There were at this time symptoms of political unrest among the Egyptians, owing to the joint domination of the European Commissioners, since the recent accession of Tewfik to the vice-regal office,—some rumblings of far thunder; but the Viceroy said he hoped that there would be no disturbance. Within about a year from the time of this banquet, Arabi-Pasha rose in insurrection, the city was bombarded, and the very splendid hall in which we dined was burned. Looking back upon this event, I recalled the men of many races who quietly sat around the table, under the lights of the great chandeliers, amid vases filled with flowers, and music in the court-yard; the Khedive helplessly in the grasp of the Great Powers, but chatting pleasantly with the King of the little islands at the cross-roads of the Pacific, which were as important to the commerce of the Pacific as Egypt on the highway to India, and a king as helpless too, before the manifest destiny of America; two rulers over weak nations lying in the way of the Anglo-Saxon march.
I asked the Medical Director, who was also a devout Mussulman, about the condition of women in the harems. He replied that they thought their condition was superior to that of the married women of Europe, who insisted on their husbands remaining at home, without giving them liberty, which put them in a sort of domestic slavery; the women believed in the Koran, and therefore were contented. He said, too, that God had willed polygamy, and it was difficult to make the devout believe that it existed in defiance of the will of the Almighty.
The Viceroy of Egypt (1881).
The guests were placed at the table according to rank; but having now had much experience in dull table companions at royal banquets, I had asked our good friend, Sami-Pasha, to ignore my own rank and place me near some person who was familiar with Egyptian affairs. I was placed next to the Medical Director of the government, who at once spoke of the leprosy which prevailed in Hawaii and had given our earthly Paradise a bad name. He had his theory about the mysterious disease, but it failed to fit the facts within our own experience. He knew every guest at the table, and for three hours described to me, with diplomatic reserve at times, the crisis which was approaching, though he hoped that it would not end in insurrection.
After the banquet, coffee was served in jewelled cups. The coffee-bearer wore a rich uniform over his shoulder, like a Hussar's jacket. In one hand he carried a gold salver on which were the cups; with the other he held a gold frame containing a deep gold coffee-urn which nearly touched the floor.
The following day we visited the Khedive's stables of Arabian horses. The King and Chamberlain found much delight in the superb animals. They were brought out one by one for their inspection, and the master of the stables declared that few persons more quickly detected the fine points in the animals. when the Khedive heard of this, he offered one of them to the King, who would have, if we had consented, taken him with us to America and Hawaii.
In the evening we went to a grand ball at the palace of the Ras-el-Tin, which was bombarded and destroyed by the British during the next year. Arriving at eleven o'clock, a grand usher received us; we were led up a broad marble stairway to the first landing, where we passed through two lines of officials to a room in which two more lines of higher officials were drawn up. Passing these, we entered the grand reception-room, which was in the form of a great dome, with marvellous frescoes. Around it were divans, and strips of rich carpet ran around its sides on a wood floor polished in black. Massive chandeliers cast a brilliant but soft light through the great hall. We approached the Khedive, who shook our hands and placed us on his right. Here we could see the guests as they entered and were presented. All the world was there; but the Italians and Greeks were the most numerous; many of the Turks appeared in European dress, but retained the fez cap. The middle-aged Italian women were not handsome, and the Grecian women were homely, but all of them had graceful manners.
The belle of the ball-room was, however, a Grecian, the wife of the Greek Consul. She had a clear pink-and-white complexion, and her Parisian dress was rather picturesque from some distinctive Grecian ornaments. As no ladies of the court were present, the King, on the Khedive's invitation, selected a walking partner from the foreign women. He naturally chose the beautiful Greek, but their promenade was a silent march, as they found no language which they could use in common, and the few pantomimic expressions which they exchanged were quite spiritless.
It was a Mussulman fete-day. From the high balcony of the palace there was an excellent view of the harbour illuminated by the light of the Egyptian warships and the rapid bursting of rockets. The British Consul pointed out to me an old coal-receiving hulk lying in the shadows across the bay. It was, he said, the frigate "Resolution," in which Captain Cook sailed when he discovered the Sandwich Islands. This was another curious incident which connected our little kingdom with places we visited. From her deck, as she lay in Kealakakua Bay ("the pathway of the gods"), the great Captain had landed, and his head had been fatally punched with the spear of the King's predecessor. Here she now lay, rusty, dismantled, and dirty, with the Sphinx winking its sympathetic eye toward her. Yet she was among "the first that ever burst into that silent sea" of the Pacific. I called the King's attention to it, and with the beautiful Greek he came to the balcony and looked at this old fighting-ship in a marine almshouse.
One's fancy could picture a pretty scene. The King stood on soil more famous in history than any he had yet visited. He could "toss a biscuit," no doubt, to the spot where Alexander the Great stood while he watched the flight of ducks which alighted here and fixed the seat of the city of Alexandria; over yonder Julius Cesar received Cleopatra rolled up in a mattress; he stood within a few steps of where Pompey's head was brought to him on a platter. Here Mark Antony, governing one third of the world, "reeled through the streets at noon," drunk with his love of the enchanting Queen, and then fell on his own sword because he was conquered; near by was the mausoleum where the "matchless dark beauty" barred out Octavius Cæsar, the ruler of another third of the world, and in her robes and beneath her crown untied the knot of her life "with the teeth of an asp." And looking down-over this place of grand tragedies stood a Polynesian king with a beautiful Greek on his arm, perhaps a lineal descendant of Helen of Troy, while over across the bay lay the hulk of the old ship which once bore the discoverer of his kingdom. I noticed at the time these curious coincidences for the use of our poet laureate, but they gave the King no inspiration. I tried to impress on him the romantic character of the events which happened here. But he replied with simplicity and most directly: "Those Romans you are talking about only made asses of themselves for a woman." I replied most respectfully that making asses of themselves by sovereigns were the prominent facts of history as it was written, and if the Recording Angel graciously permitted him to inspect the records when he got into the next world, this opinion would be confirmed. He believed that I had cast a slur upon the brotherhood of monarchs, and resented it by saying that Ministers of monarchs were often asses too. This proposition I candidly assented to, but it only proved, I urged, how poorly the world had been governed, and how prudent and wise it would be to suck some wisdom out of the events which had taken place on the spot upon which we stood. The Khedive joined us. We pointed out the old "Resolution" and repeated to him her story. Cook's voyages and discoveries he had not heard of. The tragedy of his violent death led him to ask whether the British ever punished his slayers. The King said: "Let us drink a toast to the old ship." The wine was brought, and on the grand balcony, with the harbour lighted with rockets and lanterns, the King raised his glass and said, "Here's to the 'Resolution.'"
At one o'clock in the morning we left this palace of the Ras-el-Tin, and as the steamer left early in the morning for Italy the King bade the Khedive good-bye. Both walked slowly together through the splendid halls, between rows of bowing courtiers and attendants, to the Viceroy's carriage, and there they parted.
We returned to our palace, the Mahmondieh, with the troop of horse galloping with us. We lay down on the divans for seve
ral hours, and at five o'clock in the morning were served with coffee, for the hour of leaving the city was seven o'clock. We left our palace with the usual ceremony; many of the shutters of the great silent house near by moved slightly, for the harem was still curious to see the King. At the early hour of six we found the officers of the marine service waiting for us. Our constant companions, Sami-Pasha, Abbati-Bey, and General Stone, were with us. We stepped into a large barge in which sat twenty-four oarsmen in red shirts and fez caps. Over the stern was a silk canopy with gold tassels. The cushions were of blue velvet embroidered in gold. Rich Turkish rugs covered the floor. The stroke of the twenty-four oars was slow and stately; it expressed a royal dignity. Perhaps the ancestors of the oarsmen had in these very waters pulled the oar when the Egyptian Queen sat under a like canopy, and her barge, "like a burnished throne, burned on the water."
CHAPTER XXI
Comments of Egyptian Press — The King's Masonic Rank — Voyage to Naples — A Comet — Catalonia — Volcanoes of Hawaii and Sicily — Divine Stoppage of Lava — Flows — An Italian Adventurer in Honolulu — He Reappears at Naples and Abducts the King — Pursuit and Recapture of His Majesty — Visit to the King and Queen of Italy — The Adventurer Dismissed — Italian Poems of Adulation to Strangers — Ex—Khedive Ismail Calls — Troubles with Hotel — Keepers Begin — News of Attack on President Garfield.
THE captain of the Italian steamer received his royal guest at the gangway. Sami-Pasha and Abbati-Bey bade us good-bye, and the forts and an Egyptian frigate fired royal salutes. The old "Resolution," lying on the other side of the harbour, stared at us out of her "dead-eyes" and seemed to mutter: "Just a hundred years ago, less two years, I discovered your kingdom, my royal friend, and here I am, a naval coal-scuttle."
The French and English papers of Egypt highly commended the King's appearance and behaviour; one of the French papers placed him above some of the European monarchs in intelligence and education; others said, he was "a man of noble presence, with a benevolent expression" and "with distinguished manners."
The Masonic Fraternity of Alexandria paid the King great attention, because he held high rank in that body. It was said that he delivered an address before them and surprised them with his knowledge of the history of their Order.
The voyage toward Naples was over a glassy sea. Late one day the island of Sicily loomed up on our left, but as the night came on a comet appeared in the cloudless sky; at first a large star with a dim white trail which became denser as the darkness deepened until it had the shape of a half-closed fan. It pointed toward the earth, with its tail flung back to the zenith. Under it, in the clear sky, the outlines of JEtna were faintly drawn. We anchored in the port of Catalonia, and in the early morning visited the vaults of the old Aragonese kings, the chapel and tomb of St. Agatha, the Roman baths, and the monastery of the Benedictines. The lava-flows of Ætna were quite similar in form to those of the Hawaiian group. We were told a legend of an eruption which had its counterpart in our own kingdom. It was said by the believers of the Roman Church that when the molten lava of JEtna reached the monastery, the monks, in a suppliant procession, holding before them the veil of St. Agatha, offered up prayers, and the flow was stayed within fifteen feet of the building. While we were on this tour a stream of lava over half a mile in width from the vast Hawaiian volcano, Mauna Loa, reached the outskirts of a settlement about thirty miles from its outbreak. Christian prayers besought the Almighty to arrest it, but they did not avail. Thereupon an old native Princess of the royal line, with some superstitious natives, placed themselves in front of the molten mass and made the ancient orthodox offering of a white pig to the goddess of the volcano. The flow stopped,—conclusive evidence to the superstitious natives of the power of their own gods, and the contempt of the goddess Pele for the prayers of the white people. It was a simple reasoning from an apparent cause to an apparent effect.
In the upward slope of the land, the belts of verdure at different altitudes, the cones on its flanks, and the cloud-capped summit, the contour of JEtna resembled that of the vast extinct volcano of Hale-a-ka-la ("house of the sun") upon the island of Maui, one of the Hawaiian group. But the Hawaiian crater, with a depth of two thousand feet and a diameter of nine miles, surpassed JEtna, and, indeed, every other volcano of the earth, in grandeur.
Before we reached Naples the Chamberlain and I anticipated some annoyance when we should land. A few months before we left our kingdom, an Italian adventurer, one Signor Moreno, quietly arrived in Honolulu by a tramp steamer from Hongkong, and had, without the knowledge of the King's advisers, placed before him a brilliant and fascinating scheme for the "development" of his country and the exaltation of the throne. It involved the securing of a large loan of money from the Chinese and an overwhelming Chinese immigration, the building of railways and steamships, and, above all, the suppression of the missionary and foreign influence in the government. The King disliked the conservative ways of the whites, and any scheme that supplied him with large sums of money would relieve him from dependence on them. Signor Moreno's scheme, therefore, captivated him; his Polynesian mind did not see that it was utterly visionary and impracticable, and, if executed, would be disastrous to him. He suddenly dismissed his reputable Ministers, and selected a new Cabinet, with the adventurer as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The white population, having the wealth and intelligence of the kingdom, rose up, and with the aid of the foreign diplomats, who discredited Moreno, peremptorily demanded of the King his dismissal. The King unwillingly consented, and formed a new Cabinet, of which I became a member. The adventurer was driven out of the kingdom, but he retained the King's confidence. He took with him to Italy, at the King's request, three native youths, to be educated in the military and naval schools of that country; these, when educated, were to be placed in charge of the King's forces, to aid him in suppressing his white subjects if they were troublesome. We learned in Alexandria from the valet that letters had been received by the King from Signor Moreno, stating that he would meet him in Naples, and he had arranged for his presentation to the King of Italy. The King, though on the most cordial terms with his suite, knew that they would oppose any intercourse with the Italian, and he therefore resorted to some "diplomacy" without their knowledge. Mo-reno had also foolishly advised the King to secure from the European sovereigns a guarantee of the perpetual independence of his kingdom; it would prevent any encroachments by the United States on his sovereignty. While the King had, through pressure, discarded the clever adventurer, who was without standing in any community, he still had faith in his wild schemes and had determined to renew his acquaintance with him. Even if there should be no practical results from their intercourse, it would show his white subjects that he was personally quite independent and that he resented their interference.
Humberto, King of Italy (1881).
As we anchored at Naples, the Italian admiral, the general commanding the forces, and the mayor of the city, with many officials, led by Moreno, appeared on board. Instead of seeking a presentation to the King through his Chamberlain, the adventurer, after he had been cordially received by the King, assumed charge of him, and presented to him the distinguished visitors, who understood, we afterward learned, that the King still retained the Italian in his service as a private adviser and a guardian of the Hawaiian youth. The King did not wish openly to discredit his ex-Minister, while the suite, unfortunately, were unable to speak the Italian language. Signor Moreno privately presented the Italian officials, and the Mayor of Naples cordially welcomed the King to Italy. The suite stood at a short distance, contriving means to grapple with the nerve and audacity of the adventurer, who impudently smiled upon them, for he was now the master of ceremonies and acted as interpreter.
A written address was now read to the King by some friend of the ex-Minister; it pronounced the King to be a wise and far-seeing monarch and thanked him for having appointed a noble-minded Italian to the office of Cabinet Minister, and it expressed the profound re
gret of the Italian nation that wicked men had forced him to remove such an able counsellor.
The King was bewildered, and allowed himself to be taken on shore by the adventurer to the Hotel des Etrangers, leaving his suite alone on the deck of the steamer, kingless and dumfounded. The King believed, when he left, that they were in a boat closely following him.
Margherita, Queen of Italy (1881).
There was something rather comical in the departure of the suite from the steamer, in a boat, alone, without knowing the Italian language, without acquaintance, and in pursuit of an abducted monarch. We suspected, however, that the King had been taken to the Hôtel des Étrangers, and drove there. We found him with his ex-Minister in his private parlour, and at once asked the King whether he desired our presence. He asked us to remain in the room, and as we did so the adventurer soon left. We told the King that if we should send to his kingdom the story of the events of the preceding hour his throne would be in immediate danger. He replied that he did not realise the compromising situation in which he was placed. He then left to us the disposition of the affair, and we excluded Signor Moreno from the King's apartments unless we were present at all interviews. He claimed that he needed funds for the education of the Hawaiian boys; this we provided for by putting them in charge of the King's Consul-General at Hamburg.
The King and Queen of Italy were temporarily in the city, and the King sent an aide requesting his Hawaiian Majesty to call informally at the palace the next day. We called at two o'clock. There was a parade of troops and the music of bugles. We entered a reception-room from the windows of which was a view of the great bay, and of Vesuvius with a spiral smoke curling up from its summit.
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