_Up the Nile in a Sail-Boat--Starting for the Cataracts--Advantages of a Drago man--A Tricky Lot--Frauds on Travellers--Our
Party--Rather Cosmopolitan--Getting Ahead of Mr. Cook--Our Little Game, and How it Worked--A Bath with Spectators--Decidedly
Cool--Getting Aground--A Picturesque Landscape--Last Glimpse of the Pyramids--Spending Night on Shore--Among the Ruins of
Memphis--The Wonders of Egyptian Art--What Marriette Bey Discovered--Laying Bare a Mysterious Sepulchre--Ancient Egyptian
Worship--Sacred Bulls and Beetles--A History Written in Stone--Bricks Made by the Israelites._
A JOURNEY to Egypt without a trip up the Nile is something like Hamlet without the melancholy Dane. Time and money are the
insignificant requisites for the excursion, and it is necessary to be pretty well provided with both, in order to make the journey a
comfortable one.
The proper way to do the Nile trip is in a sail boat or _dahabeeah_, as it is called there; this is the way that most travellers
have made it, and the way in which all were obliged to make it until a few years ago, when steamers were introduced. For a
_dahabeeah_ voyage you must be prepared to take your own time, and not be restricted to getting back to Cairo at a certain date,
unless you make that date so far distant as to cover all contingencies. You can hire the boat by the day or by the course; either
way is not altogether satisfactory, as I have heard that no matter which mode you select, you will afterwards advise intending
voyagers to take the other. If you go by the day, it is for the {530}interest of the boatman to be on the river as long as possible,
and he will invent all sorts of excuses for delays.
[Illustration: 0545]
If you go by the course, you are hurried along as fast as he can crowd you, and if you wish to stop at a place while ascending the
river, he will make a variety of objections to your doing so, unless there is an adverse wind or some other cause to prevent the
advance of the boat. Most travellers charter the boat by the course, and, all things considered, this is the best plan,--with
a stipulation for a certain number of days for stoppages at various points. From fourteen to twenty days delay are the ordinary
stipulation, and the whole journey can be made from Cairo to the First Cataract and back in about fifty days. Three weeks must be
added if the trip is prolonged to the Second Cataract. These periods are approximations, as the trip has been made to the First
Cataract and back inside of forty, and in excess of eighty days, and to the Second inside of sixty, and beyond a hundred.
A few years ago the Egyptian government placed some steamers on the Nile, and arranged to run them to the First Cataract {531}and
back at stated intervals during the winter season. For a sailboat journey, much preparation is required, as you must hire a boat,
stock it with provisions, engage a dragoman, and do a variety of things before you start, and the preparations will take from a week
to a fortnight, according to circumstances. Sometimes a dragoman will take you for a stipulated sum per day, and supply you with
boat and everything, but in this case you can be sure that you will not be well supplied, unless you pay a high price.
With the steamboat trip you have no trouble at all; you have only to buy your ticket, and go on board at the appointed time; you are
fed, lodged, furnished with guides and donkeys, told when to admire, and how much you can admire, and have a given number of days,
hours, and minutes in which to do everything. If no accident happens, you will be back in Cairo twenty days and five hours from
the time of your departure, and will have been put through the Nile trip, as though you were a trunk or a bale of goods. You have
a printed programme of the places to be visited, and of the time to be devoted to each, and also of the sights at each of those
places. You are instructed not to stray from the party, but to follow the dragoman and observe the orders he gives.
There is in London a man, named Cook, who has been for a quarter of a century or more a dealer in excursion tickets for England
and the Continent. A few years ago he extended his excursion business to the East, and latterly he has extended it to America, and
around the globe. He has a rival named Gaze, and they are very savage on each other. Gaze says (in polite phraseology) that Cook is
a liar, and Cook (in equally polite phraseology) says Gaze is a liar.
I have read both their pamphlets, and have come to the conclusion, when perusing their personal anathemas, that they both tell the
truth.
Cook sells tourist and single tickets for almost everywhere, and Gaze does likewise. To travel on one of the tourist tickets is
beautiful in theory, but to me, at least, a great nuisance in practice. I always avoid the tourist tickets when I can, but sometimes
you find a line of transit monopolized by one of these enterprising agents, and are obliged to take his ticket or not go {532}at
all. Cook has managed to obtain the appointment of sole and exclusive, agent for the Nile steamers, and consequently the traveller
who cannot spare the time and money for a _dahabeeah_ journey, must patronize Cook.
To ascend by sail-boat to the First Cataract, and return to Cairo, will cost two persons about fifteen hundred dollars, and four
persons about two thousand dollars. To go to the Second Cataract will cost about five hundred more in each case. If the party is
larger, the charge is somewhat lower for each person. For these figures one can get a large, well-fitted boat, and be entitled to
live with every possible comfort; lower rates can be made for smaller boats, and less luxury; the best terms I heard of when I
was in Egypt, were sixty-five Napoleons (two hundred and sixty dollars gold) each for a party of five to the First Cataract, and
allowing them fourteen days for stoppages on the return trip. I was several times offered a contract at seventy or eighty Napoleons
each, for a party of five or six to the First Cataract, and for a hundred Napoleons each, to the Second. But this was late in the
season (early in January), in fact too late to have a reasonable chance of reaching the Second Cataract. To go there, one should
start in the latter part of November, or early in December, and for the First Cataract one should start in December. Early in the
season the prices are high; later on they are more reasonable, as the dragomen and owners of boats begin to be doubtful of securing
an engagement.
The price by steamer is forty-six pounds sterling, including everything except saddles for donkey-riding and one or two
insignificant items, which rouse the temper much more than they deplete the purse. After you have paid an exorbitantly high price,
and are told that it includes everything, you are then told that you must pay five shillings extra for a saddle, and eight shillings
for a chair; then when you reach the First Cataract, you are told it will cost from two to five shillings more to see the cataract,
although the advertisement specially says “The ticket includes the trip to the First Cataract and back.” These petty frauds are of
course inseparable from the tourist business, as I never yet knew of a person who had bought a ticket to include everything who was
not called on to pay something more. The nearest one can {533}come to it, is on an ocean steamer, and on some of the river boats
in America, but even there you are liable to be bled considerably in the course of your journey. You are sometimes very forcibly
reminded of the story of the traveller, who said that the terms of a certain hotel out west were four dollars per day, with meals
and lodging extra.
We were a party of thirty persons altogether, and included six nationalities,--American, English, French, German, Danish, and
Italian.
Every place on the boat was occupied, and there might have been a dozen more, had there been any place to put them in. The boats
leave every two weeks from the first of December to the end of March, and if at any time there are passengers enough to fill an
extra boat, one is sent off.
Three o’clock was the hour for starting, so we left the hotel at two, sending our luggage on a _charette_, and taking donkeys, (for
ourselves,) to the landing.
Gustave and I thought we would get ahead of Mr. Cook a little, by taking our own wine along, as the wines on the boat were extra,
and sold at a very high price, and we found that we would save about fifty per cent, by taking wine from the shop, and paying Cook
a shilling a bottle, the advertised price for corkage. So we bought three cases and put them with our baggage, but they were stopped
on the deck of the steamer, by the Chief Steward of the line, who said he would examine the wine, fix a price upon it, and then
charge us fifty per cent, on its value. We had about five minutes of very lively talk, which ended in our triumph, as we had taken
care to bring a copy of the advertisement, with the proper paragraph ready marked for inspection.
It turned out that Cook had bought a large quantity of wine from the steamboat company, at the time he took charge of the business,
and was anxious to sell it. Under such circumstances it was very natural that he should object to a passenger supplying himself
with wine to drink on the voyage. It reminded me of the enterprise of train boys on American railways who neglect to fill the
water-coolers in the cars, in order that they may be able to assuage the thirst of passengers, by selling them lemonade at five or
ten cents a glass. {534}Of course there were some passengers who came late, so that we were not off until half an hour beyond the
appointed time. We amused ourselves, while waiting, by watching the movements of the people on shore. Troops of women and girls came
down to the river to fill water jars, which they poised on their heads and then carried away. Occasionally a man came down to fill
a pig-skin, and I observed that the men never carried water in anything else than a pig or goat-skin, while the women as invariably
carried it in jars. In several places, men and women, some of them very scantily dressed, were washing clothes in the river, and
some of the water for drinking purposes was scooped up unpleasantly near the scene of their operations. One man came to the bank
about twenty feet from the stern of our boat, removed his garments, and took a bath with as much _sang froid_ as if he were the only
person present.
The human form divine, without superfluous adornment or encumbrance, is a frequent object in an Egyptian landscape. A student of
living figures, _a la nature_, would here find a good field for his observations.
We had not been ten minutes under way before there was an alarm of fire, and the boat was stopped. It was nothing very serious, only
the awning over the upper deck had taken fire from a spark from the chimney, and a hole about six inches across was burned in the
canvas. A little while afterward we went aground, but we did not stick there long; half an hour later there was something wrong
about the engine, and we had to run to the shore. None of these things wasted much time, but they didn’t promise well for the
future. Luckily, however, they were the only events of the kind in the voyage, except that we went aground occasionally, and the bad
beginning proved like many other similar affairs in life, a good ending.
We steamed past the city, watching the grey walls of Cairo, the domes and minarets of the mosques, the palaces and hovels, the
gardens of the Island of Roda, the building containing the famous Nilometer, the green fields of the valley, the glistening sands
of the desert, the yellow hills of the Mokattam, bounding the Lybian waste, the palm-trees stippled here and there, singly and in
clusters, the _dahabecahs_, with their long-sloping sails and {535}their trim and jaunty appearance, the native boats sunk deep with
cargoes of food destined for digestion in the great stomach of the city, the camels and donkeys and buffaloes, on the bank of the
river the half-dressed or almost undressed natives working the _shadoofs_ to raise water for irrigating the land, the groups of
natives scattered here and there at work or lazily idling away their time, and over all, the clear sky of Egypt, with scarcely a
touch of color and with no mist or haze to keep back the rays of the sun. Away to the west were the pyramids of Gizeh, and south of
them were the pyramids of Sakkarah, among the burning sands and overlooking the site of Memphis. Eastward were the hills that border
the Lybian desert, and in the north was the spreading valley of the Nile. As we steamed on, the broad valley disappeared, and the
hills seemed to shut in close upon the river. The great pyramids grew faint in the distance, and when the sun went down, they were
just perceptible through the tops of the palm-trees.
We stopped for the night at Badresheyn, a village about fifteen miles above Cairo; we were to lie there until daylight, as these
steamers do not run at night. From this point passengers on the _dahabeeahs_ generally make an excursion to the site of Memphis, and
to the Apis Mausoleum.
As for Memphis there is very little of it. A half buried statue lying on its face is shown you, and there are a few substructions
and some heaps of ruins. There are some statues and statuettes in the Museum at Cairo, that were discovered at Memphis, and i the
sites of two temples have been traced. I went to Memphis with a party early in January, and at that time the water was so high
that most of the famous statue was invisible. This statue was originally about fifty feet high, and hewn from a single block of
limestone; it stood in front of a temple and is supposed to be the one mentioned by Herodotus. Memphis was used as a quarry for
supplying stone for the construction of Cairo, and hence the disappearance of the ancient city.
The ride from here to the Apis Mausoleum, or Serapeum as it is frequently called, is partly through a grove of palm trees and partly
through the desert. This was only recently discovered, and rather curiously we are indebted to a passage in Strabo, for {536}the
mention of its site. M. Mariette, conservator of the Monuments of Ancient Egypt, found it in 1860, by one day discovering the head
of a sphinx in the sand, and beneath the head was the body. Mariette then thought of a passage in Strabo which says, “There is also
a Serapeum in a very sandy spot where drifts of sand are raised by the wind to such a degree that we saw some sphinxes buried up to
their heads and others half buried.”
Mariette took this as a clue and went to work. The labor was most discouraging as the sand kept falling in almost as fast as it was
taken out. An avenue six hundred feet long was cleared out, and sometimes it was necessary to dig the trench sixty or seventy
feet deep. A hundred and fifty sphinxes were discovered, besides the pedestals of many others. The foundations of the temple were
discovered and laid bare; many statues were found, and at last in 1861 the Apis Mausoleum or Burial place of the Sacred Bulls was
opened. The avenue and the foundations of the temple are again covered with sand, and so is a portion of the Mausoleum, but the most
interesting part is still kept open.
We left our donkeys at the house where M. Mariette lived during the excavation, and accompanied an Arab guide to the tomb. Entering
through a door and descending some steps, we were in the vaults, which consist of parallel galleries, each more than two hundred
yards long and united at the ends. The galleries are hewn out of the solid rock, and were evidently cut with great care, but there
is nothing very remarkable about them. The wonderful feature of the place is the stone coffins in which the sacred bulls were
buried. There are twenty-four of them in recesses, on the sides of the galleries, but never opposite each other, and they are about
the heaviest things in the coffin line that anybody has ever seen. They vary a little in size, but the average may be taken at
thirteen feet long, seven feet six inches wide, and eleven feet high.
Now stop and think before you go on; stop and think how large a room it would take to hold one of these coffins; well, each coffin
is one solid piece of granite, from the quarries at Assouan, five hundred and eighty miles up the Nile, and is finished as nicely as
you ever saw anything in the granite line. Four or five persons can sit comfortably inside, and one of them contains the
{537}
[Illustration: 0552]
{539}table and chairs where the Empress Eugenie, and the Prince and Princess of Wales took lunch when they came here. The lid of
each coffin is in proportion to the rest of the work, and like it is of a single piece of granite. An effort was made a few years
ago to remove one of the coffins, but it was unsuccessful.
The Egyptians knew some things that we don’t. We can’t move these stone coffins; they moved them along the Nile nearly six hundred
miles, and from the East to the West bank, and put them in these galleries underground and exactly in the recesses where they wanted
them, and they used them as the burial places of the sacred bulls of Memphis; the bulls that they worshipped as the incarnation of
divinity.
All the region around here was a burial place, and many excavations have been made among the tombs. Thousands of mummies have been
found, and doubtless thousands more might be discovered if further researches were made. It is four thousand years since some of
these mummied gentlemen were pickled and preserved, and they have kept well; you may find them to-day as fresh as when they were
planted, and they reflect creditably upon the mummy-sharps that put them up, and also upon the wonderfully dry climate of Egypt. I
half suspect that the climate is responsible for the religious faith of the ancient Egyptians, and particularly for that part of it
which bade them bestow so much care upon their tombs and the preservation of the body.
Had their climate been like that of London or New York, they would have constructed a different religion, as they would have known
they could not successfully carry out the mummy part of it.
Not far from the Bull-Pits, as they are irreverently called, is a portion of a tomb of a very early date, which is known as the Tomb
of Tih. The body of Mr. Tih was buried in the rock below, and the portion now visible is the entrance chamber to the establishment.
The interesting feature about it is the mass of sculptures and paintings on the walls. Most of them are done in low relief, and very
well done too. The drawing and execution show great artistic skill, and some of the groups evince a knowledge of perspective. The
scenes represented are supposed to be incidents in the life of Tih; they represent him at home and in the field, and also at the
chase. {540}Tih was a priest who lived at Memphis about the Vth dynasty of the ancient empire; that is to say, about thirty-seven
hundred years before Christ, or fifty-six hundred years ago. We wont be particular about a year or two. He is dead now, or at all
events they buried him here. To describe all the scenes pictured on the walls of this tomb, would keep me writing for a week,
and then I shouldn’t be through. In some of them Tih is hunting crocodiles and hippopotami; in others he is looking on, while his
servants till the fields; in others he is superintending the building of a wall; and so on through all the incidents of a life of
that period. The life of the Ancient Empire can be studied from the pictures on this and other tombs of the locality, and we can
learn what they did and how they did it, what animals they used, and what most delighted them to engage in. Some of the pictures on
the Tomb of Tih have a comic touch about them, and show that there was fun even so far back as fifty-six centuries ago.
There is one picture which shows some donkeys, brought up to be laden, and they are raising their heels in a miscellaneous sort of
a way, and making things rather lively for those who are trying to control them. In another picture, where some men are fishing, one
has fallen from the boat, and his friends are pulling him out of the mud. In another, a man has evidently been pulling at a rope,
which has broken, and left him to fall in an attitude which is decidedly comical.
Evidently Tih was no slouch. He got up his tomb regardless of expense, and made it the best of the kind. The Egyptians often spent
more money on their tombs than on their houses; they considered that they were only temporary occupants of their houses, but that
the tomb was to be their eternal dwelling place. The tomb was the real home, and hence the effort to surround the occupant with the
scenes he had witnessed on earth.
One of the pyramids of Sakkarah is built in degrees or terraces, is nearly two hundred feet high, and, next to Gizeh, is the largest
of the pyramids. It is supposed to belong to the period of the First Dynasty of the Ancient Empire, and to be the oldest monument,
not only in Egypt, but in the whole world. According to several archaeologists, it was erected five thousand years {541}before
Christ. It is built, not of stone, but of sun-dried brick, and though portions of it had crumbled, they have not altered the general
appearance of the pyramid. Could you wish for better evidence of the preservative qualities of the climate of Egypt? This pyramid
was opened in 1825, but nothing of consequence was found in it. I had had quite enough of climbing at Gizeh, and therefore did not
attempt to ascend here, and I have not heard of any other person trying to climb it.
Some of the archaeologists say that the bricks of which this pyramid is composed were made by the Israelites, during their
captivity. I shouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. I certainly don’t know that the bricks were _not_ made by them.
[Illustration: 0556]
{542}
[Illustration: 0557]
CHAPTER XLIII--LIFE ON THE BANKS OF THE NILE.--COPTS, JUGGLERS, AND THIEVES.--AMUSING EXPERIENCES.
_Through an Arab village--Creating a Sensation--The “Doubter” alarmed--The li Professor perpetrates a hoax--The Egyptian
Saratoga--An Oriental Post-Office--A queer Town--Specimens of Ancient Art--A wooden statue three thousand years old--A Coptic
Convent--“Backsheesh, Howadji!”--Carrying money in their I mouths--Sturdy Beggars--An expert Swimmer--The Copts, who are
they?--Skilful swindlers--Sugar Mills on the banks of the Nile--Egyptian Jugglers--A Snake-Charmer--Adroit Thieves--A Melancholy
Experience in Donkey-riding._
I WAS up early on the first morning out from Cairo, and found the sun rising through a thin mist, which cleared away very speedily.
Our dragoman went ashore to get a supply of milk for the breakfast table, from the village opposite, and Gustave and I followed him,
and were soon in a tangle of narrow lanes, that were very crooked and would greatly puzzle a stranger to find his way among them.
Three or four times we brought up into _culs-de-sac_, or blind alleys, and had to force our way back and try again. Dogs barked and
children gathered around us, and some buffalo cows took fright at the apparition of a couple of Europeans and fled into one of the
houses. Chickens on a house top flew away, as if we had come to eat them, and some of the Arabs came out with expressions on their
faces the reverse of pleasant, Evidently we had created a sensation, but not a very agreeable one.
The milk was soon obtained, and we obeyed the warning whistle and went on board. The voyage through the day was {543}not specially
interesting, as there are no ruins of interest on this part of the river, and the banks are rather monotonous. One hour was much
like another, and the sights were nearly the same--crumbling banks, shadoofs, donkeys, camels and Arabs, sand-bars and islands, palm
trees fringing the horizon or standing out in front of the grey hills of the desert, the sandy waste in the distance, and the river,
covered more or less thickly with Arab boats.
These boats, when laden, were sunk rather deeply, and boards were placed along the sides to prevent the water breaking over. The
“Doubter” was puzzled to know why they always put these boards at the sides of the boats. The Professor (this was the name we
sometimes gave to Gustave) came to his relief with the following explanation:
“The Nile rises every year, and they put these boards up while the river is high to prevent the water coming into the boats, just as
they build up the banks to keep the fields from being drowned out.”
The “Doubter” was satisfied for a moment, but only for a moment.
“But will the boats float on the water, whether the river is high or low,” he asked, “and if they do, what is the use of the
side-boards at one time more than another?”
The Professor was equal to the emergency, and explained that the rise of the river was so rapid, and the boats were so slow in their
motion, that the flood frequently overtook and swamped them. There was no further conversation on this topic.
One of the points passed early in the morning was Helwan, which contains some remarkable springs of sulphur. They were known to the
early Egyptians, and it is recorded that one of the kings used to send leprous persons there, in the hope of curing them, or, at all
events, of separating them from the rest of the people. They have been quite neglected in later times, until a few years ago, when
their virtues were discovered and a bathhouse and hotel were erected there. They are much visited by Europeans and Turks, and some
persons have been benefited by them. An omnibus runs there twice a week from Cairo, and much of the time the hotel is full. The
place is in the desert, {544}a little distance from the river, and the absence of shade trees, grass, or anything of the sort, makes
the spot rather dreary for a lengthened stay. But the place is gradually growing fashionable, and when it becomes the _mode_ to go
there I fancy they will have more hotels and society enough to make the time pass without too much stupidity.
In the afternoon we reached Beni-Soef, and took a stroll through the town, which has a population of about five thousand, and can
boast of a fairly-stocked bazaar. We saw nothing of importance in our walk that we had not already seen at Cairo. I strayed from the
party and hired a boy to direct me to the post-office, where I posted a letter for America. The place was closed, but luckily I had
the proper stamps on the letter, so that there was nothing to do beyond dropping the missive into the box.
The Egyptian postal department is quite well managed; the postmaster general is an Italian, and the most of his employés are of his
nationality. The office at Cairo is in a large building, specially erected for it, and you have no trouble in finding the delivery
windows and in obtaining the proper stamps, when you want them. They pay great attention to the delivery of letters to foreigners,
and a placard in all the hotels informs persons about to ascend the Nile, that by leaving their addresses at the office, they
can have their mail matter forwarded to any point on, the river they may designate. The steamboats carry letters to parties on
dahabeeahs, and several times the boat was stopped to deliver such parcels.
The pyramid of Meidoon in this vicinity is supposed to be older than any of the pyramids of Gizeh, as it was probably erected by the
predecessor of Cheops. All around it are tombs, and some of them have been explored with the most gratifying results. In one of them
two stone statues, in perfect preservation, were found in 1872, and are now in the Museum at Cairo.
They belong to the Hid Dynasty, and are consequently more than six thousand years old. The work on them is admirable, and they are
evidently likenesses, and excellent ones too. The eyes are made of crystal, with a piece of black porphyry for the pupils, and this
combination gives them a remarkably life-like
{545}
[Illustration: 0560]
{547}appearance. I have several times lingered in front of them in admiration of their excellence, and one day, while I was standing
there, the director of the museum said:
“You should see them late in the afternoon, when the slanting rays of light fall upon them; they sometimes look as if ready to step
out and speak, and seem much more human than inanimate.”
The art of sculpture has not advanced as much as many persons imagine.
There is in the museum another statue of about the same age, but it is made of wood; it represents a man standing erect, and is
about half the natural size, and as life-like as any piece of work that ever issued from a Greek or Roman studio. Its eyes are
inserted within a closing covering of bronze, which serves for the lids; the eye itself consists of opaque, white quartz, with a
piece of rock crystal in the centre, as a pupil; there is a glittering point beneath this crystal, so that the resemblance to
life is almost perfect. The head and body are remarkably well executed, and evidently the figure is a good likeness of the person
represented, who was not a king, or a divinity, but simply a _sheik-el-beled_, or village chief. The statue was complete when found,
with the exception of the feet, which have been supplied, to enable the figure to be placed on a pedestal. Originally, the statue
was covered with a slight coating of stucco, painted red and white, but this is nearly gone now.
On a bluff, on the east bank of the river, there is a Coptic convent, many of whose inmates are accustomed to visit passing
boats, and beg for “backsheesh.” We had a visit from them; the first that was known of their coming was by a rush of two or three
passengers to the after part of the steamer. They were followed by all the others then on deck, and the cause of the movement was
seen in the small boats, which we towed astern.
A tall, muscular fellow, perfectly nude, was standing there and gesticulating to the passengers with the explanation, “backsheesh,
howadji; ana Chritiané” (“a present, gentlemen, I am a Christian.”)
His dress, or the absence of it, caused the ladies to make a precipitate retreat, and to fall again to their reading, with {548}an
appearance of deep absorption. Soon another beggar joined the fellow, and we tossed a few coppers into the boat. They took the money
in their mouths, as they had no other way of carrying it, and one of them got so much copper that it nearly strangled him. About a
dozen made the attempt to board the steamer, and more than half of them succeeded. Remember that the steamer was going at full speed
against the stream and you will wonder how they got on board. I watched one fellow, and here is his mode of operations.
These men swim, not after the Occidental manner, but with a hand-over-hand motion, analagous to the swimming of a dog. When a man
wanted to board the steamer, he took a position near her supposed track, so that when she passed him the wheels were not more than a
yard from his head. The instant the wheel had gone by, he struck out most vigorously towards the stern of the steamer, and by great
effort was able to climb into the small boat, towing behind us. Formerly they came on the steamer itself, and rendered it necessary
for the ladies to retreat to the cabins, but at present they can come no further than the small boats.
The Copts are supposed to be the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, but they have become so mixed with the Arabs and others, that
it is hard to say what they are. They form about one-sixteenth of the population, and the most of them are Christians; the name is
generally applied only to the Christian natives, but there are many Copts who are Mohammedans.
Their ancient language is almost lost; it is used in the churches for reading the prayers, in the same way that the Catholics use
Latin, and the Russians the Slavonic. Their language in daily life is the Egyptian Arabic of the rest of the country; as a rule,
they are better educated than the rest of the people, and are extensively employed as clerks and bookkeepers, not only in shops, but
in various government offices. They have a cleaner and better kept appearance on the whole than the Moslem Arabs, and some of
them are such great rascals, and show so much skill in swindling, as to indicate considerable familiarity with the principles of
civilization.
The Copts were among the earliest converts to Christianity, {549}but they embraced heretical doctrines, which received the
denunciation of the Church in the sixth century. Several of their churches may be seen in the Fostal quarter of Cairo.
We passed in this part of the river a great many sugar-mills, most of them in full operation, as it was then the proper season of
the cane-harvest. The boat stopped at Minieh long enough to allow us to visit one of these mills.
[Illustration: 0564]
The mill is on a grand scale, the machinery for crushing the cane and reducing the piece to sugar is all of French manufacture,
and is of the most perfect character. I was unable to ascertain what amount of sugar is made there, or at the other points, but the
product ought to be very large, to judge by the size of the mills and their number. The mill at Minieh covers a large area, and is
so arranged that from the time the cane enters {550}the crushers until the dry sugar is ready, there is no occasion for lifting or
handling the material, except in a few instances. The sugar culture ought to pay a handsome profit, but I was told that it is really
a loss, and that the Khedive would gladly sell it out to private parties. The cause of this unprofitableness is due, I was told,
to the frauds of the managers of the mills. Such a state of affairs is not confined to Egypt alone; there are many countries where
government factories have been run at a loss, but when turned into private hands, have yielded a handsome profit.
One of the great wants of Egypt is the discovery of coal. At present fuel is costly, and all the coal used in the mills and on
railways and steamers, must be imported, and, of course, at heavy expense. Explorations have been made on the upper Nile,
and elsewhere, in the hope of finding coal, but they have not yet been successful. Small deposits have been found in isolated
localities, but none that could be profitably worked. Lower Egypt does not offer much hope to the coal-searcher, but there are parts
of the Soudan where the prospect is better. A wide coal-bed, accessible from the river, so as to ensure a low cost, would be a great
boon to the country. There is very little wood for fuel, and among the peasants, dry camel-dung is extensively used.
After looking at the sugar mill, we strolled through the town of Minieh, and at the farther side, found a large crowd of people.
They were looking at a juggler, who was performing a variety of tricks, none of them specially interesting, and compelling a couple
of small boys to go through a comic dialogue, that evidently pleased the people very much, to judge by their immoderate laughter.
The fellow had a large snake, which he wound around his neck, and had taught to dance, but his snake-charming was evidently the
least of his performances.
Occasionally he allowed the snake to run on the ground, and when thus free, the reptile went around the circle with his head raised,
and created a great deal of disturbance among the boys in the front row.
The snake-charmers are a peculiar class in Egypt; they will go to houses, and for a stipulated sum, will charm snakes from the walls
or other localities, and they perform their work so well {551}that nobody has ever succeeded in detecting them in a fraud I do not
mean to say that they can find snakes where none exist; their art consists in enticing snakes that may be in a house to come out
from their concealment, and allow themselves to be put in a bag and carried away. They do this by burning a sort of incense, and
playing a doleful tune on a reed flute.
Our introduction to sight-seeing, at Beni-Hassan, in upper Egypt, was not prepossessing. There were donkeys on the bank, without
saddles or bridles, and the worst donkeys that I ever saw offered for anybody to ride. The people were as bad as the donkeys, and
presented a forlorn appearance; the inhabitants of this locality were formerly famous for their thieving propensities, and so bad
were they in this respect that Ibrahim Pasha sent a military force to destroy their village and scatter its occupants. It would not
be safe for a small-boat to lie there now over night, except with a very watchful guard. They beset us when we went on shore, and
there was a crowd around me, with a dozen donkeys offering at once. I found a donkey that was fairly decent, but, while my back was
turned, somebody else mounted him, and I was forced to take another and a poorer beast.
The donkey that I obtained must have been one of those possessed by the Beni-Hassanites when their village was destroyed by the
Pasha’s order, forty years ago, and I am not sure but that he dated from one of the dynasties of ancient Egypt. He had much less
hair than mud on his back, and I suspected that he passed his time in a mud-hole when not otherwise engaged. The saddle fitted him
in a manner fearful and wonderful to behold, and there was some doubt as to whether it touched him anywhere. When I mounted him, he
sat down in a manner perfectly natural for a dog, but not altogether so for a donkey. The result of this performance was to send
me over backwards and leave me with my shoulders on the ground and my feet in the air. I found this position inconvenient, and also
provocative of mirth in others, and therefore did not long maintain it. Even the donkey boy laughed, a proceeding which showed how
little he knew of polite society.
The next time I mounted I sat on the beast’s shoulders and prevented his sitting down. But I could not prevent his kneel{552}ing,
and I leave you to imagine the result. A regard for my personal feelings prevents my giving a detailed description of this harrowing
tale.
[Illustration: 9567]
It was nothing else, and I think I must have harrowed, with my hands, feet, and nose, not less than a square rod of land in the
vicinity of that donkey, and I also harrowed him and the donkey boy, and would have served the bystanders likewise, if they had not
been more numerous than I was. I didn’t feel a bit amiable.
At last we were off. I rode my donkey on foot most of the time, and we went along very well in this way, he walking about two yards
behind me, and very amiable and patient, while I was as cross as a man whose shirts haven’t come home from the wash-woman.
We did about six miles altogether that day, and I think I walked altogether about seven miles. To sit on him was a toil worse than
walking, and his best gait was when he was standing still. He was splendid on that part of the business, and I don’t think there was
ever a donkey that could stand stiller than he.
He was about the size of a Newfoundland dog, so that when I mounted him, my feet touched the ground on both sides. And yet he was
one of the best, or rather one of the least bad, of the lot. There were only two or three that surpassed him in personal appearance
and strength.
Not one of our party will ever forget that donkey-ride to see the “Antiquities of Egypt;” and when at last the hardships of the
journey were over, and we arrived at the Ancient Tombs--the handiwork of man centuries ago--we forgot our sore spots {553}and lame
bones, and our ill-nature gave way to curiosity and wonder at the scene around us.
These tombs, or grottos, are hewn in the solid rock, part of them on the bluff, fronting the river, and the rest in a ravine,
or valley, that runs inland from the alluvial land of the Nile. The rock is a soft limestone, not difficult to quarry, and quite
possibly when these grottos were made, the stone may have been softer than now. The excavations belong mostly to the eleventh and
twelfth dynasties, and therefore are not as old as the pyramids of Gizeh and Sakkarah, but older than the temples and monuments at
Thebes. They are old enough for all practical purposes, and are very much out of repair.
The walls are covered with paintings and inscriptions, that throw much light on the manners and customs of the time, and it would
take more space than I can spare to describe them. Among the most interesting is a series of paintings representing the arrival of
some strangers in Egypt; they were at first supposed to be Joseph and his brethren, but this can hardly be, as the tomb was made
several hundred years before Joseph’s arrival. In one of the tombs there are representations of various tradesmen at work, and among
them are barbers, shoemakers, painters tailors, glass-blowers, and goldsmiths. There are also people playing ball, wrestling, and
throwing heavy stones, and in one place a couple of patrons of the prize ring are indulging in the noble art of manly disfiguration.
The tombs, or grottos, are square or oblong chambers, cut in the rock, and the most of them are so well lighted through their
door-ways, that candles are not needed. In some instances several chambers are connected, and some of them have wells leading to
pits, below where was the real tomb. They are well above the valley, out of the reach of the highest inundations, and from their
front there is quite a pretty view. In front of some of them the rock is hewn into pillars and columns, that look at first glance as
though brought from elsewhere.
{554}
[Illustration: 0569]