We Then Mounted A Carriage,
Fought Our Way Through The Donkeys, And In Half An Hour Found
Ourselves, Chibuk In Mouth And Coffee-Cup In Hand, Seated On The Diwan
Of My Friend Larking's Hospitable Home.
Wonderful was the contrast between the steamer and that villa on the
Mahmudiyah canal!
Startling the sudden change from presto to adagio
life! In thirteen days we had passed from the clammy grey fog, that
atmosphere
[p.9]of industry which kept us at anchor off the Isle of Wight, through
the loveliest air of the Inland Sea, whose sparkling blue and purple
haze spread charms even on N. Africa's beldame features, and now we are
sitting silent and still, listening to the monotonous melody of the
East-the soft night-breeze wandering through starlit skies and tufted
trees, with a voice of melancholy meaning.
And this is the Arab's Kayf. The savouring of animal existence; the
passive enjoyment of mere sense; the pleasant languor, the dreamy
tranquillity, the airy castle-building, which in Asia stand in lieu of
the vigorous, intensive, passionate life of Europe. It is the result of
a lively, impressible, excitable nature, and exquisite sensibility of
nerve; it argues a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern
regions, where happiness is placed in the exertion of mental and
physical powers; where Ernst ist das Leben; where niggard earth
commands ceaseless sweat of face, and damp chill air demands perpetual
excitement, exercise, or change, or adventure, or dissipation, for want
of something better.
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