My Winter on the Nile

You would expect such a man to build a good temple. The sculptures are very well executed, whether they are of his time, or owe their inspiration to Berenice and Cleopatra; they show greater freedom and variety than those of most temples; the figures of lion, monkeys, cows, and other animals are excellent; and there is a picture of a man playing on a musical instrument, a frame with strings stretched over it, played like a harp but not harp shaped—the like of which is seen nowhere else. The temple has the appearance of a fortification as well as a place of worship. The towers of the propylon are ascended by interior flights of stairs, and have, one above the other, four good-sized chambers. The stairways and the rooms are lighted by slits in the wall about an inch in diameter on the outside; but cut with a slant from the interior through some five feet of solid stone. These windows are exactly like those in European towers, and one might easily imagine himself in a Middle Age fortification. The illusion is heightened by the remains of Christian paintings on the walls, fresh in color, and in style very like those of the earliest Christian art in Italian churches. In the temple we are attended by a Nubian with a long and threatening spear, such as the people like to carry here; the owner does not care for blood, however; he only wants a little backsheesh.

Beyond Dakkeh the country opens finely; the mountains fall back, and we look a long distance over the desert on each side, the banks having only a few rods of green. Far off in the desert on either hand and in front, are sharp pyramidal mountains, in ranges, in groups, the resemblance to pyramids being very striking. The atmosphere as to purity is extraordinary. Simply to inspire it is a delight for which one may well travel thousands of miles.

We pass small patches of the castor-oil plant, and of a reddish-stemmed bush, bearing the Indian bendigo, Arabic bahima, the fruit a sort of bean in appearance and about as palatable. The castor-oil is much used by the women as a hair-dressing, but they are not fastidious; they use something else if oil is wanting. The demand for butter for this purpose raised the price of it enormously this morning at Dakkeh.

In the afternoon, waiting for wind, we walk ashore and out upon the naked desert—the desert which is broken only by an occasional oasis, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea; it has a basis of limestone, strewn with sand like gold-dust, and a detritus of stone as if it had been scorched by fire and worn by water. There is a great pleasure in strolling over this pure waste blown by the free air. We visit a Nubian village, and buy some spurious scarabæi off the necks of the ladies of the town—alas, for rural simplicity! But these women are not only sharp, they respect themselves sufficiently to dress modestly and even draw their shawls over their faces. The children take the world as they find it, as to clothes.

The night here, there being no moisture in the air is as brilliant as the day; I have never seen the moon and stars so clear elsewhere. These are the evenings that invite to long pipes and long stories. Abd-el-Atti opens his budget from time to time, as we sit on deck and while the time with anecdotes and marvels out of old Arab chronicles, spiced with his own ready wit and singular English. Most of them are too long for these pages; but here is an anecdote which, whether true or not illustrates the character of old Mohammed Ali:—

“Mohammed Ali sent one of his captains, name of Walee Kasheef, to Derr, capital of Nubia (you see it by and by, very fashionable place, like I see ‘em in Hydee Park, what you call Rotten Row). Walee when he come there, see the women, their hair all twisted up and stuck together with grease and castor-oil, and their bodies covered with it. He called the sheykhs together and made them present of soap, and told them to make the women clean the hair and wash themselves, and make themselves fit for prayer. It was in accordin’ to the Moslem religion so to do.

“The Nubians they not like this part of our religion, they not like it at all. They send the sheykhs down to have conversation with Mohammed Ali, who been stop at Esneh. They complain of what Walee done. Mohammed send for Walee, and say, ‘What this you been done in Nubia?’ ‘Nothing, your highness, ‘cept trying to make the Nubians conform to the religion.’ ‘Well,’ says old Mohammed, ‘I not send you up there as a priest; I send you up to get a little money. Don’t you trouble the Nubians. We don’t care if they go to Gennéh or Gehennem, if you get the money.’.rdquo;

So the Nubians were left in sin and grease, and taxed accordingly. And at this day the taxes are even heavier. Every date-palm and every sakiya is taxed. A sakiya sometimes pays three pounds a year, when there is not a piece of fertile land for it to water three rods square.

CHAPTER XXI—ETHIOPIA

IT IS a sparkling morning at Wady Saboda; we have the desert and some of its high, scarred, and sandy pyramidal peaks close to us, but as is usual where a wady, or valley, comes to the river, there is more cultivated land. We see very little of the temple of Rameses II. in this “Valley of the Lions,” nor of the sphinxes in front of it. The desert sand has blown over it and over it in drifts like snow, so that we walk over the buried sanctuary, greatly to our delight. It is a pleasure to find one adytum into which we cannot go and see this Rameses pretending to make offerings, but really, as usual, offering to show himself.

At the village under the ledges, many of the houses are of stone, and the sheykh has a pretentious stone enclosure with little in it, all to himself. Shadoofs are active along the bank, and considerable crops of wheat, beans, and corn are well forward. We stop to talk with a bright-looking Arab, who employs men to work his shadoofs, and lives here in an enclosure of cornstalks, with a cornstalk kennel in one corner, where he and his family sleep. There is nothing pretentious about this establishment, but the owner is evidently a man of wealth, and, indeed, he has the bearing of a shrewd Yankee. He owns a camel, two donkeys, several calves and two cows, and two young Nubian girls for wives, black as coal and greased, but rather pleasant-faced. He has also two good guns—appears to have duplicates of nearly everything. Out of the cornstalk shanty his wives bring some handsome rugs for us to sit on.

The Arab accompanies us on our walk, as a sort of host of the country, and we are soon joined by others, black fellows; some of them carry the long flint-lock musket, for which they seem to have no powder; and all wear a knife in a sheath on the left arm; but they are as peaceable friendly folk as you would care to meet, and simple-minded. I show the Arab my field-glass, an object new to his experience. He looks through it, as I direct, and is an astonished man, making motions with his hand, to indicate how the distant objects are drawn towards him, laughing with a soft and childlike delight, and then lowering the glass, looks at it, and cries, “Bismillah! Bismillah,” an ejaculation of wonder, and also intended to divert any misfortune from coming upon him on account of his indulgence in this pleasure.

He soon gets the use of the glass and looks beyond the river and all about, as if he were discovering objects unknown to him before. The others all take a turn at it, and are equally astonished and delighted. But when I cause them to look through the large end at a dog near by, and they see him remove far off in the desert, their astonishment is complete. My comrade’s watch interested them nearly as much, although they knew its use; they could never get enough of its ticking and of looking at its works, and they concluded that the owner of it must be a Pasha.

The men at work dress in the slight manner of the ancient Egyptians; the women, however, wear garments covering them, and not seldom hide the face at our approach. But the material of their dress is not always of the best quality; an old piece of sacking makes a very good garment for a Nubian woman. Most of them wear some trinkets, beads or bits of silver or carnelian round the neck, and heavy bracelets of horn. The boys have not yet come into their clothing, but the girls wear the leathern belt and fringe adorned with shells.

The people have little, but they are not poor. It may be that this cornstalk house of our friend is only his winter residence, while his shadoof is most active, and that he has another establishment in town. There are too many sakiyas in operation for this region to be anything but prosperous, apparently. They are going all night as we sail along, and the screaming is weird enough in the stillness. I should think that a prisoner was being tortured every eighth of a mile on the bank. We are never out of hearing of their shrieks. But the cry is not exactly that of pain; it is rather a song than a cry, with an impish squeak in it, and a monotonous iteration of one idea, like all the songs here. It always repeats one sentence, which sounds like Iskander logheh-n-e-e-e-n—whatever it is in Arabic; and there is of course a story about it. The king, Alexander, had concealed under his hair two horns. Unable to keep the secret to himself he told it in confidence to the sakiya; the sakiya couldn’t hold the news, but shrieked out, “Alexander has two horns,” and the other sakiyas got it; and the scandal went the length of the Nile, and never can be hushed.

The Arabs personify everything, and are as full of superstitions as the Scotch; peoples who have nothing in common except it may be that the extreme predestinationism of the one approaches the fatalism of the other—begetting in both a superstitious habit, which a similar cause produced in the Greeks. From talking of the sakiya we wander into stories illustrative of the credulity and superstition of the Egyptians. Charms and incantations are relied on for expelling diseases and warding off dangers. The snake-charmer is a person still in considerable request in towns and cities. Here in Nubia there is no need of his offices, for there are no snakes; but in Lower Egypt, where snakes are common, the mud-walls and dirt-floors of the houses permit them to come in and be at home with the family. Even in Cairo, where the houses are of brick, snakes are much feared, and the house that is reputed to have snakes in it cannot be rented. It will stand vacant like an old mansion occupied by a ghost in a Christian country. The snake-charmers take advantage of this popular fear.

Once upon a time when Abd-el-Atti was absent from the city, a snake-charmer came to his house, and told his sister that he divined that there were snakes in the house. “My sister,” the story goes on, “never see any snake to house, but she woman, and much ‘fraid of snakes, and believe what him say. She told the charmer to call out the snakes. He set to work his mumble, his conjor—(’.xorcism’. yes, dat’s it, exorcism ‘em, and bring out a snake. She paid him one dollar.

“Then the conjuror say, ‘This the wife; the husband still in the house and make great trouble if he not got out.’.rdquo;

“He want him one pound for get the husband out, and my sister give it.

“When I come home I find my sister very sick, very sick indeed, and I say what is it? She tell me the story that the house was full of snakes and she had a man call them out, but the fright make her long time ill.

“I said, you have done very well to get the snakes out, what could we do with a house full of the nasty things? And I said, I must get them out of another house I have—house I let him since to machinery.

“Machinery? For what kind of machinery! Steam-engines?”

“No, misheenary—have a school in it.”

“Oh, missionary.”

“Yes, let ‘em have it for bout three hundred francs less than I get before. I think the school good for Cairo. I send for the snake-charmer, and I say I have ‘nother house I think has snakes in it, and I ask him to divine and see. He comes back and says, my house is full of snakes, but he can charm them out.

“I say, good, I will pay you well. We appointed early next morning for the operation, and I agreed to meet the charmer at my house. I take with me big black fellow I have in the house, strong like a bull. When we get there I find the charmer there in front of the house and ready to begin. But I propose that we go in the house, it might make disturbance to the neighborhood to call so many serpents out into the street. We go in, and I sav, tell me the room of the most snakes. The charmer say, and as soon as we go in there, I make him sign the black fellow and he throw the charmer on the ground, and we tie him with a rope. We find in his bosom thirteen snakes and scorpions. I tell him I had no idea there were so many snakes in my house. Then I had the fellow before the Kadi; he had to pay back all the money he got from my sister and went to prison. But,” added Abd-el-Atti, “the doctor did not pay back the money for my sister’s illness.”

Alexandria was the scene of another snake story. The owner of a house there had for tenants an Italian and his wife, whose lease had expired, but who would not vacate the premises. He therefore hired a snake-charmer to go to the house one day when the family were out, and leave snakes in two of the rooms. When the lady returned and found a snake in one room she fled into another, but there another serpent raised his head and hissed at her. She was dreadfully frightened, and sent for the charmer, and had the snakes called out but she declared that she wouldn’t occupy such a house another minute. And the family moved out that day of their own accord. A novel writ of ejectment.

In the morning we touched bottom as to cold weather, the thermometer at sunrise going down to 47° it did, indeed, as we heard afterwards, go below 40° at Wady Haifa the next morning, but the days were sure to be warm enough. The morning is perfectly calm, and the depth of the blueness of the sky, especially as seen over the yellow desert sand and the blackened surface of the sandstone hills, is extraordinary. An artist’s representation of this color would be certain to be called an exaggeration. The skies of Lower Egypt are absolutely pale in comparison.

Since we have been in the tropics, the quality of the sky has been the same day and night—sometimes a turquoise blue, such as on rare days we get in America through a break in the clouds, but exquisitely delicate for all its depth. We passed the Tropic of Cancer in the night, somewhere about Dendodr, and did not see it. I did not know, till afterwards, that there had been any trouble about it. But it seems that it has been moved from Assouan, where Strabo put it and some modern atlases still place it, southward, to a point just below the ruins of the temple of Dendoor, where Osiris and Isis were worshipped. Probably the temple, which is thought to be of the time of Augustus and consequently is little respected by any antiquarian, was not built with any reference to the Tropic of Cancer; but the point of the turning of the sun might well have been marked by a temple to the mysterious deity who personified the sun and who was slain and rose again.

Our walk on shore to-day reminded us of a rugged path in Switzerland. Before we come to Kalkeh (which is of no account, except that it is in the great bend below Korosko) the hills of sandstone draw close to the east bank, in some places in sheer precipices, in others leaving a strip of sloping sand. Along the cliff is a narrow donkey-path, which travel for thousands of years has worn deep; and we ascend along it high above the river. Wherever at the foot of the precipices there was a chance to grow a handful of beans or a hill of corn, we found the ground occupied. In one of these lonely recesses we made the acquaintance of an Arab family.

Walking rapidly, I saw something in the path, and held my foot just in time to avoid stepping upon a naked brown baby, rather black than brown, as a baby might be who spent his time outdoors in the sun without any umbrella.

“By Jorge! a nice plumpee little chile,” cried Abd-el-Atti, who is fond of children, and picks up and shoulders the boy, who shews no signs of fear and likes the ride.

We come soon upon his parents. The man was sitting on a rock smoking a pipe. The woman, dry and withered, was picking some green leaves and blossoms, of which she would presently make a sort of purée, that appears to be a great part of the food of these people. They had three children. Their farm was a small piece of the sloping bank, and was in appearance exactly like a section of sandy railroad embankment grown to weeds. They had a few beans and some squash or pumpkin vines, and there were remains of a few hills of doora which had been harvested.

While the dragoman talked with the family, I climbed up to their dwelling, in a ravine in the rocks. The house was of the simplest architecture—a circular stone enclosure, so loosely laid up that you could anywhere put your hand through it. Over a segment of this was laid some cornstalks, and under these the piece of matting was spread for the bed. That matting was the only furniture of the house. All their clothes the family had on them, and those were none too many—they didn’t hold out to the boy. And the mercury goes down to 470 these mornings! Before the opening of this shelter, was a place for a fire against the rocks, and a saucepan, water-jar, and some broken bottles The only attraction about this is its simplicity. Probably this is the country-place of the proprietor, where he retires for “shange of air” during the season when his crops are maturing, and then moves into town under the palm-trees during the heat of summer.

Talking about Mohammed (we are still walking by the shore) I found that Abd-el-Atti had never heard the legend of the miraculous suspension of the Prophet’s coffin between heaven and earth; no Moslem ever believed any such thing; no Moslem ever heard of it.

“Then there isn’t any tradition or notion of that sort among Moslems?”

“No, sir. Who said it?”

“Oh, it’s often alluded to in English literature—by Mr-Carlyle for one, I think.”

“What for him say that? I tink he must put something in his book to make it sell. How could it? Every year since Mohammed died, pilgrims been make to his grave, where he buried in the ground; shawl every year carried to cover it; always buried in that place. No Moslem tink that.”

“Once a good man, a Walee of Fez, a friend of the Prophet, was visited by a vision and by the spirit of the Prophet, and he was gecited (excited) to go to Mecca and see him. When he was come near in the way, a messenger from the Prophet came to the Walee, and told him not to come any nearer; that he should die and be buried in the spot where he then was. And it was so. His tomb you see it there now before you come to Mecca.

“When Mohammed was asked the reason why he would not permit the Walee to come to his tomb to see him, he said that the Walee was a great friend of his, and if he came to his tomb he should feel bound to rise and see him; and he ought not to do that, for the time of the world was not yet fully come; if he rose from his tomb, it would be finish, the world would be at an end. Therefore he was ‘bliged to refuse his friend.

“Nobody doubt he buried in the ground. But Ali, different. Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed (married his daughter Fat’meh, his sons Hasan and Hoseyn,) died in Medineh. When he died, he ordered that he should be put in a coffin, and said that in the morning there would come from the desert a man with a dromedary; that his coffin should be bound upon the back of the dromedary, and let go. In the morning, as was foretold, the man appeared, leading a dromedary; his head was veiled except his eyes. The coffin was bound upon the back of the beast, and the three went away into the desert; and no man ever saw either of them more, or knows, to this day, where Ali is buried. Whether it was a man or an angel with the dromedary, God knows!”

Getting round the great bend at Korosko and Amada is the most vexatious and difficult part of the Nile navigation. The distance is only about eight miles, but the river takes a freak here to run south-south-east, and as the wind here is usually north-north-west, the boat has both wind and current against it. But this is not all; it is impossible to track on the west bank on account of the shallows and sandbars, and the channel on the east side is beset with dangerous rocks. We thought ourselves fortunate in making these eight miles in two days, and one of them was a very exciting day. The danger was in stranding the dahabeëh on the rocks, and being compelled to leave her; and our big boat was handled with great difficulty.

Traders and travelers going to the Upper Nile leave the river at Korosko. Here begins the direct desert route—as utterly waste, barren and fatiguing as any in Africa—to Aboo Hamed, Sennaar and Kartoom. The town lies behind a fringe of palms on the river, and backed by high and savage desert mountains.

As we pass we see on the high bank piles of merchandise and the white tents of the caravans.

This is still the region of slavery. Most of the Arabs, poor as they appear, own one or two slaves, got from Sennaar or Darfoor—though called generally Nubians. We came across a Sennaar girl to day of perhaps ten years of age, hoeing alone in the field. The poor creature, whose ideas were as scant as her clothing, had only a sort of animal intelligence; she could speak a little Arabic, however (much more than we could—speaking of intelligence!) and said she did not dare come with us for fear her mistress would beat her. The slave trade is, however, greatly curtailed by the expeditions of the Khedive. The bright Abyssinian boy, Ahmed, whom we have on board, was brought from his home across the Red Sea by way of Mecca. This is one of the ways by which a few slaves still sift into Cairo.

We are working along in sight of Korosko all day. Just above it, on some rocks in the channel, lies a handsome dahabeëh belonging to a party of English gentlemen, which went on a week ago; touched upon concealed rocks in the evening as the crew were tracking, was swung further on by the current, and now lies high and almost dry, the Nile falling daily, in a position where she must wait for the rise next summer. The boat is entirely uninjured and no doubt might have been got off the first day, if there had only been mechanical skill in the crew. The governor at Derr sent down one hundred and fifty men, who hauled and heaved at it two or three days, with no effect. Half a dozen Yankees, with a couple of jack-screws, and probably with only logs for rollers, would have set it afloat. The disaster is exceedingly annoying to the gentlemen, who have, however, procured a smaller boat from Wady Haifa in which to continue their voyage. We are several hours in getting past these two boats, and accomplish it not without a tangling of rigging, scraping off of paint, smashing of deck rails, and the expenditure of a whole dictionary of Arabic. Our Arabs never see but one thing at a time. If they are getting the bow free, the stay-ropes and stern must take care of themselves. If, by simple heedlessness, we are letting the yard of another boat rip into our rigging, God wills it. While we are in this confusion and excitement, the dahabeëh of General McClellan and half a dozen in company, sweep down past us, going with wind and current.

It is a bright and delicious Sunday morning that we are still tracking above Korosko. To-day is the day the pilgrims to Mecca spend upon the mountain of Arafat. Tomorrow they sacrifice; our crew will celebrate it by killing a sheep and eating it—and it is difficult to see where the sacrifice comes in for them. The Moslems along this shore lost their reckoning, mistook the day, and sacrificed yesterday.

This is not the only thing, however, that keeps this place in our memory. We saw here a pretty woman. Considering her dress, hair, the manner in which she had been brought up, and her looks, a tolerably pretty woman; a raving beauty in comparison with her comrades. She has a slight cast, in one eye, that only shows for a moment occasionally and then disappears. If these feeble tributary lines ever meet that eye, I beg her to know that, by reason of her slight visual defect, she is like a revolving light, all the more brilliant when she flashes out.

We lost time this morning, were whirled about in eddies and drifted on sandbars, owing to contradictory opinions among our navigators, none of whom seem to have the least sconce. They generally agree, however, not to do anything that the pilot orders. Our pilot from Philæ to Wady Haifa and back, is a Barâbra, and one of the reises of the Cataract, a fellow very tall, and thin as a hop-pole, with a withered face and a high forehead. His garments a white cotton nightgown without sleeves, a brown over-gown with flowing sleeves, both reaching to the ankles, and a white turban. He is barefooted and barelegged, and, in his many excursions into the river to explore sandbars, I have noticed a hole where he has stuck his knee through his nightgown. His stature and his whole bearing have in them something, I know not what, of the theatrical air of the Orient.