CHAPTER XXXV.—ON THE WAY HOME.
FOR two days after the sand-storm, it gives us pleasure to write, the weather was cold, raw, thoroughly unpleasant, resembling dear New England quite enough to make one homesick. As late as the twenty-eighth of March, this was. The fact may be a comfort to those who dwell in a region where winter takes a fresh hold in March.
We broke up our establishment on the dahabeëh and moved to the hotel, abandoning I know not how many curiosities, antiquities and specimens, the possession of which had once seemed to us of the last importance. I shall spare you the scene at parting with our crew. It would have been very touching, but for the backsheesh. Some of them were faithful fellows to whom we were attached; some of them were graceless scamps. But they all received backsheesh. That is always the way. It was clearly understood that we should reward only the deserving, and we had again and again resolved not to give a piastre to certain ones of the crew. But, at the end, the obdurate howadji always softens; and the Egyptians know that he will. Egypt is full of good-for-nothings who have not only received presents but certificates of character from travelers whom they have disobliged for three months. There was, however, some discrimination in this case; backsheesh was distributed with some regard to good conduct; at the formal judgment on deck, Abd-el-Atti acted the part of Thoth in weighing out the portions, and my friend took the rôle of Osiris, receiving, vicariously for all of us, the kisses on his hand of the grateful crew. I shall not be misunderstood in saying that the faithful Soudan boy, Gohah, would have felt just as much grief in bidding us good-bye if he had not received a penny (the rest of the crew would have been inconsolable in like case); his service was always marked by an affectionate devotion without any thought of reward. He must have had a magnanimous soul to forgive us for the doses we gave him when he was ill during the voyage.
We are waiting in Cairo professedly for the weather to become settled and pleasant in Syria—which does not happen, one year with another, till after the first of April; but we are contented, for the novelties of the town are inexhaustible, and we are never weary of its animation and picturesque movement. I suppose I should be held in low estimation if I said nothing concerning the baths of Cairo. It is expected of every traveler that he will describe them, or one at least—one is usually sufficient. Indeed when I have read these descriptions, I have wondered how the writers lived to tell their story. When a person has been for hours roasted and stifled, and had all his bones broken, you could not reasonably expect him to write so powerfully of the bath as many travelers write who are so treated. I think these bath descriptions are among the marvels of Oriental literature; Mr. Longfellow says of the Roman Catholic system, that it is a religion of the deepest dungeons and the highest towers; the Oriental bath (in literature) is like this; the unwashed infidel is first plunged in a gulf of dark despair, and then he is elevated to a physical bliss that is ecstatic. The story is too long at each end.
I had experience of several different baths in Cairo, and I invariably found them less vigorous, that is milder in treatment, than the Turkish baths of New York or of Germany. With the Orientals the bath is a luxury, a thing to be enjoyed, and not an affair of extreme shocks and brutal surprises. In the bath itself there is never the excessive heat that I have experienced in such baths in New York, nor the sudden change of temperature in water, nor the vigorous manipulation. The Cairo bath, in my experience, is gentle, moderate, enjoyable. The heat of the rooms is never excessive, the air is very moist, and water flows abundantly over the marble floors; the attendants are apt to be too lazy to maltreat the bather, and perhaps err in gentleness. You are never roasted in a dry air and then plunged suddenly into cold water. I do not wonder that the Orientals are fond of their bath. The baths abound, for men and for women, and the natives pay a very small sum for the privilege of using them. Women make up parties, and spend a good part of the day in a bath; having an entertainment there sometimes, and a frolic. It is said that mothers sometimes choose wives for their sons from girls they see at the baths. Some of them are used by men in the forenoon and by women in the afternoon, and I have seen a great crowd of veiled women waiting at the door at noon. There must be over seventy-five of these public baths in Cairo.
As the harem had not yet gone over to the Gezeereh palace, we took the opportunity to visit it. This palace was built by the Khedive, on what was the island of Gezeereh, when a branch of the Nile was suffered to run to the west of its present area. The ground is now the seat of gardens, and of the most interesting botanical and horticultural experiments on the part of the Khedive, under charge of competent scientific men. A botanist or an arboriculturist would find material in the nurseries for long study. I was chiefly interested (since I half believe in the malevolence of some plants) in a sort of murderous East Indian cane, which grows about fifteen to twenty feet high, and so rapidly that (we were told) it attains its growth in a day or two. At any rate, it thrusts up its stalks so vigorously and rapidly that Indian tyrants have employed it to execute criminals. The victim is bound to the ground over a bed of this cane at night, and in the morning it has grown up through his body. We need such a vengeful vegetable as this in our country, to plant round the edges of our city gardens.
The grounds about the palace are prettily, but formally laid out in flower-gardens, with fountains and a kiosk in the style of the Alhambra. Near by is a hot-house, with one of the best collections of orchids in the world; and not far off is the zoological garden, containing a menagerie of African birds and beasts, very well arranged and said to be nearly complete.
The palace is a square building of iron and stucco, the light pillars and piazzas painted in Saracenic designs and Persian colors, but the whole rather dingy, and beginning to be shabby. Inside it is at once a showy and a comfortable palace, and much better than we expected to see in Egypt; the carpenter and mason work are, however, badly done, as if the Khedive had been swindled by sharp Europeans; it is full of rich and costly furniture. The rooms are large and effective, and we saw a good deal of splendor in hangings and curtains, especially in the apartments fitted up for the occupation of the Empress Eugénie. It is wonderful, by the way, with what interest people look at a bed in which an Empress has slept; and we may add awe, for it is usually a broad, high and awful place of repose. Scattered about the rooms are, in defiance of the Prophet's religion, several paintings, all inferior, and a few busts (some of the Khedive) and other pieces of statuary. The place of honor is given to an American subject, although the group was executed by an Italian artist. It stands upon the first landing of the great staircase. An impish-looking young Jupiter is seated on top of a chimney, below which is the suggestion of a house-roof. Above his head is the point of a lightning-rod. The celestial electrician is discharging a bolt into the rod, which is supposed to pass harmless over the roof below. Upon the pedestal is a medallion, the head of Benjamin Franklin, and encircling it, the legend:—Eripuit coelo fulmen. 1790. The group looks better than you would imagine from the description.
Beyond the garden is the harem-building, which was undergoing a thorough renovation and refurnishing, in the most gaudy French style—such being the wish of the ladies who occupy it. They are eager to discard the beautiful Moorish designs which once covered the walls and to substitute French decoration. The dormitory portions consist of passages with rooms on each side, very much like a young ladies' boarding-school; the rooms are large enough to accommodate three or four occupants. While we were leisurely strolling through the house, we noticed a great flurry and scurry in the building, and the attendants came to us in a panic, and made desperate efforts to hurry us out of the building by a side-entrance, giving signs of woe and destruction to themselves if we did not flee. The Khedive had arrived, on horseback, and unexpectedly, to inspect his domestic hearths.
We rode, one sparkling morning, after a night of heavy rain, to Heliopolis; there was no mud, however, the rain having served to beat the sand firm. Heliopolis is the On of the Bible, and in the time of Herodotus, its inhabitants were esteemed the most learned in history of all the Egyptians. The father-in-law of Joseph was a priest there, and there Moses and Plato both learned wisdom. The road is excellent and planted most of the distance with acacia trees; there are extensive gardens on either hand, plantations of trees, broad fields under cultivation, and all the way the air was full of the odor of flowers, blossoms of lemon and orange. In luxuriance and riant vegetation, it seemed an Oriental paradise. And the whole of this beautiful land of verdure, covered now with plantations so valuable, was a sand-desert as late as 1869. The water of the Nile alone has changed the desert into a garden.
On the way we passed the race-course belonging to the Khedive, an observatory, and the old palace of Abbas Pasha, now in process of demolition, the foundations being bad, like his own. It is said that the favorite wife of this hated tyrant, who was a Bedawee girl of rank, always preferred to live on the desert, and in a tent rather than a palace. Here at any rate, on the sand, lived Abbas Pasha, in hourly fear of assassination by his enemies. It was not difficult to conjure up the cowering figure, hiding in the recesses of this lonely palace, listening for the sound of horses' hoofs coming on the city road, and ready to mount a swift dromedary, which was kept saddled night and day in the stable, and flee into the desert lor Bedaween protection.
At Mataréëh, we turned into a garden to visit the famous Sycamore tree, under which the Virgin sat to rest, in the time of the flight of the Holy Family. It is a large, scrubby-looking tree, probably two hundred years old. I wonder that it does not give up the ghost, for every inch of its bark, even to the small limbs, is cut with names. The Copt, who owns it, to prevent its destruction, has put a fence about it; and that also is covered all over. I looked in vain for the name of “Joseph”; but could find it neither on the fence nor on the tree.
At Heliopolis one can work up any number of reflections; but all he can see is the obelisk, which is sunken somewhat in the ground. It is more correct, however, to say that the ground about it, and the whole site of the former town and Temple of the Sun, have risen many feet since the beginning of the Christian Era. This is the oldest obelisk in Egypt, and bears the cartouche of Amenemhe I., the successor of Osirtasen I.—about three thousand b. c., according to Mariette; Wilkinson and Mariette are only one thousand years apart, on this date of this monument. The wasps or bees have filled up the lettering on one side, and given it the appearance of being plastered with mud. There was no place for us to sit down and meditate, and having stood, surrounded by a swarm of the latest children of the sun, and looked at the remains as long as etiquette required, without a single historical tremor, we mounted and rode joyfully city-ward between the lemon hedges.
In this Spring-time, late in the afternoon, the fashionable drive out the Shoobra road, under the arches of sycamore trees, is more thronged than in winter even. Handsome carriages appear and now and then a pair of blooded Arab horses. There are two lines of vehicles extending for a mile or so, the one going out and the other returning, and the round of the promenade continues long enough for everybody to see everybody. Conspicuous always are the neat two-horse cabriolets, lined with gay silks and belonging to the royal harem; outriders are in advance, and eunuchs behind, and within each are two fair and painted Circassians, shining in their thin white veils, looking from the windows, eager to see the world, and not averse to be seen by it. The veil has become with them, as it is in Constantinople, a mere pretext and a heightener of beauty. We saw by chance one day some of these birds of paradise abroad in the Shoobra Garden—and live to speak of it.
The Shoobra palace and its harem, hidden by a high wall, were built by Mohammed Ali; he also laid out the celebrated garden; and the establishment was in his day no doubt the handsomest in the East. The garden is still rich in rare trees, fruit-trees native and exotic, shrubs, and flowers, but fallen into a too-common Oriental decay. Instead of keeping up this fine place the Khedive builds a new one. These Oriental despots erect costly and showy palaces, in a manner that invites decay, and their successors build new ones, as people get new suits of clothes instead of wearing the garments of their fathers.
In the midst of the garden is a singular summer-palace, built upon terraces and hidden by trees; but the great attraction is the immense Kiosk, the most characteristic Oriental building I have seen, and a very good specimen of the costly and yet cheap magnificence of the Orient. It is a large square pavilion, the center of which is a little lake, but large enough for boats, and it has an orchestral platform in the middle; the verandah about this is supported on marble pillars and has a highly-decorated ceiling; carvings in marble abound; and in the corners are apartments decorated in the height of barbaric splendor.
The pipes are still in place which conveyed gas to every corner and outline of this bizarre edifice. I should like to have seen it illuminated on a summer night when the air was heavy with the garden perfumes. I should like to have seen it then thronged with the dark-eyed girls of the North, in their fleecy splendors of drapery, sailing like water-nymphs in these fairy boats, flashing their diamonds in the mirror of this pool, dancing down the marble floor to the music of soft drums and flutes that beat from the orchestral platform hidden by the water-lilies. Such a vision is not permitted to an infidel. But on such a night old Mohammed Ali might have been excused if he thought he was already in El Genneh, in the company of the girls of Paradise, “whose eyes will be very large and entirely black, and whose stature will be proportioned to that of the men, which will be the height of a tall palm-tree,” or about sixty feet and that he was entertained in “a tent erected for him of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds, of a very large extent.”
While we were lounging in this place of melancholy gaiety, which in the sunlight bears something the aspect of a tawdry watering-place when the season is over, several harem carriages drove to the entrance: but the eunuchs seeing that unbelievers were in the kiosk would not permit the ladies to descend, and the cortege went on and disappeared in the shrubbery. The attendants invited us to leave. While we were still near the kiosk the carriages came round again, and the ladies began to alight. The attendants in the garden were now quite beside themselves, and endeavored to keep our eyes from beholding, and to hustle us down a side-path.
It was in vain that we said to them that we were not afraid, that we were accustomed to see ladies walk in gardens, and that it couldn't possibly harm us. They persisted in misunderstanding us, and piteously begged us to turn away and flee. The ladies were already out of the carriages, veils withdrawn, and beginning to enjoy rural life in the garden. They seemed to have no more fear than we. The horses of the out-riders were led down our path; superb animals, and we stopped to admire them. The harem ladies, rather over-dressed for a promenade, were in full attire of soft silks, blue and pink, in delicate shades, and really made a pretty appearance amid the green. It seemed impossible that it could be wrong to look at them. The attendants couldn't deny that the horses were beautiful, but they regarded our admiration of them as inopportune. They seemed to fear we might look under, or over, or around the horses, towards that forbidden sight by the kiosk. It was useless for us to enquire the age and the breed of the horses. Our efforts to gain information only added to the agony of the gardeners. They wrung their hands, they tried to face us about, they ran hither and thither, and it was not till we were out of sight of the odalisques that they recovered any calmness and began to cull flowers for us, and to produce some Yusef Effendis, as a sign of amity and willingness to accept a few piastres.
The last day of March has come. It is time to depart. Even the harem will soon be going out of town. We have remained in the city long enough to imbibe its atmosphere; not long enough to wear out its strangeness, nor to become familiar with all objects of interest. And we pack our trunks with reluctance, in the belief that we are leaving the most thoroughly Oriental and interesting city in all the East.
