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

by Thomas Wallace Knox

The artillery arm of the service has been made as effective as possible, and the batteries consist of breech-loading cannon, from Krupp’s manufactory in Germany. The navy is not large, but the ships that compose it are of the most approved construction and their armament is of steel breech-loaders, like the land batteries. The infantry are equipped with improved rifles, and the cavalry has a revolving carbine, with a removable stock, so that the weapons may be changed at will into a pistol or a rifle. In the last few years, the government has availed itself of the services of many foreign officers, the most of them from America. These are scattered among all branches of the service, the most of them being in the corps of engineers. Under their management the country is being carefully surveyed, and an elaborate map is in preparation.

Egypt has had a great many rulers. The dynasties of Kings of ancient Egypt were no less than thirty-four in number, and then came the Romans about the beginning of the Christian Era. They reigned for a few hundred years, then the country was conquered by the Arabs, and later on, it fell into the hands of the Turks. Near the end of the last century, it was invaded by the French, they remained about three years only, when they were expelled by the English, and soon after their arrival the renowned Mohammed Ali was made the ruling pasha.

He reigned from 1806 to 1848, when he became imbecile, and was succeeded by his son Ibrahim Pasha, who died after a reign of two months. Ibrahim was followed by his nephew Abbas Pasha who reigned from 1848 to 1854, and was succeeded by the fourth son of Mohammed Ali, under the name of Said Pasha. In 1863 Said was succeeded by the present ruler Ismail Pasha, second son of Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest having been drowned in the Nile in 1856.

There you have Egyptian history boiled down into a small space. I have not thought any reader would care to know the names of all the kings of Egypt from Menes, five thousand years before Christ, to Ismail nearly two thousand years after Christ.

Some were jolly old fellows, who lived as luxuriously as they knew how, though I dare say, none of them ever tasted raw oysters on the shell, or prairie chicken broiled and on toast. They used to dress rather elaborately, and they built some magnificent temples and tombs, which still remain to be wondered at by modern mortals.

No construction of the present day can begin to compare with them in grandeur, but of this I shall have more to say by and by. The kings were buried with great care, but their tombs have been plundered in modern times, so that very little of the royal relics can be found.

Occasionally they stumble on something and it is at once put into the museum at Cairo. Through the kindness of the director of this museum I was one day allowed to hold in my hand the heart of one of the most famous of the warrior kings of the XIXth Dynasty. It wasn’t much of a heart, a dried and bandaged affair of little consequence, but it was no common occurrence to grasp it, and remember that it once beat beneath the breast of a great warrior, who lived and loved, and ruled and died, three thousand years ago.

Nearly all the modern greatness of Egypt is due to her present ruler. Mohammed Ali, was a man of great ability, and under his rule the country received an impetus in the right direction. He founded schools, dug canals, and did many things for the prosperity of the country, and when he had determined to act in a certain direction, he didn’t allow himself to be thwarted. At one time he had decided to widen the Mooskee, now the principal street of the old part of Cairo, and was about to begin work when the Moslem priests interfered and declared they would bring anathemas upon him if the design was not relinquished.

He ordered the contumacious fellows arrested, and threatened to decapitate them unless they behaved themselves, They were in no hurry to be ushered into the presence of Mohammed the Prophet, and so they yielded to Mohammed the Ruler.

This recalls the story of Peter the Great, when he founded St. Petersburg and compelled the priests to bring the bones of one of the saints from their resting place at Vladimir. The priests did not like the new location, and one day they took the bones and started off for Vladimir, declaring that the ghost of the departed had told them to do so. Peter sent after them, with the threat of making ghosts of all of them, unless they returned, and they did return, bones and all. There is nothing like having a will of your own, and the power to use it.