A Babel of Tongues.

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tributed to other dust with theirs, such odours are not to be wondered at. For reasons many, and that for one, new countries such as Australia have their advantages.

Cairo is said to count a thousand coffee-houses. At most of them are the evening attractions of music and singing, to which Germans, French, and Italians are the chief contributors. The prettiest girl of the company carries round the plate and gives chats for change. I never envied the gift of tongues so much as in Cairo, nor thought so admiringly of the many-tongued Mezzofanti. Of the hundred thousand of Europeans that are said to be always in Egypt, the greater part are in Cairo, and the next largest batch at Alexandria. The dinner-table at the hotel is a veritable Babel for languages. I get among the Americans as often as I can, and they are, fortunately more numerous than other visitors, surpassing in number even the British.

"Will I go to see the Ghawazee? Everybody goes to see the Ghawazee-the famous Egyptian dancing-girls!" "No, I won't; I am tired, and shall go to bed." It is, besides, no recommendation of any girls that everybody visits them. You go, see their doings, and report progress to-morrow. There is much that is more famous to be seen yet, and hard work to be done in seeing it. "Dancing-girls are delusions, and not so much better than other girls after all. They shan't keep me from sleep, whatever they are!" I am tired with exercise of all faculties in sight-seeing, than which there is nothing more tiring except it be idleness itself. About such sleeping others have yet something to say. One is the nipping but noiseless mosquito, whose attacks are a nonentity, however, to those of the fleas. These are specialities of the place-helped by the surrounding sands as a hatching-ground, the donkeys as nurses, and Egyptians generally as supporters.

CHAPTER XXI.

OLD WORLD WONDERS.

THERE were few aids beyond masonry for wonder-making and record-preserving in the pre-printing ages. Fame could not then be noised abroad by telegraphs and newspapers, preserved in books, and perpetuated in libraries. To tell of great men and famous deeds, or of the sham imitations of both, pyramids, vast rock-cut tombs, obelisks and huge columns were made and hieroglyphically lettered with the story. The architects, builders, masons, and quarry-slaves then represented our publishers, booksellers, printers, and writers. What is now printed on paper was then painted or cut upon stone. Those who had power or wealth used both in their lifetime to see records of themselves so built and biographically inscribed, in place of trusting to the chance of a monument to be grudgingly given after their death by those who would then divide their wealth.

Four

The Pyramids, by which those nearest Cairo are generally meant, were built for wonders as much as for tombs. thousand and more years have but added for modern eyes to what they had for the eyes of the old world, and will yet have for the one to follow this. As seen in the distance, they had looked such inevitable things that they had inspired that patient waiting which is foremost of the ideas they give one. Though eight miles or so away, they look quite handy to the city as seen from its heights. Two Americans, one of whom had a name as an improver of gunnery, and the other as a barrister, had been out to these stone mountains, and I

Cheops' Pyramid.

255 talked with them about the matter at the hotel on their return. Neither of them had made the ascent. One of them had gone up fifty feet on the surface of the Cheops' monument, and said that it then occurred to him that he had others depending upon him, and therefore it was not right to risk anything. Comforting news so far, as I had none dependent upon me. The other said that he had been up as high as was necessary, and that enough was as good as a feast -a remark that he repeated seemingly for its originality.

"How was the ascent made?" I asked. "Could not a rope be put from top to bottom, as something for the hand to clutch?" I had read that it was like ascending a steep flight of stairs, the steps being from two-and-a-half to four feet high.

"No book tells anything like the facts!" was my barrister's answer. "You cannot go up in a straight line anywhere, but have to be dragged about all over the side and round to one of the angles in search of practicable stepping-stonesknown only to the Arab guides. No rope could be made of service, and no one is allowed to go up or try to do so unaccompanied by the Arabs. To get up the five hundred feet, or thereabout, of Cheops is a job only for sailors, slaters, or Alpine climbers—a man might as well attempt to scramble over the dome of St. Peter's!" Such was counsel's opinion.

I learned further at Shepherd's, from another source, that only about ten per cent. of those that go out to the pyramids ever get to their top, that is to say, to the top of Cheops' pyramid, for none but Arabs attempt the ascent of the adjoining one of Chephren, or Cyphrenes.

Referring to

the books on the subject, I found very loose and indefinite language used as to the ascent. It seemed as if the writers wished to be understood as having made it, but their expressions about it were explainable either way. My legal informant added,

"If you want to know what the ascent really is like, please to imagine the highest of walls, and against its side to pile up all the trunks, boxes, and portmanteaux obtainable-some

tens of thousands; so made, the inequalities of the sizes of these trunks will represent the rugged stones of the pyramid, and the varying height and width of its steps. The stones afford in the scrambling up nothing for the hand to grasp, and the steep steps to be taken render you liable at every step to fall backwards. At every fifty feet you have to stop for fresh wind. The odds are ten to one when you do so and look about you, if you are not used to the cross royals or to walking the roofs of houses, that your head will swim, and you will be compelled to come down. The stones, too, are worn in many places, by time and footsteps, to a slippery state. If you were by yourself, you would certainly slip, and if you did so, it would be only once!"

That was solid and practical information of a very serious sort for one given to vertigo, and unable to look over the roof of a four-storey house. It was a heavy blow and great discouragement to be in Egypt and in Cairo, and to go and see Cheops' pyramid, and not to ascend it. From youth upwards I had looked upon doing so as a thing to be done to a certainty, if the chance ever occurred of doing it. exploit looked so likely, or rather did so but here was all hope of doing it quite dashed. "I can go inside, however," I said-much as drowning folks catch at straws.

Now that the an hour back,

"Yes, if you can crawl on your hands and knees for onefourth of the way, stoop double for two-fourths, and slip about on an ice-like surface at all sorts of angles for the whole of the way, and that in pitch-like darkness and a suffocating atmosphere! If you are going inside you can practise for it at once by creeping around this room between the legs of the dining-table. The floor here is even, and not slippery, and the room is ventilated, which the pyramid is not. I would not go in again for 50l. and was never so glad as when I got out, with a suit of clothes spoiled and my knees torn and bruised. It took me an hour to recover myself outside, and the outer air-hot as it was-felt chillingly cold!"

The prospect was certainly getting darker, and I again turned to the books, which I found to be as bare of practical

New Road and Bridge.

257

information about getting to the interior as they were about ascending the exterior. The eloquent Warburton and the imaginative Kinglake gave no such useful information as my American friend, and but for what he said I should have gone out to the pyramids without any of the necessary ideas as to the work to be done there. Ignorance is not always bliss.

Four of us started on the journey after breakfast, going over the good road that the reckless Khedive constructed expressly for the convenience of French Royalty when honouring him with a visit on the opening of the canal. The bridge that crosses the Nile on this road is a very handsome, long, and expensive stone-built affair. Previously to 1870 visitors went from Cairo on donkeys, and crossed the Nile in boats, into which the donkeys were also huddled. The road for the last five miles of it is fringed with acacia and sycamore-trees, like that of Shoobra. My company preferred a vehicle, but for many reasons I took the more fashionable donkey way of going. Our guide informs us that after all the bother in making this eight-mile road and the fine bridge, neither the French Empress nor her Imperial son went up the pyramid, or into its interior. He seemed to think that as an insult to Egypt, or perhaps meant it as a hint to us to behave better.

The pyramids being show places, like the Falls of Niagara, are infested by sellers of curios, which are of as doubtful kind as the sapphires offered one at Ceylon, or the relics of the battle-field which are for sale at Waterloo. These Arab dealers come around us at a couple of miles from the pyramids, and press their wares as the vendors of correct lists of the races do on nearing Epsom, Goodwood, or Flemington. The pyramids, however, absorb all attentionawful structures of dark-looking stones, they now begin to show their overpowering immensity, and to sit heavily upon the mind, stilling the noisy jest, and hushing the shallow glee that had hitherto beguiled the journey.

At the house of the Sheik who has charge here, the carriage has to be left, and two or three hundred yards trodden over

S