Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

The road leading to Heliopolis has a charm which it shares with no other in the neighborhood of Cairo: at a certain point the desert – the real desert – comes rolling up to its very edge; one can look across the sand for miles. The desert is not a plain, the sand lies in ridges and hillocks; and this sand in many places is not so much like the sand of the sea-shore as it is like the dust of one of our country roads in August. The contrast between the bright green of the cultivated fields (the land which is reached by the inundation) and those silvery, arrested waves is striking, the line of their meeting being as sharply defined as that between sea and shore. I have called the color silvery, but that is only one of the tints which the sand assumes. An artist has jotted down the names of the colors used in an effort to copy the hues on an expanse of desert before him; beginning with the foreground, these were brown, dark red, violet, blue, gold, rose, crimson, pale green, orange, indigo blue, and sky blue. Colors supply the place of shadows, for there is no shade anywhere; all is wide open and light; and yet the expanse does not strike one in the least as bare. For myself, I can say that of all the marvels which one sees in Egypt, the desert produced the most profound impression; and I fancy that, as regards this feeling, I am but one of many. The cause of the attraction is a mystery. It cannot be found in the roving tendencies of our ancestor, since he was arboreal, and there are no trees in the strange-tinted waste. The old legend says that Adam's first wife, Lilith, fled to Egypt, where she was permitted to live in the desert, and where she still exists:

"It was Lilith, the wife of Adam;Not a drop of her blood was human."

Perhaps it is Lilith's magic that we feel.

Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, the On of the forty-first chapter of Genesis, is five miles from Cairo. Nothing of it is now left above ground save an obelisk and a few ruined walls. The obelisk, which is the oldest yet discovered, bears the name of the king in whose reign it was erected; this gives us the date – 5000 years ago; that is, more than a millennium before the days of Moses. At Heliopolis was the Temple of the Sun, and the schools which Herodotus visited "because the teachers are considered the most accomplished men in Egypt." When Strabo came hither, four hundred years later, he saw the house which Plato had occupied; Moses here learned "all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Papyri describe Heliopolis as "full of obelisks." Two of these columns were carried to Alexandria 1937 years ago, and set up before the Temple of Cæsar. According to one authority, this temple was built by Cleopatra; in any case, the two obelisks acquired the name of Cleopatra's Needles, and though the temple itself in time disappeared, they remained where they had been placed – one erect, one prostrate – until, in recent years, one was given to London and the other to New York. One recites all this in a breath in order to bring up, if possible, the associations which rush confusedly through the mind as one stands beside this red granite column rising alone in the green fields at Heliopolis. No myth itself, it was erected in days which are to us mythical – days which are the jumping-off place of our human history; yet they were not savages who polished this granite, who sculptured this inscription; ages of civilization of a certain sort must have preceded them. Beginning with the Central Park, we force our minds backward in an endeavor to make these dates real. "Homer was a modern compared with the designers of this pillar," we say to ourselves. "The Mycenæ relics were articles de Paris of centuries and centuries later." But repeating the words (and even rolling the r's) are useless efforts; the imagination will not rise; it is crushed into stupidity by such a vista of years. As reaction, perhaps as revenge, we flee to geology and Darwin; here, at least, one can take breath.

Near Heliopolis there is an ostrich yard. The giant birds are very amusing; they walk about with long steps, and stretch their necks. If allowed, they would tap us all on the head, I think, after the fashion of the ostriches in that vivid book, The Story of an African Farm.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH

Gerard de Nerval begins his volume on Egypt by announcing that the women of Cairo are so thickly veiled that the European (i. e., the Frenchman?) becomes discouraged after a very few days, and, in consequence, goes up the Nile. This, at least, is one effort to explain why strangers spend so short a time in Cairo. The French, as a nation, are not travellers; they have small interest in any country beyond their own borders. A few of their writers have cherished a liking for the East; but it has been what we may call a home-liking. They give us the impression of having sincerely believed that they could, owing to their extreme intelligence, imagine for themselves (and reproduce for others) the entire Orient from one fez, one Turkish pipe, and a picture of the desert. Gautier, for instance, has described many Eastern landscapes which his eyes have never beheld. Pictures are, indeed, much to Frenchmen. The acme of this feeling is reached by one of the Goncourt brothers, who writes, in their recently published journal, that the true way to enjoy a summer in the country is to fill one's town-house during the summer months with beautiful paintings of green fields, wild forests, and purling brooks, and then stay at home, and look at the lovely pictured scenes in comfort. French volumes of travels in the East are written as much with exclamation-points as with the letters of the alphabet. Lamartine and his disciples frequently paused "to drop a tear." Later Gallic voyagers divided all scenery into two classes; the cities "laugh," the plains are "amiable," or they "smile"; if they do not do this, immediately they are set down as "sad." One must be bold indeed to call Edmond About, the distinguished author of Tolla, ridiculous. The present writer, not being bold, is careful to abstain from it. But the last scene of his volume on Egypt (Le Fellah, published in 1883), describing the hero, with all his clothes rolled into a gigantic turban round his head, swimming after the yacht which bears away the heroine – a certain impossible Miss Grace – from the harbor of Port Said, must have caused, I think, some amused reflection in the minds of English and American readers. It is but just to add that among the younger French writers are several who have abandoned these methods. Gabriel Charmes's volume on Cairo contains an excellent account of the place. Pierre Loti and Maupassant have this year (1890) given to the world pages about northwestern Africa which are marvels of actuality as well as of unsurpassed description.

The French at present are greatly angered by the continuance of the English occupation of Egypt. Since Napoleon's day they have looked upon the Nile country as sure to be theirs some time. They built the Suez Canal when the English were opposed to the scheme. They remember when their influence was dominant. The French tradesmen, the French milliners and dressmakers in Cairo, still oppose a stubborn resistance to the English way of counting. They give the prices of their goods and render their accounts in Egyptian piasters, or in napoleons and francs; they refuse to comprehend shillings and pounds. And here, by-the-way, Americans would gladly join their side of the controversy. England alone, among the important countries of the world, has a currency which is not based upon the decimal system. The collected number of sixpences lost each year in England, by American travellers who mistake the half-crown piece for two shillings, would make a large sum. The bewilderment over English prices given in a coin which has no existence is like that felt by serious-minded persons who read Alice in Wonderland from a sense of duty. Talk of the English as having no imagination when the guinea exists!

France lost her opportunity in Egypt when her fleet sailed away from Alexandria Harbor in July, 1882. Her ships were asked to remain and take part in the bombardment; they refused, and departed. The English, thus being left alone, quieted the country later by means of an army of occupation. An English army of occupation has been there ever since.

At present it is not a large army. The number of British soldiers in 1890 is given as three thousand; the remaining troops are Egyptians, with English regimental officers. During the winter months the short-waisted red coat of Tommy Atkins enlivens with its cheerful blaze the streets of Cairo at every turn. The East and the West may be said to be personified by the slender, supple Arabs in their flowing draperies, and by these lusty youths of light complexion, with straight backs and stiff shoulders, who walk, armed with a rattan, in the centre of the pavement, wearing over one ear the cloth-covered saucer which passes for a head-covering. Tommy Atkins patronizes the donkeys with all his heart. One of the most frequently seen groups is a party of laughing scarlet-backed youths mounted on the smallest beasts they can find, and careering down the avenues at the donkey's swiftest speed, followed by the donkey-boys, delighted and panting. As the spring comes on, Atkins changes his scarlet for lighter garments, and dons the summer helmet. This species of hat is not confined to the sons of Mars; it is worn in warm weather by Europeans of all nationalities who are living or travelling in the East. It may be cool. Without doubt, æsthetically considered, it is the most unbecoming head-covering known to the civilized world. It has a peculiar power of causing its wearer to appear both ignoble and pulmonic; for, viewed in front, the most distinguished features, under its tin-pan-like visor, become plebeian; and, viewed behind, the strongest masculine throat looks wizened and consumptive.

The English have benefited Egypt. They have put an end to the open knavery in high places which flourished unchecked; they have taught honesty; they have so greatly improved the methods of irrigation that a bad Nile (i. e., a deficient inundation) no longer means starvation; finally, they have taken hold of the mismanaged finances, disentangled them, set them in order, and given them at least a start in the right direction. The natives fret over some of their restrictions. And they say that the English have, first of all, taken care of their own interests. In addition, they greatly dislike seeing so many Englishmen holding office over them. But this last objection is simply the other side of the story. If the English are to help the country, they must be on the spot in order to do it; and it appears to be a fixed rule in all British colonies that the representatives of the government, whether high or low, shall be made, as regards material things, extremely comfortable. Egypt is not yet a British colony; she is a viceroyalty under the suzerainty of the Porte. But practically she is to-day governed by the English; and, to the American traveller at least (whatever the French may think), it appears probable that English authority will soon be as absolute in the Khedive's country as it is now in India.

In Cairo, in 1890, the English colony played lawn-tennis; it attended the races; when Stanley returned to civilization it welcomed him with enthusiasm; and when, later, Prince Eddie came, it attended a gala performance of Aïda at the opera-house – a resurrection from the time of Ismail ordered by Ismail's son for the entertainment of the heir-presumptive (one wonders whether Tufik himself found entertainment in it).

In the little English church, which stands amid its roses and vines in the new quarter, is a wall tablet of red and white marble – the memorial of a great Englishman. It bears the following inscription: "In memory of Major-General Charles George Gordon, C.B. Born at Woolwich, Jan. 28, 1833. Killed at the defence of Khartoum, Jan. 26, 1885." Above is a sentence from Gordon's last letter: "I have done my best for the honor of our country."

St. George of Khartoum, as he has been called. If objection is made to the bestowal of this title, it might be answered that the saints of old lived before the age of the telegraph, the printer, the newspaper, and the reporter; possibly they too would not have seemed to us faultless if every one of their small decisions and all their trivial utterances had been subjected to the electric-light publicity of to-day. Perhaps Gordon was a fanatic, and his discernment was not accurate. But he was single-hearted, devoted to what he considered to be his duty, and brave to a striking degree. When we remember how he faced death through those weary days we cannot criticise him. The story of that rescuing army which came so near him and yet failed, and of his long hoping in vain, only to be shot down at the last, must always remain one of the most pathetic tales of history.

SOUVENIRS

As the warm spring closes, every one selects something to carry homeward. Leaving aside those fortunate persons who can purchase the ancient carved woodwork of an entire house, or Turkish carpets by the dozen, the rest of us keep watch of the selections of our friends while we make our own. Among these we find the jackets embroidered in silver and gold; the inevitable fez; two or three blue tiles of the thirteenth century; a water-jug, or kulleh; a fly-brush with ivory handle; attar of roses and essence of sandal-wood; Assiout ware in vases and stoups; a narghileh; the gauze scarfs embroidered with Persian benedictions; a koursi inlaid with mother-of-pearl; Arabian inkstands – long cases of silver or brass, to be worn like a dagger in the belt; a keffiyeh, or delicate silken head-shawl with white knotted fringe; the Arabian finger-bowls; the little coffee-cups; images of Osiris from the tombs; a native bracelet and anklet; and, finally, a scarab or two, whose authenticity is always exciting, like an unsolved riddle. A picture of these mementos of Cairo would not be complete for some of us without two of those constant companions of so many long mornings – the dusty, shuffling, dragging, slipping, venerable, abominable mosque shoes.

HOMEWARD-BOUND"We who pursueOur business with unslackening stride,Traverse in troops, with care-fill'd breast,The soft Mediterranean side,The Nile, the East,And see all sights from pole to pole,And glance and nod and bustle by,And never once possess our soulBefore we die."

So chanted Matthew Arnold of the English of to-day. And if we are to believe what is preached to us and hurled at us, it is a reproach even more applicable to Americans than to the English themselves. One American traveller, however, wishes to record modestly a disbelief in the universal truth of this idea. Many of us are, indeed, haunted by our business; many of us do glance and nod and bustle by; it is a class, and a large class. But these hurried people are not all; an equal number of us, who, being less in haste, may be less conspicuous perhaps, are the most admiring travellers in the world. American are the bands who journey to Stratford-upon-Avon, and go down upon their knees – almost – when they reach the sacred spot; American are the pilgrims who pay reverent visits to all the English cathedrals, one after the other, from Carlisle to Exeter, from Durham to Canterbury. In the East, likewise, it is the transatlantic travellers who are so deeply impressed by the strangeness and beauty of the scenes about them that they forget to talk about their personal comforts (or, rather, the lack of them).

There is another matter upon which a word may be said, and this is the habit of judging the East from the stand-point of one's home customs, whether the home be American or English. It is, of course, easy to find faults in the social systems of the Oriental nations; they have laws and usages which are repugnant to all our feelings, which seem to us horrible. But it is well to remember that it is impossible to comprehend any nation not our own unless one has lived a long time among its people, and made one's self familiar with their traditions, their temperament, their history, and, above all, with the language which they speak. Anything less than this is observation from the outside alone, which is sure to be founded upon misapprehension. The French and the English are separated by merely the few miles of the Channel, and they have, to a certain extent, a common language; for though the French do not often understand English, the English very generally understand something of French. Yet it is said that these two nations have never thoroughly comprehended each other either as nations or individuals; and it is even added that, owing to their differing temperaments, they will never reach a clear appreciation of each other's merits; demerits, of course, are easier. Our own country has a language which is, on the whole, nearer the English tongue perhaps than is the speech of France; yet have we not felt now and then that English travellers have misunderstood us? If this is the case among people who are all Occidentals together, how much more difficult must be a thorough comprehension by us of those ancient nations who were old before we were born?

The East is the land of mystery. If one cares for it at all, one loves it; there is no half-way. If one does not love it, one really (though perhaps not avowedly) hates it – hates it and all its ways. But for those who love it the charm is so strong that no surprise is felt in reading or hearing of Europeans who have left all to take up a wandering existence there for long years or for life – the spirit of Browning's "What's become of Waring?"

All of us cannot be Warings, however, and the time comes at last when we must take leave. The streets of Cairo have been for some time adorned with placards whose announcements begin, in large type, "Travellers returning to Europe." We are indeed far away when returning to Europe is a step towards home. We wait for the last festival – the Shem-en-Neseem, or Smelling of the Zephyr – the annual picnic day, when the people go into the country to gather flowers and breathe the soft air before the opening of the regular season for the Khamsin. Then comes the journey by railway to Alexandria. We wave a handkerchief (now fringed on all four sides by the colored threads of the laundresses) to the few friends still left behind. They respond; and so do all the Mustaphas, Achmets, and Ibrahims who have carried our parcels and trotted after our donkeys. Then we take a seat by the window, to watch for the last time the flying Egyptian landscape – the green plain, the tawny Nile, the camels on the bank, the villages, and the palm-trees, and behind them the solemn line of the desert.

At sunset the steamer passes down the harbor, and, pushing out to sea, turns westward. A faint crescent moon becomes visible over the Ras-et-Teen palace. It is the moon of Ramadan. Presently a cannon on the shore ushers in, with its distant sound, the great Mohammedan fast.

CORFU AND THE IONIAN SEA

Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour;Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:"It may be we shall touch the happy isle!"– Translated by Andrew Lang.

Not long before Christmas, last year, I found myself travelling from Ancona down the Adriatic coast of Italy by the fast train called the Indian Mail. There was excitement in the very name, and more in the conversation of the people who sat beside me at the table of a queer little eating-house on the shore, before whose portal the Indian Mail stopped late in the evening. We all descended and went in. A dusky apartment was our discovery, and a table illuminated by guttering candles that flared in the strong currents of air. Roast chickens were stacked on this table in a high pile, and loaves of dark-colored bread were placed here and there, with portly straw-covered flasks of the wine of the country. No one came to serve us; we were expected to serve ourselves. A landlord who looked like an obese Don Juan was established behind a bench in a distant corner, where he made coffee with amiability and enthusiasm for those who desired it. It was supposed that we were to go to him, before we returned to the train, and pay for what we had consumed; and I hope that his trust in us was not misplaced, for with his objection to exercise, and his dim little lamp which illuminated only his smiles, there was nothing for him but trust. The Indian Mail carries passengers who are outward-bound for Constantinople, Egypt, and India; his confidence rested perhaps in the belief that persons about to embark on such dangerous seas would hardly begin the enterprise by crime. To other minds, however, it might have seemed the very moment to perpetrate enormities. As we attacked the chickens, I perceived in the flickering glare that all my companions were English. Everybody talked, and the thrill of the one American increased as the names of the steamers waiting at Brindisi were mentioned – the Hydaspes, the Coromandel, the Cathay, the Mirzapore: towards what lands of sandal-wood, what pleasure-domes of Kubla-Khan, might not one sail on ships bearing those titles! The present voyagers, however, were all old travellers; they took a purely practical view of the Orient. Nevertheless, their careless "Cairo," "Port Said," "Bombay," "Ceylon," "Java," were as fascinating as the shining balls of a juggler when a dozen are in the air at the same moment. My right-hand neighbor, upon learning that my destination was Corfu, good-naturedly offered the information that the voyage was an easy one. "Corfu, however, is not what it has been!"

"But, Polly, it is looking up a little, now that the Empress of Austria is building a villa there," suggested a sister correctively.

After this outburst of talk, we all climbed back into the waiting train, and went flying on towards the south, following the lonely, wild-looking coast, with the wind from the Adriatic crying over our heads like a banshee. It was midnight when we reached Brindisi. At present this, the ancient Brundusium, is the jumping-off place for the traveller on his way to the East; here he must leave the land and trust himself to an enigmatical deep. But if he wishes to have the sensation in full force, he must not delay his journey; for, presently, the Indian Mail will rush through Greece and meet the steamers at Cape Colonna; and then, before long, there will be another spurt, and Pullman trains will go through to Calcutta, with a ferry over the Bosporus.

At Brindisi I became the prey of five barelegged boatmen, who, owing to the noise of the wind and the water, communicated with each other by yells. The Austrian-Lloyd steamer from Trieste, outward-bound for Constantinople, which carried the friends I was expecting to meet, was said to be lying out in the stream, and I enjoyed the adventure of setting forth alone on the dark sea in search of her, in a small boat rowed by my Otranto crew. During the transit there was not much time to think of Brundusium, with its memories of Horace and Virgil. But there was another opportunity to reflect upon the question, perplexing to the unskilled mind – namely, Why it is that an American abroad is constantly called upon to praise the wharves, piers, and landing-stages, and with the same breath to condemn as disgraces to civilization the like nautical platforms of his own country, when he is so often obliged, on foreign shores, to embark and disembark by means of a tossing small boat or a crowded tender, whereas at home, with the aid of those same makeshift constructions for whose short-comings he is supposed to blush, he walks on board of his steamship with no trouble whatever?

Early the next morning, awakening on a shelf in a red velvet cupboard, I was explaining to myself vaguely that the cupboard was a dream, when there appeared through the port-hole a picture of such fairy-tale beauty that the dream became lyrical – it began to sing:

"Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live!"

At last those famous lines were actualities, for surely this was the sea of the Jumblies, and those heights without doubt were "the hills of Chankly Bore." (There are people, I believe, who do not care for the Jumblies. There are persons who do not care for Alice in Wonderland, nor for Brer Rabbit, when he played on his triangle down by the brook.)

The sea which I saw was of a miraculously blue tint; in the distance the cliffs of a mountainous island rose boldly from the water, their color that of a violet pansy; a fishing-boat with red sails was crossing the foreground; over all glittered an atmosphere so golden that it was like that of sunset in other lands, though the sky, at the same time, had unmistakably the purity of early morning. Later, on the deck, during the broadly practical time of after breakfast, this view, instead of diminishing in attraction, grew constantly more fair. The French novelist of to-day, Paul Bourget, describes Corfu as "so lovely that one wants to take it in one's arms!" Another Frenchman, who was not given to the making of phrases, no less a personage than Napoleon Bonaparte, has left upon record his belief that Corfu has "the most beautiful situation in the world." What, then, is this beauty? What is this situation?