The Innocents Abroad

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Innocents Abroad


Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can
the curse of the Deity beautify a land?

Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and
tradition--it is dream-land.




CHAPTER LVII.

It was worth a kingdom to be at sea again. It was a relief to drop all
anxiety whatsoever--all questions as to where we should go; how long we
should stay; whether it were worth while to go or not; all anxieties
about the condition of the horses; all such questions as "Shall we ever
get to water?" "Shall we ever lunch?" "Ferguson, how many more million
miles have we got to creep under this awful sun before we camp?" It was
a relief to cast all these torturing little anxieties far away--ropes of
steel they were, and every one with a separate and distinct strain on it
--and feel the temporary contentment that is born of the banishment of
all care and responsibility. We did not look at the compass: we did not
care, now, where the ship went to, so that she went out of sight of land
as quickly as possible. When I travel again, I wish to go in a pleasure
ship. No amount of money could have purchased for us, in a strange
vessel and among unfamiliar faces, the perfect satisfaction and the sense
of being at home again which we experienced when we stepped on board the
"Quaker City,"--our own ship--after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a
something we have felt always when we returned to her, and a something we
had no desire to sell.

We took off our blue woollen shirts, our spurs, and heavy boots, our
sanguinary revolvers and our buckskin-seated pantaloons, and got shaved
and came out in Christian costume once more. All but Jack, who changed
all other articles of his dress, but clung to his traveling pantaloons.
They still preserved their ample buckskin seat intact; and so his short
pea jacket and his long, thin legs assisted to make him a picturesque
object whenever he stood on the forecastle looking abroad upon the ocean
over the bows. At such times his father's last injunction suggested
itself to me. He said:

"Jack, my boy, you are about to go among a brilliant company of gentlemen
and ladies, who are refined and cultivated, and thoroughly accomplished
in the manners and customs of good society. Listen to their
conversation, study their habits of life, and learn. Be polite and
obliging to all, and considerate towards every one's opinions, failings
and prejudices. Command the just respect of all your fellow-voyagers,
even though you fail to win their friendly regard. And Jack--don't you
ever dare, while you live, appear in public on those decks in fair
weather, in a costume unbecoming your mother's drawing-room!"

It would have been worth any price if the father of this hopeful youth
could have stepped on board some time, and seen him standing high on the
fore-castle, pea jacket, tasseled red fez, buckskin patch and all,
placidly contemplating the ocean--a rare spectacle for any body's
drawing-room.

After a pleasant voyage and a good rest, we drew near to Egypt and out of
the mellowest of sunsets we saw the domes and minarets of Alexandria rise
into view. As soon as the anchor was down, Jack and I got a boat and
went ashore. It was night by this time, and the other passengers were
content to remain at home and visit ancient Egypt after breakfast. It
was the way they did at Constantinople. They took a lively interest in
new countries, but their school-boy impatience had worn off, and they had
learned that it was wisdom to take things easy and go along comfortably
--these old countries do not go away in the night; they stay till after
breakfast.

When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian boys with donkeys
no larger than themselves, waiting for passengers--for donkeys are the
omnibuses of Egypt. We preferred to walk, but we could not have our own
way. The boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their
donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we turned. They
were good-natured rascals, and so were the donkeys. We mounted, and the
boys ran behind us and kept the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the
fashion at Damascus. I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any
beast in the world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile,
though opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is
convenient--very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest your
feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you.

We found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to know that the
Prince of Wales had stopped there once. They had it every where on
signs. No other princes had stopped there since, till Jack and I came.
We went abroad through the town, then, and found it a city of huge
commercial buildings, and broad, handsome streets brilliant with
gas-light. By night it was a sort of reminiscence of Paris. But finally
Jack found an ice-cream saloon, and that closed investigations for that
evening. The weather was very hot, it had been many a day since Jack had
seen ice-cream, and so it was useless to talk of leaving the saloon till
it shut up.

In the morning the lost tribes of America came ashore and infested the
hotels and took possession of all the donkeys and other open barouches
that offered. They went in picturesque procession to the American
Consul's; to the great gardens; to Cleopatra's Needles; to Pompey's
Pillar; to the palace of the Viceroy of Egypt; to the Nile; to the superb
groves of date-palms. One of our most inveterate relic-hunters had his
hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and
could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a
heavy sledge hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's
Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith
were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as
hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand
years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter battered at these
persistently, and sweated profusely over his work. He might as well have
attempted to deface the moon. They regarded him serenely with the
stately smile they had worn so long, and which seemed to say, "Peck away,
poor insect; we were not made to fear such as you; in ten-score dragging
ages we have seen more of your kind than there are sands at your feet:
have they left a blemish upon us?"

But I am forgetting the Jaffa Colonists. At Jaffa we had taken on board
some forty members of a very celebrated community. They were male and
female; babies, young boys and young girls; young married people, and
some who had passed a shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the
"Adams Jaffa Colony." Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr.
Adams, his wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no money but
did not know where to turn or whither to go. Such was the statement made
to us. Our forty were miserable enough in the first place, and they lay
about the decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed their
misery, I take it. However, one or two young men remained upright, and
by constant persecution we wormed out of them some little information.
They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary condition, for, having
been shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they felt humiliated and
unhappy. In such circumstances people do not like to talk.

The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that such as could
get away did so, from time to time. The prophet Adams--once an actor,
then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary, always an
adventurer--remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful subjects. The
forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though not all of
them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become of them then they
did not know and probably did not care--any thing to get away from hated
Jaffa. They had little to hope for. Because after many appeals to the
sympathies of New England, made by strangers of Boston, through the
newspapers, and after the establishment of an office there for the
reception of moneyed contributions for the Jaffa colonists, One Dollar
was subscribed. The consul-general for Egypt showed me the newspaper
paragraph which mentioned the circumstance and mentioned also the
discontinuance of the effort and the closing of the office. It was
evident that practical New England was not sorry to be rid of such
visionaries and was not in the least inclined to hire any body to bring
them back to her. Still, to get to Egypt, was something, in the eyes of
the unfortunate colonists, hopeless as the prospect seemed of ever
getting further.

Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our ship. One of our
passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New York Sun, inquired of the
consul-general what it would cost to send these people to their home in
Maine by the way of Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in
gold would do it. Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the
troubles of the Jaffa colonists were at an end.--[It was an unselfish
act of benevolence; it was done without any ostentation, and has never
been mentioned in any newspaper, I think. Therefore it is refreshing to
learn now, several months after the above narrative was written, that
another man received all the credit of this rescue of the colonists.
Such is life.]

Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel, and we soon
tired of it. We took the cars and came up here to ancient Cairo, which
is an Oriental city and of the completest pattern. There is little about
it to disabuse one's mind of the error if he should take it into his head
that he was in the heart of Arabia. Stately camels and dromedaries,
swarthy Egyptians, and likewise Turks and black Ethiopians, turbaned,
sashed, and blazing in a rich variety of Oriental costumes of all shades
of flashy colors, are what one sees on every hand crowding the narrow
streets and the honeycombed bazaars. We are stopping at Shepherd's
Hotel, which is the worst on earth except the one I stopped at once in a
small town in the United States. It is pleasant to read this sketch in
my note-book, now, and know that I can stand Shepherd's Hotel, sure,
because I have been in one just like it in America and survived:

I stopped at the Benton House. It used to be a good hotel, but that
proves nothing--I used to be a good boy, for that matter. Both of
us have lost character of late years. The Benton is not a good
hotel. The Benton lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel.
Perdition is full of better hotels than the Benton.

It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would
like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two.
When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that
was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and
patched with old scraps of oil cloth--a hall that sank under one's
feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light
--two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that
burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The
porter lit it again, and I asked if that was all the light the clerk
sent. He said, "Oh no, I've got another one here," and he produced
another couple of inches of tallow candle. I said, "Light them both
--I'll have to have one to see the other by." He did it, but the
result was drearier than darkness itself. He was a cheery,
accommodating rascal. He said he would go "somewheres" and steal a
lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in his criminal design. I heard
the landlord get after him in the hall ten minutes afterward.

"Where are you going with that lamp?"

"Fifteen wants it, sir."

"Fifteen! why he's got a double lot of candles--does the man want
to illuminate the house?--does he want to get up a torch-light
procession?--what is he up to, any how?"

"He don't like them candles--says he wants a lamp."

"Why what in the nation does----why I never heard of such a thing?
What on earth can he want with that lamp?"

"Well, he only wants to read--that's what he says."

"Wants to read, does he?--ain't satisfied with a thousand candles,
but has to have a lamp!--I do wonder what the devil that fellow
wants that lamp for? Take him another candle, and then if----"

"But he wants the lamp--says he'll burn the d--d old house down if
he don't get a lamp!" (a remark which I never made.)

"I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along--but I
swear it beats my time, though--and see if you can't find out what
in the very nation he wants with that lamp."

And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and
wondering over the unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was a
good one, but it revealed some disagreeable things--a bed in the
suburbs of a desert of room--a bed that had hills and valleys in it,
and you'd have to accommodate your body to the impression left in it
by the man that slept there last, before you could lie comfortably;
a carpet that had seen better days; a melancholy washstand in a
remote corner, and a dejected pitcher on it sorrowing over a broken
nose; a looking-glass split across the centre, which chopped your
head off at the chin and made you look like some dreadful unfinished
monster or other; the paper peeling in shreds from the walls.

I sighed and said: "This is charming; and now don't you think you
could get me something to read?"

The porter said, "Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead loads of
books;" and he was gone before I could tell him what sort of
literature I would rather have. And yet his countenance expressed
the utmost confidence in his ability to execute the commission with
credit to himself. The old man made a descent on him.

"What are you going to do with that pile of books?"

"Fifteen wants 'em, sir."

"Fifteen, is it? He'll want a warming-pan, next--he'll want a
nurse! Take him every thing there is in the house--take him the
bar-keeper--take him the baggage-wagon--take him a chamber-maid!
Confound me, I never saw any thing like it. What did he say he
wants with those books?"

"Wants to read 'em, like enough; it ain't likely he wants to eat
'em, I don't reckon."

"Wants to read 'em--wants to read 'em this time of night, the
infernal lunatic! Well, he can't have them."

"But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em; he says he'll just go
a-rairin' and a-chargin' through this house and raise more--well,
there's no tellin' what he won't do if he don't get 'em; because
he's drunk and crazy and desperate, and nothing'll soothe him down
but them cussed books." [I had not made any threats, and was not in
the condition ascribed to me by the porter.]

"Well, go on; but I will be around when he goes to rairing and
charging, and the first rair he makes I'll make him rair out of the
window." And then the old gentleman went off, growling as before.

The genius of that porter was something wonderful. He put an armful
of books on the bed and said "Good night" as confidently as if he
knew perfectly well that those books were exactly my style of
reading matter. And well he might. His selection covered the whole
range of legitimate literature. It comprised "The Great
Consummation," by Rev. Dr. Cummings--theology; "Revised Statutes of
the State of Missouri"--law; "The Complete Horse-Doctor"--medicine;
"The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo--romance; "The works of
William Shakspeare"--poetry. I shall never cease to admire the tact
and the intelligence of that gifted porter.

But all the donkeys in Christendom, and most of the Egyptian boys, I
think, are at the door, and there is some noise going on, not to put it
in stronger language.--We are about starting to the illustrious Pyramids
of Egypt, and the donkeys for the voyage are under inspection. I will go
and select one before the choice animals are all taken.




CHAPTER LVIII.

The donkeys were all good, all handsome, all strong and in good
condition, all fast and all willing to prove it. They were the best we
had found any where, and the most 'recherche'. I do not know what
'recherche' is, but that is what these donkeys were, anyhow. Some
were of a soft mouse-color, and the others were white, black, and
vari-colored. Some were close-shaven, all over, except that a tuft like
a paint-brush was left on the end of the tail. Others were so shaven in
fanciful landscape garden patterns, as to mark their bodies with curving
lines, which were bounded on one side by hair and on the other by the
close plush left by the shears. They had all been newly barbered, and
were exceedingly stylish. Several of the white ones were barred like
zebras with rainbow stripes of blue and red and yellow paint. These
were indescribably gorgeous. Dan and Jack selected from this lot
because they brought back Italian reminiscences of the "old masters."
The saddles were the high, stuffy, frog-shaped things we had known in
Ephesus and Smyrna. The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian rascals
who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day without
tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel was
full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting
ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus.
We were not a very large party, but as we charged through the streets of
the great metropolis, we made noise for five hundred, and displayed
activity and created excitement in proportion. Nobody can steer a
donkey, and some collided with camels, dervishes, effendis, asses,
beggars and every thing else that offered to the donkeys a reasonable
chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue that leads
out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls
of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way,
threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to
the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a
terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again.

Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibitions of Oriental
simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along the great
thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called her
thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more
than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb
build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's
acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and
then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most
startling novelties grow tame and spiritless to these sight-surfeited
wanderers.

Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the donkeys and tumbled
them bodily aboard a small boat with a lateen sail, and we followed and
got under way. The deck was closely packed with donkeys and men; the two
sailors had to climb over and under and through the wedged mass to work
the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or five donkeys out of the
way when he wished to swing his tiller and put his helm hard-down. But
what were their troubles to us? We had nothing to do; nothing to do but
enjoy the trip; nothing to do but shove the donkeys off our corns and
look at the charming scenery of the Nile.

On the island at our right was the machine they call the Nilometer, a
stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of the river and
prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two feet and produce a famine,
or whether it will properly flood the land at forty and produce plenty,
or whether it will rise to forty-three and bring death and destruction to
flocks and crops--but how it does all this they could not explain to us
so that we could understand. On the same island is still shown the spot
where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Near the spot we
sailed from, the Holy Family dwelt when they sojourned in Egypt till
Herod should complete his slaughter of the innocents. The same tree they
rested under when they first arrived, was there a short time ago, but the
Viceroy of Egypt sent it to the Empress Eugenie lately. He was just in
time, otherwise our pilgrims would have had it.

The Nile at this point is muddy, swift and turbid, and does not lack a
great deal of being as wide as the Mississippi.

We scrambled up the steep bank at the shabby town of Ghizeh, mounted the
donkeys again, and scampered away. For four or five miles the route lay
along a high embankment which they say is to be the bed of a railway the
Sultan means to build for no other reason than that when the Empress of
the French comes to visit him she can go to the Pyramids in comfort.
This is true Oriental hospitality. I am very glad it is our privilege to
have donkeys instead of cars.

At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms,
looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and filmy,
as well. They swam in a rich haze that took from them all suggestions of
unfeeling stone, and made them seem only the airy nothings of a dream
--structures which might blossom into tiers of vague arches, or ornate
colonnades, may be, and change and change again, into all graceful forms
of architecture, while we looked, and then melt deliciously away and
blend with the tremulous atmosphere.

At the end of the levee we left the mules and went in a sailboat across
an arm of the Nile or an overflow, and landed where the sands of the
Great Sahara left their embankment, as straight as a wall, along the
verge of the alluvial plain of the river. A laborious walk in the
flaming sun brought us to the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. It
was a fairy vision no longer. It was a corrugated, unsightly mountain of
stone. Each of its monstrous sides was a wide stairway which rose
upward, step above step, narrowing as it went, till it tapered to a point
far aloft in the air. Insect men and women--pilgrims from the Quaker
City--were creeping about its dizzy perches, and one little black swarm
were waving postage stamps from the airy summit--handkerchiefs will be
understood.

Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular Egyptians and Arabs
who wanted the contract of dragging us to the top--all tourists are. Of
course you could not hear your own voice for the din that was around you.
Of course the Sheiks said they were the only responsible parties; that
all contracts must be made with them, all moneys paid over to them, and
none exacted from us by any but themselves alone. Of course they
contracted that the varlets who dragged us up should not mention
bucksheesh once. For such is the usual routine. Of course we contracted
with them, paid them, were delivered into the hands of the draggers,
dragged up the Pyramids, and harried and be-deviled for bucksheesh from
the foundation clear to the summit. We paid it, too, for we were
purposely spread very far apart over the vast side of the Pyramid. There
was no help near if we called, and the Herculeses who dragged us had a
way of asking sweetly and flatteringly for bucksheesh, which was
seductive, and of looking fierce and threatening to throw us down the
precipice, which was persuasive and convincing.

Each step being full as high as a dinner-table; there being very, very
many of the steps; an Arab having hold of each of our arms and springing
upward from step to step and snatching us with them, forcing us to lift
our feet as high as our breasts every time, and do it rapidly and keep it
up till we were ready to faint, who shall say it is not lively,
exhilarating, lacerating, muscle-straining, bone-wrenching and perfectly
excruciating and exhausting pastime, climbing the Pyramids? I beseeched
the varlets not to twist all my joints asunder; I iterated, reiterated,
even swore to them that I did not wish to beat any body to the top; did
all I could to convince them that if I got there the last of all I would
feel blessed above men and grateful to them forever; I begged them,
prayed them, pleaded with them to let me stop and rest a moment--only one
little moment: and they only answered with some more frightful springs,
and an unenlisted volunteer behind opened a bombardment of determined
boosts with his head which threatened to batter my whole political
economy to wreck and ruin.

Twice, for one minute, they let me rest while they extorted bucksheesh,
and then continued their maniac flight up the Pyramid. They wished to
beat the other parties. It was nothing to them that I, a stranger, must
be sacrificed upon the altar of their unholy ambition. But in the midst
of sorrow, joy blooms. Even in this dark hour I had a sweet consolation.
For I knew that except these Mohammedans repented they would go straight
to perdition some day. And they never repent--they never forsake their
paganism. This thought calmed me, cheered me, and I sank down, limp and
exhausted, upon the summit, but happy, so happy and serene within.