THE SECOND CATARACT.
A fresh breeze, a full sail, and the consciousness of a holiday well
earned, carried us gayly along from Abou Simbel to Wady Halfeh. We
started late in the afternoon of the first day, made about twelve miles
before the wind dropped, and achieved the remaining twenty-eight miles
before noon the next day. It was our last trip on the Nile under canvas.
At Wady Halfeh the Philæ was doomed to be dismantled. The big sail that
had so long been our pride and delight would there be taken down, and
our good boat, her grace and swiftness gone at one fell swoop, would
become a mere lumbering barge, more suggestive of civic outings on the
Thames than of Cleopatra’s galley.
For some way beyond Abou Simbel, the western bank is fringed by a long
line of volcanic mountains, as much alike in height, size, and shape, as
a row of martello towers. They are divided from one another by a series
of perfectly uniform sand-drifts; while on the rounded top of each
mountain, thick as the currants on the top of a certain cake, known to
schoolboys by the endearing name of “black-caps,” lies a layer of the
oddest black stones in the world. Having more than once been to the top
of the rock of Abshek (which is the first large mountain of the chain,
and strewn in the same way) we recognized the stones, and knew what they
were like. In color they are purplish black, tinged here and there with
dull red. They ring like clinkstone when struck, and in shape are most
fantastic. L---- picked up some like petrified bunches of grapes. Others
are twisted and writhen like the Vesuvian lava of 1871. They lie loose
upon the surface, and are of all sizes; some being as small as currants,
and others as large as quartern loaves. Speaking as one having no kind
of authority, I should say that these stones are unquestionably of fiery
parentage. One seems to see how, boiling and bubbling in a state of
fusion, they must have been suddenly checked by contact with some cooler
medium.
Where the chain ends, about three or four miles above Abou Simbel, the
view widens, and a host of outlying mountains are seen scattered over an
immense plain reaching for miles into the western desert. On the eastern
bank, Kalat Adda,[122] a huge, rambling Roman citadel, going to solitary
ruin on the last water-washed precipice to the left--brings the opposite
range to a like end, and abuts on a similar plain, also scattered over
with detached peaks. The scene here is desolately magnificent. A large
island covered with palms divides the Nile in two branches, each of
which looks as wide as the whole river. An unbounded distance opens away
to the silvery horizon. On the banks there is no verdure; neither is
there any sign of human toil. Nothing lives, nothing moves, save the
wind and the river.
Of all the strange peaks we have yet seen, the mountains hereabout are
the strangest. Alone or in groups, they start up here and there from
the desert, on both sides, like the pieces on a chess-board. They are
for the most part conical; but they are not extinct craters, such as are
the volcanic cones of Korosko and Dakkeh. Seeing how they all rose to
about the same height and were alike capped with that mysterious
_couche_ of shining black stones, the writer could not help fancying
that, like the isolated Rocher de Corneille and Rocher de St. Michael at
Puy, they might be but fragments of a rocky crust, rent and swept away
at some infinitely remote period of the world’s history, and that the
level of their present summits might represent perhaps the ancient level
of the plain.
As regards form, they are weird enough for the wildest geological
theories. All taper more or less toward the top. One is four-sided, like
a pyramid; another, in shape a truncated cone, looks as if crowned with
a pagoda summer-house; a third seems to be surmounted by a mosque and
cupola; a fourth is scooped out in tiers of arches; a fifth is crowned,
apparently, with a cairn of piled stones; and so on, with variations as
endless as they are fantastic. A geologist might perhaps account for
these caprices by showing how fire and earthquake and deluge had here
succeeded each other; and how, after being first covered with volcanic
stones and then split into chasms, the valleys thus opened had by and by
been traversed by torrents which wore away the softer parts of the rock
and left the harder standing.
Some way beyond Kalat Adda, when the Abou Simbel range and palm island
have all but vanished in the distance and the lonely peak called the
Mountain of the Sun (Gebel esh-Shems), has been left far behind, we came
upon a new wonder--namely: upon two groups of scattered tumuli, one on
the eastern, one on the western bank. Not volcanic forms these; not even
accidental forms, if one may venture to form an opinion from so far off.
They are of various sizes; some little, some big; all perfectly round
and smooth and covered with a rich, greenish-brown alluvial soil. How
did they come there? Who made them? What did they contain? The Roman
ruin close by--the two hundred and forty thousand[123] deserters who
must have passed this way--the Egyptian and Ethiopian armies that
certainly poured their thousands along these very banks, and might have
fought many a battle on this open plain, suggest all kinds of
possibilities and fill one’s head with visions of buried arms and jewels
and cinerary urns. We are more than half-minded to stop the boat and
land that very moment; but are content on second thoughts with promising
ourselves that we will at least excavate one of the smaller hillocks on
our way back.
And now, the breeze freshening and the dahabeeyah tearing gallantly
along, we leave the tumuli behind, and enter upon a more desolate
region, where the mountains recede farther than ever and the course of
the river is interrupted by perpetual sand-banks.
On one of these sand-banks, just a few yards above the edge of the
water, lay a log of drift-wood, apparently a battered old palm trunk,
with some remnants of broken branches yet clinging to it; such an
object, in short, as my American friends would very properly call a
“snag.”
Our pilot leaned forward on the tiller, put his finger to his lip and
whispered:
“Crocodilo!”
The painter, the idle man, the writer, were all on deck, and not one
believed him. They had seen too many of these snags already and were not
going to let themselves again be excited about nothing.
The pilot pointed to the cabin where L---- and the little lady were
indulging in that minor vice called afternoon tea.
“Sittèh!” said he, “call sittèh! Crocodilo!”
We examined the object through our glasses. We laughed the pilot to
scorn. It was the worst imitation of a crocodile that we had yet seen.
All at once the palm-trunk lifted up its head, cocked its tail, found
its legs, set off running, wriggling, undulating down the slope with
incredible rapidity and was gone before we could utter an exclamation.
We three had a bad time when the other two came up and found that we had
seen our first crocodile without them.
A sand-bank which we passed next morning was scored all over with fresh
trails and looked as if it had been the scene of a crocodile-parliament.
There must have been at least twenty or thirty members present at the
sitting; and the freshness of the marks showed that they had only just
dispersed.
A keen and cutting wind carried us along the last thirty miles of our
journey. We had supposed that the farther south we penetrated the hotter
we should find the climate; yet now, strange to say, we were shivering
in sealskins, under the most brilliant sky in the world and in a
latitude more southerly than that of Mecca or Calcutta. It was some
compensation, however, to run at full speed past the dullest of Nile
scenery, seeing only sand-banks in the river; sand-hills and sand-flats
on either hand; a disused shâdûf or a skeleton-boat rotting at the
water’s edge; a wind-tormented Dôm palm struggling for existence on the
brink of the bank.
At a fatal corner about six miles below Wady Halfeh, we passed a
melancholy flotilla of dismantled dahabeeyahs--the Fostât, the Zenobia,
the Alice, the Mansoorah--all alike weather-bound and laid up helplessly
against the wind. The Mansoorah, with Captain and Mrs. E---- on board,
had been three days doing these six miles; at which rate of progress
they might reasonably hope to reach Cairo in about a year and a month.
The palms of Wady Halfeh, blue with distance, came into sight at the
next bend; and by noon the Philæ was once more moored alongside the
Bagstones under a shore crowded with cangias, covered with bales and
packing-cases and, like the shores of Mahatta and Assûan, populous with
temporary huts. For here it is that traders going by water embark and
disembark on their way to and fro between Dongola and the first
cataract.
There were three temples--or at all events three ancient Egyptian
buildings--once upon a time on the western bank over against Wady
Halfeh. Now there are a few broken pillars, a solitary fragment of brick
pylon, some remains of a flight of stone steps leading down to the
river, and a wall of inclosure overgrown with wild pumpkins. These
ruins, together with a rambling native Khan and a noble old sycamore,
form a picturesque group backed by amber sand-cliffs, and mark the site
of a lost city[124] belonging to the early days of Usurtesen III.
The second, or great, cataract begins a little way above Wady Halfeh and
extends over a distance of many miles. It consists, like the first
cataract, of a succession of rocks and rapids, and is skirted for the
first five miles or so by the sand-cliff ridge which, as I have said,
forms a background to the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This ridge
terminates abruptly in the famous precipice known as the Rock of Abusîr.
Only adventurous travelers bound for Dongola or Khartûm go beyond this
point; and they, for the most part, take the shorter route across the
desert from Korosko. L---- and the writer would fain have hired camels
and pushed on as far as Semneh; which is a matter of only two days’
journey from Wady Halfeh, and, for people provided with sketching-tents,
is one of the easiest of inland excursions.
One may go to the Rock of Abusîr by land or by water. The happy couple
and the writer took two native boatmen versed in the intricacies of the
cataract and went in the felucca. L---- and the painter preferred
donkeying. Given a good breeze from the right quarter, there is, as
regards time, but little to choose between the two routes. No one,
however, who has approached the Rock of Abusîr by water, and seen it
rise like a cathedral front from the midst of that labyrinth of rocky
islets--some like clusters of basaltic columns, some crowned with
crumbling ruins, some bleak and bare, some green with wild pomegranate
trees--can doubt which is the more picturesque.
Landing among the tamarisks at the foot of the cliff, we come to the
spreading skirts of a sand-drift steeper and more fatiguing to climb
than the sand-drift at Abou Simbel. We do climb it, however, though
somewhat sulkily, and, finding the donkey-party perched upon the top,
are comforted with draughts of ice-cold lemonade, brought in a kullah
from Wady Halfeh.
The summit of the rock is a mere ridge, steep and overhanging toward
east and south, and carved all over with autographs in stone. Some few
of these are interesting; but for the most part they record only the
visits of the illustrious-obscure. We found Belzoni’s name; but looked
in vain for the signatures of Burckhardt, Champollion, Lepsius and
Ampère.
Owing to the nature of the ground and the singular clearness of the
atmosphere, the view from this point seemed to be the most extensive I
had ever looked upon. Yet the height of the Rock of Abusîr is
comparatively insignificant. It would count but as a mole-hill, if
measured against some Alpine summits of my acquaintance. I doubt whether
it is as lofty as even the great pyramid. It is, however, a giddy place
to look down from, and seems higher than it is.
It is hard, now that we are actually here, to realize that this is the
end of our journey. The cataract--an immense multitude of black and
shining islets, among which the river, divided into hundreds of separate
channels, spreads far and wide for a distance, it is said, of more than
sixteen miles--foams at our feet. Foams, and frets, and falls; gushing
smooth and strong where its course is free; murmuring hoarsely where it
is interrupted; now hurrying; now loitering; here eddying in oily
circles; there lying in still pools unbroken by a ripple; everywhere
full of life, full of voices; everywhere shining to the sun. Northward,
where it winds away toward Abou Simbel, we see all the fantastic
mountains of yesterday on the horizon. To the east, still bounded by
out-liers of the same disconnected chain, lies a rolling waste of dark
and stony wilderness trenched with innumerable valleys through which
flow streams of sand. On the western side, the continuity of the view is
interrupted by the ridge which ends with Abusîr. Southward the Libyan
desert reaches away in a vast undulating plain; tawny, arid, monotonous;
all sun; all sand; lit here and there with arrowy flashes of the Nile.
Farthest of all, pale but distinct, on the outermost rim of the world,
rise two mountain summits, one long, one dome-like. Our Nubians tell us
that these are the mountains of Dongola. Comparing our position with
that of the third cataract as it appears upon the map, we come to the
conclusion that these ghostlike silhouettes are the summits of Mount
Fogo[125] and Mount Arambo--two apparently parallel mountains situate on
opposite sides of the river about ten miles below Hannek, and
consequently about one hundred and forty-five miles, as the bird flies,
from the spot on which we are standing.
In all this extraordinary panorama, so wild, so weird, so desolate,
there is nothing really beautiful except the color. But the color is
transcendent. Never, even in Egypt, have I seen anything so tender, so
transparent, so harmonious. I shut my eyes and it all comes before me. I
see the amber of the sands; the pink and pearly mountains; the cataract
rocks, all black and purple and polished; the dull gray palms that
cluster here and there upon the larger islands; the vivid verdure of the
tamarisks and pomegranates; the Nile, a greenish-brown flecked with
yeasty foam; over all, the blue and burning sky, permeated with light,
and palpitating with sunshine.
I made no sketch. I felt that it would be ludicrous to attempt it. And I
feel now that any endeavor to put the scene into words is a mere
presumptuous effort to describe the indescribable. Words are useful
instruments; but, like the etching needle and the burin, they stop short
at form. They cannot translate color.
If a traveler pressed for time asked me whether he should or should not
go as far as the second cataract, I think I should recommend him to
turn back from Abou Simbel. The trip must cost four days; and if the
wind should happen to be unfavorable either way, it may cost six or
seven. The forty miles of river that have to be twice traversed are the
dullest on the Nile; the cataract is but an enlarged and barren edition
of the cataract between Assûan and Philæ; and the great view, as I have
said, has not that kind of beauty which attracts the general tourist.
It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that of beauty. It
rouses one’s imagination to a sense of the greatness of the Nile. We
look across a world of desert, and see the river still coming from afar.
We have reached a point at which all that is habitable and familiar
comes abruptly to an end. Not a village, not a bean-field, not a shâdûf,
not a sakkieh, is to be seen in the plain below. There is no sail on
those dangerous waters. There is no moving creature on those pathless
sands. But for the telegraphic wires stalking, ghostlike, across the
desert, it would seem as if we had touched the limit of civilization,
and were standing on the threshold of a land unexplored.
Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the beginning of the
mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a thousand miles against the
stream; but what is that to the distance which still lies between us and
the great lakes? And how far beyond the great lakes must we seek for the
source that is even yet undiscovered?
We stayed at Wady Halfeh but one night and paid but one visit to the
cataract. We saw no crocodiles, though they are still plentiful among
these rocky islets. The M. B.’s, who had been here a week, were full of
crocodile stories and of Alfred’s deeds of arms. He had stalked and shot
a monster, two days before our arrival; but the creature had rushed into
the water when hit, waving its tail furiously above its head, and had
neither been seen nor heard of since.
Like Achilles, the crocodile has but one vulnerable spot; and this is a
small unarmored patch behind the forearm. He will take a good deal of
killing even there, unless the bullet finds its way to a vital part, or
is of the diabolical kind called “explosive.” Even when mortally
wounded, he seldom drops on the spot. With his last strength, he rushes
to the water and dies at the bottom.
After three days the carcass rises and floats, and our friends were now
waiting in order that Alfred might bag his big game. Too often, however,
the poor brute either crawls into a hole, or, in his agony, becomes
entangled among weeds and comes up no more. For one crocodile bagged, a
dozen regain the river, and, after lingering miserably under water, die
out of sight and out of reach of the sportsman.
While we were climbing the Rock of Abusîr our men were busy taking down
the big sail and preparing the Philæ for her long and ignominious
journey down-stream. We came back to find the mainyard laid along like a
roof-tree above our heads; the sail rolled up in a huge ball and resting
on the roof of the kitchen; the small aftersail and yard hoisted on the
mainmast; the oars lashed six on each side; and the lower deck a series
of yawning chasms, every alternate plank being taken up so as to form
seats and standing places for the rowers.
Thus dismantled, the dahabeeyah becomes, in fact, a galley. Her oars are
now her chief motive power; and a crew of steady rowers (having always
the current in their favor) can do thirty miles a day. When, however, a
good breeze blows from the south, the small sail and the current are
enough to carry the boat well along; and then the men reserve their
strength for rowing by night, when the wind has dropped. Sometimes, when
it is a dead calm and the rowers need rest, the dahabeeyah is left to
her own devices and floats with the stream--now waltzing ludicrously in
the middle of the river; now drifting sidewise like Mr. Winkle’s horse;
now sidling up to the east bank; now changing her mind and blundering
over to the west; making upon an average about a mile and a half or two
miles an hour, and presenting a pitiful spectacle of helpless
imbecility. At other times, however, the head wind blows so hard that
neither oars nor current avail; and then there is nothing for it but to
lie under the bank and wait for better times.
This was our sad case in going back to Abou Simbel. Having struggled
with no little difficulty through the first five-and-twenty miles, we
came to a dead-lock about halfway between Faras and Gebel-esh-Shems.
Carried forward by the stream, driven back by the wind, buffeted by the
waves, and bumped incessantly by the rocking to and fro of the felucca,
our luckless Philæ, after oscillating for hours within the space of a
mile, was run at last into a sheltered nook, and there left in peace
till the wind should change or drop.
Imprisoned here for a day and a half, we found ourselves, fortunately,
within reach of the tumuli which we had already made up our minds to
explore. Making first for those on the east bank, we took with us in the
felucca four men to row and dig, a fire-shovel, a small hatchet, an iron
bar, and a large wicker basket, which were the only implements we
possessed. What we wanted both then and afterward, and what no
dahabeeyah should ever be without, were two or three good spades, a
couple of picks, and a crowbar.
Climbing to the top of one of the highest of these hillocks, we began by
surveying the ground. The desert here is firm to the tread, flat,
compact, and thickly strewn with pebbles. Of the fine yellow sand which
characterizes the Libyan bank, there is little to be seen, and that
little lies like snow in drifts and clefts and hollows, as if carried
thither by the wind. The tumuli, however, are mounded of pure alluvial
mold, smooth, solid, and symmetrical. We counted thirty-four of all
sizes, from five to about five-and-thirty feet in height, and saw at
least as many more on the opposite side of the river.
Selecting one of about eight feet high, we then set the sailors to work;
and although it was impossible, with so few men and such insufficient
tools, to cut straight through the center of the mound, we at all events
succeeded in digging down to a solid substratum of lumps of crude clay,
evidently molded by hand.
Whether these formed only the foundation of the tumulus, or concealed a
grave excavated below the level of the desert, we had neither time nor
means to ascertain. It was something at all events, to have convinced
ourselves that the mounds were artificial.[126]
As we came away, we met a Nubian peasant trudging northward. He was
leading a sorry camel; had a white cockerel under his arm; and was
followed by a frightened woman, who drew her shawl over her face and
cowered behind him at sight of the Ingleezeh.
We asked the man what the mounds were, and who made them; but he shook
his head, and said they had been there “from old time.” We then inquired
by what name they were known in these parts; to which, urging his camel
forward, he replied hesitatingly that they had a name, but that he had
forgotten it.
Having gone a little way, however, he presently turned back, saying that
he now remembered all about it, and that they were called “The Horns of
Yackma.”
More than this we could not get from him. Who Yackma was, or how he came
to have horns, or why his horns should take the form of tumuli, was more
than he could tell or we could guess.
We gave him a small backshîsh, however, in return for this mysterious
piece of information, and went our way with all possible speed;
intending to row across and see the mounds on the opposite bank before
sunset. But we had not calculated upon the difficulty of either
threading our way among a chain of sand-banks, or going at least two
miles farther north, so as to get round into the navigable channel at
the other side. We of course tried the shorter way, and after running
aground some three or four times, had to give it up, hoist our little
sail, and scud homeward as fast as the wind would carry us.
The coming back thus, after an excursion in the felucca, is one of the
many pleasant things that one has to remember of the Nile. The sun has
set; the after-glow has faded; the stars are coming out. Leaning back
with a satisfied sense of something seen or done, one listens to the old
dreamy chant of the rowers and to the ripple under the keel. The palms,
meanwhile, glide past, and are seen in bronzed relief against the sky.
Presently the big boat, all glittering with lights, looms up out of the
dusk. A cheery voice hails from the poop. We glide under the bows. Half
a dozen smiling brown faces bid us welcome, and as many pairs of brown
hands are outstretched to help us up the side. A savory smell is wafted
from the kitchen; a pleasant vision of the dining-saloon, with table
ready spread and lamps ready lit, flashes upon us through the open
doorway. We are at home once more. Let us eat, drink, rest, and be
merry; for to-morrow the hard work of sight-seeing and sketching begins
again.