WE ARE on deck before sunrise, a film is over the sky and a light breeze
blows out our streamer—a bad omen for the passage.
The downward run of the Cataract is always made in the early morning,
that being the time when there is least likely to be any wind. And a
calm is considered absolutely necessary to the safety of the boat. The
north wind, which helps the passage up, would be fatal going down. The
boat runs with the current, and any exterior disturbance would whirl her
about and cast her upon the rocks.
If we are going this morning, we have no time to lose, for it is easy to
see that this breeze, which is now uncertainly dallying with our colors,
will before long strengthen. The Cataract people begin to arrive; there
is already a blue and white row of them squatting on the bank above
us, drawing their cotton robes about them, for the morning is a trifle
chilly. They come loitering along the bank and sit down as if they were
merely spectators, and had no interest in the performance.
The sun comes, and scatters the cloud-films; as the sun rises we are
ready to go; everything has been made snug and fast above and below; and
the breeze has subsided entirely. We ought to take instant advantage of
the calm; seconds count now. But we wait for the Reis of the Cataract,
the head reïs, without whose consent no move can be made. It is the sly
old sheykh with whom we have already negociated, and he has his reasons
for delaying. By priority of arrival at Philæ our boat is entitled to be
first taken down; but the dragoman of another boat has been crossing the
palms of the guileless patriarch with gold pieces, and he has agreed to
give the other boat the preference. It is not probable that the virtuous
sheykh ever intended to do so, but he must make some show of keeping his
bargain. He would like to postpone our voyage, and take the chances of
another day.
But here he comes, mounted on a donkey, in state, wrapped about the
head and neck in his cashmere, and with a train of attendants—the
imperturbable, shrewd old man. He halts a moment on the high bank,
looks up at our pennant, mutters something about “wind, not good day, no
safe,” and is coolly about to ride by.
Our dragoman in an instant is at his side, and with half-jocular but
firm persistence, invites him to dismount. It is in vain that the sheykh
invents excuse after excuse for going on. There is a neighbor in the
village whose child is dead, and he must visit him. The consolation,
Abd-el-Atti thinks, can be postponed an hour or two, Allah is all
merciful. He is chilly, his fingers are cold, he will just ride to the
next house and warm his hands, and by that time we can tell whether
it is to be a good morning; Abd-el-Atti is sure that he can warm his
fingers much better on our boat, in fact he can get warm all through
there.
“I'll warm him if he won't come.” continues the dragoman, turning to us;
“if I let him go by, the old rascal, he slip down to Assouan, and that
become the last of him.”
Before the patriarch knows exactly what has happened, or the other
dragoman can hinder, he is gently hustled down the steep bank aboard our
boat. There is a brief palaver, and then he is seated, with a big bowl
of coffee and bread; we are still waiting, but it is evident that the
decisive nod has been given. The complexion of affairs has changed!
The people are called from the shore; before we interpret rightly their
lazy stir, they are swarming on board. The men are getting their places
on the benches at the oars—three stout fellows at each oar; it looks
like “business.” The three principal reïses are on board; there are at
least a dozen steersmen; several heads of families are present, and a
dozen boys. More than seventy-five men have invaded us—and they may all
be needed to get ropes ashore in case of accident. This unusual swarm
of men and the assistance of so many sheykhs, these extra precautions,
denote either fear, or a desire to impress us with the magnitude of
the undertaking. The head reïs shakes his head at the boat and mutters,
“much big.” We have aboard almost every skillful pilot of the rapids.
The Cataract flag, two bands of red and yellow with the name of “Allah”
worked on it in white, is set up by the cabin stairs.
There is a great deal of talking, some confusion, and a little
nervousness. Our dragoman cheerfully says, “we will hope for the
better,” as the beads pass through his fingers. The reïses are audibly
muttering their prayers. The pilots begin to strip to their work. A
bright boy of twelve years, squat on deck by the tiller, is loudly and
rapidly reciting the Koran.
At the last moment, the most venerable reïs of the cataract comes on
board, as a great favor to us. He has long been superannuated, his hair
is white, his eye-sight is dim, but when he is on board all will go
well. Given a conspicous seat in a chair on the cabin deck, he begins
at once prayers for our safe passage. This sheykh is very distinguished,
tracing his ancestry back beyond the days of Abraham; his family is very
large—seven hundred is the number of his relations; this seems to be a
favorite number; Ali Moorad at Luxor has also seven hundred relations.
The sheykh is treated with great deference; he seems to have had
something to do with designing the cataract, and opening it to the
public.
The last rope is hauled in; the crowd on shore cheer; our rowers dip
the oars, and in a moment we are sweeping along in the stiff current,
avoiding the boulders on either side. We go swiftly. Everybody is
muttering prayers now; two venerable reïses seated on a box in front of
the rudder increase the speed of their devotions; and the boy chants the
Koran with a freer swing.
Our route down is not the same as it was up. We pass the head of the
chief rapid—in which we struggle—into which it would need only a wink of
the helm to turn us—and sweep away to the west side; and even appear to
go a little out of our way to run near a precipice of rock. A party of
ladies and gentlemen who have come down from their dahabeëh above,
to see us make the chûte, are standing on the summit, and wave
handkerchiefs and hats as we rush by.
Before us, we can see the great rapids—a down-hill prospect. The passage
is narrow, and so crowded is the hurrying water that there is a ridge
down the centre. On this ridge, which is broken and also curved, we are
to go. If it were straight, it would be more attractive, but it curves
short to the right near the bottom of the rapid, and, if we do not turn
sharp with it, we shall dash against the rocks ahead, where the waves
strike in curling foam. All will depend upon the skill and strength of
the steersmen, and the sheer at the exact instant.
There is not long to think of it, however, and no possibility now of
evading the trial. Before we know it, the nose of the boat is in the
rapid, which flings it up in the air; the next second we are tossed on
the waves. The bow dips, and a heavy wave deluges the cook's domain; we
ship a tun or two of water, the dragoman, who stands forward, is wet to
his breast; but the boat shakes it off and rises again, tossed like an
egg-shell. It is glorious. The boat obeys her helm admirably, as the
half-dozen pilots, throwing their weight upon the tiller, skillfully
veer it slightly or give it a broad sweep.
It is a matter of only three or four minutes, but they are minutes of
intense excitement. In the midst of them, the reïs of our boat, who has
no command now and no responsibility, and is usually imperturbably calm,
becomes completely unmanned by the strain upon his nerves, and breaks
forth into convulsive shouting, tears and perspiration running down his
cheeks. He has “the power,” and would have hysterics if he were not a
man. A half-dozen people fly to his rescue, snatch off his turban, hold
his hands, mop his face, and try to call him out of his panic. By the
time he is somewhat composed, we have shunned the rocks and made the
turn, and are floating in smoother but still swift water. The reises
shake hands and come to us with salaams and congratulations. The chief
pilot desires to put my fez on his own head in token of great joy and
amity. The boy stops shouting the Koran, the prayers cease, the beads
are put up. It is only when we are in a tight place that it is necessary
to call upon the name of the Lord vigorously.
“You need not have feared,” says a reïs of the Cataract to ours,
pointing to the name on the red and yellow flag, “Allah would bring us
through.”
That there was no danger in this passage we cannot affirm. The dahabeëhs
that we left at Mahatta, ready to go down, and which might have been
brought through that morning, were detained four or five days upon
the whim of the reises. Of the two that came first, one escaped with a
slight knock against the rocks, and the other was dashed on them, her
bottom staved in, and half filled with water immediately. Fortunately,
she was fast on the rock; the passengers, luggage, and stores were got
ashore; and after some days the boat was rescued and repaired.
For a mile below this chûte we have rapid going, rocks to shun, short
turns to make, and quite uncertainty enough to keep us on the qui vive,
and finally, another lesser rapid, where there is infinitely more noise
by the crew, but less danger from the river than above.
As we approach the last rapid, a woman appears in the swift stream,
swimming by the help of a log—that being the handy ferry-boat of the
country; her clothes are all in a big basket, and the basket is secured
on her head. The sandal, which is making its way down a side channel,
with our sheep on board, is signalled to take this lady of the lake in,
and land her on the opposite shore. These sheep of ours, though much
tossed about, seem to enjoy the voyage and look about upon the raging
scene with that indifference which comes of high breeding. They are
black, but that was not to their prejudice in their Nubian home. They
are comely animals in life, and in death are the best mutton in the
East; it is said that they are fed on dates, and that this diet imparts
to their flesh its sweet flavor. I think their excellence is quite as
much due to the splendid air they breathe.
While we are watching the manoeuvring of the boat, the woman swims to
a place where she can securely lodge her precious log in the rocks and
touch bottom with her feet. The boat follows her and steadies itself
against the same rocks, about which the swift current is swirling. The
water is up to the woman's neck, and the problem seems to be to get the
clothes out of the basket which is on her head, and put them on, and not
wet the clothes. It is the old myth of Venus rising from the sea, but
under changed conditions, and in the face of modern sensitiveness. How
it was accomplished, I cannot say, but when I look again the aquatic
Venus is seated in the sandal, clothed, dry, and placid.
We were an hour passing the rapids, the last part of the time with
a strong wind against us; if it had risen sooner we should have had
serious trouble. As it was, it took another hour with three men at each
oar, to work down to Assouan through the tortuous channel, which is
full of rocks and whirlpools, The men at each bank of oars belonged to
different tribes, and they fell into a rivalry of rowing, which resulted
in an immense amount of splashing, spurting, yelling, chorusing, and
calling on the Prophet. When the contest became hot, the oars were all
at sixes and sevens, and in fact the rowing gave way to vituperation
and a general scrimmage. Once, in one of the most ticklish places in the
rapids, the rowers had fallen to quarrelling, and the boat would have
gone to smash, if the reïs had not rushed in and laid about him with a
stick. These artless children of the sun! However we came down to our
landing in good form, exchanging salutes with the fleet of boats waiting
to make the ascent.
At once four boats, making a gallant show with their spread wings,
sailed past us, bound up the cataract. The passengers fired salutes,
waved their handkerchiefs, and exhibited the exultation they felt in
being at last under way for Philæ; and well they might, for some of them
had been waiting here fifteen days.
But alas for their brief prosperity. The head reïs was not with them;
that autocrat was still upon our deck, leisurely stowing away coffee,
eggs, cold meat, and whatever provisions were brought him, with the
calmness of one who has a good conscience. As the dahabeëhs swept by he
shook his head and murmured, “not much go.”
And they did “not much go.” They stopped indeed, and lay all day at the
first gate, and all night. The next morning, two dahabeëhs, carrying
persons of rank, passed up, and were given the preference, leaving
the first-comers still in the rapids; and two days after, they were in
mid-passage, and kept day after day in the roar and desolation of the
cataract, at the pleasure of its owners. The only resource they had was
to write indignant letters of remonstrance to the governor at Assouan.
This passage of the cataract is a mysterious business, the secrets of
which are only mastered by patient study. Why the reises should desire
to make it so vexatious is the prime mystery. The traveler who reaches
Assouan often finds himself entangled in an invisible web of restraints.
There is no opposition to his going on; on the contrary the governor,
the reises, and everyone overflow with courtesy and helpfulness. But,
somehow, he does not go on, he is played with from day to day. The old
sheykh, before he took his affectionate leave of us that morning, let
out the reason of the momentary hesitation he had exhibited in agreeing
to take our boat up the cataract when we arrived. The excellent owners,
honest Aboo Yoosef and the plaintive little Jew of Bagdad, had sent him
a bribe of a whole piece of cotton cloth, and some money to induce him
to prevent our passage. He was not to refuse, not by any means, for in
that case the owners would have been liable to us for the hundred pounds
forfeit named in the contract in case the boat could not be taken up;
but he was to amuse us, and encourage us, and delay us, on various
pretexts, so long that we should tire out and freely choose not to go
any farther.
The integrity of the reïs was proof against the seduction of this bribe;
he appropriated it, and then earned the heavy fee for carrying us up, in
addition. I can add nothing by way of eulogium upon this clever old man,
whose virtue enabled him to withstand so much temptation.
We lay for two days at the island Elephantine, opposite Assouan, and
have ample time to explore its two miserable villages, and to wander
over the heaps on heaps, the débris of so many successive civilizations.
All day long, women and children are clambering over these mounds
of ashes, pottery, bricks, and fragments of stone, unearthing coins,
images, beads, and bits of antiquity, which the strangers buy. There is
nothing else on the island. These indistinguishable mounds are almost
the sole evidence of the successive occupation of ancient Egyptians,
Canaanites, Ethiopians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, and
conquering Arabs. But the grey island has an indefinable charm. The
northern end is green with wheat and palms; but if it were absolutely
naked, its fine granite outlines would be attractive under this splendid
sky. The days are lovely, and the nights enchanting. Nothing more poetic
could be imagined than the silvery reaches of river at night, with their
fringed islands and shores, the stars and the new moon, the uplifted
rocks, and the town reflected in the stream.
Of Assouan itself, its palm-groves and dirty huddle of dwellings, we
have quite enough in a day. Curiosity leads us to visit the jail, and
we find there, by chance, one of our sailors, who is locked up for
insubordination, and our venerable reïs keeping him company, for being
inefficient in authority over his crew. In front of the jail, under the
shade of two large acacia trees, the governor has placed his divan and
holds his levées in the open air, transacting business, and entertaining
his visitors with coffee and cigars. His excellency is a very
“smartish,” big black fellow, not a negro nor a Nubian exactly, but
an Ababdeh, from a tribe of desert Arabs; a man of some aptitude for
affairs and with very little palaver. The jail has an outer guard-room,
furnished with divans and open at both ends, and used as a court of
justice. A not formidable door leads to the first room, which is some
twenty feet square; and here, seated upon the ground with some thirty
others, we are surprised to recognize our reïs. The respectable old
incapable was greatly humiliated by the indignity. Although he was
speedily released, his incarceration was a mistake; it seemed to break
his spirit, and he was sullen and uncheerful ever afterwards. His
companions were in for trivial offences: most of them for not paying the
government taxes, or for debt to the Khedive, as the phrase was. In
an adjoining, smaller room, were the great criminals, the thieves and
murderers. Three murderers were chained together by enormous iron cables
attached to collars about their necks, and their wrists were clamped in
small wooden stocks. In this company were five decent-looking men, who
were also bound together by heavy chains from neck to neck; we were told
that these were the brothers of men who had run away from the draft, and
that they would be held until their relations surrendered themselves.
They all sat glumly on the ground. The jail does not differ in comfort
from the ordinary houses; and the men are led out once a day for fresh
air; we saw the murderers taking an airing, and exercise also in lugging
their ponderous irons.
We departed from Assouan early in the morning, with water and wind
favorable for a prosperous day. At seven o'clock our worthy steersman
stranded us on a rock. It was a little difficult to do it, for he had to
go out of his way and to leave the broad and plainly staked-out channel.
But he did it very neatly. The rock was a dozen feet out of water, and
he laid the boat, without injury, on the shelving upper side of it, so
that the current would constantly wash it further on, and the falling
river would desert it. The steersman was born in Assouan and knows every
rock and current here, even in the dark. This accident no doubt happened
out of sympathy with the indignity to the reïs. That able commander is
curled up on the deck ill, and no doubt felt greatly grieved when he
felt the grating of the bottom upon the rock; but he was not too ill to
exchange glances with the serene and ever-smiling steersman. Three hours
after the stranding, our crew have succeeded in working us a little
further on than we were at first, and are still busy; surely there are
in all history no such navigators as these.
It is with some regret that we leave, or are trying to leave, Nubia,
both on account of its climate and its people. The men, various sorts
of Arabs as well as the Nubians, are better material than the fellaheen
below, finer looking, with more spirit and pride, more independence and
self-respect. They are also more barbarous; they carry knives and heavy
sticks universally, and guns if they can get them, and in many places
have the reputation of being quarrelsome, turbulent, and thieves. But we
have rarely received other than courteous treatment from them. Some of
the youngest women are quite pretty, or would be but for the enormous
nose and ear rings, the twisted hair and the oil; the old women are all
unnecessarily ugly. The children are apt to be what might be called
free in apparel, except that the girls wear fringe, but the women are as
modest in dress and manner as those of Egypt. That the highest morality
invariably prevails, however, one cannot affirm, notwithstanding the
privilege of husbands, which we are assured is sometimes exercised, of
disposing of a wife (by means of the knife and the river) who may have
merely incurred suspicion by talking privately with another man. This
process is evidently not frequent, for women are plenty, and we saw no
bodies in the river.
But our chief regret at quitting Nubia is on account of the climate.
It is incomparably the finest winter climate I have ever known; it is
nearly perfect. The air is always elastic and inspiring; the days are
full of sun; the nights are cool and refreshing; the absolute dryness
seems to counteract the danger from changes of temperature. You may do
there what you cannot in any place in Europe in the winter—get warm. You
may also, there, have repose without languor.
We went on the rock at seven and got off at two. The governor of Assouan
was asked for help and he sent down a couple of boat-loads of men, who
lifted us off by main strength and the power of their lungs. We drifted
on, but at sunset we were not out of sight of the mosque of Assouan.
Strolling ashore, we found a broad and rich plain, large palm-groves
and wheat-fields, and a swarming population—in striking contrast to
the country above the Cataract. The character of the people is wholly
different; the women are neither so oily, nor have they the wild shyness
of the Nubians; they mind their own business and belong to a more
civilized society; slaves, negroes as black as night, abound in
the fields. Some of the large wheat-fields are wholly enclosed by
substantial unburnt brick walls, ten feet high.
Early in the evening, our serene steersman puts us hard aground again on
a sandbar. I suppose it was another accident. The wife and children of
the steersman live at a little town opposite the shoal upon which we
have so conveniently landed, and I suppose the poor fellow wanted an
opportunity to visit them. He was not permitted leave of absence while
the boat lay at Assouan, and now the dragoman says that, so far as he
is concerned, the permission shall not be given from here, although the
village is almost in sight; the steersman ought to be punished for his
conduct, and he must wait till he comes up next year before he can see
his wife and children. It seems a hard case, to separate a man from his
family in this manner.
“I think it's a perfect shame,” cries Madame, when she hears of it, “not
to see his family for a year!”
“But one of his sons is on board, you know, as a sailor. And the
steersman spent most of his time with his wife the boy's mother, when we
were at Assouan.”
“I thought you said his wife lived opposite here?”
“Yes, but this is a newer one, a younger one; that is his old wife, in
Assouan.”
“Oh!”
“The poor fellow has another in Cairo.”
“Oh!”
“He has wives, I daresay, at proper distances along the Nile, and
whenever he wants to spend an hour or two with his family, he runs us
aground.”
“I don't care to hear anything more about him.”
The Moslem religion is admirably suited to the poor mariner, and
especially to the sailor on the Nile through a country that is all
length and no width.
0354