Then Your Duty Is, Having
Tucked The Curtains Closely Around, To Flap And Bang Violently With
This Towel, Right And Left, And Backwards And Forwards, Until Every
Mosquito Should Have Been Massacred That May Have Taken Refuge
Within Your Muslin Canopy.
Do what you will, however, one of them always escapes the murder;
and as soon as the candle is out the miscreant begins his infernal
droning and trumpeting; descends playfully upon your nose and face,
and so lightly that you don't know that he touches you.
But that
for a week afterwards you bear about marks of his ferocity, you
might take the invisible little being to be a creature of fancy - a
mere singing in your ears.
This, as an account of Cairo, dear M-, you will probably be
disposed to consider as incomplete: the fact is, I have seen
nothing else as yet. I have peered into no harems. The magicians,
proved to be humbugs, have been bastinadoed out of town. The
dancing-girls, those lovely Alme, of whom I had hoped to be able to
give a glowing and elegant, though strictly moral, description,
have been whipped into Upper Egypt, and as you are saying in your
mind - Well, it ISN'T a good description of Cairo: you are
perfectly right. It is England in Egypt. I like to see her there
with her pluck, enterprise, manliness, bitter ale, and Harvey
Sauce. Wherever they come they stay and prosper. From the summit
of yonder Pyramids forty centuries may look down on them if they
are minded; and I say, those venerable daughters of time ought to
be better pleased by the examination, than by regarding the French
bayonets and General Bonaparte, Member of the Institute, fifty
years ago, running about with sabre and pigtail. Wonders he did,
to be sure, and then ran away, leaving Kleber, to be murdered, in
the lurch - a few hundred yards from the spot where these
disquisitions are written. But what are his wonders compared to
Waghorn? Nap massacred the Mamelukes at the Pyramids: Wag has
conquered the Pyramids themselves; dragged the unwieldy structures
a month nearer England than they were, and brought the country
along with them. All the trophies and captives that ever were
brought to Roman triumph were not so enormous and wonderful as
this. All the heads that Napoleon ever caused to be struck off (as
George Cruikshank says) would not elevate him a monument as big.
Be ours the trophies of peace! O my country! O Waghorn! Hae tibi
erunt artes. When I go to the Pyramids I will sacrifice in your
name, and pour out libations of bitter ale and Harvey Sauce in your
honour.
One of the noblest views in the world is to be seen from the
citadel, which we ascended to-day. You see the city stretching
beneath it, with a thousand minarets and mosques, - the great river
curling through the green plains, studded with innumerable
villages. The Pyramids are beyond, brilliantly distinct; and the
lines and fortifications of the height, and the arsenal lying
below.
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