Show I I CY WARMAN AT THE PYRAMIDS r Finds aDeep Impression Left by Mark Twain in 1867 I THE NATIVES KNOW mInI mIn-I BOXKJCY MARK nODE IS STILL IX F SERVICE tL Perfect Little Railroad Along tin Suez Canal One Hotel AVitli Vltich There is Ao Fault to Fiad Only One Safe Way to the Pyra uiids Ijjilveraal Brotherhood of Section Hands Copyright 1895 by S S McClure Limited Oairo Egypt April 2S 1895 f After the Jaffa and Jerusalem the iP and I is good to look upon This t I la le railway runs from Port Said to i Ismallia less than a hundred miles The guage is not even three feet which seems to be a sort of standard for narrow guagc railways everywhere every-where It is only thirty inches The locomotives are Jike toy engines but good ones and the carriages are beau tful perfect little palaces They are not only neatly dosigned and artistically artist-ically constructed but scrupulously titan and very cotmfortalble They are narrow of course but ample room is given to each passenger They arc so arranged that the whole ar may be opened up allowing one to pass through it from end to end 1 had no time to Inform myself regarding i re-garding the roads history but I was told that it had been built and was 1 being operated by a French company I I I hope so for the J J has rather iisgraceJ France The rail which rests on metallic crossties looks toe to-e about thirty pounds to the yard The road runs for the greater part along the Suez canal with the sea on the other aide and the ride from Port Sa5o if the sand is not blowing is an interesting one In the shallow sea to the right are f riads of sea birds of every con able kind and farther out hun ditds of slp p looking little ships with one sail whose masts lean back t 3 ke slender palms in a steady wind To the left is the canal upon whose narrjw waters one sees the flag of almost I al-most every civilized country some I perhaps the stars and stripes which somehow one seldom sees in the Orient or anywhere else for that matter Even at Constantinople the i hag at the enbassy flies only on high days and holidays and not very high I then thenWith all their enterprise this company i com-pany makes one serious mistake Tney refuse to paste baggage I through from Port Said to Cairo and at Ismalia the voyager must hunt f out his luggage have reweighed and reregistered The P Os I beautiful new steamer Caledonia t bound for India had unloaded an English excursion party the day I I I went down and it took nearly two t hours that night to reweigh the baggage i bag-gage where we left the smart little railway and boarded the Egyptian < line I l lineThe Egyptian State railways are not bad nQt very good but they answer the purpose Their locomotives are fair their cars are of the usual Egyptian Egyp-tian style shore and lignt They make very good time too for such a slow country but one must travel ilrst dais always in Egypt to avoid smoke filth and dirt of every kind the quick and the dead The rniversai Brotherhood of Section Sec-tion Hands If the reader has ever ridden on the rear end of an American railroad train and is of an observing turn he I has noticed that the moment that the train passes a gang of section mea they all fall too as vigorously as though they were repairing a wsh cjt and were holding the presidents special Poor feow says the sympathetic traveler how they work He dots no observe that cvery Irish sDn of them has one eye I tn the track and the other on the rear car looking for the roadmaster W11 they do that here and the Arabs did it on the Jaffa t Jerusalem infer as the Chinan Jn do in California and the negroes in Texas Human nature is much the same the world over Opposite the English barracks in Cairo you can see barefooted negroes playing football with a cocoanut At a small station whore the train stopped I saw two little girls dark children of the Crier sitting by the track One of them about twelve years old W3S dandling her dolla black stick with a bunch of wool on one end of itwhil2 her sister a year I or two older wlth her doll lying on the sand at her sHe was dandling her bat y These dolls are dear to these children dear as the gaudy doJls of France are to the < children of the republic Ii I > re-public but how early they are weaned poor things Another thing I noticed was that = there were four flies in the upper left hand corner of the childs right eye Neither the mother nor the child made any effort to brush them away Egyptians Egyp-tians never doand the result is that one eye is literally eaten out of the head of 10 per cent of the children along the valley of the Nile Poor children At fourteen they are sold into slavery or matrimony which is the same in the eastand while still wondering who and why they are t find a taby in their arms with only I a vague notion of how it all came j about The pretty saying the iloham medans havefrom the Koran of U course From your mother to your husband from your husband to the grave came in all right here I arrived at Cairo at midnight and went straight to bed When I awoke the next morning it was because birds window 2nd r were singing near my k fountains were playing not far away i In truth I had to walk about my room to assure myself that I was still t on earth and these things were real and the marble maidens hid about in sheltered nooku were only marble I and the little lovegods and angels were nothing but stone ing2niously h wrought to fool people f The Fleasantcst Hotel On Earth With Reasonable Hates When I had dressed had my premier r pre-mier dejeuneror first brealrfast my apartments and walked out into c the hotel I found myself in a palace and instinctively touched my right side f to see if my letter of credit was there I expected to leave this place long inexperience in-experience but financially short Everything Ev-erything was on such a kingly scale t that I fclt afraid at first but as I I mounted the great staircase leading to the first floor where are the ladies saloons sa-loons the private concert and ballrooms ball-rooms and the apartments especially t reserved for royalty and distinguished persons I forgot that I was not royal rich or distinguished and began to c lose myself in the wonders of my surroundings sur-roundings It was very early and I had it all to myself An the poetry of u the place The curved ceilings dadoes tt mosaic mantlepieces of alabaster the decoration in lapiz lazuli por C > h7lY in gold in copperincrusted Tnarblethe acres of Turkish and Per I j carpets miles of silk satins and i tS embroidery all about were things to make one forget After weeks in the dreary wastes of the Holy Land it was a glorious awakening and I turned myself loose to wonder in this wilderness of wealth i At the end of an hour I went down j and out into the grounds where the I birds and fountains were It is a i 1 small forest of trees of the orient and i flowers and grottoes and mountains 1 made to order There were strange looking trees that seemed to begin to I existfifteen feet from the ground their roots running down from that point I just as their branches ran up Around one side of the grounds swept the dark I swift Nile where a steam yacht was always waiting for any of the Palace I 1 guests who wished to go on the water for pleasure or to cross to the city i I without money and without bacshees 1 How sweet it was to wander here away from the deformed beggars and lying thieving guides This is Ghezireh Palace which has been given up by the enterprising young khedive to be opened as a hotel for the public It is probably the most interesting and pleasant hotel on I the whole face of this great big earth today It is pleasant to add that it is almost perfectly managed and that I the rates are no higher than those of the crowded noisy cooksmelling hotels ho-tels in the centre of the city where they still charge for candles forgetting forget-ting it would seem that all the rooms have electric lights It is on the Nile too away from the beggars and guides and that is everything The Road to the Pyramids The road from the Palace to the pyramids six or seven miles is beautiful beau-tiful The road across the valley is raised high above the level of the country and on either side there is a line of trees whose tops meet over the drive forming a continuous arch all the way I In the fields the farmers are plough ing or having finished are beating up the clods with hoes and hammers Now as we near the pyramids the I beggars become thicker and more daring dar-ing All kinds cripples some with I a foot off run alongside jabbing the naked stub of the ankle down info the sand Women with one sometimes two babies in their arms follow the carriage while from everyone even from the workers in the field comes the hissing cry of Bacshees When we arrived at the pyramids the beggars were driven back by the army of dragomen and guides who were as bad as the beggars The only difference was that the beggars wanted want-ed something for nothing while the guides were willing to lie to you for a half hour for what one chose to give them Want seem run up the pyramids said a yellow longlegged negro as the carriage paused at the foot of the first great pile No said I Give em franc and go up back In five min Oh said I take your time Dont hurry on my account Just at that moment the army of burro ana camel boys who were lying in the shade of the largest pyramid saw us and made a charge Tonglegged camels that start slowly slow-ly like a locomotive with a large wheel and little burros that seem always al-ways to stop on the centre and have to be pinched off before you can get them along bore down upon us like an Arabian army In a minute my old shiek and I were surrounded by donkeys don-keys and camels and boys The burros bur-ros were being switched round and the poor camels were moaning and gurgling and crying as they were forced to bring their bones down on the sharp stones There were no less than a dozen donkeys and half as many camels and I was asked to ride all of them The fight grew so vot and the press so great that I straddled a large camel that had fallen at my feet and the driver gave sign for him to rise The brute threw his hind parts up and the long stick or post that stands where the tail of a saddle should be hit me a kick in the back that sent me forward just as the camel cam-el got up at that end and I got it where the Arab wears his sash Of course T leaned back a little at that stroke but I should not for the animal an-imal had only gotten half way up behind be-hind and now as he brought up the rear the hard oak post was driven into my spine so hard that I was tempted to swear Peace wolves of the desert cried the shiek my guide dramatically The prince is my friend he is rich rich as Solomonand as generous as he is rich He is from America which is in California where the sun sets and the home of Mark Twain The Donkey Mark Twain Rode In U 7 Still in Service The mob had been awed to silence by the story of my wealth but at the mention of their friend they set up a yell that would shut out a football team I had heard a great deal about Mark Twains pull at the pyramids but I was not prepared for this Once when an alderman was to be elected at Creed to fill a vacancy created by a gunshot wound I received 1100 out of 1300 votes with fourteen candidates in the field A passionate almost consuming con-suming love for the choir practice and seven up had enabled me to control both the church and the saloon vote as it was called That was prestige people said but I say now It was nothing Here is a man who has been away from his people twen tyseven yearsmany of these boys were then unborn and yet at the mere mention of his name they yell laugh cry jump up fall down beat their breasts and bite the dust Take my donkIs ver good Is young Mark Twain ride he 67 yelled 2 boy with one eye gone You savie Mark Twain 1 I asked Wee wee said the boy Hes ride same donkey 67 They all know the date perfectly but have no notion of how many years it takes to bridge over the gap from 67 to 95 They are daring but not what you would call careful painstaking liars A t a wave of the shieks hand the mob opened up and the prince of California and friend of Mark Twain on his high horse passed down the trail to see the sphinx On the Great Pyramid When an hour later I stood on the great pyramidat my back the broad geat beautiful valley of the Nile in front an endless sea of sanda feeling of rest came over me For the first time the shiek was silent From the wild waste of this waveless sea great rails appeared to rise and as I continued pais tinued to gaze high mountains grew up near the horizon The wind was dry from sweeping the miles of sand It was like the wind I had often felt beforethe wind of the west I seemed to feel my native air Blown down from some high region there But I was not to be left unmarked long Suddenly there was a sound of shuffling feet and heavy breathing behind be-hind me I turned and saw the thief of a shiek leaning over the wall I all came to me in a moment I had not given this heathen any money during the past twenty minutes I I made a play for my pocket but he pretended not to see i choosing rather rath-er to punish me Then they came leapIng leap-Ing like Indians over the top of the pyramid and I was surrounded Some thrust their dirty hands In my face and demanded bacshees others wanted to do a turn for a franc or s Would thou have em run down this pyramid up yon back and here again all nine mints Mark Twain do agaln al mnts that 67 give em five francs No Nc Idiot I said severely try Ing to imitate the shiek I would with nature here alone to watch the sunset sun-set in this shipless sea Bacshees bacshees they yelled pressing closer and closer I turned to niy guide He had his back to me s I gazing out over the great Sahara where the round red sun was going i down In the desert Begone beggars I cried reaching for my pistol pocket but it never i fazed them Then I made a dive through the crowd reached the guide and managed to press a 5franc piece into his palm Peace he cried raising the hand which held not the dollar and the I mob gave pause Take me down said I and when we reached the ground I stepped into my carriage Only One Safe Way to See the Pyra initlx I had often heard the donkeyboys say imsha or something that sounded sound-ed like that when they wanted them to go Remembering this I pressed a 5franc piece into the coachmans hand and yelled imsha in his ear To i avoid a mistake I snatched the whip I from his hand and leaning over the box began to lay it on to the smart little team They were both high spirited with a dash of old blood of Ihe desert in their veins and bpfore the mob could spring to the carriage < we were bounding down the hill to the valley and the broad drive that led to 1 i the city At the foot of the rill l where the hotel was an army of beggars I beg-gars had congregated laying for the Prince of California and friend I of Mark Twain for such was the title given me by the Shiek We passed that mob about fortyeight miles an I hour Having gone through all this I am persuaded that there is just one safe and proper way to see the pyramids go quietly alone Leave the Palace hotel on a broncho with a flowing I mane Wear a broad white straw hat and buckskin trowsers and sawteeth I trimming up the seams two spurs and two sixshooters not less than forty I five calibre Look desperate but unconcerned I un-concerned When you are in sight of the Hotel Pyramids put your horse to I a dead run and gallop right up to the door Dismount throw the reins over I the horses neck rush into the saloon and begin to shoot the lights Rush I out Into the yard again and look wildly I about It would add a great deal to the play if you could manage to shake off your hat in the house so now you would stand bareheaded and yell To somewhere with Mohamet and take a few stray shots at chickens chick-ens or dragomen When you have succe dell in putting them all to bed I or in the cellar the women at your feet and have driven the beggars all I out into the desert go up and have a look at the pyramids When you are tired come down mount your horse and ride quietly back to the city Thats the way to do i CY WARMAN |