CHAPTER XXXIV--THE LAND OF PHARAOH.--THROUGH THE EGYPTIAN DESERT.

_In Sight of Egypt--A light-house looming through the fog--On the soil of the Pharaohs--An invasion of boatmen--Scenes in the streets of Port Said--Encore de “Backsheesh”--The great Suez canal--Negotiations with a cobbler--A ludicrous situation--A bootless customer--Egyptian jugglers--Going through the Market--A disagreeable spectacle--A pocket steamer--Drinking to absent friends--On the “.raging canawl”--Sleeping on deck--A sunrise in the desert--On the summit of the Isthmus--An onslaught by Arab-baggage-smashers._

THERE it is! There is the light-house!”

Half a dozen of us looked in the direction indicated, and saw a tall column that rose apparently out of the sea, as the fog and distance did not reveal the low coast of Egypt, nor the long jetty that has been thrown out to form a harbor.

The steamer moved steadily onward, and in a little while there was a fringe of houses, and then a fringe of masts, then a long line, lighter than the sea in its color, swept away on either hand to mark the coast. In its center appeared the jetties, that form the outer harbor of Port Said. A small steamer came out to meet us, and from her a pilot came on board, to direct us between the jetties and into the inner harbor.

These jetties, or moles, are of artificial stone, two-thirds sand, and one-third hydraulic lime, mixed in a frame and allowed to harden. Each block weighs twenty-two tons, and contains about three hundred and twenty-four cubic feet. The blocks are not piled regularly to form a well built wall, but are dropped in, hig-gedly-piggedly, like a lot of bricks dumped from a cart. This {441}has been found to be the best form of sea wall, as it breaks the force of the waves more completely than would a structure with a smooth front. The sand has settled in and filled up the cavities below the water line; at first it silted through, but an occasional use of the dredge kept the harbor in proper condition.

The lighthouse is a magnificent structure of concrete, one hundred and sixty feet high, supporting a lantern twenty feet high, and flashing every three seconds with such intensity, as to be visible twenty miles. Three other lighthouses of similar construction have been placed in the interval--one hundred and twenty-five miles--between Port Said and Alexandria.

The steamer entered the harbor, and before her anchor was down, her decks were invaded by the usual swarms of boatmen, on the lookout for a job. We were almost within jumping distance of the shore, and had we possessed the strength and activity of fleas, in proportion to our size, we should have made short work of going ashore. Not being thus gifted, we made the usual bargain for transportation to the land, and from the shore, through the Custom House, to the hotel.

The customary “backsheesh” of two francs saved us from an inspection of our baggage, and we were soon at the hotel. I cannot speak very highly of this establishment; there are two hotels that keep up a warm rivalry, and are first-class in their prices, if in nothing else. Whichever hotel you patronize on visiting Port Said, you will wish you had gone to the other.

Port Said is modern; it was founded in 1859, and owes its existence to the construction of the Suez Canal. Previous to that time, there was no town there, and not even a single house. Early in April, a small body of laborers landed there, and on the 25th of that month, M. de Lesseps, the projector of the canal, in the presence of a dozen Europeans and six or eight times that number of natives, removed the first spadeful of earth in the great enterprise, that was to open a water way from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. A few huts had been erected on the site of the present city, which was named Port Said in honor of the then Viceroy.

The spot was not an attractive one, nothing but a strip of sand without vegetation, and without a drop of fresh water. As the {442}works of the canal progressed, the town grew and presented a scene of great activity. It was said to be at one time the largest workshop in the world. It has lost this character since the canal was completed, but is still a city of eight or ten thousand inhabitants, regularly laid out in streets and squares, and boasting a pretty and luxuriant garden.

There is considerable activity in the streets, and the numerous shops, stores, churches, hotels, mosques, and the like give it a permanent and not unpleasing appearance. The business is all more or less connected with the canal, and will doubtless increase as the business of the great water-way increases.

It does not take long to make a tourist’s survey of a modern town in the land of antiquities, where nothing is considered old that does not date further back than the Christian era. Where you count centuries by the score, you will not pay much attention to a decade, and grow enthusiastic over works where the mortar has scarcely settled, and paint, if there be any, is still wet.

Our first effort in Port Said was to ascertain when we could leave it, and we found that this could not be done before midnight. We could go on a small steamer as far as Ismailia and thence by rail to Cairo, and if we wished to take a detour to Suez, there was no law to prevent our going there.

We sauntered around the city; some of our party had their hair cut, some ate pastry in a _café_, some resorted to a beer garden in front of the hotel, and one, (myself,) took a seat by the side of a cobbler, whose stall was in the open air, while he mended one of my boots. Half a dozen Arabs stood around to look at me, as I crossed the bootless leg over the booted one and endeavored to appear pleased.

The cobbler had about half finished the job, when he suddenly remembered that he must go to dinner. To this I objected until my boot was done. I had no wish to sit there while he dined, and possibly took an after-dinner nap of an hour or so, and after a slight wrangle I succeeded in convincing him that he had better finish the job before doing anything else.

The Arab portion of Port Said is quite distinct from the Frank quarter, and is separated from it by a marsh, that can be {443}crossed over a rickety bridge or circumambulated by following the sea shore.

We took a stroll there in the latter part of the afternoon, and found crowds of natives surrounding a few jugglers and mountebanks, whose tricks were by no means extraordinary. I had a lot of Turkish coppers, which I had brought from Syria, and found altogether uncurrent here. To get rid of the coins I threw some to the jugglers and to a few beggars. None of them appeared to be pleased to receive this money, and evidently they had been served the same trick by previous travellers.

There was a part of the market where fish and vegetables were offered for sale, the venders having little stands about the size of dressing-tables, and not particularly clean or attractive. There were two or three restaurants where fried fish was waiting to be devoured, the restaurant,--cuisine and all,--occupying a space not more than eight feet square. Many of the natives were suffering from ophthalmia, and on the eyes of some of the children there were masses of flies eating away the oozing matter and forming a disgusting spectacle I should say that one in twenty of those I saw there were blind of an eye, and one in fifty was altogether bereft of sight.

We dined at the hotel and then slept until nearly eleven o’clock, as we knew there would be no sleeping accommodations on the boat. It was New Year’s Eve, and some of the party proposed to celebrate the New Year, which would come in as we left Port Said, so we took a couple of bottles of champagne and some glasses to the steamer.

It was about half-past eleven, when we left the hotel, and followed our baggage on the backs of the Arab porters to the landing.

The boat was an insignificant affair, carrying the mail and having room for very little else. The cabin was not far from seven feet by twelve; there were seats for about sixteen persons, and there was a small table in the centre, which was speedily piled up with baggage. Two or three native officials were there when we arrived, and they had done what we should have done had we been first. They had taken the best places, and were comfortably settled into the corners. As the clock struck {444}twelve, the ships in the harbor fired salutes and let off fireworks, and quite a quantity of rockets went up from the shore. We opened our champagne, and each drained a glass to friends at home, and a wi-sh that the end of the year might be as propitious as its commencement.

Our steamer blew her whistle and swung out from the wharf, and in a few minutes we had passed out of the basin and were in the canal.

Straight as a sun-beam the canal pushes away from the sea coast, and then through the low desert. For nearly thirty miles it has no curve, but is as direct as it is possible for the engineer to lay it out. The banks were not very high in this part, as there was not a large quantity of earth to be dredged out, and from the deck of a large steamer one can look over a wide extent of marshy lake and swamp.

As we were scarcely a foot above the water and in a small steam launch, we could not look over the bank, and were obliged to content ourselves with the contemplation of the sloping sides of the canal. They were very monotonous, even with the poetic addition of a full moon and clear sky. The night went on and so did we, but I fancy the night had much the best time of it. We could not lie down, and there was hardly room for us to sit inside. I secured a camp stool and got outside, making the end of the cabin serve as a rest for my back. Wrapped in my overcoat and plaid, I managed to keep warm, though with some difficulty, and after a time I felt sleepy, but dared not risk going to sleep there, through fear that I should fall overboard.

Then I sat down, or rather reclined on deck, and, making a pillow of an anchor, managed to get along comfortably. Every time I waked and looked out we were steaming along through the canal with the same interminable stretch of sand on either side. By-and-by there was a blush of light in the east, then there was daybreak and then there came sunrise.

We grew better natured as we thawed out under the welcome rays of the sun, and felt the dryness vanishing from our lips, and a gradual disappearance of that general feeling of mussiness that you have after sitting up all night. The sands became warm in the glow of the morning, and everything that before had been sombre was now brilliant with flashing light. {445}I do not often see the sun come up in these later years, never when I can avoid doing so; but whenever I am caught with a sunrise on my hands, I think it is about the best thing out. A sunrise in the desert is rather an extra affair, and considerably “lays over” the ordinary one that we can see at home by staying up till the next day.

We touched the dock at Ismailia in little more than seven hours from Port Said, and were glad enough to get on shore. A crowd of Arabs at the landing was as ravenous as a lot of young tigers; we tried to keep them back with words and gestures, but to no purpose; they seized our baggage, and would not put it down till we laid about them with our canes.

There were a hundred of them, all vociferating and snatching for baggage at the same instant; and I flatter myself that it was a triumph of genius over muscle when we succeeded in putting that baggage in a pile and making the fellows stand back, and tender proposals for its transport to the railway station We let the contract to the lowest bidder, who took the lot at four francs. The instant the bargain was closed, he and half the crowd fell upon the pile as if they had been wild beasts, and it disappeared like a-pint of whiskey among a dozen backwoodsmen. At the station, after we had paid the money agreed upon, they had an awful row dividing it, and there seemed to be at one time a brilliant prospect of a homicide.

The history of the Suez canal enterprise was given to the world with great minuteness of detail, at the time of its opening in 1869, and I shall not attempt a description of it here.

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