He Drives Off The Arabs With An
Oath, - Wipes His Red Shining Face With His Yellow Handkerchief,
Drops Puffing On
The sand in a shady corner, where cold fowl and
hard eggs are awaiting him, and the next minute you
See his nose
plunged in a foaming beaker of brandy and soda-water. He can say
now, and for ever, he has been up the Pyramid. There is nothing
sublime in it. You cast your eye once more up that staggering
perspective of a zigzag line, which ends at the summit, and wish
you were up there - and down again. Forwards! - Up with you! It
must be done. Six Arabs are behind you, who won't let you escape
if you would.
The importunity of these ruffians is a ludicrous annoyance to which
a traveller must submit. For two miles before you reach the
Pyramids they seize on you and never cease howling. Five or six of
them pounce upon one victim, and never leave him until they have
carried him up and down. Sometimes they conspire to run a man up
the huge stair, and bring him, half-killed and fainting, to the
top. Always a couple of brutes insist upon impelling you
sternwards; from whom the only means to release yourself is to kick
out vigorously and unmercifully, when the Arabs will possibly
retreat. The ascent is not the least romantic, or difficult, or
sublime: you walk up a great broken staircase, of which some of
the steps are four feet high. It's not hard, only a little high.
You see no better view from the top than you behold from the
bottom; only a little more river, and sand, and ricefield. You
jump down the big steps at your leisure; but your meditations you
must keep for after-times, - the cursed shrieking of the Arabs
prevents all thought or leisure.
- And this is all you have to tell about the Pyramids? Oh! for
shame! Not a compliment to their age and size? Not a big phrase,-
-not a rapture? Do you mean to say that you had no feeling of
respect and awe? Try, man, and build up a monument of words as
lofty as they are - they, whom "imber edax" and "aquilo impotens"
and the flight of ages have not been able to destroy.
- No: be that work for great geniuses, great painters, great
poets! This quill was never made to take such flights; it comes of
the wing of a humble domestic bird, who walks a common; who talks a
great deal (and hisses sometimes); who can't fly far or high, and
drops always very quickly; and whose unromantic end is, to be laid
on a Michaelmas or Christmas table, and there to be discussed for
half-an-hour - let us hope, with some relish.
* * *
Another week saw us in the Quarantine Harbour at Malta, where
seventeen days of prison and quiet were almost agreeable, after the
incessant sight-seeing of the last two months. In the interval,
between the 23rd of August and the 27th of October, we may boast of
having seen more men and cities than most travellers have seen in
such a time:- Lisbon, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malta, Athens, Smyrna,
Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo.
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