WE have taken possession of our dahabeëh, which lies moored under
the bank, out of the current, on the west side of the river above the
bridge. On the top of the bank are some structures that seem to be only
mounds and walls of mud, but they are really “brivate houses,” and each
one has a wooden door, with a wooden lock and key. Here, as at every
other rod of the river, where the shore will permit, the inhabitants
come to fill their water-jars, to wash clothes, to bathe, or to squat on
their heels and wait for the Nile to run dry.
And the Nile is running rapidly away. It sweeps under the arches of the
bridge like a freshet, with a current of about three miles an hour. Our
sandal (the broad clumsy row-boat which we take in tow) is obliged
to aim far above its intended landing-place when we cross, and four
vigorous rowers cannot prevent its drifting rapidly down stream. The
Nile is always in a hurry on its whole length; even when it spreads over
flats for miles, it keeps a channel for swift passage. It is the only
thing that is in a hurry in Egypt; and the more one sees it the stronger
becomes the contrast of this haste with the flat valley through which it
flows and the apathetic inhabitants of its banks.
We not only have taken possession of our boat, but we have begun
housekeeping in it. We have had a farewell dinner-party on board. Our
guests, who are foreigners, declare that they did not suppose such a
dinner possible in the East; a better could not be expected in Paris. We
admit that such dinners are not common in this hungry world out of New
York. Even in New York the soup would not have been made of lentils.
We have passed a night under a mosquito net, more comfortably than on
shore to be sure, but we are anxious to get into motion and change the
mosquitoes, the flies, the fleas of Cairo for some less rapacious. It
is the seventeenth of December. We are in the bazaars, buying the last
things, when, at noon we perceive that the wind has shifted. We hasten
on board. Where is the dragoman! “Mohammed Effendi Abd-el-Atti goin'
bazaar come directly,” says the waiter. At half-past two the stout
dragoman slides off his donkey and hastens on board with all the speed
compatible with short legs, out of breath, but issuing a storm of orders
like a belated captain of a seventy-two. He is accompanied by a black
boy bearing the name of our dahabeëh, rudely painted on a piece of tin,
the paint not yet dry. The dragoman regards it with some pride, and
well he may, for it has cost time and trouble. No Arab on the river can
pronounce the name, but they all understand its signification when
the legend attached to it is related, and having a similar tale in the
Koran, they have no objection to sail in a dahabeëh called the RIP VAN
WINKLE.
The name has a sort of appropriateness in the present awakening of Egypt
to modern life, but exactly what it is we cannot explain.
We seat ourselves on deck to watch the start. There is as much noise and
confusion as if the boat were on fire. The moment has come to cast off,
when it is discovered that two of the crew are absent, no doubt dallying
in some coffee-house. We cannot wait, they must catch us as they can.
The stake is pulled up; the plank is drawn in; the boat is shoved off
from its sand bed with grunting and yah-hoo-ing, some of the crew in the
water, and some pushing with poles; the great sail drops down from
the yard and the corner is hauled in to a wild chorus, and we take the
stream. For a moment it seems as if we should be carried against the
bridge; but the sail is large, the wind seizes us, and the three-months'
voyage has begun.
We are going slowly but steadily, perhaps at the rate of three or four
miles an hour, past the receding city, drawing away from the fleet of
boats and barges on the shore and the multitudinous life on its banks.
It is a scene of color, motion, variety. The river is alive with crafts
of all sorts, the shores are vocal with song, laughter, and the unending
“chaff” of a river population. Beyond, the spires and domes of the city
are lovely in the afternoon light. The citadel and the minarets gleam
like silver against the purple of the Mokattam hills. We pass the long
white palace of the Queen-mother; we are abreast the isle of Rhoda,
its yellow palace and its ancient Nilometer. In the cove at Geezeh
are passenger-dahabeëhs, two flying the American flag, with which we
exchange salutes as we go. The people on their decks are trying with
a telescope to make out the device on our pennant at the yard-arm. It
affords occupation for a great many people at different times during the
voyage. Upon a white ground is a full sun, in red; following it in red
letters is the legend Post Nubila Phobus; it is the motto on the coat
of arms of the City of Hartford. Here it signifies that we four Hartford
people, beginning this voyage, exchange the clouds of New England for
the sun of Egypt. The flag extends beyond the motto in a bifurcated blue
streamer.
Flag, streamer and sail take the freshening north wind. A smaller sail
is set aft. The reïs crouches on the bow, watching the channel; the
steersman, a grave figure, pushes slowly back and forth the long iron
handle of the tiller at the stern; the crew, waiting for their supper,
which is cooking near the mast, begin to sing, one taking the solo and
the others striking in with a minor response; it is not a song but a
one-line ejaculation, followed by a sympathetic and barbaric assent in
chorus.
The shores glide past like that land of the poet's dream where “it is
always afternoon”; reposeful and yet brilliant. The rows of palms, the
green fields, the lessening minarets, the groups of idlers in flowing
raiment, picturesque in any attitudes they assume, the depth of blue
above and the transparent soft air—can this be a permanent condition, or
is it only the scene of a play?
In fact, we are sailing not only away from Europe, away from Cairo, into
Egypt and the confines of mysterious Africa; we are sailing into the
past. Do you think our voyage is merely a thousand miles on the Nile?
We have committed ourselves to a stream that will lead us thousands of
years backwards in the ages, into the depths of history. When we loosed
from Cairo we let go our hold upon the modern. As we recede, perhaps we
shall get a truer perspective, and see more correctly the width of the
strip of time which we call “our era.” There are the pyramids of Geezeh
watching our departure, lifting themselves aloft in the evening sky;
there are the pyramids of Sakkara, sentinels of that long past into
which we go.
It is a splendid start, for the wind blows steadily and we seem to be
flying before it. It is probable that we are making five miles an hour,
which is very well against such a current. Our dahabeëh proves to be an
excellent sailer, and we have the selfish pleasure of passing boat
after boat, with a little ripple of excitement not enough to destroy
our placid enjoyment. It is much pleasanter to lift your hat to the
travelers on a boat that you are drawing ahead of than it is to those of
one that is dropping your boat astern.
The Nile voyage is so peculiar, and is, in fact, such a luxurious method
of passing a winter, that it may be well to say a little more concerning
our boat. It is about one hundred and twenty feet long, and eighteen
broad in the center, with a fiat bottom and no keel; consequently it
cannot tack or sail contrary to the wind. In the bow is the cook's
“cubby” with the range, open to the weather forward. Behind it stands
the mast, some forty feet high, and on the top of it is lashed the
slender yard, which is a hundred feet long, and hangs obliquely. The
enormous triangular sail stretches the length of the yard and its point
is hauled down to the deck. When it is shifted, the rope is let go,
leaving the sail flapping, the end of the yard is carried round the mast
and the sail is hauled round in the opposite direction, with an amount
of pulling, roaring, jabbering, and chorusing, more than would be
necessary to change the-course of an American fleet of war. The flat,
open forward deck is capable of accommodating six rowers on a side. It
is floored over now, for the sweeps are only used in descending.
Then comes the cabin, which occupies the greater part of the boat, and
makes it rather top-heavy and difficult of management in an adverse
wind. First in the cabin are the pantry and dragoman's room; next a
large saloon, used for dining, furnished with divans, mirrors, tables,
and chairs, and lighted by large windows close together. Next are rows
of bedrooms, bathroom etc; a passage between leads to the after or
lounging cabin, made comfortable with divans and Eastern rugs. Over the
whole cabin runs the deck, which has sofas and chairs and an awning,
and is good promenading space. The rear portion of it is devoted to the
steersman, who needs plenty of room for the sweep of the long tiller.
The steering apparatus is of the rudest. The tiller goes into a
stern-post which plays in a hole big enough for four of it, and
creakingly turns a rude rudder.
If you are familiar with the Egyptian temple you will see that our
dahabeëh is built on this plan. If there is no pylon, there is the mast
which was always lashed to it. Then comes the dromos of sphinxes, the
forward deck, with the crew sitting along the low bulwarks; the first
cabin is the hall of columns, or vestibulum; behind it on each side
of the passage are various chambers; and then comes the adytum or
sanctuary—the inner cabin. The deck is the flat roof upon which wound
the solemn processions; and there is a private stairway to the deck just
as there was always an inner passage to the roof from one of the small
chambers of the temple.
The boat is manned by a numerous company whose appearance in procession
would excite enthusiasm in any American town. Abd-el-Atti has for
companion and clerk his nephew, a young Egyptian, (employed in the
telegraph office) but in Frank dress, as all government officials are
required to be.
The reïs, or captain, is Hassan, Aboo Seyda, a rather stately Arab
of sixty years, with a full turban, a long gown of blue cotton, and
bare-footed. He walks the deck with an ease and grace that an actor
might envy; there is neither stiffness nor strut in it; it is a gait
of simple majesty which may be inherited from generations of upright
ancestors, but could never be acquired. Hassan is an admirable
figure-head to the expedition, but he has no more pluck or authority
than an old hen, and was of not much more use on board than a hen would
be in a chicken-hatching establishment.
Abdel Hady Hassed, the steersman, is a Nubian from the First Cataract,
shiny black in color, but with regular and delicate features. I can
see him now, with his turban set well back on his head, in a loose,
long-sleeved, brown garment, and without stockings or slippers,
leaning against his tiller and looking straight ahead with unchanging
countenance. His face had the peculiarity, which is sometimes seen, of
appearing always to have a smile on it. He was born with that smile;
he will die with it. An admirable person, who never showed the least
excitement. That man would run us fast on a sand-bank, put us on a rock
in plain sight, or let his sail jibe, without changing a muscle of his
face, and in the most agreeable and good-natured manner in the world.
And he never exhibited the least petulance at his accidents. I hope
he will be rewarded for the number of hours he patiently stood at
that tiller. The reïs would take the helm when Abdel wanted to say his
prayers or to eat his simple meals; but, otherwise, I always found him
at his post, late at night or in the early morning, gazing around on
Egypt with that same stereotyped expression of pleasure.
The cook, Hasaneyn Mahrowan (the last name has an Irish sound, but
the first is that of the sacred mosque where is buried the head of the
martyr El Hoseyn) is first among his craft, and contrives to produce on
his little range in the bow a dinner that would have made Raineses II. a
better man. He is always at his post, like the steersman, and no matter
what excitement or peril we may be in, Hasaneyn stirs his soup or bastes
his chicken with perfect sang froid. The fact is that these Orientals
have got a thousand or two thousand years beyond worry, and never feel
any responsibility for what others are doing.
The waiter, a handsome Cairene, is the perfection of a trained servant,
who understands signs better than English. Hoseyn Ali also rejoices in
a noble name. Hasan and Hoseyn are, it is well known, the “two lords of
the youths of the people of Paradise, in Paradise”; they were grandsons
of the Prophet. Hoseyn was slain at the battle of the Plain of Karbalà.
Hoseyn is the most smartly dressed fellow on board. His jacket and
trousers are of silk; he wears a gay kuffia about his fez and his waist
is girded with a fine Cashmere shawl. The fatal defect in his dress is
that the full trowsers do not quite meet the stockings. There is always
some point of shabbiness or lack of finish in every Oriental object.
The waiter's lieutenant is an Abyssinian boy who rejoices in the name
of Ahman Abdallah (or, “Slave of God”); and the cook's boy is Gohah
ebn Abdallah (“His father slave of God”). This is the poetical way of
putting their condition; they were both slaves of Abd-el-Atti, but now,
he says, he has freed them. For Gohah he gave two napoleons when the lad
was new. Greater contrast could not be between two colored boys. Ahman
is black enough, but his features are regular and well made, he has a
bright merry eye, and is quick in all his intuitions, and intellectually
faithful to the least particular. He divines the wants of his masters by
his quick wit, and never neglects or forgets anything. Gohah is from the
Soudan, and a perfect Congo negro in features and texture of skin—lips
protruding and nose absolutely level with his cheeks; as faithful and
affectionate as a Newfoundland dog, a mild, gentle boy. What another
servant would know through his sharpened interest, Gohah comprehends by
his affections.
I have described these persons, because they are types of the almost
infinite variety of races and tribes in Egypt. Besides these there are
fourteen sailors, and no two of the same shade or with similar features.
Most of them are of Upper Egypt, and two or three of them are Nubians,
but I should say that all are hopelessly mixed in blood. Ahmed, for
instance, is a Nubian, and the negro blood comes out in him in his voice
and laugh and a certain rolling antic movement of the body. Another
sailor has that flush of red under dark in the face which marks the
quadroon. The dress of the crew is usually a gown, a pair of drawers,
and a turban. Ahmed wears a piece of Turkish toweling round his head.
The crew is an incongruous lot altogether; a third of them smoke
hasheesh whenever they can get it; they never obey an order without
talking about it and suggesting something different; they are all
captains in fact; they are rarely quiet, jabbering, or quarreling, or
singing, when they are not hauling the sail, hoisting us from a sandbar,
or stretched on deck in deep but not noiseless slumber. You cannot but
like the good-natured rascals.
An irresponsible, hard-working, jolly, sullen, contradictory lot of
big children, who, it is popularly reported, need a koorbag (a whip of
hippopotamus hide) to keep them in the way of industry and obedience. It
seems to me that a little kindness would do better than a good deal of
whip. But the kindness ought to have begun some generations back. The
koorbag is the legitimate successor of the stick, and the Egyptians have
been ruled by the stick for a period of which history reports not to the
contrary. In the sculptures on the earliest tombs, laborers are driven
to their tasks with the stick. Sailors on the old Nile boats are menaced
with the stick. The overseer in the field swings the stick. Prisoners
and slaves are marshalled in line with the stick. The stick is to-day
also the one visible and prevalent characteristic of the government of
Egypt. And I think that it is a notion among the subject classes, that a
beating is now and then good for them. They might feel neglected without
it. I cannot find that Egypt was ever governed in any other way than on
the old plan of force and fear.
If there is anything that these officers and sailors do not understand,
it is the management of a Nile boat. But this is anticipating. Just now
all goes as merrily as a colored ball. The night is soft, the moon is
half full; the river spreads out in shining shallows; the shores are dim
and show lines of feathery palms against the sky; we meet or pass white
sails which flash out of the dimness and then vanish; the long line of
pyramids of Sakkara is outlined beyond the palms; now there is a light
on shore and a voice or the howling of a dog is heard; along the bank
by the ruins of old Memphis a jackal runs barking in the moonlight.
By half-past nine we are abreast the pyramids of Dashoor. A couple of
dahabeëhs are laid up below for the night, and the lights from their
rows of cabin windows gleam cheerfully on the water.
We go right on, holding our way deeper and deeper into this enchanted
country. The night is simply superb, such a wide horizon, such
brilliancy above! Under the night, the boat glides like a phantom ship;
it is perfectly steady, and we should not know we were in motion but for
the running ripple at the sides. By this lulling sound we sleep, having
come, for once in the world, into a country of tranquillity, where
nothing need ever be done till tomorrow, for tomorrow is certain to be
like to-day.
When we came on deck at eight o'clock in the morning after “flying” all
night as on birds' wings, we found that we had made thirty-five miles,
and were almost abreast of the False Pyramid of Maydoom, so called
because it is supposed to be built about a rock; a crumbled pyramid but
curiously constructed, and perhaps older than that of Cheops. From a
tomb in the necropolis here came the two life-size and striking
figures that are in the Boulak Museum at Cairo. The statues, carved
in calcareous limestone, represent two exceedingly respectable and
intelligent looking persons, who resemble each other enough to be
brother and sister; they were probably alive in the third dynasty. They
sit up now, with hands on knees, having a bright look on their faces
as if they hadn't winked in five thousand years, and were expecting
company.
I said we were “flying” all night. This needs qualification. We went
aground three times and spent a good part of the night in getting off.
It is the most natural thing in navigation. We are conscious of a slight
grating, then a gentle lurch, not enough to disturb a dream, followed,
however, by a step on deck, and a jabber of voices forward. The sail is
loosed; the poles are taken from the rack and an effort is made to
shove off by the use of some muscle and a good deal of chorus; when
this fails, the crew jump overboard and we hear them splashing along
the side. They put their backs to the boat and lift, with a grunting
“Euh-h'e, euh-h'e” which changes into a rapid “halee, halee, halee,” as
the boat slides off; and the crew scramble on board to haul tight the
sail, with an emphatic “Yah! Mohammed, Yah! Mohammed.”
We were delayed some hours altogether, we learn. But it was not delay.
There can be no delay on this voyage; for there is no one on board
who is in any haste. Are we not the temporary owners of this boat, and
entirely irresponsible for any accident, so that if it goes down with
all on board, and never comes to port, no one can hold us for damages?
The day is before us, and not only the day, but, Providence permitting,
a winter of days like it. There is nothing to be done, and yet we are
too busy to read even the guide-book. There is everything to be seen;
it is drifting past us, we are gliding away from it. It is all old and
absolutely novel. If this is laziness that is stealing over us, it is
of an alert sort. In the East, laziness has the more graceful title of
resignation; but we have not come to that condition even; curiosity
is constantly excited, and it is a sort of employment to breathe this
inspiring air.
We are spectators of a pageant that never repeats itself; for although
there is a certain monotony in the character of the river and one would
think that its narrow strips of arable land would soon be devoid of
interest, the scenes are never twice alike. The combinations vary, the
desert comes near and recedes, the mountains advance in bold precipices
or fall away; the groups of people, villages, trees, are always
shifting.
And yet, in fact, the scenery changes little during the day. There are
great reaches of river, rapidly flowing, and wide bends across which we
see vessels sailing as if in the meadows. The river is crowded all
day with boats, pleasure dahabeëhs, and trading vessels uncouth and
picturesque. The passenger dahabëeh is long, handsomely painted, carries
an enormous sail on its long yard, has a national flag and a long
streamer; and groups of white people sit on deck under the awning; some
of them are reading, some sketching, and now and then a man rises and
discharges his shot-gun at a flock of birds a half a mile beyond its
range.
The boats of African traders are short, high-pooped, and have the rudder
stepped out behind. They usually carry no flag, and are dirty and
lack paint, but they carry a load that would interest the most blasé
European. Those bound up-stream, under full sail, like ourselves, are
piled with European boxes and bales, from stem to stern; and on top of
the freight, in the midst of the freight, sitting on it, stretched out
on it, peeping from it, is another cargo of human beings, men, women and
children, black, yellow, clothed in all the hues of heaven and the rags
of earth. It is an impassive load that stares at us with incurious,
unwinking eyes.
The trading boats coming down against the current, are even more strange
and barbarous. They are piled with merchandise, but of a different
sort. The sails and yards are down, and the long sweeps are in motion,
balanced on outriggers, for the forward deck is filled, and the rowers
walk on top of the goods as they move the oars to and fro. How black the
rowers are! How black everybody on board is! They come suddenly upon
us, like those nations we have read of, who sit in great darkness. The
rowers are stalwart fellows whose basalt backs shine in the sun as they
bend to the oar; in rowing they walk towards the cabin and pull the
heavy oars as they step backwards, and every sweep is accompanied by the
burst of a refrain in chorus, a wild response to a line that has been
chanted by the leader as they stepped forwards. The passengers sit
immoveable in the sun and regard us with a calmness and gravity which
are only attainable near the equatorial regions, where things approach
an equilibrium.
Sometimes we count nearly one hundred dahabeëhs in sight, each dipping
or veering or turning in the sun its bird-wing sail—the most graceful
in the world. A person with fancies, who is watching them, declares that
the triangular sails resemble quills cut at the top for pens, and that
the sails, seen over the tongue of land of a long bend ahead, look like
a procession of goose quills.
The day is warm enough to call out all the birds; flocks of wild geese
clang overhead, and companies of them, ranks on ranks, stand on the low
sand-dunes; there are pelicans also, motionless in the shallow water
near the shore, meditating like a derweesh on one leg, and not caring
that the thermometer does mark 740. Little incidents entertain us.
We like to pass the Dongola, flying “Ohio” from its yard, which took
advantage of our stopping for milk early in the morning to go by us. We
overhaul an English boat and have a mildly exciting race with her till
dark, with varying fortune, the boats being nearly a match, and the
victory depending upon some trick or skill on the part of the crew. All
the party look at us, in a most unsympathetic manner, through goggles,
which the English always put on whenever they leave the twilight of
England. I do not know that we have any right to complain of this habit
of wearing wire eye-screens and goggles; persons who have it mean no
harm by it, and their appearance is a source of gratification to others.
But I must say that goggles have a different effect in different lights.
When we were sailing slowly past the Englishman, the goggles regarded us
with a feeble and hopeless look. But when the Englishman was, in turn,
drawing ahead of us, the goggles had a glare of “Who the devil are you?”
Of course it was only in the goggles. For I have seen many of these
races on the Nile, and passengers always affect an extreme indifference,
leaving all demonstrations of interest to the crews of the boats.
The two banks of the river keep all day about the same relative
character—the one sterile, the other rich. On the east, the brown sand
licks down almost to the water; there is only a strip of green; there
are few trees, and habitations only at long intervals. Only a little
distance back are the Mokattam hills, which keep a rarely broken and
level sky-line for two hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo.
The west side is a broad valley. The bank is high and continually caving
in, like the alluvial bottoms of the Missouri; it is so high that from
our deck we can see little of the land. There are always, however,
palm-trees in sight, massed in groves, standing in lines, or waving
their single tufts in the blue. These are the date-palms, which have no
branches on their long poles; each year the old stalks are cut off for
fuel, and the trunk, a mass of twisted fibres, comes to have a rough
bark, as if the tree had been shingled the wrong way. Stiff in form and
with only the single crown of green, I cannot account for its effect of
grace and beauty. It is the life of the Nile, as the Nile is life to it.
It bears its annual crop of fruit to those who want it, and a crop of
taxes for the Khedive. Every palm pays in fact a poll-tax, whether it
brings forth dates or not.
Where the bank slopes we can see the springing wheat and barley darkly
green; it is sown under the palms even, for no foot of ground is left
vacant. All along the banks are shadoofs, at which men in black stand
all day raising water, that flows back in regulated streams; for the
ground falls slightly away from the height of the bank. At intervals
appears a little collection of mud hovels, dumped together without
so much plan as you would find in a beaver settlement, but called a
village, and having a mud minaret and perhaps a dome. An occasional
figure is that of a man plowing with a single ox; it has just the stiff
square look of the sculptures in the tombs.
Now and then where a zig-zag path is cut, or the bank slopes, women
are washing clothes in the river, or groups of them are filling their
water-jars. They come in files from the villages and we hear their
shrill voices in incessant chatter. These country-women are invariably
in black or dark brown; they are not veiled, but draw their head
shawl over the face as our boat passes. Their long gowns are drawn up,
exposing bare feet and legs as they step into the stream. The jars are
large and heavy when unfilled, and we marvel how they can raise them
to their heads when they are full of water. The woman drags her jar out
upon the sand, squats before it, lifts it to her head with her hands,
and then rises steadily and walks up the steep bank and over the sand,
holding her robe with one hand and steadying the jar with the other,
with perfect grace and ease of motion. The strength of limbs required to
raise that jar to the head and then rise with it, ought to be calculated
by those in our own land who are striving to improve the condition of
woman.
We are still flying along with the unfailing wind, and the merry
progress communicates its spirit to the crew. Before sunset they get
out their musical instruments, and squatting in a circle on the forward
deck, prepare to enjoy themselves. One thumps and shakes the tambourine,
one softly beats with his fingers the darabooka drum, and another
rattles castanets. All who are not so employed beat time by a jerking
motion of the raised hands, the palms occasionally coming together when
the rhythm is properly accented. The leader, who has a very good tenor
voice, chants a minor and monotonous love-song to which the others
respond, either in applause of the sentiment or in a burst of musical
enthusiasm which they cannot contain. Ahmed, the Nubian, whose body is
full of Congoism, enters into it with a delightful abandon, swaying from
side to side and indulging in an occasional shout, as if he were at a
camp-meeting. His ugly and good-natured face beams with satisfaction, an
expression that is only slightly impaired by the vacant place where
two front teeth ought to shine. The song is rude and barbarous but not
without a certain plaintiveness; the song, and scene belong together.
In this manner the sailors of the ancient Egyptians amused themselves
without doubt; their instruments were the same; thus they sat upon the
ground, thus they clapped hands, thus they improvised ejaculations to
the absent beloved:—
“The night! The night! O thou with sweet hands!
Holding the dewy peach.”
The sun goes down, leaving a rosy color in the sky, that changes into an
ashes-of-roses color, that gradually fades into the indefinable softness
of night punctured with stars.
We are booming along all night, under the waxing moon. This is not so
much a voyage as a flight, chased by the north wind. The sail is always
set, the ripples are running always along the sides, the shores slide by
as in a dream; the reïs is at the bow, the smiling steersman is at the
helm; if we were enchanted we could not go on more noiselessly. There is
something ghostly about this night-voyage through a land so imperfectly
defined to the senses but so crowded with history. If only the dead who
are buried on these midnight shores were to rise, we should sail through
a vast and ghastly concourse packing the valley and stretching away into
the desert.
About midnight I step out of the cabin to look at the night. I stumble
over a sleeping Arab. Two sailors, set to hold the sail-rope and let it
go in case of a squall of wind, are nodding over it. The night is not
at all gloomy or mysterious, but in all the broad sweep of it lovely
and full of invitation. We are just passing the English dahabeëh, whose
great sail is dark as we approach, and then takes the moon full upon it
as we file abreast. She is hugging the bank and as we go by there is a
snap. In the morning Abd-el-Atti says that she broke the tip of her yard
against the bank. At any rate she lags behind like a crippled bird.
In the morning we are in sight of four dahabeëhs, but we overhaul and
pass them all. We have contracted a habit of doing it. One of them
gets her stern-sprit knocked off as she sheers before us, whereupon the
sailors exchange compliments, and our steersman smiles just as he would
have done if he had sent the Prussian boat to the bottom. The morning
is delicious, not a cloud in the sky, and the thermometer indicating a
temperature of 56°; this moderates speedily under the sun, but if you
expected an enervating climate in the winter on the Nile you will be
disappointed; it is on the contrary inspiring.
We pass the considerable town of Golosaneh, not caring very much about
it; we have been passing towns and mounds and vestiges of ancient and
many times dug-up civilizations, day and night. We cannot bother with
every ash-heap described in the guide-book. Benisooef, which has been
for thousands of years an enterprising city, we should like to have
seen, but we went by in the night. And at night most of these towns
are as black as the moon will let them be, lights being very rare. We
usually receive from them only the salute of a barking dog. Inland
from Golosaneh rises the tall and beautiful minaret of Semaloot, a very
pretty sight above the palm-groves; so a church spire might rise out of
a Connecticut meadow. At 10 o'clock we draw near the cliffs of Gebel
e' Tayr, upon the long flat summit of which stands the famous Coptic
convent of Sitteh Miriam el Adra, “Our Lady Mary the Virgin,”—called
also Dayr el Adra.
We are very much interested in the Copts, and are glad of the
opportunity to see something of the practice of their religion. For the
religion is as peculiar as the race. In fact, the more one considers the
Copt, the more difficult it is to define him. He is a descendant of the
ancient Egyptians, it is admitted, and he retains the cunning of the
ancients in working gold and silver; but his blood is crossed with
Abyssinian, Nubian, Greek and Arab, until the original is lost,
and to-day the representatives of the pure old Egyptian type of the
sculptures are found among the Abyssinians and the Noobeh (genuine
Nubians) more frequently than among the Copts. The Copt usually wears
a black or brown turban or cap; but if he wore a white one it would be
difficult to tell him from a Moslem. The Copts universally use Arabic;
their ancient language is practically dead, although their liturgy and
some of their religious books are written in it. This old language is
supposed to be the spoken tongue of the old Egyptians.
The number of Christian Copts in Egypt is small—but still large enough;
they have been persecuted out of existence, or have voluntarily accepted
Mohammedanism and married among the faithful. The Copts in religion are
seceders from the orthodox church, and their doctrine of the Trinity was
condemned by the council of Chalcedon; they consequently hate the Greeks
much more than they hate the Moslems. They reckon St. Mark their first
patriarch.
Their religious practice is an odd jumble of many others. Most of them
practice circumcision. The baptism of infants is held to be necessary;
for a child dying unbaptized will be blind in the next life. Their fasts
are long and strict; in their prayers they copy both Jews and Moslems,
praying often and with endless repetitions. They confess before taking
the sacrament; they abstain from swine's flesh, and make pilgrimages
to Jerusalem. Like the Moslems they put off their shoes on entering the
place of worship, but they do not behave there with the decorum of the
Moslem; they stand always in the church and as the service is three or
four hours long, beginning often at daybreak, the long staff or crutch
upon which they lean is not a useless appendage. The patriarch, who
dwells in Cairo, is not, I think, a person to be envied. He must be
a monk originally and remain unmarried, and this is a country where
marriage is so prevalent. Besides this, he is obliged to wear always
a woolen garment next the skin, an irritation in this climate more
constant than matrimony. And report says that he lives under rules so
rigid that he is obliged to be waked up, if he sleeps, every fifteen
minutes. I am inclined to think, however, that this is a polite way
of saying that the old man has a habit of dropping off to sleep every
quarter of an hour.
The cliffs of Gebel e' Tayr are of soft limestone, and seem to be two
hundred feet high. In one place a road is cut down to the water, partly
by a zig-zag covered gallery in the face of the rock, and this is the
usual landing-place for the convent. The convent, which is described
as a church under ground, is in the midst of a mud settlement of lay
brothers and sisters, and the whole is surrounded by a mud wall. From
below it has the appearance of an earthwork fortification. The height
commands the river for a long distance up and down, and from it the
monks are on the lookout for the dahabeëhs of travelers. It is their
habit to plunge into the water, clothed on only with their professions
of holiness, swim to the boats, climb on board and demand “backsheesh”
on account of their religion.
It is very rough as we approach the cliffs, the waves are high, and the
current is running strong. We fear we are to be disappointed, but the
monks are superior to wind and waves. While we are yet half a mile off,
I see two of them in the water, their black heads under white turbans,
bobbing about in the tossing and muddy waves. They make' heroic efforts
to reach us; we can hear their voices faintly shouting: Ana Christian, O
Howadji, “I am a Christian, O! Howadji.”
“We have no doubt you are exceptional Christians,” we shout to them in
reply, “Why don't you come aboard—back-s-h-e-e-s-h!”
They are much better swimmers than the average Christian with us. But
it is in vain. They are swept by us and away from us like corks on the
angry waves, and even their hail of Christian fellowship is lost in the
whistling wind. When we are opposite the convent another head is
seen bobbing about in the water; he is also swept below us, but
three-quarters of a mile down-stream he effects a landing on another
dahabeëh. As he climbs into the jolly-boat which is towed behind and
stands erect, he resembles a statue in basalt.
It is a great feat to swim in a current so swift as this and lashed by
such a wind. I should like to have given these monks something, if only
to encourage so robust a religion. But none of them succeeded in getting
on board. Nothing happens to us as to other travelers, and we have no
opportunity to make the usual remarks upon the degraded appearance of
these Coptic monks at Dayr el Adra. So far as I saw them they were very
estimable people.
At noon we are driving past Minieh with a strong wind. It appears to
be—but if you were to land you would find that it is not—a handsome
town, for it has two or three graceful minarets, and the long white
buildings of the sugar-factory, with its tall chimneys, and the palace
of the Khedive, stretching along the bank give it an enterprising and
cheerful aspect. This new palace of his Highness cost about half a
million of dollars, and it is said that he has never passed a night in
it. I confess I rather like this; it must be a royal sensation to be
able to order houses made like suits of clothes without ever even trying
them on. And it is a relief to see a decent building and a garden now
and then, on the river.
We go on, however, as if we were running away from the sheriff, for we
cannot afford to lose the advantage of such a wind. Along the banks the
clover is growing sweet and green as in any New England meadow in May,
and donkeys are browsing in it tended by children; a very pleasant
sight, to see this ill-used animal for once in clover and trying to bury
his long ears in luxury. Patches of water-melon plants are fenced about
by low stockades of dried rushes stuck in the sand—for the soil looks
like sand.
This vegetation is not kept alive, however, without constant labor;
weeds never grow, it is true, but all green things would speedily wither
if the shadoofs were not kept in motion, pouring the Nile into the baked
and thirsty soil.
These simple contrivances for irrigation, unchanged since the time of
the Pharaohs, have already been described. Here two tiers are required
to lift the water to the level of the fields; the first dipping takes it
into a canal parallel with the bank, and thence it is raised to the
top. Two men are dipping the leathern buckets at each machine, and the
constant bending down and lifting up of their dark bodies are fatiguing
even to the spectator. Usually in barbarous countries one pities the
woman; but I suppose this is a civilized region, for here I pity the
men. The women have the easier tasks of washing clothes in the cool
stream, or lying in the sand. The women all over the East have an
unlimited capacity for sitting motionless all day by a running stream or
a pool of water.
In the high wind the palm-trees are in constant motion tossing their
feather tufts in the air; some of them are blown like an umbrella turned
wrong side out, and a grove presents the appearance of crowd of people
overtaken by a sudden squall. The acacia tree, which the Arabs call the
sont, the acanthus of Strabo (Mimosa Nilotica) begins to be seen with
the palm. It is a thorny tree, with small yellow blossoms and bears a
pod. But what interests us most is the gum that exudes from its bark;
for this is the real Gum Arabic! That Heaven has been kind enough to let
us see that mysterious gum manufacturing itself! The Gum Arabic of our
childhood!
How often have I tried to imagine the feelings of a distant and
unconverted boy to whom Gum Arabic was as common as spruce gum to a New
England lad.
As I said, we go on as if we were evading the law; our daha-beëh seems
to have taken the bit in its teeth and is running away with us. We pass
everything that sails, and begin to feel no pride in doing so; it is a
matter of course. The other dalabeëhs are left behind, some with broken
yards. I heard reports afterwards that we broke their yards, and that
we even drowned a man. It is not true. We never drowned a man, and never
wished to. We were attending to our own affairs. The crew were busy the
first day or two of the voyage in cutting up their bread and spreading
it on the upper deck to dry—heaps of it, bushels of it. It is a black
bread, made of inferior unbolted wheat, about as heavy as lead, and sour
to the uneducated taste. The Egyptians like it, however, and it is said
to be very healthful. The men gnaw chunks of it with relish, but it
is usually prepared for eating by first soaking it in Nile-water and
warming it over a fire, in a big copper dish. Into the “stodge” thus
made is sometimes thrown some “greens” snatched from the shore. The crew
seat themselves about this dish when it is ready, and each one dips his
right hand into the mass and claws out a mouthful The dish is always
scraped clean. Meat is very rarely had by them, only a few times during
the whole voyage; but they vary their diet by eating green beans,
lettuce, onions, lentils, and any sort of “greens” they can lay hands
on. The meal is cooked on a little fire built on a pile of stones near
the mast. When it is finished they usually gather about the fire for
a pull at the “hubble-bubble.” This is a sort of pipe with a cocoa-nut
shell filled with water, through which the smoke passes. Usually a lump
of hasheesh is put into the bowl with the tobacco. A puff or two of this
mixture is enough; it sets the smoker coughing and conveys a pleasant
stupor to his brain. Some of the crew never smoke it, but content
themselves with cigarettes. And the cigarettes, they are always rolling
up and smoking while they are awake.
The hasheesh-smokers are alternately elated and depressed, and sometimes
violent and noisy. A man addicted to the habit is not good for much;
the hasheesh destroys his nerves and brain, and finally induces idiocy.
Hasheesh intoxication is the most fearful and prevalent vice in Egypt.
The government has made many attempts to stop it, but it is too firmly
fixed; the use of hasheesh is a temporary refuge from poverty, hunger,
and all the ills of life, and appears to have a stronger fascination
than any other indulgence. In all the towns one may see the dark little
shops where the drug is administered, and generally rows of victims in
a stupid doze stretched on the mud benches. Sailors are so addicted to
hasheesh that it is almost impossible to make up a decent crew for a
dahabeëh.
Late in the afternoon we are passing the famous rock-tombs of Beni
Hassan, square holes cut in the face of the cliff, high up. With our
glasses we can see paths leading to them over the debris and along the
ledges. There are two or three rows of these tombs, on different ledges;
they seem to be high, dry, and airy, and I should rather live in them,
dead or alive, than in the mud hovels of the fellaheen below. These
places of sepulchre are older than those at Thebes, and from the
pictures and sculptures in them, more than from any others, the
antiquarians have reconstructed the domestic life of the ancient
Egyptians. This is a desolate spot now; there is a decayed old mud
village below, and a little south of it is the new town; both can barely
be distinguished from the brown sand and rock in which and in front
of which they stand. This is a good place for thieves, or was before
Ibraheem Pasha destroyed these two villages. We are warned that this
whole country produces very skillful robbers, who will swim off and
glean the valuables from a dahabeëh in a twinkling.
Notwithstanding the stiff breeze the thermometer marks 74°; but both
wind and temperature sink with the sun. Before the sun sets, however, we
are close under the east bank, and are watching the play of light on
a magnificent palm-grove, beneath which stand the huts of the modern
village of Sheykh Abâdeh. It adds romance to the loveliness of the scene
to know that this is the site of ancient Antinoë, built by the Emperor
Adrian. To be sure we didn't know it till this moment, but the traveler
warms up to a fact of this kind immediately, and never betrays even
to his intimate friends that he is not drawing upon his inexhaustible
memory.
“That is the ancient Antinoë, built by Adrian.”
Oh, the hypocrisy and deceit of the enthusiastic,
“Is it?”
“Yes, and handsome Antinous was drowned here in the Nile.”
“Did they recover his body?”
Upon the bank there are more camels, dogs, and donkeys than we have seen
all day; buffaloes are wallowing in the muddy margin. They are all in
repose; the dogs do not bark, and the camels stretch their necks in a
sort of undulatory expression of discontent, but do not bleat, or roar,
or squawk, or make whatever the unearthly noise which they make is
called. The men and the women are crouching in the shelter of their mud
walls, with the light of the setting sun upon their dark faces. They
draw their wraps closer about them to protect themselves from the north
wind, and regard us stolidly and without interest as we go by. And when
the light fades, what is there for them? No cheerful lamp, no book, no
newspaper. They simply crawl into their kennels and sleep the sleep of
“inwardness” and peace.
Just here the arable land on the east bank is broader than usual, and
there was evidently a fine city built on the edge of the desert behind
it. The Egyptians always took waste and desert land for dwellings and
for burial-places, leaving every foot of soil available for cultivation
free. There is evidence all along here of a once much larger population,
though I doubt if the east bank of the river was ever much inhabited.
The river banks would support many more people than we find here if
the land were cultivated with any care. Its fertility, with the annual
deposit, is simply inexhaustible, and it is good for two and sometimes
three crops a year. But we pass fields now and then that are abandoned,
and others that do not yield half what they might. The people are
oppressed with taxes and have no inducement to raise more than is
absolutely necessary to keep them alive. But I suppose this has always
been the case in Egypt. The masters have squeezed the last drop from the
people, and anything like an accumulation of capital by the laborers is
unknown. The Romans used a long rake, with fine and sharp teeth, and
I have no doubt that they scraped the country as clean as the present
government does.
The government has a very simple method of adjusting its taxes on land
and crops. They are based upon the extent of the inundation. So many
feet rise, overflowing such an area, will give such a return in crops;
and tax on this product can be laid in advance as accurately as when
the crops are harvested. Nature is certain to do her share of the work;
there will be no frost, nor any rain to spoil the harvest, nor any
freakishness whatever on the part of the weather. If the harvest is not
up to the estimate, it is entirely the fault of the laborer, who has
inadequately planted or insufficiently watered. In the same manner a tax
is laid upon each palm-tree, and if it does not bear fruit, that is not
the fault of the government.
There must be some satisfaction in farming on the Nile. You are always
certain of the result of your labor. * Whereas, in our country farming
is the merest lottery. The season will open too wet or too dry, the seed
may rot in the ground, the young plant may be nipped with frost or grow
pale for want of rain, the crop runs the alternate hazards of drought
or floods, it is wasted by rust or devoured by worms; and, to cap the
climax, if the harvest is abundant and of good quality, the price goes
down to an unremunerative figure. In Egypt you may scratch the ground,
put in the seed, and then go to sleep for three months, in perfect
certainty of a good harvest, if only the shadoof and the sakiya are kept
in motion.
* It should be said, however, that the ancient Egyptians found the
agricultural conditions beset with some vexations. A papyrus in the
British Museum contains a correspondence between Ameneman, the librarian
of Rameses II, and his pupil Pentaour, who wrote the celebrated epic
upon the exploits of that king on the river Orontes. One of the letters
describes the life of the agricultural people:—“Have you ever conceived
what sort of life the peasant leads who cultivates the soil? Even before
it is ripe, insects destroy part of his harvest.. . Multitudes of rats
are in the field; next come invasions of locusts, cattle ravage his
harvest, sparrows alight in flocks on his sheaves. If he delays to get
in his harvest, robbers come to carry it off with him; his horse dies of
fatigue in drawing the plow; the tax- collector arrives in the district,
and has with him men armed with sticks, negroes with palm-branches.
All say, 'Give us of your corn,' and he has no means of escaping their
exactions. Next the unfortunate wretch is seized, bound, and carried
off by force to work on the canals; his wife is bound, his children are
stripped. And at the same time his neighbors have each of them his own
trouble.”
By eight o'clock in the evening, on a falling wind, we are passing
Rhoda, whose tall chimneys have been long in sight. Here is one of the
largest of the Khedive's sugar-factories, and a new palace which has
never been occupied. We are one hundred and eighty-eight miles from
Cairo, and have made this distance in two days, a speed for which I
suppose history has no parallel; at least our dragoman says that such
a run has never been made before at this time of the year, and we are
quite willing to believe a statement which reflects so much honor upon
ourselves, for choosing such a boat and such a dragoman.
This Nile voyage is nothing, after all; its length has been greatly
overestimated. We shall skip up the river and back again before the
season is half spent, and have to go somewhere else for the winter. A
man feels all-powerful, so long as the wind blows; but let his sails
collapse and there is not a more crest-fallen creature. Night and day
our sail has been full, and we are puffed up with pride.
At this rate we shall hang out our colored lanterns at Thebes on
Christmas night.
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