The age-herald., 1898-09-01
EGYPT OUT
 OF SEASON

There was no difference in Port Said. Ships want coal in July as in December; the black dust hung over the canal in sul- len fog, and the black demons of the pit walled they tripped from lighter to deck under their baskets. In the hotel the Lev antine clerks and agents took their break fast in white ducks under he punkah, but that was all the change. Black island of coal, jabbering island of beggars and touts, forlorn island cranked in by sea and canal and swamp and sand, Port Said in summer was not appreciabiy more Godforsaken than in the full season.
 1smaiia was not appreciably deader han usual. If anything, with half a dozen French summer gowns and a French bi- cycle club in blue and scarlet jerseys do- ing monkey tricks in front of the station, it was a shade more alive.
 In Cairo came the awful change. Cairo, the fashionable, the brilliant, was desola- tion When you run into the station in the season the platform Is lined with names of hotels on the gold-laced caps of under porters you can hardly step out for swarms of Arabs who fight for your bag gage. On the night of uy 12 the platform showed gaunt and large, and empty The streets were hardly better-a few listlesh Arabs in the square outside the station, and then avenue on avenue of silent dark ness.
 By daylight Cairo looked like ballroom the morning after. Our hotel was shame iessly making up a rather battered face against the next season. The veranda of Shepheard's, where six months ago you could not move for tea tables, nor hear the band for he buzz of talk, was quite empty and lifeless only one perspiring waiter hinted that this was hotel. The Cont nental he center of Cairene fashion, had whole wing shuttered up; the mirrors in the great hall were blind with whiting, and naked suites of bedroom furniture camped out in the great dining-room. Some shops were shut the rest wore demi- toilets of shutter and blind; the dozing shopkeeps seemed half resentful that anybody should wish to buy in such weather. As for scar abs and necklaces and curiosities of Egypt they no longer pretend to think that any sane man could give money for such things. As you looked out from the Cita- del Cairo seemed dazed under he sun. The very Pyramids looked as if they were talk ing a holiday.
 All that was no more than you expected: you knew that no tourists came to Egypt E III July. put IdllN6 ESypI was out or sea- son, too. The streets that clacked with touts and beggars, that jngled with every kind of hawker's rubbish-you passed along them down a vista of closed jealousios and saw not soul, heard not sound. Th4 natives must be somewhere, only where? few you saw at road-making, painting and the like jobs of an off-season. But every native was dull, listless, hanging from his stalk, half dead. Eyes were Ian. guid and lustreless; the painters head dropped and swayed from side to side, and the brush almost fell from lax fingers. In the narrow bevel of shadow left under wall by the high sun, fiat oh back or face, open-mouthed, half asleep, half fanting. gasped Arab Cairo-the parasite of the tourist in his holiday, the workman leavs ing his work, donkey-boy and donkey fiat and panting together.
 Well might they gasp and pant. For the air of Cairo was half dead, too. You might drive in it at night and feel it whistle round you, but 1t did not refresh you. you might draw 1t into your lungs, but it did not fill them. The air had no quality in it. no body; it was thin, motiopless. used up, too lirap to live in. The air of August London Is stala and close, poor; exaggerate it f1ftyfold and you have the air of July Cairo. You wake up at night dull and laecid and clammy with sweat, less refreshed than when you lay down. You live on what sleep you can pilfer during the hour of dawn. As you drive home at night you envy the dark fig ure in a galabeah stretched on the pave- ment of Kasr-en-Nil bridge, there only In Cairo can you feel a faint stirring in tho air
 To put all in one word Egypt lacks its Nile The all-fathering river is at his low est and weakest. In places he is nearly dry and what water he can give the cracked fields is pale, green, unfertile. He was be- ginning to rise now, slowly; presently would come the flood and the brown manuring water. The night wind would blow strong. ly over his broadened bosom, the green would spring out of the mud and Egypt would be alive again. Only in one place was she alive yet-and that was the Con- tinental Hotel. There all day sat, and came and vent clean-limbed young men in fam nels, and at dinner time the terrace was cool with white mess jackets. Outside was the only crowd of natives in Cairo-a thick line of Arabs squatting by the opposite wall, nursing testimonials earned or bought, cooks and valets and grooms-waitinS to be hired to go up the Nile. Up at the citadel they would show you the great black up- standing forty-pounder guns with which they meant to breach Khartoum. Out at Abbassieh the Twenty first Lancers Were changing their troop horses for lighter Syr- ians and countrybreds. The barrack yard of Kasr-en-Nil was yellow with tents, and under breathless afternoon sun the black belted rife brigade marched in from the station to fill them. The wilted Arabs hard- ly turned their heads at the band; the Rifles held their shoulders square and stepped out with rattle.
 The Egyptian may feel the sun; the Eng lishman must stand up and march in 1t. You see, it is his country and he must set an example. And seeing Egypt thus Nice less, bloodless, you felt more than ever that he must lose no time in taking into firm fingers the keys of the Nile above Khartoum.
 THE MUSTERtNG orr