For the last two days I have been steaming through one of the oldest lands of the globe. I have been travelling up the Nile through the country which belonged to Noah’s grandson, Cush, who was Ham’s eldest son, and which was known to the Greeks and Romans in later days as Ethiopia. The Egyptians called it Nubia, from their word noub, which means gold, and it is known that a large part of the gold of ancient time came from it.

Ancient Nubia had a considerable population, and was noted for its riches and power. It was already a flourishing country about the time of the Pyramid builders, while in the most prosperous days of Old Egypt it had large towns and magnificent temples dedicated to the worship of the Egyptian gods. On my way here I passed Abu Simbel, a great temple on the bank of the Nile, which was cut out of the rocks by Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the Bible. Farther down the river lies the Temple of the Lions, where that same old king was himself worshipped as a god.

Until 1100 B.C. this country was a dependency of the Pharaohs. It then became independent, and later its armies overran and conquered Egypt. As other nations came into this part of the Nile valley they sent their armies against the Nubians, but were driven back, and at the time the Romans came the country was ruled by a succession of queens named Candace, one of whom made war upon the Romans. The Nubian people very early adopted Christianity, but later, when the Mohammedans took possession of Egypt and the Upper Nile valley, they were converted to Islam. They are still followers of the Prophet, and were among the boldest soldiers of the fanatical Mahdi in his fights against the troops of Egypt and Great Britain.

A land with such a history ought to be a rich one. The Nubia of to-day is about as barren as any country on earth. With the exception of a narrow band along the Nile, it is altogether desert. Beginning in the sands of Libya, it extends several hundred miles eastward to the Red Sea, but only in a few places has the soil enough moisture to furnish even a scanty pasturage for camels and sheep. The bulk of the desert population is made up of Bisharin Bedouins, living in tents made of matting and moving about from place to place with their flocks. Each tribe has a certain number of wells, and water is the principal part of its visible wealth. The British officials of the Sudan have surveyed these wells and investigated their depth and the quality of the flow of the water. The government has also sunk some new wells and found water at a depth of about one hundred feet.

Nubia is now a part of the Upper Nile valley, a cultivated strip, in places only a quarter of a mile wide, winding its way like a snake from north to south as far as from New York City to Detroit, and extending on both sides of the river. It is of irregular width, for in some places the desert comes close to the river, while in others the stream winds through black rocky hills which rise straight above it a thousand feet. Farther on, one sees yellow sand, spotted with black rocks, which show signs of volcanic origin, and then at a low bend in the river the water may be conducted out over the sands and create a cultivated patch three miles in width.

The Nile is so walled in by hills that its waters have to be lifted in order to flow over any level place. This is done chiefly by the sakiehs, of which there are something like four thousand on the Nubian Nile. The great wheels, moving in cogs, can be seen high up on the banks, with their strings of buckets hanging to them. As the buckets descend, each dips into the water and carries to the top a few quarts at a time. In some places men raise the water in baskets or buckets, and in others, the river slopes at such an angle that they carry it up by hand and water little patches twenty or thirty feet wide. Every low place along the river is farmed, and when the Nile falls, the sand banks and islands are planted to crops.

Wherever there is a stretch of cultivated land, a village of mud and stone huts has grown up, and such villages spot the banks for hundreds of miles. At times there is no green except between village and river, and one wonders how men can be born and live and die there. Nevertheless, there are more than one hundred thousand people to whom this region is the centre of the world.

Though much of this Nile border is too narrow for profitable cultivation, it is very fertile and raises excellent cotton. At present the other chief crops are wheat, barley, and millet, and the chief fruit is dates, which are sweeter and larger than those grown farther down the Nile valley. Indeed, the date trees that one sees almost everywhere along the banks are a source of revenue for the government, which taxes them at the rate of ten cents per tree.

The steamer Ibis, on which I have been travelling, is one of the little vessels of the Sudan government which go twice a week from Shellal, just above the Aswan Dam, to Wady Halfa, where the railroad across the desert begins. The ship is a sternwheeler, much like those on some of our rivers. It is about twenty feet wide, one hundred and fifty feet long, and draws only six inches. We make about six miles per hour, and our pilot, a dark-faced, short-bearded Nubian in turban and gown, corkscrews his course from one side of the river to the other as we wind our way up the stream.

We fly the Egyptian and Sudanese flags, but the steamer belongs to the government of the Sudan which means it is British. The captain, however, is a German, and the rest of the crew are Nubians, most of whom are as black as your shoes. The captain speaks German, French, English, and Arabic. He attends to everything connected with the steamer, even to the meals and the proper table service. Our waiters are black-faced Nubians in long white gowns and sashes of bright red. They wear white turbans, and their feet are either bare or shod in red slippers.

I find the steamer comfortable and the company agreeable. The boat has two decks. On the lower one are thirty cabins and the dining room, where our meals are served table d’hôte. Over the upper deck an awning is stretched, so that we can sit and watch the scenery as we go up the river.

Our party consists of several commercial travellers, bound for the Sudan and Central Africa; two missionaries who are going up the Sobat River; a capitalist, largely interested in land development enterprises about Khartum, and several people who are on their way to the Blue Nile to hunt big game. Although we are far away in the wilds of Nubia, with nothing but desert on each side, most of us appear in evening clothes at dinner. Our meals are served in courses with half-a-dozen changes of plates, knives, and forks.

Here is our bill of fare for one day. At seven this morning, while I was yet in bed, my black boy appeared and handed me a cup of hot tea, with two sweet crackers on each side of the saucer. At eight o’clock the bell rang for breakfast in the dining room. The meal consisted of fried fish fresh from the Nile, bacon and eggs, bread and butter and jam, with tea or coffee. At one o’clock came luncheon, a bountiful meal of rice, giblets, chicken, mutton chops, and fruit, with bread and butter and cheese. Coffee, of course. At eight o’clock we had dinner, and the menu was as follows: An excellent soup, then a boiled fish just out of the Nile, followed by a salmi of pigeons, roast lamb and mint sauce, with potatoes and string beans. Then there was a course of tomato salad, and after that a pudding and fruit.

I do not find travel in Africa at all cheap. If one travels along the Nile he must expect to spend about fifteen dollars a day, the cost increasing as he goes up the river. My trip from Shellal to Khartum and back by rail and steamer, a distance not very much greater than from New York to Chicago, will be one hundred and fifteen dollars, or about six cents per mile, and I shall pay at Khartum a hotel rate of at least five dollars per day.

If one attempts to travel economically he must expect many discomforts. On this boat first-class passengers only are carried. We have some second- and third-class passengers, but they stay on a low barge which we tow alongside. This barge has a flat deck of rough boards covered by a roof. The people carry their own bedding and lay it down on the boards. They must supply their own food, and as the servants of the first-class passengers, and natives, who are far from clean, travel in that way, the company is not desirable. Besides, it is very cold at night, and those who sleep on the decks have the desert breezes blowing over them all night long. It is cooler here than in Egypt, although we are nearer the Equator. I have a woollen blanket on my bed, with a heavy travelling rug on top of that, but still I am none too warm. In the early morning I wear an overcoat on deck, although at noon it is so hot out of the breeze that I would fain take off my flesh and sit in my bones.

Sailing up the Nubian Nile we are almost free from the flies such as are found by millions in Egypt, but Nubia has a little fly of its own which is almost unbearable. This is known as the nimetta, a small midge, which appears in myriads during the winter season. Its bite causes a slight fever, and the natives sometimes wear bunches of smouldering grass twisted about their heads to keep it away.

The flies of Egypt are probably the descendants of those which the Lord sent to afflict Pharaoh when he would not let the Children of Israel go. They look not unlike the common fly of our country, but they are bolder and hungrier. Their feet stick to one as though they were glued and they will not move until forcibly brushed off, but the Egyptian peasants have become so used to them that they let them stick at will. Their favourite feeding place seems to be on one’s eyes. This is especially true of the children, and it is a common sight to see a child with its eyes so fringed with flies that it seems to have double eyelashes. The flies cover the meat in the markets, they roost on the buffaloes, camels, and donkeys, and attack the tourist to such an extent that the selling of fly brushes has become an Egyptian industry. The brushes are tassel-like affairs with long strings similar to the hairs of a horse’s tail.

Everyone knows that flies carry disease and many of the troubles of the Egyptians are due to them. Ophthalmia is especially prevalent. There are blind people everywhere, while one-eyed men and women are common. Diseases of the eye are so universal that one of the charities of Lower Egypt is a company of travelling eye doctors, who are supported by a rich Englishman. The doctors go from village to village, carrying their tents with them. As they enter a town, word goes out that the poor will be treated without charge, and crowds come to their tents to have their eyes examined and cured. They remain in one town for a month or so, serving the poor without money and without price. The institution does great good.

The port of Shellal, where I took the steamer for Wady Halfa, lies opposite the island of Philæ, and during my stay there I made several trips to the island to take photographs of the ruined temples, which have already been more or less affected by the backing up of the water of the Aswan Dam. When the Aswan Dam was first proposed a great outcry came from the savants and archæologists of the world on account of the injury that it would do to Philæ, but the material results have been so valuable to Egypt that the dam went ahead, regardless of the preservation of these ancient ruins. Something like one hundred thousand dollars was spent in fortifying the structure during the building of the dam, and it is probable that twice this amount would have sufficed to take up the temples and carry them to the mainland, or even transport them to Cairo, where all the world might see them.

The island of Philæ, which is on the edge of lower Nubia in the centre of the Nile just above the first cataract, is reached by ferry boat from Shellal or from Aswan and the dam. It is about fifteen hundred feet long and five hundred feet wide, and almost covered with temples built by the Ptolemies and others two or three centuries before Christ.

The chief deity of Philæ was the goddess Isis, though Osiris, Hathor, and the gods of the cataracts were also worshipped there. Under the Roman emperors the temples were enlarged, but when Egypt was converted to Christianity, the hermits and other fanatics made their way into Nubia and took possession of it. They turned some of the temples into Christian churches and their mutilations of the splendid carvings made in honour of the gods of Old Egypt can be plainly seen at low water.

The ruins are well worth a visit. Some of the structures have a forest of columns about them. The Kiosk, which is known as Pharaoh’s Bed, is one of the most beautiful of the Egyptian temples. The stones are all of great size. They probably came from the Aswan quarries, or it may be from the granite rocks that abound in the desert. That region is almost all granite. I rode over it for thirty miles on donkey back, making my way through the desert around and about granite boulders worn smooth by the sandstorms of thousands of years. The rocks are of all shapes and are piled, one upon another, as if by the hands of a race of Titans. Here one stands high over those surrounding it, as though on a pedestal; there others are massed like fortifications; in another spot they rise in towers.

I visited the Aswan quarries, the great stone yards from which the obelisks were taken, and from which came the mighty statues of Rameses and the massive blocks of the greatest of the Theban temples. The quarries to-day are much the same as they were when the Egyptians left them two or three thousand years ago. One can see the marks of their wedges on the rocks and the markings of the old stone-cutters are plain. In one place there is an obelisk half finished, lying on its side, just as the masons of the Pharaohs left it ages ago. When the granite was taken out for the Aswan Dam, the Italian workmen used many of the blocks that the ancient Egyptian mechanics had begun to cut; indeed, that great granite structure was made in partnership by two sets of mechanics born thousands of years apart.