beach and headed our camels towards the blue sea, dismounting at last
a hundred yards from the rippling water. Except for the slow pulse of
the waves there was an unbroken silence over the world. Southwards
the sand stretched to the foot of the hills, beyond which rose the
dreamy peaks of the Tourquoise Mountains; northwards the little town
of Kossair lay basking in the sunlight; to the west the dark hills
through which we had passed stood waiting breathlessly to surround
the setting sun; and to the east the wonderful sea seemed quietly to
be sleeping and sighing in its sleep. Had one stumbled against the
slumbering forms of the lotos-eaters themselves one would hardly
have felt surprise; for here one might suppose that one was in a
land “where it was always afternoon,” a land “where all things
always seemed the same.” In the little bay, or high and dry upon
the sand, lay vessels of a bygone age—two-masted hulks with high
ponderous sterns. Beside them one could just discern two men fast
asleep; and had one awakened them there seemed hardly a doubt that
they would have been found to be as mildeyed and melancholy as the
men of Tennyson’s poem.
Presently, as we sat listening to the sea, the sun set, and from the
minaret of a mosque in the town a boy called to the sleepy Faithful
their daily summons to prayer. His voice drifting to us on the quiet
air was the first human sound which had risen from the little town;
but hardly had it died away before the distant sound of voices, and
the grunts of camels, warned us of the arrival of our baggage. A
few figures sauntered idly out of the town to watch us, as the
tents were pitched on the beach; and thus the dream was broken,
and we awoke, as it were, to the knowledge that once more a human
habitation had been reached and officials had to be interviewed.
A note to the Maltese _Mudir_ or governor of the town brought that
gentleman speedily to our tents, obviously pleased almost to tears
to have the opportunity of relieving for an hour the utter boredom
of his existence. The Mudir is an enforced lotos-eater. Corpulent
of figure, and suffering the discomforts of a wall-eye; having
practically no duties to perform other than those of the brief
official routine; and having no European to talk to except his wife,
his little daughter, and an Austrian mechanic, there is nothing left
for him to do but to dream of the time when a benevolent government
shall transfer him to a less isolated post. The four of us will
not soon forget the ample figure of our guest, clad in white duck,
as he sat upon the edge of our one real chair in the candle-light,
and told us in disused English how little there is to tell regarding
a man’s life in this sleepy town. There was never a more desolate
smile than that which wreathed his face as he spoke of the _ennui_
of life, nor a braver twinkle than that which glinted in his single
eye as the humour of his misfortunes touched him; and though we
should meet again in many a merrier situation—for officials are
not left over long at Kossair—none of us will cease to picture
this uncomplaining servant of the government as, with unsmoked
cigarette and untasted whisky-and-soda, he told us that evening
the meaning of four years of exile.
Kossair, when he first entered upon his duties, was a town of 1500
inhabitants; but these persons were so miserably poor, and found so
little to do, that at their own request the government transported
about a thousand of them to Suez and the neighbourhood, where the
lotos does not grow and a man has to keep awake. Now there are but
500 souls in the town, 300 of whom are women and children. These
people wed very young, and there is much family intermarriage;
but, though they are a poor lot to look at, there is little mental
degeneracy which can be traced to this cause. The Mudir, who is
also in charge of the coastguards, is responsible for law and order
in Kossair; there is a Syrian doctor in charge of the government
dispensary; the above-mentioned Austrian mechanic looks after the
engine for distilling the salt water; a coastguard officer and three
men patrol the coast; four or five sailors are attached to the port;
and a native schoolmaster teaches the children to read and write:
this constitutes the official element in the town. The inhabitants
are all either of Arab or Ababdeh stock, Egyptians being entirely
wanting. They live mainly on fish and a little imported bread; but
before the population was reduced some of the poorer families were
actually eating chopped straw and other food fit only for animals.
[Plate XII:
Illustration: Desert panorama from a hill-top two hours’ ride east
of Eir es Sid, looking east. The road is seen passing to north and
south of this hill and joining up further to the east.—Page 66.]
There is very little to be done here, and most of the inhabitants
sleep for two-thirds of the day. A fast-diminishing trade
necessitates the occasional building or mending of a boat. This
trade is done with camels and goats, which are brought across from
Arabia and are led over the desert to the Nile, where they are sold
at Keneh or elsewhere, the money being partly expended on grain,
which is then carried back to Arabia. Pilgrims on the way to and
from Mecca use these vessels occasionally, but the mariners of
Kossair cannot be bothered to extend the tariff.
Except for one small group of palms there is absolutely no vegetation
whatsoever in the neighbourhood, and even an attempt to grow a few
bushes or flowers near the governor’s quarters, though carefully
persisted in for some time, proved an utter failure. For his
supplies the Mudir is entirely dependent on the arrival of the
government steamer every second month; and if, as had happened
at the time of our visit, this steamer was late, the unfortunate
gentleman becomes comparatively thin from sheer starvation. Except
for occasional travellers or prospectors no white men ever visit
Kossair; though if there is cholera at Mecca an English doctor
is sometimes sent to prevent the disease from passing into Egypt
along this route. Letters and telegrams are every week conveyed
across the desert by an express rider to Keneh, and an answer to
a telegram might be expected in about a week.
A large sea-water distillery, set up some twelve or fourteen
years ago, provides the town with pure water; but so few are the
inhabitants that it is only worked twice a month. This good supply
of water is largely responsible for the lack of sickness in the
town. During the last four years only twenty persons have died, and
of these ten were very young children and ten very old people. During
these years the serious illnesses have only consisted of two cases
of diphtheria: there has been no cholera, enteric, dysentery, or
plague. Many of the inhabitants live to be centenarians, and in
the town we saw several tottering old Methuselahs, who looked as
though the gods of the underworld had forgotten them utterly.
Of sports there are none for the Mudir to indulge in. There is no
shooting; he cannot bathe even if he desired to, because of the
sharks; there are no boats to sail in worthy the names; he cannot
leave his post to make camel trips to interesting localities, even if
that amused him, which it does not; and the one pastime, the catching
of crayfish on the coral reefs, bores him to distraction. The climate
is so monotonously perfect that it does not form a topic even of
thought: in winter it is mild and sunny, in summer it is mild and
sunnier. It is never very cold nor very hot, except for the few
days in summer when a hot east wind is blowing. The Mudir says that
he neither increases nor decreases the amount of his clothing the
whole year round, but always he wears his underclothes, his tight
white-duck tunic, his loose white-duck trousers, his elastic-sided
boots, and his red _tarbush_ or fez.
After breakfast next morning we walked along the beach to the stiff,
mustard-coloured government buildings, which stand on a point of land
projecting somewhat into the sea. A spick-and-span pier and quay,
ornamented with three or four old French cannon and some neat piles
of cannonballs, gave us the impression that we had been transported
suddenly to a second-rate English watering-place; but passing into
the building that impression was happily removed at once. Through
the sunny courtyard we went, and up the stair, saluted at intervals
by the coastguardsmen, who had donned their best uniforms for the
occasion, and at last we were ushered into the presence of our
Maltese friend, now seated in state at his office table at the far
end of a large airy room. The windows overlooked the glorious blue
sea, and the breath of an English summer drifted into the room,
bringing with it the sigh of the waves. Nothing could have been
more entrancing than the soft air and the sun-bathed scene, but to
the Mudir it was anathema, and his back was resolutely turned to
the windows.
After coffee and a brief conversation we were taken to see the
water distillery, of which the town is immensely proud; and
from thence we were conducted to the chief mosque of the place,
a picturesque old building which has seen better days. We were
readily admitted by the Reader, who, however, turned up the grass
matting which covered the floor in order, so the Mudir said, that
our feet might not be dirtied by it, but in reality in order that
the footstep of a Christian should not defile it. A few men were
praying languidly at one side of the building, and in the opposite
corner a man lay snoring upon his back. There was the silence of
sleep upon the place, and, returning to the almost deserted lanes
between the houses outside, there was hardly a sound to disturb the
stillness of the morning. In the bazaar a few people were gathered
around the two or three shops, at which business had nigh ceased. A
limp-limbed jeweller was attempting to sell a rough silver ring to a
yawning youth, and, if I am not mistaken, a young girl who watched
the transaction with very mild interest from the opposite side of
the road was to be the recipient of the jewel. Soon we passed the
open door of the schoolroom, where a dozen children chanted their
A B C in a melancholy minor; and presently we came to the chief
sight of Kossair—the old fortress built by the French at the end
of the eighteenth century.
One enters the building through a masonry archway, closed by a heavy
wooden door clamped with iron. There are still three or four cannon
inside it to tell of its past life, but now the rooms and courts
are whitewashed and are used as camel stables by the coastguards. I
have no books here in Upper Egypt which will tell me the details
of the Anglo-French struggle for the possession of Kossair, and
I must therefore leave it to my readers to correct my ignorant
statements. It appears, then, that a French force occupied the
fortress during the time of Napoleon’s rule in Egypt, and that
one fine day in the year 1800 there came sailing over the sea a
squadron of English men-o’-war, which landed a storming party so
formidable that the French were constrained to evacuate the place
and to retreat across the desert to Keneh. With the English force
there were a large body of Indian troops, and these were marched
across to the Nile in pursuit of the French; but ere more serious
operations had taken place the capitulation of Napoleon’s army
brought the campaign to a close. It is said that when the Indian
soldiers saw representation of the sacred cow of Hathor upon the
walls of the temples of Koptos and Kus, they fell upon their knees
and did obeisance as in their own temples.
The inhabitants of Kossair live to such an age and in such
stagnation that the stirring events of these old days are still
talked of, and Englishmen are here still endowed with the prestige
of conquerors. Involuntarily one held one’s head higher as an old
Shêkh pointed out the gate through which the French fled, and that
through which the English bluejackets entered; and, walking through
the quiet streets back to the tents, one gave a nautical hitch to
the trousers, talked contemptuously of “Boney,” discussed the
plans of Lord Nelson, named the yawning natives whom we passed
“lazy lubbers,” murmured “Shiver my timbers,” called one
another “me hearty,” and, in a word, acted faithlessly to the
_entente cordiale_.
[Plate XIII:
Illustration: Kossair. Arabian boats on the beach.—Page 72.
Illustration: A street in Kossair.]
In camp the remainder of the day was spent in that vague pottering
which the presence of the sea always induces. There were some
beautiful shells upon the shore to attract one, and natives brought
others for sale, lying down to sleep in the shade of the kitchen
tent until we deigned to give them attention. There were sketches
to be made and photographs to be taken. Amidst the houses at the
south end of the town some fragments of a Ptolemaic temple were
stumbled upon, and the inscriptions thereon had to be copied. These
were too fragmentary to be of much importance, and, except for the
above-mentioned ancient name of Kossair there written, no point
of particular interest requires to be noted here. We lunched and
dined off the most excellent fish, a species named _belbul_ being
particularly palatable, while crayfish and a kind of cockles were
immoderately indulged in. Having arranged to try our hand at the
catching of crayfish during the night hours, we turned in early to
sleep for a short time until the fishermen should call us.
The summons having come at about 11 P.M., we set out along the
moonlit shore, two fishermen and a boy accompanying us, carrying
nets and lanterns. Our destination was a spot at which the coral
reefs, projecting into the sea, presented so flat a surface that
the incoming tide would wash over the whole area at a depth of not
more than a few inches. In the shallow water, we were told, the
crayfish would crawl, attracted by our lanterns, and we could then
pick them up with our fingers. These crayfish are not at first sight
distinguishable from larger lobsters, though a second glance will
show that the difference lies in the fact that they have no claws,
and therefore can be caught with impunity. They are fearsome-looking
creatures, nevertheless, often measuring twenty inches or so from
head to tail. In eating them it is hard to believe that one is not
eating the most tasty of lobsters.
A tedious walk of over three miles somewhat damped our ardour; and
as the fishermen told us that the moon was too high and the tide
too low for good hunting, we were not in the best spirits when at
last we turned on to the coral reef. Here, however, the scene was
so weirdly picturesque that the catching of the crayfish became
a matter of secondary import. The surface of the reef, though
flat, was broken and jagged, and much seaweed grew upon it. In
the uncertain light of the moon it was difficult to walk without
stumbling; but the ghostly figures of the fishermen hovered in
front of us, and silently led the way out towards the sea, which
uttered continuously a kind of sobbing as it washed over the edges
of the coral reef. This and the unholy wail of the curlews were
the only sounds, for the fishermen had imposed silence upon us,
and the moonlight furthered their wishes.
As we walked over the reef we had to pick our way between several
small patches of water some five or six feet in breadth, which
appeared to be shallow pools left by the last tide in the slight
depressions of the rock. Presently one noticed that in these pools
white clouds appeared to be reflected from the sky, but quickly
looking up one saw that the heavens were cloudless. Staring closer
at the water, it suddenly dawned upon one that these white clouds
were in reality the sand at the bottom of the pools, and as suddenly
came the discovery that that bottom lay at a depth of fifteen feet
or more. Now one went on hands and knees to gaze down at those
moonlit depths, and one realised that each pool was a great globular
cavern, the surface area being but the small mouth of it. One found
oneself kneeling on a projecting ridge of coral which was deeply
undermined all round; and, looking down into the bowl, one was
reminded of nothing so much as of an aquarium tank seen through
glass. In the moonlight the cloudy bottom of the caverns could be
discerned, whereon grew great anemones and the fair flowers of the
sea. Sometimes an arched gallery, suffused with pale light, led from
one cavern to the next, the ceiling of these passages decorated
with dim plants, the floor with coloured shells. Not easily could
one have been carried so completely into the realms of Fairyland
as one was by the gazing at these depths. Presently there sailed
through the still water the dim forms of fishes, and now through
the galleries there moved two shining lamps, as though carried by
the little men of the sea to light them amidst the anemones. Two
more small lamps passed into the cavern and floated through the
water, now glowing amidst the tendrils of the sea plants, now rising
towards the surface, and now sinking again to the shells, the sand,
and the flowers at the bottom.
It was not at once that one could bring oneself to realise that
these lights were the luminous eyes of a strange fish, the name
of which I do not know; but now the fishermen, who had suddenly
drawn their net across the edge of the reef and had driven a dozen
leaping creatures on to the exposed rock, beckoned us to look at this
curious species at close quarters. Their bodies were transparent,
and from around their mouths many filmy tentacles waved. The eyes
were large and brown in colour, and appeared as fantastic stone orbs
set in a glass body. Many other varieties of fish were caught as
the tide came in; but it appeared that the moon was too powerful for
successful sport in regard to the crayfish, and the catch consisted
of but four of these. The sight of the fairy caverns, however, was
entertainment sufficient for one night; and it was with discontent
that one turned away from these fair kingdoms of the sea to return
in the small hours of the morning to the tents. The moonlight,
the sobbing of the ocean, the deep caverns lit by unearthly lamps,
left an impression of unreality upon the mind which it was not easy
to dispel; and one felt that a glance had been vouchsafed through the
forbidden gates, and a glimpse had been obtained of scenes unthought
of since the days of one’s childhood. Had we also tasted of the
lotos, and was this but one of the dreams of dreamy Kossair?
Upon the following day I rode northwards along the coast to visit
the site of the Ptolemaic port, which lies about five miles from
the modern town. An hour’s ride against a hard wind brought us
to the little inlet, around which the mounds and potsherds of the
town are scattered. The water in the bay was of the deepest blue;
a rolling plain of yellow sand lay eastwards, backed by the darker
ranges of mountains; and overhead the white clouds raced by. The sea
washed up in a line of white breakers on to a rising bar of sand,
sparkling with a thousand varieties of shells. Behind this bar there
were pools of water passing inland, and here there may have been an
artificial harbour. On the south side of the bay bold rocks jutted
into the sea, and on the north there rose a series of mounds upon
which the remains of the old town were strewn. Walking over these
mounds, where the rhythmic roar of the waves falls continuously upon
the ears, one’s mind was filled with thoughts of the ancient port
which has so utterly fallen, and of that ancient commerce with the
East which must have been so full of adventure and romance to the
men of old. Here from these mounds the townspeople have watched
the great galleys set out over the seas for the mysterious land of
Hind, and have seen the wealth of Pount and Arabia unloaded upon the
quay; and here so many centuries later the labours of Egyptologists
are beginning to permit one to recall something of what they saw,
though the spade of the excavator has not yet touched this site.
[Plate XIV:
Illustration: The interior of the mosque at Kossair.—Page 78.
Illustration: The main entrance of the fortress at Kossair.—Page
79.]
There are two wells within reach of this spot, but both are two or
three hours’ journey away, and the water question must have been a
serious one. The well to the north is named Bir Guah, and the other
to the west is called Bir Mahowatât. This latter is the name of a
tribe of Bedwin living at Suez, who state that they came originally
from El Wij in Arabia. It is interesting to find that a well here
should be named after them, for El Wij is nearly opposite this point,
and one may realise thus what intercourse there is and always has
been between Arabia and Egypt, even as far south as Kossair.
Returning with the wind at our backs we soon reached Kossair, and
rode through the streets of the sleepy town to our tents. To tea in
the afternoon came the Mudir, who for an hour or so entertained us
with tales of _ennui_. Kossair fell asleep when the Roman Empire
fell, awoke for a moment in the days of Napoleon, but slid into
slumber once more over a century ago. There was a time when the east
coast steamers used to call here, but now even they have left the
town to its long siesta. As one listened to the story of decaying
trade and languid idleness the vision of Tennyson’s lotos-eater
was ever in the mind; and one’s sympathy was as profound for an
official stationed here as was one’s envy of the man who might
be permitted to rest himself for awhile from his labours upon
this mild, sunny shore. The Mudir was, at the time of our visit,
anxiously awaiting the tardy arrival of the steamer which was to
take him and his family to Suez for three months’ leave, and his
eye fixed itself upon the sea at every pause in the conversation;
and when he bid us farewell at the door of the tent, it was but
to return to his own doorway, where he might watch for the distant
smoke until the sun should set.
Early next morning we commenced the return journey to the Nile. As
we rode away over the sloping sand towards the hills in the west we
turned in our saddles to obtain a last view of the strange little
dream-town which was sinking so surely to its death. The quiet sea
rippled upon the sunlit shore in one long line of blue from the
houses on the north to the Tourquoise Mountains on the south. Not
a trace of smoke nor a sound rose from the town. On the beach a
group of three men lay sleeping with their arms behind their heads,
while two others crouched languidly on their haunches watching
our disappearing cavalcade. Then, in the silence of the morning,
there came to us on the breeze the soft call to prayer from the
minaret of the mosque. One could not hear the warbled words; but
to the sleeping figures on the beach, one thought, they must surely
be akin to those of the song of the lotos-eaters:—
“How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To hear each other’s whispered speech;
Eating the lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy. . . .
On the quay in the far distance we could just discern a portly white
figure gazing steadfastly out to sea to catch the first glimpse of
the steamer which had been awaited so patiently for so long.
IV.
THE IMPERIAL PORPHYRY QUARRIES.
Those who have travelled in Italy, and, in the museums and in
the ruins there, have studied the sculpture and the architectural
accessories of the Roman Imperial age, will be familiar with that
magnificent purple stone known as Imperial Porphyry. It was one of
the most highly prized of the ornamental stones employed by the great
artists and architects of that age of luxury; and the great distance
which it had to be brought, over parched deserts and perilous seas,
must have sent its price up beyond the reach of all save the rulers
of the earth.