In Pastures New
"Those are anchorites," replied Mr. Peasley, without the slightest hesitation.
As a rule he gets one syllable right, which is pretty good for him. At present he is much interested in the huge dams of masonry and iron gates that have been thrown across the Nile at Assiut and Assouan. Over here they are called "barrages." Mr. Peasley insists upon calling them "garages." We tried to explain to him that a garage was a place where automobiles were cared for, but he said that automobile and "dam" belonged in the same category and often meant practically the same thing, so he continues to speak of the "garage."
By the way, when a pious Englishman over here, say a bishop on a vacation, wishes to relieve his feelings without the actual use of profanity he exclaims "Assouan!" If he falls off his donkey, "Assouan!" If his tea is served to him at less than 212 degrees Fahrenheit, "Assouan!"
"Assouan" means the superlative of all dams, the biggest dam in the world. It takes the place of a whole row of these: – — . Mr. Peasley uses the word, when he can think of it. If his memory fails him, he falls back on the American equivalent.
Inasmuch as I reside in Indiana, where it is a social offence to crave a cigarette, a misdemeanor to keep one in the house, and a high crime to smoke one, Cairo during the first day gave me many a shock. Cairo is unquestionably the cigarette headquarters of the universe. If the modern Egyptians followed the ancient method of loading the tomb with supplies for the lately departed they would put in each sarcophagus about ten thousand cigarettes and a few gallons of Turkish coffee. The food wouldn't matter.
In Cairo, men, women, and children smoke. Only the camels and donkeys abstain.
Cigarettes are sold nearly everywhere – not only by tobacconists, but also by milliners, undertakers, real estate agents, etc. Those who do not sell them give them away. A cigarette across the counter is the usual preliminary to driving a bargain.
It surprised us to learn that although the Egyptians have been addicted to this enfeebling vice ever since they first had a chance to cultivate it, they have managed to survive and flourish as a distinct breed of humanity for some seven thousand years, as nearly as I can figure it off hand. By eliminating the cigarette from Indiana the Hoosiers should beat this record. No doubt they will retain their primitive vigour for a longer period, say nine thousand years. If so, the anti-cigarette law will be vindicated.
We certainly had a feeling of guilty pleasure when we sat in front of Shepheard's Hotel and smoked the wicked little things, and knew that the policeman standing a few feet away did not dare to raise his hand against us.
A very clever young American owns a shop near the hotel. He is a student of Egyptology and a dealer in genuine antiquities, including mummies. While I was nosing through his collection of scarabs, idols, coins, and other time-worn trinkets, he suggested that I purchase a mummy.
"Can I get one?" I asked, in surprise.
"I can get you a gross, if you want them," he replied.
"What would a man do with a gross of mummies?"
"You can give them away. They are very ornamental. Formerly my only customers were colleges and museums. Now I am selling to people who put them in private residences. Nothing sets off an Oriental apartment to better effect, or gives it more colour and atmosphere, as you might say, than a decorated mummy case."
I told him I would not object to the "colour," but would draw the line at "atmosphere." He assured me that after a few thousand years the mortuary remains become as dry as a London newspaper and as odourless as a Congressional investigation.
I followed him into a large back room and saw two beautifully preserved specimens in their rigid overcoats being packed away for shipment to America, while others leaned against the wall in careless attitudes.
What a grisly reflection! Here was a local potentate, let us say Ipekak II. of Hewgag – ruler of a province, boss of his party, proud owner of broad fields and grazing herds. When he died, 1400 B.C., and was escorted to his rock tomb by all the local secret societies, the military company, and a band of music, his friends lowered his embalmed remains into a deep pit and then put in a rock filling and cut hieroglyphics all over the place, telling of his wealth and social importance, and begging all future generations to regard the premises as sacred.
Some two thousand years later along comes a vandal in a cheap store suit and a cork helmet, engages Ipekak's own descendants to pry open the tomb and heave out the rock at fifteen cents per day, hauls the mummy into the daylight, and ships it by luggage van to Cairo, where it is sold to a St. Paul man for $125!
Until I talked to the dealer I had no idea that mummies were so plentiful. In some parts of Egypt people go out and dig them up just as they would dig potatoes. The prices vary greatly, somewhat depending upon the state of preservation of the party of the first part and the character of the decorations on the case, but more particularly on account of the title or historical importance of the once lamented. For instance, a Rameses or Ptolemy cannot be touched for less than $1000. A prince, a trust magnate, or a military commander brings $150; the Governor of a city or the president of a theological seminary anywhere from $60 to $75. Within the last three years perfect specimens of humourist have been offered for as low as $18, and the dealer showed me one for $7.50 – probably a tourist.
At Naples, proceeding eastward, one enters the land of Talk. The French are conversational and animated, but Southern Italy begins to show the real Oriental luxuriance of gab. A Neapolitan trying to sell three cents' worth of fish will make more noise than a whole Wanamaker establishment. The most commonplace and everyday form of dialogue calls for flashing eyes, swaying body, and frantic gesticulations.
In front of a café in Naples Mr. Peasley became deeply interested in a conversation between two well-dressed men at a table near ours. At first we thought they were going to "clinch" and fight it out, but then we saw that there was no real anger exhibited, but that apparently one was describing to the other some very thrilling experience. He waved his arms, struck at imaginary objects, made pinwheel movements with his fingers, and carried on generally in a most hysterical manner. Mr. Peasley, all worked up, beckoned the head waiter, who had been talking to us in English.
"Look here," he said confidentially, "I want you to listen and tell me what those fellows are talking about. I can't catch a word they say, but as near as I can make out from the way they act that fellow with the goatee is describing some new kind of torpedo boat. It goes through the water at about thirty miles an hour, having three or four screw propellers. When it comes within striking distance of the enemy – bang! they cut her loose and the projectile goes whizzing to the mark, and when it meets with any resistance there is a big explosion and everything within a quarter of a mile is blown to flindereens. Now, that's the plot, as near as I can follow it from watchin' that short guy make motions. You listen to them and tell me if I am right."
The head waiter listened and then translated to us as follows: – "He is saying to his friend that he slept very well last evening and got up feeling good, but was somewhat annoyed at breakfast time because the egg was not cooked to suit him."
"How about all these gymnastics?" asked the surprised Mr. Peasley. "Why does he hop up and down, side step and feint and wiggle his fingers and all that monkey business?"
"Quite so," replied the head waiter. "He is describing the egg."
What a people – to take five cents worth of cheap information and garland it with twenty dollars' worth of Delsarte and rhetoric!
Talk is one of the few things of which there is a superabundance in the Levant. In nearly all particulars the Arab is economical and abstemious. He eats sparingly and cheaply, wears just enough clothing to keep from violating the municipal ordinances, smokes conservatively, so as to get the full value of his tobacco, and lives in a house which is furnished with three or four primitive utensils. But when it comes to language, he is the most reckless spendthrift in the world. He uses up large bales of conversation.
Suppose that three porters at a railway station are to take a trunk from a car and put it on a truck and wheel it out to a cab. The talk made necessary by this simple operation would fill several pages in the Congressional Record. All three talk incessantly, each telling the others what to do and finding fault because they don't do it his way. One seems to be superintendent, the second is foreman, and the third is boss.
Endless disputes of a most vivid character rage among the donkey boys and peddlers who assemble near the hotels and lie in wait for victims. "What do they find to talk about?" is the question that comes to one every time he hears the babel of excited voices. And while we are smiling at their childish tantrums they are splitting their sides over new stories relating to that strange being from the antipodes, the barbarian with the mushroom helmet who exudes money at every pore, who keeps himself bundled in unnecessary clothes and rides out to the desert every day to stand in the baking sun and solemnly contemplate a broken column and a heap of rubbish. Truly it all depends on the point of view.
We held back the Pyramids and the Sphinx so as to make our visit to them the cap sheaf of the stay in Cairo. As for sightseeing, most of the time we just rambled up one street and down another, looking in shop windows, watching the workmen kill time with their prehistoric implements, smelling the bazaars, dodging dog carts, donkeys and camels, and having a fine time generally.
Aimless excursions are the best, after all. It is more fun to drift around a new town and rub up against the people than to deliver yourself, body and soul, over to a guide. In Egypt the guide is called a dragoman. He puts on airs and has an inside pocket bulging with testimonials from people who were so glad to get out of his clutches that they willingly perjured themselves by giving him half-hearted certificates of good character. While you are in the hands of the dragoman you feel like a dumb, driven cow. You follow the fluttering nightshirt and the tall red fez of this arch villain for hours at a time, not knowing where you are going, or why. He takes absolute charge of you, either by making specious representations or boldly assuming authority, and when you start out to visit the famous mosque of old Midullah Oblongahta or some other defunct celebrity you finish up in a junk shop for the sale of antiques, all of which are personally guaranteed by the dragoman, because he is a silent partner in the business.
In many countries, especially at times when the traveller must condense his itinerary, the guide is a necessary evil, and in Egypt he is supposed to be a sort of ornamental body guard. We found that we could wander about without being haltered and led, so we spent pleasant hours in the Mouski, which is the native shopping street, and also we went to the race meeting and saw native horses and ponies, carrying 140 to 160 pounds each, saunter around a half-mile track while a large number of English in Mardi Gras costumes drank gallons of tea and simulated a polite interest.
One afternoon we wandered into a market and a man tried to sell me a camel. Wherever we go, if a man has something he doesn't want, he tries to sell it to me, and sometimes he does it. But I refused to take the camel. I did not see how I could fold it up and secrete it so as to get it through the custom house.
Camels in the Cairo market are now steady, not literally speaking, but as regards their value. A good terra cotta camel, 55 to 60 hands high and broken to single-foot, will fetch as high as $150. The older ones – spavined, hairless, or pigeontoed – can be bought for as low as $50 each. The common or garden camel, trained to collapse like a pocket camera and carry from three to eight tons of cargo, can usually be bought at from $100 to $125.
Cairo, as a whole, was a big surprise to us. We knew that it was going to be cosmopolitan, but we were not prepared to find it so metropolitan. We had pictured it as one or two semi-European streets hedged in by a vast area of native quarter. But, unless you seek out the old parts of the town or the bazaars, each showing a distinct type of the Oriental shark, Cairo is outwardly quite modern, very attractive, and decidedly gay – that is, not real wicked gayety of the Parisian brand, but modified, winter-resort gayety, the kind that is induced by the presence of money-spending tourists. There is no hurrah night life, and gambling, which flourished here for many seasons under the skilful direction of our countryman, Mr. Pat Sheedy, has yielded to British reformatory influence.
The modern streets in Cairo, with their attractive hotels, residences, and shops, suggest a blending of Paris and the Riviera – consistent architecture, trees, palms, gardens. The streets are of boulevard width, and the houses of cheerful colouring, many of them bearing coloured frescoes in delicate shades. We who live in a country of rainfall and smoke and changing temperatures are impelled to stop and gaze in wonder at a mansion of snowy white with a pattern of pale blossoms drooping down the front of it. That style of decoration would last about twenty minutes in Chicago.
CHAPTER XIII
ALL ABOUT OUR VISIT TO THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS
During the first three days in Cairo a brilliant and original plan of action had been outlining itself in my mind. At last I could not keep it to myself any longer, so I told Mr. Peasley.
"Do you know what I am going to do?" I asked.
Mr. Peasley did not.
"I am going to write up the Pyramids. I am going to tell who built them and how long it took and how many blocks of stone they contain. I shall have myself photographed sitting on a camel and holding an American flag. Also, I shall describe in detail the emotions that surge within me as I stand in the shadow of the Sphinx and gaze up at that vast and imperturbable expanse of face."
"It's a great scheme," said Mr. Peasley, "but you've been scooped. They've been written up already."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir; the whole outfit of Pyramids has been described in a special article by a man named Herodotus."
"How long since?"
"About 470 B.C."
He produced a guide book and proved that he was right. All the things that I had been getting ready to say about the Pyramids had been said by Herodotus. He had got there ahead of me – just 2376 years ahead of me. In daily newspaper competition, when some man gets his news twenty-four hours ahead of another one he is proud of his "beat" and is the hero of the office for fifteen or twenty minutes. But think of trailing along twenty-four centuries behind a Greek space writer! It took all the starch out of me.
Mr. Peasley suggested that inasmuch as considerable time had elapsed since the appearance of the first write-up, possibly the average reader would have only a dim recollection of it and accept my account as brand new stuff. But I knew better. I knew that some old subscriber, with a complete file put away in the bureau, would rise up and draw the deadly parallel on me. All I can safely do in regard to the Pyramids is touch up a few points overlooked by my predecessor.
Herodotus, by the way, had quite a time in Egypt. At that time Shepheard's Hotel was not in operation, although it must have been under way, and no round trip tickets were being issued by Cook, so Herodotus had to do his own booking and put up at a boarding house. In Memphis, which is now a fragmentary suburb of Cairo, Herodotus engaged a guide. He does not tell us what he paid, but he does give us a line on the character of the dragoman, who was full of superfluous and undesirable information, but who fell down when asked to divulge facts of real importance. This proves that the breed has not changed since 500 B.C.
The guide took Herodotus out to the Pyramids and filled him up. It is now believed that most of what Herodotus sent back was merely hearsay, but it made good reading. The Pyramids had been standing some two thousand years, and any information in regard to their origin could hardly come under the head of personal recollections. Whatever Herodotus had to say about the Pyramids is now accepted as gospel, in spite of the fact that he never saw them until twenty centuries after the last block of stone had been put in place and Cheops had taken possession of the tomb chambers. Rather late for a grand opening.
When he arrived at the Great Pyramid he stepped it off and put down the dimensions, and then he remarked to some of the natives standing around that it must have been quite a job to build a tomb of that size. They said yes; it had been a big contract, and as the work had been completed only two thousand years they were enabled to go into details. They gave Herodotus a fine lay-out of round figures. They said that one hundred thousand men had worked on the job and that the time required was thirty years – ten years to build the road and the huge incline for bringing the blocks of stone into place, and then twenty years to quarry the stone and transport it across the Nile and the valley. The stone cutters worked all the year, and during the three months' inundation, when farming was at a standstill, the entire rural population turned out, just as they would at a husking bee or a barn raising, and helped Cheops with his tomb. They did this year after year for thirty years, until they had piled up 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each containing forty cubic feet.
Herodotus discovered some large hieroglyphics on the face of the Pyramid and asked the guide for a translation. It is now supposed that the guide could not read. Anyone with education or social standing wouldn't have been a guide, even in that remote period. But this guide wanted to appear to be earning his salary and be justified in demanding a tip, so he said that the inscription told how much garlic and onions the labourers had consumed while at work on the job, and just how much these had cost. Herodotus put it all down in his notebook without batting an eye.
"How much did they spend for onions and garlic?" he asked, poising his pencil.
The guide waited for a moment, so that his imagination could get a running start, and then he replied, "They cost 1600 talents of silver."
Now, that sum in talents is equivalent, under modern computation, to 350,000 English pounds, or $1,750,000. Think of a million dollars' worth of garlic! Try to imagine the bouquet that permeated the desert when one hundred thousand men who had been eating garlic began to call for more bricks and mortar!
Herodotus told his story and got away with it. By the time the next letter-writing traveller came along, a good many centuries later, the outer casing of the Pyramid had been stripped off and the inscription had disappeared. His story has stood because he was here ahead of the rest of us and saw the marks with his own eyes and had them translated by a ten-cent guide. But can you believe that a great monarch would devote thirty years and sacrifice thousands of lives and work the whole male population of his kingdom to skin and bones putting up a colossal sepulchre and then set aside the most valuable space on this glorious monument for telling how much onions and garlic had been fed to the help?
Marco Polo, Mark Twain, and all the other great travellers of history love to tell tall ones once in a while, but the garlic story by Herodotus will doubtless be regarded as a record performance for a long time to come.
Cheops was possibly the most successful contractor in history. It is estimated that he really did work one hundred thousand men in the building of the great Pyramid, as related by Herodotus, and that he must have devoted at least thirty years to the big undertaking. During all that time he never had a strike or even a clash with the walking delegate. The eight hour day was unknown, and no one dreamed of such a thing as an arbitration committee. All he had to do was to give orders and the entire population obeyed him. Everybody worked but Cheops. He didn't even pay salaries. It is true that in a spirit of generosity he set out a free lunch for the labourers – about $2,000,000 worth of garlic and onions. If he had tried to feed them on quail probably he would have gone broke.
Nowadays visitors go out to the Pyramids by tramcar. For some reason we had the notion, doubtless shared by many who have not been there, that to get to the Pyramids one simply rides through Cairo and out onto the flat desert. As a matter of fact, the Great Pyramid at Ghizeh, its two smaller companions and the Sphinx are on a rocky plateau five miles to the west of the city. There is a bee-line road across the lowlands. It is a wide and graded thoroughfare, set with acacia trees, and as you ride out by trolley or carriage you look up at the Pyramids, and when you are still three miles away they seem to be at least a half-mile distant. At the end of the avenue and at the foot of the hill there is a hotel, and from this point one may climb or else charter a dumb animal.
Not knowing the ropes, we engaged a carriage at 100 piastres to take us from the city out to the plateau. This is not as much as it sounds, but it is about twice the usual rate. After we struck the long road leading across the valley and saw the trolley cars gliding by and leaving us far behind, we decided to send the carriage back to the city and take to the trolley, where we would feel at home. The driver informed us that he could not return to the city, as the big bridge had been opened to permit the passing of boats, and that it would be three hours before he could drive back to town. It seems that he was right. The big bridge swings open but once a day, and then it stays open for a few hours, and the man who finds himself "bridged" must either swim or engage a boat.
It is a five minutes' climb from the end of the drive up to the rocky plateau on which the pyramids are perched, and the ordinary tourist goes afoot. But we were pining for Oriental extravagance and new sensations, so we engaged camels. The camel allotted to me was destitute of hair, and when first discovered was in a comatose condition. His or her name was Zenobia, and the brunette in charge said that its age was either six or sixty. It sounded more like "six," but the general appearance of the animal seemed to back up the "sixty" theory. As we approached, Zenobia opened one eye and took a hard look at the party, and then made a low wailing sound which doubtless meant "More trouble for me." The venerable animal creaked at every joint as it slowly rose into the air on the instalment plan, a foot or two at a time.
We had come thousands of miles to see the Pyramids, and for the next ten minutes we were so busy hanging on to those undulating ships of the desert that we overlooked even the big Pyramid, which was spread out before us 750 feet wide and 450 feet high. Riding a camel is like sitting on a high trestle that is giving way at the joints and is about to collapse. The distance to the ground is probably ten feet, but you seem to be fifty feet in the air. As soon as we could escape from the camels we walked around and gazed in solemn silence at the Sphinx and the three Pyramids and doubtless thought all of the things that were appropriate to the time and place.
The great Pyramid of Cheops has been advertised so extensively that doubtless many people will be surprised to learn that there is a whole flock of Pyramids on this plateau along the edge of the Libyan desert. There are Pyramids to the north and Pyramids to the south, five groups in all, sixty of them, and they vary in size from a stingy little mound looking like an extinct lime kiln up to the behemoth specimen which is photographed by every Cook tourist.
Why do these Pyramids vary so greatly in size? Each was built by some royal personage as an enduring monument to his administration and the last resting place of his remains. The most eminent students of Egyptology now agree that the size of each of these Pyramids is a fair measure of the length of each king's reign. The reason that Cheops has the biggest Pyramid is that he held office longer than the others. When a king mounted the throne, if he was feeling rugged and was what an insurance company would call a "preferred risk" he would block out the foundation of a Pyramid tomb that would require, say, ten years for the building. If, at the end of ten years, he was still feeling in good physical condition and confident of lasting a while longer he would widen the foundations and put on additional layers up to the summit. Labor was free and materials were cheap, and he kept everybody working on his tomb as long as he lived. Finally, when the court physicians began to warn him that his time was limited, he would begin putting on the outer coating of dressed stone and arrange for the inscriptions. The ruler who lasted only three or four years was buried in a squatty little Pyramid, which soon became hidden under the drifting sands of the desert. Cheops kept piling up the huge blocks for thirty years, and that is why his Pyramid holds the record. If Methusaleh had been a Pyramid builder he would have been compelled to put up a tomb probably a mile and a half high and about eleven miles around the base. In a revolutionary South American republic the ruler would probably get no further than laying the corner stone.
