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Updated: June 19, 2025
Beyond were a smaller mail steamer and a long line of dahabeeyahs flying the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, flags of France, Spain, and other countries. Donkeys cantered by, bearing agitated or exultant sight-seers, and pursued by shouting donkey-boys.
The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian rascals who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day without tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel was full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus.
"Hurra," thought we two minds with but a single, etc., "a funeral magnificent. Just the thing to complete the scene." A string of donkeys came round the corner, on either flank each animal bore a case marked with a large red cross. Amongst the animals were donkey-boys, and it was from their lips came the dismal wailing. Never have we seen so ragged and wretched a crew.
Here is the station; and you observe that there is a bridge across the canal by which the traveller can proceed to Suez, which you can see upon the point on the other side. The donkeys and donkey-boys abound here as everywhere in Egypt, and boats can be obtained to ferry you over to the town. But as we shall remain here a day or two, I think we had better go into the basin.
The Sheikh, on his swaying camel, riding on ahead, the donkey-boys, with their fleet limbs and blue shirts clinging to them as they ran, were becoming immortal in her memory. Years would never efface the picture. Only Michael Amory and herself, in their European clothes, had no place in it. They were intruders. Not a bird crossed their path, not a falcon circled over the tops of the cliffs.
He has opened great possibilities to the College dealing with inherited dignity of ancient fame. This Cintra is a town on a hill and in a hole, a kind of half-funnel opening on a long plain which is dotted by small villages and farms. If the donkey-boys were extirpated it might be fine on a fine day.
The narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as we plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired themselves or fall behind.
All the sounds are not unmusical, however, for from the minarets comes the "muezzin's" sweet call to prayer, to mingle with the jingling bells and the tinkling of the cups of the water-sellers. Then the donkey-boys, everywhere to be found in Cairo, add much to the liveliness of the streets.
Donkey-boys were urging their heavy-laden animals along the road, and cameleers led their deliberate strings of ungainly beasts by a rope or a light chain reaching from one nodding head to another. A camel's load never looks as large as a donkey's, but no doubt he often finds it heavy, and he always looks displeased with it.
They said that I would have a donkey-boy all to myself, that the donkey never went out of a walk, and wound up by the cheerful assurance that if he did pitch me over his head I would not have far to fall. The donkey-boys of the Nile deserve a book all to themselves. Such craft! Such flattery! Such knowledge of human nature!
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