illKf IIY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Of CALIFORNIA m :^-'^ %^ '^y^' "■ *f3 'f*'^^^*^ Uniform with this Volume, A Ramble Round France. All the Russias. Chats about Germany. The Land of the Pyramids. (Egypt.) The Eastern "Wonderland. (Japan.) The Land of Temples. (India.) Peeps into China ; or, The Missionary's Children. Glimpses of South America. Round Africa. The Isles of the Pacific Cassell & Company, Limited, Ludgate Hill, London. 44—10.95 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS Bt J. OHESNET TENTH THOUSAND Cassell and Company Limited LONDOJS PARIS d; MELBOURNE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED l^OAN STACK THE WORLD IN PICTURES. A Ramble Round France. All the Russias. Chats about Germany. The Eastern Wonderland (Japan). Peeps into China. Glimpses of South America. Round Africa. The Land of Temples (India). The Isles of the Pacific. The Land of the Pyramids. ALL ILLUSTRATED THROUGHOUT. Cassell & Covipany, Lhnited, Ludgate Hill, London. PREFACE. rpHIS little book, in great measure the result of personal observation during several months spent in " The Land of the Pyramids/^ has been written with the view of giving to children a correct idea of the Egypt of our day, and also some acquaintance with its ancient history ; it is hoped, therefore, that it may be found instructive as well as amusing. In regard to matters beyond her own knowledge, the Author has consulted the best authorities within her reach, and she desires to tender her thanks to Mr. Lane-Poole for having kindly given the little work the great benefit of his careful revision. 015 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page Uncle Gerard's Arrival .9 CHAPTER IT. A Glance at Egyptian History ..... 13 CHAPTER III. Alexandria 56 CHAPTER IV. The Delta and Ur the Nile to Cairo , . . .102 CHAPTER V. Cairo 142 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. Middle and Upper Egypt Page 18G CHAPTER VII. The Red Sea and Suez Canal 20: THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. CHAPTER I. UNCLE GERARD S ARRIVAL. XTERE^S Lucy ! That is de- lightful ! " exclaimed three or four children at once as their grown-up sister entered the schoolroom. " You are just in time for tea/^ said Harry; ''take the arm-chair by the fire^ and we will put the little table beside you j and now tell us the news while I finish making some toast.''' " We want some amusement very badly this dreary evening/-' put in Lotta, a girl of fourteen ; " we were going out to get some spring flowers — the banks are 10 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. a perfect mass of bluebells and anemones — but with such a downpour it was impossible to stir/"* "I was very glad to stay at home and rig up my boats ; only girls care about gathering primroses and such nonsense;^'' was the not very civil rejoinder of Master John, rather a rough specimen of the boy who affects manliness, though in reality a good-hearted fellow. ^' I like primroses, but I like stories better/^ said little Susie, evidently a privileged pet, who had climbed into Miss Carrington^s lap and laid her golden head upon her shoulder. " Now, sister,^' resumed Harry, '' give us the news. What is going to happen ? '' '^ Why should you think I have anything special to tell ? ^^ laughingly replied the elder sister, who had long done her utmost to replace their lost mother. '' Surely my visits are not so rare that it should require an earth- quake or something very extraordinary to bring me to you ! '' " No. Not that exactly. But you do look as if you had a secret, and I know it must be a pleasant one. What is it ? A whole holiday ? A day upon the river ? or a visit from the Graingers ? " "It has to do with a visit, but not one from the Graingers. Who do you think is coming home ? No less a person than Uncle Gerard, and he will be' here this day week ! " " Uncle Gerard ! The old fellow \ ho was digging out ruins somewhere in Egypt, and who has not been heard of for ever so long ! I do not call that very grand news ! I am sure he will be very tiresome, and not care about us children. He is always poring over musty books. Papa said so.''"* UNCLE GERAUD's ARRIVAL. 11 " You do not remember him/' said Miss Carrington_, ** or you would not talk like that/' ^' Uncle Gerard is certainly not fond of hunting and field-sports, and I am not quite sure that he even cares for a game of cricket, which in your eyes, Harry, must be a great disqualification ; but he is neither old nor tiresome/' A week soon passed over, and Mr. Gerard Carring- ton, a fine tall man with a long glossy beard and a merry twinkle in his dark eyes, who was immediately voted ^^a jolly fellow" by his two nephews, showed himself very ready to make friends with all the young people; little Susie coming in perhaps for an extra share of notice, and speedily putting in her claim for " nice stories." '^ I think I should have liked to be with you in Egypt, uncle," said Lotta. " Wandering about in boats and on camels must be grand. Just like a perpetual picnic. I wish you would tell us about it." " I am quite at your command, Miss Lotta, if you care to hear of my doings, but I doubt whether they will have interest enough for you young people." ^' Oh, yes, they will," said both boys at once ; "it is ever so much nicer to listen to a person telling his travels than to read about them ; and, besides, we shall know that what you say is true." " You need have no fear on that score ; I shall either tell you what I have myself seen and done, or what has been related by people who can be implicitly believed. Where and when shall our talks come off?" "Oh, here!" replied Harry. "There is not a nicer place than this old schoolroom ! I mean, out of lesson- time!" 12 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. " Very well. I will try and begin to-morrow after- noon ; but now I must go and unpack, and I dare say I shall be able to find a few curiosities to show you," said the indulgent uncle. '^ But don't expect/' he added, '^ that all my talk will be amusing. You must use your brains a little too. If you want to understand what I have been doing, you will have to swallow some dry bits of history between whiles, I can assure you.''"' '' We shall not mind that, uncle, for the sake of the rest,"*' was the answer of the three elder children, who with difficulty managed to control their impatience during the next twenty -four hours. CHAPTER II. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. '' Pictures ! pictures ! '' cried Susie, as Mr. C'arriiigtoii entered the schoolroom, and forthwith seizing upon the ANCIENT EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. roll in his hand she carried it to her elder brother to be immediately opened. "What queer people!''^ the child exclaimed, as Harry did as she requested with the least possible delay ; 14 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. " men and women/^ she went on, " and boats and birds, all having a game of play ! " ^' Not exactly, little woman,^' replied her uncle. '' This picture is, however, extremely curious, though not quite the one I meant to show you first. I thought a few engravings would make you understand much better of what I had to tell.^' '^ Oh ! so they will,^^ said Lotta ; *' and as we happen to have pitched upon this one, please tell us what it means.^^ '' It is intended," replied Mr. Carrington, " for heaven and earth. You see the latter is represented by a figure lying down, while the starry heaven, in the shape of a woman with very long legs and arms, forms an arch above it. ^' Ra, the sun-god, is in the centre bearing the symbol of eternity, and on either side is a boat carrying a dead man and the god of shades — the Egyptian Charon — to the lower world. Pictures of this kind are often found on tombs, and also such as this next one where men are winnowing and ploughing, this of a person making an offering to the gods, and many like subjects, showing the former occupation or office of the deceased. Meantime, before going any farther, I should like to hear what you yourselves know about Egypt." ^^ It is where there was a wicked king," cried out Susie, " who put a baby into the water." This infantine version of the finding of Moses of course produced a laugh, and when it had subsided Mr. Carrington said: '^ You all remember the Bible story of the sufferings of the Israelites and their miraculous deliverance; but, to begin with, where is the land of Egypt?" A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 15 WINNOWING AND PLOUGHING. "Here," said- Lotta, producing a school atlas, "in the north-east of Africa/^ '^ And what do you know, Harry, about its ancient his- tory ?^^ ^^ Alexander conquered it/' he replied glibly, ^^and it afterwards belonged to the Greeks, and the Ptolemies and Cleopatra reigned there.'' "The Ptolemies and Cleo- patra may be said to be moderns, my boy." " Moderns, uncle ; that is good ! why, even Cleopatra lived before Christ, and the first Ptolemy as much as three hundred years before Him." "That is nothing; in an ancient country like Egypt the making offerings to the gods. 16 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. first Pbolemy was a modern, an absolute modern. Why, the Pyramids have been standing 6,000 years, and we have found records relating to a king who reigned before they were built.'' "Oh, uncle ! that is astonishing," answered the boy ; '' I should hardly believe any one else if he said such a thing/' " What made you go out there in the first instance, dear uncle ? " asked Lucy. " My health had broken down, and I required rest from brain work and also a dry climate, but I only made a stay of a few months at that time, though what I saw interested me so much that I returned to Egypt on two subsequent occasions, and during my last journey went so much farther up the country than I had intended that I could not send news home for a long while, and you all thought I was lost."*' " But why did you care so much about the ruins ? '' said John. *^What good could it do you to dig up old bricks and mummies ? " '^Oh ! I think that would be grand,'' said Lotta; *' fancy the pleasure of turning up something fresh every day, and puzzling out the meaning of it." " Ah ! but you don't find something fresh every day, or every week either," replied Mr. Carrington. " You often toil fruitlessly for months together, and have a great deal of trouble, too, sometimes with the people of the country, and a good many other difiiculties and disagreeables, but it is worth it all; not precisely for the sake of old bricks and mummies, as John says, but in order to learn something more of the history of Egypt, and of the manners and religion of the people of former davs. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTOllY. 17 ^^ When you see a group of splendid monuments like the Pyramids and the Sphinx, for instance, you can- not help desiring to know more about those who made them, and this is only to be done by decyphe ing the picture- writing we call hieroglyphic (the word means sacred sculptures) , which covers a large part of the walls of Egyptian temples, tombs, and other monuments/'' MONUMENTS OF THE PAST— PYKAMIDS OF GHIZEH AND THE SPHINX OF KARNAK. 18 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. '' What is a sphinx ? '^ said Harry. '^ A figure with the body of a lion and the head of a man or a ram, often found near Egyptian temples. It is one of the forms of the sun-god, and supposed to repre- sent kingly power. The largest of the sphinxes is that near the Pyramids ; you shall hear all about it by-and-bye. In the lower part of the picture to the left we have w^orkmen busily en- gaged in making a sphinx. One you see is chiselling the head, and the two others look as if they were polish- ing; one seems to hold a pumice-stone, and the other a bowl of water. In the upper section they are engaged on a gigantic statue, and you see they have erected a scaffolding in order to reach the higher part, and two of them are kneeling upon it, while one stands and works on the ground.^'' SCULPTORS AT WORK. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTOUY. 19 '^They are odd-looking fellows/' said John^ ^^but they do not seem to be wasting their time/'' ^'No, indeed. The poor people of Egypt have always had to work hard ; but many of those who built the vast monuments we are talking about were slaves^ or prisoners taken in battle. Thothmes III., whose title is engraved on this necklace, was a great conqueror, who made many captives and also built much ; and in NECKLACE WITH THE TITLE OP THOTHMES III. one of the tombs at Thebes there is a painting executed fully a hundred years before the birth of Moses, which depicts this forced labour, representing brickmakers at their work, some carrying water, others breaking up and kneading clay, some moulding the bricks, and others carrying them in slings to stack them, while the over- seers, staff in hand, are either following the labourers, or sitting watching them, and in the inscription beside the picture are represented as saying, ^ The stick is in my hand, be not idle/ all which reminds us forcibly of the days of bondage and Pharaoh's reproaches to the Israelites.'-' ^^Well, this is very curious," said John. "I do not so much wonder now, uncle, at your caring to dig, if you can find out things like that/^ B 2 20 THE LAND OF THE PYEAMIDS. '^ If it were not for the cost of the work we should find out a great deal more/^ said Mr. Carrington. '^ There is, however_, a society for assisting in the explo- ration of Egyptian ruins that has already done much, and will, I hope, obtain funds to enable it to work more efficiently; and our discoveries do not always relate, as you might suppose, to "grave matters of history, for M. Mariette found in the tomb of En-Aaa, the portrait . of that king^s favourite hound, with its name, Bahuka, engraved on the, stone, so that we actually know what a particular dog was called that lived 3,000 years ago !^' ^' What sort of religion had these ancient Egyptians, uncle ?'^ " They were of course idolaters. We learn that from the Bible, where we hear of their gods. '^ They had many sacred animals supposed to repre- sent different divine attributes, and the sun was con- sidered to be a visible manifestation of the Creator. '^ The king too was looked upon as a god, and was worshipped both during his life and after his death. "There were also a great many gods only wor- shipped at particular places where we find temples specially dedicated to them. It is, however, believed by some of the learned that these were the same deities as the former, only adored under different names. " It is pretty clear that the Egyptians had retained the idea of one great universal God who formed all things out of nothing, made the day and the night, loves goodness and hates evil, provides for the welfare of men, and rules the destiny of nations ; and this God they typified by all that is best and strongest, most beautiful and productive amongst visible things; so that in the beginning the sun and the moon, the sacred A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 21 animals and images were only worshipped as the repre- sentatives of some of the divine attributes; but in the course of time their true signification was forgotten^ and planets, beasts, and stones, received divine honours, at any rate from the ignorant people. '^ The principal divinity was the sun, the vivifier or daily renewer of life, but he was worshipped under different forms answering to the several stages of his daily course ; when he was rising, as Harmachis or the sphinx — in midday strength as Ra^ his own special title — -at sunset as Turn, and during the hours of darkness as. Osiris the judge of the dead, for the Egyptians believed in a judgment, and we often see in paintings on the tombs a representation of the soul either waiting to hear sentence pronounced upon it, or going away to a state of happiness, or perhaps departing in the form of an unclean animal to undergo punishment or purification. ^' Osiris is represented either standing or sitting, wearing a cap ornamented with the feather of truth, and carrying a whip and a crook as symbols of his governing and directing power. " Isis was the wife of Osiris ; she is usually repre- sented sitting, and bears on her head the moon between a pair of cow's horns. ^^ Amon, or Amen, for the name is variously written, means the hidden unrevealed deity, and he may be said to have been the greatest of Egyptian gods. He is represented in different ways, but usually with the head ornament of feathers and other symbols. As we have him here, he is the sun-god Amen-Ra. Thebes was the place where he was more especially worshipped, and it was called the city of Amen. ^^ There were a great number of other deities, such 22 THE LAND 0¥ THE PYRAMIDS. as Ma, the goddess of truth; Maut, the universal mother; Thoth, the god of letters, and so on. ISIS. ^' Many animals also were^ as I have told you, held sacred ; such as the bull Apis, the calf Mnevis, a water- fowl called the ibis, the cat, the crocodile, and the wolf ; and these creatures were not only worshipped while A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 23 living", but carefully embalmed after death, and their bodies laid in sepulchres. '^In 1850 M. Mariette found quite accidentally an immense cemetery entirely devoted to the remains of sacred bulls, with the tomb of one of the high priests of Apis who was the son of the then reigning- king of Egypt. '^When my heavy baggage arrives I shall be able to show you some mummies of birds and small animals, and I have brought home a human mummy too, but that is to go to the museum. ^^ '^ But why did the Egyptians make mummies of people, instead of burying them as we do ? '''' remarked Lotta. • "It was their great desire that the body should not decay, because they thought that unless it were preserved entire for the soul to re-enter, its resur- rection would be impossible. ^' For this reason, therefore, the bodies of dead people were most carefully swathed in folds of linen with fragrant spices, and then placed in a kind of case made of a sort of papier mache with a glazed white surface, which for persons of good standing was covered with hieroglyphs and other paintings, and very often placed in a handsome stone coffin. " With the dead man or woman were also buried the things they most prized — gold and silver vases, ai'mour, splendid ornaments and jewels, and even clothing and furniture, for they believed that the soul after undergoing a very long probation would come AMEN-RA. 24 THE LAND OF THE PYHAMIDS. back once more to its body, which would then arise and go forth to enjoy hfe again. '^ The tombs of ancient Egyptians are always found either in the desert or in the side of a mountain, sometimes built up like the Pyramids, at others, hewn out of the rock, and all who were able to do so prepared their last resting-place during their life-time with the greatest care, as they looked upon their sepulchre as a place of abode. " The inner walls were co- vered with sculptures or paint- ings showing the kind of scenes in which the deceased passed his life, ending with his burial ; these pictures are very curious, as you shall hear later on. ^^ But Susie has gone to sleep; our talk is too dry for her. Perhaps you have all had enough for to-day ? ^^ ''No, no, uncle/' was the reply from the rest. ''Do please go on and tell us a little A MrMMY. about the kings of Egypt, and we shall then understand better what you are speaking of when you describe your own travels. '' " Well, I will try and give you a short account of A GLAKCT: AT KfiYPTTAN HISTORY. 25 what we at present know. In the first place the name of the country is said to be derived from Aegyptus or Mizraim, the grandson of Noahj who is supposed to have settled on the banks of the Nile soon after the dispersion at the building of the tower of Babel ; but ENTRANCE TO A TOMB AT GHIZEH. the first Egyptian monarch of whom we have any record is Menes_, who left This, the ancient capital of the king- dom, and built Memphis. '^ I have not a sketch of the ruins of Memphis, but here is one of Zoan, or Tanis, as it is called in Greek, which will give you an idea of the utter desolation into which most of these cities have fallen. '^ Zoan was also once the capital of Egypt, a city of great importance, and one of the chief abodes of the Pharaohs. You may remember that Zoan and its 26 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. Princes are often spoken o£ in the Biblcj and that Ezekiel prophesies of its downfall, saying that ''fire shall be set in Zoan/ ^' Zoan, then, was in all probability the residence of the Pharoah ' who knew not Joseph/ for we are expressly told that the wonders which ended in the deliverance of the Israelites were wrought ^ in the field of Zoan/ and from Zoan it was that they set forth on their march towards the Red Sea. '' We know but little of the long line of kings of different dynasties who succeeded each other in Egypt before its conquest by Cambyses, though Manetho, who wrote in the time of the first or second of the Ptolemies, has left a list of them; but we possess fragmentary accounts of the remarkable events of many reigns either on engraved tablets or in papyrus rolls. " The glories of Osirtasen, the first and second for instance, are inscribed in some of the tombs at Beni Hasan, while at Semneh, above the second cataract of the Nile, there is a record of the rise of that river during the reign of .Amenemhat III., a prince who conferred great benefits on his country by constructing dykes, reservoirs, and canals for regulating the inun- dations. It was he who caused the Lake Moeris to be dug. '^ Thothmes I. was a great conqueror. He introduced the horse into Egypt after one of his Asiatic campaigns, and it is on a monument of his time that we first find a representation of that animal. " Thothmes III., however, was still more famous as a warrior, and greatly extended his kingdom. ^^ He built a splendid temple at Karnak, the walls of which are covered with the accounts of his triumphs 41 28 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. and of the countries and people lie subdued. But it would take mucli too long were I to go on telling you about all these kings. I will mention only two others, Seti, a very magnificent prince, who not only distin- guished himself by his conquests, but made himself much more famous by constructing the first canal between the Red Sea and the Nile; and his son Rameses II., whom you already know very well under the name of Pharaoh.^' '^ What ! uncle ! Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea ?^^ '' Not that one, but the Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. ^^ ^' But, uncle, you said his name was Rameses ; how does he come to be called Pharaoh ?'^ '' It is common in Eastern countries to give various honourable titles to the sovereigns, and to call them by these instead of their proper names. This was particularly the case in Egypt, and we find Per-ao, Hhe great house/ continually substituted for the king's name; indeed, it is believed that the common people were not allowed to mention him otherwise, and it is this word Per-ao which has been in our Bibles turned into Pharaoh.-'' ^' Rameses must have been a bad king, uncle,'' said Lotta; " I do not think he deserved the title of Great." ^^ He was certainly cruel," replied Mr. Carrington, ''^for he had a passion for founding new cities and carrying on gigantic works of all kinds, and recklessly destroyed in doing so millions of lives by forced labour. Slaves from Ethiopia and captives taken in war were all employed in this way ; and it was probably when they w^ere insufficient to do what was required that the Israelites were oblio^ed to undertake the same tasks. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 29 '^ Bitter as was the lot of the latter, however, it does not seem to have been nearly so terrible as that o£ the slaves, who were torn from their country and their homes, and obliged to work underground in the mines without respite until they died. '' Notwithstanding all this Rameses was a popular hero j and there is no ancient Egyptian king whom we know so well, not merely by his great works and the inscriptions upon them, but by his portraits, and as you may see from this one (p. 30) he was a handsome man. " He is believed to have come to the throne in his early days, and an inscription found at Abydos tells us BAMESES II, A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 31 that he reigned for sixty- seven years. It also says that while yet a boy of ten years old he designed public buildings J laid their foundations^ and superintended their construction^ the office of architect having been from the earliest times confided in Egypt only to princes of the blood royal. In any case Rameses filled the country from one end to the other with monuments of extraordinary magnificence, which seem, however, to have been executed principally during the last forty-six peaceful years of his reign, for immediately after his accession to the throne he engaged in war with the revolted Ethiopians, and also with the Syrians and Mesopotamians, all of whom he seems to have reduced to subjection. ^^ You may perhaps remember that we are told in the Bible that the Israelites built treasure-cities for Pharaoh. Now one of these treasure-cities, Pithom, has been lately discovered. But what is still more curious is that we have, on some of the papyrus rolls I told you of, letters written by two scribes, Kauiser and Keniamon to their superiors, in which they men- tion being bidden to serve out rations to the Hebrews engaged in quarrying stone for the palace of King Rameses and other buildings, and give an account of the expenditure. " These two clerks,''^ as a modern writer (Miss Amelia Edwards) says, *4ived, and died, and were mummied between three and four thousand years ago; and yet the frail fragments of papyrus have survived the wreck of ages, and the quaint writing with which they are covered is as intelligible to ourselves as to the func- tionaries to whom it was addressed We see the Israelites at their toil, and the overseers report- 32 THE LAND OF THE PYRA.MIDS. ing them to the directors of public works. They extract from the quarry those huge blocks which are our wonder to this day. Harnessed to rude sledges^ they drag them to the river-side and embark them for transport to the opposite bank. Some are so large and heavy that it takes a month to get them down from the mountain to the landing-place. Other Israelites are elsewhere making bricks^ digging canals, helping to build the great wall that reached from Pelusium to Heliopolis, and strengthening the defences not only of Pithom and Rameses, but of all the cities and forts between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. ^' There is no certainty/'' continued Mr. Carrington, ^^ as to the time when King Menes, of whom I spoke, began his reign; but modern students believe that it was at least as early as 3,000 or 4,000 years before Christ ; and you must not fancy this ancient monarch a barbarian. Oh^ no ! The country he reigned over had attained to a high state of civilisation, and arts and sciences which have since been lost were then flourishing. ^^ Memphis was also excavated by M. Mariette some thirty years ago, and we find that King Menes had actually turned the course of one of the branches of the Nile into another direction, in order to make a barrier between his new city and the tribes of the desert, and that he built his capital on what had been the bed of the river. There were palaces, and temples, and schools, and beautiful squares and streets in it, and also a famous citadel called the ' White Wall,"* with a port upon the river to which the Phoenician traders could bring their merchandise, so that Memphis seems to have fairly deserved its appellation of the ' Perfect Abode.^ '^ A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 33 '^Will you tell us, uncle, what the papyrus rolls are ? " said Harry. " It seems to me they must be a kind of book?^^ '' You are right, my boy. These rolls are specimens of the oldest kind of paper we know of .'"' ''The plant from which it is made — the papyrus — which as you may easily see has given its name to our paper^ is a very beautiful kind of rush of a bright green BRICK BEARING THE STAMP OF RAMESES II. colQur, which grows to the height of nine or ten feet, and sends forth tufts of very fine filaments, near the end of which are the flowers. It is an aquatic plant with a bulbous root, and attaches itself to the river banks and bottom by means of long delicate fibres. There is only one spot in Europe where the papyrus can be found in its natural state, and that is the bed of the little River Pisma — the ancient Cyane — near Syracuse. It is believed to have been introduced into Sicily from Northern Egypt, where it was cultivated in pools and used for an immense number of different purposes ; in fact, if we are to believe half of v/hat the naturalist Pliny tells us about it, the papyrus must have been the most useful plant in the world.'' 34 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. " Why what could they do with it^ uncle, except make paper ? " '^ In the first place its root served for fuel and the manufacture of domestic utensils; boats or canoes were made of the stalk; and sails, ropes, mats, and even clothes of the bark. Its juice was good for food as well as for medicine ; and the crowning virtue of the plant was, as I have already said, its capability of being made into paper.^-* ^^ How was that done?'' inquired John. " Well, it would take too long a time to describe the process, but I may briefly say that the plant is composed of a number of fibrous layers which could be separated without much difficulty, from the innermost of which, being the finest, the paper called hieratica was made for the use of the priests ; the others serving for paper of inferior quality. ^' Several layers of papyrus fibre were laid upon each other, the glutinous nature of the plant causing them to stick together, until the sheet was supposed to be thick enough ; it was then pressed under a weight and dried in the sun. " For a long time Nile water was believed to be essential to this manufacture. " Papyrus paper used to be imported into Rome, but as the best kind was already written upon it was necessary to discover a way of effacing the Egyptian characters so that it could be used over again. Paper thus treated was called Augustus paper after the Emperor, and a second quality bore the name of his wife Livinia, a commoner sort being called Amphi- theairica, because it was made near the Alexandrian amphitheatre. c 2 3G THE T.AND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ^^Palaemon^ tlie schoolmaster, however, afterwards discovered a way of re-manufacturing this last kind so as to reduce its thickness and make it equol to papei of the first quality. '^The fiction that Nile water was necessary for making papyrus no doubt arose from the fact that it was needful to use the plant in a green state, so that its natural gum should make the layers adhere to each other.'' ^' Oh ! thank you, uncle ; that history of the papyrus is really very interesting. How much the Egyptians must have prized this useful plant." '' Yes ; and as they wished to show their gratitude to their gods for the gift . they thought they had bestowed upon them, they used to crown their statues with its flowery tufts. " From the mild-looking beautiful face of King Meneptah II. (p. 38), the son and successor of Rameses, you never would imagine that he could possibly be the hardened Pharaoh of the Exodus, who was drowned in the Red Sea; yet that he was so we are certain from recent discoveries. The likeness may, however, be a flattering one, or it may have been taken when the king was young. " This next picture (p. 40) gives a fair idea of some of the buildings of Rameses the Great, who added a splendid gateway and colonnade to the temple of Luxor, with two fine obelisks of red granite, one of which you see here, but the other has been carried off to Paris. There are also two statues of King Rameses in front of the gateway, but they are nearly buried in the earth and sand j you can, however, see their heads and shoulders. ^^And now I think we have had enough of early A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 87 Egyptian history and may go on to something else ; and perhaps by this time, Harry, you have some idea why I spoke of three hundred years before Christ as being comparatively quite a modern time/' " Yes, indeed, uncle ; I had no idea of such an- tiquity, and even yet can hardly take it in/' "It is indeed difficult,my boy, to realise that so many ages back there were people of such power and intelligence as these Egyp- tians; indeed it is only when standing face to face with the the papyrus plant. evidences of what they did that one is able to arrive at some concep- tion of what they must have been. " But we must really get on a little faster. *' About 1,000 B.C. the power of Egypt began to decline, and the country fell successively under the S8 THE LAND OF THE PYEAMIDS. dominion of. the Assyrians, the Ethiopians, and the Persians, being finally conquered by Alexander (b.c. 332), whose stay there was but short. After his death MENEPTAU II. came the reigns of the Ptolemies, the first three of whom, munificent patrons of the arts and learning, did very much to restore the land of the Pharaohs to its former grandeur, which, however, it unfortunately lost again under their dissolute and unworthy successors, one of the worst of whom, Cleopatra, being defeated A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTOllY. 39 as you may remember by Octavian at Actium, put an end to herself either by taking poison^ or as has been asserted by allowing an asp to bite her arm^ and thence- forth Egypt became a Roman province. ^' The name of Tiberius is found on many Egyptian monuments at Denderah, Thebes,, Philse^ and other places. That of Titus is also found once or twice. Domitian built temples in Rome to the Egyptian gods Serapis and Isis. Jn the time of Trajan the canal between the Red Sea and the Nile was re-opened. Hadrian visited Egypt twice, but rather looked with contempt upon his Egyptian subjects. On one of his visits to Thebes he was accompanied by the Empress Sabina, a fact which has been chronicled by one of her attendants, Julia Balbilla, who inscribed it on the foot of a colossus, just as some people now-a-days scribble their names at remarkable spots they have visited, only that the Roman lady^s memorial is rather better done. '' The persecutions instituted by some of the Roman emperors against the Christians raged very fiercely in Egypt. Septimius Severus issued an edict forbidding any one to become a Jew or a Christian, and those of the latter religion suffered very severely, as they did also in the reign of Decius. The worst persecution of all, however, was probably that under Diocletian, and it was continued in the following reign, after which Constantino succeeded, and he being a Christian was of course favourable to those of his creed. Some fifty years later Theodosius proclaimed Christianity the re- . ligion of the whole empire ; however^ we see by an inscription at Philse that Isis and Serapis were still worshipped more than seventy years after this edict of Theodosius. OBELISKS AND STATUES OP RAMESES II. AT LUXOll. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 41 know, is an Arabic word whicli means successor, and the Arabian princes adopted it because they succeeded to the temporal and spiritual power of their prophet Moham- HEAD OF CLEOPATRA (From a Greek Coin). med. So when we hear of the Khalifate, we understand by it the Arab Empire founded by these princes, who styled themselves Commanders of the Faithful/^ " But I thought the Khalif s lived at Bagdad ! " said John. ^' Don^t you remember the ' Arabian Nights ' ? " " To be sure I do,^^ said Mr. Carrington ; '^ the best story-book in the world. It beats ' Robinson Crusoe I '' '* 4-2 THE LAND 01 THE PYBAMIDS. ft I don^t know about that. I am very fond of Robinson and Friday, and so I think is every one/' " Doubtless. All boys and girls enjoy that book, and old as I am I could sit down and read it again any day ! Bat what I mean by saying that the ' Arabian Nights' beat it is, not only that they contain mor« stories, but that the descriptions are so true to nature, that when you go to the East you seem to be already quite familiar with everything. '^ But you are quite right, John, in supposing that the Khalifs lived at Bagdad, for it was a Khalif who founded the city and made it his capital ; and Haroon al Rashid, one of his sons, is the hero of the Arabian tales.'' '^ I do not know anything about Mohammed,^' said Lotta; "I have heard of him of course, but have no clear idea of what he did." " Well, he was a very wonderful man who believed himself inspired by God to teach a new faith. He said the angel Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him to write down the doctrines of what he called the true religion and spread them abroad ; and accordingly he by degrees composed the Koran, which has long been the sacred book of the Mohammedans. Much of what it contains is undoubtedly derived from the Old and New Testaments ; but a great deal of it is his own. "The book advocates a high morality and strict practices of devotion. Mohammed had a great venera- tion for Jesus Christ, who a/ler himself he regarded as the greatest of prophets. He also revered Moses, but he was very bitter against the Jews because they would not accept him, Mohammed, as their Messiah. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 43 " The new religion extended itself with extra- ordinary rapidity over a large portion of the worlds but what is more surprising^ is its continuance. To account for this we must remember that the false prophet was not merely a fanatic, but one who had immense influence over other men, and as he always led his followers against his enemies in the name of God, he inspired them with a confidence that often rendered them victo- rious, so that he not only subdued the whole of Arabia, but was even preparing to attack Syria, when his last illness came on. However, his warlike spirit was inherited, as I told you, by his successors, who made conquest after conquest, always making the Mohammedan religion that of the countries they overran. The name of this religion is Islam, which means resignation or entire submission to the will and precepts of God, upon which the whole teaching professes to be founded. '' It is of course much better than Paganism, and in so far as the Moslems have replaced idolatry by the worship of one Godj they may be said to have conferred a benefit upon the world; but as we know only too well they also waged fierce war with Christian countries, enslaved many people and treated them with cruelty, and took possession of Jerusalem and its holy places. " The Khalifs were generally great patrons of art, and they erected magnificent buildings, not in the style of the ancient Egyptian temples, but of that kind which we call Moorish or Saracenic. " Their dominion in Egypt lasted, as I told you, some 500 years, during which time they extended their empire in many directions. Saladin, however, who defeated the Crusaders, also made a conquest of Egypt, and built the citadel of Cairo. But before a century 44 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. had passed over_, the Mamelukes or Memlooks, in reahty a body o£ armed slaves of different races, rising against his descendants, took the government out of their hands, establishing themselves so firmly in their place that, being from time to time succeeded by others, they re- mained in possession for 300 years. *^Do not suppose, however, that because I have called the Mamelukes slaves — such being the simple meaning of the word, and such also their original position — that they were in any sense uncultured barbarians. "Their ancestors were Turks or Circassians, who formed, it is probable, the bodyguard of Saladin. Under them art and literature flourished in Egypt, and the reign of the Mameluke Sulfcans may be called the golden age of Mohammedan rule in that country. A great many of the buildings we so much admire date from that period. " In the days of the Mameluke Sultans as in those of the Pharaohs, and as also in our times, the Egyptian people were obliged to spend a certain, and often a very large part of their time in forced labour, yet one of the Mameluke Sultans, En-Nasir, notwithstanding his ex- emption from the payment of wages, contrived to spend eight thousand pieces of gold a day upon building. He erected more than thirty mosques besides other great works. " A mosque was not by any means always simply a place of worship. It might be, and often was, com- bined with a hospital, a college, or some other charitable institution. For instance, in the famous Maristan, built in the thirteenth century by Sultan Kalaoon, there was not only a school where sixty orphans were fed and 46 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. instructed gratuitously, but the Mohammedan religion was publicly taught in one part o£ the great building by fifty salaried teachers ; the library contained a fine collection of legal, medical, theological, and gramma- tical books, with a librarian and five assistants to take care of them, and rich and poor were treated and fed for nothing in the hospital, where there were separate wards for every disease then known, as also an asylum for lunatics, and the chief doctor delivered lectures to medi- cal students in a large hall set apart for the purpose. '^ Unfortunately this splendid institution has fallen into rain, and except the m.osque proper, which is one of the most remarkable in Cairo, and the founder^s tomb, little now remains of it. " Mosques were frequently the burial-places of princes and their families. There are a great number of what may be called tomb-mosques, and they are always very fine buildings. Some are constructed of pale red and yellowish limestone placed in alternate courses, which has a very good effect, mellowed as it is by the influence of time. ^' What are designated the tombs of the Khalifs are of this character, but they are really the work of the Mameluke Sultans, and no Khalifs are buried there. Although now falling into ruin these buildings are extremely graceful. There is a large group of them in the eastern cemetery near Cairo, and the ornamen- tation of most of the cuj)olas done in raised geometrical patterns is quite wonderful. ^^What makes them still more striking is their position in the desert. Nothing can exceed their lonely grandeur, especially if you visit them at night. A train of camels gliding noiselessly along looks quite A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN IIISTOIIY, 47 weird in the moonlight^ and all speaks of the repose of ages. " Mosques are not alvvaj's built in the same manner, but there are some principal features which do not change, such as the open court and the fountain for ablutions (for the Mohammedan law is very strict about washing before prayer), the dome, and the minaret or tower from whence is uttered the call to prayer. Sometimes as many as four minarets are at- tached to a mosque, in other cases only one. ^^The ruined mosque of El Hakim was built by the Khalif of that name about the year a.d. 1003. This Khalif was a cruel persecutor of Jews and Chris- tians, and founded the sect of the Druses. " With all his mad cruelty he was, however, very good to the poor, and his followers believe that he was taken up to heaven and will come down again some day to receive the adoration of the world. "In 1517 Seleem the First, Sultan of Turkey, took possession of Egypt and turned it into a Turkish pro- vince; but in order to conciliate the Mamelukes he placed twenty-four of their Chiefs or Beys over the dif- ferent districts, giving one of them indeed the important post of Governor of Cairo, though a Pasha sent from Constantinople was supposed to rule the whole country. '* These Pashas, however, soon became subservient to the fiery Mamelukes who did not fail to again assert themselves, and the latter were the chief rulers of Egypt at the time of Napoleon^s arrival there in the year 1798. He defeated 60,000 of them at the battle of the Pyramids. "After our intervention and the departure of the French, the Mamelukes were again giving trouble, but at 4.8 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. this juncture a remarkable man appeared on the scene, one who determined to crush them by fair means or foul. MOSQUE OF EL IIAKIM. "This was the celebrated Mohammed AH, the ffreat-grandfalher of the present Khedive, an Albanian A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 49 soldier, who was sent to Egypt in command of some troops of his own nation. '^ His quick intelligence at once took in the state of affairs in Cairo, and he played his cards so well that he soon contrived to ingratiate himself with the people, who entreated him to become their ruler, and this choice being sanctioned by the Sultan, Mohammed Ali found himself Governor of Egypt. "So long, however, as the Mamelukes remained powerful his seat was insecure. '^ The first thing he did was to decoy as many of them as possible within the city walls and cause them to be massacred, but the number of those who met with death in this manner was not much more than a hundred. " Biding his time, therefore, the wily Governor pro- fessed to desire peace and tranquillity, issued edicts which were favourable to the Mamelukes, and even made them grants of land ; and a few years having passed in this manner their suspicions were set at rest, and they actually seem to have believed in the friendship of their former enemy ; so that when Mohammed Ali invited all their chiefs to attend the installation of his son Touspoon as commander-in-chief of the army, with the exception of one man, they all repaired to the citadel accompanied by their followers. " The Pasha received them with great courtesy, and after they had taken coffee a procession was formed as if to march out towards the camp, the Mamelukes being preceded and followed by the troops of the Pasha. '^ When, however, they approached the gates of the citadel they were suddenly closed against them, and the unfortunate Mamelukes, four hundred and seventy in D A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 51 number^ entrapped in the narrow roadway, were fired upon by the Albanians, and almost all murdered. "One Bey is said to have escaped by taking- a desperate leap from the ramparts, although his horse was killed by the fall. The scene of this event is always pointed out to travellers, but whether the legend be true or not I cannot say.'^ " What horrible treachery ! ■'■' exclaimed the elder children. ^' Yes. And it was only the beginning of worse cruelty; for the Mamelukes were immediately slaugh- tered throughout the whole of Egypt, and it was by this means that Mohammed Ali secured his position.^^ " The barbarous old fellow ! '' said Harry. '^ And yet I think I have heard him praised.'''' " He was in a certain sense an enlightened ruler, ^^ replied Mr. Carrington. "Having satisfied his ambition, become Pasha of Egypt, and suppressed, or rather murdered, all those he had reason to fear, he did much towards introducing modern civilisation and improve- ments into the country of which he had taken posses- sion. You will hear about some of his great works as we go on ; but he also oppressed his people with taxation, and his grandson Ismail did so to a far greater extent. " The murdered Mamelukes are buried in a small neg-lected enclosure in the southern cemetery of Cairo, and their tombs, which are of marble, stand upon sculptured platforms under wooden canopies, which are supported, strangely enough, by marble columns. Their wives and children lie beside them, and their burial- place is quite close to that of the family of Mohammed Ali, who put them to death. The bodies of these latter are in an ugly mausoleum. D 2 52 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. " But I think I have done talking* enough for to- day, unless an}^ one has a question to ask/' TOMBS OF THE MAMELUKES. '' Just one^ uncle/^ said Harry. ^^ I do not under- stand exactly about the hieroglyphics, though I know A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 53 you said they were a kind of picture-writing, and that the name means sacred sculptures. What I want to know is how these pictures can be read?^"* " You do well to ask. ^' These writings are of two kinds, hieroglyphics that represent objects and ideas, and hieroglyphics that repre- sent sounds, and compose, so to speak, an alphabet. "For instance, some of the signs stand for whole words; a bee represents Egypt, and a leek the king; a circle stands for Ra, the sun, and a beetle for Kheper, the Creator. Some signs also mean epithets, and others numbers. " To give you an example, a dog may be put for the thing meant, that is to say a dog, or it may stand, not for its own name, but for some attribute it possesses, let us say fidelity. Or a jackal may indicate cunning, a woman beating a tambourine joy, and so on ; but a great number of hieroglyphs are simply the letters of an alphabet." " It must have been very difficult to find out what they mean ? '^ " Yes, and the person who first did so. Dr. Thomas Young, seems to be almost forgotten, but though others have added immensely to our knowledge in these matters, he it was who first found the key to this ob- scure mode of writing." " Do you know how he managed it, uncle ?" " Well, it happened that in 1799, during the French occupation of Egypt, M. Boussard, a French officer of engineers who was superintending excavations at I'ort St. Julien, near Rosetta, came upon a fragment of stone, now in the British Museum, which has since become very famous under the name of ' the Rosetta stone.* I V«>T,f^f*,''^S^r.-kAV1tT•1,/oW.«».c*«t2^«»^=l»i«-^•~•'^ ;v^' >v -'-y-^ r- --;' e-';;■cl•■.ra•C-;^.•B^^i<f^•'■■■». II iit.,\\y,„y\\r''J jAi* \\v=^-.'A^' j-s?i:«*.%'*i \3-^o X rii/,>fi'-'/-vv»v«»*>"r/V |i'-i.• - iii,;:^^;^^-::^y f/- • vj >^i-.,i/ THE HOSErXA STONE. A GLANCE AT EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 55 '' This is covered with an inscription in three kinds of writing, one of which was immediately seen to be Greeks another hieroglyphic, and a third proved to be that which is called enchorial, a kind of running hand introduced into Egypt about 600 b.c._, which continued in use there until the early Christians brought in the Greek alphabet. '^ By a comparison of these three versions of the same inscription, Dr. Young managed to spell out bit by bit and with great labour the meaning of five hieroglyphs, but went no farther. The French author, Champollion, however, having heard of Young^s discovery, investigated the matter more deeply, and found out a great deal more. Other learned men following in his track carried on this interesting study, until at length they arrived at such perfection as to be able to read hieroglyphic inscriptions nearly as well as we read print. " It is now known that the site where the Rosetta stone was found is that of a temple dedicated by Necho II. to the god Tum or Atum, the setting sun; and the inscription itself is a decree of the priests of Egypt assembled in synod at Memphis, in favour of Ptolemy Ephiphanes, who had granted them sorne special favours. ^^ " Oh, thank you, uncle. Did you learn to read hieroglyphs ? '* '' A little. Quite enough to make my inspection of the ruins very interesting, and I also made use of the knowledge of those who had gone before me. But we have now had quite enough of such dry subjects, which you have listened to with great patience, and our next talk will, I hope, be of a more amusing character.''' CHAPTER III. ALEXANDRIA. ^^"VTOW, uncle/' said the children -L>l the next time Mr. Carring- ton came to the schoolroom and seemed ready for a talk, '' you are going* to tell us your own adventures in Egypt; begin at the very beginning, please, and go right through. ■'■' ^'Well, the Wery begin- ning/ I suppose, would be my voyage from Southampton to Alexandria in one of the steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, but there is not much to say about that. " It occupied ten days, and the time did not hang heavily, as there were pleasant people on board. '^ Suppose we make a start from the time when we came in sight of land. *' As the coast of Egypt lies very low you see COIN OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 58 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. nothing at all of it until you are within thirteen or fourteen miles. Then you perceive one after another the lighthouse^ Pompey^s pillar^ the forts, two palaces, some low hills on which stand the numerous windmills erected by Napoleon to grind flour for his army, and the masts of the shipping in the harbour. *^ When I was there you could also see the great obelisk which has since been removed, but there is nothing striking in the first appearance of the city of Alexander. *' He chose the site because of its extensive bay, the extremity of which formed a natural harbour, which had occasionally been used as a refuge for ships from a very early period. It is so mentioned by Homer. " In the time of the Pharaohs the Egyptians traded mostly with the countries bordering on the Arabian Gulf, but when commerce became more extended it was necessary to have a port on the Mediterranean, and Alexander proposed to build a city which could hold free communication with India, Arabia, and Europe, — which should be the successor of Tyre, and as it were, a mart for the whole world. "So he committed the execution of his idea to Dinocratcs, a famous architect, and in the first place divided the bay, which was about six miles and a half in length, into two parts, by building an embankment or mole called the Heptastadion, in order to connect the mainland with the little island of Pharos, and then the city was laid out in the shape, it is said, of a Mace- donian mantle. " There are, therefore, two harbours, the eastern or new harbour, which becomes so choked up by sand as to be of use only for native vessels of small draught ; and the ALEXANDRIA. 59 western or smaller one, called Uunostus, or ' good home sailing"/ one of the finest ports in the world, this latter being again divided into the outer and inner harbour. " The entrance is very intricate on account of a reef OUR STEEKSMAN. of rocks, so that if you arrive off Alexandria at night or in rough weather there is nothing to be done but to ride at anchor waiting patiently. This reef might, how- ever, be easily removed. " In our case we were very soon boarded by a pilot, who took the vessel in charge ; the office of pilot is here- ditary, and has been for centuries in the same family. 60 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ^^ A queer old fellow our steersman was, you would say. I must confess that he . did not look much like a sailor except for his weather-beaten face and bright intelligent eyes, for like all his countrymen he wore loose eastern garments, and his head was covered by a turban; but he knew his business, and steered us safely over the bar, and past the great breakwater, which is a fine bit of English engineering. '^ The quays, and wharfs, and warehouses are pretty much like what we see at home, but we have no doubt that we are in foreign parts when we find our vessel surrounded by boats of curious build, from which Arabs, Greeks, Maltese, people of many different nationalities in picturesque dresses, come on board, that is as many as are allowed to do so, either to sell fruit, vegetables, and other things to the sailors, or to get the passengers to go with them to the different hotels which employ them, while the rest from their boats keep up a perfect babel, shouting out to the same effect either in broken English or in whatever European tongue they may happen to know. '^ But I forgot to tell you that one of the most re- markable things you notice as you steam into the harbour is the fine lighthouse on Eunostus Point, which has a light 180 feet above the sea level that revolves every twenty seconds. "This lighthouse was built by Mohammed All, but the light was placed there by his grandson the ex- Khedive, Ismail Pasha, who spent enormous sums in so- called European improvements, some of them beneficial to his country, and others very much the reverse. " However, the revolving light is decidedly useful, and the building which contains it stands on the site ALEXANDRIA. 61 of. the ancient Pharos. You know what that was, of course ? " '' A beacon-tower/^ said Lotta. " Named after the island near it/^ said Harry. THE MODERN LIGHTHOUSE AT ALEXANDRIA. *'And one of those seven wonders of the world/' added John. '' Well done ! And now do you know what it was like ? when it was built ? and how long it lasted ? " Nobody seemed to remember any of these things, though the young people had a vague idea of having learned them. ^'The Pharos/' said Mr. Carrington, ^* was begun by Ptolemy I., and completed about 280 B.C., and Crl THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. Sf'^.„ ,1 it lasted for 1600 years/'' ^^That was a long time, uncle/^ said John ; ''these ancients were capital builders. Do not you think so ? ^' "You may well say so. Do you not remem- ber that I told you the Pyramids are believed to be 6,000 years old ? And there seems to be no reason why they should not stand as long as the world lasts, as no- thing short of a violent earthquake could over- throw them ; so 1,600 years is not much/^ "But this Pharos, uncle, what was it like ?^' "This picture (p. 62) is supposed to give a fair idea of it. THE PHAROS. ALEXANDHIA. G3 *' It was a square building of white marble on which rested an octagonal one, diminishing towards the top like a church spire^ and having a staircase running round it outside. '^ Its height is said to have been 400 feet, and a fire was kept constantly burning on the summit. , '^ The architect was one Sostratus, who is said to have perpetuated his own name instead of that of Ptolemy by means of a clever trick. '^ He carved his inscription on the stone and placed the king^s over it in plaster, which of course fell off in time, leaving the more durable letters behind it, and by these unfair means caused his fame to reach posterity. " However, he must have been a clever fellow to be able to erect such a tower, the light from which could be seen, as we are told, at a distance of 40 miles. Ismail Pacha's light only reaches 20 miles, but that is enough. '^ But to continue my story. I chose out a sharp- looking Maltese, who soon sent the other fellows who were pestering me to the right-about, and told him to take my luggage to the Hotel de PEurope, and on land- ing I mounted a donkey, and made the best of my way through the narrow streets which led to the European quarter of the town.'' '' A donkey, uncle ! How very queer ! " " Oh ! every one rides donkeys in Egypt, and nice nimble little creatures they are. Most of them are small and of a very pretty fawn colour. Some, however, are taller than ponies and quite white. ^' You can get into an omnibus with all your belong- ings on landing at Alexandria and be driven off as if you were in Paris or some other continental town, but 1 confess I like the old fashion better/^ 64- THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. *' Oh ! SO should we ! ^' the children all cried out. " Yes ; I am sure you would. For though Alexandria was not even when I landed there so much like an Eastern as a Greek or Italian town, and is even less remarkable now, you cannot think how many strange sights you would meet with during that first ride, by going as I did through the old streets.^'' '' What sort of sights, uncle ? " '^ Camels laden with water-skins ; poor Arabs selling many kinds of fruit and flowers which would be new to you, the latter made into stiff little bouquets tied round a skewer and stuck into a cucumber like pins in a cushion, instead of being carried in a basket; curious little shops more like booths at a fair, whole rows of them set apart for the sale of the same kind of article, and perhaps a grave-looking shopkeeper drinking a cup of coffee with his customer before con- cluding a bargain/'' " What a capital idea ! ■'^ said Lotta. '^ I only wish the polite shopmen would offer Lucy and me cups of coffee when we go to buy our spring and winter dresses and things ! '^ " Ah ! but with us ' time is money,"* the proverb says, and we could not afford to spend it in that way. Besides, we have fixed prices, and so there is nothing to be said, provided the article pleases you. But in the East you never dream of giving what is asked ; if you did you would only be thought ignorant and foolish. ^' On the contrary, you begin by offering about half, and if what you wish for should be of considerable value you may very likely spend several hours in its purchase, the owners gradually lowering its price and you as gradually increasing your offer, or perhaps getting up ALEXANDRIA. 65 and walking away, only to be called back and begin again /^ '^ It must be very tiresome/^ said Harry. '^ Yes ; especially to an impatient young gentleman like yourself/^ said his uncle ; '^ but it is rather amusing^ too, for you watch what is going on around you ; and as one does not take such a long journey as that to the East to rush through the country at railroad speed, a few days more here or there makes little difference. ^'I had a good deal of this bargaining to do, for contrary to the wont of travellers I meant to begin my voyage at Alexandria. "Most people stay there but a very short time; they just give a look round and are off to Cairo by train, where they either hire a boat or take their passage by steamer — for you can do that now — if they mean to go up the Nile. " I, however, had other ideas. Wishing to avoid fatigue and bustle, and to go through Egypt in a lazy, comfortable fashion, I resolved to follow the old route by the Mahmoodieh canal, and had therefore to j^rovide myself at once with a house-boat or dahabeeyeh, and the many requisites for living on board of her. " The first thing was to get money. ^' " But had you not carried that with you, uncle ? ^' " In a certain sense I had. But it was necessary to have the money of the country, and, moreover, a great quantity of coin of very small value to make purchases of food and other things from the peasants ; so I had to exchange my bank-notes for a large boxful of piastres and half-piastres, and five, ten, and twenty para pieces, the value of which ranges from about 2|d. down to a farthing and a half. Plenty of money- E 66 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. changers are to be found sitting in the streets ready to take the coin of almost any nation and give you its pretended value ; but you may be sure I did not go to them, but to a regular bank. ^' As this was my first visit to an Eastern country a great many things were of course new to me, and I confess that I used to stop and look with interest at the curious groups of people talking and gesticulating in the streets, even the very beggars being so unlike those we see at home. *' There is not much actual sight-seeing to do in Alexandria — the place is more interesting from its recollections than from its ancient remains — still there are a few things one ought to see, — for instance, Pompey^s pillar. " On my way to this I noticed some booths in a square to my left, and turning into it found myself in the midst of an Arab fair. Poor people were buying and selling fish, fruit, and other eatables, and children amusing themselves in a kind of primitive merry-go- round, just as they would do at home. '^ After this I went to have a look at the houses of the married Egyptian soldiers — the unmarried live in barracks — and found whole villages of wretched, low, flat-roofed huts, two or three together, and each con- taining two rooms, built in long lines covering several acres of ground. If it should rain heavily they fall down, being only built of mud and a few sticks. *^ Before the doors the wives were cooking or doing other household work. They were dressed in a blue cotton skirt, with a square piece of the same material over the head and falling down the back, and another narrower one attached to this head-piece as a veil, so as ALEXANDRIA. 67 to cover the whole face except the eyes, between which there was an ornament of brass or silver, the veil being long enough to reach to the knees. Some women, how- ever, were unveiled, and one could see that they wore large silver earrings and necklaces consisting of many coils. They also had bangles round the wrists and ankles. ^'Pompey^s pillar stands near the Moslem burial- place, some distance to the south-east of Alexandria, and on what was probably the highest ground of the ancient city. ^^ It is a fine column of red granite, beautifully polished, standing on blocks, one of which bears the name of Psammetichus the First, therefore it is believed that the column also is one belonging to ancient times, placed in its present position in honour of the Emperor Diocletian, when its more modern capital and pedestal were added to it. It appears to have been erected a.d. 302 under Pompems, the prefect, or gover- nor, of Egypt, and hence its name. ^'In returning I took a different road, chiefly through the narrow streets of the Turkish quarter, and many things attracted my attention, but chiefly the windows with their nicely-carved lattices. I did not, however, see any of them open like the one before you (on the next page), with a pretty face looking out. '^'The windows of the hareem, or women^s apart- ments, do not open towards the street, but into a private court or garden, for Mohammedan women must not be seen unveiled by any men save their husbands. " There are plenty of European shops in Alexandria where you can get a tolerably complete assortment of what you want, but no one can resist a plunge into the bazaars, where little is sold save Oriental articles, B 2 68 THE LAND OP THifi PYRAMIDS. althougli quite aware that they cannot compare for a moment with those o£ Cairo/^ *' I like to go to bazaars/^ said Susie, in whom the word had very naturally awakened lively recollections o£ toys and v ^ sweetmeats. > -/ c.Yes, my little maid, I am sure you do; and I can tell you we are all like children s ome t im e s when we see pretty things/^ "But are the Eastern bazaars the same as ours ? '' asked John. "If so 7 should not care much for them ; there is often such a lot of trumpery that one can hardly see how to spend a shilling.''^ " We have borrowed the name, and give it generally to fancy fairs, but bazaar simply means a market, and I found it only too easy to spend not merely shillings but pounds, even at Alexandria. "I think the first thing I invested in was a Nargheeleh or water-pipe. Here it is. With its pretty pedestal it would not make a bad drawing-room orna- ment, and in the East the ladies all use them, smoking a very fine kind of tobacco. The bowl is filled with ALEXANDRIA. 69 rose-water, and the smoke is made to pass through it, and then it is inhaled through a long flexible tube. "But there were plenty of pipes of other kinds in the pipe-makers' street — for as I told you each kind of goods is sold in a separate place; cherry- sticks a yard and a half or more in leng-th are the favourites, the mouth-pieces being usually of amber. " Alexandria has manu- factories of pipe-stems as well as of tobacco, so it was quite proper to buy some. Many of the other goods for sale there are imported, as for instance the engraved brazen vessels and the pottery, some of which latter is beautiful. ''' ''Lanterns were then also in great profusion, for every one was obliged to carry one, or have one borne before him at night, and some were very handsome, but the poor people used paper ones, which folded up flat, and expanded like a concertina. Now, of course, there is less need for lanterns, as there is gas in all the principal parts of the town. "The Jews' bazaar is rather picturesque, for the houses overhang it and nearly meet at the top. The A NARGHEEIEH, 70 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. dark cloaks, silk vests, and white or red turbans of the Israelite merchants are also striking, but when it came to buying', I found Arabs, Turks, or Syrians pleasanter to deal with/^ *' I do not understand,'^ said Lotta, ^^ the route you were going to take. Please show it to me on the map, uncle. You were not going round by sea?" '^No. To facilitate traffic between Cairo and Alexandria, Mohammed Ali caused a canal fifty miles in length to be cut between the latter city and the Rosetta branch of the Nile, which it joins at a point about 130 miles below Cairo. You see it here. The line is pretty straight. It partly follows the ancient Canopic branch of the river and the old canal of Fooah, which was used in the time of the Venetians, and still existed a century ago, though it was then nearly dry. " The new canal was called Mahmoodieh, after the reigning sultan, Mahmood II. It cost j6300,000, and was finished in one year, but it is dreadful to think that twenty thousand of the men employed in digging it should have died either by accident, hunger, or plague. '^ It took me some time to find a boat to my liking. Though there were plenty to choose from, some were too small and others too large, some were dirty, and for others an exorbitant sum was demanded, so I had to make a great many expeditions to the banks of the canal before I finally decided, and then the bargaining was long and close. " Nor is it only the boat herself you have to think of. Each one of them is in charge of a particular cap- tain who is responsible for her the whole year round. The' crew is discharged at the end of a voyage, but the Reis, as he is called, is permanently in command, so ALEXANDRIA. 71 after you have made your choice of a dahabeeyeh you should, before engaging her, discover if possible, whether the K-eis is thoroughly to be depended upon, for on him it devolves to engage the crew, and he can make your A SAILOR. voyage pleasant or disagreeable by his behaviour and management. '^ I must say I was extremely fortunate, for not one of the fifteen who made up my crew ever gave me any trouble.^' ^^ Fifteen, uncle!" 72 TliE LAND OF THE P YE AM IDS. " Yes. The Reis and his assistant — commonly called the second Reis — twelve sailors, and a boy, tlie latter being the captain^s personal attendant. " Once embarked, your boat is to be your home for a long time. It is necessary, therefore, to see that it is comfortable, and to have a good supply of books, as well as a tolerably large stock of groceries and other provisions. '' The Fatima was a pretty craft, and a good one of her kind.^' "Oh, uncle,'-' said John, "you called her a house- boat, and I was fancying her something like one of our barges.''^ " Not at all. She carried, like all Nile boats, a great striped triangular sail, called a lateen sail, hang- ing from a long, tapering yard, thick at the lower end and heavily weighted, crossing her tallest mast, the smaller mast in the stern having only a sprit sail, which was seldom used. But she had also oars, for it is often necessary to pull for days together when the wind is unfavourable, and this rowing is done in a curious fashion, for the oars being necessarily very long, there are three men to each of them, one sitting and two standing. Thus, you see, we needed twelve men to only four oars." " How were those men dressed ? '* said Harry. '^ The sailors in blue or brown shirts with cotton drawers under them,'"* said Mr. Carrington. " They had usually only white or brown skull-caps, but when they came near towns or villages they put on their turbans and made themselves smart in other ways as well. "The Reis and second Reis were much better dressed. MOSQUE OF SAID PASHA 74 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ^'They wore striped sbirts and over them a long robe with open sleeves, a red sash round the waist, and, of course, turbans.'^ "Wouldn't they cut a figure on the Thames ! " said John. " We would soon teach them a thing or two if we had them here.'' '' You might do so, I daresay," replied his uncle, "but you would have to learn ' a thing or two ' from them if you were to try to take a heavy boat, or indeed any boat, up the Nile ; so I recommend a little less British conceit, my boy." The laugh was against John for a moment, and then one of the party taking up a picture, said, "Why, here is another mosque ! " "That is the one built by Said Pasha in Alexandria (p. 73), so of course quite modern. It is handsome, but there is nothing specially remarkable about it, but it was when passing that mi- naret that I first heard the ' call to prayer.' It startled me then, for it is a most singular shrill cry, but I soon got well used to it from hearing it five times a day." THE CALL TO PRAYER. ALEXANDRIA. 75 " Do Moslems pray as often as that ? *' '' They are enjoined to do so, but probably the greater number do not pray more than three times. However, they are so religious a people, keeping their fasts so carefully, performing all the ceremonies taught them by their holy book the Koran, and not neglecting to give to others even if poor themsdves, that they very often put Christians to shame.''^ ^^ But why do they not have bells, uncle ? '* ^' Oh ! The Prophet said that bells Avere Satan^s musical instruments, and that the angels do not assort with any company where there is a bell. I do not know why he held this opinion, but at any rate his followers have been most obedient, and the Acldn, which consists principally in a repetition of ^ God is most great,^ ^ there is no God but God,^ still conveys the only intimation to the Moslem that it is time to wash himself and go to his prayer carpet.^^ ^' You were describing your dahabeeyeh, uncle,''^ said Lotta, ^^ when the boys interrupted you ; please go on telling us what it was like, for I shall not be able to picture you to myself unless I know everything you had about you.'-* ^^ I daresay I shall find a sketch of a Nile boat somewhere,^' said Mr. Carrington, ^*^but I have it not at hand at present ; however I will do my best to bring the Fatima before you. ^^ She is of course flat-bottomed, and has two decks, the lower one for the sailors, and the other, which only occupies about two-thirds of the length of the boat, for the passeugers. You reach it by a little flight of steps. " The cabins are on the after-part of this deck, and 76 THE LAND 0¥ THE PYRAMIDS. their roof forms a platform whicli is a most agreeable lounge. " It is furnished with tables and chairs, and you sit there under an awning and carry on your occupations, having at the same time an uninterrupted view on all sides. ^^ On the passenger deck is a saloon, or if the boat be very large there may be a second, with divans all round it and lockers under them for stores. The saloon is very nicely decorated, and has mirrors, bookshelves, plenty of windows with curtains, and of course a dining-table ; the sleeping cabins and bath-room are at either end of it, and portieres separate you from them, if, as is most likely, you keep the doors open in the daytime. '^ On the forward side of the big mast, that is to say, as far from the cabins as possible, there is a tiny kitchen, and you would l)e surprised to see the grand dinners that issue forth from it, for a Nile cook takes almost as much pride in his art as does a French eke/ de cuisine. " I must not forget to mention another very promi- nent object, namely, a huge clay filter, in which the delicious Nile water is made to pass through a quantity of broken apricot stones upon which it deposits its earthy particles : a primitive contrivance, but one which answers sufficiently well. ^^ Round this filter in my boat used to be seen a heap of water-melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, bananas, pomegranates, and other kinds of fruit and vegetables, which not only looked very cool and refreshing, but proved to us that Egypt had not altogether lost the fertility which it boasted in the days of the Israel- ALBXANDKIA. 77 '' I should think a Noah^s Ark of this kind would be top-heavy/' said John. '' That is an intelligent remark. We will not make fun of you this time/'' replied Mr. Carring-ton. "She would be top-heavy did not the hold^ in which bulky and weighty articles are stored, serve to counterbalance the superstructure. The sailors may sleep in the hold, too, if they please, but unless during one of the rare storms, I never knew any of them to take refuge there. They prefer to lie on deck rolled up in their rough brown blankets ; but then you know there is seldom anything like what we should call cold weather, though of course travellers only visit Egypt during the cool season. " Then it is that these poor fellows make their harvest. Their pay is a little over two pounds a month. For the rest of the year some of them make a living by acting as porters in Cairo, and others work as day labourers for very poor wages. A few, however, manage to get employed on cargo-boats, and that suits them best. " They are most willing, obliging fellows, very hard- working, and always good-humoured. Whatever their occupation, whether towing, rowing, or punting, they never fail to accompany it by a sort of chant. Not always the same, however, by any means. They have different songs for the times of starting, continuing the voyage, and so on ; and each of my sailors seemed to have an air of his own in which he was considered to excel. Whenever I heard one about the bright eyes of Anija I knew we must be approaching a town or village— that was a certain sign. " But I have run on too fast. Talking about the 78 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. boat has led me to tell you all this about the crew, and I had a great many preparations still to make before I could embark, causing me many a ride along the dusty A WATER-CARRIER. roads, which but for the continual exertions of the sakkas, or water carriers, would be quite unendurable. These people form a separate class, and generally live in the same part of the town. Their substitute for a water-cart is, as you may see (p. 78) , a goat-skin with the hair left on it, each of the legs being tied up and ALEXANDRIA. 79 a spout fitted to the neck, so that they really look as if they were carrying an animal. Their work is very hard, but so is that of all Egyptians of the lower class. As Mr. Lane- Poole says, 'the fellah is the only real worker in Egypt, and he has been used to doing all the work from ages long before Moses. He is the same man as the peasant who toiled to build up the great stones of the Pyramids. Assyrians and Persians, Greeks and Romans, Arabs and Turks, have conquered his land, and changed his language and his religion, but him they have not changed.^ ''My dahabeeyeh belonged to a descendant of the Prophet, as was to be seen at once by his green turban. As in those days I could not hold a conversation in Arabic, my negotiations with him had been carried on through my dragoman. " But I suppose you do not know anything about that important functionary, and as you will often hear of him, he shall be introduced at once. " Hajji Ali, that is. Pilgrim Ali — a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca always takes that title — was a very honest fellow, though certainly not hand- some. " The word dragoman is derived from a Turkish word, meaning interpreter. The higher classes of dra- gomen are employed by our ambassadors and consuls, but a number of them are hired by travellers as couriers or upper servants, and you can, if you like, make a contract with them to supply everything you will need for your journey, boats, camels, horses, food, servants, plate, china, cooking utensils, and so forth, and to make every arrangement for you. This plan saves a good deal of trouble, but does not always work well. 80 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. " I did not adopt it, preferring to be independent. *' Most of these dragomen are Italians or Maltese, A DRAGOMAN. but Hajji Ali was an Arab. He came to me with very good recommendations, and thoroughly deserved them. '' Besides acting as interpreter when required, he kept very good order on board the boat ; made excellent ALEXANDRIA. 81 arrangements for sight-seeing, prevented my being imposed upon by shopkeepers, and saw that the other servants did their duty/'' " You had other servants, then, uncle ? '' '^ Of course. One requires them just as much as in a house. ^'Who is to do the cooking, and cleaning, and washing, and waiting at table ? ^^ Besides, you want to be able to entertain the friends you may meet with. A good deal of hospitality goes on upon the river, and there is immense rivalry between the different dragomen as to the equipment of their dahabeeyehs and the quality of the provisions on board. ^^By the way, I do not think I said that each daha- beeyeh has also a sandal or jolly-boat, which you use for going ashore when the water is too shallow for the larger craft, or for paying visits to the occupants of other boats, if, as sometimes happens, a good many may be stopping at the same place, and you have made some pleasant acquaintance; but in entertaining each other there is not much to be achieved in the way of variety, although, as I have said before, Nile cooks do wonders with the material they have. '^ Butchers^ meat in Egypt consists principally of mutton or goat's flesh, for the people object very naturally to killing their cattle — a l^eautiful short- horned breed — which are so useful to them for tliei»' labour. They do, however, provide beef occasionally f oi foreigners. ''The spot where the Khedive has built one of his huge palaces, about two miles and a-half beyond the Rosetta Gate, is remarkable as being the site of the F 82 THK LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ancient Nicopolis, where Ang^ustus defeated the followers of Antony, and where a fortified Roman camp was afterwards established. Of this camp scarcely a trace now remains, but it was a square enclosure with four entrances, and each of its walls was defended by six towers. *' A mosaic pavement was found in what are now the gardens of the Khedive near the sea ; and a little EGYPTIAN SHEEP AND GOATS. way off is a portion of a ruined aqueduct which supplied the camp with water. In excavating about this place wells, reservoirs, and baths were found, and it seems that the water was raised just as is done in the present day, by a wheel with earthen jars around it. "Another famous battle took place on this same spot much nearer our own day, for on the 21st March, 1801, the British forces under Sir Ralph Abercromby defeated the French there under General Menou, at the cost, however, of the life of one of our great heroes. The British Commander was wounded in the thigh by a musket ball during the action, but not till victory had ¥ 2 84 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. been declared for us did he show what he was suffering. He was then borne from the field and taken on board Lord Keith''s ship, anchored with the rest of the fleet in Abookir Bay, and there he died. " It was in Abookir Bay, in 1798, as you no doubt remember, that Nelson gained the great naval victory which we call the battle of the Nile, because Abookir, now a miserable village, is at the mouth of one of its branches, having replaced the ancient city of Canopus which gave its name to it. ^' You have not, I am sure, forgotten the boy-hero Casabianca, who died a martyr to obedience, nor Mrs. Hemans's beautiful lines on the subject. Well, he was the son of the captain of the French ship L' Orient, and perished in her when blown up in that engagement.^'' " Oh ! I like to hear of brave deeds of that kind,^' said Harry ; " I think that one who remains at his post, say when a ship is sinking, worse still when she is on fire, waiting for the word of command, is just splendid.'''' '^'^ So do ly' said Lotta; ''^I always admired that poem, but I did not at all remember where it was that Casabianca died.''^ " Is the Khedive^s Palace very grand inside, uncle ? '* '' I should call it gorgeous rather than grand. I do not like those semi-Europeanised palaces ; to me they seem quite out of place, and a sad falling-off from the beautiful Moorish buildings and their appropriate orna- ments. The gardens, however, are fine though formal. The late Khedive Ismail paid much attention to the cultivation of plants and trees, and many kinds not before grown in Egypt have been imported and acclima- tised there. ALEXANDRIA. 85 " The large-flowered jasmine, which is very beautiful, flourishes abundantly, and isj I fancy, indigenous, as k 86 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. also the oleander; roses and violets, too, are common; but the lotus flower, so symbolical of the country, does not grow in the Nile, but may be found, it is said, in the Delta during the inundation, in ponds which are dry at other seasons/' " Is this a portrait of one of your servants, uncle ? '' said Harry, taking up another picture (p. 85). " He seems in a great hurry/' '^ No; that is a sais or running footman. One or more of these precede the carriages of great people to clear the way for them, and it is astonishing how fast they will go, and what a length of time they will keep up the pace. ^^ I had no need for a person of the sort, and should not have liked to have one either, for it is a cruelly hard occupation, and ought to be put an end to ; but here is a likeness of one of my sailors (p. 71), a good-natured fellow called Achmet, who made himself very useful on many occasions, for the men used to come on shore with me, leaving one or two to guard the boat, and help to make an excavation or do anything I set them at, getting some extra pay of course. ^^ The European quarter of Alexandria, . unhappily destroyed by fire during the war of 1882, has arisen from its ashes in an improved condition. But you will be glad to know it as it used to be. " There were no public buildings there worth speak- ing of ; in fact, the only one which could with any propriety have been so designated was the Exchange, and even that was a very poor affair. Most of the streets bore French names. The Rue Cherif Pasha was one of the handsomest, for the houses of many of the principal merchants were there, and as it 88 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ' led to the Rosetta Gate and the Canal, which is the fashionable drive, it used to be very gay in the afternoon when a constant stream of carriages passed through it. ^^The Place Mohammed Ali (p. 87), formerly called Place des Consuls, where were situated my hotel and many others, was generally called by English people the Great Square, and may be said to have been the European centre of Alexandria, for surrounding it were the offices of the chief bankers and merchants, as well as many good shops, while its main portion formed a pleasant promenade with plenty of seats shaded by fine trees, and having a fountain at either end. In the centre was an equestrian statue of Mohammed Ali. '^ There was another square in this quarter, though not so fine a one, called Place Ibrahim, or more commonly Place de PEglise, because one side of it is occupied by the Roman Catholic Church of St. Catherine, but the modern city forms a great contrast to the Alexandria of ancient times, which was not only replete with splendid buildings, the joint production of the arts of Greece and the wealth of Egypt, but also enriched by its extensive commerce, so that the luxury and magnificence of its inhabitants exceeded anything that Thebes and Mem- phis could ever boast of, while its schools of learning, removed thither from Heliopolis, were of world-wide celebrity. " A grand Museum — that is to say a Temple of the Muses, a building devoted to science, learning, and the fine arts — with a magnificent library attached to it, was erected by Ptolemy Soter, and there many teachers, both Pagan and Christian, gave instruction in whatever was then known of astronomy, geology, physics, and other branches of science, as well as in philosophy. ALEXANDRIA. 89 '^ One of these instructors, Euclid, is very well known to you boys. " The Library of Alexandria numbered no less than 100,000 volumes after it had been enriched by Ptolemy Philadelphus, a copy of every known work being* sup- posed to be placed in it. But I regret to say that the treasures it contained were not always obtained by fair means. " If report speaks true, not only was every book which was brought into the country seized and sent to the library, but when it had been transcribed, the copy only was returned to the owner and the original retained. " Indeed, Ptolemy Euergetes is said to have actually borrowed several classics from the Athenians and kept them in his possession, sending back in their stead some finely-executed copies and nearly £3,000 in money, which enforced sale was by no means agreeable to that cultured people. '^ In the time of Julius Caesar the Library, which then contained 400,000 volumes, was burnt — whether by accident or design is not clear — and the work and labour of ages were lost for ever.^^ " I think it was quite fair,'"* said John. " If they stole the books they deserved to lose them.''-' ^^ I see,^^ said Mr. Carrington, " you are a follower, of the ancient Jewish dispensation and would have the children punished for the iniquities of their parents, for you must recollect that the real criminals had been dead for one or two centuries. However, no kind of injustice prospers in the long run. ^^ The most important work done in the Museum of Alexandria has been a benefit to all time, namely, that translation of the Old Testament Scriptures into Greek 90 THE LAND OF THE PYHAMIDS. which is called the Septuagint version, from a tradition, now believed to be incorrect, that seventy, or as it was said seventy-two persons, were employed in its compila- tion. " This version was immediately reproduced in a mul- titude of copies, more or less correct, to be used in the various Jewish synagogues and Greek churches, one of the oldest being that preserved in the British Museum. " In writing of Alexandria, which city by the way the Romans considered as second only to their own capital, the historian Gibbon tells us that idleness was unknown there, people of every age and sex, even the blind and the lame, being employed in profitable pur- suits of some kind. ''The making of glass, the weaving of linen, and the manufacture of the papyrus paper I told you about, were some of the principal occupations of the people of the lower orders; who were, however, notwithstanding their industry, a turbulent and seditious set, and also very inconstant, these vices being probably caused by their being an admixture of different nationalities, each one with his own peculiar passions and prejudices. " In the present day the commerce of Alexandria is also very important. It exports to England cotton, cotton seed, beans, corn, sugar, different kinds of gum, coffee, ivory, wool, linseed, and mother-of-pearl, sending some of these things also to France ; and it imports manufactured goods and coals very largely from us ; while from other countries it gets wood, oils, wine, liqueurs, raw silk, marbles and stones, as well as fruit, vegetables, and salted provisions. "I have already mentioned that pipe stems are manufactured and tobacco prepared largely at Alexandria, AXEXANDMA. d\ but other tilings are also extensively made, such as native saddle- ry and arms. Cotton stuffs are also woven and dyed, and a great deal of silk embroidery is done. " You see here a young woman at her frame, while her lord A SILK EMPUOIDERER. 92 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS, and master is considering what pattern he shall trace for her at the other end of the piece of material. " They are working in the open air, which in such a climate, if not exposed to the sun's rays, is the plea- santest mode, so that it is usual to see people carrying on their trades in this way/' *^ These people by their dress seem to be Syrians/' ^^ As I have told you, people of all nations settle down in Alexandria, and there are plenty of Europeans there who carry on some of the industries of their own countries, such as making soap, starch, Italian paste, gas, candles, and so on. '^ All these people, being of different religions, must have their places of worship. '^Accordingly, besides the numerous mosques of which you have been complaining, we find Coptic, Armenian, and Maronite churches, as well as those of what are called respectively the Orthodox Greeks and 'the Greek Catholics, and of course the Jews have their synagogues. I have already mentioned St. Catherine's Church which belongs to the Koman Catholics, and there are also Scotch Presbyterian, French and German churches, not to speak of the English St. Mark's. "The Europeans of Alexandria have, however, in- stituted several charitable societies for helping their poor fellow-citizens, and there are two or three hospitals, one managed by the Kaisersworth Deaconesses, and another by the Sisters of Charity, who have also a home for foundlings, while the Christian Brothers have a school of 600 children, 300 of whom receive gratuitous instruction, natives and Europeans of all creeds being alike received. ALEXANDRIA. 93 '^ The schools attached to the Greeks German,, Scot- tish, and American churches are also large and well attended, and here, as at Cairo, the Egyptian Govern- ment has several educational establishments/^ ^^Is there any mission-work going on in Egypt, uncle ? " asked Lotta. "Not very much. I will reserve what there is to DOGS OF THE CITY. say about that till we arrive in Cairo, for it is the principal seat of whatever movement there may be. ^^ You will have seen, however, from what I have told you of Mohammedanism, that it must be very difficult to make an impression upon the followers of that religion ; and I am bound to add that European example has not been, as a rule, of such a nature as to lead to the conviction that the Christian faith must necessarily be the true one.^^ " What nice doggies ! '' said Susie ; " one, two, three, four, five, and all just the same.''^ " Those are street dogs, my little woman, doggies who do not belong to anybody, but just live where they please.^'' " Have they got no home ? " replied the child, upon 94 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. whom the apparent destitution of the dogs seemed to have made a great impression. '^ No one to give them bread and milk, as I do to Rover ? ^' ^' Oh yes ; they are fed, and not badly too ; see how fat and sleek they look ! It is part of the people^s religion to feed them and see that they have water ; and the animals are so secure of their position — at least in the Native quarter — that they never think of getting out of your way, not expecting to meet with unkindness, and neither a horse nor a donkey will tread upon them. I have continually seen mothers with litters of puppies reposing peacefully in the very middle of the roadway. I sometimes made friends with these dogs_, and bought cakes for them in the bazaars; they are yellow, and rather like wolves, but I must confess that the barking and howling they keep up at night are far from pleasant. What is curious is that they have their own quarter of the town allotted to them by some canine law, and will suffer no intruders in their particular streets ; but I found it was quite possible to tame these wild dogs, and that they were as capable of personal attachment as our own household pets; I had two or three of them in succession while I was in Egypt. ''^ *' Oh, uncle ! why did you not bring one home ? '' ^' I wished to do so, for I had grown quite fond of Toby, the last I had, but really I had too much to look after, so I left him with a fellow who used to sell sweet drink or sherbet in the Cairo bazaar, and who promised to look after him and let me have him back when I return there. " I think we have now nearly done with Alexandria. Is there anything more to tell? Let me see. Have I said anything about the catacombs ?" A SHERBET-SELLER. 96 THE LAND OF THE PYEAMIDS. " Oh no, uncle ; are they like those at Rome ? We have been reading about them lately/'' '^ No, Harry ; for you can see nothing of the Roman catacombs until you actually get into them, while those of Alexandria are visible from the deck of the steamer as you come into harbour, though at that distance they look not unlike rabbit-holes in the face of the low hill on which stand Napoleon^s windmills. '^ They are, however, immense excavations extending a very long way, and you could easily be lost in them if you penetrated very far, unless indeed the guides carried ropes and tapers. " I observed that these sepulchres were usually arranged in groups of three, so as to form a cross. No bones or stone coffins were to be seen. Over the entrances were very simple ornaments cut in stone. Some of these tombs are below the sea-level, and these are called the baths of Cleopatra, but for what reason it is impossible to say. '^A few Christian inscriptions, probably as late as the fourth century, have been found in some of the catacombs, these sepulchres being apparently used in- differently for the burial of all the inhabitants. " In laying the foundations of modern houses about Alexandria people sometimes come upon fragments of statues or columns, or pieces of fallen masonry, but scarcely anything remains to testify to the past glories of a city once so magnificent and illustrious. ^' We can now go by rail from Alexandria to all the principal towns in Egypt, and there is a large terminus connecting the different lines. " Near the Ramleh Sta,tion, not far from the New Port, once stood the two great obelisks called Cleo- ALEXANDRIA. 97 patra^s Needles^ one o£ which you know is now on the Thames Embankment in London^ and the other (en- graved on p. 98) has been taken to America. These obelisks were brought to Alexandria from Heliopolis in the time of Augustus, and set up in front of the temple of Csesar. " Some, however, say that it was Cleopatra who erected the temple, and if so that would account for the obelisks having been called her needles. Both are of red granite, and they bear, among other hieroglyphs, the names of Thothmes III., Rameses II., and Seti II. " When I first visited Egypt, one of these monu- ments had fallen down, but the other was still standing. " The fallen one had been given to the English by Mohammed Ali in memory of the glorious termination of the campaign of 1801, but the difficulty and expense of removing it seemed to be too great. In 1877, however, two private individuals. Sir (then Dr.) Erasmus Wilson and Mr. John Dixon, undertook this great work at their own expense, and actually encased the English obelisk in an iron cylinder where it lay, and rolled it into the sea. This new-fashioned iron vessel was then fitted with a rudder, deck-house, cabin, and so forth, and towed to London by a steamer, after having been abandoned in the Bay of Biscay on account of rough weather, and actually lost for a few days.^^ ^' Well, it was certainly ^a great feat,"" said Lotta ; ^^but I do not see much use in doing it.^^ " I would rather leave in each country the memorials of its past,^' returned her uncle. '* But the mania for acquiring is so strong in most people that they will bring home any remarkable thing they can lay their o CLEOPATEA'S NEEDLE (AS IT FORMERLY STOOD). ALEXANDRIA. 99 hands on. The French have been notorious robbers of works of art, but they were obliged to restore most of the pictures and statues removed from Italy by Napoleon when the great war came to an end. '^ My preparations being at length finished I went on board my boat, and then, hoisting the Union Jack, flying a gay little distinguishing pennant, and bidding good-bye to the friends who, according to Egyptian custom, came down to see us off, we loosed from our moorings, and the Fatima began her voyage down the Mahmoodieh Canal on a lovely afternoon in September, just as the elite of Alexandria were taking their airing on its right bank ; and, as it was Friday, the Moham- medan Sabbath, the band was playing. '^ Everything on board the dahabeeyeh had been put into first-rate order, reis, sailors, and dragoman were in capital humour, and I myself not a little pleased to be off. • " After passing the handsome villas and gardens in the immediate neighbourhood of Alexandria the banks of the canal become very monotonous, and continue so, I may say, for the whole distance, although large mounds here and there tell us that we are passing by the sites of some cities that once were famous. *' I have forgotten to mention the various cemeteries outside Alexandria — Christian, Jewish, and Moslem. There is nothing very special about any of them, but the funeral ceremonies of the modern Egyptians remind one very much of what we see depicted in the pictures on the walls of ancient tombs. The burial-place, for in- stance, is often on the opposite bank of the river from that on which the town is situated, and then the corpse is ferried over. But whether this is so or not there G 2 100 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. is always a great concourse o£ people at a funeral, most o£ whom are women, some of tkese specially hired to raise the singular cry very like that you hear on such occasions in country parts of Ireland. It rises and swells, dies away into a plaintive moan, and then re- commences as if with a fresh burst of sorrow. If you are at a little distance the sound is strangely wild and pathetic. ^' Generally a near relative leads the choir of mourners, who wear a white fillet bound round the brow, put dust on their heads, beat their breasts violently, and make every demonstration of excessive grief. ^^ It is the custom among Moslems to pay a visit of ceremony to the tombs of their departed relatives three times every year. '^ It takes about three days with a fair wind to reach Cairo by water; that city was not, however, my im- mediate destination, and twenty-four hours brought me to the mouth of the canal, where, though it took fully an hour to pass through the locks, I spent the time agreeably looking at the pretty village of Atfeh, with its quaintly-shaped houses mingled with trees, and the people outside their doors and on the banks busied in various ways. " The sun was setting as we passed the last barrier and found ourselves on the Nile, and the golden light increased the beauty of the scene. I am sure I shall never forget that first sight of the noble river. " On the opposite bank, a long way off, lies the tower of Fowah, with its towers, palms and minarets ; and barques of many different kinds, with their graceful rigging and pretty sails, were idly lying at anchor or sweeping over the broad expanse of water — rather a con- ALEXANDRIA. 101 trast to the decidedly ugly iron-elads which I had left behind in the harbour of Alexandria. " Then came twilight, short but lovely, and the cool evening breeze, and very soon the sounds from the village were hushed, and all sank into stillness/* AN ARAB CEMETEKY OUTSIDE ALEXANDRIA. CHAPTER IV. THi: DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. ""TTTHO remembers where- V V abouts we were when we left off talking about Egypt P"*^ said Mr. Carrington to his circle of young listeners^ when next they came round him to hear more of his travels. '^ You had just reached the Nile/^ said Lotta, ^^and were going to ascend the river.^^ " Precisely the reverse. My explorations were to begin with the Delta. I suppose I need not tell you whence the triangular portion of Northern Egypt de- rives its name ? '^ ^^ From the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet^ I suppose/* said Harry. '' Of course. And is not this tract lying between the outermost of the seven outlets by which the Nile formerly discharged itself into the Mediterranean a perfect Delta? You can see it very distinctly by THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 1().'5 looking" at the map of Egypt in your Classical Atlas. Canopus and Pelusium are at the two lower corners, somewhat to the right and left of where Rosetta and Damietta, the modern towns at the end of the only two branches of the river that still remain open,, now stand.'' "Yes, I see/' said John. ^^It is quite properly called Delta." " And it is a region of great interest too, for many reasons/' replied his uncle. " Here you have a pretty picture (p. 104) of one of the dykes or embankments, with a buffalo in the water, and Arabs and camels about. It is a very ordinary scene in this part of Egypt." " But why are there so many dykes ?" said practical John. " To regulate the inundations. Do you not know that Egypt is called the 'gift of the river?' Without the fertilising waters of the Nile the narrow valley through which it runs would be as arid as the sandy desert by which it is bounded, for it brings with it from the Abyssinian mountains a very large amount of allu- vial soil which it has washed down during the tropical rains ; and overflowing its banks regularly at a certain season every year, it deposits this rich earth wherever its waters extend, so that to the Egyptian a high Nile means plenty, and a deficient inundation a scarcity of food. It is necessary, therefore, to be very particular to distribute the Nile water as far as possible to every part of the land, and this is done by contrivances of which we shall speak later on. " The Delta being well watered by a network of canals, some of them running in ancient channels, pro- duces splendid crops of corn and cotton^ and also beautiful THE DELTA AND UP TTTE NILE TO CAIHO. 105 palm groves, and contains as many as three hundred villages and several towns. " It was in the eastern part of the Delta, the bordcr- RIVER WALL AT DAMIETTA. land comprised between the present Suez Canal and the Tanitic branch of the Nile^ at that time the richest portion of the land of Egypt, that Joseph, with th© permission of Pharaoh, established his father and his brethren. '^ And there, in the land of Goshen, as it was then called, the children of Israel lived for centuries; but that region has now become so barren, that it is difficult J 06 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. to imagine that it could ever have been so fertile as to deserve to he designated Hhe garden o£ the Lord/ " Then, however, not only did the now-diminished river flow beside it in a plentiful stream, but countless canals, intersecting the country in every direction, dis- tributed its waters to every field and garden, which yielded in great abundance all the necessaries of life. " Here was that great city of Tanis, or Zoan, whose ruins I showed you the other day (p. 27). Zoan, which was rebuilt for Pharaoh by the Israelites, and which is described by an Egyptian poet of the time of Meneptah the oppressor as of surpassing beauty, is now only a poor fishing village called San, but great mounds mark the place where formerly stood two splendid temples surrounded by palaces and gardens ; and ^ not even at Thebes,'' says Ebers, ' are so many monuments of hard granite to be found ; yet of all the magnificent buildings that once stood there, not even the. ground plan can be traced.^ '' So it is with all the cities of the Eastern Delta. " Of Goshen itself, though it gave its name to, and was the capital of a district, we can only recognise the site. "In the Eastern Delta, however, should excavations be largely carried on, more traces of the children of Israel and of their works would probably be found. Accord- ingly, I found my friends the explorers full of hope that important discoveries would eventually be made there. " But it was not till long after my visit to Tanis, in fact not till the year 1883, that M. Naville was so fortunate as to light upon the remains of Pithom- Succoth, one of the great store-cities built for Kameses II. by the Israelites, and the place, as we know from THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 107 the Bible^ where they first halted on their march out of the country of their bondage/^ " Then you did not see Pithom, uncle ? What a pity ! I should have been so sorry to miss it/^ said Lotta. *'\ did not see it then, of course, since it was no! discovered ; but on my way home this time, hearing of the great find, I took a run by train — for you know there are plenty of railways now in Lower Egypt — and satisfied myself of the value of one of the most remark- able of all our Egyptian discoveries. " Pithom is a fortified enclosure almost entirely occupied by scpare chambers, the walls of which are three feet thick. These chambers have no doors, and must have been entered from above. The bricks of which they are made are large and laid with great regu- larity. In fact, ancient Egyptian bricks are better than those of the present day, though made in the same manner, and the bricks of the time of which we are now speaking were mixed with straw, as I myself have seen.'" " Oh ! uncle ! how very interesting ! Do you think that mummies of the children of Israel will ever be found ? Just fancy, if we could discover the tomb of Reuben or Benjamin, or some one of the sons of Jacob T' '^ Yes, Lotta. I do not see why we should not do this, for the Israelites did embalm theii- great men, if not the common people. But I am sure you quite understand that we do not want any proofs of what the Bible tells us, though it is very interesting to see with our own eyes how these people lived and laboured, and the finding of very ancient documents sometimes helps to convince unbelievers. 108 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. *' But we will now leave the sand-heaps and ruins, and go to other parts of the Delta. '* Damietta/ though much fallen in importance, is still one of the largest towns in Egypt, having a population of 29,000. It was formerly consider- od a strong posi- tion, in fact, the key of the Delta, Lind was attacked more than once by the Crusaders. '^In those days it lay nearer the sea than it does at present, having been rebuilt farther inland. But its harbour is little available for com- merce on account of the sand-bar which crosses it, as well as the shallow- ness of its channel. ON THE ROSETTA BRANCH OF THE NILE. Still, it CarricS OU some trade with Greece and Syria, and sends fish and rice into the interior, but the striped calico, to which as coming from there we have given the name of dimity, is no longer THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 109 maxie, nor is there much of interest to be seen in the town. *^ Mansoorah, another town on the Damietta branch of the Nile, is memorable as having been the scene of the defeat of Jean de Brienne in 1221, and it is also the place where St. Louis was imprisoned about thirty years afterwards at the close of the sixth crusade. '^ At Mansoorah I left my dahabeeyeh and made an excursion to Lake Menzaleh, one which you boys would have thoroughly enjoyed. I went in the jolly-boat by the canal of Ashmoon, which is narrow and winding, and in some parts overhung by trees, to the lively bright little town of Menzaleh, so unlike what one expects to find in so out-of-the-way a place, and there took another boat to go on the lake, which is dotted with a number of small islands, some containing interesting ruins. But I will reserve my account of Lake Menzaleh for a future time. *' Of course I had to retrace my steps before I could get upon the Rosetta branch of the Nile, but having once done so a few hours took me to the town of that name. There is. not very much of interest on the way, but an occasional palm-grove beside the banks is a pretty object, and there is generally something in every new scene to occupy an observant mind. '^ You will not, perhaps, be prepared to believe that the Delta forms the larger half of Egypt, but this is really the case, because it is so much wider than any other part. "It contains in fact 11,342 square miles, little more than half of which is cultivable land. '' The northern part, forming the coast line, is oc- cupied by salt-marshes or shallow lakes, and sandy no THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. wastes,, and as a consequence the cli- mate there is damp and depressing. ''To us English- men is due the exis- tence of the western- most of these salt lakes, because the British army when besieging Alexan- dria in 1801, cut off the water supply of that city by let- ting the sea into Lake Mareotis, then a fertile plain with a freshwater lake in its centre. "Besides causing great loss of life, this piece of strategy ruined the climate of Alexandria. "Behind Abookir Bay is another of these salt lakes, and yet farther, to the east of Eosetta, a much larger one. Lake Burullus, between which and Damietta stretch low sand-hills and a dreary desert, all which is in strong contrast with the interior of the Delta, which. A PALM GROVE. THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 11 even with its present disadvantages^, is^ as I have before said_, extremely populous and fertile. *^ The Egyptian peasant farmer might be, and ought to be, a prosperous man. But to raise him to such a condition the irrigation of the country must be better OATE OP ROSETTA. managed. At present the canals are not only badly constructed and badly kept up, but the engineers in charge of them, intent upon making money, sell the water to the highest bidder, giving plenty of water to the rich man and letting the poor man suffer. " It is a sort of thing that happens more or less all over the world, but is perhaps more evident just at present in Egypt than elsewhere. " Rosetta, once a flourishing port, but now a town 112 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. of little consequence Khalifs about 570 a.d was founded by one of the It is situated on the left bank of the river about three miles from the coast, and is a strikingly picturesque walled town, surrounded by extensive gardens which used to attract many visitors from Cairo and Alexandria in former times. Its population is not now more than 14,000, yet it is a pleasant place, and were it not so much out of the ordinary line of march of the tourist would be much frequented. '^ There is no hotel in Ilosetta,but the Franciscan friars are always willing* to give hospitality at their convent. There are several mosques,bazaars,andkhans in the town, the latter being the Oriental substi- tutes for inns, and consist of large court-yards with arched recesses or rooms round it, in which travellers, their merchandise, and their animals can be put up. Many of these khans are splen- did buildings, owing their existence to the charity of some great person who has erected them to the honour of God. An attendant has charge of them, but the IN ROSETTA. THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 113 traveller is obliged to supply himself with all necessaries. However,, in the East it is usual to carry one^s bedding, and food can be obtained from the cook-shops in the bazaars. '^ The northern gate of Rosetta is remarkable on a<3- count of the two towers beside it, which are unlike what are usually seen in Egypt. On .the whole I was glad I had made the excursion. The advantage of having a dahabeeyeh is, that being so independent in the matter of lodging one can stop where and when one likes, and either remain a few days or a few hours as may please one^s fancy. I stayed several days at Rosetta. '^ The houses are vastly superior to those of most Egyptian towns, and I thought some of them quite worthy of being sketched. " The palms there are particularly fine ; but you must not think, children, that it is natural to the palm tree to have a long straight stem with branches only at the top. This is the result of pruning. If the palm were left to itself it would be feathered from the very base, and the tree would not attain either to the same height or fruitfulness, neither indeed would it be so beautiful. "And I must tell you that dates, which seem to us to be much the same thing wherever they come from, are in reality of many different kinds, which the natives easily distinguish from each other. Nubian dates are supposed to be particularly excellent. " A bunch of dates weighs from twenty to twenty- five pounds, and there are usually about two hundred dates in a bunch. The fruit is eaten either fresh or dried in various ways — sometimes kept whole and com- pressed into drums like figs, at others broken up and squeezed into jars or bags, or even pounded and kneaded H 114 THE LAND OF THE PYUAMID8. GATllEHING DATES. into cakes, which are so hard as to require to be cut with a hatchet. " The date palm not merely furnishes nutritious food to millions of people, but it is also most useful for supplying cordage,matting,&c. '' From the leaf- stalks baskets and wicker-work are made, also walking- sticks and fans, and the wood is used for buildings and fences. THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 115 ^' In some parts of North Africa roasted date-stones form a substitute for coffee, and in other places these stones are ground up, oil extracted from them, and the refuse afterwards given to cattle in the form of cake. A SELLER OF DATE BKEAD. '^ Palm wine is also made by tapj^ing the tree and allowing the sap to ferment, but this exhausts it very soon, and also renders the fruit very inferior. An ardent spirit called arrack or raki is distilled from dates. " Each date tree in Egypt is very foolishly taxed for the support of the Government. H 2 176 THE LAND OP THK PYRAMIDS. " I have already said that except in the eastern part, which from want of water has relapsed into the con- dition of a desert, the Delta is extremely fertile, and capable of producing, by means of irrigation, as many as three croj)s in the year. ''I should have told you that there are two kinds of cultivable land in Egypt, that which is naturally covered every year by the Nile at its period of inunda- tion, and which consequently lies under water for several months, and bears only winter crops; and that which requires to be watered by artificial means. " In the Delta the land is mostly of the latter class, and it is for this reason that so many crops can be got out of it, as the fields need never lie fallow. ^' Rice, cotton, indigo, maize, millet, wheat, barley, beans and clover, are the principal crops, and a little sugar-cane is grown. ^^ Lentils, chick-peas, lupines and vetches, as well as gourds, cucumbers, and water-melons, are also largely produced. " In most cases it is sufficient to mercdy sj^inkle any seed over the soft mould and press it in by means of a toothed roller, or very often by palm branches which the cattle drag across. " An Egyptian plough is a very primitive concern, and but little used. *' Their hoes are made of wood. "But the harvesting is the oddest affair, for tbe pulse or grain being either pulled up by the roots, or cut with a sickle, is all heaped together in the middle of the field, and then a waggon with sharp iron wheels is dragged over it by oxen, which go round and round until the ears and stalks are chopped up small, after 118 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. which the whole is thrown about in the wind until the r.haff is blown away. So it is not surprising that with such a mode of winnowing we should find little stones amongst Egyptian lentils. " But here you perceive is the Fatima, close to a village shaded by sycamore fig trees and palms." ^' Do sycamores bear figs in Egypt, then ? " says Johu. ^^Yes. Of course not our sycamore, but one the Arabs call Pharaoh^s fig. It is a fine graceful tree, with bending branches something like those of the wych elm ; and a curious thing about it is that the fruit, which is yellow, does not grow on the small twigs and lighter branches, but on the main trunk and stems. ^*^An Egyptian village looks picturesque enough from a little distance, but very miserable on a closer in- spection. The road to it is a causeway or bank of earth, high enough to be beyond the reach of inundation, and the huts are such as I have described to you already, built of sun-dried bricks with a roof made either of matting or of millet-stalks cemented with mud. There is generally a little yard outside where the animals live and the children play. ''There is nothing like a street, but opposite the house of the head man or sheykh you find a small open space, where the elders meet to smoke their pipes and discuss their affairs. " Every now and then one makes a halt at one of these villages for a washing and baking day ; you see in this sketch that some of the clothes are already hung up to dry, for I need not tell you that the laundry work is done in a primitive manner. " The Egyptian labourer is content with very little. THE DELTA. AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 119 thous'li he works hard. His fare is much the same as that of the sailor, black millet-bread, or unleavened cakes, fruits and vegetables. Even if he happen to possess meat, poultry, or eggs, he will seldom al- low himself to taste them, preferring to make a little money by their sale, for he is al- ways extremely poor. " Here is a pretty little moon- light scene. This kind of boat is ?alled a kanjah, and is one of the commonest boats on the Nile. '' She has, you see, no upper deck, only a kind of little hut as a cabin. '^ These boats are used by the natives for fishing and carrying merchandise, but travellers will also some- times take a kanjah when they want to go far up the river, for a dahabeeyeh will not do in shallow water."*^ ''Egypt would be the very place for John,^^ said Harry, " for he is always rigging and swimming boats, and it seems to me that they play a great part in that country.''' A KANJAH. 120 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. " Of course tliey do, since the Nile may be said to bo the great roadway, as it is also, as I have shown you, the source of wealth. ^' One of our best modern authorities in Oriental matters, Mr. Lane -Poole, al- ready referred to, remarks that 'f ^ ^ the wovdifeUdh, ' peasant,^ lite- rally means a ^ cleaver^ or 'cutter^ of the ground, whereas ' waterer' would be a much more appropriate name for him, as the soil of Egypt requires scarcely any ploughing, but the peasant is really employed from morning till night either in watering the ground or repairing the canals, which is still a kind of watering. " In the Delta the farmers are now so far advanced, as in many instances to have clubbed together to buy steam pumps, but in the rest of Egypt most of the watering is done in a very laborious manner by means of the shadoofs (a lever and bucket), or the sdkiyeh (a water-wheel) . '^ The first consists of a pole with a lump of mud at A LABOURER. THE DELTA AND UP THK NILE TO CAIRO. 121 one end of it as a balance weight, swinging between two posts, and having at its other extremity a lighter pole to which is attached a primitive bucket, made of basket- work or matting, or else of a hoop and a piece of leather. This can be worked by one man who is only able to throw up water to a height of about eight feet, so that when the river is very low, four or five shadoofs, one above another, are needed to raise it to the level of the land. Some of these machines have two levers, and of course two men to work them, but toil as they may it takes six men from dawn to sunset to water two acres of barley, or one of sugar cane. '^ The water when raised is made to flovv along a gutter into one after another of the little squares into which the fields are usually divided by low ridges of earth, or else into furrows. ^^ One thing, however is to be said in favour of the Egyptian peasant. If he works hard he has few anxieties. He need fear no rain and no blight. There is but one thing to dread, namely, ' a bad Nile,^ and that does not often occur. ^^The water-wheel is a better invention, and you will understand howitworks by looking at the picture (p. 122) . '^ Two ropes, you see, pass round it, to which earthen jars are attached, and these fill as they descend, and empty themselves into the channel as they rise. These wheels are as many as thirty feet high, but being worked by buffaloes or bullocks fastened to the horizontal wheel you see higher up which sets the upright wheel in motion, they can be attended to by a woman or a boy, and are thus a great saving of labour.^^ " Why don't they have them everywhere in Egypt, then ? " said Lotta. A WATEE-WHEEL. THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 1:^3 ^' Because they are expensive. Less than £30 will not set one up, and then the owner must have animals too, so the poorer people still cling to the shadoof, though the water-wheel will do six times the amount of work in the twenty-four hours, and can be worked by night as well as day. '* The peculiar creaking of these wheels strikes the traveller disagreeably at first, but it is music in the ears of their owners, and a man^s wealth is often estimated by the number of these machines which he possesses, as it shows pretty nearly the amount of land which he holds. They are picturesque objects, and serve to diversify a little what is often a very monotonous landscape.^' ^' But have these hard-working people of Egypt no amusements, uncle ? '' '^Not very many, but in festival times they thoroughly enjoy themselves. I was fortunate enough to be at Tantah, one of the chief towns of the Delta, just at the time of one of the fetes, lasting eight days, which are held there three times a year, and are a combination of a religious festival and a fair. '' The sight would have amused you very much. *^ The Seyyid-el-Bedavvee is the saint who is thus honoured, and as he is renowned throughout Egypt people flock to Tantah from all parts at these times, as many as 200,000 people being often gathered together, and of course amongst them are many dervishes or Mohammedan friars. ^' After a few prayers have been said at the tomb, and the aid of the Saint has been fervently invoked, the rest of the time of the pilgrims can be spent in business and pleasure. *' Jn the open space round the town tents of all sorts 124 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. if^^ and sizes are erected, that of the sheikh or chief being of course the grandest. " There are booths for the dancing girls, jug- glers, reciters of tales, and all those people who con- gregate at fairs, and even the Arabs of the desert are there. ^^ Horses, mules, ca- mels, donkeys, and cattle are brought for sale. At night the fair is lighted up with rows of gay lan- terns, and the whole effect is very curious, especially when the dervishes are carrying on their strange devotions. " It was whilst wan- A GROUP AT TANTAH. THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. \^5 dering about at Tantah that I first entered a fellah hut; here is a sketch of the in- terior'' (p. 126). '^ Which does not look very com- fortable/' put in Lotta. "No; for the sole furniture con- sists of a few mats and earthen jars; and hollow spaces left in the wall here and there serve as primitive cupboards, and even as fowl and pigeon-h ouses, when the latter have not, as is ve- ry commonly the case, a tower allot- ted to them. These pigeon towers are a most peculiar feature, for they are built on the tops of the houses, and being of coni- cal form, the vil- A BUiilKH. 126 THE LAI?D OF THE PYRAMIDS. lages look like a col- lection of mud sugar- loaves. " The birds which are kept of course make daily inroads upon the corn and other grain,, and they often, in conse- quence, have a hard battle for life with the boys set to watch the crops, who sling stones at them with great eagerness. '^ Besides doing the cooking, wash- ing and mending, theEgyptian peasant woman often works as hard as her husband, carrying A FELLAH HUT. THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 127 heavy water-jars on her head from the well, tending the bullocks at the water-wheel_, and even taking a turn at bricklaying, and yet she finds time to embroider and to spin. *^ Domestic employments are considered to be her most praiseworthy occupation, and she is not required to have much religion, for has not Mohammed laid down the law that 'an hour at the distaff is better than a year's worship^? a remarkably convenient doctrine for eastern men, who like to be well waited on, and see in their wives little more than domestic servants. However, to be just, there is much SOME HOUSEHOLD COMr ANIONS. 128 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. genuine affection between the fellah husband and wife, and the latter has her pleasures too, consisting in parties strictly confined to her own sex, on which occasions she can enjoy a nice bit of gossip, some dancing and sing- ing, and various childish amusements. " The peasants of Egypt are a fine race, well built, broad-chested, and decidedly good-looking. '*^They have very dark skins, black eyes, and splendid teeth, and are remarkably like the men we see depicted on the oldest pictures on the walls of temples and tombs. " Very few of the peasants are land-owners as they used to be ; they are either tenants or day-labourers, but they are a very domestic, contented class of people, always healthy and merry, and ready to chat, to joke, or to sing; they are, however, rather rapacious and avaricious, and not quite above lying aiid thieving, for they have been so long ground down and ill-treated that it would be very strange if they had not imbibed some vices. "Nevertheless there are no people more ready to respond to good treatment, or who can better appreciate genuine kindness, as has been experienced by Lady Duff Gordon and others who have lived amongst them and tried to do them good.''-' '^ What greedy ugly men ! '' exclaimed little Susie ; who of course had not been attending to all this history of the peasants, and had got hold of a picture of fellaheen at meals (p. 130). ^^ Oh ! you think they are greedy, my little one,^' said her uncle ; " because they are eating with their fingers, contrary, to all nursery and schoolroom teach- ing! THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 129 " But these people do not know the use of forks, and it was, and still is, the Eastern custom to put the hand into the dish. '^ These fellaheen have probably only a dish of dukhahy that is, lentils stewed with onions and nicely seasoned with salt, pepper, and herbs, into which they dip their bread. ^' But we will return to the dahabeeyeh, for having finished my inspection of the Delta, I began my ascent of the river, which after I had passed Fooah was of course new to me. ^' There was not much of special interest in this part of the voyage ; here mounds betokening the site of an ancient city, there a deserted village half swept away by the inundation; in one place a number of water- wheels almost completely immersed; again, a brick- built town, with its red and white striped houses, its mosque and minarets, its palms and sycamores, or per- haps tamarisks and weeping willows; while a number of kanjas laden with cotton and other produce were ascending or descending the river. ^* Then the view began to be bounded by hills, and the far-famed Pyramids came in sight, and soon after- wards the towers of the grand, but rather useless, Barrage, which consists of a double bridge spanning both the Damietta and Rosetta branches of the Nile at the point where they separate at the head of the Delta. " The Barrage (p. 132) was intended to hold up the waters of the river during the eight months of ebb, and by keeping them at the level of the soil, to supply Lower Egypt with plenty of water without the need of either water-wheels or levers, but the great sluice-gates I THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CATTIO. 131 which were to effect this have only been set up on the Rosetta side, for the completion of the scheme has been found to be impracticable. '^ In a very short time the Fatima had reached Boolak, the port of Cairo, and the singular old houses, the palms, the shipping, the river itself, and the in- numerable minarets of the city backed by the Mokat- tam Hill, on a spur of which stands the citadel, make a very beautiful picture, particularly if you see it first, as I did, in the light of early morning. " Being very anxious to reach the Pyramids, I made that my first excursion. Indeed, I did not go into Cairo at all until I had gratified my great longing, but being joined by a couple of friends and getting into the jolly- boat, we were soon rowed across the river to the town of Ghizeh on the opposite side, Hajji Ali having engaged donkeys to be in readiness, as we had some distance to go, first along a broad avenue of acacias and tamarisks, then across fields,* and next through a grove of particularly fine palms, in the midst of w^hich is the tomb of some Moslem saint. ■ ' At this spot, which is about half way between Cairo and the Pyramids, we were met by a number of Bcdo«in, who accosting us in broken English, mixed with bits of French, Italian, and German, informed us that they were Hhe Arabs of the Pyramids,^ and begged us to engage them for the ascent, which, how- ever, we declined to do at that moment, so they kept up with our donkeys, shouting, ' Me good Arab,^ ' Take me, mein Herr,^ ^ Si Signor, Arab ver strong man,^ 'Pas possible monter without Arab,' and so on (p. 134). " Two sheykhs and about thirty of their followers live at the Pyramids, and make a good thing of helping I % 132 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. travellers^ though they are not very hard to satisfy when you come to bargain with tnem. " In the present day you simply take a car- riage from your hotel in Cairo, and drive to the Pyramids by a good road, the Prince and Princess of Wales being the first travel- lers who were able to do this without a break in the journey. " On my first visit to Cairo it was very differ- ent, for there was then no bridge across the river, and besides that, you never knew when you would be pulled up by great sheets of water left by the inundation, which caused you to make a considerable detour if they wore not shallow enough to be forded. I3i THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ^' It was when we arrived at one of these obstacles that the Arabs had us at their mercy, for the water was evidently too deep for the donkeys, and besides, **ME GOOD AllAlJ." they would have sunk into the mud even before reaching" it. ''So there was nothing* for it but to leave the animals to await our return^ and as we did not wish to spoil our clothes by wading, each of us got on the back of one of the brawny sons of Ishmael, who joked and laughed and pretended to be about to deposit us: in the deepest part of the muddy water. 14C THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. were not at all sorry to see the grand lunch which Hajji Ali had laid out for us on the lowest steps of the shady- side of King" Khufu's big tomb, and willingly discussed it before proceeding to the disagreeable task of pene- trating to the interior/^ ^' Why do you call it disagreeable, uncle ? ^^ " Well, I think you would find it so, for the air is stifling, and there are plenty of bats, which, being seriously discomposed by the light of our torches, flew about in our faces. " The entrance to the Pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only the Priests knowing where to find the moveable stone that would admit them ; now, however, we go in by an opening made in the north side, about forty-five feet from the ground, covered with a pent- house roof, and then descend by a narrow passage some 320 feet in length, which probably led straight to the sepulchral chamber, but is now cut off by the falling of a granite block, so that one has to turn aside and scramble up one passage and down another, now leaping across a chasm, now climbing with the help of a ladder, if one wishes to visit all these strange chambers, which, as Miss Martineau says, ' look like a fit prison for fallen angels/ There is, however, only one thing to be seen, the great red granite sarcophagus now emptied and broken ; but the effect of the vast cavern-like place, partially revealed by torches, or perhaps wholly so for a moment by magnesium light, is very striking. " On coming out of the Pyramid there was the great Sphinx to visit, but I have already told you what Sphinxes are like, and need only say that the body of this one is 140 feet long, and its head is 30 feet in THE DELTA AND UP THE NILE TO CAIRO. 141 height^ and that it had an altar between its paws to which you ascended by a long flight of steps. It is now, how- ever, so mutilated and so covered by sand that it is difficult to form any idea of its real grandeur. The Arabs call it ' the father of terror.'' " But this must suffice for to-day^s talk, for I have business which calls me else where. ^^ CHAPTER V. CAIRO. SUPPOSE we sit out under the "trees to-day, uncle, it is so lovely/^ said Lotta, '^ and it will be a nice place for one of your talks /^ ^' Oh, yes,^^ replied Susie, dancing and clapping her hands, '' and we will have tea out in the garden too/"* '' Very well, my little woman, I think it is just the thing to do, so get it all ready and I will come/^ When the tea had been duly discussed, and some beautiful strawberries and cream, which Lucy had added to the feast, fully appre- ciated, Harry told Mr. Carrington that they were quite ready to be transported to Cairo. 144 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. '^ We will just shut our eyes, you knovv/^ said the lively boy, '''and fancy ourselves there/"* '' Not a bad plan at this moment,'^ remarked Lotta, '^ but I think if we were leally in Cairo we should want to keep our eyes very wide open, and feel as if we could never see enough, for everything would be so new to us/' ^' Why,'' retorted John, '^ uncle said we should feel as if we had seen it all before, because it is just what we read of in the ' Arabian Nights ' ! " ^' Both things are true, my boy. When you first wander about Cairo you seem almost to be in dreamland; everything is new, and yet to a certain extent familiar, and certainly beautiful beyond anything you have been led to expect. "This is partly the effect of the clear bright air, which makes even common objects look so different from what they do under our dull skies and in our smoky atmosphere, and partly because the forms and colouring are really beautiful in themselves, and at every turn you see something that is worthy of being put into a picture. '^ Cairo is the largest city in Africa, and one also which still retains its thoroughly Arabian character. There is a European quarter there, it is true, but we need not much concern ourselves with it. What you would most enjoy would be a stroll through the bazaars, where every imaginable article is for sale, but where, I am bound to confess, the heat and din are almost in- supportable. '^ We may say that everi/ street in Cairo proper is a bazaar; that is, that the lower part of it consists of a line of shops, such as I described to you when speaking of Alexandria ; they are really called markets. Thus, CAIRO, there is the pipe market, the slipper market, the silk market, the cotton market, the grocers' mar- ket, and so on. In one street you buy fresh and in another dried fruit; you must go to a particular street to find cloth, and then perhaps quite a long- way ofe for braid and buttons. '' The goldsmiths and A STREET IN CAIRO. A SHOP-KEEPER, CAIEO. 147 silversmiths have a quarter to themselves, and there you can examine^ even if you do not wish to purchase, not only the curious and expensive ornaments worn by rich ladies, but also exquisitely wrought vases of many grace- ful shapes (especially those used for sprinkling perfume), little stands of filagree work for holding coffee-cups, ^nd many other things made of the precious metals. ^^In the copper- smiths^ bazaar there are bowls, trays, and various utensils, either em- bossed or engraved in very intricate pattern s c oloured red or black, which are most tempting. " But after all, the goods for sale may be said to form merely a background for the imposing figures of the stately merchants in rich dresses who sit smoking in the most dignified manner in their little stalls, looking so like pashas or great people of some kind that we find it difficult to realise that they wish to sell the things that surround them ; and when you turn wrom these statuesque figures to the dense, ever-shifting crowd, you seem to be beholding a scene in a play. '^ A veiled lady will pass you, wearing a dress of rose-coloured silk confined at the waist by an em- broidered girdle, over all which magnificence is thrown J 2 A VEILED BEAUTV 148 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. a black mantle^ so large and light that it puffs out like a balloon. Such a lady may be walkings in which case she will have loose yellow morocco boots with pointed toes^ or she may be sitting astride a grandly- caparisoned donkey, and you will then get a glimjDse of a bare foot cased in a tiny velvet slipper,, and an arm literally laden with jewelled bracelets ; while the steed, which may be worth from sixty to a hundred pounds, has not merely all kinds of tassels and fringes about his neck and head, and gold embroidery on his high pommeled velvet saddle, but very likely his nicely shaven hind-quarters and legs may be painted in stripes of blue, white, and yellow."*^ '' Oh, uncle ! That is too much ! A donkey wear- ing paint ! " *^ Yes. I daresay he does not like the operation. Or, who knows ? Perhaps he is proud of his finery ! I really believe that some animals are not without vanity. " The lady, however, soon passes out of sight, to be followed by sweetmeat sellers with their trays on their heads, camels laden with planks or stones. Bedouin of the desert in brown and white flowing garments and deeply-fringed headkerchiefs, Armenian priests in long black robes, Persians with strange high caps, and blind, dirty, but niost picturesque beggars; besides water- carriers — most important persons in a climate like that of Egypt — dervishes, soldiers, boatmen, labourers, and people of every shade of complexion, and it might almost be said in every kind of costume ; and overhead are the projecting upper parts of the old houses with their picturesque latticed windows, and between them a rude awning of long rafters and bits of matting, through which here and there a stray sunbeam glints down. " It is said that every street in Cairo has its mosque. CAIRO. 149 Whether this be so or not, you are continually coming upon these striking, if not always beautiful, buildings, and will very often see devout Moslems engaged in prayer. The group to your right shows some of the many postures in which they place themselves at different stages of their devotions. ^' The oldest mosque of all is to be found in whal Europeans call Old Cairo. ^^ This town, partly built on the site of the f ormei capital, is about three miles from the city. Its original name was Fostat, said to be deri- ved from the fostctt, or leather tent, which Amr or Amru pitched there on his invasion of Egypt. MOSLEMS AT PRAYBB» 150 THE LAND OF THE PYEAMIDS. '' Fostat was burned by the Sanieens in 11 68, to pre- vent its falling into the hands of the Crusaders, and not very much of interest now remains in it, except the ruins of the mosque of Amr, with its fine colon- nades, and some curious ancient Coptic churches. " Near the entrance of the 'mosque of the conquest/ as it is called, because of its having been built by Amr, are two columns about eight or ten inches apart, the remnants proba- bly of a number of such double columns that formerly existed. These are now t"^ pillars of ok deal. called the pillars of ordeal, because visitors are invited to attest their faith or piety by passing between them ! A corpulent individual, to say nothing of one of very ordinary pro- portions, would have, it is evident, no chance whatever of being considered a true follower of the Prophet. " There is a tradition that whenever the mosque of A LANE IN THE COfT QUAETEE^. 152 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. Amr shall fall. Mohammedanism will come to an end ; yet no great attempts have been made to preserve it, and it is fast hastening* to decay. ''^All the oriental part of Cairo is divided into quarters which take their names from the class or nationality of the people who inhabit them. Thus there is the Frank quarter, commonly called the Musky, a name which is derived from some relation of Saladin, who built the bridge there. In former times Europeans were not permitted to reside in any other part of Cairo, but now they occupy a number of the adjacent streets. "There is a Jewish quarter, a Copt quarter, the quarter of the water-carriers, and so on. "The Copt quarter contains very good houses, although its streets are so narrow and gloomy. One reason for making the streets so narrow was that they might be cooler in summer, and in fact the inhabitants of the broader and more fashionable streets feel the intense heat of the sun much more than do those who live in the older part of the town. " Here is a poor water-carrier, who has either lost an eyo^ or is suffering from ophthalmia, the terrible disease that destroys the sight of so large a proportion of the population of Egypt, and which is so much increased by the ignorance and superstition of the poor mothers, who think it ^ unlucky ' to wash a baby^s face ; so that you may frequently see unfortunate children quite covered with swarms of flies, and plastered with dirt. " Perhaps in time Christian women desirous of doing good may gain influence with these ignorant creatures, and be able to teach them something better. Tpdeedj I believe, there has been already a small raoye? CAIRO. 153 A WATER-CAHKIER. ment in this direction, but the work must necessarily be very slow, for the people naturally distrust foreigners, ^nd despise those of an^ relig-ion but their own. 154 THE LAND OF THK PYRAMIDS. " It would be necessary to sliow them great kind- ness for a long" time, and to convince tliem thoroug-lily INTERIOR OP A COPTIC CHURCH. f.hat one has no object at heart but their own good, before one could expect them to listen. ^^ With the Copts of course there is more to be done, because they are already Christians, although as a rule religion does not seem to have much active influence over them/^ CAIRO. 155 " I forget who the Copts are/' said John. ^' They are considered to be true descendants of the ancient Egyptians/' said Mr. Carriiigton, " consequently quite a distinct race from the Arabs. Their features are indeed remarkably like those of the people on the ancient monuments. They number about a fourteenth part of the whole population of Egypt. . " The greater portion of them still hold the peculiar doctrines which caused their separation from the Eastern Church early in the fifth century^ and which they con- sider to be the ancient faith, but many have joined what is called tbe Orthodox Greek, and more have united themselves to the Latin church, retaining, however, their singular ritual. Coptic is no longer spoken, but may still be heard in some of the church prayers ; it is one of the oldest languages, and is said to be the same as what is found on ancient Egyptian monuments. " Copts are very expert in calculations, and much employed as accountants, scribes, and book-keepers, although their reputation for honesty by no means stands high. They are usually to be distinguished from Moslems by wearing a black or blue turban, those of the former being generally white. Descendants of the Prophet, and they only, as I think I said before, are allowed to have them green. " Some of the Coptic churches are well worth a visit, especially those at Old Cairo, for they are voiy ancient, and contain much that is curious. ^' Most of these stand within the precincts of the ancient Koman fortress called Babylon, and the columns which support the roofs are Koman. The roofing it- self, though of wood, is very ancient, for the black acacia^, or shittim, is of great endurance. 156 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ^* In the church of the Sitteh Mariam — our Lady Mary — we see one of the earliest forms of Christian churches. There is a font for immersion^, a tank for the washing of feet^ another for infant baptism ; these are all near the entrance, and then there is a screen dividing the catechumens from the rest of the congregation, and another separating the women from the men. '^The sanctuary is also screened off by beautiful wood- carving, inlaid with ivory. About the church are many curious paintings in the early Greek style, amongst them several of St. George, and one of the Sitteh Geminiana and her forty virgins who suffered martyrdom in the time of Diocletian.''^ '' How is it they have adopted our English Saint George, uncle ? '^ '' Rather the other way ! You are something like a Devonshire lady I remember, who on being told that the Arabs made clotted cream, asked if they had learned to make it in her country ! St. George is quite an Eastern saint, and it was probably on the return of the Crusaders that he was adopted as the patron of England. '^ To return, however, to the streets of Cairo, I must not forget to introduce you to the coffee-shops, of which they say there are more than a thousand, for everybody, small and great, drinks coffee, and such coffee too, as you have never dreamed of, so truly delicious is it. ^' The fragrant berry, freshly roasted and pounded, is put into the coffee-pot when the water boils, and stirred up, the pot is then put on the fire until it begins to simmer, when the beverage is poured into the cups while yet creamy. Milk is never used, and sugar but rarely. Cardamom seed is, however, a favourite addition, or the cup is fumigated with the smoke of green mastic* 158 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. " Kicli people perfume their coffee with ambergris, which is said to be delicious, but it is very expensive. ^' The coffee-cups are very small, the best are of fine porcelain. They are always placed in metal stands like egg-cups, instead of in saucers, the stands being more or less elegant, according to the wealth of the owner. " The coffee-shop is open towards the street, and has raised seats in front and round the walls. It is a great centre of attraction, especially towards evening. Thither the shopkeepers and people of lower class resort for a friendly chat, a game, a little music, or one of those recitations in which Easterns so much delight. " The game must, however, be purely one of skill, for those of chance are strictly forbidden, and a gambler is looked upon as the most degraded of creatures, " The two men in the foreground of this picture (p. 157) are playing at mankala/i. They have a kind of chess-board before them with holes in it in which pebbles are placed according to certain rules. This game requires much calculation, and the winner has to pay for all the coffee consumed by the lookers-on as well as by his antagonist. ^^ You see some are attending to the game, and others are listening to music. ^' Poets, singers, and musicians have ever been held in great favour in these countries, and although the Prophet did consider musical instruments the engines of Satan, the pipe, the lute, and the viol are played, and played sweetly too, although the performers are not now rewarded with the lavish profusion which, accord- ing to Mr. Lane in his ' Arabian Society of the Middle Ages/ was customary in former times. ^' Then even 'a beggar who gave an answer in neatly- Cairo. 159 turned verse would find Ms jar filled with gold ; and a good repartee would cram the mouth that uttered it with jewels, and load the speaker's back with costly- dresses. Ono poet left behind him at his death a hun- dred complete court suits, two hundred shirts, and five hundred state turbans. Twenty or thirty thousand gold pieces were even given for a single couplet.' So you see the poet's art was one that paid well. ^^ In a wedding procession, which one not unfrequently meets in the streets, there are always groups of musicians, but the drums are apt to drown the sweeter- sounding instruments. ^' If the wedding be that of people of rank a great display is made, and, in compliance with a curious cus- tom, the party is usually preceded by a water-carrier bearing a goat skin filled with sand and water, which he has even carried about for several hours before the pro- cession started in order to amuse the people by this feat of strength, for the skin thus filled is immensely heavy. '' After the waler-carrier come a number of highly ornamented open cars, separated from each other by groups of dancers, jugglers, and so on, each car containing different tradesmen or artificers, such as pancake and sweetmeat-makers, weavers, tinners of copper vessels, coffee-makers, even whitewashers, all at their respective occupations ; next follow the ladies of the bride's family, and lastly the fair one herself, in a European carriage, wearing a kind of pasteboard crown, over which is a cashmere shawl which covers her from head to foot. Sometimes, however, the ladies all ride asses with high saddles. After the procession there is a feast. " Marriages in the East are managed in a way that 100 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. A KHATIBEU. seems to us curious, the young people being never con- sulted in the matter, or allowed even to see each other before they have become husband and wife. It is the CAIRO. lf)l parents, there fore^ who look out for suitable matches for their sons and daughters ; hut you must remember to have read something of this kind in the Book of Genesis, where we are told of Abraham sending out his faithful servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Isaac. " In Cairo there are old women who exercise the profession of matrimonial agents, and who are called khatibehs or betrothers. These people go from house to house, generally selling ornaments and cosmetics, or other things which are acceptable in hareems, and making it their business to know all about every marriageable girl, and what sum of money her father expects for her. **The law exacts that no woman shall be married without receiving a dowry, which is, of course, pro- portioned to her station in life, and sometimes, therefore, exceedingly small. " When there is a young man to be settled in life, his father has recourse to the khatibeh — unless, indeed, as sometimes happens, the children of two friends have been betrothed from childhood — and the old woman is sure to have a suitable damsel to propose to him, although she does not by any means say so in the first instance, in order to enhance the apparent value of her services. *^ Presently, however, she makes her report, and if it be deemed favourable, the question of money next comes up, for two-thirds of the sum agreed upon must be paid down as soon as the marriage has been arranged, and it will be then spent upon the bride^s trousseau, the other third being delivered up when the marriage contract is signed, probably about a week before the wedding. ^^ This signing of the contract is looked upon as a religious ceremony. K 162 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. " The whole sum. whether less or more, is settled upon the bride, as is also whatever she may bring with her in the way of furniture, dresses, and so on.''' " What a horrid looking old creature this khatibeh (p. 160) is ; ''■' said Harry. '' Sbe looks more like a man than a woman. I should think all the girls would run away when they spied her approaching.'^ '' Not a bit of it. •' In the first place the mother would not allow it. But any visit is an event in a hareem, and the young ladies are glad enough to turn over the goods the old dame has brought with her, and discuss any novelties in the way of silks and ribbons. And as the object of the visit is pretty soon discovered, great care is taken to get into the good graces of the important visitor, and cause her to praise up the favourite daughter to the person who has deputed her to make an inspection. '^The Khatibeh is a personage who very often figures in Oriental poetry and romance, since upon her good offices depends the happiness of many a young couple. '' At present scarcely any Eastern ladies receive an education : they can embroider beautifully, but they have no other occupations beyond paying and receiving visits, examining each others' dresses, looking at dancing or singing girls, eating sweetmeats, and now and then taking the bath, which is quite an important performance. A Turkish bath, you know, consists of several chambers ; and on such occasions the whole place will probably be hired, and a party of friends will resort to it together and spend many hours, not merely in bathing, but in smoking, chatting, and drinking coffee. ^' They also undergo the process of shampooing, which, CArRO. 163 though not exactly pleasant^ makes the joints and musclos delightfully supple. " Whenever you see a cloth hung across the entrance to a bath-house, you know that it is set apart for women. ^* These baths, however, are not at all as handsome as those which we have built in imitation of them, and as there is more vapour than we are accustomed to, they seem very stifling. '^ Here (p. 164) is the interior of a handsome house in Cairo ; the master is reclining on the divan, a long cushioned sofa, and smoking his chibouque, while an atten- dant serves him with coffee. This sketch gives you a very good idea of what an Eastern ENTRANCE TO A WOMAn's BATH. INTERIOR OF AN EASTERN HOUSE. CAIRO. 165 reception room is like ; and here you have one of the hareem, or women''s apartments, which looks out into a garden or a court, and is besides so high up and so ...;^^-(; V^'i/1 -:^ WI^DO\V Ol A HAKEEM. closely latticed that no one could by any possibility see the people behind it. ^' Here (p. 167) is another queer character, but this time decidedly not a woman, for he has a thick grizzly moustache. " This is the Mesahhar, the messenger of the dawn, who goes round the whole city every morning to an- 166 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. iiounce the api:)roaching sunrise, in order tliat every good Moslem may rise and say his prayers before the luminary has passed the horizon. " To this end he beats a tattoo upon his little drum. We should not like to be disturbed in such a manner, but Easterns are early risers, not merely from devotion, but because the cool morning is the best time for work, and they reward themselves for their exertions by a long noontide rest. " I used to follow their example very often, and turn out quite early, for I found the early hours the pleasantest for making excursions. '' Thus I have ascended by the winding road leading to the citadel when the sun was just beginning to touch the gilded dome and minarets of the mosque of Mohammed Ali within its enclosure, and feasted my eyes with the glorious view spread out before me, though most people prefer to do this at sunset. " Immediately below is the city, two miles in length by one in breadth, with its yellow and white flat- roofed houses, its gardens, and countless mosques, in particular that of Sultan Hasan in the foreground, and beyond it on either side the valley of the Nile with its palm groves and pyramids, and the long line of aque- duct which supplies Cairo with its water. Quite at one^s feet is the great square of the Rumayleh, where Moslem culprits are beheaded, those of any other religion being hanged either in the Frank quarter or at the grated window of the Ashrafeeyah, as their blood would, it is considered, defile the soil. "The citadel was built by Saladin in 1166 with stones taken from the smaller pyramids, on one of the spurs of Mount Mokattam, and before . cannon was invented CAIRO 167 may be said to have been a strong position, but it is completely commanded by the summit of the hill, and THE MESA HH All. it was by the device of erecting a battery on the higher eminence that Mohammed Ali forced it to surrender. ]68 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. ^' An Arab historian says that Saladin chose this site for his fortress and palace, because he found that meat would keep there twice as long as in the city. The palace was pulled down to make room for Moham- med Ali^s mosque, the architecture of which is considered so poor as to be rather an eye-sore than the thing of beauty which so prominent an object ought to have been. It is, however, abundantly decorated, and the tomb of the Pasha, covered with green velvet embroidered with gold, may be seen there. The Palace adjoining, also built by him, is handsome, and contains a bath- room of alabaster. " But the most interesting thing is undoubtedly the ancient well a little higher up, which was discovered and cleared out by Saladin, and from this circumstance probably called Joseph^s Well, as the Sultana's name was Yoosuf, though the Arabs fancy that the Patriarch made it. It is nearly 300 feat deep, anl supposed to reach the level of the Nile. The well is cut out of the solid rock, and a winding staircase, rather wet and muddy, leads to the bottom. ^^ Apertures admit a little light, and also enable one to look down into the well. About midway there is a platform, where stands a sakiyah turned by donkeys which raises the water to a tank at this level, a second one at the top bringing it^ up to the surface. A steam-pump may perhaps one day replace this cumbrous machinery.^^ " I suppose, uncle,'^ said Lotta, *' that these are just the same water-wheels as those used in very old times ? Don't you know in the Book of Ecclesiastes there is ' the wheel broken at the cistern.'' ''■' " Yes, Lotta ; that is a good remark. A better image of desolation could not be found, for a broken CAIRO. 169 water-wheel means dearth to the whole neighbourhood surrounding it/"' ^* You said, uncle, you would speak of mission work when you came to Cairo/'' " I did, but unfortunately there is not very much to tell you. The chief hope for bringing the people to give up their false religion lies in the instruction of the young, and this truth seems to be realised by Christians of every denomination, so that schools may be said to be the chief element in mission work in Egypt. Those of Miss Whateley, which have been going on now for many years, and which are supported by voluntary contributions, by a Government grant, and the small payments of the scholars, seem to be making consider- able progress, as she states that she has 700 children on her books, with an average daily attendance of 600, while i»any have to be refused admission for want of space. Miss Whateley has also a Bible-woman who teaches some young women who are too old for school, and there is a medical mission where poor people can have advice and remedies gratis, and at the same time be taught a little of the Gospel. *' The Church Missionary Society has a small station at Cairo, as have the Americans ; and they, as well as the Greeks, the Copts, and the Armenians,, have also schools. " There is a Franciscan church and convent, and near to them are the schools of the Christian Brothers, while the Jesuits have a seminary where a small number of poor young Copts are lodged, fed, and taught gratis, as also a college for children of the higher classes, which appears to be succeeding well. '^ At the same time the conversions to Christianity 170 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. seem as yet to be but few and far between,, for Moslems hold to their religion with great tenacity. '^ Nothing is more curious than the independence of these people with regard to the very means by which they gain their living. A tradesman, for instance, thinks nothing of going off to see a friend, or to say his prayers during the hours of business, or even of shut- ting his shop altogether if he does not feel inclined for work ; and in this case you have no remedy 'f you want to see him ever so urgently, for the little recess where he disposes of his wares is quite unconnected with the house at the back of it, and its owner lives probably a long way off. With these people anything like eagerness or hurry is unknown. They will tell you that ' God is with the patient,^ and will answer your earnest appeal for more energetic action in the most provoking manner with ^ Bukra,^ ' to-morrow,' ^nd the usual addition, ^ if it pleases God.' " In some things, however, they are decidedly ahead of us. For instance, they have had public drinking fountains for centuries both in their streets and beside their mosques, while with us they may be said to be new introductions, and only rarely to be seen. Not only so, but there are everywhere troughs of water for the dogs, and these are daily rej^lenished, the water-carrier being paid a trifle by each shopkeeper for watering the streets and filling the d )gs' troughs. The number of these animals is extraordinary, and as I have told you the people consider it a religious duty to feed them, although they do not often keep them as pets ; though Lane, in his ^ Modern Egyptians,' gives a droll ac- count of a woman, who having no friends or relations became so much attached to her dog, and was so grieved CAIRO. 171 at its death, that she wished to buiy it with Moslem rites. The people, however, discovered the fact, stopped the procession, and were so incensed at the woman's profanity, that, had not the police interposed, they would have torn her to pieces. "There is, or was, an asylum for house- less cats in Cairo, and fed do pigeons are hundreds at some the mosques. "By-the-bye, I not think I have g-iven you an idea what beauti- ful bits of street archi- tecture one lights upon. Some of the gateways and old khans are really remarkable, and the de- licate tracing of the domes, the slender grace of the minarets, and the marble dados and stained fflass windows of the in- teriors of mosques, are A LUUNKING FOUNTAIN. )ften very beautiful. " One of the most characteristic spots in Cairo is the Khan El Khaleely, where are sold cloth, dresses, swords, silks, embroideries, and other Turkish and Persian goods, but especially carpets, the rich blues and greens and reds of which make a perfectly gorgeous display among the Saracenic archways and traceried windows of this picturesque building of the thirteenth century and the narrow streets surrounding it. One very often ENTRANCE TO THE KHAN EL KHALEELY. CATEO. 175 meets also with remains of constructions of the time of the Mamelukes, built into some quite modern erection, and it is a great pity that more of these have not been preserved. *^ I have already spoken of the drinking fountains, which are so numerous in Cairo; but notwithstanding their multiplicity, there is generally a school at- tached to each of them to which boys are sent when they are five or ANCIENT REMAINS IN A MODERN FOUNTAJN. 174 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. six years old ; but before this time they have already begun their education at home, for an Egyptian father seizes the earliest possible moment to teach his little son the two things he deems of the greatest importance : the articles of his faith, and polite behaviour. ^' We are rather astonished when we hear of the words of prayer being shouted into the ear of a new- born baby, but the custom shows at least the anxiety of the parents that religion should be the first thing their child has to do with. After he has thus heard the Adan, a great clashing of brass vessels is made near the unfortunate creature, that he may be hardened against noise ; and after that, again, but for what reason I do Hot know, unless it may be to make him lively, he is put into a sieve and gets a good shaking. " One beautiful thing, however, in Mohammedan education is that a boy learns to pay the utmost respect to his parents, and continues to obey his father at an age when a European son would consider himself quite emancipated, an undutiful child being almost unheard of. Mohammed's saying, ' God's pleasure is a father's pleasure; and God's displeasure is a father's dis- pleasure,' is in fact nothing but a free translation of the Fifth Commandment ; and if we think it going too far to teach a little boy not to sit in his father's pre- sence until invited to do so, and are surprised that a grown man will not permit himself to smoke or lounge before his parent, it must be confessed that we might, with advantage, learn something from a people we are rather accustomed to look down upon. '^ At school the boy is first taught the alphabet, the master writing the letters for each scholar with a reed pen, on a small white board ; and you may see a group CAIRO. 175 of these tiny pupils in their red or white caps, scpiatting on the ground, surrounding their perhaps grey-bearded turbaned teacher, and shouting out their lesson all together as loud as they can, swaying their little bodies to-and-£ro the while; for that seems to be the orthodox mode of conveying the instruction to the brain, as even grown-up students practise it while considering abstruse points of theology. '^ When the little boys know the alphabet they gradually learn to read, but not many of them become proficients in this, being in haste to pass on to what is considered of chief importance, the recitation of certain passages of the Koran. If a young man wishes to know more, he must go to the University of El Azhar, which I consider one of the most remarkable sights in Cairo. ^'The name signifies 'the splendid,^ but externally you see nothing but a vast group of buildings pos- sessing little architectural beauty. " Within is a mosque with a very large open court, surrounded by porticoes divided into smaller compart- ments called riwaks, each of which is destined for students of different nations, for they come from every part of the Mohammedan world to be instructed by the ' Ulamaf' or wise men of the University, whose teaching is entirely gratuitous, while the pupils are maintained out of the endowment left by pious souls to the special riwak to which they belong. Of course the education received at the Azhar is by no means adapted to modern requirements, but the principle on which it is conducted is very noble, as the poorest may learn as much as the very highest in the land. " It is only of late years that any Frank traveller THE "GATE OF POTTAGE," MOSUUE OF EL AZIIAR. CAIRO. 177 has been permitted to enter the Azhar, and indeed the sight of one is even yet not much relished — when I was there one of the students struck me with a book and uttered some contemptuous words, although I had a Turkish official with me. We took no notice, however, for it requires very little to inflame these fiery youths, who are often great fanatics and hate the very sight of a Christian. There were about ten thousand of them, and they sit on the ground round their teachers just as do the little cbildren in the schools. It is very strik- ing to see so many nationalities together, Egyptians, Turks, Moors, Syrians, Indians, and even Malays, their countenances as much as their attire revealing the quarter of the globe from which they had come. ^^The M61id-en-Nebby, or the birthday of the Prophet, is celebrated for eight days with great fes- tivities, and as there are many other of these m61ids, the people do not want for amusement. ^^ But there is a ceremony you must hear about which is quite peculiar to Cairo. It takes place every year when the Nile has risen to a certain height, at the cutting of the dam which has kept its waters from entering the canal that passes through the city. This is done by the Governor in person, and is an occasion of great rejoicing, for it is the harbinger of prosperity to the whole country. '^ But long before this a public crier has gone about announcing day after day the rise of the river, until at last a morning comes when he says it is ^ full Nile,' for which felicitous tidings he expects to be rewarded. According to Mr. Lane-Poole, after many cries of ' God has given abundance,'' he will add, ' May God not cause me to stop before the door of an avaricious woman, nor I. 178 THE LAND OP THE PYRAMIDS. of an avaricious man^ nor of one who measures the water in the jar — nor who counts the bread while it is yet dough — and if a cake be wanting orders a fast — nor who shuts up the cats at supper-time — nor who drives away the dogs upon the wall/ which sarcastic observa- tions will usually draw forth at least a copper, after which he and his train of banner- carrying boys troop on to the next house. '' The height of the river is ascer- tained by means of the Kilometer in the island of Roda opposite to Old Cairo. It was at this place, say the Arabs, that Moses was found by Pha- raoh^s daughter. '^ The Nilometer is a stone chamber built on a level with what was formerly the bed of the river, and has in it a column with seventeen lines upon it showing the height to which the water has reached. As, however, the bed of the Nile is now much higher than it was in ancient times, the column is much more than covered at high Nile. There have been many Nilometers, for THE KILOMETER. CAIRO. 179 this method of measuring was in use even in the time of the Pharaohs. The present one is supposed to have been built a.d. 861. '^ The evening before the cutting of the dam boats of all kinds bring people to Roda, tents are pitched, and fireworks and merry-making go on all night. As Mr. Lane-Poole says ^ the mere sight of the Nile that night is like a scene out of fairyland/ '^ Early next morning workmen are busy cutting away the dam, and when but a very slight thickness is left the Governor of Cairo, and the Kady, or chief magistrate, appear, a formal document is read, a boat with an officer in it pushes away the remaining ob- struction, the Nile flows into the canal, and all Cairo rejoices/' l2 CHAPTER VI. MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. ""YTTHERE are we going VV now ?'^ said John. "I think it is time we left Cairo/^ '^ I could tell you plenty more about it/^ answered Mr. Carring- ton^ '^ but I see you want to be on board the boat again. Very well, the Fatima and her crew are always ready, let us be off. '^ Passing between Ghizeh and its Pyramids on the west, and Old Cairo on the east, we sail into a broad reach of the Nile, where we see on the one side a picturesque mosque with fine trees about it, and on the other a Coptic village, and by-and-bye arrive at Toora, from the quarries behind which so much of the limestone used in building the Pyramids was taken, that it is believed that a great portion of them has entirely disappeared. MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 181 '^It is a striking spot when merely seen from the river, but the quarries themselves are well deserving a visit, not only because they are o£ vast extent, but also on account of the many ancient tablets and inscriptions to be found there. One can also see exactly how the VIEW OF TOORA. Egyptian masons cut out the stone, as there are distinct traces of their work; and even lines on the roof showing the sizes and numbers of different sets of blocks ; as if, as probably was the case, an account had been kept there of the tasks of gangs of labourers. '' By-and-bye a dense forest of date palms tells us that behind it lie the Pyramids of Sakkarah, and as we have not made an excursion to them from Cairo, we 182 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. must do so from Bedreshejn_, where accordingly we make a halt. *^ There are eleven Pyramids at Sakkarah, and o£ these what is called the Step Pyramid is of course the THE STEl' PYRAMID OF SAKKARAH. most remarkable. It is believed to be still more ancient than those of Ghizeh, and I fancy it is generally thought to be an unfinished monument. But there is something at Sakkarah even more wonderful than this ancient Pyramid,, and that is the temple of Serapis^ which it took M. Mariette more than four years to MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 183 uncover, but which became in a short time again com- pletely buried in the sand-drifts o£ the desert. '^ Still he had discovered and sent to Paris a vast number of tablets and statues, and has made it possible for others to descend into the great catacomb beneath it, where had once lain the mummies of thousands of departed bulls. '' None of these are now left, but we still find many of their stone coffins, as much as thirteen or fourteen feet long and eleven high, the size, in fact, of a small room, yet cut out of a single block of granite. " The cost of the funeral of one of these sacred animals was about £20,000. "During his lifetime he was also magnificently provided for. " People who wished to know whether the bull-god was favourable to them were admitted behind the curtain in the Temple of Ptah where he reposed on a soft bed, and were allowed to offer him food. If he ate from their hand, it was considered that all would go well with them ; if he refused to do so, they were doomed. '"' " How could they be so foolish, uncle ? '^ said John. " How, indeed ! But you might as well ask how the people of any heathen nation can believe in their idols ! '^ When once the knowledge of the true God is lost, there is, it seems, no folly too great for human nature to practise. " After leaving Sakkarah and passing the large but uninteresting town of Benisweyf, there is little to be seen on either side of the river save low sand-hills, patches of bright green maize, palms scattered or in groups, and villages more or less picturesque, until you come to the limestone rocks of Gebel-et-Teyr, upon which is perched 1S4 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. what is called the Convent of the Pulley. The Coptic monks who live there are great beggars^ and letting themselves down the face of the cliff, will swim off to a passing boat and ask alms on the ground of being Christians. " Minyeh on a bend of the river is a very pretty place, and has now a railway station, as well as a post and telegraph office ; and some miles higher up you come to Beni Hasan, where are many grottoes in the cliffs. You can see them from the boat, but as they are full of paintings and sculptures, some of them of extreme i»iterest, they require a special visit. In one of these rock-tombs is a painting long supposed to represent the arrival of JosepVs brethren, but in reality executed some centuries before that period. At Tel-el-Amarna and many other places there are also grottoes of the same kind. " A sudden bend in the river brings into sight the fine headlands of Gebel-Abou-Feydeh, with their abrupt precipices sometimes rent into chasms, the resort of countless wild birds, at others pierced by sepulchral excavations which afforded shelter to the anchorites of old, and in one of which St. Athanasius is said to have lived. "It was there that we experienced one of those violent squalls that arise so unexpectedly and as sud- denly calm down, but are not a little dangerous while they last, and it was followed by the khamseen or hot wind, bringing with it clouds of fine dust that penetrates everywhere. " Sioot or Asyoot, the capital of the province and the residence of the governor of Upper Egypt, is really charming. Backed by fine cliffs, and surrounded with 186 THE LAND OF THE PYEAMIDS. gardens, its magnificent trees, old domes, quaint houses, and airy pinnacles group themselves into a lovely picture, to which Arabs, camels, donkeys, and veiled women give just the needed bit of anima- tion. Sioot stands on the site of the '' wolf -city '"' Lyeopolis ; wolf-mummies are often met with there, as well as real wolves also, one of which took himself off rather speedily when we came to make an IN SOOHAQ. MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 187 inspection of the grotto he had chosen for his den. ^^ The view from the cHffs about Sioot is one of great beauty, and as I had a fancy to see it by sunrise, I started off with Haj ji Ali and our donkey boys at about two o^clock in th-e morning. ^' It was not a prudent proceeding in any way. I ran the danger of being pounced upon by Arabs and detained for a ransom, which did not happen to me, and of catching a fever, which did. Nevertheless, I do not regret that escapade. " Resting on a jutting point of limestone, after having climbed on foot the steep part of the rock which the donkeys could not manage, I watched the first light gild the top of the long low line of hills to the east, and then light up the sixteen minarets and some of the houses and gardens of Sioot, falling next on the cemetery, and then upon the river and the white sails skimming across it, till, when the sun had fully risen, the whole landscape was suffused with a haze of deepest violet which no artist could possibly depict. '^ Soohag, another large town, the capital of the province of Girgeh, is large, well-built, and important, but not so picturesque as Sioot, nor even as Girgeh, the former capital. The latter place takes its name from St. George, and contains a considerable number of Christians, with a large Roman Catholic Monastery. Bellianeh, a village standing high on the western bank, is the point from which to start for what the Arabs call Arabat the buried : no less a place than Abydos, once a large and flourishing city built close to the ruins of This, the ancient capital of Egypt and the birthplace of Menes, t%e earlies-t, so far as is known to us, of all its kings. 188 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. '' It is a delightful ride — that to Abydos — taking- us alternately through palm-groves and luxuriant fields AN INHABITANT OF GIRGEII. which when I traversed them were clad in their richest green^ for this may be said to be the most fertile part of Egypt. If you visit it in harvest time it is very inter- MiDDLte AND UPPEH EGYPT. 180 esting to watch the men reaping and the women follow- ing them to glean, while the camels are being laden with the bounteous produce, and the plough with oxen yoked to it is at once driven through the stubble in NEAR ABYDOS. order that other crops may be planted without the slightest delay. " Of This, or Thinis, nothing is left but some crude remains of brick building, but of Abydos there are grand vestiges, the uncovering of which was principally the work of Marie tte. "The large temple begun by Seti I. and com- pleted by his son Rameses II. is wonderfully perfect ; roof, pillars, walls, all are preserved, and the chiselling 190 THE LA.ND OF THE PYRAMIDS. on the latter is something" marvellous^ and what renders it doubly interesting, we actually know the name of the sculptor who executed it. Hi must have indeed been a man of genius to have been able to give us such life-like delineations of the king and his young son ; that one in which they are represented as taming a young bull is especially spirited. In another place Seti and Rameses are offering homage to seventy-six of their de- parted ancestors^, the list of whom begins with Menes and ends with Seti himself. "Rameses II. also erected a temple at Abydos, but it is not in nearly so good preservation as that of his father. '^ The sailors had been taking advantage of the halt to have a baking and washing day, and after their even- ing meal and a smoke out of the queer cocoa-nut water pipe, which was always handed from one to another, amused themselves, as they often did, with their primitive music and dancing. '* Seating themselves in a circle, one taking the tar or tambourine, another the darabukkah, a curious funnel-shaped drum made of sun-dried clay, the wider end of which is covered with parchment, the chief singer gives the key-note by leading off with a kind of prolonged wail, which the others soon after take up one by one, until all unite in a sort of indescribable howl or cry, after which prelude the first singer will execute sundry wonderful but very unmusical roulades, always received by the others with great applause, as testified by loud and empha!.ic grunts (I can call them nothing else) of Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! " Then comes a chorus accompanied by the instru- ments, and a peculiar measured clapping of hands, and MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 191 in the intervals between eacli performance a man stand- ing in the centre utters strange groans through a long red trumpet^ wriggling about at the sapae time in 'the wildest contortions, at which the others laugh heartily. '^At night, with the light of a lantern gleaming upon some of their dark faces, while others are in shadow, this turbaned group of quaint musicians is ex- tremely picturesque; and though at first one thinks Arab melody disagreeable, it grows upon one in time till one gets almost to like this strange concert.^'' ^' I do not think I should ever arrive at that point,^^ remarked Lotta. " Oh ! It is extraordinary,^^ said her uncle, *' how one becomes accustomed to all sorts of things which at first seem strange and even displeasing. ^^ From Abydos a road leads to what are called the great and the western Oases. Do you know what I mean by an Oasis, children ? ^' " I think so,^' said Lotta. ^^ Is it not a green spot in the desert?'''' ^' Not a bad definition. An Egyptian Oasis is a de- pression into which the water of the Nile penetrates by filtration through the rocks, and then bubbles up, generally at a somewhat high temperature, causing the greenness you speak of ; but you must not think of an Oasis as a spot, but as a district many miles in length, with a large Arab population, many towns, and much cultivation. There are many Oases^ and several caravan routes lead through them ; without such breaks in the wilderness the san^y Egyptian deserts would be im- passable. *^ But we must spread our sail, and stop no more, even though we pass the imposing temple of Denderah, 192 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. and many other places of interest, until we reach Liixor, for there we have to make a considerable halt, A SriUNG IN THE DESERT. that we may take a survey of the splendid ruins of Thebes.-'' ''1 suppose/' said Harry, "that Thebes is the grandest place on the Nile, for it is the one we hear mentioned most frequently.'' MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 193 '' It is indeed unlike anything that one has seen, or anything that one will see, during the Nile voyage, but it will be very difficult to convey to you any adequate idea of the place in few words ; I will, however, do my best. " Imagine then a vast green plain intersected by the river, and bounded by the long ridges of the Libyan and Arabian hills, which at this point form a great amphitheatre, as they close in upon the Nile, after making a wide curve on either side of it ; and in this rock-girdled enclosure picture to yourselves various groups of temples, more than twenty in all, which, though more ruined than those of some other parts of Egypt, are unrivalled as to grandeur of design and rich- ness of ornamentation. You must remember that Thebes, like London, is built on both sides of the river. ^^ The first sight that greets you as you are on the point of arriving, is the long row of columns and huge gateway of the Temple of Luxor on the eastern bank, in front of which, and even intermingled with the ruins, is the large Arab village of that name, which means ^ the palaces.' Here your dahabeeyeh is moored, probably in company with several others; at all events there are many boats about, and the place altogether is gay-look- ing and picturesque. " It is here that we find those pylons and statues of Rameses II., which you have already seen, for the buildings at Luxor are chiefly the work of that monarch and his somewhat remote predecessor, Amenoph III. ^^ The twin colossal statues now standing in lonely desolation on the plain opposite, once guarded the portal of M 191 TUE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. Amenoph's western temple. One of these measures sixty- four feet, and its compeer was of the same height until shattered by some convulsion of the earth. This broken statue is called ' the vocal Memnon/ that name having been erroneously given to it by early Roman visitors. statues op amenoph iii. (the further one is called the vocal memnon.) Whether from natural causes, such as the effect of heat upon a cracked stone wet with dew, as has been con- jectured, or whether by some artifice of the priests, the broken colossus is said to have given forth sweet sounds, compared by some to the breaking of a harp-string, at the hour of sunrise, and it is covered with inscrip- tions dating as far back as the time of Nero, testi- fying to the wonder and admiration of those tourists of ancient days who had listened to this strange morning MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 195 " There are two ways of visiting the Theban ruins ; by daylight to examine details, by torchlight and moonlight to get a better idea of their overpowering grandeur. Most travellers can spend but a few days in these investigations^ and are hardly able to form to THE VALLEY OF THE TOMBS OF KINGS. themselves a picture of what must have been the glories of ' the city of the hundred gates '' in the days when she could send forth twenty thousand armed chariots at the bidding of her victorious kings. It really requires months to make anything like an adequate study of Thebes, and at my first visit I could not remain very long, and therefore considered myself extremely for- tunate in meeting with an old acquaintance in the shape of a German savant engaged in the study of hiero- M 2 196 THE LAND OF THE PYEA3IIDS. glyphics, who was most kindly willing to assist me in my survey, and who began by inviting me and one or two others to take tea with him in his picturesque dwelling-place, namely, the small temple at one time the abode of Champollion, and afterwards that of Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, who carried on similar studies. ^^ He had screened off a part of the large hall for a sleeping apartment, the rest of it being furnished with a divan, tables and chairs, and plenty of books and writing materials. " In the chamber opening off to the right the Arab cook was busy preparing the coming meal, and his fire showed quite plainly some inscriptions running round that part of the building, while that to the left was made use of for a stable, and there we saw a horse, three donkeys, and even a little flock of sheep, with four of the large, strong dogs of Erment as their body- guard. " Large torches, placed here and there, brought some parts of the temple into bright light, while others remained in deep shadow, the farther recesses appearing quite cavernous, and suggesting the possible presence of wolves, jackals, and snakes, which indeed do abound in all the ruins. ^^ After a time, leaving the gipsy camp, we went to see what is probably the noblest architectural work ever executed — the Hall of Columns in the Great Temple — and in that clear atmosphere could plainly discern every piece of sculpture upon which the moonbeams fell. Perhaps you will comprehend better the size of this hall if I tell you that it occupies as much ground as a large cathedral, and that of its 134 columns each of the twelve central ones measures thirty feet in circumference, and MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 197 about 62 feet in heiglit. The roof^ which consisted of great slabs of stone painted on the inside in blue ar.d gold, has almost wholly fallen away, but some of the enormous gateways or pylons are still entire, and you see also fragments of pillars, broken colossal statues, and great masses of masonry lying on the ground in confusion, partly covered with drifts of sand, and amongst them are palm trees and Arab huts, while every now and then one of the owners of these latter appears on the scene with a long lance in his hand. " Many of the columns represent the lotus plant, the capital being intended for the flower and the shaft for the stem ; and you must recollect that here as in other temples, walls, columns, and gateways are covered with historical sculptures of extreme interest ; for example, on the outside of the south wall we find depicted the campaign of the Shishak of the Bible against Palestine, as we know from the names of the conquered cities inscribed over the warriors. "An avenue of sphinxes once extended the whole distance, a mile and a half, between Karnak and Luxor. "We must, however, cross to the other side of the river, not to inspect the temples there, which are of the same character as those we have been speaking of, but to visit some of the sepulchres in the vast cemetery situated in the gloomy gorges of the Libyan hills. " There are several ranges of these tombs, the last resting-places of kings, queens, priests and ordinary people. Even before the days of Ptolemy many of the royal burying-places had been opened and rilled of their treasures, and ever since they have been con- stantly invaded by people in quest of mummies and 198 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. other relics. The Government of Egypt now, however, very properly prohibits the removal of antiquities by any persons not authorised to take them, and objects of TUE MARKET-PLACE AT ESNEH. antiquarian value are consigned to the Museum of Boolak. These valleys are shut in on every side by steep clifPs of glaring white limestone, and in these clifPs are the excavations. You go down a long narrow passage, the walls of which, as you see' by the light of the torches. MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 199 are covered with pictures^ and enter large chambers similarly decorated, in some of which may be seen a sarcophagus. In the royal tombs these pictures usually represent the passage of the soul to another life^ and its judgment, but other subjects are also introduced^ for instance, there are kitchen scenes, minstrels playing on harps, people having a game of draughts, warlike implements, domestic furniture, a naval engagement, and thousands of other most curious things, the descrip- tion of which would be endless ; but perhaps I have said enough to incite you to read more about Thebes for yourselves at some future time. " Esneh, my next stopping-place on the Nile, which is said to be the healthiest spot in Egypt, is an im- portant town, and a capital place for replenishing one''s stock of provisions, as such things are dear higher up. '^At Edfu there is a splendid temple in perfect preservation, standing, too, in a cleared space, so that you get an exact idea of what these buildings really were like. From its top you have a very fine view. "Above Edfu you come to Gebel Silsileh, or the Gorge of the Chain ; a striking spot where the river, in that place at its narrowest* dimensions, has cut its way through the sandstone rocks. The Arabs have a tradition that at one time navigation was here barred by a chain thrown across the river. The finely-situated temple of Kom Ombo next comes in sight, and as you make your way southwards, the remarkable dom-palm makes its appearance, shadoofs and water-wheels are very frequent, and masses of rock and granite boulders betoken one's nearness to the First Cataract ; and then the picturesque town of Assouan shut in by granite 200 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. rocks, with the island of Elephantine opposite to it, come in sight, and steering through the narrow channel between them you reach the mooring-ground. *^^ Assouan, the ancient Syene, being the frontier- town of Egypt, is the mart for all the produce of the Soudan and Central Africa, such as ivory, gum-arabic, ostrich-feathers, and skins, which you often see in quantities on the t river-bank guar- ded by Nubians, Ababdeh Arabs, negroes, and people of other African races; while within the town you meet Turks, Egypt- ians, Greeks, and other foreigners. " The quar- ries from which ASSOUAN. the red granite used in the con- struction of the Pyramids and other ancient monuments was taken lie behind Assouan, and there one can see a large obelisk, not entirely detached from the rocks, lying just as it was left by the workmen, as well as a sarco- phagus, evidently broken in the making and discarded, and some unfinished columns. " The island of Elephantine, one of the Arabic names of which means the island of flowers, is at some seasons attractive from its greenness, but there is very little of interest to be seen there. MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 201 ''The ascent of the First Cataract would^ I am sure,ha,ve been most amusing to all of you^ though, perhaps indeed^ COFFEE-SHOP AT ASSOUAN. Susie would have been afraid ; however, there is really nothing to fear, although the noise and bustle are tre- mendous. The Cataracts are simply a succession of rapids, and where the river is high there is but little MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 203 trouble in passing them if your boat be not too large, but when it is low there is a good deal of difficulty. A Nubian pilot takes the command, and he has a number of people on the banks to help him with tow-ropes^ &c. The river is full of huge boulders, which often allow but a very narrow channel through which to steer, and besides there are many islets. On one bank there are sand-hills, on the other most picturesque rocks, sometimes sharp and jagged, but more often rounded by the action of the water. " At intervals the eye is refreshed by the sight of palm or acacia trees, and whenever a sufficiently large sand-bank occurs, there are small crops of maize, millet, tobacco, beans, and other vegetables. " The river is constantly so shut in by its rocky boundaries that it has quite the appearance of a lake, and then after a time a narrow passage becomes apparent, which takes you into a fresh reach, with more vistas of dark violet- coloured frowning rocks. '^ Nothing could be more picturesque than our sailors and their dusky Nubian assistants, as they scrambled over the massive boulders, or crept along narrow ledges much higher than our heads, pulling the tow-rope, while the pilot and our second reis waded or swam out in order to free it from obstructions. ^^ How the men scolded, and quarrelled, and laughed, and chattered, and shouted, it would be impossible to tell you. ^' At what they call ^ the third gate ' we had to get out and scramble over the rocks in order to lighten the boat, which looked very pretty with her red flag and gay awning, as she laboured upwards, and thanks to the punting and towing of her indefatigable crew and their 204 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. helpers, stemmed the current. Sometimes one of the ropes would break, and down would go the haulers, and the boat of course would swing round, but the disaster would be repaired and the work would go on again; until finally we arrived at the end of the last rapid, and were able to sail up to Mahattah, a village charmingly situated in a small inlet with a beautiful background of palms and sycamores. *^ On the half-mile of beach stretching in front of it was a trader^s camp; and native boats of all sizes and colours, and much more numerous than those of Assouan, thronged the bay ; for here the traders of the Soudan disembark their goods, which on account of the cataract have to be taken by land to Assouan, where they are re-shipped. " A group of camels and their drivers, the quaint vehicle of a wandering huckster, tents, huts, donkeys, dogs, wild-looking half-naked men, and wholly naked children, unveiled women in dark blue dresses, wearing ornaments made of white and brown shells and silver, were moving about in all directions, and offered many subjects for the painter^s brush ; but the grandest picture by far is that which lay before me at the turning-point of my first journey, the lovely island of Pliilse, crowned with its temples, its pylons, its colonnades, and its feathery palms, and set in a complete framework of majestic rocks and purple mountains. " We moored close to the eastern bank, where were a good many kanjas, and forthwith for our edification a number of urchins coming from the few huts on the island floated about on pieces of wood, now darting along with the current, now stemming it most vigorously, and seeming quite as much at home in the muddy Nile as on MIDDLE AND UPPER EGYPT. 205 terra firma. They are, indeed, an amphibious race these dusky Nubians, and very curious is it to watch women and girls crossing the river with jars, baskets, or bundles of canes upon their heads, no other part of them being A WANDERING HUCKSTER. visible, as sitting on the trunk of a small tree they paddle their singular ferry-boats by the movement of their arms. " To the worship of Isis the island of Philse was especially consecrated, and her great temple is, in my opinion, taking everything into account; one of the most beautiful of Egyptian ruins, and much of the vivid colouring of the interior still remains fresh and uninjured. 206 THE LAXD OF THE PYRAMIDS. ''An hour and. a half takes one by the western channel back to Assouan, and there preparations are made for the descent of the river. These consist mainly in taking away the big mast and sail, replacing them with smaller ones, and putting in seats for the rowers. ''Our sailors also took in a somewhat curious cargo for sale in Cairo, namely as many as seven monkeys, besides sundry curiosities, such as the fringed girdles worn by way of petticoat by the girls who live beyond the Cataract and which are sold to travellers under the comical name of ' Madame Nubia,^ whips of hippopotamus hide, and so on. Some of the monkeys were too newly caught to be allowed their freedom, but two of them, a big fellow named Abd-el-Aboo, and a little one called Fatima, were very amusing, and would come into my cabin and jump upon my shoulder, and expect to be regaled with pomegranate seeds and other delicacies. r^^ BUINS AT PHIL^. CHAPTER VII. THE RED SEA. AND THE SUEZ CANAL. " "T AM afraid/^ said Lotta, on JL Mr. Carrington^s next appear- ance in the schoolroom^ ^^ that our nice Egyptian talks are over. You took us about the Delta, uncle, and up the Nile, so I suppose there is no more to hear.^^ "Well, as I am leaving you in a day or two,''"' said Mr. Carrington, " there is little more time ; still, I do not think your idea of Egypt would be complete i£ we did not say a few words about the Red Sea, and that important modern work the Suez Canal. ^^ " I should like to know something of both,^"* replied Harry, ^' and first of all why that sea is called red ? " '^ There are various theories upon that point,"*^ said his uncle, "and nothing is known with certainty. It has been conjectured that ' reedy sea ■' is really its proper appellation, but I think it more likely that as the Greeks gave the name Red Sea to the Persian as well as the Arabian Gulf, the word red is their literal translation of THE RED SEA AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 209 Edom, as the country bordering upon these waters was anciently called. /^ Very desolate are the shores of the Red Sea. It is surrounded by desert^ the Arater is brackish^ and there is no vegetation. From a picturesque point of view^ however, we find in some parts much to admire, as the mountains about it are very varied in outline, and being composed of rocks of many different stratifications their colouring VIEW OP SUEZ. is most singular, and in some lights very beautiful, the alternating shades of broWn, yellow, dark red, and grey mingled with white, appearing at one time perfectly dis- tinct, and at another melting into a deep violet or a soft vapoury delicious blue. ^^ In the time of the Ptolemies there were six trading stations on the west coast of the Red Sea, but of these Koseyr and Suez (the ancient Clysma) are the only ones now existing. The former of these was once a very flourishing place, for thirty thousand Mecca pilgrims passed through it, every year, and it was also the j^ort whence the corn of Arabia was despatched to other countries, but the railway from Cairo to Suez and the N 210 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. Suez Canal have so completely changed the course of traffic that Koseyr is now nothing more than an insig- A STREET IN SUEZ. nificant village. Suez is merely a poor half-Europeanised town^ with a few tolerable shops, a native bazaar, two or three mosques, an English hospital, and the store- houses of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. The DONKEY-BOYS IN SUEZ. N 2 212 THE LAND OF THE PYllAMTDS. Waterworks which supply the town draw their store from the Fresh- water Canal, of which we heard so much during the war in 1882. This is for the most part a revival of the canal which anciently connected one arm of the Nile with the city of Heroopolis in the Delta. A great part of it having become choked up, it was first re- opened and extended only in order to supply the work- men engaged on the works of the Suez Canal with drinkable water, but it has since become invaluable to that part of the country which it traverses. " Donkeys and donkey-boys are as much a feature of Suez as of other Eastern resorts of travellers, one of the excursions for which they are put into requisition being that to what Dean Stanley has called ' the Rich- mond of Suez,^ the little oasis of Ain Moosa, or the Wells of Moses, a picturesque spot which some identify with Marah, and others with Elim. The water bubbles up for the most part in holes dug in the earth, but one of the wells is composed of very ancient masonry. A pretty garden surrounds them. " Tradition has it that Ain Moosa is the place where Miriam sang her triumphant song after the discomfiture of Pharaoh and his host. It is now a great place for picnics. '^ The Suez Canal, by which the route to India has been so materially shortened, and so many benefits con- ferred upon a great portion of the world, owes its existence, as every one knows, to the untiring energy and determined perseverance of M. Ferdinand de Lesseps. "The desirability of connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, had, however, been perceived as long ago as the time of Seti I., who is said to have been TTIE RED SE/l AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 213 the first to attempt such a work^ though it seems only to have taken shape in the reign of Pharaoh Necho, about B.C. 610. '^ Darius Hystaspes continued the undertaking nearly M. DE LESSEPR. a century later, bufe its completion was reserved for Ptolemy Philadelphus, and in the time of Cleopatra it had already become impassable. " But this canal did not provide direct communica- tion between the two seas^ as it only began at Bubastis, 2U THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. near the present town o£ Zagazig, so that vessels had, before entering it, to ascend a portion of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. It ended at Arsinoe, a little to the north of Suez. '^ When Napoleon was in Egypt in 1798, he him- IN THE SUEZ CANAL. self examined the traces of this old canal, and projected the construction of another which should run straight from sea to sea, but the idea was abandoned on account of a supposed difference of level, which would, it was imagined, have simply caused the Red Sea to run dry. '^ England was, however, informed, so early as 1830, by one of her officers, the late General, then Captain, Chesney, R.A., that this difference of level was far too slight to be capable of causing any such fatality ; and as this statement was confirmed in 1846 by a commis- THE RED SEA AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 215 sion, of which the celebrated engineer_, Stephenson, was a member, we might, had we so pleased, have been the first to inaugurate the great enterprise which the dis- tinguished Frenchman brought to so happy a termi- nation. '^M. de Lesseps first started his company in 1858, and after immense diflftculties, political as well as finan- cial, the canal was opened in 1869, the rejoicings on the occasion, in which all Europe participated, having cost the Egyptian Government an enormous sum. ^'The canal, which is a hundred miles in length, starts from the east side of the Bay of Suez, and after crossing a low, marshy plain, enters a deep cutting, through which it flows into the Bitter Lakes. '' These, which before the canal was made were only salt marshes, are now large sheets of water from twenty to thirty feet deep; and the same thing has happened to the crocodile lake (Lake Timsah), which from being a reedy pond has become a fine expanse of inland sea. *'0n this lake is the modern town of Ismailia, originally built to accommodate the workmen, but now of small importance. '^ The canal next makes a bend to the East, cutting through the highest point of the Isthmus, and passing through the Balah Lakes, after which it runs along the eastern side of Lake Menzaleh, until it terminates in the newly-built harbour of Port Said, on the Mediter- ranean. ^^ In its earlier stages the work of constructing the canal was principally carried on by means of hand- labour, Greeks, Albanians, Montenegrins, Germans, and Italians uniting in it with the Egyptian fellaheen. Camels, horses, and donkeys assisted, however, in 216 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. carrying away the earth on their backs^ the donkeys, which were very numerous, being so intelligent as to need merely the word of command to send them off in long files between the place where they were loaded and that where their burden was to be de- ISMAILIA. posited, after which they would return in the same way to receive another load without being accompanied by any driver. '^ Very soon, however, a number of most ingenious machines were constructed to do the work of excavation, and, in particular, steam dredgers with long spouts, which were able to take out and deposit an extraordi- nary amount of soil in a very short time. Even now THE RED SEA AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 217 the canal would soon fill up again, were not dredgers continually at work to keep it clear. '^ As I said before, the latter part of the Suez Canal is carried through Lake Menzaleh, and from the deck of a big steamer one has an uninterrupted view over this A DIIEI)^>ER AT WORK. great expanse of a thousand square miles of water, on which at certain seasons may be seen countless flocks of flamingoes, pelicans, herons, geese, ducks, white spoon- bills, and even swans. " Never in my life did I see such swarms of wild- fowl as on Lake Menzaleh. In some parts of it the right of killing birds is rented from the Government, and they are then taken in nets in great numbers. THE RED SEA AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 219 '^ Visitors, of whom there are often many, for it is a favourite place for sport, generally pitch their tents on the islands, taking care to get as far away as possible from their marshy banks, as the damp and exhalations are unhealthy. ^' Fishing is the great occupation of the people about the lake, as many as between three or four thousand persons being employed in it, who make use of four hundred boats of different kinds, some of which contain a tank or well in which to keep the fish alive. "■ One village is most curious, as it is so wholly given up to fish that there is nothing else to be seen; the people making their living entirely by catching and salting it, and it almost seems, moreover, to be their only food. It is said that the Egyptian Government makes £60,000 a year by farming out the fishing.'''' " Oh ! uncle ! I should like to go to Lake Menzaleh,'^ said Harry, ^' and go in for a regular bit of sport. I would go out with those fellows and see how they did everything, and I would bring home a fine lot of staffed birds too.'''' ^' Yes, it is a grand place for an ornithologist. I brought home many birds from there, as well as from other parts of Egypt. You shall see my collection some day. '^ About Lake Menzaleh you also meet with a good many Arabs of the desert, and they would interest you, too. " Kantarah, on the Suez Canal, about a mile and a- half from Lake Menzaleh, was one of the principal caravan stations on the road from Egypt to Syria, and «ven now travellers pass through it who are making 220 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. their journey by way o£ Gaza and El Areesli^ and these always have an Arab escort. " But the Bedouin often pitch their tents in the A liEDOrlX SHEYKIl. desert, a little beyond the lake; it is one o£ their regular camping grounds. ^■' ^' Did you see them, uncle ? ^' " Oh yes, often ; both there and elsewhere, and have travelled with them for weeks together.^'' " Did you share one of their tents ? '* ^' No. I had my own, which was much more com- THE RED SEA AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 2ai fortable. Though the Arab does call his tent his house, it is but a poor sort of lodging". " It is made of stuff woven from goats' hair, and is generally black, but sometimes striped with white. This tent covering will keep out the heaviest rain. " The tent is oblong, and about twice as wide as it is A BEDOUIN ENCAMPMENT. deep. It is supported by nine posts, three in the centre and three at each end, those in the middle being the highest. The front part is open, at least in the day-time, and the whole is divided into two apartments, one for the men and one for the women, a piece of stuff fastened to the centre poles forming the division. " When you pay a visit to a Bedouin Sheykh, he will in all probability invite you to eat, and very possibly send a young man to his flock for a sheep or a goat, just as you read in the Book of Genesis that Abraham did. '222 THE LAND OP THE VYKAMIDS. and make a feast for you ; or if it be not the time of day for a meal, or if you will not allow liim to take so much trouble, he will at any rate offer you coffee. ^^This is always prepared in the presence of the guest,, the berries being first roasted in an iron ladle and then pounded in a mortar. The coffee is thick and frothy, and has of course neither milk nor sugar, but its flavour is usually very fine. " While you are chatting with your host and the coffee is being got ready, the women, on their side of the tent, are making bread. '^ Would you like to know how this is done ? '' '^ Oh, yes, please, uncle/'' ^' They mix maize-flour with water and flatten this paste out into a large round cake upon a circular piece of iron, if the tent possesses such a Commodity, or upon the skinny side of a sheep-skin if they have no other substitute for a bake-board, and then, sweeping aside the embers, they lay the cake on the heated ground, and cover it up completely with hot ashes'. In ten minutes it will be sufficiently baked, and it is then pulled out and tapped smartly with a stick to free it from dust, after which perhaps it may be eaten with treacle, or it may accompany the favourite dish of bourgool/^ " What is bourgool, uncle ? ^'' said Lotta. ^' It is wheat that has been boiled with leaven, dried in the sun, and afterwards kept for about a year to season. It is cooked with butter and oil, and forms as you may suppose a greasy mess. *^ Bourgool, rice, and dates are the things upon which Arabs usually live. On great occasions, how- THE RED SEA AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 223 ever^ a sheep is killed. A traveller^ for instance, will now and then present one to his Arab escort, and then they have a splendid feast, cooking the animal whole in the embers like the cake, and consuming every bit of it, even the in side. ^^ " How disgusting ! " said Lotta. "It is rather barbarous,'''' replied Mr. Carriugton, " but Arabs are not civilised people. ^^ This, however, is only an episode. We will re- turn to the Suez Canal, or rather to Port Said, its Mediterranean harbour, now a town of 10,000 inhabi- tants, which only came into existence when the works commenced, the very ground it stands upon having had to be made.''"' *' How so, uncle ? '' "The site was chosen as being that which was nearest to deep water, so the foundations were con- structed with enormous labour by dredging out the shallows and putting down vast blocks of concrete manufactured for the purpose. " And when you learn that every drop of drinking water for the workmen had for some time to be brought from Damietta, a distance of thirty miles, and that across Lake Menzaleh in Arab boats which were often delayed and sometimes lost, you will have a little idea of the sufferings of these poor fellows, and of their wonderful endurance. The result, however, has been the construction not only of a town with docks, quays, churches, hospitals, hotels, and mosques, but also of one of the safest and best harbours along the coast, for the great breakwaters on either side of it render it at all times approachable, and it has also a very fine light- house." 224 THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS. ^' Oh, thank you, uncle/^ said Harry ; '^ if we ever go to India and pass through the Suez Canal we shall remember all you have told us. I almost think this last is the pleasantest of your talks.^'' "I hke it very much/-' said Lotta, ^'but the whole account of Egypt has been so interesting that it is difficult to siiy what part one likes best. I only hope we may have some more chats of the kind at another time. It is such a pleasant way of learning what other parts of the world are like.'" AX fORT SAID. Print Edition, 3s. 6d. English Literature, Library of. By Prof. Henry Morley. Complete in Five Vols., 7s. 6d. each. English Literature, The Dictionary of. By W. Davenport Adams. Cheap Edition. 7s. 6d. English Literature, Morley's First Sketch of. Revised Edition. 7s. 6d. English Literature, The Story of. By Anna Buckland. 3s. 6d. English Writers. By Prof. Henry Morley. Vols. L to XL 5s. each. Etiquette of Good Society. New Edition. Edited and Revised by Lady Colin Campbell, is. ; cloth, is. 6d. Fairway Island. By Horace Hutchinson. Cheap Edition. 3s. 6d. Fairy Tales Far and Near. Re-told by Q. Illustrated. 3s. 6d. 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