“Any news going? What about Sir Roger?”
“Oh, the case is in court, you know. But I heard in Alexandria last night that the Governor has resigned, and that the Ministry will be out-voted.”
“Oh! indeed! Ah, well!—a bad job—a telegram—but of course it won’t be true, you know;” and so on.
Several gentlemen seemed to live there for months spending the time in a state of luxurious ease, subsisting, as it were, in a “Castle of Indolence,” and breathing with lazy enjoyment the balmy Egyptian air. They were to be seen often sauntering under the piazzas, or witnessing the trick of some conjuror in the outer courtyard, or lounging on cushions in the large vestibule of the hotel, or listening to the brass band in the Viceroy’s music garden opposite.
“I say, Jones, just close that curtain another inch, will you? don’t you see the sun is taking the shine out of me?”
“No, thank you, old boy; I am not lazy, you know, but I was born ‘tired.’”
“Ah! just so, and I suppose you have now got a bone in your arm too;” and so on, with similar bits of small wit.
The very air of Egypt here suggests repose, and some travellers—after “doing the Pyramids” and climbing the citadel, where the finest view of Cairo is to be had—often thus saunter away day after day. Some lounge in the bazaars, probably on a donkey or in an open carriage, bargaining for half an hour over some purchase of a few francs’ value, and when completed all the cheapening is pretty sure to be lost in getting small change for a sovereign. Gold seems with these Easterns the one supremely precious thing in the world; and when you despair of obtaining any article at your offer, the presentation of your purse of gold coins will sometimes carry the day. To change and exchange other coins for gold seems a passion with all bankers, bazaar keepers, dragomans, hotel people, and barbers, as well as the money changers, who sit at almost every street corner with their case of coins of all nations freely displayed.
Of course we visited all the “Lions.” Of these the chief are the Pyramids, which are at first disappointing, as all great things appear to be, especially when first seen from a distance. But the nearer they are approached and the longer looked at they seem to swell in size, and with each new visit their vastness more and more impresses the mind. There are seventy Pyramids in all, but most of them are of sun-burnt brick of inferior size and considerably decayed. Seven are situated at Ghizeh, some seven miles south-west of Cairo on the west of the Nile. The finest is that of Cheops, of sandstone or limestone, and is evidently more destroyed by the builders of Cairo than by time, notwithstanding its immense age. Its height is 480 feet with a square base line of 764 feet; its sides front to the four cardinal points, and the opening is on its north face, as indeed is the case with all the Pyramids.[1]