Cities Of The Dawn Part 7

CHAPTER XVI.

THE RIVER NILE.

At length I gaze on the Nile-that marvellous river, the sources of which, though many have tried to find them, have only been discovered in our day. The history of Egypt is the oldest known to us. A large portion of its history can be constructed from the native records of the Egyptians, and those records are all to be found on the banks of the Nile. Four thousand four hundred years before Christ, Mena, the first King of Egypt of whom we have a record, founded Memphis, having turned aside the course of the Nile and established a temple service there. In the reign of Ammenehat, 2,300 years before Christ, special attention was paid to the rise of the Nile, and ca.n.a.ls were made and sluices dug for irrigating the country; the rise of the Nile was marked on wells at Semnah, about thirty-five miles above the second cataract, and the inscriptions are visible to this day. A thousand years later Seti I. is said to have built a ca.n.a.l from the Nile to the Red Sea. Under the Roman Emperor Trajan the Nile and Red Sea Ca.n.a.l was reopened. Egypt proper terminates at Syene: the territory south of that town and each side of the new Nile is called Nubia. All Egypt depends upon the Nile; where the Nile does not flow all is barrenness-nothing but sand and rock.

The area of the land in Egypt available for cultivation is about 11,500 square miles; the Delta contains about 6,500 square miles, and the Nile Valley about 5,000. The country seems to have been taken possession of by a people from the East about 5,000 years before Christ. They found there an aboriginal people, with a dark skin and complexion. The Egyptians generally called their land black (Kanit), and the term is appropriate, if we consider the dark rich colour of the cultivated land.

In the Bible Egypt is known as Ham. All nations have held the land, and have sent their people thither. But it is a curious fact that the physical type of the Egyptian fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties.

The river Nile is one of the largest rivers in the world. It is formed by the junction of two great arms, the Blue Nile and the White; one rises in Abyssinia, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet above the level of the sea; the other, the true Nile, has its fountain-head in the Victoria Nyanza, a huge basin far below the level of the country. The course of the Nile has been explored about 3,500 miles. From Khartoum to Cairo the Nile falls about 400 yards; its width in its widest part is about 1,100 yards. After entering Egypt, the Nile flows in a steady stream always to the north, and deposits the mud which is the life of Egypt. The breadth of the Nile Valley varies from four to ten miles in Nubia, and from fifteen to thirty in Egypt. The width of the area of cultivated land on each bank of the river in Egypt is never more than eight or nine miles.

The inundation caused by the descent of rain on the Abyssinian mountains commences at the cataracts in June, and in July makes a great show. The rise of the Nile continues till the end of September when it remains stationary about three weeks. In October it rises again, and attains its highest level. When I saw it in November the waters had subsided, and the peasants were hard at work, making the best of their opportunity.

The ground was still too wet for ploughing, but gangs were turning up the soil with hoes, and sowing the seed. It seemed to be simple work, under the blue sky and the bright sun. There was no need for high farming; Nature did everything, and the toil of the labourer was richly rewarded.

It made me think of what Douglas Jerrold said of Australia-that it was a country so fertile that 'if you but tickle her with a hoe she laughs with a harvest.' And the harvest is wonderful. Commercially, the Nile is a fortune to Cairo. It is estimated that if all the land watered by the Nile were thoroughly cultivated, Egypt, for its size, would be one of the richest countries in the world. Till the Cairo Waterworks were established, the people of Cairo depended solely on the water of the Nile; and in Cairo, as in Jerusalem, the water-carrier is still to be seen, bearing on his back a large black goatskin filled with water from the river. At the Cairo railway-station he is always in evidence watering the platform and keeping down the dust. The short legs of the goat cut off at the knee stick out in a most grotesque manner when the skin is full and round. The neck forms the spout, and is held firmly in the left hand, to enable the carrier to sprinkle the contents where desired. The weight of some of these large skins must be very considerable. The skins used for wine are identical in form with these.

In ancient times there were near Cairo no less than seven branches of the Nile; only two now remain. Very busy are the people who have to do with the Nile in the vicinity of Cairo. A large open s.p.a.ce at the end of one of the bridges is selected for the collection of the octroi duties levied upon all food and produce entering the city. Here the fellaheen a.s.semble daily, with their camels and a.s.ses laden with produce, or with droves of buffaloes and oxen, and flocks of sheep and goats. The scene there is almost picturesque and animated. Another bridge carried over a wide ca.n.a.l, which forms an important backwater to the hill, connects the western sh.o.r.e. From this point roads radiate north, west, and south, each shaded by avenues of the acacia, so common in Egypt. The Ghizeh road is the southern one, following the course of the river, always alive with boats with large triangular sails, always redolent of busy life.

Egypt without the Nile would be a desert. 'Anyone,' says old Herodotus, the father of history, the truth of whose narrative every day becomes more apparent to everyone who sees Egypt, without having heard a word about it before, 'must perceive, if he has only common powers of observation, that the Egypt to which the Greeks go in their s.h.i.+ps is an acquired country, the gift of the Nile.'

The prosperity of the country depends upon its inundation: if it should prove excessive, and becomes what is termed a high Nile, towns and villages are sometimes swept away; if it should not rise above a certain height, it is called a low Nile-a large area will be left uncovered, and deficient crops will be the result. Fortunately, a low Nile is of rare occurrence. At one time, the only way of going up the Nile was by the dahabeah, a kind of yacht fitted up for the convenience of travellers, an expensive and dilatory mode of conveyance. Now Mr. John Cook has a line of fine steamers, and the Nile and the journey up and down is done as safely and expeditiously as the trip by the _Clacton Belle_ steamers up and down the Thames. The voyage to a.s.souan and back is done in three weeks. Facilities are afforded the traveller for the extension of his voyage to the second cataract.

Of course, the ancient Egyptians wors.h.i.+pped the Nile. Hapi, the G.o.d of the Nile, is represented wearing a cl.u.s.ter of flowers on his head; he is coloured red and green, probably to represent the colours of the water of the Nile immediately before and just after the beginning of the inundation. An ill.u.s.tration of this wors.h.i.+p occurs upon a wall in Thebes, where a priest, in his painted robe, is offering incense, while others play on a harp, a guitar, and two reed pipes. This is the song of one of the priests who lived 1,400 years before Christ:

'Adoration to the Nile! Hail, to thee, O Nile! who manifesteth thyself over this land, and comest to give life to Egypt; mysterious is the coming forth from the darkness, watering the orchards created by Ra (the sun-G.o.d), to cause all the cattle to live. Thou givest the earth to drink, inexhaustible one. Thou createst the corn; thou bringest forth the barley, causing the temples to keep holiday. If thou ceasest thy toil and thy work, then all that exists is in anguish. . . . None [Picture: A Tourist Streamer-Cook's Nile Flotilla] know the place where he dwells; none discover his retreat by the aid of a written spell. All is changed by the inundation. It is a healing balm for all mankind. A festal song is raised for the harp with the accompaniments of the hand,' etc.

In a valuable work on the Nile, written by Wallis Budge, Acting a.s.sistant Secretary in the department of Egyptian and a.s.syrian Antiquities, British Museum, and published by Thomas Cook and Son, we have a beautiful ill.u.s.tration of the practical side of Egyptian theology, written by a scribe called Ani, who gives his son advice for behaviour in all the varied scenes of life. It is taken from one of the papyri in the Egyptian Museum at Ghizeh:

'If a man cometh to seek thy counsel, let this drive thee to look for information.

'Enter not into the house of another; if a man asks thee into his house, it is an honour for thee.

'Spy not upon the acts of another from thy house.

'Be not the first to enter or leave an a.s.sembly, that thy name be not tarnished.

'The sanctuary of G.o.d abhorreth noisy declamations. Pray humbly, and with a loving heart whose words are spoken silently; G.o.d will then protect thee, and hear thy pet.i.tions, and accept thy offerings.

'Consider what hath been. Set before thee a correct rule of life as an example to follow. The messenger of death will come to thee, as to others, to carry thee away; yea, he standeth ready. Words will profit thee nothing, for he cometh-he is ready. Say not, "I am a child; wouldst thou in very truth bear me away?" Thou knowest not how thou wilt die. Death cometh to meet the babe at his mother's breast, even as he meeteth the old man who hath finished his course.

'Take heed with all diligence that thou woundest no man with thy words.

'Keep one faithful steward only and watch his deeds, and let thy hand protect the man who hath charge of thy house and property.

'The man who hath received much and giveth little is as one who committeth an injury.

'Be not ungrateful to G.o.d, for He giveth thee existence.

'Sit not while another standeth, if he be older than thou or if he is thy superior.

'Whosoever speaketh evil receiveth no good.'

CHAPTER XVII.

THE RETURN TO Ma.r.s.eILLES.

What memories crowd on me as I step into the tug which is to take me and the rest of us, in a confused ma.s.s, stowed away amidst the luggage, to the Custom House at Ma.r.s.eilles, a fine, handsome building, apparently in the very heart of the town, with s.h.i.+pping of many nations all around; for has not Ma.r.s.eilles in our time come to be the headquarters of all those who, fearing the Bay of Biscay, have a mind to make their way along the historic sh.o.r.es, and on the blue waters of the Mediterranean? As I leave the Custom House, a friend says to me: 'I have soon got out. You see, there is nothing lost by civility. I took my luggage to one of the officers, took off my hat to him, and he came directly and let me go through.' I replied to the effect that I was more successful, as I had been out a quarter of an hour before my friend, and I never took off my hat, but simply held out my Gladstone, which confirms me in my original idea, which, I mention for the benefit of travellers, that the real secret of getting one's examination over is simply to have nothing for the Custom House officer to search. [Picture: The New Harbour, Ma.r.s.eilles. From Ca.s.sell's 'Cities of the World'] Not that I deprecate civility; the more I travel in France, the more I appreciate it. We English are a grand people-there are no better men on the face of the earth-but we might be a little more civil to one another.

And now I am in Ma.r.s.eilles, a clean, handsome, flouris.h.i.+ng city, with an enormous population and an enormous trade; and naturally I think of the time-now more than a century ago-when the Ma.r.s.eillais set out for Paris.

'The notablest of all the moving phenomena of that time,' writes Carlyle, 'is that of Barbaroux's "six hundred Ma.r.s.eillais who know how to die." A black-browed ma.s.s, full of grim fire,' got together no one knows how-from the _forcats_, say some. As they march through Lyons, the people shut their shops in fear. 'The Thought which works voiceless in this black-browed ma.s.s, an inspired Tyrtaeus, Colonel Rouget de Lille, has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or March of the Ma.r.s.eillaise: luckiest musical-compet.i.tion ever promulgated. The sound of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins; and whole Armies and a.s.semblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot, and Devil.'

Ma.r.s.eilles is a far n.o.bler city than it appears to the tourist as he rushes from the train to catch the steamer waiting to bear him far away.

High above the city, on a precipitous rock, from which you have a grand view of the place, and the harbour, and the far-off Mediterranean, stands the old Cathedral of Ma.r.s.eilles-Notre Dame de la Garde-a n.o.ble Romanesque [Picture: Ma.r.s.eilles] building, with a gilt figure of the Virgin at the top, her arms extended as if to protect the city. You reach it either by a winding road or a hydraulic lift, for the use of which you pay a trifle. It was there the ancient inhabitants kept watch over sea and land. In time a chapel was erected on its site, which became a place of pilgrimage for mariners and fishermen. The present magnificent building was erected in 1864. If only for the view, the visitor is well repaid for his trouble. Hardly can you enjoy a more magnificent prospect, embracing the fair valley of the Rhone, the white houses of Ma.r.s.eilles stretching up the plain, the gray mountains of Spain in the far distance, the dazzling blue of the Gulf of Lyons, the dark towers of the fort, with the rocky, picturesque islands, with the Chateau d'If, whence, according to Dumas, Monte Cristo made his marvellous escape, beyond. In the city itself, on a hill, whence you have also a fine view, is a grand new cathedral of imposing form and structure. It was Sunday when I visited it; but there were not many people in it, though more in the heart of the city, where I tried to enter a church, it was so crowded that there really was no standing-room. But even in Ma.r.s.eilles you must be cautious when the east wind blows. It was there Dr. Punshon, the greatest Wesleyan orator of our time, caught the cold which laid the foundation of the illness that ultimately carried him off.

It has a very ancient history, this n.o.ble city of Ma.r.s.eilles. It owes its origin to a tribe of Ionian Greeks, who, about 600 B.C., there founded a town that ultimately became the head of a Roman province. In the contest between Pompey and Caesar, the town wished to remain neutral, but Caesar had need of gold, vessels, and harbours, and scrupled not for a moment to lay siege to it, which was maintained against him during the whole of his long and severe warfare with Afranius and Petreius in Spain, and was not taken till after the capture or dispersion of their legions.

The treatment of the town was so merciless, that from thenceforward, by Strabo's account, it only preserved vestiges of its former prosperity and wealth. However, Ma.r.s.eilles in time recovered from the blow, and chiefly by means of the book trade. It seems to have become a miniature Athens.

France was especially distinguished by its apt.i.tude and zeal for Roman learning. At Ma.r.s.eilles there was an inst.i.tution for Greek education and literature, which was visited, even in preference to Athens, by men of the highest rank. A large inst.i.tution of the same kind existed at Autun, and Tacitus calls that city the princ.i.p.al seat of Latin culture. With respect to the book trade of Lyons, we have the testimony of the younger Pliny, when he states that he learned, with some surprise, from a friend that his own discourses and writings were publicly sold there.

In the time of the Crusades Ma.r.s.eilles became a busy place. It is now wholly given up to trade, and flourishes accordingly. Since 1850 it has become the head packet-station on the Mediterranean, and more and more frequented by English pa.s.sengers, who can stay at gorgeous hotels, or more economical ones, according to the state of their finances. If they only stop the day, they cannot do better than dine at the buffet attached to the railway-station, unless they wish to partake of the famous _bouillabaisse_ of which Thackeray sung, and to which my friend-my lamented friend-George Augustus Sala, devoted many a learned paragraph in his 'Table Talk' in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ and elsewhere. Woe is me! I quite forgot all about it till just as I had to take the train to carry me away. I shall never cease to regret that forgetfulness on my part. It may be that I may live to repair it!

There was a time when this delicious delicacy could be had in Paris.

Some of us can still remember Thackeray's beautiful ballad:

'A street there is in Paris famous, For which no rhyme our language yields; Rue Neuve des Pet.i.ts Champs its name is, The New Street of the Little Fields.

'And here's our wish, not rich and splendid, But still in comfortable ease, The which in youth I oft attended To eat a bowl of _bouillabaise_.'

But Ma.r.s.eilles lives on other things than its _bouillabaisse_-a rich soup or stew of all sorts of fish-not to be flippantly eaten, not to be lightly forgotten. Some 2,000 vessels fill its capacious harbour. In its lofty bonded warehouses are stored away the merchandise of many climes, and its soap-works and sugar-refineries are on an extensive scale. In short, it is the Liverpool of France; but, alas for the pride of the Mersey, how much cleaner, brighter, grander! how much purer the smokeless atmosphere! how much lovelier the outlook over sea and land!

It was there that in 1797 that great French statesman, M. Adolphe Thiers, was born. That acute judge of men and books, Abraham Hayward, who was at Paris before Thiers had risen, as he did at a later time, describes him, in 1844, as 'a little, insignificant man, till he gets animated, but wonderfully clever.'

The one drawback to Ma.r.s.eilles, the only cloud in its blue sky, is the drink; and I am glad to find that there is a good man there, Pastor Lenoir, who has taken up temperance work, and has carried it on very successfully. Last year, for a novelty, in Ma.r.s.eilles he got up a temperance fete, which was a great success. During the last twenty years drinking has greatly increased, and the drink-shops as well. In 1876 there were in Ma.r.s.eilles 2,460 drink-shops; now there are 4,205-far too many, when we remember that the town has only 600 bakers' shops and only 500 schools. As a consequence, Dr. Rey shows that insanity has greatly increased, and that in the hospital of St. Pierre the proportion of insane patients whose disease can be traced to alcohol has increased from 15 per cent. to 31 per cent. of the patients admitted. 'The chief factor,' he writes, 'of these mental diseases is alcohol, and especially when to its intoxicating effects is added that of absinthe, and other vegetable substances which produce epilepsy and other similar evils.' In this respect, Ma.r.s.eilles teaches us a lesson which it is well to remember at home.

In another way Ma.r.s.eilles is a lesson in favour of temperance work. In the district of Villette the drinking cla.s.ses chiefly dwell. It is a narrow, dirty court, opening on a series of alleys; in the centre runs an open gutter-the only drainage of the place-while on either side are small one-storied houses, called _cabanons_, let for about eight s.h.i.+llings a month. They are let to the poorest of the poor, and abound with dirt and large families and drunkenness; the three in France, as in England, generally go hand in hand. The air is stifling, the odours insupportable; and when the sun pours down in the middle of summer, and the hot sirocco-like wind blows, the condition of matters is unbearable.

As I write I see the people of Ma.r.s.eilles, in fear of the plague, will not permit travellers from the East, under any pretence whatever, to land there. They had much better look at home, and reform their own sanitary arrangements in such districts as Villette. It is there the good Protestant pastor, connected, I believe, with the McAll Mission in Paris, labours unweariedly with a band of fellow labourers as devoted as himself. I give the story of one of his rescued men, as an ill.u.s.tration of labour-life in the fair city of Ma.r.s.eilles:

'Thibaut is a strong, muscular man, who worked as a docker, and could carry 140 kilos of wool on his shoulders from six o'clock to twelve o'clock without taking rest. He was an inveterate drunkard, and had on one occasion swallowed _thirty-five gla.s.ses of absinthe_, _raw_, _in a day_. For thirty years he had never set foot in a church, and his wife had died from the effects of his ill-treatment. Once, in a fit of drunkenness, he threw all that was left of furniture in their miserable home into the street, including the stove, which was alight, and on which their bit of dinner was cooking. He dragged his wife when ill from her bed by her hair, and threw her into the street. The day of her death he was found drunk in a public-house, and he followed the remains to the grave reeling. He lived in the famous "Grand Salon," in a miserable hut of planks, the most filthy hovel imaginable. Thibaut was not over-scrupulous as to how he got the drink, without which he could not exist. There are many ways in which a docker can steal from the cargoes he discharges without being found out. For instance, there is a way of letting fall a case of wine or cognac, so as to break one bottle, the contents of which then can be quickly absorbed. Like most French workmen, he wore trousers very baggy at the top, and tied round the ankles. Such trousers can be made to hold about four pounds of tea or coffee, or such like, and many a time Thibaut has walked past the searchers at the dock-gates with his stock of groceries, and has never been detected.'

He was nearly falling a victim to his drunken habits more than once.

They are now rejoicing over him at Ma.r.s.eilles, for he that was dead is now alive again. The lost one is found.

If the traveller has time to spare, let him by all means pay Arles a visit, where there is a fine Roman amphitheatre, or rather the remains of one. Very early Arles became distinguished in Church history-I was going to say Christian history; but, alas, at that time the bitter disputes and dissensions in the Church bore little traces of the teachings or the example of Christ. In A.D. 314, when, as Gibbon writes, Constantine was the protector, rather than the proselyte of Christianity, he referred the African controversy to the Council of Arles, in which the Bishops of York, of Treves, of Milan, and of Carthage, met as friends and brethren to debate, in their native tongue, on the common interests of the Latin or Western Church. One ancient writer says there were 600 bishops there, but this is probably an exaggerated account of their number. The subject, of course, was the nature of the Trinity, the discussions on which, inflamed with pa.s.sion, had filled the Churches with fury, and sedition, and schism-a fury which excites the wonder of the modern less heated Christian Church.

It was at Arles, at a later period, Constantine repaired to celebrate in its palace, with intemperate luxury, a vain and ostentatious triumph-his military success against the Goths. It was at Arles, the seat at that time of government and commerce, A.D. 418, that the Emperor Honorius, in a solemn address, filled with the strongest a.s.surances of that paternal affection which, as Gibbon writes, sovereigns so often express but rarely feel, convened an annual a.s.sembly consisting of the Pretorian Prefect of the Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one consular and six presidents; of the magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of sixty cities; and of an indefinite number of leading landed proprietors. They were empowered to interpret the laws of their sovereign, to expose the wishes and grievances of their const.i.tuents, to moderate the excessive or unequal weight of taxes, and to deliberate on every subject of local and national importance that would tend to the restoration of peace and prosperity to the seven provinces. It was a step in the right direction.

It was a step that might have tended, if universally followed, at any rate, to r.e.t.a.r.d the decay and decline of the Roman Empire. But the Emperor found that the people were not ready to accept the proffered boon. A fine of three, or even five, ounces of gold was imposed on the absent representatives. Honorius was in advance of his age-in politics as great a blunder as being behind it. It was not till centuries of oppression and misgovernment that the rights of man were practically won for France, and that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity became the watchwords of the people.

Arles was very early peopled by a colony from Central Italy, and very remarkable is the physique of its inhabitants. The late Lord Malmesbury, Lord Derby's Minister of Foreign Affairs, writes: 'The women are remarkably handsome, but entirely of the Etruscan type, with magnificent dark hair and eyes, good teeth, and fair complexions. They have beautiful round throats, set on fine shoulders and busts, but their legs are much too short for their general build.' I am, of course, not a judge of such matters, and I prefer to copy from Lord Malmesbury, who, as a Foreign Minister and a frequent guest both at the Courts of England and France, and a high-born aristocrat as well, had opportunities for the pleasing study of woman far superior to any possessed by an ordinary scribe. He had a good opportunity of seeing the population, as it was a fete day when he favoured the city with his presence. He continues: 'There were games in the square, such as climbing a greased pole for a leg of mutton placed at the top, which no one succeeded in winning. The women were all in costume, with black veils, worn like the mantilla. I noticed that the men were remarkably plain, sallow, under-sized and narrow-chested-in every way a remarkable contrast to the women.' As indeed they are, or ought to be, all the world over.