Breakfast over, next morning, I returned to the village and departed on the south-bound express. The third-class coach was densely packed with huddled natives and their unwieldy cargo; all, that is, except the bench around the sides, on which a trio of gloomy Arabs, denied the privilege of squatting on the floor, perched like fowls on a roost. The air that swept through the open car was as wintry as the Egyptian is wont to experience. Only the faces of the males were uncovered. The women, wrapped like mummies in fold after fold of black gowns, crouched utterly motionless, well-nigh indistinguishable from the bundles of baggage. Even the guard, wading through the throng, brought no sign of life from the prostrate females; for their tickets were invariably produced by a male escort.
The congestion was somewhat relieved at the junction of the Fayoum branch. The men who had reached their destination rose to their feet, struggled to extricate their much-tied bundles, and rolled them over their fellow travelers and down the steps. Not a female stirred during this unwonted activity of her lord and master. When he had safely deposited his more valuable chattels on the platform, he returned to grasp her by the hand and drag her unceremoniously out the door.
Around the train swarmed hawkers of food. Dates, boiled eggs, baked fish, oranges, and soggy bread-cakes, in quantity sufficient to have supplied an army, were thrust upon whomever ventured to peer outside. From the neighboring fields came workmen laden down with freshly cut bundles of sugar cane, to give the throng the appearance of a forest in motion. Three great canes, as long and unwieldy as bamboo fish rods, sold at a small piastre, and hardly a native in the car purchased less than a half-dozen. By the time we were off again, the coach had been converted into a fodder bin.
The canes were broken into two-foot lengths, and each purchaser, grasping a section in his hands, bit into it, and, jerking his head from side to side like a bulldog, tore off a strip. Then with a sucking that was heard above the roar of the train, he extracted the juice and cast the pulp on the floor about him. At each station, new arrivals squatted on the festive remnants left by their predecessors and spat industriously at the valleys which marked the resting places of the departed. The pulp dried rapidly, and by noonday the floor of the car was carpeted with a sugar-cane mat several inches thick.
My pass ran out in the early afternoon, and I set off to canvass the metropolis of upper Egypt. Several Europeans had already expressed their regrets when, towards evening, I caught sight of the stars and stripes waving over an unusually large building. I turned in at the gate and made inquiry of a native grubbing in the yard.
“Thees house?” he cried, “you not know what thees is? Thees American Hospital.”
I drew out my notes. Beneath the name of the hospital appeared this entry:—“Dr. Henry and Dr. Bullock, Americans; easy marks; very religious.”
“Come and see house,” invited the native. “Very beeg.”
He led the way to one side of the building, where nearly a hundred natives, suffering with every small ailment from festered legs to toothache, were huddled disconsolately about the office stairway.
“Thees man come get cured,” said my guide. “Thees not sick nuff go bed. American Doctors very good, except”—and his voice dropped to a whisper—“wants all to be Christian.”