Asiatic Breezes Part 23

"Literally, 'lost stones,' as they were when they went overboard; but that was what the French engineers called them."

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, I desire to invite you to the upper deck, where I wish to say something to you about the Land of Goshen, and thus finish up Egypt, except the portion we shall have in view as we continue on our voyage," said the commander rising from his seat.

The ladies were handed down from the promenade by the gallant gentlemen, though, unfortunately, there were not enough of the former to go round; but no one but the captain and Louis presumed to offer his services to Mrs. Belgrave or Miss Blanche. As the party approached the place where the conferences had usually been held, they saw that a change had been made in the appearance of things.

The first novelty that attracted their attention was the large map which was suspended on a frame rigged against the mainmast. It was brilliant with colors, with all the streams, towns, and lakes, properly labelled, upon it. A small table stood at the left, or port side, of it, covered with a cloth, with a Bible and a vase of flowers upon it. Chloe, the stewardess, had provided the latter from the pots which the ladies had kept in the cabin since their visit to Bermuda.

On the deck a large carpet had been spread out, and the thirteen arm-chairs had been placed in a semicircle, facing the map, with one behind the table for the speaker for the occasion. As soon as the company had taken in this arrangement for the educational feature of the voyage, they halted, and applauded it with right good-will.

"Please to be seated, ladies and gentlemen," said the commander, as he handed Mrs. Belgrave to the chair on the right of the table; and at the same time he took his place behind the table.

The party took their chairs according to their own fancies, and Mrs.

Blossom managed to get at the side of Felix. At one side stood Mr.

Gaskette and the two sailors who had a.s.sisted him in his work. They had also arranged the meeting-place from the direction of the captain. Some of the tourists wondered what the commander meant to do in the face of all these preparations. It was not Sunday, or they would have come to the conclusion that the usual religious service was to be held here; for the Bible on the table pointed in this direction. As soon as the party were seated the commander opened the Good Book at a marked place.

"I see that some of you are surprised at the altered appearance of our out-door hall," Captain Ringgold began. "I regard the instructive element of our voyage as one of the greatest importance; and if I were to fit out the s.h.i.+p again for this cruise, I should provide an apartment on this deck for our conference meetings. But I have done the best I could under the circ.u.mstances, with the a.s.sistance of Mr. Gaskette, the second officer of the s.h.i.+p.

"I see also that the map before you has challenged your attention,"

continued the commander, who proceeded to explain in what manner he had caused the maps to be made. "Mr. Gaskette has been my right-hand man in this work. He is not only a good navigator and a thorough seaman, but he is a highly educated gentleman, a graduate of Harvard College, a person of artistic tastes, as you may have learned from your intercourse with him. The map before you is only one of three already completed, and the work is in progress upon several others."

The company, including the ladies, received this explanation with generous applause, and all the boys called for the subject of the captain's remarks. He was presented to them, and thanked the commander for his kind words, and hoped the maps would prove to be useful in the conferences.

"I will begin what I have to say about the Land of Goshen by reading a few verses from the first chapter of Exodus: 'And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. Now there rose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pa.s.s, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.

Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Ramses.'

"Ramses II. is generally regarded as the Pharaoh of the oppression, and doubtless the Israelites suffered a great deal of persecution in his reign," the commander proceeded as he closed the Bible. "But the one who proposed in the verse I have read to 'get them up out of the land, was the successor of Ramses II., 'the new king over Egypt,' Merenptah, the son of Ramses, and now believed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. He reigned about 1325 years A.D.

"The Land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, is the north-eastern part of Egypt, the whole of it lying to the east of the Damietta branch of the Nile," continued the commander, using his pointer upon the map.

"Through this region then, as now, there were fresh-water ca.n.a.ls, by which the country was made very productive, and the people were very prosperous. The city of Ramses, built by the Israelites, was doubtless the most important in Goshen. It is the ancient Tanis, the ruins of which are still to be seen. Pithom, the other city mentioned in the Scripture, is here," and the speaker pointed it out. "It is quite near the Arabian Desert, and the present fresh-water ca.n.a.l runs within a few miles of it.

"With the birth of Moses, and the finding of the child in the ark or basket by the daughter of Pharaoh, and her adoption of it, you are all familiar; and the story is quite as interesting as any you can find in other books than the Bible. Though of the house of Levi, he became an Egyptian for the time; but he claimed his lineage, and became the leader of the Israelites, and conducted them out of Egypt.

"A great deal of study has been given by learned men to the route by which this was accomplished. Most of them agreed that he started from Tanis, or Ramses. On that narrow strip of land between the lake and the Mediterranean, which you have seen from the promenade, was one of the usual roads from Egypt into Asia, and was the one which led into Palestine, the Holy Land. Where Moses and his followers crossed the Red Sea is still an open question, though hardly such to devout people who accept literally the Bible as their guide in matters of faith and fact both. These accept the belief that the crossing of the Red Sea, with the miracles attending it, was in the portion near Suez.

"Heinrich Karl Brugsch, a learned German and eminent Egyptologist, born in Berlin in 1827, has constructed a theory in relation to the exodus of the Israelites which is more ingenious than reasonable to the pious reader of the Scripture. It would be hardly profitable for us to go into the details of his reasoning, though he uses the Bible as the foundation of his statements. There were two roads from Egypt to Palestine, the one mentioned, and one farther south, not so well adapted to caravans on account of the marshy country it traverses.

"The German savant believed they departed by the northern road. In the British Museum is a letter written on papyrus over three thousand years ago, in which an Egyptian writer describes his journey from Ramses in pursuit of two runaway servants. The days of the month are given; and his stopping-places were the same as those of the Israelites. (Exodus xii. 37): 'The children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth;' and this is the region east of Goshen. (Exodus xiii. 20): 'And they journeyed from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness,' or the desert.

"This was also the route of the Egyptian letter writer. Then the pilgrims were commanded to turn, and encamp at a point between Migdol and the sea, (Exodus xiv. 2.) He found the fugitives had gone towards the wall, meaning the forts by which Egypt was defended from Asiatic enemies. Following the same route, the Israelites came to the Sarbonian Lake. This is a long sheet of water on the isthmus," said the commander, as he pointed it out on the map. "It was, for it no longer exists, separated from the Mediterranean by such a strip as that which you see here by Lake Menzaleh.

"Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Sarbonian Lake was filled with a rank growth of reeds and papyrus bushes, which made it very dangerous to travellers. Strong winds blew the sands of the desert over the surface, studded with leaves, so as to hide the water; and the traveller might walk upon it and sink to his death. The same ancient writer says that an army with which Artaxerxes, King of Persia, intended to invade Egypt, being unacquainted with this treacherous lake, got into it, and was lost.

"Brugsch believes this was the lake through which the Israelites pa.s.sed, and that Pharaoh's army encountered a storm, were lost, and perished as did the Persian forces. But we must drop the subject here, though it may come up again when we arrive at Suez, where others believe the six hundred thousand Israelites went over dry shod, while Pharaoh and his hosts perished in the closing waters."

The company had certainly been deeply interested in the subject, and the commander retired from the rostrum with a volley of applause.

CHAPTER XX

THE LAST OF CAPTAIN MAZAGAN

Captain Ringgold was very much delighted with the success which had attended his efforts to interest his pa.s.sengers; for he never lost sight of the instructive feature of the voyage. None of his party were scientists in a technical sense in the studies which occupied them, though Dr. Hawkes and Professor Giroud were such in their occupation at home; but they were all well-educated persons in the ordinary use of the term.

They were not Egyptologists, philosophers, theologians, zoologists, biblical critics, ethnologists, or devoted to any special studies; they were ordinary seekers after knowledge in all its varieties. The everyday facts, events, and scenes, as presented to them in their present migratory existence, were the staple topics of thought and study. Though none of the party ascended to the higher flights of scientific inquiry, the commander endeavored to make use of the discoveries and conclusions of the learned men of the present and the past.

He was eminently a practical man, and practical knowledge was his aim; and he endeavored to lead the conferences in this direction. The building of the piers at Port Said, and the construction of the ca.n.a.l, as meagrely described by the magnate of the Fifth Avenue, were the kind of subjects he believed in; and he had a sort of mild contempt for one who could discourse learnedly over a polype, and did not know the difference between a sea mile and a statute mile.

"Do you believe in the explanation of that Dutchman you mentioned, Captain Ringgold?" asked Mr. Woolridge, at the close of the conference.

"What Dutchman?" inquired the commander. "I do not remember that I alluded to any Dutchman."

"I mean the man who says that Pharaoh's army perished in the lake where the weeds and papyrus grew," the magnate explained.

"Brugsch? He was not a Dutchman; he was a German."

"It is all the same thing; I have been in the habit of calling a German a Dutchman."

"If you will excuse me, Mr. Woolridge, I think it is a very bad habit,"

added the commander with a deprecatory smile. "A German is not a Dutchman, any more than a Dutchman is a German; and I should as soon think of calling a full-blooded American a Chinaman, as a German a Dutchman."

"Of course you are right, Captain, though I am not alone in the use of the word," replied the magnate.

"But it is more common among uneducated people than with people of even fair education. I do not accept Brugsch's explanation, but cling to the Bible story as I learned it in my childhood. I don't think Brugsch's explanation comes under the head of what is called the 'higher criticism,' or that it places him in the column of those who represent the 'advanced thought' of the present time; for he follows the Scripture record, and does not seek to invalidate it. But we are going to run into the basin, and it is time we were moving," added the commander, as he called the first officer, and ordered the anchor to be weighed.

"Do you have to pay to go through the ca.n.a.l, Captain Ringgold?" asked Mrs. Belgrave, after the commander had given his orders.

"Of course we do," replied the captain; and about all the party gathered around him to hear what he had to say. "As Mr. Woolridge said, the ca.n.a.l is good paying stock to the holders of the shares. It cost a vast sum of money, and it is worked and kept in running order at an immense expense."

"I asked a foolish question, and I might have known better," said the lady.

"Every vessel that goes through to Suez has to pay a round sum for the privilege."

"Do all s.h.i.+ps have to pay the same amount?"

"Certainly not; for that would be very unfair. They pay by the ton; and every vessel carries a register, in which her tonnage is given. The Guardian-Mother's is 624 tons. About everything is French in this locality; and the rate charged is ten francs a ton, or a little less than two dollars. I shall have to pay a bill of $1,248 in our money."

"That looks like an enormous price," suggested Mrs. Woolridge.

"In addition to this charge, we have to pay from ten to twenty francs for a pilot, depending upon the tonnage, and the same for each pa.s.senger. Through the greater portion of the ca.n.a.l the speed of steamers is limited to five miles an hour; otherwise the swash of the propeller would injure the embankments on either side. It takes steamers about sixteen hours to go through to Suez."

"But that is over six miles an hour," Uncle Moses objected.

"The three lakes, making nearly thirty miles of the distance, are wide enough and deep enough to permit steamers to go ahead at full speed, which will more than make up the difference, and include the stay at Ismalia. There are sometimes unavoidable delays. A vessel may get aground, and bar the pa.s.sage for a day or two. The ca.n.a.l is not in all places wide enough for one large steamer to pa.s.s another, and there are sidings, as on a single track railroad, where it can be done, a little more than three miles apart. Posts are set up every five kilometres to indicate the distances."

"Anchor aweigh, sir," reported the first officer.