Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

So chanted Matthew Arnold of the English of to-day. And if we are to believe what is preached to us and hurled at us, it is a reproach even more applicable to Americans than to the English themselves. One American traveller, however, wishes to record modestly a disbelief in the universal truth of this idea. Many of us are, indeed, haunted by our business; many of us do glance and nod and bustle by; it is a class, and a large class. But these hurried people are not all; an equal number of us, who, being less in haste, may be less conspicuous perhaps, are the most admiring travellers in the world. American are the bands who journey to Stratford-upon-Avon, and go down upon their knees—almost—when they reach the sacred spot; American are the pilgrims who pay reverent visits to all the English cathedrals, one after the other, from Carlisle to Exeter, from Durham to Canterbury. In the East, likewise, it is the transatlantic travellers who are so deeply impressed by the strangeness and beauty of the scenes about them that they forget to talk about their personal comforts (or, rather, the lack of them).

There is another matter upon which a word may be said, and this is the habit of judging the East from the stand-point of one's home customs, whether the home be American or English. It is, of course, easy to find faults in the social systems of the Oriental nations; they have laws and usages which are repugnant to all our feelings, which seem to us horrible. But it is well to remember that it is impossible to comprehend any nation not our own unless one has lived a long time among its people, and made one's self familiar with their traditions, their temperament, their history, and, above all, with the language which they speak. Anything less than this is observation from the outside alone, which is sure to be founded upon misapprehension. The French and the English are separated by merely the few miles of the Channel, and they have, to a certain extent, a common language; for though the French do not often understand English, the English very generally understand something of French. Yet it is said that these two nations have never thoroughly comprehended each other either as nations or individuals; and it is even added that, owing to their differing temperaments, they will never reach a clear appreciation of each other's merits; demerits, of course, are easier. Our own country has a language which is, on the whole, nearer the English tongue perhaps than is the speech of France; yet have we not felt now and then that English travellers have misunderstood us? If this is the case among people who are all Occidentals together, how much more difficult must be a thorough comprehension by us of those ancient nations who were old before we were born?

The East is the land of mystery. If one cares for it at all, one loves it; there is no half-way. If one does not love it, one really (though perhaps not avowedly) hates it—hates it and all its ways. But for those who love it the charm is so strong that no surprise is felt in reading or hearing of Europeans who have left all to take up a wandering existence there for long years or for life—the spirit of Browning's "What's become of Waring?"

All of us cannot be Warings, however, and the time comes at last when we must take leave. The streets of Cairo have been for some time adorned with placards whose announcements begin, in large type, "Travellers returning to Europe." We are indeed far away when returning to Europe is a step towards home. We wait for the last festival—the Shem-en-Neseem, or Smelling of the Zephyr—the annual picnic day, when the people go into the country to gather flowers and breathe the soft air before the opening of the regular season for the Khamsin. Then comes the journey by railway to Alexandria. We wave a handkerchief (now fringed on all four sides by the colored threads of the laundresses) to the few friends still left behind. They respond; and so do all the Mustaphas, Achmets, and Ibrahims who have carried our parcels and trotted after our donkeys. Then we take a seat by the window, to watch for the last time the flying Egyptian landscape—the green plain, the tawny Nile, the camels on the bank, the villages, and the palm-trees, and behind them the solemn line of the desert.

At sunset the steamer passes down the harbor, and, pushing out to sea, turns westward. A faint crescent moon becomes visible over the Ras-et-Teen palace. It is the moon of Ramadan. Presently a cannon on the shore ushers in, with its distant sound, the great Mohammedan fast.

CORFU AND THE IONIAN SEA

Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.

Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour;

Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;

Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:

"It may be we shall touch the happy isle!"

—Translated by Andrew Lang.

Not long before Christmas, last year, I found myself travelling from Ancona down the Adriatic coast of Italy by the fast train called the Indian Mail. There was excitement in the very name, and more in the conversation of the people who sat beside me at the table of a queer little eating-house on the shore, before whose portal the Indian Mail stopped late in the evening. We all descended and went in. A dusky apartment was our discovery, and a table illuminated by guttering candles that flared in the strong currents of air. Roast chickens were stacked on this table in a high pile, and loaves of dark-colored bread were placed here and there, with portly straw-covered flasks of the wine of the country. No one came to serve us; we were expected to serve ourselves. A landlord who looked like an obese Don Juan was established behind a bench in a distant corner, where he made coffee with amiability and enthusiasm for those who desired it. It was supposed that we were to go to him, before we returned to the train, and pay for what we had consumed; and I hope that his trust in us was not misplaced, for with his objection to exercise, and his dim little lamp which illuminated only his smiles, there was nothing for him but trust. The Indian Mail carries passengers who are outward-bound for Constantinople, Egypt, and India; his confidence rested perhaps in the belief that persons about to embark on such dangerous seas would hardly begin the enterprise by crime. To other minds, however, it might have seemed the very moment to perpetrate enormities. As we attacked the chickens, I perceived in the flickering glare that all my companions were English. Everybody talked, and the thrill of the one American increased as the names of the steamers waiting at Brindisi were mentioned—the Hydaspes, the Coromandel, the Cathay, the Mirzapore: towards what lands of sandal-wood, what pleasure-domes of Kubla-Khan, might not one sail on ships bearing those titles! The present voyagers, however, were all old travellers; they took a purely practical view of the Orient. Nevertheless, their careless "Cairo," "Port Said," "Bombay," "Ceylon," "Java," were as fascinating as the shining balls of a juggler when a dozen are in the air at the same moment. My right-hand neighbor, upon learning that my destination was Corfu, good-naturedly offered the information that the voyage was an easy one. "Corfu, however, is not what it has been!"