At eight o'clock we stopped at Katanah for supper, and I climbed the bank to see if I could obtain any information about the Children of Israel. They are said to have crossed here. This is the highest point of the low hills which separate Lake Menzaleh from the interior lakes. Along this ridge is still the caravan-route between Egypt and Syria; it has been, for ages unnumbered, the great highway of commerce and of conquest. This way Thothmes III., the greatest of the Pharaohs and the real Sesostris, led his legions into Asia; and this way Cambyses came to repay the visit with interest.
It was so dark that I could see little, but I had a historic sense of all this stir and movement, of the passage of armies laden with spoils, and of caravans from Nineveh and Damascus. And, although it was my first visit to the place, it seemed strange to see here a restaurant, and waiters hurrying about, and travelers snatching a hasty meal in the night on this wind-blown sand-hill. And to feel that the stream of travel is no more along this divide but across it! By the half-light I could distinguish some Bedaween loitering about; their little caravan had camped here, for they find it very convenient to draw water from the iron pipes.
It was quite dark when we presently sailed into Lake Menzaleh, and we could see little. I only know that we held a straight course through it for some thirty miles to Port Said. In the daytime you can see a dreary expanse of morass and lake, a few little islands clad with tamarisks, and flocks of aquatic birds floating in the water or drawn up on the sand-spits in martial array—the white spoonbill, the scarlet flamingo, the pink pelican. It was one o'clock in the morning when we saw the Pharos of Port Said and sailed into the basin, amid many lights.
Port Said was made out of nothing, and it is pretty good. A town of eight to ten thousand inhabitants, with docks, quays, squares, streets, shops, mosques, hospitals, public buildings; in front of our hotel is a garden and public square; all this fed by the iron pipe and the pump at Ismailia—without this there is no fresh water nearer than Damietta. It is a shabby city, and just now has the over-done appearance of one of our own western town inflations. But its history is a record of one of the most astonishing achievements of any age. Before there could be any town here it was necessary to build a standpoint for it with a dredging machine.
Along this coast from Damietta to the gulf of Pelusium, where once emptied the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, is a narrow strip of sand, separating the Mediterranean from Lake Menzaleh; a high sea often breaks over it. It would have saved much in distance to have carried the canal to the Pelusium gulf, but the Mediterranean is shallow there many miles from shore. The spot on which Port Said now stands was selected for the entrance of the canal, because it was here that the land can be best approached—the Mediterranean having sufficient depth at only two miles from the shore. Here therefore, the dredgers began to work. The lake was dredged for interior basins; the strip of sand was cut through; the outer harbor was dredged; and the dredgings made the land for the town. Artificial stone was then manufactured on the spot, and of this the long walls, running out into the sea and protecting the harbor, the quays, and the lighthouses were built. We saw enormous blocks of this composite of sand and hydraulic lime, which weigh twenty-five tons each.
It is impossible not to respect a city built by such heroic labor as this; but we saw enough of it in half a day. The shops are many, and the signs are in many languages, Greek being most frequent. I was pleased to read an honest one in English—“Blood-Letting and Tooth-picking.” I have no doubt they all would take your blood. In the streets are vagabonds, adventurers, merchants, travelers, of all nations; and yet you would not call the streets picturesque. Everything is strangely modernized and made uninteresting. There is, besides, no sense of permanence here. The traders appear to occupy their shops as if they were booths for the day. It is a place of transit; a spot of sand amid the waters. I have never been in any locality that seemed to me so nearly nowhere. A spot for an African bird to light on a moment on his way to Asia. But the world flows through here. Here lie the great vessels in the Eastern trade; all the Mediterranean steamers call here.
The Erymanthe is taking in her last freight, and it is time for us to go on board. Abd-el-Atti has arrived with the baggage from Cairo. He has the air of one with an important errand. In the hotels, on the street, in the steamer, his manner is that of one who precedes an imposing embassy. He likes state. If he had been born under the Pharaohs he would have been the bearer of the flabellum before the king; and he would have carried it majestically, with perhaps a humorous twinkle in his eye for some comrade by the way. Ahman Abdallah, the faithful, is with him. He it was who made and brought us the early morning coffee to-day,—recalling the peace of those days on the Nile which now are in the dim past. It is ages ago since we were hunting in the ruins of Abydus for the tomb of Osiris. It was in another life, that delicious winter in Nubia, those weeks following weeks, free from care and from all the restlessness of this driving age.
“I shouldn't wonder if you were right, Abd-el-Atti, in not wanting to start for Syria sooner. It was very cold on the boat last night.”
“Not go in Syria before April; always find him bad. 'Member what I say when it rain in Cairo?—'This go to be snow in Jerusalem.' It been snow there last week, awful storm, nobody go on the road, travelers all stop, not get anywhere. So I hunderstand.”
“What is the prospect for landing at Jaffa tomorrow morning?”