A Ride in Egypt E-Book

William John Loftie

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Mr. Loftie's very pleasant book relates, strictly speaking, to an excursion from Sioot to Luxor, undertaken by the author and three friends in 1879, but it includes as well some entertaining notes en route from England to the East, and a number of instructive chapters on Cairo and its environs. The "Ride" proper, which was taken mostly on donkey-back, conducted the party a little aside from the hackneyed track, and to some of the less well known points of archaeological interest, notably to the ruins of This, or Thinis, claimed by modern Egyptologists as the cradle of ancient monarchy. Nothing fresher or more entertaining on the subject of Egypt has appeared for a long time back than this well-considered volume. Mr. Loftie gives us much that is curious as well as entertaining with regard to antiquities, history, and the humors of the road; and makes a little gentle fun of the school, headed by Mr. Piazzi Smith, which professes to have discovered so much of the secret of the great Pyramid; and he deserves special credit for his forcible and manly exposure of the misdoings and misgovernment of the Khedive, who was at that time still the shielded pet of English stockholders, and of the terrible results of his mal-administration as evidenced by the Fellah famine.

Leseprobe

A Ride in Egypt

From Sioot to Luxor in 1879

WILLIAM JOHN LOFTIE

A Ride in Egypt, W. J. Loftie

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849650285

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

Availability: Publicly available via the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) through the following Creative Commons attribution license: "You are free: to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work; to make derivative works; to make commercial use of the work. Under the following conditions: By Attribution. You must give the original author credit. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above." (Status: unknown)

CONTENTS:

PREFACE.1

CHAPTER I. ON THE VOYAGE.3

CHAPTER II. THE PROPHET ON THE PLATFORM.30

CHAPTER III. THE FELLAH.41

CHAPTER IV. DERVISHES.52

CHAPTER V. THE BOOLAK MUSEUM.59

CHAPTER VI. THE PYRAMIDS AND THE SPHINX.70

CHAPTER VII. BABYLON.81

CHAPTER VIII. EDUCATION IN EGYPT.86

CHAPTER IX. THE JOURNEY TO SIOOT.92

CHAPTER X. SIOOT.104

CHAPTER XI. THE GREEK SHOP AT SOOHAG.110

CHAPTER XII. THE DONKEYS.117

CHAPTER XIII. THE ANCIENT THIS.123

CHAPTER XIV. THE TABLE OF ABOOD.134

CHAPTER XV. THE FAMINE.137

CHAPTER XVI. DENDERA.144

CHAPTER XVII. GYPT.150

CHAPTER XVIII. AMEN.154

CHAPTER XIX. LUXOR.160

CHAPTER XX. FLOATING DOWN.166

APPENDIX OF LETTERS RELATING  TO THE FAMINE IN UPPER EGYPT.170

PREFACE.

IN the following sketches an attempt is made to give some account of the present aspect of Egypt. They are the result of three visits to the Nile valley, comprising in all about fifteen months' residence.

It may be matter of surprise that another writer should venture to publish a book about Egypt. But I find two excuses both so good that the hesitation naturally felt at first thought is much diminished. The recent progress of events under the viceregal government, and especially the terrible famine of the past winter, have excited a new interest among English readers, who want to have the latest particulars of the state of the country. And, moreover, while the history of Egypt seems to have been growing with such rapidity at the present day, that is, the latter end, the researches and discoveries of the past few years have added so much to our knowledge of the other, the further end, that books published even three years ago are already behind the times.

I have endeavoured as much as possible to avoid details which have already appeared in English books: and have confined my historical chapters as much as I could to the times of the Early Monarchy, that remote and mysterious kingdom, of which the date is unknown, but which is so vividly before us in the monuments left us of its architecture, portraiture, and literature. About Rameses and his dynasty I have said as little as possible consistently with my desire to give some account of This and Thebes. Of the later times, down to the present dynasty, I have said nothing. Indeed, I was minded when my book first began to take shape, to call it “Egypt, Ancient and Modern,” for such a title would have clearly described its contents.

I have used as it was convenient the substance and sometimes the actual words of various articles contributed during the past four years to the Saturday Review and other periodicals. I have to thank the editors for leave to use them, and have many acknowledgments to make to friends who have helped me with sketches, with information, and with criticism.

I am particularly indebted to Miss Evans and Mr. George Grahame the artists, to my American friends E. W. L. and Mrs. L., and to M. L. M. their comrade on the Nile voyage, for charming little bits of scenery. I have availed myself to the utmost of Mr. Roland Michell's stores of knowledge respecting the present condition of Egypt. From Mr. Greville Chester I have also received information of which he was in many cases the exclusive repository, but which was as ungrudgingly given as it is here gratefully acknowledged.

On my second voyage out I remained some weeks at Malta, and then made an abortive attempt to see Naples again, after an interval of nearly thirty years. I have thought it better to include my notes of these wanderings in the Mediterranean, as some parts of them at least will answer to the yearly experience of travellers who winter in Egypt.

Although since this book was written and, indeed, partly printed, the reign of Ismail Pasha has come to an end in the country he so terribly oppressed—I have not thought it necessary to alter any of the passages in which I refer to him and his acts. It is well to show to what a condition he had reduced his unhappy country as a justification of the extreme measures just taken against a prince for whom, not twenty months ago, the English press and English public had very little but praise. It is well, also, that we should remember, lest disappointment come upon us, that Mohammed Towfik Pasha is a Turk and his father's son: that what has happened may happen again: and that, above all, though I write it with regret and hesitation, an Anglo-French alliance where an unselfish and benevolent policy towards an oppressed people is what most of us desire to see, must end in failure. W. J. L.

CHAPTER I. ON THE VOYAGE.

The P. and O.—The Bay—The Company—Gibraltar—An Orange Tree—The Sieges—The Signal Station—Approaching Malta—The Fear of Quarantine—What Quarantine is—Gozo and Malta from the Sea—Valetta—Pratique—The Government—The Palace—A Debate in Parliament—The Old Nobility—The Dome of Mosta— How not to get from Malta to Naples—A Night between Scylla and Charybdis.

IT is quite impossible to winter out of London—so one thinks rebelliously, when the doctor's doom has been pronounced. But there is no appeal—go you must. When you have gone, when you have tasted of the pleasures of a climate in which the air is not damp, in which the sun is warm at Christmas, in which you are strong and happy, able to breathe and see, able to go about, to work and play, to learn and teach, to take long walks and join pic-nics, all at a season in which you would at home be confined to one room, artificially heated and lighted: even the charms of the village of St. Marylebone, near London, cease to prey upon your memory.

Another thing which mitigates the terror of wintering abroad is to find that people at home get on very well without you. There are of course two sides to this aspect of the subject. It is a little mortifying to observe that the charitable or the learned society which, as you thought, you were carrying on by your own strivings with recalcitrant committees, and which was prospering solely through your constant tact and management, prospers even more swimmingly when you are away. It is not altogether pleasant to hear when you are abroad that one who, &c., is able to enjoy an evening party or a run through the old Masters at the Grosvenor, just as well with that silly fellow Blank, who fortunately for him possesses the art of making her laugh, as she ever did with you. But after a time even these memories lose their poignancy, and you reflect, perhaps wisely, that to breathe her name you must retain the use of your lungs, and that rheumatism will give you worse beatings of the heart than she can ever cause, be she never so beautiful or so cruel.

But apart from the question of health, I confess the prospect of spending four or five months in Egypt had no charms for me. True, I had read half a dozen books about that ancient land, and, like everybody else, had my own theory of the Exodus. I knew that some pre-Adamite kings had heaped up cairns at a place called Gheezeh, and that little boys in the streets of Cairo were but scantily clad, and had eyes full of flies. I was also acquainted with the use of the word backsheesh, and had so far progressed in Oriental languages that I knew it came, like khedive, from the Persian, and that both words were looked upon as disagreeable by people who love Egypt. Hieroglyphs, too, like all the things “which no fellow can understand,” had a certain fascination for me, but I was not competent to distinguish between a determinative and a cartouche.

Under these circumstances, it was with no lively feelings that on a miserable morning in November, 1876, I commenced my first journey to Egypt—a journey repeated every winter since. I drove to Waterloo Station as the sun was going through what must be called, for want of a fitter term, sunrise. It only consisted, on this sad morning, in making more visible the dinginess of closed shop-fronts and deserted streets, followed by a rapid retirement as the regular midday darkness set in. I loved the fog: would that it had loved me in return. What are the golden sands of Libya, or the crimson peaks of Cush, to one who knows the mud of Regent Street and the ruddy vapours of Hyde Park?

It does not take many hours to reach Southampton; and the journey, once we were in the open country, was not exactly unpleasant. I was rather curious to make my first acquaintance with actual life on board a great mail steamer.

The French say, with some truth, that Englishmen can express about half their ideas by the use of two words—namely, “fast” and “board.” To be on board a fast mail steamer is an experience very common with Englishmen; but the actual feelings of those who travel in this way must vary in every case, not only according to a man's mind, but according to his stomach. To be lodged with some hundreds of people in a great floating hotel, cut off from all the disagreeable excitements of civilised life, the postman's knock, the afternoon visitor, the telegram —to be face to face with nature in one of its grandest aspects, as we are constantly reminded by the sentimental portion of our fellow-travellers—is to see life, it might be thought, under very favourable conditions.

But the reality is not so sweet. As we float down the Solent on a calm sea, a lovely view of the Isle of Wight in front, the sun setting behind the trees of the New Forest, and nothing to disturb the peaceful beauty of the scene but the long and hideous redness of Netley Hospital and the sound of the dinner-bell, we are likely to anticipate more enjoyment than will really fall to our share. The first interruption to our dream of happiness is probably caused by seeing the visitors leave by the little Southampton steamer. Husbands parting from wives, parents from children, lovers from lovers, are an interesting sight, but one which we do not care to see twice. The comic aspects are so mixed up with the tragic, the kisses with the tears, that the indifferent looker-on is doubtful whether to laugh or cry. Here is a man coming on board in a state of semi-intoxication, not drunk enough to be happy, and evidently struggling with the imperfect recollection of some secret which he wishes to impart before he and his friend are finally separated; or a father and mother bidding their son farewell with the look of being heartily glad to get rid of a prodigal, and the young man weeping while even the mother's eyes are dry. There may be a trace of repentance in his face, and he has probably found life at home too pleasant to be willingly given up. A bride with floods of tears, a red nose, and redder eyes, parts from her sisters with frantic embraces, her husband looking on helplessly and but half pleased. But a great rush of steam, a groan and a fizzle combined, and we are off; the little steamer disappears in a cloud of waving handkerchiefs, and those of us who have suffered no bereavement are at leisure to observe with disappointment that the prettiest face has departed, and that the ladies who remain have almost all the appearance of suffering from colds in the head. Such are my first impressions.

Presently I begin to take stock of my surroundings. The sleeping-cabin is very small for four. My large portmanteau can only be crushed under the sofa, and a surgical operation may be needful for its extraction. The washing appliances seem very deficient. The bed is very hard, and as narrow as a coffin. It suddenly dawns on my memory that a favourite cigar-case is at the bottom of the box under the bed, and my mind is disturbed by the thought that, of the companions of my cabin, one is sure to be sick, and at least one to snore.

Before rough water is reached the dinner-bell rings, and there is a contest, not altogether good-tempered, as to a seat near the captain. By degrees, however, settlements take place; those who cannot get near the captain endeavour to sit opposite a pretty face, or near the door, or where there is a chair, and so on, until everybody is satisfied, or at least, seated. But dinner is not a success. A pallor attacks my next neighbour's countenance. In the middle of my best anecdote he smiles at me vacantly for a moment, then hardly pausing to mutter an excuse, he rises, and disappears to return no more. One by one, about half the guests at table leave it before the conclusion of the banquet, and the survivor feels a sense of personal injury when ominous sounds, as of a human being in distress, reach him from the neighbouring cabin. Perhaps his turn follows, perhaps he escapes; but, next to being ill yourself, it is worst to witness the sufferings of others, even if sympathy has no place among your moral qualities; and your first evening at sea closes in gloom. My own sufferings at sea have always been slight, but the motion of the ship causes qualms. For the first two days I have a feeling of being subjected to indignity as the rolling rudely shakes me from my seat, or takes my feet from under me. There is something humiliating in running down the deck and staggering up again as if you were very drunk indeed. Of this first voyage my chief recollection is that we had a gale in the Bay of Biscay. I had long wished to see the great waves of which I had heard so much, but it is a question whether it is worth going through a gale to see them. In other respects, for I must not attempt to describe great waves, one voyage is much like another.

As the days pass, and calmer latitudes are reached, the whole company of passengers meet again, and various phases of sea-going character present themselves. Some pace the deck in solitary meditation. Some seat themselves in a shady corner and observe what goes on around them with sleepy eyes. The ladies lie back on the chairs with which the quarterdeck is crowded, and make oft-repeated remarks on the sea and sky. A smoking-tent has been rigged up, and there the men assemble to talk as they take tobacco, and give their opinions to the little world on things in general. It is there that the universal traveller holds forth, he who has surveyed the world from China to Peru, and who has apparently brought back only a knowledge of the iniquity of the British Government, the discomfort of foreign hotels, the loss of money by exchange, and the comparative venom of different breeds of mosquitoes. You ask him if he has been in Ceylon, or Norway, as the case may be, and he tells you of the price of wine at Colombo, or the bad tea they gave him at Christiana; or you ask him about the latest revolution among the South American States, and he replies with the remark that all Portuguese settlers are rascals, and proves it by an account of how a Spaniard cheated him about a horse. If you inquire as to the customs of the Dyaks of Borneo, he begins a series of criticisms on the steamboat arrangements of Rajah Brooke. To him travelling in itself is an end. He does not boast of the lands and cities he has “done,” but talks as if doing them had been an unmitigated annoyance to him. He complains of the world because it is too easily exhausted, and laments that there are so few regions left to be traversed. He can tell you nothing about any place he has visited, except how to get there and how to get away again, and if you devote an evening to cross-examining him in the hope of obtaining some information, you are continually disappointed, and find in the end that you have lost the time you might have much more profitably devoted to reading a geography book.

Beside him is a gentleman whose brogue, coupled with his irregular use of will and shall, betrays his origin, who informs you in five minutes of all the particulars you care to hear of his birth, parentage, and education, of his relationship to Lord So-and-so, and the name of his wife's first husband. He allows to having been born in Dublin, but vows he never set foot in it since. If in return you think to shame him by saying that you also are an Irishman, he only tries to startle you by confessing that he was convicted of Fenianism, and soothes you again by an interminable anecdote, told to show you that he was or is a man of property, and that in a hand-to-hand fight he can lick all before him. He knows every celebrated author in the three kingdoms, despises most of them, and wonders how any one can read their works, for he cannot. It is indeed soon evident that in the last particular he tells the truth. How far his other stories are to be believed you cannot easily decide.

On the whole, however, he is a more agreeable companion than the argumentative voyager, a man who always takes the other side, whatever may be your view, who invariably breaks down in the main point of his argument, and seldom fails to forget before he has done which was the side he originally undertook to support. Then there is the serious traveller, who makes it a business to go abroad, who would not visit any country without an object, who sighs deeply as he tells you he has to get to Japan before the middle of January as it is his duty, evidently a painful one, to investigate the history and practice of Go Bang in its native country. You cannot play chess with him because he knows every gambit and opening, and tells you when you have made three moves that he must checkmate you in twenty-one or twenty-two more as the case may be. He has also made whist a special study, and informs you that when he lived in India he hired a pundit at so much a month to play double dummy with him.

This man of serious purpose, who takes his pleasure moult tristement, contrasts in my recollections with the young lady who travels for no earthly purpose or reason, who does not know whence she is coming or where she expects to go: who begins the Last Days of Pompeii on the first day of the voyage, and is well into the second chapter by the time she lands, under the impression that she will be able to get up the Bay of Naples from its pages, and so combine amusement with instruction. As a rule, however, she does not read much, nor, though she looks constantly at the sea, does she seem to see much. She admires the coast of Portugal, thinks Cintra very romantic, has never heard of the Convention, and forgets whether it is Madrid or Lisbon which lies at the mouth of the Tagus. On the whole, unless that wistful gaze over the taffrail betokens a pre-occupation which betrays itself on calm days in excessive letter-writing, she affords entertaining company to the traveller, and his mind is not much wearied in any effort to direct the course of a conversation with her.

I have always found children on board a great resource, and am at times tempted in consequence to imagine myself very amiable. Perhaps I am, but they certainly amuse me better than their elders, and keep up a constant excitement in my mind, as I am always expecting one of them to fall overboard. Perhaps the young soldiers going to fight the battles of their country come next in interest. The children are scarcely so simple as the officers: for they lay little plots to capture a good-natured passenger, lie in ambush for him in the companion, ruin his repeater by constant striking, and break his back by making a horse of him from morning to night. The young heroes are less troublesome, but less pleasing. They smoke incessantly, perhaps in the vain hope of colouring their scanty moustaches. They talk of their regiment though they have never seen it, and are curious in boot-jacks and cigarettes. They go to their destination with a feeling that they may have to bleed in their country's cause, which helps to ennoble them. In moments of fancied seclusion—there is no real seclusion on board—a photograph book is brought out from the recesses of a portmanteau, and when the boy's eyes are raised from his mother's or his sister's likeness they are full of tears. He need not feel ashamed of them though he wipes them away so fast. It is to such young Englishmen that England may have to look in time of need.

Such are the minor accessories of life on every voyage. I remember that on this voyage in particular, two brown gentlemen who had been aides-decamp to the Prince of Wales during his Indian tour were returning home. One of them was a Mahommetan: the other a Hindoo. They used to play a good deal of chess, and were much admired for their personal beauty and gorgeous costumes. They studied a complete letter-writer with great assiduity, and brightened up very much when addressed in Hindostanee.

We had also opportunities for studying the natural history of the ship's stokers. They are indeed a strange race, much blacker than anybody can paint them—so black indeed that the coal-dust looks like pearl powder on their faces. They sit, when not at work, on the gratings near the funnel, and twang the light banjo or sew long seams in grey shirtings. There are many other blacks of various degrees of darkness and obscurity, physical or social, on board and I was much startled in the grey dawn of the second morning to find one of them standing over my lowly pillow with a drawn razor in his hand.

He had been told, it seems, that I wanted a shave, and so I rose when I had sufficiently composed my countenance, and putting on a dressing-gown followed him to a big box near a porthole, where he set me up like a model, and standing afar off at each lurch of the vessel—for it was blowing a gale—made a lunge at me, after a very moderate exhibition of soap. Strange to say when my presence of mind returned sufficiently to enable me to refuse any further assaults of the kind, I found myself extremely well shaved and perfectly smooth, my features no more chiselled than when they were turned out originally by mother nature.

The noise on board is incessant. First, there is the throbbing of the engines. The beating of my own rheumatic heart is nothing to them. Then there are innumerable chains which are dragged through holes, the holes all seeming to be just under my pillow. Then at night there are uneasy spirits who seem to start from every wave, and walk the deck over our heads. In the early morning there is the deck swabbing and the holy-stoning. Finally the irony of fate is exemplified in the barrel-organ from Saffron Hill which a grinning Italian grinds all the evening. It seems as if the street music which has contributed so much to your nervous breakdown in London, had been specially commissioned by your ghostly or literary enemy to follow you to sea. But the organist is too sick to play for the first three days, by which time the absence of postmen's knocks and railway whistles has so far braced your nerves that you can bear him with equanimity.

So passed the voyage. I omit the amazing anecdotes I heard, and the pleasant chats I had with acquaintances from the antipodes, the new world, the dear knows where, and many other out-of-the-way places. We rounded the ruddy cape of St. Vincent, which looks as if its rocks were stained with the blood of British seamen. We were shown afar off the blue and brown headland of Trafalgar—the last land which Nelson saw . And on the fourth morning we perceived, as the mist cleared away, on the right, the mysterious snow-clad mountains of Atlas; and on the left Tarifa, the first landing-place of the Moors in Spain, near the scene of Don Roderick's disappearance in the lost battle.

Already, as we turn into Gibraltar Bay, we are in a different climate. English ways, dresses, neatness, soldiers, and advertisements are all about us as we land; but the sky and the sea have a foreign look. Yet it is hard to realise the fact that we are really on a foreign soil. The rows of prickly pears, the aloes, a shovel-hatted priest or two, only remind us of the scenery of the Italian Opera. We pass through the gateway known from Charles V.'s cognisance over the arch as the Ragged Staff, and are at once in the town. Except for the brilliant daylight there is nothing very outlandish about it. Suddenly, in a shady lane of the town, I glance up an archway, and immediately I feel the reality of the difference. There, growing twenty feet high in its native soil, with great green leaves and golden fruit and white blossoms, is a magnificent orange-tree.

The orange-tree behind the library at Gibraltar is, to my mind, whether in itself or its surroundings, one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen.

It stands in a magnificent landscape. Towering up nearly perpendicular behind it are fourteen hundred feet of grey limestone, ragged and rough, but dazzling in the sunshine to Northern eyes. The skyline is sharply defined by the white saw -teeth against the deep blue. Here and there a spot of dark green vegetation affords a scanty browsing place to half-a-dozen long-eared goats. Below, the purple waves dance and sparkle, white-sailed feluccas cross the bay, and the brown hills beyond look down upon Algeciras—the Green Islands of the Moors. The waters of the bay have swallowed all but one, now no longer green, but white with fortifications and bristling with guns, a standing menace to the English fortress opposite. Some ninety years ago the anxious eyes of Elliot and his little army were turned on the Spanish preparations for the famous siege; they had to watch in silence while their fiery trial was prepared for them before their faces. Nearer we may recognise the New Mole, on which, under Rooke, the seamen of Hicks and Jumper landed in 1704; the Lines, which bore the attack of the Spanish fireships in 1780; the Old Mole, the Alameda, and all the little piers and landing places which together go to make up the port of Gibraltar. The red-tiled roofs, the white walls, the many-coloured shutters of the windows glow in the warm winter sunshine.

High up on the steep side of the bare rock, at the angle which may be said to form the pass from the mainland to the town, stands the Moorish castle, one of the few fragments of antiquity which the place contains. Where everything is in working repair, fortifications and barracks, batteries and churches alike, the ancient walls, zigzagging down the hill from the tall square tower above to the old port below, look strange and out of place, the sole surviving witnesses besides the rock itself of the days when Taric, the Persian freedman, led his Africans into Spain. Some part of the buildings may date from the time when the Moors colonised the barren slope, bringing with them, no doubt, the apes from Barbary and the orange-tree from the orchards of Andalusia. Their dominion lasted for seven centuries and a half where no Phœnician, Roman, or Goth had thought it worth while to build so much as a fort. It has been remarked that what one Roderick lost another regained. Roderick the Goth forfeited life and realm at the Guadalete in the eighth century, and Roderick of Arcos took Gibraltar in the fifteenth from Mohammed IX.

But, though Gibraltar may, strictly speaking, be reckoned among the possessions of the last Gothic King, there is no evidence that it had, ever been inhabited before the coming of Taric ibn Zeyad. The apes have dwindled to the little flock preserved, like pheasants in England, by the keepers of the signal-station. The castle, where it is not in ruin, has been worked into the modern fortifications. But the “tree is living yet,” and flourishes in many a hanging garden of the little city, to Northern eyes, at least, among the most beautiful of its adornments. The simple harmony of natural colouring may be studied to advantage among its well-laden branches, for the leaf offers exactly the scientifically correct contrast to the fruit. The brilliant tint of the orange is best set off by the dark green of the foliage. It seems like destroying the balance of a finely-painted picture to pluck a single orange. When the leaves were still young and pale, the fragrant white blossoms appeared. Next, as the foliage assumed a deeper hue, the light green fruit became visible. Then, as the leaves darkened, as more and more of the blue of the sky was absorbed, the yellow tone was transferred, until at length the full glory of both leaves and fruit was attained, and the cold harmony of spring became the ripe contrast of autumn.

Though the orange-tree may be the most beautiful thing in Gibraltar, there is no want of beauty and interest in the scenery, circumscribed as it is, of the famous Rock. The English visitor expects to see a fortress. He finds a wild mountain, rich gardens, a busy city, a summer sea, cliffs which rival Shakspeare's, panoramas of folding hills, and a population formed of the most picturesque constituents the world affords. Dark-eyed Spanish ladies, with the graceful mantilla round their proud heads, contrast with the bustling English merchants' clerks. Soldiers in the scarlet uniform of England march briskly through the streets to the enlivening music of fife and drum. Here and there may be seen the white capote of the Arab lounging in a sunny corner, or the crimson burnouse, the turban, the yellow slippers of a people who, whatever they may have done in the eighth century, certainly never hurry themselves in the nineteenth. The seeker for antiquities may be disappointed. He will see the arms and badges of Charles V. over a gateway; may trace some ancient masonry in the old sea wall, now masked by a line of white limestone batteries, and may observe that the Old Church, hideously modern as it is, contains at one end some features of the Pointed style of the fifteenth century. He may remark over another gate the name of the Earl of Chatham. That was William Pitt's elder brother—the dilatory hero of the epigram—

“The Earl of Chatham with sword drawn Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan; Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em, Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.”

The castle, indeed, is there, with its rough yellow keep, its pointed arches, and the walls, with their six towers, descending like steps, which once protected the port. But even here he can find few features of sufficient importance to be worth a nearer inspection. He is driven to pass it by, wondering how much of its remains date from the Moorish conquest and how much from the time of Abdul Mumen, who in 1160 fortified the town.

The view from above the castle is fine, but it is well worth the walk to go up to the signal-station. By rising early before the sun has come over the Rock, we managed to have a cool pleasant walk. After passing the castle, which stands at the extreme northern end of the town, we went by roads cut in the rock, past a guard-house and a magazine of undoubtedly modern construction; and, after walking a few yards, found ourselves already high above the roofs and gardens. A short but steep ascent brought us to one of the highest points of the Rock. All along the path constant changes of view are afforded. Looking back, the Castle forms a foreground to the distant mountain, the first on Spanish territory, and locally known as the Queen of Spain's Chair. Beyond it, a little to the left, gleaming white on a hill, is San Roque, whither the Spanish inhabitants of Gibraltar removed when Sir George Rooke took their town. It was impossible not to hazard the guess that they called it after him as a“sarcassum.” Just below is the beautiful Alameda, and at one end the still more beautiful spot where the victims of the great siege were buried. Among the monuments and the cypresses stands, at the top of a flight of steps, the green bronze bust of Elliot. Perhaps this was the scene of a famous tragedy—

“When Elliot, called the Salamander, Was stout Gibraltar's famed commander; A soldier there went to a well To fetch home water to his Nell:

“But fate decreed the youth to fall A victim to a cannon-ball. They straightway ran to tell his spouse: She trembling heard, and fled the house.

“The husband slain, the water spilt, Judge ye, fond females, what she felt! She looked, she sighed, she melting spoke— ‘Thank Heav'n! the pitcher is not broke!'”

Full in front is the bay, rolling its blue waves up to the foot of the rock. Beyond, on the western shore, is Algeciras, a more ancient town than Gibraltar; and not far from it, but invisible from the Rock, are the remains of a Roman station. The background is filled with mountains as far as the eye can see; those in front dotted with limestone in regular strata, those beyond marked here and there with a white village, here and there topped by a tower.

As the signal-station is reached, a still finer view is obtained. Looking due south along the axis of the Rock, the height known as O'Hara's Folly, with its ruined tower standing on the sharp ridge of limestone, here bleached into marble whiteness, offers a strong contrast to the blue sea on either hand, the blue mountains across the Strait beyond, and the sky, bluer than all, above. I felt a thrill as I gazed into Africa, so to speak, over those mysterious mountains. They rise precipitously from the water, the highest being the ancient Abyla, the “Mountain of God,” according to the Phœnicians. The Saracens called it after Musa, as they called Calpe after his lieutenant, Tarik; and the modern English soldier, outdoing even the Moor in his want of sentiment, has given it the familiar name of the Ape's Hill. Below, but hardly visible, is Ceuta, the Spanish convict settlement of which so shocking an account appeared recently in the English papers. The seven hills which gave it the ancient name Sebta, from which the modern Ceuta is corrupted, cannot be made out; but we could hardly help contrasting the horrors which go on, so to speak, under our very eyes across the Strait, with the orderly, if stern, rule of the “state of siege” in Gibraltar.

Turning to the eastward, we looked over a parapet fourteen hundred feet down into the Mediterranean. Steep as is the giddy height, it is still steeper a little further north, where a long sloping bank of loose sand extends almost from the very summit to the sea below, and cuts off the communication from north to south upon that side. The coast-line eastward curves gradually towards Malaga and the snowy Sierra, ranges of mountains appearing and disappearing in the blue distance as the sunlight comes and goes. Just below the signal-station may be seen, nestling at the foot of the cliff, the summer residence of the Governor, where two summers ago the children were startled from their games by the apparition of a dozen tailless “monkeys” which the dry weather had driven from their fastnesses in the rocks above. North of the slope of sand is Catalan Bay, a colony it is said, of Genoese fishermen. They are cut off from all communication with the outer world, except by sea or when a dry season allows them to make a path along the shifting sands.

Bleak and rugged as is the view, the sunshine, the colouring, the glowing purple of sea and sky impart a beauty which enabled me to understand, if I had not done so before, why people talk as they do of the Mediterranean and its supremacy among inland seas. We turned reluctantly as the signalmen announced the approach of an ironclad from the West, or ran up the ball which tells of the coming of the mail from England. A distant bugle-call catches the ear, and we look down to the parade-ground, a thousand feet below, where we see the soldiers moving as on a chess-board, or watch the artillery practice from one of the forts at the water's edge. The ledge of earth on which the town stands is interrupted by the public gardens, which include the parade-ground; high above them, but far below the station, a few villas are perched among stone-pines and vine-clad terraces, wherever there is standing-room for a house. The cultivation of the Rock contrasts strongly with the desolate bareness of the Spanish coast across the bay. The English energy which has held Gibraltar against such fearful odds has also made it into a garden. The roadway above the Alameda might have been transplanted bodily from Surrey, if it were not for the prickly pears and the aloes here and there. There are English yachts in the bay; English steamers come and go; English carriages drive along the street as if it were Piccadilly, and as the parade breaks up, the troops march to their barracks to the sound of “Obadiah” and “Tommy, make room.”

I stayed one week only on my first visit to Gibraltar, and should have gladly stayed longer but that one of the dreaded “levanters” broke over the Rock, and the damp became unbearable. When a levanter blows, the rain comes down from the steep cliff in a cascade, and though carefully drained, the town becomes so damp in a few hours that you are in a steam bath.

The voyage to Malta commenced in the dark, and it was not till another year that I enjoyed the beautiful views of the African and Spanish coasts which are afforded from within the Straits in daylight. We took our passage in the weekly Peninsula and Oriental steamer; and once out of the reach of the “levanter,” spent a few very pleasant days. Then came a cloud.

The inexperienced traveller is sometimes puzzled by his fellow-voyagers' anxiety about pratique. He does not fully understand their dread of quarantine, and has no idea of the penalties incurred by a “foul bill.” Yet these terms belong to usages which may cause him the greatest inconvenience, usages against which the best viséd passport and the warmest letters of introduction cannot protect him. Precautions against epidemics of a kind which may be described as superstitious and traditional rather than scientific or efficacious have been devised at every port, and the unfortunate tourist has no escape. Quarantine may mean for him the full forty days of abstinence from the joys of society or he may get off with a less protracted period; but he who has once undergone even the shortest probation in a Lazaretto will ever after fear to incur it.

Now, Malta is a place full of interest for many different kinds of travellers. Soldiers may want to see the forts, artists to sketch the up and down stairs streets. The ordinary tourist even may have many things to see in the three little islands which form the group. He has read St. Paul and Josephus, and would visit the scene of the wreck of “a certain ship of Alexandria.” He may have an interest in the history of orders of chivalry, and desire to examine St. Elmo, and fight over on the spot the famous siege of 1565. He has studied architecture, and would verify Mr. Fergusson's account of the wonderful dome of Mosta. If he is a botanist, he may propose to judge for himself as to the genus of a so-called Centaurea, about which Linneans are in doubt. The language of the natives has not yet been successfully reduced to writing. The statistical problems offered by the thickly-populated islets are but half worked out There are, in short, few places of the same size in Europe—for the Maltese reckon themselves Europeans —in which so many objects of interest, social, political, geological, geographical, or only picturesque, may be found; and the traveller easily makes up his mind to land, and, after seeing something of Valetta and its environs, to go on by the next steamer. He may be sorry to leave pleasant company on board, but pleasant company may be encountered again, and there is but one Malta. There may be even a melancholy pleasure in persuading himself that bright eyes are a little dimmed as he announces his heroic intention. He is not altogether displeased to find that he will be missed, and his own sorrow is much mitigated by the regrets he hears expressed at the prospect of parting.

Should this, then, be your case, the accounts you hear of the quarantine and the danger of being trapped there are not pleasant. Before we sighted Gozo a discouraging rumour spread among the passengers. It was told at first as a profound secret; but many hours had not elapsed before everybody knew it. Small-pox was on board. A sailor had developed the disease in a mild form, and before it was recognised he was almost well. We all felt sorry, in a modified way, for the poor man, and wondered why he had not been properly vaccinated; but there we should probably have ceased to think of the matter, only for the look of our more experienced friends. They were not afraid of infection, but they were afraid of quarantine.

After much debate, a deputation waited on the captain to ascertain the truth. Every member of it wore the longest face possible as they emerged again from the deck cabin. A “clean bill” is hopeless at Malta: passengers landing will almost certainly be detained in quarantine: there is just a chance that, as the case is of the slightest, and as the disease has not spread, pratique may be granted after a little delay: smallpox is not cholera, nor even measles. Such were the captain's words. But the chance is very slender, and those who proposed to land must make up their minds to the worst. They must prepare to undergo all the mystic and inconvenient ceremonial annexed to going ashore from an infected vessel. How many days, we inquired anxiously, will seclusion be enforced? The answer makes our hearts sink. Not more than twenty-one; yet we had not intended to stay more than seven. Three weeks in a quarantine hospital! the prospect is sufficient to appal the stoutest heart. Would it not be better to go on to the next port? The “case” will be landed. The quarantine at Alexandria or Suez will be shorter, if there is any. And then we shall not have to part quite so soon from our new friends.

There were several of us in this situation, and it was easy to see that the prospect of going on was not wholly disagreeable to a gentleman or two on one side and a lady or two on the other. Even with a mild and isolated case of small-pox on board, lovemaking went on briskly under the favouring rays of a full moon. Their minds, poor things, were evidently torn between contending emotions. Eventually they decided that it would be foolish to pack up with such a prospect: and so I believe their young hearts were not sundered till the ship reached Suez. Meanwhile I confess to having had a great feeling of curiosity as to quarantine. The love of knowledge impelled me to seek the curious experience. I had never met anybody who had undergone it. I was not unwilling to see what it was like. Is there a prison— a kind of combination of the old sponging-house and a sanitarium? And where is it situated? Do the wild waves beat upon a sea-girt rock? or is it perched upon a lofty peak whence the islands may be surveyed at leisure, and twenty-one sunsets admired? Perhaps it would be as well, after all, to submit to fate. I might take the opportunity of mastering Mr. Browning's latest poem, or that charming treatise on pre-historic culture, or the wave theory in musical tone, which I have so long intended to study. One might write in the enforced solitude a work which will immortalise him. Another might, if there is a piano in quarantine, practise that difficult passage of Bach, and astonish his musical friends on his return. Another might paint a whole picture in three weeks and have it ready for the next Academy. Thus I reflected taking one side of the question first. But the other side was not to be neglected. Here were merry companions, a comfortable cabin, fine weather promising to hold out, a good ship, and, above all, no trouble of packing and disembarking only to pack up and embark again. I was still undecided as Malta came in sight, and I went on deck to see the view.

The three islands do not look very attractive from the sea. Gozo is the most westerly; and after the blue haze has turned to brown, and the bare rocks and parched hills are clearly seen, there is little to make one wish to land upon it. There is a narrow green strait, over which something like a castle seems to keep guard, and then Comino gradually develops itself, a mere islet, and almost featureless. Beyond it is the so-called Bay of St. Paul. Malta itself is now alongside, and soon the white fortifications of Valetta begin to appear over the hill-top. In the valley is the dome of Mosta, looking very like a haystack from a distance. The shore is dotted with villas, and the mouth of the harbour has the appearance of a second-rate watering-place in England. Not a tree is in sight, and everything is either white oolite stone or brown sunburnt moor. Valetta itself is well situated on a peninsula of the limestone which divides the harbour into two parts. The town stands very high, and, as it faces north, looks higher and shadier than it is against the glowing southern sky. As the steamer enters two deep bays present themselves, and the three great forts, one on either side and one on the promontory between, look very impressive in their strength. The eastern harbour is the chief naval port; but the steamer, keeping to the right, enters the western, passing close to an island which lies within the harbour, and still bears its old Arabic designation of “Jezirah.” Two buildings only are upon it. Fort Manoel was built in 1726, and forms part of the system of defences, looking to seaward; the Lazaretto is behind the fort, and looks the other way—a long low building, at the sight of which, and the prospect of passing three weeks or a month within its dingy walls, my heart sank. Turning away, I caught sight of a yellow flag at the mast head of the steamer.

Those wise passengers who had decided not to land had a great advantage in the calmness with which they could look on. The scene, was very unlike what would be presented by an English seaport. There was stir and bustle enough, but it did not wear the aspect of business. Numberless green boats, with prows like gondolas, are being rowed round the steamer at a short distance by sailors who stand and row forward. There are great black coal barges, orange boats, flower boats, pleasure boats, all putting off from the “Marsamuscetto Gate” at the foot of a steep street of steps. The rocky promontory on which Valetta stands is full in view, and you may observe that it is divided transversely by a deep ravine, down the sides of which are other long flights of steps, as well as to the water-side. Along the dorsal ridge, the axis of the peninsula, is the chief line of street, and all the others run parallel or at right angles; for Valetta is no ancient and irregular town, but was all built upon a settled plan after the repulse of the Turks from St. Elmo. La Valette laid the first stone in 1566, and in 1571 the city was completed. From the water's level it still looks new, and this look is increased by the number of villas which on all sides fringe the shores of the Quarantine Harbour—Sliema, the principal suburb at that side, being just so near that you can see the carriages coming and going along the dusty road.

While the officer of health is coming we may glance at a local guide-book which gives us particulars of the quarantine regulations. Here are some pleasing extracts:—

“In regard to food, should the person not possess the means of ordering a breakfast and dinner at the high rate charged by the Trattoria connected with the Lazaretto, he stands a good chance of suffering from hunger.” Nor does the cheerful prospect thus held out improve when we read on:—” As the Guardiano placed over you is not allowed to serve in any way (though you are obliged to pay him a salary, besides supplying him with food), one must almost necessarily hire a servant, who may charge as much as 2s. 3d. per day.” Your ideas as to the pleasant leisure of a life in quarantine fade insensibly as you proceed. In case the traveller “wishes to hire furniture over and above that provided by the Government, consisting of a table, two chairs, and two bed-boards and trestles, he may do so from a person privileged for the purpose, who at a pretty high rate will supply him with anything he may require.”

Such are some of the quarantine regulations in what may be considered a civilised country. What must they be in Turkey or in Spain? Three weeks at Suez would probably make Jezirah seem a little paradise by contrast. For no fault of your own, unless it is a fault to travel, you may be imprisoned and very heavily fined, at the option of an official who probably does not know the difference between endemic and epidemic, or typhus and typhoid. Apart from actual experience you might suppose that, if a community like that of Malta thinks quarantine needful, it would at least take care that the unfortunate traveller who suffers for its sake should not suffer at the expense of his own pocket, since it is not for his own good. If he is not actually recompensed for his imprisonment, at least care will be taken that he has nothing to pay. But unless our Guide is strangely misinformed, he has to pay, and to pay heavily too, for the privilege of undergoing quarantine. His bill at a Brighton hotel in the height of the season would probably about equal that incurred at the Lazaretto on Jezirah. One might at least have expected that the custodian placed over him would be paid by the Government, that his rations would be supplied at cost price, and that a soldier from the Hospital Corps would be told off to wait on him. I do not go at all into the question of the efficacy of these or any other quarantine rules. If people who have the right to make such rules choose to do so, it is no concern of mine.

As we survey the unfortunate passengers who are obliged to land, we feel that the present working of those rules at Malta is needlessly severe, and indeed disgraceful to the executive of a British dependency. Here is a timid little governess without a friend; how is she to support three weeks' quarantine? She has been months scraping up her passage-money. In the words of the Guide, she stands a good chance of suffering from hunger. There is a second-class passenger with a wife and two children. He has made up a little purse to keep the family going till he gets work. It will suffice them for about a week. And of a different character, but deserving also of sympathy, are the other cases—the anxious wife, who descries her husband afar off in one of the boats, which still keep out of reach; or the midshipman about to join his ship; or the young tourist of rank who is going to stay a week with the Governor.

As we endeavour by condoling with these unfortunates to make the best of our own case, the officer of health appears. He is a pompous-looking man in uniform, and is rowed out from the gate under an awning. The anxious passengers augur well or ill from the expression of his face as he nears the steamer. The surgeon stands to meet him at the foot of the ladder and hands him the fatal bill. He receives it with a pair of tongs, at which there is a laugh and a cheer, and puts it into a box full of holes, which he places over a little brazier to be fumigated. There are a few moments of intense anxiety as he pushes off and reads the paper at a safe distance. Some of the passengers endeavour to keep up the spirits of the others, but with slight success. The captain speaks hopefully of pratique, and his words are eagerly received and commented upon. At last the officer of health returns. He speaks for a minute with the surgeon, who mounts the ladder and speaks to the captain. The captain descends; five minutes pass. Some of the ladies are in tears; the men look pale. The captain suddenly comes up again with a smiling face. “You must all be fumigated,” he says, “and then you can go ashore; he grants us pratique.”

Thus happily ended a scare. There is enough to see at Malta to make a fortnight pass very rapidly.

Few countries have undergone so many changes of rulers. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, and Arabs, all held it in turn before the close of the ninth century of our era. Since Roger the Norman in 1090 drove out the Moslems the series of Christian dynasties has included German emperors, Aragonese kings, French princes, and Spanish dons. History records few stranger transactions than that by which in 1350 the islanders freed themselves from the grasp of Don Gonsalvo Monroi, to whom they had been pledged by King Martin of Sicily for 30,000 florins; but not even by buying their own freedom and taking themselves out of pawn did they secure independence; and when in 1530 the Knights of Rhodes were seeking a new habitation, Malta was given up to them by Charles V. at the peppercorn rent of a falcon to the King or the Viceroy of Sicily. For the first time in their existence, perhaps, the Maltese enjoyed the blessings of home rule under the sovereignty of the Grand Master, but we have no reason to suppose that they were satisfied with what was only a tyranny tempered by the Inquisition. Even Roger the Norman had respected the conscientious scruples of such Mohammedans as remained after his conquest; but the order of St. John enforced the strictest orthodoxy, and before the French expelled the Knights and the Inquisition with them, Malta had become what she is still, more completely Romish than Rome itself. Even the Grand Master fell completely under the terrible rule of the Dominicans, and a window is pointed out at a street corner close to St. John's Church, where executions took place, in sight of the crowd assembled in the adjacent square.

The French abolished the Inquisition as well as the Knights, but with that strangely short-sighted policy which has made them hated wherever they have come, in Egypt, in Syria, in Germany, as in Malta, they plundered the unhappy people and their churches to an incredible extent. I was shown curious-old silver treasures at Citta Vecchia in the cathedral, and heard wonderful stories of how they were preserved during the French occupation.

The English are not, however, very popular: but the example of the unhappy Corfuegians may well be held up to the Maltese. The Ionian islanders were constantly petitioning to be given up to Greece. Now that they have attained their wish, and the prosperity which Englishmen and money brought to the island have disappeared together, they lament their hard case, and abuse us for our selfishness in turning them off.

It will be the same with the Maltese if we ever, during the reign of some future Gladstone, take it into our heads to hand the island over to Italy. There is, I believe, an Italian party in Malta. Their objects are about as definite as those of Home Rulers in our own Parliament.