( 211 ) CHAPTER XXI. DANCING GIRLS. "Soone after them, all dauncing in a row, The dusky virgins came with garlands dight, When morning deaw upon their leaves doth light; And in their handes sweet timbrells all upheld on hight." WE moored our boat to the bank at Esne one hot summer noon. After lunch we strayed under the palms as far as the fertile land went-that is, to the first ripplings of the desert. It is curious to mark how the desert, like insatiate death, is for ever battling to overrun that little strip of living green along the river. Were it not for the overflowing Nile and the perpetual irrigation of countless sakias, Egypt would soon be swallowed up, and all its wealth of copse and corn-field, bud and blossom, sunk in the arid waste. Long before we reached the frontier line of sterility, we found a palm wood, whose leafage still glistened with the spray of the last sandstorm. There are enfenced gardens hereabout, leafy enclosures, secluded as the paradise of Iram, where you may find pleasant shelter from the heat. We entered one of these gardens, and made ourselves at home-settling down in a comfortable nook and lighting our chiboukes. Several dancing girls had followed us from the bank-from curiosity, I suppose, for they did not ask for backsheesh. But they were not daring enough to pass the gates into the garden. We watched them through the leaves, lingering outside in the cold, but looking wistfully in like Peris at the door of Paradise, fearful to enter. They were dressed in a glimmer of gauzy stuff from the waist upwards, and wore numberless necklaces, bracelets, rings; tinkling ornaments about the feet, where the trowsers were tied. Little sparkling gold coins were sprinkled about in their hair, and altogether-like the lady in the nursery rhyme-they were musically attended at every step they took. Esne has in these latter days become famous for its dancing girls-a race frail, if not fair. They are as distinct a people as Basque or gipsy, and boast an ancestry rooted in some unknown antiquity. Cleopatra was of their caste, they affirm, and the girl Salome, that danced at Herod's revel, was taught in their school. Truly enough, the almehs' modern dances are very like those portrayed on the Theban tombs; and, though the costume is not similar, their features are the same. 66 Mild-eyed and melancholy" they seem DANCING GIRLS. 213 like those lotus-eaters who wooed weary mariners over summer seas to the sleepy bliss of their enchanted island. Of the same sisterhood, surely, are they who dance before Pharaoh on the pictured walls -full lipped, placid, dreamy. The two are alike. Some, though, flash out upon you a wild beauty more akin to that of the nomad gipsy of Europe. It is odd to contemplate a race of hereditary dancers-devotees of pleasure! A people thus brought up from childhood, outcast on principle. For even Egyptian society does not recognize them. Why they swarm at Esne is because Mohammed Ali, in a fit of sham virtue, banished them from Cairo. They somehow vexed his righteous soul, and he shipped them up the river-taking meanwhile to more detestable vice. Yet society tolerates them at feasts. I believe no fashionable wedding, betrothal, or other jollification whatever, is thought complete without a dance of hired almehs; for they have crept back into Cairo. A dance that is witnessed, of course, by all the womenkind of the hareem-wives, children, and maids. What is stranger yet, these Dalilahs figure at religious festivals-in dances round the tomb of a sheik. That afternoon we strolled through copse and grove, and finally hit upon an open space by the city gate to the west. There we met the Governor taking an airing, attended by his pipe-bearer. This is the fashionable lounge, I believe, the Rotten Row of Esne. Only the fashionables there were distributed in squatting attitudes under shady trees. The only quadrupeds on the scene were a few fractious camels that much objected to the burdens people were heaping upon them, and a donkey or two blissfully asleep. As for perambulation, there was none. The excitement lay in smoking chiboukes and keeping off the flies. The Governor sat on a mud divan under a tree. We paid our respects to him. Haroun interpreted for us-telling a lot of fibs as to our rank and importance, a habit we never could break him of. 66 "My duty to their Lordships," said the Governor. Happy to see them at Esne." Whereupon the poor pipe-bearer had to take off his coat and lay it under the tree for us to sit on. He was a fine-looking fellow this satrap-good intellectual forehead, deep-set eyes, and ample beard. He was bonneted in a snowy turban, and wound up (over his robe) in a Damascus scarf. By the time that coffee came (for a servant had been sent off post into the city), we were deep in a discussion about steamboats, of all things in the world! The Governor's mind was perplexed about them. How did they go? How did people stop them when they were going? The Governor had seen them on the river-been on board. Hence his excitement. But men had told him of the railway at Cairo. Ah! that was wonderful. A great iron beast, big as a hippopotamus-was it not?—that flew along the desert faster than the fleetest dromedary! Well: Allah was great! Then his Excellency had heard, too, some wild' tale from an Englishman-a funny Englishman!— how that in our great city of London, people burnt smoke in lamps, and in the daytime too, to light the streets! "Wallah! but that was a joke, of coursea very good joke! Yes: Allah was great." Just then a kawass and two men - apparently shopkeepers—came up and prayed the Governor to decide a case. They addressed him from behind, so as not to disturb us. His Excellency patiently listened to their pleading, between his puffs of smoke. They were impassioned, but he was calm. He only turned his head twice, and the last time it was to deliver judgmer. "Let the debt" (it was a question of debt) "be paid," said he, "before Ramadan, or give the man twenty lashes." The kawass thereupon lit his pipe. The pleaders walked away musingly. It was a sentence without appeal. While we were talking, the red sun had dipped |