CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE SHADOW OF THE PYRAMIDS.

The Hotel d'Orient, while not as fashionable as Shepard's or the Grand New, was a most comfortable house and set one of the best tables of the many that we encountered on the trip. It faced a big circular open space from which half a score of thoroughfares diverged like the spokes of a wheel, and was accessible from all parts of the city. In the big public garden opposite one of the Khedive's bands was playing at the time of our arrival, and on every hand were to been the open doors of cafes, bazaars, gambling hells and places of amusement, while the jargon of many tongues that surrounded us made confusion worse confounded. We were too tired the first night of our arrival to attempt much in the sight-seeing line, and contented ourselves, with a quiet stroll about the streets radiating from the circle, and a peep into some of the bazaars and gambling houses, gambling, then, as I presume it is at the present time, being conducted on the wide-open plan, and roulette wheels being operated within full view of the crowded streets. There is nothing that is known to any other city in the world that cannot be found in Cairo, and there are representatives of every nation in the world to be found among its denizens. Seen in the gloom of the evening, its towers and minarets showing in the moonlight, its streets pervaded with the dull red glow of the lights that gleam in the adjacent bazaars and cabarets, and with its white-walled buildings towering in the darkness, Cairo looks like a scene from the Arabian Nights, but viewed by daylight the picture is not so entrancing, for the semi-darkness serves to hide from the eye of the traveler the squalor and filth that the sunlight reveals and that is part and parcel of all oriental cities and towns.

As no arrangements had been made for a game the day following our arrival, the members of our party were at liberty to suit themselves in the matter of amusement, and the majority of them overworked the patient little donkeys before nightfall. I am in a position to testify that I met many a little animal that afternoon bestrode by a long-legged ball player who looked better able to carry the donkey than the donkey did to carry him, but for all that both boys and donkeys seemed to be enjoying themselves. In company with Mrs. Anson and others of the party the day was spent in sight-seeing, we taking carriages and driving through the Turkish, Moorish, Algerian and Greek quarters of the town and over narrow streets paved with cobblestones and walled in by high buildings, with overhanging balconies, where the warm rays of the sun never penetrated. The rich tapestries and works of art to be found in all of these bazaars were the delight and the despair of the ladies, who would have needed all the wealth of India to have purchased one-half of the beautiful things that they so much admired. We then drove over the bridge that spans the Nile to the Khedive's gardens, the roadway being lined with magnificent equipages of all kinds, for this is the fashionable drive of Cairo and one of the sights of the place, the gorgeous liveries of the coachmen and outriders, the gaily-caparisoned and magnificent horses and the beautiful toilettes of the ladies all combined to make a picture that entranced the senses. One of the Khedive's palaces, and, by the way, he has half a dozen of them in Cairo, is situated at the far end of these gardens, which are finer than any of our parks at home, and their palaces being built in the Egyptian style of architecture, are a delight to the eye.

The day passed all too quickly, and when night came and we returned to the hotel, we had not seen half as much as we wished.

That evening after dinner, wishing to see how Cairo looked by gaslight, Mrs. Anson and I drove out in search of a theater, which I naturally thought it would be no very difficult matter to find, though which of the many we wished to go to we had not made up our minds. The driver, unfortunately, could not understand a word of English, that being the trouble with half of the beggars one encounters in a strange land, and so as we drove down by the Grand Hotel and French Opera House and came to a palatial-looking building, with brilliantly lighted grounds and colored awnings extending down to the sidewalk, and looking the sort of a place that we were in search of, I stopped the carriage and tried to find out from the driver as best I could what sort of a theater it was. His answer sounded very much like circus, and I thought that it would just about fill the bill that evening, as far as Mrs. Anson and I were concerned. Helping my wife to alight we passed under the awning and by liveried servants that stood in the doorway, the music of many bands coming to our ears and the scent of a perfumed fountain whose spray we could see, to our nostrils.

"This is a pretty swell sort of a circus, isn't it?" I said to my wife, who nodded her head in reply.

Through the open door we could catch glimpses of large parties of ladies and gentlemen in full dress, but it had never occurred to me that it could be anything but what I had understood the driver to say it was, a circus, and I began to look around for a ticket office in order that I might purchase the necessary pasteboards. At last, running up against a dark-complexioned and distinguished-looking man in full uniform, I asked him if he could tell us where the tickets could be bought.

"Tickets! What tickets?" he asked, in very good English, but in a rather surprised tone.

"Why, the tickets to the circus here," I answered, nervously, for I began to fear that I had make a mistake. "There is no circus here, my friend," said the stranger, as he turned away his head to hide a smile, "this is my private residence. I am Commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army, and am simply entertaining a few friends here tonight. I would be much pleased if you would remain and--"

"Don't say a word, sir," I replied, feeling cheaper than I had ever felt in my life, "it is my mistake and I hope you will excuse me," and bowing my self out as best I could we drove back to the hotel, where Mrs. Anson, who had been laughing at me all the way back, had of course to tell the story, the result being that I was guyed about my experience "at the circus" for some days and weeks after Cairo had become only a memory. That evening in the office of the hotel the following bulletin was posted:

"Base-ball at the Pyramids. The Chicago and All-America teams, comprising the Spalding base-ball party, will please report in the hotel office, in uniform, promptly at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. We shall leave the hotel at that hour, camels having been provided for the All-Americas and donkeys for the Chicago players, with carriages for the balance of the party. The Pyramids will be inspected, the Sphinx visited, and a game played upon the desert near by, beginning at 2 o'clock."

The next morning at half-past nine the court of the Hotel d'Orient held what it had never held before, and what in all probability it will never hold again, twenty of the best-known exponents of the National Game that America could boast of having congregated there in uniform and in readiness to play ball in the presence of the countless ages that look down from the summits of the Pyramids and the imprint of whose fingers is seen in the seamed and scarred face of the Sphinx. In front of the hotel lay a dozen long-necked camels, saddled and bridled, and contentedly chewing their cuds, while about them stood as many more of the patient little donkeys that became so familiar to so many of the visitors to the Streets of Cairo during the World's Fair days at Chicago. The dragoman in charge had provided all the donkeys necessary for the occasion, but other donkey boys managed to get mixed up in a general melee, and when the boys had mounted the wrong donkeys and went to get on the right ones a row followed that would have put a Donnybrook Fair melee to shame, the disappointed donkey boys biting and scratching their more fortunate competitors and the policemen laying about them with their bamboo staffs. At last we were all in the saddle, the All-America team being mounted on the camels and the Chicago boys on the donkeys and with the ball players leading the way and the carriages following we moved through the streets of Cairo, past the residence of the American Minister, where we cheered the old flag that floated over his quarters, thence over the bridge of the Nile and down through the Khedive's gardens, the "ships of the desert" lurching along with their loads like vessels in an ocean storm, and the donkeys requiring an amount of coaxing and persuasion that proved to be a severe tax upon the patience of their riders.

The road leading to the Pyramids was a beautiful one running beneath an avenue arched with acacias until it reached the lowlands of the river across which it winds until it arrives at the edge of the desert upon which these great monuments of the kings and queens dead and gone for centuries are built. Half way to our destination an interchange of camels and donkeys was made by the members of the two teams, an exchange that, so far as the Chicagos were concerned, was for the worse and not for the better. At two o'clock we arrived at our destination and partook of the lunch that had been prepared for us in the little brick cottage that stood at the foot of old Cheops. After lunch we found ourselves surrounded by a crowd of Bedouins and Arabs numbering some two hundred, who besought us to purchase musty coins and copper images that were said to have been found in the interior of the huge piles of stone that surrounded us, and more persistent beggars than they proved to be it has never been my misfortune to run against. After visiting the big Pyramids and the Sphinx, and having our pictures taken in connection with these wonders of the world, we passed down to the hard sands of the desert, where a diamond had been laid out, and where, in the presence of fully a thousand people, many tourists coming to Cairo having been attracted to the scene by the announcements made that we were to play there, we began the first and only game of ball that the sentinels of the desert ever looked down upon. This game was played under difficulties, as when the ball was thrown or batted into the crowd the Arabs would pounce upon it and examine it as though it were one of the greatest of curiosities, and it was only after a row that we could again get it in our possession.

On this occasion Tener and Baldwin both pitched for Chicagos before the five innings were over, and Healy and Crane for the All-Americas. Both sides were exceedingly anxious to win this game, but fortune favored the All-Americas and we were beaten 10 to 6, for which I apologized to the Sphinx on behalf of my team after the game was over. To this she turned a deaf ear and a stony glance was her only answer. After the game we returned to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, looking them over more at our leisure and trying to fathom the mystery of how they were built that has been a puzzle for so many ages.

It was seven o'clock in the evening when we returned to Cairo, well satisfied with our sight-seeing experience, but a little disappointed to think that the only ball game that had ever been played in the shadow of the Pyramids had not been placed to the credit of Chicago.

There was nothing to do the next day and night but to stroll about Cairo, as the Khedive, before whom we had offered to play, was out at his Nile palace, and to have visited him there and given an exhibition, as he invited us to do, would have taken more time than we had at our disposal. The Mosques of Sultan Hassan and of Mohammed Ali were visited by many of us during the day. They stood upon the highest point of the city, and though the former is fast crumbling to ruins, the latter, which is the place where the Khedive worships, is fairly well preserved. From the citadel, which is garrisoned by English soldiers, we obtained an excellent bird's-eye view of Cairo, the broad surface of the Nile and the Pyramids of Cairo and Sakarah, the latter of which are twenty miles distant.

I believe that had we remained in Cairo for a year we could still have found something to interest and amuse us, though I should hardly fancy having to remain there for a life-time, as the manners and customs of the Orient are not to my liking. The line of demarcation between the rich and the poor is too strongly drawn and the beggars much too numerous to suit my fancy, and yet while there both my wife and myself enjoyed ourselves most thoroughly, and the recollections that we now entertain of it are most pleasant.

Our departure from Cairo was made on the morning of February 11th. Ismalia, a little city on the banks of the Suez Canal, about half way between Suez and Port Said, being our destination, and here we arrived late in the afternoon, and at five o'clock boarded the little steamer that was to take us to Port Said, where we were to catch the steamer across the Mediterranean, to the little Italian town of Brindisi.