Sketches in Egypt

EGYPT has sat for her likeness longer than any other country. Nothing disturbs her composure. Financial ruin may stare her in the face, armies may come and go, but each year the Nile rises and spreads out over her, and all traces of disturbances are gone.
Newspapers may be busy telling of her troubles, but very few of those troubles seem to affect her expression. The stockholders in London worry, and send out more Englishmen to look after their interests. Sugar-factories are inspected, and the barrage is doctored. But it is all very quietly done.
The French cabinet may resign on account of her, and the English army may be increased for her sake, but few signs of these compliments does she show. All is tranquil. The only disturbance seems to be made by the dragomans who meet you at the station.
Important events follow each other so closely in Egypt that a year-old guide-book is several chapters too short. Last year it was Kitchener’s campaign against the dervishes, and now the French are threatening to interfere with England’s march to the Cape. The dragoman is sometimes as satisfactory as the guide-book, and it is often pleasant to find how soon he is through with his recitation and you are allowed to go alone among the great temples. Earthquakes have shaken some in orderly ruin, as if the unseen hands of the men who built them were quietly and slowly building them up again. But there is a temptation to grow sentimental over Egypt. It is far more cheerful than it sounds. It is happy and a place for a holiday—a country to make sketches in. These were made between December, 1897, and March, 1898, and I have been asked to help them tell their story of that part of Egypt the tourist is most likely to see, where the old and the new world meet most often.
The ancient Egyptian artist must have been very happy. Temples were built with great smooth walls for him to cover with pictures that required very little writing to go with them, seldom more than Pharaoh’s cartouches, and even these he made more like a picture than a name. That must have been very pleasant, and it should have compensated him for all the restrictions imposed upon him by the high priest of those days, who often limited his choice of subject to a king. The choice of subject is now unlimited. There never were so many different kinds of people in Egypt before. But it would be difficult to draw the king now, for there is much difference of opinion as to who he is.