But the houses on either side were not occupied merely by flaming lamps, for from the latticed windows over the shops the female inhabitants of the city, eagerly throwing off the customary reserve, peered down upon the passing throng. Colour in the lighted streets and diversity were everywhere in company with rampant irregularity, for each decorator had worked according to his own sweet will. No two streets were alike either in occupants or in decoration. Sombre and sordid buildings crowded close upon palaces, and while one street was dark and empty, with its sporadic lamps, the next was crowded with a dense mass listening to the plaintive music of the native bands discoursing wild and, possibly to the hearers, delicious strains, but strains containing too much bagpipe and cymbal for the foreign ear. In another, as if it were some gigantic old-world fair, the merry-featured, strangely robed throng was clustering round a knot of dancing girls, Egyptian Terpsichoreans. These displayed their ideas of the poetry of motion in a singularly wild and picturesque manner, and were evidently frantically admired by the holiday-keeping lookers-on.
By way of change, after hours of wandering through the crowded and illuminated streets, Henty describes one of the palaces where the principal guests were accommodated by the Khedive. This was reached after a quiet drive to its site, a short distance from the town. Here in the soft darkness of the Egyptian night the illuminations were superb, and the description exemplifies the lavish recklessness of the host on behalf of his guests. In front of the palace was a space forming a parallelogram of considerably over a quarter of a mile long by some three hundred yards wide. This was surrounded by an arched trellis-work, resembling somewhat in its detail the delicate tracery of a cathedral cloister. The wooden structure was literally covered upon both sides with illumination lanterns, and looked like some gnome or fairy fabric of fire. Round it was a carriage drive which passed between it and the palace, and against the walls of the palace itself glittering lights were fixed in the same order as upon the wooden framework, so that to the spectator it was as if he gazed down a vista of two interminable walls of fire connected by arches of coloured lamps. The effect was exquisite, heightened as it was by the ascending rockets which burst and showered down coloured stars in constant succession. Pyrotechnic fires burned here and there, and threading as it were the falling stars, the strains of band after band of music blended their enchantment with the beauty of the scene.
This is but a slight description of one of the many sights embraced by the enormous fête provided for the Khedive Ismail’s world-invited guests, and picture after picture Henty painted of these scenes by night and by day. He also visited the various points of interest in the neighbourhood, notably the Pyramids, going by the road to these ancient monuments which had been slave-constructed by order of the Khedive, as if in a fit of lavish recklessness he had determined to emulate the doings of some Pharaoh of old, so that his French empress visitor should have a special way made smooth across the desert to the old world-famous pyramidal tombs. Visitor and special correspondent Henty was, but he spoke out as the quiet, thoughtful Englishman in translating the words of the wise old Orientals who thoughtfully shook their heads and added their quiet Cui bono? over the thriftless wanton expense. There was banqueting and feasting, and all at a time when the treasury was depleted, when the civil and military forces had their payments in arrear, and when national debt heaped upon national debt. All this could only end in the bankruptcy which too surely came.
Most of this renowned spectacle was preliminary to the long-expected opening of the canal, and, ignoring the head-shaking of the thoughtful, the great mass of the light-hearted Egyptians, rich and poor alike, went to see and share in the festivity, and took no thought of the future. The world had come to see the opening of the canal, the finish of a stupendous undertaking, the inception of a clever western, but thoroughly Egyptian and Pharaoh-like in its audacity. At last the shovel and basket of the drudging slaves as well as workers for hire, were cast aside, and the waters flowed through what American visitors sardonically styled “the ditch”, opening nearly a hundred miles of waterway extending from Suez to Timsah, now re-christened, or Mahommedanised into Ismailia. Along this “ditch” there was a grand procession of state barges, steam launches, and visitor-bearing craft, all made the more imposing by the presence of a squadron of British battleships, whose approach to the entrance with the saluting thunder of their great guns Henty dwells upon, though, apparently with a grim chuckle of British irony, he relates how two of the marine monsters got aground.
The procession, however, seems to have been petty in comparison with the innate grandeur of M. de Lesseps’s enterprise and what it meant to the future of the civilised world. Later, as if to make up for his words respecting the grounding of the huge iron-clads, which were doomed to flounder like whales in a rivulet before they got off, Henty hastens to paint vividly and evidently with a feeling of pride the aspect of the ships of war of every European nation, the dark line of sailors who manned the yards, cheering vociferously, the clouds of powder smoke mingling with the volumes from the funnels drifting slowly across the water, the lofty lighthouse, and the populous town which had sprung up as if under the wand of a magician. And that magician was M. de Lesseps, the sun of whose greatness sank in sadness years after, when, as if vaulting ambition had overleaped itself, he died half-forgotten and broken-hearted at the temporary failure of his other great venture, the canal to join Pacific and Atlantic, which, these many years after the great man’s death, promises to be the accomplished fact of the twentieth century.
George Henty was always a sailor at heart, and never happier than when, hatless in a brisk breeze, he was watching the easing off or the tightening of a sheet, while his hands played with the spokes of the wheel which governed a vessel’s course. So it is not surprising that in his description of the grand fêtes and rejoicings over the opening of the canal he should find a businesslike corner at the bottom of one of his letters to talk about the chances of a vessel passing easily through the sand-bordered ribbon of water which joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas. He says: “I have been favoured with a log of the soundings taken on board the Cambria during her passage through the canal,”—he speaks like the man in his element—“and I am bound to say that they are far more favourable than from all other accounts I could have believed possible. The total number of soundings were seventy-six. They were taken, with the exception of the passage of the Bitter Lakes, during the whole passage at intervals of a nautical mile, and of the seventy-six soundings no fewer than fifty-six gave a depth of twenty-seven feet and over, while of the remaining twenty only four were below twenty-two feet, one only giving as little as nineteen feet of water. This table of soundings shows that the canal is upon the average of a depth of twenty-six feet; and although it is unquestionable that the vessels drawing only eighteen feet did scrape the ground in several places during their passage, the soundings taken by Mr Ashbury showed that these must have been, with the exception of the lump of rock at Serapium, mere accidental mounds and banks which had been left in the process of dredging.”
And here, too, it will not be out of place to add a few words written after the inauguration, and finis coronat opus had been added to Henty’s descriptions of the great event. Just overleaf it was the sailor speaking upon the achievement and the canal’s possibilities of carrying out the objects for which it was designed. He is now speaking as the thoughtful leader-writer, and somewhat in these words he begins to count the cost of the entertainment provided by the Khedive. “Admitting,” he says, “that the cost of all this enterprise has been enormous, amounting as they say here to two millions sterling, to what good has this sum been spent? For it is not the viceroy’s private money, but the national revenue, and one feels in the position of the guests of the directors of some public company, One says, ‘Yes, it is a splendid banquet; but what will the unfortunate shareholders say?’ I can reply that the shareholders do not like it at all. Why should French journalists, German professors, and English heads of chambers of commerce be taken up the Nile at the expense of the people of Egypt?”
But it is only fair to say that this was not written in a grudging spirit, for Henty had found time to praise warmly the admirable management and kindly welcome given to the Khedive’s guests, and his final remarks were veined with a feeling of sorrow that the hospitality should have been so profuse.
At the dispersal of the crowd of visitors it seems as if it occurred to Henty that this would be a most favourable opportunity, after making himself acquainted with the land of the captivity and the ancient works in Egypt, to take in reverse the journey made of old in the days of famine, and visit the Holy Land. This happy thought he put into execution, and making a tour through the Holy Land, he ended by visiting Jerusalem before his return to England.