03.21. The Mediterrranean Sea - Egypt

21 The Mediterranean Sea.

Naples at Night from the Sea -- Stromboli -- Paul’s Journey by Sea -- The Mediterranean -- A Bill of Fare -- Egypt -- From Alexandria to Cairo -- Scenes from time Car Window -- Villages -- The Desert of Shur -- The Bazaars of Cairo -- The Mosque -- The View from the Citadel. On a beautiful evening in August I took ship at Naples, and sailed for Egypt. The farewell sight of the city twinkling at night, in ascending lights around its semi-circular bay, is an Italian picture that memory loves to recall. Vesuvius had his red plume of war floating in the night wind, while a bloody gash in his left side looked foreboding.

Next morning we sighted and passed Stromboli -- that most peculiar volcano island. It rises up suddenly from the sea all around, forming a cone and reaching the height of three thousand feet. One would think that people would be slow to settle where they would be rendered doubly helpless in time of peril by fire above and water all around; and yet here, nestling at the foot of this volcano, whose fires never go out, is a large town or city. America has countless thousands of acres of land with no natural convulsions to disturb the settler to which she invites the nations; and yet the people of this volcano belt prefer to scrape a living from these hard rocks, having their houses occasionally knocked to pieces by earthquakes, and every four or five years running a race for their lives against streams of lava, and under showers of scoriae.

It has been both pleasant and interesting to me to discover that I am traversing the same route by sea that Paul passed over in coming to Rome. According to the last chapter in Acts, he took a vessel that had sailed from Alexandria; I took one that was sailing to Alexandria. He landed at Puteoli, just nine miles above Naples. Passing this place in the day, as he evidently did, from the narrative, his eye rested on the beautiful bay and the smoking summit of Vesuvius. This was the very year in which the terrible earthquake occurred that almost overwhelmed Pompeii and several other cities. God was letting the corrupt land know that his servant had arrived! Luke says that they came from the island of Melita, thence to Syracuse, and touched at Rhegium. With what interest, as our ship passed down the Straits of Messina, did I look at this old city of Rhegium, and at the mountains that line both the Italian and Sicilian shores! The thought that this noble herald of the gospel had passed this way, and that his eyes had surveyed the landscapes before me, gave a charm to them over and above that which they possessed naturally. What a spectacle for men and angels was this journey of the apostle! I can realize its moral sublimity here as I could not far away. Christ’s ambassador in chains! God’s invading army, consisting of a single individual, and he a prisoner! South of Sicily we turned eastward, and ran parallel with Paul’s course for six or seven hundred miles. The Mediterranean was calm and lovely throughout the entire trip. The waves in the daytime, purple ones at night, beautiful sunsets in the evening, and a few snowy sails on the horizon were some of the pleasing features of the voyage. Nothing strikes the traveler more forcibly on an ocean trip than the loneliness of the sea. For days we steamed on over the deep without seeing a single sail in the offing. The first impression is that there are few ships on the waters. The real explanation is the vast expanse of the sea. After sailing steadily for a week over endless fields of waves and illimitable prairies of water, this fact comes with peculiar and almost overwhelming power upon the mind. What are ten thousand ships upon the ocean that covers three quarters of the globe? Just what an hundred men would be, scattered over the United States. How often does the reader think they would meet? The steamer on which I sailed was an Italian vessel. I knew not a word of the language, and the officers and crew knew nothing of English. The consequence was that there was silence for six days on the Mediterranean. A bow which I regularly rendered to the captain on entering the dining-saloon, would be answered by him with one far deeper and more profoundly impressive. His moustache would almost sweep the plate in his courteous greeting. This would be all. Then the captain and myself would observe an eloquent silence toward each other. Thought was busy, the powers of mastication were employed, but words were few.

I herewith offer for inspection a kind of photograph of one of our breakfasts at sea; it could hardly be called a bill of fare: BOTTLES OF WINE. (I did not partake.) SOLEMN DISTRIBUTION OF ICE.

SOUP AND POWDERED CHEESE.

Change of plates.

SALT FISH (Sardine size) AND OLIVES.

Change of plates.

VERMICELLI AND POWDERED CHEESE.

Change of plates.

FRIED FISH.

Change of plates.

STEAK AND POTATOES.

Change of plates.

CHEESE AND FRUIT.

Removal of plates.

COFFEE TOOTHPICKS. This meal, or rather rattle of plates, lasted over one hour. I often arose hungry from these matutinal [early morning] banquets of the sea. The name of one of Shakespeare’s comedies, "Much Ado About Nothing," would well describe some of these Italian table scenes where I have languished with an unsatisfied appetite and lost much valuable time beside. On the fifth day from Naples our ship cast anchor in the port of Alexandria. It needed not a second glance to show me that I was in a new world, in one sense, and in the Old World, in another. The palm trees near the river; the turbans, red fez caps and robes of the men; and the veiled women -- all proclaimed, most powerfully the East. Again and again a view of the Nile, through a perspective of palm-trees, spoke like a voice, saying: "You are in the Dark Continent, but also in the borders of one of the most ancient civilizations. You are in the far-famed land of Egypt." Who wonders that I read that night in the Word of God about Joseph and his sojourn here, and what the Gospels say about Jesus, as a child being brought down to Egypt! So I am in one land already that has been made sacred by the presence of the infant Savior.

It seems strange to see a railroad in this old sleepy land; and yet here is one running from Alexandria to Cairo, and a day’s journey still farther on up the Nile. In the trip to Cairo, which takes something over four hours, you are held to the window by a constant interest. The great fertilizing river has already covered the fields, left its rich deposit, and is now retiring, while the farmers are all at work. I judge that these Nile farmers have a power by their ditches and small levees, to throw the water upon any portion of the land that they desire. I saw countless fields of wheat, corn, and rice. The character of the country and crops reminded me much of our Mississippi and Louisiana swamp lands. It would have been easy to have fancied one’s self back home, but for the buffaloes plowing in the fields, the camels in caravan procession along the high-road, and the turbaned men and veiled women everywhere to be seen. The villages of the poorer classes at first puzzled me for a descriptive word; but, after a few glances, the proper phrase came -- they are exactly like large dirt-dauber’s nests. The reader remembers the tenement that this interesting third cousin to the wasp builds on our American rafters. The house of a poor Egyptian is simply a dirt-dauber’s nest enlarged The railway often ran for miles by the side of one of the highroads of Egyptian travel. It was like gazing on a panorama to keep the eye fixed on that road. And it was a living panorama of deep interest. There were donkeys, buffaloes and camels; there were men in all the vivid and varied costumes of the East, and women black-robed, as a rule, and black-veiled up to the eyes. There is a traveler and his dragoman dashing along on horses, and there a group of travelers with a slow-moving caravan of camels. Yonder is a band of soldiers, and yonder, riding to himself, is a stalwart, bearded man, in red turban and white robe, sitting on the back haunches of a diminutive donkey, who progresses with such a swift, gliding motion that the man looks as if he were sailing along the surface of the ground in a sitting posture. But it is a sight to see his gravity and dignity of mien. The Sultan on his throne, could not look more impressive and magisterial. In drawing near to Cairo, I noticed on our left a high, yellowish ridge of ground, apparently thirty or forty feet above the level of the plain on which we were traveling. I needed not to be told that it was the beginning of the desert that reaches eastward to Gaza and the Dead Sea, and southward to Mt. Sinai and the lands where God led his people by the pillar of cloud and fire. I could not see over it, but I knew its barren wastes, and remembered what had occurred upon it; and it seemed like a presence to me. Over that plain Abraham had come and returned; over it Joseph had traveled as a grief-stricken youth, and was carried back with honors due to royalty.

Over it Jacob had appeared wondering and rejoicing, and was carried back to Hebron with funeral celebrations of such a character and extent that the people said: "This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians." Under the long, sandy horizon line of this desert Moses disappeared with a great multitude of people who never came back. And over this very plain, after the flight of centuries, came and went back again "the young Child and His Mother."

More than once lately have I seen a mother and her young child traveling these dusty roads under a burning August sky. The clinging babe, the downward droop of the mother’s face and the quivering heat beating oftentimes upon them on a treeless road, have thrown a new light and meaning upon the quiet statement made in the Gospel of that journey from Palestine to Egypt: "He took the young Child and His Mother by night and departed into Egypt." How much of suffering is there back of the simple affirmations of the Bible? Truly Christ suffered for us from the very days of his infancy! Truly the Father did not spare His Son! And there is the desert that brings these things to mind. What a monument it is! or, better still, what a wondrous pedestal it is! Forty feet high and over a thousand miles around the base, and upon it History and the Bible have grouped figures, and armies, and scenes, and transactions of the most profoundly interesting and important character. The bazaars of Cairo consist of a number of exceedingly narrow streets lined with diminutive shops and crowded with a jostling procession of human beings, camels and donkeys. In front of the shop sits -- Turkish fashion -- the owner, either smoking his nargileh or dispensing his goods with the dignity of a judge giving forth justice. The scene, as you look, is one of animation and attractiveness. The different-colored turbans and dresses, the veiled women, the clatter of various languages, the sudden and constant looming up of camels with riders or burdens -- these and other things constantly interest the spectator.

I visited two mosques. Of course I could not be admitted on their sacred floors until my unhallowed feet had been encased in slippers. The first pair were as large as frying-pans. In these I slapped my way along, viewing the dirt, and dinginess, and religious mummery of the mosque of Sultan Hassan. At the next my pedal extremities were again enswathed in Eastern slippers, which were this time as remarkable for length as the preceding pair had been for breadth. Armed at my feet with slippers equal to short swords, I moved my dagger-like way into the mosque of Mahomet Ali. This is as beautiful a building as the other is unattractive. The auditorium is a vast and lofty chamber, surmounted with a dome illuminated with exquisitely colored glass. The lights of the auditorium are ranged in concentric circles, with a few clusters besides, suspended at certain points. When lighted, it must be a place of great splendor. There are no chairs used in their worship, but the floor is covered with mats. The leader addresses the sitting throng from an airy perch, reached by a carpeted staircase of thirty or forty steps. The females are admitted into a balcony that runs around the sides of the chamber at a height of fully fifty or sixty feet. Here, fenced off and deeply veiled, they get those portions of truth that may happen to fly upward. There is no music in a Mohammedan service. But after listening to their secular or profane music, one has reason for being thankful that there is no song service in their mosques, if he happens to be dwelling in the vicinity. Infidelity has no hymn book, and Mohammedanism has no singing in its worship. Both facts are significant, and mean the same thing, and that thing is that they are both spiritually dead. The dead sing not. "The living, the living, they shall praise thee," said King Hezekiah. I shall have more to say about Islamism in another chapter. From the citadel I had a fine view of Cairo and the surrounding country. For the first time I looked down on a minaretted city. The church spire and gospel bell give way in this land to the mosque and to the minaret, and the voice of the Muezzin calling four times a day to prayers. But this shall not be long. The promise is that Christ "shall inherit all nations." The sight of the minarets and domes; the uplifted plumed heads of the palm trees; the windings of the river Nile; the shipping on its bosom, with mast and spar of bamboo making a curve peculiar, yet pleasing, to the eye; the sight of the Pyramids, eight miles away, on the edge of the Great Desert -- all these made a view striking, peculiarly oriental and beautiful. It was also calculated to impress me with the fact that I was a considerable distance from home. This was the sensation experienced when I saw the Nile for the first time through a featherly line of palm trees.

Traveling as I am now doing, independently of excursion parties, and alone, there are moments when, naturally, a feeling of solitariness sweeps down upon the heart. For instance: It is hard to be seeing constantly striking objects, and have no one to commune with on the subject. It is trying to see parties of friends and loved ones together, and feel shut out from like pleasures. There is a trying experience in being forever surrounded with strange faces, listening to a babel of strange tongues, and moving all the time through strange lands. But there are three things that instantaneously save me from the lonely feeling. One is: That I am traveling for the very purpose of seeing the strange and unknown. Next: A number of years ago I struck up an acquaintanceship and friendship with the clouds and stars. We have been on delightful communing terms for quite a while. As a boy they spoke to me and said many things that set me to thinking and quieted my spirit. As a child of God, I have recognized a still , small voice coming out from their beautiful sanctuaries. Their voices are kindly, their faces are friendly and familiar. So, all through the different countries I have journeyed, I have repeatedly steadied and cheered my heart with a view of the clouds and the stars. They are the only things that have not changed since I left home. There they are, the same "bright, motionless pillars of heaven" when piled up of the horizon; and there are the same constellations that I saw bend over the land in America. They actually give a homelike appearance to every foreign country. A third fact may be easily guessed by the reader. It is the sense of the perpetual presence and companionship of the Savior.

I possess by my present remoteness a peculiar advantage in respect to the day. While writing this at 4 of clock in the afternoon, people in the United States are just sitting down to breakfast, or, perhaps, rising from bed. The day with me is far spent. I have looked into its history, lived its life, seen it grow old before they rub the sleep from their eyes. This gives one an advantage. It makes me something like a prophet, in that I have seen what they have not seen. I have dipped, in a sense, into the future, and looked into the face of the unborn and unknown.

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