Off Malta — March 1, 1893.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
I have been having a delightful voyage with moonlight all
night and sunlight all day. Africa kept in sight most of the
time and before that we saw beautiful mountains in Spain
covered with snow and red in
the sunset. There were a lot of nice English people going out
to India to meet their husbands and we have "tiffin" and
"choota" and "curry," so it really seemed oriental. The third
night out we saw Algiers sparkling like Coney Island. I play
games with myself and pretend I am at my rooms reading a story
which is very hard to pretend as I never read in my rooms and
then I look up and exclaim "Hello, I'm not in New York, that's
Algiers." The thing that has impressed me most is how
absolutely small the world is and how childishly easy it is to
go around it. You and Nora
must take this trip; as for me
I
think Willie Chanler is the most sensible individual I have
yet met.
All the fascination of King Solomon's Mines seems to be
behind those great mountains and this I may add is a bit of
advance work for mother, an entering wedge to my disappearing
from sight for years and years in the Congo. Which,
seriously, I will not do; only it is disappointing to find the
earth so small and so easily encompassed that you want to go
on where it is older, and new. The worst of it is that it is
hard leaving all the nice people you meet and then must say
good-bye to. The young ladies and Capt. Buckle and Cust came
down to see me off and Buckle brought me a photo four feet
long of Gib, an official one which I had to smuggle out with a
great show of secrecy and now I shall be sorry to leave these
people. Just as I wrote that one of the officers going out to
join his regiment came to the door and blushing said the
passengers were getting up a round robin asking me to stop on
and go to Cairo.
Since writing the above lots of things have happened. I
bid farewell to everyone at Malta and yet
in four hours I was back again bag and baggage and am now on
my way to Cairo. Tunis and the Bey are impossible. As soon
as I landed at Malta I found that though I could go to Tunis I
could not go away without being quarantined for ten days and
if I remained in Malta I must stay a week. On balancing a
week of Egypt against a week of Malta I could not do it so I
put back to this steamer again and here I am. Tomorrow we
reach Brindisi and we have already passed Sicily and had a
glimpse of the toe of Italy and it is the coldest sunny Italy
that I ever imagined. I am bitterly disappointed about Tunis.
I have no letters to big people in Cairo only subalterns but I
shall probably get along. I always manage somehow with my
"artful little Ikey ways." It was most gratifying to mark my
return to this boat. One young woman danced a Kangaroo dance
and the Captain wept and all the stewards stood in a line and
grinned. I sing Chevalier's songs and they all sit in the
dining room below and forget to lay out the plates and last
night some of the Royal Berkshire with whom I dined at Malta
came on board and after hearing the Old Kent Road were on the
point of Mutiny and refused to return to barracks. Great is
the Power of Chevalier and great is his power for taking you
back to London with three opening bars. Malta was the
queerest place I ever got into. It was like a city, country
and island made of cheese, mouldy cheese, and fresh limburger
cheese with holes in it. You sailed right up to the front
door as it were and people were hanging out of the windows
smoking pipes and looking down on the deck as complacently as
though having an ocean steamer in the yard was as much a
matter of course as a perambulator. There were also women
with
black hoods which they wear as a penance because long ago the
ladies of Malta got themselves talked about. I was on shore
about five hours and saw some interesting things and with that
and Brindisi and the voyage I can make a third letter but
Tunis is writ on my heart like Calais.
Today Cleveland is inaugurated and I took all the
passengers down at the proper time and explained to them that
at that moment a great man was being made president and gave
them each an American cocktail to remember it by and in which
to toast him I am getting to be a great speech maker and if
there are any more anniversaries in America I shall be a
second Depew.
It is late but it is still the season here and it will be
gay, but what I want to do now is to go off on a little trip
inland although Cairo is the worst of all for it is surrounded
by deserts and nothing to shoot but antelope and foxes and
those I scorn. I want Zulus and lions. I shall be
greatly
disappointed if I do not have something to do outside of Cairo
for I have had no adventures at all. It is just as civilized
as Camden only more exciting and beautiful although Camden is
exciting when you have to get there and back in time for the
last edition. From what I have already seen I am ready to
spend a month in Cairo and then confess to knowing nothing of
it. But we shall see. There may be a W A R or a lion hunt or
something yet if there is not I shall come back here again. I
must fire that Winchester off at least once just for all the
trouble it has given me at custom houses. Something exciting
must happen or I shall lose faith in the luck of the British
army which marches shoulder to shoulder with mine. If I don't
have any adventures
THE MEDITERRANEAN AND PARIS 111
I shall write essays on art after this like Mrs. Van. Love
and lots of it.
DICK.
