Part 9 (1/2)
In the summer and early autumn, especially during August and September when the Nile is at its height, the view is more striking though hardly so beautiful. Then it is that this Protean country offers its most impressive aspect. The Delta becomes an inland archipelago studded with green islands, each island crowned with a white-mosqued village, or conspicuous with a cl.u.s.ter of palms. The Nile and its swollen tributaries are covered with huge-sailed dahabyehs, which give life and variety to the watery expanse.
Alexandria can boast of few ”lions” as the word is usually understood, but of these by far the most interesting is the column known by the name of Pompey's Pillar. Everyone has heard of the famous monolith, which is as closely a.s.sociated in people's minds with Alexandria as the Colosseum is with Rome, or the Alhambra with Granada. It has, of course, no more to do with the Pompey of history (to whom it is attributed by the unlettered tourist) than has Cleopatra's Needle with that famous Queen, the ”Serpent of Old Nile”; or Joseph's Well at Cairo with the Hebrew Patriarch. It owes its name to the fact that a certain prefect, named after Caesar's great rival, erected on the summit of an existing column a statue in honor of the horse of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. There is a familiar legend which has been invented to account for the special reason of its erection, which guide-book compilers are very fond of. According to this story, this historic animal, through an opportune stumble, stayed the persecution of the Alexandrian Christians, as the tyrannical emperor had sworn to continue the ma.s.sacre till the blood of the victims reached his horse's knees. Antiquarians and Egyptologists are, however, given to scoffing at the legend as a plausible myth.
In the opinion of many learned authorities, the shaft of this column was once a portion of the Serapeum, that famous building which was both a temple of the heathen G.o.d Serapis and a vast treasure-house of ancient civilization. It has been suggested--in order to account for its omission in the descriptions of Alexandria, given by Pliny and Strabo, who had mentioned the two obelisks of Cleopatra--that the column had fallen, and that the Prefect Pompey had merely re-erected it in honor of Diocletian, and replaced the statue of Serapis with one of the Emperor--or of his horse, according to some chroniclers. This statute, if it ever existed, has now disappeared. As it stands, however, it is a singularly striking and beautiful monument, owing to its great height, simplicity of form, and elegant proportions. It reminds the spectator a little of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, and perhaps the absence of a statue is not altogether to be regretted considering the height of the column, as it might suggest to the irrepressible tourists who scoff at Nelson's statue as the ”Mast-headed Admiral,” some similar witticism at the expense of Diocletian.
With the exception of this monolith, which, ”a solitary column, mourns above its prostrate brethren,” only a few fragmentary and scattered ruins of fallen columns mark the site of the world-renowned Serapeum. Nothing else remains of the famous library, the magnificent portico with its hundred steps, the vast halls, and the four hundred marble columns of that great building designed to perpetuate the glories of the Ptolemies. This library, which was the forerunner of the great libraries of modern times, must not be confounded with the equally famous one that was attached to the Museum, whose exact site is still a bone of contention among antiquarians. The latter was destroyed by accident, when Julius Caesar set fire to the Alexandrian fleet. The Serapeum collection survived for six hundred years, till its wanton destruction through the fanaticism of the Caliph Omar. The Arab conqueror is said to have justified this barbarism with a fallacious epigram, which was as unanswerable, however logically faulty, as the famous one familiar to students of English history under the name of Archbishop Morton's Fork. ”If these writings,” declared the uncompromising conqueror, ”agree with the Book of G.o.d, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.” Nothing could prevail against this flagrant example of a _pet.i.tio principii_, and for six months the three hundred thousand parchments supplied fuel for the four thousand baths of Alexandria.
Hard by Pompey's Pillar is a dreary waste, dotted with curiously carved structures. This is the Mohammedan cemetery. As in most Oriental towns, the cemetery is at the west end of the town, as the Mohammedans consider that the quarter of the horizon in which the sun sets is the most suitable spot for their burying-places.
In this melancholy city of the dead are buried also many of the ruins of the Serapeum, and scattered about among the tombs are fragments of columns and broken pedestals. On some of the tombs a green turban is roughly painted, strangely out of harmony with the severe stone carving. This signifies that the tomb holds the remains of a descendant of the prophet, or of a devout Moslem, who had himself, and not vicariously as is so often done, made the pilgrimage to the sacred city of Mecca. Some of the head-stones are elaborately carved, but most are quite plain, with the exception of a verse of the Koran cut in the stone. The observant tourist will notice on many of the tombs a curious little round hole cut in the stone at the head, which seems to be intended to form a pa.s.sage to the interior of the vault, though the aperture is generally filled up with earth. It is said that this pa.s.sage is made to enable the Angel Israfel at the Resurrection to draw out the occupant by the hair of his head; and the custom which obtains among the lower cla.s.s Moslems of shaving the head with the exception of a round tuft of hair in the middle--a fas.h.i.+on which suggests an incipient pigtail or an inverted tonsure--is as much due to this superst.i.tion as to sanitary considerations.
Of far greater interest than this comparatively modern cemetery are the cave cemeteries of El-Meks. These catacombs are some four miles from the city. The route along the low ridge of sand-hills is singularly unpicturesque, but the windmills which fringe the sh.o.r.e give a homely aspect to the country, and serve at any rate to break the monotony of this dreary and prosaic sh.o.r.e. We soon reach Said Pacha's unfinished palace of El-Meks, which owes its origin to the mania for building which helped to make the reign of that weak-minded ruler so costly to his over-taxed subjects. One glimpse at the b.a.s.t.a.r.d style of architecture is sufficient to remove any feeling of disappointment on being told that the building is not open to the public. The catacombs, which spread for a long distance along the seash.o.r.e, and of which the so-called Baths of Cleopatra are a part, are very extensive, and tourists are usually satisfied with exploring a part. There are no mummies, but the niches can be clearly seen. The plan of the catacombs is curiously like the wards of a key.
There are few ”sights” in Alexandria of much interest besides those already mentioned. In fact, Alexandria is interesting more as a city of sites than sights. It is true that the names of some of the mosques, such as that of the One Thousand and One Columns, built on the site of St.
Mark's martyrdom, and the Mosque of St. Athanasius, are calculated to arouse the curiosity of the tourist: but the interest is in the name alone. The Mosque of many Columns is turned into a quarantine station, and the Mosque of St. Athanasius has no connection with the great Father except that it stands on the site of a church in which he probably preached.
Then there is the Coptic Convent of St. Mark, which, according to the inmates, contains the body of the great Evangelist--an a.s.sertion which would scarcely deceive the most ignorant and the most credulous tourist that ever entrusted himself to the fostering care of Messrs. Cook, as it is well known that St. Mark's body was removed to Venice in the ninth century. The mosque, with the ornate exterior and lofty minaret, in which the remains of Said Pacha are buried, is the only one besides those already mentioned which is worth visiting.
The sh.o.r.es of the Delta from Alexandria to Rosetta are singularly rich in historical a.s.sociations, and are thickly strewn with historic landmarks.
The plain in which have been fought battles which have decided the fate of the whole western world, may well be called the ”Belgium of the East.” In this circ.u.mscribed area the empires of the East and West struggled for the mastery, and many centuries later the English here wrested from Napoleon their threatened Indian Empire. In the few miles' railway journey between Alexandria and the suburban town of Ramleh the pa.s.senger traverses cla.s.sic ground. At Mustapha Pacha the line skirts the Roman camp, where Octavius defeated the army of Antony, and gained for Rome a new empire.
Unfortunately there are now few ruins left of this encampment, as most of the stones were used by Ismail Pacha in building one of his innumerable palaces, now converted into a hospital and barracks for the English troops. Almost on this very spot where Octavius conquered, was fought the battle of Alexandria, which gave the death-blow to Napoleon's great scheme of founding an Eastern Empire, and converting the Mediterranean into ”un lac francais.” This engagement was, as regards the number of troops engaged, an insignificant one; but as the great historian of modern Europe has observed, ”The importance of a triumph is not always to be measured by the number of men engaged. The contest of 12,000 Britons with an equal number of French on the sands of Alexandria, in its remote effect, overthrew a greater empire than that of Charlemagne, and rescued mankind from a more galling tyranny than that of the Roman Emperors.”[5] A few minutes more and the traveller's historical musings are interrupted by the shriek of the engine as the train enters the Ramleh station. This pleasant and salubrious town, with its rows of trim villas standing in their own well-kept grounds and gardens, the residences of Alexandrian merchants, suggests a fas.h.i.+onable or ”rising” English watering place rather than an Oriental town. As a residence it has no doubt many advantages, including a good and sufficient water supply, and frequent communication by train with Alexandria. But these are not the attractions which appeal to the traveller or tourist. The only objects of interest are the ruins of the Temple of a.r.s.enoe, the wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Concerning this temple there is an interesting and romantic legend, which no doubt suggested to Pope his fanciful poem, ”The Rape of the Lock”:--
”Not Berenice's hair first rose so bright, The heavens bespangling with dishevelled light.”
This pretty story, which has been immortalized by Catullus, is as follows:--When Ptolemy Euergetes left for his expedition to Syria, his wife Berenice vowed to dedicate her hair to Venus Zephyrites should her husband return safe and sound. Her prayer was answered, and in fulfilment of her vow she hung within the Temple of a.r.s.enoe the golden locks that had adorned her head. Unfortunately they were stolen by some sacrilegious thief. The priests were naturally troubled, the King was enraged, and the Queen inconsolable. However, the craft of Conon, the Court astronomer, discovered a way by which the mysterious disappearance could be satisfactorily explained, the priests absolved of all blame, and the vanity of the Queen gratified. The wily astronomer-courtier declared that Jupiter had taken the locks and transformed them into a constellation, placing it in that quarter of the heavens (the ”Milky Way”) by which the G.o.ds, according to tradition, pa.s.sed to and from Olympus. This pious fraud was effected by annexing the group of stars which formed the tail of the constellation Leo, and declaring that this cl.u.s.ter of stars was the new constellation into which Berenice's locks had been transformed. This arbitrary modification of the celestial system is known by the name of Coma Berenices, and is still retained in astronomical charts.
”I 'mongst the stars myself resplendent now, I, who once curled on Berenice's brow, The tress which she, uplifting her fair arm, To many a G.o.d devoted, so from harm They might protect her new-found royal mate, When from her bridal chamber all elate, With its sweet triumph flushed, he went in haste To lay the regions of a.s.syria waste.”[6]
A few miles northwest of Ramleh, at the extremity of the western horn of Aboukir Bay, lies the village of Aboukir. The railway to Rosetta skirts that bay of glorious memory, and as the traveller pa.s.ses by those silent and deserted sh.o.r.es which fringe the watery arena whereon France and England contended for the Empire of the East, he lives again in those stirring times, and the dramatic episodes of that famous Battle of the Nile crowd upon the memory. That line of deep blue water, bounded on the west by the rocky islet, now called Nelson's Island, and on the east by Fort St. Julien on the Rosetta headland, marks the position of the French fleet on the 1st of August, 1798. The fleet was moored in the form of a crescent close along the sh.o.r.e, and was covered by the batteries of Fort Aboukir. So confident was Brueys, the French Admiral, in the strength of his position, and in his superiority in guns and men (nearly as three to two) over Nelson's fleet, that he sent that famous despatch to Paris, declaring that the enemy was purposely avoiding him. Great must have been his dismay when the English fleet, which had been scouring the Mediterranean with bursting sails for six long weeks in search of him, was signaled, bearing down unflinchingly upon its formidable foe--that foe with which Nelson had vowed he would do battle, if above water, even if he had to sail to the Antipodes. ”By to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey,” were the historic words uttered by the English Admiral when the French fleet was sighted, drawn up in order of battle in Aboukir Bay. The soundings of this dangerous roadstead were unknown to him, but declaring that ”where there was room for the enemy to swing, there must be room for us to anchor,” he ordered his leading squadron to take up its position to the landward of the enemy. The remainder of the English fleet was ordered to anchor on the outside of the enemy's line, but at close quarters, thus doubling on part of the enemy's line, and placing it in a defile of fire. In short, the effect of this brilliant and masterly disposition of the English fleet was to surround two-thirds of the enemy's s.h.i.+ps, and cut them off from the support of their consorts, which were moored too far off to injure the enemy or aid their friends.
The French Admiral, in spite of his apparently impregnable position, was consequently out-manoeuvred from the outset, and the victory of Nelson virtually a.s.sured.
Evening set in soon after Nelson had anch.o.r.ed. All through the night the battle raged fiercely and unintermittently, ”illuminated by the incessant discharge of over two thousand cannon,” and the flames which burst from the disabled s.h.i.+ps of the French squadron. The sun had set upon as proud a fleet as ever set sail from the sh.o.r.es of France, and morning rose upon a strangely altered scene. Shattered and blackened hulks now only marked the position they had occupied but a few hours before. On one s.h.i.+p alone, the _Tonnant_, the tricolor was flying. When the _Theseus_ drew near to take her as prize, she hoisted a flag of truce, but kept her colors flying.
”Your battle flag or none!” was the stern reply, as her enemy rounded to and prepared to board. Slowly and reluctantly, like an expiring hope, that pale flag fluttered down her lofty spars, and the next that floated there was the standard of Old England. ”And now the battle was over--India was saved upon the sh.o.r.es of Egypt--the career of Napoleon was checked, and his navy was annihilated. Seven years later that navy was revived, to perish utterly at Trafalgar--a fitting hecatomb for the obsequies of Nelson, whose life seemed to terminate as his mission was then and thus accomplished.” The glories of Trafalgar, immortalized by the death of Nelson, have no doubt obscured to some extent those of the Nile. The latter engagement has not, indeed, been enshrined in the memory of Englishmen by popular ballads--those instantaneous photographs, as they might be called, of the highest thoughts and strongest emotions inspired by patriotism--but hardly any great sea-fight of modern times has been more prolific in brilliant achievements of heroism and deeds of splendid devotion than the Battle of the Nile. The traditions of this terrible combat have not yet died out among the Egyptians and Arabs, whose forefathers had lined the sh.o.r.es of the bay on that memorable night, and watched with mingled terror and astonishment the destruction of that great armament. It was with some idea of the moral effect the landing of English troops on the sh.o.r.es of this historic bay would have on Arabi's soldiery, that Lord Wolseley contemplated disembarking there the English expeditionary force in August, 1882.
On the eastern horn of Aboukir Bay, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, and about five miles from its mouth, lies the picturesque town of Rosetta. Its Arabic name is Ras.h.i.+d, an etymological coincidence which has induced some writers to jump to the conclusion that it is the birthplace of Haroun Al Ras.h.i.+d. To some persons no doubt the town would be shorn of much of its interest if dissociated from our old friend of ”The Thousand and One Nights;” but the indisputable fact remains that Haroun Al Ras.h.i.+d died some seventy years before the foundation of the town in A. D. 870. Rosetta was a port of some commercial importance until the opening of the Mahmoudiyeh Ca.n.a.l in 1819 diverted most of its trade to Alexandria. The town is not devoid of architectural interest, and many fragments of ruins may be met with in the half-deserted streets, and marble pillars, which bear signs of considerable antiquity, may be noticed built into the doorways of the comparatively modern houses. One of the most interesting architectural features of Rosetta is the North Gate, flanked with ma.s.sive towers of a form unusual in Egypt, each tower being crowned with a conical-shaped roof. Visitors will probably have noticed the curious gabled roofs and huge projecting windows of most of the houses. It was from these projecting doorways and latticed windows that such fearful execution was done to the British troops at the time of the ill-fated English expedition to Egypt in 1807. General Wauchope had been sent by General Fraser, who was in command of the troops, with an absurdly inadequate force of 1,200 men to take the strongly-garrisoned town. Mehemet Ali's Albanian troops had purposely left the gates open in order to draw the English force into the narrow and winding streets. Their commander, without any previous examination, rushed blindly into the town with all his men. The Albanian soldiery waited till the English were confined in this infernal labyrinth of narrow, crooked streets, and then from every window and housetop rained down on them a perfect hail of musket-shot and rifle-ball. Before the officers could extricate their men from this terrible death-trap a third of the troops had fallen. Such was the result of this rash and futile expedition, which dimmed the l.u.s.tre of their arms in Egypt, and contributed a good deal to the loss of their military prestige. That this crus.h.i.+ng defeat should have taken place so near the scene of the most glorious achievement of their arms but a few years before, was naturally thought a peculiar aggravation of the failure of this ill-advised expedition.
To archaeological students and Egyptologists Rosetta is a place of the greatest interest, as it was in its neighborhood that the famous inscribed stone was found which furnished the clue--sought in vain for so many years by Egyptian scholars--to the hieroglyphic writings of Egypt. Perhaps none of the archaeological discoveries made in Egypt since the land was scientifically exploited by the savants attached to Napoleon's expedition, not even that of the mummified remains of the Pharaohs, is more precious in the eyes of Egyptologists and antiquarians than this comparatively modern and ugly-looking block of black basalt, which now reposes in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. The story of its discovery is interesting. A certain Monsieur Bouchard, a French Captain of Engineers, while making some excavations at Fort St. Julien, a small fortress in the vicinity of Rosetta, discovered this celebrated stone in 1799. The interpretation of the inscription for many years defied all the efforts of the most learned French savants and English scholars, until, in 1822, two well-known Egyptologists, Champollion and Dr. Young, after independent study and examination, succeeded in deciphering that part of the inscription which was in Greek characters. From this they learnt that the inscription was triplicate and trilingual: one in Greek, the other in the oldest form of hieroglyphics, the purest kind of ”picture-writing,” and the third in demotic characters--the last being the form of hieroglyphics used by the people, in which the symbols are more obscure than in the pure hieroglyphics used by the priests. The inscription, when finally deciphered, proved to be one of comparatively recent date, being a decree of Ptolemy V., issued in the year 196 B. C. The Rosetta stone was acquired by England as part of the spoils of war in the Egyptian expedition of 1801.
At Rosetta the railway leaves the coast and goes south to Cairo.
If the traveller wishes to see something of the agriculture of the Delta, he would get some idea of the astonis.h.i.+ng fertility of the country by merely taking the train to Damanhour, the center of the cotton-growing district. The journey does not take more than a couple of hours. The pa.s.senger travelling by steamer from Alexandria to Port Said, though he skirts the coast, can see no signs of the agricultural wealth of Egypt, and for him the whole of Egypt might be an arid desert instead of one of the most fertile districts in the whole world. The area of cultivated lands, which, however, extends yearly seawards, is separated from the coast by a belt composed of strips of sandy desert, marshy plain, low sandhills, and salt lagunes, which varies in breadth from fifteen to thirty miles. A line drawn from Alexandria to Damietta, through the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Boorlos, marks approximately the limit of cultivated land in this part of the Delta. The most un.o.bservant traveller in Egypt cannot help perceiving that its sole industry is agriculture, and that the bulk of its inhabitants are tillers of the soil. Egypt seems, indeed, intended by nature to be the granary and market-garden of North Africa, and the prosperity of the country depends on its being allowed to retain its place as a purely agricultural country. The ill-advised, but fortunately futile, attempts which have been made by recent rulers to develop manufactures at the expense of agriculture, are the outcome of a short-sighted policy or perverted ambition. Experience has proved that every acre diverted from its ancient and rational use as a bearer of crops is a loss to the national wealth.
That ”Egypt is the gift of the Nile” has been insisted upon with ”d.a.m.nable iteration” by every writer on Egypt, from Herodotus downwards. According to the popular etymology,[7] the very name of the Nile ([Greek: Neilos], from [Greek: nea ilys], new mud) testifies to its peculiar fertilizing properties. The Nile is all in all to the Egyptian, and can we wonder that Egyptian mythologists recognized in it the Creative Principle waging eternal warfare with Typhon, the Destructive Principle, represented by the encroaching desert? As Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole has well observed, ”without the Nile there would be no Egypt; the great African Sahara would spread uninterruptedly to the Red Sea. Egypt is, in short, a long oasis worn in the rocky desert by the ever-flowing stream, and made green and fertile by its waters.”
At Cairo the Nile begins to rise about the third week in June, and the beginning of the overflow coincides with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star. The heavens have been called the clocks of the Ancients, and, according to some writers, it was the connection between the rise of the Nile and that of the Dog Star that first opened the way to the study of astronomy among the ancient Egyptians, so that not only was the Nile the creator of their country, but also of their science. The fellahs, however, still cherish a lingering belief in the supernatural origin of the overflow. They say that a miraculous drop of water falls into the Nile on the 17th of June, which causes the river to swell. Till September the river continues to rise, not regularly, but by leaps and bounds. In this month it attains its full height, and then gradually subsides till it reaches its normal height in the winter months.
As is well known, the quality of the harvest depends on the height of the annual overflow--a rise of not less than eighteen feet at Cairo being just sufficient, while a rise of over twenty-six feet, or thereabouts, would cause irreparable damage. It is a common notion that a very high Nile is beneficial; whereas an excessive inundation would do far more harm to the country than an abnormal deficiency of water. Statistics show conclusively that most of the famines in Egypt have occurred after an exceptionally high Nile. Shakespeare, who, we know, is often at fault in matters of natural science, is perhaps partly accountable for this popular error:--”The higher Nilus swells, the more it promises,” he makes Antony say, when describing the wonders of Egypt to Caesar.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The coast between Rosetta and Port Said is, like the rest of the Egyptian littoral, flat and monotonous. The only break in the dreary vista is afforded by the picturesque-looking town of Damietta, which, with its lofty houses, looking in the distance like marble palaces, has a striking appearance seen from the sea. The town, though containing some s.p.a.cious bazaars and several large and well-proportioned mosques, has little to attract the visitor, and there are no antiquities or buildings of any historic interest. The traveller, full of the traditions of the Crusades, who expects to find some traces of Saladin and the Saracens, will be doomed to disappointment. Damietta is comparatively modern, the old Byzantine city having been destroyed by the Arabs early in the thirteenth century, and rebuilt--at a safer distance from invasion by sea--a few miles inland, under the name of Mensheeyah. One of the gateways of the modern town, the Mensheeyah Gate, serves as a reminder of its former name.