shall be as vacant as the bankrupt Olympus. All the town of Khodes has this appearance of decay and ruin, except a few consuls' houses planted on the sea- side, here and there, with bright flags flaunting in the sun ; fresh paint ; English crockery ; shining mahogany, &c, — so many emblems of the new prosperity of their trade, while the old inha- bitants were going to rack — the fine church of St. John, converted into a mosque, is a ruined church, with a ruined mosque inside ; the fortifica- tions are mouldering away, as much as time will let them. There was considerable bustle and stir about the little port ; but it was a bustle of people, who looked for the most part to be beggars ; and I saw no shop in the bazaar, that seemed to have the value of a pedlar's pack. A DRAGOMAN. 145 I took, by way of guide, a young fellow from Berlin, a journeyman shoemaker, who had just been making a tour in Syria, and who professed to speak both Arabic and Turkish quite fluently, which I thought he might have learned when he was a student at college, before he began his profession of shoemaking; but I found he only knew about three words of Turkish, which were produced on every occasion, as I walked under his guidance through the desolate streets of the noble old town. We went out upon the lines of fortification, through an ancient gate and guard-house, where once a chapel probably stood, and of which the roofs were richly carved and gilded. A ragged squad of Turkish soldiers lolled about the gate now — a couple of boys on a donkey ; a grinning slave on a mule ; a pair of women flapping along in yellow papooshes ; a basket-maker sitting under an antique carved portal, and chanting or howling as he platted his osiers ; a peaceful well of water, at which knights' chargers had drunk, and at which the double-boyed donkey was now refreshing himself — would have made a pretty picture for a sentimental artist. As he sits, and endeavours to make a sketch of this plaintive little comedy, a shabby dignitary of the island comes clattering by on a thirty-shilling horse, and two or three of the M 146 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. ragged soldiers leave their pipes to salute hirn as he passes under the Gothic archway. The astonishing brightness and clearness of the sky under which the island seemed to bask, struck me as surpassing anything I had seen — not even at Cadiz, or the Piraeus, had I seen sands so yellow, or water so magnificently blue. The houses of the people along the shore were but poor tenements, with humble court-yards and gardens ; but every fig-tree was gilded and bright, as if it were in a Hesperian orchard ; the palms, planted here and there, rose with a sort of halo of light round about them ; the creepers on the walls quite dazzled with the brilliancy of their flowers and leaves ; the j)eo- ple lay in the cool shadows, happy and idle, with handsome solemn faces; nobody seemed to be at work ; they only talked a very little, as if idleness and silence were a condition of the delightful shin- ing atmosphere in which they lived. We went down to an old mosque by the sea- shore, with a cluster of ancient domes hard by it, blazing in the sunshine, and carved all over with names of Allah, and titles of old pirates and generals who reposed there. The guardian of the mosque sat in the garden- court, upon a high wooden pulpit, lazily wagging his body to and fro, and singing the praises of the prophet gently A FINE DAY. 1 17 through his nose, as the breeze stirred through the trees over head, and cast chequered and chang- ing shadows over the paved court, and the little fountains, and the nasal psalmist on his perch. On one side was the mosque, into which you could see, with its white walls and cool matted floor, and quaint carved pulpit and ornaments, and nobody at prayers. In the middle distance rose up the noble towers and battlements of the knightly town, with the deep sea-line behind them. It really seemed as if everybody was to have a sort of sober cheerfulness, and must yield to in- dolence under this charming atmosphere. I went into the court-yard by the sea-shore (where a few lazy ships were lying, with no one on board), and found it was the prison of the place. The door was as wide open as Westminster Hall. Some prisoners, one or two soldiers and functionaries, and some prisoners' wives, were lolling under an arcade by a fountain ; other criminals were strolling about here and there, their chains clinking quite cheer- fully : and they and the guards and officials came up chatting quite friendly together, and gazed languidly over the portfolio, as I was endeavouring to get the likeness of one or two of these comfort- able malefactors. One old and wrinkled she- criminal, whom I had selected on account of the 148 A JOUENET TO CAIEO. peculiar hideousness of her countenance, covered it up with a dirty cloth, at which there was a general roar of laughter among this good-humoured auditory of cut- throats, pickpockets, and policemen. The only symptom of a prison about the place was a door, across which a couple of sentinels were stretched, yawning; while within lay three freshly- caught pirates, chained by the leg. They had committed some murders of a very late date, and were awaiting sentence ; but their wives were al- lowed to communicate freely with them : and it seemed to me, that if half a dozen friends would set them free, and they themselves had energy enough to move, the sentinels would be a great deal too lazy to walk after them. The combined influence of Rhodes and Rha- mazan, I suppose, had taken possession of my friend, the Schuster- gesell from Berlin. As soon as he received his fee, he cut me at once, and went and lay down by a fountain near the port, and ate grapes out of a dirty pocket-handkerchief. Other Christian idlers lay near him, dozing, or sprawling in the boats, or listlessly munching water-melons. Along the coffee-houses of the quay sat hundreds more, with no better employment ; and the captain of the Iberia and his officers, and several of the passengers in that famous steam-ship, were in this RHODES. 149 company, being idle with all their might. Two or three adventurous young men went off to see the valley where the dragon was killed ; but others, more susceptible of the real influence of the island, I am sure would not have moved, though we had been told that the Colossus himself was taking a walk half a mile off. m 2 IX. THE WHITE SQUALL. On deck, beneath the awning, I dozing lay and yawning ; It was the grey of dawning, Ere yet the sun arose ; And above the funnel's roaring, And the fitful wind's deploring, I heard the cabin snoring With universal nose. I could hear the passengers snorting, I envied their disporting, Vainly I was courting The pleasure of a doze. So I lay, and wondered why light Came not, and watched the twilight And the glimmer of the skylight, That shot across the deck : THE WHITE SQUALL. 151 And the binnacle pale and steady, And the dull glimpse of the dead-eye, And the sparks in fiery eddy, That whirled from the chimney neck : In our jovial floating prison There was sleep from fore to mizen, And never a star had risen The hazy sky to speck. Strange company we harboured ; We 'd a hundred Jews to larboard, Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered, Jews black, and brown, and grey ; With terror it would seize ye, And make your souls uneasy, To see those Kabbis greasy, Who did nought but scratch and pray : Their dirty children puking, Their dirty saucepans cooking, Their dirty fingers hooking Their swarming fleas away. To starboard Turks and Greeks were, Whiskered, and brown their cheeks were, Enormous wide their breeks were, Their pipes did puff alway ; 15 '2 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. Each on his mat allotted, In silence smoked and squatted, Whilst round their children trotted, In pretty, pleasant play. He can't but smile who traces The smiles on those brown faces, And the pretty prattling graces Of those small heathens gay. And so the hours kept tolling, And through the ocean rolling, Went the brave Iberia bowling Before the break of day When a Squall upon a sudden, Came o'er the waters scudding ; And the clouds began to gather, And the sea was lashed to lather, And the lowering thunder grumbled, And the lightning jumped and tumbled, And the ship, and all the ocean, Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle- dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, THE WHITE SQUALL. 153 And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing ; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle ; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels ; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal, To the stokers, whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places ; And the captain he was bawling, And the sailors pulling, hauling ; And the quarter-deck tarpauling Was shivered in the squalling ; And the passengers awaken, Most pitifully shaken ; And the steward jumps up, and hastens For the necessary basins. Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered, And they knelt, and moaned, and shivered, As the plunging waters met them, And splashed and overset them ; And they call in their emergence Upon countless saints and virgins ; 154 A JOUKNEY TO CAIKO. And their marrowbones are bended, And they think the world is ended. And the Turkish women for'ard Were frightened and behorror'd ; And, shrieking and bewildering, The mothers clutched their children ; The men sung, "Allah ! Illah ! Mashallah Bismillah ! " As the warring waters doused them, And splashed them and soused them ; And they called upon the Prophet, And thought but little of it. Then all the fleas in Jewry Jumped up and bit like fury ; And the progeny of Jacob Did on the main- deck wake up (I wot those greasy Eabbins Would never pay for cabins) ; And each man moaned and jabbered in His filthy Jewish gaberdine, In woe and lamentation, And howling consternation. And the splashing water drenches Their dirty brats and wenches ; THE WHITE SQUALL. 155 And they crawl from bales and benches, In a hundred thousand stenches. This was the White Squall famous, Which latterly o'ercame us, And which all will well remember On the 28th September ; When a Prussian captain of Lancers (Those tight-laced, whiskered prancers) Came on the deck astonished, By that wild squall admonished, And wondering cried, " Potz tausend, Wie ist der Sturm jetzt brausend ? " And looked at Captain Lewis, Who calmly stood and blew his Cigar in all the bustle, And scorned the tempest's tussle. And oft we've thought hereafter How he beat the storm to laughter ; For well he knew his vessel With that vain wind could w r restle ; And when a wreck w r e thought her, And doomed ourselves to slaughter, How gaily he fought her, And through the hubbub brought her, 156 A JOURNEY TO CAIRO. And, as the tempest caught her, Cried, "George ! some brandy and water!' And when, its force expended, The harmless storm was ended, And, as the sunrise splendid Came blushing o'er the sea ; I thought, as day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling, and making A prayer at home for me. ■o|M*f