Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL

IN

EGYPT, ARABIA PETRÆA, &c.

CHAPTER I.

Alexandria.-Pompey's Pillar.-The Catacombs.-The Warwick Vase. The Pacha's Canal.-Boats of the Nile.

On the afternoon of the

December, 1835,

after a passage of five days from Malta, I was perched up in the rigging of an English schooner, spyglass in hand, and earnestly looking for the "Land of Egypt." The captain had never been there before; but we had been running several hours along the low coast of Barbary, and the chart and compass told us that we could not be far from the fallen city of Alexander. Night came on, however, without our seeing it. The ancient Pharos, the Lantern of Ptolemy, the eighth wonder of the world, no longer throws its light far over the bosom of the sea to guide the weary mariner.

VOL. I.-B

Morning came, and we found ourselves directly opposite the city, the shipping in the outward harbour, and the fleet of the pacha riding at anchor under the walls of the seraglio, carrying me back in imagination to the days of the Macedonian conqueror, of Cleopatra and the Ptolemies. Slowly we worked our way up the difficult and dangerous channel, unaided by a pilot, for none appeared to take us in charge. It is a fact worthy of note, that one of the monuments of Egypt's proudest days, the celebrated Pompey's Pillar, is even now, after a lapse of more than two thousand years, one of the landmarks which guide the sailor to her fallen capital. Just as we had passed the last reef pilots came out to meet us, their swarthy faces, their turbans, their large dresses streaming in the wind, and their little boat with its huge latteen sail, giving a strange wildness to their appearance, the effect of which was not a little heightened by their noise and confusion in attempting to come alongside. Failing in their first endeavour, our captain gave them no assistance, and when they came upon us again he refused to admit them on board. The last arrival at Malta had brought unfavourable accounts of the plague, and he was unwilling to run any risk until he should have an opportunity of advising with his consignee. My servant was the only person on board who could speak Arabic; and telling the wild, fly-away looking Arabs to fasten on astern, we towed our pilots in, and at about eight o'clock came to anchor in the

[blocks in formation]

harbour. In half an hour I was ashore, and the moment I touched it, just as I had found at Constantinople, all the illusion of the distant view was gone.

Indeed, it would be difficult for any man who lives at all among the things of this world, to dream of the departed glory of Egypt when first entering the fallen city of Alexander; the present and the things of the present are uppermost; and between ambling donkeys, loaded camels, dirty, half-naked, sore-eyed Arabs, swarms of flies, yelping dogs, and apprehensions of the plague, one thinks more of his own movements than of the pyramids. I groped my way through a long range of bazars to the Frank quarter, and here, totally forgetting what I had come for, and that there were such things as obelisks, pyramids, and ruined temples, the genius of my native land broke out, and, with an eye that had had some experience in such matters at home, I contemplated the "improvements;" a whole street of shops kept by Europeans and filled with European goods, ranges of fine buildings, fine country houses and gardens growing upon barren sands, showed that strangers from a once barbarous land were repaying the debt which the world owes to the mother of arts, and raising her from the ruin into which she had been plunged by years of misrule and anarchy.

My first visit was to Mr. Gliddon, the American consul, whose reception of me was such that I felt already as one not alone in a strange land. While

with him an English gentleman came in—a merchant in Alexandria-who was going that night to Cairo. Mr. Gliddon introduced us; and, telling him that I too was bound for Cairo, Mr. T. immediately proposed that I should accompany him, saying he had a boat and every thing ready, and that I might save myself the trouble of making any preparations, and would have nothing to do but come on board with my luggage at sundown. Though rather a short notice, I did not hesitate to accept his offer. Besides the relief from trouble in fitting out, the plague was in every one's mouth, and I was not sorry to have so carly an opportunity of escaping from a city where, above all others, "pestilence walketh in darkness, and destruction wasteth at noonday."

Having but a short time before me, I immediately mounted a donkey-an Egyptian donkeybeing an animal entirely unknown to us, or even in Europe, and, accompanied by my servant, with a sore-eyed Arab boy to drive us, I started off upon a full gallop to make a hasty survey of the ruins of Alexandria. The Frank quarter is the extreme part of the city, and a very short ride brought us into another world. It was not until now, riding in the suburbs upon burning sands and under a burning sun, that I felt myself really in the land of Egypt. It was not in fact till standing at the base of Pompey's Pillar, that I felt myself among the ruins of one of the greatest cities of the world. Reaching it through long rows of Arab huts, where

« ÎnapoiContinuă »