THE GATEWAY OF THE EAST.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 6 November 1914, Page 8

THE GATEWAY OF THE EAST.

Twelve days at sea from Birkenhead on the ocean highway to Bombay will see you passing- the famous statue of De Lesseps, which looks over aud past the ramshackle buildings of Port Said to the entrance of , the famous Suez Canal, of which he was, as everyone knows, the engineer. To a Western eye, as yet unfamiliar with the fascinating and incongruous East, Fort Said offers j the first glimpse of Eastern life, and tho conditions under which exist-r-nce is maintained under hot sun. Hitherto you have been accustomed to chimneys—here are none ! This, perhaps, is the first thing that is noted as the liner draws up to her moorings opposite the landing places ; the next is a babel of voices alongside, as numberless boats rush across the short distance from the shore carrying all the oddments of humanity who make a living: from the pockets of Eastern travellers. Here they come ! Arabs in long 3lue robes selling postcards, Turkish delight, necklaces, lace, cigarettes, etc.—all of dubious quality, and offered at—well, anything they can get !It is the inexperienced traveller, of course, who gets " had"— your seasoned 'man has gone through it Vefore—but it is quite a common trick for a box of cigarettes to contain under its first layer very little more than camel's dung, and as you are well up the Canal by the time you reach this new narcotic, well the seller makes a good thing of the deal, and a little lurid I tp.fi-'a'ge "East of Port Said "is nothing. Little boys will entertain you by juggling live chickens out of your pocket for a lilt of silver, whilst over the ship side are naked lu<ls in 4 the water yelling out for soins to be thrown down, and very r*.rely indeed do they miss them ! This is the sort of thing that happens on deck as soon as the gangway is lowered, and you can imagine what a welcome diversion it is after the twelve days at sea—for you can exhaust the variety offered on ship-board very quickly indeed ! It is more than likely that you will ,get four or five hours' stop at Port Said—it all depends on the chance of entering the Canal quickly nnd whether the ship's bunkers need ~oal, which is not very likely on the outward run. Coaling at Port Said is set to music ! —picture hun:lreds of natives "Fillaheen," trotting up planks from the coal barges to the ship, each man with a basket of coal on his head, each man .-hauling some weird Eastern monotone as he moves up one plank to :he ship and down another to the bargo, and so on until the ship is reounkered, and there you have it ! ■Very pictureque, at a distance, like most Eastern customs. Cet within smelling reach, and the scene has its drawbacks ! Of course you go ashore if only to v. rite home and tell them all about it ; and, further, you want to see if all the tales of Port Said heing "a sinkhole of iniquity" are true, and so you step oiY into a gaily-painted boat and spend the next few minutes in .wondering how much the man will charge you ;it is really 3d. per head, arid if the boatmen gets his legal fare—well, you don't understand the "lin,go," so it doesn't matter,'and anyway it is necessary to acquire an air of indifference when paying out to an Eastern, because he never gets enough ! Once ashore you begin to feel the sun, .and thought -flies back to those few cold days out at Liverpool ; next the dust, fine and thick •as it is everywhere East from now onward ; then one begins to notice the faces, and what a conglomeration of race is here ! Every corner of Europe is represented, and so far as the men are concerned, if one may judge by the facial expression, their respective countries will hardly regret their absence*; they seem to have no work to do beyond sitting at tables outside cafes and leering at the endless procession of ships' passengers on which Tort Said mostly lives ; the resident European women are either very fat and dirty or Aery graceful and— dc-ini-monde. It is a pleasant relief to notice the women to whom Egypt is home ; clothed in black robes from head to foot, wearing I curious little brass cylinders over ; their noses, and just a glint from a black eye as you pass to make you feel that under the Eastern robe is a very alluring little baby. The touts who pester you to visit quarters of a "certain"' reputation, with talk of "can-can," etc., are,, perhaps, the- worst nuisance of the streets of Port Said ; they are natives, of course, and as persistent as only an Eastern can be when dealing with what a Hindoo would call a "burra-Sahib." They will follow you all through the town, and no threats of violence can dissuade them from their husine-s. The only thing to push them oft is the sight of an Egyptian policeman, and he has a very simple- but effective way otf dealing with these pests ;he carries a useful cane, and if you will remember' that they oniy wear a thin cotton robe, you can imagine the rest ! Near the railway station —si range incongruity—we saw a caravan just in from the desert, and a very charming and picturesque scene it made. Breakfast was in the making at the hands of the women, w4ao move as gracefully as dccv, whilst the men—grave with the dignity born of desert silences—sat round smoking and watching their children's curiosity as the Europeans

got near the picture with kodaks. The solemn camels made background to a truly Eastern scene— quite the prettiest that Port Said ; had to offer to us. There is really | very little of interest in the town. I The main street is relieved by some feathery mimosa trees ; otherwi- ! the whole place is monotonous. Everybody pays a visit to the one decent shop, kept by one Simon Arzt, who will sell you excellent cigarettes, and fit you out with anything in the way of tropical clothing or presents for home, and a very fine thing he must make out of it, for few there be who travel by way of the "ditch" who do not know Simon Artz, "of Port Said. The rest of the shops are not interesting, and—if one may judge by a passing glance—not very clean ! As to the immoral tone of the town, it is all there by suggestion— touts, post-cards, and the "giad-e.\e" of the European detui-monde ; all these await you in a Port Said thoroughfare, and having seen so much, it is wise to imagine the rest. Speaking for ourselves, W we ventured on a tour of inspection of Port Said houses, it would have to be in the company of half-a-dozen prizefighters ; the risks of such an adventure do not appeal to a solitary Englishman, as yet a stranger to the East and its ways. After two hours ashore, you will lie quite ready for (he ship, and as you m,ount the gangway again your last recollection will be of the boatman who has failed in trying to "bounce" you out of one shilling for the trip, and is now offering you a highly-coloured 3 opinion -of yourself from his point of view. And so you go to your cabin to wash off the dust of Port Said, and probably by this time the boat's house flag will be waving from the offices of the Canal Company as a sign that the liner may push her nose into the 90 miles of narrow! water that crosses a desert to link up West to East.