DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0111
80
EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT.
tricks, and a shrewd Abyssinian improvisatore, entertaining
a group of men and boys with tragedy and comedy in min-
iature, relieved with snatches of native songs.
Having dined at Shepherd's, we donkey back to Boulak
to sleep on the boat. This Boulak is itself a town of con-
siderable size, though of recent growth. The river has
receded from Cairo — which stands upon its ancient bluff—
and a canal for irrigation now marks its former bed ; while
Boulak, ranging along its present bank, serves as a port.
Here are immense areas, in which grain and beans are
piled up like mountains of sand, no doubt as they were in
the days of Joseph. They need no covering where it never
rains. Here, too, are piles of large, fresh, luscious oranges,
at twenty cents the hundred, and boats unlading at the
bank, are swelling these enormous piles. There is life and
activity everywhere. But here, too, is squalor and filth;
and on the way hither we passed a cluster of miserable
hovels, around which ragged men and naked children,
swarming with flies, were sunning themselves; and on that
splendid avenue of acacias and sycamores were little girls,
scraping together with their hands the refuse of passing
animals, to be dried for fuel to cook their scanty meals.
Alas! all is not poetry in the East; here is sorrow and
suffering in contrast with a magnificence unparalleled in the
New World.
The Nile is made to fructify the great plain around Cairo,
and to water the public square and gardens within the city,
as well as the palace gardens and plantations of the Viceroy
without the walls, by the force of steam, which pumps up
its water and pours it into an arterial system of canals.
When the Sabbath came, it was refreshing once more to
attend public worship in the English tongue. A little
chapel in Cairo, under the auspices of the British Embassy,
opens its doors to all strangers, and its excellent minister,
EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT.
tricks, and a shrewd Abyssinian improvisatore, entertaining
a group of men and boys with tragedy and comedy in min-
iature, relieved with snatches of native songs.
Having dined at Shepherd's, we donkey back to Boulak
to sleep on the boat. This Boulak is itself a town of con-
siderable size, though of recent growth. The river has
receded from Cairo — which stands upon its ancient bluff—
and a canal for irrigation now marks its former bed ; while
Boulak, ranging along its present bank, serves as a port.
Here are immense areas, in which grain and beans are
piled up like mountains of sand, no doubt as they were in
the days of Joseph. They need no covering where it never
rains. Here, too, are piles of large, fresh, luscious oranges,
at twenty cents the hundred, and boats unlading at the
bank, are swelling these enormous piles. There is life and
activity everywhere. But here, too, is squalor and filth;
and on the way hither we passed a cluster of miserable
hovels, around which ragged men and naked children,
swarming with flies, were sunning themselves; and on that
splendid avenue of acacias and sycamores were little girls,
scraping together with their hands the refuse of passing
animals, to be dried for fuel to cook their scanty meals.
Alas! all is not poetry in the East; here is sorrow and
suffering in contrast with a magnificence unparalleled in the
New World.
The Nile is made to fructify the great plain around Cairo,
and to water the public square and gardens within the city,
as well as the palace gardens and plantations of the Viceroy
without the walls, by the force of steam, which pumps up
its water and pours it into an arterial system of canals.
When the Sabbath came, it was refreshing once more to
attend public worship in the English tongue. A little
chapel in Cairo, under the auspices of the British Embassy,
opens its doors to all strangers, and its excellent minister,