Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/399

Rh Alexandria slowly; everybody was going on to India except me, and I landed. The first thing I did was to go straight to a telegraph office and pay nineteen shillings and sixpence for a telegram to Richard at Beyrout, which of course arrived there after I did. I cannot say that I was struck with Alexandria; in point of fact, I mentally called it "a hole," in vulgar parlance. I went to the Hôtel de l'Europe, a second-rate hotel, though one of the best in Alexandria. It was not so bad as might have been expected. In the afternoon we made a party up to see Pompey's Pillar and Cleopatra's Needle and the bazars and other things. But I am bound to say that, on the whole, I thought Alexandria "neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring." It was a sort of a jumble of Eastern and Western, and the worst of each. The only amusing incident which happened to me there was when two dragomans got up a fictitious quarrel as to who should take me to the bazars. Of course they appealed to me, and I said, "You may both come, but I shall only pay one." Whereupon they fastened upon each other tooth and nail, tore each other's clothes, and bit each other's cheeks. These two, though I never suspected it at the time, were, it appeared, in the habit of thus dealing with ladies and missionaries and amiable English tourists; and they always got up this farce, because, to avoid a street fight, the kindhearted looker-on would generally employ and pay them both, and perhaps give them a tip in addition to calm them down. But I innocently did the right thing without knowing it. I had so often seen negroes