In Pastures New Part 12

One afternoon we wandered into a market and a man tried to sell me a camel. Wherever we go, if a man has something he doesn't want, he tries to sell it to me, and sometimes he does it. But I refused to take the camel. I did not see how I could fold it up and secrete it so as to get it through the custom house.

Camels in the Cairo market are now steady, not literally speaking, but as regards their value. A good terra cotta camel, 55 to 60 hands high and broken to single-foot, will fetch as high as $150. The older ones--spavined, hairless, or pigeontoed--can be bought for as low as $50 each. The common or garden camel, trained to collapse like a pocket camera and carry from three to eight tons of cargo, can usually be bought at from $100 to $125.

Cairo, as a whole, was a big surprise to us. We knew that it was going to be cosmopolitan, but we were not prepared to find it so metropolitan. We had pictured it as one or two semi-European streets hedged in by a vast area of native quarter. But, unless you seek out the old parts of the town or the bazaars, each showing a distinct type of the Oriental shark, Cairo is outwardly quite modern, very attractive, and decidedly gay--that is, not real wicked gayety of the Parisian brand, but modified, winter-resort gayety, the kind that is induced by the presence of money-spending tourists. There is no hurrah night life, and gambling, which flourished here for many seasons under the skilful direction of our countryman, Mr. Pat Sheedy, has yielded to British reformatory influence.

The modern streets in Cairo, with their attractive hotels, residences, and shops, suggest a blending of Paris and the Riviera--consistent architecture, trees, palms, gardens. The streets are of boulevard width, and the houses of cheerful colouring, many of them bearing coloured frescoes in delicate shades. We who live in a country of rainfall and smoke and changing temperatures are impelled to stop and gaze in wonder at a mansion of snowy white with a pattern of pale blossoms drooping down the front of it. That style of decoration would last about twenty minutes in Chicago.

CHAPTER XIII

ALL ABOUT OUR VISIT TO THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS

During the first three days in Cairo a brilliant and original plan of action had been outlining itself in my mind. At last I could not keep it to myself any longer, so I told Mr. Peasley.

"Do you know what I am going to do?" I asked.

Mr. Peasley did not.

"I am going to write up the Pyramids. I am going to tell who built them and how long it took and how many blocks of stone they contain. I shall have myself photographed sitting on a camel and holding an American flag. Also, I shall describe in detail the emotions that surge within me as I stand in the shadow of the Sphinx and gaze up at that vast and imperturbable expanse of face."

"It's a great scheme," said Mr. Peasley, "but you've been scooped.

They've been written up already."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Scooped!_"]

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir; the whole outfit of Pyramids has been described in a special article by a man named Herodotus."

"How long since?"

"About 470 B.C."

He produced a guide book and proved that he was right. All the things that I had been getting ready to say about the Pyramids had been said by Herodotus. He had got there ahead of me--just 2376 years ahead of me. In daily newspaper compet.i.tion, when some man gets his news twenty-four hours ahead of another one he is proud of his "beat" and is the hero of the office for fifteen or twenty minutes. But think of trailing along twenty-four centuries behind a Greek s.p.a.ce writer! It took all the starch out of me.

Mr. Peasley suggested that inasmuch as considerable time had elapsed since the appearance of the first write-up, possibly the average reader would have only a dim recollection of it and accept my account as brand new stuff. But I knew better. I knew that some old subscriber, with a complete file put away in the bureau, would rise up and draw the deadly parallel on me. All I can safely do in regard to the Pyramids is touch up a few points overlooked by my predecessor.

Herodotus, by the way, had quite a time in Egypt. At that time Shepheard's Hotel was not in operation, although it must have been under way, and no round trip tickets were being issued by Cook, so Herodotus had to do his own booking and put up at a boarding house. In Memphis, which is now a fragmentary suburb of Cairo, Herodotus engaged a guide. He does not tell us what he paid, but he does give us a line on the character of the dragoman, who was full of superfluous and undesirable information, but who fell down when asked to divulge facts of real importance. This proves that the breed has not changed since 500 B.C.

The guide took Herodotus out to the Pyramids and filled him up. It is now believed that most of what Herodotus sent back was merely hearsay, but it made good reading. The Pyramids had been standing some two thousand years, and any information in regard to their origin could hardly come under the head of personal recollections. Whatever Herodotus had to say about the Pyramids is now accepted as gospel, in spite of the fact that he never saw them until twenty centuries after the last block of stone had been put in place and Cheops had taken possession of the tomb chambers. Rather late for a grand opening.

When he arrived at the Great Pyramid he stepped it off and put down the dimensions, and then he remarked to some of the natives standing around that it must have been quite a job to build a tomb of that size. They said yes; it had been a big contract, and as the work had been completed only two thousand years they were enabled to go into details.

They gave Herodotus a fine lay-out of round figures. They said that one hundred thousand men had worked on the job and that the time required was thirty years--ten years to build the road and the huge incline for bringing the blocks of stone into place, and then twenty years to quarry the stone and transport it across the Nile and the valley. The stone cutters worked all the year, and during the three months' inundation, when farming was at a standstill, the entire rural population turned out, just as they would at a husking bee or a barn raising, and helped Cheops with his tomb. They did this year after year for thirty years, until they had piled up 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each containing forty cubic feet.

Herodotus discovered some large hieroglyphics on the face of the Pyramid and asked the guide for a translation. It is now supposed that the guide could not read. Anyone with education or social standing wouldn't have been a guide, even in that remote period. But this guide wanted to appear to be earning his salary and be justified in demanding a tip, so he said that the inscription told how much garlic and onions the labourers had consumed while at work on the job, and just how much these had cost. Herodotus put it all down in his notebook without batting an eye.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Herodotus put it all down--without batting an eye_]

"How much did they spend for onions and garlic?" he asked, poising his pencil.

The guide waited for a moment, so that his imagination could get a running start, and then he replied, "They cost 1600 talents of silver."

Now, that sum in talents is equivalent, under modern computation, to 350,000 English pounds, or $1,750,000. Think of a million dollars'

worth of garlic! Try to imagine the bouquet that permeated the desert when one hundred thousand men who had been eating garlic began to call for more bricks and mortar!

Herodotus told his story and got away with it. By the time the next letter-writing traveller came along, a good many centuries later, the outer casing of the Pyramid had been stripped off and the inscription had disappeared. His story has stood because he was here ahead of the rest of us and saw the marks with his own eyes and had them translated by a ten-cent guide. But can you believe that a great monarch would devote thirty years and sacrifice thousands of lives and work the whole male population of his kingdom to skin and bones putting up a colossal sepulchre and then set aside the most valuable s.p.a.ce on this glorious monument for telling how much onions and garlic had been fed to the help?

Marco Polo, Mark Twain, and all the other great travellers of history love to tell tall ones once in a while, but the garlic story by Herodotus will doubtless be regarded as a record performance for a long time to come.

Cheops was possibly the most successful contractor in history. It is estimated that he really did work one hundred thousand men in the building of the great Pyramid, as related by Herodotus, and that he must have devoted at least thirty years to the big undertaking. During all that time he never had a strike or even a clash with the walking delegate. The eight hour day was unknown, and no one dreamed of such a thing as an arbitration committee. All he had to do was to give orders and the entire population obeyed him. Everybody worked but Cheops. He didn't even pay salaries. It is true that in a spirit of generosity he set out a free lunch for the labourers--about $2,000,000 worth of garlic and onions. If he had tried to feed them on quail probably he would have gone broke.

Nowadays visitors go out to the Pyramids by tramcar. For some reason we had the notion, doubtless shared by many who have not been there, that to get to the Pyramids one simply rides through Cairo and out onto the flat desert. As a matter of fact, the Great Pyramid at Ghizeh, its two smaller companions and the Sphinx are on a rocky plateau five miles to the west of the city. There is a bee-line road across the lowlands.

It is a wide and graded thoroughfare, set with acacia trees, and as you ride out by trolley or carriage you look up at the Pyramids, and when you are still three miles away they seem to be at least a half-mile distant. At the end of the avenue and at the foot of the hill there is a hotel, and from this point one may climb or else charter a dumb animal.

Not knowing the ropes, we engaged a carriage at 100 piastres to take us from the city out to the plateau. This is not as much as it sounds, but it is about twice the usual rate. After we struck the long road leading across the valley and saw the trolley cars gliding by and leaving us far behind, we decided to send the carriage back to the city and take to the trolley, where we would feel at home. The driver informed us that he could not return to the city, as the big bridge had been opened to permit the pa.s.sing of boats, and that it would be three hours before he could drive back to town. It seems that he was right.

The big bridge swings open but once a day, and then it stays open for a few hours, and the man who finds himself "bridged" must either swim or engage a boat.

It is a five minutes' climb from the end of the drive up to the rocky plateau on which the pyramids are perched, and the ordinary tourist goes afoot. But we were pining for Oriental extravagance and new sensations, so we engaged camels. The camel allotted to me was dest.i.tute of hair, and when first discovered was in a comatose condition. His or her name was Zen.o.bia, and the brunette in charge said that its age was either six or sixty. It sounded more like "six,"

but the general appearance of the animal seemed to back up the "sixty"

theory. As we approached, Zen.o.bia opened one eye and took a hard look at the party, and then made a low wailing sound which doubtless meant "More trouble for me." The venerable animal creaked at every joint as it slowly rose into the air on the instalment plan, a foot or two at a time.

We had come thousands of miles to see the Pyramids, and for the next ten minutes we were so busy hanging on to those undulating s.h.i.+ps of the desert that we overlooked even the big Pyramid, which was spread out before us 750 feet wide and 450 feet high. Riding a camel is like sitting on a high trestle that is giving way at the joints and is about to collapse. The distance to the ground is probably ten feet, but you seem to be fifty feet in the air. As soon as we could escape from the camels we walked around and gazed in solemn silence at the Sphinx and the three Pyramids and doubtless thought all of the things that were appropriate to the time and place.

The great Pyramid of Cheops has been advertised so extensively that doubtless many people will be surprised to learn that there is a whole flock of Pyramids on this plateau along the edge of the Libyan desert.

There are Pyramids to the north and Pyramids to the south, five groups in all, sixty of them, and they vary in size from a stingy little mound looking like an extinct lime kiln up to the behemoth specimen which is photographed by every Cook tourist.

Why do these Pyramids vary so greatly in size? Each was built by some royal personage as an enduring monument to his administration and the last resting place of his remains. The most eminent students of Egyptology now agree that the size of each of these Pyramids is a fair measure of the length of each king's reign. The reason that Cheops has the biggest Pyramid is that he held office longer than the others.

When a king mounted the throne, if he was feeling rugged and was what an insurance company would call a "preferred risk" he would block out the foundation of a Pyramid tomb that would require, say, ten years for the building. If, at the end of ten years, he was still feeling in good physical condition and confident of lasting a while longer he would widen the foundations and put on additional layers up to the summit. Labor was free and materials were cheap, and he kept everybody working on his tomb as long as he lived. Finally, when the court physicians began to warn him that his time was limited, he would begin putting on the outer coating of dressed stone and arrange for the inscriptions. The ruler who lasted only three or four years was buried in a squatty little Pyramid, which soon became hidden under the drifting sands of the desert. Cheops kept piling up the huge blocks for thirty years, and that is why his Pyramid holds the record. If Methusaleh had been a Pyramid builder he would have been compelled to put up a tomb probably a mile and a half high and about eleven miles around the base. In a revolutionary South American republic the ruler would probably get no further than laying the corner stone.

We visited the pyramids. Also, we looked at the golf links, staked out across the barren sands--not to be played on, but merely to be featured in the hotel advertis.e.m.e.nt. Think of a golf course which is one huge hazard! Drive the ball in any direction and you can't play out of the sand! Forty centuries gazing down on a bow-legged tourist in fuzzy Scotch stockings!

Most of the pleasure seekers that we encountered in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids seemed to be quite elderly--some of the more sprightly as young as sixty, and from that going up to where it would be better to stop guessing. Mr. Peasley gave an explanation of their presence.

He said that the dry climate of Egypt would preserve antiquities for an indefinite period.

Here they were, these male and female octogenarians, not propped up in arm chairs dividing the family silverware and arranging bequests to hospitals and libraries, but out on the blinding desert, thousands of miles from home, falling off donkeys, climbing up on camels, devouring guide books, rummaging around for time tables, kicking on the charges, and leading on the whole a life of purple strenuosity. We heard of two English women, sisters, both over seventy, who had just returned from Khartoum, from which point they had gone on a hunting expedition still further into the interior. They had to wear mosquito bags and semi-male attire, and were out in the wild country for days at a time, chasing gazelles, hyenas, and other indigenous fauna.

Just as I am about to conclude this treatise it occurs to me that, although I have given a wealth of useful information regarding the Pyramids, I have rather overlooked our old friend the Sphinx. I can only say in pa.s.sing that it looks exactly like the printed advertis.e.m.e.nts. There is no deception about it. It is in a bad state of repair, but this is not surprising when we consider its age.

Herodotus does not mention the Sphinx. It was right there at the time.

In fact, it had been there fourteen hundred years when he first arrived. It seems strange that an observing traveller should have overlooked a monument sixty-six feet high, with a face nearly fourteen feet wide, a nose five feet and seven inches long, and wearing a smile that measures over seven feet! Herodotus either walked by without seeing it or else he did not think it worthy of mention. The only plausible explanation is that he was too busy figuring up the garlic statistics.

ON THE NILE