_ CHAPTER XIX. THE JOURNEY OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL
Captain Ringgold suggested to the magnate of the Fifth Avenue that he had omitted something, as he pointed to the long piers which extended out into the sea.
"I had it on my tongue's end to mention them; but I am not much accustomed to speaking before an audience, and I forgot to do so," replied Mr. Woolridge. "But then they are engineering work, and I doubt if this company would be interested."
"I was wondering where they obtained all the stone to build them in this place, where there appears to be nothing but sand and mud," interposed Mrs. Belgrave. "They must be nearly a mile long."
"They are quite a mile long," replied Mr. Woolridge.
"Did they bring the stone from the quarries away up the Nile, where they got the material of which the pyramids are built?"
"Not at all; that would have been about as big a job as digging out the canal."
"Hardly; for they could have brought them by water about all the way," said the commander. "But the material did not come from those quarries."
"No; they made the rocks," added the magnate.
"Made them!" exclaimed Mrs. Blossom. "Do you expect us to believe that?"
"There is a great deal of such work done in the United States, and in some of our cities there are streets paved and sidewalks built of manufactured stone," replied Mr. Woolridge. "At the town which you see, the piers start out about two-thirds of a mile apart, and approach each other till they are less than a third of a mile from each other. They were built to protect the port from the north-west winds which sometimes blow very fresh here, and to prevent the harbor of Port Said from being choked up with the Nile mud from the mouths of the great river.
"These piers were constructed by a French firm. The first thing was to manufacture the artificial stone, which was composed of seven parts sand, of which there is a plentiful supply in this vicinity, and one part of hydraulic lime, imported from France. I suppose the latter is something like the cement used in New York in building sewers and drains, or other works in wet places. This concrete was mixed by machinery, then put into immense wooden moulds, just as you make a loaf of sponge cake, Mrs. Blossom, where it was kept for several weeks. These blocks weighed twenty tons each."
"Goodness! They were heavier than Mrs. Grimper's sponge cake!" exclaimed Mrs. Blossom.
"Considerably," laughed the magnate. "The solid contents of each were thirteen and a third cubic yards. How big a cubic block would that make in feet, young gentlemen? I hope you are not neglecting your mathematics for geography and sight-seeing."
"About seven feet," replied Louis, after some mental figuring.
"A little more than that," added the professor.
"Seven feet is about the height of the cabin of this ship, and one of them would just stand up in it," continued Mr. Woolridge. "They made thirty of them every day, and twenty-five thousand were required."
"This is about as wonderful as the immense work of the ancient Egyptians," said Mrs. Belgrave.
"But all this labor was done by machinery. The moulds were removed from the blocks, and they were exposed to the air in order to harden them more effectually. They were then hoisted on peculiar boats, built for the purpose, with an inclined deck, from which they were slid into the sea. They made a tremendous splash when they were dumped overboard; and it was a sight worth seeing if we had happened to be here twenty-four years ago."
"It wasn't convaynient for some of us to be here at that time," said Felix.
"That is so, my broth of a boy; but some things happened before you were born, as well as since."
"Sure, the pyramids were built before your honor was barn."
"True for you; some things happened before I was born, and even before the twin cupids came into the world; for I believe they are the oldest persons on board," replied the magnate. "They kept dropping these tremendous blocks into the sea till they came nearly to the level, and then they built the walls as you see them now. I suppose you have noticed that lighthouse on the little strip of land between the sea and Lake Menzaleh. That is also built of these artificial stones, and it is one hundred and sixty-four feet high. It is provided with electric lights, which are to be seen from a distance of twenty-four miles. It is, therefore, one of the largest in the world. I believe I have covered the ground now, and I won't say anything about Port Said till we are moored in the grand basin."
"You have disposed of the
pierres perdues very nicely indeed, Mr. Woolridge," said the professor.
"Who are they?" asked the magnate, who had forgotten all the French he ever knew.
"Literally, 'lost stones,' as they were when they went overboard; but that was what the French engineers called them."
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, I desire to invite you to the upper deck, where I wish to say something to you about the Land of Goshen, and thus finish up Egypt, except the portion we shall have in view as we continue on our voyage," said the commander rising from his seat.
The ladies were handed down from the promenade by the gallant gentlemen, though, unfortunately, there were not enough of the former to go round; but no one but the captain and Louis presumed to offer his services to Mrs. Belgrave or Miss Blanche. As the party approached the place where the conferences had usually been held, they saw that a change had been made in the appearance of things.
The first novelty that attracted their attention was the large map which was suspended on a frame rigged against the mainmast. It was brilliant with colors, with all the streams, towns, and lakes, properly labelled, upon it. A small table stood at the left, or port side, of it, covered with a cloth, with a Bible and a vase of flowers upon it. Chloe, the stewardess, had provided the latter from the pots which the ladies had kept in the cabin since their visit to Bermuda.
On the deck a large carpet had been spread out, and the thirteen arm-chairs had been placed in a semicircle, facing the map, with one behind the table for the speaker for the occasion. As soon as the company had taken in this arrangement for the educational feature of the voyage, they halted, and applauded it with right good-will.
"Please to be seated, ladies and gentlemen," said the commander, as he handed Mrs. Belgrave to the chair on the right of the table; and at the same time he took his place behind the table.
The party took their chairs according to their own fancies, and Mrs. Blossom managed to get at the side of Felix. At one side stood Mr. Gaskette and the two sailors who had assisted him in his work. They had also arranged the meeting-place from the direction of the captain. Some of the tourists wondered what the commander meant to do in the face of all these preparations. It was not Sunday, or they would have come to the conclusion that the usual religious service was to be held here; for the Bible on the table pointed in this direction. As soon as the party were seated the commander opened the Good Book at a marked place.
"I see that some of you are surprised at the altered appearance of our out-door hall," Captain Ringgold began. "I regard the instructive element of our voyage as one of the greatest importance; and if I were to fit out the ship again for this cruise, I should provide an apartment on this deck for our conference meetings. But I have done the best I could under the circumstances, with the assistance of Mr. Gaskette, the second officer of the ship.
"I see also that the map before you has challenged your attention," continued the commander, who proceeded to explain in what manner he had caused the maps to be made. "Mr. Gaskette has been my right-hand man in this work. He is not only a good navigator and a thorough seaman, but he is a highly educated gentleman, a graduate of Harvard College, a person of artistic tastes, as you may have learned from your intercourse with him. The map before you is only one of three already completed, and the work is in progress upon several others."
The company, including the ladies, received this explanation with generous applause, and all the boys called for the subject of the captain's remarks. He was presented to them, and thanked the commander for his kind words, and hoped the maps would prove to be useful in the conferences.
"I will begin what I have to say about the Land of Goshen by reading a few verses from the first chapter of Exodus: 'And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. Now there rose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Ramses.'
"Ramses II. is generally regarded as the Pharaoh of the oppression, and doubtless the Israelites suffered a great deal of persecution in his reign," the commander proceeded as he closed the Bible. "But the one who proposed in the verse I have read to 'get them up out of the land, was the successor of Ramses II., 'the new king over Egypt,' Merenptah, the son of Ramses, and now believed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. He reigned about 1325 years A.D.
"The Land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, is the north-eastern part of Egypt, the whole of it lying to the east of the Damietta branch of the Nile," continued the commander, using his pointer upon the map. "Through this region then, as now, there were fresh-water canals, by which the country was made very productive, and the people were very prosperous. The city of Ramses, built by the Israelites, was doubtless the most important in Goshen. It is the ancient Tanis, the ruins of which are still to be seen. Pithom, the other city mentioned in the Scripture, is here," and the speaker pointed it out. "It is quite near the Arabian Desert, and the present fresh-water canal runs within a few miles of it.
"With the birth of Moses, and the finding of the child in the ark or basket by the daughter of Pharaoh, and her adoption of it, you are all familiar; and the story is quite as interesting as any you can find in other books than the Bible. Though of the house of Levi, he became an Egyptian for the time; but he claimed his lineage, and became the leader of the Israelites, and conducted them out of Egypt.
"A great deal of study has been given by learned men to the route by which this was accomplished. Most of them agreed that he started from Tanis, or Ramses. On that narrow strip of land between the lake and the Mediterranean, which you have seen from the promenade, was one of the usual roads from Egypt into Asia, and was the one which led into Palestine, the Holy Land. Where Moses and his followers crossed the Red Sea is still an open question, though hardly such to devout people who accept literally the Bible as their guide in matters of faith and fact both. These accept the belief that the crossing of the Red Sea, with the miracles attending it, was in the portion near Suez.
"Heinrich Karl Brugsch, a learned German and eminent Egyptologist, born in Berlin in 1827, has constructed a theory in relation to the exodus of the Israelites which is more ingenious than reasonable to the pious reader of the Scripture. It would be hardly profitable for us to go into the details of his reasoning, though he uses the Bible as the foundation of his statements. There were two roads from Egypt to Palestine, the one mentioned, and one farther south, not so well adapted to caravans on account of the marshy country it traverses.
"The German savant believed they departed by the northern road. In the British Museum is a letter written on papyrus over three thousand years ago, in which an Egyptian writer describes his journey from Ramses in pursuit of two runaway servants. The days of the month are given; and his stopping-places were the same as those of the Israelites. (Exodus xii. 37): 'The children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth;' and this is the region east of Goshen. (Exodus xiii. 20): 'And they journeyed from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness,' or the desert.
"This was also the route of the Egyptian letter writer. Then the pilgrims were commanded to turn, and encamp at a point between Migdol and the sea, (Exodus xiv. 2.) He found the fugitives had gone towards the wall, meaning the forts by which Egypt was defended from Asiatic enemies. Following the same route, the Israelites came to the Sarbonian Lake. This is a long sheet of water on the isthmus," said the commander, as he pointed it out on the map. "It was, for it no longer exists, separated from the Mediterranean by such a strip as that which you see here by Lake Menzaleh.
"Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Sarbonian Lake was filled with a rank growth of reeds and papyrus bushes, which made it very dangerous to travellers. Strong winds blew the sands of the desert over the surface, studded with leaves, so as to hide the water; and the traveller might walk upon it and sink to his death. The same ancient writer says that an army with which Artaxerxes, King of Persia, intended to invade Egypt, being unacquainted with this treacherous lake, got into it, and was lost.
"Brugsch believes this was the lake through which the Israelites passed, and that Pharaoh's army encountered a storm, were lost, and perished as did the Persian forces. But we must drop the subject here, though it may come up again when we arrive at Suez, where others believe the six hundred thousand Israelites went over dry shod, while Pharaoh and his hosts perished in the closing waters."
The company had certainly been deeply interested in the subject, and the commander retired from the rostrum with a volley of applause. _