THE morning puts a new face on our affairs. It is Sunday, and the most
devout could not desire a quieter day. There is a thick fog on the
river, and not breeze enough stirring to show the stripes on our flag;
the boat holds its own against the current by a sort of accumulated
impulse. During the night we may have made five miles altogether, and
now we barely crawl. We have run our race; if we have not come into a
haven, we are at a stand-still, and it does not seem now as if we ever
should wake up and go on again. However, it is just as well. Why should
we be tearing through this sleepy land at the rate of four miles an
hour?
The steersman half dozes at the helm; the reïs squats near him watching
the flapping sails; the crew are nearly all asleep on the forward deck,
with their burnouses drawn over their head and the feet bare, for it is
chilly as late as nine o'clock, and the thermometer has dropped to 540.
Abd-el-Atti slips his beads uneasily along between his fingers, and
remembers that when he said that we would reach Asioot in another day,
he forgot to ejaculate; “God willing.” Yet he rises and greets our
coming from the cabin with a willing smile, and a—
“Morning sir, morning marm. I hope you enjoyin' you sleep, marm.”
“Where are we now, Abd-el-Atti?”
“Not much, marm; this is a place call him Hadji Kandeel. But we do very
well; I not to complain.”
“Do you think we shall have any wind to-day?”
“I d'know, be sure. The wind come from Lord. Not so?”
Hadji Kandeel is in truth only a scattered line of huts, but one lands
here to visit the grottoes or rock-tombs of Tel el Amarna. All this
country is gaping with tombs apparently; all the cliffs are cut into
receptacles for the dead, all along the margin of the desert on each
side are old necropolises and moslem cemeteries, in which generation
after generation, for almost fabulous periods of time, has been
deposited. Here behind Hadji Kandeel are remains of a once vast city
built let us say sixteen hundred years before our era, by Amunoph IV.,
a wayward king of the eighteenth dynasty, and made the capital of Egypt.
In the grottoes of Tel el Amârna were deposited this king and his court
and favorites, and his immediate successors—all the splendor of them
sealed up there and forgotten. This king forsook the worship of the gods
of Thebes, and set up that of a Semitic deity, Aten, a radiating disk, a
sun with rays terminating in human hands. It was his mother who led him
into this, and she was not an Egyptian; neither are the features of the
persons sculptured in the grottoes Egyptian.
Thus all along the stream of Egyptian history cross currents are coming
in, alien sovereigns and foreign task-masters; and great breaks appear,
as if one full civilization had run its course of centuries, and decay
had come, and then ruin, and then a new start and a fresh career.
Early this morning, when we were close in to the west bank, I heard
measured chanting, and saw a procession of men and women coming across
the field. The men bore on a rude bier the body of a child. They came
straight on to the bank, and then turned by the flank with military
precision and marched upstream to the place where a clumsy country
ferry-boat had just landed. The chant of the men, as they walked, was
deep-voiced and solemn, and I could hear in it frequently repeated the
name of Mohammed. The women in straggling file followed, like a sort of
ill-omened birds in black, and the noise they made, a kind of wail,
was exactly like the cackle of wild geese. Indeed before I saw the
procession I thought that some geese were flying overhead.
The body was laid on the ground and four men kneeled upon the bank as
if in prayer. The boat meantime was unloading, men, women and children
scrambling over the sides into the shallow water, and the donkeys, urged
with blows, jumping after them. When they were all out the funeral took
possession of the boat, and was slowly wafted across, as dismal a going
to a funeral as if this were the real river of death. When the mourners
had landed we saw them walking under the palm-trees, to the distant
burial-place in the desert, with a certain solemn dignity, and the
chanting and wailing were borne to us very distinctly.
It is nearly a dead calm all day, and our progress might be
imperceptible to an eye naked, and certainly it must be so to the eyes
of these natives which are full of flies. It grows warm, however, and
is a summer temperature when we go ashore in the afternoon on a tour of
exploration. We have for attendant, Ahmed, who carries a big stick as
a defence against dogs. Ahmed does not differ much in appearance from
a wild barbarian, his lack of a complete set of front teeth alone
preventing him from looking fierce. A towel is twisted about his head,
feet and legs are bare, and he wears a blue cotton robe with full
sleeves longer than his arms, gathered at the waist by a piece of rope,
and falling only to the knees. A nice person to go walking with on the
Holy Sabbath.
The whole land is green with young wheat, but the soil is baked and
cracked three or four inches deep, even close to the shore where the
water has only receded two or three days ago. The land stretches for
several miles, perfectly level and every foot green and smiling, back to
the desert hills. Sprinkled over this expanse, which is only interrupted
by ditches and slight dykes upon which the people walk from village to
village, are frequent small groves of palms. Each grove is the nucleus
of a little settlement, a half dozen sun-baked habitations, where
people, donkeys, pigeons, and smaller sorts of animated nature live
together in dirty amity. The general plan of building is to erect a
circular wall of clay six or seven feet high, which dries, hardens, and
cracks in the sun. This is the Oriental court. In side this and built
against the wall is a low mud-hut with a wooden door, and perhaps here
and there are two similar huts, or half a dozen, according to the size
of the family. In these hovels the floor is of smooth earth, there is a
low bedstead or some matting laid in one corner, but scarcely any other
furniture, except some earthen jars holding doora or dried fruit, and a
few cooking utensils. A people who never sit, except on their heels, do
not need chairs, and those who wear at once all the clothes they possess
need no closets or wardrobes. I looked at first for a place where
they could keep their “Sunday clothes” and “nice things,” but this
philosophical people do not have anything that is too good for daily
use. It is nevertheless true that there is no hope of a people who do
not have “Sunday clothes.”
The inhabitants did not, however, appear conscious of any such want.
They were lounging about or squatting in the dust in picturesque
idleness; the children under twelve years often without clothes and not
ashamed, and the women wearing no veils. The women are coming and going
with the heavy water-jars, or sitting on the ground, sorting doora and
preparing it for cooking; not prepossessing certainly, in their black
or dingy brown gowns and shawls of cotton. Children abound. In all the
fields men are at work, picking up the ground with a rude hoe shaped
like an adze. Tobacco plants have just been set out, and water-melons
carefully shaded from the sun by little tents of rushes. These men are
all Fellaheen, coarsely and scantily clad in brown cotton gowns, open at
the breast. They are not bad figures, better than the women, but there
is a hopeless acceptance of the portion of slaves in their bearing.
We encountered a very different race further from the river, where
we came upon an encampment of Bedaween, or desert Arabs, who hold
themselves as much above the Fellaheen as the poor white trash used to
consider itself above the negroes in our Southern States. They pretend
to keep their blood pure by intermarrying only in desert tribes, and
perhaps it is pure; so, I suppose, the Gipsies are pure blood enough,
but one would not like them for neighbors. These Bedaween, according
to their wandering and predatory habit, have dropped down here from the
desert to feed their little flock of black sheep and give their lean
donkeys a bite of grass. Their tents are merely strips of coarse brown
cloth, probably camel's hair, like sacking, stretched horizontally over
sticks driven into the sand, so as to form a cover from the sun and
a protection from the north wind. Underneath them are heaps of rags,
matting, old clothes, blankets, mingled with cooking-utensils and the
nameless broken assortment that beggars usually lug about with them.
Hens and lambs are at home there, and dogs, a small, tawny wolfish
breed, abound. The Arabs are worthy of their dwellings, a dirty,
thievish lot to look at, but, as I said, no doubt of pure blood, and
having all the virtues for which these nomads have been celebrated since
the time when Jacob judiciously increased his flock at the expense of
Laban.
A half-naked boy of twelve years escorts us to the bank of the canal
near which the tents are pitched, and we are met by the sheykh of
the tribe, a more venerable and courtly person than the rest of
these pure-blood masqueraders in rags, but not a whit less dirty. The
fellaheen had paid no attention to us; this sheykh looked upon himself
as one of the proprietors of this world, and bound to extend the
hospitalities of this portion of it to strangers. He received us with a
certain formality. When two Moslems meet there is no end to their formal
salutation and complimentary speeches, which may continue as long as
their stock of religious expressions holds out. The usual first greeting
is Es-salaam, aleykoom, “peace be on you,” to which the reply is
Aleykoom es-saalam, “on you be peace.” It is said that persons of
another religion, however, should never make use of this salutation to
a Moslem, and that the latter should not and will not return it. But we
were overflowing with charity and had no bigotry, and went through Egypt
salaaming right and left, sometimes getting no reply and sometimes a
return, to our “peace be on you,” of Wa-aleykoom, “and on you.”
The salutations by gesture are as varied as those by speech When
Abd-el-Atti walked in Cairo with us, he constantly varied his gestures
according to the rank of the people we met. To an inferior he tossed a
free salaam; an equal he saluted by touching with his right hand in one
rapid motion his breast, lips, and head; to a superior he made the same
motion except that his hand first made a dip down to his knees; and when
he met a person of high rank the hand scooped down to the ground before
it passed up to the head.
I flung a cheerful salaam at the sheykh and gave him the Oriental
salute, which he returned. We then shook hands, and the sheykh kissed
his after touching mine, a token of friendship which I didn't know
enough to imitate, not having been brought up to kiss my own hand.
“Anglais or Français?” asked the sheykh.
“No,” I said, “Americans.”
“Ah,” he ejaculated, throwing back his head with an aspiration of
relief, “Melicans; tyeb (good).”
A ring of inquisitive Arabs gathered about us and were specially
interested in studying the features and costume of one of our party; the
women standing further off and remaining closely veiled kept their eyes
fixed on her. The sheykh invited us to sit and have coffee, but the
surroundings were not tempting to the appetite and we parted with
profuse salutations. I had it in mind to invite him to our American
centennial; I should like to set him off against some of our dirty red
brethren of the prairies. I thought that if I could transport these
Bedaween, tents, children, lank, veiled women, donkeys, and all to the
centennial grounds they would add a most interesting (if unpleasant)
feature. But, then, I reflected, what is a centennial to this Bedawee
whose ancestors were as highly civilized as he is when ours were wading
about the fens with the Angles or burrowing in German forests. Besides,
the Bedawee would be at a disadvantage when away from the desert, or the
bank of this Nile whose unceasing flow symbolizes his tribal longevity.
As we walk along through the lush-fields which the despised Fellaheen
are irritating into a fair yield of food, we are perplexed with the
query, what is the use of the Bedaween in this world? They produce
nothing. To be sure they occupy a portion of the earth that no one else
would inhabit; they dwell on the desert. But there is no need of any one
dwelling on the desert, especially as they have to come from it to levy
contributions on industrious folds in order to live. At this stage of
the inquiry, the philosopher asks, what is the use of any one living?
As no one could answer this, we waded the water where it was shallow
and crossed to a long island, such as the Nile frequently leaves in its
sprawling course. This island was green from end to end, and inhabited
more thickly than the main-land. We attracted a good deal of attention
from the mud-villages, and much anxiety was shown lest we should walk
across the wheat-fields. We expected that the dahabeëh would come on and
take us off, but its streamer did not advance, and we were obliged to
rewade the shallow channel and walk back to the starting-place. There
was a Sunday calm in the scene. At the rosy sunset the broad river shone
like a mirror and the air was soft as June. How strong is habit. Work
was going on as usual, and there could have been no consent of sky,
earth, and people, to keep Sunday, yet there seemed to be the Sunday
spell upon the landscape. I suspect that people here have got into the
way of keeping all the days. The most striking way in which an American
can keep Sunday on the Nile is by not going gunning, not even taking a
“flyer” at a hawk from the deck of the dahabeëh. There is a chance for a
tract on this subject.
Let no one get the impression that we are idling away our time, because
we are on Monday morning exactly where we were on Sunday morning. We
have concluded to “keep” another day. There is not a breath of wind
to scatter the haze, thermometer has gone down, and the sun's rays
are feeble. This is not our fault, and I will not conceal the adverse
circumstances in order to give you a false impression of the Nile.
We are moored against the bank. The dragoman has gone on shore to shoot
pigeons and buy vegetables. Our turkeys, which live in cages on the
stern-deck, have gone ashore and are strutting up and down the sand;
their gobble is a home sound and recalls New England. Women, as usual,
singly and in groups, come to the river to fill their heavy water-jars.
There is a row of men and boys on the edge of the bank. Behind are two
camels yoked wide apart drawing a plow. Our crew chaff the shore people.
The cook says to a girl, “You would make me a good wife; we will take
you along.” Men, squatting on the bank say, “Take her along, she is of
no use.”
Girl retorts, “You are not of more use than animals, you sit idle all
day, while I bring water and grind the corn.”
One is glad to see this assertion of the rights of women in this region
where nobody has any rights; and if we had a tract we would leave it
with her. Some good might be done by travelers if they would distribute
biscuit along the Nile, stamped in Arabic with the words, “Man ought to
do half the work,” or, “Sisters rise!”
In the afternoon we explore a large extent of country, my companion
carrying a shot-gun for doves. These doves are in fact wild pigeons,
a small and beautiful pearly-grey bird. They live on the tops of the
houses in nests formed for them by the insertion of tiles or earthen
pots in the mud-walls. Many houses have an upper story of this sort on
purpose for the doves; and a collection of mere mud-cabins so ornamented
is a picturesque sight, under a palm-grove. Great flocks of these birds
are flying about, and the shooting is permitted, away from the houses.
We make efforts to get near the wild geese and the cranes, great numbers
of which are sunning themselves on the sandbanks, but these birds know
exactly the range of a gun, and fly at the right moment. A row of cranes
will sometimes trifle with our feelings. The one nearest will let us
approach almost within range before he lifts his huge wings and sails
over the river, the next one will wait for us to come a few steps
further before he flies, and so on until the sand-spit is deserted of
these long-legged useless birds. Hawks are flying about the shore and
great greyish crows, or ravens, come over the fields and light on the
margin of sand—a most gentlemanly looking bird, who is under a queer
necessity of giving one hop before he can raise himself in flight. Small
birds, like sand-pipers, are flitting about the bank. The most beautiful
creature, however, is a brown bird, his wing marked with white, long
bill, head erect and adorned with a high tuft, as elegant as the
blue-jay; the natives call it the crocodile's guide.
We cross vast fields of wheat and of beans, the Arab “fool,” which are
sown broadcast, interspersed now and then with a melon-patch. Villages,
such as they are, are frequent; one of them has a mosque, the only one
we have seen recently. The water for ablution is outside, in a brick
tank sunk in the ground. A row of men are sitting on their heels
in front of the mosque, smoking; some of them in white gowns, and
fine-looking men. I hope there is some saving merit in this universal
act of sitting on the heels, the soles of the feet flat on the ground;
it is not an easy thing for a Christian to do, as he will find out by
trying.
Toward night a steamboat flying the star and crescent of Egypt, with
passengers on board, some of “Cook's personally conducted,” goes
thundering down stream, filling the air with smoke and frightening the
geese, who fly before it in vast clouds. I didn't suppose there were so
many geese in the world.
Truth requires it to be said that on Tuesday morning the dahabeëh holds
about the position it reached on Sunday morning; we begin to think we
are doing well not to lose anything in this rapid current. The day is
warm and cloudy, the wind is from the east and then from the south-east,
exactly the direction we must go. It is in fact a sirocco, and fills
one with languor, which is better than being frost-bitten at home. The
evening, with the cabin windows all open, is like one of those soft
nights which come at the close of sultry northern days, in which
there is a dewy freshness. This is the sort of winter that we ought to
cultivate.
During the day we attempt tracking two or three times, but with little
success; the wind is so strong that the boat is continually blown
ashore. Tracking is not very hard for the passengers and gives them an
opportunity to study the bank and the people on it close at hand. A long
cable fastened on the forward deck is carried ashore, and to the far
end ten or twelve sailors attach themselves at intervals by short ropes
which press across the breast. Leaning in a slant line away from the
river, they walk at a snail's pace, a file of parti-colored raiment and
glistening legs; occasionally bursting into a snatch of a song, they
slowly pull the bark along. But obstructions to progress are many. A
spit of sand will project itself, followed by deepwater, through which
the men will have to wade in order to bring the boat round; occasionally
the rope must be passed round trees which overhang the caving bank; and
often freight-boats, tied to the shore, must be passed. The leisure with
which the line is carried outside another boat is amusing even in this
land of deliberation. The groups on these boats sit impassive and look
at us with a kind of curiosity that has none of our eagerness in it.
The well-bred indifferent “stare” of these people, which is not exactly
brazen and yet has no element of emotion in it, would make the fortune
of a young fellow in a London season. The Nubian boatmen who are
tracking the freight-dahabeëh appear to have left their clothes in
Cairo; they flop in and out of the water, they haul the rope along the
bank, without consciousness apparently that any spectators are within
miles; and the shore-life goes on all the same, men sit on the banks,
women come constantly to fill their jars, these crews stripped to their
toil excite no more attention than the occasional fish jumping out of
the Nile. The habit seems to be general of minding one's own business.
At early morning another funeral crossed the river to a desolate
burial-place in the sand, the women wailing the whole distance of the
march; and the noise was more than before like the clang of wild geese.
These women have inherited the Oriental art of “lifting up the voice,”
and it adds not a little to the weirdness of this ululation and
screeching to think that for thousands of years the dead have been
buried along this valley with exactly the same feminine tenderness.
These women wear black; all the countrywomen we have seen are dressed in
sombre gowns and shawls of black or deep blue-black; none of them have
a speck of color in their raiment, not a bit of ribbon nor a bright
kerchief, nor any relief to the dullness of their apparel. And yet they
need not fear to make themselves too attractive. The men have all the
colors that are worn; though the Fellaheen as a rule wear brownish
garments, blue and white are not uncommon, and a white turban or a red
fez, or a silk belt about the waist gives variety and agreeable relief
to the costumes. In this these people imitate that nature which we
affect to admire, but outrage constantly. They imitate the birds. The
male birds have all the gay plumage; the feathers of the females are
sober and quiet, as befits their domestic position. And it must be
admitted that men need the aid of gay dress more than women.
The next morning when the sun shows over the eastern desert, the sailors
are tracking, hauling the boat slowly along an ox-bow in the river,
until at length the sail can catch the light west wind which sprang
up with the dawn. When we feel that, the men scramble aboard, and the
dahabeëh, like a duck that has been loitering in an eddy for days,
becomes instinct with life and flies away to the cliffs opposite, the
bluffs called Gebel Aboofayda, part of the Mokattam range that here
rises precipitously from the river and overhangs it for ten or twelve
miles. I think these limestone ledges are two or three hundred feet
high. The face is scarred by the slow wearing of ages, and worn into
holes and caves innumerable. Immense numbers of cranes are perched on
the narrow ledges of the cliff, and flocks of them are circling in front
of it, apparently having nests there. As numerous also as swallows in a
sand-bank is a species of duck called the diver; they float in troops on
the stream, or wheel about the roosting cranes.
This is a spot famed for its sudden gusts of wind which sometimes
flop over the brink and overturn boats. It also is the resort of the
crocodile, which seldom if ever comes lower down the Nile now. But
the crocodile is evidently shy of exhibiting himself, and we scan the
patches of sand at the foot of the rocks with our glasses for a long
time in vain. The animal dislikes the puffing, swashing steamboats, and
the rifle-balls that passing travelers pester him with. At last we see
a scaly log six or eight feet long close to the water under the rock. By
the aid of the glass it turns out to be a crocodile. He is asleep, and
too far off to notice at all the volley of shot with which we salute
him. It is a great thing to say you saw a crocodile. It isn't much to
see one.
And yet the scaly beast is an interesting and appropriate feature in
such a landscape,# and the expectation of seeing a crocodile adds to
your enjoyment. On our left are these impressive cliffs; on the right
is a level island. Half-naked boys and girls are tending small flocks of
black sheep on it. Abd-el-Atti raises his gun as if he would shoot
the children and cries out to them, “lift up your arm,” words that
the crocodile hunter uses when he is near enough to fire, and wants to
attract the attention of the beast so that it will raise its fore-paw
to move off, and give the sportsman a chance at the vulnerable spot. The
children understand the allusion and run laughing away.
Groups of people are squatting on the ground, doing nothing, waiting for
nothing, expecting nothing; buffaloes and cattle are feeding on the thin
grass, and camels are kneeling near in stately indifference; women in
blue-black robes come—the everlasting sight—to draw water. The whole
passes in a dumb show. The hot sun bathes all.
We pass next the late residence of a hermit, a Moslem “welee” or holy
man. On a broad ledge of the cliff, some thirty feet above the water,
is a hut built of stone and plaster and whitewashed, about twelve feet
high, the roof rounded like an Esquimau snow-hut and with a knob at
the top. Here the good man lived, isolated from the world, fed by the
charity of passers-by, and meditating on his own holiness. Below him,
out of the rock, with apparently no better means of support than he had,
grows an acacia-tree, now in yellow blossoms. Perhaps the saint chewed
the gum-arabic that oozed from it. Just above, on the river, is a slight
strip of soil, where he used to raise a few cucumbers and other cooling
vegetables. The farm, which is no larger than two bed blankets, is
deserted now. The saint died, and is buried in his house, in a hole
excavated in the rock, so that his condition is little changed, his
house being his tomb, and the Nile still soothing his slumber.
But if it is easy to turn a house into a tomb it is still easier to turn
a tomb into a house. Here are two square-cut tombs in the rock, of which
a family has taken possession, the original occupants probably having
moved out hundreds of years ago. Smoke is issuing from one of them, and
a sorry-looking woman is pulling dead grass among the rocks for fuel.
There seems to be no inducement for any one to live in this barren spot,
but probably rent is low. A little girl seven or eight years old comes
down and walks along the bank, keeping up with the boat, incited
of course by the universal expectation of backsheesh. She has on a
head-veil, covering the back of the head and neck and a single shirt
of brown rags hanging in strings. I throw her an apple, a fruit she has
probably never seen, which she picks up and carries until she joined is
by an elder sister, to whom she shows it. Neither seems to know what
it is. The elder smells it, sticks her teeth into it, and then takes a
bite. The little one tastes, and they eat it in alternate bites, growing
more and more eager for fair bites as the process goes on.
Near the southern end of the cliffs of Gebel Aboofayda are the
crocodile-mummy pits which Mr. Prime explored; caverns in which are
stacked up mummied crocodiles and lizards by the thousands. We shall
not go nearer to them. I dislike mummies; I loathe crocodiles; I have
no fondness for pits. What could be more unpleasant than the three
combined! To crawl on one's stomach through crevices and hewn passages
in the rock, in order to carry a torch into a stifling chamber, packed
with mummies and cloths soaked in bitumen, is an exploit that we
willingly leave to Egyptologists. If one takes a little pains, he can
find enough unpleasant things above ground.
It requires all our skill to work the boat round the bend above these
cliffs; we are every minute about to go aground on a sand-bar, or jibe
the sail, or turn about. Heaven only knows how we ever get on at all,
with all the crew giving orders and no one obeying. But by five o'clock
we are at the large market-town of Manfaloot, which has half a dozen
minarets and is sheltered by a magnificent palm-grove. You seem to be
approaching an earthly paradise; and one can keep up the illusion if he
does not go ashore. And yet this is a spot that ought to interest the
traveler, for here Lot is said to have spent a portion of the years of
his exile, after the accident to his wife.
At sunset old Abo Arab comes limping along the bank with a tin pail,
having succeeded at length in overtaking the boat; and in reply to the
question, where he has been asleep all day, pulls out from his bosom
nine small fish as a peace-offering. He was put off at sunrise to get
milk for breakfast. What a happy-go-lucky country it is.
After sundown, the crew, who have worked hard all day, on and off,
tacking, poling, and shifting sail, get their supper round an open fire
on deck, take each some whiffs from the “hubble-bubble,” and, as we sail
out over the broad, smooth water, sing a rude and plaintive melody to
the subdued thump of the darabooka. Towards dark, as we are about to
tie up, the wind, which had failed, rises, and we voyage on, the waves
rippling against the sides in a delicious lullaby. The air is soft, the
moon is full and peeps out from the light clouds which obscure the sky
and prevent dew.
The dragoman asleep on the cabin deck, the reïs crouched, attentive of
the course, near him, part of the sailors grouped about the bow in low
chat, and part asleep in the shadow of the sail, we voyage along under
the wide night, still to the south and warmer skies, and seem to be
sailing through an enchanted land.
Put not your trust in breezes. The morning finds us still a dozen miles
from Asioot where we desire to celebrate Christmas; we just move with
sails up, and the crew poling. The head-man chants a line or throws out
a word, and the rest come in with a chorus, as they walk along, bending
the shoulder to the pole. The leader—the “shanty man” the English
sailors call their leader, from the French chanter I suppose—ejaculates
a phrase, sometimes prolonging it, or dwelling on it with a variation,
like “O! Mohammed!” or “O! Howadji!” or some scraps from a love-song,
and the men strike in in chorus: “Hâ Yàlësah, hâ Yâlësah,” a response
that the boatmen have used for hundreds of years.
We sail leisurely past a large mud-village dropped in a splendid grove
of palms and acacias. The scene is very poetical before details are
inspected, and the groves, we think, ought to be the home of refinement
and luxury. Men are building a boat under the long arcade of trees,
women are stooping with the eternal water-jars which do not appear
to retain fluid any better than the sieves of the Danaïdes, and naked
children run along the bank crying “Backsheesh, O Howadji.” Our shot-gun
brings down a pigeon-hawk close to the shore. A boy plunges in and gets
it, handing it to us on deck from the bank, but not relinquishing his
hold with one hand until he feels the half-piastre in the other. So
early is distrust planted in the human breast.
Getting away from this idyllic scene, which has not a single resemblance
to any civilized town, we work our way up to El Hamra late in the
afternoon. This is the landing-place for Asioot; the city itself is a
couple of miles inland, and could be reached by a canal at high water.
We have come again into an active world, and there are evidences that
this is a busy place. New boats are on the stocks, and there is a forge
for making some sort of machinery. So much life has not been met with
since we left Cairo. The furling our great sail is a fine sight as
we round in to the bank, the sailors crawling out on the slender,
hundred-feet-long yard, like monkeys, and drawing up the hanging slack
with both feet and hands.
It is long since we have seen so many or so gaily dressed people as are
moving on shore; a procession of camels passes along; crowds of donkeys
are pushed down to the boat by their noisy drivers; old women come to
sell eggs, and white grease that pretends to be butter, and one of them
pulls some live pigeons from a bag. We lie at the mud-bank, and classes
of half-clad children, squatting in the sand, study us. Two other
dahabeëhs are moored near us, their passengers sitting under the awning
and indolently observing the novel scene, book in hand, after the manner
of Nile voyagers.
These are the pictures constantly recurring on the river, only they are
never the same in grouping or color, and they never weary one. It is
wonderful, indeed, how satisfying the Nile is in itself and how little
effort travelers make for the society of each other. Boats pass or meet
and exchange salutes, but with little more effusion than if they were
on the Thames. Nothing afloat is so much like a private house as
a dahabeëh, and I should think, by what we hear, that sociability
decreases on the Nile with increase of travel and luxury.
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