Albert Bigelow Paine

“ XLII THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT
There could hardly be a daintier boat than the Memnon. It just holds our party; it is as clean and speckless as possible, and there is an open deck the full width of the tiny steamer, with pretty rugs and lazy chairs, where we may lounge and drowse and dream and look out on the gently passing panorama of the Nile.
For we have left Luxor, and are floating in this peaceful fashion down to Cairo, resting in the delight of it, after those fierce temple-hunting, tomb-visiting days. Not that we are entirely through with temples and the like. ”

“ It is good just to sit in the sun and dream; to lean over the rail and watch the little rainbow that travels with us, the white lace that the ship makes in its majestic sweep, to wander back to the stern and follow the interminable wake of the screw as it stretches back beyond the horizon line. Then there is the sunset; it was wonderful to-night. The air was perfectly clear, the sun a red disk going down cleanly cut into the sea. Laura and I saw it from amidships, looking out across the high stern of the vessel that sank now below the horizon, then lifted into the sky. ”

“ Furthermore, our rooms look across the river—the soul of Damascus—the water in which Eve first saw her sweet reflected form, if tradition holds. Its banks are bordered by a great thoroughfare now, where against a background of peach-bloom and minaret an eternal panorama flows by. Camel trains from Bagdad and the far depths of Persia; mule trains from the Holy Land; donkey trains from nowhere in particular; soldiers with bands playing weird music; groups of Arabs mounted on splendid horses—dark men with long guns, their burnouses flying in the wind. ”

“ I have never seen a place that so completely conveyed the idea of fertility as those teeming, haze-haunted plains of Sharon. Level as a floor, the soil dark, loose, and loamy; here green with young wheat, there populous with labor—men and women, boys and girls, dressed in the old, old dress, tilling the fields in the old, old manner; flocks and herds tended by such shepherds as saw the Star rise over Bethlehem; girls carrying water-jars on their heads; camel trains swinging across the horizon—a complete picture of primal husbandry, it was—a vast allegory of increase. ”

“ If anybody doubts that modern Athens is beautiful, let him go to that spot and look down through the evening light and behold a marble vision such as the world nowhere else presents. Whatever ancient Athens may have been, it would hardly surpass this in beauty, and if Pericles could stand here to-day and gaze down upon the new city which has arisen to preserve his treasures, I think he would be satisfied.
When the others had gone to visit the Hill of Mars, Laura and I wandered back to the Parthenon, followed its silent corridors, and saw it all again to our hearts' content. ”

“ From the brink of the great cliff we could look out over the whole plain of Thebes, its villages and its ruins, its green cultivation and its blazing sands. Once it was a vast city—"the city of a hundred gates and twenty thousand chariots of war." Through its centre flowed the Nile, a very fountain of life, its one outlet to the world. To the east and the west lay Nature's surest fortifications, the dead hills and the encompassing sands. It is estimated that the city of Paris could stand on this level sweep and that Thebes overspread it all. ”

“ She spends most of her time disposed in a ravishing fashion in a steamer-chair, reading a novel or letting the volume drop listlessly at her side, with one of her dainty fingers between the pages to mark the place, while her spirit lives in other worlds than ours. The Promoter says she is cold and frigidly beautiful—a winter landscape. But then the Promoter is a simple, forgiving soul. I think she is just flitter and frosting—just a Christmas-card. A ship like this is democratic—it has to be. We are all just people here. ”

“ The fact that they sleep and wake and pursue their drowsy round in places hallowed by tradition; that the house which sheltered St. Paul stands in the midst of their murmuring bazaar; that one side of this wareroom is the wall of the ancient city, the actual end of the Street called Straight; that every step they take is on historic ground, sacred to at least three religions—this to me marvellous condition is to them not strange at all.
It is not that they do not realize the existence of these things: they do—at least, most of them do—and honor and preserve their landmarks. ”

“ It was a quiet, sunlit day—just pleasantly warm—the ship steady as a rock on that luminous, level sea. No wonder the ancients did not want to leave these placid tides and venture out upon the dark tossing Atlantic which they could see foaming just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. No wonder they peopled those hungry wastes with monsters and evil spirits. Here, on this tranquil sea, there were no unfamiliar dangers. The summer shores that shut them in held all their world—a golden world of romance wherein gods mingled with the affairs of men; where fauns and hamadryads flitted through the groves ”

“ I know this, for when I stop anywhere and look over our party, here amid the turbans and fezzes and long flowing garments of the Orient, I can see for myself that it is really our party that looks queer and fantastic and out of place—not these people at all.
It is natural that one should realize this in Damascus, for Damascus is the great reality—the unchanged and changeless. Algiers was a framed picture; Constantinople was a world's Midway—a sort of masquerade, prepared for our benefit. Here it is different. No longer the country and the people constitute the show, but ourselves. ”

“ The Temple of Luxor (so called) is but a step from the hotel, and, waiting on the terrace for our donkeys, we looked across the Nile to the Colossi of Memnon, still rising from the wide plain where once a thronging city stood—still warming to the sunrise that has never failed in their thirty-five hundred years.
We were in no hurry to leave that prospect, but our donkeys were ready presently, and a gallant lot indeed. The Luxor donkeys are the best in Egypt, we are told, and we believe it. They are a mad, racing breed—fat, unwearied, and strenuous—the pick of their species. ”

“ It was sunset, and the Golden Horn was true to its name. Ships at anchor, barges drifting up and down, were aglow with the sheen of evening—the water a tawny, molten flood, the still atmosphere like an impalpable dust of gold. Caiques carrying merchants to their homes somewhere along the upper shores were burnished with the aureate hue. Domes and minarets caught and reflected the wonder of it—the Galata bridge ahead of us had become such a span as might link the shores of the River of Peace.
Once more Constantinople was a dream of Paradise—a vision of enchantment—a city of illusion. ”

“ A multitude was pouring out of the city when we reached the gates—dwellers in the lands about. We entered and turned aside into quiet streets, the twilight gathering about mysterious doorways and in dim shops and stalls, where were bowed, turbaned men who never seemed to sell anything, or to want to sell anything—who barely noticed us as we passed through the Grand Bazaar, where it was getting dark, and all the drowsy merchants of all the drowsy merchandise were like still shadows that only moved a little to let us pass. ”

“ If there is one thing in Jerusalem absolutely genuine and directly linked with its ancient glories, it is the Jews' Wailing-place.
You approach it through a narrow lane—a sickening gantlet of misery. Near the entrance wretched crones, with the distaff and spindle of the Fates, sat in the dust, spinning what might have been the thread of sorrow. Along the way the beggars; not the ordinary vociferous beggars of Constantinople, of Smyrna, of Ephesus, even of Jaffa, but beggars such as the holy city alone can duplicate. ”

“ Every little way where we slackened speed, detachments of sellers would charge from the roadside with trinkets, imitation scarabs, and images, but more notably with fragments (and these were genuine enough) of what long ago—as much as three or four thousand years, perhaps—had been human beings like ourselves. Remnants of mummies they were, quarried out of the barren hills where lie not only the kings but the millions who in the glory of Egypt lived and died in Thebes. The hills are full of them, Gaddis said, and unearthing them has become an industry. ”

“ The day was well along when we reached Cairo and, after the usual battle with the Ishmaelites, drove to Shepheard's Hotel. As there is only one Egypt, so there is only one Shepheard's Hotel. There are other hotels as large and as lavish, with as fair gardens, perhaps, but I believe there is no other hotel on the planet where you can sit on a vast balmy terrace and look down on such a panorama of the nations—American, European, Asiatic, African—such a universal congress of pleasure as each winter assembles here. ”

“ There is a continuous panorama between Alexandria and Cairo, absolutely fascinating to one who has not seen it before, and I wonder how it can ever grow old to any one. Almost immediately there was water—the Nile, or one of its canals—and stretching away, a dead level of green—lavish, luxurious, blossoming green—the delta-land of Lower Egypt, the richest garden in all the world. ”

“ What we know is that by the beginning of the Christian era Ephesus was a metropolis with a temple so amazing, a theatre so vast and a library so beautiful that we stand amid the desolation to-day, helplessly trying to reconstruct the proportions of a community which could require these things; could build them and then vanish utterly, leaving not a living trace behind.
For nobody to-day lives in Ephesus—not a soul. A wandering shepherd may build his camp-fire here, or an Arab who is tilling a bit of ground ”

“ It is a long way. You pass through streets of many kinds and by houses of many sorts, and you cross the Nile and glide down an avenue of palms where there are glimpses of water—the infinite desert stretching away into the evening. Long before we reached them we saw the outlines of the three pyramids against the sky, and then we made out the Sphinx—that old group which is perhaps the most familiar picture that children know. ”

“ Not a ray of reason can enter a mind darkened for a lifetime by ceremonials in which candles, chantings, swinging censers, and prostrations are regarded as worship. Could you produce any evidence that would appeal to the minds of those figures that march and countermarch, and carry tapers and chant among these frauds and fripperies of their faith? Hardly—they would not care for evidence. What they want is more superstition; more for themselves—more, always more, for their followers; the more superstition, the more power, the more baksheesh. They have no use for facts and testimony. ”

“ But I was speaking of architecture. Without knowing anything on the subject, I should say that the architecture of Madeira is a mixture of Spanish and Moorish, like that of Mexico. Only it is better than anything in Mexico. From the ship, the stucco, tile-roofed city is flawless; and as we steam away, and night comes down and lights break out and become a jewelled necklace along the water's edge, our one regret is that we are leaving it all behind. ”

“ The great theatre where St. Paul battled with the wild beasts stands just across the way. It seated twenty-five thousand, and its stone benches stretch upward to the sky. The steep marble flight that carries you from tier to tier is there to-day exactly as when troops of fair ladies and handsome beaux climbed up and still up to find their places from which to look down on the play or the gladiatorial combat or the massacre of the Christians in the arena below. ”

“ Certainly this is fairyland—a mirage whose fragile fabric may vanish in a breath. Oh, our time is all too short! One must have long and long to look upon the East—it has taken so long to build!
We went to Saladin's tomb, and that is authoritative, though I confess that I could not realize, as we stood in that narrow building and viewed the catafalque in the centre, that the mighty Saracen hero of romance rested there. For me, he belongs only in tales of enchantment and fierce deeds, and not in that quiet place. ”

“ If I hadn't found that pocket-book at Alexandria I should have taken my meals with the Arabs in the back basement.
The Arab, by-the-way, is the general servitor in the Egyptian hotel. You ring three times when you want him, and he is as picturesque and gentle a Bedouin as ever held up a camel train or slew a Christian to glorify his faith. He is naïve and noiseless, and whatever you ask him for he says "Yes," and if you ask him if he understands he says "Yes," and you will never know whether he does or not until you see what he brings. It does not help matters to talk loudly to the Arab. ”

“ Here were just ruins—always ruins—they could never have been anything but ruins. Perhaps our imaginations were not in good working order.
We descended again into the great theatre, for it fascinated us, nearly breaking our necks where vines and briers tangled, pausing every other minute to rest and consider and dream. Pawing over a heap of rubbish—odd bits of carving, inscriptions, and the like—the place is a treasure-trove of such things—I found a little marble torso of a female figure. ”

“ From the outside it is all fairyland and enchantment; from the inside it is all grime and wretchedness. Viewed from the entrance of the Bosporus, through the haze of morning, it is a vision. Viewed from a carriage driven through the streets it becomes a nightmare. If one only might see it as we did—at sunrise, with the minarets and domes lifting from the foliage, all aglow with the magic of morning—and then sail away from that dream spectacle, his hunger unsatisfied, he would hold at least one supreme illusion in his heart. ”

“ Dust rises in a fog and settles on the wayside vegetation. Here and there on the hillsides are villas and entertainment gardens.
A widening of the valley, an expanse of green and bloom, mingled with domes and minarets; a slowing down of speed, a shouting of porters through the sunlit dust, and behold, we have reached the heart and wonder of the East, Damascus, the imperishable—older than history, yet forever young. ”