CHAPTER LI—THE WEDDING OF THE KHEDIVE’S SON.—ENJOYING A MONARCH’S HOSPITALITY.
High Jinks in the Egyptian Capital—Dancing Horses—Arabian Blooded Steeds—Treading the “Light Fantastic Toe”—Bedouin Riders—The Mysterious Cage—Egyptian Prima Donnas—A Spice of the Arabian Nights—A Silken Palace—Headquarters of the Khedive—Thoughtless Intruders upon Royalty—A Glimpse of the Princes Royal—The Heir of the Throne of Egypt—His Appearance, Dress, and Character—A Cordial Invitation—Partaking of the Khedive’s Hospitality—A Turkish Comedy—A Free Lunch—End of the Festival.
NEAR the entrance of the field, of which I have spoken, there was a platform twelve or fifteen feet high, and twenty-five or thirty feet square, where a dozen acrobats were performing by the light of a row of open pots of burning oil.
A little farther on there was an exhibition of dancing horses. A pace was set off with a surrounding of ropes and stakes, and into this space the horses were led, two or three, sometimes half a dozen, at a time. The rider then took his place in the saddle, flourished a spear, and the dance began. You remember what Dr. Johnson said about a dog that walked on his hind legs: It was a very bad imitation of upright walking, and you wonder not at the way he does it, but that he does it at all. It was so with this equine dance. The animals were of pure Arabian stock and had been well trained, and showed great intelligence; but after all, when you considered the performance from a terpsichorean point of view, it wasn’t much. Some Arabic music was played, and the horses seemed to be keeping time to it, though the real fact was that the time was kept by the rider. It was the sort of thing that most of us have seen at the circus, and not equal to what we sometimes see in that entertainment. The riders were dressed like Bedouins of the desert, but were really some of the Khedive’s cavalry, attired for the occasion, to make them more picturesque. A very few moments sufficed to satisfy us with the performance.
The next thing that attracted our attention was a large crowd around a sort of cage about ten feet square, and near the cage several musicians were standing, and playing an Arab air of a rather doleful character. Guards with rattan canes kept the assemblage from approaching too near, and I must do the crowd the credit to say that the native portion of it did not make any attempt to overstep the bounds. Not so the strangers, of whom we were two; we wanted to investigate and didn’t heed the guards until they called us to order and motioned for us to fall back.