Foot-prints of Travel - Maturin Murray Ballou (book suggestions txt) 📗

their history rests, after all is said, amid a confusion of very thin speculation. There is little genius evinced in the design or execution of the Pyramids. Neither art, taste, nor religion is in any way subserved by these unequalled follies. There is no architectural excellence in them, though great skill is evinced in their construction, they are merely enormous piles of stone. Some pronounce them marvellous as evidences of ancient greatness and power. True; but if it were desirable, we could build loftier and larger ones in our day. As they are doubtless over four thousand years old, we admit that they are venerable, and that they are entitled to a certain degree of consideration on that account. In the religious instinct which led the Buddhists to build, at such enormous expense of time and money, the cave-temples of Elephanta, Ellora, and Carlee; in the idolatrous Hindoo temples of Madura and Tanjore, the shrines of Ceylon, the pagodas of China, and the temples of Japan, one detects an underlying and elevating sentiment, a grand and reverential idea, in which there may be more of acceptable veneration than we can fully appreciate; but in the Pyramids we have no expression of devotion, only an embodiment of personal vanity, which hesitated at nothing for its gratification, and which proved a total failure.

The immensity of the desert landscape, and the absence of any object for comparison, make these three pyramids seem smaller than they really are; but the actual height of the largest, that of Cheops, is nearly five hundred feet. The theory that they are royal tombs is generally accepted. Bunsen claims for Egypt nearly seven thousand years of civilization and prosperity before the building of these monuments. We do not often pause to realize how little of reliable history there is extant. Conjecture is not history. If contemporary record so often belies itself, what ought we to consider veracious of that which comes to us through the shadowy distance of thousands of years? Not many hundred feet from the nearest pyramid, and on a somewhat lower plane, stands that colossal mystery, the Sphinx. The Arabs call it "The Father of Terror," and it certainly has a weird and unworldly look. Its body and most of the head is hewn out of the solid rock where it stands, the upper portion forming the head and bust of a human being, to which is added the body with the paws of an animal. The great size of the figure will be realized when we mention the fact that the face alone is thirty feet long and half as wide. The body is in a sitting posture, with the paws extended forward some fifty feet or more. This strange figure is believed to be of much greater antiquity than the Pyramids, but no one can say how old it really is. Notwithstanding its mutilated condition, showing the furrows of time, the features have still a sad, tranquil expression, telling of the original dignity of the design.

From Cairo we take the railway to Ismailia, the little town situated midway on the Suez Canal, between the two seas, at the Bitter Lakes, through which the course of the canal runs. It is a pretty and attractive place, containing four or five thousand inhabitants, and is a creation of the last few years. Here we observe gardens filled with choice flowers and fruit-trees, vegetation being in its most verdant dress, promoted by irrigation from the neighboring fresh-water canal. The place has broad, neat streets, and a capacious central square, ornamented with large and thrifty trees. It was here that the representatives of all nations met on the occasion of the inaugurating ceremony on the completion of De Lesseps's canal. We take a small mail steamer at Ismailia, through the western half of the canal to Port Said, the Mediterranean terminus of the great artificial river. It is a fact worthy of remembrance that, with all our modern improvements and progressive ideas, the Egyptians were centuries before us in this plan of shortening the path of commerce between the East and the West; or, in other words, of connecting the Red Sea with that of the Mediterranean across the Isthmus and through the Gulf of Suez. The purpose was probably never thoroughly carried out until De Lesseps's consummation of it as it now exists.

Port Said, like Suez, derives its only interest and importance from the canal. It contains some seven thousand inhabitants, with a floating population of two thousand. The region round about it is perfectly barren, like Egypt nearly everywhere away from the valley of the Nile. Through that part of the desert which we pass in coming from Suez, one looks in vain for any continuous sign of vegetation. The entire absence of trees and forests accounts for the lack also of wild beasts, excepting the hyena and jackal, which are occasionally met with. Here and there, at long intervals, an oasis of green is seen, like a smile breaking over the arid face of nature. Once or twice we see a cluster of palms beside a rude well, hedged in by a little patch of green earth, about which a few camels or goats are quenching their thirst or cropping the scanty herbage. Some Arabs, in picturesque costumes, linger hard by. The tents pitched in the background are of the same low, flat-topped, camel's-hair construction as have been used by these desert tribes for many thousands of years.

Egypt has only her ruins, her antiquity, her Bible associations to give her interest with the world at large. Japan is infinitely to be preferred; China even rivals her in natural advantages; and India is much more inviting. In looking at Egypt we must forget her present and recall her past. The real Egypt is not the vast territory which we find laid down by geographers, reaching to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and embracing equatorial regions; it is and was, even in the days of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the valley of the Nile, from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean Sea, hemmed in by the Libyan and Arabian deserts, whence there came to the rest of the world so much of art, science, and philosophy. The fellah or peasant, he who tills the soil, is of a fine and industrious race, well built, broad chested, and lithe of frame. He is the same figure that his ancestors were of old, as represented on the tombs and temples of Thebes, and on the slabs one sees from Gizeh, in the museum of Cairo. He still performs his work in the nineteenth century just as he did before the days of Moses, scattering the seed and irrigating by hand. He is little seen in the cities,--his place is in the field, where he lives and thrives. Though his native land has found such various masters in Greek and Roman, Arab and Turk, he has never lost his individuality; he has ever been, and is to-day, the same historic Egyptian.

The next point to which our course will take us is the Island of Malta, which involves a sail of a thousand miles from Port Said. The city of Valetta is the capital, having a population of a hundred and fifty thousand. The island is an English outpost, similar to Gibraltar, and, in a military point of view, is about as important. It is twenty miles long and sixteen wide, and has held a conspicuous place in historical records for nearly three thousand years. The houses of the city are mostly large stone structures, and many have notable architectural merit, fronting thoroughfares of good width, well paved, and lighted with gas. An aspect of cleanliness and freshness pervades everything. Many of the streets run up the steep hillside on which the town stands, and are flanked by broad stone steps for foot-passengers, the roadway of such streets being quite inaccessible for vehicles. The principal thoroughfare is the Strada Reale, nearly a mile long, lined with attractive stores and dwelling-houses, forming a busy and pleasant boulevard. The houses over the stores are ornamented by convenient iron balconies, where the citizens can sit and enjoy the cool evening breezes after the hot days that linger about Malta nearly all the year round.

At the upper end of the Strada Reale we observe a large and imposing stone opera-house, presenting a fine architectural aspect, being ornamented with lofty Corinthian columns, a side portico and broad stone steps leading up to the vestibule. A visit to the Church of St. John will afford much enjoyment. It was built a little over three hundred years since by the Knights of the Order of St. John, who lavished fabulous sums of money upon its erection and its elaborate ornamentation. Statuary and paintings of rare merit abound within its walls, and gold and silver ornaments render the work of great aggregate value. The entire roof of the church, which is divided into zones, is admirably painted in figures of such proportions as to look life-size from the floor, representing prominent Scriptural scenes. In this church the Knights seem to have vied with each other in adding to its ornaments and its treasures, so that the rich marbles, bas-reliefs, and mosaics are almost confusing in their abundance. The floor is formed of inlaid marble slabs, which cover the last resting-places of the most distinguished Knights of the famous Order of St. John.

Snow is not known in Malta, but ice sometimes forms during the coldest nights of winter, though only in very thin layers, the climate being much like that of Southern Italy. Fruit and ornamental trees abound, and flowers attract the eye in nearly every domestic window. There must be a prevailing refinement of taste in this island city, otherwise the abundance of flowers offered for sale in the Strada Reale would not find purchasers. There is a section near the harbor named Casal Attand; that is, the "Village of Roses." _Casal_ in Maltese signifies village. There is also Casal Luca, the "Village of Poplars," and still another, Casal Zebbug, the "Village of Olives," a natural and appropriate system of nomenclature. It is extremely interesting to visit the armory of the Knights of St. John, to see the rusty lances, dimmed sword-blades, and tattered battle-flags which were borne by the Crusaders in the days of Saladin and Coeur de Lion. A visit to Fort St. Angelo, perched upon the summit of the island, enables us to look far away over the blue Mediterranean, dotted by the picturesque maritime rig of these waters. It is pleasant to stroll about the bright, cleanly streets of Valetta, to chat with the smiling flower-girls who occupy the little kiosks (flower-stands) on the corners of the Strada Reale, and to enjoy a cooling ice in the gardens of the cafe adjoining the Knights' Palace. But we must not linger here, whence we sail for Gibraltar, a thousand miles away, at the other end of this great inland sea.

Arrived at the famous Rock, we are at once impressed upon landing with its military importance. Every other person one meets is in uniform, and cannon are as plenty as at Woolwich or West Point. The Signal Station is fifteen hundred feet in height. The zigzag path leading to the summit is lined with wild-flowers, though we come now and again upon embrasures, whence protrude grim-muzzled guns. Further up we stoop to gather some daphnes and disclose a battery screened by fragrant and blooming flowers. From the top the view is magnificent; the white wings of commerce which sprinkle the sea look like sea-gulls, and steamships are only discernible by the long line of smoke trailing behind them. Far below us, on the Spanish side, lies the town, a thick mass of yellow, white, and brown houses; and nestling in the bay is the shipping, looking like toy-boats. The