day.
Another afternoon's excursion was made by carriage to the old villages of Matariya and Heliopolis. Near the former place is an ancient gnarled sycamore, under which, so tradition says, the Holy Family rested in their flight to Egypt. The present tree was planted in 1672, but the credulous still believe it to be a direct descendant of the original one. A fine spring which flows in the vicinity is also supposed to have lost its natural brackish taste on account of the infant Jesus having been bathed in it. A half-mile farther on is Heliopolis, the old City of the Sun. It is now marked by the solitary obelisk, which alone remains to remind us of a past that stretches untold centuries back of the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640; and of a city that was the exponent of the most ancient civilization of the world.
The obelisk is the oldest Egyptian one known; it is of red granite, sixty-six feet in height, although it seems lower on account of the mass of debris at the base, and is inscribed with hieroglyphics. There remain a few granite blocks of the temple, designated the House of Ra, whose priests were so learned as to have attracted Plato when a student, to have drawn Herodotus into discussion, and to have laid the foundation of Moses' wisdom.
Heliopolis has been the scene of many stirring events, the victory of the Turks over the Mamelukes occurring there in 1517, while in 1800 General Kléber successfully led the French forces against the Turks. The memory of the active past serves to emphasize the present solitude of the place.
A favorite resort of the Cairo folk is the island of Gezireh; here a long avenue of lebbek trees furnishes a fashionable promenade, while games of golf, tennis, cricket, and polo, together with the races, are a constant source of attraction. The once famous palace of Gezireh (the scene of great festivities at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869) is now turned into a popular hotel; its grounds slope down to the Nile, where dahabiyehs are sometimes anchored; an inspection of one of these, the Bedouin, excited our admiration.
The time of our stay was drawing to a close, and Cairo was again to become "memory" with a past stretching back into centuries without number. Egypt has a human history that is almost appalling to the thoughtful mind; this limitless stretch of time may, in part, explain the peculiar, indefinable charm that Cairo has upon the imagination of the beholder, thus winning for herself the appropriate name of the "Mysterious City of the Nile."
Port Saïd, November 26th: The return to Port Saïd in the afternoon was followed by our departure on another P. & O. steamer, the Arabia, for Bombay, India.
One enters the Suez Canal with peculiar sensations, as it is a waterway of vast importance, connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and so narrow that the shores on both sides are distinctly visible. It extends from Port Saïd to Suez, and is nearly one hundred miles in length; it is artificial, with the exception of a channel through Bitter Lakes and Lake Tinsuh. All along the way, we were virtually traversing the desert, Isma'iliya presenting a small oasis, fifty miles from Port Saïd. From the deck we watched the monotonous scene, hour after hour, the landscape being old and colorless, with great billows of sand in the foreground, and here and there occasional hillocks. Once we saw mountains of sand, called the Gebel Abû Batah range. Sometimes a few native huts would appear (the mere semblance of a village), then a stray camel or two, or a group of natives with their pigskins, intent on securing water. The Great Bitter Lake is a fine body of water, and it afforded us a temporary relief from the monotony of the Canal. There was a short stay at Suez, which has all the stir of a noisy modern port. We were now for a time in the Gulf of Suez, but saw nothing except a yellow beach and low outlying mountains; we longed for even a patch of grass, but, alas! this was the season of drought, and vegetation was slumbering.
But if Nature was dull and lifeless, there was no lack of jollity on board the steamer; for the passengers were mostly English, and there were constant games or other devices for "killing time," in which the English as a nation are so proficient.
We sailed out of the Gulf of Suez into the Red Sea, which afforded some variety of scene, as there were occasional islands, that of Perim being the most important and a possession of Great Britain. It stands prominently out of the sea in its length of two miles, and seems almost destitute of vegetation, although there was a little settlement close to the shore.
Thus far, contrary to all expectation, we had had comfortable weather; but Aden, a few hours later, gave us a heated welcome. This small city of Arabia is picturesquely situated on the Arabian Sea, high up on rocky cliffs; we had anticipated a hurried survey of the city, but the heat was so excessive that only a few gentlemen ventured ashore; however, we had a little diversion on the steamer in the interval, as numerous natives appeared with amber beads, ostrich feathers (which are a noted commodity of the place) and fans; this provoked the usual contest in bargains.
The evening brought us compensation for a day of heat, with its consequent languor, in the shape of a gorgeous sunset; a huge ball of fire hung in the west and radiated great streaks of red, yellow, and blue, these fading away into the softer tints, and then came the most wonderful afterglow, the heavens being suffused, and the whole scene making one breathless, as if under a spell.
The Arabian Sea gave us an aftermath of heat, but, remembering with considerable satisfaction that the days of our transit were nearly over, we assumed an indifferent air.
Bombay, December 6th: On nearing India, with its far-away past, I was convinced that I would be first impressed with its Oriental aspect, but, on the contrary, the approach to Bombay presented a decidedly modern phase. There is a fine, almost semi-circular harbor, with a modern quay, and tall buildings encircling the shore, the tasteful Royal Bombay Yacht Club in the front, the spacious new Taj Mahal Hotel to the left, having about a block of frontage on the bay, while farther back were other tall buildings. Dusky faces greeted us at the landing, and a Babel of voices in an unknown tongue, or rather tongues, since many tribes were represented, each with their separate dialect.
Arriving at the Taj Mahal, we felt a sense of strangeness, as the arrangement of rooms and the service were distinctly foreign. There were almost too many attendants or servants (two for each room, an upper and a lower one), and the waiters in the dining-room were more interesting to me than the menu—the Portuguese wearing white uniforms with short jackets, pink vests, and black ties; the Mohammedans attired in long white tunics, with wide belts at the waist, loose trousers, and barefooted.
It was reserved for an afternoon drive through the crowded native quarter, however, to give us a striking impression of the India of the past. Every nook and corner of the narrow streets seemed a blaze of color—women in their full skirts of many shades of red (that color predominating), with diverse novel waist arrangements and a profusion of jewelry, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and anklets. Men were in their many-hued turbans of various styles, with no clothing to the waist and a limited supply below. Then there were boys and small children—the former with only a loin cloth, the latter as Nature made them, with silver chains bearing quite large hearts suspended around their waists, and with smaller chains around their necks, each supposed to ward off sudden calamity or disease.
But, if there was color in the dress, there was emaciation in the figure—thin features, thin limbs, and flat chests being the prevailing type, a fair indication that their scanty supply of food does not furnish them sufficient nutrition. Northern India is the so-termed "famine district," and the famine of one year is said to have destroyed over four millions of people; pestilence is always threatening these natives, and besides, the demands for tribute of an enervated priesthood (who "toil not," alas! "neither do they spin") have to be met. So is it any wonder that poverty prevails and that sadness of countenance is everywhere