Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water

It would hardly be believed what natural signal-stations are ready to hand. The mounds, not of earth, but of rocks, seem naturally to taper into the crowning flagstaff. A grand command of the Gates of the Red Sea, the Coast of Arabia, and the Indian Ocean, has the signal-station on the summit of the highest point, 1300 feet sheer up.

In the afternoon Mrs. Blair took us for a drive—the one drive it must be confessed—along the Bunder, or seashore, to the military depôt at the Isthmus.

Descending into the hollow, we saw the sapper and miners' lines, the barracks and the hospital, the church, and the bungalows of the P. and O. and Messageries' agents, who form the civilian community of Aden; then driving along the seashore, the "town," with its hotels and shops, contained in the one sweep of the Prince of Wales' Crescent.

Camels striding over the sandy desert by the roadside, and a strange mingling of desert tribes, seemed the natural accompaniments to this sand of Arabia.

We saw sturdy Arabs with their thick legs and short-set frame, Persians, Indians, Somales, Soudanese, and Nubians—the two latter tribes as black as soot—Jews, whom we knew by their funny little corkscrew curls, bobbing on either side of the face, and who are still here the down-trodden race of the 12th century, degraded and trampled upon by the Arab. Then there are a tribe of fishermen called the Eastern Pirates, and most romantic-looking with their wild, dare-devil faces, and long, smoked-yellow robe, the colour of one of their own weather-worn sails.

The Arabs have their heads plastered with white clay, found along the coast, which turns the colour of the hair to a bright yellow, making it at the same time stiff and frizzy. The Arab women have their faces covered with a thin spotted handkerchief, but even without this you would single them out by their easy swinging walk. Women of other tribes wear their hair en chignon, covered with black muslin, and red or orange saris crossed over the chest, to leave their black arms free.

We drove along the rocky rampart, which reminds me much of a smaller, a very much smaller range of Rocky Mountains. You soon grow accustomed to expect nothing but rocky surfaces and sand at Aden, and are quite surprised at the suspicion of green under the lee of the range; a little wild mignonette, snapdragon, or lupin—a pretty flower with a terrible odour—which are trying to exist there.

We pass several unenclosed and disused Mohammedan cemeteries by the roadside, and at last see the end of the three straight miles of Bunder in the rock fortress, ironically named "The last Refuge." Three hundred and seventy-five steps lead up the face of the rock to its isolated summit, where provisionless, though impregnable, the fortress would quickly surrender. By the side of this fortress we pass under a gateway, and are in "The Camp of the Isthmus." The regiment of British infantry and the native troops quartered at Aden are divided into three camps, that at the Isthmus, the camp in the Crater, and the camp at Aden itself. This foolish separation gives rise to much inconvenience and consequent grumbling amongst the officers; where the community is so small, it seems a pity they should be so unsociably distant. We watched the cricket match that was being played by the sons of the military against the sons of civilians. The ground was curiously white and glistening, from the salt which exudes after rain from the earth, and which makes it very slippery.

The stillness when driving home again was quite extraordinary, not a breath to stir a ripple on the water.

Friday, February 20th.—Every afternoon at three o'clock the danger flag is hoisted opposite the Presidency, and a great bombardment commences. The fortifications, so long needed, are in progress, and every day the entrenchments are blasted away by gunpowder. From the one nearest, the first explosion is heard, sending up clouds of smoke and a shower of stones into the air, which rattle and roll down a rocky ravine on to the beach. One report after another follows quickly, and then when these begin to decrease and die away, those from the opposite fort take up the roll of artillery, the smoke, the rattle of hailstone-shot.

We drove that afternoon to the crater—to the camp inside the crater, a unique position in the world for one, I should say. From the inevitable drive along the Bunder we turned off, and made our way up a zig-zagging hill of great steepness, towards an archway very far above us, built into the rocks. The road ended in a wall of rock, and the entrance under the gateway was not seen till you reached it, because it was immediately on the right-hand, at a sharp angle. Here then we found ourselves in "The Pass," a very grand and striking one, from the vertical height of the crags and the depth we were sunk in below them. The arch we passed under was formed to bridge over the gulf and connect the two lines of fortifications running up on either mountain-side. This pass was pickaxed out of the mountain rock, and very beautiful is the blood-red granite and the green serpentine colours it has exposed to view. Here and there we see a vertical strata of lava embedded in the rock.

We are inside the crater now; a wonderful scene it is. Black rocks of lava and scoria, irregular and jagged at the top like the mouth of a crater, rise up all around; and down in the hollow, in their midst, lies the camp and village, a collection of white buildings. The dull red colour of the scoria gives one the impression that the flames have been of very recent date. There are the caverns, the caves, the cones of lava left by the eruption, the formation of a volcano but active the other day. The heights are bristling with cannon pointed seawards. A tunnel connects with the camp at the Isthmus, which really is only on the other side.

We pass through the native quarter and the camel market. Here we see the Aden white sheep with black heads, and the lumps of fat protruding from each haunch.

Far up in the side of the crater lie the wonderful tanks, the one object of interest in Aden. Supposed to have been made somewhere about 400 B.C., their existence was never suspected till 1851, some twenty years after our occupation. A freshet of water after the rains coming down the side of the rock, led to their discovery.

The tanks are on a platform, and there are six of them, mounting higher and higher into the gulley in the crater. They are all enormously deep, and communicate by channels, and all have been cut out in the rock. They are capable of holding 4,000,000 gallons of water when filled during the rainy season.

The water is then gathered up behind a sluice, and a native climbing up by the rail and ropes we saw, opens it and lets the water down with a rush, which generally fills the first three or four tanks. At this season of the year they are dry, and we saw the yellow chunar-mortar that the tanks are whitewashed with, and the natural formation of rocks, rounded and worn by the action of the water.

Not the least charming part about these tanks is the green peepul-tree, looking, oh! so fresh and green, growing in its crevasse by the tanks, and shading a well. It is the one green spot in the midst of scoria, dust, and ashes.

I remarked how healthy the children in the camp looked, having lately come from India, but was told that it is a fact that troops coming from there are always known to improve and pick up at Aden. It seems strange to say so of such a climate, for we ourselves found the heat and breathless stillness at night very trying. I believe the good health of the station is attributable to the water which is all condensed, and therefore very pure, and very precious also, being doled out in an allowance of three gallons per person daily.

The storm-clouds gathering round the crater at sunset produced a wonderfully grand and gloomy effect, and then the drive home by moonlight, with a last glimpse back at the "Camp in the Crater" from the Pass, the swift gallop along the Bunder behind the pretty Arab horses, brought us quickly home.

At last! After being for four days in that most uncomfortable of all conditions, viz. unable to make up one's mind, our plans have been decided for us by the arrival of the Messageries' boat this afternoon.

The question appeared simple enough—should we go one day south to the Cape, in the Messageries' boat, or the next day north, through the Red Sea homewards, in a P. and O.? In reality it was very complex. We longed to complete our tour round the British Empire, to see the last of our great ruled dominions, the Cape; but then, on the other hand, the political horizon was cloudy, and a vote of censure on the Gladstone Administration pending.

We should have, we found, to wait twenty-five days at the Mauritius, to which there is no cable, before getting a steamer to take us to Natal and Cape Town. This would sever us from telegraphic news, and effectually prevent any immediate and sudden return home in case of a dissolution. We decided therefore against the Cape project, and great as was the disappointment at the time, events have so far justified our decision that we cannot wholly regret it.

At 5 p.m. the next afternoon the P. and O. Brindisi was signalled, and soon afterwards we saw her from the Residency windows, anchoring in the bay. It was not long before we rowed out to her and were on board. Coaling operations, added to the disorganization always attendant on a ship in port, gave us rather an uncomfortable evening.

At nine o'clock we saw an Italian man-of-war, bound for Massowah, stealing out to sea, so noiselessly she moved, as the huge ship loomed black in the dusk to our starboard. The heat was very great downstairs in the cabins, and we got no rest till eleven o'clock, when we cleared away from Aden.

Wednesday, 25th.—"The captain's compliments, and we are passing Perim," shouted at my cabin door at 7 a.m. the next morning, summoned me hastily on deck to see that rocky island at the mouth of the Red Sea.

The morning sun shone brightly and brought out in full relief its excessive barrenness. We ran up our flag in response to the salute from the stone fort which looks appropriately cold and ugly. The two ships wrecked on the rocks around Perim tell how inhospitable are her shores. The Italian war-ship of the night before was just disappearing round the corner of the island to take the broader channel. I prudently refrain from mentioning the two well-known little stories of the capture of Perim and of one of the officers who subsequently occupied, or rather was non-resident there. Notwithstanding all its natural disadvantages, Perim is destined very soon now to rise into importance as a port of call.

From the reap in early childhood we are taught to seek the Red Sea as a narrow strip of blue against the yellow outline of Egypt and Arabia. It is difficult then to realize you are in such a well-known spot when on neither hand is there any coast-line. We only know we are on the great highway, and that its limits are confined, from the numerous ships we are constantly passing. One day four P. and O.'s were actually in sight of one another, an almost unprecedented event, I believe.

We have a good sea running, but the ship is splendidly steady, and there is a following wind, the one most dreaded in the Red Sea, but it is too early in the year to be very hot.

We passed the "Three Brothers" in the afternoon, and the "Twelve Apostles" in the evening. All these islands are covered with white sand, which glistens in the sunlight by day and the moonlight by night.

Thursday, 26th.—Passed Suakim (unseen), whither transports without number are hurrying at this moment.

At five o'clock this morning was sighted Mount Sinai, but to my intense disappointment I had forgotten to ask overnight the time, and when I came up on deck at eight o'clock, I could only see the range. It is forty-five miles away, and rarely seen clearly, but had been to-day.

On this quiet Sunday morning the service on deck seemed peculiarly appropriate, when almost within view of the Holy Mount and those sandy shores of Arabia, that are fraught with such holy memories.

The sea is narrowing; we have a coast-line now on either hand: the pale yellow sand of Arabia against the faint blue of the sky, gives a look of such atmospheric heat, so like what we have always pictured to ourselves the Holy Land. On the other are the more rugged mountains, bare and rocky, of the coast of Egypt—mountains that have a very purple hue—that are grand and solemn in their outline, which occasionally open out to show a glimpse of the desert beyond.

Narrower and narrower grows our channel, the land is closing in as towards 5 p.m. we approach Suez, and see in the distance the few buildings, with the large storehouse, which marks the entrance to the canal. We anchor opposite a Messagerie vessel, and, soon after we have taken up our position, are followed by another P. and O., the Ballarat from Australia.

Who could conceive the loveliness of the sunset tints that evening? I for one have never seen, nor could imagine that such heavenly shades in such inextricable harmony could have existed in nature.

On the "fair coast of Arabia" there was seen the most delicate electric blue, with just such a suspicion of mauve that you knew not whether it was there or not, with a distinct dash of pink,—distinct because it clashed with the streak of yellow sand. It was sublime.

The usual indecision followed as to whether to land at once or not, but being hastily decided in the negative we spent a moonlight evening on board. Sleep came with difficulty that night, for, strange as it seems, we missed the lullaby of the throb of the engines and the noisy revolution of the screw.

It was at five the next morning that we got up, in the middle of the night, as it appeared, and dressed hastily for the steam-launch which was to come at 5.30. The captain was weighing anchor and preparing to go into the canal. At daybreak we collected our goods and stumbled, cold and sleepy, into the launch.

As we crossed the harbour we saw sunrise over the Egyptian hills, and watched it gradually eclipsing the moonlight.

At Suez there were sixty ships hired as transports by the Government—ships of all sorts, rusty, paintless, and out of date, but pressed into service for this emergency. Two thousand camels, whose humpy backs in the dawn at first gave the appearance of a line of sandhills, were waiting on the Isthmus for transportation to Suakim; and the wharf, covered with tents and military stores, showed the bustle and activity of war.

At this wharf we waited for two weary hours and a half, cold and breakfastless, till a train, dirtier than any we have ever previously seen, arrived to take us to Suez.

"Old, familiar Suez," say some of the passengers; "just the same as ever," with her awful wastes, her salt marshes, strewn with rusty bolts and ends of iron, her mud huts and pariah dogs,—the dreary desert scene.

At Suez we looked forward to breakfast. Rejecting the offer of the donkey-boy, pointing to his donkey with a persuasive "Quite a masher," we walked through the road, ankle-deep in sand, when "Bond Street" led us to the "Hotel de Suez," on the quay. Small chance was there among the collective passengers of three ships just arrived of getting anything like a comfortable breakfast, and the scramble for food that ensued was a painful sight. We felt glad we had not left the ship to sleep at the hotel last night when we heard that a few nights ago three generals had been "doubled up" (as it was expressively told us by a soldier) in one room, and three colonels in the next. The place was swarming with soldiers, military chests, tin cases, bundles of bedding, &c., just landed and awaiting orders to proceed to Suakim.

At length we started in the train over the line which gives us our first impression of the desert. The vast expanse of waterless, wasteless sand, parched and glaring, weary even unto death, where life can have no attraction left for man or beast, where all is desolate and dead to life. How intense then must be the longing for the "shadow of the Great Rock in the weary land!"

Yet under the influence of the late Sir Herbert Stewart's brilliant march through the desert, yet under the excitement of our hard-won victory at Abu Klea, and later, that at Metammeh, we think with a realizing anguish of the horrors of the prolonged marches, the deadly thirst our men must have endured.

Here our eyes find some relief in patches of bulrushes and the blue strip of water of the canal, where we see the line of steamers slowly passing along in single file, each appearing to chafe at the slow progress of the foremost one. The Messagerie leads the way, followed by our Brindisi, in its turn followed by the Ballarat—in the order in which they entered the canal this morning. At its widest part the canal opens out into an inland lake.

Again our hearts are stirred as we approach the scene of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir—as we see the roughly thrown-up entrenchments behind which the Arabs lay hidden as our troops came ever onwards, cautiously and noiselessly, for it was the night of the now famous "Silent March." We could hear the British cheer, the maddening rush, the wild swoop which carried all before it. We saw the bridge over which the frantic retreat was made; we saw, too, the green cemetery by the line, where a few white stones mark the graves of those who were left still and cold on that battle-field.

There are no remains to be seen from the railway line, no carcases or bleached bones, no skeletons of camels or broken weapons, but only the long, long rows of low entrenchments, like a sandbank, extending for two or three miles.

At Zagazig we had luncheon, and a very dirty journey brought us to within sight of Cairo, whose first and distant view is disenchanting. It looks little more than a large native village, with a citadel and a few minaret towers. My husband's brother—the Financial Adviser to the Egyptian Government, met us at the station and we drove to his house—made beautiful by his splendid collection of embroideries that have been drawn from the wealth of such stores in the bazaars of Constantinople, Broussa, Egypt, and Arabia.

We feel in the world once more; we have returned to civilization.

The sound of the war-tramp echoes through Cairo.

The streets are full of officers, transport-waggons, and stores.

The almost historical balcony of "Shepheards" is peopled with a military throng—with officers eager to go to "the front," with others awaiting "further orders." All connected with "the service" have additional importance in their own and every one's eyes just now. Wives and relations are in Cairo, as nearer the seat of war, and within earlier reach of news, though, as a matter of fact, the news of the fall of Khartoum the other day was known a day earlier in London.

Rumours and panics of defeat—repulse—surprise—are rife, and all is excitement and anxious flurry.

Colonel Swaine, C.B., Military Secretary to Lord Wolseley, came here early this morning on his way home on sick leave; he will be the first to arrive from the camp at Korti in London. He gave us some interesting particulars about the battle of Abu Klea.

Cairo strikes me as being so French in tone, with the parquet floors and the French windows, with its French population, with Parisian fashions. But after all one must disillusion oneself from the natural idea that Cairo is now English. Cairo is above all things an international metropolis.

During our week's stay there we saw most of the principal sights, but I have not the smallest intention of boring my readers with attempting any minute description (save of the Pyramids and the Dancing Dervishes) of what has been told in glowing, life-like pictures by other writers of name and fame.

I will not write of the streets, with their motley crowd of Arabs, Copts, Syrians, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Cairenes proper, with their thousands of donkeys and accompanying hâmmars, handsome animals cruelly bitted and curbed, ridden alike by grave official in Turkish bags, embroidered jacket, and fez, or by Arab ladies with balloon of silk, and feet tucked up in front. Nor of the pretty street-cries, "God will make them light O! lemons," "Odours of Paradise O! flowers of Henna." Nor yet even of the bazaar, where are spread out the treasures of gold and silver of Arabia, Persia, and Syria, of Damascus and Bagdad—the Cairo Bazaar unique in the world. It is terrible to see the number of those afflicted with eye-diseases in Cairo, and the many blind men led about the streets, crying, "O! Awakener of Pity, O! Master," or "I am the guest of God and the Prophet;" and then the answer comes, "God will succour, or give thee succour." It makes one's heart ache, too, to see the babies with the flies—the proverbially persistent fly of Egypt—settled black on the child's eye, and with no attempt being made to brush them away, causing the eye to close by a process too frightful to describe. The children are always sucking sugar-cane, and it is the sticky sweetness which causes the flies to settle so thickly on their cheeks.

We were much struck with the fineness of the mosques in Cairo after seeing those of India.

As Mohammedanism was only a later introduction into India—a faith struggling in a new land—so are its mosques but a feeble reproduction of those in the land of the Prophet—the home of Mahomet.

The mosque of Sultan Hassan is a grand spot for worship. It is not beautiful, nor curious, nor interesting, but it is simply majestically imposing, from the height of its walls. They present an immeasurable surface, pierced only by lancet recesses, which, by their narrow length, add only to the grandeur of the wall. It is from the ancient to the modern we proceed as we go to the alabaster mosque of Mahomet Ali at the citadel, where all is gaudy and modern: Turkey carpets, coloured-glass windows, and rows of glass globes.

We look lastly at the celebrated "view from the citadel," which is certainly most beautiful.

Thursday, March 5th.—At six in the morning we started on our expedition to the Pyramids. Passing the enormous square of the Kasr-er-Nil barracks, and crossing the lion-guarded bridge of the same name, we soon distanced the town.

Coming in from the surrounding country, all along the roads, we met trains of camels and troops of donkeys laden with the day's forage for Cairo. The green grass looked rich and succulent, swaying in mountainous stacks on either side the camel, and balancing across the donkeys in loads that hid all except their four legs walking underneath.

Sandy and barren as is the desert of Egypt, where irrigation is brought into use, the crops are extraordinarily rich and luxuriant—added to which, they cut with impunity crop after crop of clover and green food, without dreaming of allowing the ground to lie fallow during any part of the year. Thus it is that around Cairo, though really only the desert, it looks a green and cultivated plain. The canals are cracked and dry, but will fill with the rising of the Nile which, irrigating the land and overflowing with its muddy waters, leaves that rich alluvial deposit of fertility.

The last four miles' approach to the Pyramids is over a road shaded by an avenue of tamarinds, so straight that you can see a man—a speck—at the end.

We read, we imbibe unconsciously, we listen eagerly to the account of impressions of some world-wonder, some object of exceptional beauty or interest.

We cannot help longing to see "that" object, we cannot help feeling some excitement when we are nearing "that" wonder which we have been picturing to ourselves for so long—when we are nearing the realization of an oft-expressed wish since childhood.

Thus it is. And thus it is that we often realize some disenchantment. I had often done so, but nothing will ever come up to the keen intensity of my disappointment, or the bitter revulsion of feeling as we approached the Pyramids and obtained a good view of them.

"They may grow grander as we come nearer," I said. But no; I think they really diminished rather than increased on a nearer approach. The Pyramids stand on a natural platform of rock. The three are in a line: the second, or Pyramid of Chephren, touches the angle of the first, or that of Cheops; and that of the third, the Pyramid of Mycerinus, that of Chephren.