Professors of hall and college,
With a great deal of learning and little knowledge.
And, alas! I have known many such. It amuses me more to talk to some of the third-class passengers. ‘Ah, sir,’ said one of them to me, as we steamed out of Naples Bay—‘ah, sir, that is a very wicked city; it allus reminds me of Nineveh.’ I was compelled to admit that I did not know much of the wickedness of either; but that I did happen to know that, excluding Jack the Ripper, there were not a few wicked people left in London. I always like to look at home before I begin censuring other people. There is a good deal of truth in the remark of the old Californian, when Sir Charles Dilke told him ‘Californians in the Empire City were called the scum of the earth.’ ‘Them New Yorkers,’ was the old man’s reply, ‘is a sight too fond of looking after other people’s morals.’
Just as we are nearing the lowlands of Africa, and Port Said—a wretched place, where we stop a few hours to coal—is in sight, a death occurs on board; a tiny babe, weary of the world of which it knows so little, refuses to live any longer. In the drawing-room few of us know of the event, and the gaiety goes on much as usual. I rush on to the deck, and see a dark cloud of passengers at one end, and there is the Bishop standing at a red kind of box or reading-desk, repeating that grand burial service which is nowhere more impressive than when heard in the ocean’s solitude, with nothing but the wide, wide sea below, and the clear, moonlight sky above. The parents are, of course, there to mourn, and the bearing of the little crowd is sympathetic. The poor little corpse, covered by the British flag, is placed on an inclined board, which is tipped over when the sentence ‘we commit this body to the deep’ is reached, and the sea receives its dead. I had only asked the doctor that morning what was the state of health on board the ship, and his reply was that it was as well as could be. Perhaps steerage passengers don’t count, especially when babies. At any rate, the funeral is over, and we are taking our evening tea as if nothing of consequence had occurred—as if no tender mother’s heart had been torn with anguish as she saw her babe fall a victim to the Reaper whose name is Death. Not for a moment did the ship slacken her career, and we press on to Port Said with all our might.
CHAPTER II.
EGYPT TO COLOMBO.
Coaling in Port Said—The Suez Canal—England the Main Support—Donkey-drivers—The Electric Light—Ismailia—Suez—Aden—The Red Sea.
Under a vermilion sky, as the sun sinks down into the west, we approach the land of Egypt—a barren land, kindly to neither man nor beast, fruitful only in sand, and hospitable only to the camel, who seems here to be a friend in need, patiently following his turbaned leader over the pathless desert. We have a little sand near Southport, we have more still on the Lincolnshire coast at Skegness, we have most of all on the Dutch coast, from Flushing to Scheveningen, that gay resort of the Dutchmen and the Germans; but they fail to give you an idea of the dreary and boundless waste of sand through which that wonderful old man, M. de Lesseps, cut his grand canal, which ought to have been done by Englishmen, and which perhaps would have been, had not Lord Palmerston declared in season and out of season that it could not be done, and that if it were done it could never pay. When we stopped at Port Said, looking as if only artificially raised out of the sea, I landed: partly to say I had planted the sole of my foot in Egypt—the land of the Pharaohs, of Joseph and his brothers, of Antony and Cleopatra, of Origen and Hypatia and early Christian hermits, of grand philosophies and theologies, which stir the pulses even of to-day—and partly that I might have an evening stroll in a place not at one time the safest for a white man to land, but which now is quite as free from danger as any London neighbourhood—the happy hunting-ground of the burglar and the thief. The fact was that at Port Said we had to coal; and as we landed after dinner, it was a new sensation to be rowed ashore by turbaned sailors, who were clothed in what seemed to me in the twilight very much like petticoats. It was rather risky, as the boat was crammed down to the water’s edge. Nor was I much reassured as, after running up against the ropes and being nearly capsized, the man at the prow called out in broken English, ‘Never mind,’ to which I was obliged to reply that I did mind, and that I ventured to hope he would take care of our precious carcases. Apparently the advice was not thrown away, for after a few minutes’ row, and after an attempt had been made to collect the fare, which we all firmly resisted till on terra firma, we landed where a couple of old women apparently, in reality sailors, were standing with lanterns ready to receive us. As the fare was only sixpence each way, I can’t say that the Egyptian watermen were quite so exorbitant as some I wot of nearer home. There was not much to see at Port Said; but it was better to be there than on board ship while the process of coaling was going on. While at dinner there was a sound all round as if a million of monkeys were screaming and jabbering underneath. They were the coalheavers, on board the big barges laden with coal that surrounded us on all sides directly we had come to anchor. Each barge had two lights of burning coals, by the glare of which we could see the porters in strings of fifty at a time climbing up a ladder that led to the ship’s inside, with coal-sacks on their shoulders, and streaming back again, all the while screaming, as seems to be the manner of the Arab tribe all the world over. They all scream. They screamed at us as we stood on the deck; they screamed at us as they rowed us ashore; they screamed at us as we walked the streets—or, rather, the one long street which forms the town till it is lost in the sand of the surrounding waste. On one side lies the market, and a mile or two beyond is the old Arabian town. Men of all nationalities are well represented in Port Said; but the Greeks have the best shops, where a fine trade is done in cigarettes, photographs, and richly-worked napkins, and helmets to keep off the sun in the Red Sea, and the other products to be met with in Turkish bazaars. In the street it was difficult to tell the men from the women, so weird and unearthly seemed their make-up in the evening gloom. Two of the dark bundles approaching me were, I concluded, women, as the faces were concealed—all but the dark, round eyes, from the dangerous glances of which, happily, my age protected me. The great attraction of the place was a large café chantant, which, however, I fancy, did duty as a gambling-house as well. On the bank, just as you land, is a large building calling itself the Hotel Continental; but as it was shut up, apparently it has not been a commercial success. The houses, or, rather, the shops—for there were nothing but shops to be seen—were all of wood and painted. On my return to the ship, which was covered with coal-dust, I found we had an Egyptian conjurer, who went through a performance such as we see any day in England. But I must not say a word against a gentleman who was so kind as to intimate that I was ‘a big masher.’
For a real Lotus-land, where it is always afternoon, commend me to the Suez Canal. It is a busy spot. No spot is busier. Steamers, especially English ones, are always passing up and down. It is an expensive spot. You are fortunate if your steamer has not to pay a thousand or two for the trip. The Orizaba has to pay £1,700 for going through; but that does not concern you, if you have taken your passage to Ismailia or Colombo, or one or other of the great Australian ports. All that you have to do is to sit still and enjoy yourself. There the good sailor and the bad one are equal. There you fear no north or south simoom, no seas mountains high (I have never yet seen them, and begin to believe in them only as I do in stories of mermaids and mermen, or in legends of the sea-serpent ever turning up at unexpected times and in unexpected quarters), no rough blasts of the winter winds, no equinoctial gales. The captain comes down from his bridge, the officers take it easy, and you really need not to drive dull care away. On that calm water, under that bright sky, you have no thought of time. All around you is still life—the boundless sands, the distant hills, the camels, and the Arabs encamped far away. All is repose, in the heavens above, as well as in the earth beneath. It is true the beggars here and there on the banks are a nuisance, but where are they not, either in the Old World or the New? For eighteen or twenty hours you are at peace—to read the last novel, to flirt with the last fancy of the hour; to dream, if you like, in the broad daylight of other days and other times. The big ship moves, but so slowly that you can scarce tell that you are moving at all. The stewards bring your meals as usual; your sleep is undisturbed. There is your morning bath, your accustomed cigar, your game of chess, or your rubber of whist. Ah, you are much to be envied! The pity of it is that the trip is so soon over; that the dream is soon dispelled; that the curtain so soon falls on the scene; that you have to get back again to the cares, and troubles, and struggles of real life.
In the matter of the Suez Canal, Englishmen are paying rather dearly for their faith in Lord Palmerston. It is to the credit of M. de Lesseps that he conceived the idea, got together the money, and carried it out, and by that means, as a patriotic Frenchman, secured for France an influence in Egypt which, not to put too fine a point on it, has not worked for the advantage of either Egypt or ourselves. The officials of the Canal are French, the official language is French, the neat little stations, with their painted wooden houses, protected here and there by a palm tree struggling for life, are pre-eminently French. Fortunately, Lord Beaconsfield bought some shares for the nation, which gives us a locus standi. But the Canal, you feel, ought to have been designed by British engineers and paid for by British gold. It is emphatically England that keeps it going. The stream of steamers ever sailing up and down by day or by night are chiefly English steamers built in British shipyards, sailed by British captains and officers, and filled with British goods. It is true France subsidizes her steamers to struggle with England in all parts of the world. It is equally true that Germany does the same, but they cannot beat the British merchant and shipowner, who will not yield without a fierce struggle the supremacy it has taken them centuries to build up and sustain, and if the Canal manages to pay a dividend, it is because of the constant passage of British ships. As we were steaming along the Canal in one of the finest steamers of the Orient line, and of any line, we met a French steamer on her homeward trip. Mounseer looked politely at our crowded deck—his own seemed deserted, though they do tell me that the accommodation on board the French ships is remarkably good, and then our steerage commenced singing with heart and soul ‘Rule, Britannia.’ They ought not to have done it, I know. It was a breach of good manners; but if anywhere we may be pardoned for singing ‘Rule, Britannia,’ it is in the Suez Canal.
On leaving Port Said, in a few minutes you are in the Canal, which has been here protected from the shifting sand by a breakwater a mile and a half long. On Lake Menzaleh, to the westward, are to be seen wonderful flights and flocks of birds, including pelicans and flamingoes, to detect which, however, requires an uncommonly strong glass. Ships are piloted on the block system, under the control of the head official at Port Said, who telegraphs the movements of each ship as it slowly makes its way. At each of the stations, or ‘gares,’ there are signal-posts, and a ball above a flag says ‘Go into the siding,’ while a flag above a ball says ‘Go into the Canal.’ You see a good deal of the country, an utter, miserable desert at first, but soon hidden by the sand-banks. As you get nearer to Suez, wandering Arabs and droves of camels may be seen making their way along the burning waste, under the burning sun. All day and all night the heavens are wonderful. Now and then you meet a ship, and there is not much room to spare; now and then one is run aground, and it is often weary waiting, as it is inexpedient to go on shore and take a donkey-ride, in compliance with the request of the donkey-drivers, who seem to scent a stoppage from afar, and come to the bank, clamouring vociferously all the while. As you proceed you find the boys and girls on each side keeping you company, in hopes of the copper the kind-hearted visitor may feel inclined to throw them. It is needless to add that they are loosely clad, and are brown and sunburnt to look at. By night the electric light on the sandy bank has a singularly strange effect, which is more particularly apparent as another ship approaches, making the sand where it catches the light seem as if there were drifts of snow all round. As you enter the lakes the waters widen, and the speed is greater; the scenery is also a little more attractive. Away on your right is the land of Goshen, and Ismailia clusters prettily around the summer palace of the Khedive. Here you drop the passengers for Cairo, who are increasing in number every year—that part of Egypt becoming increasingly a winter resort, essential to the comfort and well-being of those who do not care for English cold and fog and rain. It is a wonderful change and a great relief for the asthmatic to spend a winter in Egypt. It is a pity that more cannot do so, but, alas! few of us can spare the time, and many of us have not the cash, and so a man must live where his bread is buttered, though to do so prolongs his pains at the same time that it shortens his life. As you look at Ismailia it seems a charming spot; however, the condition of the place is by no means sanitary, and danger lurks there under those green trees, beside those still waters. It has, however, been the scene of high life, as when the Canal was opened in 1869, when the Empress Eugenie, the Crown Prince of Prussia and the Empress of Austria took part in the ceremony. At a later date there was also exciting work in Ismailia when it became the basis of ‘our only general’s’ brilliant campaign. The Canal and lakes were filled with transports and men-of-war, and to the town an army of 20,000 men looked for supplies. It was from thence they marched to fight the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and to send poor Arabia prisoner for life to Ceylon, where, perhaps, after all, he is better off than he would have been had he stopped at home. His life would have been sacrificed had he remained.
Little of life is to be seen anywhere, but a few men are engaged in cutting away the sand, while camels bear it far away. They are ugly beasts, and never seem happy. They are, however, docile, and kneel down while the men fill the panniers with sand, when they rise up and walk away; or we come to a ferry where they are waiting to cross, and display the same patient, forbearing, half-starved look. The Egyptian donkey seems to me a far livelier animal. Now and then a dog displays itself on the bank, but he is rarely a favourable specimen of his race. Small steamers and barges, occupied in connection with the improvement of the canal, are also met, but the crew take little note of the white man, who, however, after all, has got such a hold on the land that it is questionable, whatever statesmen say at Westminster, whether it can ever be removed. It seems as if Egypt could never be let alone. True, it was a great country once, but that was long ago.