my life did I feel a more pleasant sensation, or turn round with more unaffected delight to
return a friend's greeting. It was as though a cup of water had been handed to me in the
desert. I knew that a cargo of passengers for Australia had reached Cairo that morning,
and were to be passed on to Suez as soon as the railway would take them, and did not
therefore expect that the greeting had come from any sojourner in Egypt. I should
perhaps have explained that the even tenor of our life at the hotel was disturbed some
four times a month by a flight through Cairo of a flock of travellers, who like locusts eat
up all that there was eatable at the Inn for the day. They sat down at the same tables with
us, never mixing with us, having their separate interests and hopes, and being often, as I
thought, somewhat loud and almost selfish in the expression of them. These flocks
consisted of passengers passing and repassing by the overland route to and from India
and Australia; and had I nothing else to tell, I should delight to describe all that I watched
of their habits and manners--the outward bound being so different in their traits from their
brethren on their return. But I have to tell of my own triumph at Suez, and must therefore
hasten on to say that on turning round quickly with my outstretched hand, I found it
clasped by John Robinson.
"Well, Robinson, is this you?" "Holloa, Walker, what are you doing here?" That of
course was the style of greeting. Elsewhere I should not have cared much to meet John
Robinson, for he was a man who had never done well in the world. He had been in
business and connected with a fairly good house in Sise Lane, but he had married early,
and things had not exactly gone well with him. I don't think the house broke, but he did;
and so he was driven to take himself and five children off to Australia. Elsewhere I
should not have cared to come across him, but I was positively glad to be slapped on the
back by anybody on that landing-place in front of Shepheard's Hotel at Cairo.
I soon learned that Robinson with his wife and children, and indeed with all the rest of
the Australian cargo, were to be passed on to Suez that afternoon, and after a while I
agreed to accompany their party. I had made up my mind, on coming out from England,
that I would see all the wonders of Egypt, and hitherto I had seen nothing. I did ride on
one day some fifteen miles on a donkey to see the petrified forest; but the guide, who
called himself a dragoman, took me wrong or cheated me in some way. We rode half the
day over a stony, sandy plain, seeing nothing, with a terrible wind that filled my mouth
with grit, and at last the dragoman got off. "Dere," said he, picking up a small bit of
stone, "Dis is de forest made of stone. Carry that home." Then we turned round and rode
back to Cairo. My chief observation as to the country was this--that whichever way we
went, the wind blew into our teeth. The day's work cost me five-and-twenty shillings, and
since that I had not as yet made any other expedition. I was therefore glad of an
opportunity of going to Suez, and of making the journey in company with an
acquaintance.
At that time the railway was open, as far as I remember, nearly half the way from Cairo
to Suez. It did not run four or five times a day, as railways do in other countries, but four
or five times a month. In fact, it only carried passengers on the arrival of these flocks
passing between England and her Eastern possessions. There were trains passing
backwards and forwards constantly, as I perceived in walking to and from the station;
