Remarkable and bizarre notes about Egypt by early travellers

M'Collester, Sullivan Holman, 1826-1921
The course of civilization has been, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Modern Europe, America. Man is the heir of all ages; and step by step, his progress has been from the far East to the far West. If the sum of his fortunes rose in beauty, it promises to set in glory.

Davis, William Potter, 1846-1917
We were there long enough to see the chief objects of interest, and that was quite long enough.

Tischendorf, Constantin von, 1815-1874 (1844)
There they lay, rosy and solemn in the distance, --those old, majestical familiar edifices. Several of us tried to be impressed; but breakfast supervening, a rush was made at the coffee and cold pies, and the sentiment of awe was lost in the scrabble for victuals.

Burton, Richard Francis, 1821-1890 (1852)
The land of the Pharaos is being civilized, and unpleasantly so: nothing can be more uncomfortable than its present middle-state between barbarism and the reverse.

Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878 (1852)
It is a mistake to speak of the Oriental as grave, solemn, and quiet; the Egyptian, at least, is the liveliest and noisiest of slaves. Everything in this country is done with noise.

Carlisle, Arthur Drummond (1870)
Modern Egypt seems to have no respect for, and no desire to imitate, its mighty ancestor: it is a slatternly decadent, reckless of the family name, and kicking about its heirlooms as if they were as worthless as itself.

Seward, Olive Risley, 1844-1906 (1871)
Suez, like Omaha, is a great place in the future

Knox, Thomas W., 1835-1896
The beast par exellance of Egypt is the donkey; he ought to have a place on the national coat-of-arms, as much as the lama has on that of Peru.

Appleton, Thomas Gold, 1812-1884 (1874)
The first intercourse with a camel had long been looked forward to and was very interesting. The camel is a creature unique in its merits and defects, and I should suppose Mr. Darwin would consider it a favorite proof of natural selection and the struggle for life.

Curtis, B.R., 1855-1891 (1876)
At diner at Shepard's one may see a most varied and cosmopolitan gathering. The English are largely in the majoruty, but close by a lord or duke a 'free American citizen' is often located, while Frenchmen, Italians, and Germans are scattered in various locations.

Brassey, Annie, 1939-1887 (1877)
For the capitalist or resident, Cairo may be improved, but for the traveler, the artist, the lover of the picturesque, the quaint, and the beautiful, the place is ruined.

Hendrix, Eugene Russel, 1847-1923 (1877)
Cairo proved to be a larger, busier, and cleaner city, and having fewer dogs, than I expected. The dogs have certainly improved in appearance and lessened in number, thus illustrating the 'survival of the fittest'.

Bridges, F.D. (1878)
Antiquity is decidedly a relative term; or, Egypt extremely upsets ones ideas on the subject.

Leland, Lillian (1885)
I've done the Pyramids, having been warned most particularly not on any account to go to the Pyramids alone, of course that was the very thing I did.

Rockeley, Evelyn Cecil (1888)
Cairo has nowadays become so fashionable and familiar that anything more than a passing notice of it will soon be as superiluous as a description of Paris.

Fullerton, William Morton (1889)
For every one makes Cairo the point of vantage; and the mingling of Oriental dainties called by that name in the menu of the nations is for a time the most indigestible dish in the world.

Reeve, Charles McCormick (1889)
Among the relics of antiquity we find are the telephone, electric light, gas, sewers, water-works, cheap cabs, pin-pool, and the American bar.

Curtis, William Eleroy, 1850-1911(1904)
There are disappointments in store for everybody who visits Egypt. For example, there are no crocodiles in the Nile.

Carson, Blanche Mabury (1907)
A propos of harems: An amusing incident happened to Mr. and Mrs. Gorham and their friend, Miss Cox, guests at our hotel. They were told that one passport would suffice for all three on their recent trip through Palestine. Later they discovered on examination that it was made out in true Oriental fashion: 'Gorham Pasha and harem', which resulted in somewhat mixed feelings in the whole trio as to just who was who.

Copping, Arthur Edward (1910)
Cairo made my eyeballs ache. It is a city of coloured splendour, alive and moving, with a hundred gay pigments astir in the sunshine, and every thoroughfare stuffed full, as it seems, of processioning and pageantry.

Lushington, Sarah (1827)
The Pyramids still continued to be, in my eyes, no more than Pigmy efforts of human imperfection to rival the surrounding mountains.

Haight, Sarah (1839)
Let the barbarian but touch a stone of the Pyramids (those monuments which belong to the world at large), and if the sword of the Gaul or the bayonet of the Briton cannot reach him, I hope the cannon of the young West will thunder such anathemas in his ears as never echoed through the whole valley of the Nile.

Montauban, Elliot, Mrs. (1840)
Cairo is remarkable for its cleanliness: each housekeeper is held responsible that the space in front of his own dwelling shall be swept three times a-day.

Mott, Valentine, 1795-1865 (1840)
Of all the places ever visited, Cairo will be preeminent in our recollections, for the 'compound of the most villainous smells' which perpetually salutes the oil factories, and the like of which was certainly never elaborated from any mortal place.

Bartlett, William Henry, 1809-1854 (1845)
The troops of clamourous beggars, their eternal chorus for 'beckshish', which everywhere encounters the traveler, --the alarming results of contact with the tattered garments and filthy persons of the claimants, --the eternal howling of dogs by which he is everywhere beset, some of which are savage and dangerous, --he must grope his way to tomb and temple, irritate his eyes, lungs, and temper, and too often convert his enthousiasm to fury.

Martineau, Harriet, 1802-1876 (1847)
The mingled expressions of spite, fear and hopelessness in the face of the camel always gave me the impression of its being, or feeling itself, a damned animal.

Norden, Fredrik Ludvig, 1708-1742 (1737)
The conversations of the people, with whom one makes acquaintance in the country, gives commonly into the marvelous. They relate a thousand accidents that, they pretend, have happened to travelers, or to others.

Irwin, Eyles, 1751-1817 (1777)
Travelers like us, who fall by accident into a country replete with the monuments of past ages, and whose time is not at their own disposal, to gratify the desire of investigating the remains of decayed art, can only skim the surface of the stream they would willingly dive into.

Badia y Leblich, Domingo (pseud. Ali Bey) (1806)
Several Christian travelers have represented the streets of Cairo as being extremely dirty, and of a dull appearance. I can certify that I have seen few cities in Europe whose streets are cleaner.

Fuller, John (1819)
The narrative of a voyage on the Nile cannot be very entertaining, the incidents being little more than a repetition of rowing and touring, fair and contrary winds, now and then running on a sandbank, and occasionally a mutiny of the boatmen.

Francis, Rene (1911)
Wadi Halfa is nothing. There is a grubby Soudanese village, and there are a few ancient tombs in the hills to the east. The rest is all flat sand around the town buildings, haunted by low-flying vultures.

Henniker, Frederick, 1793-1825 (1819)
No English breakfast to be got; no breakfast of any kind; nothing but coffee, half and half, grits and water, neither sugar nor milk.

Morrill, Gulian Lansing, 1857-1928 (1912)
The auto's honk has drowned out the Muezzins cry. You motor to the Pyramids, take a Martini before you climb on and crawl in them; stand up by the sphinx with a cigarette in your mouth and have your picture taken.

Poe, Sophie A. (1913)
Cairo is a fine modern city in many ways, but dirty.

Bradt, Acken Gordon (1913)
After taking pictures of the party, Sphinx and Pyramids, we hired some camels from some anxious men who wanted a job and rode back to the street car station.

Anonymous (mid-nineteenth century)
Were we to pile together the various works that have appeared of late years upon the subject of Egypt and Palestine, we might readily construct a monument rivaling in magnitude, if not in durability, some of those that still frown on the waters of the Nile.

Veryard, Ellis (1678)
The Natives of Egypt are generally proud, beggary, lazy, illiterate, instable, unfaithful, treacherous, and such as would not stick at anything that's Ill on the prospect of least Gain.

Pitts, Joseph (1685)
There is in no part of the world, I am apt to think, greater Encouragement given to Whoredom, than in Egypt. It is impossible for me to give you a full Account of their Licentiousness of this kind, and which is tolerated too.

Perry, Charles (1740?)
The Hurry and Confusion one meets with in passing the principal Streets of Cairo, what with the Number of People, Camels, Asses, and, which is of all the greatest Eye-sore, the Grandees, (to whom you must pay the Reverence of dismounting, on Peril, or rather, full Assurance, of being knock'd off your Ass for want of Respect) is very incommodious.

Capper, James (1779)
The city of Cairo and its environs as you well know are full of curiosities, but nothing attracted my attention so much as the infinite variety of people in the public streets, and yet I could discover nothing like an original national character among them.

Sparks, Jared (1789)
Alexandria at large presents a scene more wretched, than I have witessed. Poverty, rapine, murder, tumult, blind bigotry, cruel persecution, pestilence! A small town built on the ruins of antiquity, as remarkable for its miserable architecture, as I suppose the place once was for its good and great works of the kind.

Mountnorris, George Ansley, 2nd Earl of (1806)
If it were dubious in the time of Herodotus, by whom, or for what purpose, the pyramids were constructed, it is scarcely possible that modern ingenuity should clear away the deeper gloom which the course of ages has covered the mystery.

Turner, William (1815)
Cairo must, to a European, be a most uncomfortable residence, for it affords no place where he can take a quiet walk.

Wilson, William Rae (1818-19)
In descending the Nile from Grand Cairo, such is the state of dilapidation into which every thing has fallen, not only by the hands of barbarism, but the ravages of time, that I am fully aware I had passed many interesting spots without being able to trance any vestiges of their ancient consideration.

Hanson, John (1819)
It may be stated once for all, that the present ruler, Mahommed Ally Pacha, is a most despotic sovereign, and very capable of screwing to himself the utmost resources of this country.

Carne, John (1824?)
It is difficult to describe the noble and stupendous ruins of Thebes. Beyond all others they give you the idea of a ruined, yet imperishable city; so vast is their extent, that you wander a long time confused and perplexed, and discoverat every step some new objects of interest.

Robinson, George (1830)
As we pushed off from the shore, many a poor Arab fellah gazed upon our bark with a longing eye, as if desirous to escape from the tyrannic chains of the present ruler of Egypt.

Stephens, John Lloyd (1836-37)
I do not believe that the contents of all bazaars in Siout, one of the largest towns in Egypt, were worth as much as the stocks of an ordinary dealer in dry goods on Broadway.

Holthaus, Peter Dietrich (1838)
I often visited the slave-market in Cairo. Black and brown people lie separated into lots, and are offered for sale by the conductors.

Garston, Elgar (1840)
The dogs under my care aroused the jealousy of the canine aborigines, and I was persued by a howling pack from the gate to the hotel.

Measor, Henry Paul (1841-42)
One experiences a great deal of annoyance on a visit to the pyramids, from the crowds of naked Arabs, who continue to gain a trifle by conducting travellers to the top and interior of the buildings.

Fisk, George (1842)
If it were one's disposition to mention annoyances, a long catalogue might soon be formed, of those which prevail in Egypt, and especially in Cairo, it's great capital.

Warburton, Eliot (1843)
We found, on awakening the day after leaving Assouan, that we had passed Edfou in the night-time, and (shall I confess it?) were rather glad than otherwise. By this time we had been so be-templed and be-ruined, that we look on a city of the Pharaohs with as much indifference as on a club-house in Pall Mall.

Wilson, Thomas (1846)
Our evening levee of Arabs at the tent door is very amusing, and might occupy an artist. Poor fellows! Nothing can be more unassuming and tractable than their behaviour.

Flaubert, Gustave (1849-50)
Reflection: the Egyptian temples bore me profoundly. Are they going to become like the churches of Brittany, the waterfalls in the Pyrinees? Oh necessity! To do what you are supposed to do; to be always according to circumstances (and despite the aversion of the moment) what a young man, or tourist, or an artist, or a son, or a citizen, etc. is supposed to be!

Taylor, Bayard ((1851-52)
[...] I have taken it for granted that the reader will feel more interested --as I was-- in the live Arab, than the dead Pharaoh.

Kennard, Adam Steinmetz (1854?)
Shopping in Cairo and shopping in London are similar operations in the abstract notion only, viz., that of going out to purchase many different things at many different shops.

Anonymous (1854-55)
In vain does the traveler start from England well armed with quassia,papier tue-mouche, and a variety of professedly infallible means of destroying flies; they are worse than useless in a Nile boat.

Isham, Warren (1856?)
One of the torments of travel in Egypt --worse than the lice-- is encountered in the currency. In other countries, when you have succeeded in getting your funds reduced to the currency of the country, your financial miseries are at end... But not so in Egypt.

Bausman, Benjamin (1857)
Deducting its annoyances, Cairo is a very interesting city of a few weeks' study.