EGYPT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16749, 2 January 1915, Page 5

EGYPT.

WHERE NEW ZEALAND SOLDIERS ARE NOW.

SOME TRAVEL IMPRESSIONS. (By HELENE CROSS.)

Since so many of our own men aro now ..stationed in Egypt, I venture to think that some of my impressions of that country, culled not so very long ago, may bo of interest. Those who now try to picture husbands, sons and brothers, stationed at the foot of the Pyramids in the land of the Pharoalis, may care to have a description at firsthand from one who lias spent some time in tho country whore their loved ones now are.

It is a far cry from little green, fertile Now Zealand to the land of d'esert and yellow sand. It is a farther cry than a matter of miles of ocean. ft is the distance between a few years of fresh young life and thousands of years of the sleep that has known no awakening, ft is tho antithesis of all things—the fresh, alert, young strong lives—and tho country of tho Dead. That emphasis of tho past is now all around them—and not tho past of a few hundred years, hut of a few thousands many thousands, maybe. What a change to go from tho most youthful placo in tlio world to tho oldest 1 From one of, the greenest, most luscious countries, to hundreds of miles of desert, to tombs and monuments of thousands of years ago! Cairo itself is a mixture of ancient and modern, of doad and very much alive beings, of white, swarthy, dark and black population, of chattering tongues and. padded footfalls. There is perhaps not in the world such a mixture of races as are to be seen in Cairo. Tho city itself is an over-changing kaleidoscope of humanity, with a fascination all its own. Sit on tho terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel for just one afternoon, and you will see the nations of the world go by. No need to travel, they will travel past you. English, French, Egyptian, Turkish, Arab, liedon in, now can 1 name them all? And each separate atom of this conglomerate whole has its own special characteristic, so absorbingly interesting to the observant traveller. One observation is noted at once. What change have tho years wrought to make everyone in Egypt so prosperous and well content r ' Tho calm peasants, outside the city, riding peaco--l’nl donkeys, their sheep following them along the route as clogs follow us of the West. Everywhere I saw peaco and plenty, no lean cattle or povertystricken humans. In Cairo the air of content strikes one still further. The beasts are fed' on the green alfalfa which is cultivated so plentifully, and there is no stint of it. The Arabs wear a peaceful expression, and 101 l prosperously in their carriages. From Egyptian history I knew well this prosperity had not always been with them. I resolved to question the people themselves, not tho English, for we, as a nation, have a lordly habit of taking the credit—are we right? Po to the Egyptians I went with my query, to tho Arabs and the Bedouins. How and whence came all this prosperity? There was not even one dissentient voice. They answered as one man, “Tiie English.” “ Oh, yes,” said Mohammed, my guide. “We all like tho English very much to be here. Since English, came Arabs get rich, Bedouins got rich, Egyptians too. Tho English treat everybody the same.” Yes, that, I truly believe, is the secret of our power. Everybody is treated alike, and treated fairly. And cunning, unscrupulous, wicked or faithless as the Arab may he, lie recognises the quality of fairness in tho English rule. These alien races, once win their faith' and respect, and they are yours. What will help us more than _ anything else in our ruling of Egypt is not the firm hand or tho iron heel, half so much as the fact that we English have won their faith and their trust. Many a time did I hear from Arab, Egyptian or Bedouin.tho same remark, “Oh, yes, the English, they treat every man the same.” . -I

When Lord Kitchener was In Egypt, he won their faith and their respect. He was nominally administrator, but practically emperor. , But ho was accessible to the humblest soldier if he had a grievance to lay before him, and lie saw in every case that justice was done.

Now, our men are camped besido the great Pyramids, amidst tho shifting sands of thousands of years. From the citadel at Cairo which we can climb in the blue haze of a brilliant winter's day, we gaze across the silver ribbon of the flashing Nile, and seo those _ aged monuments, the Pyramids, pointing their apex into the shimmering blue. AVe do not see the Sphinx from Cairo, for it is in a hollow of sand, but perhaps that is just as well, for the wonder of it conies all the fresher to our mind's when we have travelled to it. How strange that in this land of camels, donkeys, water-carriers and veiled women, we should take an ordinary tram oar to go from Cairo to Gizeh, w'hero the Pyramids are! But such is tho fact. If we do not care to spend extra money on a carriage, wo take the tram car from Cairo, and after about three-quarters of an hour’s ride wo arrive at Menai House, the well-known hotel near the Pyramids. There we find camels and donkeys, which we mount, in order to ride the rest of the way to the Pyramids through tho sand. There aro several exciting things for our soldiers to do. One is to climb to the top of tho Great Pyramid, helped by the guides, who are always in readiness. The view from tho top of tho Pyramid is superb and wonderful, and the gigantic tomb is not too difficult to climb, for a man at least, though a woman would have to seo to her skirts, as tho stone blocks make enormous steps. By far the most uncomfortable performance is penetrating to the interior of the Pyramids. To do that one Ims to scriunblo through narrow openings, of course helped by guides, down slippery, pitch-dark passages into the close airless interior oftho stone tomb. The placo is close and smells of bats, which squeak and flutter about as the guides light tho ribbons of magnesium in order to show the blackened interiors of the chambers, from which mummies and treasure have long since been removed. One breathes a sigh of relief and thankfulness on emerging, scratched and dishevelled, hack into tho fresh air and sunlight once more. By far the most wonderful sight at Gizeh is the Sphinx, that over-elusive mystery which fascinates every gazer by its calm inscrutable expression. How much tho Sphinx has scon in tho past of wars and of tragedies! It has seen dynasties rise and fall, armies have bnttorod it even so lately as Napoleon, it has been made a target for the puny fury, pf man. A ct its inscrutable eyes still gaze imperturbably out over tho desert sands towards the rising sun. "Oil, little race of men,” it seems to say, “why trouble over your small fleeting cares? I am the Immovable, tho Great, and all in time will he resolved into what is Right and Good. Have patience, patience.”

And so the great figure sits majestically on, and conveys a message to all who see it. It is wonderful the impression the. Sphinx makes even on the veriest frivollers. • They come upon it from behind, they joko, they laugh, call it a “big mushroom” and other i oolish names,' and then they arrive where dicy can soo its worn and bafck™ lace, and aro .silent! Ihe first experience of a ride on a camel, how mixed one’s feelings are, ni more ways than one! AVo think

how romantic it looks to get on the J bade of that huge, obedient, grunting j creature. Wo mount airily and excited- ‘ Iv. Then tho creature begins to move, t and we also begin to move. Every - separate bono in our body seems to | try moving on its own account, and j the animal calmly. proceeds to j dissect all our joints and put) them together again tho wrong way. t After a short time, wo begin sincerely to envy our companions who have beon ? content to mount the humbler donkey —especially if our camel takes it into his head to break into a trot. And a week in the desert on camel-back makes us vow that, once hack at Cairo, the “ship of tho desert” will for the future be severely left alone. All Egypt is, as 1 said before, such a tremendous antithesis to our brandnew country that tho contrast must strike our men most tremendously forcibly, and, once tho novelty over, they will probably weary of tombs and sandy desert. For Egypt is, without question, a country of tho dead. We bore aro tho country of tho now, the verv-inuch-alivo, the fresh and the alert. In Egypt, everywhere, there is that same insistence on death, reiterated until it becomes morbid, and would lie wearisome were tliero no living, picturesque races to supply a flash of life and colour.

The wonderful' Egyptian Museum of Cairo, with its Egyptian and Greek antiquities, will bo a source of interest and education to our troops. _ But hero, as everywhere else, the insistence on the dead is most marked. For by far tho greatest part of its wonders are connected with mummies and sarcophagi. Some wonderful statues and reliefs show the height of artistic ability that prevailed thousands of years »g°- . '. > , - , But I am not now writing a guide to Egypt. My purpose is merely to bring a few of the principal points to tho notice of those whose loved ones have gone thore, that they may imagine a little what sights and' sounds they may be experiencing. And so I will just givo a small description of tho streets of Cairo itself.

There is tho Cairo that we see first on emerging from the railway station, a largo city full of streets with good shops, of squares, of gardens, and of people. That Cairo is the ono where European travellers stay and move about and rub shoulders with swarthy men in tar bushes, with veiled women, With Bedouins in turbans, with Arab porters, water-carriers, sellers of alt kinds of wares, beggars, Copts, Turks, Armenians, Nubians. Then there is another Cairo in tiltold Arabian quarters, a Cairo, of narrow streets, so narrow that the balconies of tiie harems above project and nearly meet each other. Tho traffic in this old Cairo is confused and complicated. One threads one’s way through a continuous stream of animals, men, women, walking or riding, carts, mules, horses, donkeys. The money-changers sit, jingling their coins, the water-car-riers rattle their vessels, the camels groan, the donkeys bray, the beggars accost ono every moment, the sellors of all kinds of rubbish urge one to buy, the children call out for backsheesh., and there doesn’t seem to he a. noise under the sun that is not ringing in one’s ears. The pungent smell of vhe alfalfa on which the animals are constantly fed assails one’s nostrils, together with all the other native smells, and one may say that there is not ono sense of tho body that is not being actively engaged. Lastly, the sound of the muezzin is heard at intervals, summoning the faithful to prayer. It is a strange sight to European eyes to sec the Mohammedans stop whatever they are doing and kneel to their prayers in tho sight of all men'- There is no embarrassment in their action. It is their religion and their custom, and it should inspiro respect in the minds of us Europeans. It is an action which might occasionally make us pause and wonder if we, in our homes, remember our Maker as the Faithful do in Egypt. In the Zoological Gardens at Cairo" there is a splendid collection of giraffes, quite a flock, besides many other rare African animals.

1 have spoken of two Cairos. There is a third worthy of mention, it is the City of tho Dead. AVo ride‘or drive through quiet streets, we pass and see mosques and tombs. But the strange part of tliis is that we aro passing through streets where houses of the living once were, hut whoso houses are now closed and transformed into tombs. AVo go past shuttered houses, and thero is no footfall. No denizens of the homes pass in or out; all is silence, and dust and sand settlo over everything. So tho cult of the dead, and tho worship of the dead, hang over Egypt and brood in the air. And we are glad to float on tho lazy Nile, and later to try and forget 60 manv tombs, of so many thousand years. Avo are glad to greet the living, even if they are only the beggars, who run after us to demand alms. And at first we givo too lavishly, and, like all strangers, help to spoil the already spoilt races which swarm amongst tfie sand and the millions of flies in Egypt. Lord Kitchener, their idol, tried to improve matters as far as that promiscuous giving was concerned. Even the babes of a few week* old are taught to hold out wizened hands for alms.

But tho Egyptians, on tho whole, love the English and English rule, and so do all the other conglomerate races that throng the streets of Cairo. And long may they do so!