Past And Present in the East

ut, I saw a young gentleman reclining under the awning of his boat, with a cigarette in his mouth. He was being rowed up stream by his straining chocolate- coloured crew. It was something to create both a breeze and this masterful sensation so near grumbling London. You may get into a railway carriage at Charing Cross, and in a week find yourself the lord of a dahabeah, on whose shaded sofa- cushioned upper deck you can lounge, looking down upon the double bank of swarthy oarsmen who drag at their weighty sweeps. I don-t mean to say that they mind it, or vex their souls about the contrast between the lot of the master and the man. Indeed, they are glad of the job, and are ever ready to show their magnificent teeth in a smile at a kindly word or the donation of a little tobacco. But still, the contrast exists, and is so constantly and importunately present as, surely, sometimes to touch the mind of the sensitive traveller with uneasiness, or to gratify mischievously the consciousness of any one with slave-driving instincts. Moreover, I may be wrong, but I fancy that the reiterated representation of colossal imperiousness on palace and temple walls, where calm-faced Rameses for three thousand years has held his shrieking captives by the hair, or, big as Gulliver among the Lilliputians, driven his chariot over heaps of slain, still sheds a savour of unfeeling masterhood on this land, soutterly, in its social and historical atmosphere, unlike that which its modern ...