PHILÆ TO KOROSKO.
Sailing gently southward--the river opening wide before us, Philæ
dwindling in the rear--we feel that we are now fairly over the border;
and that if Egypt was strange and far from home, Nubia is stranger and
farther still. The Nile here flows deep and broad. The rocky heights
that hem it in so close on either side are still black on the one hand,
golden on the other. The banks are narrower than ever. The space in some
places is little wider than a towing-path. In others, there is barely
room for a belt of date-palms and a slip of alluvial soil, every foot of
which produces its precious growth of durra or barley. The steep verge
below is green with lentils to the water’s edge. As the river recedes,
it leaves each day a margin of fresh, wet soil, in which the careful
husbandman hastens to scratch a new furrow and sow another line of
seeds. He cannot afford to let so much as an inch of that kindly mud lie
idle.
Gliding along with half-filled sail, we observe how entirely the
population seems to be regulated by the extent of arable soil. Where the
inundation has room to spread, villages come thicker; more dusky figures
are seen moving to and fro in the shade of the palms; more children race
along the banks, shrieking for backshîsh. When the shelf of soil is
narrowed, on the contrary, to a mere fringe of luminous green dividing
the rock from the river, there is a startling absence of everything like
life. Mile after mile drags its slow length along, uncheered by any sign
of human habitation. When now and then a solitary native, armed with gun
or spear, is seen striding along the edge of the desert, he only seems
to make the general solitude more apparent.
Meanwhile, it is not only men and women whom we miss--men laboring by
the river side; women with babies astride on their shoulders, or
water-jars balanced on their heads--but birds, beasts, boats; everything
that we have been used to see along the river. The buffaloes dozing at
midday in the shallows, the camels stalking home in single file toward
sunset, the water-fowl haunting the sand-banks, seem suddenly to have
vanished. Even donkeys are now rare; and as for horses, I do not
remember to have seen one during the seven weeks we spent in Nubia. All
night, too, instead of the usual chorus of dogs barking furiously from
village to village, we hear only the long-drawn wail of an occasional
jackal. It is not wonderful, however, that animal life should be scarce
in a district where the scant soil yields barely food enough for those
who till it. To realize how very scant it is, one needs only to remember
that about Derr, where it is at its widest, the annual deposit nowhere
exceeds half a mile in breadth; while for the most part of the way
between Philæ and Wady Halfeh--a distance of two hundred and ten
miles--it averages from six to sixty yards.
Here, then, more than ever, one seems to see how entirely these lands
which we call Egypt and Nubia are nothing but the banks of one solitary
river in the midst of a world of desert. In Egypt, the valley is often
so wide that one forgets the stony waste beyond the corn-lands. But in
Nubia the desert is ever present. We cannot forget it, if we would. The
barren mountains press upon our path, showering down avalanches of
granite on the one side and torrents of yellow sand on the other. We
know that those stones are always falling; that those sands are always
drifting; that the river has hard work to hold its own; and that the
desert is silently encroaching day by day.
These golden sand-streams are the newest and most beautiful features in
the landscape. They pour down from the high level of the Libyan desert
just as the snows of Switzerland pour down from the upper plateaux of
the Alps. Through every ravine and gap they find a channel--here
trickling in tiny rivulets; flowing yonder in broad torrents that widen
to the river.
Becalmed a few miles above Philæ, we found ourselves at the foot of one
of these largest drifts. The M. B.’s challenged us to climb the slope
and see the sunset from the desert. It was about six o’clock, and the
thermometer was standing at 80° in the coolest corner of the large
saloon. We ventured to suggest that the top was a long way up; but the
M. B.’s would take no refusal. So away we went; panting, breathless,
bewailing our hard fate. L---- and the writer had done some difficult
walking in their time, over ice and snow, on lava cold and hot, up
cinder-slopes and beds of mountain torrents; but this innocent-looking
sand-drift proved quite as hard to climb as any of them. The sand lies
wonderfully loose and light, and is as hot as if it had been baked in an
oven. Into this the foot plunges ankle-deep, slipping back at every
step, and leaving a huge hole into which the sand pours down again like
water. Looking back, you trace your course by a succession of
funnel-shaped pits, each larger than a wash-hand basin. Though your
slipper be as small as Cinderella’s, the next comer shall not be able to
tell whether it was a lady who went up last, or a camel. It is toilsome
work, too; for the foot finds neither rest nor resistance, and the
strain upon the muscles is unremitting.
But the beauty of the sand more than repays the fatigue of climbing it.
Smooth, sheeny, satiny; fine as diamond-dust; supple, undulating,
luminous, it lies in the most exquisite curves and wreaths, like a
snow-drift turned to gold. Remodeled by every breath that blows, its
ever-varying surface presents an endless play of delicate lights and
shadows. There lives not the sculptor who could render those curves; and
I doubt whether Turner himself, in his tenderest and subtlest mood,
could have done justice to those complex grays and ambers.
Having paused to rest upon an out-cropping ledge of rock about half-way
up, we came at length to the top of the last slope and found ourselves
on the level of the desert. Here, faithful to the course of the river,
the first objects to meet our eyes were the old familiar telegraph posts
and wires. Beyond them, to north and south, a crowd of peaks closed in
the view; but westward, a rolling waste of hillock and hollow opened
away to where the sun, a crimson globe, had already half-vanished below
the rim of the world.
One could not resist going a few steps farther, just to touch the
nearest of those telegraph posts. It was like reaching out a hand toward
home.
When the sun dropped we turned back. The valley below was already
steeped in dusk. The Nile, glimmering like a coiled snake in the shade,
reflected the evening sky in three separate reaches. On the Arabian side
a far-off mountain-chain stood out, purple and jagged, against the
eastern horizon.
To come down was easy. Driving our heels well into the sand, we half
ran, half glissaded, and soon reached the bottom. Here we were met by an
old Nubian woman, who had trudged up in all haste from the nearest
village to question our sailors about one Yûsef, her son, of whom she
had heard nothing for nearly a year. She was a very poor old woman--a
widow--and this Yûsef was her only son. Hoping to better himself he had
worked his passage to Cairo in a cargo-boat some eighteen months ago.
Twice since then he had sent her messages and money; but now eleven
months had gone by in silence, and she feared he must be dead. Meanwhile
her date-palm, taxed to the full value of its produce, had this year
yielded not a piaster of profit. Her mud hut had fallen in, and there
was no Yûsef to repair it. Old and sick, she now could only beg; and her
neighbors, by whose charity she subsisted, were but a shade less poor
than herself.
Our men knew nothing of the missing Yûsef. Reïs Hassan promised when he
went back to make inquiries among the boatmen of Boulak. “But then,” he
added, “there are so many Yûsefs in Cairo!”
It made one’s heart ache to see the tremulous eagerness with which the
poor soul put her questions, and the crushed look in her face when she
turned away.
And now, being fortunate in respect of the wind, which for the most part
blows steadily from the north between sunrise and sunset, we make good
progress, and for the next ten days live pretty much on board our
dahabeeyah. The main features of the landscape go on repeating
themselves with but little variation from day to day. The mountains wear
their habitual livery of black and gold. The river, now widening, now
narrowing, flows between banks blossoming with lentils and lupins. With
these, and yellow acacia-tufts, and blue castor-oil berries, and the
weird coloquintida, with its downy leaf and milky juice and puff-bladder
fruit, like a green peach tinged with purple, we make our daily bouquet
for the dinner-table. All other flowers have vanished, and even these
are hard to get in a land where every green blade is precious to the
grower.
Now, too, the climate becomes sensibly warmer. The heat of the sun is so
great at midday that, even with the north breeze blowing, we can no
longer sit on deck between twelve and three. Toward sundown, when the
wind drops, it turns so sultry that to take a walk on shore comes to be
regarded as a duty rather than as a pleasure. Thanks, however, to that
indomitable painter who is always ready for an afternoon excursion, we
do sometimes walk for an hour before dinner; striking off generally into
the desert; looking for onyxes and carnelians among the pebbles that
here and there strew the surface of the sand, and watching in vain for
jackals and desert-hares.
Sometimes we follow the banks instead of the desert, coming now and then
to a creaking sakkieh turned by a melancholy buffalo; or to a native
village hidden behind dwarf-palms. Here each hut has its tiny forecourt,
in the midst of which stand the mud oven and mud cupboard of the
family--two dumpy cones of smooth gray clay, like big chimney-pots--the
one capped with a lid, the other fitted with a little wooden door and
wooden bolt. Some of the houses have a barbaric ornament palmed off, so
to say, upon the walls; the pattern being simply the impression of a
human hand dipped in red or yellow ocher and applied while the surface
is moist.
The amount of “bazaar” that takes place whenever we enter one of these
villages is quite alarming. The dogs first give notice of our approach;
and presently we are surrounded by all the women and girls of the place,
offering live pigeons, eggs, vegetable marrows, necklaces, nose-rings
and silver bracelets for sale. The boys pester us to buy wretched,
half-dead chameleons. The men stand aloof, and leave the bargaining to
the women.
And the women not only know how to bargain, but how to assess the
relative value of every coin that passes current on the Nile. Rupees,
roubles, reyals, dollars and shillings are as intelligible to them as
paras or piasters. Sovereigns are not too heavy nor napoleons too light
for them. The times are changed since Belzoni’s Nubian, after staring
contemptuously at the first piece of money he had ever seen, asked: “Who
would give anything for that small piece of metal?”
The necklaces consist of onyx, carnelian, bone, silver, and colored
glass beads, with now and then a stray scarab or amulet in the ancient
blue porcelain. The arrangement of color is often very subtle. The
brow-pendants in gold repoussée, and the massive old silver bracelets,
rough with knobs and bosses, are most interesting in design, and
perpetuate patterns of undoubted antiquity. The M. B.’s picked up one
really beautiful collarette of silver and coral, which might have been
worn three thousand years ago by Pharaoh’s daughter.
When on board, we begin now to keep a sharp lookout for crocodiles. We
hear of them constantly--see their tracks upon the sand-banks in the
river--go through agonies of expectation over every black speck in the
distance; yet are perpetually disappointed. The farther south we go the
more impatient we become. The E’s, whose dahabeeyah, homeward-bound,
drifts slowly past one calm morning, report “eleven beauties,” seen
altogether yesterday upon a sand island, some ten miles higher up. Mr.
C. B.’s boat, garlanded with crocodiles from stem to stern, fills us
with envy. We would give our ears (almost) to see one of these engaging
reptiles dangling from either our own mainmast or that of the faithful
Bagstones. Alfred, who has set his heart on bagging at least half a
dozen, says nothing, but grows gloomier day by day. At night, when the
moon is up and less misanthropic folk are in bed and asleep, he rambles
moodily into the desert, after jackals.
Meanwhile, on we go, starting at sunrise; mooring at sunset; sailing,
tracking, punting; never stopping for an hour by day, if we can help it;
and pushing straight for Abou Simbel with as little delay as possible.
Thus we pass the pylons of Dabôd with their background of desert;
Gertássee, a miniature Sunium, seen toward evening against the glowing
sunset; Tafah, rich in palms, with white columns gleaming through green
foliage by the water side; the cliffs, islands, and rapids of Kalabsheh,
and the huge temple which rises like a fortress in their midst; Dendûr,
a tiny chapel with a single pylon; and Gerf Hossayn, which from this
distance might be taken for the mouth of a rock-cut tomb in the face of
the precipice. About half way between Kalabsheh and Dendûr, we enter the
tropic of cancer. From this day till the day when we repass that
invisible boundary, there is a marked change in the atmospheric
conditions under which we live. The days get gradually hotter,
especially at noon, when the sun is almost vertical; but the freshness
of night and the chill of early morning are no more. Unless when a
strong wind blows from the north, we no longer know what it is to need a
shawl on deck in the evening; or an extra covering on our beds toward
dawn. We sleep with our cabin-windows open, and enjoy a delicious
equality of temperature from sundown to sunrise. The days and nights,
too, are of almost equal length.
Now, also, the southern cross and a second group of stars, which we
conclude must form part of the Centaur, are visible between two and four
every morning. They have been creeping up, a star at a time, for the
last fortnight; but are still so low upon the eastern horizon that we
can only see them when there comes a break in the mountain-chain on that
side of the river. At the same time, our old familiar friends of the
northern hemisphere, looking strangely distorted and decidedly out of
their proper place, are fast disappearing on the opposite side of the
heavens. Orion seems to be lying on his back, and the Great Bear to be
standing on his tail; while Cassiopeia and a number of others have
deserted _en masse_. The zenith, meanwhile, is but thinly furnished; so
that we seem to have traveled away from the one hemisphere and not yet
to have reached the other. As for the Southern Cross, we reserve our
opinion till we get farther south. It would be treason to hint that we
are disappointed in so famous a constellation.
After Gerf Hossayn, the next place of importance for which our maps bid
us look out, is Dakkeh. As we draw near, expecting hourly to see
something of the temple, the Nile increases in breadth and beauty. It is
a peaceful, glassy morning. The men have been tracking since dawn, and
stop to breakfast at the foot of a sandy bank, wooded with tamarisks and
gum-trees. A glistening network of gossamer floats from bough to bough.
The sky overhead is of a tender, luminous blue, such as we never see in
Europe. The air is wonderfully still. The river, which here takes a
sudden bend toward the east, looks like a lake and seems to be barred
ahead by the desert. Presently a funeral passes along the opposite bank;
the chief mourner flourishing a long staff, like a drum-major; the
women snatching up handfuls of dust and scattering it upon their heads.
We hear their wild wail long after the procession is out of sight.
Going on again presently, our whole attention becomes absorbed by the
new and singular geological features of the Libyan desert. A vast plain
covered with isolated mountains of volcanic structure, it looks like
some strange transformation of the Puy de Dôme plateau, with all its
wind-swept pastures turned to sand and its grassy craters stripped to
barrenness. The more this plain widens out before our eyes, the more it
bristles with peaks. As we round the corner, and Dakkeh, like a smaller
Edfû, comes into sight upon the western bank, the whole desert on that
side, as far as the eye can see, presents the unmistakable aspect of one
vast field of volcanoes. As in Auvergne, these cones are of all sizes
and heights; some low and rounded, like mere bubbles that have cooled
without bursting; others ranging apparently from one thousand to fifteen
hundred feet in height. The broken craters of several are plainly
distinguishable by the help of a field-glass. One in particular is so
like our old friend the Puy de Pariou that in a mere black-and-white
sketch the one might readily be mistaken for the other.
We were surprised to find no account of the geology of this district in
any of our books. Murray and Wilkinson pass it in silence; and writers
of travels--one or two of whom notice only the “pyramidal” shape of the
hills--are for the most part content to do likewise. None seem to have
observed their obvious volcanic origin.
Thanks to a light breeze that sprang up in the afternoon, we were able
to hoist our big sail again and to relieve the men from tracking. Thus
we glided past the ruins of Maharrakeh, which, seen from the river,
looked like a Greek portico set in a hollow waste of burning desert.
Next came Wady Sabooah, a temple half-buried in sand, near which we met
a tiny dahabeeyah, manned by two Nubians and flying the star and
crescent. A shabby government inspector, in European dress and a fez,
lay smoking on a mat outside his cabin door; while from a spar overhead
there hung a mighty crocodile. The monster was of a greenish-brown color
and measured at least sixteen feet from head to tail. His jaws yawned;
and one flat and flabby arm and ponderous paw swung with the motion of
the boat, looking horribly human.
The painter, with an eye to foregrounds, made a bid for him on the spot;
but the shabby inspector was not to be moved by considerations of gain.
He preferred his crocodile to infidel gold, and scarcely deigned even to
reply to the offer.
Seen in the half-light of a tropical after-glow--the purple mountains
coming down in detached masses to the water’s edge on the one side; the
desert with its volcanic peaks yet rosy upon the other--we thought the
approach to Korosko more picturesque than anything we had yet seen south
of the cataract. As the dusk deepened the moon rose; and the palms that
had just room to grow between the mountains and the river turned from
bronze to silver. It was half-twilight, half-moonlight, by the time we
reached the mooring-place where Talhamy, who had been sent forward in
the small boat half an hour ago, jumped on board laden with a packet of
letters and a sheaf of newspapers. For here, where the great
caravan-route leads off across the desert to Khartûm, we touched the
first Nubian postoffice. It was only ten days since we had received our
last budget at Assûan; but it seemed like ten weeks.