ELIOT WARBURTON
The Crescent and the Cross
I.—Alexandria
Bartholomew Eliot George Warburton, who wrote as Eliot Warburton, was born in 1810 in Tullamore, Ireland, and died in 1852. He graduated at Cambridge, where he was the fellow student and intimate friend of Hallam, Monckton Milnes, and Kinglake (of "Eothen" fame). He studied law and was called to the bar, but instead of practising in the legal profession took to a most adventurous career of travel, and wrote of his experiences in a spirited and romantic style which soon secured him a wide reputation. His eight works include "The Crescent and the Cross," which appeared in 1845, after his wanderings in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Greece; "Memoirs of Prince Rupert," and "Darien, or the Merchant Prince." He was sailing for Panama, as an agent of the Atlantic and Pacific Company, when he was lost in the steamship Amazon, which was burnt off Land's End on January 4, 1852. Warburton was beloved for his generous, amiable, and chivalrous disposition. His peculiar gift for embodying in graphic terms his appreciation of striking scenery and his picturesque delineation of foreign manners and customs give his works a permanent place in the classics of travel.
We took leave of Old England and the Old Year together. On the first of January we left Southampton; on the evening of the 2nd we took leave of England at Falmouth. Towards evening, on the 18th day since leaving England, the low land of Egypt was visible from the mast-head. The only object visible from the decks was a faint speck on the horizon, but that speck was Pompey's Pillar. This is the site Alexander selected from his wide dominions, and which Napoleon pronounced to be unrivalled in importance. Here stood the great library of antiquity, and here the Hebrew Scriptures expanded into Greek under the hands of the Septuagint. Here Cleopatra revelled with her Roman conquerors. Here St. Mark preached the truth on which Origen attempted to refine, and here Athanasius held warlike controversy.
The bay is crowded with merchant vessels of every nation. Men-of-war barges shoot past you with crews dressed in what look like red nightcaps and white petticoats. Here, an "ocean patriarch" (as the Arabs call Noah), with white turban and flowing beard, is steering a little ark filled with unclean-looking animals of every description; and there, a crew of swarthy Egyptians, naked from the waist upwards, are pulling some pale-faced strangers to a vessel with loosed top.
The crumbling quays are piled with bales of eastern merchandise, islanded in a sea of white turbans wreathed over dark, melancholy faces. High above the variegated crowds peer the long necks of hopeless-looking camels. Passing through the Arab city, you emerge into the Frank quarter, a handsome square of tall white houses, over which the flags of every nation in Europe denote the residences of the various consuls. In this square is an endless variety of races and costumes most picturesquely grouped together, and lighted brilliantly by a glowing sun in a cloudless sky. In one place, a procession of women waddles along, wrapped in large shroud-like veils from head to foot. In another, a group of Turks in long flowing drapery are seated in a circle smoking their chiboukes in silence.
II.—The Nile
"Egypt is the gift of the Nile," said one who was bewildered by its antiquity before our history was born (at least he, Herodotus, was called the father of it). This is an exotic land. That river, winding like a serpent through its paradise, has brought it from far regions. Those quiet plains have tumbled down the cataracts; those demure gardens have flirted with the Isle of Flowers (Elephantina), five hundred miles away; and those very pyramids have floated down the waves of Nile. In short, to speak chemically, that river is a solution of Ethiopia's richest regions, and that vast country is merely a precipitate.
Arrived at Alexandria, the traveller is yet far distant from the Nile. The Canopic mouth is long since closed up by the mud of Ethiopia, and the Arab conquerors of Egypt were obliged to form a canal to connect this seaport with the river. Under the Mamelukes, this canal had also become choked up. When Mehemet Ali rose to power his clear intellect at once comprehended the importance of the ancient emporium. Alexandria was then become a mere harbour for pirates. The desert and the sea were gradually encroaching on its boundaries, but the Pasha ordered the desert to bring forth corn and the sea to retire. Up rose a stately city of 60,000 inhabitants, and as suddenly yawned the canal which was to connect the new city with the Nile.