Nothing can be more quiet than the nights in a city where all the inhabitants retire after dark to their own homes, the streets being perambulated by few persons, and those of the soberest description; but with the sun, a scene of bustle and noise ensues, which effectually prevents repose. The windows of my apartment looked out upon a narrow street, in which the ground-floors were, as it is usual, composed of shops, while several persons, having vegetables or grain to sell, were seated upon the ground. The hum of human voices, the grunting of the camels, and the braying of donkeys, kept up an incessant din, and therefore some minutes elapsed before my attention was attracted by a wordy war which took place beneath my window. Hastily arraying myself in my dressing-gown, and looking out, I saw a man and woman engaged in some vehement discussion, but whether caused by a dispute or not, I could not at first decide. They both belonged to the lower class, and the woman was meanly dressed in a blue garment, with a hood of the same over her head, her face being concealed by one of those hideous narrow black veils, fastened across under the eyes, which always reminded me of the proboscis of an elephant. Her hands were clasped upon the arms of the man just above the elbow, who held her in the same manner, and several people were endeavouring to part them, as they struggled much in the same manner which prevails in a melodrame, when the hero and heroine are about to be separated by main force. I thought it, therefore, probable that they were a loving couple, about to be torn asunder by the myrmidons of the law. Presently, however, I was set right upon this point, for the man, seizing a kind of whip, which is generally carried in Cairo, and flogging off his friends, dashed the poor creature on the ground, and inflicted several severe strokes upon her prostrate body, not one of the by-standers attempting to prevent him. The woman, screaming fearfully, jumped up, and seizing him again, as if determined to gain her point, whatever it might be, poured forth a volley of words, and again the man threw her upon the ground and beat her most cruelly, the spectators remaining, as before, quite passive, and allowing him to wreak his full vengeance upon her.
Had I been dressed, or could I have made my way readily into the street, I should have certainly gone down to interpose, for never did I witness any scene so horrible, or one I so earnestly desired to put an end to. At length, though the pertinacity of the woman was astonishing, when exhausted by blows, she lay fainting on the ground, the man went his way. The spectators, and there were many, who looked on without any attempt to rescue this poor creature from her savage assailant, now raised her from the earth. The whole of this time, the veil she wore was never for a moment displaced, and but for the brutal nature of the scene, it would have been eminently ridiculous in the eyes of a stranger. After crying and moaning for some time, in the arms of her supporters, the woman, whom I now found to be a vender of vegetables in the street, told her sad tale to all the passers-by of her acquaintance, with many tears and much gesticulation, but at length seated herself quietly down by her baskets, though every bone in her body must have ached from the severe beating she had received. This appeared to me to be a scene for the interference of the police, who, however, do not appear to trouble themselves about the protection of people who may be assaulted in the street.
I afterwards saw a drunken Englishman, an officer of the Indian army, I am sorry to say, beat several natives of Cairo, with whom he happened to come in contact in the crowd, in the most brutal and unprovoked manner, and yet no notice was taken, and no complaint made. It was certainly something very unexpected to me to see a Frank Christian maltreating the Moslem inhabitants of a Moslem city in which he was a stranger, and I regretted exceedingly that the perpetrator of acts, which brought disgrace upon his character and country, should have been an Englishman, or should have escaped punishment. No sooner have we been permitted to traverse a country in which formerly it was dangerous to appear openly as a Christian, than we abuse the privilege thus granted by outrages on its most peaceable inhabitants. I regret to be obliged to add, that it is but too commonly the habit, of Englishmen to beat the boat-men, donkey-men, and others of the poorer class, whom they may engage in their service. They justify this cowardly practice—cowardly, because the poor creatures can gain no redress—by declaring that there is no possibility of getting them to stir excepting by means of the whip; but, in most cases, all that I witnessed, they were not at the trouble of trying fairer methods: at once enforcing their commands by blows. The comments made by the janissary and our own servant upon those who were guilty of such wanton brutality showed the feeling which it elicited; and when upon one occasion Miss E. and myself interposed, declaring that we would not allow any person in our service to be beaten, they told us not to be alarmed, for that the rais (captain of the boat), who was an Arab, would not put up with ill-treatment, but had threatened to go on shore at the next village with all his men.
An English gentleman, long resident in Cairo, had done me the honour to call upon me on the day after my arrival, and had invited me to come to his house, to see some mummies and other curiosities he had collected. Accompanied by two of my female friends, and escorted by a gentleman who was well acquainted with the topography of the city, we set out on foot, traversing blind alleys and dark lanes, and thus obtaining a better idea of the intricacies of the place than we could possibly have gained by any other means. Sometimes we passed under covered ways perfectly dark, which I trod, not without fear of arousing some noxious animal; then we came to narrow avenues, between the backs of high stone houses, occasionally emerging into small quadrangles, having a single tree in one corner. We passed a house inhabited by one of the superior description of Frank residents, and we knew that it must be tenanted by a European by the handsome curtains and other furniture displayed through its open windows. Turning into a street, for the very narrow lanes led chiefly along the backs of houses, we looked into the lower apartments, the doors of which were usually unclosed, and here we saw the men at their ordinary occupations, and were made acquainted with their domestic arrangements. At length we arrived at a court, which displayed a door and a flight of steps at the corner. Upon knocking, we were admitted by an Egyptian servant, who showed us up stairs into a room, where we found the master of the house seated upon one of the low stools which serve as the support of the dinner-trays in Egypt, the only other furniture that the room contained being a table, and the customary divan, which extended all round. Coffee was brought in, served in small China cups; but all the coffee made in Egypt was too like the Nile mud for me to taste, and warm and fatigued with a walk through places from which the fresh air was excluded, I felt myself unequal to make the trial now.
Our friend's collection of antiquities appeared to be very valuable; but I had been at the opening of a mummy-case before, and though interested by the different articles which his researches had brought to light, was more so in the examination of his house. It was very oddly arranged, according to the ideas formed in Europe, many of the rooms looking like lanthorns, in consequence of their having windows on the stairs and passages, as well as to the street. This was probably caused by a desire to secure a free circulation of air, but it at the same time destroyed every idea of privacy, and therefore looked exceedingly uncomfortable. There were glass-windows to several of the apartments, but the house exhibited considerable quantities of that wooden trellice-work, represented in Mr. Lane's book. Nothing, indeed, can be more accurate than his descriptions; the English inhabitants of Cairo say that, reading it upon the spot, they cannot detect a single error; the designs are equally faithful, and those who study the work carefully may acquire the most correct notion of the city and its inhabitants.
The apartments at the top of the house opened, as usual, upon a rather extensive terrace or court, but the surrounding wall was too high to admit of any prospect; both here, and in a similar place at our hotel, persons walking about could neither see their neighbours nor be seen by them. We, therefore, gained nothing by climbing so high, and I was disappointed at not obtaining any view of the city. I tried in each place to make acquaintance with an Egyptian cat, but I found the animal too shy. I noticed several, which seemed to be domestic pets; they were fine-looking creatures of the kind, and I fancied larger than the common English cat, but the difference, if existing at all, was very slight. I returned home, so much fatigued with my walk, as to be unable to go out again, especially as we were to start at four o'clock for the desert.
Two of the ladies of the party, not having completed their purchases at the bazaars, went out upon a shopping excursion, and passing near the Nubian slave-market, were induced to enter. Christians are not admitted to the place in which Circassian women are sold, and can only obtain entrance by assuming the Turkish dress and character. My friends were highly interested in one woman, who sat apart from the rest, apparently plunged into the deepest melancholy; the others manifested little sorrow at their condition, which was not, perhaps, in reality, changed for the worse: all eagerly scrambled for some pieces of money which the visitors threw amongst them, and the sight was altogether too painful for Christian ladies to desire to contemplate long.
They were much more amused by some gipsies, who were anxious to show their skill in the occult science. Upon the morning after our arrival, Miss E., who was always the first upon the alert, accepted the escort of a gentleman, who conducted her to a neighbouring shop; while making some purchases, a gipsy came and seated herself opposite, and by way of showing her skill, remarked that the lady was a stranger to Cairo, and had a companion, also of her own sex, who pretended to be a friend, but who would prove treacherous.
As we had ridden through the fair together on the preceding evening, it did not require any great effort of art to discover that two Frank ladies had arrived at Cairo; but in speaking of treachery, the gipsy evidently wished to pique the curiosity of my friend, and tempt her to make further inquiry. Much to my regret, she did not take any notice of the fortune-teller, whose words had been repeated by the gentleman who had accompanied her, and who was well acquainted with the language in which they were spoken. I should like to have had a specimen of the talents of a modern scion of this race, in the country in which the learned have decided that the tribe, now spread over the greater part of the world, originated.
The arrival of the Berenice at Suez had been reported the evening before, and the mails had been brought to Cairo in the coarse of the night. All was, therefore, bustle and confusion in our hotel; gentlemen hourly arriving from the Nile, where they had been delayed by squalls and contrary winds, or snatching a hasty meal before they posted off to the Pyramids. Our camels and donkeys had been laden and despatched to the outskirts of the city, to which we were to be conveyed in a carriage.