Henry Field - From Egypt to Japan

The donkey-men are very sharp, like their tribe in all parts of the world. The Arabs have a great deal of natural wit, which might almost entitle them to be called the Irish of the East. They have picked up a few words of English, and it is amusing to hear them say, with a most peculiar accent, "All right," "Very good," "Go ahead." They seem to know everybody, and soon find out who are their best customers. I cannot go down the steps without a dozen rushing toward me, calling out "Doctor, want a donkey?" One of them took me on my weak side the first day by saying that the name of his animal was "Yankee Doodle," and so I have patronized that donkey ever since, and a tough little beast he is, scudding away with me on his back at a great rate. His owner, a fine looking Arab, dressed in a loose blue gown and snowy turban, runs barefooted behind him, to prick him up, if he lags in his speed, or if perchance he goes too fast, to seize him by the tail, and check his impetuosity. We present a ludicrous spectacle when thus mounted, setting out for the bazaars, where our experience of Constantinople is repeated.

Of course the greatest sight around Cairo is the Pyramids. It is an event in one's life to see these grandest monuments of antiquity. The excursion is now very easy. They are eight miles from Cairo, and it was formerly a hard day's journey to go there and back, as one could only ride on a donkey or a camel, and had to cross the river in boats; and the country was often inundated, so that one had to go miles around. But the Khedive, who does everything here, has changed all that. He has built an iron bridge over the Nile, and a broad road, raised above the height of the annual inundations, so as never to be overflowed, and lined with trees, the rapid-growing acacia, so that one may drive through a shaded avenue the whole way. A shower which had fallen the night before we went (a very rare thing in Egypt at this season) had laid the dust and cooled the air, so that the day was perfect, and we drove in a carriage in an hour and a half from our hotel to the foot of the Pyramids. The two largest of these are in sight as soon as one crosses the Nile, but though six miles distant they seem quite near. Yet at first, and even when close to them, they hardly impress the beholder with their real greatness. This is owing to their pyramidal form, which, rising before the eye like the slope of a hill, does not strike the senses or the imagination as much as smaller masses which rise perpendicularly. One can hardly realize that the Pyramid of Cheops is the largest structure in the world – the largest probably ever reared by human hands. But as it slopes to the top, it does not present its full proportions to the eye, nor impress one so much as some of the Greek temples with their perpendicular columns, or the Gothic churches with their lofty arches, and still loftier towers, soaring to heaven. Yet the Great Pyramid is higher than them all, higher even than the spire of the Cathedral at Strasburg; while in the surface of ground covered, the most spacious of them, even St. Peter's at Rome, seems small in comparison. It covers eleven acres, a space nearly as large as the Washington Parade Ground in New York; and is said by Herodotus to have taken a hundred thousand men twenty years to build it. Pliny agrees in the length of time, but says the number of workmen employed was over three hundred thousand!

But mere figures do not give the best impression of height; the only way to judge of the Great Pyramid is to see it and to ascend it. One can go to the top by steps, but as these steps are blocks of stone, many of which are four feet high, it is not quite like walking up stairs. One could hardly get up at all but with the help of the Arabs, who swarm on the ground, and make a living by selling their services. Four of them set upon me, seizing me by the hands, and dragging me forward, and with pulling and pushing and "boosting," urged on by my own impatience – for I would not let them rest a moment – in ten minutes we were at the top, which they thought a great achievement, and rubbed down my legs, as a groom rubs down a horse after a race, and clapped me on the back, and shouted "All right," "Very good." I felt a little pride in being the first of our party on the top, and the last to leave it.

These Arab guides are at once very troublesome and very necessary. One cannot get along without them, and yet they are so importunate in their demands for backsheesh that they become a nuisance. They are nominally under the orders of a Sheik, who charges two English shillings for every traveller who is assisted to the top, but that does not relieve one from constant appeals going up and down. I found it the easiest way to get rid of them to give somewhat freely, and thus paid three or four times the prescribed charge before I got to the bottom. No doubt I gave far too much, for they immediately quoted me to the rest of the party, and held me up as a shining example. I am afraid I demoralized the whole tribe, for some friends who went the next day were told of an American who had been there the day before, who had given "beautiful backsheesh." The cunning fellows, finding I was an easy subject, followed me from one place to another, and gave me no peace even when wandering among the tombs, or when taking our lunch in the Temple of the Sphinx, but at every step clamored for more; and when I had given them a dozen times, an impudent rascal came up even to the carriage, as we were ready to drive away, and said that two or three shillings more would "make all serene!" – a phrase which he had caught from some strolling American, and which he turns to good account.

But one would gladly give any sum to get rid of petty annoyances, and to be able to look around him undisturbed. Here we are at last on the very summit of the Great Pyramid, and begin to realize its immensity. Below us men look like mice creeping about, and the tops of trees in the long avenue show no larger than hot-house plants. The eye ranges over the valley of the Nile for many miles – a carpet of the richest green, amid which groups of palms rise like islands in a sea. To the east beyond the Nile is Cairo, its domes and minarets standing out against the background of the Mokattam hills, while to the west stretches far away the Libyan desert.

Overlooking this broad landscape, one can trace distinctly the line of the overflow of the Nile. Wherever the waters come, there is greenness and fertility; at the point where they cease, there is barrenness and desolation. It is a perpetual struggle between the waters and the sands, like that which is always going on in human history between barbarism and civilization.

In the Pyramids the two things which impress us most are their vast size and their age. As we stand on the top, and look down the long flight of steps which leads to the valley below, we find that we are on the crest of a mountain of stone. Some idea of the enormous mass imbedded in the Great Pyramid may be gathered from the fact, ascertained by a careful computation (estimating its weight at seven millions of tons, and considering it a solid mass, its chambers and passages being as far as discovered but 1/2000th of the whole), that these blocks of stone, placed end to end, would make a wall a foot and a half broad, and ten feet high around England, a distance of 883 miles – a wall that would shut in the island up to the Scottish border.

And the Pyramids are not only the greatest, but the oldest monuments of the human race, the most venerable structures ever reared by the hand of man. They are far older than any of the monuments of Roman or Grecian antiquity. They were a marvel and a mystery then as much as they are to-day. How much older cannot be said with certainty. Authorities are not fully agreed, but the general belief among the later chronologists is that the Great Pyramid was built about two thousand one hundred and seventy years before the time of Christ, and the next in size a century later. Thus both have been standing about four thousand years. Napoleon was right therefore when he said to his soldiers before the battle fought with the Mamelukes under the shadow of the Pyramids, "From those heights forty centuries behold you." This disposes of the idea which some have entertained, that they were built by the children of Israel when they were in Egypt; for according to this they were erected two hundred years before even the time of Abraham. Jacob saw them when he came down into Egypt to buy corn; and Joseph showed them to his brethren. The subject Hebrews looked up to them in the days of their bondage. Moses saw them when he was brought up in the court of Pharaoh, and they disappeared from the view of the Israelites only when they fled to the Red Sea. They had been standing a thousand years when Homer sang of the siege of Troy; and here came Herodotus the father of history, four hundred years before Christ, and gazed with wonder, and wrote about them as the most venerable monuments of antiquity, with the same curious interest as Rawlinson does to-day. So they have been standing century after century, while the generations of men have been flowing past, like the waters of the Nile.