A Yankee Engineer Abroad: Part II: The East

by Frederick Hubbard

Overview

This book is a transcription of a recently discovered manuscript of a Grand Tour taken by a clasically educated American engineer in the years 1855 through 1857.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467871402
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	12/07/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
File size:	14 MB
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A Yankee Engineer Abroad

Part II: The East

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By Frederick Hubbard

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Linnaeus C. Shecut
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4678-7142-6

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Chapter One

I. EGYPTIAN WELCOMES — ALEXANDRIA — THE DELTA — LAND OF BONDAGE — GRAND CAIRO — MOSQUES AND TOMBS — HELIOPOLIS — WHIRLING DERVISHES

The voyage to Alexandria, some eight hundred miles, was accomplished without any incident of note in three days and a half. The water became intensely blue on nearing the Levant, and the nightly phosphorescence was, also, brilliant. Our passengers were made-up of specimens of almost every nation on the eastern continent, with no small number of Americans.

At 10 o'clock P.M. of the 18th December [1856], we made the Alexandria light, and lay off and on during the night. Early the following morning, we were boarded by the pilot, a turbaned Turk, and conducted slowly through the intricate passage that leads to the old, or western, port. The coast is very low, and not visible far out to sea. The most conspicuous objects from a distance are the lighthouse and Pompey's Pillar. The former is interesting as being the successor of the ancient Pharos of Alexandria, the earliest of these structures, and long accounted one of the Wonders of the World. Our simple forefathers in that early age were easily set a wondering.

On approaching the city, the palace and harem of the Pasha appears as a prominent object at the end of the island or peninsula on which Alexandria is situated. On the right lay a dense mass of shipping, attesting the importance and enterprise of the place, overtopped by the slender minarets of the mosques. Outside of these were anchored a number of large men-of-war, with the flag of the star and crescent, together with numerous English, French, and Austrian steamers.

As we dropped anchor in the harbour, we were instantly surrounded by swarms of boats, manned by the most gaily dressed and vociferous of boatmen. Turks and Arabs – fez-cap and turban – were waiting for us, and pounced down upon their prey like a flock of hungry hawks. In vain the officers forbade their entrance; in vain the stewards fought and struggled at the gangways. The hope of gain proved stronger than authority, and triumphed over all prohibitions, moral and physical. With inimitable good humour and the most dogged perseverance, they pressed their suit, accounting sticks and dry knocks as no more than stubble, and ropes' ends as excellent jokes. Occasionally a son of Ishmael was tumbled neck and heels backward into the boats, or a turbaned "true believer" was made to retreat before the too-sturdy strokes of a "dog of an infidel." Yet they had no thought of yielding. Back up the gangways they crowded en masse – up over the vessel's side – over the paddle-boxes – over the stern – clinging to ropes, tiller-chains, hooks, anything accessible – tumbled themselves on board, and fairly took possession of the ship by sheer force of impudence and numbers. The scene that ensued between the confounded passengers and the raging Ishmaelites does not admit of description. After a large amount of persevering and elbowing, and a stopping of the ears against the vociferations of the surrounding throng, uttered in every language of Christendom and heathendom, we selected our boats and pushed away for the shore.

The landing-wharf presented a strange mixture of the peculiarities of the Orient and Occident. Soberly dressed Franks and gaily dressed Egyptians were moving about in their several avocations. Solemn-looking Mussulmans were earnestly employed in the great work of smoking in the sunshine. There were Arab women with their ugly faces carefully veiled from vulgar gaze. There were impatient Europeans in a fever at the too-scrutinizing search of the customhouse officials; there were slatternly soldiers lounging about with nothing but paper cigars to attend to; there were loaded donkeys and strange-looking oxen trudging patiently on, regardless of the thumpings and shoutings of the half-naked children that drove them. There were several huge, gaily painted, staring omnibuses from the hotels, for all the world like those that run on Broadway or the Strand. In long file, with heads tied to the tails of their predecessors, were strings of camels, those awkwardly shaped "ships of the desert," with long, curving necks, little sheep's heads, ugly, crooked legs and great, squashy feet, bearing away water in huge leathern sacks. All these were mingled in strange confusion, an anomalous jumble of the characteristics of far-separated and widely differing climes.

The modern city of Alexandria has few attractions. It is wretchedly built and dirty, excepting the large square of the Frank quarter where are the hotels and consulates, and a neat English church in a semi-moorish style. There is a large Greek church, also, in another part of the city. The Arab bazaar is a cluster of mean houses along narrow filthy streets. The buildings are divided into little square shops, a few feet wide, with just room for the shopkeeper to sit cross-legged with his pipe, on the counter in the midst of his goods. Arab fruit-women crowd the narrow streets, sitting squatted beside their wares – with eyes, only, exposed, and with strings of coin, worn on the forehead or between the eyes for ornament. Parties of curiously gazing Europeans, mounted on donkeys, are occasionally met-with; and, now and then, a wheeled vehicle, with a running courier in advance to clear the way.

The principal "sights" of Alexandria are Pompey's Pillar and Cleopatra's Needle. Both of these, it is hardly necessary to say, are misnamed, and both are too well-known to need a minute description. The Pillar is a solitary Corinthian column of granite, mounted on a pedestal. The total height is about one hundred feet, and the diameter of the shaft – a magnificent monolith – nearly ten feet. It is supposed to have been erected in the time of Diocletian, and in his honour, some fifteen centuries ago. The earth has become removed around the base of the monument, exposing the rubble foundation and endangering the safety of the column. Ruins and monuments are cheap in Egypt, and consequently no care is taken to preserve them. This noble shaft cannot stand erect much longer in the present state of neglect. A very trifling expenditure would repair and secure the foundations, but it is nobody's business, and the government does not care whether it stands or falls.

Cleopatra's Needle, dating back to the time of the Exodus of the Israelites, nearly fifteen centuries before Christ, has witnessed the changes and chances of three thousand three hundred years. It stood originally at Heliopolis, and was removed to this point by one of the Caesars. The transportation must have been a fair trial of the engineering skill of those days, as the mass is 70 feet high and nearly 8 feet in diameter at the base, and cannot weigh less than 160 tons. The angles at the bottom are truncated, probably by accident before it was raised to its present position. To give increased stability to the narrowed foundation, and to distribute more equally the enormous pressure, solid masses of copper were introduced under the huge monolith, and rudely fashioned in the form of claw-feet. The whole surface of the obelisk is carved in hieroglyphics, deeply cut in the hard granite. The lower portion of the stone, as well as the whole of one face, is a good-deal corroded, probably by the drifting sand. A second obelisk exists in the vicinity, prostrate and now covered with sand.

The thermometer at Alexandria, between the 19th and 22nd of Dec., ranged from 66° to 70°. The weather was bright and cloudless, with a hot sun at mid-day, but a cool fresh air at night. The city was filled with strangers, mostly India passengers, awaiting the arrival of the English steamer, or travellers in search of health or pleasure, bound on a voyage up the Nile. The latter are more than usually numerous this season. I joined myself to a party consisting of an English and an American gentleman, with their ladies, and made a contract with a dragoman to conduct us to the Second Cataract and back, an excursion which will occupy about three months. As usual in such cases, the contract was drawn-up in form with a good deal of detail, and signed and sealed before the consul.

The railroad is completed from Alexandria to Cairo, and is soon to be extended to Suez. The ride, about one hundred and thirty miles, occupied us seven hours. The route lies over the Delta of the Nile, through a fertile country, as flat as our western prairies. The soil, where kept moist, is a fine black mud, being entirely a deposit of the waters of the river in their overflow. An amazing amount of solid matter has thus been brought down from the upper regions of the Nile. The delta has thrust itself out into the Mediterranean, forming an arched line of coast, whose chord is one hundred and fifty miles, and projection about forty miles. The entire surface of Lower Egypt, also which the river annually overflows, has been raised by like deposits many feet in the course of centuries.

The villages of the Delta are dismal clusters of mud hovels, crowded together upon some little eminence, to be out of reach of the floods. There are no trees nor shrubbery about them, and their appearance is wretched in the extreme. The inhabitants are poor and degraded, but their land is exceedingly fertile, bearing heavy crops of grain and cotton. The former is exported largely from Alexandria. The fields are all artificially irrigated, the machines for the purpose being of the rudest description, the same in fact that have been employed without variation for some thousand years. The most complicated of these antique mechanical contrivances lifts the water in earthen jars, attached to ropes passing round a drum, turned by oxen. Hand labour is more frequently employed in dipping-up water in buckets, balanced on a pole, like our "well-sweeps" on a smaller scale – or in bailing it in a shallow, closely woven basket, swung by cords held by two men.

The railroad, constructed by English enterprise and capital, is all the way on a considerable embankment, and is well and substantially built. In lieu of ties, the rails rest on iron sleepers, cast in one piece with the chairs. The bearing part is a segment of a spherical shell of about two feet chord, placed with the hollow part down. Two small apertures are provided for the "tamping"-tool in adjusting the track. The bearing-plates are tied across at intervals by slender iron rods. The bridges are of iron, resting on cylindrical iron piers. The principal crossing of the Nile, not yet being completed, the trains are taken across by a sort of flying-ferry, an iron vessel with a lofty framework, carrying a double-track, adjustable in height to accommodate the varying level of the river.

Approaching the upper part of the Delta, we entered the Scripture Land of Goshen, the Israelites' land of bondage. It is distinguished from the surrounding region by its increased fertility, its groves of waving palm-trees and orchards of fruit. As it was thirty-five centuries ago, when offered by Pharaoh to the brethren of Joseph, so it remains to this day: "the best of the land." The whole region around us is full of the highest interest. In these very fields – how hard it is to realize it – the patriarch Jacob dwelt with his children, when they were strangers in the land of Ham; and here, their descendants passed under the cruel yoke of the oppressor. Yonder, towards the east, a slender obelisk on the edge of the desert marks the site of the ancient Heliopolis, the City of the Sun. And now, as the domes and slender minarets of Grand Cairo began to rise up before us, there in the western horizon, dim and faint like mountain-peaks, but presenting to us in these latter days the same fixed and unchanging features that they did to the Israelites of yore, to the Persian Cambyses, to the grey old Father of History, to the proud Philosophers of Greece, to the armies of the Mistress of the World, and to wave after wave of succeeding generations that have moved beneath their shadows and long since passed away – there, hoary with an antiquity of four thousand years, stand the PYRAMIDS.

As it came to a rest, our shrieking engine (how strangely it sounded here) awoke us from our dreams of the past; and, recalling us through a long range of centuries, introduced us abruptly into the hubbub and turmoil of a modern railroad station. But, on clearing the cars and the omnibuses and the modernisms of the railroad, and once among the streets of Cairo, back into antiquity we slid again – at least a thousand years, for everything around us seemed to belong to the past – to the old Oriental Scriptural days. The flat-roofed houses, the picturesque costumes, the bright-coloured robes and odd-fashioned ornaments, the shrouded women, riding mysteriously on the high backs of camels, the plume-topped palm-trees, the fragments of antique sculpture, the dried antiquity of every object around us – belong to the grey, old, patriarchal times, and have nothing to do with the nineteenth century.

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We spent a week in Cairo, busily employed in preparations for our voyage, and in making excursions through the city and its environs. There are few carriages in the city; donkeys of the smallest pattern do the duty of hackney coaches – and very useful they are, on account of their diminutive size, in forcing their way through the swarm of life that fills the dark and narrow streets. Crowds of these little long-eared, much-abused quadrupeds, each one attended by a half-naked monkey of an Arab boy, stand waiting before the hotel doors and in public places for hire. Great is the excitement and loud the vociferation when an expected employer appears. The boys always accompany their animals, encouraging their advance by hearty and substantial arguments, and constant shoutings to clear the way. An excellent understanding appears to exist between biped and quadruped, and the rider is not slow to learn that he is not the master of the animal he bestrides.

The peculiarities of this old Oriental city are best seen in the Turkish bazaars in the thickest part of the town. The streets are narrow and intricate, and darkened by balconies and projections. The windows are enclosed by protruding lattices of ornamentally carved wood-work, jealously shrouding the inmates from observation, while it permits them to peep down upon the throng below. Across the narrower thoroughfares, these projecting cage-works are often in actual contact. Many of the streets are roofed-over; others have matting thrown across the narrow interval from house to house to keep off the sun. The ventilation of these places is indifferent, but they are kept comparatively cool by abundant sprinkling. The watering operation is performed in the most primitive manner. The machine is a sturdy Arab, bending under the burden of a huge water-skin, whose neck he holds compressed in one hand. As he stumps along, by a peculiar manipulation and fling of his body, he ejects a stream of the cooling fluid to right and left across the narrow breadth of the street. This rare invention, with many others in this conservative country, has descended unchanged from patriarchal times.

The native shops are little pigeon-holes, eight or ten feet square, with a floor elevated from two to three feet above the street. On this, the shopkeeper sits cross-legged among his goods, smoking his long pipe and calmly awaiting the turn of fate that may send him a customer. Vendors of particular kinds of goods invariably inhabit the same locality. Most of these merchants transact business in a very small way on a most limited capital; yet, there are silk and shawl bazaars, and shops for the sale of amber and precious stones, where these articles of Oriental luxury are to be found in high perfection and of costly price.

The population of Cairo is variously estimated from three to five hundred thousand souls. Its contracted streets are perpetually crowded with one moving mass of life. Mixed with the closely wedged throng are: innumerable donkeys, threading their winding way, splendidly caparisoned horses, long strings of loaded camels, whose projecting burdens occupy nearly the whole space from shop to shop – and, now and then, at long intervals, a wheeled vehicle with its forerunner to clear the way. One would think the confusion inextricable, yet the crowd moves on in its varying directions, rapidly and good-humorously, with a surprising freedom from jostling. The average width of these thoroughfares is eight or nine feet.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Yankee Engineer Abroad by Frederick Hubbard Copyright © 2011 by Linnaeus C. Shecut. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

INTRODUCTION....................v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS....................xi
I....................3
II....................20
III....................46
IV....................67
V....................83
VI....................106
VII....................124
VIII....................145
IX....................167
X....................185
XI....................206
XII....................225
XIII....................246
XIV....................268
XV....................288
XVI....................303
XVII....................323
XVIII....................345
XIX....................362
XX....................379
WEATHER CHART....................391
MAPS....................405
LE VOYAGE PITTORESQUE....................415
OBITUARY....................451
SOURCES....................455
INDEX....................457