Instead of thirty hours, we took
three mortal days and nights to reach Cairo, and we grounded with
painful regularity four or five times between sunrise and sunset. In
the scenery on the banks sketchers and describers have left you nought
to see. From Pompey's Pillar to the Maison Carree, Kariom and its
potteries, Al-Birkah[FN#1] of the night birds, Bastarah
[p.30]with the alleys of trees, even unto Atfah, all things are
perfectly familiar to us, and have been so years before the traveller
actually sees them. The Nil al-Mubarak itself-the Blessed Nile,-as
notably fails too at this season to arouse enthusiasm. You see nothing
but muddy waters, dusty banks, a sand mist, a milky sky, and a glaring
sun: you feel nought but a breeze like the blast from a potter's
furnace. You can only just distinguish through a veil of reeking
vapours the village Shibr Katt from the village Kafr al-Zayyat, and you
steam too far from Wardan town to enjoy the Timonic satisfaction of
enraging its male population with "Haykal! ya ibn Haykal! O Haykal!-O
son of Haykal[FN#2]!" You are nearly wrecked, as a matter of course, at
the Barrage; and you are certainly dumbfoundered by the sight of its
ugly little Gothic crenelles.[FN#3] The Pyramids of Khufa and Khafra
(Cheops
[p.31]and Cephren) "rearing their majestic heads above the margin of
the Desert," only suggest of remark that they have been remarkably
well-sketched; and thus you proceed till with a real feeling of
satisfaction you moor alongside of the tumble-down old suburb "Bulak."
To me there was double dulness in the scenery:
