LIFE AT SOUAKIM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 7563, 30 May 1885, Page 6

LIFE AT SOUAKIM.

(Special Correspondent of the Melbourne Age.) If I could only hire a bed in Souakim I would spend the night in writing apologetic notes about the place. But as there are no beds to be had, I will spend the hour at my disposal before returning to camp in an unvarnished statement of how we found matters here upon our arrival, a week ago. The climate since then has been perfect. We came prepared . for the worst. No one seemed to venture a word on its behalf. Before we left Sydney long letters appeared in the papers, with scarcely one exception, calculated to excite grave anxiety for the health of our men. Remedies for dysentery were bandied about on all hands. Parting gifts took the form of quack medicines, and cholera belts were considered as essential as rifles. Indeed, there was a general opinion that we should have less to fear from the Arabs than their climate. And, lo! we have found it in every respect superior to our own. It is hot, and will become hotter still as the summer advances. We are prepared for that, but if only the nights remain cool, and the sea breeze fans the parched desert by day, there will be little enough reason-to complain. The heat we have thus far*encountered has been a dry heat. The sun’s power begins to be felt about 8 o’clock in the morning, and for the next hour or two it is intensely warm; then the sea breeze springs up, and, filtering through it, the rays become modified. During the long and weary march from Tamai the temperature became the topic of conversation, and several guesses were hazarded respecting the height of the thermometer. No one imagined that it was more than 80deg Fahr., and the surprise was great when Che surgeon-major proved that it was at least 100. It tells its own tale when tired and thirsty men err on the aide of moderate opinions. The stars at night are bright as torches. In the same heavens we see the Southern Cross and the Great Bear, and so resplendent are the constellations that one could almost imagine he was star-gazing on a frosty night in old England. There is no perspiring in bed. From sunset till after midnight it is neither too cool nor too warm, but with a blanket thrown over one’s couch a temperate, sleepy kind of glow is kindled. If the blanket be too thin, or the sleeper has forgotten to cover himself at all, he will wake with a chill about 2 o’clock in the morning and be glad of the thickest rug he can find. It is in these circumstances that cholera belts become something more than a mere fad. They protect the vital parts from cold; and let a man be shivering in the joints of every limb, he will generally be saved from a sudden attack of dysentery.' It is early in the year. We are only, as yet, in the midst of 'spring; but to compare the climate, as we have found it here, with the weather one experiences during the summer in New South Wales, would be an injustice to Souakim. We have, nevertheless, had a solemn warning that this tempered sunshine is not to be trifled with. Captain Parrott was laid up with a stroke on returning from Tamai. Major Jekyll was similarly, though less violently, affected, and this morning, as I followed the ’ troops a short distance on the road to Handub, I met several stretcher-bearers carrying sun-struck men back to town. The Imperial troops send, on an average, 12 or 15 men into Hospital each day, suffering, more or less, from this cause. The chief surgeon has condemned the helmets worn by our. men as being too thin to resist the heat,\and, I presume, steps will be taken without , delay to remedy the evil. The mistake appears to be that they are made of cork instead of pith, and are thus both thinner and heavier than they should be. Despite their magnificent physique and the heat to which they have been subject in the past, the Australians -have not proved themselves as (capable of

fatigue as might have been expected. Colonial beer will have to answer for much abnormal thirst, but generally speaking the men have not had time to recover from the effects of a long and somewhat enervating voyage. Lounging about the deck of a ship, polishing swords and pipeclaying helmets, or even shouldering a musket for three or four dours a day is no preparation for a forced march from 3 o’clock in the morning until 6 the same evening. But Souakim is not so ethereal that its climate is the only thing to write about. There is a bazaar in Souakim, and there are mosques too holy for the touch of shoe leather; there are filthy lagoons in which the natives paddle half naked from morning to night; there are roadside inns, in front of which turbaned indolence sips Turkish coffee and plays backgammon; but what is most important is the history of Souakim, the English are here, and they have taken to “ running ” the town. Its natives are a mere cipher. They may buy and sell their dried dates and tobacco; they may propel tneir boats with oars like wooden spades, or beat tin cans and howl when the mocn is eclipsed, as it was a few evenings ago. Who cares ? Who gives them a thought unless it be when there is a ship to unload or a caravan of camels to drive to the front ? The trade of the place is in the hands of Europeans. All that an Englishman buys from a native is an occasional packet of Turkish cigarettes.. Such names as “ Walker and C 0.,” or the “ Aidershot Supply Stores” are seen above the shop windows; and as for the stock-in-trade of these establishments, it is as diverse and excellent as could be found in a first-class dry goods store in a Colonial city. There are a few fairly good restaurants, and one hotel called “ Adams’.” No doubt Mr Adams is making his fortune. All the swells go there, and he never seems to have a bedroom to let. Perhaps it is the name that draws, for although a Jones or a Eobinson who presumes, unarmed by a nom de plume, to cook puddings and pies on his native heath must languish and starve, in a foreign country even Mr Gunsler himself might condescend to dub himself “Smith.” There are a large number of Greeks in Souakim. I have lunched every day at a Greek restaurant. The food is good and the charges reasonable. A bill of fare may be of interest at Home. I commend it—especially the prices—to caterers there. “ Macaroni. 7id; fried fish, 7sd ; curried chicken, lOd ; stewed beef, 10d;. tomatoes stuffed, lOd; roast beef, 10d; roast chicken, lOd; bread and chees.e, 3d.” Note the absence of “ fricasees ” and Joints “ k la Fran<jaise." The reasonableness of provender is only an example of the general tariffs in other lines of business. I bought an amber-tipped cigarette holder, that would have cost.ls fid or 2s in Australia for two piastres (sd). A friend purchased a large clasp knife with two blades and a corkscrew for a couple .of shillings, when the same article in Melbourne would have cost nearly double the price. In every other respect the state of the place reminds one of holiday time in a quaint Welsh town, when the lodginghouses are full, and people roll themselves in their travelling rugs and sleep on the sands or in bathing vans. • I am not complaining, but why the thrifty Greek should be more merciful on our pockets than our cousins in Wales is an enigma, and the solution is yet more difficult when one asks himself where all the curried chickens and roast beef come from. They are surely not grown within a hundred miles of Souakim, for there is not feed enough on the desert to fatten a rabbit.

The bazaar is in the centre of the town. It is a scene of continuous life—always crowded with buyers and sellers. The street is narrow, as streets mostly are in the Orient. The shops are like so many Punch and Judy shows—mere boxes five or six feet square, in which the tradesman sits cross-legged amongst his goods. Dried fruit, tobacco, garlic, macaroni, Turkish delight, and cooked meats, appear the chief articles of consumption. Bargains are not made as we are accustomed to make them. The purchaser comes up on his mule; the mule sniffs all round, stuffs his head into a basket of dates, and kicks the apprentice boy, who is rolling a huge water melon across the street. The man alights, and, with his dirty hands, turns everything over in the window, and, sticking his finger into a dish of fried sheep’s tails, then begins the bargain. He offers a price ; the tradesman shakes his head, and probably tells him to go elsewhere. The other sets off on his mule as though he meant it, and, after traversing the entire bazaar, returns. He is received like a prodigal, and the bargain goes on again, for a while peacefully enough, but, sooner or later, the strife recommences. They shout and push and shake their fists in each others’ faces ; and very soon a crowd of idlers and elave girls has gathered to assist in the dispute. This is only an instance of what is taking place all day long in an Eastern bazaar. When a shop is free of customers the proprietor falls asleep, and the flies descend in columns upon his goods. It is only fair, however, to say that the flies are effete, few and harmless compared to flies in the Australian bush, and that as yet we have encountered no mosquitoes. The town itself, as most of your readers are aware, is built on an island separated from the desert coast by two arms of the canal-like harbour. A causeway recently constructed joins Souakim proper with its suburbs, where there is another bazaar, and more dried dates. The disparity of dwellings amongst us is surely vast enough, but contrasted with the Arab hubs, that stand side by side with the houses of solid masonry here, one is apt to forget that there is an East end of London, or a Little Bourke street in Melbourne. The better class of houses in Souakim are built of coral, cemented with lime that is coral itself burnt and mixed with water. The formation is durable beyond anything else, even if there were a choice in the matter, which there does not appear to be. The houses are of various heights, and as they all have flat roofs and deep parapets they have the appearance of half-finished structures. There is not a pane of glass in the town. For windows slabs of filigree work are found much cooler, and besides they require no cleaning —a moat important consideration in a city whose only washtub is a foul lagoon. Many of these houses, and the caravansarei—a spacious storehouse —are built of the same material, all in as good preservation as brand new buildings, which are reputed to be of great age. The Arab huts are pitiable hovels, for all the world like gipsies’ tents. They straggle through every quarter of the town. Built of bent sticks covered with canvas or matting, they rarely intrude in groups of more than half a dozen in the better parts of the town, but in the Arab quarter they constitute a city by themselves. Of their inhabitants I shall have something to say anon.