From the Pyramids to Joppa.
We have spoken of Cairo as of the East, Eastern. But this
quality is gradually diminishing. The influence of Europe is telling on its
architecture, its customs, and its costumes, and turning the picturesque into
the prosaic. The wave from the West is sweeping over everything and modifying
everything. When shall the wave of a pure Christianity sweep away its false
religion and a hundred other evils with it, and, like the waters of
Egypt’s beneficent river, deposit in the minds of its people the elements
of a renewed life, the germs of highest blessing?
Still, Cairo continues to
be the most Oriental of all the great cities of Egypt, and our knowledge of
this soon drew us out from our hotel to a stroll among its bazaars. Generally,
the streets which contain these shops of Eastern traffic are very narrow so
much so, that it is often with great difficulty and much need for mutual
accommodation that two persons riding on donkeys can pass each other. The
storeys of the houses as they ascend project more and more, and at length the
highest storeys on the opposite sides come so near, that, on looking up, you
can only see the narrowest line of sky; a custom which, though perhaps not so
favourable to ventilation, effectually protects both the inhabitants and the
passengers from the terrible rays of a vertical sun.
We noticed the same
apparent unconsciousness of the march of time and want of “push” in
those cross-legged merchants as in their brethren of Alexandria; though when we
sat down near them in their own posture, and proceeded to bargain- making,
their dreamy eyes speedily opened, and they made it very evident that they were
wide awake. The practice referred to in certain of the “books of the
Prophets” also drew our attention, - as it afterwards did in other large
cities of the East. - of whole streets being devoted to one particular kind of
artisanship and merchandise. One was entirely occupied with tailors; another
with the making of brazen utensils; a third was engrossed with the manufacture
and sale of rude, quaint mirrors; while in a fourth, innumerable nimble fingers
were busy almost at the same moment with, the making and selling of silken
tassels.
It will not greatly surprise our readers that, amid the noise of
shouting camel-drivers and donkey-boys, of curiously varied street-calls, and
the incessant importunity of beggars with their everlasting
“bucksheesh,” and wandering, without an interpreter or guide, in
tortuous streets that seemed to obey no law but that of confusion, we soon
found ourselves in an inextricable labyrinth. But the donkey is the cheap and
popular conveyance of Cairo; and throwing ourselves on to the back of the first
we met, and simply naming our hotel to the quick-witted boy-driver, we left the
rest to him. .It is a mode of conveyance, however, which, in such narrow,
crowded streets, requires skilful pilotage; for your legs are in much danger of
getting entangled with some passing object when you are at your full speed, and
of either doing harm or getting harm. There is often an impish love of
mischief, too, about the boy who is driving the animal from behind, which makes
him indifferent about the rider, if he can only save his donkey. He leaves it
to the rider to see all dangers ahead. We remember how an admired friend, some
years before, when cantering along one of these streets at full speed, found
himself and his donkey suddenly landed in a deep pit which had been opened, an
hour or two before, in the middle of the street. Our friend’s irritation
was increased when, on extricating himself from the ugly hole, he found all the
interest and sympathy of the driver and the passers-by given to the ass, which
they kindly examined and stroked, while he was left to gather himself up as he
best might. We suspect the Koran contains no parable like that of the Good
Samaritan.
We were told, in one of our walks about Cairo, of some curious
features in its police arrangements which worked effectually in preventing
deeds of violence. Each of the principal crafts has a sheikh or chief who keeps
his eye on the members of his own fraternity, and, knowing them all, secures
the detection and punishment of offenders among them. Moreover, the whole city
is divided into eight wards, under a separate police inspection; and as the
greater number of the streets have no thoroughfare, and have gates guarded by a
sentinel, which are closed at an early hour of the night, escape is next to
impossible. Then the administration of justice, though corrupt in civil cases,
is pure in criminal matters; while punishment is certain, prompt, and terrible.
The consequence is, that Cairo, whatever may be the measure of its offences in
other respects, is more free from deeds of violence than many European cities.
In the case of some of our greatest cities, there is no elevated point from
which we can look on them so as to include them in one view; they can only be
seen in detail. But in Cairo, its lofty Citadel gives you this advantage. It
was built by the famous Saladin of the Crusades on a lateral ridge of the
Mokattam hills, at an elevation of about two hundred and fifty feet above the
level of the city, which it is more fitted to command than to protect, - as
Mohammed Ali more than once discovered during his energetic but turbulent
reign. Certainly the view from this grand eminence is the noblest in Egypt, and
one of the most memorable in all the East The vast city, with its population of
more than three hundred thousand persons, lies mapped at your feet, every
object distinctly defined and clear in its colouring in the singularly pure
atmosphere. Breaking the monotony of the brown flat-roofed surface, there are
spacious and verdant gardens; gorgeous palaces; beautifully adorned public
fountains; tombs of the mighty dead, as large, in some instances, as had been
their habitations when living; occasional sycamores and palms casting their
welcome shadows; and, most characteristic of all, four hundred mosques
scattered over the city and rising high with their swelling domes and tall,
white, airy minarets. Looking westward, fields of Indian-corn, groves of palms,
gardens of orange-trees, intermixed with sweet-scented limes and feathery
bananas, spread away in the direction of Old Cairo, and down towards the banks
of the great river. And there is the resplendent river itself, the mysterious,
beneficent Nile, dotted with verdant islets; while little boats, winged with
white lateen sails, are steering their way in the midst of them, up the stream.
Villages gleaming out here and there from an ambush of trees give life to the
landscape beyond the river. And yonder, at the distance of five miles, are the
mighty Pyramids, the different courses of stones which compose the enormous.
structures, with the Sphinx rising from the sand near them, traceable with the
naked eye; and beyond these, closing up the view, are the Libyan mountains,
stretching away into the illimitable Libyan wilderness.
"Beyond the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless
and bare,
the lone and level sands stretch far away."
Looking to the eastward of Cairo, there is nothing but
sandy waste, - dreary desolation.
There was one object of much interest
within the inclosure of the Citadel - the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, a structure
not so remarkable for the purity or beauty of its architectural style, as for
the costliness of its material, every part of it, except its outer wall,
consisting of Oriental alabaster. We were informed that while Mohammed Ali
occupied twenty years in its erection, he would never allow it to be entirely
finished, from the dread produced by a popular prophecy that when the last
stone was laid he should die. We found afterwards that this is a common form of
popular superstition among rulers all over the East - the Sultan of Turkey not
excepted - and that they therefore always keep on hand some unfinished
building. At the time when we entered this gorgeous structure, the worshippers
were few, probably not more than six scattered over a place that was capable of
containing as many thousands. We walked silently over the richly carpeted floor
to the Caaba-stone which indicates the direction of Mecca, such as is to be
found in every mosque, and towards which every Moslem worshipper present has
his eye and his body turned. In all likelihood, this is a practice borrowed by
the Mohammedans from the ancient Jewish worship, for it is now well known that
there was a stone in every synagogue - both in Judea itself and in foreign
countries - which pointed the worshipper in the direction of Jerusalem and its
temple; and it would almost appear as if the noble exile Daniel must have had
some provision of this kind in his dwelling in Babylon, where he prayed and
gave thanks before his God three times a day, with his window open and his face
turned towards Jerusalem.
There was one other mosque which stood out very
prominently before us as beheld from the Citadel, remarkable for the elegance
of its proportions and the elaborate beauty of its decorations, the pride of
every Moslem heart in Cairo, which we visited later in the day - the Mosque of
Sultan Hassan. It was built of stones brought from the Pyramids, and adorned at
an expense sufficient to have drained the resources of a province. Two majestic
fountains in front of this thing of beauty - at which, when we saw them, many
Moslem votaries were performing their sacred washings and purifications - were
equal in elegance to the mosque itself, and in admirable keeping with it. There
was a kind of aristocracy or inner sect among those engaged in their ablutions,
who monopolized the purer fountain. For sanitary reasons, we should certainly
have joined them in their preference. We were also struck with the fact here,
as in many other places seen by us subsequently, that amusement jostled and
elbowed devotion - for the open space around the sacred house, the square of
the Roumaylee, was the favourite resort of half the idlers of Cairo, who never
wearied in looking on the exploits of native tumblers and the tricks of
magicians and Syrian jugglers, or in listening to the songs of Nubian musicians
and the improvised tales of Arabian storytellers.
All the time since we had
entered Cairo, we had been fretting with a secret impatience to visit the
oldest of all human monuments; and the next morning we gave the reins to our
impatience, and were off to the Pyramids. The presence of the Prince of Wales
in Cairo had been the occasion of greatly increasing the facilities and
comforts of this pilgrimage. In honour of the heir to England’s throne,
the Khedive had improvised a carriage-road all the way from his capital to the
Pyramids. Instead of the old system of donkeys and drivers and dragomen, with a
stock of provisions, and even, in some instances, a company of armed followers,
we set off in an open carriage with one fine, dark, tall Nubian for our guide.
Crossing the Nile by a bridge of boats, we hurried on, sometimes on open,
exposed parts of the road, and sometimes through long and shady avenues of
acacia-trees. At some points on the way the road was still in course of being
improved, and men were in the act of planting and watering young trees on
either side of it. We observed that every gang of workers had a task-master
over them with a thick cudgel in his hand, which was not a mere idle badge of
office, but meant for use; and we thought of the Hebrew bondsmen toiling thus
under a broiling sun, making bricks of mud such as that around us, and their
lives made bitter to them under a far heavier bondage and more unrelenting
task-masters. We were able to drive up so near that, sitting in our vehicle, we
could touch the lowest stones of the Pyramid. But the eye of our Nubian guide
was turned to another object than the wonderful pile. Among that motley
jabbering multitude scattered at its base, he saw a Nubian dark as himself; a
native of the same mud-village a thousand miles up the Nile. The recognition
was simultaneous, and the next moment the two brothers had fallen on each
other’s neck, and were locked in each other’s embrace. There was
another Bible reminiscence here.
And those were the Pyramids of Egypt, the
oldest and most stupendous human structures in the world! The most competent
authorities on such matters have fixed the date of the erection of the
principal Pyramid - that of Cheops - at 2500 years b.c., which carries us back
to within a few generations of the Deluge; so that the builders may be imagined
to have shaken hands with the sons of Noah. The Pyramid of Chephren bears the
marks of greater skill in its masonry, and therefore probably arose a few ages
later; and though it is not quite so broad at its base as its neighbour of
Cheops, yet, from being built on a loftier natural platform, it appears, when
seen from certain points, to be higher than the other. But the chief notice of
pilgrims is generally turned to the older pile, as being the first that is
approached from Cairo, and, like the eldet brother in an Eastern family, having
“the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power.” At first we
had the experience common to most visitors, of finding some difficulty in
believing in the vast proportions assigned to it, as covering at its base
twelve acres; but, as we walked round it, and leaned upon its lower blocks and
looked up to its apex, our incredulity melted away without our needing the
additional test of mensuration. We walked aside a little to the famous Sphinx,
which, indicating equal boldness of conception with those great Pyramids, gave
evidence not only of masonic skill, but of the genius of the sculptor. In
length it is 143 feet, while it measures 102 feet round the forehead; the whole
- with the exception of the paws and a portion of the back - being chiselled
out of the solid rock. Was that colossal figure, with its human head and
lion’s body, an object of worship? Or was it an emblematic representation
of the king, as uniting in himself the highest wisdom and power? The fact that
under its breast and between its enormous paws there is a little temple with
its altar, from which incense must have ascended into the expanded nostrils of
the image, seems rather to favour the former conjecture, though it is not
inconsistent with the other; while the emblematic theory receives countenance
from the long avenues of sphinxes that have been discovered in other parts of
Egypt. Imagine those heaps of stones and debris, the accumulation of more than
four millenniums, to have been carried away from around the base of the two
great Pyramids, that they are again encased in gray granite from Sinai, or in
red porphyry from the Mokattam hills, and a second Sphinx placed on the other
side of the broad path leading up to them, and we approach nearer to the
spectacle of those enormous masses as the first generations looked on them.
And who built those Titanic structures, and what was the design of their
builders? These are questions that have been repeated since the Father of
history, more than two thousand years ago, looked up on those same time-defying
piles, and thought them old. Even could it be shown that certain astronomical
principles had been recognized in their erection, this, we humbly suggest,
would not warrant the conclusion that they had been built for astronomical
uses, any more than the placing of a sun-dial on the corner of some modern
mansion would prove that the house had been built for the measuring of time. We
have listened to Professor Smyth’s singularly ingenious exposition of his
theory - which represents the Pyramid of Cheops as reared for a half sacred
use, as the depository of the standard measure both for liquids and for solid
bodies - with admiration, but without conviction. The old and popular
supposition which regards them as royal tombs or monuments continues by far the
most probable, especially when it is considered that human remains have
actually been found in some of the smaller Pyramids. Perhaps the ambitious
structure on the plain of Shinar may have supplied the first hint to the men
who planned them, in which case, as quaint Fuller has remarked, “they are
the younger brethren of the Tower of Babel” On this supposition, with the
name of the monarch that erected them to his own glory buried in impenetrable
oblivion, what a monument are they at once of human power, folly, and crime.
Yet these mountain structures, which were almost contemporaneous in their
erection with the beginning of human history, and may very possibly be standing
at its close, suggest more than one conclusion. They prove at how early a
period human rule assumed the form of gigantic despotisms. We learn from
Herodotus that twenty thousand men, relieved every three months, were employed
for twenty years in erecting the one Pyramid of Cheops. The energies of a whole
nation were bent for so long a period, and its resources drained, to gratify
the mad ambition of one of the earliest of the Pharaohs. And they also place it
beyond doubt that Egypt must have been one of the first peopled countries, as
well as one of the earliest cradles of the arts. There must have been something
more than mere brute strength - a considerable knowledge of some of the great
mechanical laws, as well as of the rules of masonry - to be able to raise those
huge blocks to their appointed place, and to rear those Pyramids. And when we
find among Egypt’s earliest tomb-paintings and imperishable frescoes,
pictures of the shoemaker’s knife, of the weaver’s hand-shuttle, and
of the whitesmith’s blowpipe as it is used in our own days, we cannot
admit that there is a shade of extravagance in those lines of the old bard,
"Eye yet the heroes of Deucalion's blood
Pelasgia
peopled with a glorious brood,
The fertile plains of Egypt flourished then,
Productive cradle of the first of men.”
And now looking down from the Pyramids upon Egypt, it was
impossible not to be struck with its unique position in the religious history
of the world. From the earliest times, down through that long series of ages in
which a divine revelation was being given to the world through the medium of
the chosen people, Egypt stands forth in history as the chief antagonist and
the unchanging enemy of the Church of God. We except the period of Joseph, when
the patriarch Jacob and his family found a sunny refuge in Goshen; but how few
generations elapsed before their house of refuge became their house of bondage,
and Israel in the brick-kilns became the most cruelly oppressed and
down-trodden of slaves. Egypt, in consequence, became the vast theatre on which
the more awful attributes of God were manifested, just as Palestine became the
selected scene in which the wonders of his grace should be revealed. Those ten
plagues in which a whole nation was punished, and shame put upon their false
divinities through the very form of the miraculous judgments, awfully
culminating in the death of every first-born in the land and in the destruction
of the proud Pharaoh and his armed charioteers in the Red Sea, were
unapproached in their terrific scale of retribution in any of the older nations
of the world. And yet this long line of ever darkening and deepening judgments
taught the guilty people and their rulers no lesson of repentance. All through
the centuries of the Jewish Church and the periods of the prophetic revelation,
Egypt appears either as the tempter or as the persecutor of Israel, dividing
the guilt, in this respect, with the Babylonian and Assyrian monarchies to the
east of the sacred land.
No burden therefore reads more darkly in the
“books of the Prophets” than that of Egypt. There is a minuteness of
detail, a graphic picturing, an intensity of colouring, an adaptation to the
characteristic customs of the people and to the characteristic features of
Egyptian scenery, in such elaborate predictions as those in the nineteenth
chapter of Isaiah and in certain passages of Ezekiel, that cannot be exceeded.
These were spoken and placed on record when Egypt was still in the meridian of
her power, and contending with the great monarchies on the banks of the
Euphrates and the Tigris for the supremacy of the nations. And yet they have
all been fulfilled. With Gibbon and Volney as involuntary witnesses, and modern
Egypt looked down upon by us from the Pyramids, we behold events corresponding
not only to, every line but to every letter of the inspired oracles. The
harmony is startling. When we read in those prophets that Egypt should
“become the basest of nations,” that “there should no more be a
prince of the land of Egypt,” that the country should become
“destitute of that whereof it was full ;“ and when we place side by
side with these oracles the facts that during the long ages of the Mamaluke
supremacy her rulers were imported strangers and slaves - that for two thousand
years no native prince has ever sat upon her throne, but its sovereignty has
often been sold to the highest bidder - that the papyrus and the flax and the
manufacture of fine linen which were once her glory have now vanished, and the
land which was once, with Sicily, the granary of the Roman empire, is scarcely
able to supply bread to its own inhabitants, - it would be madness to call such
things as these accidental coincidences. Reason says, Here are the words and
the working of Him who “knoweth the end from the beginning.”
It
would, however, be an utter mistake to say that this state of things has been
produced by a direct curse from Heaven upon the land. God usually punishes
nations, and accomplishes his prophecies regarding them, by allowing their sins
to work out their own natural consequences. The curse lies in the ignorance,
the false religion, the profound moral debasement, and the exhausted energies
of the people. They are so debased as not to be conscious of their debasement.
All the natural resources of the country are just what they were when
Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens came down to glass themselves in the
great river. We turn from gazing on those useless Pyramids to look down on that
munificent gift of God to Egypt - the mysterious, silent, solitary Nile. It is
this which creates Egypt, annually renews it, fecundates it, saves it from
being swallowed up by the all-encircling ocean of sand. This makes it as unique
in its physical geography as we have seen it to be in its history. The
singularity does not consist in the mere fact of the annual inundations of the
life-giving stream, for the same thing takes place with the La Plata, the
Amazon, and indeed with all great rivers whose source is within the tropics;
but in this further fact, that as there is scarcely any rain-fall in Egypt, its
fertility entirely depends on the Nile. Wherever it reaches, there are verdure
and abundance, and
“Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.”
Beyond its influence is the reign of desolation. But then, by the increase
and extension of canals for inland conveyance, and still more for irrigation,
and by the use of machinery for raising the water above its natural level,
whole sandy provinces might be reclaimed, and dreary deserts turned into
smiling Goshens. There is an almost miraculously exuberant fertility in the mud
of the Nile when it is shone upon by an Egyptian sun. It is scarcely
extravagant to say that the river is “a solution of Ethiopia’s
richest regions, and the vast country is merely a precipitate.” The
cucumber and the melon-shoot have sometimes been known to grow twenty-four
inches in as many hours. There are extensive districts which cheerfully yield a
rotation of four crops in the same year. The date-palm alone is to the Egyptian
what the reindeer is. to the poor Lap- lander; supplying him at once with milk
and food, cordage and fuel, basket-work and clothing. And there are budding
prophecies which keep alive the hope that temporal prosperity will return to
this land when her people have welcomed the higher blessing. “The Lord
shall smite and heal it; and they shall return to the Lord, and he shall be
entreated of them, and shall heal them.”
Early on the following
morning, we were off by railway to Suez, a long journey of 180 miles, through a
region that was almost entirely desert. The old camel-road must have been
drearier still, for there isonly one tree visible in its long track of
desolation. The railways of Egypt are the property of the Khedive, and are
under his entire management; and we had an experience of his railway rule on
this journey that did not increase our love for absolute and irresponsible
government. It so happened that he was to cross our line some time on that day,
and no train was allowed to approach his point of transit until he had passed.
The consequence was, that we were kept sitting for hours under a burning
Egyptian sun, at a station whose neighbourhood was so infested by reptiles that
we could almost believe that Cleopatra must have obtained from it her deadly
asp.
Suez stands at the head of the Red Sea, on its western shore. There
is nothing beautiful about it, looking out, as it does, upon a broad ocean of
yellow sands and a narrow stripe of green water. But it has an interest to
Englishmen as the point of embarkation or of landing for passengers to or from
our Indian possessions; and we confess to having had a feeling of greater
nearness to home when, on looking two miles down the gulf, we saw a little
fleet of ships at anchor, with the unmistakable British build about them.
Our principal object in diverging thus far out of our way to Palestine, was
to enjoy a day’s ride into the desert on the route to Sinai, so far as the
traditional wells of Moses. We crossed in a boat a little arm of the Red Sea,
taking mules and muleteers with us for our trackless desert-ride.
On our
right, about a mile and a half distant, the sea stretched itself out before us,
gradually swelling into a breadth of apparently about six miles, mountains of
considerable elevation and abruptness rising on its further side. Immediately
in front of us, and towards the east, as far as the eye could reach, there
spread an illimitable sea of sand. Our sure-footed animals carried us forward
with a fair amount of speed, the sandy path beneath their feet sounding crisp
as snow when the frost has been keen. There was no appearance of vegetation,
save, at intervals, a little tuft of coarse grass struggling to live, and
scarcely succeeding. An occasional lizard, yellow as the sand, and sickly, made
us wonder how it contrived to pick up a living under such disadvantages. But
our ride was diversified by something more exciting. Twice, in the course of
four hours, we were so fortunate as to see a mirage of the desert. There
appeared to rise suddenly before us at some distance, as if by an
enchanter’s wand, a blue sparkling lake, with men riding on camels at its
brink. At times the riders advanced a little way into the lake, and the water
splashed around the camels’ feet. The deception seemed so beautifully
real, that it was with difficulty we could reason ourselves into the belief of
its unreality. We knew how science had accounted for the phenomenon even in
such remarkable instances as the Fata Morgana of the Strait of Messina and the
Spectre of the Brocken in Germany. But it was only by our riding up to the spot
that the illusion was entirely dispelled.
At length, after four hours’
riding, a green oasis appeared at no great distance, at the sight of which our
little mules pricked up their ears and quickened their pace. We found it to
consist of two inclosures, probably about five acres in extent, surrounded by
hedges woven with dried palm-leaves. It contained palms and fig-trees,
pomegranates and tamarisks; and in the midst of these, and shaded by them,
several fountains, in one of which, especially, the water bubbled up in great
force, helping to irrigate and keep green a large space around it. Were these
the fountains to which Moses came with his emancipated pilgrims on the third
day after their wondrous passage through the neighbouring gulf, and where, by a
miracle, he turned the waters into sweetness? The answer to this question
depends upon another which, in spite of all that has been written on the
subject, remains to this hour unsettled, Where is the point of the miraculous
passage of the Hebrew host and their emergence on the sandy wilderness? The
opinion has for a good while been gaining ground, that this branch of the Red
Sea extended, at the period of the Exodus, much further inland and eastward. M.
De Lesseps, the latest writer on the subject, believes that he traced
convincing evidence of the presence of this sea a long way eastward in the line
of his canal, and even professes to have identified, on the margin of the
“Bitter Lakes,” the scene of the miraculous deliverance. Should this
theory turn out to be correct, it will rather increase the likelihood that
these are the actual Marah fountains.
The little spot was curious, however,
apart from those sacred associations which are supposed by many to hang around
it. We found human enterprise and domestic life even here. One family lives in
a house principally built of palm-branches and thatched with palm-leaves -
partially thatched only, for in the middle of the house there was an acacia
flourishing and rising through the roof, with a beautiful white dove perched on
one of it's topmost branches, and a musket hanging from another. The master is
a Levantine, has a wife and a pretty boy, and contrives to gain a precarious
livelihood from such visits as ours, and also from hunting gazelles and other
game over the surrounding desert.
Outside the inclosure, on a sandy
eminence about a hundred yards distant, there was a large fountain with a
majestic old palm bending over it. When we got up to it, a company of Bedouins
were standing on its further side giving their camels drink. The salutations
between them and ourselves had all the grave elaboration of the days of the
patriarchs. It happened rather strangely that all the four quarters of the
globe were at that moment represented at this well in the desert. Those swarthy
Bedouins represented Asia, the muleteers whom we had brought from Suez were
children of Africa, our companion and ourself stood sponsors for Europe, and an
American artist, who had joined our group, for America. The fountain became to
us an emblem of Christ’s gospel with its inestimable blessings, for there
was ample room around it for all, and there was water enough a thousand times
over to slake the thirst of the whole many-coloured company.
On our return
to Suez, we kept nearer to the sea, and tried to imagine the scene of the
miraculous passage of the Israelites. In the mountains opposite, rising like a
wall near to the shore, we could see openings or gorges hemmed in by hills and
precipices on either side, along which the bannered multitude, guided and
guarded by the pillar of fire, may have advanced towards the swelling sea. We
could imagine the Israelites, at the word of Moses, advancing towards the
pebbly sand, when the waves opened before them, and the myriad hosts marched
through as on a rocky pavement, the obedient waters rising high like walls of
crystal on either side. The feet of the last pilgrim have scarcely touched the
sand of the Arabian desert, when the waters close on the pursuing chariots of
Egypt with their horses and riders, and the whole army of Egypt perishes with
its king in one watery grave. We could imagine Miriam and her maidens sounding
the loud timbrel and moving in the sacred dance on the neighbouring sands, and
singing their song of triumph in praise of that most stupendous miracle which
wrote itself indelibly in the poetry of the Hebrews, and struck terror into the
hearts of the surrounding nations at the thought of “a God who was able to
deliver after this sort.”
On the following morning, we left Suez for
Port Said, hoping to find an early opportunity of crossing from thence to the
Holy Land. The first three hours of our journey were by rail to Ismailia,
where, entering a small steamer, we sailed across the “Bitter Lakes,”
and proceeded along the Grand Suez Canal towards the Mediterranean shore. We
naturally looked with much interest upon this stupendous triumph of engineering
skill, which public opinion is rapidly coming to regard as not only a grand
feat of modern enterprise, but an immense benefit to the world. It is
impossible to withhold high admiration from the man whose genius planned it,
whose energy accomplished it in the face of a thousand difficulties, physical,
political, and financial, and whose hopeful enthusiasm never sank when
prophecies of failure were at the loudest. In length nearly 100 miles, in depth
26 feet, in width at the bottom 72 feet, and on the surface 196 feet, it links
the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and shortens the sea-path between England
and the East 7500 miles. With India, as so vast and rich a portion of the
British empire, to no country in the world is it so important commercially and
politically as our own. When we look back upon those useless Pyramids, the work
of despotism, the monument of an ambition that outwitted and befooled itself,
and compare them with a grand human work like this, whose tendency is to expand
the commerce and increase the wealth of the world and to promote the
brotherhood of nations, it is impossible not to feel that in the two we have a
measure of human progress, and that in the long interval the world has been
becoming wiser and better.
But nothing can ever make this canal
picturesque. The ugliest canal in Holland has now and then a redeeming feature,
but this is the veriest realization of dreariness and monotony. On either side
it is sand - all sand. One traveller describes certain places on its banks as
rendered gay and brilliant by innumerable flocks of rosy pelicans, scarlet
flamingoes, and snow-white spoonbills. And we do not question his accuracy. But
on the day of our voyage, we had experience of a phenomenon which made the
dreariness more dreary,- and drove every bird in nature to a distance. This was
a sand-storm, in which the sand blew and drifted all around us, as in a violent
fall of snow when the wind has risen to a gale. We are now writing with a
snow-storm beating against our windows, but this is nothing to the blinding,
choking, stupefying effect of a storm when the sands of the desert are rained
pitilessly upon us. Eyes and ears, nose and mouth, all become foul or gritty.
The pilot of our little vessel stood peering through the tempest, as we have
seen shepherds in our own land when the snow was played with by a whirlwind,
often at a loss to know where he was. Had this state of things continued for a
fortnight, M. Lesseps would have needed to commence digging his canal anew.
Travellers on their way through the Arabian desert to Mount Sinai, on some rare
occasions encounter such storms. The best-equipped caravan finds difficulty in
toiling on against it. The Bedouins, with their heads covered with shawls and
their backs turned to the storm, leave the camels to their own guidance, and
the patient animals continue moving straight forward, now and then throwing
their long necks sideways to avoid the tempest. The whole thing was unpleasant
enough while it lasted, but what was this to the experience of travellers when
that “angel of death,” the fiery simoom, “spreads his wings on
the blast”! Before we reached Port Said the evening had become beautifully
calm, and the Egyptian moon looked down upon us in most serene brightness from
a cloudless sky.
Port Said is the rapid creation of the same enterprise
that has produced the canal, Ten years since, it consisted of a few miserable
shanties, and all its fresh water was brought from a place thirty miles distant
across the lake Menzaleh in little Arab boats; now, its water is brought in
pipes, and it has many other of the conveniences of a European city, with a
population exceeding 10,000.
To-morrow, March 21st, was the Sabbath-day,
and we had hoped to find our “pension,” which looked out so
pleasantly on the bright sea, turned into a little sanctuary; but the long fast
and the wearisome sail through that howling wilderness laid us prostrate with
dysentery. Those were the first hours of sadness since we had left home. But a
good Samaritan appeared in the afternoon, in the person of a generous M. P., a
member of the Wesleyan Church, who had been our fellow-passenger on the
previous day, and who brought us a native medicine which he had obtained in
Cairo. This soon restored us, and proved invaluable to many others in our
subsequent wanderings. At noon on the Monday a Russian steamer hove in view,
and in a few hours later had us out of sight of Egypt, promising to land us at
Joppa early on the next day. The ship was crowded with a many-tongued and
motley company. Pilgrims from many countries were on their way to Jerusalem to
celebrate the Latin Easter. Jews reclining on the deck on little strips of
carpet, were going up to keep the Passover. They could easily have taken up
their bed and walked. It was a calm clear night; but the captain lost his way,
and in the morning we were considerably north of our landing-place. We could
see not far off the ruined harbour of the Roman Caesarea; beyond, the
forest-crowned promontory of Carmel, and that broad, white, majestic mountain,
rising like a wall many thousand feet to the sky, was the snowy Hermon - a
grand, welcome, unexpected vision. It was therefore near mid-day before we cast
anchor and lay off Joppa.
Go To Chapter
Three
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