Lord Cromer’s latest report of the state of matters in Egypt is cheering. The finances are better. The income from railways, customs, and tobacco has improved. A great boon has been conferred on the fellaheen by the experimental money advances made by Government to tide them over till their cotton-crop is ripe. Hitherto they have had to borrow from Greeks, who, however admirable in the character of liberators, are not so lovely as money-lenders. They charge from 20 to 30 per cent. for their loans, and, in addition, always take back an Egyptian pound, equal to £1 0s. 6d., for the pound sterling. This is really more than an extra 2½ per cent., for the loans are not for a whole year. There are Mohammedan lenders, too. Their religion forbidding usury, they take it out of the fellaheen in cotton. The Government in their experimental loans have charged a half per cent. per month, or 6 per cent. per annum. The experiment was successful. Of nearly £8,000 lent between February and July, all but £20 had been repaid with interest by the end of November. The benefit that an agricultural bank would be to the smaller cultivators has been in this way realized by Lord Cromer, who suggests that private bankers should take the experiment in hand.
The Government has also been checkmating the money-lenders by sending them good seed at 58 pounds Turkish an ardeb, payable in three instalments, upon finding out that the usurers were advancing inferior seed at 70 to 100 pounds Turkish, payable at cropping-time.
The land-tax is now got in with certainty, whereas formerly the Government never knew what to estimate for arrears; the post-office revenue is improving; exports and imports have gone up by about two millions; the cotton-crops are better; the sugar industry is rapidly increasing in Upper Egypt; the railway receipts are the highest on record; railway extension is going on, and plans and surveys for light railways are well advanced; agricultural roads are constructed; there are electric tramways and lighting in Cairo. The light dues will be decreased this year. The only relic of forced labour is a yearly diminishing amount for the protection of the Nile banks during the period of flood. Crime is diminishing, and sanitary reform is progressing. Education is advancing as far as possible, considering the deficiency of funds, and slavery is kept under.
As to the question when our work shall be done, and we English shall retire from Cairo, it is impossible, says Sir A. Milner, to give a definite answer. It would be difficult to over-estimate what that work owes to the sagacity, patience, and fortitude of the British Ambassador. The contrast between the Egypt of to-day and the Egypt as it was when he first took it in hand is the best testimony to his efficiency and wisdom. All writers on Egypt agree in this. ‘There is not a native,’ writes Mr. Wood, ‘that does not recognise at heart the benefits of the British occupation’ – a remark which seemed to be to a certain extent true; but not quite to the extent Mr. Wood suggests. ‘It is quite an anachronism,’ Sir A. Milner remarks, ‘to suppose that the interest of Egyptian finance centres in the debt, and that the financial authorities of the country are the mere bailiffs of the bondholders.’ As a matter of fact, now that it has been established that the resources of Egypt can bear the interest of the debt at its present rate, the last people whom an Egyptian Finance Minister need trouble himself about are the bondholders. Except when an occasion presents itself to reduce the interest by the legitimate method of conversion, the debt need no longer have a foremost place in his mind. ‘Even the Commissioners of the Caisse,’ writes Sir A. Milner, ‘who only meet to protect the creditors, and who from time to time, to justify their existence, get up a little fuss about some supposed danger to interests which in their hearts they know to be perfectly secure – even the Commissioners of the Caisse, I say, are more occupied now-a-days with employing their reserve fund in developing the wealth of the country than with needless anxieties about the coupon.’ Sir A. Milner has no doubt well weighed his words. Of all the romances of finance there are few to be compared with the borrowings of Ismail, to whom is due the honour of having originated the Egyptian National Debt.
CHAPTER XV
THE PYRAMIDS AND THE SPHINX
There are two things in Egypt which amply repay the traveller for his trouble. One is the museum at Gizeh, and the other the pyramids, especially the Great Pyramid of Cheops. I did them both in one day. It is a pleasant ride from Cairo, on a road broad, well watered, and shaded all the way by large acacia-trees. I did the museum first, though it will be a matter of regret to me that I had only an hour to visit a collection where one might usefully spend weeks, and that our guide indulged in an English almost as unintelligible to us as
‘The heathen GreekThat Helen spoke when Paris wooed.’The palace which shelters the museum is said to have been built at a cost of nearly 5,000,000 sterling. The edifice is placed in spacious grounds close to the river, just opposite the spot on the other side where Pharaoh’s daughter is said to have come to bathe when she discovered Moses. It was opened by the Khedive in 1890. The section devoted to the exhibition of papyri is remarkably interesting, but to most of us the gem of the collection is the splendid sarcophagus which contains the body of Rameses II., the persecutor of the Israelites. The features of his face are well preserved, but his head does not give you any idea of any special intellectual capacity; and the face of his father, who lies close by, is almost that of a pure negro – that is, as far as I could make it out. On one of the papyri is an inscription, of which I copy a portion, in order to give the reader an idea of the piety of the ancient Egyptians:
‘When thou makest an offering to God, offer not that which He abominateth. Dispute not concerning His mysteries. The God of the world is in the light above the heavens, and His emblems are upon earth. It is unto these that worship is paid daily. When thou hast arrived at years of maturity, and art married and hast a house, forget never the pains which thou hast cost thy mother, nor the care which she has bestowed upon thee. Never give her cause to complain of thee, lest she lift up her hand to God in heaven to complain of thee, and He listen to her complaint.’
It seems to me that we have a good deal to learn of the ancient Egyptians yet.
To the Pyramids it is a drive of about five miles. When we reached them it was too hot for most of us to attempt climbing; yet several of our party did so, and came back delighted with the view they had thus gained over all the country round. I need not describe the appearance of the Great Pyramid, standing as it does on the edge of the Libyan desert – an enormous pile of stones, up which it would be impossible to climb were it not for the help of the guides, who are remarkably skilful in aiding the traveller in the perilous ascent and the far more perilous descent, and at the same time remarkably pressing for backsheesh. There is no evidence to show that the Pyramids were built for astronomical purposes, and the theory that the Great Pyramid was built as a standard of measurement is equally worthless. Outwardly, they seem nothing but a pile of big stones, broad at the base, tapering at the top. A French savant has asserted that the stones of the three Pyramids would make a wall round the frontier of France. The Pyramid of Cheops was built b. c. 3733. Its four sides measure in length about 755 feet at the base; its height is now 451 feet, but it is said to have been originally about 481 feet.
Of late, as I have shown, the trip to the Pyramids cannot well be easier or more agreeable. In 1868 Sir Stafford Northcote thus describes his experiences: ‘We observed nothing particular till we reached the Nile, when the scene of crossing in the ferry-boats afforded us unmixed satisfaction. The usual amount of noise in the streets at Cairo was as silence to the noise at the waterside. Hosts of donkeys were being pushed, pulled, beaten, or shouted at, and eventually lifted into the boats, and then shoved off with loads that looked very unmanageable. We had a boat to ourselves, and our donkeys took their places in it like old stagers. We had a pretty strong breeze in our favour, and sailed across easily enough, wondering how we were to get back again. Soon after crossing, we came into the fine new road which the Viceroy has made to the Pyramids, and which is perfectly luxurious. It is as wide as the Edgware Road, but not so hard, and must be charming for a horse’s foot. Avenues of acacias are planted all along it, and when these have grown to the size of those which line the earlier part of the road, the approach will be in delicious shade all the way. Avenues of trees are inferior in dignity to avenues of sphinxes, but make pleasanter travelling. We were seized on in the usual way and dragged up the Great Pyramid by the Arabs. I could have got up a great deal better by myself, but it would have been contrary to all precedent, and might have led to an émeute. It took me twenty minutes to go up, including a good stoppage for breath and another for a wrangle between two Arabs. The view from the top was good, but one could not enjoy it much in the presence of such a crowd. The first thing my Bedouin did was to go down on his knees and offer to cut my name, which I indignantly forbade. He then proceeded to tender some coins (genuine antique, of course) at a suspiciously low price, and finally he urged me to come down quickly, in the hopes, no doubt, of getting hold of another victim.’
Sir Stafford adds that he admired the Sphinx, which is, in some respects, more interesting than the Pyramids themselves. Now there is to be a tramway to the Pyramids. But I fear the nuisance of the Arab guides shouting and pushing will remain a nuisance still.
As I sit under what little shade I can find on the burning sand, I am badgered to death by the dealers in imitation antiques and the donkey boys. The white donkeys of Egypt are beautiful animals, and sometimes fetch a hundred pounds. I have seen a gentleman whose donkey cost him that sum. The value of the common donkey to be met with in the streets of Cairo is about seven pounds. The finest donkeys in the world come from Cyprus. The next best are those to be had at Syene, in Egypt. I could tell much of the artfulness of the donkey-boys. One of my companions was very stout, and did not think it right to gallop, on account of his weight. ‘Me too fat,’ said he to the donkey-boy. ‘No,’ replied the latter – ‘not too fat; you fine man.’ Again, one of the ladies of our party was enjoying a ride, when the boy plaintively remarked: ‘Fine lady – fine donkey – poor donkey-boy!’ And the boy secured a little extra backsheesh. I could fill a chapter with the smart sayings of the donkey-boys. So far as I can make out, there is no need for the donkey-boy to travel to Ireland to kiss the Blarney-Stone. Alas for him, I was deaf to all his flattery, and plunged on in the burning sand till I stood in the presence of the world-renowned Sphinx.
At first I was disappointed in the Sphinx, but, like Niagara, the more you look, the more you admire. Poets and literary men have told us how it stands in the desert, and has stood for centuries, overlooking the eternal sands as nations and dynasties come and go. In reality its position is by no means elevated, and you don’t see it till you are actually before it. And yet one can in time realize something of that fine passage in ‘Eothen,’ written half a century ago, which tells how this unworldly Sphinx has looked down on ancient kings of Ethiopian and Egyptian origin, upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors, upon Napoleon, dreaming of an Eastern empire, upon battle and pestilence, and how it will remain watching when Islam will wither away, and the Englishman will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile. Originally it was crowned with a helmet; the stone cap was only discovered as lately as 1896. Mr. John Cook runs a four-horse coach to the Pyramids and back during the season, and thus, at the foot of the Sphinx, the present and the past meet and mingle. The age of the Sphinx is unknown. All that is certain is that it was the work of one of the kings of the ancient empire. A stele discovered of the time of Thothmes, b. c. 1533, records that one day, during an after-dinner sleep, Hermachis appeared to Thothmes IV., and promised to bestow upon him the crown of Egypt if he would dig his image the Sphinx out of the sand. Another inscription recently discovered shows that the Sphinx existed in the time of Cheops. The Sphinx is here hewn out of the solid rock, but pieces of stone have been added when necessary. The body is about 150 feet long, the paws are 50 feet long, the head is 30 feet long, the face is 14 feet wide, and from the top of the head to the base of the monument the distance is about 70 feet. Originally there were probably ornaments on the head, the whole of which was covered with a limestone covering, and the face was coloured red. Of these decorations scarcely any traces now remain, though they were visible towards the end of the last century. The condition in which the monument now appears is due to the savage destruction of its features by the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt, some of whom caused it to be used for a target. Around this imposing relic of antiquity a number of legends and superstitions have clustered in all ages. A little to the south-east of the Sphinx stands the large granite and limestone temple excavated by M. Marriette in 1853.
And now I have done with the East, and my face is turned towards Marseilles. I am once more on board the Midnight Sun, the quiet and repose of which are infinitely refreshing after the tumult and bustle of Egypt. Long, long will I remember the gorgeous East – its heat, its confusion, its noise, its undying charm. To enjoy Cairo, you must go and stop there a winter. My fellow-passengers seem to have been lavish in their expenditure. One gentleman alone of our party expended as much as £60 in the purchase of carpets and gold-embroidered cloths, and for the ladies the bazaars seem to have had peculiar charms. I am sure Dr. Lunn deserves the hearty thanks of all our party for organizing what has proved to be such a gratifying time. His brother and his secretary, Mr. Wight, have done all in their power to make us comfortable. There was no hitch in any of the arrangements. Carriages and hotels were all of the very best, and the cost of the whole trip was really remarkably small. The ordinary traveller, making the trip on his own account, must have had to pay a great deal more, and experienced an amount of trouble and fatigue, and consequent loss of temper, of which we passengers by the Midnight Sun have had no conception.
The Doctor calls his tours educational ones, and provides us with lectures. I did not much profit by the lectures, my hearing being, alas! rather defective; yet we all of us got a good deal of education during the course of our visit – the education which comes to all of us from the use of our eyes and ears, and the gift, or, rather, exercise, of common-sense.
I ought to mention that there is a very good hotel on your right just as you get to the Pyramids; many gentlemen I met were staying there, and spoke well of it. Some years since a gentleman suffering from consumption built a house, and went to live there in the hope that the pure air of the desert would restore him to health. It did not. As is the case with so many consumptive people, the remedy was deferred too long. Many are those who have gone to the desert to recover, but fade away and die, to the sorrow of those who loved them, simply because they have deferred the remedy too long. On the decease of the builder of the house, it was greatly enlarged, and is now known as the Mena House Hotel. Mena is the name of one of the most ancient Egyptian kings. All round it stretches the desert right away to the great Sahara, and there Byron might have realized his dream – which, happily, he never realized, nor ever, perhaps, wished to – of the desert being his dwelling-place, with some fair spirit for his minister,
‘Where he might soon forget the human race,And, hating no one, love but only her.’It was well for the noble poet, whose fame will grow when that of our Poet Laureate and his brother rhymesters will have collapsed, that the elements did not hear his prayer and accord him his heart’s desire. But a fellow might do worse than put up at the Mena Hotel, of which I, alas! only saw the outside. One ought to stop some time at the Pyramids. Mr. Pollard, who devotes considerable space to them – the last authority on the subject – says the rocks upon which they are built, ‘and the stones with which they are constructed, abound with small fossil shells, which, from their resemblance to money or coins, have caused this limestone to be called nummulite. Other round, small shells, closely resembling lentils, are also found; the Arabs say that they were the food of the masons turned into stone. The flora is interesting, though limited: an anthromis bearing its strong characteristic scent, but without petals; a very pretty small plant of the herbage family; and an umbelliferous plant smelling strongly of aniseed, were all much appreciated by the camels and snails.’
While I was there I saw no flowers, nor heard of any. They had all withered under the scorching sun.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RIVER NILE
At length I gaze on the Nile – that marvellous river, the sources of which, though many have tried to find them, have only been discovered in our day. The history of Egypt is the oldest known to us. A large portion of its history can be constructed from the native records of the Egyptians, and those records are all to be found on the banks of the Nile. Four thousand four hundred years before Christ, Mena, the first King of Egypt of whom we have a record, founded Memphis, having turned aside the course of the Nile and established a temple service there. In the reign of Ammenehat, 2,300 years before Christ, special attention was paid to the rise of the Nile, and canals were made and sluices dug for irrigating the country; the rise of the Nile was marked on wells at Semnah, about thirty-five miles above the second cataract, and the inscriptions are visible to this day. A thousand years later Seti I. is said to have built a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. Under the Roman Emperor Trajan the Nile and Red Sea Canal was reopened. Egypt proper terminates at Syene: the territory south of that town and each side of the new Nile is called Nubia. All Egypt depends upon the Nile; where the Nile does not flow all is barrenness – nothing but sand and rock.
The area of the land in Egypt available for cultivation is about 11,500 square miles; the Delta contains about 6,500 square miles, and the Nile Valley about 5,000. The country seems to have been taken possession of by a people from the East about 5,000 years before Christ. They found there an aboriginal people, with a dark skin and complexion. The Egyptians generally called their land black (Kanit), and the term is appropriate, if we consider the dark rich colour of the cultivated land. In the Bible Egypt is known as Ham. All nations have held the land, and have sent their people thither. But it is a curious fact that the physical type of the Egyptian fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties.
The river Nile is one of the largest rivers in the world. It is formed by the junction of two great arms, the Blue Nile and the White; one rises in Abyssinia, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet above the level of the sea; the other, the true Nile, has its fountain-head in the Victoria Nyanza, a huge basin far below the level of the country. The course of the Nile has been explored about 3,500 miles. From Khartoum to Cairo the Nile falls about 400 yards; its width in its widest part is about 1,100 yards. After entering Egypt, the Nile flows in a steady stream always to the north, and deposits the mud which is the life of Egypt. The breadth of the Nile Valley varies from four to ten miles in Nubia, and from fifteen to thirty in Egypt. The width of the area of cultivated land on each bank of the river in Egypt is never more than eight or nine miles. The inundation caused by the descent of rain on the Abyssinian mountains commences at the cataracts in June, and in July makes a great show. The rise of the Nile continues till the end of September when it remains stationary about three weeks. In October it rises again, and attains its highest level. When I saw it in November the waters had subsided, and the peasants were hard at work, making the best of their opportunity.
The ground was still too wet for ploughing, but gangs were turning up the soil with hoes, and sowing the seed. It seemed to be simple work, under the blue sky and the bright sun. There was no need for high farming; Nature did everything, and the toil of the labourer was richly rewarded. It made me think of what Douglas Jerrold said of Australia – that it was a country so fertile that ‘if you but tickle her with a hoe she laughs with a harvest.’ And the harvest is wonderful. Commercially, the Nile is a fortune to Cairo. It is estimated that if all the land watered by the Nile were thoroughly cultivated, Egypt, for its size, would be one of the richest countries in the world. Till the Cairo Waterworks were established, the people of Cairo depended solely on the water of the Nile; and in Cairo, as in Jerusalem, the water-carrier is still to be seen, bearing on his back a large black goatskin filled with water from the river. At the Cairo railway-station he is always in evidence watering the platform and keeping down the dust. The short legs of the goat cut off at the knee stick out in a most grotesque manner when the skin is full and round. The neck forms the spout, and is held firmly in the left hand, to enable the carrier to sprinkle the contents where desired. The weight of some of these large skins must be very considerable. The skins used for wine are identical in form with these.
In ancient times there were near Cairo no less than seven branches of the Nile; only two now remain. Very busy are the people who have to do with the Nile in the vicinity of Cairo. A large open space at the end of one of the bridges is selected for the collection of the octroi duties levied upon all food and produce entering the city. Here the fellaheen assemble daily, with their camels and asses laden with produce, or with droves of buffaloes and oxen, and flocks of sheep and goats. The scene there is almost picturesque and animated. Another bridge carried over a wide canal, which forms an important backwater to the hill, connects the western shore. From this point roads radiate north, west, and south, each shaded by avenues of the acacia, so common in Egypt. The Ghizeh road is the southern one, following the course of the river, always alive with boats with large triangular sails, always redolent of busy life.
Egypt without the Nile would be a desert. ‘Anyone,’ says old Herodotus, the father of history, the truth of whose narrative every day becomes more apparent to everyone who sees Egypt, without having heard a word about it before, ‘must perceive, if he has only common powers of observation, that the Egypt to which the Greeks go in their ships is an acquired country, the gift of the Nile.’
The prosperity of the country depends upon its inundation: if it should prove excessive, and becomes what is termed a high Nile, towns and villages are sometimes swept away; if it should not rise above a certain height, it is called a low Nile – a large area will be left uncovered, and deficient crops will be the result. Fortunately, a low Nile is of rare occurrence. At one time, the only way of going up the Nile was by the dahabeah, a kind of yacht fitted up for the convenience of travellers, an expensive and dilatory mode of conveyance. Now Mr. John Cook has a line of fine steamers, and the Nile and the journey up and down is done as safely and expeditiously as the trip by the Clacton Belle steamers up and down the Thames. The voyage to Assouan and back is done in three weeks. Facilities are afforded the traveller for the extension of his voyage to the second cataract.
Of course, the ancient Egyptians worshipped the Nile. Hapi, the god of the Nile, is represented wearing a cluster of flowers on his head; he is coloured red and green, probably to represent the colours of the water of the Nile immediately before and just after the beginning of the inundation. An illustration of this worship occurs upon a wall in Thebes, where a priest, in his painted robe, is offering incense, while others play on a harp, a guitar, and two reed pipes. This is the song of one of the priests who lived 1,400 years before Christ:
