Читать книгу An Australian Ramble; Or, A Summer in Australia онлайн

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Coaling in Port Said—The Suez Canal—England the Main Support—Donkey-drivers—The Electric Light—Ismailia—Suez—Aden—The Red Sea.

Under a vermilion sky, as the sun sinks down into the west, we approach the land of Egypt—a barren land, kindly to neither man nor beast, fruitful only in sand, and hospitable only to the camel, who seems here to be a friend in need, patiently following his turbaned leader over the pathless desert. We have a little sand near Southport, we have more still on the Lincolnshire coast at Skegness, we have most of all on the Dutch coast, from Flushing to Scheveningen, that gay resort of the Dutchmen and the Germans; but they fail to give you an idea of the dreary and boundless waste of sand through which that wonderful old man, M. de Lesseps, cut his grand canal, which ought to have been done by Englishmen, and which perhaps would have been, had not Lord Palmerston declared in season and out of season that it could not be done, and that if it were done it could never pay. When we stopped at Port Said, looking as if only artificially raised out of the sea, I landed: partly to say I had planted the sole of my foot in Egypt—the land of the Pharaohs, of Joseph and his brothers, of Antony and Cleopatra, of Origen and Hypatia and early Christian hermits, of grand philosophies and theologies, which stir the pulses even of to-day—and partly that I might have an evening stroll in a place not at one time the safest for a white man to land, but which now is quite as free from danger as any London neighbourhood—the happy hunting-ground of the burglar and the thief. The fact was that at Port Said we had to coal; and as we landed after dinner, it was a new sensation to be rowed ashore by turbaned sailors, who were clothed in what seemed to me in the twilight very much like petticoats. It was rather risky, as the boat was crammed down to the water’s edge. Nor was I much reassured as, after running up against the ropes and being nearly capsized, the man at the prow called out in broken English, ‘Never mind,’ to which I was obliged to reply that I did mind, and that I ventured to hope he would take care of our precious carcases. Apparently the advice was not thrown away, for after a few minutes’ row, and after an attempt had been made to collect the fare, which we all firmly resisted till on terra firma, we landed where a couple of old women apparently, in reality sailors, were standing with lanterns ready to receive us. As the fare was only sixpence each way, I can’t say that the Egyptian watermen were quite so exorbitant as some I wot of nearer home. There was not much to see at Port Said; but it was better to be there than on board ship while the process of coaling was going on. While at dinner there was a sound all round as if a million of monkeys were screaming and jabbering underneath. They were the coalheavers, on board the big barges laden with coal that surrounded us on all sides directly we had come to anchor. Each barge had two lights of burning coals, by the glare of which we could see the porters in strings of fifty at a time climbing up a ladder that led to the ship’s inside, with coal-sacks on their shoulders, and streaming back again, all the while screaming, as seems to be the manner of the Arab tribe all the world over. They all scream. They screamed at us as we stood on the deck; they screamed at us as they rowed us ashore; they screamed at us as we walked the streets—or, rather, the one long street which forms the town till it is lost in the sand of the surrounding waste. On one side lies the market, and a mile or two beyond is the old Arabian town. Men of all nationalities are well represented in Port Said; but the Greeks have the best shops, where a fine trade is done in cigarettes, photographs, and richly-worked napkins, and helmets to keep off the sun in the Red Sea, and the other products to be met with in Turkish bazaars. In the street it was difficult to tell the men from the women, so weird and unearthly seemed their make-up in the evening gloom. Two of the dark bundles approaching me were, I concluded, women, as the faces were concealed—all but the dark, round eyes, from the dangerous glances of which, happily, my age protected me. The great attraction of the place was a large café chantant, which, however, I fancy, did duty as a gambling-house as well. On the bank, just as you land, is a large building calling itself the Hotel Continental; but as it was shut up, apparently it has not been a commercial success. The houses, or, rather, the shops—for there were nothing but shops to be seen—were all of wood and painted. On my return to the ship, which was covered with coal-dust, I found we had an Egyptian conjurer, who went through a performance such as we see any day in England. But I must not say a word against a gentleman who was so kind as to intimate that I was ‘a big masher.’