Sketches and Travels in London

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Then we went to see the famous obelisk presented by Mehemet Ali to

  the British Government, who have not shown a particular alacrity to

  accept this ponderous present. The huge shaft lies on the ground,

  prostrate, and desecrated by all sorts of abominations. Children

  were sprawling about, attracted by the dirt there. Arabs, negroes,

  and donkey-boys were passing, quite indifferent, by the fallen

  monster of a stone--as indifferent as the British Government, who

  don't care for recording the glorious termination of their Egyptian

  campaign of 1801. If our country takes the compliment so coolly,

  surely it would be disloyal upon our parts to be more enthusiastic.

  I wish they would offer the Trafalgar Square Pillar to the

  Egyptians; and that both of the huge ugly monsters were lying in

  the dirt there side by side.

  Pompey's Pillar is by no means so big as the Charing Cross trophy.

  This venerable column has not escaped ill-treatment either.

  Numberless ships' companies, travelling cockneys, &c., have affixed

  their rude marks upon it. Some daring ruffian even painted the

  name of "Warren's blacking" upon it, effacing other inscriptions,--

  one, Wilkinson says, of "the second Psammetichus." I regret

  deeply, my dear friend, that I cannot give you this document

  respecting a lamented monarch, in whose history I know you take

  such an interest.

  The best sight I saw in Alexandria was a negro holiday; which was

  celebrated outside of the town by a sort of negro village of huts,

  swarming with old, lean, fat, ugly, infantine, happy faces, that

  nature had smeared with a preparation even more black and durable

  than that with which Psammetichus's base has been polished. Every

  one of these jolly faces was on the broad grin, from the dusky

  mother to the india-rubber child sprawling upon her back, and the

  venerable jetty senior whose wool was as white as that of a sheep

  in Florian's pastorals.

  To these dancers a couple of fellows were playing on a drum and a

  little banjo. They were singing a chorus, which was not only

  singular, and perfectly marked in the rhythm, but exceeding sweet

  in the tune. They danced in a circle; and performers came trooping

  from all quarters, who fell into the round, and began waggling

  their heads, and waving their left hands, and tossing up and down

  the little thin rods which they each carried, and all singing to

  the very best of their power.

  I saw the chief eunuch of the Grand Turk at Constantinople pass by-

  -(here is an accurate likeness of his beautiful features {2})--but

  with what a different expression! Though he is one of the greatest

  of the great in the Turkish Empire (ranking with a Cabinet Minister

  or Lord Chamberlain here), his fine countenance was clouded with

  care, and savage with ennui.

  Here his black brethren were ragged, starving, and happy; and I

  need not tell such a fine moralist as you are, how it is the case,

  in the white as well as the black world, that happiness (republican

  leveller, who does not care a fig for the fashion) often disdains

  the turrets of kings, to pay a visit to the "tabernas pauperum."

  We went the round of the coffee-houses in the evening, both the

  polite European places of resort, where you get ices and the French

  papers, and those in the town, where Greeks, Turks, and general

  company resort, to sit upon uncomfortable chairs, and drink

  wretched muddy coffee, and to listen to two or three miserable

  musicians, who keep up a variation of howling for hours together.

  But the pretty song of the niggers had spoiled me for that

  abominable music.

  CHAPTER XV: TO CAIRO

  We had no need of hiring the country boats which ply on the

  Mahmoodieh Canal to Atfeh, where it joins the Nile, but were

  accommodated in one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's fly-

  boats; pretty similar to those narrow Irish canal boats in which

  the enterprising traveller has been carried from Dublin to

  Ballinasloe. The present boat was, to be sure, tugged by a little

  steamer, so that the Egyptian canal is ahead of the Irish in so

  far: in natural scenery, the one prospect is fully equal to the

  other; it must be confessed that there is nothing to see. In

  truth, there was nothing but this: you saw a muddy bank on each

  side of you, and a blue sky overhead. A few round mud-huts and

  palm-trees were planted along the line here and there. Sometimes

  we would see, on the water-side, a woman in a blue robe, with her

  son by her, in that tight brown costume with which Nature had

  supplied him. Now, it was a hat dropped by one of the party into

  the water; a brown Arab plunged and disappeared incontinently after

  the hat, re-issued from the muddy water, prize in hand, and ran

  naked after the little steamer (which was by this time far ahead of

  him), his brawny limbs shining in the sun: then we had half-cold

  fowls and bitter ale: then we had dinner--bitter ale and cold

  fowls; with which incidents the day on the canal passed away, as

  harmlessly as if we had been in a Dutch trackschuyt.

  Towards evening we arrived at the town of Atfeh--half land, half

  houses, half palm-trees, with swarms of half-naked people crowding

  the rustic shady bazaars, and bartering their produce of fruit or

  many-coloured grain. Here the canal came to a check, ending

  abruptly with a large lock. A little fleet of masts and country

  ships were beyond the lock, and it led into THE NILE.

  After all, it is something to have seen these red waters. It is

  only low green banks, mud-huts, and palm-clumps, with the sun

  setting red behind them, and the great, dull, sinuous river

  flashing here and there in the light. But it is the Nile, the old

  Saturn of a stream--a divinity yet, though younger river-gods have

  deposed him. Hail! O venerable father of crocodiles! We were all

  lost in sentiments of the profoundest awe and respect; which we

  proved by tumbling down into the cabin of the Nile steamer that was

  waiting to receive us, and fighting and cheating for sleeping-

  berths.

  At dawn in the morning we were on deck; the character had not

  altered of the scenery about the river. Vast flat stretches of

  land were on either side, recovering from the subsiding

  inundations: near the mud villages, a country ship or two was

  roosting under the date-trees; the landscape everywhere stretching

  away level and lonely. In the sky in the east was a long streak of

  greenish light, which widened and rose until it grew to be of an

  opal colour, then orange; then, behold, the round red disc of the

  sun rose flaming up above the horizon. All the water blushed as he

  got up; the deck was all red; the steersman gave his helm to

  another, and prostrated himself on the deck, and bowed his head

  eastward, and praised the Maker of the sun: it shone on his white

  turban as he was kneeling, and gilt up his bronzed face, and sent

  his blue shadow over the glowing deck. The distances, which had

  been grey, were now clothed i
n purple; and the broad stream was

  illuminated. As the sun rose higher, the morning blush faded away;

  the sky was cloudless and pale, and the river and the surrounding

  landscape were dazzlingly clear.

  Looking ahead in an hour or two, we saw the Pyramids. Fancy my

  sensations, dear M -: two big ones and a little one -

  ! ! !

  There they lay, rosy and solemn in the distance--those old,

  majestical, mystical, familiar edifices. Several of us tried to be

  impressed; but breakfast supervening, a rush was made at the coffee

  and cold pies, and the sentiment of awe was lost in the scramble

  for victuals.

  Are we so blases of the world that the greatest marvels in it do

  not succeed in moving us? Have society, Pall Mall clubs, and a

  habit of sneering, so withered up our organs of veneration that we

  can admire no more? My sensation with regard to the Pyramids was,

  that I had seen them before: then came a feeling of shame that the

  view of them should awaken no respect. Then I wanted (naturally)

  to see whether my neighbours were any more enthusiastic than

  myself--Trinity College, Oxford, was busy with the cold ham:

  Downing Street was particularly attentive to a bunch of grapes:

  Figtree Court behaved with decent propriety; he is in good

  practice, and of a Conservative turn of mind, which leads him to

  respect from principle les faits accomplis: perhaps he remembered

  that one of them was as big as Lincoln's Inn Fields. But, the

  truth is, nobody was seriously moved . . . And why should they,

  because of an exaggeration of bricks ever so enormous? I confess,

  for my part, that the Pyramids are very big.

  After a voyage of about thirty hours, the steamer brought up at the

  quay of Boulak, amidst a small fleet of dirty comfortless cangias,

  in which cottons and merchandise were loading and unloading, and a

  huge noise and bustle on the shore. Numerous villas, parks, and

  country-houses had begun to decorate the Cairo bank of the stream

  ere this: residences of the Pasha's nobles, who have had orders to

  take their pleasure here and beautify the precincts of the capital;

  tall factory chimneys also rise here; there are foundries and

  steam-engine manufactories. These, and the pleasure-houses, stand

  as trim as soldiers on parade; contrasting with the swarming,

  slovenly, close, tumble-down, Eastern old town, that forms the

  outport of Cairo, and was built before the importation of European

  taste and discipline.

  Here we alighted upon donkeys, to the full as brisk as those of

  Alexandria, invaluable to timid riders, and equal to any weight.

  We had a Jerusalem pony race into Cairo; my animal beating all the

  rest by many lengths. The entrance to the capital, from Boulak, is

  very pleasant and picturesque--over a fair road, and the wide-

  planted plain of the Ezbekieh; where are gardens, canals, fields,

  and avenues of trees, and where the great ones of the town come and

  take their pleasure. We saw many barouches driving about with fat

  Pashas lolling on the cushions; stately-looking colonels and

  doctors taking their ride, followed by their orderlies or footmen;

  lines of people taking pipes and sherbet in the coffee-houses; and

  one of the pleasantest sights of all,--a fine new white building

  with HOTEL D'ORIENT written up in huge French characters, and

  which, indeed, is an establishment as large and comfortable as most

  of the best inns of the South of France. As a hundred Christian

  people, or more, come from England and from India every fortnight,

  this inn has been built to accommodate a large proportion of them;

  and twice a month, at least, its sixty rooms are full.

  The gardens from the windows give a very pleasant and animated

  view: the hotel-gate is besieged by crews of donkey-drivers; the

  noble stately Arab women, with tawny skins (of which a simple robe

  of floating blue cotton enables you liberally to see the colour)

  and large black eyes, come to the well hard by for water: camels

  are perpetually arriving and setting down their loads: the court

  is full of bustling dragomans, ayahs, and children from India; and

  poor old venerable he-nurses, with grey beards and crimson turbans,

  tending little white-faced babies that have seen the light at

  Dumdum or Futtyghur: a copper-coloured barber, seated on his hams,

  is shaving a camel-driver at the great inn-gate. The bells are

  ringing prodigiously; and Lieutenant Waghorn is bouncing in and out

  of the courtyard full of business. He only left Bombay yesterday

  morning, was seen in the Red Sea on Tuesday, is engaged to dinner

  this afternoon in the Regent's Park, and (as it is about two

  minutes since I saw him in the courtyard) I make no doubt he is by

  this time at Alexandria, or at Malta, say, perhaps, at both. Il en

  est capable. If any man can be at two places at once (which I

  don't believe or deny) Waghorn is he.

  Six o'clock bell rings. Sixty people sit down to a quasi-French

  banquet: thirty Indian officers in moustaches and jackets; ten

  civilians in ditto and spectacles; ten pale-faced ladies with

  ringlets, to whom all pay prodigious attention. All the pale

  ladies drink pale ale, which, perhaps, accounts for it; in fact the

  Bombay and Suez passengers have just arrived, and hence this

  crowding and bustling, and display of military jackets and

  moustaches, and ringlets and beauty. The windows are open, and a

  rush of mosquitoes from the Ezbekieh waters, attracted by the wax

  candles, adds greatly to the excitement of the scene. There was a

  little tough old Major, who persisted in flinging open the windows,

  to admit these volatile creatures, with a noble disregard to their

  sting--and the pale ringlets did not seem to heed them either,

  though the delicate shoulders of some of them were bare.

  All the meat, ragouts, fricandeaux, and roasts, which are served

  round at dinner, seem to me to be of the same meat: a black

  uncertain sort of viand do these "fleshpots of Egypt" contain. But

  what the meat is no one knew: is it the donkey? The animal is

  more plentiful than any other in Cairo.

  After dinner, the ladies retiring, some of us take a mixture of hot

  water, sugar, and pale French brandy, which is said to be

  deleterious, but is by no means unpalatable. One of the Indians

  offers a bundle of Bengal cheroots; and we make acquaintance with

  those honest bearded white-jacketed Majors and military Commanders,

  finding England here in a French hotel kept by an Italian, at the

  city of Grand Cairo, in Africa.

  On retiring to bed you take a towel with you into the sacred

  interior, behind the mosquito curtains. Then your duty is, having

  tucked the curtains closely around, to flap and bang violently with

  this towel, right and left, and backwards and forwards, until every

  mosquito should have been massacred that may have taken refuge

  within your muslin canopy.

  Do what you will, however, one of them always escapes the murder;

  and as soon as the candle is out the
miscreant begins his infernal

  droning and trumpeting; descends playfully upon your nose and face,

  and so lightly that you don't know that he touches you. But that

  for a week afterwards you bear about marks of his ferocity, you

  might take the invisible little being to be a creature of fancy--a

  mere singing in your ears.

  This, as an account of Cairo, dear M-, you will probably be

  disposed to consider as incomplete: the fact is, I have seen

  nothing else as yet. I have peered into no harems. The magicians,

  proved to be humbugs, have been bastinadoed out of town. The

  dancing-girls, those lovely Alme, of whom I had hoped to be able to

  give a glowing and elegant, though strictly moral, description,

  have been whipped into Upper Egypt, and as you are saying in your

  mind-- Well, it ISN'T a good description of Cairo: you are

  perfectly right. It is England in Egypt. I like to see her there

  with her pluck, enterprise, manliness, bitter ale, and Harvey

  Sauce. Wherever they come they stay and prosper. From the summit

  of yonder Pyramids forty centuries may look down on them if they

  are minded; and I say, those venerable daughters of time ought to

  be better pleased by the examination, than by regarding the French

  bayonets and General Bonaparte, Member of the Institute, fifty

  years ago, running about with sabre and pigtail. Wonders he did,

  to be sure, and then ran away, leaving Kleber, to be murdered, in

  the lurch--a few hundred yards from the spot where these

  disquisitions are written. But what are his wonders compared to

  Waghorn? Nap massacred the Mamelukes at the Pyramids: Wag has

  conquered the Pyramids themselves; dragged the unwieldy structures

  a month nearer England than they were, and brought the country

  along with them. All the trophies and captives that ever were

  brought to Roman triumph were not so enormous and wonderful as

  this. All the heads that Napoleon ever caused to be struck off (as

  George Cruikshank says) would not elevate him a monument as big.

  Be ours the trophies of peace! O my country! O Waghorn! Hae tibi

  erunt artes. When I go to the Pyramids I will sacrifice in your

  name, and pour out libations of bitter ale and Harvey Sauce in your

  honour.

  One of the noblest views in the world is to be seen from the

  citadel, which we ascended to-day. You see the city stretching

  beneath it, with a thousand minarets and mosques,--the great river

  curling through the green plains, studded with innumerable

  villages. The Pyramids are beyond, brilliantly distinct; and the

  lines and fortifications of the height, and the arsenal lying

  below. Gazing down, the guide does not fail to point out the

  famous Mameluke leap, by which one of the corps escaped death, at

  the time that His Highness the Pasha arranged the general massacre

  of the body.

  The venerable Patriarch's harem is close by, where he received,

  with much distinction, some of the members of our party. We were

  allowed to pass very close to the sacred precincts, and saw a

  comfortable white European building, approached by flights of

  steps, and flanked by pretty gardens. Police and law-courts were

  here also, as I understood; but it was not the time of the Egyptian

  assizes. It would have been pleasant, otherwise, to see the Chief

  Cadi in his hall of justice; and painful, though instructive, to

  behold the immediate application of the bastinado.

  The great lion of the place is a new mosque which Mehemet Ali is

  constructing very leisurely. It is built of alabaster of a fair

  white, with a delicate blushing tinge; but the ornaments are

  European--the noble, fantastic, beautiful Oriental art is

  forgotten. The old mosques of the city, of which I entered two,

  and looked at many, are a thousand times more beautiful. Their

  variety of ornament is astonishing,--the difference in the shapes

  of the domes, the beautiful fancies and caprices in the forms of

  the minarets, which violate the rules of proportion with the most

  happy daring grace, must have struck every architect who has seen