And the outcome of three or four minutes of hauling and noise enough to raise a ton, is about a quart of mud!
The river panorama is always varied and entertaining, and we are of a divided mind between a lazy inclination to sit here and watch the busy idleness of the population, or address ourselves to the much that still remains to be seen in Cairo. I ought to speak, however, of an American sensation on the river. This is a little steam-yacht—fifty feet long by seven and a half broad—which we saw up the Nile, where it attracted more attention along the banks than anything else this season. I call it American, because it carries the American flag and is owned by a New-York art student, Mr. Anderson, and an English-American, Mr. Medler; but the yacht was built in London, and shipped on a large steamboat to Alexandria. It is the first steam-vessel, I believe, carrying anything except Egyptian (or Turkish) colors that has ever been permitted to ascend the Nile. We took a trip on it one fine morning up to Helwân, and enjoyed the animation of its saucy speed. When put to its best, it makes eighteen miles an hour; but life would not be as long on it as it is on a dahabeëh. At Helwân are some hot sulphur-springs, famous and much resorted to in the days of the Pharaohs, and just now becoming fashionable again.
Our days pass we can hardly say how, while we wait for the proper season for Syria, and regard the invincible obstacles that debar us from the longed-for desert journey to Sinai and Arabia Petra. The bazaars are always a refuge from the heat, a never-failing entertainment. We spend hours in lounging through them. We lunch at the shops of the sweatmeat makers, on bread, pistachio-nuts, conserve of roses, I know not what, and Nile-water, with fingans of coffee fetched hot and creamy from the shop near by. We give a copper to an occasional beggar: for beggars are few in the street, and these are either blind or very poor, or derweeshes; and to all these, being regarded as Allah's poor, the Moslems give cheerfully, for charity is a part of their religion. We like also to stand at the doors of the artisans. There is a street where all the workmen are still making the old flint-lock guns and pistols, and the firearms with the flaring blunderbuss muzzles, as if the object was to scatter the charge, and hit a great many people but to kill none. I think the peace society would do well to encourage this kind of gun. There are shops also where a man sits before a heap of flint-chalk, chipping the stone with a flat iron mallet, and forming the flints for the antiquated locks.
We happen to come often in our wanderings, the distinction being a matter of luck, upon a very interesting old city-gate of one of the quarters. The gate itself is a wooden one of two leaves, crossed with iron bands fastened with heavy spikes, and not remarkable except as an illustration of one of the popular superstitions of the Arabs. The wood is driven full of nails, bits of rags flutter on it, and human teeth are crowded under the iron bands. It is believed that if a person afflicted with headache will drive a nail into this door he will never have the headache again. Other ills are relieved by other offerings, bits of rag, teeth, etc. It would seem to be a pretty sure cure for toothache to leave the tooth in this gate. The Arabs are called the most superstitious of peoples, they wear charms against the evil-eye (“charm from the eye of girl, sharper than a spike; charm from the eye of boy, more painful than a whip”), and they have a thousand absurd practices. Yet we can match most of them in Christian communities.
How patiently all the people work, and wait. Complaints are rare. The only reproof I ever received was from a donkey-boy, whom I had kept waiting late one evening at the Hotel Nil. When I roused him from his sleep on the ground, he asked, with an accent of weariness, “how much clock you got?”
By the twenty-third day of March it is getting warm; the thermometer is 81°. It is not simply the heat, but the Khâmaseen, the south wind, the smoky air, the dust in the city, the languor. To-day it rained a few drops, and looked threatening, just as it does in a hot summer day at home. The outskirts of Cairo are enveloped in dust, and the heat begins to simmer over the palaces and gardens. The travelers are leaving. The sharp traders, Jews from Bagdad, Syrians, Jews from Constantinople, Greeks, Armenians from Damascus, all sorts, are packing up their goods, in order to meet the traveler and fleece him again in Jerusalem, in Beyrout, in Damascus, in Smyrna, on the Golden Horn. In the outskirts, especially on the open grounds by the canal, are the coffee-booths and dance-shanties—rows of the disreputable. The life, always out of doors even in the winter, is now more flamboyantly displayed in these open and verandahed dwellings; there is a yielding to the relaxation of summer. We hear at night, as we sit on the deck of our dahabeëh, the throbbing of the darabookah-drum and the monotonous song of the dissolute ones.
