Thirty Indian officers in moustaches and jackets; ten
civilians in ditto and spectacles; ten pale-faced ladies with
ringlets, to whom all pay prodigious attention. All the pale
ladies drink pale ale, which, perhaps, accounts for it; in fact the
Bombay and Suez passengers have just arrived, and hence this
crowding and bustling, and display of military jackets and
moustaches, and ringlets and beauty. The windows are open, and a
rush of mosquitoes from the Ezbekieh waters, attracted by the wax
candles, adds greatly to the excitement of the scene. There was a
little tough old Major, who persisted in flinging open the windows,
to admit these volatile creatures, with a noble disregard to their
sting - and the pale ringlets did not seem to heed them either,
though the delicate shoulders of some of them were bare.
All the meat, ragouts, fricandeaux, and roasts, which are served
round at dinner, seem to me to be of the same meat: a black
uncertain sort of viand do these "fleshpots of Egypt" contain. But
what the meat is no one knew: is it the donkey? The animal is
more plentiful than any other in Cairo.
After dinner, the ladies retiring, some of us take a mixture of hot
water, sugar, and pale French brandy, which is said to be
deleterious, but is by no means unpalatable. One of the Indians
offers a bundle of Bengal cheroots; and we make acquaintance with
those honest bearded white-jacketed Majors and military Commanders,
finding England here in a French hotel kept by an Italian, at the
city of Grand Cairo, in Africa.
On retiring to bed you take a towel with you into the sacred
interior, behind the mosquito curtains. Then your duty is, having
tucked the curtains closely around, to flap and bang violently with
this towel, right and left, and backwards and forwards, until every
mosquito should have been massacred that may have taken refuge
within your muslin canopy.
Do what you will, however, one of them always escapes the murder;
and as soon as the candle is out the miscreant begins his infernal
droning and trumpeting; descends playfully upon your nose and face,
and so lightly that you don't know that he touches you. But that
for a week afterwards you bear about marks of his ferocity, you
might take the invisible little being to be a creature of fancy - a
mere singing in your ears.
This, as an account of Cairo, dear M-, you will probably be
disposed to consider as incomplete: the fact is, I have seen
nothing else as yet. I have peered into no harems. The magicians,
proved to be humbugs, have been bastinadoed out of town. The
dancing-girls, those lovely Alme, of whom I had hoped to be able to
give a glowing and elegant, though strictly moral, description,
have been whipped into Upper Egypt, and as you are saying in your
mind - Well, it ISN'T a good description of Cairo: you are
perfectly right. It is England in Egypt. I like to see her there
with her pluck, enterprise, manliness, bitter ale, and Harvey
Sauce. Wherever they come they stay and prosper. From the summit
of yonder Pyramids forty centuries may look down on them if they
are minded; and I say, those venerable daughters of time ought to
be better pleased by the examination, than by regarding the French
bayonets and General Bonaparte, Member of the Institute, fifty
years ago, running about with sabre and pigtail. Wonders he did,
to be sure, and then ran away, leaving Kleber, to be murdered, in
the lurch - a few hundred yards from the spot where these
disquisitions are written. But what are his wonders compared to
Waghorn? Nap massacred the Mamelukes at the Pyramids: Wag has
conquered the Pyramids themselves; dragged the unwieldy structures
a month nearer England than they were, and brought the country
along with them. All the trophies and captives that ever were
brought to Roman triumph were not so enormous and wonderful as
this. All the heads that Napoleon ever caused to be struck off (as
George Cruikshank says) would not elevate him a monument as big.
Be ours the trophies of peace! O my country! O Waghorn! Hae tibi
erunt artes. When I go to the Pyramids I will sacrifice in your
name, and pour out libations of bitter ale and Harvey Sauce in your
honour.
One of the noblest views in the world is to be seen from the
citadel, which we ascended to-day. You see the city stretching
beneath it, with a thousand minarets and mosques, - the great river
curling through the green plains, studded with innumerable
villages. The Pyramids are beyond, brilliantly distinct; and the
lines and fortifications of the height, and the arsenal lying
below. Gazing down, the guide does not fail to point out the
famous Mameluke leap, by which one of the corps escaped death, at
the time that His Highness the Pasha arranged the general massacre
of the body.
The venerable Patriarch's harem is close by, where he received,
with much distinction, some of the members of our party. We were
allowed to pass very close to the sacred precincts, and saw a
comfortable white European building, approached by flights of
steps, and flanked by pretty gardens. Police and law-courts were
here also, as I understood; but it was not the time of the Egyptian
assizes. It would have been pleasant, otherwise, to see the Chief
Cadi in his hall of justice; and painful, though instructive, to
behold the immediate application of the bastinado.
The great lion of the place is a new mosque which Mehemet Ali is
constructing very leisurely. It is built of alabaster of a fair
white, with a delicate blushing tinge; but the ornaments are
European - the noble, fantastic, beautiful Oriental art is
forgotten. The old mosques of the city, of which I entered two,
and looked at many, are a thousand times more beautiful.
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