Here, at the very point, has been built a town. Whether the town existed during Mr. Tapley's time I have not been able to learn. At the period of my visit it was falling quickly into ruin; indeed, Ithink I may pronounce it to have been on its last legs. At that moment a galvanic motion had been pumped into it by the war movements of General Halleck; but the true bearings of the town, as a town, were not less plainly to be read on that account. Every street was absolutely impassable from mud. I mean that in walking down the middle of any street in Cairo, a moderately-framed man would soon stick fast, and not be able to move. The houses are generally built at considerable intervals, and rarely face each other; and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid, on which the mud had accumulated only up to one's ankles. I walked all over Cairo with big boots, and with my trowsers tucked up to my knees; but at the crossings I found considerable danger, and occasionally had my doubts as to the possibility of progress. I was alone in my work, and saw no one else making any such attempt. But few only were moving about, and they moved in wretched carts, each drawn by two miserable, floundering horses. These carts were always empty, but were presumed to be engaged in some way on military service. No faces looked out at the windows of the houses, no forms stood in the doorways. A few shops were open, but only in the drinking-shops did I see customers. In these, silent, muddy men were sitting, not with drink before them, as men sit with us, but with the cud within their jaws, ruminating. Their drinking is always done on foot. They stand silent at a bar, with two small glasses before them. Out of one they swallow the whisky, and from the other they take a gulp of water, as though to rinse their mouths. After that, they again sit down and ruminate. It was thus that men enjoyed themselves at Cairo.
I cannot tell what was the existing population of Cairo. I asked one resident; but he only shook his head and said that the place was about "played out." And a miserable play it must have been. Itried to walk round the point on the levees, but I found that the mud was so deep and slippery on that which protected the town from the Mississippi that I could not move on it. On the other, which forms the bank of the Ohio, the railway runs, and here was gathered all the life and movement of the place. But the life was galvanic in its nature, created by a war galvanism of which the shocks were almost neutralized by mud.
As Cairo is of all towns in America the most desolate, so is its hotel the most forlorn and wretched. Not that it lacked custom. It was so full that no room was to be had on our first entry from the railway cars at five A.M., and we were reduced to the necessity of washing our hands and faces in the public wash-room. When I entered it the barber and his assistants were asleep there, and four or five citizens from the railway were busy at the basins. There is a fixed resolution in these places that you shall be drenched with dirt and drowned in abominations, which is overpowering to a mind less strong than Mark Tapley's. The filth is paraded and made to go as far as possible. The stranger is spared none of the elements of nastiness.
I remember how an old woman once stood over me in my youth, forcing me to swallow the gritty dregs of her terrible medicine cup. The treatment I received in the hotel at Cairo reminded me of that old woman. In that room I did not dare to brush my teeth lest I should give offense; and I saw at once that I was regarded with suspicion when I used my own comb instead of that provided for the public.
At length we got a room, one room for the two. I had become so depressed in spirits that I did not dare to object to this arrangement. My friend could not complain much, even to me, feeling that these miseries had been produced by his own obstinacy. "It is a new phase of life," he said. That at any rate was true. If nothing more be necessary for pleasurable excitement than a new phase of life, I would recommend all who require pleasurable excitement to go to Cairo. They will certainly find a new phase of life. But do not let them remain too long, or they may find something beyond a new phase of life. Within a week of that time my friend was taking quinine, looking hollow about the eyes, and whispering to me of fever and ague. To say that there was nothing eatable or drinkable in that hotel, would be to tell that which will be understood without telling. My friend, however, was a cautious man, carrying with him comfortable tin pots, hermetically sealed, from Fortnum & Mason's; and on the second day of our sojourn we were invited by two officers to join their dinner at a Cairo eating-house. We plowed our way gallantly through the mud to a little shanty, at the door of which we were peremptorily commanded by the landlord to scrub ourselves, before we entered, with the stump of an old broom. This we did, producing on our nether persons the appearance of bread which has been carefully spread with treacle by an economic housekeeper. And the proprietor was right, for had we not done so, the treacle would have run off through the whole house.
But after this we fared royally. Squirrel soup and prairie chickens regaled us. One of our new friends had laden his pockets with champagne and brandy; the other with glasses and a corkscrew; and as the bottle went round, I began to feel something of the spirit of Mark Tapley in my soul.