A MILLION SUNRISES
It is very cold and quite dark when I wake. The steamer is anchored
close up to the bank and not a sound comes from the still water. My
blankets are very comfortable; it can't be time to turn out yet. It is
an effort even to stretch out a hand and strike a light to see my
watch--5.15! Yes, we ought to go!
You take some waking, and only my threat of, "You'll never get another
chance in your life," brings you out of your bunk at last.
If you've ever done anything nastier than trying to dress against time,
two together in a small cabin on a cold morning in the pitch dark, I'd
like to know it. The electric light is off, because the engines are not
running, and there are no candles. By the time we've got into some sort
of clothing we're both at snarling-point. Twice I've violently tried to
put on your boots, thinking they were mine, and I know you've got my
shirt on, because I couldn't find it and had to drag out a clean one!
A walk along the cold dark deck and across a slippery plank to the mud
bank does not improve matters. Apparently we have this exhilarating
entertainment all to ourselves, for the rest of the fifteen passengers
have not appeared.
The sand is like the softest silk, and it seems sometimes as if we must
be walking backwards so little headway do we make. If it wasn't for this
icy wind I should think I was still dreaming. All the time that red bar
in the east glows steadily brighter, and warns us that if we want to see
one of the grandest sights in the world--Abu Simbel by sunrise--we must
hurry up.
When at last we get clear of the sand we find ourselves on a piece of
ground cut up by cracks wide enough to put a foot in. There is just
sufficient light to keep us from twisting our ankles if we walk along
with our eyes glued to the ground, and so we get along somehow, till
suddenly we stop--sunrise is here!
A considerable distance in front of us and above our level we see three
mighty seated figures and the remains of a fourth in a flat recess
chiselled out of the side of a great rounded cliff. That first touch of
dawn has tinged them with rosy pink, and they sit with their faces to
the sunrise, which they must have seen somewhere about one million times
already. Night succeeding day, day succeeding night, light following
darkness, darkness following light, thus has time flickered before them
throughout their stupendous age. As we creep nearer and climb higher
they seem to rise and rise in size. Silently we seat ourselves on a
stone, forgetting the shivering wind, and we stare and gaze spellbound
at the triumphant eager expression on those mighty features, which, as
the dawn spreads, softens to a deep complacence. Then the pink changes
to a splendour of living gold, which sweeps over like a curtain, and the
full majesty of them strikes us almost like a blow.
Their expression has in it something akin to that of all mighty
time-resisting images set up by man; it is found in the face of the
Sphinx and on that of the Buddhas of the East. It is an expression of
soul-crushing superiority, so without doubt of its own unassailable
dignity that it can afford to be benign. We must make up a word and call
it "supremity"--it is the only one that fits it.
Under the knee of each mighty figure is the plump outline of a little
wife, small it looks from here, but draw nearer still, stand right under
that colossus on the right and you will find that she is twice the
height of a man.
As they tower above us, seeming to grow greater every instant as the
light filters into the crevices, we get some idea of the monster size of
these noble statues, and discover that each foot is nearly as long as a
man! From the broken face of the sloping cliff they have been hewn, not
built and pieced together and brought here from elsewhere, but born full
size, springing to life from out the living rock. They all represent the
king with whom we are already familiar, Rameses II., who caused this
great temple to be made to celebrate his victory over the Kheta, a tribe
of Syrians, living far away by the river Orontes in the north of the
Holy Land.
Two on each side of the temple doorway the statues sit, and between
them, in low relief, is the small figure of the god Harmakhis. Running
above, across them all, is an inscription, part of which signifies--
"I give to thee all life and strength."
Look up at it beyond those towering immovable heads, and from it again
to the rough cliff untouched by tool, and from that to the sky, now of
the purest, softest blue, hanging like a canopy above.
The high black doorway of the temple lies like a gash on the face of the
cliff, and on one day of the year the ray of light from the rising sun
falls through it clean as a shot arrow. The black-robed guardian has
been expecting us, he stands waiting, holding his staff of office, and
admits us to the interior. It is very dark, and even with the light of
the flickering candle he holds up it is difficult to make out those
great columns, each seventeen feet high, carved with an image of the god
Osiris. As for the deep-cut pictures everywhere on the walls we can only
get the merest glimpses of them. We pass on through several halls,
noting how the angles and lines are absolutely plumb and true, and come
to the innermost sanctuary, where we find the king again as one of four
seated statues, not very large, the other three being gods! That was the
idea Rameses had of his own importance!
Then it grows on us with increasing wonder that all this temple--the
walls, the columns, the statues--are cut out of the actual rock, and
that all the stone dislodged in the cutting must have been carried out
through that doorway. How was it achieved? The depth of the temple to
its farthest wall is one hundred and eighty-five feet, or almost three
times a cricket-pitch! Imagine this depth driven in to the rock and
cleared out to a great height without any machine power or modern tools!
And this was accomplished in the reign of one king. Rameses reigned some
sixty years, and his great victory over the Kheta was five years after
his coronation, so perhaps sixty years is the longest we can give for
the construction of the temple, and it was probably much less. The story
goes that in this great battle the king, cut off from his men and alone
in the midst of a hostile army, performed prodigies of valour; he slew
and hewed right and left until he sent the greater part of the Syrian
army flying before him; all this is recorded on the walls. Of course in
the case of kings these doings are apt to be magnified, still, there is
no doubt that this was one of the most memorable occasions of his life,
and he has certainly caused it to be remembered by building this
enduring monument.
[Illustration: A CHILD HOLDS OUT A STRANGE LITTLE BEAST.]
We hear voices, and are joined by half a dozen of our fellow-travellers
from the steamer. As we all walk back together a child sidles up and
holds out a strange little beast with a head like a skull and a long
tail like a rat. It is about as big as your hand. One of the army men
takes it and puts it in the sleeve of his green tweed coat, and as he
walks along carrying it the quaint little beast turns a greenish colour.
It is a chameleon and has the faculty of changing to the colour of its
background whatever that may be; this forms a protection against its
enemies, who cannot easily see it.
"I'll keep it," says the soldier, laughing and giving the child a coin.
"He is a useful little beggar. You should see that tongue of his flick
out and catch an unwary fly half a foot away."
The steamer hoots a warning note and we all scramble on board hastily.
Yes, I _told_ you it was my shirt!
An hour or so later we pass the boundary into the Soudan.
"Now we are out of Egypt," says another of our friends, a Government
official with years of experience behind him. "The Soudan is a greatly
superior place; no one is allowed to bother you here--we don't let them.
The children don't even know the meaning of the word _bakshish_; they
are not allowed to learn it."
This sounds comforting and gives a good prospect for the day we shall
have to spend at our stopping-place, Wady Haifa, before going back on
the steamer to Assouan.
There is no railway between Assouan and Wady Haifa, and so Government
steamers run all the year round to bridge the gap between the two ends
of the railway. In the season Cook runs steamers too, and they give much
more time for passengers to see Abu Simbel and other temples on the way;
unfortunately, as we are too early in the year, we could not take
advantage of them and had to go on a Government boat.
The men we have been with are all passing on by rail from Wady Haifa,
and when we land there we go in the afternoon to see them off at the
station. They are a keen, hard-bitten crew, and make us feel proud of
our countrymen; they are reticent mostly, bearing the unmistakable stamp
of responsibility. Men who "build the Empire" are little apt to "slop
over" or demand sympathy. The boyish vigour remains with them later than
with most men, but it is tempered by a certain hardness outside. The
train is particularly comfortable and well managed, with sleeping-cars
that bear comparison with the best in Europe, and a good dining-car; and
it is necessary, for these men have a journey of a day and a night
before reaching Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan, and the way lies
right across barren desert, where the sand insidiously creeps in at
every chink in spite of the closely shut windows. To some of them indeed
Khartoum is only a jumping-off place. There is one army man who received
orders to leave Cairo at ten days' notice and plunge into Central
Africa, there to hold an outpost as the only white man for hundreds of
miles around. He knows little of what is expected of him beyond the fact
that he is to purchase a year's stores in Khartoum, and that when he has
gone as far as boat and waterway can take him, he will have to march at
least a hundred miles through country where his equipment must be
carried by natives, as it is the haunt of the dreaded tsetse fly whose
bite is fatal to animals. He has a map made up mostly of rivers
"unexplored" and country "unknown." It looks quite full of information
and names when you merely glance at it, but when you begin to handle it
you find a great deal of the print tells you only what is not there. The
owner of it hardly knows what language he will have to speak, but he is
as pleased about it all as a girl going to her first ball. In his own
words, he "has got his chance." When we ask him what he is going to
take with him, he answers with a merry twinkle, "I started with two
dozen tooth-brushes; I should think in their line they would be enough."
So long as England produces men of this metal she need not fear the
decadence of the race.
When we have parted from them all we stroll down the bazaar at Wady
Haifa and are immediately followed by a horde of children of all ages,
sizes, and descriptions, who, whenever we stop and look around at them,
say with growing confidence, "Bakshish, bakshish!" even the tiny fat
babe who can scarcely toddle murmurs "'Shish!"
Still pursued by the horde we make our way to a tea-house, where
numerous natives of Haifa sit out in a little compound surrounded by a
wooden fence and refresh themselves. We order tea, and get it after some
difficulty; but it is more because the attendant guesses what we would
be likely to ask for than because he understands us that we eventually
are provided with a small pot of quite decent tea.
While we drink the children gather from afar; every one in Haifa under
the age of fourteen is there I should say. They glue themselves to the
fence and force their little faces between the posts, or spike their
chins on the top and then watch in solemn deadly earnest the ways of
these strange beings whom fate has so kindly sent to amuse them. The
rest-house attendant does not approve of these manners, so he slips out
of a side-door with a basin of water in his hand and pitches it straight
over the little crew as if they were a flock of intrusive chickens; they
fly, shrieking with delight, and return in thicker swarms than ever
inside of two minutes.
An affable gentleman in a gown seats himself beside us.
"I wish you good-day," he says in English, and we return his greeting.
"I am dragoman here," he continues.
We point to one small girl with a face quite different from that of the
other children, and her hair done in innumerable little tight pigtails,
and ask him who she is. "Nubian," he says. "Eat castor oil, plenty oil,
like it much." We tell him to bring the child to us, but directly he
translates, she flies screaming, is captured by the other children, and
a noise begins like that inside the parrot-house at the Zoo. I explain
that we don't want her to be frightened, but that if she will come and
speak to us she shall have bakshish. The magic word produces instant
calm, the child comes forward at once with coquettish assurance and
when, through the interpreter, we inquire her name, and she tells us it
is "Nafeesa," we give her half a piastre and let her go.
[Illustration: A LITTLE NUBIAN GIRL.]
When we start off again for the steamer the whole crowd follows hard on
our heels, for it is we who provide the free circus to-day. One mite
trotting forward with his eyes glued on us goes smack into a tree and so
hurts his little face that he covers it with a crooked arm and sets off
homewards wailing softly.
This is really a deserving case, even in England it is allowable to
soothe the feelings of a hurt child, so we mutter "Bakshish," and all
the eager crew rush after the little suffering child, yelling,
"Bakshish," and they bring him back triumphantly with the tears already
dried on his hurt face.
So much for the Government official!
Now we are off really! Back down the Nile and good-bye to this glorious
land. Rapidly we fly down-stream, past Abu Simbel, past the sweeps of
deep rich yellow sand seen nowhere south of Assouan in such glorious
colouring; sand that is swept smooth by the wind into great banks and
drifts with sharp edges like snow-drifts; past masses of plum-coloured
rock sticking up out of it; past defiles of stony mountains falling
sheer to the water; hiding here and there in their folds tiny villages
indistinguishable from the rocks without glasses. There is hardly a
_shaduf_ to be seen and very little cultivation, it is either desert or
stony hills on each side. Grand beyond thought is it when seen in the
flaming light of the afterglow!
[Illustration: THE PEOPLE GOING HOME IN THE EVENINGS--WATER-CARRIERS.]
At Assouan we have time for a glimpse at the great dam, extending for
over a mile in length and built of masonry eighty-two feet thick at the
bottom. This banks up the water, we have already seen, among the hills
into a prodigious lake when the great swirl of the river comes down at
flood-time, and thus much of it, which would have rushed away and been
lost, is stored and let out gradually through the sluice-gates as
required.
Then we change on to one of Cook's steamers, and for days we fly
down-stream to Cairo. We see the green fields of maize, and we watch the
people going home in the evenings with the tired oxen and the little
donkeys carrying their provender on their backs. And one day we arrive
at Cairo and take the train for Port Said.
Good-bye to Egypt! Mysterious, beautiful land! Never in all our
wanderings round the globe shall we come upon a country more
interesting.
[Illustration: JERUSALEM.]