Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau
of seeing. So impatient a beast I do not know, – growling, groaning and fretting whenever asked to do or bear anything, – looking, on such occasions, as if it longed to bite, if only it dared. Its malignant expression of face is lost in pictures: but it may be seen whenever one looks for it. The mingled expression of spite, fear, and hopelessness in the face of the camel always gave me the impression of its being, or feeling itself, a damned animal. I wonder some of the old painters of hell did not put a camel into their foreground, and make a traditional emblem of it. It is true, the Arab loves his own camel, kisses its lips, hugs its neck, calls it his darling and his jewel, and declares he loves it exactly as he loves his eldest son: but it does not appear that any man's affection extends beyond his own particular camel, which is truly, for its services, an inestimable treasure to him. He is moved to kick and curse at any but the domestic member of the species, as he would be by the perverseness and spite of any other ill-tempered creature. The one virtue of the camel is its ability to work without water; but, out of the desert, I hardly think that any rider would exchange the willing, intelligent, and proud service of the horse for that of the camel, which objects to everything, and will do no service but under the compulsion of its own fears.
When the camels had passed, some women entered the Square from different openings. I was surprised to see their faces hardly covered. They pulled their bit of blue rag over, or half over, their faces when anyone approached them, as a matter of form; but in Alexandria, at least, we could generally get a sight of any face we had a mind to see, – excepting, of course, those of mounted ladies. As we went up the country, we found the women more and more closely veiled, to the borders of Nubia, where we were again favoured with a sight of the female countenance.
The next sight in the Square was a hareem, going out for a ride; – a procession of ladies on asses, – each lady enveloped in a sort of balloon of black silk, and astride on her ass, – her feet displaying a pair of bright yellow morocco boots. Each ass was attended by a running footman; and the officer of the hareem brought up the rear.
By this time, my friends were ready for a cup of coffee and a walk before breakfast: and we went forth to see what we could see. After leaving the Square, we made our way through heaps of rubbish and hillocks of dust to the new fortifications, passing Arab huts more sordid and desolate-looking than I remember to have seen in other parts of the country. We met fewer blind and diseased persons than we expected; and I must say that I was agreeably surprised, both this morning and throughout my travels in Egypt, by the appearance of the people. About the dirt there can be no doubt; – the dirt of both dwellings and persons; and the diseases which proceed from want of cleanliness: but the people appeared to us, there and throughout the country, sleek, well-fed, and cheerful. I am not sure that I saw an ill-fed person in all Egypt. There is hardship enough of other kinds, – abundance of misery to sadden the heart of the traveller; but not that, as far as we saw, of want of food. I am told, and no doubt truly, that this is partly owing to the law of the Kurán by which every man is bound to share what he has, to the last mouthful, with his brother in need: but there must be enough, or nearly enough food for all, whatever be the law of distribution. Of the progressive depopulation of Egypt for many years past, I am fully convinced; but I am confident that a deficiency of food is not the cause, nor, as yet, a consequence. While I believe that Egypt might again, as formerly, support four times its present population, I see no reason to suppose, amidst all the misgovernment and oppression that the people suffer, that they do not still raise food enough to support life and health. I have seen more emaciated, and stunted, and depressed men, women, and children in a single walk in England, than I observed from end to end of the land of Egypt. – So much for the mere food question. No one will suppose that in Egypt a sufficiency of food implies, as with us, a sufficiency of some other things scarcely less important to welfare than food.
We saw this morning a sakia1 for the first time, – little thinking how familiar and interesting an object the sakia would become to us in the course of three months, nor how its name would for ever after call up associations of the flowing Nile, and broad green fields, and thickets of sugar-canes, and the melancholy music of the waterwheel, and the picturesque figures of peasant children, driving the oxen in the shady circuit of the weed-grown shed. This, the first we saw, was a most primitive affair, placed among sand hillocks foul with dirt, and its wooden cogwheels in a ruinous state. We presently saw a better one in the garden of the German Consul. It was on a platform, under a trellice of vines. The wheel, which was turned by a blindfolded ox, had rude earthen jars bound on its vanes, its revolutions emptying these jars into a trough, from which the water was conducted to irrigate the garden.
In this garden, as in every field and garden in Egypt, the ground was divided off into compartments, which are surrounded by little ridges, in order to retain whatever water they receive. Where there is artificial irrigation, the water is led along and through these ridges, and distributed thus to every part. I found here the first training of the eye to that angularity which is the main characteristic of form in Egypt. It seems to have been a decree of the old gods of Egypt that angularity should be a prime law of beauty; and the decree appears to have been undisputed to this day: and one of the most surprising things to a stranger is to feel himself immediately falling into sympathy with this taste, so that he finds in his new sense and ideas of beauty a fitting avenue to the glories of the temples of the Nile.
The gardens of Alexandria looked rude to our European eyes; but we saw few so good afterwards. In the damp plots grew herbs, and especially a kind of mallow, much in use for soups: and cabbages, put in among African fruits. Among great flowering oleanders, Marvel of Peru, figs, and oranges, were some familiar plants, cherished, I thought, with peculiar care under the windows of the consular houses; – monthly roses, chrysanthemums, Love-lies-bleeding, geraniums, rosemary, and, of course, the African marigold. Many of these plots are overshadowed by palms, and they form, in fact, the ground of the palm-orchards, as we used to call them. Large clusters of dates were hanging from under the fronds of the palms; and these were usually the most valuable product of the garden. The consular gardens are not, of course, the most oriental in aspect. We do not see in them, as in those belonging to Arabs, the reservoir for Mohammedan ablution, nor the householder on the margin winding on his turban after his bath, or prostrating himself at his prayers.
The contrast is great between these gardens and the sites of Cleopatra's Needle and Pompey's Pillar – curiosities which need not be described, as everyone has seen them in engravings. The Needle stands on the burning sands, close to the new fortification wall, whose embankment is eighty feet high, and now rapidly enclosing the town. The companion obelisk, which was offered to England, but not considered worth bringing away, is now buried in this embankment. There it will not decay; for there is no such preservative as the sand of Egypt. When, and under what circumstances, will it again see the light? In a time when it may be recognised as an object known now? or in an age so distant as that the process of verification must be gone over again? Everyone now knows that these obelisks are of the time of the early Pharaohs, some of whose names they bear inscribed; that they stood originally at Heliopolis, and were transported to Alexandria by the Caesars.
The Pillar stands in a yet more desolate place. We reached it through the dreariest of cemeteries, where all was of one dust-colour – even to the aloe which was fixed upon every grave. The graves were covered with mortar, much of which was broken and torn away. A Christian informant told us that this was done by foxes and dogs; but a Mohammedan declared that such ravage was prevented by careful watching. There is a rare old book which happily throws light on what this Pillar was. In the twelfth century, while the Crusaders were ravaging Syria, a learned physician of Bagdad, named Abdallatif, visited Egypt, and dwelt a considerable time there. He afterwards wrote an admirable account of whatever he himself saw in the country; and his work has been translated by some Arabic scholars. The best translation is by De Sacy (Paris, 1810). Abdallatif tells us that the column (now called by us Pompey's Pillar), which is so finely seen from the sea, was called by the Arabs »the pillar of the colonnades«; that he had himself seen the remains of above four hundred columns of the same material lying on the margin of the sea; and he tells us how they came there. He declares that the governor of Alexandria, the officer put in charge of the city by Saladeen, had overthrown and broken these columns to make a breakwater! »This«, observes Abdallatif, »was the act of a child, or of a man who does not know good from evil.« He continues: