Chapter 24

We took leave of Old England and the Old Year together. On the first of January we left Southampton; on the evening of the 2nd we took leave of England at Falmouth. Towards evening, on the 18th day since leaving England, the low land of Egypt was visible from the mast-head. The only object visible from the decks was a faint speck on the horizon, but that speck was Pompey's Pillar. This is the site Alexander selected from his wide dominions, and which Napoleon pronounced to be unrivalled in importance. Here stood the great library of antiquity, and here the Hebrew Scriptures expanded into Greek under the hands of the Septuagint. Here Cleopatra revelled with her Roman conquerors. Here St. Mark preached the truth on which Origen attempted to refine, and here Athanasius held warlike controversy.

The bay is crowded with merchant vessels of every nation. Men-of-war barges shoot past you with crews dressed in what look like red nightcaps and white petticoats. Here, an "ocean patriarch" (as the Arabs call Noah), with white turban and flowing beard, is steering a little ark filled with unclean-looking animals of every description; and there, a crew of swarthy Egyptians, naked from the waist upwards, are pulling some pale-faced strangers to a vessel with loosed top.

The crumbling quays are piled with bales of eastern merchandise, islanded in a sea of white turbans wreathed over dark, melancholy faces. High above the variegated crowds peer the long necks of hopeless-looking camels. Passing through the Arab city, you emerge into the Frank quarter, a handsome square of tall white houses, over which the flags of every nation in Europe denote the residences of the various consuls. In this square is an endless variety of races and costumes most picturesquely grouped together, and lighted brilliantly by a glowing sun in a cloudless sky. In one place, a procession of women waddles along, wrapped in large shroud-like veils from head to foot. In another, a group of Turks in long flowing drapery are seated in a circle smoking their chiboukes in silence.

_II.--The Nile_

"Egypt is the gift of the Nile," said one who was bewildered by its antiquity before our history was born (at least he, Herodotus, was called the father of it). This is an exotic land. That river, winding like a serpent through its paradise, has brought it from far regions. Those quiet plains have tumbled down the cataracts; those demure gardens have flirted with the Isle of Flowers (Elephantina), five hundred miles away; and those very pyramids have floated down the waves of Nile. In short, to speak chemically, that river is a solution of Ethiopia's richest regions, and that vast country is merely a precipitate.

Arrived at Alexandria, the traveller is yet far distant from the Nile. The Canopic mouth is long since closed up by the mud of Ethiopia, and the Arab conquerors of Egypt were obliged to form a canal to connect this seaport with the river. Under the Mamelukes, this canal had also become choked up. When Mehemet Ali rose to power his clear intellect at once comprehended the importance of the ancient emporium. Alexandria was then become a mere harbour for pirates. The desert and the sea were gradually encroaching on its boundaries, but the Pasha ordered the desert to bring forth corn and the sea to retire. Up rose a stately city of 60,000 inhabitants, and as suddenly yawned the canal which was to connect the new city with the Nile.

In the greatness and cruelty of its accomplishment, this Mahmoudie canal may vie with the gigantic labours of the Pharaohs. From the villages of the delta were swept 250,000 men, women, and children, and heaped like a ridge along the banks of the fatal canal. They had only provisions for a month, and famine soon made its appearance. It was a fearful sight to see the multitude convulsively working against time. As a dying horse bites the ground in his agony, they tore up that great grave--25,000 people perished, but the grim contract was completed, and in six weeks the waters of the Nile were led to Alexandria.

It was midnight when we arrived at Atfeh, the point of junction with the Nile. We are now on the sacred river. In some hours we emerged from the Rosetta branch and the prospect began to improve. Villages sheltered by graceful groups of palm-trees, mosques, green plains, and at length the desert--the most imposing sight in the world, except the sea. We felt we were actually in Egypt and our spirits rose. By the time the evening and the mist had rendered the country invisible, we had persuaded ourselves that Egypt was indeed the lovely land that Moore has so delightfully imagined in the pages of the "Epicurean."

_III--Cairo and Heliopolis_

Morning found us anchored off Boulak, the port of Cairo. Toward the river it is faced by factories and storehouses; within, you find yourself in a labyrinth of brown, narrow streets, that resemble rather rifts in some mud mountain, than anything with which architecture has had to do. Yet here and there the blankness of the walls is relieved and broken by richly worked lattices, and specimens of arabesque masonry.

Gaudy bazaars strike the eye, and the picturesque population that swarms everywhere keeps the interest awake. On emerging from the lanes of Boulak, Cairo, Grand Cairo! opens on the view; and never did fancy flash upon the poet's eye a more superb illusion of power and beauty than the "city of Victory" presents from a distance. ("El Kahira," the Arabic epithet of this city, means "the Victorious.") The bold range of the Mokattam mountains is purpled by the rising sun, its craggy summits are clearly cut against the glowing sky, it runs like a promontory into a sea of verdure, here wavy with a breezy plantation of olives, there darkened with accacia groves.

Just where the mountain sinks upon the plain, the citadel stands upon its last eminence, and widely spread beneath it lies the city, a forest of minarets with palm-trees intermingled, and the domes of innumerable mosques rising, like enormous bubbles, over the sea of houses. Here and there, richly green gardens are islanded within that sea, and the whole is girt round with picturesque towers and ramparts, occasionally revealed through vistas of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that surround it. It has been said that "God the first garden made, and the first city Cain," but here they seem commingled with the happiest effect.

The objects of interest in the neighbourhood of Cairo are very numerous. Let us first canter off to Heliopolis, the On of Scripture. It is only five miles of a pathway, shaded by sycamore and plane-trees, from which we emerge occasionally into green savannahs or luxuriant cornfields, over which the beautiful white ibis are hovering in flocks.

In Heliopolis, the Oxford of Old Egypt, stood the great Temple of the Sun. Here the beautiful and the wise studied love and logic 4,000 years ago. Here Joseph was married to the fair Asenath. Here Plato and Herodotus studied and here the darkness which veiled the Great Sacrifice was observed by a heathen astronomer, Dionysius the Areopagite. We found nothing, however, on the site of this ancient city, except a small garden of orange-trees, with a magnificent obelisk in the centre.

_IV.--The Market of Sorrow_

One day while in Cairo I went to visit the slave-markets, one of which is held without the city, in the courtyard of a deserted mosque. I was received by a mild-looking Nubian, who led me in silence to inspect his stock. I found about thirty girls scattered in groups about an inner court. The gate was open, but there seemed no thought of escape. Where could they go, poor things? Some were grinding millet between two stones; some were kneading flour into bread; some were chatting in the sunshine; some sleeping in the shade.

One or two looked sad and lonely enough, until their gloomy countenances were lit up with hope--the hope of being bought! Their faces for the most part were woefully blank, and many wore an awfully animal expression. Yet there were several figures of exquisite symmetry among them, which, had they been indeed the bronze statues they resembled, would have attracted the admiration of thousands, and would have been valued at twenty times the price that was set on these immortal beings. Their proprietor showed them off as a horse-dealer does his cattle, examining their teeth, removing their body-clothes, and exhibiting their paces.

It is like the change from night to morning, to pass from these dingy crowds to the white slaves from Georgia and Circassia. The commodities of this department of the human bazaars are only purchased by wealthy and powerful Moslems; and, when purchased, are destined to form part of the female aristocracy of Cairo. These fetch from one, two, three, or even five hundred pounds, and being so much more valuable than the Africans, are much more carefully tended. Some were smoking; some chatting merrily together; some sitting in dreamy languor. All their attitudes were very graceful.

They were for the most part exquisitely fair; but I was disappointed in their beauty. The sunny hair and heaven-blue eyes, that in England produce such an angel-like and intellectual effect, seemed to me here mere flax and beads; and I left them to the "turbaned Turk" without a sigh.

_V.--The Harem_

Difficult a study as woman presents in all countries, that difficulty deepens almost into impossibility in a land where even to look upon her is a matter of danger or of death. The seclusion of the hareem is preserved in the very streets by means of an impenetrable veil; the well-bred Egyptian averts his eyes as she passes by; she is ever to remain an object of mystery; and the most intimate acquaintance never inquires after the wife of his friend, or affects to know of her existence.

An English lady, visiting an Odalisque, inquired what pleasure her profusion of rich ornaments could afford, as no person except her husband was ever to behold them. "And for whom do _you_ adorn yourself? Is it for other men?" replied the fair barbarian.

I have conversed with several European ladies who had visited hareems, and they have all confessed their inability to convince the Eastern wives of the unhappiness or hardship of their state. It is true that the inmate of the hareem knows nothing of the wild liberty (as it seems to her) that the European woman enjoys. She has never witnessed the domestic happiness that crowns a fashionable life, or the peace of mind and purity of heart that reward the labours of a London season. And what can _she_ know of the disinterested affection and changeless constancy of ball-room belles, in the land where woman is all free?

Let them laugh on in their happy ignorance of a better lot, while round them is gathered all that their lord can command of luxury and pleasantness. His wealth is hoarded for them alone; he permits himself no ostentation, except the respectable one of arms and horses; and the time is weary that he passes apart from his home and hareem. The sternest tyrants are gentle there; Mehemet Ali never refused a woman's prayer; and even Ali Pasha was partly humanized by his love for Emineh. In the time of the Mamelukes, criminals were always led to execution blindfolded, as, if they had met a woman and could touch her garment, they were saved, whatever was their crime.

Thus idolized, watched, and guarded, the Egyptian woman's life is, nevertheless, entirely in the power of her lord, and her death is the inevitable penalty of his dishonour. Poor Fatima! shrined as she was in the palace of a tyrant, the fame of her beauty stole abroad through Cairo. She was one among a hundred in the hareem of Abbas Pasha, a man stained with every foul and loathsome vice; and who can wonder, though many may condemn, if she listened to a daring young Albanian, who risked his life to obtain but a sight of her. Whether she _did_ listen or not, none can ever know, but the eunuchs saw the glitter of the Arnaut's arms, as he leaped from her terrace into the Nile and vanished into the darkness.

The following night a merry English party dined together on board Lord E----'s boat, as it lay moored off the Isle of Rhoda; conversation had sunk into silence as the calm night came on; a faint breeze floated perfumes from the gardens over the star-lit Nile; a dreamy languor seemed to pervade all nature, and even the city lay hushed in deep repose, when suddenly a boat, crowded with dark figures, among which arms gleamed, shot out from one of the arches of the palace.

It paused under the opposite bank, where the water rushed deep and gloomily along, and for a moment a white figure glimmered among that boat's dark crew; there was a slight movement and a faint splash, and then the river flowed on as merrily as if poor Fatima still sang her Georgian song to the murmur of its waters.

I was riding one evening along the water-side. There was no sound except the ripple of the waves and the heavy flapping of a pelican's wing. As I paused to contemplate the scene an Egyptian passed me hurriedly, with a bloody knife in his hand. His dress was mean and ragged, but his countenance was one that the father of Don Carlos might have worn. He never raised his eyes as he passed by; and my groom, who just then came up, told me he had slain his wife, and was going to her father's village to denounce her.

_VI.--Djouni and Lady Hester Stanhope_

One morning we were already in motion as the sun rose over Lebanon. We passed for some miles through mulberry gardens, and over a dangerous rocky pass, where Antiochus the Great defeated the Egyptians, in 218 B.C. This pass would have required the best exertions and courage of a European horse, yet a file of camels was ascending it with the same patient look that they wear in their native deserts. Though forced frequently to traverse mountains in a country whose commerce is conducted by their means, these animals are only at their ease upon the sandy plain. The Arabs say, that if you were to ask a camel which he preferred--travelling up or down hill, his answer would be, "May the curse of Allah light on both!"

The road was only a steep and rocky path, which, in England, a goat would be considered active if he could traverse. Our horses, nevertheless, went along it at a canter, though the precipice sometimes yawned beneath our outside stirrup, while the inner one knocked fire out of the rocky cliff. Rocks, tumbled from the mountain, lay strewn about and nearly choked up the narrow river bed; over these we scrambled, climbed, and leaped in a manner that only Arab horses would attempt or could accomplish.

It was late when we came in sight of two conical hills, on one of which stands the village of Djouni, on the other a circular wall over which dark trees were waving, and this was the place in which Lady Hester Stanhope had finished her strange and eventful career. It had been formerly a convent, but the Pasha of Acre had given it to the "Prophet Lady," and she had converted its naked walls into palaces, its wilderness into gardens. The sun was setting as we entered the enclosure. The buildings that constituted the palace were of a very scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space, but only one storey in height; courts and gardens, stables and sleeping-rooms, halls of audience and ladies' bowers, were strangely intermingled.

Here fountains once played in marble basins, and choice flowers bloomed; but now it presented a scene of melancholy desolation. Our dinner was spread on the floor in Lady Hester's favourite apartment; her deathbed was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel; her name our conversation. Lady Hester Stanhope was niece to Mr. Pitt, and seems to have possessed or acquired something of his indomitable energy and proud self-reliance during the time that she presided over his household. Soon after his death she left England. For some time she was at Constantinople, where her magnificence and near alliance to the great minister gained her considerable influence. Afterwards she passed into Syria.

Many of the people of that country, excited by the achievements of Sir Sidney Smith, looked on her as a princess who had come to prepare the way for the expected conquest of their land by the English. Her influence increased through the prestige created by her wealth and magnificence, as well as by her imperious character and dauntless bravery. She believed in magic, astrology, and, incredible as it may appear, in her own divine mission.

She had two mares which were held sacred by herself and her attendants. One was singularly marked by a natural saddle. The animal was never mounted, but reserved for some divinity whom she was to accompany on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The other was retained for her own "mount" on the same remarkable occasion.

It is said that she was crowned Queen of the East by 50,000 Arabs, at Palmyra. Lady Hester certainly exercised despotic power in her neighbourhood on the mountain. Mehemet Ali could make nothing of her. She annihilated a village for disobedience, and burned a mountain chalet, with all its inhabitants, on account of the murder of two Frenchmen who were travelling under the protection of her firman.

_VII.--Mount Hermon_

One morning, before daylight, I set out for the summit of Hermon, called in Arabic, Djebel Sheikh, the "Chief of the Mountains." This is the highest point of Syria, the last of the Anti-Lebanon range. We rode through some rugged valleys and tracts of vineyards, and, leaving our horses at one of the sheds in the latter, began the steep and laborious ascent. I have climbed Snowdon, Vesuvius, Epomeo, and many others, but this was the heaviest work of all. After six hours of toil we stood on the summit, and perhaps the world does not afford a more magnificent view than we then beheld.

We looked down from the ancient Hill of Hermon over the land of Israel. There gleamed the bright blue Sea of Galilee, and nearer was Lake Hooly, with Banias, the ancient Dan, on its banks. The vast and varied plain, on which lay mapped a thousand places familiar to the memory, was bounded on the right by the Mediterranean, whose purple waters whitened round Sidon, Tyre, and the distant Promontorium Album, over which just appeared the summit of Mount Carmel. On the left of the plain a range of hills divided the Hauran from Samaria. Further on, towards the Eastern horizon, spread the plain of Damascus, and the desert towards Palmyra.

To the north, the wide and fertile valley of Bekaa lay between the two great chains of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon; the latter of whose varied hills and glens, speckled with forests and villages, lay beneath my feet. Nothing but lakes were wanting to the valleys, nothing but heather to the mountains. We caught some goats after a hard chase, and, milking them on the snow, drank eagerly from this novel dairy.

Soon afterwards we discovered a little fountain gushing from a snowy hill, and only those who have climbed a mountain 9,000 feet high, under a Syrian sun, can appreciate the luxury of such a draught as that cool, bubbling rill afforded.

_VIII.--Damascus: The World's Oldest City_

Emerging from the savage gorges of Anti-Lebanon, we entered a wide, disheartening plain, bounded by an amphitheatre of dreary mountains. Our horses had had no water for twenty-four hours, and we had had no refreshment of any kind for twenty. After two hours of more hard riding I came to another range of mountains, from beyond which opened the view of Damascus, from which the Prophet abstained as too delicious for a believer's gaze. It is said that after many days of toilsome travel, when he beheld this city thus lying at his feet, he exclaimed, "But one paradise is allowed to man; I will not take mine in this world;" and so he turned his horse's head from Damascus and pitched his tent in the desert.

For miles around us lay the dead desert, whose sands seemed to quiver under the shower of sunbeams; far away to the south and east it spread like a boundless ocean; but there, beneath our feet, lay such an island of verdure as nowhere else perhaps exists. Mass upon mass of dark, delicious foliage rolled like waves among garden tracts of brilliant emerald green. Here and there the clustering blossoms of the orange or the nectarine lay like foam upon that verdant sea. Minarets, white as ivory, shot up their fairy towers among the groves; and purple mosque-domes, tipped with the golden crescent, gave the only sign that a city lay bowered beneath those rich plantations.

One hour's gallop brought me to the suburban gates of Mezzé, and thenceforth I rode on through streets, or rather lanes, of pleasant shadow. For many an hour we had seen no water; now it gushed and gleamed and sparkled all around us; from aqueduct above, and rivulet below, and marble fountain in the walls--everywhere it poured forth its rich abundance; and my horse and I soon quenched our burning thirst in Abana and Pharphar.

On we went, among gardens, fountains, odours, and cool shade, absorbed in sensations of delight. Fruits of every delicate shape and hue bent the boughs hospitably over our heads; flowers hung in canopy upon the trees and lay in variegated carpet on the ground; the lanes through which we went were long arcades of arching boughs; the walls were composed of large square blocks of dried mud, which, in that bright, dazzling light somewhat resembled Cyclopean architecture, and gave, I know not what, of simplicity and primitiveness to the scene.

At length I entered the city, and thenceforth lost the sun while I remained there. The luxurious people of Damascus exclude all sunshine from their bazaars by awnings of thick mat, whenever vine-trellises or vaulted roofs do not render this precaution unnecessary. The effects of this pleasant gloom, the cool currents of air created by the narrow streets, the vividness of the bazaars, the variety and beauty of the Oriental dress, the fragrant smell of the spice-shops, the tinkle of the brass cups of the sherbet seller--all this affords a pleasant but bewildering change from the silent desert and the glare of sunshine.

And then the glimpse of places strange to your eye, yet familiar to your imagination, that you catch as you pass along. Here is the portal of a large khan, with a fountain and cistern in the midst. Camels and bales of merchandise and turbaned negroes are scattered over its wide quadrangle, and an arcade of shops or offices surrounds it, above and below, like the streets of Chester. Another portal opens into a public bath, with its fountains, its reservoirs, its gay carpets, and its luxurious inmates clad in white linen and reclining on cushions as they smoke their chibouques.

I lodged at the Franciscan Convent, of which the terrace commands the best view, perhaps, of the city. The young Christian women of Damascus come hither in numbers to confess, which, if their tongues be as candid as their eloquent eyes, must be rather a protracted business. They are passing fair; but the Jewess, with her aristocratic mien, her proud, yet airy step, and her eagle eye, throws all others into the shade, and vindicates her lineal descent from Eve, in this, Eve's native land.

I thought Damascus was a great improvement on Cairo in every respect. It is much more thoroughly Oriental in appearance, in its mysteries, in the look and character of its inhabitants. The spirit of the Arabian Nights is quite alive in these, its native streets; and not only do you hear their fantastic tales repeated to rapt audiences in the coffee-houses, but you see them hourly exemplified in living scenes. This is probably the most ancient city in the world. Eleazar, the trusty steward of Abraham, was a citizen of it nearly 4,000 years ago, and the Arabs maintain that Adam was created here out of the red clay that is now fashioned by the potter into other forms.