Part 35

TUESDAY, APRIL 22.—This morning at 11 o’clock we entered the Red Sea, through the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. The straits are about ten miles wide, and are made narrower at the entrance to the Red Sea by Perim Island, which the English have fortified. On our right, Asia; on the left, Africa,—two continents in sight. The Red Sea is a great highway for ships since the completion of the Suez Canal; ships for India, China, Japan, Ceylon, Australia and Africa now pass this way. From 7 o’clock this morning until 3 P. M. we passed fourteen ships: six were in sight at one time. Most of them passed us so closely that we could read their names.... All over the world, you hear how terribly hot and disagreeable a passage through the Red Sea is. I have been through it twice, and both voyages were cool and pleasant. Ask anyone who has been through the Red Sea, and he will tell you he had a pleasant voyage, but those who have not made the trip, say it is dreadful. If you have a head-wind, they say, the voyage is endurable, but if you have a following wind,—well, passengers can’t stand it, and beg the captain to run the other way for a time, and give them some relief. We have a following wind today,—that is, the smoke from our funnels is ahead of us,—but we find the weather more agreeable than it was at Beira, or other points on the east coast of Africa.... We are rarely out of sight of land, and this afternoon we passed the Arabian town of Mokka. We spell it Mocha, and famous coffee comes from its vicinity. Mocha coffee is like the Blue Point oyster; it is very rare, and there are many imitations. The town of Mocha has no harbor, and ships rarely call there, so the little coffee it produces is sent to Aden. Further up the coast is the town of Jiddah. It is from this place that pilgrims start for Mecca, sacred city of the Mohammedans. Only one white man has ever visited Mecca, as white people are not allowed in the place. This man, an English officer named Burton, disguised himself as an Arab physician. He spent several years in familiarizing himself with the Mohammedan religion and the Arab language. After his preparations were complete, he shipped as a deck passenger at Suez and successfully deceived the dozens of real Arabs and Mohammedans with whom he was intimately associated. The pilgrims to Mecca from Jiddah are cruelly robbed by the Arabs through whose country they must pass, and the party Burton traveled with had one pitched battle with the thieves. Burton wrote a book telling of his experiences, and I know of nothing more interesting in the way of adventure. A railroad is now being built to Mecca, if it has not been actually completed, and Jiddah will lose much of its former importance. War and slavery are common in most of the Arab towns along the Red Sea, and it is dangerous for ships to send parties ashore, unless heavily armed. During the hot, dry season, many of these towns are entirely deserted; the inhabitants go into the mountains, and remain there until the weather becomes endurable. The Red Sea has a shore-line of more than three thousand miles, yet the country surrounding it is so worthless that there is almost no town of importance on its shores, and no river runs into it. There is no rain in the vicinity of the Red Sea, and it loses eight feet every year from evaporation, which must be made up from other seas where there is more rain and less heat.... You hear a great deal of the “Mysticism of the East.” This mysticism is as foolish as the doggerel used by children when they count the buttons on your coat: “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor lawyer, merchant chief,” etc. Mysticism never means anything. The West solves riddles, and discovers how to produce a hundred bushels of corn per acre: the East pays great attention to Mysticism, and has more poor, dirty and ignorant people than any other part of the world. When the plague breaks out in the East, as a result of foolish pilgrimages to Mecca or Benares, the pilgrims say the plague is a part of the Mysticism of the East, and continue to drink holy and dirty water. But the men of the West have a better doctrine: its chief tenet is, “Clean Up,” and the plague disappears before it.... All our deck passengers left us at Aden. Men who spend half their time saying their prayers do not flourish in the great world west of Suez.... The passengers spend a good deal of their time in reading. I often hear them talking of the books they are reading. “How do you like it?” one will ask. “Oh,” the other will reply, “it serves to kill time, but is rather foolish.” What queer things you find in books! And how much alike many of the famous ones are. “Adam Bede,” “The Manxman,” and “The Scarlet Letter,” were all written around an “idea” that is unnatural, unclean and absurd.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23.—We are in a wider part of the Red Sea today, and are not meeting so many ships; the few we have seen have been far away. Yesterday we were in a part of the sea almost as narrow as a river, and we could not avoid meeting all passing vessels. At one time last night so many brilliantly lighted ships were in sight that we were reminded of a night parade of electrical features at a celebration.... We have had a strong head-wind all day which travelers pray for in the Red Sea, and toward evening the “Burgermeister” acquired considerable motion.... The English passengers on board organized a Sports Committee this morning, and are now busily engaged in arranging for such elevating sports as “In a Pig’s Eye,” “Are You There?” potato-races for women, etc. The traveling Englishman has lately gone crazy about ship sports; he is like a Methodist who believes in sanctification by baptism: he will talk of nothing else, and insists on arguing the question with you. In England, only cheap people at country fairs engage in such sports, but on English ships, dukes and princes are expected to take part, for the honor of Old England. The German passengers are not enlisting for the sports, but the English urge them to take part to the point of annoyance.... I have heard none of the passengers mention the fact that the water in the Red Sea is not red; the fact that the water in the Red Sea is blue, now seems to be generally known.... A passenger in the third-class is very ill, and the ship doctor, and a German military doctor who volunteered his services, decided that the man has malaria of the head. Malaria is so common in the tropics that now they have it in the head.... A peculiar thing about the “Burgermeister” is that several of the gentlemen passengers wear white socks. Somewhere on this trip I met a man who was irritable because his white socks attracted attention. He should be on the “Burgermeister,” where they are quite common.... I heard a woman make a remarkable statement last night. She said: “I have been traveling four months, and have not seen a single married man attempt to flirt; all the flirting I have seen has been done by married women with young men.” I submit the statement as unusual, without comment.... The dance last night was a failure; the orchestra played several numbers which did not attract any dancers at all, and only five couples danced during the entire evening. All the women dancers were married, and their husbands sat around and frowned at the young fellows who were dancing with them. There is nothing in the notion that husbands want their wives to be very popular with other men.... During the concert this evening, the tall negro man nurse who has whiskers, appeared with a bottle of milk, and submitted it to the inspection of his employer. The woman smelt and then tasted the milk; it seemed satisfactory, for she gave it back to the tall Kaffir, and he disappeared, probably to feed his charge.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24.—I awoke early this morning because of a strange and unusual sensation. I feared I might be catching the fever, or plague, but later discovered I was cold. A chilly head-wind was blowing, and this in the Red Sea, which rumor says is as hot as a furnace! The passengers went about wearing overcoats all day. At 2:30 P. M. we passed out of the tropics.... For two days we have been in that part of the Red Sea which is two hundred miles wide, and have not seen many ships; but tonight we were in a narrow part, and four ships were in sight at one time. All of them were small; there are many ships in the east, but no very big ones. If one of the big ships of the Atlantic should appear at Bombay or Colombo, people would travel hundreds of miles to see it.... The general impression in America is that an English lord is an effeminate little man who only knows enough to carry an eyeglass in one eye. As a matter of fact, some of them seem to be quite useful and manly. Lord Delamere is one of the conspicuous figures in the development of British East Africa, and has done much for that country. In addition, he is the world’s greatest lion-hunter. Up to 1911, he had killed seventy lions, single-handed. Of the first forty-nine he shot, not one escaped. No other lion-hunter has a record half as good as Lord Delamere.

[Illustration: Street-Car in East Africa

Ricksha Boy, South Africa

Car to Kimberley Diamond Mines

Bullock Teams, Victoria Falls

Transport Wagons, Rhodesia]

Another useful man in Africa is Lord Carnworth, who is an extensive farmer, as is Lord Delamere. Both these men engage in expensive agricultural experiments for the general good. Lord Carnworth lately wrote a book entitled, “A Colony in the Making.” It displays a wonderful knowledge of British East Africa. Among other things, he says the American hunters who come here are game hogs, and places Mr. Roosevelt in that class. He also speaks jestingly of the dangers of hunting in Africa. The terrible rhino, which in books is never content unless he has a hunter impaled on his single terrible horn, is not thought to be dangerous by hunters who live in this country.... In his book, Lord Carnworth discusses the native labor question quite frankly. He says what practically all the whites here say: that the missionaries are doing no good—that their converts are worse than the unconverted negroes. I quote his exact language:

“Inevitably but unfortunately the mission-educated native does not bear a good name, either among his fellow natives or among Europeans. It is, alas, a very generally accepted fact that one should beware of mission servants, who almost invariably lie, drink and steal.”

Speaking of Roosevelt reminds me that in German East Africa I saw his hunting book, translated into German, on sale at the bookstores. Everyone knows of him, and around Mombasa all the natives say with pride that they saw him. There are dozens of big-game hunters on this boat; most of them know men who were with Roosevelt, and one of them was in Roosevelt’s party for a time. They all say Roosevelt was very popular in Africa, but that Kermit, his son, was cordially despised. Roosevelt himself, they say, is a thorough sportsman, and a man of undoubted courage. He is not considered a particularly good shot, but they say he is the luckiest hunter who ever handled a gun. Besides, everything was specially arranged for his hunt. Not only all the white residents, but all the native chiefs, did what they could to locate game for him; he did not have the trouble of the usual hunter. It is further said over here that Roosevelt was a great talker, and that he would quit hunting any time to tell about his well-known theories for bettering humanity.... It is also agreed that hunters are very unpopular among the actual residents of Africa; not that the residents object to the game being killed, but every hunter requires a large number of natives for his outfit, and these are drawn mainly from the farms, where labor is scarce, and badly needed. There are millions of native men able to work, but most of them won’t work. In the native settlements, the hard labor is mainly performed by the women, children, and old men; the stalwart fellows who would do the work in a civilized community, strut about covered with grease, looking for fights with other tribes. The whites say these idlers should be made to work; that it is better that they work for a shilling a day than spend their time in idleness and mischief, and I would not be surprised to hear that the British have adopted a Vagrancy Act to reach the loafers.

FRIDAY, APRIL 25.—One of the passengers plays the piano a good deal, and plays it well, and I have just learned that he is a noted lion-hunter. That is the funniest combination I have ever heard of; a piano-player who is a lion-hunter.... There is on board a captain in the British army, and a captain in the German army. You would think they would affiliate, but they do not; on the contrary, they glare at each other. The German captain wears his uniform a good deal, and as the British captain does not, I am satisfied that he thinks the German is lacking in taste.... Among the passengers are two elderly men married to young wives; Germans who occupy official positions of some kind in German East Africa. They are the most loving couples on board; the old husbands always have their arms about their wives when on deck. If there is any one thing particularly fitted for privacy, it is love. I think the old gentlemen believe that the other passengers talk about them—and they do—and want to show them that their young wives are satisfied.... We have been having Sports today, the English gentlemen having had their way.... Every little while two men dash by with their legs tied together. They are practicing for the three-legged race, and have already run over two babies and one negro boy nurse. In the Ladies’ Potato Race, two women fell headlong, and the exhibition of dry goods was as indelicate as that seen in a dry-goods window to show new spring underwear. There is something wrong with every woman’s figure, and a potato-race brings out the irregularities.

SATURDAY, APRIL 26.—We reached Suez at 1:30 this afternoon, after a chilly ride through the narrow end of the Red Sea, which is known as the Gulf of Suez. All morning, land was in sight on both sides, and lighthouses on lonely islands were frequent. At 3 o’clock this morning we passed Mount Sinai. I have asked about half the passengers what happened on Mount Sinai to make it famous, and they don’t know.... Three hours before reaching Suez we saw a steamship that had gone ashore during the night. Another vessel was assisting it, and we did not stop.... We had a long wait at Suez before being admitted to the canal. The port doctor, a woman, amused us by coming on board, and marshaling us in the music-room for inspection. As our names were called, we walked past the doctor, and she looked at us in a manner intended to be searching. I was called out as “Herr Howe,” while Adelaide answered to “Fraulein Howe.”... We had a scheme to go to Cairo by special train from Suez, and rejoin the ship at Port Said, but the authorities would not let us land, owing to our taking on a dozen or more Arab firemen at Aden, where there is plague. But dozens of Egyptians surrounded the ship, in little boats, and offered us all sorts of articles, which they sent up for our inspection in baskets. One ship went into the canal ahead of us, having been waiting longer, and a dozen or more boats came out carrying mud from the canal dredgers. Finally a launch appeared, bringing the long-expected pilot, and at 5:30 P. M. we steamed slowly into the canal, passing within a few hundred feet of the main streets of Suez. In an hour, we passed two freight steamers, and they gave us right of way, as ours is a mail-boat.... The Suez Canal, as everyone knows, runs through the Egyptian desert, and the desolation on the Arabian side interested me greatly. The canal requires so many workmen that it is fringed with residences of one sort and another; some are boat-houses, some are huts, and some are sightly stations. And every quarter of a mile there seems to be a dredge, to keep the channel the required depth. Every foot of the canal, on both sides, is being lined with stone, and for this work a great many Egyptian laborers are required.... On the Egyptian side there is a fresh-water canal, supplied from the Nile, and this is used to irrigate a considerable stretch of country. With a glass, we could see a good many typical Egyptian farm-houses, and Egyptian agricultural life in various stages; but on the Arabian side, there was the lonely desert you have seen in pictures and read about. At one place we saw a caravan of camels in camp for the night: the drivers in one group, and the camels in another. At another place we saw a jackal among the little hills composed of dirt from the canal. The animal was gaunt and ugly, and looked at the ship indifferently. There was a great deal to see, but the sun was declining rapidly, and at 7:30, when we left the deck and went down to dinner, we could see nothing fifty feet beyond the lighted decks.... There was to be a dance after dinner, beginning at 9 o’clock, but the night was cold, and before that hour the travelers from Kansas went to bed; just as the ship entered one of the lakes which form thirty miles of the canal. In this lake we steamed at full speed, whereas in the canal proper we had been running at five miles an hour. At Suez, we took on a special lighting apparatus; not a headlight, but a searchlight. This was attached to our prow, and lighted our way.... The engineer of the “Burgermeister,” a fat German we all admire, sat on deck while we were passing through the canal, reading a newspaper. I asked him how often he had been through, and he guessed that he had made the trip seventy times. His ship makes four trips a year around Africa.

SUNDAY, APRIL 27.—When I went on deck at 5:30 this morning, the sun was just peeping out of the Mediterranean, and Port Said was in sight. I was the only passenger on deck, and although I expected Adelaide every moment, she did not appear until we were tied up in Port Said, an hour and a half later; the Suez Canal greatly excited me, although I had been through it before, but it did not greatly excite Adelaide. Half a dozen Arab sailboats, loaded with coal, passed in the canal; they had the peculiar sails seen on boats on the Nile, and were so old that I wondered they did not fall to pieces. On the larger boats were three men, and two on the smaller ones. The masts were very tall, and in this flat country the sails catch enough wind to push the boats along.... When Adelaide appeared at 7:30, I proposed that we go ashore before breakfast. She agreed to the proposition, and we were walking the streets of Port Said ten minutes later, as the ship was tied up within a hundred feet of the principal street.... Port Said is said to be a very high-priced and dishonest town, but the boatman charged only six cents each to take us to land, and the price of a carriage is only fifty cents an hour. We engaged a guide, because one followed us, and began explaining things, and we could not get rid of him. Besides, he said his price was only a shilling an hour. In no other town we have visited have we found prices as low as in Port Said, which has a worse reputation than any other town in the world. Port Said has regulations for the protection of visitors, and enforces them. When you go ashore, you do not pay the boatman, who may charge you any price he sees fit, but you pay an official at the landing. Get rid of the notion printed everywhere that Port Said is “tough.” In addition to being an orderly place, it is very interesting. Sunday is not observed in the town, for two reasons: 1. Ships arrive and send passengers ashore nearly every hour of every day, and these want supplies on Sunday the same as on other days; 2. The sixty thousand inhabitants are mainly Mohammedans, and they have no Sunday.... There were several other ships in the harbor, and the streets were crowded at 8 A. M. In front of one café, an orchestra of fifteen men and women was playing, and playing well. Most of the shops are devoted to tourist trade, but we visited an Arab market instead of the curio stores. The older portion of Port Said is as purely Egyptian as Cairo, and as dirty and oriental. The streets are narrow, and the houses high, and the native shops are as interesting as they are anywhere. Our guide was an Arab, and took us to his church: a Mohammedan mosque, which we could not enter without putting coverings on our feet. Everywhere we heard exploding fire-crackers; today is some sort of Mohammedan festival.... We received a lot of mail from home; the first in more than four months. After getting our mail, we lost interest in Port Said, and went back to the ship to read our letters. We found these so interesting that at 10:30, when the “Burgermeister” left for Naples, we barely glanced at the famous statue to Ferdinand de Lesseps which adorns the entrance to the canal.