ON THE NILE
In my ears is the sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I
hear the agonising scrape of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have
heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a
thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a
concert hall and spring up wildly with the intention of getting outside
until the music begins, but the movement wakes me, and behold I am not
at a concert in London on a dim Sunday afternoon, but in a brilliantly
white two-berth cabin with the sun flooding in through the square
window! Peering out I see we are running smoothly along up-stream close
in to a high mud bank, and that is where the noise comes from. It is
caused by the squeaking of one wooden rod against another as hundreds of
Egyptian fellaheen raise the water from the Nile to moisten their crops.
It is not long before we are both dressed and out to examine the
curious sight. The banks are about the height of a high room, and at the
distance of, it may be, fifty yards, all the way along them there are
deep cuts like miniature denes, or chines, running down to the water. At
the foot of each of these a brown-skinned man stands with his bare feet
at the edge of the water, gripping with his toes to save himself from
slipping in the mud. At this time in the morning he is clothed in a
quantity of garments, mostly mud-colour, but as the sun grows strong he
throws them aside and stands forth a fine bronze statue with his skin
gleaming in the clear light. Just above his head there is a pole
bridging the cut, or chine, and fastened to the middle of it at right
angles is another, which swings up and down upon it like a see-saw.
A huge lump of mud like a swollen football is plastered on to the far
end of this, and at the other end a basket or basin made of skin is
attached to a string. The mud ball is heavy, and when it is allowed to
go free it hangs down to the ground; but the brown man constantly
reaches up and raises it by pulling down the basin, which he dips in the
Nile water, then lets the heavy end swing it up as high as his head,
when he tips it up, and the water from it flows into a pool at that
height. Another man stands on the edge of this pool and he has a similar
arrangement, by means of which he raises the water out of the pool with
a basin like the first, and there may be another above him, and another
again. This primitive arrangement is called a _shaduf_, and by its means
the water from the Nile is lifted up to the surface of the fields, where
it runs away in miniature channels to water the roots of the maize. This
is one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Think of all the
mills in which machinery does delicate work like that of the human hand;
think of the patterns made by the machines, of the newspapers printed
and folded with very little human guidance, and then leap back to this
clumsy device used now by the Egyptian as it was used by his ancestors
thousands of years ago! A few pints of muddy water raised by a weight,
half of it falling out of the badly constructed basin as it goes, and
the same drop of water handled again and again by four men till the tiny
trickle reaches the fields! We watch with amazement. The shrieking and
squeaking of the _shadufs_ goes on, the brown figures stoop down, rise
again, and swing with regularity, minute after minute. We steam on round
the next corner and see more of them and yet more again; how many have
we not seen already in the short time we have been on deck? Multiply
that times without number for all the miles we came up by train and
double it to include both banks! Imagination gives way!
[Illustration: A "SHADUF."]
"I can't bear it," says the nice American who was in the train with us
and has now joined us in the trip up to Assouan in one of Cook's
steamers. "It's maddening! Why can't a whole village form a company and
get some sort of machine to work? It would water all their crops in a
tenth of the time."
As he speaks there comes into view something just a little better. At
the top of one of the deep cuts on the bank two bullocks plod slowly
round and round in a circle as if they were threshing corn; they work a
wheel, which revolves horizontally and is fitted into another which
turns vertically, deep down into the hole it reaches, low enough to
touch the water at the bottom. Earthenware jars are strung all round it
like beads on a necklet, and as each pot dips into the water it brings
up its share, and when it reaches the highest point it tips it into a
little channel, where it runs away. This is called a _saddiyeh_. The
wheels groan and creak, the patient beasts turn in their dizzy circle,
and the youngster seated on the wheel prods them with a sharp-pointed
stick when they slacken. At least the water runs away in a continuous
stream at the top, however tiny.
Then the steamer takes a sharp turn, leaves the bank, and careers across
into midstream! We go up on to the top deck and see three dark-skinned
men, warmly wrapped up in brown coats, sitting in a little glasshouse in
the bows and watching earnestly the channel ahead.
This is the _reis_, or captain, with his two assistants. They know every
turn and dip in the river; but the river changes ever, no two days is it
alike as it falls and washes away a bank or deposits sand so as to make
an island where none was before. So the three men watch intently and
steer the boat to this side and that wherever they can find the deepest
channel. The Nile is low for this time of year and caution is necessary;
when there is any doubt as to there being enough water, one of the crew
below handles a long pole, dipping it in to find the bottom and calling
out the depth as he goes.
There are twenty passengers or so on the boat and they sit about the
sunny decks watching the panorama of the banks and the wonderful
changing scenes ahead, hour by hour. Hardly anywhere would you find a
greater variety of nationalities than on one of these Nile boats, for
Egypt draws people from all parts of the world with her mystery and
beauty. The odd people one meets add to the interest, and the strange
manners, which are not ours, are like flavouring in the dish of travel,
which, if it were composed only of scenes of perpetual beauty, might be
a little insipid.
To begin with, I am English and you are Scottish, we have our friend the
American and four of his compatriots, not by any means so delightful as
he is. He takes care to steer clear of them, we notice! One of them is a
little man who might be any age from twenty to fifty; if we examine him
with field-glasses we shouldn't be able to discover how old he is. His
yellow skin, drawn tightly over a bony face, gives no sign of age or
youth. He eats sweets all day out of a box as large as a child's coffin,
and he is attended by three stout ladies, doubtless "his mother and his
aunts." They are veiled and swathed in wraps, and seem to spend their
time gossiping or asleep in the innermost recesses of the cabin. We
never once catch them admiring the scenery or taking any interest in the
wonders we pass. Then there is a Swiss, a gentle-mannered bronzed man
with a brown beard; he speaks only French, and in an unobtrusive way
seems to have seen a great deal of the world; we discover, for one
thing, that he has lived out in the desert near Tunis for many years.
There are three Russians, mother, father, and daughter, who speak
practically nothing but Russian, with a few words of French; they are
brave to have started out on such a journey so ill-equipped. Coming
across a Russian dragoman in Cairo they trusted him joyfully; he bought
three temple tickets for them at their expense and promised to meet them
somewhere up the Nile. They seem to expect to find him sitting on every
sandbank, and their faith is pathetic; they'll never see those tickets
again, for the man will sell them to the next party of victims. Then
there is a Belgian, also a couple of lively pleasant French people, and
two Germans, a sister and brother, who dress in clothes intended to be
very sporting.
It is an interesting crowd, and it is well kept in hand by the manager,
who looks like a fair-haired, brown-faced boy of two-and-twenty, but has
been everywhere and speaks half a dozen languages fluently. In addition
to this he sketches in water colours, plays the fiddle, and breaks in
horses! You have to travel to come across people like that! Here he is
nothing so out of the way--every dragoman is able to talk in three
languages at least. Doesn't it spur you on to feel how much we have to
learn and how ignorant we are in our stay-at-home villages?
All the morning we sit about and watch the graceful white-sailed boats
coming down with cargoes of every kind. Sometimes we see them stranded
on a hidden sandbank with the crew making frantic efforts to get them
off again. We see the reaches lying ahead glittering like jewels in the
sun, and then we land and ride a short way to a temple, under the care
of the dragoman of the boat. The most moving thing in all that temple is
a set of scenes of a hippopotamus hunt shown with great spirit; the poor
little hippo looks more like a pig when he is at the bottom of the water
with a spear or harpoon sticking in him, but when they haul him up by
means of a noose round one leg the ancient artist represents him
becoming bigger and bigger as he comes to the surface!
The walls are, besides, covered with all the usual scenes of the king
making offerings to the gods, and overriding his enemies, and doing all
those noble things which kings wanted their posterity to know about
them.
A high-pitched voice, speaking in a hyper-refined affected tone, breaks
in on our enjoyment; it belongs to one of the English people from the
boat, a lady who evidently considers it her mission in life to instruct
people; information flows from her ten finger-tips, she cannot help it,
she was born to be a schoolmistress certainly.
"That is the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt," she says, "that the king
is wearing; sometimes you see him with one and sometimes with the other,
here he has both together."
As this is about the first thing a dragoman tells anyone in the first
temple he sees, and as it is repeated at least once at every temple
afterwards, only an idiot could fail to know it. We murmur something
politely and turn away. Round a corner we stop to admire the rich colour
still left in the ceiling, where a heavenly blue, covered with golden
stars, represents the sky.
"When we were here three years ago," says the lady at our elbows, "they
had not uncovered those pillars, but we are told--that----"
The peace and beauty are spoilt! Again we murmur something and make a
dive to get away, but are confronted by a clean-shaven man in glasses.
"When we were here three years ago," he begins, "perhaps my wife has
told you----"
It is rude, but there is nothing for it but to bolt; people like that
would take the effervescence off newly opened champagne! We leave them
confronting each other, and wonder what they do when they are alone
together! Do they force their mixture of guidebook and water on each
other?
[Illustration: THE DAM AT ASSOUAN.]
When we look back upon Egypt these river days will stand out most
clearly, for the glory of them and the interest of them are unfailing.
We have to leave this boat at Assouan, but we shall come back and go
right down the Nile to Cairo on our return journey, so that is something
to look forward to.
At Assouan we are not going to stop but to change on to another steamer,
one belonging to the Government this time, and we shall penetrate
farther into the heart of the land to see something, which, after the
Sphinx, is the most wonderful thing in Egypt.
But we can't step off one steamer on to another, for at Assouan is the
first of the many cataracts that for ages has hindered the navigation of
the Nile. The river, hemmed in between two rocky sides, tears down,
dashing over stones and whirling round corners in a dangerous way. So
the steamer for the upper part of the river waits above the cataract and
we have to make a short train journey of half an hour or so to join it.
Picture the scene at an English railway station of any size, with its
solidly-built platform and its gloomy roof and its row of uniformed
porters drawn up waiting the arrival of the incoming train. I don't
suppose anywhere you could find anything less like this than the station
at Assouan where we await our train this afternoon. There are great palm
trees springing out of the platform itself, not fenced in in any way.
There are masses of scarlet poinsettias growing. And the porters! yes,
they _are_ porters, not criminals waiting to be hanged! There they
stand, a ragged regiment indeed, dressed in any sort of garment that
takes their fancy. Most of them look as if they had collected all the
dish-clouts and dusters which had seen service and piled them on anyhow.
To add to their adornment each man has a double coil of shabby-looking
rope hung round his neck, this is to fasten together the luggage he
hopes to carry. The men are of all sizes and all colours. That
good-looking fellow at the end is not darker than a sun-browned
Englishman, while that stout, round-faced, thick-lipped one next to him
is as black as the polished boot seen in an advertisement. He is a
Nubian, for here we are on the borders of Nubia, now counted part of
Egypt. The porters are making a tremendous hullabaloo, chattering and
quarrelling at the tops of their voices, so a native policeman in khaki
comes along and smacks one of them hard on the side of his face, and
then catches him a crack on the other side to make him keep his balance;
the man does not resent it at all--he rubs his cheek and takes the hint.
Fancy a policeman in our country smacking a porter on the face; what a
row there would be!
Here is the train! The engine-driver and his mate are dressed in shabby
European clothes crowned by turbans which have gaudy orange and red
handkerchiefs twisted round them. They get down on the platform, and
suddenly the fireman sees a rather unpleasant-looking man, with a beard,
standing away from the others; he rushes at him, bows low before him,
and finally kisses both his hands. The man is probably a sheikh of the
Mohammedan church.
The train is a corridor one, and we mount the platform at the end of a
carriage and find ourselves in a compartment thick with dust, where the
seats vary from straight leather-covered benches to comfortable-looking
basket-chairs. The place is crammed with "kit"; dispatch-boxes,
helmet-cases, sword-cases and leather bags fill every corner.
"Allow me," says a pleasant-voiced sunburnt man as he stoops to remove
some of his things to make room for us. "We've come right up from Cairo
and things get a bit scattered," he adds apologetically.
When we get clear of the town we find that in addition to glass windows
and wooden shutters there are also windows of blue glass to keep off the
glare, a splendid idea, as they do not hinder the view. One of these is
up, and peeping through it we get our first real glimpse of the desert,
transformed as if it lay beneath bright moonlight. From the other side
we can see it as it is in its yellow colouring. How fascinating! Its
runs away in sweeping low waves to a line of hills and is crossed by
caravan tracks; even as we watch we see a man riding a small donkey
ahead of a string of camels laden with huge bales. The railway is still
but a small thing in Egypt; it runs right ahead, with few side-lines,
and from it the desert tracks lead off in many directions. The camel,
who has been the bearer of Egyptian traffic for generations, still does
a large share of the transport. A good camel is expensive, but a man who
owns one is sure of a livelihood, for he works backwards and forwards
across the great solitudes, eating his handful of dates or grain, and
drinking the water he carries with him, if he is not lucky enough to
camp near a well. Oddly enough camels are not represented on the
wall-drawings of the ancient Egyptians, and though it is true they were
probably not to be found in the country in the very earliest times, yet
they were certainly introduced as early as the horse, who is often shown
in battle-scenes.
[Illustration: MEN OF THE BISHARIN TRIBE.]
What rivets our attention directly it comes into sight is an encampment
of low mat huts like beehives right out in the midst of the sand.
"Those belong to the Bisharin," says the same fair-haired, keen-faced
man who had first spoken; "tribe of fuzzy-wuzzies! They extend right
away from here to the Red Sea. Live on raw grain mostly. Quaint lot!"
Some of the men from the camp are standing near the railway line, so we
can see them well; they are very tall and extremely handsome, with
well-cut features and well-proportioned figures. Their hair is cut
exactly after the fashion of the palm trees, with a tuft standing up in
the middle and two tufts dropping away from it on each side. These men
are quiet enough now that they have learnt the British power, but not so
long ago they were inflamed with fanatical hatred.
You have heard of the dervishes who were killed in thousands at
Omdurman, outside Khartoum, in the great battle at which Lord Kitchener
won his title when he freed the Soudan from the power of the Mahdi? Now,
having seen the Bisharin, you can imagine what dervishes looked like.
For they dressed their hair in the same way, they wore the same
dirty-white garments, and as they came yelling onward at a run,
brandishing their weapons, it must have taken some courage for the
Egyptian soldiers to meet them steadily.
All the men in the carriage with us are going on up to Khartoum and
beyond. They are soldiers, administrators, and Government officials, men
whose lives are passed on the outposts of civilisation, and who carry
the British ideals of cleanliness, honesty, and straight-dealing far
into the desert; but they do not talk about it, as Kipling says they
speak:--"After the use of the English in straight-flung words and few--"
"Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways,
Baulking the end half won for an instant dole of praise.
Stand to your work and be wise--certain of sword and pen,
Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men."
Khartoum is the capital of the Soudan, but we have not arrived in the
Soudan yet. This great province was won from barbarism and brutality by
the English, who had trained and commanded the Egyptian army for the
purpose through years of heart-breaking work, and it is held jointly by
England and Egypt.
Then we arrive at Shellal, the station where the steamer waits, and in
a moment we are plunged into a turmoil of confusion and shouting.
The red sun is setting in a flame of glory over the great lake-like
expanse studded with black rocks; this is the huge dam or reserve of
water held up for the use of the crops when the Nile goes down. The
scene beggars description; bags, bundles, bales, boxes are pitched out
pell-mell. Gleaming black faces are lit up by the flames of leaping
fires lit on the sand. Petticoated porters thrust metal numbers at us so
that we may be able to recognise them again and reclaim our luggage
safely. We make our way to the steamer and mount to the first-class deck
and look down on the whirl of turbans and red fezes (also called
tarbooshes) below. The perpetual chatter, the long low cries, the
beating shout of men staggering under heavy loads make up a resounding
din. Clamped boxes, camp-chairs, enamel basins, dispatch-boxes,
helmet-cases are carried swinging up the gangway. Here is a man wildly
waving a gun-case which a non-commissioned officer wrenches from him;
another is struggling under a folded tent, the end of which catches on a
post and nearly precipitates him into the water. Black Nubian sailors in
white and blue jumpers are wrestling with an endless series of
mail-bags; third-class passengers, lost under piles of bedding, straggle
into a great barge alongside. In the midst of it all one sailor detaches
himself a little from the rest and drops down on his knees on the quay,
prostrating himself and bowing with his forehead to the ground; he rises
again, stands straight, with head erect, then down he goes again. He is
praying at sunset, as a good Mohammedan is told to do. No one notices
him or ridicules him. What would happen to an English sailor who knelt
to say his prayers on an English dock? We feel that we have something to
learn from this people, who are at all events not ashamed of their
religion.
A man is selling oranges on the quay, another has large round flat
loaves of bread tucked well under his arms and hugged against his body.
A black hand, extended from the lowest deck beneath us, grasps one of
these loaves and begins to finger it with a view to purchase; we cannot
see the owner of the hand, but we can see his fingers feeling cautiously
all around that loaf; he nips it between finger and thumb, he prods it,
kneads it, rubs it, and finally, when no inch of it has been untouched,
he hands over reluctantly a small coin and withdraws with the bread.
"Hope that isn't for us," says the cheerful voice of a young officer
leaning over the rail beside us in the dark. "Think I'll cut off my
crust at dinner to-night on the off-chance, anyway!"
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN SOLDIER.]