To this appeal Campbell replied very drily: “I assure you I never heard it before I had the honour of meeting you on board the Oriental.” Thus dispersing the county reputation in Norman times and the fame of the works on jurisprudence at one blow.
It was evident that it would be a rich treat to cross the desert with this party; so Sidney led the conversation to that subject. In a short time it was arranged that they should come to a final decision on their plans next morning at breakfast.
Sidney communicated this resolution to Aali in their evening walk, and ventured to predict that the decision would be for immediate departure.
At breakfast next morning, it was accordingly determined to quit Cairo in three days. The literary man considered that it was his duty to employ that time in writing a description of Cairo and the Pyramids on the spot. The party, however, did not succeed in completing their arrangements in less than a week. Mr Ringlady procured the most celebrated Dragoman remaining at Cairo, by paying him enormous wages, and giving him full power to lay in what provisions and take what measures he considered necessary for crossing the desert with comfort. The Dragoman hired was named Mohammed; and he commenced by purchasing double the quantity of stores required and sending half to his own house, as he said his new master looked like a man who would change his mind, and it would be satisfactory, should he return suddenly to Cairo, to find every thing ready for proceeding up the Nile. Mr Campbell and Mr Lascelles Hamilton arranged to hire a servant together, as far as Jerusalem. Sidney was attended by an Arab from Guzzerat, who had been with him for some time, and who, from being a subject of the East India Company, or an Englishman, was in less danger of suffering any inconvenience than a native from the part he was going to take in Aali’s enterprise. He was as black as a coal, but he spoke of Abyssinians, Nubians, and others, a shade lighter than himself, as “them d—n black fellows.”
It was necessary to make a written contract with the sheikh of the camels for a journey from Cairo to Gaza, and this document required to be prepared at the English consulate. The scene at signing the document was a singular one. After much wrangling, during which the officials of the consulate stoutly defended the cause of the camel-drivers, who brought forward, one after another, nearly a dozen new pretensions, as pretexts for additional extortion, though the terms had been already arranged, the patience of Sidney and the exertions of Achmet el Khindee brought the negotiation to an end, and the treaty was signed. Then the chancellor of the English consulate stepped forward, and, rubbing his hands with great glee, exclaimed, “Now, gentlemen, you have concluded your bargain; let us hear what backshish you are going to give the sheikh?” As this question appeared to imply too close a sympathy between the feelings of the chancellory and the amount of the backshish, Mr Sidney quietly observed, that as he supposed the amount did not require to be registered in the archives of the British consulate, it could be settled at Gaza. Scenes of this kind are constantly repeated at all the trading consulates of the Levant; yet it is prudent for travellers not to enter into the desert, nor even to ascend the Nile, without a written contract at the consular office. Even should they pay something more than they might otherwise do, the surplus serves as an insurance against native fraud and open robbery, as the people recommended by the consulate are at least well known and of Arab respectability.
At the latter end of April, long before daybreak, the party quitted the Hotel d’Orient, mounted on donkeys, to join the camels at El Khanka. At the hour of departure, Mr Lascelles Hamilton was no where to be found; but a waiter, roused from sleep, at last informed the travellers that he had left word that he would join them on the road. This event rather discomposed Sidney, who feared that the son of the Indian general of cavalry, in spite of his agreeable manners, universal knowledge, and incessant volubility, might have opened communications with Mohammed Ali to cut off the retreat of Aali. It was certain that all Mr Lascelles Hamilton said could not be received according to the letter, or it would be difficult to understand why he was not governor-general of India, or at least ambassador at St Petersburg.
The camels were found at El Khanka, kneeling on the verge of the desert, near the mosque, at the entrance of the place. The donkeys and the donkey-boys were here dismissed, and the party soon moved onward with the slow monotonous and silent motion of a fleet of desert ships. The baggage, the dragomans, and the singular Mr Lascelles Hamilton, had proceeded to Belbeis to prepare the tents and refreshments; but Aali was found at Khanka, waiting to join Sidney, as the report had been left at Cairo that he was going to Jerusalem as his travelling companion.
The difficulties and dangers of the flight of the fair Fatmeh were now to commence, and Sidney felt that he might be embarked in a perilous enterprise. The plan concerted with Aali was this. Sheikh Salem had sent forward his wife and daughter in a takterwan, or camel-sedan, to Belbeis. Fresh dromedaries were to be found there for the whole party, with which it was proposed to reach Saba Biar in a single day, where horses were to be in waiting. In the mean time it had been announced at Cairo that the whole party was to take the route by Salahieh, and the camels had been hired for that road.
The shades of evening were falling over the renowned city of Belbeis as our travellers approached. High mounds, crowned by dusky walls, set in a frame of waving palm-trees, gave the landscape a splendid colouring; but even the obscurity could not veil the fact that the once renowned city had shrunk into a collection of filthy huts, huddled together on mountains of rubbish.
The tents were found pitched to the north-east of the city, and the camp presented a most orderly appearance. The three tents of the travellers were ranged in a line—the magnificent tent of Mr Ringlady in the centre; behind, stood the cooking tents, and in a semicircle in the rear, the kneeling camels were disposed in groups, side by side. The whole arrangement testified the spirit of order Achmet had imbibed with his Indian education at Bombay. At a short distance to the north, the takterwan of the ladies was seen with a large caravan of dromedaries.