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

by Thomas Wallace Knox

The sun went down according to his usual custom and at the time set by astronomers for him to do so. There was nothing remarkable in the fact that sunset occurred at the close of the day, but there was something remarkable in the coloring of the sky, and in the lights and shadows of the hour. An Egyptian sunset is about the finest thing of the kind that can be found anywhere, and it is no wonder that poets rave about it and artists make long pilgrimages and endure many hardships in order to transfer it to canvass. I have seen the glorious orb of day leave the world “to darkness and to me” in many lands and climes of this terrestial ball—in unsentimental English I have seen the same sun set in many places—but I have never found it making a spectacle more gorgeous than the Egyptian one. The Egyptian morning has some color, but not much; in the middle of the day every particle of tint disappears altogether, and the sky is perfectly clear—a sort of grayish blue in which there is only the very faintest suggestion of cerulean. An hour or two before sunset a close observer will discover faint outlines or ghosts of clouds—cirrus and cirro-cumulus—streaming up from the western half of the horizon, and furtively gaining little by little until they are at the zenith. At first these clouds are colorless, but as they grow and take definite shape, and the minutes roll on, they become purple and scarlet, and crimson and golden, until the whole western heavens from north to south, and from south back to north again seem to be aglow with lurid flames. The sands of the Desert have absorbed during the middle of the day all the effulgent beams of the sun; now they are giving them back in all their prismatic variety and painting a picture of rarest beauty. The colors are brightest as the sun drops into the waste of sand in the west. If we are standing on the Mokattam Hills overlooking Cairo we have the pyramids of Gizeh between us and the declining sun and their outlines become more and more distinct as the day wanes. The colors linger on the clouds but gradually they fade and disappear till at last we see only a bright line of light along the horizon. This in turn melts away and the day is done.

“Soldiers,” said Napoleon, as he formed his army in line to resist the desperate charge of the Mamelukes, “soldiers,—from the lights of yonder pyramids forty centuries look down on you.”

Forty centuries and more have rolled away since Cheops and Cephren built these monuments on the banks of the Nile. Could those stony masses be endowed with speech what stories might they not tell us of the glories of ancient Egypt, of the rise and fall of dynasties and kingdoms, of the horrors of war and the blessings of peace, and of the many events which their existence has embraced. They could tell us of many thousand sunset scenes like the one we have just witnessed; of gorgeous pictures painted on cloud and sky in colors that fade not as time rolls on but remain to-day as brilliant as when the morning stars first sang together ages and ages ago.

Our return voyage was not marked by any special incident. At sunset we just caught a glimpse of the citadel that overlooks Cairo and commands with its black-mouthed cannon the city of the Caliphs and the Mamelukes. The arrowy minarets of the mosque of Mohammed Ali were faintly discernible against the sky, and the orange groves of the Island of Roda filled the foreground of the picture with their dark foliage.

We were on deck and busily engaged in studying the scene. There was a gentle breeze blowing up the Nile and we met numerous boats taking advantage of the wind that favored their southward journey. Most of them were empty; they had been at Cairo and a market, and were now homeward bound. Some were filled with men and women,—villagers from the banks of the river, and every few moments we heard sounds of music and merriment from these densely laden craft. One boat was so crowded that there were not seats for all, and the gunwale of the craft was not more than two inches above the water.

“What can they be?” asked a young lady who was generally the leader in questioning.

“Don’t you know?” was the prompt reply, “it is a party of Cook’s tourists on a pleasure trip.” Despite the untruth it contained the reply caused a laugh on the part of all who heard it, including the fair maiden who sought to be informed as to the character of the party.

Darkness gathered over us and the stars came out in a moonless sky as we moved slowly down the stream. Out of the gloom came a white-winged dahabeeah, or Nile pleasure boat, and sailed directly in the track we were pursuing. There was much running and shouting by the Arab crews: the long sails were hastily swung around but not soon enough to save us from collision and attendant excitement.

Happily there was no damage done, and happily too there was none of the emphatic conversation such as we might have heard had the crews been of the English speaking race.

Just as we swung clear of the upward bound boat and were once more under way, a rocket shot up in the distant darkness and exploded into a constellation of stars not to be found in any celestial atlas.