Part 5 (1/2)
”So long as they treat their womenfolk like that they'll never rise to anything better,” he says emphatically. ”The higher the civilisation of a nation is the higher the position of its women. A nation of men who ride and let the women carry the burdens is bound to be rotten and flabby.”
Next there pa.s.ses across our window-frame a flock of goats, but they are not much like those we know--they are dark brown and black, with thick rough coats and cheeky tufted tails; numbers of kids dance up and down the steep sides of the tow-path after the manner of kids all the world over. A small boy, dressed in what appears to be a striped flannel night-s.h.i.+rt, with a tiny skull-cap on his head, is driving them. He pulls his single garment up to his waist as he dances and pirouettes as if the joy of living were almost too much for him. He is enveloped in a cloud of dust raised by the goats, but he s.n.a.t.c.hes handfuls of the dust from the ground and flings it in the air around as if he could never get enough of it!
”The Lady of Shalott,” in Tennyson's poem, who watched in her mirror all who went down to Camelot, cannot ever have seen anything half so interesting as this.
Presently we meet a long string of fine-looking camels, one of them pure white; they are fastened by a connecting rope and so covered with loads of bristling twigs that each looks like a walking bush, out of which the great padded feet are planted with deliberate steps and the haughty heads swaying at the ends of the long necks stick out. It is the scrub of the cotton bush that they are carrying; you will see fields of it presently, some of it bursting into fluffy pods, for cotton growing is one of the most extensive and profitable of Egyptian industries. The twigs and branches are used as fuel by the people, who have a happy knack of letting nothing be wasted.
”I never!” exclaims the American. ”If that isn't like them!” We are overtaking a second string of camels, precisely similar to the first, and similarly laden, stepping gingerly and protestingly in the opposite direction from the first, having just pa.s.sed them. ”Why couldn't they arrange things better?” demands the American. ”If one lot is going this way and the other that, an exchange would have saved time and labour.”
In America labour is costly and all sorts of inventions for saving time have been invented; in this eastern land time is of no value at all, and a man working all day in the fields is content to earn a s.h.i.+lling.
Perhaps the contrast with their own country is the reason of the fascination Egypt has for Americans!
What are those strange-looking beasts mincing along like gigantic peac.o.c.ks? As we draw nearer we see that they are camels too, each bearing a load of sword-bladed leaves, which hang down over their hindquarters exactly like the folded fan-tail of a peac.o.c.k. Upon my word I never noticed it before, but a camel walks just like a peac.o.c.k, with the same hesitating ”Don't-care-a-hang-for-you” stride. The bundles so arranged hide the animals' hind legs and bring out the resemblance.
But what is it they are carrying? Not maize stalks this time, nor bushy cotton twigs, for these stalks are a dull crimson at the upper end. It is sugar-cane, which grows in quant.i.ties here, and forms a more profitable crop than maize. You will see it sold at the stations; the people buy it, and, breaking off a joint, eat it with pleasure.
We cannot tear ourselves away from this fascinating window even for a moment; far in the distance across the green fields and waving palm trees we see glimpses of the desert, looking pinkish-yellow, and rising up in it, changing with every mile we travel, are many pyramids, not only those famous ones at Gizeh we visited yesterday, but others stretching farther and farther away. You will notice that the favourite colour for the dress of the peasants, or fellaheen, as they are called, is a glorious blue, but that all the women are in black--most unsuitable of hues, as they live and move and have their being amid drab-coloured dust; khaki would be much better.
As our breakfast, though better than that in France, was nothing so very wonderful, we begin to feel hungry, and are ready to go along early to the luncheon-car; we had a good dinner in that one on the train coming up from Port Said to Cairo, and antic.i.p.ate something of the same kind.
As we get up the American remarks casually, ”Best pull in your belts and have a smoke--there isn't any.”
No luncheon-car! No means of getting any kind of refreshment on the train! And we, having started at eight, are in for a journey of fourteen hours! Lively this! It is one of the little incidental discomforts of travel! The American is in the same plight himself. But he found out soon after we started that there was no restaurant-car; it only runs three times a week, for the season hasn't begun yet!
We call the Egyptian attendant to find out if there is any prospect of buying anything on the way. He stands grinning very affably but doesn't understand a word of English. Presently, however, he seems to understand, and dashes off, to return triumphantly with a feather-brush in his hand with which he violently flops the seats of the carriages and all our personal belongings until we are choked and smothered with the dust.
In English fas.h.i.+on we have kept the windows open, not realising that in this country it is impossible, and that slowly we have been silted up with a layer of fine soft dust; but we didn't feel the inconvenience of it much until this idiot stirred it up and made it unendurable.
Having accomplished this great feat he stands still, grinning and holding out a broad palm. Officials on the trains are probably forbidden to utter the wicked word ”Baks.h.i.+sh,” meaning tips, but they can ask quite as well without it.
Having got rid of him, we turn in despair to the station at which we have just pulled up. There is a fine mingled crowd on the platform.
Lying in the sun, awaiting their master's pleasure, are two beautifully kept white donkeys, with their hides clipped in neat patterns, very superior creatures indeed to what we know as donkeys, more like mules in size. A group of children, fascinated by our strange faces, draw nearer and gaze their fill unwinkingly; one poor little mite of about four has a ma.s.s of flies crawling all over its face, especially about the eyes.
It never attempts to brush them off, for long habit has made it callous.
Formerly very many children were so afflicted, and the crawling flies, carrying disease, made them blind; but since the British took the matter in hand the evil is much less. Yet so indifferent are the mothers, that in many cases even when lotion is supplied free for the children's faces they will not trouble to use it!
There is nothing eatable being sold in the station except fruit, but there seems plenty of that, and by the time the train starts again we find ourselves with a fine a.s.sortment in rich colours of purple and orange and scarlet. First there is a packet of dates which looks all right on the top, but turning them out we find the purple side of one had been placed carefully uppermost, and the rest are all hard, green, and unripe, not in the least like the sweet juicy dates we are accustomed to. The attendant, who is watching, scoops them up and devours them as if he hadn't been fed for a month. Then comes a bit of sugar-cane, stringy and sickly, which makes us feel as if we had bitten into a piece of sweet wood when we try it. That great purple pomegranate is, like all pomegranates, unsatisfactory and full of seeds, and though the little green limes are refres.h.i.+ng for the moment while we suck the juice, after a while our lips begin to smart as if they were raw, and we both keep on furtively wiping them. It is a tantalising feast, and the American smiles serenely as he smokes in his corner and refuses to have anything to do with it. The only thing we do get out of it are some really good green figs, which cannot, however, be eaten without shameless messiness, as they are so difficult to peel.
When the afternoon sun grows scorchingly hot the grinning attendant proves himself for once useful, by showing us that we can pull up sun-shutters with wooden slats outside the gla.s.s ones. He has indeed been anxious to pull them up all round the compartment ever since we started, and nothing but physical force has restrained him, for he cannot conceive how anyone could want to look out. Even now we keep down those on the sunless side, which grieves him deeply.
So all the afternoon we watch the glorious scenes changing in sunlight; we see the sailing boats, with their tapering white wings, laden with cargoes of straw, drifting up the ca.n.a.l, driven by the strong north wind; we pa.s.s innumerable villages, and some larger towns, where market-day has attracted vast crowds.
The small villages are indeed wonderful, and the first one excited us all three so much that we had to hurry to the window. Imagine a colony of last year's swallows' nests under the eaves, or a collection of ruined pigsties and sheds, only they are not ruins at all, but living, thriving villages with healthy people in them. The houses are all made of mud; a few are fas.h.i.+oned out of mud bricks, but many are merely of mud stuck and moulded together as a child would form a mud house with his hands. The doors and the holes for windows are crooked and lop-sided as they would be in a childish attempt. The roof is covered over with an untidy thatch of straw, thrown on anyhow, with piles of cotton scrub on the top of it. This scrub is for firing, and it is kept up there in the Egyptian's only storehouse; it is backed up by cakes of dried buffalo dung used for the same purpose. As it never rains the fuel is quite safe from damp.
Every man builds his own house as it pleases him, without regard to the style or position of his neighbour's, consequently the streets are narrow crooked pa.s.sages of uneven levels; there is not a green thing in them, and the people live in dust and eat it and wallow in it. Here and there you can see a tray of flat cakes pushed out into the midst of the dust to bake in the sun and form a playground for the flies and the microbes, for the Egyptian has no respect for microbes, he is germ-proof; for generations he and his forefathers have drunk the Nile water, unfiltered and carried in goat-skins not too well cured. Yet the people are happy and the children apparently a gay set of youngsters.
Little Ga.s.sim or Achmed, in the single unchanged and unwashed garment that covers their little brown bodies, dance and roll and sing and drive the loathly black buffaloes to the water and eat sc.r.a.ps of sugar-cane, and are as happy as the day is long. They work hard, it is true, from the time they can toddle, but so does everyone else, and all the animals do their share of toil, day in and day out. ”I can't understand why they don't find a way of harnessing the turkeys,” says the American sarcastically as we pa.s.s a lordly camel, stepping, with protest in every movement, alongside a st.u.r.dy bullock who helps to drag a primitive plough. The plough merely scratches the surface of the ground, but that is enough, for the Egyptian will never go deeper than he need.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A WATER-CARRIER.]