A Journey to Central Africa: Life and Landscapes From Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile
9781465686572
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I left Smyrna in the Lloyd steamer, Conte Stürmer, on the first day of November, 1851. We passed the blue Sporadic Isles—Cos, and Rhodes, and Karpathos—and crossing the breadth of the Eastern Mediterranean, favored all the way by unruffled seas, and skies of perfect azure, made the pharos of Alexandria on the evening of the 3d. The entrance to the harbor is a narrow and difficult passage through reefs, and no vessel dares to attempt it at night, but with the first streak of dawn we were boarded by an Egyptian pilot, and the rising sun lighted up for us the white walls of the city, the windmills of the Ras el-Tin, or Cape of Figs, and the low yellow sand-hills in which I recognized Africa—for they were prophetic of the desert behind them. We entered the old harbor between the island of Pharos and the main land (now connected by a peninsular strip, on which the Frank quarter is built), soon after sunrise. The water swarmed with boats before the anchor dropped, and the Egyptian health officer had no sooner departed than we were boarded by a crowd of dragomen, hotel runners, and boatmen. A squinting Arab, who wore a white dress and red sash, accosted me in Italian, offering to conduct me to the Oriental Hotel. A German and a Smyrniote, whose acquaintance I had made during the voyage, joined me in accepting his services, and we were speedily boated ashore. We landed on a pile of stones, not far from a mean-looking edifice called the Custom-House. Many friends were there to welcome us, and I shall never forget the eagerness with which they dragged us ashore, and the zeal with which they pommelled one another in their generous efforts to take charge of our effects. True, we could have wished that their faces had been better washed, their baggy trousers less ragged and their red caps less greasy, and we were perhaps ungrateful in allowing our Arab to rate them soundly and cuff the ears of the more obstreperous, before our trunks and carpet-bags could be portioned among them. At the Custom-House we were visited by two dark gentlemen, in turbans and black flowing robes, who passed our baggage without scrutiny, gently whispering in our ears, “backsheesh,”—a word which we then heard for the first time, but which was to be the key-note of much of our future experience. The procession of porters was then set in motion, and we passed through several streets of whitewashed two story houses, to the great square of the Frank quarter, which opened before us warm and brilliant in the morning sunshine. The principal hotels and consulates front on this square The architecture is Italian, with here and there a dash of Saracenic, in the windows and doorways, especially in new buildings. A small obelisk of alabaster, a present from Mohammed Ali, stands in the centre, on a pedestal which was meant for a fountain, but has no water. All this I noted, as well as a crowd of donkeys and donkey-boys, and a string of laden camels, on our way to the hotel, which we found to be a long and not particularly clean edifice, on the northern side of the square. The English and French steamers had just arrived, and no rooms were to be had until after the departure of the afternoon boat for Cairo. Our dragoman, who called himself Ibrahim, suggested a bath as the most agreeable means of passing the intermediate time.
