Part 8

From Alexandria we had meant to go straight on to Cairo, but eventually agreed it was best to stay a night at a hotel in Alexandria to rest before the dusty train journey.

We had a wretched night, and, not knowing how to find a good doctor if I needed one, I felt very lonely in a vast hotel where no one seemed to speak English.

The next day we managed to journey on to Cairo in the morning, and rested at Shepherd's Hotel until the evening, and then moved on to this place--about half an hour by rail from Cairo, and actually on the borders of the desert.

We have many friends in Cairo, and there is a good train service, so they often come out to spend the day with us, or for the afternoon, and then sometimes I go into Cairo to do necessary shopping or to pay some visits. Cairo is a very gay place, and the people very pleasant and friendly.

One day I went to lunch with some friends, and they drove me to see the Citadel (driving all through the native quarter of the town), and then we had tea with the sisters at the Military Hospital--a rambling big place, designed for a palace and not for a hospital--and they seemed very full up with enteric patients.

Then we went to see the Mosque, and were seized by the feet by several Arabs, who tied on sandals for us before we went inside, and in these we were allowed to flop about. The Mosque is a vast dome, nearly all marble and alabaster, with a lovely alabaster fountain, where the people wash their feet before going in to pray.

We walked all round the fortifications, and had a splendid view of Cairo, and then drove back to town just in time to see the Khedive arrive from Alexandria; a stout, sad-looking young man, his native escort very smart, and riding such beautiful little horses.

Another day I was invited to bicycle out from Cairo to Mena House; so I went into Cairo by the early morning train, and mounted a hired bicycle for the nine-mile ride to Mena House Hotel. The first two miles seemed very perilous, as our route lay all through the town, and many water-carts made the roads very slippery, and electric trams and steam trams rushed about in a most confusing way, and natives in swarms (many of them blind) seemed to take a pleasure in strolling in our track, and stupid donkeys and sad-eyed camels with unwieldy loads kept turning about in unexpected directions, and looking at us in a reproachful way, as much as to say they thought bicycles _quite_ out of place in their country.

The narrow bridges over the Nile were thick with traffic, and I was quite glad when we got out to the open country and on to a good road with trees all along.

We left our bicycles at the hotel, and walked out to the great Ghizeh Pyramids, really a most marvellous sight.

The big Pyramid covers as much ground as Lincoln's Inn Fields; enormous blocks of stone, apparently just tumbled one on the top of the other, and yet the whole worked into such perfect shape. To think of how they can have brought these vast blocks of stone down, without mechanical help, from Upper Egypt (for there was no such stone to be found near there) is indeed wonderful.

The Temple, also, is a thing to marvel at, great blocks of granite and alabaster cut and fitted together so perfectly, the doorway as straight as possible, and to think that all this work was done from 3000 to 5000 years ago and is still as sound as ever.

We had not time to climb the Pyramid, but of course we paid our respects to the Sphinx, and wished we could stay to see her by moonlight, when she is said to be even more impressive than in the daylight.

They gave us a very good lunch on the balcony of the hotel, which is said to be the best managed in Egypt; and I should think it would be a very pleasant place to stay at, nice airy rooms and a lovely marble swimming-bath at the back.

As we rode back there was a good deal of wind against us, and I was out of practice and rather tired, so I found the crowded streets of Cairo alarming, and was much relieved to give up my bicycle without having run over any one or damaged the machine.

I think there was more of a crowd than usual, as the Khedive had driven to the station to meet the King of Siam, and we saw the whole procession pass on their way back to the palace.

The King of Siam was very gorgeous in a white uniform with much gold lace, and his two sons were a somewhat curious contrast to the natives around, in their Eton suits and top-hats; they are going up the Nile on a private boat.

Helouan is beginning to fill up for the season (we were about the first arrivals), and we have many visitors. We are in comfortable lodgings, quite on the outskirts of the village; the servant who chiefly waits upon us is a fine Arab with a black moustache, who stalks about in a white night-gown down to his heels, tied round with a red sash; he wears a red fez cap with a blue tassel, and red sandals on his feet; he does most of the housework, for which purpose he puts a housemaid's apron with a bib over his night-gown! His name is "Abdul" (the "slave of God"); and there is a small Arab boy called "Ishmael," who runs messages, and is most interested in our doings.

The mosquitoes are pretty bad at night here, and we have to sleep in nets. Last week we had two days with a south wind blowing, and then the beasts--creeping, crawling, and flying--_were_ a trial; there were great wasps (quite three times as large as English ones), and horrid little beasts that look like bugs (only they fly and don't bite) settling on our dinner-table;--I am sure the south wind must have been blowing in the time of the plagues of Egypt!

I am busy collecting things that we want to take up the Nile for our house, as we shall then be 450 miles from the nearest shop, and it is rather difficult, as I don't know at all what the house is like.

There are so many things that I should like to do and see in Cairo, but I have not time, as we are leaving by the first tourist steamer that goes up the Nile, and I don't like to be out for any length of time, but I did manage a visit to the great native hospital, the Kasr-el-Aini, where I know several of the sisters.

It is a very fine place with a very up-to-date theatre; the nurses are all natives (men for the male patients), but they all work under the English sisters.

The sisters have a most delightful Home, their dining and drawing rooms are very spacious apartments, and they each have a very large room, which most of them screen off into bed and sitting rooms.

There is a special fund which provides a carriage and pair for their use, and they have a very good tennis court in their garden, in which they are "At Home" one day each week, and the Cairo people go to tea with them and to play tennis.

I have not told you a word about the native bazaars and all the quaint sights of the Cairo streets, but every one writes about them, and I find them too dazzling to describe. I could sit for hours on the balcony at Shepherd's Hotel just doing nothing but watch the people. Take my advice, and come to see Cairo some day, for it is a most fascinating place, and I am quite loth to leave it.

XX

LUXOR, UPPER EGYPT, _December 1897_.

Once more we have moved our camp, and though we managed the move with very little exertion for my patient, and are now settled in very comfortable quarters here, and he is pleased to be amongst old friends and in his old haunts, and the climate is perfectly beautiful, still it is sad to see that he is going downhill; so it has been arranged for his mother and younger brother to join us here, and we are counting the days till they arrive.

We came up the Nile on _Rameses III._, the newest of Cook's tourist steamers, a very comfortable boat with nice airy cabins. I took all our baggage on board in Cairo, but we had agreed it was better to avoid the noise and bustle of embarking in Cairo, and that we should join the boat when she anchored a few miles away from Helouan, at a place called Badrachin.

Two of our doctor friends had meant to come to see us safely on board, but at the last moment they were both prevented, so we started off in an arabeyeh, escorted by a policeman mounted on a donkey, who had been sent to give us any help he could.

Much to my anxiety, before we had gone far, the sun had disappeared, and a sand-storm had got up, and by the time we had reached the Nile it was quite cold, and the water was very rough with white waves showing.

_Rameses III._ was anchored at Sakkarah on the other side of the river, but our policeman rode on and signalled to them, and as soon as they saw us they sent off a boat to take us across; it was rather a perilous trip as the boat was a light one, and we shipped a good deal of water. I was thankful when we got safely on board, and found a good doctor and other friends to help us.

The tourists--of whom there were not many, as this was the first trip of the season--were all away sightseeing at the Sakkarah Pyramids.

Strolling up the river on these steamers is a very pleasant way of travelling. Though the banks of the Nile are flat and there is a certain sameness about them, the lights are so wonderful that they never _look_ the same. I used to think that the only thing that it was really worth while having to get up early for was a day's hunting, but now I must add the sight of the sunrise on the Nile, and as for the sunsets they are simply gorgeous, the intense red, gold, and orange as the sun sinks with the delicate blue above; and then you turn your back on the sun and face the rich indigo blue of the afterglow, and then in a few minutes it is all dark (no twilight here), and there is a solemn hush over everything.

The steamers don't travel at night, and they stop at various points where there are interesting things to be seen, and then all the tourists troop off and mount the excellent donkeys, who seem to think nothing of the heaviest weights, but canter off to the Tombs or the Temples as though they quite enjoyed it.

I had a very good ride on a big donkey called Mahomet to the Tombs of Beni Hassan, and another day I went ashore and had a good look round Assiout.

On the morning of November 23 I had a long ride out to see the Temple of Dinderah (a very beautiful temple), and then the same evening we reached Luxor just at sunset, and walked up an avenue of palm-trees to the hotel, which just at this season is very empty, so we have large rooms on the ground floor, and there is a delightful garden, where at present we spend most of the day. We have a little house just across the road facing the hotel, and I am very busy getting it ready. As I am the only nurse here, if any visitors should come up ill, I should have to look after them; but so far people are behaving nicely.

We have secured two good Arab boys as servants--Hassan and Girgus. Hassan can speak a little English, but Girgus cannot, and it takes a long time to get much work out of people when you can't talk to them! You would be amused to see me wrestling with Arab carpenters, who seem quite incapable of putting anything up straight, and with Arab painters, who never get the same colour for two days together.

The chaplain's wife, who came up the river with us, has gone on to Assouan for a few days, and as she has left me her donkey to use, I get a little exercise every afternoon.

The other day I had rather an amusing time. I had ridden out to Karnak with Miss L. to see the temple: it was very dusty, and we were very hot; and when we got into the shade of the temple we saw a party of people having tea, with two men in very gorgeous uniforms waiting upon them and a dignified dragoman standing by. I recognised the dragoman as one of Cook's men who had helped us in Cairo, and he gave me a sweeping bow as we passed. I said to Miss L. as we moved away, "I am sure that nice dragoman would like to offer us some tea, and I do want some very badly," and we had not gone very far when the dragoman came after us with a visiting card and "Sir G. N.'s compliments, and would the ladies accept a cup of tea?" so we joined the party and had a most pleasant tea, the dragoman having evidently explained who we were.

They had come up on a dahabeah, and were staying only for one night now, but may return later on. They told us they thought they _must_ ride camels in Egypt, so at Keneh they all started off on camels, each with a boy attendant on a donkey, but all except one of the party returned on the donkeys, with the boys on the camels!

The Karnak Temple is very beautiful; I have been to see it several times now, and find something new to gaze at every time I go; once I visited it by moonlight, and then it was most solemn.

There is a very nice little hospital for natives in Luxor, where they do a good many eye and other operations. The native doctor in charge has been most kind in lending me his horse, a perfect little Arab that goes like the wind, and I have had some delightful gallops on the desert.

All the houses in Luxor are built of mud, or mud bricks, the bigger ones being colour-washed over, but often you see a little bit of straw sticking through the colour-wash just to remind you that it is "a house of straw."

We are building a little summer-house out at Karnak, and sometimes drive out there with our lunch and spend the day--the air is fresher away from the village and the cultivated land; and one of the engineers who is building the railway from Cairo to Assouan sometimes lends us his trolley on the line, and a couple of Arabs shove us (with Hassan in attendance) several miles out into the desert. We also do some sailing on the Nile when there is any wind.

_Rameses III._ stayed here a few days on her way down the river, and most of the passengers came to look us up. One evening they had a fancy dress ball on board. I went down for a little while, and it was such a pretty sight; the boat was moored close in, so that they could dance on deck and then stroll in the hotel grounds, and it was all lit up with Japanese lanterns, and looked so pretty with the palms waving above.

There was a gymkhana one day, and it was very good fun; camel races and buffalo races and all varieties of donkey races; one very amusing race was for gentlemen riding one donkey and driving another with long reins in front of him. The leaders would seldom go straight, and they got hopelessly mixed up in the reins, and had to be disentangled several times.

A favourite amusement here is to play hare and hounds on donkeys. They have quite a big meet of hounds near the hotel, and the hares (three of them) have a long start to give them time to ride out to Karnak, and then they have to try to ride back to the racecourse without being caught.

The hounds are divided into three packs--the fast, the medium, and the slow; the master has to be a man of tact: he sends off with the fast pack the keen young tourists, many of them Americans, the men riding in their shirt sleeves, and they gallop out to the boundary to drive the hares in; then the medium pack trot out in a business-like way, ladies and gentlemen, who are probably very correct in their costume for riding in the Row, and who would not think of riding at home without a top-hat; and, lastly, the slow pack, consisting of people who (in some cases) hardly know a horse from a donkey, and who solemnly jog down to the racecourse and then loiter about to see the fun when the hares come in.

The natives take a great interest in this sport, and call it "hunting the Mahdi," but their sympathies seem to be entirely with the hares, and they give them every assistance by scouting about for the hounds, and secreting the hares and their donkeys in their mud houses when there is danger about.

Dr. R. and I were the hares one day, and we had a most exciting ride, but were caught at last just as we reached the racecourse. At one point I was hustled into a native house (just mud walls with no proper roof), and found a buffalo being milked in one corner and a baby lying on the ground in another, and from there I watched half-a-dozen hounds gallop past, thinking they were close on my heels, and when they got out of sight I doubled off in another direction.

The donkeys seem quite to enter into the fun of the thing, and do their best, but sometimes they get excited and bray--inexcusable behaviour, which is most disconcerting when you are trying to hide in a patch of sugar-cane!

XXI

LUXOR, UPPER EGYPT, _January 1898_.

It was difficult for us to realise the snow and cold that you had for Christmas, while we were enjoying perpetual sunshine here.

My patient is now established in his little mud house, just across the road from this hotel. I am thankful to say his mother and brother have arrived, so we share the nursing between us.

It has been downhill work lately, and now he seldom leaves his bedroom, a large "upper chamber" with a nice view over the palm-trees to the Nile.

The nurse from Assouan has come down to be with him at night, as I have been annexed by a poor lady in the hotel who is desperately ill; she came up from Cairo with a very bad throat, and now that is better, but she is still very ill, and it is not quite clear whether it is typhoid fever or general pyæmia, but I am afraid, whatever it is, her strength cannot hold out much longer.

I am with her for all the nights and part of the days, and go backwards and forwards to the house, and get some sleep in just when I can.

There has been much excitement here about the rumour of war in the Soudan, and now it is more than rumour, and the troops are being pushed up country as fast as they can.

Cook's people are in great trouble, as all their tourists going down to Cairo have had to be turned off the boats at Naghamadi (the present railroad head), and they have to go the rest of the way down by train, while the boats turn back to take the troops up to Assouan. Some regiments are being sent all the way by rail, in spite of the line not being yet finished.

The engineers are working day and night. I met one of them just now, who said he was up to his eyes in work, and that he had twenty telegrams in his pocket, all different orders, and each contradicting the one before; so I said I supposed he did what he thought was right and hoped for the best!

They have been busy here with an old tub of a steamer that has been used for years as a landing stage; with much tinkering at last they got the engines to work, and now she has gone wobbling down the Nile to bring up stores. It was exciting when they first lit up the fires, as I hear she ran away and knocked pieces out of the road on the front.

The Oxfordshire and Lincolnshire Regiments have gone past, the men packed like sardines in the boats.

I badly want to go up with them, but at present they don't seem to be sending any sisters, and my work is cut out for me here just at present.

All the steamers that come up, besides being heavily loaded, are towing large barges with either men or stores in them, so there is a good deal of delay about our mails, &c.

I expect you hear more of what is going on at the front than we do, as all the wires are blocked with service messages, and we hear only rumours; to-day we hear our troops have had a bad smash up near Berber, and that they have lost a gunboat, but whether there is any truth in it or not is very doubtful.

To-day the Camerons are passing through here, and the natives are much excited at the kilts. I think they rather imagine that England has run out of men and has begun to send the women!

Somehow life seems very strange here just now; for one thing, there is the rustle and bustle of war in the air, then, at the same time, in this little place we are already having a stern fight against the enemy of disease, and all the time there are tourists filling up the hotel and making merry, and you hear them talk of the Luxor Meet of the Sporting Club, and which donkey they will secure as their mount, as though it was the most important thing in the world.

Until last week I still went for a ride now and then by way of refreshment. There is a doctor here who rides an enormous white Syrian horse, and he was most kind in bringing me a beautiful little Arab, and taking me out for a gallop when I could get away; the Arab was too quick for the Syrian, and often, having let it go, I had to wait for him afterwards. One day we were coming in from the desert and passed our chaplain, who afterwards amused my friends by telling them that I had passed him at such a pace on the Arab that the wind I made nearly blew him off his donkey, and then about a mile behind something thundered past that at first he thought was a white elephant but afterwards concluded it was a watering-pot of a new fashion, as it left such a track of damp on the sand!

One day the German Consul took me to see his collection of curios (I believe he does a good deal of trading in them): he has got a splendid collection. I had to drink native coffee--which I can't abide--but before I left he gave me a beautiful little "antique," a little blue image that was found in a tomb near here, and probably dates from about 3000 B.C., so I forgave him the coffee!

The other day Miss C., the housekeeper at the hotel, knocked up with dysentery, and was very seedy for a few days. Before she got well again there was an urgent call for more steamers for troops; so the steamer _Rameses the Great_, that happened to be moored here (meaning to stay four days while the passengers explored the place), suddenly had to turn all her passengers and their baggage off into the hotels and leave them there, while she did a trip up to Assouan and back. The hotel was simply packed for five days, and the noise was very bad for our sick ones; poor Miss C. was frantic at not being able to get about and see about rooms, &c., for all these people, so I had to do what I could to help her, but I was frightfully busy with so many ill.

The Nile is getting very low and "smelly," and we hear that they have several cases of dysentery at Assouan, and there is a poor lady somewhere up the river on a dahabeah very ill with it, and there is no nurse within reach free to go to her.

With all this urgent traffic on the river it is difficult to get things up from Cairo (even urgent "medical comforts"), and you cannot imagine how many things one finds lacking for the sick ones from day to day, when you are 450 miles from the nearest chemist's shop, with uncertain communication by post or telegraph.

I am always making raids on the little hospital, and the doctor there is most kind in helping us, but he is short of some things that he needs himself and cannot get--for one thing, the supply of chloroform is very nearly exhausted. We sent an urgent message (telegraph not available) by the last boat going up to Assouan, and we hope the doctor there may be able to lend us some for the present.

It seems weeks since I have had a night in bed; my poor lady is so ill that I can hardly leave her, and I just sleep in an arm-chair in her room when her husband sits by her for a time.

The Arab servants, especially Hassan and Girgus, are wonderfully attentive and good--in fact, all help us as much as they possibly can; but with people so desperately ill one does long for London, and the best physicians, and the best nurses to help one. It is not possible to do all one would wish for several patients at once both night and day; and having had so little sleep of late I am afraid of forgetting things, and I have to write all the orders down and tick them off as I carry them out.