THE LAND OF THE NILE
One fine morning, some two weeks after my introduction to Tom, I vacated
my post in the consul’s household and set about laying plans for a
journey up the Nile. My wages had not been reckoned on the American
scale, but for all that I was a man of comparative affluence when I
turned off the Moosky for my last visit to the headquarters of “the
union.”
The German is nothing if not systematic, be he prime minister or errant
adventurer. The Teutonic tramp does not wander at random through lands
of which his knowledge is chaotic or nil. He profits by the experience
of his fellow-ramblers. If he covers an unknown route, he returns with a
notebook full of information for his fellows. Thanks to this method, the
German beggar colony of Cairo had long contained a bureau of information
to which many a vagabond of other nationality bewailed his linguistic
inability to gain access. The archives of “the union” were particularly
rich in Egyptian lore. For there is but one route in Egypt. He who has
once journeyed up or down the Nile, with open eyes, is an authority on
the whole country.
Several of die Kunde were romping about on as many vermin colonies when
I entered, on this February afternoon, the room in which Pia was
accustomed to pen his eleemosynary masterpieces. It was an informal and
chance gathering that included nearly every authority in “the union” on
the territory beyond the Tombs of the Mamelukes. My projected journey
awakened great interest in all the group.
“As for myself,” said Pia, “I can’t see why you go. Most of the comrades
do, of course, but they will make the journey worth while. As for a man
who will only work! Pah! You will starve and die in the sands up there.”
The emaciated door was kicked open and a burly young man entered and
threw himself across the foot of one of the cots.
“Ah, now,” Pia went on, “there is Heinrich. He is going up the Nile too,
in a few days. He’s been up six times already. Why don’t you go up with
him? He knows all the ropes and you, being an American—”
“Was!” roared the newcomer, “Ein Amerikaner? Going up the river? Shake,
mein lieber! We go up together! We’ll do more business—”
“But if I go up, I’ll spend considerable time sight-seeing—”
“Sights? There’s something I never could understand. All the tourists go
up to see _sights_! Thank the Lord they do; what would the business be
without them? But what the devil do they see? Hundreds of miles of dry,
choking sand, with nothing but dirty Nile water to wash it off your face
and out of your throat! A lot of smashed-up rocks, covered with pictures
of hens and roosters, all red hot under the cursed sun that never stops
blazing. And besides that, niggers—millions of dirty niggers, blind
niggers, and half-blind niggers who do nothing but crawl around after
decent white men and beg. That’s all there is in Egypt, if you go up the
Nile, till you come to the sudd-fields of Uganda.”
“Well what do you go up for?” I asked. Even this brief acquaintance with
Heinrich convinced me that he would die the death of a martyr rather
than disgrace die Kamaraden by working.
“What for? Why so I won’t starve, to be sure. If I could wiggle the
feather and paint like Otto there, I’d see hell freeze over before I’d
move a mile south of Cairo. But I can’t, so I must go over the
soft-hearted ones again. I’ve worked ’em pretty hard the last two years,
but the game’s good yet. I’ve grown this beard since the last trip, and
got a new story all bolstered up. I’m a civil engineer this time, with a
wife and three children here in Cairo. Going up, I’ll be making for the
Berber-Suakim line, after spending all I had on the kid’s doctor bills.
Coming down, it’s the fever story—that’s always good—or my wife is dying
and, if we can get her back to Hamburg before she croaks, she’ll get an
inheritance her uncle just left her. Pretty neat that, eh?” grinned
Heinrich, turning to his admiring mates. “Thought that out one night
when I couldn’t sleep. Brand new, isn’t it? Aber, Gott, mein lieber,” he
addressed me once more, “if you’ll only come along! I can’t speak
English, and most of the soft ones know my face. But I’ll point out
everyone of them from here to Assuan. I’ll lay low and we’ll share
even.”
[Illustration: A woman of Alexandria, Egypt, carrying two bushels of
oranges. Even barefooted market-women wear the veil required by the
Koran]
[Illustration: On the top of the largest pyramid. From the ground it
looks as sharply pointed as the others]
I declined to enter into an offensive alliance against the “soft ones,”
however, and turned to Pia for the information which he had once
promised to give me. While he talked, every other lounger in the room
added his voice from time to time; and from deep wells of experience I
gleaned a long list of names, flanked by biographical details, as we
journeyed mentally up the river. This vagabond’s edition of “Who’s Who
in Egypt” completed, Pia laid down several rules of the road.
“I don’t see why you go up,” he began. “You can make a fortune right
here. If you are determined to go, get a good story and always stick to
it, changing it enough to fit different cases. Some, it will pay you to
ask for work—you know the breed; others, just ask for money. Take
anything they give you. You can sell it if you don’t want it. Always see
the big men long before train time. They will often offer to buy you a
ticket to wherever you want to go; and, if the train is soon due, they
may go to the station and buy it. But if you touch them long before
train time, they may give you the money and go back to business. Then
you can spend a couple of piastres to the next station and work that the
same way. The sugar factories are all good—they’ll even give you work,
perhaps, if you are fool enough to take it. Always hit the young
Englishmen. They’re almost all of them adventurers with nothing much to
do with their money. When you catch a missionary, make him take up a
collection for you among the native Christians. He must do it, by the
rules of the Board of Missions.
“The ticket game is always best. If you get three or four men in each
town to give you the price to Assiut or Assuan, you can make the trip in
a month and pick up good money. When you get a lot of silver, change it
at any of Cook’s offices into gold sovereigns and sew them up in your
clothes. Be sure not to let any money rattle when you’re spinning a
hard-luck yarn. And don’t be a fool, like some of the comrades who have
gone up for one trip. They pump a town dry, and, not satisfied to wait
until they hit Cairo again, go on a blow-out and lie around drunk for a
week where those who gave them ticket money can see them. That queers
the burg for the next six months. Of course you know enough to be of the
same church, and very pious, when you hit a missionary, and to be from
the same state when you touch an American? Above all never let a boat
load of tourists go by without touching them. Always go down to the dock
and make enough noise so that they all hear you. Some of the boys who
are good at it throw a fit when they get in a crowd of rich ones. But as
you talk English, a good tale of woe will do as well. When you get well
up the river, and a good tan, and a couple of weeks’ beard, spring the
old yarn of ‘lost my job and must get down to Cairo.’ And always wait
for a train. You’ll miss the whole game if you walk; and you’ll die of
sunstroke, besides.”
In the face of Pia’s warning, I left Cairo on foot the next morning,
and, crossing the Nile, turned southward along a ridge of shifting sand
beyond the village of Gizeh. Along an irrigating ditch, that flanked the
ridge, scores of _shadufs_, those human paradigms of perpetual motion,
were ceaselessly dipping, dipping, the water that gives life to the
fields of Egypt. Between the canal and the sparkling Nile, groups of
fellahs, deaf to the blatant sunshine, set out sugar cane or clawed the
soil of the arid plain. On the desert wind rode the never-ceasing squawk
of the _sakka_, or Egyptian water-wheel.
Beyond the pyramids of Sakkara, I sought shelter in the palm groves that
cover the site of ancient Memphis, and took my siesta on the recumbent
statue of Rameses. A backsheesh-thirsty village rose up to cut off my
return to the sandy road, and forced me to run a gauntlet of
out-stretched hands. ’Tis the national anthem of Egypt, this cry of
backsheesh. Workmen at their labor, women bound for market, children
rooting in the streets, drop all else to surge after the faranchee who
may be induced to “sprinkle iron” among them. Even the unclothed infant
astride a mother’s shoulder thrusts forth a dimpled hand to the passing
white man with a gurgle of “sheesh.”
As darkness came on I reached the railway station of Mazgoona, some
thirty miles from Cairo. The village lay far off to the eastward; but
the station master invited me to supper and spread a quilt bed in the
telegraph office.
A biting wind blew from the north when I set out again in the morning. A
hundred yards from the station, a cry of “monsoor” was borne to my ears,
and a servant summoned me back to his master’s office.
“I have just received a wire,” said the latter, “from the division
superintendent. He is coming on the next train. Wait and ask him for a
job.”
A half-hour later there stepped from the north-bound express, not the
grey-haired man I had expected, but a beardless English youth who could
not have been a day over twenty. It was a new experience to apply for
work to a man younger than myself, but I respectfully stated my case.
“I haven’t a vacancy on my division just at present,” said the boy.
“There is plenty of work in Assiut, though. Want to go that far south?”
[Illustration: “Along the way shadoofs were ceaselessly dipping up the
water that gives life to the fields of Egypt”]
[Illustration: The “Tombs of the Kings” from the top of the Libyan
range, to which I climbed above the plain of Thebes]
“Yes,” I answered.
He drew a card from his pocket and scribbled on it two fantastic Arabic
characters.
“Take the third-class coach,” he said, handing me the pass. “This covers
my division; but you might drop off in Beni Suef and look about.”
Following his advice, I halted near noonday at that wind-swept village.
There was no need to make inquiry for the European residents; they were
all duly recorded in the “comrades’ Baedeker.” As in Cairo, however,
they offered money in lieu of work, and clutched weakly at the nearest
support when I refused it. A young Englishman, inscribed in my notes as
“Bromley, Pasha, Inspector of Irrigation; quite easy,” gave me evening
rendezvous on the bank of the canal beyond the village. Long after dark
he appeared on horseback, attended by two natives with flaming torches,
and, being ferried across the canal, led the way towards his _dahabeah_,
anchored at the shore of the Nile.
“I fancied I’d find something to put you at,” he explained, as he turned
his horse over to a jet-black groom who popped up out of the darkness,
“but I didn’t, and the last train’s gone. I’ll buy you a ticket to
Assiut in the morning.”
“I have a pass,” I put in.
“Oh,” said the Englishman, “well, you’ll put up with me here to-night,
anyway.”
He led the way across the gangplank. The change from the bleak wastes of
African sand to this floating palace was as startling as if Bromley,
Pasha, had been possessor of Aladdin’s lamp. Richly-turbaned servants,
in spotless white gowns, sprang forward to greet their master; to place
a chair for him; to pull off his riding boots and replace them with
slippers; to slip the Cairo daily into his hands; and sped noiselessly
away to finish the preparation of the evening meal. Had Bromley, Pasha,
been a fellow countryman, I might have enjoyed the pleasure of his
company instead of dining alone in the richly-furnished anteroom. But
Englishmen of the “upper classes” are not noted for their democratic
spirit, and the good inspector, no doubt, dreaded the uncouth table
manners of a plebeian from half-civilized America.
Breakfast over, next morning, I returned to the village and departed on
the south-bound express. The third-class coach was densely packed with
huddled natives and their unwieldy cargo; all, that is, except the bench
around the sides, on which a trio of gloomy Arabs, denied the privilege
of squatting on the floor, perched like fowls on a roost. The air that
swept through the open car was as wintry as the Egyptian is wont to
experience. Only the faces of the males were uncovered. The women,
wrapped like mummies in fold after fold of black gowns, crouched utterly
motionless, well-nigh indistinguishable from the bundles of baggage.
Even the guard, wading through the throng, brought no sign of life from
the prostrate females; for their tickets were invariably produced by a
male escort.
The congestion was somewhat relieved at the junction of the Fayoum
branch. The men who had reached their destination rose to their feet,
struggled to extricate their much-tied bundles, and rolled them over
their fellow travelers and down the steps. Not a female stirred during
this unwonted activity of her lord and master. When he had safely
deposited his more valuable chattels on the platform, he returned to
grasp her by the hand and drag her unceremoniously out the door.
Around the train swarmed hawkers of food. Dates, boiled eggs, baked
fish, oranges, and soggy bread-cakes, in quantity sufficient to have
supplied an army, were thrust upon whomever ventured to peer outside.
From the neighboring fields came workmen laden down with freshly cut
bundles of sugar cane, to give the throng the appearance of a forest in
motion. Three great canes, as long and unwieldy as bamboo fish rods,
sold at a small piastre, and hardly a native in the car purchased less
than a half-dozen. By the time we were off again, the coach had been
converted into a fodder bin.
The canes were broken into two-foot lengths, and each purchaser,
grasping a section in his hands, bit into it, and, jerking his head from
side to side like a bulldog, tore off a strip. Then with a sucking that
was heard above the roar of the train, he extracted the juice and cast
the pulp on the floor about him. At each station, new arrivals squatted
on the festive remnants left by their predecessors and spat
industriously at the valleys which marked the resting places of the
departed. The pulp dried rapidly, and by noonday the floor of the car
was carpeted with a sugar-cane mat several inches thick.
My pass ran out in the early afternoon, and I set off to canvass the
metropolis of upper Egypt. Several Europeans had already expressed their
regrets when, towards evening, I caught sight of the stars and stripes
waving over an unusually large building. I turned in at the gate and
made inquiry of a native grubbing in the yard.
“Thees house?” he cried, “you not know what thees is? Thees American
Hospital.”
I drew out my notes. Beneath the name of the hospital appeared this
entry:—“Dr. Henry and Dr. Bullock, Americans; easy marks; very
religious.”
“Come and see house,” invited the native. “Very beeg.”
He led the way to one side of the building, where nearly a hundred
natives, suffering with every small ailment from festered legs to
toothache, were huddled disconsolately about the office stairway.
“Thees man come get cured,” said my guide. “Thees not sick nuff go bed.
American Doctors very good, except”—and his voice dropped to a
whisper—“wants all to be Christian.”
The patients filed into the office, emerged with cards in their hands,
and crowded about the door of the dispensary. As the last emaciated
wretch limped away, a slender, middle-aged white man descended the
steps.
“Thees Dr. Henry,” whispered the native. “Doctor, thees man be
American.”
I tendered my letter of introduction from the American consulate.
“A mechanical engineer!” cried the doctor. “Fine! Just the man we are
looking for. Come with me.”
An engineer I was not—of any species. That profession had been forced
upon me by the carelessness of Mr. Morgan’s secretary. But there flashed
suddenly across my mind the saying of an erstwhile employer in
California:—“When you’re looking for work, never admit there’s anything
you can’t do.” I followed after the doctor.
At the rear of the establishment, Dr. Bullock and a well-dressed native
were superintending the labors of a band of Egyptians, grubbing about
the edge of a large reservoir.
“Now, here is the problem,” said the older man, when he had introduced
me to his colleague. “This reservoir is our water supply. It is filled
by the inundations of the Nile. But towards the end of the dry season
the water gets so low that our force-pump will not raise it. The native
engineer whom we have called in is a graduate of the best technical
school in Cairo. But—ah—er”—his voice fell low—“you know what natives
are? Now what do _you_ suggest?”
Compelled to spar for wind, I asked to be shown the pump and to have the
reservoir sounded. The native engineer hung on our heels, listening for
any words of wisdom that might fall from my lips. Fortunately, I had
once seen a similar difficulty righted.
“There are two possible solutions of the trouble,” I began, in an
authoritative voice, swinging round until the native appeared on the
edge of my field of vision. “The first is to buy a much more powerful
pump”—the native scowled blackly—“the second is to build a smaller
reservoir halfway up, get another small pump, and—er—relay the water to
the top.” The engineer was smiling blandly at the doctors’ backs. “Now
the first would be costly. The second requires only a few yards of pipe,
a cheap pump, and a bit of excavating.”
“Ah!” cried the native, rushing forward, “That is my idea exactly, only
I did not wish to say—”
“Bah!” interrupted Dr. Henry, “Your idea! Why don’t you fellows ever
have an idea until someone else gives you one? I’m glad. Dr. Bullock,
that we’ve got a man at last who—”
“Yes,” I repeated, “I should put in two pumps, by all means.”
“I’ll send in the order to Cairo to-night,” said the doctor. “Bring your
men in the morning, efendee, and set them to digging the reservoir. You
don’t need another man to help you on that, I hope?”
“You will find little work in Assiut, just now,” he went on, as we
entered the hospital. “By all means go to Assuan. There is employment
for every class of mechanic on the barrage. I suppose two dollars will
about cover your fee?” He dropped four ten-piastre pieces into my hand.
“But you must stay to supper with us. We have one bed unoccupied, too;
but three men have died in it in the past month, and if you are
superstitious—”
“Not in the least,” I protested.
I rose long before daylight next morning, and groped my way to the
station. A ticket to Luxor took barely half my fee as consulting
engineer. At break of day, the railway crossed to the eastern bank, and
at the next station the train stood motionless while driver, trainmen,
and passengers executed their morning prayers in the desert sand.
Beyond, the chimneys of great sugar refineries belched forth dense
clouds of smoke, and at every halt shivering urchins offered for sale
the crude product of the factories, cone-shaped lumps, dark-brown in
color.
The voice of the south spoke more distinctly with every mile. We were
approaching, now, the district where rain and dew are utterly unknown.
The desert grew more arid, the whirling sand finer, more penetrating.
The natives, already of darker hue than the cinnamon-colored Cairene,
grew blacker and blacker. The chilling wind of two days past turned
tepid, then piping hot, and, ere we drew into Luxor, Egypt lay, as of
old, under her mantle of densest sunshine.
[Illustration: A water-carrier of Luxor. A goatskin full costs one cent]
The tourist colony of Luxor, housed in two great faranchee hotels, would
be incomplete without a rendezvous for “the comrades.” Close by the
station squats a tumble-down shack, styled the “Hotel Economica,”
wherein, dreaming away his old age over a cigarette, sits Pietro
Saggharia. Pietro was a “comrade” once. His tales of “the road,” gleaned
in forty years of errant residence in Africa, and couched in almost any
tongue the listener may choose, are to be had for a kind word, even
while the exiled Greek is serving the forbidden liquor to backsliding
Mohammedans and the white wanderers who take shelter beneath his roof.
I left my knapsack in Pietro’s keeping and struck off for the great
ruins of Karnak. The society intrusted with the preservation of the
monuments of upper Egypt has put each important ruin in charge of a
guardian, and denies admittance to all who leave Cairo without a ticket
issued by the society. The price thereof is little short of a vagabond’s
fortune. I journeyed to Karnak, therefore, resolved to be content with a
view of her row of sphinxes and a circuit of her outer walls.
About the approach to the ancient palaces the seekers after backsheesh
held high court. Before I had shaken off the last screeching youth, I
came upon a great iron gate that shut out the unticketed, and paused to
peer through the bars for a glimpse of the much-heralded interior. On
the ground before the barrier squatted a sleek, well-fed native. He rose
and announced himself as the guard; but made no attempt to drive me off.
“You don’t see much from here,” he said, in Arabic, as I turned away.
“Have you already seen the temple? Or perhaps you have no ticket?”
“La, ma feesh,” I replied; “therefore I must stay outside.”
“Ah! Then you are no tourist?” smiled the native. “Are you English?”
“Aywa,” I answered, for the Arabic term “inglesi” covers all who speak
that tongue, “but no tourist, merely a workingman.”
“Ah,” sighed the guard, “too bad you are an inglesi then; for if you
spoke French, the superintendent of the excavations is a good friend of
workingmen. But he speaks no English.”
“Where shall I find him?”
“In the office just over the hill, there.”
I took the direction indicated, and came upon a temporary structure,
before which an aged European sat motionless in a rocking chair. About
him was scattered a miscellaneous collection of statues, broken and
whole.
“Are you the superintendent, sir?” I asked, in French.
The octogenarian frowned, but answered not a word. I repeated the
question in a louder voice.
“Va t’en!” shrieked the old man, grasping a heavy cane that leaned
against his chair and shaking it feebly at me. “Go away! You’re a
beggar. I know you are.”
Evidently the fourth layer of shirt bosom, uncovered specially for the
occasion, had failed in its mission. I pleaded a case of mistaken
identity. The aged Frenchman watched me with the half-closed eyes of a
cat, clinging to his stick.
“Why do you want to see the superintendent?” he demanded.
“To work, if he has any. If not, to see the temple.”
“You will not ask him for money?”
“By no means.”
“Bien! En ce cas—Maghmoód,” he coughed.
A native appeared at the door of the shanty.
“My son is the superintendent,” said the old man, displaying a grotesque
pattern of wrinkles that was meant for a smile. “Follow Maghmoód.”
The son, an affable young Frenchman attired in the thinnest of white
trousers and an open shirt, was bowed over a small stone covered with
hieroglyphics. I made known my errand.
“Work?” he replied, “No. Unfortunately the society allows us to hire
only natives. I wish I might have a few Europeans to superintend the
excavations. But I am always pleased to find a workman interested in the
antiquities. You are as free to go inside as if you had a ticket. But it
is midday now. How do you escape a sunstroke with only that cap? You had
better sit here in the shade until the heat dies down a bit.”
I assured him that the Egyptian sun had no evil effects upon me and he
stepped to the door to shout an order to the sleek gatekeeper just out
of sight over the hill. That official grinned knowingly as I appeared,
unlocked the gate, and, fending off with one hand several elusive
urchins, admitted me to the noonday solitude of the forest of pillars.
As the shadows began to lengthen, a flock of “Cookies” invaded the
sacred precincts, and, stumbling through the ruins in pursuit of their
shepherds, two dragomans of phonographical erudition, awoke the dormant
echoes with their bleating. With their departure, came less precipitous
mortals, weighed down under cameras and notebooks. Interest centered in
one animated corner of the enclosure. There, in the latest excavation,
an army of men and boys toiled at the shadufs that raised the sand and
the water which the sluiceways poured into the pit to loosen the soil.
Other natives, naked but for a loin-cloth, groped in the mud at the
bottom, eager to win the small reward offered to the discoverer of each
archæological treasure.
One such prize was captured during the afternoon. A small boy, half
buried in the ooze, suddenly ceased his wallowing with a shrill shriek
of triumph; and came perilously near being trampled out of sight by his
fellow-workmen. In a twinkling, half the band, amid a mighty uproar of
shouting and splashing, was tugging at some heavy object still hidden
from view.
They raised it at last,—a female figure in blue stone, some four feet in
length, which had suffered downfall, burial, and the onslaughts of the
Arab horde without apparent injury. The news of the discovery was
quickly carried to the shanty on the hill. In a great pith helmet that
gave him a striking resemblance to a walking toadstool, the
superintendent hurried down to the edge of the pit and gave orders that
the statue be carried to a level space, about which a throng of excited
tourists lay in wait with open notebooks. There it was carefully washed
with sponges, gloated over by the aforementioned tourists, and placed on
a car of the tiny railway system laid through the ruins. Natives, in
number sufficient to have moved one of Karnak’s mighty pillars, tailed
out on the rope attached to the car, and, moving to the rhythm of a
weird Arabic song of rejoicing, dragged the new find through the temple
and deposited it at the feet of the aged Frenchman.
As evening fell, I turned back to the Hotel Economica. Several
“comrades” had gathered, but neither they nor Pietro could give me
information concerning the land across the Nile, which I proposed to
visit next day. The Greek knew naught of the ruins of Thebes, save the
anecdote of a former guest, who had attempted the excursion and returned
wild with thirst, mumbling an incoherent tale of having floundered in
seas of sand.
“For our betters,” said Pietro, in the softened Italian in which he
chose to address me. “For the rich ladies and gentlemen who can ride on
donkeys and be guarded by many dragomans, a visit to Thebes is very
well. But common folk like you and I! Bah! We are not wanted there. They
would send no army to look for _us_ if we disappeared in the desert.
Besides, you must have a ticket to see anything.”
I drew from my pocket the folders of the Egyptian tourist companies. A
party from the Anglo-Saxon steamer, tied up before the temple of Luxor,
was scheduled to leave for an excursion to Thebes in the morning. What
easier plan than to shadow these more fortunate nomads?
Fearful of being left behind, I rose at dawn and hastened away to the
bazaars to make provision for the day—bread-cakes for hunger and oranges
for thirst. A native boatman, denied a fee of ten piastres, accepted
one, and set me down on the western bank. The shrill screams of a troop
of donkey boys, embarking their animals below the temple, greeted the
rising sun. Not long after their landing a vanguard of three veiled and
helmeted tourists stepped ashore, and, mounting as many animals, sped
away into the trackless desert. I followed them as swiftly as was
consistent with faranchee dignity until the last resounding whack of a
donkey boy’s stave came faintly to my ear; then sat down to await the
next section. The inhabitants of a mud village swooped down upon me,
and, convinced that I had fallen from my donkey, sought to force upon me
a score of wabbly-kneed beasts. My refusal to choose one of these “ver’
cheap, ver’ fine” animals was taken as an attempt at facetiousness,
which it was to their interests as prospective beneficiaries to roar at
with delight. When the supposed canard waxed serious, their mirth turned
to virulence, and I was in a fair way to be mounted by force when the
steamer party rode down upon us.
’Twas an inspiring sight. The half-mile train of donkeys that trailed
off across the desert was bestridden by every condition of Anglo-Saxon
from raw-boned scientists and diaphanous maidens to the corpulent
matrons and mighty masses of self-made men whose incessantly belabored
animals brought up the rear. I kept pace with the band and even
outstripped the stragglers. After an hour’s swift march, that left me
dripping with perspiration, the party dismounted to inspect a temple.
Gates were there none, and what two guardians could examine the tickets
of such a band all at once? I had satisfied my antiquarian tastes before
an observant dragoman pointed me out to the officials, and my consequent
exit gave me just the time needed to empty the sand from my slippers
before the cavalcade set off again.
[Illustration: The main entrance to the ruins of Karnak]
The sharp ascent to the Tombs of the Kings was more irksome to an
over-burdened ass than to a pedestrian. Even though the jeering donkey
boys succeeded in pocketing me in the narrow gorges, it was I who
carried news of the advancing throng to the gate of the mausoleum. A
native lieutenant of police was on hand to offer assistance to the
keeper against the unticketed. But the lieutenant spoke Italian, and was
so delighted to find that he could hold converse with me without being
understood by the surrounding rabble, that he gave me permission to
enter, in face of the gate tender’s protest.
Sufficiently orientated now to find my way alone, I took silent leave of
the party and struck southward towards a precipitous cliff of stone and
sand. To pass this barrier the bedonkeyed must make a circuit of many
miles. Clinging to crack and crevice, I began the ascent. Halfway up, a
roar of voices sounded from the plain below. I groped for a safer hand
hold and looked down. About the lieutenant at the foot of the cliff was
grouped the official party, gazing upward, confirmed now, no doubt, in
their earlier suspicion that I was some madman at large. Before their
circuit of the mountain had well begun, I had reached the summit above
the goal from which they were separated by many a weary mile.
The view that spread out from the rarely visited spot might well have
awakened the envy of the tourists below. North and south, unadorned by a
vestige of verdure, stretched the Lybian range, deep vermilion in the
valleys, the salient peaks splashed blood-red by the homicidal sunshine.
Below bourgeoned the plain of Thebes, its thick green carpet weighted
down by a few fellaheen villages and the ponderous playthings of an
ancient civilization. As the eye wandered, a primeval saying took on new
meaning:—“Egypt is the Nile.” Tightly to the life-giving river,
distinctly visible in this marvelous atmosphere for a hundred miles,
clung the slender land of Egypt, a spotless ribbon of richest green,
following every contour of the Father of Waters. All else was but a
limitless sea of yellow, choking sand.
I descended to the Tomb of Queen Hatasu and spent the afternoon among
the ruins on the edge of the plain. Arriving alone and unannounced, I
had little difficulty in entering where I chose. For were the guardian
not asleep, I had only to refuse to understand his Arabic and his
excited gestures, until I had examined each monument to my heart’s
content. I had passed the Colossi of Memnon before the tourists, jaded
and drooping from a day in the saddle, overtook me, and I made headway
against them to the bank of the river. There they shook me off, however.
The dragomans in charge of the party snarled in anger when I offered to
pay for the privilege of embarking in the company boat. There was
nothing else to do, much as I rebelled against the recrimination, but to
be ferried over with the donkeys.
I departed, next day, by the narrow-gauge railway to Assuan, and reached
that watering place of the first cataract in time to grace the afternoon
concert. Pietro’s retreat is the last of the chain. Nearly six hundred
miles, now, from the headquarters of die Kunde, I was reduced again to a
native inn and the companionship of a half-barbaric horde. It was no
such palace as housed my fellow-countrymen on Elephantine Island; but
the bedroom on the roof was airy, and the bawling of a muezzin in the
minaret above summoned forth no other faranchee to witness the gorgeous
birth of a new day.
Some miles beyond Assuan lay the new barrage, where work was plentiful.
Just how far, I could not know; still less that it was connected with
the village by rail. From morning until high noon, I clawed my way along
the ragged cliffs overhanging the impoverished cataract, ere I came in
sight of the vast barrier that has robbed it of its waters. Among the
rocks of what was once the bed of the Nile, sat a dozen wooden shanties.
From the largest, housing the superintendent, came sounds of revelry out
of all keeping with the gigantic task at hand. It transpired, however,
that this was no ordinary dinner-hour festival. I had arrived, as so
often before, mal à propos.
“Work?” gurgled the superintendent, handing back my papers, “The bloody
work is off the slate, Yank.”
Was it the Egyptian sun that had made him so merry? Perhaps. But there
was more than one bottle, blown with the name of Rheims, scattered in
the sand before the hut.
“Yesh,” confided the Englishman, “she’s all over, old cock. We’re goin’
down in the morning. A few dago masons and the coolies will mess about a
few weeks more; but all these lads are, hick—‘Sailin’ ’ome to merry
England; never more to roam,’” and his voiced pitched and stumbled over
the well-known melody. “But the man that comes up to work in this
murderin’ sun should be paid for it, boys, even if it’s only a bloomin’
intention. ’Ere, lads, pass the ’at for the Yank. ’E can’t go ’ome
to-mor—” but I was gone.
I was still the proud possessor of fifty piastres. That sum could not
carry me down to the Mediterranean; for the fare by train to Cairo was
sixty-five, and the steamer rate of forty-five did not include food.
Moreover, ’tis the true vagabond spirit to push on until the last
resource is exhausted; and what a reputation I might win among the Kunde
by outstripping the best weaver of Märchen among them!
The railway was ended, but steamers departed twice a week from Shellal,
above the barrage. At the landing a swarm of natives were loading a
dilapidated barge, and a native agent was dozing behind the bars of a
home-made ticket office.
“Yes,” he yawned, in answer to my query, “there is to-night leaving
steamer. Soon be here. The fare is two hundred and fifty piastres.”
“Two hun—” I gasped. “Why, that must be first-class.”
“Yes, very first class. But gentleman not wish travel second class?”
“Certainly not. Give me a third-class ticket.”
The Egyptian fell on his feet and stared at me through the grill.
“What say gentleman? Third-class! No! No! Not go third-class.
Second-class one hundred and eighty piastres, very poor.”
“But there _is_ a third-class, isn’t there?”
“Third-class go. Forty piastres. But only for Arabs. White man never go
third-class. Not give food, not give sleep, not ride on steamer; ride on
barge there, tied with steamer with string. All gentlemen telling me
must have European food. Gentlemen not sleep with boxes and horses on
barge? Very Arab; very stink—”
“Yes, I know; but give me a third-class ticket,” I interrupted, counting
out forty piastres.
The native blinked, sat down dejectedly on his stool, and, with a sigh
of resignation, reached for a ticket. Suddenly his face lighted up and
he pushed my money back to me.
“If white man go third-class,” he crowed, “must have pass of Soudan
gover’ment. Not can sell ticket without.”
“But how can I get a pass before I am in the Soudan?”
“There is living English colonel with fort, far side Assuan.”
I hurried away to the railway station. The fare to Assuan was a few
cents, and one train ran each way during the afternoon. But it made the
up-trip first! I struck out on the railroad, raced through Assuan, and
tore my way through the jungle to the fort, three miles below the
village. A squad of khaki-clad black men flourished their bayonets
uncomfortably near my ribs. I bawled out my errand in Arabic, and an
officer waved the sentinels aside.
“The colonel is sleeping now,” he said; “come this evening.”
“But I want a pass for this evening’s steamer.”
“We cannot wake the colonel.”
“Is there no one else who can sign the order?”
“Only the colonel. Come this evening.”
Order or no order, I would not be red-taped out of a journey into the
Soudan. I readjusted my knapsack and pranced off for the third time on
the ten-mile course between Assuan and Shellal. Night was falling as I
sped through the larger village. When I stepped aside for the
down-train, my legs wobbled under me like two pneumatic supports from
which half the air had escaped. The screech of a steamboat whistle
resounded through the Nile valley as I came in sight of the lights of
Shellal. I broke into a run, falling, now and then, on the uneven
ground. The sky was clear, but there was no moon and the night was black
despite the stars. The deck hands were already casting off the shore
lines of the barge, and the steamer was churning the shallow water. I
pulled off my coat, threw it over my head, after the fashion in which
the fellah wears his gown after nightfall, and, thus slightly disguised,
dashed towards the ticket office.
“A ticket to Wady Haifa,” I gasped in Arabic, striving to imitate the
apologetic tone of an Egyptian peasant. For once I saw a native move
with something like haste. The agent glanced at the money, snatched a
ticket, and thrust it through the bars, crying: “Hurry up, the boat is
go—” but the white hand that clutched the ticket betrayed me. The agent
sprang to the door with a howl, “Stop! It’s the faranchee! Come back—”
I caught up my knapsack as I ran, made a flying leap at the slowly
receding barge, and landed on all fours under the feet of a troop of
horses.
The Arab who stood grinning at me as I picked myself up was evidently
the only man on the craft who had witnessed my hurried embarkation. He
was dressed in native garb, save for a tightly buttoned khaki jacket.
His legs were bare, his feet thrust into low, red slippers. About his
head was wound an ample turban of red and white checks, on either cheek
were the scars of three long parallel gashes, and in the top of his
right ear hung a large silver ring.
[Illustration: The Egyptian fellah dwells in a hut of reeds and mud]
The scars and ring announced him a Nubian; the jacket, a corporal of
cavalry; the bridle in his hand, custodian of the horses; and any
blockhead must have known that he answered to the name of Maghmoód. We
became boon companions, Maghmoód and I, before the journey ended. By
night we shared the same blanket; by day he would have divided the
contents of his saddlebags with me, had not the black men who trooped
down to each landing with baskets of native food made that sacrifice
unnecessary. He spun tales of his campaigns with Kitchener in a
clear-cut Arabic that even a faranchee must have understood, and, save
for the five periods each day when he stood barefooted at his prayers,
was as pleasant a companion as any denizen of the western world could
have been.
When morning broke I climbed a rickety ladder to the upper deck. It was
so densely packed from rail to rail with huddled Arabs that a poodle
could not have found room to sit on his haunches. I mounted still higher
and came out upon the roof of the barge, an uncumbered promenade from
which I could survey the vast panorama of the Nile.
Its banks were barren, now. The fertile strips of green, fed by the
shaduf and the sakka, had been left behind with the land of Egypt.
Except for a few tiny oases, the aggressive desert had pushed its way to
the very water’s edge, here sloping down in beaches of softest sand,
there falling sheer into the stream in rugged, verdureless cliffs. Yet
somewhere in this yellow wilderness a hardy people found sustenance. Now
and then a peasant waved a hand or a tattered flag from the shore, and
the steamer ran her nose high up on the beach to pick up the bale of
produce he had rolled down the slope. With every landing a group of
tawny barbarians sprang up from a sandy nowhere to slash from the
gorgeous sunlight fantastic shadows as black as their own leathery
skins.
On the level with my promenade deck was that of the first-class
passengers. There were no English-speaking travelers among them. Half
the party were priests of the Eastern Church, phlegmatic, robust men in
long black gowns and a headdress like an inverted “stovepipe,” beneath
which a tangled thicket of hair and beard left barely more than nose and
eyes visible. The laymen, evidently, were of the same faith. They took
part in the religious services, and their speech was redundant with the
softened S of modern Greek.
Maghmoód, perhaps, betrayed my confidences. At any rate, the
oily-skinned Armenian who accosted me from the steamer in execrable
French knew more of my affairs than I had told to anyone but the
cavalryman.
“My friends have been wondering,” he began, abruptly, “how you will find
work in the Soudan if you have not money enough to go to Khartum, where
the work is? We are all going to Khartum. The venerable patriarch there,
with the longest beard, is the head of our church in Africa, going there
to look after the Greeks. You should come too.”
Several times during the afternoon, he returned to ply me with
questions. As we halted before the cliff-hewn temple of Abu Simbel, I
descended to the lower deck to pose Maghmoód for a picture. He had just
called up Mecca, however, and before he deigned to notice my existence,
a voice sounded above me:—“Faranchee, taala hena.” I looked up to see
the servant of the Armenian beckoning to me from the upper deck.
“All the cabin passengers have been saying,” maundered the master, when
I reached the roof of the barge, “that you must get to Khartum. We were
about to take up a collection to buy you a ticket when the venerable
patriarch showed us a better plan. He is in need of a servant who can
write English and French. Of course, he is very rich, like all the head
patriarchs, and he will, perhaps, pay you much. If he does not need you
when he gets to Khartum, there is plenty of work there. Come with me to
the cabin.”
The “venerable patriarch” spoke only his native tongue. One of his
attendant priests, however, was well versed in Italian, and through him
his chief dictated a letter to the English mudir of Wady Halfa, and a
second to the French consul at Assiut. Neither epistle contained matter
of international importance. I half suspected that my employment was
little more than charity in disguise; yet the Greek assured me that my
services were indispensable. Who knows? But for the force of
circumstances, I might still be gracing the suite of the patriarch of
Africa.
We tied up at Wady Halfa after nightfall. The first man to cross the
gang plank was an English officer bearing an order forbidding any one to
land. A telegram from Assuan announced the outbreak of the plague, and
the steamer was to be held in quarantine.
A loud-voiced protest rose from the Greeks. The train to Khartum was to
depart soon, and the service is not hourly in the Soudan. A swift
correspondence took place between the steamer and the mudiria. The
priests were permitted to disembark. The laymen revolted against such
discrimination and were soon released. Within a half-hour, the
second-class passengers followed after them; and, with no man of
influence left on board, the steamer slipped her moorings and tied up in
the middle of the river at the foot of the second cataract.
We were landed early next morning and the Armenian, in company with
three Greek residents, met me at the top of the bank.
“The patriarch has made this man your guardian,” he explained, pointing
to one of his companions. “He is keeper of the Hotel Tewfekieh. He has
your third-class ticket to Khartum, and you will live with him until you
leave.”
It was then Thursday morning. The next train was scheduled to leave on
Saturday night. In two days I had more than exhausted the sights of Wady
Halfa, and time hung heavily on my hands. Until my meeting with the
Greeks, I had never dreamed of proceeding beyond the second cataract.
The sun-baked city of Omdurman teemed with interest, perhaps; but a
sweltering two-day journey across the desert was no pleasant
anticipation. Moreover, half my allotted time had already passed, and my
trip around the globe was by no means half completed. Unfortunately, my
worldly wealth, if it was my own, was tied up in a bit of cardboard in
the possession of my host. It was a small fortune, too, more than ten
dollars. Had I been the possessor of half that amount, I should have
turned back to Port Saïd forthwith. The good patriarch, certainly, would
shed no tears of regret if I failed to appear before him on Tuesday
morning. My “guardian,” too, always spoke of the ticket as _my_
property, and would, no doubt, relinquish it if I could offer a
reasonable excuse for turning back. But I could not, and who should say
that the railway company would refund the money if I could.
I had, therefore, resolved to carry out the plan as first proposed,
when, one afternoon, a native soldier broke in on my musing and summoned
me to the office of the commissioner of customs.
“I hear you’re going to Khartum,” said that official. “You know you must
have a pass from the mudir. Thought I’d tell you so you wouldn’t get
held up at the last moment. The mudiria is closed now, but as soon as it
opens, you can get a pass all right.”
“Hope not,” I muttered, as I turned away.
The next morning a servant in a turban of daring color-scheme ushered me
into the office of Governor Parsons, Pasha, raised his palms to his
forehead, and withdrew. The mudir was a slight, yet sturdy Englishman of
that frank, energetic type which the British government seems singularly
fortunate in choosing as rulers of her dependencies abroad. My
application for a pass awakened within him no suspicion of my real
desire. He jotted down my answers on the official blank before him as if
this granting of permission to ragged adventurers to enter a territory
so lately pacified were but a part of his daily routine.
“Name? Birthplace? Nationality? Age? Profession?” He read the questions
in a dispassionate voice that quickly dispelled my hope of having the
official ban raised against me. “Purpose in going to Khartum? Probable
length of stay?”
Oh, well, it did not matter. There would be a satisfaction in having
penetrated so far into Africa, and I could trust to fortune to bring me
down again.
“I see no reason to refuse you a passport,” said the mudir, in his
deliberate, clear-cut enunciation. “By the way, one other question which
the law requires me to ask. Of course you have sufficient means to
support yourself in Khartum, or to pay your way down again?”
“I’ve got three piastres,” I answered, striving to conceal the joy
within me.
“What! No more?”
He turned the paper meditatively in his fingers.
“As a rule, we do not grant passports to those who may by any chance
find themselves unprovided for. It is a precaution necessary for the
protection of the individual, for Khartum is a far-call from
civilization. But then, I am not going to keep you back if you wish to
go. I have an infinite faith, justified by years of observation, in the
ability of a sailor, especially a young chap, to take care of himself.”
He pressed his official seal on a red pad and examined it intently.
Fate, evidently, was bent on sending me to Khartum. I resolved to take a
more active hand in the game.
“Well, a couple of chaps I was talkin’ with in Wady give the place a
tough name, too, sir,” I began. “You see, I didn’t know that when I was
down below, and since then I’ve been thinkin’, sir, that it would be a
bad port to get on the beach in.”
“And these Greeks, are you certain they will employ you? Did they give
their address?”
“They didn’t give no address, sir, only said they was goin’ to Khartum.
I was thinkin’ it would be better to get down to Port Saïd and ship out,
instead of goin’ up. But the ticket’s already bought, sir, an’—”
[Illustration: Arab passengers on the Nile steamer. Except for their
prayers, they scarcely move once a day]
[Illustration: The Greek patriarch whose secretary I became—temporarily]
“Oh,” smiled the mudir, “that will offer no difficulty. It is a
government railway and I can give you a note to the A. T. M., requesting
him to refund you the price of the ticket. On the whole, after what you
have said, I think I had better refuse you a pass.”
He tore up the blank slowly and, pulling out an official pad, wrote an
order to the railway official. I tucked it in my pocket and returned to
the hotel.
“What’s the matter?” cried the Armenian, as I sat down with sorrowful
face in a corner of the pool room.
“The mudir has refused me a pass to Khartum,” I sighed.
“Refused you a pass?” echoed the Armenian, turning to the Greeks that
had gathered around us.
Cries of sympathy sounded on all sides.
“Never mind,” purred the interpreter, patting me on the shoulder,
“Khartum isn’t much and the patriarch will get along somehow without
you.”
“Yes, but there’s no work here to earn my fare down the river.”
The remark precipitated a long debate. At last, the interpreter turned
to me with a smiling face.
“We have it!” he cried. “As the mudir has refused you permission,
perhaps he will refund you the price of the ticket if you go and ask
him? That will be enough—”
“But the ticket isn’t mine,” I protested.
“Not yours?” cried the Armenian, “what nonsense! Of course it’s yours.
Whose else is it? The patriarch didn’t pay you anything else for your
work! Certainly, it’s your ticket.”
He took it from the sad-eyed hotel keeper and thrust it into my hand.
“Now run over to the mudiria and ask the governor if he can’t fix it so
you can get the money back.”
I ran—past the mudir’s office and into that of the traffic manager. He
was a young Englishman of the type of those who, according to Pia, “have
nothing much to do with their money.”
“Do you think,” he asked, as he handed me the price of the ticket, “that
two quid will carry you down to Port Saïd?”
“Sure,” I replied.
“I’m afraid it won’t,” he went on; “better have another quid.”
He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a handful of gold.
“No, I’m fixed all right,” I protested.
“Go ahead, man; take it,” he insisted, holding out a sovereign. “Many a
one I’ve had shoved on me when I was down and out.”
“No, I’m all right,” I repeated.
“Well, here,” said the manager; “I’m going to make you out a check on my
bank in Cairo for a couple of quid. I think you’ll need it. If you
don’t, chuck it in the canal and no harm done. We chaps never want to
see a man on the rocks, you know.”
He filled out the check as he talked, and, in spite of my protest,
tucked it into one of my pockets. I acknowledged my thanks; but months
afterward I scattered the pieces of that bit of paper on the highway of
another clime.
Late that night I departed from Wady Halfa, reaching Assuan on Monday
morning. On the following day I boarded the steamer _Cleopatra_, of the
Cook Line, as a deck passenger, and drifted lazily down the Nile for
five days, landing here and there with the tourists of the upper deck to
visit a temple or a mud village. At the Asile Rudolph, Cap Stevenson
welcomed me with open arms, but “the union” was wrapped in mourning.
Pia, the erudite, had departed, no man knew when nor whither. The end of
the Cairo season was at hand. All its social favorites were turning
their faces towards other lands. I called on the superintendent of
railways to remind him of his promise, and, armed with a pass to Port
Saïd, bade the capital farewell.