IN THE WAKE OF THE RISING SUN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 9, 28 February 1901, Page 3

IN THE WAKE OF THE RISING SUN.

By 'Viator.'

Beyrout, Syria, Dec. 6, 1900. ALEXANDRIA. We were early awake on the morning of Tuesday, November 27, for the first streak of dawn was to herald our entrance into the harbor of Alei.au dria, iLe open gateway of modern E^ypt. From the bridge we watched not in vain. In the roseate haze the Pharos rose in lonely grandeur, all alone out, of the warn; mi.si.b of the morning, but Boon circling at its base — for it is a low reach of sand — we picked out the extending piles of the modern city. Up the narrow channel we thread oar way, past many steamers lying at anchor, past the Khedive's yacht and the Khedive's Palace, till we find our berth alongside the quay. Of the ancient city of Alexandria, seat of science, and art, and culture, scarce a vestige remains, but beyond the purview of the native quarter, that in the Far East changeth not, rise the usual bright buildings of modern times. Though France haß had to yield her sway in Egypt, there is much to remind the traveller of the impress made here by our Gallic neighbors when her power for colonising was stronger and more enduring than in these degenerate times. The names of the streets tell of fair France ; most of the officials in the Civil Service hail from that country, and in the stores and shops on the boulevards, in the cafes, in the churches, you hear the echoes of the French language. Guides and dragomans, city police and railway officials, cab-drivers and donkey boys — all in their ready if halting language tell of the past ascendency of France in these parts. What Chaucer wrote bo slyly of the Abbess in his ' Tales ' may without Btrain be quoted of the disjointed French spoken in the streets of Alexandria. ' Her French was the French of Stratford-at-Bowc, For the French of Paris was to her unknowe.' All trace of the Ptolemies and the Neo-Platonists is lost in modern Alexandria — a glittering city, save where the swarthy races forefather, and streets with a decidedly continental finish. But quite lately, within the last three or four months only, accident has unearthed the most startling discoveries of a buried city lying dormant and lost during the ages under piles of earth and rubbish. The antiquarian and the archaeologist will have in disclosed streets and buildings and tombs a big field for study and discussion. We had a look at ' Pompey's Pillar.' at the canal running into the Nile at Cairo, at the public gardens rich and glorious in flowers, fruits and giant palms, at the Franciscan Church and the Jesuit College, and then took train to Cairo. , Leaving Alexandria at 4.30 we covered the 130 miles distance to Cairo in three hours and a half over a country peopled by the toiling fellaheen of Egypt, still hugging tbe primitive past ; still lagging on time's highway ; still corded victims of manners, habits, and customs that bring the observer back to biblical pictures and biblical stories with a reality quite startling to western races. If aught is to be gathered from the toilers in the cotton, rice, and maize fields, from the mud huts crouching under the lee of the modest hills, from the toil-worn limbs and half-clad forms, albeit interesting in their many colors setting off the dusky skin, there is too in the land of the Nile a system of land tenure whose first principle is not to gift the toiler with the best fruits of his labor. Here for the first time are eeen the Eastern women thickly vuled, or decked as to the visage with hideous 'yashmak' cunningly contrived to conceal the face and features, but with just enough opening for the eye to fix the gaze on others. ' Forsitan ut spectent, sed non spectentur ut ipsa?.' In a little over three hours we cover the 130 miles between Alexandria and Cairo — in railway carriages quite up to the ease and comforts of Western countries. As we near the capital of modern Egypt, the Libyan chain of mountains is seen in the distance, gardens and neat cottages rush past the railway line, and minarets rising sheer in the still evening air tell us we are at Cairo. As we alight at the railway station, built in arabesque style, we are the centre of a mixed throng of dark and dusky noisy figures, befezzed and beturbaned, standing out in red, and yellow, and blue, and turquoise, and gold, and spotless white, all awaiting the 'express' from Alexandria. CAIRO. Cairo, the largest city in Africa, counts a population of more than 600,000 souls, of whom only some 2.">,000 are Europeans. The native population is made up of Arabs, Fellahs, Copts, Turks, Jews, Bedouins, Numidians, and others. It stands on the east bank of the Nile some 10 miles south of the point where the Itosetta and Damietta branches of the lordly river divide. Since the middle of present century, Cairo has rapidly developed on the European side, and as the prinoipal residence of the Khedive, and of the ConsulsGeneral, the seat of Government and StUe Adrnininistration, is the centre, during the season, of a large and varied fashionable soc iety. The strong hand of England is scarcely veiled under the filmy shadow of native administration, and the native in his own haunts is a thing not reckoned with. He is veritably a hewer of wood and a drawer of water in the ancient land of the Pharaohs. ' Shepheard's Hotel,' to which we were driven in an open drag with four horses, picked out of the many cabs and carriages hitched on to the wiry animals of Fgypt, that lie in wait for the traveller, is a hostelry appointed in modern style of the highest order of comfort. We sauntered after dinner into the open streets, and in the clear moonlight breathed the late November air, as fresh, and soft, and olear as its fellow-evening at its summer best in far New Zealand. But we sauntered not far into the native quarter, that ramificates in lanes and passages and malodorous byways just off the European district — a Btubborn proof of the strict conservatism, in spite of the

invasion of the restless Western, in apite of plague and epidemic— a conservatism writ large on Oriental habits even in the capital of Egypt. Cairo would seem to me the rallying ground of wealthy/ Europeans seeking to cheat the rigid winters of the West, and anxious to gratify a natural desire of seeing the wonders strewn over this ancient land. Would that I could add that the motley peoples who cluster in these parts benefit to a slight degree by association with these birds of passage. Insoluble problem ! They go their ways, and cherish their customs, and tread the beaten path of their fnthprs and e-lory in thpir unalterable ways, however darksome, punitive, revolting, with a conviction and steadfastness of pnrj ir >°c thn* '•poV not of modification or ohariffp — ' Qnare fremuerunt gentes, et populi meditati aunt mania ? ' — Of the highest order of interest is Cairo with its euvirons. THE JESUITS. At Fagollah, a quarter of an hour's walk from Shepheard's Hotel, the Jesuit Fathers, always in the forefront of the battle, have a church and a college. 1 was able, through the courtesy of tbe Superior, to say Mass each morning, and with professional interest had a close insight into the college, its professors, pupils, opportunities, curriculum, and management. The church — publio — ia larjre and modern, of Roman style. The college is built of stone, with wide and airy corridors, for the heat from March to October is very trying to the staff. Here in the heart of Egypt, amid Mohammadan domination the Fathers of the Society pursue their noble work of education and culture. Here I saw in the various classes, Mohammadans, Copts. Greeks, Armenians, with a large number of Europeans, ,'JOO in all, under the masters' eye, clearing the difficulties that beset the path of knowledge. The übiquitous Irishman is here in the person of Rev. Patrick Kane, S.J., of Dublin, who did much to make our stay in Cairo interesting: and profitable. ' One in fame and one in name Is the sea-divided Gael. 1 I was very much interested in the fact that in this fine, progressive College of Fagollah — where every {intelligence, enthusiasm, personality is at the head — Moslem, Greek, and Christian sip the waters of sound and wholesome knowledge at the clear springs opened to their pupils by the pioneers and past masters of education, the Fathers of the Society of Jesus. Other churches there are in Cairo, but for me all the attraction was at the College and Church of Fagollah. THE PYRAMIDS. Out in the bright sunshine, under a cloudless sky with a rustling suspicion of breeze, we drive through the new Ismailizeh quarter, over the grandiose bridge — Kasr-el-Nil — that spans the eternal Nile, out on to the Ghezireh where we debouch on to a fine carriage drive, lined by acacia trees, that leads to Ghizeh and the Pyramids. We stop on the way to hastily glance at the exhibits shown in the Ghizeh Museum, a Palace boasting of close on 100 apartments built in an extensive park by Ismail Pasha at a cost of nearly one million pounds hterhng. The Egyptian collection herein stored and classified is singular above all other collections in its wealth of monuments of the first six dynasties, and in the absolute reliability of the antiquities that startle and fascinate the visitor. Here you see a famous collection of .sraraht or sacred beetles, the wooden statue of Shekh-el-B( led. the stone of Tanis with the celebrated decree of Carope, the treasure of Queen Aoh-hotep, the royal mummies of Deri-el-Bohay, and stones, inscriptions and mummies of every size, order, condition and class. A half-an-hour more brings us to the border of the Libyan desert, the home of the Pyramids and the Sphinx. A sumptuous hostelry — the Mena House Hotel — rises at the edge of the desert sands and here invalids inhale the fresh, dry air of the desert. On the Sands are grouped the Ghizeh Pyramid^, three in number, and the Sphinx. Pyramids are found only in the centre of a Neciopolis, and thus furnish strong 1 reason for believing that they were erected as tombs for the Egyptian Kings who reigned before the invasion of Hyksos, 1780 before Christ. According to some Arab authors, they were built by King Sarid 300 years before the Deluge. And here are they still. An interesting fact in connection with their position is, that the cardinal points are always exactly determined, and that the entranoe is always on the north side. But tho' they rise bold and defiant on the desert sand, they were oft- time rifled of their treasures, and torn by greedy builders, who regarded them as mere quarries for supplying blocks of stone. Many of the mosques and sacred buildings in Cairo were erected with blocks taken from the Pyramids. The highest and greatest of the Ghizeh Pyramids — the CheopB — dates back, it is said, to Chufu, the second King of the fourth dynasty, before Christ, 2800. The measurements of the Cheops pyramid are at present 7ooft at the base, and in height 451 ft. But the original dimensions were greater by some 30ft or 40ft. The blocks of stones of which it is constructed are from the quarries of Mokattam and Tuna, near Cairo, and the contents amount to 85,000,000 cnbic feet. We did not find the accent too tiring, assisted as we were by two Bedouins to each of us, yet the stones average three feet in height. From the top, which is flat, a very charming view is to be had of the Delta. In the interior of the pyramid are three mortuary chambers, and the entrance is by sloping narrow passages, so close and low as to compel visitors to stoop and creep in passing through them. In the upper mortuary chamber is the red granite sarcophagus of Cheops, aud in a chamber above the name of Cheops is found painted in red on the blocks. It is recounted by the Greek historian Herodotus that this pyramid took 20 years to build, and that 100,000 men were employed in its construction. The pyramids, meaningless heaps of cut stone, are immense, overawing, colossal, but they make no claim on the elegant or the aesthetic. Crowds of Bedouins took us in charge, or threatened to do so, as we stepped from the verdure of the plain of the Nile on to the eternal sands of the desert, but our faithful

dragoman, Sadi Osman — calm, alert, patient, imperturbable — repelled the invasion and adjusted the Bedouin claims and the tastes and curiosity of the visitors to the full satisfaction of all. One Mohamed Hassan, from among the Bedouins, offered for two francs to ascend the Cheops and return to its base in eight minutes. We took him at hi- word. Nirnble-footei a-* a goat, but considerably faster in pace, Mohamad M*a'ed the rough stones, rising higher and higher He performed the feat within the time specified, and fairly earned his wager. From the pyramids wo pabsed on camel back to ttc Sphinx THE ETEBNAL SPHINX, • Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes,' iv lovely iud.Jcoty, littlo altered by the ravages of time, impervious to decay. The Sphinx is cut out of the living rock, and represents a crouching lion with a human head. The body is rough-hewn from the rock, but the head has been scu'ptured with considerable care and not a little power. Still looking out into time, impassive, grave, unsympathetic, cynical, wrapped in the silence of ages, reoking nought of the changes that perturb the little world of men. the Sphinx is a type of immortality — yesterday, to-day, the same for ever. The face bears the damages of Arab marksmen, and the red color spread over the features is patchy — the head-dress and part of the beard are gone — still the Sphinx looks out into space with as placid and imperturbable an eye as when Abraham, son of Thare, because of a famine in the 1 iim. wt nt down to Egypt and sojourned there when Abraham recehed the divme promise of a land for his children to extend from the riv« r of Etrypt to the Euphrates, when Jacob went down to the land of the Pharaohs to seek his son Joseph, when Moses rose in his might to lead the children of Israel out of the house of bondage, when the Holy Family sought refuge in flight from the murderous decree of Herod, when Napoleon mobilised his legions on the sands of the desert in vain boast of universal conquest. For thonxandu of years the Sphinx looking out into immensity from its bed of sand has furnished an enigma for traveller and archaeologist, and though modern antiquarians have stripped the colossus of much of the mystery which constituted its charm, the Sphinx still remains, the oldest monument in the world— colossal, fascinating — looking down unmoved at the wavelets of time breaking at its base. ' Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world ; the once-wor-shipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation. Yet you can see see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mould of beauty — home mould of beauty now forgotten — forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Aegean, and in her image created new forms of beauty and made it a law among men that the short and proudly-wreathed lips should stand for the sign and main condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet there still lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world ; and Christian children of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad. serious gaze, and ki-<s your charitable hand with the big, pouting lips of the very Sphinx ' ( Kinglake). The year 21X10 before Christ is net do.\n as rhe date «,f th<; carving of the Sphinx. Medieval ci it iv-> write tint the Sphinx i* a model of human Bymmetry. wearing .m « •>> j.'rt^^imi of the sottt'nt beauty and the most winning ggnu.e v . lint though rmirg to the march ot the Vandal in the ages that luivt, p,iN*ed, t! wj rv i-> little concrete btauty in the colossal features. There i*> in the l> >ld po-ition. the solitary grandeur, the sol-Mini am roii tul n^-.the n.^tenons traditions and the immemori il antiquity an owrnnwernig t.wjiri ition and charm in the Sphiux. Yesterday, to-day, tiie same for tve ", may be written of the immortal Sphinx The body ot tht Sphinx is 1 .">(.» ft long, the paws ."Oft, the wellproportioned head .^)ft high and 14ft broad. It will give, some notion of its immense size, though it does not look so in the vast, sandy space, when I say that if a man stands on the top of one ear, he cannot reach the top of the Sphinx's head. Under trie clear blue sky, on the lonely, sandy waste, nVcked only by rusty cirnels, and Bedouin colors and our party of three, we stood lost in awe and wonder, gazing at this carved block of stone, that has resisted the shock of ages and stands silent and solid while empires rise like mushrooms and crumble to dust. A souvenir of our visit to the pyramids is a photograph of our party, mounted on camels, with dragoman and Bedouin guides in the foreground, and for background the pyramids, the immortal Sphinx, the Libyan desert. The picture is a satisfactory presentment of the travellers and will long serve as reminder of a delightful visit to the most interesting and fascinating monuments on this earth of ours.

An elderly man is required as gardener for the Convent, Nelson. — v % Wanted, about .r>o. r >o clerks to help read testimonials re Tussicura. Sole manufacturer, S. J. Evans, 2s 6d. — ,*„ The McCormick Harvesting Machine Company built and sold 213,629 machines in the beacon of IS'Ji). This is the greatest bale of harvesting- machines ever made by one company. — J* t The Railway department notifies that several alterations in and additions to the ordinary train service will be made in connection with the Dunedin autumn races to be held at Wingatui on February 27. and March 1 and 2. Full particulars will be found in our adveaiiing columns. — „% Did you over read litk'n'x Jiab'wx, and do you remember the delightful enthusiasm of little Toddy when he got at the internal workings of somebody's watch and wanted to see ' the wheels go round ' I And uoes it occur to you that wheels occupy a pretty important part in cycles ? We have realised this fact, and as an evidence of the attcn'ion given the subject, want you to examine the latent Sterling chain, ohainloss. and free wheel?. Built like a watch. New (shipment just landed. Morrow, Bassett, and Co.-/*