FIRST VOYAGE ON THE NILE.
Departure—The Kangia—The Egyptian Climate—The Mahmoudieh
Canal—Entrance Into the Nile—Pleasures of the Journey—Studying
Arabic—Sight of the Pyramids—The Barrage—Approach to Cairo.
We paid a most exorbitant bill at the Oriental Hotel, and started on
donkey-back for our boat, at sunset. Our preparations for the voyage
consisted of bread, rice, coffee, sugar, butter and a few other
comestibles; an earthen furnace and charcoal; pots and stew-pans, plates,
knives and forks, wooden spoons, coffee-cups and water-jars; three large
mats of cane-leaves, for bedding; and for luxuries, a few bottles of
claret, and a gazelle-skin stuffed with choice Latakieh tobacco. We were
prudent enough to take a supper with us from the hotel, and not trust to
our own cooking the first night on board.
We waited till dark on the banks of the Canal before our baggage
appeared. There is a Custom-House on all sides of Alexandria, and goods
going out must pay as well as goods coming in. The gate was closed,
and nothing less than the silver oil of a dollar greased its hinges
sufficiently for our cart to pass through. But what was our surprise on
reaching the boat, to find the same _kangia_ and the same grizzly raïs,
who had previously demanded three hundred piastres. He seemed no less
astonished than we, for the bargain had been made by a third party, and I
believe he bore us a grudge during the rest of the voyage. The contract
placed the boat at our disposition; so we went on board immediately, bade
adieu to the kind friends who had accompanied us, and were rowed down the
Canal in the full glow of African moonlight.
Some account of our vessel and crew will not be out of place here. The
boat was about thirty-five feet in length, with a short upright mast in
the bow, supporting a lateen sail fifty feet long. Against the mast stood
a square wooden box, lined with clay, which served as a fireplace for
cooking. The middle boards of the deck were loose and allowed entrance to
the hold, where our baggage was stowed. The sailors also lifted them and
sat on the cross-beams, with their feet on the shallow keel, when they
used the oars. The cabin, which occupied the stern of the boat, was built
above and below the deck, so that after stepping down into it we could
stand upright. The first compartment contained two broad benches, with a
smaller chamber in the rear, allowing just enough room, in all, for three
persons to sleep. We spread our mats on the boards, placed carpet-bags
for pillows (first taking out the books), and our beds were made. Ibrahim
slept on the deck, against the cabin-door.
Our raïs, or captain, was an old Arab, with a black, wrinkled face, a
grizzly beard and a tattered blue robe. There were five sailors—one with
crooked eyes, one with a moustache, two copper-colored Fellahs, and one
tall Nubian, black as the Egyptian darkness. The three latter were our
favorites, and more cheerful and faithful creatures I never saw. One of
the Fellahs sang nasal love-songs the whole day long, and was always
foremost in the everlasting refrain of “_haylee-sah!_” and “_ya salaam!_”
with which the Egyptian sailors row and tow and pole their boats against
the current. Before we left the boat we had acquired a kind of affection
for these three men, while the raïs, with his grim face and croaking
voice, grew more repulsive every day.
We spread a mat on the deck, lighted our lantern and sat down to supper,
while a gentle north wind slowly carried our boat along through shadows
of palms and clear spaces of moonlight. Ibrahim filled the shebooks, and
for four hours we sat in the open air, which seemed to grow sweeter and
purer with every breath we inhaled. We were a triad—the sacred number—and
it would have been difficult to find another triad so harmonious and
yet differing so strongly in its parts. One was a _Landwirth_ from
Saxe-Coburg, a man of forty-five, tall, yet portly in person, and
accustomed to the most comfortable living and the best society in
Germany. Another was a Smyrniote merchant, a young man of thirty, to whom
all parts of Europe were familiar, who spoke eight languages, and who
within four months had visited Ispahan and the Caucasus. Of the third
it behooves me not to speak, save that he was from the New World, and
that he differed entirely from his friends in stature, features, station
in life, and every thing else but mutual goodfellowship. “Ah,” said
the German in the fulness of his heart, as we basked in the moonlight,
“what a heavenly air! what beautiful palms! and this wonderful repose in
all Nature, which I never felt before!” “It is better than the gardens
of Ispahan,” added the Smyrniote. Nor did I deceive them when I said
that for many months past I had known no mood of mind so peaceful and
grateful.
We rose somewhat stiff from our hard beds, but a cup of coffee and the
fresh morning air restored the amenity of the voyage. The banks of the
Canal are flat and dull, and the country through which we passed, after
leaving the marshy brink of Lake Mareotis, was in many places still too
wet from the recent inundation to be ploughed for the winter crops. It
is a dead level of rich black loam, and produces rice, maize, sugar-cane
and millet. Here and there the sand has blown over it, and large spaces
are given up to a sort of coarse, wiry grass. The villages are miserable
collections of mud huts, but the date-palms which shadow them and
the strings of camels that slowly pass to and fro, render even their
unsightliness picturesque. In two or three places we passed mud machines,
driven by steam, for the purpose of cleaning the Canal. Ropes were
stretched across the channel on both sides, and a large number of trading
boats were obliged to halt, although the wind was very favorable. The
barrier was withdrawn for us Franks, and the courteous engineer touched
his tarboosh in reply to our salutations, as we shot through.
Towards noon we stopped at a village, and the Asian went ashore with
Ibrahim to buy provisions, while the European walked ahead with his
fowling-piece, to shoot wild ducks for dinner. The American stayed on
board and studied an Arabic vocabulary. Presently Ibrahim appeared with
two fowls, two pigeons, a pot of milk and a dozen eggs. The Asian set
about preparing breakfast, and showed himself so skilful that our bark
soon exhaled the most savory odors. When we picked up our European he had
only two hawks to offer us, but we gave him in return a breakfast which
he declared perfect. We ate on deck, seated on a mat; a pleasant wind
filled our sails, and myriads of swallows circled and twittered over our
heads in the cloudless air. The calm, contemplative state produced by the
coffee and pipes which Ibrahim brought us, lasted the whole afternoon,
and the villages, the cane-fields, the Moslem oratories, the wide level
of the Delta and the distant mounds of forgotten cities, passed before
our eyes like the pictures of a dream. Only one of these pictures marred
the serenity of our minds. It was an Arab burying-ground, on the banks of
the Canal—a collection of heaps of mud, baked in the sun. At the head and
foot of one of the most recent, sat two women—paid mourners—who howled
and sobbed, in long, piteous, despairing cries, which were most painful
to hear. I should never have imagined that any thing but the keenest
grief could teach such heart-breaking sounds.
When I climbed the bank at sunset, for a walk, the minarets of Atfeh,
on the Nile, were visible. Two rows of acacias, planted along the
Canal, formed a pleasant arcade, through which we sailed, to the muddy
excrescences of the town. The locks were closed for the night, and we
were obliged to halt, which gave us an opportunity of witnessing an
Arabic marriage procession. The noise of two wooden drums and a sort of
fife announced the approach of the bride, who, attended by her relatives,
came down the bank from the mud-ovens above. She was closely veiled, but
the Arabs crowded around to get a peep at her face. No sooner had the
three Franks approached, than she was doubly guarded and hurried off to
the house of her intended husband. Some time afterwards I ascended the
bank to have a nearer view of the miserable hovels, but was received with
such outcries and menacing gestures, that I made a slow and dignified
retreat. We visited, however, the house of the bridegroom’s father,
where twenty or thirty Arabs, seated on the ground, were singing an
epithalamium, to which they kept time by clapping their hands.
Next morning, while our raïs was getting his permit to pass the locks
(for which four official signatures and a fee of thirty piastres
are necessary), we visited the bazaar, and purchased long tubes of
jasmine-wood for our pipes, and vegetables for our kitchen. On all such
occasions we detailed Seyd, the tall Nubian, whose ebony face shone
resplendent under a snow-white turban, to be our attendant. The stately
gravity with which he walked behind us, carrying bread and vegetables,
was worthy the pipe-bearer of a Sultan. By this time we had installed
the Asian as cook, and he very cheerfully undertook the service. We soon
discovered that the skill of Ibrahim extended no further than to the
making of a _pilaff_ and the preparation of coffee. Moreover his habits
and appearance were not calculated to make us relish his handiwork. The
naïveté with which he took the wash-basin to make soup in, and wiped
our knives and forks on his own baggy pantaloons, would have been very
amusing if we had not been interested parties. The Asian was one day
crumbling some loaf sugar with a hammer, when Ibrahim, who had been
watching him, suddenly exclaimed in a tone of mingled pity and contempt,
“that’s not the way!” Thereupon he took up some of the lumps, and wrapped
them in one corner of his long white shirt, which he thrust into his
mouth, and after crushing the sugar between his teeth, emptied it into
the bowl with an air of triumph.
A whole squadron of boats was waiting at the locks, but with Frankish
impudence, we pushed through them, and took our place in the front rank.
The sun was intensely hot, and we sweated and broiled for a full hour,
in the midst of a horrible tumult of Arabs, before the clumsy officers
closed the last gate on us and let us float forth on the Nile. It is
the western, or Canopic branch of the river which flows past Atfeh. It
is not broader than the Hudson at Albany, but was more muddy and slimy
from its recent overflow than the Mississippi at New Orleans. Its water
is no less sweet and wholesome than that of the latter river. After
leaving the monotonous banks of the Canal, the aspect of its shores,
fringed with groves of palm, was unspeakably cheerful and inspiring.
On the opposite side, the slender white minarets of Fooah, once a rich
manufacturing town, sparkled in the noonday sun. A fresh north wind from
the Mediterranean slowly pressed our boat against the strong current,
while the heavily-laden merchant vessels followed in our wake, their
two immense lateen sails expanded like the wings of the Arabian roc.
We drank to the glory of old Father Nile in a cup of his own brown
current, and then called Ibrahim to replenish the empty shebooks. Those
who object to tobacco under the form of cigars, or are nauseated by the
fumes of a German meerschaum, should be told that the Turkish pipe,
filled with Latakieh, is quite another thing. The aroma, which you inhale
through a long jasmine tube, topped with a soft amber mouth-piece, is
as fragrant as roses and refreshing as ripe dates. I have no doubt that
the atmosphere of celestial musk and amber which surrounded Mahomet,
according to the Persian Chronicles, was none other than genuine
Latakieh, at twenty piastres the oka. One thing is certain, that without
the capacity to smoke a shebook, no one can taste the true flavor of the
Orient.
An hour or two after sunset the wind fell, and for the rest of the night
our men tracked the boat slowly forward, singing cheerily as they tugged
at the long tow-rope. The Asian spread on the deck his Albanian capote,
the European his ample travelling cloak, and the representatives of three
Continents, travelling in the fourth, lay on their backs enjoying the
moonlight, the palms, and more than all, the perfect silence and repose.
With every day of our journey I felt more deeply and gratefully this
sense of rest. Under such a glorious sky, no disturbance seemed possible.
It was of little consequence whether the boat went forward or backward,
whether we struck on a sand-bar or ploughed the water under a full
head of wind; every thing was right. My conscience made me no reproach
for such a lazy life. In America we live too fast and work too hard, I
thought: shall I not know what Rest is, once before I die? The European
said to me naïvely, one day: “I am a little surprised, but very glad,
that no one of us has yet spoken of European politics.” Europe! I had
forgotten that such a land existed: and as for America, it seemed very
dim and distant.
Sometimes I varied this repose by trying to pick up the language.
Wilkinson’s Vocabulary and Capt. Hayes’s Grammar did me great service,
and after I had tried a number of words with Ibrahim, to get the
pronunciation, I made bolder essays. One day when the sailors were
engaged in a most vociferous discussion, I broke upon them with: “What
is all this noise about? stop instantly!” The effect was instantaneous;
the men were silent, and Seyd, turning up his eyes in wonder, cried
out: “_Wallah!_ the Howadji talks Arabic!” The two copper-faced Fellahs
thought it very amusing, and every new word I learned sufficed to set
them laughing for half an hour. I called out to a fisherman, seated on
the bank: “O Fisherman, have you any fish?” and he held up a string of
them and made answer: “O Howadji, I have.” This solemn form of address,
which is universal in Arabic, makes the language very piquant to a
student.
During our second night on the river, we passed the site of ancient Saïs,
one of the most renowned of Egyptian cities, which has left nothing but
a few shapeless mounds. The country was in many places still wet from
the inundation, which was the largest that had occurred for many years.
The Fellahs were ploughing for wheat, with a single buffalo geared
to a sharp pole, which scratched up the soil to the depth of three
inches. Fields of maize and sugar-cane were frequent, and I noticed also
some plantations of tobacco, millet, and a species of lupin, which is
cultivated for its beans. The only vegetables we found for sale in the
villages, were onions, leeks and tomatoes. Milk, butter and eggs are
abundant and very good, but the cheese of the country is detestable. The
habitations resemble ant-hills, rather than human dwellings, and the
villages are dépôts of filth and vermin, on the most magnificent scale.
Our boat was fortunately free from the latter, except a few cockroaches.
Except the palm and acacia, without which a Nile journey would lose half
its attractions, I saw few trees. Here and there stood a group of superb
plane-trees, and the banana sometimes appeared in the gardens, but there
is nothing of that marvellous luxuriance and variety of vegetation which
is elsewhere exhibited in the neighborhood of the Tropics.
On the evening of the third day we reached the town of Nadir, and, as
there was no wind, went ashore for an hour or two. There was a café on
the bank—a mud house, with two windows, adorned with wooden frames,
carved in the Moorish style. A divan, built of clay and whitewashed,
extended along one side of the room, and on this we seated ourselves
cross-legged, while the host prepared the little coffee-cups and filled
the pipes. Through the open door we saw the Nile, gleaming broadly under
the full moon, and in the distance, two tall palm-trees stood clearly
against the sky. Our boatmen, whom we had treated to _booza_, the
Egyptian beer, sat before us, and joined in the chorus of a song, which
was sung to entertain us. The performers were three women, and a man who
played a coarse reed flute. One of the women had a tambourine, another a
small wooden drum, and the third kept time by slapping the closed fingers
of the right hand on the palm of the left. The song, which had a wild,
rude harmony that pleased me, was followed by a dance, executed by one of
the women. It was very similar to the fandango, as danced by the natives
of the Isthmus of Panama, and was more lascivious than graceful. The
women, however, were of the lowest class, and their performances were
adapted to the taste of the boatmen and camel-drivers, by whom they are
patronized.
The next day the yellow hills of the Libyan Desert, which in some places
press the arable land of the Delta even to the brink of the Nile,
appeared in the west. The sand appeared to be steadily advancing towards
the river, and near Werdan had already buried a grove of acacias as
high as their first branches. The tops were green and flourishing above
the deluge, but another year or two would overwhelm them completely. We
had a thick fog during the night, and the following day was exceedingly
hot though the air was transparent as crystal. Our three faces were
already of the color of new bronze, which was burned into the skin by
the reflection from the water. While my friends were enjoying their
usual afternoon repose, a secret presentiment made me climb to the roof
of our cabin. I had not sat there long, before I descried two faint
blue triangles on the horizon, far to the south. I rudely broke in upon
their indolence with a shout of “the Pyramids!” which Seyd echoed with
“_El-hàram Faraoon!_” I was as much impressed with the view as I expected
to be, but I completely nullified the European’s emotion by translating
to him Thackeray’s description of his first sight of those renowned
monuments.
The same evening we reached the northern point of the Delta, where we
were obliged to remain all night, as the wind was not sufficiently strong
to allow us to pass the _Barrage_. Singularly enough, this immense work,
which is among the greatest undertakings of modern times, is scarcely
heard of out of Egypt. It is nothing less than a damming of the Nile,
which is to have the effect of producing two inundations a year, and
doubling the crops throughout the Delta. Here, where the flood divides
itself into two main branches, which find separate mouths at Damietta
and Rosetta, an immense dam has not only been projected, but is far
advanced toward completion. Each branch will be spanned by sixty-two
arches, besides a central gateway ninety feet in breadth, and flanked
by lofty stone towers. The point of the Delta, between the two dams,
is protected by a curtain of solid masonry, and the abutments which it
joins are fortified by towers sixty or seventy feet in height. The piers
have curved breakwaters on the upper side, while the opposite parapet
of the arches rises high above them, so that the dam consists of three
successive terraces, and presents itself like a wedge, against the force
of such an immense body of water. The material is brick, faced with
stone. When complete, it is intended to close the side-arches during low
water, leaving only the central gateway open. By this means sufficient
water will be gained to fill all the irrigating canals, while a new
channel, cut through the centre of the Delta, will render productive a
vast tract of fertile land. The project is a grand one, and the only
obstacle to its success is the light, porous character of the alluvial
soil on which the piers are founded. The undertaking was planned and
commenced by M. Linant, and has since been continued by other engineers.
The Egyptian boatmen have reason to complain of the Barrage. The main
force of the river is poured through the narrow space wherein the piers
have not yet been sunk, which cannot be passed without a strong north
wind. Forty or fifty boats were lying along the shore, waiting the
favorable moment. We obtained permission from the engineer to attach
our boat to a large government barge, which was to be drawn up by a
stationary windlass. As we put off, the wind freshened, and we were
slowly urged against the current to the main rapid, where we were
obliged to hold on to our big friend. Behind us the river was white
with sails—craft of all kinds, pushed up by the wind, dragged down by
the water, striking against each other, entangling their long sails and
crowding into the narrow passage, amid shouts, cries and a bewildering
profusion of Arabic gutturals. For half an hour, the scene was most
exciting, but thanks to the windlass, we reached smoother water, and
sailed off gayly for Cairo.
The true Nile expanded before us, nearly two miles in width. To the
south, the three Pyramids of Gizeh loomed up like isolated mountain-peaks
on the verge of the Desert. On the right hand the Mokattam Hills lay
red and bare in the sunshine, and ere long, over the distant gardens of
Shoobra, we caught sight of the Citadel of Cairo, and the minarets of the
mosque of Sultan Hassan. The north wind was faithful: at three o’clock we
were anchored in Boulak, paid our raïs, gave the crew a backsheesh, for
which they kissed our hands with many exclamations of “_taïb!_” (good!)
and set out for Cairo.