My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

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.