Passing through the land of Goshen—Its associations, ancient and modern—The route of the Israelites—Some speculations relating to the patriarch Joseph—The start from Suez—Adventures on the Red Sea—The village of Tor—The pleasures of dromedary-riding—The life of the Bedouin—The difference between the dromedary and the camel—The Arabian horse and ass—Mishaps of desert travel—The approach to Gebel Musa.
A PARTY having been formed to go to Mount Sinai during the winter of 1878, I was easily persuaded to join it, as I had never visited that celebrated mountain. We took our departure from Cairo. It may not be uninteresting, in passing over the land of Goshen, to give a short description of the country once occupied by the ancient Israelites, a few facts in their history, and some of the incidents connected with the exodus of that people. We left on the train for Suez, where a steamer was expected to take us across the Red Sea. Immediately outside Cairo the solitary obelisk at Heliopolis marks the site of the ancient city of On, where the temple of the sun once glittered in its morning rays, undoubtedly one of the most interesting objects in Egypt. Joseph married the daughter of the high priest of the temple, and as this monument stood in front of it, the shaft must have been a familiar object to his eyes, and thus may be said to be connected with biblical history. While the hieroglyphics indicate that the Pyramids are much older than this obelisk, yet the Bible nowhere mentions them directly, and only once darkly refers to them (Job 3 : 14). Near here is also the famous old sycamore called the Virgin's tree. The tradition is that it sheltered the Holy Family in its flight into Egypt, and often near it the fate of Cairo has been decided by the sword. During the Crusades St. Louis was taken prisoner at Manzoura while on his march to this spot, and the Duke of Artois, his brother, was killed. Here Kleber, in modern times, as if to efface that defeat, conquered the Egyptians and took possession of Cairo. In retaliation he was assassinated by a fanatic. Here too, Tomans, the last king of those savage freebooters, the Mamelukes, was taken prisoner, and executed in Cairo, near a mosque at the famous old gate of the street which leads to the Citadel. Mounting the débris at Heliopolis and looking directly across the wavy green plain before it, and over the Nile to the opposite side, a clump of date trees is seen. This is the village of Embâbeh, and marks the spot where Napoleon fought the battle of the Pyramids with the Mamelukes. Carrying the eye along the horizon to the south, the great Pyramid of Cheops is in splendid view, whence you have the 4000 years looking down upon Napoleon's battle. We soon come to the ruins of Tel-el-Yahoodeh (the mound of the Jews), noted as the site of Onion, where the son of Onanias the high priest built a temple modelled after that at Jerusalem, obtaining authority to do so from a liberal Ptolemy. Thirty miles farther we are at the ruins of the ancient city of Bubastis, now called Tell Basta, the seat of power of the twenty-second dynasty of the Pharaohs, the city from which Shishak began the expedition which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem and the bringing of the holy vessels from the temple, 798 B.C. To this site and a short distance beyond, the fertile land extends, and now the water of the new canal to Ismailia passes on its way, charged with the fertilizing alluvium of the Nile, to make fruitful the ancient land of Goshen, and open navigation, closed for so many centuries, between the Nile and the Red Sea. Starting from Cairo, it taps the two seas near the centre of the Suez Canal, and thus realizes the idea which puzzled the brain of the greatest among the Pharaohs and all his successors, and only now consummated by the government of Egypt. The canal just completed from the Nile at Cairo to the canal of Suez will open in time a very rich country, and gradually but certainly make ancient Goshen as fertile as in the olden time. By impregnating the sands with its fertilizing alluvium the Nile will in a few years make it again blossom as the rose.
Near Bubastis are the ruins of Tel-el-Kebir, in the opinion of many archæologists the Pithom of the Bible, where Joseph and Jacob met, and the spot where recently the English crushed the National party of Egypt which had risen against Tewfik and his allies. There is much more diversity of opinion as to where the city of Rameses was located. Tradition places it, and the world seems to have settled down to the conclusion that it was at the other end of an ancient canal, that ran from Pithom to the Red Sea, near the present city of Ismailia, which lies on the western side of Lake Timsah ; the site is called Masamah, and is twenty-eight miles south-west of Ismailia. It was here and in the country adjacent that Moses, the experienced general as well as sage, gathered his people for their famous march (Ex. 12 : 37 ; Num. 33 : 3–5), taking what is known as the Wady Tawarak, just beyond the present city of Suez, and near which the crowning miracle occurred. Though Herr Brugsch, the great archæologist and linguist, advances a very striking theory, which will be noticed farther on, it is difficult to shake the faith of those who accept the route which tradition for so many thousands of years has marked out to be the true one, a conclusion arrived at by a careful collation of facts, which reciprocally support while they fully explain one another. The new theorists, on the contrary, affirm that the city of Rameses was located where the city of San or Zoan now lies, formerly the site of the old city of Tanis, near the Mediterranean Sea. Brugsch Bey infers, from the hieroglyphics on two statues found at the site of Tanis, that Rameses II. gave his name to this town, and farther eastward there are monuments upon which are read “ Thuka” or “ Thukut,” the same, he thinks, as “ Succoth” in the Bible, the first camp of the Israelites ; and he places Pithom, the treasure city, on the route to Migdol, their second camp. A papyrus in the British Museum contains the name of Katom, which he thinks was Etham ; and thus he takes the chosen people from camp to camp. The Israelites crossed the isthmus over the marshes which lie between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, near a place now called Kantara, the usual road to Syria. His argument is strengthened by the fact that here lie the great Serbonian bogs, which Egyptian fables say had swallowed up whole armies while marching along the coast. The names of Strabo and Diodorus are given as authority for these fables, and they speak of this country as at times covered with water to a considerable depth. Brugsch fortifies his opinion with numerous facts and historical interpretations of the Egyptian monuments, which prove to him that it was here that Pharaoh and his host met their fate, not by waters from the Red Sea, but by the waves of the Mediterranean. His brochure is ingenious, able, and learned, and is well worthy of study. Mariette Bey, another Egyptologist, who was in charge of the antiquities of Egypt, thinks it probable that Joseph came hither under one of the shepherd kings, and his being Semitic, like these Pharaohs, explains his appointment as prime minister. This naturally leads to the conclusion that through him occurred many of the vast changes in the prosperity of Egypt, felt even in the reign of Rameses II. (Sesostris), the one who “ knew not Joseph,” and in that of his thirteenth son and successor, Menephtheh. It has been settled among Egyptologists that the latter king was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, though his tomb has been found at Bab-el-Malouk instead of at the bottom of the Red Sea or of the Serbonian marsh. Mariette thinks, with Champollion, that the treasure city of Rameses of the Bible is the same as the present site of San, the same fixed upon by Brugsch Bey. These are the views of the greatest hieroglyphic scholars of the present day. They have verified these facts from investigations among the historical ruins of Egypt, and from them the hieroglyphists are continuing the rich harvest of truth in these latter days. Where before there was scarcely any information gleaned to show that Joseph or Jacob were ever in Egypt, Brugsch Bey in his “ Exodus” presents much that is confirmatory of the touching history of the patriarch recounted in the Book of Genesis.
It is difficult at this distance of time, though we have to some extent the recorded history of the administration of the patriarch Joseph, to decide with any certainty in what consisted the extraordinary policy which many writers have assumed led to the great prosperity of Egypt under that renowned prime minister. If it was the hoarding of the grain during the famine, of which the inspired writers have given us an account, until it became a monopoly in the granaries of the Pharaoh, it would, according to the ideas of our day, be considered a cruel visitation upon the people. It would be questionable policy for a despot to compel his people to sell all their grain, and when necessity was upon them to force that very people to give their money, then their lands, and finally their bodies, in return for the very grain they had sold. It was simply committing robbery under the guise of law, and reducing the people to servitude. When Joseph said, “ There yet remain your liberties, sell them to the king,” he forced so monstrous an alternative on the starving wretches that this worthy minister of the benevolent king and his philanthropic schemes are not entitled to the least credit. Most writers have measured the prosperity of Egypt by the magnitude and number of her structures and her many destructive wars. Possibly to attain this enviable distinction it was the policy of Joseph to enslave the people and thus enable his sovereign to erect great palaces, temples, and monuments, and to send out huge armies “ to overthrow kingdoms and destroy the cities thereof,” of which doings the history is visible in their ruins even to this day. We find it pictured and engraved upon their walls and monuments, that they were constructed by slaves and prisoners of war for the glory of the prince and the worship of idols, particular pains being taken to emphasize the fact that these gigantic works were all done under the taskmasters and the lash. I confess, with all the lights before me, I have little respect for the assumed enlightened policy, much less for the greatness, of the patriarch Joseph and the king he served.
The road now followed passes by the pretty little French built town of Ismailia, the home of Lesseps when in Egypt. It lies on the western border of Lake Timsah, which since the cutting of the canal has been filled by the two seas, and forms a part of the canal. At Suez our party embarked in an open boat of twenty tons for a place called Tor, a distance of 140 miles down the dangerous coast of the Red Sea, where at this season heavy storms are encountered. We had been promised a steamer, but it did not come. I was persuaded, against my judgment, to take the small boat, with a party of two others and our servants. Entering upon the waste of waters, in the dim distance eastward could be faintly discerned a beautiful clump of palms, with a range of sandy mountains in the background. These palms mark the spot where the pilgrims of to-day slake their thirst at Moses' wells, like the Israelites in their day. Our Mussulmans prostrated themselves toward the tomb of the Prophet, muttering their fanatical petition for seventy houris promised with such questionable generosity. Soon we saw the majestic range of mountains on the peninsula, of which Mount Sinai (Gebel Musa), the object of our voyage, was the most prominent.
During the first night in our small boat we had a storm. The excitement of scudding through the water at racing pace was somewhat heightened by the possibility of going any moment to the bottom. What added still more to this anticipation was the prayer of the Bedouin who steered our boat, and who was heard in his frequent calls upon Allah to save him. He hoped that Allah would give him the houris that Mahomet promised ; but stopping suddenly, as if a bright vision had passed before him, he said that he had a beautiful houri in this world and if it pleased Allah he would like to stay with her a little longer. As we lay sea-sick in our frail boat upon this stormy night, I thought this surpassed all the foolish things I had done in my life.
At last the storm abated, and we passed Cape Aboo Zelimeh, where a sort of wooden hut is in sight, marking the tomb of an Arab saint. It is a singular fact that the more filthy he can contrive to make himself and the less clothing he can wear, the more holy the saint is in the eyes of the Moslem. One of these miserable objects gives his name to this cape. In consideration of having safely weathered the storm, our ries (captain) ordered a fête, consisting of coffee and pipes. While regaling ourselves, the customary cup of coffee having been set aside to be cast into the sea to propitiate the saint, the ries in full Arab dress, cast a wistful eye at the cup, and thinking it too full for the saint, his Arab taste for coffee overcame his fanaticism. Thinking it at best but a pious fraud, he swallowed half of the contents, and then, with great solemnity consigned the rest to the waves.
Tor consists of a miserable little hamlet of three or four Arab houses and a strongly built Greek church for religion and defence. The shore in front is lined with shells, and much red coral is gathered here. It is the site of an old Roman fort, the walls and bastions of which are so crumbling and sunburnt that the ruins hardly reveal its original purpose. It was not long before the usual haggling for camels and dromedaries commenced with the Bedouins, who were prevented from overreaching us by the military governor, himself somewhat awed by the official aspect of our party. He had lived in this solitary place for many years. Chickens, sheep, and goats shared his house with him and his harem. Upon the arrival of our party it was necessary to drive out some of these animals in order to welcome us into his “ Salam-lick.” The odor of the place not being fragrant, we hurried through coffee and pipes and pitched our tents by the sea, some distance from this high-flavored family. Mounting our dromedaries on the desert saddle, the most uncomfortable invention ever designed to torment man, we started. We encamped for the night a few miles from Tor, at the well of El Haide, pleasantly situated among gardens of palm-trees. The Bedouin in these deserts scorns the labor of civilized man, and like the Indian of North America, cannot be tamed. Possessing a like dignity, he is exceedingly amiable, and can be induced to behave himself by very little money. He gossips and laughs, and is by no means a savage unless fired by fanaticism. Content to pitch his low woollen tent in the open desert, he never thinks of sheltering it with a tree or rock, though both may be convenient. Nominally an Egyptian, if asked why he does not settle down and till the soil, he tells you he can never consent to make soldiers of his children. With the fellah, the Egyptian peasant, this is the crowning act of human misery. Once under the yoke, he never leaves it ; home, children, family ties are alike ignored by the remorseless military power. No wonder the Bedouin Arab dreads the blessings of civilization. Those with us were without their tents or families. It was after dark, and they were soon grinding wheat between two stones, as the Mexicans do, preparatory to making their solitary meal, perhaps without salt, and with only the few herbs or roots they happen to find upon the desert. They crouched around the scanty fagot fire, for it was cold, their camel's long neck between them and his nose at the same fire too. Thus camel and master passed the night. Such is the life of the wild man of the desert. If one accepts the distinctions of Pliny adopted by Buffon, where two species of animals are marked by nature with certain permanent peculiarities, there cannot be found such an animal as a camel in Egypt or in the surrounding deserts. Unlike the Bactrian, there is no animal of this kind to be seen with two humps ; you never see or hear of but one. Consequently all these animals are of the dromedary species. The name camel is universally applied to the animal with one hump in this country, and it is difficult to draw any distinction between it and the dromedary, also with one, the latter being only considered a peculiar breed. There is scarcely an Arab over these broad deserts who has ever heard of the Bactrian camel. The name gammeel (camel) is that by which he designates the most common beast of burden he has—slow and patient, of great size and strength, used in cities and on deserts for heavy loads, capable of great endurance, of living upon the coarse food found upon the deserts, and of going a long time without water. The one of graceful and delicate form, rapid in its motion, smaller and of easier gait, is called by the Arab hadjim, and by us dromedary. There are others seen among the Bedouins, stouter and shorter, with more and longer hair of a pale red. We have often seen one of these on the trackless wastes, where there is no living thing, patiently moving with the rich treasures of the East hooked on his back and his master treading by his side in perfect confidence. Were it not that nature had fitted him to endure the heat and sand, without food and water, it would be impossible to cross these immense wastes which separate the human family. Besides such valuable qualities, they are also uncommonly intelligent animals, and are said to be sensitive to injustice, and for the purpose of avenging a wrong will wait a year, as General Twiggs used to say of the mule, to get a good kick at you.
No one but the Arab will eat camel's flesh, but he considers it a dainty. Camel's milk is his food, and out of the hair he makes his tents, carpets, and clothing.
Having travelled over Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and parts of Arabia and Abyssinia, I will say something about the horse and ass of these Eastern countries. The pure-blooded Arabian is still found in great numbers elsewhere in the East, but Egypt has lost him. The greater cultivation of the land, the destruction of the Mamelukes, those savage freebooters who laid waste the land and who boasted in their horses the blood of those of the Prophet, and the fatal diseases which of late have swept away thousands, have confined the few that are left to the stables of the Khedive and of his family, and a very few rich Pachas, or have driven them into the desert. These hot countries seem to produce a beautiful, nervous horse, with clean limbs, small head and ears, wide nostrils, intelligent and bright eyes, silky mane and tail, great bottom and vigor. Though the stallion alone is used, he is so gentle that he never kicks or bites. Some think he takes his habits from the people around him, who being under a “ strong government” are very amiable. If the horse is so elegant an animal in these heated, sterile wastes, his companion, the ass, also thrives. Found wild in Nubia, he attains great beauty and spirit there, and only degenerates as he advances into colder northern climates. If the Arabian horse is not injured when transplanted, it is because he is caressed, and more attention is given in the modification of the breed by a care which is neglected in the others. By the lavishing of minute attention upon the one, he becomes acclimated in all his beauty, while the other, patient and gentle, becomes by ill-treatment an ungainly drudge. Equal care of him and attention to his breeding would make him the splendid animal so much admired in the East. The ass often attains the height of the horse, and frequently sells at a higher price. Travellers in Egypt are always struck by the animal's well-set head, bright eyes, form, and speed. Like the camel, he will go a long time without water and live upon the commonest food. Capable of greater endurance than the horse, asses are more used for long journeys over the deserts, and are often seen with camels passing over these vast solitudes. The saddle used on them has a protuberance in front which gives the rider an even and agreeable seat. Followed by an Arab boy who keeps the beast at a brisk trot with a sharp stick, the tourist prefers him to any other means of locomotion for sight-seeing in Cairo. When the Empress Eugénie was here she honored one, and the amiable simplicity of the Emperor of Brazil induced him from choice and convenience to make frequent use of this easy-gaited little animal. Even at this day, when carriages are so common, you see bright-eyed women folded in black silk covering like a piece of goods, riding en amazone upon superbly caparisoned asses of high value, preceded by a eunuch mounted on a beautiful-limbed Arabian, glittering in the richest gold and silver embroidered trappings.
But to our journey. Since leaving camp, though on a plain nearly the whole day, there had been a gradual ascent toward a sand mountain in our front, the greater chain looming up in the south-west. After a short ride we camped on the edge of the mountain at the first water we had met. On leaving Tor we were promised a rapid transit over barren wastes, and the time mentioned in which we were to do it was two days. Our Bedouin made it four. “ The poor Bedouin and the poor camels” is the eternal plea with all travellers. We heard it throughout our trip, but had to submit. Next day, while mounted on one of those amiable homars (donkeys) which have just been discussed, an accident occurred. I changed the camel for the ass, because of the precipitous ascent before us, my long-eared steed being a powerful animal and pretty sure of his footing. Losing it, however, on this occasion, he took a five-foot tumble and dragged down not only the rider, but four Bedouins, who on these dangerous roads rush to the rescue as quick as lightning. On getting from under my animal, I took it for granted I was hurt, being the heaviest in the party, and was surprised at not having even a scratch, while all the others, including the homar, were injured. After that I mounted my dromedary. This is accomplished as follows : A Bedouin by divers jerks first succeeds in coaxing or forcing the animal down on his knees, with a snap like that of a double-bladed jack-knife. While one holds his head away to keep him from biting, another ties his forelegs together, and then to secure them stands upon them, inviting you to mount and fix yourself in the execrable saddle. In the mean time the dromedary is uttering the most agonizing cries of distress. Suddenly the Bedouin loosens the strap and bounds from the animal's legs ; another terrible grunt and you discover that you are on the top of this living machine, waiting patiently further developments, with your hands grasping the horns in front and rear. The animal raises his fore quarters with a bound, and this sticks the front horn into your stomach, while you are pressing upon it to keep in a horizontal position ; that done, up go the hind quarters with another jerk, and this time the rear horn sticks you in the back. You are only too glad to get the rear punch in token of the completed business. While the animal was opening his hinges I was thoroughly impressed with the dizzy height of several hundred feet. It is best not to strike these beasts too much, for if beaten they are certain to stand still and deliberately turn their long necks and try to bite a piece out of your legs. It then becomes necessary to stick to them in order to avoid their fury, until by gently patting they are made to move on amicably again. Their walk is rough, but they trot with comparative ease, carrying the head up and tail straight in the air and looking very gay as they rapidly move along. With your sack of water and leather thong they can without much inconvenience travel from 50 to 80 miles a day. But in making this swift passage through the heated air reflected from the burning sands you are literally roasted, and this rubbing and twisting your loins and galling your hands in the effort to hold on makes dromedary-riding a painful operation to those not accustomed to it.