BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH.
It is the rule of the Nile to hurry up the river as fast as possible,
leaving the ruins to be seen as the boat comes back with the current;
but this, like many another canon, is by no means of universal
application. The traveler who starts late in the season has, indeed, no
other course open to him. He must press on with speed to the end of his
journey, if he would get back again at low Nile without being
irretrievably stuck on a sand-bank till the next inundation floats him
off again. But for those who desire not only to see the monuments, but
to follow, however superficially, the course of Egyptian history as it
is handed down through Egyptian art, it is above all things necessary to
start early and to see many things by the way.
For the history of ancient Egypt goes against the stream. The earliest
monuments lie between Cairo and Siout, while the latest temples to the
old gods are chiefly found in Nubia. Those travelers, therefore, who
hurry blindly forward with or without a wind, now sailing, now tracking,
now punting, passing this place by night, and that by day, and never
resting till they have gained the farthest point of their journey, begin
at the wrong end and see all their sights in precisely inverse order.
Memphis and Sakkârah and the tombs of Beni Hassan should undoubtedly be
visited on the way up. So should El Kâb and Tell el Amarna, and the
oldest parts of Karnak and Luxor. It is not necessary to delay long at
any of these places. They may be seen cursorily on the way up, and be
more carefully studied on the way down; but they should be seen as they
come, no matter at what trifling cost of present delay and despite any
amount of ignorant opposition. For in this way only is it possible to
trace the progression and retrogression of the arts from the
pyramid-builders to the Cæsars; or to understand at the time and on the
spot in what order that vast and august procession of dynasties swept
across the stage of history.
For ourselves, as will presently be seen, it happened that we could
carry only a part of this programme into effect; but that part, happily,
was the most important. We never ceased to congratulate ourselves on
having made acquaintance with the pyramids of Ghîzeh and Sakkârah before
seeing the tombs of the kings at Thebes; and I feel that it is
impossible to overestimate the advantage of studying the sculptures of
the tomb of Ti before one’s taste is brought into contact with the
debased style of Denderah and Esneh. We began the great book, in short,
as it always should be begun--at its first page; thereby acquiring just
that necessary insight without which many an after-chapter must have
lost more than half its interest.
If I seem to insist upon this point it is because things contrary to
custom need a certain amount of insistence and are sure to be met by
opposition. No dragoman, for example, could be made to understand the
importance of historical sequence in a matter of this kind; especially
in the case of a contract trip. To him, Khufu, Rameses and the Ptolemies
are one. As for the monuments, they are all ancient Egyptian, and one is
just as odd and unintelligible as another. He cannot quite understand
why travelers come so far and spend so much money to look at them; but
he sets it down to a habit of harmless curiosity--by which he profits.
The truth is, however, that the mere sight-seeing of the Nile demands
some little reading and organizing, if only to be enjoyed. We cannot all
be profoundly learned; but we can at least do our best to understand
what we see--to get rid of obstacles--to put the right thing in the
right place. For the land of Egypt is, as I have said, a great book--not
very easy reading, perhaps, under any circumstances; but at all events
quite difficult enough already without the added puzzlement of being
read backward.
And now our next point along the river, as well as our next link in the
chain of early monuments, was Beni Hassan, with its famous rock-cut
tombs of the twelfth dynasty; and Beni Hassan was still more than a
hundred and forty-five miles distant. We ought to have gone on again
directly--to have weighed anchor and made a few miles that very evening
on returning to the boats; but we insisted on a second day in the same
place. This, too, with the favorable wind still blowing. It was against
all rule and precedent. The captain shook his head, the dragoman
remonstrated in vain.
“You will come to learn the value of a wind when you have been longer on
the Nile,” said the latter, with that air of melancholy resignation
which he always assumed when not allowed to have his own way. He was an
indolent, good-tempered man, spoke English fairly well, and was
perfectly manageable; but that air of resignation came to be aggravating
in time.
The M. B.’s being of the same mind, however, we had our second day, and
spent it at Memphis. We ought to have crossed over to Turra and have
seen the great quarries from which the casing-stones of the pyramids
came, and all the finer limestone with which the temples and palaces of
Memphis were built. But the whole mountain side seemed as if glowing at
a white heat on the opposite side of the river, and we said we would put
off Turra till our return. So we went our own way; and Alfred shot
pigeons; and the writer sketched Mitrâhîneh and the palms and the sacred
Lake of Mena; and the rest grubbed among the mounds for treasure,
finding many curious fragments of glass and pottery, and part of an
engraved bronze Apis; and we had a green, tranquil, lovely day, barren
of incident, but very pleasant to remember.
The good wind continued to blow all that night, but fell at sunrise,
precisely when we were about to start. The river now stretched away
before us, smooth as glass, and there was nothing for it, said Reïs
Hassan, but tracking. We had heard of tracking often enough since coming
to Egypt, but without having any definite idea of the process. Coming on
deck, however, before breakfast, we found nine of our poor fellows
harnessed to a rope like barge-horses, towing the huge boat against the
current. Seven of the M. B.s’ crew, similarly harnessed, followed at a
few yards’ distance. The two ropes met and crossed and dipped into the
water together. Already our last night’s mooring place was out of sight,
and the pyramid of Ouenephes stood up amid its lesser brethren on the
edge of the desert, as if bidding us good-by. But the sight of the
trackers jarred, somehow, with the placid beauty of the picture. We got
used to it, as one gets used to everything, in time; but it looked like
slaves’ work and shocked our English notions disagreeably.
That morning, still tracking, we pass the pyramids of Dahshûr. A
dilapidated brick pyramid standing in the midst of them looks like an
aiguille of black rock thrusting itself up through the limestone bed of
the desert. Palms line the bank and intercept the view, but we catch
flitting glimpses here and there, looking out especially for that
dome-like pyramid which we observed the other day from Sakkârah. Seen in
the full sunlight, it looks larger and whiter and more than ever like
the roof of the old Palais de Justice far away in Paris.
Thus the morning passes. We sit on deck writing letters, reading,
watching the sunny river-side pictures that glide by at a foot’s pace,
and are so long in sight. Palm-groves, sand-banks, patches of
fuzzy-headed dura[21] and fields of some yellow-flowering herb succeed
each other. A boy plods along the bank, leading a camel. They go slowly,
but they soon leave us behind. A native boat meets us, floating down
sidewise with the current. A girl comes to the water’s edge with a great
empty jar on her head and waits to fill it till the trackers have gone
by. The pigeon-towers of a mud village peep above a clump of lebbek
trees, a quarter of a mile inland. Here a solitary brown man, with only
a felt skull-cap on his head and a slip of scanty tunic fastened about
his loins, works a shâdûf,[22] stooping and rising, stooping and
rising, with the regularity of a pendulum. It is the same machine which
we shall see by and by depicted in the tombs at Thebes; and the man is
so evidently an ancient Egyptian, that we find ourselves wondering how
he escaped being mummified four or five thousand years ago.
[Illustration: THE SHADUF.]
By and by a little breeze springs up. The men drop the rope and jump on
board--the big sail is set--the breeze freshens--and away we go again,
as merrily as the day we left Cairo. Toward sunset we see a strange
object, like a giant obelisk broken off halfway, standing up on the
western bank against an orange-gold sky. This is the pyramid of Meydûm,
commonly called the false pyramid. It looks quite near the bank; but
this is an effect of powerful light and shadow, for it lies back at
least four miles from the river. That night, having sailed on till past
nine o’clock, we moor about a mile from Beni Suêf, and learn with some
surprise that a man must be dispatched to the governor of the town for
guards. Not that anything ever happened to anybody at Beni Suêf, says
Talhamy; but that the place is supposed not to have a first-rate
reputation. If we have guards, we at all events make the governor
responsible for our safety and the safety of our possessions. So the
guards are sent for; and being posted on the bank, snore loudly all
night long, just outside our windows.
Meanwhile the wind shifts round to the south, and next morning it blows
full in our faces. The men, however, track up to Beni Suêf to a point
where the buildings come down to the water’s edge and the towing-path
ceases; and there we lay to for awhile among a fleet of filthy native
boats, close to the landing-place.
The approach to Beni Suêf is rather pretty. The khedive has an
Italian-looking villa here, which peeps up white and dazzling from the
midst of a thickly wooded park. The town lies back a little from the
river. A few coffee-houses and a kind of promenade face the
landing-place; and a mosque built to the verge of the bank stands out
picturesquely against the bend of the river.
And now it is our object to turn that corner, so as to get into a better
position for starting when the wind drops. The current here runs deep
and strong, so that we have both wind and water dead against us. Half
our men clamber round the corner like cats, carrying the rope with them;
the rest keep the dahabeeyah off the bank with punting poles. The rope
strains--a pole breaks--we struggle forward a few feet and can get no
farther. Then the men rest awhile; try again; and are again defeated. So
the fight goes on. The promenade and the windows of the mosque become
gradually crowded with lookers on. Some three or four cloaked and
bearded men have chairs brought and sit gravely smoking their chibouques
on the bank above, enjoying the entertainment. Meanwhile the
water-carriers come and go, filling their goat-skins at the
landing-place; donkeys and camels are brought down to drink; girls in
dark-blue gowns and coarse black veils come with huge water-jars laid
sidewise upon their heads and, having filled and replaced them upright,
walk away with stately steps, as if each ponderous vessel were a crown.
So the day passes. Driven back again and again, but still resolute, our
sailors, by dint of sheer doggedness, get us round the bad corner at
last. The Bagstones follows suit a little later; and we both moor about
a quarter of a mile above the town. Then follows a night of adventures.
Again our guards sleep profoundly; but the bad characters of Beni Suêf
are very wide awake. One gentleman, actuated no doubt by the friendliest
motives, pays a midnight visit to the Bagstones; but being detected,
chased and fired at, escapes by jumping overboard. Our turn comes about
two hours later, when the writer, happening to be awake, hears a man
swim softly round the Philæ. To strike a light and frighten everybody
into sudden activity is the work of a moment. The whole boat is
instantly in an uproar. Lanterns are lighted on deck; a patrol of
sailors is set; Talhamy loads his gun; and the thief slips away in the
dark like a fish.
The guards, of course, slept sweetly through it all. Honest fellows!
They were paid a shilling a night to do it and they had nothing on their
minds.
Having lodged a formal complaint next morning against the inhabitants of
the town, we received a visit from a sallow personage clad in a long
black robe and a voluminous white turban. This was the chief of the
guards. He smoked a great many pipes; drank numerous cups of coffee;
listened to all we had to say; looked wise; and finally suggested that
the number of our guards should be doubled.
I ventured to object that if they slept unanimously forty would not be
of much more use than four. Whereupon he rose, drew himself to his full
height, touched his beard and said with a magnificent melodramatic air:
“If they sleep they shall be bastinadoed till they die!”
And now our good luck seemed to have deserted us. For three days and
nights the adverse wind continued to blow with such force that the men
could not even track against it. Moored under that dreary bank, we saw
our ten days’ start melting away and could only make the best of our
misfortunes. Happily the long island close by and the banks on both
sides of the river were populous with sand-grouse; so Alfred went out
daily with his faithful George and his unerring gun and brought home
game in abundance, while we took long walks, sketched boats and camels
and chaffered with native women for silver torques and bracelets. These
torques (in Arabic _Tók_) are tubular but massive, penannular, about as
thick as one’s little finger and finished with a hook at one end and a
twisted loop at the other. The girls would sometimes put their veils
aside and make a show of bargaining; but more frequently, after standing
for a moment with great wondering black velvety eyes staring shyly into
ours, they would take fright like a troop of startled deer and vanish
with shrill cries, half of laughter, half of terror.
At Beni Suêf we encountered our first sand-storm. It came down the river
about noon, showing like a yellow fog on the horizon and rolling rapidly
before the wind. It tore the river into angry waves and blotted out the
landscape as it came. The distant hills disappeared first; then the
palms beyond the island; then the boats close by. Another second and the
air was full of sand. The whole surface of the plain seemed in motion.
The banks rippled. The yellow dust poured down through every rift and
cleft in hundreds of tiny cataracts. But it was a sight not to be looked
upon with impunity. Hair, eyes, mouth, ears, were instantly filled and
we were driven to take refuge in the saloon. Here, although every window
and door had been shut before the storm came, the sand found its way in
clouds. Books, papers, carpets, were covered with it; and it settled
again as fast as it was cleared away. This lasted just one hour, and was
followed by a burst of heavy rain; after which the sky cleared and we
had a lovely afternoon. From this time forth, we saw no more rain in
Egypt.
At length, on the morning of the fourth day after our first appearance
at Beni Suêf and the seventh since leaving Cairo, the wind veered round
again to the north, and we once more got under way. It was delightful
to see the big sail again towering up overhead, and to hear the swish of
the water under the cabin windows; but we were still one hundred and
nine miles from Rhoda, and we knew that nothing but an extraordinary run
of luck could possibly get us there by the twenty-third of the month,
with time to see Beni Hassan on the way. Meanwhile, however, we make
fair progress, mooring at sunset when the wind falls, about three miles
north of Bibbeh. Next day, by help of the same light breeze which again
springs up a little after dawn, we go at a good pace between flat banks,
fringed here and there with palms, and studded with villages more or
less picturesque. There is not much to see, and yet one never wants for
amusement. Now we pass an island of sand-bank covered with snow-white
paddy-birds, which rise tumultuously at our approach. Next comes Bibbeh,
perched high along the edge of the precipitous bank, its odd-looking
Coptic convent roofed all over with little mud domes, like a cluster of
earth-bubbles. By and by we pass a deserted sugar factory, with
shattered windows and a huge, gaunt, blackened chimney, worthy of
Birmingham or Sheffield. And now we catch a glimpse of the railway and
hear the last scream of a departing engine. At night, we moor within
sight of the factory chimneys and hydraulic tubes of Magagha, and next
day get on nearly to Golosanèh, which is the last station-town before
Minieh.
It is now only too clear that we must give up all thought of pushing on
to Beni Hassan before the rest of the party shall come on board. We have
reached the evening of our ninth day; we are still forty-eight miles
from Rhoda; and another adverse wind might again delay us indefinitely
on the way. All risks taken into account, we decide to put off our
meeting till the twenty-fourth, and transfer the appointment to Minieh;
thus giving ourselves time to track all the way in case of need. So an
Arabic telegram is concocted, and our fleet runner starts off with it to
Golosanèh before the office closes for the night.
The breeze, however, does not fail, but comes back next morning with the
dawn. Having passed Golosanèh, we come to a wide reach in the river, at
which point we are honored by a visit from a Moslem santon of peculiar
sanctity, named “Holy Sheik Cotton.” Now Holy Sheik Cotton, who is a
well-fed, healthy-looking young man of about thirty, makes his first
appearance swimming, with his garments twisted into a huge turban on the
top of his head, and only his chin above water. Having made his toilet
in the small boat, he presents himself on deck and receives an
enthusiastic welcome. Reïs Hassan hugs him--the pilot kisses him--the
sailors come up one by one, bringing little tributes of tobacco and
piasters, which he accepts with the air of a pope receiving Peter’s
pence. All dripping as he is, and smiling like an affable Triton, he
next proceeds to touch the tiller, the ropes, and the ends of the yards,
“in order,” says Talhamy, “to make them holy;” and then, with some kind
of final charm or muttered incantation, he plunges into the river again,
and swims off to repeat the same performance on board the Bagstones.
From this moment the prosperity of our voyage is assured. The captain
goes about with a smile on his stern face, and the crew look as happy as
if we had given them a guinea. For nothing can go wrong with a
dahabeeyah that has been “made holy” by Holy Sheik Cotton. We are
certain now to have favorable winds--to pass the cataract without
accident--to come back in health and safety, as we set out. But what, it
may be asked, has Holy Sheik Cotton done to make his blessing so
efficacious? He gets money in plenty; he fasts no oftener than other
Mohammedans; he has two wives; he never does a stroke of work; and he
looks the picture of sleek prosperity. Yet he is a saint of the first
water; and when he dies, miracles will be performed at his tomb, and his
eldest son will succeed him in the business.
We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a good many saints in
the course of our eastern travels; but I do not know that we ever found
they had done anything to merit the position. One very horrible old man
named Sheik Saleem has, it is true, been sitting on a dirt heap near
Farshût, unclothed, unwashed, unshaven, for the last half-century or
more, never even lifting his hand to his mouth to feed himself; but
Sheik Cotton had gone to no such pious lengths, and was not even dirty.
We are by this time drawing toward a range of yellow cliffs that have
long been visible on the horizon, and which figure in the maps as Gebel
et Tâyr. The Arabian desert has been closing up on the eastern bank for
some time past and now rolls on in undulating drifts to the water’s
edge. Yellow bowlders crop out here and there above the mounded sand,
which looks as if it might cover many a forgotten temple. Presently the
clay bank is gone and a low barrier of limestone rock, black and shiny
next the water-line, has taken its place. And now, a long way ahead,
where the river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far
distance, a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the
Pulley. Perched on the brink of the precipice it looks no bigger than an
ant-heap. We had heard much of the fine view to be seen from the
platform on which this convent is built, and it had originally entered
into our programme as a place to be visited on the way. But Minieh has
to be gained now at all costs; so this project has to be abandoned with
a sigh.
And now the rocky barrier rises higher, quarried here and there in
dazzling gaps of snow-white cuttings. And now the convent shows clearer;
and the cliffs become loftier; and the bend in the river is reached; and
a long perspective of flat-topped precipice stretches away into the dim
distance.
It is a day of saints and swimmers. As the dahabeeyah approaches, a
brown poll is seen bobbing up and down in the water a few hundred yards
ahead. Then one, two, three bronze figures dash down a steep ravine
below the convent walls, and plunge into the river--a shrill chorus of
voices, growing momentarily more audible, is borne upon the wind--and in
a few minutes the boat is beset by a shoal of mendicant monks,
vociferating with all their might “_Ana Christian ya Hawadji!--Ana
Christian ya Hawadji!_” (“I am a Christian, oh, traveler!”) As these are
only Coptic monks and not Moslem santons, the sailors, half in rough
play, half in earnest, drive them off with punting poles; and only one
shivering, streaming object, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, is allowed
to come on board. He is a fine, shapely man, aged about forty, with
splendid eyes and teeth, a well-formed head, a skin the color of a
copper beech-leaf, and a face expressive of such ignorance, timidity,
and half-savage watchfulness as makes one’s heart ache.
And this is a Copt; a descendant of the true Egyptian stock; one of
those whose remote ancestors exchanged the worship of the old gods for
Christianity under the rule of Theodosius some fifteen hundred years
ago, and whose blood is supposed to be purer of Mohammedan intermixture
than any in Egypt. Remembering these things, it is impossible to look at
him without a feeling of profound interest. It maybe only fancy, yet I
think I see in him a different type to that of the Arab--a something,
however slight, which recalls the sculptured figures in the tomb of Ti.
But while we are thinking about his magnificent pedigree, our poor
Copt’s teeth are chattering piteously. So we give him a shilling or two
for the sake of all that he represents in the history of the world; and
with these and the donation of an empty bottle, he swims away contented,
crying out again and again: “_Ketther-kháyrak Sittát! Ketther-kháyrak
keteer!_” (“Thank you, ladies! thank you much!”)
And now the convent with its clustered domes is passed and left behind.
The rock here is of the same rich tawny hue as at Turra, and the
horizontal strata of which it is composed have evidently been deposited
by water. That the Nile must at some remote time have flowed here at an
immensely higher level seems also probable; for the whole face of the
range is honeycombed and water-worn for miles in succession. Seeing how
these fantastic forms--arched, and clustered, and pendent--resemble the
recessed ornamentation of Saracenic buildings, I could not help
wondering whether some early Arab architect might not once upon a time
have taken a hint from some such rocks as these.
Thus the day wanes, and the level cliffs keep with us all the way--now
breaking into little lateral valleys and _culs-de-sac_ in which nestle
clusters of tiny huts and green patches of lupin; now plunging sheer
down into the river; now receding inland and leaving space for a belt of
cultivated soil and a fringe of feathery palms. By and by comes the
sunset, when every cast shadow in the recesses of the cliffs turns to
pure violet; and the face of the rock glows with a ruddier gold; and the
palms on the western bank stand up in solemn bronze against a crimson
horizon. Then the sun dips, and instantly the whole range of cliffs
turns to a dead, greenish gray, while the sky above and behind them is
as suddenly suffused with pink. When this effect has lasted for
something like eight minutes, a vast arch of deep-blue shade, about as
large in diameter as a rainbow, creeps slowly up the eastern horizon and
remains distinctly visible as long as the pink flush against which it is
defined yet lingers in the sky. Finally the flush fades out; the blue
becomes uniform; the stars begin to show; and only a broad glow in the
west marks which way the sun went down. About a quarter of an hour later
comes the after-glow, when for a few minutes the sky is filled with a
soft, magical light, and the twilight gloom lies warm upon the
landscape. When this goes it is night; but still one long beam of light
streams up in the track of the sun and remains visible for more than two
hours after the darkness has closed in.
Such is the sunset we see this evening as we approach Minieh; and such
is the sunset we are destined to see, with scarcely a shade of
difference, at the same hour and under precisely the same conditions for
many a month to come. It is very beautiful, very tranquil, full of
wonderful light and most subtle gradations of tone, and attended by
certain phenomena of which I shall have more to say presently; but it
lacks the variety and gorgeousness of our northern skies. Nor, given the
dry atmosphere of Egypt, can it be otherwise. Those who go up the Nile
expecting, as I did, to see magnificent Turneresque pageants of purple,
and flame-color, and gold, will be disappointed as I was. For your
Turneresque pageant cannot be achieved without such accessories of cloud
and vapor as in Nubia are wholly unknown, and in Egypt are of the rarest
occurrence. Once, and only once, in the course of an unusually
protracted sojourn on the river, had we the good fortune to witness a
grand display of the kind; and then we had been nearly three months in
the dahabeeyah.
Meanwhile, however, we never weary of these stainless skies, but find in
them, evening after evening, fresh depths of beauty and repose. As for
that strange transfer of color from the mountains to the sky, we had
repeatedly observed it while traveling in the Dolomites the year before,
and had always found it take place, as now, at the moment of the sun’s
first disappearance. But what of this mighty after-shadow, climbing half
the heavens and bringing night with it? Can it be the rising shadow of
the world projected on the one horizon as the sun sinks on the other? I
leave the problem for wiser travelers to solve. We had not science
enough among us to account for it.
That same evening, just as the twilight came on, we saw another
wonder--the new moon on the first night of her first quarter; a perfect
orb, dusky, distinct, and outlined all round with a thread of light no
thicker than a hair. Nothing could be more brilliant than this tiny rim
of flashing silver; while every detail of the softly glowing globe
within its compass was clearly visible. Tycho, with its vast crater,
showed like a volcano on a raised map; and near the edge of the moon’s
surface, where the light and shadow met, keen sparkles of
mountain-summits catching the light and relieved against the dusk were
to be seen by the naked eye. Two or three evenings later, however, when
the silver ring was changed to a broad crescent, the unilluminated part
was as if it were extinguished, and could no longer be discerned even by
help of a glass.
The wind having failed as usual at sunset, the crew set to work with a
will and punted the rest of the way, so bringing us to Minieh about nine
that night. Next morning we found ourselves moored close under the
khedive’s summer palace--so close that one could have tossed a pebble
against the lattice windows of his highness’ hareem. A fat gate-keeper
sat outside in the sun, smoking his morning chibouque and gossiping with
the passers by. A narrow promenade scantily planted with sycamore figs
ran between the palace and the river. A steamer or two, and a crowd of
native boats, lay moored under the bank; and yonder, at the farther end
of the promenade, a minaret and a cluster of whitewashed houses showed
which way one must turn in going to the town.
It chanced to be market-day; so we saw Minieh under its best aspect,
than which nothing could well be more squalid, dreary, and depressing.
It was like a town dropped unexpectedly into the midst of a plowed
field; the streets being mere trodden lanes of mud dust, and the houses
a succession of windowless mud prisons with their backs to the
thoroughfare. The bazaar, which consists of two or three lanes a little
wider than the rest, is roofed over here and there with rotting
palm-rafters and bits of tattered matting; while the market is held in a
space of waste ground outside the town. The former, with its little
cupboard-like shops, in which the merchants sit cross-legged like
shabby old idols in shabby old shrines--the ill-furnished shelves--the
familiar Manchester goods--the gaudy native stuffs--the old red saddles
and faded rugs hanging up for sale--the smart Greek stores where Bass’
ale, claret, curaçoa, Cyprus, Vermouth, cheese, pickles, sardines,
Worcester sauce, blacking, biscuits, preserved meats, candles, cigars,
matches, sugar, salt, stationery, fire-works, jams, and patent medicines
can all be bought at one fell swoop--the native cook’s shop exhaling
savory perfumes of Kebabs and lentil soup, and presided over by an
Abyssinian Soyer blacker than the blackest historical personage ever was
painted--the surging, elbowing, clamorous crowd--the donkeys, the
camels, the street-cries, the chatter, the dust, the flies, the fleas,
and the dogs, all put us in mind of the poorer quarters of Cairo. In the
market it is even worse. Here are hundreds of country folk sitting on
the ground behind their baskets of fruits and vegetables. Some have
eggs, butter, and buffalo-cream for sale, while others sell sugar-canes,
limes, cabbages, tobacco, barley, dried lentils, split beans, maize,
wheat, and dura. The women go to and fro with bouquets of live poultry.
The chickens scream; the sellers rave; the buyers bargain at the top of
their voices; the dust flies in clouds; the sun pours down floods of
light and heat; you can scarcely hear yourself speak; and the crowd is
as dense as that other crowd which at this very moment, on this very
Christmas eve, is circulating among the alleys of Leadenhall Market.
The things were very cheap. A hundred eggs cost about fourteen pence in
English money; chickens sold for five pence each; pigeons from two-pence
to two-pence-half-penny; and fine live geese for two shillings a head.
The turkeys, however, which were large and excellent, were priced as
high as three-and-sixpence; being about half as much as one pays in
Middle and Upper Egypt for a lamb. A good sheep may be bought for
sixteen shillings or a pound. The M. B.’s, who had no dragoman and did
their own marketing, were very busy here, laying in stores of fresh
provision, bargaining fluently in Arabic, and escorted by a body-guard
of sailors.
A solitary dôm palm, the northernmost of its race and the first specimen
one meets with on the Nile, grows in a garden adjoining this
market-place; but we could scarcely see it for the blinding dust. Now,
a dôm palm is just the sort of tree that De Wint should have
painted--odd, angular, with long forked stems, each of which terminates
in a shock-headed crown of stiff finger-like fronds shading heavy
clusters of big shiny nuts about the size of Jerusalem artichokes. It
is, I suppose, the only nut in the world of which one throws away the
kernel and eats the shell; but the kernel is as hard as marble, while
the shell is fibrous, and tastes like stale gingerbread. The dôm palm
must bifurcate, for bifurcation is the law of its being; but I could
never discover whether there was any fixed limit to the number of stems
into which it might subdivide. At the same time, I do not remember to
have seen any with less than two heads or more than six.
Coming back through the town, we were accosted by a withered one-eyed
hag like a reanimated mummy, who offered to tell our fortunes. Before
her lay a dirty rag of handkerchief full of shells, pebbles and chips of
broken glass and pottery. Squatting, toad-like, under a sunny bit of
wall, the lower part of her face closely veiled, her skinny arms covered
with blue and green glass bracelets and her fingers with misshapen
silver rings, she hung over these treasures, shook, mixed and
interrogated them with all the fervor of divination, and delivered a
string of the prophecies usually forthcoming on these occasions.
“You have a friend far away, and your friend is thinking of you. There
is good fortune in store for you; and money coming to you; and pleasant
news on the way. You will soon receive letters in which there will be
something to vex you, but more to make you glad. Within thirty days you
will unexpectedly meet one whom you dearly love,” etc., etc., etc.
It was just the old familiar story, retold in Arabic, without even such
variations as might have been expected from the lips of an old fellâha
born and bred in a provincial town of Middle Egypt.
It may be that ophthalmia especially prevailed in this part of the
country, or that, being brought unexpectedly into the midst of a large
crowd, one observed the people more narrowly, but I certainly never saw
so many one-eyed human beings as that morning at Minieh. There must have
been present in the streets and market-place from ten to twelve thousand
natives of all ages, and I believe it is no exaggeration to say that at
least every twentieth person, down to little toddling children of three
and four years of age, was blind of an eye. Not being a particularly
well-favored race, this defect added the last touch of repulsiveness to
faces already sullen, ignorant and unfriendly. A more unprepossessing
population I would never wish to see--the men half stealthy, half
insolent; the women bold and fierce; the children filthy, sickly,
stunted and stolid. Nothing in provincial Egypt is so painful to witness
as the neglected condition of very young children. Those belonging to
even the better class are for the most part shabbily clothed and of more
than doubtful cleanliness; while the offspring of the very poor are
simply incrusted with dirt and sores and swarming with vermin. It is at
first hard to believe that the parents of these unfortunate babies err,
not from cruelty, but through sheer ignorance and superstition. Yet so
it is; and the time when these people can be brought to comprehend the
most elementary principles of sanitary reform is yet far distant. To
wash young children is injurious to health, therefore the mothers suffer
them to fall into a state of personal uncleanliness, which is alone
enough to engender disease. To brush away the flies that beset their
eyes is impious; hence ophthalmia and various kinds of blindness. I have
seen infants lying in their mothers’ arms with six or eight flies in
each eye. I have seen the little helpless hands put down reprovingly if
they approached the seat of annoyance. I have seen children of four and
five years old with the surface of one or both eyes eaten away; and
others with a large, fleshy lump growing out where the pupil had been
destroyed. Taking these things into account, the wonder is, after all,
not that three children should die in Egypt out of every five--not that
each twentieth person in certain districts should be blind, or partially
blind; but that so many as forty per cent of the whole infant population
should actually live to grow up, and that ninety-five per cent should
enjoy the blessing of sight. For my own part I had not been many weeks
on the Nile before I began systematically to avoid going about the
native towns whenever it was practicable to do so. That I may so have
lost an opportunity of now and then seeing more of the street-life of
the people is very probable; but such outside glimpses are of little
real value, and I at all events escaped the sight of much poverty,
sickness and squalor. The condition of the inhabitants is not worse,
perhaps, in an Egyptian beled[23] than in many an Irish village; but the
condition of the children is so distressing that one would willingly go
any number of miles out of the way rather than witness their suffering,
without the power to alleviate it.[24]
If the population in and about Minieh are personally unattractive, their
appearance at all events matches their reputation, which is as bad as
that of their neighbors. Of the manners and customs of Beni Suêf we had
already some experience; while public opinion charges Minieh, Rhoda and
most of the towns and villages north of Siût with the like marauding
propensities. As for the villages at the foot of Beni Hassan, they have
been mere dens of thieves for many generations; and though razed to the
ground some years ago by way of punishment, are now rebuilt and in as
bad odor as ever. It is necessary, therefore, in all this part of the
river, not only to hire guards at night, but, when the boat is moored,
to keep a sharp lookout against thieves by day. In Upper Egypt it is
very different. There the natives are good-looking, good-natured, gentle
and kindly; and though clever enough at manufacturing and selling modern
antiquities, are not otherwise dishonest.
That same evening (it was Christmas eve), nearly two hours earlier than
their train was supposed to be due, the rest of our party arrived at
Minieh.