KOSSEIR
WE had not long to wait before the Mudir, or Governor of Kosseir, arrived to welcome us. He was a stout, good-natured, middle-aged Maltese; he spoke English fluently, but with the accent of his countrymen. His pleasure at seeing us was very genuine, and the more we heard him tell of life in Kosseir, the more we appreciated what an event in his dull existence our arrival must have been. Besides his wife and little daughter there was not a European in the place, except an Austrian mechanic who attended to the sea-water condenser. A Syrian doctor had been sent here to attend to the sick, and as no one ever was sick, and the Mudir never had any cases to try, their only topic of conversation was of the dulness of the place. There were 1500 souls in Kosseir when the Mudir was first appointed, and now there are barely 300. They lived on the fish they caught and some bags of flour which a coasting steamer left here at long intervals. The arrival of the steamer was the one event which awakened the inhabitants, who, during the intervals, spent most of their time in sleep.
I asked what the large building was which we noticed when first we caught sight of the place, and I246 was told that it was a condenser which the government had erected so as to save the people having to go four miles to the nearest well to fetch the brackish water it supplied. The Mudir would show us over it the following morning, as well as the other objects of interest in the town. We were told we could not get some necessaries we thought we might be able to procure for our return journey. ‘There is nothing here, nothing, nothing,’ and which he pronounced ‘Nozing, nozing, nozing,’ while the tears almost started from the poor man’s eyes.
It appeared that when he was first sent here the people were often reduced to eating chopped straw with their fish. The little trade, which had hitherto kept the place going, disappeared when Suakin and Suez became the only places of call on that coast. The great condenser had supplied the ships with water, and a trade in fish gave the men an occupation and brought a little money into the place. The Mudir sent a report to the government on the starving condition of the inhabitants, and a grant was voted to transplant the population to more prosperous districts. Three-quarters of the people left when the means were given them to do so, and as none but the aged remained, it was hoped that Kosseir would soon cease as an inhabited town. So great, however, is the native’s attachment to his locality, that a certain number returned, after a while, to the semi-starvation of their natal place.
We asked if the people were honest and well-behaved. ‘Dere is nozing to steal, and when they are not fishing dey sleep,’ was our answer. The doctor had as little to247 do as the Mudir in his capacity as magistrate, for, in spite of the poor living, old age was the only physical complaint from which any one suffered.
On this barren coast, where no blade of grass can grow, the germs of disease do not easily spread, and the filth from the habitations is soon sterilised in the perpetual sunshine. To rust out takes longer than to wear out in such a climate, and this must account for the great age which most of the inhabitants attain.
Our baggage had arrived during these tales of woe, and we tried to induce the governor to share our dinner. He would not stay, but promised to have tea with us the next day, and to bring his daughter, the Austrian mechanic, and the Syrian doctor. He had hardly taken his departure when some men arrived bringing half a dozen chairs and a present of fish, with a message that if there was anything Kosseir could supply, it was at our orders. I think the kind-hearted Mudir left to spare us our expressions of gratitude.
To lie on the soft sand within a few yards of the gentle plashing of the incoming waves, and to watch the full moon slowly emerging above the sharp-cut line of the blue waters, consoled us that Kosseir could at least supply a half-hour of as exquisite enjoyment as any wealth could command in the most prosperous of cities. The fizzling sounds which proceeded from Selim’s cooking-tent did not jar in the least, for the anticipation of some fresh fish, after a régime of tinned meats, was far from disagreeable. After a course of crayfish and of a well-served belbul, we told Selim that he could give his tin-opener a thorough rest.
248 We returned to our soft couches in the sand, and lay there till the moon was high in the heavens, when we turned in for the night.
The Mudir was awaiting us when we arrived at his office at eight o’clock on the following morning. It was in a large building, for our host’s duties were various: he was consul to many nations, of whom a subject might be here cast ashore; he was also postmaster-general, in case a letter ever arrived; head of the customs—on what dutiable articles was not related. As captain of the coastguards a chance of some work might occur, for were this coast not guarded, hasheesh would be sure to find an inlet and poison some of the people in the Nile valley. He was here also to enforce the orders given by the sanitary inspectors in regard to pilgrims returning from Mecca through this port. In spite of these and other duties, Mr. Wirth (as we discovered his name to be) had plenty of time to place at our disposal, and when we had sipped the usual cup of coffee we started to see Kosseir under his guidance.
The huge and unsightly building which housed the condensing machinery was, as might be expected, the pièce de résistance, and with pride we were shown the one thing left in which some lingering signs of vitality remained. The government had spent ￡14,000 to put this thing up. It was large enough to supply water to 10,000 souls, and now by working it during two mornings per month it more than supplied the present population. A paternal government had decreed that a charge of one millième, that is a farthing, should be made for each pailful supplied; but as many had not249 the farthing, it was a case of ‘thank you for nothing.’ The governor informed us that many women filled their pitchers at the brackish well, four miles off, from want of this money to pay for the distilled water: a case of farthing wise and pound foolish on the part of the government.
I was glad when we got out of the place and proceeded to inspect the chief mosque. When we had awakened the caretaker, he started removing the matting, so as not to oblige us to take off our shoes. Mr. Wirth wittily remarked that the ground would be less likely to dirty our shoes than would the mats if we stepped on them. We prevented the man from moving one of them, so as not to disturb the sleep of one or two worshippers who lay there. It was a picturesque old mosque, and Mr. Whymper and I decided to return and make a drawing of it when we had seen what else Kosseir had to show.
The fort stands close by, and we were taken to see the place where Desaix had quartered some troops, and where these French soldiers pined, during two years, for their native country, until they were hurriedly dislodged by the Anglo-British force under Baird. Our Maltese friend, being a British subject, pointed out with pride the gate through which the English and Indian soldiers effected an entrance, and at the back of the fort he showed us from whence the poor Frenchmen escaped to try and reach the Nile across the desert. How many succeeded, history does not relate. Knowing what preparations have to be made to make a desert journey, it is awful to contemplate the fate of these250 soldiers with only the food they could hurriedly grab up, and the wells guarded by the enemy. We are told that the British troops reached Keneh, and that the French had by that time evacuated Egypt. General Desaix had joined Napoleon’s army more than a year before, and fell in the battle of Marengo on the 14th of June 1800.
His brilliant career was cut short while only in his thirty-second year, his greatest achievement being the conquest of Upper Egypt, where he became known by the natives as the Just Sultan.
The custodian of the fort told us how the British fired water from their ships on to the ammunition of the French, and the latter, then being unable to return the fire, tried to reach Keneh as best they could. Strange things are often related by Arab custodians!
The main street of Kosseir is picturesque, with the minaret towering above the deserted shops, or rather it might have been, had the coloured stuffs and fruits and a busy throng been there to furnish it with the usual properties which make up an oriental street picture. The two stalls which had something to sell had no other customers than a swarm of flies, and we should hardly have had the heart to wake the shopman from his profound sleep had there been anything worth buying. The Mudir had had the little quay repaired, as well as the wooden pier which formed the breakwater to a small harbour. He had also fenced in a space of about a hundred yards square in the sea, so as to allow any one who wished to bathe to be able to do so in safety from the sharks. We mentioned that one251 of our party had bathed near our camp, and he was horrified, for the sea, he told us, was alive with sharks. ‘Had we not noticed a shark lying on the strand with its throat cut?’ We mentioned that we had, though not till after our friend’s bath. We were then told that a youth was standing there with his feet just in the sea when a shark made a dash at him, and, missing his prey, landed too high on the beach to be able to get back into the water before the youth cut its throat. This had only happened a couple of days before our arrival at the coast.
Two high-sterned dhows were beached near here for repairs; they added considerably to the characteristics of the place, which had something un-Egyptian about them. K............