The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

A long time ago, when a certain Pharaoh – we can only guess which Pharaoh – ruled over Egypt, it saw a young man who had been sold into bondage from Syria rise in the king's favor through certain dreams and become his chief counsellor, even "ruler over all the land of Egypt." It saw him in the height of his power and glory bring his family, who were Syrian shepherds, down from their barren hills and establish them in the favor of the Egyptian king. The Sphinx was old – a thousand years old, at least, even then – and, being wise, heard with certain curiosity their claim that they were a "chosen people," and thoughtfully watched them multiply through a few brief centuries into a band of servitors who, because of this tradition, held themselves a race apart, repeating tales of a land of promise which they would some day inherit. Then at last, during a period of visitation, the Sphinx saw them escape, taking what they could lay their hands on, straggling away, with their families and their flocks, toward the Red Sea. The Sphinx heard nothing more of that tribe for about three thousand years.

Then an amazing thing happened. Among those who came to wonder at the Sphinx's age and mystery were some who repeated tales of that runaway band – tales magnified and embroidered almost beyond recognition – and, what was more curious, accepted them – not as such tales are usually accepted, with a heavy basis of discount – but as gospel; inspired truth; the foundation of a mighty religion; the word of God.

Nor was that all. The Sphinx realized presently that not only were those old stories accepted as gospel by the descendants of the race themselves, but by a considerable number of the human race at large – accepted and debated in a most serious manner, even to the point of bloodshed.

Some details of this inspired chronology were wholly new to the Sphinx. It was interesting, for example, to hear that there had been three million of those people, and that before they started there had been a time when the Nile had been turned to blood – twice, in fact: once by the grace of God and once by magicians. The Sphinx did not remember a time when the Nile had turned to blood. In the five thousand years and more of its existence it had never heard of a magician who could produce that result. It was interesting, too, to learn that the Red Sea had opened a way for those people to cross, and that the hosts of Egypt, trying to follow them, had been swallowed up and drowned. This was wholly new. The Sphinx had been there and seen all that had happened, but she had somehow missed those things.

Not that the Sphinx was surprised at these embroideries. She had seen several mythologies created, and knew the general scale of enlargement and glorification. It was only when she saw strong, cultured, and enlightened nations still accepting the old Hebrew poem – with all its stately figures and exaggerations – as gospel; heard them actually trying to prove that a multitude as big as the census of Australia had marched out with its chattels and its flocks; heard them vow that the Red Sea had parted long enough to let this population pass through; heard them maintain that this vast assembly had found shade and refreshment on the other side by twelve wells of water and under seventy palm-trees: heard them tell how the sea behind them had suddenly rushed together and swallowed up all the Egyptian army (including the king himself, some said) – it was only when the Sphinx heard learned men argue these things as facts that a smile – scarcely perceptible, yet still a smile – began to grow behind the stone lips.

That is the smile we saw to-night – a quiet smile, a gracious smile, a compassionate smile – and as it has grown so slowly, so it will not soon depart. For by-and-by, when these ages have passed, and with them their story and their gospels – when those old chronicles of the Jews have been relegated to the realm of mythology for a thousand years – there may come another band who will establish their traditions as God's holy word, and the Sphinx – still remaining, still observing, still looking across the encompassing sands to the sunrise – will smile, and dream old dreams.

XXXVIII

WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN

I wonder why we are always taken first to the mosques, or why, when our time is pretty limited, we are taken to them at all. Mosques are well enough, but when you have seen a pretty exhaustive line of them in Turkey and Syria, Egypt cannot furnish any very startling attractions in this field. For mosques are modern (anything less than a thousand years old is modern to us now), and Egypt is not a land of modern things. Besides, here in Cairo there are such a number of fascinating out-of-the-way corners which we are dying to see – unholy side-streets, picturesquely hidden nooks, and mysterious, shut-in life; besides all the bazaars —

Never mind; the mosques did have a certain interest, especially the mosque of Al-Azhar, which is nine hundred years old and built about a great court – an old mosque when America was still undiscovered – and the mosque of Hassan, "whose prayer will nevair be accept," Abraham said (Abraham being our guide), "because when ze architec' have finish, ze Sultan Hassan have cut off hees han' so he cannot produce him again." Napoleon's first gun in Egypt hit a minaret of Hassan's mosque, it is said, and it has had bad luck generally, perhaps because of the cruel act of its royal builder. We were not even required to put on slippers to enter it, so it cannot be held in very great veneration. Then there is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, built within the last century and modern throughout, the only mosque in the world, I believe, to have electric lights!

It was Mohammed Ali who settled the Mameluke problem in the conclusive way which sultans adopt at times. The Mamelukes were the Janizaries of Egypt, though fewer in number. Still, there were enough of them to make trouble and keep matters stirred up, and Ali grew tired of them. So did the public, according to our guide:

"Ali, he say to some people, 'You like get rid of zose Mameluke?' an' all ze people say, 'Yez, of course.' So Ali he make big dinner, an' ze Mameluke come an' eat, an' have fine, big time."

It was on the 1st of March, 1811, that Ali issued his general invitation to the Mameluke leaders to attend a function at the Citadel; and, after entertaining them hospitably, invited them to march through a narrow passageway, which was suddenly closed at each end, while from above opened a musket-fire that presently concluded those Mamelukes – 470 of them – with the exception of one man, who is said to have leaped his horse through a window down a hundred feet or so, where he "Jump from hees horse and run – run fas' to Jaffa!" which was natural enough.

There was only one trouble with that story. Abraham did not explain how this particular Mameluke came to have his horse at luncheon, and why, with or without horses, a number of those other Mamelukes did not follow him. Every Mameluke of my acquaintance would have gone through that window, mounted or otherwise, and without calculating the distance to the ground. However, Abraham showed us the passage and the place of the leap, and later the graves of the 470, all of which was certainly convincing. Following the removal of the leaders, a general burial of Mamelukes took place throughout Egypt, since which time members of that organization have been extremely hard to catch. It must have been Ali's neat solution of the Mameluke problem which fifteen years later was copied in Constantinople by Mahmoud II., when he disposed of the Janizaries.

It was at the tomb of a distinguished pasha – a fine, inviting place – that we saw a small green piece of the robe of Abraham. It was incorporated in a very sacred rug, one of the twelve which Cairo, Constantinople, and Damascus contribute to Mecca each year. We asked how Abraham's robe could hold out this way, and his namesake shrugged and smiled:

"Oh, zay take little piece of ze real robe an' roll him 'roun' an' 'roun' wiz many piece of goods, an' zay become all ze robe of Abraham."

Thus does a thread leaven a whole wardrobe.

Laura and I escaped then. We did not care for any more tombs and mosques, and we did care a great deal for a street we had noticed where, squatted on the ground on both sides of it, their wares spread in the dust, were sellers of certain trinkets and jars which, though not of the past, had a fatal lure we could not all forget. Our driver was a black, scarred semi-Nubian who looked as if he had been through a fire, and had possibly five words of English. It does not matter – Menelek (so we named him) served us well, and will retain a place in my affections.

We took the back track, and presently were in the street of small sellers, driving carefully, for there was barely room to pass between their displayed goods. Here and there we stooped to inspect, and we bought a water-jar for a piastre – an Egyptian piastre, which is really money and worth exactly five cents. Beyond the jars was a woman selling glass bracelets, such as the Arab women wear. I had wanted some of those from the beginning. I picked out a gay handful, and then discovered I had only a gold twenty-franc piece to pay with. The woman had never owned twenty francs, and no seller in the neighborhood could furnish the change. So I handed it to Menelek, who grinned and disappeared while we sat there in the carriage waiting.

I suppose he had to go miles in that neighborhood for as much change as that. I know we sat there in the sun and looked at all the curious things in all the assortments about us, over and over, and discussed them and wondered if Menelek would ever return. It became necessary at last that he should do so. No vehicle could pass us in that narrow thoroughfare, and in a string behind there was collecting as motley an assortment of curiosities as ever were gathered in a menagerie. There was a curious two-wheeled cart or dray, drawn by water-buffaloes, upon which a man had his collection of wives out for an airing; there was a camel loaded with huge water-jars until they projected out over the heads of the selling people; there was a load of hay drawn by a cow; there was a donkey train that reached back to the end of the street, and what lay beyond only Allah knew.

The East is patient, but even the East has its limits. Presently we began to be interviewed by dark men – camel-drivers and the like – who had a way of flinging up their hands, while from behind came a rising tide of what I assumed to be imprecation.

We were calm – that is, we assured each other that we were calm – and we told them quite pleasantly how matters stood. The result was not encouraging. One Bedouin grabbed the bridle, and I was at the point of slaying him with my water-jar when at the same moment appeared a member of the Cairo police – one of those with a tall red fez – also Menelek, our long-lost Menelek, with the change, out of which there was baksheesh for the discontented drivers. Everything was all right then. We headed the procession. Behind us came the buffalo-cart – the wives, sandwiched fore and aft and smiling – the camel with his distended load of jars; the heaped-up little hay-wagon; the string of donkeys all in blue beads, with heaven knows what else trailing down the distance. All the curses were removed; all the drivers singing; traffic congestion in the East was over.

One of the first things we had noticed in Egypt was the curious brass spool affair which Arab women wear, suspended perpendicularly across the forehead, from the head-gear to the top of their veil. It extends from the nose upward, and has sharp, saw-like ridges on it, which look as if they would cut in. When we asked about these things, we were told that they were worn to avert the evil eye, also as a handy means by which the husband may correct any little indiscretion on the part of one of his wives. He merely has to tap that brass spool with his cane or broomstick, or whatever is handy, and it cuts in and neatly reminds the wearer that she is a woman and had better behave. Family discipline has matured in this ancient land.

I explained to Menelek now, in some fashion, that I wanted one of those brass things; whereupon we entered the narrow and thronging thoroughfare of commerce – a gay place, with all sorts of showy wares lavishly displayed – and went weaving in and out among the crowd to find it. Every other moment Menelek would shout something that sounded exactly like, "Oh, I mean it! Oh, I mean it!" which made us wonder what he meant in that emphatic way.

Then all at once he changed to, "Oh, I schmell it! Oh, I schmell it!"

"That's all right," we said; "so do we," for, though Cairo is cleaner than Constantinople, it was not over-sweet just there. But presently, when he changed again to, "Oh, I eat it! Oh, I eat it!" we drew the line. We said, "No, we do not go as far as that."

We have learned now that those calls are really "O-i-menuk, o-i-schmeluk," etc., and indicate that some one is to turn to the right or left, or simply get out of the way, as the case may be. We used them ourselves after that, which gave Menelek great joy.

XXXIX

WHERE HISTORY BEGAN

When I glanced casually over the little heap of hand-bags that would accompany our party up the Nile – we were then waiting on the terrace of Shepheard's for the carriages – I noticed that my own did not appear to be of the number. I mentioned this to the guides, to the head-porter, to the clerk, to casual Bedouins in the hotel uniform, without arousing any active interest. Finally, I went on a still hunt on my own account. I found the missing bag out in the back area-way, with a Bedouin whom I had not seen before sitting on it, smoking dreamily and murmuring a song about lotus and moonlight and the spell of his lady's charms. Growing familiar with the habits of the country, I dispossessed him with my foot and marched back through the vast corridors carrying my bag myself. Still, I am sorry now I didn't contribute the baksheesh he expected. He was probably the cousin or brother or brother-in-law of one of my room servitors. They all have a line of those relatives, and they must live, I suppose, though it is difficult to imagine why.

There was a red glow in the sky when our train slipped out of the Cairo station toward Luxor. The Nile was red, too, and against this tide of evening were those curious sail-boats of Egypt that are like great pointed-winged butterflies, and the tall palms of the farther shore. By-and-by we began to run through mud villages that rose from the river among the palms, wonderfully picturesque in the gathering dusk. This was the Egypt of the pictures, the Egypt we have always known. No need to strain one's imagination to accept this reality. You are possessed, enveloped by it, and I cannot think that I enjoyed it any the less from seeing it through the window of a comfortable diner, with the knowledge that an equally comfortable, even if tiny, state-room was reserved in the car ahead. The back of a camel or deck of a dahabiyah would be more picturesque, certainly – more poetic – but those things require time, and there are drawbacks, too. Railway travel in Egypt is both swift and satisfactory. The accommodations differ somewhat from those of America, but not unpleasantly.

We were a small party now. There were fewer than twenty of us – all English-speaking, except a young man who shared my apartment and was polite enough to pretend to understand my German.

It was a little after 5 a. m. when I heard him getting up. I inquired if there was "Etwas los?" which is the ship idiom for asking if anything had gone wrong. He said no, but that the sun would be upstanding directly, which brought me into similar action. One does not miss sunrises on the Nile, if one cares for sunrises anywhere. We hurried through our dressing and were out on the platform when the train drew up for water at Nag Hamadeh – a station like many others, surrounded by the green luxury of the Nile's fertile strip, with yellow desert and mountains pressing close on either hand. It was just before sunrise. The eastward sky was all resonant with ruddy tones – a stately overture of its coming. Uplifting palms, moveless in the morning air, broke the horizon line, while nearer lay the low village – compact and flat of roof – a vast, irregular hive built of that old material of Egypt, bricks without straw. Below it the Nile repeated the palms, the village, the swelling symphony of dawn. Only here and there was any sign of life. An Arab woman with a water-jar drowsed toward the river-bank; a camp of Bedouins with their camels and their tents were beginning to stir and kindle their morning fires. The railroad crosses the river here, and just as we were creeping out over the slow-moving flood the sun rose, and the orchestra of the sky broke into a majestic crescendo, as rare and radiant and splendid as it was when Memnon answered to its waking thrill and sang welcome to the day.

The young man and I had forgotten each other, I think, for neither of us had spoken for some moments. Then we both spoke at once – "Wunderbar!" we said, "Wunderschon!" for I have trained myself to speak German even when strongly moved. Then with one impulse we looked at our watches. It was precisely six, and we remembered that it was the 22d of March – the equinox.

We stayed out there and saw the land awake – that old land which has awakened so many times and in so much the same fashion. Outside of its cities and its temples it cannot have changed greatly since the days of Rameses. It is still just a green, fertile thread of life, watered and tilled in the manner of fifty centuries ago. They had to drag us in to breakfast at last, for we would be at Luxor before long, four hundred and fifty miles from Cairo; that is, at ancient Thebes, where – though the place has lingered for our coming a good four thousand years – "ze train he have not time to wait."

We are in Thebes now, the "city of a hundred gateways and twenty thousand chariots of war." Homer called it that, though it was falling to ruin even then. Homer was a poet, but his statistics are believed to be correct enough in this instance, for Diodorus, who saw the ruins a little before the Christian era, states that there were a hundred war stables, each capable of holding two hundred horses, "the marks and signs of which," he says, "are visible to this day." Of its glory in general he adds: "There was no city under the sun so adorned with so many and stately monuments of gold and silver and ivory, and multitudes of colossi and obelisks cut out of entire stone." Still further along Diodorus adds, "There, they say, are the wonderful sepulchres of the ancient kings, which for state and grandeur far exceed all that posterity can attain unto at this day."

Coming from a historian familiar with Athens and Rome in the height of their splendor, this statement is worth considering. We have journeyed to Thebes to see the ruin of the mighty temples which Diodorus saw, and the colossi and the obelisks, and to visit the royal tombs of which he heard – now open to the light of day.

We had glimpses of these things at the very moment of our arrival. 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. They can gallop all day in the blazing sun, and the naked rascal that races behind, waving a stick and shouting, can keep up with them hour after hour when an American would drop dead in five minutes.

They are appropriately named, those donkeys. Mine was "Whiskey Straight," and he arrived accordingly. He was a gray, wild-headed animal, made of spring steel. We headed the procession that led away for the Temple of Karnak in a riotous stampede. Laura's donkey was "Whiskey and Soda" – a slightly milder proposition, but sufficient unto the day. I have never seen our ship-dwellers so unreserved in their general behavior, so "let loose," as it were, from anything that resembled convention, as when we went cavorting through that Arab settlement of "El-Uksur," where had been ancient Thebes. Beset with a mad, enjoying fear, our ladies – some of whom were no longer young and perhaps had never ridden before – broke into frantic and screaming prophecies of destruction, struggling to check their locomotion, their feet set straight ahead, skirts, scarfs, hats, hair streaming down the wind. It was no time for scenery – Egyptian scenery; we knew nothing, could attend to nothing, till at the towering entrance of the great Temple of Karnak we came to a sudden and confused halt.

We dismounted there, shook ourselves together, and stared wonderingly up at those amazing walls whose relief carving and fresco tints the dry air of this rainless land has so miraculously preserved. And then presently we noticed that Gaddis, our guide for the Nile, had stepped quietly out before us, and with that placid smile he always wears had lifted his hand to the records of his ancestors.

I want to speak a word just here of Gaddis. He is pure Copt, and the name "Copt" is from "Gypt" – that is, "Egypt" – the Copts being the direct descendants of the race that built ancient Thebes. His color is a clear, rich brown; his profile might be a part of these wall decorations. Then there are his eyes – mere dreamy slits, behind which he dwells in an age far removed from ours, while his lips wear always that ineffable smile which belongs only to Egypt, its sculpture and its people, the smile that regards with gentle contemplation – and compassion – all trivial things. Young in years, Gaddis is as old as these monuments in reflection and mental heritage – a part with them of a vanished day. And but for his fez and little European coat, which with the sash and figured skirt complete the dress of the Egyptian guide, Gaddis might truly have been plucked from these pictured walls. I should add that he reads the hieroglyphics and has all languages on his tongue – English, French, German – the Egyptian is born with these, I think; his voice is a drowsy hum that is pure music; his temper is as sweet and changeless as his smile.

So much for Gaddis. He stood now with his lifted hand directed to the panoramic story of the past; then, in slow, measured voice:

"Zis is ze great temple of Karnak – ze work of many king. Here you will see ze King Ram-e-ses II. wiz ze crown an' symbol of Upper an' Lower Egypt, making sacrifice of fruit and fowl an' all good sings to ze gawd Amm-Ra, in ze presence of Horus, ze hawk-headed sun-gawd, an' Anubis an' Osiris, ze gawd of ze under-worlid."

Thus it was our sight-seeing in Upper Egypt began.

XL

KARNAK AND LUXOR

The temple of Karnak cannot be described. The guide-books attempt it, but the result is only a maze of figures and detail for which the mind cares little. All the Greek temples on the Acropolis combined would make but a miniature showing by the side of Karnak. Most of the Egyptian kings, beginning as far back as 3000 b. c., had a hand in its building, and for above two thousand years it was in a state of construction, restoration, or repair. The result is an amazing succession of halls and columns, monoliths, and mighty walls – many of them tumbled and tumbling now, but enough standing to show what a race once flourished here. Long ago the road over which we came from Luxor was an avenue eighty feet wide and a mile and a half long, connecting the two great temples. It was faced on each side with ram-headed sphinxes only a few feet apart. Most of them are gone now, but the few mutilated specimens left prompt one's imagination of that mighty boulevard. The Karnak of that day, with its various enclosures, is said to have covered a thousand acres. The mind does not grasp that, any more than it comprehends the ages of its construction, the history it has seen. It is like trying to grasp the distance to the stars.

No one may say who began Karnak, but the Usertsens of the earliest Theban Dynasty had a hand in its building, and after them the other dynasties down to the Ptolemaic days. Thothmes III. and his aunt, the wonderful Queen Hatasu – the ablest woman of her time – were among its builders, and these two set up obelisks, erected pylons and vast columned halls. This was about 1600 b. c., when the glory of Egypt was at flood-tide. Two centuries later the mighty Seti I., whose mummied form sleeps to-day in the Museum at Cairo, began what is known as the great Hypostile Hall, finished by his still mightier son, Rameses II., whose mummy likewise reposes in Cairo, father and son together. Rameses built other additions to Karnak, and crowded most of them with pictures and statues of himself and the sculptured glorification of his deeds. He was, in fact, not only the greatest king, but the greatest egotist the world has ever known, and in the end believed himself a god. It is said that he built more than seventy temples altogether, chiefly to hold his statues, and that he put his name on a number that had been built by his predecessors. It has been hinted that to his title of "The Great" the word "Advertiser" should have been added, and the fact that he is now on exhibition in a glass case must be a crowning gratification to him, if he knows it. It should be mentioned that Rameses II. is thought to be one of the oppressors of the Israelites, which may tend to arrange his period and personality in the Biblical mind.