The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

It was about half-past eleven, when we left the hotel, and followed our baggage on the backs of the Arab porters to the landing.

The boat was an insignificant affair, carrying the mail and having room for very little else. The cabin was not far from seven feet by twelve; there were seats for about sixteen persons, and there was a small table in the centre, which was speedily piled up with baggage. Two or three native officials were there when we arrived, and they had done what we should have done had we been first. They had taken the best places, and were comfortably settled into the corners. As the clock struck twelve, the ships in the harbor fired salutes and let off fireworks, and quite a quantity of rockets went up from the shore. We opened our champagne, and each drained a glass to friends at home, and a wi-sh that the end of the year might be as propitious as its commencement.

Our steamer blew her whistle and swung out from the wharf, and in a few minutes we had passed out of the basin and were in the canal.

Straight as a sun-beam the canal pushes away from the sea coast, and then through the low desert. For nearly thirty miles it has no curve, but is as direct as it is possible for the engineer to lay it out. The banks were not very high in this part, as there was not a large quantity of earth to be dredged out, and from the deck of a large steamer one can look over a wide extent of marshy lake and swamp.

As we were scarcely a foot above the water and in a small steam launch, we could not look over the bank, and were obliged to content ourselves with the contemplation of the sloping sides of the canal. They were very monotonous, even with the poetic addition of a full moon and clear sky. The night went on and so did we, but I fancy the night had much the best time of it. We could not lie down, and there was hardly room for us to sit inside. I secured a camp stool and got outside, making the end of the cabin serve as a rest for my back. Wrapped in my overcoat and plaid, I managed to keep warm, though with some difficulty, and after a time I felt sleepy, but dared not risk going to sleep there, through fear that I should fall overboard.

Then I sat down, or rather reclined on deck, and, making a pillow of an anchor, managed to get along comfortably. Every time I waked and looked out we were steaming along through the canal with the same interminable stretch of sand on either side. By-and-by there was a blush of light in the east, then there was daybreak and then there came sunrise.

We grew better natured as we thawed out under the welcome rays of the sun, and felt the dryness vanishing from our lips, and a gradual disappearance of that general feeling of mussiness that you have after sitting up all night. The sands became warm in the glow of the morning, and everything that before had been sombre was now brilliant with flashing light. I do not often see the sun come up in these later years, never when I can avoid doing so; but whenever I am caught with a sunrise on my hands, I think it is about the best thing out. A sunrise in the desert is rather an extra affair, and considerably “lays over” the ordinary one that we can see at home by staying up till the next day.

We touched the dock at Ismailia in little more than seven hours from Port Said, and were glad enough to get on shore. A crowd of Arabs at the landing was as ravenous as a lot of young tigers; we tried to keep them back with words and gestures, but to no purpose; they seized our baggage, and would not put it down till we laid about them with our canes.

There were a hundred of them, all vociferating and snatching for baggage at the same instant; and I flatter myself that it was a triumph of genius over muscle when we succeeded in putting that baggage in a pile and making the fellows stand back, and tender proposals for its transport to the railway station We let the contract to the lowest bidder, who took the lot at four francs. The instant the bargain was closed, he and half the crowd fell upon the pile as if they had been wild beasts, and it disappeared like a-pint of whiskey among a dozen backwoodsmen. At the station, after we had paid the money agreed upon, they had an awful row dividing it, and there seemed to be at one time a brilliant prospect of a homicide.

The history of the Suez canal enterprise was given to the world with great minuteness of detail, at the time of its opening in 1869, and I shall not attempt a description of it here.