Part 10 (2/2)
It is flattering to learn that people we have never met have been interested in us for a long time. Continuing the same line of thought, it is often disappointing to learn that the people most deeply interested in us are those who have never met us. For fear of getting mixed up, let us return to the boat.
Our princ.i.p.al cargo was honeymoon. We had six newly married couples, who were advertising to all the world the fact of their sudden happiness, and three other couples were under suspicion. The men lounged in the smoking-room, as if to give the impression that they were hardened in matrimony, but they peeked out through the portholes too often and made many trips to the deck.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Three other couples under suspicion_]
One German couple was the most newly married team that any of us had ever seen. I don't think they knew they were in a boat. They may have suspected, but it really didn't make any difference. They were in a trance, riding on a cloud of incense, saturated with bliss. He was middle aged, with red flaring whiskers, and a nose showing an angular break in the middle. She was short and plump, with a s.h.i.+ny, oil-finish countenance. Neither had been constructed according to the plans and specifications of Love's Young Dream, and yet the devouring adoration which played back and forth between Romeo and Juliet was almost icy compared with this special brand of Teutonic love. They were seldom more than three inches apart, he gazing into her eyes with a yearning that was unutterable (even in German) and she gazing right back at him in blus.h.i.+ng rapture and seeming to say to herself:--”Just think! He belongs to me, whiskers and all!” It was almost enough to induce one to get married.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”_--Whiskers and all_”]
They were drifting so far above the earth that they forgot to be seasick. The other honeymooners took to their cabins.
Is there anything so perverse, so whimsical, so tantalising, and so full of surprises as our old friend the weather? When the warm suns.h.i.+ne trickled down our backs in Naples we rejoiced and said, ”At last we have found summer.” We looked forward to three balmy days on the blue Mediterranean, and even began to remember where we had packed the summer clothes at the bottom of the trunk. During the first night out we pa.s.sed between Scylla and Charybdis. They sound like a team of acrobats, but really they are the promontories guarding the narrow Strait of Messina. It was pitch dark when we pa.s.sed, and we had turned in, but we read about them in Baedeker next morning and were much gratified to know that we had been so near them. Not that we can describe them, but hereafter we can refer to them.
After we rounded the south coast of Italy and pointed for Alexandria, we ran into a mess of weather that had lost its bearings and wandered down from the north Atlantic. The wind blew a gale. We sat huddled in our heaviest wraps. The good s.h.i.+p pitched and pitched, and then pitched some more. And this was the Mediterranean! We had promised ourselves to lie basking in the gentle warmth and count the lateen sails as they went drifting by. We had expected to see the whole surface of the Mediterranean almost as busy as State and Madison, or Broadway and Forty-second--craft of all descriptions criss-crossing the blue ripples, a continuous aquatic bioscope. As a matter of fact, we rode for three days across waters as lonesome and empty as those of the north Pacific, where the course is so clear that the captain, after putting to sea, can tie the wheel and go below and play dominoes.
Our chilly voyage from Naples to Alexandria has suggested a few reflections on travel in general. Why the Anglo-Saxon pa.s.sion for gadding about? Cairo to-day is absolutely congested with Americans.
The continent of Europe is two days away by speedy boat; Paris is two days more, and London less than a week by ordinary modes of travel.
America lies three thousand miles beyond the most remote European city and across stormy waters, and yet America seems to claim a plurality of all the transients. If an Egyptian began to pack up his things to take a four thousand mile jump to look at the stock yards of Chicago or the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, his friends would have him consigned to some Mohammedan inst.i.tution for the treatment of those mentally deranged.
But the Americans are here in flocks, droves, coveys--decrepit old people; blooming debutantes, boys just out of college, tired-out business men, women who have been studying Egypt at their clubs, and, of course, the 8000 (more or less) newly married couples. And most of them are working like farm hands to generate some real enthusiasm for tombs and hieroglyphics. Hard pulling, but they will make it if their legs hold out.
What is the charm--the siren call of Egypt--that has lured these thousands so far away from home and friends? It is not climate, for we have a better climate of our own. If the traveller seeks merely warmth and suns.h.i.+ne, he can find them in Southern California, the West Indies, or at Palm Beach. It is not a genuine and deep-seated interest in ancient records, inasmuch as ninety per cent. of the fresh arrivals from America do not know the difference between a cartouche and a scarab. I know, because I looked it up yesterday. It is not a sn.o.bbish desire to rub up against the patchouli and rice powder of European hothouse aristocracy, because nearly all of the Americans flock by themselves and make disparaging remarks about other nationalities, and vice versa.
No doubt the one great reward of the persistent traveller is to find new varieties of his fellow man. Cairo is the _pousse cafe_ of humanity--probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. The guide books talk about rock tombs and mosques, but the travellers find their real enjoyment in the bazaars and along the crowded streets and on the sheer banks of the Nile, which stand out as an animated panorama for hundreds of miles. The first hour in Cairo is compensation for many an hour of tedious travel. Once more in the suns.h.i.+ne, the soft but gamey flavour of Orientalism soothing the nostrils, a lively chatter of unfamiliar languages; an interweaving throng of turbans, gowns, fezes, swarthy faces; the pattering hoof-beats of spangled donkeys and the stealthy sweep of dignified camels--so much to see that one needs four pairs of eyes to catch all parts of the picture and at least a half-dozen fountain pens to keep score of the attractions.
The first hour in a new land! It is that which repays the patient traveller. It gives him the gasping surprises and the twinges of delight which are not to be found in southern California or at Palm Beach. And it is the very first hour which is memorable and crowded with large emotions. Because, after about two hours, the American has adapted himself to his new environment, and is beginning to be blase.
Along about the second day, when the guide attempts to dazzle him by showing another variety of bazaar he murmurs ”Chestnut” and suggests going back to the hotel.
It may afford consolation to the large number of people who remain at home to know that only about five per cent. of foreign travel is really worth while. Mr. Emerson's beautiful law of compensation holds true in regard to travel just as it applies to all other things that are coveted by mortals. You must pay for what you get, not in money alone, but in hards.h.i.+ps, annoyances, and long periods of dumb, patient waiting.
The better half of one of the honeymoon combinations that came with us from Naples told a plaintive story. She had been travelling for three weeks in weather that had been a _crescendo_ of the disagreeable. All the way across the Atlantic she had been desperately ill in her cabin.
In London they found fogs. In Paris it rained. And now they were fighting their way through a storm in the Mediterranean.
Notwithstanding all this, she was trying to be cheerful, for she believed that she would like Egypt.
The blessedness of travel is that when the sun comes from behind the cloud and a new city begins to arise from the sea, we forget all the gloomy days on board s.h.i.+p, all the crampy rides in the stuffy railway compartments, all the overcharges and vexations and hara.s.sments and get ready to tear ash.o.r.e and explore a new wonderland.
Who can forget the first hour of the first railway ride through rural England? The storybook pictures that you have seen all your life come true at last.
Or the first hour in London? That tall thing looming right in front of you is really the Nelson monument and not a papier mache deception put up for the entertainment of tourists.
In the first hour of 'rickshaw riding in j.a.pan I saw so much that was funny and fantastic and nerve kinking that at the end of the ride I wanted to pay the coolie for a year instead of an hour.
And how about the first hour up the Grand Ca.n.a.l in Venice? Or the first hour in the tangled bedlam of Canton? Or the first hour in front of Shepheard's Hotel, here in Cairo, when it really seems that a wonderful pageant has been ordered for your special joy? With bulging eyes and reeling senses you view the changing kaleidoscope and ask, in the language of Mr. Peasley, ”Is this on the level?”
Yes, travel is hard work, and your true traveller is a mighty grumbler, but he goes on buoyed always by the hope of another ”first hour.”
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