Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/701

. 12, 1863.] very different were the incidents of travel then to the humdrum monotony of the present transit by rail. That which is now accomplished in a few short hours, was, in the time of the careless, but brave and ill-requited Waghorn, somewhat of an undertaking. The disembarking from the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, the landing at Alexandria, the passage of the Mahmoudieh canal and subsequent voyage up the Nile, the sojourn in Cairo, and the eighty-four miles of desert ere the traveller reached Suez, afforded altogether a little mine of adventure and novelty, anticipated with keen enjoyment by the genuine lovers of travel. At the time of which I write, Waghorn and Company were a sort of Eastern Pickford’s, conveying passengers and merchandise of all descriptions between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. For years they enjoyed a well-merited monopoly of this traffic, until the report of their success induced certain French adventurers to seek a concession from Mehemet Ali and start a rival messagerie. Unfortunate, however, were such travellers as, tempted by a cheaper tariff, entrusted themselves to the “French Agency.” Having no right of entrée to the desert stations erected by Waghorn, with the aid of the Bombay Steam Fund, their forced and frequent halts were passed, not under the shade of stone walls, and within reach of good food and cool water, but beneath ill-constructed tents inadequate to screen them from the scorching sun, and where their only refreshment was afforded by an impromptu and dubious cuisine, and a carte des vins, which furnished little else than ready-mulled claret. It will therefore be readily believed that Waghorn and Company were not greatly in fear of being run off the road by the opposition agency, but it was nevertheless needful for their employés to board every steamer arriving from the westward, to prevent India-bound travellers from falling too easily into the hands of their piratic rivals.

This boarding work formed a part of my duty, when one fine morning in June, the lighthouse, which now occupies the site of the old Pharos of the Ptolemies, signalled the arrival of the monthly packet from Southampton. In a few minutes I had been paddled by sinewy arms over the calm surface of the bay, and before she had dropped her anchor, was standing on the deck of the Tagus. The next proceeding was to ascertain what passengers were going on at once to join the mail steamer lying at Suez, and to receive from the supercargo an invoice of their luggage and of the mail boxes, these latter being stowed without loss of time in a lighter alongside, and sent round to the mouth of the Mahmoudieh canal. As this process invariably occupied some hours, the sea-weary travellers were at liberty to land at their leisure, and recruit themselves at Key’s Hotel in the Grand Square, before the time arrived for betaking themselves to the canal boats.

The India-bound voyager will doubtless remember that his troubles began when he quitted the side of the good ship to plant his foot on the sandy soil of Africa. He will recall the hurry-skurry scramble on donkey-back through the bazaars and labyrinthine suburbs of Alexandria; the limited ablution, and the comfortless confusion of the odd thè-dinant at the hotel, and finally, perhaps, the writer’s “call to horse” if such a term can be properly applied to the kicking, braying, fighting squad of ready-saddled donkeys below. Then the pell-mell race at full gallop by rough and treacherous paths, over the half-hidden ruins of ancient Alexandria, to the unsavoury Mahmoudieh, and lastly the squeeze into the omnibus-like and overcrowded treykshuyt. Who that has once made the overland journey about the time of which I write, will have forgotten the arrival at Atfeh, and the debarcation, often at daybreak, of the wearied occupants of the boats? The crossing of the plank to gain the shore, the slipping and sliding on its steep declivity in the grasp of ready but reeking fellàhs, and the twenty minutes’ walk to the Nile among the mingled merchandise on the summit of the bank, dogs, timber, grain, pigs, dates, dirt, and sleeping Arabs! And anon the puffing little English steamer, no bigger than a Thames penny ’bove-bridge, with its English captain (!) in gold-laced cap and familiar “go-ahead” and “ease her.” And then Atfeh and its darkness, din and confusion fade away in our wake, and we gratefully sniff the morning air borne down upon the bosom of old Father Nile; and the cheery rattle of cups and saucers, and the fragrant aroma of early “Mocha,” force from us the admission that there may be a bright side to every picture.

If I thus venture to revert to scenes so hackneyed, it is not with the intention of enlarging upon them. I use them as accessories to my narrative, and to explain the nature of my duties as one of Waghorn’s employés. Did space permit of it I would gladly smoke a chibouque with my countrymen grouped on the deck of the panting little steamer as she cleaves the sluggish waters of the Nile, and join in admiration of the towering palms that skirt its shores, or the shout of pleasure that, later on in the day, greets the first glimpse of the pyramids of Ghizeh lighted up by the western sun. I should like the second edition of the donkey-ride which occurs between Boulac and Cairo, and to make one at the well-covered dinner-table of the “Great Eastern” hotel, taking a post-prandial cheroot with dear old Dr. A, in its proprietor’s comfortable sanctum. But the confused sounds which reach us from the court yard below, warn the passengers to prepare for the desert journey. Hastening down, and threading a few of the very narrow streets of Cairo, for the inn-yard is not accessible to anything with wheels, we find in a somewhat more open space, half-a-dozen or more of the rude-looking carriers’ carts before alluded to, used by Waghorn and Company for traversing the desert. Raven, the resident partner of the firm, has previously assigned the six inside seats of each to as many ladies or gentlemen, and they soon find their appointed places. His way-bill, however, made up without the slightest regard to compatibility of tastes, is not always happy in the arrangements dependent on it. Singular enough, at times, was the admixture of creed and grade in these desert coaches. I once saw General Ventura wedged in between a member of the Society of Friends and the Bishop of Antioch, their vis-à-vis consisting of the daughter of an Indian