THE FAYOUM OR ARTISTS IN EGYPT. PART I. SKETCH I. OUR PLAN. Our Luggage and Ourselves. IF RAMESIS had reckoned upon us to make an inventory of his pylones, or to set the catalogue of his ancestors right, he would have been grossly cheated. We set out with a deliberate intention of ingratitude towards the Ptolemies, and we should have considered ourselves ill-used if, in order to paint the Pyramids, we had been obliged to reckon their strata. Our object in going to Egypt was to look out for subjects for pictures, and to paint them. We did not pretend to see everything, but we wished to see B thoroughly, and to paint the truth of everything we were to see. Thus, cobalt blue and dry collodion played a much more important part in our equipment than flannel and antidotes. Our chief solicitude was that our supply of paints should not fall short; for though we did not despise the hunting we expected to have, or any other amusement, our colour-box was of far greater importance than our weapons of destruction. The younger members of our party attached a ridiculous importance to their luggage, which was heavy in proportion to the inexperience of its owners. For my part, I had to send back to Paris a collection of useless things with which I had laden my trunks on the sage excuse that I was going into the Desert. Into a country where one cannot want anything, it is absurd to take anything. Each of us thought he had nothing but the merest necessaries with him, and yet we looked as if the Pyramids themselves were following us. OUR FIRST SIGHT OF AFRICA. 3 SKETCH II. FROM THE LYONS RAILWAY-STATION TO 'STOP!' cried a man in a turban, whom we had taken on board at Messina as a pilot; thus announcing at the same time the end of a tedious passage and the rising of the curtain before the great fairy scene called a voyage in the East. But the curtain did not rise all at once; a thick mist obscured the horizon after a most disobliging and inhospitable fashion. The sun made us wait for him, like a king who desires to dazzle his guests by the splendour of his long-expected presence-sending up innumerable flashes along the horizon, until at length his disc became completely visible above the water. Then we saw the coast of Africa, like a long gilded straw, floating in the distance. Our imagination outstripped the ship. We vied with each other in perceiving the imperceptible. 'Do you see this?' 'Do you see that?' 'Those are palm-trees!' 'No, they are camels.' 'Not at all; they are windmills.' Thus we talked in our excitement. On that morning our little party were more restless than usual, and the horrible noise of the boiler was nothing in comparison with the exclamations of joyous enthusiasm with which we amazed the other passengers. 'Do you see the frogs?' we asked our dear stuffer of birds and beasts. 'I see a few,' he replied, but I think they have turbans on.' For our naturalist has only one defect : he is as near sighted as all the moles of the Thebaid. Everything-the ship and the pilot included—was right, and we found ourselves all of a sudden in the midst of the magnificent port behind which rises the city of Alexandria. The first exercise that I recommend to all Europeans on landing is a gymnastic encounter, aided by a cane, a stick, or the palm of the hand, with the natives who swarm about the ship, if he does not wish to see his luggage carried away in as many different directions as it consists of packages. Adha Anna, who had been cook to our chief during his first campaign in Egypt, simplified our landing and that of our luggage for us; and after he had rendered us this inestimable service, it did not take us very long to pass off our cartridges as English preserves, and perform our toilet at the hotel. ༔ We were impatient to find ourselves in those narrow streets where people roll about like stones in a torrent; where everyone treads on everyone's feet on principle, and everyone bumps up against everyone as a religious observance; where asses, camels, and dromedaries keep the footway to themselves, and the middle of the road belongs freely to the male foot passengers, and to women bundled up in long blue garments, who are either carrying incomprehensible loads, or dragging after them a crowd of children, who hang to their rags like bunches of grapes. We procured at the hotel two Europeanbuilt carriages, which would have looked well at a wedding at a mairie; and as our party should properly have filled three, we strongly resembled a noce as we started off at a great pace to see everything interesting which remains to be seen in Alexandria, notwithstanding the efforts of its inhabitants to turn. it into a copy of Marseilles. The straight streets, the houses with green blinds, the photograph frames, and the red signature of Nadar,' are calculated to strike a chill to one's first ideas of an Egyptian city so full of historical memories. After we had traversed some portions of the city which were certainly more pic 1 A well-known Parisian advertisement. |