[5] Ansted's Introduction to Geology, i. 303.
[6] Lyell's Travels in North America, i. 254.
[7] Quarterly Journal of Geological Society, April, 1851.
AITON'S TRAVELS.
A work in any department of general literature rarely appears from the pen of a clergyman in the Church of Scotland, and therefore that to which we are about to refer, under the title noted beneath,[8] is in some respects a curiosity. The writer, a minister settled in a mountainous parish in Lanarkshire, may be said to have made a remarkable escapade for one in his obscure situation and reverend calling. With an immense and unclerical flow of animal spirits, evidently as fond of travelling as old William Lithgow, and as garrulous as Rae Wilson, of whose class he is a surviving type, Dr Aiton is quite the man to take a journey to the Holy Land; for no difficulty in the way of toil, heat, hunger, creeping or winged insects, wild beasts, or still wilder savages, disturbs his equanimity. He also never hesitates to use any expression that comes uppermost. He explicitly observes, that 'no man with the capacity of a hen,' should fail to contribute such information as he possesses on the sacred regions he has traversed. Alluding to some circumstances in the voyage of St Paul, he says he has 'no desire to cook the facts.' He talks of a supposition being 'checkmated.' And in going along the coast of Spain, he mentions that he took care to have 'a passing squint at Cape St Vincent.' Many similar oddities break out in the course of the narrative; not that we care much about them one way or other; it is only to be regretted that the author has by this looseness of expression, and his loquacious dragging in of passages from Scripture on all occasions, also by his inveterate love of anecdotic illustration, done what he could to keep down a really clever book to an inferior standard of taste. We would hope, however, that candid readers will have a kindly consideration of the author's intentions, and pass over much that is prosy and ridiculous for the sake of what is original and interesting. Traversing lands that have been described a hundred times before, it might be supposed that little was left for Dr Aiton to pick up; yet every traveller has his own method of observation. In justice to the doctor, it must be acknowledged that he made a judicious use of time during his travels in the East, and has told us many amusing particulars of what he saw. There is, at least, always a certain graphic painting in his off-hand descriptions; as, for instance, his notice of an incident that occurred on his arrival in Egypt.
'On landing at Alexandria I saw a ship unloading, and box by box were being handed to the lighter, according to the number each respectively bore. Some mistake, more or less important, had apparently been made by one of the native operatives on the occasion. Instantly two sticks were laid on his head with dreadful effect. The poor fellow seemed to be stunned and stupified for a time. On this account it probably happened, that he fell into a second similar blunder, when a stick was thrown, not horizontally, but perpendicularly, and so aimed that it struck the socket of the eye. In one moment he lost the sight of it, and the ball hung by a ligament on his cheek. He uttered a hideous yell, and staggered; notwithstanding of which other two cudgels were applied to his arm while he had the power to hold it up in protection of his head. Horror of horrors! I thought, verily in the fulfilment of prophecy, God has been pleased to curse this garden and granary of the world, and to permit foreigners terribly to tyrannise over its degraded people.' Proceeding onward to Cairo: 'What a hurry-skurry there was in the dark in getting into the vans at the hotel-door to be conveyed to the Mahmoudie Canal! When I arrived, I found the barge in which we were to be conveyed both very confined and dirty. But it proceeded at tolerable speed, drawn by horses which were pursued by well-mounted Arabs yelling, lashing, and cracking with their whips. We all passed a fearful night of suffocation and jambing, fasting and feasted on by millions. Some red-coated bedlamites, unfortunately infatuated with wine, had to be held from jumping overboard. The ramping and stamping, and roaring and scrambling for room to sit or lie, was horrific. At last the day dawned, when matters were not quite so bad; but we moved over our fifty miles of ditch-water to Atfeh in a manner the most uncomfortable any poor sinners ever suffered.'
The account given of his entry to Cairo is also strikingly faithful. 'When I landed at Boulac, another Oriental scene of novelty was presented. Crowds of men and women, all in their shirts only—lazy looking-on watermen calling for employment, porters packing luggage on the camels, donkey-boys, little active urchins, offering their asses, crying: "Here him best donkey"—"you Englese no walk"—"him kick highest"—"him fine jackass"—"me take you to Cairo." There were also plenty of custom-house folks demanding fees to which they had no right, and sturdy rascals seeking buckshish, and miserable beggars imploring alms. Walking through this promiscuous crowd, with all the dignity they could muster, there were venerable sheiks, or Egyptian oolema, with white turbans, and long silvery beards, and tawny sinister faces. And there were passengers not a few, with a carpet-bag in the one hand and a lady hanging on the other arm, crowding from the deck to the shore.
'The moment I mounted the stair at the pier of Boulac, I found myself in the red dusky haze of an Egyptian atmosphere. It was near noon, and the rays of the hot sun trembled over the boundless Valley of the Nile on to the minarets of Cairo, and further still to the sombre Pyramids. Now, indeed, the scene before me presented a superb illusion of beauty. The bold range of the Mockattam Mountains, its craggy summits cut clearly out in the sky, seemed to run like a promontory into a sea of the richest verdure; here, wavy with breezy plantations of olives; there, darkened with acacia groves. Just where the mountain sinks upon the plain, the citadel stands on its last eminence, and widely spread beneath lies the city—a forest of minarets, with palm-trees intermingled, and the domes of innumerable mosques rising and glittering over the sea of houses. Here and there, green gardens are islanded within that ocean, and the whole is girt round with picturesque towers, and ramparts occasionally revealed through vistas of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that surround it. From Boulac I was conveyed to the British Hotel at Cairo, the Englishman's home in Egypt, conducted by Mr Shepherd, the Englishman's friend in the East. The approach to Grand Cairo is charming and cheering, and altogether as fanciful as if I had been carried with Aladin's lamp in my hand through a fairy region to one of the palaces mentioned in the Arabian Nights of Entertainment. I passed along a broad level path, full of life and fancy, amid groves and gardens, and villas all glittering in grandeur. At every turn, something more Oriental and magnificent than anything I had yet seen presented itself. Along the level, broad highway, a masquerading-looking crowd was swarming towards Cairo. Ladies, wrapped closely in white veils, were carrying water on their heads. Long rows of dromedaries loaded with luggage were moving stately forward. Donkeys at full canter, one white man riding, and two black men driving and thumping the poor brutes most unmercifully with short thick sticks, were winding their way through the throng. Ladies enveloped in flowing robes of black silk, and veiled up to the eyes, were sitting stride-leg on richly-caparisoned asses, shewing off with pomp a pair of yellow morocco slippers, which appeared on their feet from under their flowing robes. And before these, clearing the way, there were eunuch slaves crying: "Darak ya Khowaga-riglak! shemalak!" which probably may mean: "Stand back, and let her ladyship pass!" There were walkers and water-carriers, with goat-skins full on their back; and fruit-sellers and orange-girls; and ourselves and others driving at full gallop, regardless of all the Copts, Abyssinians, Greeks, Turks, Parsees, Nubians, and Jews, which crowded the path. But curiosity of this sort is soon satisfied, and these novelties are passed, when I find myself in the midst of the city, more full of mud and misery, dark, dirty twisting lanes, arched almost over by verandas, and wretchedly paved or not paved at all, full of smells and disgusting sights—such as lean, mangy dogs, and ragged beggars quivering with lice, and poverty-stricken people; all this more than the whole world can produce anywhere else, not excepting even the Jewish city of Prague; which astonished me beyond comparison till I saw the poorer portions of Cairo.'