Cairo the Grand

In the night we dropped down to Bulac, and, when we looked out in the morning, we found ourselves moored close in front of the palace of Ismael Pasha (he had been murdered, or rather put to death, by the peasants of Nubia. He was among them as a conqueror, and was oppressive); it has an appearance princely, and is a strange mixture of Italian, Greek, and Asiatic taste, having a wide front, of handsome windows and balconies, Greek painting on its walls, much gilding on its iron-work, and a wing for the harem quite eastern. Cairo the Grand by no means corresponds with this early promise of show and magnificence; but Cairo is abundantly interesting, and, though I confess myself the possessor of a sanguine disposition, it did not disappoint my expectations. As I lay looking from the cabin-window at this palace, a voice said (with the deliberate utterance and accent of a Scotchman), – “If you are the gentlemen from Upper Egypt, the consul has sent me to conduct you and your baggage to Cairo.” I looked up and saw a fresh-looking man with the Highland countenance, sandy mustachios, the red Mamaluke trowsers, and the fine white cloak of Africa; the tone, the look, all that seemed unaltered and unalterable about this man, struck and prepossessed me at once; and as he was attached to us by Mr. Salt, during our stay, and accompanied us in our daily rides, I thus introduce him. In fact, it was coming in contact with Europe, although the unfortunate being who formed the fancied link is himself an object of (I can write no other word than) pity.

Camels and asses were in readiness, and we mounted and set forward. I must tell the reader that the ass of Cairo, even the hired ass, is a lineal descendant of the Sprightly, in the Arabian Nights; a fine-sized animal, with a party-coloured packsaddle, having a high pommel covered with red leather, on which you may lounge, lean your hand, or suffer your reins to lie. He is provided with stirrups and bridle, half European; away he goes trotting or cantering, the ragged driver running after him and crying, Taieeb, Signor, taieeb, lashy lee breed (Lachez le bride); whether you do or no, he carries you, winding his way between loaded camels, workmen’s stalls, porters, beggars, crowds mounted, and crowds on foot, in a manner that at first quite puzzles you. It is necessary to have your eyes open and your wits ready, or you will be knocked off by the mountain-load of some camel, or, what might be worse, you would run against a surly Albanian.

After passing, however, three or four narrow lanes, you get out of Old Cairo, and ride along a fine, and rather a wide bit of road to the new city. Here you may look before and around you, and ask questions. Mounted on sleek, beautiful, well-groomed asses, you meet numbers of respectable-looking figures, in their ample and distinguishing robes; the Coptic and Armenian merchants, with dark robes and dark turbans; the Mohammedans in brighter colours, and turbans white, or of shawls. You see mingled with these (we did that very morning) Greek and Latin monks in their blue and black garments, with beards and turbans.

There is green corn on each side of you; the city does look, as you approach, like a capital.

You enter and cross the Birket Esbequieh; it is an open, irregular square; the houses on one side lofty, latticed, mean, and out of repair, but novel and picturesque. To the right are the palaces of Ali Pasha, Ahmed Pasha, and other grandees; white buildings, large, with, before one, a small garden, before the others bare walls, but nothing either being or looking palace-like. They front to the street beyond; but are not much better in appearance on that side.

You pass out of this square, and again find yourself “in Cairo’s crowded streets.” Mr. Salt, whom we first visited, had taken us apartments in a hotel in the Frank quarter. Thither we went; the Franks, I am sorry to say, are by far the most disreputable-looking class in Cairo. No pencil, but such a one as the late Mr. Scott’s, could at all convey to the reader’s mind the portraits of these people. The lively fidelity of one late traveller might have done something for it, and I am surprised that he omitted the mention of them. I can only beg you to image to yourself a set of needy, indolent, adventurous, dissipated, sharp-visaged men, whose offences, or fortunes, or hopes, have driven them from Trieste or Venice, Genoa or Marseilles; and to clothe them from the Monmouth Streets of those places, with such coats, hats, and caps, as they alone can furnish, and you have before you the many of that Frank population (on a Sunday, all, however, are to be seen in something looking new. How they live is a matter of wonder, as many are without employ) at Cairo, which represents the European and the Christian to the eye of the haughty Mussulman. Where is the merchant of Venice in his scarlet cloak? where the Genoese in his rich and glossy velvets? That Cairo, the Cairo of the caliphs, is no more; but you shall yet see the streets along which they rode, the mosques in which they prayed, and the bazaars where the Jewish and Arabian merchants brought and displayed the costly goods of India, to the purchasers from Europe.

We were very comfortable at the hotel; the master was a reserved, respectable, and respectful man, a Monsieur Meunier. He had a table d’hóte: we dined there the first evening, as an experiment or amusement, but his anxiety about our doing so, and the people we met, together with his looks at, and manner to them, showed us it would not do. We were very glad, however, to have seen it. At the table there were two who looked unhappy, disappointed men; and in the garden I used often to pass a French officer in a worn-out uniform, without epaulette, whose look (though he bowed) spoke the unsubdued spirit of a soldier, perhaps exiled from France, and, in desperate fortunes, seeking a service, and mingling among men he despised.

Osmyn, the Scotch Mamaluke, came to attend us in the morning. Our first ride was to Shubrah, the country palace of the pasha; as we crossed the Esbequieh, a new building was pointed out as the site of a house which Bonaparte had once inhabited, also that once occupied by the French Institute. We cantered or ambled pleasantly along a fine road, between avenues of Syrian and Egyptian mulberry-trees; we met large droves of asses, laden with forage, fine fresh grass, and green barley. The country harem happened to be cleaning, repairing, and empty, so that we saw all the apartments. There is a large central one for the women; small apartments at the angles for the more distinguished; one, rather handsome, for the pasha’s wife. There are summer apartments below; one with a fountain, a small bath of marble, and a large Eastern kitchen for the cooks and slaves: there is, also, above, a private apartment of the pasha’s, and one appropriated to youthful slaves, whom the crimes and customs of the East condemn to effeminacy and degradation.

Some of these apartments have the walls decorated with Greek paintings of a bright, tawdry colouring, representing palaces, kiosks, fountains, gardens, and, alas! for the poor inmates, scenes of open country or natural landscape; they are ill executed, but, with all the minuteness and laborious attention of Eastern artists. The gardens are pretty; the larger one has less stiff formality than I had expected; the smaller one has arbours, and trellis-covered paths, which are formed of the small pebbles of Rhodes. There were orange-trees, with their golden fruit, in the larger; in the smaller, many beautiful plants and creepers, also reservoirs of water, and little ducts of stone, guiding the sparkling treasure.

The gardeners had an air and countenances that pleased; their features fine, their occupation pleasant: they were Greeks from the gardens of Scio. Poor fellows! the men of whom they learned to use the pruning-knife, and tie up the drooper, and the girls with whom they danced, where are they? Were the question asked in that sad isle, who would answer?

Greek artists, too, with an Italian directing them, are building a sort of marble pavilion, or a water-palace. It promises to be handsome; a large square reservoir, a fountain, which will pour its waters from the mouths of crocodiles (the crocodiles are vile, stiff, and ill-suited to the purpose), verandas all round, marble pillars, urns, lions, and the ceiling of the pavilion and walks painting in fresco, by Greeks. The whole is paving with fine squares of white marble, which are ready prepared in Sicily and Italy for laying down, and then sent hither, as are all the other ornaments of marble.

The last thing we went to visit was a cameleopard, sent from Nubia by the pasha’s son; a most extraordinary, beautiful, and gentle creature. Nature has given it the eye and the closed nostril of the camel, a neck as long, but the proportion and grace of it peculiarly its own; a something in its body, especially in the rounded compact hind-quarter, of the horse; a cloven hoof; has adorned it with the spottings of the leopard, but gifted it with the tameness of the fawn. Not often is it caught; and then generally becomes a state-prisoner; it has been led up in Roman triumphs, and, since that day, has had its very existence disputed (it stood ten feet high to the crown of the head, between six and seven feet to the top of the shoulder. I see by the paper he has been shipwrecked in his passage to Constantinople very lately, but saved).

A gentleman, who had visited Shubrah a few weeks before us, was prevented from sketching it by the keepers, on account of their dread of the “evil eye,” and they seemed very impatient at our long visit. From a like apprehension they prevented us from going round the pasha’s stud; about twenty of his horses, however, we saw, by no means fine animals. We now returned home. Every afternoon during my stay I walked out alone, through all the streets and bazaars, and into the lanes, courts, and suburbs of Cairo, but of that presently. The next day we visited Mohammed Ali; Mr. Salt was present. We rode to the palace he occupied (one of Ahmed Pasha’s); found a court-yard filled with a number of men, soldiers, and other attendants; a few horses; but nothing having an air of order or show; and no persons, either from dress or manner, looking or assuming consequence. We were introduced into a large apartment; the pasha was at one end, on the divan; Mr. Salt on his right; a shrewd-looking Italian interpreter standing up, directly opposite to the pasha, in the Frank habit, with his hat in his hand. We were received courteously, the common questions addressed to us, and then coffee was brought. We sat there a very long time; not one attendant of any kind was in the room, and only the khawajee and assistants in the moments of their service. Almost the whole time the pasha was carrying on an animated, laughing conversation with Mr. Salt. The interpreter appeared to me fearlessly familiar, voluble, and to aim at and succeed in making the pasha laugh. Turkish and Italian were the languages, and without at the time understanding more of the Italian than its similarity to the Spanish admitted, the general tenor of the discourse was easily gathered, and consisted of allusions to local events, and persons of whom we knew nothing: the graver part of it was concerning the emir of the Druses, who was then at Cairo, and had lately received pardon (that is, life), and permission to return to his government at Mount Lebanon.

The pasha, every now and then, addressed some questions to us; two or three about the Persians, and their adoption of our discipline; but all inconsequent. I sat on the divan with my eyes fixed upon him; I wanted to examine the countenance of a man, who had realised in our day one of those scenes in history, which, when we have perused it, always compels us to lay down the book, and recover ourselves. There he sat, – a quick eye, features common, nose bad, a grizzled beard, looking much more than fifty, the worn complexion of that period of life, and there seemed to be creeping upon him that aspect which belongs to, and betrays the “grey decrepitude of lust.” Mohammed Ali Pasha is a Turk, a very Turk: he is surrounded, flattered, and cajoled by a set of foreign adventurers, who put notions into his head, and words into his mouth, which pass for, and, in truth, become his own: the race between him and them is who shall get the most out of the other, and what between force and fraud, I believe the pasha has the best of it. His idea of political economy is pretty much like that of the countryman, who killed the goose, and was astonished not to find more eggs of gold.

So far from improving, as far as we could hear and see, he is ruining and impoverishing his country. He has got rid of his Turks and Albanians, and flatters himself his new levy is a master-stroke of policy. He does not pay, and will never attach them; and if they do not (which I think probable) desert with their arms, and disturb his conquests and possessions above the cataracts, they will die away as a body, and fall to pieces in a very short period of time.

The protection which he affords to the European traveller is to be acknowledged, but not at the expense of truth. He knows if his country was not safe, the European would not come there: he encourages the intercourse, because he avows his wish to receive and employ Franks; and it is necessary, therefore, to let them see and know that protection is afforded to them, and to accustom his subjects to their presence. As far as pasha can be independent of the Porte, he is, and he knows it is only by cultivating his European relations that he can effectually continue so to the end. They might now send him the bowstring in vain; they tell you that he is not sanguinary; men grow tired of shedding blood, as well as of other pleasures; but if the cutting off a head would drop gold into his coffers, he would not be slow to give the signal. His laugh has nothing in it of nature; how can it have? I can hear it now, – a, hard sharp laugh, such as that with which strong heartless men would divide booty torn from the feeble. I leave him to his admirers. At one thing I heartily rejoice: it is said that our Consul-general has great influence with him; and it is known that that is always exerted freely and amiably for Franks of all nations in distress or difficulty, and often for natives also.

We went to the castle and visited the arsenal; a clear-eyed, intelligent, manly-spoken Englishman was in temporary charge of it, and hoped to be confirmed in the situation. He was a good specimen of what our countrymen are in such charges. Not a great deal of work is done here; there are plenty of good workmen, Franks and some English, who were disappointed with their employer, and about to return: they only cast four-pounders. It was in a room here, over a machine for boring cannon, that some Frenchmen formerly in charge had painted in large characters, – “Vive Mahomed Ali, Protecteur des Arts!” The Englishman said, that when the pasha visited the arsenal he certainly asked questions that surprised him, in a Turk. A man in power, of common intelligence, soon learns, by some means or another, to ask a few questions when he visits an establishment. His merit, if any, is, in defiance of prejudices, receiving men with heads to contrive and hands to execute what himself, his three-tailed sons, and his people cannot.

The castle of Cairo is a fine thing. The pillars in the hail of Joseph and the well of that caliph, are memorials of a prouder period; and, from surveying them, it is common to go and take your stand on the outer wall of the castle, and look out upon the magnificent scene it commands; a noble one it is. Cairo still looks itself; the dark mass of the mosque of Hassan, the many light and lofty minarets which rise above the crowded buildings, the gardens, the trees, the green earth, and the broad river beyond, proclaim aloud (that is, speaking to the eye), power, beauty, wealth, abundance; and you might again go down and expect to see caparisoned horses and fair structures, stuffs of gold and silver, and the measure of corn heaped up and flowing over into the poor man’s bosom. This you do not see; still, however, you find the narrow streets crowded and busy, a stream of turbaned men, long files of camels, the quick ambling asses of scribes and merchants, here and there a solitary horseman, or a small group, perhaps, a wealthy man on a mule, a poor man with the smallest-sized overloaded ass, a party of armed Albanians, a file of women going to the baths, enveloped in their large black mantles and closely veiled, slaves before clearing their path with a cry and a blow, and they raised very loftily, upon saddles high, high above their animals, with one servant leading and one at each stirrup, – nor shape, nor face, nor foot, discernible; nothing whereby eager youth might guess if they, too, were young enough for love, save the dark flashing of the eye, which, if it will, can smile without the aid of parted lips or dimpling cheek.

I must stop for a minute, and confess that I saw no eye of this description, – but such there must be in Cairo, or such there was, as the young merchant, who lost his right hand, found to his cost; but I am wrong, I believe the lady came on a mule to the bezestein, on a shopping excursion, and unveiled.

Well, it was very pleasant, in my school-boy days, to put aside the imposed τυφθησομαι and light the taper at my scob (a conveniency for holding books at Winchester College, so called), and read those same Arabian tales; and it was very pleasant, though I did but imperfectly recollect them, to think about them in the streets of Grand Cairo, where the author of those tales seems always fond of carrying his heroes. The loads of wood on the camels, which really in these lanes it is not easy to avoid, bring the scar of Amine’s cheek, and her prompt and natural account of it, to your idle mind, and assure you that the writer (said to be a Greek; – indeed there is much in them that could hardly have been written by a Mussulman born) once moved in these very streets.

We stopped before the gate of a large building, and, turning, entered a court of no great size, with a range of apartments all round; open doors showed that they were dark and wretched; at them, or before them, stood or sat small groups of female slaves; also from within these chambers, you might catch the moving eyes and white teeth of those who shunned the light. There was a gallery above with other rooms, and slave-girls leaning on the rail, – laughter, all laughter, – their long hair in numerous falling curls, white with fat; their faces, arms, and bosoms shining with grease. Exposure in the market is the moment of their joy. Their cots, their country, the breast that gave them suck, the hand that led their tottering steps not forgotten, but resigned, given up, as things gone for ever, left in another world. The toils and terrors of the wide desert, the hard and scanty fare, the swollen foot, the whip, the scalding tear, the curse; all, all are behind: hope meets them here, and paints some master kind; some mistress gentle; some babe or child to win the heart of; – as bond-women they may bear a son, and live and die the contented inmates of some quiet harem. You see they laugh, and some wear even a wanton look; – they are quite happy. No, – look at that scowling, dark-browed Moor; he is their owner; it is to please, or to escape from him, they smile; you think otherwise of that one; well, perhaps it is nature prompts her; but the many, and those wild, shy groups within, – could we sit, and hear, and understand the simple history of every smiler there, we should go home and shudder.

“Then what is man? and what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?”

Yes! Arabian fiction may have charmed, and cheated, our unthinking youth, and we may still delight to look upon forms and features, robes and arms, the manners and the customs of other days; but we gladden to see decay at work; – the blackened mosque, the dulled crescent, the silent khan, the roofless dwelling, these tell us that

” – What remains
Of this tempestuous state of human things,
Is merely as the working of a sea
Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest.”

We visited an hospital, founded five hundred years ago; four large vaulted recesses, spacious and airy, are the chambers; they surround an open court with a fountain. We walked round the cots of the patients. It appeared to me that they were but fed and sheltered; there are native physicians, but I believe the wisest of them attempt little in the way of treatment. We saw a Moggrebyn, lying in a sad state, his limbs swollen, his eye hopeless; he was a native of Fez. You make a present in bread here (not money), a strange custom. We were shown a smaller court, with a fountain in it, and a few small cells around with iron-grated fronts. I have seen beasts of the forest in the like; they were some of them tenanted, and by human beings, men stricken of God; a sad, a fearful sight (I see not that the Turk who professes to regard these sufferers as holy, is tender in his treatment of them).

Every morning during our stay, save one, when the hot wind called the hamseen blew fiery as from a furnace-mouth, we visited something; each afternoon I wandered through the city to catch and carry away its aspect. We generally dined as evening closed; and not an evening but we became silent, and listened as a muezzin, who had one of those deep fine-toned voices you never forget, chaunted out from a lofty minar, not very distant, the solemn call to prayer.

We rode one morning to the tombs of the caliphs; they are in a ruinous condition, but must still be very striking objects to the eye of a traveller visiting them from Europe. He who has looked upon the remains of Moorish magnificence in Hindostan, those vast and costly edifices raised by the Mogul emperors on the plains of Agra, is surprised at the comparative inferiority of these, and indeed all the works of the caliphs.

A little beyond the ” Victory Gate,” Osmyn pointed to where under some small tomb, which we could not distinguish among the closely crowded graves, lie the remains of poor Burckhardt. “Nay, you must not go up,” said Osmyn; and do not let the people see you looking that way too intently.” It is just on the edge of that immense desert he was preparing to traverse.
Hopes broken, “he fell pale in a land unknown.” Osmyn was the man whom Burckhardt found in slavery at Djidda, and, by the ready assistance of Mr. Salt, raised from his abject condition, and placed in comparative comfort at Cairo, where he is now, attached to, and protected by, the Consul-general. He was with Burckhardt when he died, and kindly remembered in his will. He, less happy, is a Turk by rite; and as in the case of poor Ibrahim, the Moslems will take his body, and lay it among their own; but I believe, Scotland, his heart is in your hills, and that quiet kirk he never more shall see. He cannot, could not again face you; wounded and a beaten slave, they performed the rite by force. I shall long remember the evening when in the garden of our dwelling (gloomy and dark it was) he told his tale. If there be any who in his secure and carpeted chambers shall entertain hard thoughts of this man as a renegade, who thinks that he should go and ask for the martyrdom of impalement, I counsel him to offer thanks, and drop the stone; reflecting with deep self-abasement on the care and love which have saved him from like trials, and a like melancholy fate.

We visited the Coptic convent; saw their cymbals, and the supporting crutches on which they lean in service. We observed ostrich eggs suspended from the roof of their chapel, and descended below, to where an altar and a font mark the spot which some monkish invention gives out as having once been a place of concealment for the Virgin Mother and her holy babe.

We visited also the Greek convent, and drank coffee with the priests. The Greek gives burial-ground to the Protestant. Some English lie in the convent garden; we, in return, look with cold indifference on his trampled cross. We went into a very large forsaken mosque on our way home; once a year there is still some festival held there; it has a most spacious square court, and porticoes adorned with, and supported by, handsome columns. We passed a Turkish encampment, infantry destined for Candia.

We had the pleasure of dining with Mr. Salt, and of seeing his little collection of Egyptian relics. He has many fine bronze figures of their idols. Of the objects which most pleased me were, a sacred vessel of yellow metal, a composition fine as Corinthian brass, giving a clear musical sound, which is long, very long, in dying away, and is listened to with attention, till the last faint exquisite note, which does not seem to finish, blends with such sounds, as when the world is up and awake, belong even to silence.

There was another vessel like the lotos leaf (similar we have in India); a sacrificial knife and axe; ornament of fine gilding, and of coloured glass; scarabæi; papyri, fine specimens; a Greek one with part of the Iliad; an ink-stand, colour-box, combs, crisping pins, pencils for the eyes, mirrors of brass, sandals, shoes, some of infant size, basket-work, a chair, a harp unstrung, a timbrel, a hand-ball, bow and arrows, a piôche, or hand-plough.

In my solitary wanderings in the city, I visited the Convento della Propaganda, and della Terra Santa also; walked all through the Jewish quarter, and was shown their largest synagogue, (they have seven,) a building somewhat mosque-like, of stone, with handsome small pillars: they had, in the ark or recess, seven copies of the law, written and on rollers. They also showed me an old Bible illuminated, and written in beautiful characters; together with other books and copies of the Talmud. They asked me to put my shoes from off my feet, when I went into this synagogue; I did so; they showed me a school of little boys at their Hebrew lessons. Their quarter is dark, dirty, and you see many meanly clad figures¹, yet do they seem to be far more at ease here than I had seen them in Arabia; they purchase dearly their protection: I was told they occupied about a hundred and twenty houses in separate families. A family is always very large, that is, it consists of all connected with each other, also servants and travelling strangers.

I can never pass the Jew without a feeling of awe and sorrow.

Through the other quarters of the town I would walk slowly, now pausing to ask a question, or to look at what was strange; a large, and not a very clean-looking towel hanging before the door of the Hummaam, denotes that women are in the bath; the Mambrino helmet is here, as in Spain, whither the Moors carried, or left it, the sign of a shop where heads are shaved in an orthodox manner, and you see them held low and shining under the hands of the skilful operator.

Here, too, beards are trimmed and perfumed, and the mustachio is twisted, or curled to the fancy of the wearer. Coffeehouses abound, and the sherbet-shop I have seen, but no cream tarts, either with or without pepper. In one quarter you will find every shop filled with slippers of red or yellow leather, and men working at that trade; in another, saddlers dwell. I went into a large yard, filled with old Mamaluke saddles, all torn and weather-stained, the blue, and crimson, and purple velvets faded, and the embroidery tarnished. Two or three workmen were making new, and some others embroidering new housings. I contrived to ask them if the saddles I saw were of the Mamaluke chiefs and their followers: they said, Yes; and then looked at each other, and at me, as much as to say, he has read about them in his book; and I observed a strong expression of regret as they regarded the old saddles. However, ‘tis a selfish feeling with them, perhaps, for the killing off of the beys made quite a change in Cairo. Horses and rich saddles, and velvet housings, are seldom seen now.

In the large open space before the castle you may see a few mountebanks and monkeys; a kind of combat with staves; and others, where men act and speak, also combating. A few small idle crowds are gathered in little knots round these, but there is little mirth, not to be compared with what you would meet in India; their serpent-charmers and dancing women I did not see, but from what I hear, and readily credit, they are inferior to like exhibitions in India. The Arabian Nights Entertainments yield, in Cairo, with the Arabs and people generally, to the tale of Antar, so at least I was informed, for at night, their great story-telling season, I had no opportunity of seeing the groups of listeners. In one large bezestein you see numbers of cloth-merchants, and bales of cloth, silks, shawls, &c.; in another, you see garments made up, and those for the soldiery or attendants (the rich and great dressing always plain) are covered with so much embroidery, that hussar-officers would smile to see themselves eclipsed. There is a quarter allotted to the Moggrebyns; they bring fine white cloaks, red caps, and a stouter, stronger slipper, of a different shape from the common one, for sale. Here I met with one of my companions; and, as I was bargaining for a red cap, a Moor came over to interpret; an elderly good-tempered man: he also led us to a lane filled with the shops of perfumers, my friend wishing to buy some atar. I did not think a Turk could have recommended his essences and perfumed waters with such smiling and persevering animation as did the youth (he was a fresh complexion bright-eyed youth, and his way quite the “Jin Vin” of his quarter) before whose shop we stopped. They are cheap, and put up in little glass-bottles, gilded and figured with flowers and stars. It was very late that evening, and we made the old Moor conduct us home to the Frank quarter; we wound through a number of narrow lanes, and in one, where all the shops were shut, and the Turks gone, our man of Morocco struck up “God save the King,” of which he sung a verse or two in a manner the most comic. He had been in England, and had a sort of delight and pride in the circumstance, which, all silly as he was in the expression of it, did more than merely divert us. There is no way so short to the heart of an Englishman as to praise his country. It is not that you value the praises given, because, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the foreigner, be he Turk or Parisian, knows not what he praises; but you who do, see all the privileges and the glories which you are heir to summoned to your awakened thoughts.

Our last ride in the neighbourhood of Cairo was to the site of Heliopolis. It was a Friday, and women were going veiled among the tombs, with flowers to sprinkle on them. When these adornings of the tomb are the tribute of sincere grief and affection, the soothing to the heart of the mourner must be great; for there is a sacred pleasure in such innocent rites, honouring the dead over whom you weep. We have, in our days, refined a great deal too much upon ancient, and simple, and salutary customs; and because, in our happy, spiritual, and reformed church, we have conscientiously abolished masses over the grave, I know not why the cemetery and the churchyard are to be abandoned to the sexton and the nettle. Long after we cease to weep, or even regret the dead, we may read a sermon without book, we may hear a monitor without a voice, as we look and tread upon the stone which covers their black coffin.

We passed on the road an encampment of Turkish horse, lately returned from Arabia; the horses were by no means fine, nor had the men a soldier’s look; however, we only saw them en passant, as they lay picketed and grouped about. In appearance the Mogul horse are princely warriors compared to them; but I believe there is no doubt that the Turk has the stuff in him, the real courage to meet the biting blade when put to it. Moreover, such specimens of Turkish horse as you see in Egypt cannot be a fair sample of the Ottoman cavalry.

About four miles from the city we found a small caravan of 500 or 600 camels, collecting for Suez! Some had already gone forwards, and the rendezvous for that evening’s halt having been named, they were lying idle, or moving off in parties of ten and twenty into the desert. The scene is very interesting; the character of their journeys, and their customs in travelling, are so opposed, so widely opposed, to any thing with which you can compare them in Europe. The master and the slave are here brought nearly to the same level; the master has a better carpet, a neater pillow, a mouth-piece to his pipe, either of the finest amber, or otherwise richly enamelled, is well dressed, has nothing to do, smokes, and never moves; the slave has a coarser carpet, a dirtier pillow, a wooden pipe, is well-clothed, and has a little, and very little, to do; the coffee which he makes, and the meal which he prepares, he also partakes of. Both sit upon the sand, and encounter the sun by day, and the dew of night. The women sit enveloped in their mantles when halted, and ride shut up in litters of basketwork, covered with cloths and curtained. We saw this caravan at a moment when you might catch every variety of grouping afforded by the acts of loading, cooking, smoking, sleeping; camels without burdens kneeling to have them fixed; others moving off loaded; groups of families, slaves, servants children; drivers, armed Arabs, and friends taking leave of each other: their salutations, in this country, are as of old, they fall on each other’s neck and kiss. All this seen, and then a thought directed back to the period when caravans of many thousand (that from the interior of Africa is still often composed of from 3000 to 6000 camels) camels used to traverse the immense deserts of Libya, in which there have been instances of their total destruction, and their sufferings were often very great; and, when they used to be looked for in the khans of Cairo with no common anxiety; a little increases for us the charm of such a passage as –

– “In Cairo’s crowded streets
Th’ impatient merchant wondering waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens with the long delay.”

We rode on to Matarea, saw the well, the garden, and the sycamore, where, tradition says, Joseph and the Virgin, and the infant Saviour reposed, oppressed with thirst, and water welled forth miraculously to refresh them; of the sycamore tree, it opened, they say, to receive our Saviour and his mother, their pursuers being at hand. Two centuries ago, Paul Sandys found the tree hacked for relics, so did we, and rudely carved all over with names and crosses: a proof that they, who invented such legends, did well know human nature, which is ever running after something on which to look with a permitted and excusable affection, thereby wandering from the spirituality and simplicity of faith; and, with all one’s proud incredulity, how comes it that we receive pleasure from contemplating such objects? Why, call him by what name you will, man is dear to man; and when any thing connected with the history of the human heart is brought before us, we cannot refuse our sympathy.

A tall lone obelisk stands in a spacious field, which each year is flooded by the Nile, and yields a harvest to the husbandman. You ride up to it and alight. It is just such a monument as should mark the site of a renowned and perished city, – majestic, solitary, – no columns, walls, statues; nothing for the antiquarian to display his learning on, save the hieroglyphics which mock him. Yet are we thankful to him; for, through his labours, we learn that we are standing on the very spot where the ancient On of the Scriptures, the Heliopolis of a later day, raised this pillar of her pride, under which the sages of Greece listened with the docility of children, and the lord of Persia, in the maddening moment of victory, was awed into an act of mercy.

Another kind of college than that of the priests of On is now rising on the banks of the Nile. Ali Pasha has an institution in the empty palace of Ismail Pasha; I could not learn either the number of its professors or students, or any thing farther than that the scholars were to be taught every thing. We saw there several fine-looking youths, in Turkish costume; and no questions about the establishment could I get answered. A man showed us the library, who styled himself one of the under tutors; just as low a Levantine in manner and speech as we met.

Among the books, a most conspicuous place was occupied by a number of volumes backed “Victoires des Français!” I observed “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” two large volumes backed “L’Amour,” Byron, in French prose!!! and one solitary book in English, – Malcolm’s Persia.

This will convey some little idea of what the Egyptian Institute is likely to be; however, an establishment of this sort reflects credit on the pasha, and must be productive of great good; for if the boys were to read all the trash, and the worst trash which France could send them, they would be every way, even in morality, gainers.

This evening I took my last walk in the bazaars of Cairo. I wanted to buy a carpet, and thought I would amuse myself by shopping where I had often, in my mind’s eye, fancied and followed others. I was some time before I found the carpet-shops; at last I did, and in broken Arabic, asked for what I wanted: a dozen were displayed to me; I made choice of a small one. I observed a large, coarse, brawny fellow, in the common brown dress, with a basket and a rope in his hand, come near: by his countenance, which was expressive of great good temper, he seemed to take an interest in my purchase. The merchant and myself were both soon satisfied about the price.
My large friend immediately offered to carry it wherever I ordered: I bade him take it and follow me; and I bought at another shop one of those large white woollen prayer-cloths (they answer well as a blanket) of the Mohammedans, meaning to lay it under my carpet, which I designed in future as my bed. My next want was a pillow; I mentioned it to the porter, and away he trudged as my guide; it was to a quarter remote, retired, and quite in an opposite direction. We passed through streets that were crowded, and long lanes, where we met not a soul; he saw that I was a stranger to the city, the customs, and the language; he might have easily run away with my carpet, – nay, more, have knocked me down, and taken my watch and purse: he did not, however. He brought me to shops where there was cotton for stuffing, and red leather for covers, worked and stamped ornamentally; and was anxious to see me served well. After some trouble, I found one ready made, bought it, and he led me to the Frank quarter. Looking at him as he strode before me with his basket and cord, I had the exact picture of the character as it is represented in the Arabian Nights, only there it was from shop to shop, catering for a good supper, to which, moreover, the poor fellow was himself invited, and he met the three calenders and the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid: no Zobeide did I see; and I rather suspect that of all the characters in those tales, none is left so much what he was as the simple porter. To be sure you might find a hunchback; a tailor, a Jewish doctor, a Turkish purveyor, and a Christian merchant, are daily to be met with, go where you will; I have seen a black slave with a cane, leading his master’s son; and though handsome men do not abound in the city, yet I should not be at a loss for a Bedreddin Hassan in the streets of Cairo (I think the population of Cairo is over-rated; to be sure, in the cool hour of the afternoon, the streets are thronged, for all the men are out; but I doubt much if it amounts to two hundred thousand).

Having discharged our Indian and Arabian servants, who each, in his way, had conducted themselves most highly to our satisfaction, and carried with them our rewards and good wishes, we supplied their places with a long Levantine, named Marco, and an Italian, called Giovanni, and left Cairo for Alexandria.

From Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and in Italy
by Moyle Sherer, 1824

Notes

¹ I met some of their women: they wore a white mantle on the head; and two that I saw had zones of metal, thin silver; one, an old woman, from the slovenliness and carelessness of age, wore the zone low and loose, so that it caused the garments about her bosom to fall awkwardly, and exposed her aged breasts. I mention it, because, although familiar with the sight of the zone in the East, I had never seen it so worn: it for the first time gave me the exact meaning of such poetical images as belong to the loosened zone.