CHAP. XXII - FRANCE IN THE EAST

Summary

It is no longer possible to see the Pyramids or even Heliopolis in the solitary and solemn fashion in which they should be approached. English “going out” and “coming home” are there at all days and hours, and the hundreds of Arabs selling German coins and mummies of English manufacture are terribly out of place upon the desert. I went alone to see the Sphinx, and, sitting down on the sand, tried my best to read the riddle of the face, and to look through the rude carving into the inner mystery; but it would not do, and I came away bitterly disappointed. In this modern democratic railway-girt world of ours, the ancient has no place; the huge Pyramids may remain for ever, but we can no longer read them. A few months may see a café chantant at their base.

Cairo itself is no pleasant sight. An air of dirt and degradation hangs over the whole town, and clings to its people, from the donkey-boys and comfit-sellers to the pipe-smoking soldiers and the money-changers who squat behind their trays. The wretched fellaheen, or Egyptian peasantry, are apparently the most miserable of human beings, and their slouching shamble is a sad sight after the superb gait of the Hindoos. The slave-market of Cairo has done its work; indeed, it is astonishing that the English should content themselves with a treaty in which the abolition of slavery in Egypt is decreed, and not take a single step to secure its execution, while the slave-market in Cairo continues to be all but open to the passer.