Moslem Worship.—Scenery of the Nile.—Fellowship with
the People.—The Temple of Dendera.—Mr. Taylor’s
Enthusiasm.—Luxor.—Karnak.—The Extent of Ancient Thebes.—The
Tombs and Statues.—The Natives.—Arrives at Assouan.—The Island
of Philæ,—Separation of the Friends.—Starts for the White
Nile.—Trip through the Desert.—Again on the Nile.—Reception by
the People and Officials.—Visits Ancient Meroe.
Mr. Taylor’s sympathy with all mankind led him to regard with sincere
respect the daily religious ceremonies which his Moslem boatmen
performed, with their faces toward Mecca. He often mentioned their
punctuality and apparent sincerity, and contrasted it with some of the
formal, half-hearted proceedings in some Christian churches. His regard
for conscientious worship, which appeared to characterize the ignorant
Arabs, appears more striking to persons who have travelled the same
route over which Mr. Taylor went, for it is so common a sight to see
bigoted, conceited Europeans ridiculing the prostrations, prayers, and
gestures of the worshippers. The writer most keenly regrets having been
compelled to witness the caricaturing of a Moslem at prayer, by a coarse,
hard-hearted, brutal Christian countryman, while the sad and shocked
believers in Mahomet stood by, scarce able to resist the temptation to
throw the Frank into the Nile. In the lovable, noble character of Mr.
Taylor, there was no inclination to ridicule the conscientious belief of
any man, and instinctively he kept silent and patiently endured the delay
when the call to prayer took his employees from their labor. In return
for his sincere regard for them, he received the love and most faithful
service of the natives. They stole nothing from him. They shielded him
from enemies and affectionately cared for his health.
Thus, with friends for boatmen, an admirer for a guide, and a most
agreeable comrade for a travelling companion, he floated along, inhaling
from every breeze the essence of health and comfort. The banks were
covered with the richest and rarest verdure, for it was the Egyptian
spring. There were luxuriant grasses, palms and sugar-cane; there
flourished wheat, cotton, maize, hemp, indigo, tobacco, oranges, olives,
and dates, springing from the richest soil which civilized man has yet
seen. Harvests came and went in confused succession; the ripe fruit
with blossom; threshing-floors piled with ripe dourra, while around,
the new wheat seeking the sunlight, betokened a bounty munificent and
inexhaustible. So prolific and speedy was the growth of the crops that
the people could not, with their rude implements, avail themselves of
the full benefits of one harvest before its rank successors forced them
to turn their labor into other channels. Then, as now, the fields, for
miles inland from the river, were checkered with canals, and the rude
water-wheel and awkward “well-sweep” were kept in constant motion to
supply the vast amount of water necessary to the irrigation of hundreds
of square miles. There were goats, mules, horses, and a variety of fowl,
and in the wild nooks a grand collection of birds of the gayest songs and
plumage. The sky was clear, the air balmy, the breezes cool and light,
the cabin of their boat was spacious, and their beds comfortable. It was
“a soothing experience for an aching heart.”
In the first week of December they arrived at Dendera, where stands in
majestic completeness one of the most ancient temples of Egypt. It has
for thousands of years been half buried in the earth, and at one time
must have been nearly hid by the shifting sands of the desert which
once surrounded the pile. The impression which the gigantic columns,
sixty feet high, and the enormous blocks of stone, eight feet thick,
gave to them, is doubtless shared in some degree by all travellers. As
he walked through the shadowy recesses, each aperture seeming like a
deep cave in a rocky mountain, he was filled with a solemn sense of awe
and sadness, which so overwhelmed him that he peered about the avenues
in silence, and involuntarily stood on tip-toe. The sombre grandeur of
the massive masonry, the sacred associations connected with the ancient
worship of Osiris and Isis, the wonderful tales of wars, tyrannies,
famines, plagues, Rameses, Moses, Pharaoh, Alexander, Ptolemy, Cambyses,
and Napoleon, which those lofty statues could tell if their symmetrical
lips could speak, awaken indescribable emotions, deep, thrilling, and
permanent. Mr. Taylor saw a grace and an artistic merit in the stone
figures, and in the hieroglyphics that adorned the temple, which few
travellers detect or admit. To many travellers the figures on those old
porches and halls seem rude and often out of proportion, and the writer
confesses to having been one of the latter class. But Mr. Taylor’s
appreciating scrutiny may be accounted for on the basis that with his
poetical instincts and thorough culture in art, there were beauties in
those works of ancient sculptors, latent to others, but apparent and
striking to him. But there is no disagreement as to the unspeakable
solemnity of the place and the gloom of its lonely halls.
The next night they reached Luxor, and caught the first glimpse of those
interesting ruins by moonlight. There, silent and stately, arose the
great Colonnade. There, quietly recalling the ancients, stood the twin
Obelisk to the one at which Mr. Taylor had often looked in the Place de
la Concorde in Paris, when as a boy he dreamed of distant Egypt. For
seven miles around the Temple of Luxor are the ruins of ancient Thebes,
within which were once the temples of Karnak, Luxor, Goorneh, Memnonium,
and hundreds more, which now cumber the otherwise fertile plains.
Thebes, with its hundred gates, with its countless armies, with its wise
men, its Colossus that sang in the morning sunlight, its avenues of
sphinxes and gods in stone, lay broken, spurned, and dead before them.
The same moon looked down on them that gazed on the priests of Isis and
the palace of its Cæsars. No one can imagine anything so solemn and grand
as to stand in the moonlight on the haunted plains of ancient Thebes!
One may have thought the Coliseum at Rome impressive beyond description
when seen in the favorable light of an autumn moon, but when compared
with Thebes it is tame and insignificant. Ages and ages before the
rape of the Sabines, these temples had been constructed. They saw the
morning of civilization; but now they are ruined and useless, the night
seems best fitted for an appreciative view of them. Among the mighty
colonnades whose columns are broken and falling, and around gigantic
remains of ancient statues carved from a mountain of stone, Mr. Taylor
wandered for two whole days. He scrutinized closely the long rows of
ancient tombs, and stood in the rocky grave of Rameses I. The pictures
on the walls of the tombs, the kind of rock, the original shape of the
temples, the employments of the ancient races, the blue sky overhead,
the clear atmosphere around, together with sketches of history and
poetical allusions, shared in the interesting letters which Mr. Taylor
wrote from Thebes. Such scenes contain an inspiration and an education
which make scholars and statesmen of such as love history and appreciate
the lessons those ruins teach. To one of Mr. Taylor’s disposition, a
visit to such a place was a privilege not to be lightly thrown away. He
investigated everything, and in a manner bordering on recklessness he
descended through small holes into dark subterranean tombs, and with
equal hardihood walked the crumbling roofs and cornices of the lofty
ruins. He looked with disgust on the evidences of spoliations which were
to be seen in splintered columns and fragments of ancient frescoes, and
which were the work of scientific explorers. He regarded with a jealous
anxiety the evidences of vandalism and decay, and wished sincerely
that time and man would allow those precious relics of the old régime
to remain forever intact. He appears to have regarded those massive
wrecks as half-human, and sympathized with their forsaken and friendless
condition.
But in all this antiquarian excitement, which usually occupies the
undivided attention of less enthusiastic travellers, Mr. Taylor
neglected not the living. He witnessed with interest the graces of the
Arabian dancing-girls, noticed the features of the beggar-boys, the
methods of teaching children the Koran, and the worn appearance of the
water-carriers.
Leaving Luxor, they spent three or four days ascending the river to
Assouan, and in visiting the villages, old temples, half-buried cities,
and gorgeously decorated tombs in the mountain-sides, which are almost
numberless in the valley of Upper Egypt. At Assouan, he was most
cordially received by the Governor and was given a friendly greeting
by all the officials he met. From that town he made several excursions
with his German friend, the most interesting of which was that to
the cataract of the Nile and the island of Philæ. There he saw the
celebrated temple of the time of the Ptolemies, which he looked upon as
modern, because it was not over twenty-two hundred years old. But he
felt sufficient interest in the ruins of the old city to describe that
marvellous colonnade which has astonished so many visitors to the island
of Philæ. The reader of his letters can detect, however, in Mr. Taylor’s
description of columns, aisles, roofs, walls, capitals, sculptures,
monoliths, and colossi, a vein of sadness which may have colored his
views. At all events the ruins of Philæ did not impress him as they seem
to have affected other visitors. The fact that he was so soon to part
with a companion for whom he felt a love like that of Jonathan for David,
may have had more or less influence upon his capacity to enjoy scenery
or the remains of antiquity: for the writer looked upon Philæ as one of
the most interesting localities of the lower Nile, and cannot but regard
the ruined temple as one of the grandest in Egypt. They visited the
fields, villages, the tombs, the ancient quarry, wherein half-sculptured
statues and columns still remain unmoved, and after a day of antiquarian
research they rode back to their boat, as he said “with heavy hearts.”
The next day came the hour of parting; and these two men, one a young
man, the other an elderly gentleman, who had been utter strangers forty
days before, now clung to each other with the sincerest brotherly love
and parted in tears. How little did Mr. Taylor think, as he saw the boat
sailing away for Cairo with the Saxe-Coburg colors at the peak, where he
had so long kept the Stars and Stripes, that they would meet again in the
sunny southern lands of Europe, and that another person would join their
company for life and make up what he termed “a sacred triad.” He thought
then that the parting might be for all time. He was going into an unknown
wilderness, while his friend sought again the lands of civilization:
it was a long time before either could dispel the gloom which their
separation left about them.
[Illustration: PHILÆ COLONNADE.]
Mr. Taylor took another boat at Assouan and proceeded to Korosko,
where, with the assistance of the Governor and a wild Arab chieftain,
whose friendship was purchased by presents and sociability, he secured
the necessary camels and outfit for a trip across the desert. It was a
hazardous undertaking for a stranger, alone, unknown, to traverse the
desert. If he was murdered, none of the authorities would care, nor
would his death become known. He might contract the terrible fever. He
was liable to be eaten by wild beasts, and he ran great risk of dying
of thirst or hunger on the hot sands of a trackless desert. The way had
been travelled many times before, but was all the more dangerous because
of the opportunity it gave robbers to lie in wait for tourists. But he
unhesitatingly entered upon the journey, trusting in the friendship of
his Nubian and Arabian servants, and in his own ability to withstand
the heat of the sands and the attacks of African fever. Camping in the
desert sands, riding a dromedary in the scorching sun, living upon
rudely prepared food, drinking lukewarm water, with the sight of bones
and carcasses by the way to warn him, and the occasional appearance of
sickly returning caravans to dishearten him, he passed that arm of the
desert between the first cataract of the Nile and Abou-Hammed. Thence
his little caravan of six camels followed the winding river to a small
town, El Mekheyref, where he dismissed his friendly companions, excepting
one, who had accompanied him from Cairo, and set sail again on the Nile.
Everywhere he was received with kindness and hospitality by the natives
and by the Governors. His servants were so much interested in his welfare
that they told the natives that he was a high official in the country
from which he came, and he was treated with the respect the Eastern
people think is due to persons of high rank. All disclaimers from him
were considered to be actuated by feelings of modesty and elevated him in
the estimation of his entertainers.
His visit to Meroe was an interesting episode in his long pilgrimage,
although he did not make such diligent search as an antiquarian among its
crumbling walls as he had done in some of the other ancient cities. Yet
his descriptions of that place are most vivid pictures and convey an idea
of the topography of the capital of that ancient kingdom in a manner most
readable to the stranger and very important to students of history.