This was our first impression with regard to Egypt, and the second was by no means a more favorable one. Our ship was anchored about three miles from the shore, and the schooner Shark, our consort on this occasion, was directed to proceed into the harbor, with an invitation to the U. S. consul, Mr. J. Gliddon, to come on board. When he arrived, he informed us that two cases of what seemed to be the plague had appeared eight days previously in the Greek convent, and had excited some alarm: he added, however, that the building had been put in strict quarantine, and as the disease had extended no further, and the symptoms were not of a decided character, their fears had subsided, and that they were in hopes of enjoying their usual health. Their expectations were encouraged by the fact that the country had for many years been exempted from this dreadful disease.[1] Mohammed Ali was at this time in Syria, whither he had been called to assist in putting down a rebellion, which had suddenly burst out there. Mr. Gliddon strongly urged the Commodore to await his return; and informed us, that in the mean time we could visit Cairo and the Pyramids with perfect safety, as that city and the intermediate country were free from sickness, and our route would not carry us through Alexandria or expose us to contact with its inhabitants.
It was with the most sincere pleasure that we learned that Commodore Patterson had decided in favor of this excursion. Dim land of embalmed and faded greatness, that, from the searments of the tomb, dost murmur to us in solemn and mystic language, we should see thee then! we should stand on the banks of the Nile, where even Nature herself is shrouded in unusual obscurity: we should look down from the summits of the Pyramids, those monuments on which all ages have gazed with wonder, and where they have speculated in vain. I had myself just been living in a squatter’s cabin in Indiana, and anticipated with keen relish the strong contrast that would here be presented. I had come from witnessing the first elements of society forming into order, to see the monuments of a people ancient even in the most ancient times; from watching the conflicts of separate individual interests, to behold the “vast expanse of ages and nations;” from wandering amid the primeval solitudes of nature, to wander amid the solitudes of deserted cities; and from witnessing the first efforts for human greatness to contemplate its end.
Mohammed Ali had left as his representative, Boghaz Bey, an Armenian of talent and energy, who enjoys his highest confidence; and while preparations were making for our journey, the Commodore, with Capt. Nicolson and Mr. Gliddon, went to pay him a visit of ceremony. On application being made to him for passports to Cairo, he replied, that they would be unnecessary; that he would consider Com. Patterson as the guest of the Pasha, and, as soon as we should start, would forward orders by telegraph to the river, to have boats provided, and to Cairo to have the party treated with every attention.
On the 16th we transferred ourselves, together with conveniences for cooking and sleeping, to the decks of the schooner, and were landed towards evening near the mouth of the great canal of Mahmoudieh. This canal was the first of the many proofs which our journey led us to witness of the wonderful enterprize and energy of Mohammed Ali, whom the reader, when he has followed us further, will, I think, agree with us in considering one of the greatest sovereigns of the age. In some respects we must also allow his government to be marked by singular short-sightedness and weakness; but on this point it is only fair to let him speak for himself, which we shall presently allow him to do.
The traveller through Egypt is constantly struck with two things: one, the high state of improvement in all public institutions, and the energy with which they are conducted; and the other, the vassalage, the extremely abject state of the people. No subjects in the world are in such a wretched condition as those of the Egyptian Pasha. They have the appearance of freedom, but throughout the whole country every man is a slave to the royal master. They till the land and may call the produce theirs; but when it is gathered in, he compels them to carry it to his store-houses, and there he purchases it at his own prices, which are just sufficient to keep them from a miserable death. The stores thus accumulated he sells all over Europe, wherever a good market can be procured; the money is laid out chiefly in the support of his army and navy, and thus the avails of their labor are returned to the poor wretches in the shape of the “nezzam,” or soldiers to keep them in subjection. Of course they hate both the Pasha and all his armed forces most cordially; but for this he cares nought, and thus we have the spectacle of a nation apparently prosperous, but in reality extremely miserable. He is so severe in his exactions, that if a cultivator wishes to plant a tree, he must provide an equivalent for the ground it may occupy, and in one village up the Nile, where we stopped to get vegetables, they informed us that they had none for themselves. The last season their grounds, they said, had not yielded the quantity of grain required, and this year they had been compelled to convert their gardens into wheat fields, in order to make up the deficiency.
The annual revenue of the Pasha from all these sources amounts in ordinary seasons to twenty-five, and in very fruitful years to thirty millions of dollars. In his own personal expenses he may be considered very moderate; and nearly the whole of this immense income is expended in public improvements, and in the pay and equipment of his army and navy. The former consists of 80,000 men, well disciplined, and efficient, and strongly attached to their duties and to the Pasha; the navy at present consists of 11 one hundred gun ships and as many frigates, afloat, and is to be increased to 40 vessels, chiefly of the largest class. The public improvements throughout the country evince an enlargement of mind and an energy of character that in an eastern sovereign is wonderful, especially when we consider that in most of his operations the Pasha has no one to second him, but devises and executes by the force of his own individual energy; and very often has to give a personal superintendence to his operations. With regard to the abject state of his subjects, he says it is a necessary one, and is lamented by himself as much as by any other person. His power is unstable; he has lately gained a kind of slippery independence, is closely watched by his former master, the Sultan, and, without a large army and navy, his throne would soon slide from under him. His improvements, too, he says, must be carried on with untiring assiduity, or they will result in little good. His own life will probably not be continued much longer, and if they are not well advanced towards completion before his death, they will all be an abortion, and the country will retrograde to its late state of inferiority, and be again behind the character of the age. And in this he is correct; for his step-son, Ibrahim Pasha, who will doubtless be his successor, is altogether devoted to military affairs, and cares little for manufactories, unless they be of arms and munitions of war. “Therefore,” argues the Pasha, (or thus at least argued the governor of Cairo for him at our first interview,) “therefore I must drive matters with the utmost speed, and to do this I must have a large revenue, and to obtain this I must lay heavy burdens on my subjects.” He says, however, that as soon as the cause of these exactions is removed, and his power secured, and his improvements sufficiently advanced to fear no relapse, he will make his people comfortable; and that in the interval, by means of schools and his own example, he is endeavoring to inform them, and to stimulate them to higher views of things than they have hitherto had, and greatly to increase the resources of the country. Thus speaks the new monarch of Egypt, and I have thought it best to give the reader at once an insight into his views, in order that he may be able the better to judge of them as we proceed through the country.
We now return to the canal of Mahmoudieh. Fifteen years ago there was a scarcity of grain in Europe, but a great abundance in Egypt, and the merchant-sovereign had an opportunity of realizing an extremely handsome profit on the products of his soil; but the Nile happened at that season to be unusually low, and vessels found it so difficult to load at the mouth of the river, that his harvest of gain was in a great measure lost. He then conceived the idea of a canal to unite the river with the secure and excellent harbor of Alexandria. With him there is but a short interval between planning and executing. He sent his soldiers into the country with requisitions on the various governors for men, according to the size of their villages or districts. The poor natives were hunted up, and being fastened to long poles by iron collars around the neck, forty to a pole, were thus driven down to the line marked out by his engineer, and there set to work. Mr. Gliddon, who saw the work in progress, informed me that there were 150,000 men employed upon it at one time. In six months the canal was completed, with the exception of a little masonry, and was opened for use. It is sixty miles in length, ninety feet wide, and eighteen in depth, including six feet of water. The workmen had no tools, except a few hoes to break the hard upper crust: when this had been done, they scraped the earth together with their fingers, formed it into balls, and passed them by hand to the sides of the canal, a large portion of the wet mass often escaping between their hands while on the way. Exposed to the sun, and without shelter at night, and probably without sufficient food, disease crept in among them; and I was credibly informed that during the digging, 30,000 of the workmen perished: their bodies, as soon as life was extinct, were tossed upon the growing heaps of earth at the side, and this was their burial. The canal follows the line of that dug by Alexander the Great, till near Damanhour, when it unaccountably makes a great bend to the south. The engineer has made another blunder in the grading, in consequence of which it is too shallow to be navigable during the two months when the river is at the lowest.
Mr. Gliddon, whose kindness on this and other occasions has placed us under many obligations, had secured boats for us, and towards sunset our arrangements for the inland voyage were completed. We then hoisted the American ensign at the peaks of our little flotilla, and dropping the large sails to a fresh and favorable breeze, the city and its shipping soon glided from our sight. After passing near the elevated ground on which stands Pompey’s Pillar, and then by a few country-seats of the nobles of Alexandria, we entered upon an open, dreary waste, and night began soon after to sink around us, and upon the still and melancholy scene; for, except our rushing boats, not a sight nor a sound met the senses, which soon became actually oppressed by the solitude. A dim moon threw a flickering and uncertain light upon the banks, and it required but little effort of the imagination, as we watched them flitting by, to make out shadowy forms, and cover the place with the phantoms of the many poor victims sacrificed and buried there.
But had they actually risen up, the whole 30,000, and pointed their bony fingers and gibbered at us as we passed, they would scarcely have exceeded in numbers or terror the blood-thirsty tormentors that soon after this assailed us in the little cabins in our boats. We had extinguished our lights and laid down for repose, but repose there was none for us. The reader must excuse me if I draw such a nauseous picture; it is not fair that he should travel without sharing some of the pains of travelling, nor can he otherwise get a correct idea of the country. We soon found ourselves literally covered with vermin, whose bite, though dreadfully annoying, left us uncertain whether they were the animal that sometimes chooses our beds for their residence, or those that constituted the third plague of Egypt; and during the long night, while stung almost to madness, we were left to weigh the evidence in this agreeable query. The latter insects are, at certain seasons, common in every part of Egypt; and Sir Sidney Smith, having removed his tent to the desert, in order to escape from them, found them even among its sands. It was really quite a relief to us, when morning came, to find that our clothes were thickly sprinkled over with only the former less terrible insect. It was a long and wearisome night. I climbed the mast once or twice to cool my blood and seek for relief by gazing around; but only a flat, and utterly deserted country met the sight, and the ear could not detect a single sound; the hooting of an owl would have been a pleasant relief.
Morning did come at last; and as the sun began to throw its welcome beams over the landscape, if landscape it may be called, the banks of mud bordering the canal grew higher, and receded on either side, until presently we found ourselves in a kind of basin, and soon after amid a multitude of boats. We had arrived at its termination. Casting our eyes on the left bank, where there seemed to be something in motion, we were able, by and by, to detect a village stuck into its side; the houses, or rather the single small chamber forming each house, being made partly by digging into the bank, and partly by building up a low wall of mud, with an opening in its front for a door. They were covered with reeds, and these again with mud. Creeping in and out, were a swarm of natives, in soiled habiliments, as dark looking as the houses themselves. This, together with some store-houses of the Pasha at the gate of the canal, and a few more decent dwellings on the banks of the river, form the village of Atf. On the right bank of the canal was a well paved quay, lined with boats, and covered with heaps of grain.