AT LAST, twenty-four days from Cairo, the Nubian hills are in sight,
lifting themselves up in the south, and we appear to be getting into the
real Africa—Africa, which still keeps its barbarous secret, and dribbles
down this commercial highway the Nile, as it has for thousands of years,
its gums and spices and drugs, its tusks and skins of wild animals,
its rude weapons and its cunning work in silver, its slave-boys and
slave-girls. These native boats that we meet, piled with strange and
fragrant merchandise, rowed by antic crews of Nubians whose ebony bodies
shine in the sun as they walk backward and forward at the long sweeps,
chanting a weird, barbarous refrain,—what tropical freights are these
for the imagination!
At sunset we are in a lonesome place, the swift river flowing between
narrow rocky shores, the height beyond Assouan grey in the distance,
and vultures watching our passing boat from the high crumbling sandstone
ledges. The night falls sweet and cool, the soft new moon is remote in
the almost purple depths, the thickly strewn stars blaze like jewels,
and we work slowly on at the rate of a mile an hour, with the slightest
wind, amid the granite rocks of the channel. In this channel we are
in the shadow of the old historical seat of empire, the island of
Elephantine; and, turning into the narrow passage to the left, we
announce by a rocket to the dalabeehs moored at Assouan the arrival
of another inquisitive American. It is Sunday night. Our dragoman des
patches a messenger to the chief reïs of the cataract, who lives at
Philæ, five miles above. A second one is sent in the course of the
night; and a third meets the old patriarch on his way to our boat
at sunrise. It is necessary to impress the Oriental mind with the
importance of the travelers who have arrived at the gate of Nubia.
The Nile voyager who moors his dahabeëh at the sandbank, with the fleet
of merchant boats, above Assouan, seems to be at the end of his journey.
Travelers from the days of Herodotus even to this century have followed
each other in saying that the roar of the cataract deafened the people
for miles around. Civilization has tamed the rapids. Now there is
neither sight nor sound of them here at Assouan. To the southward, the
granite walls which no doubt once dammed the river have been broken
through by some pre-historic convulsion that strewed the fragments about
in grotesque confusion. The island of Elephantine, originally a long
heap of granite, is thrown into the middle of the Nile, dividing it into
two narrow streams. The southern end rises from the water, a bold mass
of granite. Its surface is covered with ruins, or rather with the débris
of many civilizations; and into this mass and hills of brick, stone,
pottery and ashes, Nubian women and children may be seen constantly
poking, digging out coins, beads and images, to sell to the howadji. The
north portion of the island is green with wheat; and it supports two
or three mud-villages, which offer a good field for the tailor and the
missionary.
The passage through the east channel, between Assouan and Elephantine,
is through walls of granite rocks; and southward at the end of it the
view is bounded by a field of broken granite gradually rising, and
apparently forbidding egress in that direction. If the traveler comes
for scenery, as some do, nothing could be wilder and at the same time
more beautiful than these fantastically piled crags; but considered as a
navigable highway the river here is a failure.
Early in the morning the head sheykh of the cataract comes on board, and
the long confab which is preliminary to any undertaking, begins. There
are always as many difficulties in the way of a trade or an arrangement
as there are quills on a porcupine; and a great part of the Egyptian
bargaining is the preliminary plucking out of these quills. The
cataracts are the hereditary property of the Nubian sheykhs and their
tribes who live near them—belonging to them more completely than the
rapids of the St. Lawrence to the Indian pilots; almost their whole
livelihood comes from helping boats up and down the rapids, and their
harvest season is the winter when the dahabeëhs of the howadji require
their assistance. They magnify the difficulties and dangers and make a
mystery of their skill and knowledge. But, with true Orientalism, they
appear to seek rather to lessen than to increase their business. They
oppose intolerable delays to the traveler, keep him waiting at Assouan
by a thousand excuses, and do all they can to drive him discouraged down
the river. During this winter boats have been kept waiting two weeks
on one frivolous excuse or another—the day was unlucky, or the wind was
unfavorable, or some prince had the preference. Princes have been very
much in the way this winter; the fact would seem to be that European
princes are getting to run up the Nile in shoals, as plenty as shad in
the Connecticut, more being hatched at home than Europe has employment
for.
Several thousand people, dwelling along the banks from Assouan to three
or four miles above Philæ, share in the profits of the passing boats;
and although the sheykhs, and head reises (or captains) of the cataract
get the elephant's share, every family receives something—it may be
only a piastre or two—on each dahabeëh; and the sheykhs draw from the
villages as many men as are required for each passage. It usually takes
two days for a boat to go up the cataract and not seldom they are kept
in it three or four days, and sometimes a week. The first day the boat
gets as far as the island of Séhayl, where it ties up and waits for
the cataract people to gather next morning. They may take it into their
heads not to gather, in which case the traveler can sun himself all day
on the rocks, or hunt up the inscriptions which the Pharaohs, on their
raids into Africa for slaves and other luxuries, cut in the granite in
their days of leisure three or four thousand years ago, before the world
got its present impetus of hurry. Or they may come and pull the boat
up a rapid or two, then declare they have not men enough for the final
struggle, and leave it for another night in the roaring desolation. To
put on force enough, and cables strong enough not to break, and promptly
drag the boat through in one day would lessen the money-value of the
achievement perhaps, in the mind of the owner of the boat. Nature has
done a great deal to make the First Cataract an obstacle to navigation,
but the wily Nubian could teach nature a lesson; at any rate he has
never relinquished the key to the gates. He owns the cataracts as the
Bedowees own the pyramids of Geezeh and the routes across the desert to
Sinai and Petra.
The aged reïs comes on board; and the preliminary ceremonies, exchange
of compliments, religious and social, between him and our astute
dragoman begin. Coffee is made, the reïs's pipe is lighted, and the
conversation is directed slowly to the ascent of the cataracts. The head
reïs is accompanied by two or three others of inferior dignity and by
attendants who squat on the deck in attitudes of patient indifference.
The world was not made in a day. The reïs looks along the deck and says:
“This boat is very large; it is too long to go up the cataract.” There
is no denying it. The dahabeëh is larger than almost any other on the
river; it is one hundred and twenty feet long. The dragoman says:
“But you took up General McClellan's boat, and that is large.”
“Very true, Effendi; but why the howadji no come when Genel Clemen come,
ten days ago?”
“We chose to come now.”
“Such a long boat never went up. Why you no come two months ago when the
river was high?” This sort of talk goes on for half an hour. Then the
other sheykh speaks:—“What is the use of talking all this stuff to
Mohammed Abd-el-Atti Effendi; he knows all about it.”
“That is true. We will go.”
“Well, it is 'finish',” says Abd-el-Atti.
When the long negotiation is concluded, the reïs is introduced into the
cabin to pay his respects to the howadji; he seats himself with dignity
and salutes the ladies with a watchful self-respect. The reïs is a
sedate Nubian, with finely cut features but a good many shades darker
than would be fellowshipped by the Sheltering Wings Association in
America, small feet, and small hands with long tapering fingers that
confess an aristocratic exemption from manual labor. He wears a black
gown, and a white turban; a camel's hair scarf distinguishes him from
the vulgar. This sheykh boasts I suppose as ancient blood as runs in any
aristocratic veins, counting his ancestors back in unbroken succession
to the days of the Prophet at least, and not improbably to Ishmael. That
he wears neither stockings nor slippers does not detract from his simple
dignity. Our conversation while he pays his visit is confined to the
smoking of a cigar and some well-meant grins and smiles of mutual good
feeling.
While the morning hours pass, we have time to gather all the knowledge
of Assouan that one needs for the enjoyment of life in this world. It is
an ordinary Egyptian town of sunbaked brick, brown, dusty and unclean,
with shabby bazaars containing nothing, and full of importunate beggars
and insatiable traders in curiosities of the upper country. Importunate
venders beset the traveler as soon as he steps ashore, offering him all
manner of trinkets which he is eager to purchase and doesn't know what
to do with when he gets them. There are crooked, odd-shaped knives and
daggers, in ornamental sheaths of crocodile skin, and savage spears with
great round hippopotamus shields from Kartoom or Abyssinia; jagged
iron spears and lances and ebony clubs from Darfoor; cunning Nubian
silver-work, bracelets and great rings that have been worn by desert
camel-drivers; moth-eaten ostrich feathers; bows and arrows tipped
with flint from the Soudan, necklaces of glass and dirty leather charms
(containing words from the Koran); broad bracelets and anklets cut out
of big tusks of elephants and traced in black, rude swords that it needs
two hands to swing; bracelets of twisted silver cord and solid silver as
well; earrings so large that they need to be hitched to a strand of the
hair for support; nose-rings of brass and silver and gold, as large
as the earrings; and “Nubian costumes” for women—a string with leather
fringe depending to tie about the loins—suggestions of a tropical life
under the old dispensation.
The beach, crowded with trading vessels and piled up with merchandise,
presents a lively picture. There are piles of Manchester cotton and
boxes of English brandy—to warm outwardly and inwardly the natives of
the Soudan—which are being loaded, for transport above the rapids, upon
kneeling dromedaries which protest against the load in that most vulgar
guttural of all animal sounds, more uncouth and less musical than the
agonized bray of the donkey—a sort of grating menagerie-grumble which
has neither the pathos of the sheep's bleat nor the dignity of the
lion's growl; and bales of cinnamon and senna and ivory to go down
the river. The wild Bisharee Arab attends his dromedaries; he has a
clear-cut and rather delicate face, is bareheaded, wears his black hair
in ringlets long upon his shoulders, and has for all dress a long strip
of brown cotton cloth twisted about his body and his loins, leaving his
legs and his right arm free. There are the fat, sleek Greek merchant,
in sumptuous white Oriental costume, lounging amid his merchandise; the
Syrian in gay apparel, with pistols in his shawl-belt, preparing for his
journey to Kartoom; and the black Nubian sailors asleep on the sand.
To add a little color to the picture, a Ghawazee, or dancing-girl, in
striped flaming gown and red slippers, dark but comely, covered with
gold or silver-gilt necklaces and bracelets, is walking about the shore,
seeking whom she may devour.
At twelve o'clock we are ready to push off. The wind is strong from the
north. The cataract men swarm on board, two or three Sheykhs and thirty
or forty men. They take command and possession of the vessel, and our
reïs and crew give way. We have carefully closed the windows and blinds
of our boat, for the cataract men are reputed to have long arms and
fingers that crook easily. The Nubians run about like cats; four are at
the helm, some are on the bow, all are talking and giving orders; there
is an indescribable bustle and whirl as our boat is shoved off from
the sand, with the chorus of “Hâ! Yâlêsah. Hâ! Yâlêsah!” and takes the
current. The great sail, shaped like a bird's wing, and a hundred feet
long, is shaken out forward, and we pass swiftly on our way between the
granite walls. The excited howadji are on deck feeling to their finger
ends the thrill of expectancy.
* Yalesah (I spell the name according the sound of the pronunciation)
was, some say, one of the sons of Noah who was absent at the time the
ark sailed, having gone down into Abyssinia. They pushed the ark in
pursuit of him, and Noah called after his son, as the crew poled along,
“Ha! Yalesah!” And still the Nile boatmen call Yalesah to come, as they
push the poles and haul the sail, and urge the boat toward Abyssinia.
Very likely “Ha! Yale-sah” (as I catch it) is only a corruption of
“Halee!'.esà Seyyidnà Eesà” is the Moslem name for “Our Lord Jesus.”
The first thing the Nubians want is something to eat—a chronic complaint
here in this land of romance. Squatting in circles all over the boat
they dip their hands into the bowls of softened bread, cramming the
food down their throats, and swallow all the coffee that can be made for
them, with the gusto and appetite of simple men who have a stomach and
no conscience.
While the Nubians are chattering and eating, we are gliding up the swift
stream, the granite rocks opening a passage for us; but at the end of it
our way seems to be barred. The only visible opening is on the extreme
left, where a small stream struggles through the boulders. While we
are wondering if that can be our course, the helm is suddenly put hard
about, and we then shoot to the right, finding our way, amid whirlpools
and boulders of granite, past the head of Elephantine island; and before
we have recovered from this surprise we turn sharply to the left into a
narrow passage, and the cataract is before us.
It is not at all what we have expected. In appearence this is a cataract
without any falls and scarcely any rapids. A person brought up on
Niagara or Montmorency feels himself trifled with here. The fishermen
in the mountain streams of America has come upon many a scene that
resembles this—a river-bed strewn with boulders. Only, this is on a
grand scale. We had been led to expect at least high precipices, walls
of lofty rock, between which we should sail in the midst of raging
rapids and falls; and that there would be hundreds of savages on the
rocks above dragging our boat with cables, and occasionally plunging
into the torrent in order to carry a life-line to the top of some
seagirt rock. All of this we did not see; but yet we have more respect
for the cataract before we get through it than when it first came in
sight.
What we see immediately before us is a basin, it may be a quarter of a
mile, it may be half a mile broad, and two miles long; a wild expanse
of broken granite rocks and boulders strewn hap-hazard, some of them
showing the red of the syenite and others black and polished and shining
in the sun; a field of rocks, none of them high, of fantastic shapes;
and through this field the river breaks in a hundred twisting passages
and chutes, all apparently small, but the water in them is foaming and
leaping and flashing white; and the air begins to be pervaded by the
multitudinous roar of rapids. On the east, the side of the land-passage
between Assouan and Philæ, were high and jagged rocks in odd forms, now
and then a palm-tree, and here and there a mud-village. On the west the
basin of the cataract is hemmed in by the desert hills, and the yellow
Libyan sand drifts over them in shining waves and rifts, which in some
lights have the almost maroon color that we see in Gerome's pictures.
To the south is an impassable barrier of granite and sand—mountains of
them—beyond the glistening fields of rocks and water through which we
are to find our way.
The difficulty of this navigation is not one cataract to be overcome
by one heroic effort, but a hundred little cataracts or swift tortuous
sluiceways, which are much more formidable when we get into them than
they are when seen at a distance. The dahabeëhs which attempt to wind
through them are in constant danger of having holes knocked in their
hulls by the rocks.
The wind is strong, and we are sailing swiftly on. It is im possible to
tell which one of the half-dozen equally uninviting channels we are to
take. We guess, and of course point out the wrong one. We approach, with
sails still set, a narrow passage through which the water pours in what
is a very respectable torrent; but it is not a straight passage, it has
a bend in it; if we get through it, we must make a sharp turn to the
left or run upon a ridge of rocks, and even then we shall be in a
boiling surge; and if we fail to make head against the current we shall
go whirling down the caldron, bumping on the rocks—not a pleasant thing
for a dahabeëh one hundred and twenty feet long with a cabin in it as
large as a hotel. The passage of a boat of this size is evidently an
event of some interest to the cataract people, for we see groups of them
watching us from the rocks, and following along the shore. And we think
that seeing our boat go up from the shore might be the best way of
seeing it.
We draw slowly in, the boat trembling at the entrance of the swift
water; it enters, nosing the current, feeling the tug of the sail, and
hesitates. Oh, for a strong puff of wind! There are five watchful men at
the helm; there is a moment's silence, and the boat still hesitates. At
this critical instant, while we hold our breath, a naked man, whose name
I am sorry I cannot give to an admiring American public, appears on the
bow with a rope in his teeth; he plunges in and makes for the nearest
rock. He swims hand over hand, swinging his arms from the shoulders
out of water and striking them forward splashing along like a
sidewheeler—the common way of swimming in the heavy water of the Nile.
Two other black figures follow him and the rope is made fast to the
point of the rock. We have something to hold us against the stream.
And now a terrible tumult arises on board the boat which is seen to be
covered with men; one gang is hauling on the rope to draw the great sail
close to its work; another gang is hauling on the rope attached to the
rock, and both are singing that wild chanting chorus without which no
Egyptian sailors pull an ounce or lift a pound; the men who are not
pulling are shouting and giving orders; the Sheykhs, on the upper deck
where we sit with American serenity exaggerated amid the Babel,
are jumping up and down in a frenzy of excitement, screaming and
gesticulating. We hold our own; we gain a little; we pull forward where
the danger of a smash against the rocks is increased. More men appear
on the rocks, whom we take to be spectators of our passage. No; they lay
hold of the rope. With the additional help we still tremble in the jaws
of the pass. I walk aft, and the stern is almost upon the rocks; it
grazes them; but in the nick of time the bow swings round, we turn short
off into an eddy; the great wing of a sail is let go, and our cat-like
sailors are aloft, crawling along the slender yard, which is a hundred
feet in length, and furling the tugging canvas. We breathe more freely,
for the first danger is over. The first gate is passed.
In this lull there is a confab with the Sheykhs. We are at the island of
Sehâyl, and have accomplished what is usually the first day's journey of
boats. It would be in harmony with the Oriental habit to stop here for
the remainder of the day and the night. But our dragoman has in mind
to accomplish, if not the impossible, what is synonymous with it in the
East, the unusual. The result of the inflammatory stump-speeches on both
sides is that two or three gold pieces are passed into the pliant hand
of the head Sheykh, and he sends for another Sheykh and more men.
For some time we have been attended by increasing processions of men and
boys on shore; they cheered us as we passed the first rapid; they came
out from the villages, from the crevices of the rocks, their blue and
white gowns flowing in the wind, and make a sort of holiday of our
passage. Less conspicuous at first are those without gowns—they are
hardly distinguishable from the black rocks amid which they move. As we
lie here, with the rising roar of the rapids in our ears, we can see no
further opening for our passage.
But we are preparing to go on. Ropes are carried out forward over the
rocks. More men appear, to aid us. We said there were fifty. We count
seventy; we count eighty; there are at least ninety. They come up by
a sort of magic. From whence are they, these black forms: They seem to
grow out of the rocks at the wave of the Sheykh's hand; they are of the
same color, shining men of granite. The swimmers and divers are simply
smooth statues hewn out of the syenite or the basalt. They are not
unbaked clay like the rest of us. One expects to see them disappear like
stones when they jump into the water. The mode of our navigation is to
draw the boat along, hugged close to the shore rocks, so closely that
the current cannot get full hold of it, and thus to work it round the
bends.
We are crawling slowly on in this manner, clinging to the rocks, when
unexpectedly a passage opens to the left. The water before us runs like
a mill-race. If we enter it, nothing would seem to be able to hold the
boat from dashing down amidst the breakers. But the bow is hardly let to
feel the current before it is pulled short round, and we are swinging
in the swift stream. Before we know it we are in the anxiety of another
tug. Suppose the rope should break! In an instant the black swimmers
are overboard striking out for the rocks; two ropes are sent out, and
secured; and, the gangs hauling on them, we are working inch by inch
through, everybody on board trembling with excitement. We look at our
watches; it seems only fifteen minutes since we left Assouan; it is an
hour and a quarter. Do we gain in the chute? It is difficult to say;
the boat hangs back and strains at the cables; but just as we are in the
pinch of doubt, the big sail unfurls its wing with exciting suddenness,
a strong gust catches it, we feel the lift, and creep upward, amid an
infernal din of singing and shouting and calling on the Prophet from the
gangs who haul in the sail-rope, who tug at the cables attached to the
rocks, who are pulling at the hawsers on the shore. We forge ahead and
are about to dash into a boiling caldron before us, from which there
appears to be no escape, when a skillful turn of the great creaking helm
once more throws us to the left, and we are again in an eddy with the
stream whirling by us, and the sail is let go and is furled.
The place where we lie is barely long enough to admit our boat; its
stern just clears the rocks, its bow is aground on hard sand. The number
of men and boys on the rocks has increased; it is over one hundred, it
is one hundred and thirty; on a re-count it is one hundred and fifty.
An anchor is now carried out to hold us in position when we make a new
start; more ropes are taken to the shore, two hitched to the bow and one
to the stern. Straight before us is a narrow passage through which the
water comes in foaming ridges with extraordinary rapidity. It seems to
be our way; but of course it is not. We are to turn the corner sharply,
before reaching it; what will happen then we shall see.
There is a slight lull in the excitement, while the extra hawsers are
got out and preparations are made for the next struggle. The sheykhs
light their long pipes, and squatting on deck gravely wait. The men who
have tobacco roll up cigarettes and smoke them. The swimmers come on
board for reinforcement. The poor fellows are shivering as if they had
an ague fit. The Nile may be friendly, though it does not offer a warm
bath at this time of the year, but when they come out of it naked on
the rocks the cold north wind sets their white teeth chartering. The
dragoman brings out a bottle of brandy. It is none of your ordinary
brandy, but must have cost over a dollar a gallon, and would burn a hole
in a new piece of cotton cloth. He pours out a tumblerful of it, and
offers it to one of the granite men. The granite man pours it down his
throat in one flow, without moving an eye-winker, and holds the glass
out for another. His throat must be lined with zinc. A second tumblerful
follows the first. It is like pouring liquor into a brazen image.
I said there was a lull, but this is only in contrast to the preceding
fury. There is still noise enough, over and above the roar of the
waters, in the preparations going forward, the din of a hundred people
screaming together, each one giving orders, and elaborating his opinion
by a rhetorical use of his hands. The waiting crowd scattered over the
rocks disposes itself picturesquely, as an Arab crowd always does,
and probably cannot help doing, in its blue and white gowns and white
turbans. In the midst of these preparations, and unmindful of any
excitement or contusion, a Sheykh, standing upon a little square of sand
amid the rocks, and so close to the deck of the boat that we can hear
his “Allâhoo Akbar” (God is most Great), begins his kneelings and
prostrations towards Mecca, and continues at his prayers, as undisturbed
and as unregarded as if he were in a mosque, and wholly oblivious of
the babel around him. So common has religion become in this land of its
origin! Here is a half-clad Sheykh of the desert stopping, in the
midst of his contract to take the howadji up the cataract, to raise his
forefinger and say, “I testify that there is no deity but God; and I
testify that Mohammed is his servant and his apostle.”
Judging by the eye, the double turn we have next to make is too short
to admit our long hull. It does not seem possible that we can squeeze
through; but we try. We first swing out and take the current as if we
were going straight up the rapids. We are held by two ropes from the
stern, while by four ropes from the bow, three on the left shore and one
on an islet to the right, the cataract people are tugging to draw us up.
As we watch almost breathless the strain on the ropes, look! there is a
man in the tumultuous rapid before us swiftly coming down as if to his
destruction. Another one follows, and then another, till there are half
a dozen men and boys in this jeopardy, this situation of certain death
to anybody not made of cork. And the singular thing about it is that the
men are seated upright, sliding down the shining water like a boy, who
has no respect for his trowsers, down a snow-bank. As they dash past us,
we see that each man is seated on a round log about five feet long; some
of them sit upright with their legs on the log, displaying the soles of
their feet, keeping the equilibrium with their hands. These are smooth
slimy logs that a white man would find it difficult to sit on if they
were on shore, and in this water they would turn with him only once—the
log would go one way and the man another. But these fellows are in
no fear of the rocks below; they easily guide their barks out of the
rushing floods, through the whirlpools and eddies, into the slack
shore-water in the rear of the boat, and stand up like men and demand
backsheesh. These logs are popular ferry-boats in the Upper Nile; I have
seen a woman crossing the river on one, her clothes in a basket and the
basket on her head—and the Nile is nowhere an easy stream to swim.
Far ahead of us the cataract people are seen in lines and groups,
half-hidden by the rocks, pulling and stumbling along; black figures are
scattered along lifting the ropes over the jagged stones, and freeing
them so that we shall not be drawn back, as we slowly advance; and
severe as their toil is, it is not enough to keep them warm when the
chilly wind strikes them. They get bruised on the rocks also, and have
time to show us their barked shins and request backsheesh. An Egyptian
is never too busy or too much in peril to forget to prefer that request
at the sight of a traveler. When we turn into the double twist I spoke
of above, the bow goes sideways upon a rock, and the stern is not yet
free. The punt-poles are brought into requisition; half the men are in
the water; there is poling and pushing and grunting, heaving, and
“Yah Mohammed, Yah Mohammed” with all which noise and outlay of brute
strength, the boat moves a little on and still is held close in hand.
The current runs very swiftly We have to turn almost by a right angle
to the left and then by the same angle to the right; and the question
is whether the boat is not too long to turn in the space. We just scrape
along the rocks, the current growing every moment stronger, and at
length get far enough to let the stern swing. I run back to see if it
will go free. It is a close fit. The stern is clear; but if our boat
had been four or five feet longer, her voyage would have ended then
and there. There is now before us a straight pull up the swiftest and
narrowest rapid we have thus far encountered.
Our sandal—the row-boat belonging to the dahabeëh, that becomes a
felucca when a mast is stepped into it—which has accompanied us fitfully
during the passage, appearing here and there tossing about amid the
rocks, and aiding occasionally in the transport of ropes and men to one
rock and another, now turns away to seek a less difficult passage. The
rocks all about us are low, from three feet to ten feet high. We have
one rope out ahead, fastened to a rock, upon which stand a gang of men,
pulling. There is a row of men in the water under the left side of the
boat, heaving at her with their broad backs, to prevent her smashing on
the rocks. But our main dragging force is in the two long lines of men
attached to the ropes on the left shore. They stretch out ahead of us
so far that it needs an opera-glass to discover whether the leaders are
pulling or only soldiering. These two long struggling lines are led and
directed by a new figure who appears upon this operatic scene. It is a
comical Sheykh, who stands upon a high rock at one side and lines out
the catch-lines of a working refrain, while the gangs howl and haul,
in a surging chorus. Nothing could be wilder or more ludicrous, in the
midst of this roar of rapids and strain of cordage. The Sheykh holds a
long staff which he swings like the baton of the leader of an orchestra,
quite unconscious of the odd figure he cuts against the blue sky. He
grows more and more excited, he swings his arms, he shrieks, but always
in tune and in time with the hauling and the wilder chorus of the
cataract men, he lifts up his right leg, he lifts up his left leg, he
is in the very ecstasy of the musical conductor, displaying his white
teeth, and raising first one leg and then the other in a delirious
swinging motion, all the more picturesque on account of his flowing
blue robe and his loose white cotton drawers. He lifts his leg with a
gigantic pull, which is enough in itself to draw the boat onward, and
every time he lifts it, the boat gains on the current. Surely such an
orchestra and such a leader was never seen before. For the orchestra is
scattered over half an acre of ground, swaying and pulling and singing
in rhythmic show, and there is a high wind and a blue sky, and rocks and
foaming torrents, and an African village with palms in the background,
amid the debris of the great convulsion of nature which has resulted
in this chaos. Slowly we creep up against the stiff boiling stream,
the good Moslems on deck muttering prayers and telling their beads, and
finally make the turn and pass the worst eddies; and as we swing round
into an ox-bow channel to the right, the big sail is again let out and
hauled in, and with cheers we float on some rods and come into a quiet
shelter, a stage beyond the journey usually made the first day. It is
now three o'clock.
We have come to the real cataract, to the stiffest pull and the most
dangerous passage.
A small freight dahabeëh obstructs the way, and while this is being
hauled ahead, we prepare for the final struggle. The chief cataract is
called Bab (gate) Aboo Rabbia, from one of Mohammed Ali's captains who
some years ago vowed that he would take his dahabeëh up it with his own
crew and without aid from the cataract people. He lost his boat. It is
also sometimes called Bab Inglese from a young Englishman, named Cave,
who attempted to swim down it early one morning, in imitation of the
Nubian swimmers, and was drawn into the whirlpools, and not found for
days after. For this last struggle, in addition to the other ropes, an
enormous cable is bent on, not tied to the bow, but twisted round the
cross-beams of the forward deck, and carried out over the rocks. From
the shelter where we lie we are to push out and take the current at a
sharp angle. The water of this main cataract sucks down from both sides
above through a channel perhaps one hundred feet wide, very rapid and
with considerable fall, and with such force as to raise a ridge in the
middle. To pull up this hill of water is the tug; if the ropes let go
we shall be dashed into a hundred pieces on the rocks below and be
swallowed in the whirlpools. It would not be a sufficient compensation
for this fate to have this rapid hereafter take our name.
The preparations are leisurely made, the lines are laid along the rocks
and the men are distributed. The fastenings are carefully examined.
Then we begin to move. There are now four conductors of this gigantic
orchestra (the employment of which as a musical novelty I respectfully
recommend to the next Boston Jubilee), each posted on a high rock, and
waving a stick with a white rag tied to it. It is now four o'clock. An
hour has been consumed in raising the curtain for the last act. We are
now carefully under way along the rocks which are almost within reach,
held tight by the side ropes, but pushed off and slowly urged along by a
line of half-naked fellows under the left side, whose backs are against
the boat and whose feet walk along the perpendicular ledge. It would
take only a sag of the boat, apparently, to crush them. It does not need
our eyes to tell us when the bow of the boat noses the swift water. Our
sandal has meantime carried a line to a rock on the opposite side of the
channel, and our sailors haul on this and draw us ahead. But we are held
firmly by the shore lines. The boat is never suffered, as I said, to get
an inch the advantage, but is always held tight in hand.
As we appear at the foot of the rapid, men come riding down it on logs
as before, a sort of horseback feat in the boiling water, steering
themselves round the eddies and landing below us. One of them swims
round to the rock where a line is tied, and looses it as we pass;
another, sitting on the slippery stick and showing the white soles of
his black feet, paddles himself about amid the whirlpools. We move so
slowly that we have time to enjoy all these details, to admire the deep
yellow of the Libyan sand drifted over the rocks at the right, and
to cheer a sandal bearing the American flag which is at this moment
shooting the rapids in another channel beyond us, tossed about like a
cork. We see the meteor flag flashing out, we lose it behind the
rocks, and catch it again appearing below. “Oh star spang”—but our own
orchestra is in full swing again. The comical Sheykh begins to swing his
arms and his stick back and forth in an increasing measure, until his
whole body is drawn into the vortex of his enthusiasm, and one leg after
the other, by a sort of rhythmic hitch, goes up displaying the white
and baggy cotton drawers. The other three conductors join in, and a
deafening chorus from two hundred men goes up along the ropes, while
we creep slowly on amid the suppressed excitement of those on board
who anxiously watch the straining cables, and with a running fire of
“backsheesh, backsheesh,” from the boys on the rocks close at hand. The
cable holds; the boat nags and jerks at it in vain; through all the
roar and rush we go on, lifted I think perceptibly every time the sheykh
lifts his leg.
At the right moment the sail is again shaken down; and the boat at once
feels it. It is worth five hundred men. The ropes slacken; we are going
by the wind against the current; haste is made to unbend the cable; line
after line is let go until we are held by one alone; the crowd thins
out, dropping away with no warning and before we know that the play is
played out, the cataract people have lost all interest in it and are
scattering over the black rocks to their homes. A few stop to cheer;
the chief conductor is last seen on a rock, swinging the white rag,
hurrahing and salaaming in grinning exultation; the last line is cast
off, and we round the point and come into smooth but swift water, and
glide into a calm mind. The noise, the struggle, the tense strain, the
uproar of men and waves for four hours are all behind; and hours of
keener excitement and enjoyment we have rarely known. At 12.20 we
left Assouan; at 4.45 we swung round the rocky bend above the last and
greatest rapid. I write these figures, for they will be not without a
melancholy interest to those who have spent two or three days or a week
in making this passage.
Turning away from the ragged mountains of granite which obstruct the
straight course of the river, we sail by Mahatta, a little village of
Nubians, a port where the trading and freight boats plying between the
First and Second Cataract load and unload. There is a forest of masts
and spars along the shore which is piled with merchandise, and dotted
with sunlit figures squatting in the sand as if waiting for the goods
to tranship themselves. With the sunlight slanting on our full sail, we
glide into the shadow of high rocks, and enter, with the suddenness of a
first discovery, into a deep winding river, the waters of which are dark
and smooth, between lofty walls of granite. These historic masses, which
have seen pass so many splendid processions and boastful expeditions
of conquest in what seems to us the twilight of the world, and which
excited the wonder of Father Herodotus only the other day, almost in
our own time (for the Greeks belong to us and not to antiquity as it now
unfolds itself), are piled in strange shapes, tottling rock upon rock,
built up grotesquely, now in likeness of an animal, or the gigantic
profile of a human face, or temple walls and castle towers and
battlements. We wind through this solemn highway, and suddenly, in the
very gateway, Philæ! The lovely! Philæ, the most sentimental ruin
in Egypt. There are the great pylon of the temple of Isis, the long
colonnades of pillars, the beautiful square temple, with lofty columns
and elongated capitals, misnamed Pharaoh's bed. The little oblong
island, something like twelve hundred feet long, banded all round by an
artificial wall, an island of rock completely covered with ruins, is set
like the stone of a ring, with a circle of blue water about it, in the
clasp of higher encircling granite peaks and ledges. On the left bank,
as we turn to pass to the east of the island, is a gigantic rock which
some persons have imagined was a colossus once, perhaps in pre-Adamic
times, but which now has no resemblance to human shape, except in a
breast and left arm. Some Pharaoh cut his cartouche on the back—a sort
of postage-stamp to pass the image along down the ages. The Pharaohs
were ostentatious; they cut their names wherever they could find a
conspicuous and smooth place.
While we are looking, distracted with novelty at every turn and excited
by a grandeur and loveliness opening upon us every moment, we have come
into a quiet haven, shut in on all sides by broken ramparts,—alone with
this island of temples. The sun is about to set, and its level light
comes to us through the columns, and still gilds with red and yellow
gold the Libyan sand sifted over the cliffs. We moor at once to a
sand-bank which has formed under the broken walls, and at once step on
shore. We climb to the top of the temple walls; we walk on the stone
roof; we glance into the temple on the roof, where is sculptured the
resurrection of Osiris. This cannot be called an old temple. It is
a creation of the Ptolemies, though it doubtless replaced an older
edifice. The temple of Isis was not begun more than three centuries
before our era. Not all of these structures were finished—the priests
must have been still carving on their walls these multitudes of
sculptures, when Christ began his mission; and more than four centuries
after that the mysterious rites of Isis were still celebrated in these
dark chambers. It is silent and dead enough here now; and there lives
nowhere upon the earth any man who can even conceive the state of
mind that gave those rites vitality. Even Egypt has changed its
superstitions.
Peace has come upon the earth after the strain of the last few hours. We
can scarcely hear the roar of the rapids, in the beating of which we had
been. The sun goes, leaving a changing yellow and faint orange on the
horizon. Above in the west is the crescent moon; and now all the sky
thereabout is rosy, even to the zenith, a delicate and yet deep color,
like that of the blush-rose—a transparent color that glows. A little
later we see from our boat the young moon through the columns of the
lesser temple. The January night is clear and perfectly dry; no dew
is falling—no dew ever falls here—and the multiplied stars burn with
uncommon lustre. When everything else is still, we hear the roar of the
rapids coming steadily on the night breeze, sighing through the old and
yet modern palace-temples of the parvenu Ptolemies, and of Cleopatra—a
new race of conquerors and pleasure-hunters, who in vain copied the
magnificent works of the ancient Pharaohs.
Here on a pylon gate, General Dessaix has recorded the fact that
in February (Ventose) in the seventh year of the Republic, General
Bonaparte being then in possession of Lower Egypt he pursued to this
spot the retreating Memlooks. Egyptian kings, Ethiopian usurpers,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Nectanebo, Cambyses, Ptolemy, Philadelphus,
Cleopatra and her Roman lovers, Dessaix,—these are all shades now.
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