The birthday of Mahomet will soon take place, when it will be unsafe for Jew or Gentile to appear in the streets. For several days before the festival the Marabouts or holy men commence eating Indian hemp seed, which produces delirium; they then rush out, shaking their heads and bodies violently, followed by men and women chanting and shrieking. They then perform miracles by swallowing knives, nails, glass, and putting red hot shovels to their tongues, and sometimes their fanaticism induces them to maltreat or tear to pieces Jews and Gentiles; and the Pacha warns Consuls to keep their protégés or servants at home, as he cannot be responsible for them.
We have had some excellent gun practice from the English gun boat Vigilant, now in port, in honor of the Pacha. The distance fired was nearly half a mile, with two sixty-eight pounders; she carries also two thirty-two pounders. The target was a rock in the roadstead, painted white. Rounds of shot, shell, and grape, were fired with much precision. After the conclusion, and the partaking of a collation, the captain carried us in his gig to examine the effect, and we found chain shot and broken shell.
I am invited by the commander of this beautiful screw steamer, of six hundred and forty tons, to occupy a part of his cabin. Although I had paid my passage on board the steamer which has already departed, my friends induced me to stay a few days longer and accept the invitation. The old Pasha was to have been on board, but a plea of indisposition excused him. Several consuls and vice-consuls were among our number. On another occasion we had a trial of firing at a floating target, which in this case was a barrel sent adrift, with a couple of sixty-eight pound shot suspended to keep it steady, and an old flag staff stuck in the bung. We then described a circle of a half mile, and fired while in motion; the shot told remarkably as line shots, and the surface of the water sometimes looked like the spouting of whales. The English have now one hundred and thirty, large and small, of this class of steamers or gunboats. The Vigilant carries ninety men, and has an engine of two hundred horse power, with a screw twelve feet diameter; the boilers and machinery are below water mark; she draws twelve feet of water, and is admirably calculated for destruction.
Within the harbor of Malta, and encircled by the strong walls of these immense and world-wide renowned fortifications, lay the flag ship and part of the squadron of Admiral Lyons. Having once made a quarantine of twenty-one days there, coming from Egypt, which quarantine is fortunately abandoned now, besides spending ten days in sight seeing, nothing stuck me as new.
CXXXIII.
Grand Cairo, Egypt, April 10, 1858.
I reached Malta on board of an English war steamer, in time to connect with the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s packet, with the India overland passengers. An agreeable passage of three and a half days brought us to Alexandria, and instead of taking canal and river boats as in former times, occupying four days, I proceeded by rail to this city in eight hours. The distance is about one hundred and thirty miles, and the road is to continue to Suez, across the little desert, some ninety miles more. There only remain some twenty miles to complete it, when Alexandria and its port will be in communication with the Red Sea. The Pasha has constructed this great work at his own expense, and must ultimately derive a large revenue from it, as the tax upon each passenger crossing is ten pounds or fifty dollars.
This being my third visit to Egypt, I am able to judge of the changes that have taken place, particularly since the introduction of the railway. In 1842, when I first made the ascent of the Nile to Upper Egypt, we met only four passenger boats; the past winter the number has been forty, which is much less than usual, owing to disturbed monetary relations throughout the world. Then, Alexandria was a village, surrounded with the ruins of the former city. Now, it is a place of large commerce, with a population of seventy or eighty thousand, and instead of camels to carry one’s luggage, and donkeys to ride up a miserable hotel, one finds carriages and four-horse omnibuses around the railway station. The whistle of the locomotive, and the cry of “clear the track,” is calculated to wake up the most lethargic races. When I passed through Egypt in 1855, en route from the East Indies, I was struck with the changes. We descended the Nile in a steamer from Cairo, which was a great improvement.
Pompey’s Pillar and Cleopatra’s Needle still stand, towering high, as solitary spectators of the progress of the age.
I find here some familiar faces; the Dragoman who accompanied me to Upper Egypt and crossed the desert to Palestine, meets me with a smile; Paul, who is spoken of in Stephens’s work on Egypt, I find again. I have just visited the Mausoleum of the great man Mohammed Ali, the regenerator of Egypt, with whom I once passed an evening with accompaniment of the chilbouk or pipe, sherbet and coffee, talking over the affairs of this country. He was of humble origin, but through his military prowess and energy of character rose to the throne, conquered the Bedouins of the desert, massacred the Mamelukes, dug canals, regulated the embankments of the Nile for irrigation, forced the natives into the army and into useful employments, introduced the growth of cotton, built a fleet, which was destroyed by the allied forces, erected manufactories and palaces; in a word, he was a tyrant, but a benefactor in advancing civilization.