My Winter on the Nile

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.

CHAPTER XXXII.—JOTTINGS

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.