Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming

“ We trust that a better fate is reserved for these great waters than attended the works of the proud Pharaohs; and that the blessing of heaven may rest upon Egypt's new river—a blessing which not priests and people alone, but also the crowned heads of many nations, both Christian and Mahommedan, united so solemnly to implore, when, ere the great canal was opened for traffic, each nation present did in its own tongue and after its own manner most earnestly commend this (one of the mightiest works ever wrought by human hands) to the special care of the Almighty Ruler of the Floods. ”

“ With the poor, this veil is invariably of a deep blue, dyed with indigo; but richer folk wear black silk, and their attendants white linen, and when the wind blows back this covering it reveals indoor raiment of vivid colours, beautifully embroidered.
To an unaccustomed eye, a ramble through the city offers a constant succession of pictures, and we peered and peeped down curious courts and alleys, noting where here and there a quaintly carved stone, the broken shaft of a column, or richly wrought old capital, built roughly into the wall, told of the ruins of the grand old city ”

“ Every blue-robed woman whom you meet probably carries on her head a great flat basket of fruits and vegetables, her little marketing for the day; or else on her shoulder sits a quaint eastern baby, and a group of bigger children clustered round her—little creatures whose large, calm eyes would be so beautiful were it not for flies and filth; but, alas! as some one suggested, "What is beauty without soap?" (and, indeed, soap seems a thing unknown in Egypt, or at least wonderfully precious, judging from the prices charged for washing!) ”

“ One strong back-hander, dealt without the slightest apparent effort, and he is submerged. In a moment he rises to the surface, and is restored to dry land by amused spectators; when he stands quivering with impotent rage, his splendid Eastern eyes flashing fire, and with hands and arms gesticulating, and action all over, he pours forth a stream of imprecations on the laughing young Englishmen, whose boat meanwhile has pushed off, and placed them beyond reach of his wrath and his knife. ”

“ The similarity was so extraordinary, that we went close up to them to make sure that it was really not some curious procession of poultry; when we perceived that it was a funeral, the uncoffined corpse, wrapped in white linen, and laid on a bier, being carried head foremost, and preceded by a long string of men with dishevelled beards, who were chanting a solemn dirge. ”

“ Their bodies, being shovelled in with the sand and mud, helped to raise the canal banks, making them at the same time into a horrible, ghastly cemetery. But the fifty miles of canal were completed in one year (some accounts say in six weeks!) ; and human life in Egypt is of small importance when balanced against a great man's will.
From first to last these Egyptian canals have weighed heavily on the labourers; for what with artificial lakes and rivers, means of locomotion or of irrigation, each successive generation seems to have devised for itself some new experiment in waterworks. ”

“ The ravages of ophthalmia tell cruelly on the beauty of the Egyptian women. Too often the dark blue veil, which just reveals one dreamy brown eye, conceals a hideous chasm in the place where its fellow should be. ”

“ But the chief charm of these bazaars lies in the throng of human beings of all sorts and kinds; the almost bewildering medley of voices talking "every man his own tongue wherein he was born"; the perpetual motion, the intensity of colours, the vivid sunlight, the cool, deep shadows. ”

“ The confusion on landing is amazing, the noisy crowd consisting of representatives of every nation—black, white, brown, yellow—shouting and quarrelling, all contending for us and our luggage. At last we are safely deposited in an African hotel, and gain our first experience of cold, barn-like rooms—for so they seem to the outward-bound. ”

“ For just as in London you expect to find bankers in Lombard Street, silkweavers in Spitalfields, coachbuilders in Long Acre, watchmakers in Clerkenwell, and so forth, so in the East each trade has its own bazaar—the silkweavers, the coppersmiths, the saddlers, letter-writers, the dealers in Moorish, Turkish, Persian, or Algerian stuffs, each cluster together in their own quarter. ”

“ We were in the Hôtel d'Europe, which has the advantage of capital balconies overlooking the Grand Square, and the tank where all manner of picturesque life congregates: groups of stately Bedouins, who rest here awhile, while their camels stand swaying from side to side, impatient to return to the desert; half-naked Arabs and hard-working Fellahs, with their brown felt caps ”

“ You can tell by a glance at a man's hat to which set he belongs, for young England's first investment on landing is a puggaree, white or with coloured stripe, which he wears round his hat during the voyage, after which it is never seen again, being a plaything which is quickly replaced by the genuine article, a thick, white linen helmet for the military, or a huge hat of white pith for other mortals: a sort of great mushroom to which the human body acts as a stalk. ”

“ The bones of bygone generations of old Egyptians are not the only relics with which this present age has dealt ruthlessly. A gentleman told me that a few years ago he had ridden about seven miles into the plain to the east of Alexandria, a spot rarely visited, where to his amazement he found ruins of buildings, pillars, and sepulchres carved in the rock, which he could only compare to those of Arabia Petrea. ”

“ Even the coachmen from the principal hotels are more than likely to waste your afternoon in driving you about over sands and ruins and execrable masses of disintegrated rock, mis-called roads; and after all may be compelled to acknowledge that they do not know where to go next. ”

“ Then, the amount of ophthalmia is something frightful. It is due chiefly to the intense dryness of the atmosphere and the subtle, impalpable dust which for ever floats in the air above the crowded city. Exceeding dirt also does its part; while the swarms of flies which cluster on the sores, and there revel undisturbed, are a sight to fill you with disgust. ”

“ Wondertul as were the means employed in overcoming the tremendous difficulties which at every turn of this vast work uplifted their hydra heads, nothing was more astonishing to the people of Egypt than the fact, that so far from having been as a new grindstone for the faces of the poor, it supplied toiling myriads with regular work at fair wages; a boon in itself inestimable, and one which shows M. de Lesseps' canal in very glowing colours, as compared with those of his predecessors. ”

“ Vast multitudes of those poor hard-worked and much-oppressed Fellahs, about whom we have lately heard so much, were gathered together—250,000 men, women, and children, half naked, were forced to work in the burning sun, under command of brutal task-masters, who, as in the days of Pharaoh, did not hesitate freely to use their scourge of cords, to encourage the weary. ”

“ At the funeral of a rich man from sixty to a hundred of these hired mourners are present, wailing and beating their breasts. In cases of real grief it is customary for women of whatever rank to sit unveiled in the dust. ”

“ Through the purply haze, that lends a dreamy beauty of its own to the dull, barren coast, we discern those ever-turning sails, mingling with a forest of masts, telling how the ships of many lands are once more crowding the Alexandrian harbour. ”

“ One fair British damsel, after gazing for some time in open-mouthed admiration at a group of magnificent Moors, confided to me that in her wildest moments she had never dreamt of such eyes, but that now she could sympathise with Desdemona!
All day long, if you choose, you can sit and watch this ever-varying kaleidoscope, with every shade and variety of eastern and western life—white men in dark clothes, dark men in bright clothes; Jews (of whom multitudes have found their way back to the old house of bondage) , Turks, Greeks, infidels, and heretics ”

“ Then a gruesome thought chased away these hallowed memories as we recollected the horrible trade which modern Egyptians have here carried on with their ancestral dust.
You may remember how disgusted we all were when, among the vast supplies of bones brought to certain mills from Russian slaughter-houses, it was reported that human bones collected from Crimean battle-fields were freely mixed with those of cattle, and were all ground up together to enrich British soil. ”

“ When the Christians gained the ascendency in the city, the Emperors for many years spared this and other rich temples of their heathen subjects, but at length there came a bishop of Alexandria, so avaricious that he determined to appropriate all this treasnre. So he laid siege to the building and pillaged the temple, storing the gold and precious stones in the cellars of his palace, till he could therewith decorate some costly church with offerings that had cost him nothing, save his good name. ”

“ Even where actual blindness does not exist, the powers of vision are singularly defective, and when it became necessary for the railway, in selecting its servants, to test their sight, it was found that a very small minority of the candidates could distinguish a red signal from a green one at a distance of a hundred yards. ”

“ It is said that in the time of Mahomet Ali many children were artificially made blind of one eye to exempt them from the conscription; indeed, grown-up men voluntarily blinded themselves to avoid the hated service, forgetting that the wilful destruction of one eye might always involve the loss of both. ”

“ It is curious to stand beside the dealer in firearms and watch the simple process of manufacture. The workman, sitting on his counter, holds a long wire between his toes, and, slowly winding it round the tin barrel, produces a lethal weapon which would astonish Purdie or Lancaster. It is a fowling-piece which a British sportsman would regard with awe if required to fire it ”

“ The next great work of the sort was that vast artificial lake constructed in the reign of Mœceris, for purposes of irrigation—a lake 300 feet in depth, and measuring 450 miles in circumference—which, being fed by the mother Nile through countless artificial channels, became a huge store-house, wherein were treasured the waters of the annual overflow. These, being imprisoned by mighty locks and floodgates, were therein retained till the earth had drunk up the last drop of the Nile's great gift. ”

“ So it seems that raised books for the blind are no modern invention, any more than boxes of alphabets, inasmuch as we find one of these saintly fathers counselling a young matron on the education of her family, and recommending that they should in early years be accustomed to play with such boxes of letters carved in wood or ivory. ”

“ Of course they carry infection to the next eye on which they settle, and so the loathsome disease spreads, and that with such frightful rapidity that sometimes the whole eye is reduced to a mere opaque pulp within twenty-four hours, even when the sufferer is otherwise in perfect health. The consequent amount of blindness is startling; and I believe the computation is that one man in six has lost the sight of either one or both eyes. ”

“ About a hundred years later, however—that is to say, about two centuries before Christ—the high priest at Jerusalem excited the wrath of Ptolemy Philopater (who had offered large sacrifices and given valuable gifts to the Temple) by refusing to let him enter the Holy of Holies, whereupon the vengeful king returned to Alexandria, determined to destroy all the Jews in the city. He caused multitudes of them to assemble in the arena, where they were delivered up to wild beasts. The legend goes on to tell that the discriminating lions refused to touch the Jews, but made large havoc of the Greeks. ”

“ These almost without exception were blind of one or both eyes, a fact for which we could only account by imagining they might be the Muezzins hired as mourners; blind men being always preferred to fill that sacred office, inasmuch as their morning and evening ascents of the minarets to call the faithful to worship would give too good occasion for prying into their neighbours' domestic life in the courtyard or on the fiat roof.
The women are also hired to howl and make lamentation, and throw dust on their heads. ”

“ Sometimes a small herd of buffaloes are slain, and before they are half skinned the mob generally contrive to rush in and tear or cut off lumps of flesh, every man for himself hacking the carcase to pieces ”

“ As you journey towards Memphis you might very recently have chanced to meet long strings of camels, heavily laden with human bone dust from the tombs. Here too, from these old Alexandrian catacombs to the merchant vessels in the harbour, barges laden with brown dust ply to and fro; their cargo is carried on board in baskets, and thrown into the hold, and the vessels deliver their choice goods in British ports at 6l. ”