ON a high bluff stands the tottering temple of Kom Ombos conspicuous
from a distance, and commanding a dreary waste of desert. Its gigantic
columns are of the Ptolemaic time, and the capitals show either Greek
influence or the relaxation of the Egyptian hieratic restraint.
The temple is double, with two entrances and parallel suites of
apartments, a happy idea of the builders, impartially to split the
difference between good and evil; one side is devoted to the worship of
Horus, the embodiment of the principle of Light, and the other to that
of Savak, the crocodile-headed god of Darkness. I fear that the latter
had here the more worshippers; his title was Lord of Ombos, and the fear
of him spread like night. On the sand-bank, opposite, the once-favored
crocodiles still lounge in the sun, with a sharp eye out for the rifle
of the foreigner, and, no doubt, wonder at the murderous spirit which
has come into the world to supplant the peaceful heathenism.
These ruins are an example of the jealousy with which the hierarchy
guarded their temples from popular intrusion. The sacred precincts were
enclosed by a thick and high brick wall, which must have concealed the
temple from view except on the river side; so formidable was this wall,
that although the edifice stands upon an eminence, it lies in a basin
formed by the ruins of the enclosure. The sun beating in it at noon
converted it into a reverberating furnace—a heat sufficient to melt any
image not of stone, and not to be endured by persons who do not believe
in Savak.
We walked a long time on the broad desert below Ombos, over sand as
hard as a sea-beach pounded by the waves, looking for the bed of pebbles
mentioned in the handbook, and found it a couple of miles below. In
the soft bank an enormous mass of pebbles has been deposited, and is
annually added to—sweepings of the Nubian deserts, flints and agates,
bits of syenite from Assouan, and colored stones in great variety. There
is a tradition that a sailor once found a valuable diamond here, and it
seems always possible that one may pick some precious jewel out of the
sand. Some of the desert pebbles, polished by ages of sand-blasts, are
very beautiful.
Every day when I walk upon the smooth desert away from the river, I look
for colored stones, pebbles, flints, chalcedonies, and agates. And I
expect to find, some day, the ewige pebble, the stone translucent,
more beautiful than any in the world—perhaps, the lost seal of Solomon,
dropped by some wandering Bedawee. I remind myself of one looking,
always in the desert, for the pearl of great price, which all the
markets and jewelers of the world wait for. It seems possible, here
under this serene sky, on this expanse of sand, which has been trodden
for thousands of years by all the Oriental people in turn, by caravans,
by merchants and warriors and wanderers, swept by so many geologic
floods and catastrophes, to find it. I never tire of looking, and
curiously examine every bit of translucent and variegated flint that
sparkles in the sand. I almost hope, when I find it, that it will not
be cut by hand of man, but that it will be changeable in color, and
be fashioned in a cunning manner by nature herself. Unless, indeed, it
should be, as I said, the talismanic ring of Solomon, which is known to
be somewhere in the world.
In the early morning we have drifted down to Silsilis, one of the most
interesting localities on the Nile. The difference in the level of the
land above and below and the character of the rocky passage at Silsilis
teach that the first cataract was here before the sandstone dam wore
away and transferred it to Assouan. Marks have been vainly sought here
for the former height of the Nile above; and we were interested in
examining the upper strata of rocks laid bare in the quarries. At a
height of perhaps sixty feet from the floor of a quarry, we saw between
two strata of sandstone a layer of other material that had exactly the
appearance of the deposits of the Nile which so closely resemble rock
along the shore. Upon reaching it we found that it was friable and, in
fact, a sort of hardened earth. Analysis would show whether it is a Nile
deposit, and might contribute something to the solution of the date of
the catastrophe here.
The interest at Silsilis is in these vast sandstone quarries, and very
little in the excavated grottoes and rock-temples on the west shore,
with their defaced and smoke-obscured images. Indeed, nothing in Egypt,
not even the temples and pyramids, has given us such an idea of
the immense labor the Egyptians expended in building, as these vast
excavations in the rock. We have wondered before where all the stone
came from that we have seen piled up in buildings and heaped in miles
of ruins; we wonder now what use could have been made of all the stone
quarried from these hills. But we remember that it was not removed in a
century, nor in ten centuries, but that for great periods of a thousand
years workmen were hewing here, and that much of the stone transported
and scattered over Egypt has sunk into the soil out of sight.
There are half a dozen of these enormous quarries close together, each
of which has its communication with the river. The method of working was
this:—a narrow passage was cut in from the river several hundred feet
into the mountain, or until the best-working stone was reached, and then
the excavation was broadened out without limit. We followed one of these
passages, the sides of which are evenly-cut rock, the height of the
hill. At length we came into an open area, like a vast cathedral in the
mountain, except that it wanted both pillars and roof. The floor was
smooth, the sides were from fifty to seventy-five feet high, and all
perpendicular, and as even as if dressed down with chisel and hammer.
This was their general character, but in some of them steps were left
in the wall and platforms, showing perfectly the manner of working. The
quarrymen worked from the top down perpendicularly, stage by stage. We
saw one of these platforms, a third of the distance from the top, the
only means of reaching which was by nicks cut in the face of the rock,
in which one might plant his feet and swing down by a rope. There was
no sign of splitting by drilling or by the the use of plugs, or of any
explosive material. The walls of the quarries are all cut down in fine
lines that run from top to bottom slantingly and parallel. These lines
have every inch or two round cavities, as if the stone had been bored by
some flexible instrument that turned in its progress. The workmen seem
to have cut out the stone always of the shape and size they wanted to
use; if it was for a statue, the place from which it came in the quarry
is rounded, showing the contour of the figure taken. They took out every
stone by the most patient labor. Whether it was square or round, they
cut all about it a channel four to five inches wide, and then separated
it from the mass underneath by a like broad cut. Nothing was split away;
all was carefully chiseled out, apparently by small tools. Abandoned
work, unfinished, plainly shows this. The ages and the amount of labor
required to hew out such enormous quantities of stone are heightened
in our thought, by the recognition of this slow process. And what hells
these quarries must have been for the workmen, exposed to the blaze of
a sun intensified by the glaring reflection from the light-colored rock,
and stifled for want of air. They have left the marks of their unending
task in these little chiselings on the face of the sandstone walls.
Here and there some one has rudely sketched a figure or outlined a
hieroglyphic. At intervals places are cut in the rock through which
ropes could be passed, and these are worn deeply, showing the use of
ropes, and no doubt of derricks, in handling the stones.
These quarries are as deserted now as the temples which were taken from
them; but nowhere else in Egypt was I more impressed with the duration,
the patience, the greatness of the race that accomplished such prodigies
of labor.
The grottoes, as I said, did not detain us; they are common
calling-places, where sailors and wanderers often light fires at night
and where our crew slept during the heat of this day, We saw there
nothing more remarkable than the repeated figure of the boy Horus taking
nourishment from the breast of his mother, which provoked the irreverent
remark of a voyager that Horus was more fortunate than his dragoman had
been in finding milk in this stony region.
Creeping on, often aground and always expecting to be, the weather
growing warmer as we went north, we reached Edfoo. It was Sunday,
and the temperature was like that of a July day, a south wind and the
mercury at 85°.
In this condition of affairs it was not unpleasant to find a temple,
entire, clean, perfectly excavated, and a cool retreat from the glare
of the sun. It was not unlike entering a cathedral. The door by which we
were admitted was closed and guarded; we were alone; and we experienced
something of the sentiment of the sanctuary, that hush and cool
serenity which is sometimes mistaken for religion, in the presence of
ecclesiastical architecture.
Although this is a Ptolemaic temple, it is, by reason of its nearly
perfect condition, the best example for study. The propylon which is two
hundred and fifty feet high and one hundred and fifteen long, contains
many spacious chambers, and confirms our idea that these portions of the
temples were residences. The roof is something enormous, being composed
of blocks of stone, three feet thick, by twelve wide, and twenty-two
long. Upon this roof are other chambers. As we wandered through the vast
pillared courts, many chambers and curious passages, peered into the
secret ways and underground and intermural alleys, and emerged upon the
roof, we thought what a magnificent edifice it must have been for the
gorgeous processions of the old worship, which are sculptured on the
walls.
But outside this temple and only a few feet from it is a stone wall of
circuit, higher than the roof of the temple itself. Like every inch
of the temple walls, this wall outside and inside is covered with
sculptures, scenes in river life, showing a free fancy and now and then
a dash of humor; as, when a rhinoceros is made to tow a boat—recalling
the western sportiveness of David Crockett with the alligator. Not only
did this wall conceal the temple from the vulgar gaze, but outside
it was again an enciente of unbaked brick, effectually excluding and
removing to a safe distance all the populace. Mariette Bey is of the
opinion that all the imposing ceremonies of the old ritual had no
witnesses except the privileged ones of the temple; and that no one
except the king could enter the adytum.
It seems to us also that the King, who was high priest and King, lived
in these palace-temples, the pylons of which served him for fortresses
as well as residences. We find no ruins of palaces in Egypt, and it
seems not reasonable that the king who had all the riches of the land at
his command would have lived in a hut of mud.
From the summit of this pylon we had an extensive view of the Nile and
the fields of ripening wheat. A glance into the squalid town was not so
agreeable. I know it would be a severe test of any village if it were
unroofed and one could behold its varied domestic life. We may from such
a sight as this have some conception of the appearance of this world to
the angels looking down. Our view was into filthy courts and roofless
enclosures, in which were sorry women and unclad children, sitting in
the dirt; where old people, emaciated and feeble, and men and women ill
of some wasting disease, lay stretched upon the ground, uncared for,
stifled by the heat and swarmed upon of flies.
The heated day lapsed into a delicious evening, a half-moon over head,
the water glassy, the shores fringed with palms, the air soft. As
we came to El Kab, where we stopped, a carawan was whistling on the
opposite shore—a long, shrill whistle like that of a mocking-bird. If
we had known, it was a warning to us that the placid appearances of the
night were deceitful, and that violence was masked under this smiling
aspect. The barometer indeed had been falling rapidly for two days. We
were about to have our first experience of what may be called a simoon.
Towards nine o'clock, and suddenly, the wind began to blow from the
north, like one of our gusts in summer, proceeding a thunderstorm. The
boat took the alarm at once and endeavored to fly, swinging to the wind
and tugging at her moorings. With great difficulty she was secured by
strong cables fore and aft anchored in the sand, but she trembled and
shook and rattled, and the wind whistled through the rigging as if we
had been on the Atlantic—any boat loose upon the river that night must
have gone to inevitable wreck. It became at once dark, and yet it was a
ghastly darkness; the air was full of fine sand that obscured the sky,
except directly overhead, where there were the ghost of a wan moon and
some spectral stars. Looking upon the river, it was like a Connecticut
fog—but a sand fog; and the river itself roared, and high waves ran
against the current. When we stepped from the boat, eyes, nose, and
mouth were instantly choked with sand, and it was almost impossible to
stand. The wind increased, and rocked the boat like a storm at sea; for
three hours it blew with much violence, and in fact did not spend itself
in the whole night.
“The worser storm, God be merciful,” says Abd-el-Atti, “ever I saw in
Egypt.”
When it somewhat abated, the dragoman recognized a divine beneficence in
it; “It show that God 'member us.”
It is a beautiful belief of devout Moslems that personal afflictions
and illnesses are tokens of a heavenly care. Often when our dragoman has
been ill, he has congratulated himself that God was remembering him.
“Not so? A friend of me in Cairo was never in his life ill, never any
pain, toothache, headache, nothing. Always well. He begin to have fear
that something should happen, mebbe God forgot him. One day I meet him
in the Mooskee very much pleased; all right now, he been broke him the
arm; God 'member him.”
During the gale we had a good specimen of Arab character. When it was
at its height, and many things about the attacked vessel needed looking
after, securing and tightening, most of the sailors rolled themselves
up, drawing their heads into their burnouses, and went sound asleep.
The after-sail was blown loose and flapping in the wind; our reïs sat
composedly looking at it, never stirring from his haunches, and let the
canvas whip to rags; finally a couple of men were aroused, and secured
the shreds. The Nile crew is a marvel of helplessness in an emergency;
and considering the dangers of the river to these top-heavy boats, it
is a wonder that any accomplish the voyage in safety. There is no more
discipline on board than in a district-school meeting at home. The boat
might as well be run by ballot.
It was almost a relief to have an unpleasant day to talk about. The
forenoon was like a mixed fall and spring day in New England, strong
wind, flying clouds, but the air full of sand instead of snow; there
was even a drop of rain, and we heard a peal or two of feeble
thunder—evidently an article not readily manufactured in this country;
but the afternoon settled back into the old pleasantness.
Of the objects of interest at Eilethyas I will mention only two, the
famous grottoes, and a small temple of Amunoph III., not often visited.
It stands between two and three miles from the river, in a desolate
valley, down which the Bisharee Arabs used to come on marauding
excursions. What freak placed it in this remote solitude? It contains
only one room, a few paces square, and is, in fact, only a chapel, but
it is full of capital pieces of sculptures of a good period of art. The
architect will find here four pillars, which clearly suggest the Doric
style. They are fourteen-sided, but one of the planes is broader than
the others and has a raised tablet of sculptures which terminate above
in a face, said to be that of Lucina, to whom the temple is dedicated,
but resembling the cow-headed Isis. These pillars, with the sculptures
on one side finished at the top with a head, may have suggested the
Osiride pillars.
The grottoes are tombs in the sandstone mountain, of the time of the
eighteenth dynasty, which began some thirty-five hundred years ago.
Two of them have remarkable sculptures, the coloring of which is still
fresh; and I wish to speak of them a little, because it is from them
(and some of the same character) that Egyptologists have largely
reconstructed for us the common life of the ancient Egyptians. Although
the work is somewhat rude, it has a certain veracity of execution which
is pleasing.
We assume this tomb to have been that of a man of wealth. This is
the ante-chamber; the mummy was deposited in a pit let into a small
excavation in the rear. On one wall are sculptured agricultural scenes:
plowing, sowing, reaping wheat and pulling doora (the color indicates
the kind of grain), hatcheling the latter, while oxen are treading out
the wheat, and the song of the threshers encouraging the oxen is written
in hieroglyphics above; the winnowing and storing of the grain; in
a line under these, the various domestic animals of the deceased are
brought forward to a scribe, who enumerates them and notes the numbers
on a roll of papyrus. There are river-scenes:—grain is loaded into
freight-boats; pleasure-dahabeëhs are on the stream, gaily painted, with
one square sail amidship, rowers along the sides, and windows in the
cabin; one has a horse and chariot on board, the reïs stands at the
bow, the overseer, kurbash in hand, is threatening the crew, a sailor is
falling overboard. Men are gathering grapes, and treading out the
wine with their feet; others are catching fish and birds in nets, and
dressing and curing them. At the end of this wall, offerings are made to
Osiris. In one compartment a man is seated holding a boy on his lap.
On the opposite wall are two large figures, supposed to be the occupant
of the tomb and his wife, seated on a fauteuil; men and women, in two
separate lines, facing the large figures, are seated, one leg bent under
them, each smelling a lotus flower. In the rear, men are killing and
cutting up animals as if preparing for a feast. To the leg of the
fauteuil is tied a monkey; and Mr. Wilkinson says that it was customary
at entertainments for the hosts to have a “favorite monkey” tied to the
leg of the chair. Notwithstanding the appearance of the monkey here
in that position, I do not suppose that he would say that an ordinary
entertainment is represented here. For, although there are preparations
for a feast, there is a priest standing between the friends and the
principal personages, making offerings, and the monkey may be present
in his character of emblem of Thoth. It seems to be a funeral and not
a festive representation. The pictures apparently tell the story of the
life of the deceased and his occupations, and represent the mourning at
his tomb. In other grottoes, where the married pair are seated as here,
the arm of the woman on the shoulder of the man, and the “favorite
monkey” tied to the chair, friends are present in the act of mourning,
throwing dust on their heads, and accompanied by musicians; and the
mummy is drawn on a sledge to the tomb, a priest standing on the front,
and a person pouring oil on the ground that the runners may slip easily.
The setting sun strikes into these chambers, so carefully prepared for
people of rank of whom not a pinch of dust now remains, and lights them
up with a certain cheer and hope. We cannot make anything melancholy out
of a tomb so high and with such a lovely prospect from its front door.
The former occupants are unknown, but not more unknown than the peasants
we see on the fields below, still at the tasks depicted in these
sculptures. Thirty-five hundred years is not so very long ago! Slowly
we pick our way down the hill and regain our floating home; and, bidding
farewell forever to El Kab, drift down in the twilight. In the morning
we are at Esneh.
In Esneh the sound of the grinding is never low. The town is full of
primitive ox-power mills in which the wheat is ground, and there are
always dahabeëhs staying here for the crew to bake their bread. Having
already had one day of Esneh we are tired of it, for it is exactly
like all other Egyptian towns of its size: we know all the possible
combinations of mud-hovels, crooked lanes, stifling dust, nakedness,
squalor. We are so accustomed to picking our way in the street amid
women and children sprawling in the dirt, that the scene has lost its
strangeness; it is even difficult to remember that in other countries
women usually keep indoors and sit on chairs.
The town is not without liveliness It is half Copt, and beggars demand
backsheesh on the ground that they are Christians, and have a common
interest with us. We wander through the bazaars where there is nothing
to buy and into the market-place, always the most interesting study in
an unknown city. The same wheat lies on the ground in heaps; the same
roots and short stalks of the doora are tied in bundles and sold for
fuel, and cakes of dried manure for the like use; people are lying about
in the sun in all picturesque attitudes, some curled up and some on
their backs fast asleep; more are squating before little heaps of
corn or beans or some wilted “greens,” or dried tobacco-leaves and
pipe-bowls; children swarm and tumble about everywhere; donkeys and
camels pick their way through the groups.
I spent half an hour in teaching a handsome young Copt how to pronounce
English words in his Arabic-English primer. He was very eager to learn
and very grateful for assistance. We had a large and admiring crowd
about us, who laughed at every successful and still more at every
unsuccessful attempt on the part of the pupil, and repeated the English
words themselves when they could catch the sound,—an exceedingly
good-natured lot of idlers. We found the people altogether pleasant,
some in the ingrained habit of begging, quick to take a joke and easily
excited. While I had my scholar, a fantasia of music on two tambourines
was performed for the amusement of my comrade, which had also its ring
of spectators watching the effect of the monotonous thumping, upon
the grave howadji; he was seated upon the mastabah of a shop, with
all formality, and enjoyed all the honors of the entertainment, as was
proper, since he bore the entire expense alone,—about five cents.
The coffee-shops of Esneh are many, some respectable and others
decidedly otherwise. The former are the least attractive, being merely
long and dingy mud-apartments, in which the visitors usually sit on
the floor and play at draughts. The coffee-houses near the river have
porticoes and pleasant terraces in front, and look not unlike some
picturesque Swiss or Italian wine-shops. The attraction there seems to
be the Ghawazees or dancing-girls, of whom there is a large colony here,
the colony consisting of a tribe. All the family act as procurers
for the young women, who are usually married. Their dress is an
extraordinary combination of stripes and colors, red and yellow being
favorites, which harmonize well with their dark, often black, skins, and
eyes heavily shaded with kohl. I suppose it must be admitted, in spite
of their total want of any womanly charm of modesty, that they are
the finest-looking women in Egypt, though many of them are ugly; they
certainly are of a different type from the Egyptians, though not of
a pure type; they boast that they have preserved themselves without
admixture with other peoples or tribes from a very remote period;
one thing is certain, their profession is as old as history and their
antiquity may entitle them to be considered an aristocracy of vice. They
say that their race is allied in origin to that of the people called
gypsies, with whom many of their customs are common. The men are
tinkers, blacksmiths, or musicians, and the women are the ruling element
in the band; the husband is subject to the wife. But whatever their
origin, it is admitted that their dance is the same as that with which
the dancing-women amused the Pharaohs, the same that the Phoenicians
carried to Gades and which Juvenal describes, and, Mr. Lane thinks, the
same by which the daughter of Herodias danced off the head of John the
Baptist. Modified here and there, it is the immemorial dance of the
Orient.
Esneh has other attractions for the sailors of the Nile; there are the
mahsheshehs, or shops where hasheesh is smoked; an attendant brings
the “hubble-bubble” to the guests who are lolling on the mastabah; they
inhale their portion, and then lie down in a stupor, which is at every
experiment one remove nearer idiocy.
Still drifting, giving us an opportunity to be on shore all the morning.
We visit the sugar establishment at Mutâneh, and walk along the high
bank under the shade of the acacias for a couple of miles below it.
Nothing could be lovelier in this sparkling morning—the silver-grey
range of mountains across the river and the level smiling land on our
left. This is one of the Viceroy's possessions, bought of one of his
relations at a price fixed by his highness. There are ten thousand acres
of arable land, of which some fifteen hundred is in sugar-cane, and the
rest in grain. The whole is watered by a steam-pump, which sends a
vast stream of water inland, giving life to the broad fields and the
extensive groves, as well as to a village the minaret of which we can
see. It is a noble estate. Near the factory are a palace and garden,
somewhat in decay, as is usual in this country, but able to offer us
roses and lemons.
The works are large, modern, with improved machinery for crushing and
boiling, and apparently well managed; there is said to be one of the
sixteen sugar-factories of the Khedive which pays expenses; perhaps this
is the one. A great quantity of rum is distilled from the refuse. The
vast field in the rear, enclosed by a whitewashed wall, presented a
lively appearance, with camels bringing in the cane and unloading it and
arranging it upon the endless trough for the crushers. In the factory,
the workmen wear little clothing and are driven to their task; all
the overseers march among them kurbash in hand; the sight of the black
fellows treading about in the crystallized sugar, while putting it up in
sacks, would decide a fastidious person to take her tea unsweetened.
The next morning we pass Erment without calling, satisfied to take the
word of others that you may see there a portrait of Cleopatra; and by
noon come to our old mooring-place at Luxor, and add ours to the painted
dalabeëhs lounging in this idle and gay resort.
During the day we enjoyed only one novel sensation. We ate of the ripe
fruit ot the dôm-palm. It tastes and smells like stale gingerbread, made
of sawdust instead of flour.
I do not know how long one could stay contentedly at Thebes; certainly
a winter, if only to breathe the inspiring air, to bask in the sun,
to gaze, never sated, upon plains and soft mountains which climate and
association clothe with hues of beauty and romance, to yield for once
to a leisure that is here rebuked by no person and by no urgency of
affairs; perhaps for years, if one seriously attempted a study of
antiquities.
The habit of leisure is at least two thousand years old here; at any
rate, we fell into it without the least desire to resist its spell. This
is one of the eddies of the world in which the modern hurry is unfelt.
If it were not for the coughing steamboats and the occasional glimpse
one has of a whisking file of Cook's tourists, Thebes would be entirely
serene, and an admirable place of retirement.
It has a reputation, however, for a dubious sort of industry. All along
the river from Geezeh to Assouan, whenever a spurious scarabæus or a
bogus image turned up, we would hear, “Yes, make 'em in Luxor.” As we
drew near to this great mart of antiquities, the specification became
more personal—“Can't tell edzacly whether that make by Mr. Smith or by
that Moslem in Goorneh, over the other side.”
The person named is well known to all Nile voyagers as Antiquity Smith,
and he has, though I cannot say that he enjoys, the reputation hinted at
above. How much of it is due to the enmity of rival dealers in relics of
the dead, I do not know; but it must be evident to anyone that the very
clever forgeries of antiquities, which one sees, could only be produced
by skillful and practiced workmen. We had some curiosity to see a man
who has made the American name so familiar the length of the Nile, for
Mr. Smith is a citizen of the United States. For seventeen years he has
been a voluntary exile here, and most of the time the only foreigner
resident in the place; long enough to give him a good title to the
occupation of any grotto he may choose.
In appearance Mr. Smith is somewhat like a superannuated agent of the
tract society, of the long, thin, shrewd, learned Yankee type. Few
men have enjoyed his advantages for sharpening the wits. Born in
Connecticut, reared in New Jersey, trained for seventeen years among the
Arabs and antiquity-mongers of this region, the sharpest in the Orient,
he ought to have not only the learning attached to the best-wrapped
mummy, but to be able to read the hieroglyphics on the most inscrutable
human face among the living.
Mr. Smith lives on the outskirts of the village, in a house, surrounded
by a garden, which is a kind of museum of the property, not to say the
bones, of the early Egyptians.
“You seem to be retired from society here Mr. Smith,” we ventured to
say.
“Yes, for eight months of the year, I see nobody, literally nobody. It
is only during the winter that strangers come here.”
“Isn't it lonesome?”
“A little, but you get used to it.”
“What do you do during the hottest months?”
“As near nothing as possible.”
“How hot is it?”
“Sometimes the thermometer goes to 120° Fahrenheit. It stays a long time
at 100°. The worst of it is that the nights are almost as hot as the
days.”
“How do you exist?”
“I keep very quiet, don't write, don't read anything that requires the
least thought. Seldom go out, never in the daytime. In the early morning
I sit a while on the verandah, and about ten o'clock get into a big
bath-tub, which I have on the ground-floor, and stay in it nearly all
day, reading some very mild novel, and smoking the weakest tobacco. In
the evening I find it rather cooler outside the house than in. A white
man can't do anything here in the summer.”
I did not say it to Mr. Smith, but I should scarcely like to live in
a country where one is obliged to be in water half the year, like a
pelican. We can have, however, from his experience some idea what this
basin must have been in summer, when its area was a crowded city, upon
which the sun, reverberated from the incandescent limestone hills, beat
in unceasing fervor.
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