WE steam out of the station in Alexandria, and soon find ourselves running between large earth- works on our left, and the huge lagoon of Lake Mareotis on the right. Ere long these, in turn, give way to a vast plain, which presents to our western gaze a panorama of surpassing interest. There are villages of red, sun-burnt brick, sheltered by waving date palms, and embowered in orange groves; canals, is which Arabs are performing their ablution preparatory to their mid-day prayer, and huge water buffaloes are wallowing, with only their black muzzles showing above the sluggish stream. There are dusty paths, along which strings of slow-moving camels march with shambling gait; donkeys bestridden now by white-turbaned men, and now by women close-veiled and pantalooned; men irrigating the fields, by raising water from the neighboring canal by means of a suspended pole, with a bucket and an equipoise at either end, just as they did in Pharaoh's days, or goading their oxen yoked to ploughs such as the Israelites might have used, and turning up the rich, red loam, to produce the second or third crop of the year; white ibises, the subject of idolatrous worship in other days, flitting across the fields, while big brown kites wheel and croak overhead—these and a thousand other sights which in a few days we shall pass unnoticed, now prove an irresistible attraction to our unaccustomed eyes, and make our journey to Cairo three hours of unremitting interest; and as we descend upon the platform we agree that it is worth all our journey to have seen these sights alone.
But if these sights interested us, what shall we say of Cairo itself, with its hundreds of minarets, its endless bazaars, its cosmopolitan inhabitants? Or how shall we describe the view from the citadel over the great city beneath our feet, away past the Nile and the pyramids, until the desert and the evening sky seem blended into one?
The day of our arrival at Cairo was one of the two great Moslem anniversaries when the dancing and howling dervishes perform in the great mosque of Mehemet Ali. Thither accordingly in the evening we repaired. At the door we secured, for a small fee, a pair of loose overshoes (for the place whereon we were about to tread was to the Moslem holy ground) and entered the mosque. The floor of the building was covered with rich Persian carpets, and in common with all mosques is entirely unseated.
The mosque was thronged with some thousands of swarthy men, clad in robes of every hue. For the most part the crowd seemed to be wandering aimlessly about, but it surged most densely round the rings where the respective dervishes performed. First came the dancing dervishes, clad in high conical caps, and long robes gathered at the waist, and descending to the ankles with many pleats. The dancers began with arms extended horizontally, the palm of one hand being held upwards and the other downwards, and as each began slowly to gyrate upon his axis, his dress gradually opened out, until, in the case of good dancers, the rapid pace caused the robes to assume an almost rigid appearance.
What can we say of the howlers, towards whom we next direct our steps? Truly, a weird, unwashed and unkempt crew they are, with wild, fanatical eyes, and pasty-looking cheeks, and long disheveled locks. But their part of the performance is about to commence. First the thrumming of a kind of native banjo is heard, and, keeping time with it, each dervish throws himself slowly forward, bowing to his knees, and as he does so utters a sound, half sigh, half groan, and then springs back again past the perpendicular, sending his long hair, which had fallen forward, flying wildly out behind.
Faster and faster grows the banjo's thrum, and faster and faster do the dervishes bow and groan, till at last poor suffering humanity can bear no more, and, steaming with sweat at every pore, several fall senseless into the ring.
The object of the ceremony seems now to be attained, for the exhausted howlers stop, and, half-supported by their friends, are led away.
These swarthy hosts have souls—souls that must live when this great dome above our heads has collapsed and disappeared, and yonder pyramids have crumbled into dust! How long shall Satan's power prevail? May He, who, when all was dark, didst say, “Let there be light," speak again to these dark souls, and light shall be.
The first thoughts of one who has just arrived at Cairo naturally turn to the Museum of Gezireh and the Pyramids. Our route at first lay through that portion of the town where many of the richer pashas and others seem to have taken up their abode, whose gardens made the air heavy with the scent of orange blossom. Ere long we reach the Nile, muddy and broad-flowing, and cross it on a modern bridge. At a certain hour each day a section of this bridge is raised, and it is a pretty sight, it you do not happen to be wanting to cross, to see the dahabeahs, which have congregated during the past twenty-four hours, coming swiftly upwards impelled by their enormous wing-like sails. Fortunately for us the bridge at the time of our visit was closed, so we crossed and soon found ourselves at the gate of the gardens in which the Gezireh Museum stands, and in which the treasures formerly at Boulak, are now stored. And treasures indeed they are, such as the world itself cannot elsewhere show. But being consumed by an overwhelming desire to get into the presence of the mighty dead, we go all too quickly past the statues of Rapert and Nefert, his wife, with their marvelous onyx eyes, which seem to follow you round the room; past the far-famed Wooden Man, which despite its many thousand years of age, stands instinct with life and movement, as if it were a being of yesterday; past monument after monument of those long dead dynasties, till at last we stand in the presence of the mighty dead themselves.
A strange feeling p assesses us as we advance and gaze into the nearest case. For this is Rameses— Rameses with whom Moses must often have spoken, the brother of her who drew the Deliverer from the Nile; Rameses together with whom Moses was doubtless indoctrinated in the mysteries of the priestly class at the University of On, for there was but a difference of five years in their respective ages; Rameses from whose face Moses was destined at a later day to fly, when he found that the fact that he had slain the Egyptian was known! And what manner of man was it from whom Moses so precipitately fled? A man with a high-arched aquiline nose, with a firm set mouth, and an imperious face framed with locks of scanty auburn hair; a man of no ordinary force of will. Yes, princes of provinces have quailed before that face, and myriads of subjects have bowed submissive to the scepter which those hands have swayed; and now, by the strange irony of fate, the tourist gazes unabashed upon his countenance, and the museum attendant takes the monarch out occasionally to dust!
But what of him who fled? While not one word that those lips of Rameses uttered in life has been preserved to us, Moses, though dead, yet speaks; his words are translated into a hundred tongues, and have penetrated to the inmost recesses of the earth! They differed in life, and not less diverse were they in death. Here, in this flat Egyptian land, they buried Pharaoh with mighty pomp, and his sculptured tomb remains almost intact today. Yonder, away in Moab, on Pisgah's lonely summit, Moses' spirit passed away, and the Lord Himself “buried him in a valley over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day." But his tomb, like Pharaoh's, is empty too, for Michael strove victoriously with Satan for his body (Jude 99Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. (Jude 9)), and he appeared glorified upon the holy mount with Elias, who did not die.
Close by the mummy-case of Rameses is that of Seti, his father—a man of somewhat noble countenance. The benignity of his face contrasts favorably with the austerity of his son. But he and others lack the interest attaching to the latter, for they can scarcely be called Bible characters, nor are their names, like that of Rameses, recorded in the Book. “They built," we read, "for Pharaoh Treasure cities" (i.e., cities for storing corn), " Pithom and Raamses." (Exod. 1:1111Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. (Exodus 1:11))
Soon after passing Gezireh, the road to Gizeh trends to the right, and then runs straight to the Pyramids, a distance of several miles. It is skirted on either side by carob trees, which cast a pleasant shade, and which render the ride delightful Ai the extreme. The long straight road is preserved from monotony by much that interests the eye of anyone unaccustomed to the East. Vendors of sugar-cane and tangerines sit sleepily by their wares; camels, like moving haystacks, pass towards the city loaded with fresh-cut grass; a man with bent back, and a great black goatskin slung across his shoulders, by jerking' the skin with a semi-circular movement, and at the same time relaxing his hold upon the orifice at the neck, most effectively waters the road; white-clad Arabs ply their endless task of raising and emptying their buckets into the neighbouring sluices; a camel-corps of the Egyptian army passes with that peculiar bowing motion that camel riding engenders.
Occupied with these various sights, the long vista of carob trees grows less and less, and ends at last, and we dismount among a band of vociferating Arabs at the foot of the great Pyramid itself. J. F.