WE ARE at home again. Our little world, which has been somewhat disturbed by the gaiety of Thebes, and is already as weary of tombs as of temples and of the whole incubus of Egyptian civilization, readjusts itself and settles into its usual placid enjoyment.
We have now two gazelles on board, and a most disagreeable lizard, nearly three feet long; I dislike the way his legs are set on his sides; I dislike his tail, which is a fat continuation of his body; and the “feel” of his cold, creeping flesh is worse than his appearance; he is exceedingly active, darting rapidly about in every direction to the end of his rope. The gazelles chase each other about the deck, frolicking in the sun, and their eyes express as much tenderness and affection as any eyes can, set like theirs. If they were mounted in a woman's head, and properly shaded with long lashes, she would be the most dangerous being in existence.
Somehow there is a little change in the atmosphere of the dahabeëh. The jester of the crew, who kept them alternately laughing and grumbling, singing and quarreling, turbulent with hasheesh or sulky for want of it, was left in jail at Assouan. The reïs has never recovered the injury to his dignity inflicted by his brief incarceration, and gives us no more a cheerful good-morning. The steersman smiles still, with the fixed look of enjoyment that his face assumed when it first came into the world, but he is listless; I think he has struck a section of the river in which there is a dearth of his wives; he has complained that his feet were cold in the fresh mornings, but the stockings we gave him he does not wear, and probably is reserving for a dress occasion. Abd-el-Atti meditates seriously upon a misunderstanding with one of his old friends at Luxor; he likes to tell us about the diplomatic and sarcastic letter he addressed him on leaving; “I wrote it,” he says, “very grammatick, the meaning of him very deep; I think he feel it.” There is no language like the Arabic for the delivery of courtly sarcasm, in soft words, at which no offence can be taken,—for administering a smart slap in the face, so to say, with a feather.
It is a ravishing sort of day, a slight haze, warm but life-giving air, and we row a little and sail a little down the broadening river, by the palms, and the wheat-fields growing yellow, and the soft chain of Libyan hills,—the very dolce far niente of life. Other dahabeëhs accompany us, and we hear the choruses of their crews responding to ours. From the shore comes the hum of labor and of idleness, men at the shadoofs, women at the shore for water; there are flocks of white herons and spoonbills on the sandbars; we glide past villages with picturesque pigeon-houses; a ferry-boat ever and anon puts across, a low black scow, its sides banked up with clay, a sail all patches and tatters, and crowded in it three or four donkeys and a group of shawled women and turbaned men, silent and sombre. The country through which we walk, towards night, is a vast plain of wheat, irrigated by canals, with villages in all directions; the peasants are shabbily dressed, as if taxes ate up all their labor, but they do not beg.
The city of Keneh, to which we come next morning, is the nearest point of the Nile to the Red Sea, the desert route to Kosseir being only one hundred and twenty miles; it is the Neapolis of which Herodotus speaks, near which was the great city of Chemmis, that had a temple dedicated to Perseus. The Chemmitæ declared that this demi-god often appeared to them on earth, and that he was descended from citizens of their country who had sailed into Greece; there if no doubt that Perseus came here when he made the expedition into Libya to bring the Gorgon's head.
Keneh is now a thriving city, full of evidences of wealth, and of well-dressed people, and there are handsome houses and bazaars like those of Cairo. From time immemorial it has been famous for its koollehs, which are made of a fine clay found only in this vicinity, of which ware is manufactured almost as thin as paper. The process of making them has not changed since the potters of the Pharaohs' time. The potters of to-day are very skillful at the wheel. A small mass of moistened clay, mixed with sifted ashes of halfeh-grass and kneaded like bread, is placed upon a round plate of wood which whirls by a treadle. As it revolves the workman with his hands fashions the clay into vessels of all shapes, graceful and delicate, with a sleight of hand that is wonderful. He makes a koolleh, or a drinking-cup, or a vase with a slender neck, in a few seconds, fashioning it as truly as if it were cast in a mould. It was like magic to see the fragile forms grow in his hands. We sat for a long time in one of the cool rooms where two or three potters were at work, shaded from the sun by palm-branches, which let the light flicker upon the earth-floor, upon the freshly made vessels and the spinning wheels of the turbaned workmen, whose deft fingers wrought out unceasingly these beautiful shapes from the revolving clay.
At the house of the English consul we have coffee; he afterwards lunches with us and insists, but in vain, that we stay and be entertained by a Ghawazee dance in the evening. It is a kind of amusement of which a very little satisfies one. At his house, Prince Arthur and his suite were also calling; a slender, pleasant appearing young gentleman, not noticeable anywhere and with a face of no special force, but bearing the family likeness. As we have had occasion to remark more than once, Princes are so plenty on the Nile this year as to be a burden to the officials,—especially German princes, who, however, do not count any more. The private, unostentatious traveler, who asks no favor of the Khedive, is becoming almost a rarity. I hear the natives complain that almost all the Englishmen of rank who come to Egypt, beg, or shall we say accept? substantial favors of the Khedive. The nobility appear to have a new rendering of noblesse oblige. This is rather humiliating to us Americans, who are, after all, almost blood-relations of the English; and besides, we are often taken for Inglese, in villages where few strangers go. It cannot be said that all Americans are modest, unassuming travelers; but we are glad to record a point or two in their favor:—they pay their way, and they do not appear to cut and paint their names upon the ruins in such numbers as travelers from other countries; the French are the greatest offenders in this respect, and the Germans next.
We cross the river in the afternoon and ride to the temple of Athor or Venus at Denderah. This temple, although of late construction, is considered one of the most important in Egypt. But it is incomplete, smaller, and less satisfactory than that at Edfoo. The architecture of the portico and succeeding hall is on the whole noble, but the columns are thick and ungraceful, and the sculptures are clumsy and unartistic. The myth of the Egyptian Avenues is worked out everywhere with the elaboration of a later Greek temple. On the ceiling of several rooms her gigantic figure is bent round three sides, and from a globe in her lap rays proceed in the vivifying influence of which trees are made to grow.
Everywhere in the temple are subterranean and intramural passages, entrance to which is only had by a narrow aperture, once closed by a stone. For what were these perfectly dark alleys intended? Processions could not move in them, and if they were merely used for concealing valuables, why should their inner sides have been covered with such elaborate sculptures?
The most interesting thing at Denderah is the small temple of Osiris, which is called the “lying-in temple,” the subjects of sculptures being the mystical conception, birth, and babyhood of Osiris. You might think from the pictures on the walls, of babes at nurse and babes in arms, that you had obtruded into one of the institutions of charity called a Day Nursery. We are glad to find here, carved in large, the image of the four-headed ugly little creature we have been calling Typhon, the spirit of evil; and to learn that it is not Typhon but is the god Bes, a jolly promoter of merriment and dancing. His appearance is very much against him.
Mariette Bey makes the great mystery of the adytum of the large temple, which the king alone could enter, the golden sistrum which was kept there. The sistrum was the mysterious emblem of Venus; it is sculptured everywhere in this building—although it is one of the sacred symbols found in all temples. This sacred instrument par excellence of the Egyptians played as important a part in their worship, says Mr. Wilkinson, as the tinkling bell in Roman Catholic services. The great privilege of holding it was accorded to queens, and ladies of rank who were devoted to the service of the deity. The sistrum is a strip of gold, or bronze, bent in a long loop, and the ends, coming together, are fastened in an ornamented handle. Through the loop bars are run upon which are rings, and when the instrument is shaken the rings move to and fro. Upon the sides of the handle were sometimes carved the faces of Isis and of Nephthys, the sister goddesses, representing the beginning and the end.
It is a little startling to find, when we get at the inner secret of the Egyptian religion, that it is a rattle! But it is the symbol of eternal agitation, without which there is no life. And the Egyptians profoundly knew this great secret of the universe.
We pass next day, quietly, to the exhibition of a religious devotion which is trying to get on without any sistrum or any agitation whatever. Towards sunset, below How, we come to a place where a holy man, called Sheykh Saleem, roosts forever on a sloping bank, with a rich country behind him; beyond, on the plain, hundreds of men and boys are at work throwing up an embankment against the next inundation; but he does not heed them. The holy man is stark naked and sits upon his haunches, his head, a shock of yellow hair, upon his knees. He is of that sickly, whitey-black color which such holy skin as his gets by long exposure. Before him on the bank is a row of large water-jars; behind him is a little kennel of mud, into which he can crawl if it ever occurs to him to go to bed.
About him, seated on the ground, is a group of his admirers. Boys run after us along the bank begging backsheesh for Sheykh Saleem. A crowd of hangers-on, we are told, always surround him, and live on the charity that his piety evokes from the faithful. His own wants are few. He spend his life in this attitude principally, contemplating the sand between his knees. He has sat here for forty years.
People pass and repass, camels swing by him, the sun shines, a breeze as of summer moves the wheat behind him and our great barque, with its gay flags and a dozen rowers rowing in time, sweeps before him, but he does not raise his head. Perhaps he has found the secret of perfect happiness. But his example cannot be widely imitated. There are not many climates in the world in which a man can enjoy such a religion out of doors at all seasons of the year.
We row on and by sundown are opposite Farshoot and its sugar-factories; the river broadens into a lake, shut in to the north by limestone hills rosy in this light, and it is perfectly still at this hour. But for the palms against the sky, and the cries of men at the shadoofs, and the clumsy native boats with their freight of immobile figures, this might be a glassy lake in the remote Adirondack forest, especially when the light has so much diminished that the mountains no longer appear naked.
The next morning as we were loitering along, wishing for a breeze to take us quickly to Bellianeh, that we might spend the day in visiting old Abydus, a beautiful wind suddenly arose according to our desire.
“You always have good fortune,” says the dragoman.
“I thought you didn't believe in luck?”
“Not to call him luck. You think the wind to blow 'thout the Lord know it?”
We approach Bellianeh under such fine headway that we fall almost into the opposite murmuring, that this helpful breeze should come just when we were obliged to stop and lose the benefit. We half incline to go on, and leave Abydus in its ashes, but the absurdity of making a journey of seven thousand miles and then passing near to, but unseen, the spot most sacred to the old Egyptians, flashes upon us, and we meekly land. But our inclination to go on was not so absurd as it seems; the mind is so constituted that it can contain only a certain amount of old ruins, and we were getting a mental indigestion of them. Loathing is perhaps too strong a word to use in regard to a piece of sculpture, but I think that a sight at this time, of Rameses II. in his favorite attitude of slicing off the heads of a lot of small captives, would have made us sick.
By eleven o'clock we were mounted for the ride of eight miles, and it may give some idea of the speed of the donkey under compulsion, to say that we made the distance in an hour and forty minutes. The sun was hot, the wind fresh, the dust considerable,—a fine sandy powder that, before night, penetrated clothes and skin. Nevertheless, the ride was charming. The way lay through a plain extending for many miles in every direction, every foot of it green with barley (of which here and there a spot was ripening), with clover, with the rank, dark Egyptian bean. The air was sweet, and filled with songs of the birds that glanced over the fields or poised in air on even wing like the lark. Through the vast, unfenced fields were narrow well-beaten roads in all directions, upon which men women, and children, usually poorly and scantily clad, donkeys and camels, were coming and going. There was the hum of voices everywhere, the occasional agonized blast of the donkey and the caravan bleat of the camel. It often seems to us that the more rich and broad the fields and the more abundant the life, the more squalor among the people.
We had noticed, at little distances apart in the plain, mounds of dirt five or six feet high. Upon each of these stood a solitary figure, usually a naked boy—a bronze image set up above the green.
“What are these?” we ask.
“What you call scarecrows, to frighten the birds; see that chile throw dirt at 'em!”
“They look like sentries; do the people here steal?”
“Everybody help himself, if nobody watch him.”
At length we reach the dust-swept village of Arâbat, on the edge of the desert, near the ruins of the ancient Thinis (or Abvdus), the so-called cradle of the Egyptian monarchy. They have recently been excavated. I cannot think that this ancient and most important city was originally so far from the Nile; in the day of its glory the river must have run near it. Here was the seat of the first Egyptian dynasty, five thousand and four years before Christ, according to the chronology of Mariette Bey. I find no difficulty in accepting the five thousand but I am puzzled about the four years. It makes Menes four years older than he is generally supposed to have been. It is the accuracy of the date that sets one pondering. Menes, the first-known Egyptian king, and the founder of Memphis, was born here. If he established his dynasty here six thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine years ago, he must have been born some time before that date; and to be a ruler he must have been of noble parents, and no doubt received a good education. I should like to know what sort of a place, as to art, say, and literature, and architecture, Thinis was seven thousand and four years ago. It is chiefly sand-heaps now.
Not only was Menes born here, in the grey dawn of history, but Osiris, the manifestation of Light on earth, was buried here in the greyer dawn of a mythic period. His tomb was venerated by the Pharaonic worshippers as the Holy Sepulchre is by Christians, and for many ages. It was the last desire of the rich and noble Egyptians to be buried at Thinis, in order that they might lie in the same grave with Osiris; and bodies were brought here from all parts of Egypt to rest in the sacred earth. Their tombs were heaped up one above another, about the grave of the god. There are thousands of mounds here, clustering thickly about a larger mound; and, by digging, M. Mariette hopes to find the reputed tomb of Osiris. An enclosure of crude brick marks the supposed site of this supposed most ancient city of Egypt.
From these prehistoric ashes, it is like going from Rome to Peoria, to pass to a temple built so late as the time of Sethi I., only about thirty-three hundred years ago. It has been nearly all excavated and it is worth a long ride to see it. Its plan differs from that of all other temples, and its varied sculpture ranks with the best of temple carving; nowhere else have we found more life and grace of action in the figures and more expressive features; in number of singular emblems and devices, and in their careful and beautiful cutting, and brilliant coloring, the temple is unsurpassed. The non-stereotyped plan of the temple beguiled us into a hearty enjoyment of it. Its numerous columns are pure Egyptian of the best style—lotus capitals; and it contains some excellent specimens of the Doric column, or of its original, rather. The famous original tablet of kings, seventy-six, from Menes to Sethi, a partial copy of which is in the British Museum, has been re-covered with sand for its preservation. This must have been one of the finest of the old temples. We find here the novelty of vaulted roofs, formed by a singular method. The roof stones are not laid flat, as elsewhere, but on edge, and the roof, thus having sufficient thickness, is hollowed out on the under side, and the arch is decorated with stars and other devices. Of course, there is a temple of Rameses II., next door to this one, but it exists now only in its magnificent foundations.
We rode back through the village of Arâbat in a whirlwind of dust, amid cries of “backsheesh,” hailed from every door and pursued by yelling children. One boy, clad in the loose gown that passes for a wardrobe in these parts, in order to earn his money, threw a summersault before us, and, in a flash, turned completely out of his clothes, like a new-made Adam! Nothing was ever more neatly done; except it may have been a feat of my donkey a moment afterwards, executed perhaps in rivalry of the boy. Pretending to stumble, he went on his head, and threw a summersault also. When I went back to look for him, his head was doubled under his body so that he had to be helped up.
When we returned we found six other dahabeëhs moored near ours. Out of the seven, six carried the American flag—one of them in union with the German—and the seventh was English. The American flags largely outnumber all others on the Nile this year; in fact Americans and various kinds of Princes appear to be monopolizing this stream. A German, who shares a boat with Americans, drops in for a talk. It is wonderful how much more space in the world every German needs, now that there is a Germany. Our visitor expresses the belief that the Germans and the Americans are to share the dominion of the world between them. I suppose that this means that we are to be permitted to dwell on our present possessions in peace, if we don't make faces; but one cannot contemplate the extinction of all the other powers without regret.
Of course we have outstayed the south wind; the next morning we are slowly drifting against the north wind. As I look from the window before breakfast, a Nubian trader floats past, and on the bow deck is crouched a handsome young lion, honest of face and free of glance, little dreaming of the miserable menagerie life before him. There are two lions and a leopard, and a cargo of cinnamon, senna, elephants' tusks, and ostrich-feathers, on board; all Central Africa seems to float beside us, and the coal-black crew do not lessen the barbaric impression.
It is after dark when we reach Girgeh, and are guided to our moorage by the lights of other dahabeëhs. All that we see of this decayed but once capital town, are four minarets, two of them surrounding picturesque ruins and some slender columns of a mosque, the remainder of the building having been washed into the river. As we land, a muezzin sings the evening call to prayer in a sweet, high tenor voice; and it sounds like a welcome.
Decayed, did we say of Girgeh? What is not decayed, or decaying, or shifting, on this aggressive river? How age laps back on age and one religion shuffles another out of sight. In the hazy morning we are passing Menshéëh, the site of an old town that once was not inferior to Memphis; and then we come to Ekhmeem—ancient Panopolis. You never heard of it? A Roman visitor called it the oldest city of all Egypt; it was in fact founded by Ekhmeem, the son of Misraim, the offspring of Cush, the son of Ham. There you are, almost personally present at the Deluge. Below here are two Coptic convents, probably later than the time of the Empress Helena. On the shore are walking some Coptic Christians, but they are in no way superior in appearance to other natives; a woman, whom we hail, makes the sign of the cross, and then demands backsheesh.
We had some curiosity to visit a town of such honorable foundation. We found in it fine mosques and elegant minarets, of a good Saracenic epoch. Upon the lofty stone top of one sat an eagle, who looked down upon us unscared; the mosque was ruinous and the door closed, but through the windows we could see the gaily decorated ceiling; the whole was in the sort of decay that the traveler learns to think Moslemism itself.
We made a pretence of searching for the remains of a temple of Pan,—though we probably care less for Pan than we do for Rameses. Making known our wants, several polite gentlemen in turbans, offered to show us the way—the gentlemen in these towns seem to have no other occupation than to sit on the ground and smoke the chibook—and we were attended by a procession, beyond the walls, to the cemetery. There, in a hollow, we saw a few large stones, some of them showing marks of cutting. This was the temple spoken of in the hand-book. Our hosts then insisted upon dragging us half a mile further through the dust of the cemetery mounds, in the glare of the sun, and showed us a stone half buried, with a few hieroglyphics on one end. Never were people so polite. A grave man here joined us, and proposed to show us some quei-is antéeka (“beautiful antiquities”); and we followed this obliging person half over town; and finally, in the court of a private house, he pointed to the torso of a blue granite statue. All this was done out of pure hospitality; the people could not have been more attentive if they had had something really worth seeing. The town has handsome, spacious coffee-houses and shops, and an appearance of Oriental luxury.
One novelty the place offered, and that was in a drinking-fountain. Under a canopy, in a wall-panel, in the street, was inserted a copper nipple, which was worn, by constant use, as smooth as the toe of St. Peter at Rome. When one wishes to drink, he applies his mouth to this nipple and draws; it requires some power of suction to raise the water, but it is good and cool when it comes. As Herodotus would remark, now I have done speaking about this nipple.
We walked on interminably and at length obtained a native boat, with a fine assortment of fellahs and donkeys for passengers, to set us over to Soohag, the capital of the province, a busy and insupportably dirty town, with hordes of free-and-easy natives loafing about, and groups of them, squatting by little dabs of tobacco, or candy, or doora, or sugar-cane, making what they are pleased to call a market.
It seemed to be a day for hauling us about. Two bright boys seized us, and urged us to go with them and see something marvelously beautiful. One of them was an erect, handsome lad, with courtly and even elegant dignity, a high and yet simple bearing, which I venture to say not a king's son in Europe is possessed of. They led us a chase, through half the sprawling town, by lanes and filthy streets, under bazaars, into the recesses of domestic poverty, among unknown and inquisitive natives, until we began to think that we should never see our native dahabeëh again. At last we were landed in a court where sat two men, adding up columns of figures. It was an Oriental picture, but scarcely worth coming so far to see.
The men looked at us in wondering query, as if demanding what we wanted.
We stood looking at them, but couldn't tell them what we wanted, since we did not know. And if we had known, we could not have told them. We only pointed to the boys who had brought us. The boys pointed to the ornamental portals of a closed door.
After a long delay, and the most earnest posturing and professions of our young guides, and evident suspicion of us, a key was brought, and we were admitted, into a cool and clean Coptic church, which had fresh matting and an odor of incense. Ostrich-eggs hung before the holy places, as in mosques; an old clock, with a long and richly inlaid dial-case, stood at one end; and there were paintings in the Byzantine style of “old masters.” One of them represented the patron saint of the Copts, St. George, slaying the dragon; the conception does equal honor to the saint and the artist; the wooden horse, upon which St. George is mounted, and its rider, fill nearly all the space of the canvas, leaving very little room for the landscape with its trees, for the dragon, for the maiden, and for her parents looking down upon her from the castle window. And this picture perfectly represents the present condition of art in the whole Orient.
At Soohag a steamboat passed down towing four barges, packed with motley loads of boys and men, impressed to work in the Khedive's sugar-factory at Rhodes. They are seized, so many from a village, like the recruits for the army. They receive from two to two and a half piastres (ten to twelve and a half cents) a day wages, and a couple of pounds of bread each.
I suspect the reason the Khedive's agricultural operations and his sugar-factories are unprofitable, is to be sought in the dishonest agents and middle-men—a kind of dishonesty that seems to be ingrained in the Eastern economy. The Khedive loses both ways:—that which he attempts to expend on a certain improvement is greatly diminished before it reaches its object; and the returns from the investment, on their way back to his highness, are rubbed away, passing through so many hands, to the vanishing point. It is the same with the taxes; the fellah pays four times as much as he ought, and the Khedive receives not the government due. The abuse is worse than it was in France with the farmers-general in the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. The tax apportioned to a province is required of its governor. He adds a lumping per cent, to the total, and divides the increased amount among his sub-governors for collection; they add a third to their levy and divide it among the tax-gatherers of sections of the district; these again swell their quota before apportioning it among the sheykhs or actual collectors, and the latter take the very life-blood out of the fellah.
As we sail down the river in this approaching harvest-season we are in continual wonder at the fertility of the land; a fertility on the slightest cultivation, the shallowest plowing, and without fertilization. It is customary to say that the soil is inexhaustible, that crop after crop of the same kind can be depended on, and the mud (limon) of the overflowing Nile will repair all wastes.
And yet, I somehow get an impression of degeneracy, of exhaustion, both in Upper and Lower Egypt, in the soil; and it extends to men and to animals; horses, cattle, donkeys, camels, domestic fowls look impoverished—we have had occasion to say before that the hens lay ridiculously small eggs—they put the contents of one egg into three shells. (They might not take this trouble if eggs were sold by weight, as they should be.) The food of the country does not sufficiently nourish man or beast. Its quality is deficient. The Egyptian wheat does not make wholesome bread; most of it has an unpleasant odor—it tends to speedy corruption, it lacks certain elements, phosphorus probably. The bread that we eat on the dahabeëh is made from foreign wheat. The Egyptian wheat is at a large discount in European markets. One reason of this inferiority is supposed to be the succession of a wheat crop year after year upon the same field; another is the absolute want of any fertilizer except the Nile mud; and another the use of the same seed forever. Its virtue has departed from it, and the most hopeless thing in the situation is the unwillingness of the fellah to try anything new, in his contented ignorance. The Khedive has made extraordinary efforts to introduce improved machinery and processes, and he has set the example on his own plantations It has no effect on the fellah. He will have none of the new inventions or new ways. It seems as hopeless to attempt to change him as it would be to convert a pyramid into a Congregational meeting-house.
For the political economist and the humanitarian, Egypt is the most interesting and the saddest study of this age; its agriculture and its people are alike unique. For the ordinary traveler the country has not less interest, and I suppose he may be pardoned if he sometimes loses sight of the misery in the strangeness, the antique barbarity, the romance by which he is surrounded.
As we lay, windbound, a few miles below Soohag, the Nubian trading-boat I had seen the day before was moored near; and we improved this opportunity for an easy journey to Central Africa, by going on board. The forward-deck was piled with African hides so high that the oars were obliged to be hung on outriggers; the cabin deck was loaded with bags of gums, spices, medicines; and the cabin itself was stored so full, that when we crawled down into it, there was scarcely room to sit upright on the bags. Into this penetralia of barbaric merchandise, the ladies preceded us, upon the promise of the sedate and shrewd-eyed traveler to exhibit his ostrich-feathers. I suppose nothing in the world of ornament is so fascinating to a woman as an ostrich-feather; and to delve into a mine of them, to be able to toss about handfuls, sheafs of them, to choose any size and shape and any color, glossy black, white, grey, and white with black tips,—it makes one a little delirious to think of it! There is even a mild enjoyment in seeing a lady take up a long, drooping plume, hold it up before her dancing, critical eyes, turning the head a little one side, shaking the feathered curve into its most graceful fall—“Isn't it a beauty?” Is she thinking how it will look upon a hat of the mode? Not in the least. The ostrich-feather is the symbol of truth and justice; things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other—it is also the symbol of woman. In the last Judgment before Osiris, the ostrich-feather is weighed in the balance against all the good deeds of a man's life. You have seen many a man put all his life against the pursuit of an ostrich-feather in a woman's hat—the plume of truth in beauty's bonnet.
While the ostrich-trade is dragging along its graceful length, other curiosities are produced; the short, dangerous tusks of the wild boar; the long tusks of the elephant—a beast whose enormous strength is only made a snow of, like that of Samson; and pretty silver-work from Soudan.
“What is this beautiful tawny skin, upon which I am sitting?”
“Lion's; she was the mother of one of the young lions out yonder. And this,” continued the trader, drawing something from the corner, “is her skull.” It gave a tender interest to the orphan outside, to see these remains of his mother. But sadness is misplaced on her account; it is better that she died, than to live to see her child in a menagerie.
“What's that thick stuff in a bottle there behind you?”
“That's lion's oil, some of her oil.” Unhappy family, the mother skinned and boiled, the offspring dragged into slavery.
I took the bottle. To think that I held in my hand the oil of a lion! Bear's oil is vulgar. But this is different; one might anoint himself for any heroic deed with this royal ointment.
“And is that another bottle of it?”
“Mais, no; you don't get a lion every day for oil; that is ostrich-oil. This is good for rheumatism.”
It ought to be. There is nothing rheumatic about the ostrich. When I have tasted sufficiently the barbaric joys of the cabin I climb out upon the deck to see more of this strange craft.
Upon the narrow and dirty bow, over a slow fire, on a shallow copper dish, a dark and slender boy is cooking flap-jacks as big as the flap of a leathern apron. He takes the flap-jack up by the edge in his fingers and turns it over, when one side is cooked, as easily as if it were a sheepskin. There is a pile of them beside him, enough to make a whole suit of clothes, burnous and all, and very durable it would prove. Near him is tied, by a cotton cord, a half-grown leopard, elegantly spotted, who has a habit of running out his tongue, giving a side-lick of his chops, and looking at you in the most friendly manner. If I were the boy I wouldn't stand with my naked back to a leopard which is tied with a slight string.
On shore, on the sand and in the edge of the wheat, are playing in the sun a couple of handsome young lions, gentle as kittens. After watching their antics for some time, and calculating the weight of their paws as they cuff each other, I satisfy a long ungratified Van Amburg ambition, by patting the youngest on the head and putting my hand (for an exceedingly brief instant) into his mouth, experiencing a certain fearful pleasure, remembering that although young he is a lion!
The two play together very prettily, and when I leave them they have lain down to sleep, face to face, with their arms round each other's necks, like the babes in the wood. The lovely leopard occasionally rises to his feet and looks at them, and then lies down again, giving a soft sweep to his long and rather vicious tail. His countenance is devoid of the nobility of the lion's. The lion's face inspires you with confidence; but I can see little to trust in the yellow depths of his eyes. The lion's eyes, like those of all untamed beasts, have the repulsive trait of looking at you without any recognition in them—the dull glare of animality.
The next morning, when the wind falls, we slip out from our cover, like the baffled mariners of Jason, and row past the bold, purplish-grey cliff of Gebel Sheykh Herëedee, in which are grottoes and a tomb of the sixth dynasty, and on to Tahta, a large town, almost as picturesque, in the distance, with its tall minarets and one great, red-colored building, as Venice from the Lido. Then the wind rises, and we are again tantalized with no progress. One likes to dally and eat the lotus by his own will; but when the elements baffle him, and the wind blows contrary to his desires, the old impatience, the free will of ancient Adam, arises, and man falls out of his paradise. We are tempted to wish to be hitched (just for a day, or to get round a bend,) to one of these miserable steamboats that go swashing by, frightening all the gamebirds, and fouling the sweet air of Egypt with the black smoke of their chimneys.
In default of going on, we climb a high spur of the Mokat-tam, which has a vast desert plain on each side, and in front, and up and down the very crooked river (the wind would need to change every five minutes to get us round these bends), an enormous stretch of green fields, dotted with villages, flocks of sheep and cattle, and strips of palm-groves. Whenever we get in Egypt this extensive view over mountains, desert, arable land, and river it is always both lovely and grand. There was this afternoon on the bare limestone precipices a bloom as of incipient spring verdure. There is always some surprise of color for the traveler who goes ashore, or looks from his window, on the Nile,—either in the sky, or in the ground which has been steeped in color for so many ages that even the brown earth is rich.
The people hereabouts have a bad reputation, perhaps given them by the government, against which they rebelled on account of excessive taxes; the insurrection was reduced by knocking a village or two into the original dust with cannon balls. We, however, found the inhabitants very civil. In the village was one of the houses of entertainment for wanderers—a half-open cow-shed it would be called in less favored lands. The interior was decorated with the rudest designs in bright colors, and sentences from the Koran; we were told that any stranger could lodge in it and have something to eat and drink; but I should advise the coming traveler to bring his bed, and board also. We were offered the fruit of the nabbek tree (something like a sycamore), a small apple, a sort of cross between the thorn and the crab, with the disagreeable qualities of both. Most of the vegetables and fruits of the valley we find insipid; but the Fellaheen seem to like neutral flavors as they do neutral colors. The almost universal brown of the gowns in this region harmonizes with the soil, and the color does not show dirt; a great point for people who sit always on the ground.
The next day we still have need of patience; we start, meet an increasing wind, which whirls us about and blows us up stream. We creep under a bank and lie all day, a cold March day, and the air dark with dust.
After this Sunday of rest, we walk all the following morning through fields of wheat and lentils, along the shore. The people are uninteresting, men gruff; women ugly; clothes scarce; fruit, the nabbek, which a young lady climbs a tree to shake down for us. But I encountered here a little boy who filled my day with sunshine.
He was a sort of shepherd boy, and I found him alone in a field, the guardian of a donkey which was nibbling coarse grass. But his mind was not on his charge, and he was so much absorbed in his occupation that he did not notice my approach. He was playing, for his own delight and evidently with intense enjoyment, upon a reed pipe—an instrument of two short reeds, each with four holes, bound together, and played like a clarionet.
Its compass was small, and the tune ran round and round in it, accompanied by one of the most doleful drones imaginable. Nothing could be more harrowing to the nerves. I got the boy to play it a good deal. I saw that it was an antique instrument (it was in fact Pan's pipe unchanged in five thousand years), and that the boy was a musical enthusiast—a gentle Mozart who lived in an ideal world which he created for himself in the midst of the most forlorn conditions. The little fellow had the knack of inhaling and blowing at the same time, expanding his cheeks, and using his stomach like the bellows of the Scotch bagpipe, and producing the same droning sound as that delightful instrument. But I would rather hear this boy half a day than the bagpipe a week.
I talked about buying the pipe, but the boy made it himself, and prized it so highly that I could not pay him what he thought it was worth, and I had not the heart to offer its real value. Therefore I left him in possession of his darling, and gave him half a silver piastre. He kissed it and thanked me warmly, holding the unexpected remuneration for his genius in his hand, and looking at it with shining eyes. I feel an instant pang, and I am sorry that I gave it to him. I have destroyed the pure and ideal world in which he played to himself, and tainted the divine love of sweet sounds with the idea of gain and the scent of money. The serenity of his soul is broken up, and he will never again be the same boy, exercising his talent merely for the pleasure of it. He will inevitably think of profit, and will feverishly expect something from every traveler. He may even fall so far as to repair to landings where boats stop, and play in the hope of backsheesh.
At night we came to Assiout, greeted from afar by the sight of its slender and tall minarets and trees, on the rosy background of sunset.
LETTING our dahabeëh drift on in the morning, we spend the day at Assiout, intending to overtake it by a short cut across the oxbow which the river makes here. We saw in the city two examples, very unlike, of the new activity in Egypt. One related to education, the other to the physical development of the country and to conquest.
After paying out respects to the consul, we were conducted by his two sons to the Presbyterian Mission-School. These young men were educated at the American College in Beyrout. Nearly everywhere we have been in the East, we have found a graduate of this school, that is as much as to say, a person intelligent and anxious and able to aid in the regeneration of his country. It would not be easy to overestimate the services that this one liberal institution of learning is doing in the Orient.
The mission-school was under the charge of the Rev. Dr. John Hogg and his wife (both Scotch), with two women-teachers, and several native assistants. We were surprised to find an establishment of about one hundred and twenty scholars, of whom over twenty were girls. Of course the majority of the students were in the primary studies, and some were very young; but there were classes in advanced mathematics, in logic, history, English, etc. The Arab young men have a fondness for logic and metaphysics, and develop easily an inherited subtlety in such studies. The text-books in use are Arabic, and that is the medium of teaching.
The students come from all parts of Upper Egypt, and are almost all the children of Protestant parents, and they are, with an occasional exception, supported by their parents, who pay at least their board while they are at school. There were few Moslems among them, I think only one Moslem girl. I am bound to say that the boys and young men in their close rooms did not present an attractive appearance; an ill-assorted assembly, with the stamp of physical inferiority and dullness—an effect partially due to their scant and shabby apparel, for some of them had bright, intelligent faces.
The school for girls, small as it is, impressed us as one of the most hopeful things in Egypt. I have no confidence in any scheme for the regeneration of the country, in any development if agriculture, or extension of territory, or even in education, that does not reach woman and radically change her and her position. It is not enough to say that the harem system is a curse to the East: woman herself is everywhere degraded. Until she becomes totally different from what she now is, I am not sure but the Arab is right in saying that the harem is a necessity: the woman is secluded in it (and in the vast majority of harems there is only one wife) and has a watch set over her, because she cannot be trusted. One hears that Cairo is full of intrigue, in spite of locked doors and eunuchs. The large towns are worse than the country; but I have heard it said that woman is the evil and plague of Egypt—though I don't know how the country could go on without her. Sweeping generalizations are dangerous, but it is said that the sole education of most Egyptian women is in arts to stimulate the passion of men. In the idleness of the most luxurious harem, in the grim poverty of the lowest cabin, woman is simply an animal.
What can you expect of her? She is literally uneducated, untrained in every respect. She knows no more of domestic economy than she does of books, and she is no more fitted to make a house attractive or a room tidy than she is to hold an intelligent conversation. Married when she is yet a child, to person she may have never seen, and a mother at an age when she should be in school, there is no opportunity for her to become anything better than she is.
A primary intention in this school is to fit the girls to become good wives, who can set an example of tidy homes economically managed, in which there shall be something of social life and intelligent companionship between husband and wife. The girls are taught the common branches, sewing, cooking, and housekeeping—as there is opportunity for learning it in the family of the missionaries. This house of Dr. Hogg's, with its books, music, civilized menage, is a school in itself, and the girl who has access to it for three or four years will not be content with the inconvenience, the barren squalor of her parental hovel; for it is quite as much ignorance as poverty that produces miserable homes. Some of the girls now here expect to become teachers; some will marry young men who are also at this school. Such an institution would be of incalculable service if it did nothing else than postpone the marriage of women a few years. This school is a small seed in Egypt, but it is, I believe, the germ of a social revolution. It is, I think, the only one in Upper Egypt. There is a mission school of similar character in Cairo, and the Khedive also has undertaken schools for the education of girls.
In the last room we came to the highest class, a dozen girls, some of them mere children in appearence, but all of marriageable age. I asked the age of one pretty child, who showed uncommon brightness in her exercises.
“She is twelve,” said the superintendent, “and no doubt would be married, if she were not here. The girls become marriageable from eleven years, and occasionally they marry younger; if one is not married at fifteen she is in danger of remaining single.”
“Do the Moslems oppose your school?”
“The heads of the religion endeavor to prevent Moslem children coming to it; we have had considerable trouble; but generally the mothers would like to have their girls taught here, they become better daughters and more useful at home.”
“Can you see that you gain here?”
“Little by little. The mission has been a wonderful success. I have been in Egypt eighteen years; since the ten years that we have been at Assiout, we have planted, in various towns in Upper Egypt, ten churches.”
“What do do you think is your greatest difficulty?”
“Well, perhaps the Arabic language.”
“The labor of mastering it?”
“Not that exactly, although it is an unending study. Arabic is an exceedingly rich language, as you know—a tongue that has often a hundred words for one simple object has almost infinite capabilities for expressing shades of meaning. To know Arabic grammatically is the work of a lifetime. A man says, when he has given a long life to it, that he knows a little Arabic. My Moslem teacher here, who was as learned an Arab as I ever knew, never would hear me in a grammatical lesson upon any passage he had not carefully studied beforehand. He begged me to excuse him, one morning, from hearing me (I think we were reading from the Koran) because he had not had time to go over the portion to be read. Still, the difficulty of which I speak, is that Arabic and the Moslem religion are one and the same thing, in the minds of the faithful. To know Arabic is to learn the Koran, and that is the learning of a learned Arab. He never gets to the end of the deep religious meaning hidden in the grammatical intricacies. Religion and grammar thus become one.”
“I suppose that is what our dragoman means, when he is reading me something out of the Koran, and comes to a passage that he calls too deep.”
“Yes. There is room for endless differences of opinion in the rendering of almost any passage, and the disagreement is important, because it becomes a religious difference. I had an example of the unity of the language and the religion in the Moslem mind. When I came here the learned thought I must be a Moslem because I knew the grammatical Arabic; they could not conceive how else I should know it.”
When we called upon his excellency, Shakeer Pasha, the square in front of his office and the streets leading to it were so covered with sitting figures that it was difficulty to make a way amidst them. There was an unusual assembly of some sort, but its purport we could not guess. It was hardly in the nature of a popular convention, although its members sat at their ease, smoking, and a babel of talk arose. Nowhere else in Egypt have I seen so many fine and even white-looking men gathered together. The center of every group was a clerk, with inkhorn and reed, going over columns of figures.
The governor's quarters were a good specimen of Oriental style and shabbiness; spacious whitewashed apartments, with dirty faded curtains. But we were received with a politeness that would have befitted a palace, and with the cordial ease of old friends. The Pasha was heartbroken that we had not notified him of our coming, and that now our time would not permit us to stay and accept a dinner—had we not promised to do so on our return? He would send couriers and recall our boat, he would detain us by force. Allowing for all the exaggeration of Oriental phraseology, it appeared only too probable that the Pasha would die if we did not stay to dinner and spend the night. But we did not.
This great concourse? Oh, they were sheykhs and head men of all the villages in the country round, whom he had summoned to arrange for the purchase of dromedaries. The government has issued orders for the purchase of a large number, which it wants to send to Darfour. The Khedive is making a great effort to open the route to Darfour (twenty-eight days by camel) to regular and safe travel, and to establish stations on the road. That immense and almost unknown territory will thus be brought within the commercial world.
During our call we were served with a new beverage in place of coffee; it was a hot and sweetened tea of cinnamon, and very delicious.
On our return to the river, we passed the new railway station building which is to be a handsome edifice of white limestone. Men women, and children are impressed to labor on it, and, an intelligent Copt told us, without pay. Very young girls were the mortar-carriers, and as they walked to and fro, with small boxes on their heads, they sang, the precocious children, an Arab love-song;—
“He passed by my door, he did not speak to me.”
We have seen little girls, quite as small as these, forced to load coal upon the steamers, and beaten and cuffed by the overseers. It is a hard country for women. They have only a year or two of time, in which all-powerful nature and the wooing sun sing within them the songs of love, then a few years of married slavery, and then ugliness, old age, and hard work.
I do not know a more melancholy subject of reflection than the condition, the lives of these women we have been seeing for three months. They have neither any social nor any religious life. If there were nothing else to condemn the system of Mohammed, this is sufficient. I know what splendors of art it has produced, what achievements in war, what benefits to literature and science in the dark ages of Europe. But all the culture of a race that in its men has borne accomplished scholars, warriors, and artists, has never touched the women. The condition of woman in the Orient is the conclusive verdict against the religion of the Prophet.
I will not contrast that condition with the highest; I will not compare a collection of Egyptian women, assembled for any purpose, a funeral or a wedding, with a society of American ladies in consultation upon some work of charity, nor with an English drawing-room. I chanced once to be present at a representation of Verdi's Grand Mass, in Venice, when all the world of fashion, of beauty, of intelligence, assisted. The coup d'oil was brilliant. Upon the stage, half a hundred of the chorus-singers were ladies. The leading solo-singers were ladies. I remember the freshness, the beauty even, the vivacity, the gay decency of the toilet, of that group of women who contributed their full share in a most intelligent and at times profoundly pathetic rendering of the Mass. I recall the sympathetic audience, largely composed of women, the quick response to a noble strain nobly sung, the cheers, the tears even which were not wanting in answer to the solemn appeal, in fine, the highly civilized sensitiveness to the best product of religious art. Think of some such scene as that, and of the women of an European civilization; and then behold the women who are the product of this,—the sad, dark fringe of water-drawers and baby-carriers, for eight hundred miles along the Nile.
We have a row in the sandal of nine miles before we overtake our dahabeëh, which the wind still baffles. However, we slip along under the cover of darkness, for, at dawn, I hear the muezzin calling to prayer at Manfaloot, trying in vain to impress a believing but drowsy world, that prayer is better than sleep. This is said to be the place where Lot passed the period of his exile. Near here, also, the Holy Family sojourned when it spent a winter in Egypt. (The Moslems have appropriated and localized everything in our Scriptures which is picturesque, and they plant our Biblical characters where it is convenient). It is a very pretty town, with minarets and gardens.
It surprises us to experience such cool weather towards the middle of March; at nine in the morning the thermometer marks 550; the north wind is cold, but otherwise the day is royal. Having nothing better to do we climb the cliffs of Gebel Aboofeyda, at least a thousand feet above the river; for ten miles it presents a bold precipice, unscalable except at intervals. We find our way up a ravine. The rocks' surface in the river and the ravine are worn exactly as the sea wears rock, honeycombed by the action of water, and excavated into veritable sea-caves near the summit. The limestone is rich in fossil shells.
The plain on top presented a singular appearance. It was strewn with small boulders, many of them round and as shapely as cannon-balls, all formed no doubt before the invention of the conical missiles. While we were amusing ourselves with the thousand fantastic freaks of nature in hardened clay, two sinister Arabs approached us from behind and cut off our retreat. One was armed with a long gun and the other with a portentous spear. We saluted them in the most friendly manner, and hoped that they would pass on: but, no, they attached themselves to us. I tried to think of cases of travelers followed into the desert on the Nile and murdered, but none occurred to me. There seemed to be no danger from the gun so long as we kept near its owner, for the length of it would prevent his bringing it into action close at hand. The spear appeared to be the more effective weapon of the two; it was so, for I soon ascertained that the gun was not loaded and that its bearer had neither powder nor balls. It turned out that this was a detachment of the local guard, sent out to protect us; it would have been a formidable party in case of an attack.
Continuing our walk over the stone-clad and desolate swells, it suddenly occurred to us that we had become so accustomed to this sort of desert-walking, with no green or growing thing in sight, that it had ceased to seem strange to us. It gave us something like a start, therefore, shortly after, to see, away to the right, blue water forming islands out of the hill-tops along the horizon; there was an appearance of verdure about the edge of the water, and dark clouds sailed over it. There was, however, when we looked steadily, about the whole landscape a shimmer and a shadowy look that taught us to know that it was a mirage, the rich Nile valley below us, with the blue water, the green fields, the black lines of palms, was dimly mirrored in the sky and thrown upon the desert hills in the distance. We stood where we could compare the original picture with the blurred copy.
Making our way down the face of the cliff, along some ledges, we came upon many grottoes and mummy-pits cut in the rock, all without sculptures, except one; this had on one side an arched niche and pilasters from which the arch sprung. The vault of the niche had been plastered and painted, and a Greek cross was chiseled in each pilaster; but underneath the plaster the rock was in ornamental squares, lozenges and curves in Saracenic style, although it may have been ancient Egyptian. How one religion has whitewashed, and lived on the remains of another here; the tombs of one age become the temples of another and the dwellings of a third. On these ledges, and on the desert above, we found bits of pottery. Wherever we have wandered, however far into the desert from the river, we never get beyond the limit of broken pottery; and this evidence of man's presence everywhere, on the most barren of these high or low plains of stone and sand, speak of age and of human occupation as clearly as the temples and monuments. There is no virgin foot of desert even; all is worn and used. Human feet have trodden it in every direction for ages. Even on high peaks where the eagles sit, men have piled stones and made shelters, perhaps lookouts for enemies, it may be five hundred, it may be three thousand years ago. There is nowhere in Egypt a virgin spot.
By moonlight we are creeping under the frowning cliffs of Aboofeyda, and voyage on all night in a buccaneerish fashion; and next day sail by Hadji Kandeel, where travelers disembark for Tel el Amarna. The remains of a once vast city strew the plain, but we only survey it through a field-glass. What, we sometimes say in our more modern moments, is one spot more than another? The whole valley is a sepulchre of dead civilizations; its inhabitants were stowed away, tier on tier, shelf on shelf, in these ledges.
However, respect for age sent us in the afternoon to the grottoes on the north side of the cliff of Sheykh Said. This whole curved range, away round to the remains of Antinoë, is full of tombs. Some that we visited are large and would be very comfortable dwellings; they had been used for Christian churches, having been plastered and painted. Traces of one painting remain—trees and a comical donkey, probably part of the story of the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. We found in one the ovals of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, and much good sculpture in the best old manner—agricultural scenes, musicians, dancers, beautifully cut, with careful details and also with spirit. This is very old work, and, even abused as it has been, it is as good as any the traveler will find in Egypt. This tomb no doubt goes back to the fourth dynasty, and its drawing of animals, cows, birds, and fish is better than we usually see later. In a net in which fish are taken, many kinds are represented, and so faithfully that the species are recognizable; in a marsh is seen a hippopotamus, full of life and viciousness, drawn with his mouth stretched asunder wide enough to serve for a menagerie show-bill. There are some curious false doors and architectural ornaments, like those of the same epoch in the tombs at the pyramids.
At night we were at Rhoda, where is one of the largest of the Khedive's sugar-factories; and the next morning at Beni Hassan, famed, next to Thebes, for its grottoes, which have preserved to us, in painted scenes, so much of the old Egyptian life. Whoever has seen pictures of these old paintings and read the vast amount of description and inferences concerning the old Egyptian life, based upon them, must be disappointed when he sees them to-day. In the first place they are only painted, not cut, and in this respect are inferior to those in the grottoes of Sheykh Saïd; in the second place, they are so defaced, as to be with difficulty deciphered, especially those depicting the trades.
Some of the grottoes are large—sixty feet by forty feet; fine apartments in the rock, high and well lighted by the portal. Architecturally, no tombs are more interesting; some of the ceilings are vaulted, in three sections; they are supported by fluted pillars some like the Doric, and some in the beautiful lotus style; the pillars have architraves; and there are some elaborately wrought false doorways. And all this goes to show that, however ancient these tombs are, they imitated stone buildings already existing in a highly developed architecture.
Essentially the same subjects are represented in all the tombs; these are the trades, occupations, amusements of the people. Men are blowing glass, working in gold, breaking flax, tending herds (even doctoring animals that are ill), chiseling statues, painting, turning the potter's wheel; the barber shaves his customer; two men play at draughts; the games most in favor are wrestling and throwing balls, and in the latter women play. But what one specially admires is the honesty of the decorators, which conceals nothing from posterity; the punishment of the bastinado is again and again represented, and even women are subject to it; but respect was shown for sex; the women was not cast upon the ground, she kneels and takes the flagellation on her shoulders.
We saw in these tombs no horses among the many animals; we have never seen the horse in any sculptures except harnessed in a war-chariot; “the horse and his rider” do not appear.
There is a scene here which was the subject of a singular mistake, that illustrates the needless zeal of early explorers to find in everything in Egypt confirmation of the Old Testament narrative. A procession, painted on the wall, now known to represent the advent of an Asiatic tribe into Egypt, perhaps the Shepherds, in a remote period, was declared to represent the arrival of Joseph's brethren. The tomb, however, was made several centuries before the advent of Joseph himself. And even if it were of later date than the event named, we should not expect to find in it a record of an occurrence of such little significance at that time. We ought not to be surprised at the absence in Egypt of traces of the Israelitish sojourn, and we should not be, if we looked at the event from the Egyptian point of view and not from ours. In a view of the great drama of the ancient world in the awful Egyptian perspective, the Jewish episode is relegated to its proper proportion in secular history. The whole Jewish history, as a worldly phenomenon, occupies its narrow limits. The incalculable effect upon desert tribes of a long sojourn in a highly civilized state, the subsequent development of law and of a literature unsurpassed in after times, and the final flower into Christianity,—it is in the light of all this that we read the smallest incident of Jewish history, and are in the habit of magnifying its contemporary relations. It was the slenderest thread in the days of Egyptian puissance. In the ancient atmosphere of Egypt, events purely historical fall into their proper proportions. Many people have an idea that the ancient world revolved round the Jews, and even hold it as a sort of religious faith.
It is difficult to believe that the race we see here are descendants of the active, inventive, joyous people who painted their life upon these tombs. As we lie all the afternoon before a little village opposite Beni Hassan I wonder for the hundredth time what it is that saves such miserable places from seeming to us as vile as the most wretched abodes of poverty in our own land. Is it because, with an ever-cheerful sun and a porous soil, this village is not so filthy as a like abode of misery would be with us? Is it that the imagination invests the foreign and the Orient with its own hues; or is it that our reading, prepossessing our minds, gives the lie to all our senses? I cannot understand why we are not more disgusted with such a scene as this. Not to weary you with a repetition of scenes sufficiently familiar, let us put the life of the Egyptian fellah, as it appears at the moment, into a paragraph.
Here is a jumble of small mud-hovels, many of them only roofed with cornstalks, thrown together without so much order as a beaver would use in building a village, distinguishable only from dog-kennels in that they have wooden doors—not distinguishable from them when the door is open and a figure is seen in the aperture. Nowhere any comfort or cleanliness, except that sometimes the inner kennel, of which the woman guards the key, will have its floor swept and clean matting in one corner. The court about which there are two or three of these kennels, serves the family for all purposes; there the fire for cooking is built, there are the water-jars, and the stone for grinding corn; there the chickens and the dogs are; there crouch in the dirt women and men, the women spinning, making bread, or nursing children, the men in vacant idleness. While the women stir about and go for water, the men will sit still all day long. The amount of sitting down here in Egypt is inconceivable; you might almost call it the feature of the country. No one in the village knows anything, either of religion or of the world; no one has any plans; no one exhibits any interest in anything; can any of them have any hopes? From this life nearly everything but the animal is eliminated. Children, and pretty children, swarm, tumbling about everywhere; besides, nearly every woman has one in her arms.
We ought not to be vexed at this constant north wind which baffles us, for they say it is necessary to the proper filling out of the wheat heads. The boat drifts about all day in a mile square, having passed the morning on a sand-spit where the stupidity and laziness of the crew placed it; and we have leisure to explore the large town of Minieh, which lies prettily along the river. Here is a costly palace, which I believe has never been occupied by the Khedive, and a garden attached, less slovenly in condition than those of country palaces usually are. The sugar-factory is furnished with much costly machinery, which could not have been bought for less than half a million of dollars. Many of the private houses give evidences of wealth in their highly ornamented doorways and Moorish arches, but the mass of the town is of the usual sort here—tortuous lanes in which weary hundreds of people sit in dirt, poverty, and resignation. We met in the street and in the shops many coal-black Nubians and negroes, smartly dressed in the recent European style, having an impudent air, who seemed to be persons of wealth and consideration here. In the course of our wanderings I came to a large public building, built in galleries about an open court, and unwittingly in my examination of it, stumbled into the apartment of the Governor, Osman Bey, who was giving audience to all comers. Justice is still administered in patriarchal style; the door is open to all; rich and poor were crowding in, presenting petitions and papers of all sorts, and among them a woman preferred a request. Whether justice was really done did not appear, but Oriental hospitality is at least unfailing. Before I could withdraw, having discovered my blunder, the governor welcomed me with all politeness and gave me a seat beside him. We smiled at each other in Arabic and American, and came to a perfect understanding on coffee and cigarettes.
The next morning we are slowly passing the Copt convent of Gebel e' Tayr, and expecting the appearance of the swimming Christians. There is a good opportunity to board us, but no one appears. Perhaps because it is Sunday and these Christians do not swim on Sunday. No. We learn from a thinly clad and melancholy person who is regarding us from the rocks that the Khedive has forbidden this disagreeable exhibition of muscular Christianity. It was quite time. But thus, one by one, the attractions of the Nile vanish.
What a Sunday! But not an exceptional day. “Oh dear,” says madame, in a tone of injury, “here's another fine day!” Although the north wind is strong, the air is soft, caressing, elastic.
More and more is forced upon us the contrast of the scenery of Upper and Lower Egypt. Here it is not simply that the river is wider and the mountains more removed and the arable land broader; the lines are all straight and horizontal, the mountain-ranges are level-topped, parallel to the flat prairies—at sunset a low level of white limestone hills in the east looked exactly like a long line of fence whitewashed. In Upper Egypt, as we have said, the plains roll, the hills are broken, there are pyramidal mountains, and evidences of upheaval and disorder. But these wide sweeping and majestic lines have their charm; the sunsets and sunrises are in some respects finer than in Nubia; the tints are not so delicate, the colors not so pure, but the moister atmosphere and clouds make them more brilliant and various. The dawn, like the after-glow, is long; the sky burns half round with rose and pink, the color mounts high up. The sunsets are beyond praise, and always surprise. Last night the reflection in the east was of a color unseen before—almost a purple below and a rose above; and the west glowed for an hour in changing tints. The night was not less beautiful—we have a certain comfort in contrasting both with March in New England. It was summer; the Nile slept, the moon half-full, let the stars show; and as we glided swiftly down, the oars rising and falling to the murmured chorus of the rowers, there were deep shadows under the banks, and the stately palms, sentinelling the vast plain of moonlight over which we passed,—the great silence of an Egyptian night—seemed to remove us all into dreamland. The land was still, except for the creak of an occasional shadoof worked by some wise man who thinks it easier to draw water in the night than in the heat of the day, or an aroused wolfish dog, or a solitary bird piping on the shore.