CHAPTER XXXV--IN AND AROUND THE CITY OF THE CALIPHS.

_A Costly Breakfast--Ismailia--The Palace of the Khedive--On an Egyptian Railroad Train--Rolling Through the Desert--The Delta of the Nile, What Is It?--The Garden of Egypt--Cairo--The Mighty Pyramids--Life at an Egyptian Hotel--Sights of the Capital--Cairo of To-Day--Occidental Progress and Oriental Conservatism--Burglaries and Other Modern Improvements--Cosmopolitan Costumes--A Harem Taking an Airing--A Daring Robbery--The Battle-Field of the Pyramids--Slaughter of the Mamelukes--Singular Escape of Emir Bey._

WE breakfasted at the only hotel in Ismailia, paying a frightfully high price for the meal, and then we hastened to the railway station to take the train to Cairo. We had no time to look about the town, but the little we saw was pleasing. The houses were embowered in trees, and there were pretty gardens here and there, some of them very tastefully arranged. There was a broad avenue from the landing place to the railway station, and there is a well-built quay, more than a mile long.

The Khedive has a palace here that looks, from a distance, like a comfortable and cozy residence, and there has lately sprung up a sea-bathing establishment on the shores of the lake. Port Said and Ismailia are the urban results of the canal; the former is practical and the latter is both practical and beautiful.

We waited at the station nearly an hour, the train being somewhat late in coming from Suez. Finally it appeared and we entered it.

The coaches were not attractive in the way of cleanliness and comfort, and we were rather more crowded than we liked to be. {447}We moved off at a dignified pace, along the banks of the Sweetwater Canal, and with the desert stretching out around us.

There is very little to be seen on the railway journey from Ismailia to Cairo. Part of the way we were in the desert, and a part of the way we skirted the rich delta of the Nile.

We passed towns and villages in great number, and saw fields bright with verdure, although it was midwinter. Men were at work in the fields, with no abundance of clothing, and half-naked children were playing out-of-doors as they might play in New York in August.

We made brief stoppages at half a dozen stations, possibly at double that number, as I kept no reckoning, and about six hours after leaving Ismailia we saw the Pyramids sharply outlined against the western sky, where the sun was setting, as they have stood outlined for more than forty centuries; and as dusk had fallen and darkness was gathering around us, we rolled into the station at Cairo, and were speedily in the midst of a noisy crowd of the usual attendance upon arriving trains. Soon we ran all the gauntlets of the station and its surroundings, and were quartered in the comfortable Hotel du Nil.

It was after six o’clock in the evening when we reached the hotel, and we had just time to prepare for dinner when the bell announced that the meal was ready. It was the first of January, {448}and the proprietor stood treat on the occasion, everybody being liberally supplied with champagne. The hotel seemed to promise well, and we went to bed contented and happy.

Twenty years ago or more, Cairo was far more Oriental than it is to-day. There was no railway in Egypt, and travellers were not numerous.

The few that came here were not sufficient to manners and habits of the people. The foreign population was small, and left nearly everything in the hands of the natives, and the foreigners in the service of the government were few and far between, and generally in irresponsible positions. _Maintenant ou a changé tout cela_.

Egypt has her network of railways and her maritime canal; she has telegraphs, she has steamboats, she has a navy, armed with rifled cannon, she has an army, many of whose officers have come from other lands, and whose soldiers are supplied with breech-loading guns of the most approved patterns. The foreign quarter of Cairo contains inhabitants from all parts of Europe, and they can be counted by the thousand. The city can boast of parks and gardens of great beauty; tall buildings of stone rise above the humble edifices of Arab architecture, and there are wide streets and boulevards, where the smooth pavement supports the wheels of elegant carriages of European manufacture, drawn by horses of great beauty and value.

The costume of the Occident mingles with that of the Orient; the Frank jostles against the native; the church rises in sight of the mosque; and the sound of Christian worship mingles with the voice of the Muezzin as he chants in the minaret the call

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{451}for the faithful to assemble at prayer. You may see a group of women, closely veiled and mounted on donkeys, under the escort of a tall eunuch, whose features and complexion mark his Nubian origin. It is the harem of a Moslem out for an airing, and you may seek in vain to penetrate the veils that cover the faces of the fair riders. Their baggy dresses are puffed out like balloons, as the breeze blows against them, and they are as much Oriental as though they had stepped from the pages of the Arabian Nights.

The next minute there comes before you a handsome carriage, drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses, and containing a beautiful woman dressed in all the taste and elegance of Paris or New York. It is the wife, perhaps, of a resident foreigner, and you may see many carriages and many occupants in the course of your promenade. The procession on the donkeys makes way for the vehicle, and halts until it passes. Thus the customs of the Occident are invading the once dull and listless East.

Cairo has grown rapidly in wealth and importance in the past score of years, particularly in the last decade. The Moslem is no longer supreme in commerce as of yore, and finds it useless to sit idly and wait for a customer, as once was his wont. The bustling habit of the European is becoming engrafted upon the country, and the railway and telegraph are teaching to the people the value of time and the disadvantages of the old modes of locomotion. Builders are busy in Cairo, and large edifices, on the plan of Paris, are completed, or in the process of erection.

The new part of Cairo can boast of straight avenues, with lines of shade trees and with rows of well-built houses, from whose windows peep out women, whose unveiled faces show they are not of Moslem faith. While I was in Egypt, a gentleman arrived there after an absence of more than twenty years. He told me he could not recognize that part of Cairo beyond the Ezbekieh gardens. All was changed, and where once were open fields or waste places, there are now the streets and avenues of a city.

There is a handsome bridge of iron across the Nile, and there is a broad and well-built carriage-road from Cairo to the foot of the great Pyramids at Gizeh. Steamboats are plying on the {452}river, and factories rear their tall chimneys on the land. Rows and rows of shops are conducted by foreign capital and tended by foreign men. The streets are lighted with gas, and it is proposed to provide them with wooden pavement, like that which has found favor in many American cities. The post-office is efficiently managed, and so is the police--both of them on the European model.

The temperance of the Orient may prevail among the original inhabitants, but the foreigners manage to get drunk with as much freedom as they would at home, and likewise to be arrested and fined. And so many Christians have found their way there, that crime can be no longer suppressed.

While I was in Cairo there was a burglary that would have done honor to London or New York. A jewelry establishment was entered at night, and property to the value of six thousand pounds sterling was taken. The robbers entered by breaking a hole in a side wall, and they took away everything, except a quantity of clocks, that were evidently too cumbersome. Not a watch, not a piece of jewelry of any kind was left behind, and the fellows got clean away. Does not this sound like civilization?

Polygamy is growing unpopular, and the natives are becoming content to live with one wife each, according to the Western custom. And, still following the Western custom, they abuse her, and stay out late of nights, at the club or the theatre, or somewhere else, and are not over liberal in supplying her pecuniary wants. Slavery is not altogether suppressed, but is greatly restricted, and has no legal protection. Gambling houses abound, not only for native, but for foreign patronage, and to judge by the number of these places, the foreigners that come here are fond of combats with the tiger.

I might name many other indications of the change that has come over Egypt, but the foregoing must suffice.

One of our first excursions was to the Citadel. Its character is shown by its name; it was built in 1166, by Saladin, as a defence to the city, but the site was rather unwisely selected, as it is dominated by the Mokattam--a hill directly behind it--and has once been taken by batteries, stationed on the latter eminence. It is strong enough to resist an attack by small arms, {453}and some of its towers are quite massive and picturesque. It is quite extensive, and contains a palace and a mosque, the latter built almost entirely of alabaster. The interior of the mosque is particularly rich, in consequence of the material used in its construction, and the arches have a curious effect, quite impossible to describe in writing. The palace also abounds in the same material, and contains some very handsome rooms.

But the great charm of the citadel is the view from the platform. One can look upon the Nile and a portion of its rich valley, and on nearly the whole city of Cairo. The roofs of the houses are below the feet of the observer, and there are only the highest minarets of the mosques to approach him in elevation. In the west are the Pyramids, standing in the edge of the desert, and looking more grand than when one sees them from the bank of the river.

The best time for this view is at sunset, and if the air is clear there are few pictures anywhere in the world to surpass it. There is a wonderful contrast between the flat roofs and domes and minarets of the city, and the rich green of the open country beyond. Altogether the view from the Citadel at sunset is one that should not be missed by a visitor to Cairo, and once enjoyed it is not likely to be speedily forgotten.

We were shown the spot where one of the Mamelukes saved himself, by jumping his horse over a wall and down upon a pile of rubbish thirty or more feet below. The horse was killed, but the rider was not hurt.

Mohammed Ali found the Mamelukes troublesome, just as the Janizaries were in Constantinople, and he determined to get rid of them. He invited them to a banquet at the palace, and they came in their richest suits, and when they were all in the courtyard of the palace, his Albanian body guard opened fire upon them from the surrounding windows and from the crenelated walls. The gates had been shut, and there was no chance of escape, and all were slaughtered except Emir Bey, the one who saved himself in the way mentioned. This little incident occurred in 1811, and put an end to the disturbances that the Mamelukes frequently created.

Mohammed Ali loved peace and quietness and was willing to {454}do anything in reason to secure them. The Mamelukes were constantly making trouble, and rendering the throne insecure; in fact they had the power of saying who should or should not be the ruler of the land. Is there anything more natural, than that he should study how to get rid of them, and in such a way that his motives could not be questioned? If he had asked them to come to his palace and be killed, there is every reason to believe they would have remained away; at any rate some of them would have been fastidious, and declined his polite invitation, so that his scheme for bagging them all would have failed. It was much better to invite them to a banquet; a man is much more likely to go to a good dinner, than to accept the honors of a butchery in which he is to occupy an objective place. Some men are so particular.

Why didn’t he poison them at the banquet, some one may ask. Poisoning isn’t respectable, and besides, you always run a risk of changing glasses with somebody, and getting into your own stomach the arsenic you intended for his. Servants are careless at dinner, and then you always have some guests, who don’t drink and are quite likely to detest the particular kind of soup or pie where you have placed your medicine. Besides, when you poison a man, he has no time to prepare for death, while in a massacre like this he has lots of it. The Mamelukes that were not shot at the first fire had at least a quarter of a minute for preparation, as it would take quite that time to open the windows and level the rifles. Then you must add the period required for the bullets to go from the rifles to the Mamelukes, and altogether you will conclude that the time must have hung heavy on their hands. Those not killed at the first fire, had the additional time required for reloading, and you must remember, before condemning Mohammed Ali for taking them unawares, that the rifles of that day were charged at the muzzle and were much slower to load than the Sharps, and Mansers, and Chassepots of our time.

The more you study this massacre of the Mamelukes, the more you must admire Mohammed Ali for the way he managed it He attended to the details, and did no bungling work.

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