The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-25 00:00:00

turbans and of their taking their seat upon the
bank an'd smoking away in a serious manner for
come time ! And of our captain making no more
reply to the fresh accusations of the re-assembled •
multitude than he had done before ; but lighting
another pipe, and declaring that God was great !
"At last"—let us hear Mr. Curzon himself tell
the end of the adventure—" the two elders made
signs that they intended to speak ; and, silence
being obtained, they, with all due solemnity, de-
clared that they agreed with the captain that God
was great, and that undoubtedly Mohammed was the
Prophet of God. All parties having come to which
conclusion, it appeared that there was nothing more ,
to be said, and we returned to our boat," and
sailed away for a village in the ne,ighbourboo'd !
A genuine glimpse of Egyptian life and manners,
recounted with our traveller's customary facetious- '
ness. It is surprising, by the way, how large a
share the luscious puffs of the chibouk, and the
gurgling bubble of the narghile have in the luxu-
rious flow, or rather trickle of oriental conver-
sation, and how very frequently the dialogues of
those smoking the ever - delectable latakia is
sprinkled with the pious ejaculation, "La allah
illah allah, Mohammet resool allah !" There is
but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet !
Converse throughout the East, indeed, being little
more than tobacco-smoke and adoring apostrophies.
But little leisure was allowed himself by Mr. Cur-
zon during his memorable visits to the monasteries
•f the Levant, for the proper enjoyment of that
profound state of listless repose, popularly known
among the Asiatic races as kef. His progress
onwards seems to have been as unintermitting as
that of the flying Tatars (or, as we have found
them lately, without the f) the native couriers
in the land of the sun-rise. Slowly, or rapidly,
as occasion admits, ho is ever advancing in
those famous travels of 1833, through Egypt,
along the borders of the Natron Lakes, high up
(soaringly) into the Convent of the Pulley, among
the splintered fragments of the ruined monastery
of Thebes, away, across the desert, to the white
monastery and the red monastery, into the luxuri-
ant verdure of the Island of Philoe, the green and
beautiful, among the holy wonders of Jerusalem,
over the sacred soil of Palestine, into the monas-
teries of St. Sabba and Meteora, and finally into
those of the classic Athos, the giant rock that was
to have been sculptured into a colossus of Alex-
ander ! Onward, and ever onward he goes, mer-
rily, musingly, laughingly, meditatively, observant,
and appreciative, ourroving Heraclitus in search,
not like CceLbs, of a wife, or Syntax of the pic-
turesque, but of rare, old, mouldy, dust-begrimed,
worm-eaten manuscripts, on vellum, on skins, on
pap: r, on papyrus, palempsist and uncial, with
his saddle-bags bulging out more and more protu-
berantly as he moves on from one to another of
those not easily numerable monastic institutions.
Greeting the old monks, as he comes upon them
suddenly in the mulberry-bearing solitudes of
Athos, with a "Kalemera sas, ariste, kalemera sas
(good day to you, sir, good day to you); or a kali
s 's (good morning to you) ;" being answered in re-
turn, " Kalos orizete ? (how do you do ?)" as he
advances to some polite old hermit of the Holy
Mountain—one of whom presents the young Eng-
lish traveller with a large rosy apple, "evidently
the best thing he had," says Mr. Curzon, " and I
was touched when he gave it me.' Hear him fur-

ther—" I took a great bite ; it was very sour in-
deed ; but what was to be done? I could not bear
to vex the old man, so I went on eating a great
deal of it, although it brought the tears into my
eyes." And thus genially and humorously—
does our author encounter adventure after adven-
ture. 'Ls perception is alike keen for the sublime
and for the ridiculous. He takes equally appre-
ciative note of the awful pillars of sand, columns
of dry and heated dust, raised by the whirlwind,
and met, every now and then, stalking through
the desert, " like the evil genii of the storm "
and of the horrid dissonant bray of old Fatima's
jackass in the tomb, visited alter nightfall in the
Thebes Necropolis: The latter incident interrupt-
ing, very laughably, a -easel) made there after cer-
tain Coptic manuscripts. Mr. Curzon's account
of his interview with Mohammed Ali—according
to him " a hale, broad-shouldered, broad-faced,
man [in 1833]," with a " short grey beard stuck
out from each side of his face, his nostrils very
much opened, and with his quick sharp eye, look-
ing like en old grey lion"—is, altogether, a capi-
tal. piece of eerie-comic description. Following
out a hint offered by the very remarkable calcu-
lation that it takes the wits of-
-4 Turks to overreach one Frank :
2 Franks to cheat one Greek :
2 Greeks to cheat one Jew :
6 Jews to cheat one Armenian :
Mr. Curzon tells a delightful anecdote about the
ingenious manner in which a poor devil of a Jew
is regularly (there is no other word for it) bam-
boozled. by a Turk, acting upon a plan suggested to
him by a venerable Hadji, " a sly, long•bearded,
grave personage, who had made two pilgrimages
to Mecca." First of all, the Turk is the poor devil,
rather than the Jew, upon whom he is ultimately
revenged, thanks to the ingenuity of the cunning'
old Hadji aforesaid—for we learn that " every day
when the Turk brought back his purchases to
Valido Khan, where ho put up during his stay in
the city [Cairo], he invariably found that somehow
or other he had been taken in : lie was sure to find
that he had been cheated either in measure, weight,
quality, or something else." Bono Turco, under
this daily infliction, gets at last, as a matter of
course, thoroughly exasperated—sore and touchy
to the last degree—and the more he is fleeced the
more and more thin-skinned he becomes on the
subject of his dealings wi•li the Hebrew. In de-
spair he flies to the Hadji already mentioned—
"Oh ! Hadji," be cries, "in the ' name of the
Prophet help me in this thing : tell me of your
charity of some device by which I maybe revenged
on this Ceifoot, this Jew, for the ehainefal way in
which he has continually cheated a true believer
like myself. I might beat him certainly, I might
make him eat stick ; hut then I should put myself
in the wrong, I should get into trouble with the
Cadi, and the end would be worse than the begin-
ning." Tne Hadji having listened with becoming
gravity delivers a long whiff of smoke from his pipe
feom among the hairs of his umbrageous mous-
tache, and thus replies—" My son, return again to
the Jew's shop, look about among his wares, aud,
seizing upon some insignificant-looking thing, ask
eagerly the price, holding it in your hand and
taking out a purse of gold at the same time : pay
him down upon his counter board immediately
whatever he may ask ; walk away rapidly with a
smiling countenance : do this, and you will be re-
vengeal." The poor Turk is so bewildered at first
by this strange advice that he is almost tempted to
fancy his countryman is joking, only he knows very
well, says Mr. Curzon, " that the Hadji is no joker,
and [in fact] had never made a joke in his life."
However away he starts to the Jew's shop, in
which he pounces upon a little old box worth per-
haps some 20 piastres—but for which the villain
of a Jew asks him, unconscionably and without
any bowels of compassion-200 ! " His great dif-
ficulty now was," says our narrator, "to pay this
money with a cheerful countenance, for he felt that
be was being cheated again ; however, lie made an
effort, paid the 200 piastres with a smile, and
walked off with the shabby little box with the air
of a man who had done something clever." "Well,"
says the Hadji to him when they met again towards
evening, " have you done what I said ?—have you
followed my advice ?" " Yes," replies the Turk,
"I have : see, hero is a box ; what is it worth ?
ten piastres ? Cursed be all Jews ! What do you
think I gave for it Blessed be the Prophet, Jews
have no chance in the next world ; that is some
comfort anyhow : but how am I 'revenge, 0
Hadji ? Tell me, 0 father ; do not laugh at my
beard, for the son of abomination is counting
by
200 piastres at this moment : may his soul et
grilled and made into 200 skewers of kabobs .
Behold, I do not sea how I am to be revenged."
" Ya.vash, gently, my son."
sap the Hadji,
" yavash ; tomorrow, Inshallah, you will see
and speaking thus he puffs away at his pipe com-
placently. To-morrow comes in duo course—and
lo ! our friend Bono Turco of the simple-mind,
wandering through the bazaar with a rueful visage,
finds the Jew's shop shut up ! " Oh, sir," says a
bystander in reply to his inquiries upon this some-
what unusual circumstance, " Oh, aga, be it known
to your nobility that yesterday a merchant, who
had many dealings with this Jew, and to whom he
was as it were an estate, a khasniular, a treasurer,
from the profit Which the Jew made out of him—
this merchant bought a box at his shop ; it was
evidently worth nothing so far as its appearance
went ; but the merchant having paid two thousand
piastres, as it is said, rather than lose this mean-
looking box, a thought came into the head of the
Jew—there must have been a diamond in it ! He
considered, and, shutting up his shop in vexation,
he went home and told his wife. Perhaps it was
a talisman,' she said. Oh, fool said his wife's
mother, miserable dog that thou art, doubtless it
was Solomon's seal ; for otherwise why should a
Turk give such a sum for a mean box worth no-
thing ? Alas ! thou fool, what hast thou done ?
Thou disgrace to our house, hast thou kept a shop
in the bazaar so long for this ? Oh, small man, a
woman indeed would have been more awake. Alas,
that we have married our daughter to an ass ! Woe
is me ! Dost thou call thyself a man ?—a man !
where are thy brains, oh man ?—say hast thou any
brains or not ? Mast thou ruined thy
family or least
thou not ?—what dirt has thou been eating ? Alas !
alas amaan, amaan, amaan. The poor man had
no peace. . . and therefore, Oh aga, in the
morning, his life being a burthen, ho went out into
his garden and hanged himself." Bono Turco is
much shocked by this news of the unhappy end of