Leaves Gibraltar for Alexandria.—Egypt and Old Friends.—The Town of Suez.—Embarks for Bombay.—Mocha and its Coffee.—Aden.—Arrival in Bombay.—Reception by the People.—Trip to Elephanta.—Ride into the Interior.—Difficulties of the Journey.—Views of Agra.—Scenes about Delhi.—Starts for the Himalaya Mountains. “Where is Gulistan, the Land of Roses?
Not on hills, where Northern winters
Break their spears in icy splinters,
And in shrouded snow the world reposes;
But amid the glow and splendor,
Which the Orient summers lend her,
Blue the heaven above her beauty closes:
There is Gulistan, the Land of Roses.
Northward stand the Persian mountains;
Southward spring the silver fountains,
Which to Hafiz taught his sweetest measures.
Clearly ringing to the singing,
Which the nightingales delight in,
When the Spring, from Oman winging
Unto Shiraz, showers her fragrant treasures
On the land, till valleys brighten.”
—Taylor.
By far the most interesting and valuable part of Mr. Taylor’s experience as a traveller was in India, China, and Japan, if we consider only the welfare of his readers. But so far as its influence upon him was[207] concerned, its impression was far less marked than that in Europe and Egypt. At the time he left Gibraltar for Egypt, the lands of India, China, and Japan were comparatively little known to the reading communities in America. Even India, which had so long been the idol of England and the El Dorado for all her adventurous spirits and valorous soldiers, was a country with which America had but little communication, and in whose people Americans took but little interest. It was a neglected field.
Mr. Taylor, in a letter to a friend in Washington, laid much stress upon the importance to American commerce of an accurate description of those lands, and hoped to be the instrument by which an interest in such enterprises might be awakened. It was a laudable, patriotic purpose, and was most conscientiously carried out by him.
He left Gibraltar on the 28th of November, on a Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which touched at that port, on its way from Southampton to Alexandria. He arrived at Alexandria December 8, and sought his old quarters in the city. He felt like one who returns to his home, as he walked the streets of the Egyptian city, and relates with evident satisfaction how pleasant it was to call out to the crowd of donkey-drivers in their native tongue.
But his visit to Cairo gave him the keenest delight, as there he saw many familiar faces, and was greeted with many welcoming smiles. He was especially delighted[208] to meet his faithful dragoman, Achmet, who had been his companion on his trip to the White Nile, and the happiness of the Egyptian on seeing his old employer told very impressively the power and virtue of Mr. Taylor’s character. Men were faithful to him because he had faith in them. They loved him because he understood and appreciated them. Even the little donkey-boy on whose animal Mr. Taylor had rode a year before in one of his reckless canters through the bazaars, remembered him and offered to let him ride again without pay—an act unheard of by other travellers there. It could not be otherwise than sweet to travel in any land where the people were friends and where the wanderer was regarded in the light of an especially intelligent relative.
At that date there were no railroads in Egypt, although one was projected, and Mr. Taylor was compelled, in common with the crowd of other travellers, to ride in a cart, eighty-four miles, through the sandy desert, to Suez. The latter town was then, according to Mr. Taylor’s account, a small, dirty, insignificant place. But the writer, who visited the place after a visit to Japan, China, and India, in 1870, found a very prosperous town, with excellent hotel accommodations. The bazaar was large and stocked with an immense quantity of goods from all parts of the civilized world. It has doubtless grown much since the work was begun on the Suez Canal, and since the harbor has been dredged and the wharves constructed.
[209]
His stay in Suez was, however, very brief, as the Mediterranean steamer had arrived much behind time, and consequently all were hurried on board the little tug, and soon walked the deck of an India steamer.
They were on the Red Sea! Now that its barren, sandy shores, the home of the pelican and ostrich, have become so familiar to tourists, and its glaring surface been so often mentioned by correspondents, there is less romance about a voyage from Suez to Aden than in that comparatively early day when Mr. Taylor visited the locality. There was the rugged pass on the west, through which the pillar of fire led the escaping Jews to the shore, and there was the beach and highlands on the east, up which they marched dry-shod from the bed of the sea, while the waves rolled in on the hosts of Pharaoh. There was the hill on which Miriam sang so exultingly; and beyond, the hot peaks of the Sinaitic Wilderness. Somewhere in the vicinity of that sea resided the Queen of Sheba; and not far from its shores were the forgotten mines of ancient Ophir.
But Mr. Taylor felt now that a patriotic duty rested upon him, and avoiding the delicious flights of fancy which pleased him so much in Europe, he devoted himself to the practical things which might be of advantage to his ambitious countrymen. So he told about the sailors who were employed on the steamer, where Hindoos did all the drudgery and Chinamen prepared the food, under the direction of Europeans.[210] He described the character of the passengers, telling where each came from and where they were going. How he ascertained these facts is an enigma; but they were important to commercial people who would compete with the established lines, and who would like to know whom to employ and who would be their patrons. There were physicians, soldiers, officers, merchants, and health-seekers, from each of whom Mr. Taylor managed to gain much information. He did not wait, like the fashionable tourist of this day, until he arrived at his destination, trusting to luck for information and accommodation. He closely studied the country before he arrived there, and frequently astonished his guides and native companions by showing a much more accurate and extensive knowledge of their country than they possessed who had lived there all their lives.
He mentioned the hot red hills and the furnace-like surface of the sea, saying that one part of the Red Sea was the hottest part of the earth’s surface. But he appears to have suffered less than he had in the desert, and was quite happy with his biscuit and claret, and lost no time with useless fans.
He saw Mocha from the deck of the steamer, and immediately set about ascertaining what advantages that port and town offered to commerce. Without leaving the deck he found persons who knew all about Arabia and its products; so he sits down and writes a letter about coffee and its culture in and about Mocha.[211] He was such a devoted lover of coffee that it may have been a peculiarly interesting topic to him. At all events, he wrote so intelligently that an old schoolmate, who was engaged in foreign trade, acted profitably on Mr. Taylor’s hints and started a son in the coffee-trade at Baltimore. Mr. Taylor stated in his letter that fifteen thousand tons of coffee were exported annually from Mocha, it being raised in the interior and brought to Mocha on camels. He said that foreign vessels could best load at Aden, the English stronghold on the south-west coast of Arabia, to which port the native coasting vessels carried nearly all the exports of Mocha and of the other small ports along the Red Sea. He also gave the information that equally good coffee could be obtained on the Abyssinian coast, and at a smaller price.
He entered the port of Aden in the night, and was startled to look out on the port in the morning and see such jagged masses of black rock shooting up from the sand one thousand five hundred feet. It is another Gibraltar, and shrewdly has England held by diplomacy what she obtained by such a show of force. But the heat from the sand and barren rocks is so intense that the quivers of a heated atmosphere are always visible, and very injurious to the eyes. At the time of Mr. Taylor’s visit, the town and the harbor were wretched and dangerous; but in 1870 the writer found a neat village, with good hotels, and a spacious wharf. Mr. Taylor saw the advantages of the port[212] and predicted its growth. He mentioned the form, features, and dispositions of the Arabians; and told what interest the Parsees and Hindoos took in the local trade. He mentioned the articles of commerce to be found there, and gave the prices.
There is not to be found in his letters to the “Tribune,” nor in his book, “India, China, and Japan,” any mention of his sensations when he saw, as he did at Aden, a fire-worshipper (Parsee) for the first time. Being a poet by nature, and an admirer of Moore, he must have been fascinated by the actual presence of a Gheber with whom he could converse, and with whom he could change English money into the coin of the country. How “Lalla Rookh” comes to the tongue’s end when we look a fire-worshipper in the face and recognize the picture Moore had given of him!
At Aden Mr. Taylor witnessed an incident which, to one so broadly charitable and Christian, must have been most revolting. One of the workmen, who had been loading the steamer with coal, was asleep in the hold when the vessel started, and the officers finding him aboard after they had put to sea, forced the poor native overboard and left him to float ashore with the tide or perish in the waves. He whose land was the world, whose brethren were all mankind, whose friends were the humblest heathen as well as the titled official, looked back at the dark speck on the waves, and tears filled his eyes.
[213]
From Aden, the steamer entered upon its trip across the Indian Ocean, which was true to its reputation, and was placid and peaceful as an inland lake. But the slow steamer took nine days to sail from Suez to Bombay; and by the time Mr. Taylor was brought into view of the mountains where Brahma and Vishnu had so long been worshipped, he had become acquainted with nearly all the Hindoo sailors, and could secure unusual attendance from the waiters by addressing them in the Hindustanee language. He had learned the names of the principal streets of Bombay, the names of the richest merchants, and the kind of fare to be expected at the hotels. So naturally did he fall into the ways of the people that the boatmen who took him ashore at............