Pompey's Pillar Must Stand
Like A Mountain, In A Yellow Plain, Surrounded By A Grove Of
Obelisks As Tall As Palm-Trees.
Placid sphinxes brooding o'er the
Nile - mighty Memnonian countenances calm - had revealed Egypt to me
in a sonnet of Tennyson's, and I was ready to gaze on it with
pyramidal wonder and hieroglyphic awe.
The landing quay at Alexandria is like the dockyard quay at
Portsmouth: with a few score of brown faces scattered among the
population. There are slop-sellers, dealers in marine-stores,
bottled-porter shops, seamen lolling about; flys and cabs are
plying for hire; and a yelling chorus of donkey-boys, shrieking,
"Ride, sir! - Donkey, sir! - I say, sir!" in excellent English,
dispel all romantic notions. The placid sphinxes brooding o'er the
Nile disappeared with that shriek of the donkey-boys. You might be
as well impressed with Wapping as with your first step on Egyptian
soil.
The riding of a donkey is, after all, not a dignified occupation.
A man resists the offer at first, somehow, as an indignity. How is
that poor little, red-saddled, long-eared creature to carry you?
Is there to be one for you, and another for your legs? Natives and
Europeans, of all sizes, pass by, it is true, mounted upon the same
contrivance. I waited until I got into a very private spot, where
nobody could see me, and then ascended - why not say descended, at
once? - on the poor little animal. Instead of being crushed at
once, as perhaps the rider expected, it darted forward, quite
briskly and cheerfully, at six or seven miles an hour; requiring no
spur or admonitive to haste, except the shrieking of the little
Egyptian gamin, who ran along by asinus's side.
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