EGYPT IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
BY A FAST TRAVELER.
'You ought to go to the East,' said Mr. Swift, with a wave of his hand; 'I've been there, and seen it under peculiar circumstances.'
'Explain, O howaga! Give us the facts.
'Immediately. Just place the punch-pitcher where I can reach it easily. That's right! Light another Cabañas. So; now for it. In 1858, month of December, I was settled in comfortable quarters in the Santa Lucia, Naples, and fully expected to winter there at my ease, when, to my disgust, I received letters from England, briefly ordering me by first steamer to Alexandria, thence per railroad to Cairo, there to see the head of a certain banking-house; transact my business, and return to Naples with all possible dispatch. No sooner said than done; there was one of the Messagérie steamers up for Malta next day; got my passport visaed, secured berth, all right. Next night I was steaming it past Stromboli, next morning in Messina; then Malta, where I found steamer up for Alexandria that night; in four days was off that port, at six o'clock in the morning, and at half-past eight o'clock was in the cars, landing in Cairo at four o'clock in the afternoon. Posted from the railroad-station to the banker's, saw my man, arranged my business, was to receive instructions at seven o'clock the next morning, and at eight o'clock take the return train to Alexandria, where a steamer was to sail next day, that would carry me back to Naples, presto! as the jugglers say.
'There, breathe a little, and take another glass of punch, while I recall my day in the East.
'Through at the banker's, he recommended me to the Hotel ——, where I would find a good table, clean rooms, and none of my English compatriots. I love my native land and my countrymen in it, but as for them out of it, and as Bohemians—ugh! I am too much of a wolf myself to love wolves. Arrived at the hotel, with my head swimming with palm-trees, railroad, turbans, tarbooshes, veiled women, camels, pipes, dust, donkeys, oceans of blue calico, groaning water-wheels, the Nile, far-off view of the Pyramids, etc., I at once asked the headwaiter for a room, water, towels; he passed me into the hands of a very tall Berber answering to the name of Yusef, who was dressed in flowing garments and tarboosh, and who was one of the gentlest beings entitled to wear breeches I have ever seen; he had feet that in my recollection seem a yard long, and how he managed to move so noiselessly, unless both pedals were soft-shod, worries me to the present time. Well, at six o'clock the gong sounded for dinner, and out I went over marble floors to the dining hall, where I found only three other guests, who saluted me courteously when I entered, and at a signal from Yusef, a compromise between a bow and a salaam, we seated ourselves at table. Of the three guests, one was particularly a marked man, apart from his costume, that of a cavalry officer in the Pacha's service; there was something grand in his face, large blue eyes, full of humor and bonhommie, a prominent nose, a broad forehead, burned brown with the sun, his head covered with the omnipresent tarboosh, a mustache like Cartouche's; such was my vis-à-vis at the hotel-table.
'In conversation with this officer, it turned up that one of my most intimate friends was his cousin, and so we had a bottle of old East-India pale sherry over that; then we had another to finally cement our acquaintance; I said finally—I should say, finally for dinner.
'I have seen the interiors of more than three hundred hotels in Europe, Africa, and America; but I have yet to see one that appeared so outrageously romantic as that of the Hotel ——, at Cairo, after that second bottle of sherry! The divans on which we reposed, the curious interlacing of the figures on the ceiling, the raised marble floor at the end of the room overlooking the street, the arabesques on the doors, and finally the never-ending masquerade-ball going on in the street under the divans where we sat and smoked.
'I can't tell you how it happened, but after very small cups of very black coffee and a pousse café, in the officer's room, of genuine kirschwasser and good curaçoa, I was mounted on a bay horse; there was a dapple-gray alongside of me; and running ahead of us, to clear the way, the officer's sais afoot, ready to hold our horses when we halted. We were quickly mounted and off like the wind, past turbans, flowing bournouses, tarbooshes, past grand old mosques, petty cafés, where the faithful were squatting on bamboo-seats, smoking pipes or drinking coffee-grounds, while listening to a storyteller, possibly relating some story in the Arabian Nights; then we were through the bazaars, all closed now and silent; then up in the citadel, and through the mosque of Yusef; then down and scouring over the flying sand among the grand old tombs of the Mamelukes and of the caliphs; then off at break-neck speed toward the Mokatamma mountains, from a rise on the lower spur of one of which we saw, in the shadow of the coming night, the Pyramids and the slow-flowing Nile.