CHAPTER L--SUNSET IN THE ORIENT.--VOYAGING DOWN THE NILE.

_An Egyptian Sunset--A Gorgeous Spectacle--The Sky that bends above the Nile--Singular Atmospheric Phenomena--A Picture for an Artist--Shadows from History--Napoleon and the Pyramids--Our Voyage back to Cairo--Scenes by the Way--“Cook’s Tourists”--An Amusing Sight--Night-Fall on the Nile--A Flame of Rockets--“What does it Mean?”--The Marriage of the Khedive’s Son--Feminine Disappointment--Jumping Ashore--Aboard of Donkeys--Gustave’s Somersault--Practical Sympathy--In the Pasha’s Garden--A Magnificent Sight--The Wedding Pageant--Elbowing an Arab Crowd--A Pyrotechnic Shower._

THE tenth of February was the last day of our journey on the Nile. Both gladly and reluctantly we hailed the end.

The sun went down according to his usual custom and at the time set by astronomers for him to do so. There was nothing remarkable in the fact that sunset occurred at the close of the day, but there _was_ something remarkable in the coloring of the sky, and in the lights and shadows of the hour. An Egyptian sunset is about the finest thing of the kind that can be found anywhere, and it is no wonder that poets rave about it and artists make long pilgrimages and endure many hardships in order to transfer it to canvass. I have seen the glorious orb of day leave the world “to darkness and to me” in many lands and climes of this terrestial ball--in unsentimental English I have seen the same sun set in many places--but I have never found it making a spectacle more gorgeous than the Egyptian one. The Egyptian morning has some color, but not much; in the middle of the day every particle of tint disappears altogether, and the sky is perfectly clear--a sort of grayish blue in which there is only the very faintest suggestion of cerulean. An hour or two {638}before sunset a close observer will discover faint outlines or ghosts of clouds--cirrus and cirro-cumulus--streaming up from the western half of the horizon, and furtively gaining little by little until they are at the zenith. At first these clouds are colorless, but as they grow and take definite shape, and the minutes roll on, they become purple and scarlet, and crimson and golden, until the whole western heavens from north to south, and from south back to north again seem to be aglow with lurid flames. The sands of the Desert have absorbed during the middle of the day all the effulgent beams of the sun; now they are giving them back in all their prismatic variety and painting a picture of rarest beauty. The colors are brightest as the sun drops into the waste of sand in the west. If we are standing on the Mokattam Hills overlooking Cairo we have the pyramids of Gizeh between us and the declining sun and their outlines become more and more distinct as the day wanes. The colors linger on the clouds but gradually they fade and disappear till at last we see only a bright line of light along the horizon. This in turn melts away and the day is done.

“Soldiers,” said Napoleon, as he formed his army in line to resist the desperate charge of the Mamelukes, “soldiers,--from the lights of yonder pyramids forty centuries look down on you.”

Forty centuries and more have rolled away since Cheops and Cephren built these monuments on the banks of the Nile. Could those stony masses be endowed with speech what stories might they not tell us of the glories of ancient Egypt, of the rise and fall of dynasties and kingdoms, of the horrors of war and the blessings of peace, and of the many events which their existence has embraced. They could tell us of many thousand sunset scenes like the one we have just witnessed; of gorgeous pictures painted on cloud and sky in colors that fade not as time rolls on but remain to-day as brilliant as when the morning stars first sang together ages and ages ago.

Our return voyage was not marked by any special incident. At sunset we just caught a glimpse of the citadel that overlooks Cairo and commands with its black-mouthed cannon the city of the Caliphs and the Mamelukes. The arrowy minarets of the mosque of Mohammed Ali were faintly discernible against the {639}sky, and the orange groves of the Island of Roda filled the foreground of the picture with their dark foliage.

We were on deck and busily engaged in studying the scene. There was a gentle breeze blowing up the Nile and we met numerous boats taking advantage of the wind that favored their southward journey. Most of them were empty; they had been at Cairo and a market, and were now homeward bound. Some were filled with men and women,--villagers from the banks of the river, and every few moments we heard sounds of music and merriment from these densely laden craft. One boat was so crowded that there were not seats for all, and the gunwale of the craft was not more than two inches above the water.

“What can they be?” asked a young lady who was generally the leader in questioning.

“Don’t you know?” was the prompt reply, “it is a party of Cook’s tourists on a pleasure trip.” Despite the untruth it contained the reply caused a laugh on the part of all who heard it, including the fair maiden who sought to be informed as to the character of the party.

Darkness gathered over us and the stars came out in a moonless sky as we moved slowly down the stream. Out of the gloom came a white-winged _dahabeeah_, or Nile pleasure boat, and sailed directly in the track we were pursuing. There was much running and shouting by the Arab crews: the long sails were hastily swung around but not soon enough to save us from collision and attendant excitement.

Happily there was no damage done, and happily too there was none of the emphatic conversation such as we might have heard had the crews been of the English speaking race.

Just as we swung clear of the upward bound boat and were once more under way, a rocket shot up in the distant darkness and exploded into a constellation of stars not to be found in any celestial atlas.

Another and another followed in quick succession, and then there arose a tongue of flame that brought the palm trees into bold relief.

A wild shout was wafted to us on the northerly breeze, and it redoubled when several rockets rose from the Citadel as if an{640}swering the more distant ones that first appeared. Then a hundred or more rockets rose almost together and the heavens that before were calm and silent, and luminous only with the bright dottings of myriad stars became resonant with explosions and flashing with the corruscations of the flying pyrotechnics. ‘The stars were paled by the nearer and more brilliant lights of man’s handiwork, and we saw again the sunset colors released from the serene glory of sky and cloud, and darting here and there as if the sun had burst and the clouds were being chased away by a dozen opposing winds.

“What does all this mean?” came from the lips of our inquisitive maiden.

This time her question was seriously answered.

“It is the beginning of the festivities in honor of the marriage of one of the sons of the Khedive,” was the reply. “The ceremony took place this morning, and the affair terminates with a round of festivities that include fireworks, and dinners, and a good time generally.”

“We are just in time,” exclaimed all the male voices in the party. “We are just too late,” was the exclamation from all the female mouths.

Did you ever see a woman who wouldn’t give all her antiquated bootees to attend a wedding ceremonial, and did you ever see a man who wouldn’t give quite as much to stay away from one--(his own included)--if there was any social regulation requiring his attendance? Of course there are exceptions but they only affirm the correctness of the rule. I know of no subject on which there is more divergence of opinion between the sexes than on that of attending other people’s weddings. In the present instance all the women of our party thought we had missed everything in missing the ceremony, while every man thought we were fortunate in getting there for the festivities. As a spectacle in a strange land the wedding might have been interesting, but from a social and matrimonial point of view it was of no consequence to a single beard-wearer.

“The rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air” continued as we descended the stream, and tied up to the east bank of the Nile, just above the new iron bridge that spans the river {641}and enables you to take a carriage drive whenever you wish to the Geezereh palace, or to the pyramids.

It was so late that the ladies concluded not to leave the boat, but we masculines were not so particular.

We jumped ashore and quickly clambered up the bank, and before many minutes elapsed, Gustave and I had secured donkeys and were scampering away in the direction of the fireworks. Gustave was lighter than I, and urged his beast so fast that I could not keep up. I was striving to overtake him, when suddenly I heard a thud in the dust-cloud just ahead of me and a remark that was not altogether evangelical in its character. I had no difficulty in overtaking Gustave then.

He and his donkey were lying all in a heap, and it was difficult to say how much was donkey and how much was Gustave.

Both were covered with dust and looked as if they had been the principal attendants of a country flouring mill, or stevedores engaged in the stowage of a cargo of plaster of Paris.

My tendency to risibility was suddenly terminated by the fall of _my_ donkey, and there we were in an indiscriminate mass, two men and two donkeys. Some rude jester may remark that there were four donkeys and no men in the heap, but I shall take no notice of such impertinence.

We righted ourselves and shook the dust from our feet as a testimony against such accidents. I dusted Gustave with my riding-whip and he dusted me, and we did it so vigorously that {642}a policeman came to arrest us for fighting. An explanation in English, French, and German, which he did not understand, with a small silver coin, which he did, made it all right. He went his way rejoicing and left us to go ours. Our drivers got the donkeys up and put them together; we remounted and proceeded, this time at a more solemn pace. Gustave had suddenly remembered that the show was to last ten days, and there was no occasion for us to be in a hurry. We had no more falls that evening.

Moral: When you ride a donkey in Cairo, take your time and go slow. If you attempt to push things, you will suddenly find yourself a greater ass than the other one.

The fantasia, as the natives call it, was on a large open space where were formerly the plantations of Ibrahim Pasha. It is outside the city, on the road from Cairo to Old Cairo, and is studded with trees that bear many marks of antiquity. The road is broad, macadamized, and modern, and for a mile or more is as straight as a sunbeam. Along this straight portion there was a framework of posts and horizontal planks, hung with Chinese lanterns, in great variety of colors and in number about as countable as a political meeting on election night.

There were thousands of these lights, but whether five, ten, or twenty thousands, I will not pretend to say. There was a four-inch candle in each lantern, and the aggregate of illumination was sufficient to make the way unmistakably clear.

The open field as we approached it, was on the left of the road, and opposite, on the right hand, was the vice-regal palace known as the Kasr-el-Ali.

Over the road or street in front of the palace, was a sort of arch of triumph, and this was covered with a profusion of lanterns. There were four or five rows of them; the lower one red, the next green, and the rest of other colors, so that the combined effect was quite picturesque and had a great deal of Oriental brilliancy about it.

The street was full of carriages, and the policemen had no easy work to keep the double files in place. Then there were crowds of pedestrians and equestrians, _i.e._, if a man mounted on a donkey can be called an equestrian--and it was no easy {643}matter to work one’s way through the struggling mass. But luckily it happens that an Arab crowd is a good-natured and non-pushing one, and by a use of time and patience we managed to get along. We were borne on the current into the field where carriages were not allowed to penetrate, and once inside we dismounted and left the donkeys and their drivers to wait till we were ready to return to the boat.

Two sides of the field were bounded by fences, and the other two by tents, each tent quite open at the end next the field. There were three or four bands of music in as many places, and each band played without much regard for the others.

The heavens were ablaze with the glare of rockets, and there were Catherine wheels and composite pieces on frames in countless numbers. On every side you heard expressions of astonishment and delight, just as you hear them under similar pyrotechnic circumstances in New York or elsewhere.

The contrast between the solemn stillness which reigned amid the mighty ruins of the temples, tombs, and cities of the upper Nile, which we had so lately visited, and the brilliancy of the scene we were now gazing upon, excited tumultuous emotions, which I will not stop to analyze. We hastened forward, and in a few minutes succeeded in pushing our way into the centre of the crowd.

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