VOYAGE DOWN THE NILE.
Assouan—A Boat for Cairo—English Tourists—A
Head-wind—Ophthalmia—Esneh—A Mummied Princess—Ali Effendi’s
Stories—A Donkey Afrite—Arrival at Luxor—The Egyptian Autumn—A
Day at Thebes—Songs of the Sailors—Ali leaves me—Ride to
Dendera—Head-winds again—Visit to Tahtah—The House of Rufaā Bey.
I reached the Egyptian frontier on the morning of the sixteenth of March,
having been forty days in making the journey from Khartoum. Immediately
upon our arrival, I took a donkey and rode around the Cataract to
Assouan, leaving Ali to take care of the baggage-camels. I went directly
to the beach, where a crowd of vessels were moored, in expectation of
the caravans of gum from the South. An Egyptian Bey, going to Khartoum
in the train of Rustum Pasha, had arrived the day before in a small
dahabiyeh, and the captain thereof immediately offered it to me for the
return to Cairo. It was a neat and beautiful little vessel, with a clean
cabin, couch, divan, and shady portico on deck. He asked twelve hundred
piastres; I offered him nine hundred; we agreed on a thousand, and when
my camels arrived there was a new refuge prepared for my household gods.
I set Achmet to work at getting the necessary supplies, sent the raïs
to bake bread for the voyage, and then went to see the jolly, flat-nosed
Governor. He received me very cordially, and had a great deal to say
of the unparalleled herd of travellers on the Nile during the winter.
Ninety-six vessels and eleven steamboats had reached the harbor of
Assouan, and of these the greater number were Americans. “Mashallah! your
countrymen must be very rich,” said the Governor.
When I left the divan, the firing of guns announced the safe arrival of
the English boats below the Cataract. Very soon I saw two burnt-faced,
tarbooshed individuals, with eye-glasses in their eyes, strolling up the
beach. For once I threw off the reserve which a traveller usually feels
towards every one speaking his own language, and accosted them. They
met my advances half-way, and before long my brain was in a ferment of
French and English politics. Europe was still quiet then, but how unlike
the quiet of the Orient! The Englishmen had plenty of news for me, but
knew nothing of the news I most wanted—those of my own country. Had our
positions been reversed, the result would have been different. They left
at sunset for the return to Thebes, but I was detained until noon the
next day, when I set off in company with the boat of Signor Drovetti, of
Alexandria, who left Khartoum a few days after me. I had six men, but
only two of them were good oarsmen.
In the morning, when I awoke, the broken pylon of Ombos tottered directly
over the boat. I rushed on deck in time to catch another sight of the
beautiful double portico, looking down from the drifted sands. The wind
blew very strongly from the north, but in the afternoon we succeeded
in reaching Djebel Silsileh, where the English boats were moored. We
exchanged pistol salutes, and I ran up to the bank to visit some curious
sculptured tablets and grottoes, which we did not see on the upward
voyage. During the night the wind increased to such an extent that all
the boats were obliged to lay to. The morning found our four dahabiyehs
floating slowly down in company, crossing from side to side transversely,
in order to make a little headway. After three or four hours, however,
the wind grew so strong that they were driven up stream, and all ran
to the lee of a high bank for shelter. There we lay nearly all day.
The Englishmen went ashore and shot quails, but I lounged on my divan,
unable to do any thing, for the change from the dry, hot desert air, to
the damp Nile blasts, brought on an inflammation of the eyes, resembling
ophthalmia. I was unable to read or write, and had no remedies except
water, which I tried both warm and cold, with very little effect.
Towards evening the wind fell; after dark we passed the pylon of Edfoo,
and at noon the next day reached Esneh. I went at once to the temple, so
beautiful in my memory, yet still more beautiful when I saw it again. The
boys who admitted me, lifted the lids of the large coffin and showed the
royal mummies, which are there crumbling to pieces from the neglect of
the Egyptian authorities, who dug them up at Goorneh. The coffins were
of thick plank and still sound, the wood having become exceedingly dry
and light. The mummies were all more or less mutilated, but the heads of
some were well preserved. In form, they differ considerably from the Arab
head of the present day, showing a better balance of the intellectual
and moral faculties. On one of them the hair was still fresh and
uncorrupted. It was of a fine, silky texture and a bright auburn color.
The individual was a woman, with a very symmetrical head, and small,
regular features. She may have been a beauty once, but nothing could be
more hideous. I pulled off a small lock of hair, and took it with me as a
curious relic. Esneh appeared much more beautiful to me than on my upward
journey; possibly, by contrast with the mud-built houses of Soudân. I
went to a coffee-shop and smoked a _sheesheh_, while the muezzin called
down from the mosque in front: “God is great; there is no God but God;
Mohammed is the Prophet of God.”
Ali Effendi, the agent of the _Moodir_, or Governor, came to see me and
afterwards went on board my vessel. As the wind was blowing so furiously
that we could not leave, I invited him to dinner, and in the meantime we
had a long talk on afrites and other evil spirits. I learned many curious
things concerning Arabic faith in such matters. The belief in spirits
is universal, although an intelligent Arab will not readily confess the
fact to a Frank, unless betrayed into it by a simulated belief on the
part of the latter. Ali Effendi informed me that the spirit of a man who
is killed by violence, haunts the spot where his body is buried, until
the number of years has elapsed, which he would otherwise have lived. He
stated, with the greatest earnestness, that formerly, in passing at night
over the plain between Embabeh and the Pyramids, where Napoleon defeated
the Mamelukes, he had frequently heard a confusion of noises,—cries of
pain, and agony, and wrath—but that now there were but few sounds to be
heard, as the time of service of the ghosts had for the most part expired.
One of his personal experiences with an afrite amused me exceedingly.
He was walking one night on the road from Cairo to Shoobra, when he
suddenly saw a donkey before him. As he was somewhat fatigued, and the
donkey did not appear to have an owner, he mounted, and was riding along
very pleasantly, when he was startled by the fact that the animal was
gradually increasing in size. In a few minutes it became nearly as large
as a camel; and he thereby knew that it was no donkey, but an afrite. At
first he was in such terror that the hairs of his beard stood straight
out from his face, but suddenly remembering that an afrite may be brought
to reveal his true nature by wounding him with a sharp instrument, he
cautiously drew his dagger and was about to plunge it into the creature’s
back. The donkey-fiend, however, kept a sharp watch upon him with one of
his eyes, which was turned backwards, and no sooner saw the dagger than
he contracted to his original shape, shook off his rider and whisked away
with a yell of infernal laughter, and the jeering exclamation: “Ha! ha!
you want to ride, do you?”
We had scarcely left Esneh before a fresh gale arose, and kept us tossing
about in the same spot all night. These blasts on the Nile cause a rise
of waves which so shake the vessel that one sometimes feels a premonition
of sea-sickness. They whistle drearily through the ropes, like a gale
on the open sea. The air at these times is filled with a gray haze, and
the mountain chains on either hand have a dim, watery loom, like that of
mountains along the sea-coast. For half a day I lay in sight of Esneh,
but during the following night, as there was no wind, I could not sleep
for the songs of the sailors. The sunrise touched the colonnade of Luxor.
I slept beyond my usual time, and on going out of the cabin what should
I see but my former guide, Hassan, leading down the beach the same little
brown mare on which I had raced with him around Karnak. We mounted and
rode again down the now familiar road, but the harvests whose planting I
had witnessed in December were standing ripe or already gathered in. It
was autumn in Egypt. The broad rings of clay were beaten for threshing
floors, and camels, laden with stacks of wheat-sheaves paced slowly
towards them over the stubble fields. Herds of donkeys were to be seen
constantly, carrying heavy sacks of wheat to the magazines, and the
capacious freight-boats were gathering at the towns along the Nile to
carry off the winter’s produce.
It was a bright, warm and quiet day that I spent at Thebes. The great
plain, girdled by its three mountain-chains, lay in a sublime repose.
There was no traveller there, and, as the people were expecting none,
they had already given up the ruins to their summer silence and
loneliness. I had no company, on either side of the river, but my former
guides, who had now become as old friends. We rode to Karnak, to Medeenet
Abou, to the Memnonium, and the Colossi of the Plain. The ruins had now
not only a memory for me, but a language. They no longer crushed me with
their cold, stern, incomprehensible grandeur. I was calm as the Sphinx,
whose lips no longer closed on a mystery. I had gotten over the awe of a
neophyte, and, though so little had been revealed to me, walked among the
temples with the feelings of a master. Let no one condemn this expression
as presumptuous, for nothing is so simple as Art, when once we have the
clue to her infinite meanings.
White among the many white days of my travel, that day at Thebes is
registered; and if I left with pain, and the vast regret we feel on
turning away from such spots, at least I took with me the joy that
Thebes, the mighty and the eternal, was greater to me in its living
reality than it had ever been in all the shadow-pictures my anticipation
had drawn. Nor did the faultless pillars of the Memnonium, nor the
obelisks of Karnak, take away my delight in the humbler objects which
kept a recognition for me. The horses, whose desert blood sent its
contagion into mine; the lame water-boy, always at my elbow with his
earthen bottle; the grave guides, who considered my smattering of Arabic
as something miraculous, and thence dubbed me “Taylor Effendi;” the
half-naked Fellahs in the harvest-fields, who remembered some idle joke
of mine,—all these combined to touch the great landscape with a home-like
influence, and to make it seem, in some wise, like an old resting-place
of my heart. Mustapha Achmet Aga, the English agent at Luxor, had a great
deal to tell me of the squabbles of travellers during the winter: how the
beach was lined with foreign boats and the temples crowded day after day
with scores of visitors; how these quarrelled with their dragomen, and
those with their boatmen, and the latter with each other, till I thanked
Heaven for having kept me away from Thebes at such a riotous period.
Towards evening there was a complete calm, and every thing was so
favorable for our downward voyage that I declined Mustapha’s invitation
to dine with him the next day, and set off for Kenneh. The sailors rowed
lustily, my servant Ali taking the leading oar. Ali was beside himself
with joy, at the prospect of reaching his home and astonishing his family
with his marvellous adventures in Soudân. He led the chorus with a voice
so strong and cheery that it rang from shore to shore. As I was unable
to write or read, I sat on deck, with the boy Hossayn at my elbow to
replenish the pipe as occasion required, and listened to the songs of the
sailors. Their repertory was so large that I was unable to exhaust it
during the voyage. One of their favorite songs was in irregular trochaic
lines, consisting of alternate questions and answers, such as “_ed-dookan
el-liboodeh fayn?_” (where’s the shop of the cotton caps?) sung by the
leader, to which the chorus responded: “_Bahari Luxor beshwoytayn._”
(A little to the northward of Luxor). Another favorite chorus was:
“_Imlāl-imlāl-imlālee!_” (Fill, fill, fill to me!) Many of the songs
were of too broad a character to be translated, but there were two of a
more refined nature, and these, from the mingled passion, tenderness and
melancholy of the airs to which they were sung, became great favorites of
mine.[7]
Before sunrise we reached Kenneh. Here I was obliged to stop a day to let
the men bake their bread, and I employed the time in taking a Turkish
bath and revisiting the temple of Dendera. My servant Ali left me, as his
family resided in the place. I gave him a good present, in consideration
of his service during the toilsome journey we had just closed. He kissed
my hand very gratefully, and I felt some regret at parting with, as I
believed, an honest servant, and a worthy, though wild young fellow.
What was my mortification on discovering the next day that he had stolen
from me the beautiful stick, which had been given me in Khartoum by the
Sultana Nasra. The actual worth of the stick was trifling, but the action
betrayed an ingratitude which I had not expected, even in an Arab. I
had a charming ride to Dendera, over the fragrant grassy plain, rippled
by the warm west wind. I was accompanied only by the Fellah who owned
my donkey—an amiable fellow, who told me many stories about the robbers
who used formerly to come in from the Desert and plunder the country. We
passed a fine field of wheat, growing on land which had been uncultivated
for twenty years. My attendant said that this was the work of a certain
Effendi, who, having seen the neglected field, said that it was wrong to
let God’s good ground lie idle, and so planted it. “But he was truly a
good man,” he added; “and that is the reason why the crop is so good. If
he had been a bad man, the wheat would not have grown so finely as you
see it.”
For three days after leaving Kenneh, a furious head-wind did its best to
beat me back, and in that time we only made sixty miles. I sighed when I
thought of the heaps of letters awaiting me in Cairo, and Achmet could
not sleep, from the desire of seeing his family once more. He considered
himself as one risen from the dead. He had heard in Luxor that his wife
was alarmed at his long absence, and that his little son went daily to
Boulak to make inquiries among the returning boats. Besides, my eyes were
no better. I could not go ashore, as we kept the middle of the stream,
and my only employment was to lounge on the outside divan and gossip
with the raïs. One evening, when the sky was overcast, and the wind
whirled through the palm-trees, we saw a boy on the bank crying for his
brother, who had started to cross the river but was no longer to be seen.
Presently an old man came out to look for him, in a hollow palm-log,
which rolled on the rough waves. We feared the boy had been drowned, but
not long afterwards came upon him, drifting at the mercy of the current,
having broken his oar. By the old man’s assistance he got back to the
shore in safety.
On the fourth day the wind ceased. The Lotus floated down the stream as
lightly as the snowy blossom whose name I gave her. We passed Girgeh,
Ekhmin; and at noon we brushed the foot of Djebel Shekh Hereedee and
reached the landing-place of Tahtah. I had a letter from Rufaā Bey in
Khartoum to his family in the latter town, and accordingly walked thither
through fields of superb wheat, heavy with ripening ears. Tahtah is a
beautiful old town; the houses are of burnt brick; the wood-work shows
the same fanciful Saracenic patterns as in Cairo, and the bazaar is as
quiet, dim and spicy as an Oriental dream. I found the Bey’s house, and
delivered my letter through a slave. The wife, or wives, who remained
in the hareem, invisible, entertained me with coffee and pipes, in the
same manner, while a servant went to bring the Bey’s son from school. Two
Copts, who had assisted me in finding the house, sat in the court-yard,
and entertained themselves with speculations concerning my journey, not
supposing that I understood them. “Girgos,” said one to the other, “the
Frank must have a great deal of money to spend.” “You may well say that;”
his friend replied, “this journey to Soudân must have cost him at least
three hundred purses.” In a short time the Bey’s son came, accompanied by
the schoolmaster. He was a weak, languid boy of eight or nine years old,
and our interview was not very interesting. I therefore sent the slave to
bring donkeys, and we rode back to the boat.