The steps occupy the place of the great doorway. The jambs and part of the cornice, the intercolumnar screen, the shafts of the columns under whose capitals we came in, are all there, half-projecting from and half-imbedded in the solid mound beyond. The light, however, comes in from so high up and through so narrow a space, that one’s eyes need to become accustomed to the darkness before any of these details can be distinguished. Then, by degrees, forms of deities familiar and unfamiliar emerge from the gloom.
The temple is dedicated to Knum[44]or Kneph, the soul ofthe world, whom we now see for the first time. He is ram-headed and holds in his hand the “ankh,” or emblem of life. Another new acquaintance is Bes,[45]the grotesque god of mirth and jollity.
Two singular little erections, built in between the columns to right and left of the steps, next attract our attention. They are like stone sentry-boxes. Each is in itself complete, with roof, sculptured cornice, doorway, and, if I remember rightly, a small square window in the side. The inscriptions upon two similar structures in the portico at Edfû show that the right-hand closet contained the sacred books belonging to the temple, while in the closet to the left of the main entrance the king underwent the ceremony of purification. It may therefore be taken for granted that these at Esneh were erected for the same purposes.
And now we look around for the next hall—and look in vain. The doorway which should lead to it is walled up. The portico was excavated by Mohammed Ali in 1842; not in any spirit of antiquarian zeal, but in order to provide a safe underground magazine for gunpowder. Up to that time, as may be seen by one of the illustrations to Wilkinson’s “Thebes and General View of Egypt,” the interior was choked to within a few feet of the capitals of the columns, and used as a cotton-store. Of the rest of the building nothing is known; nothing is visible. It is as large, probably, as Denderah or Edfû, and in as perfect preservation. So, at least, says local tradition; but not even local tradition can point out to what extent it underlies the foundations of the modern houses that swarm above its roof. An inscription first observed by Champollion states that the sanctuary was built by Thothmes III. Is that antique sanctuary still there? Has the temple grown step by step under the hands of successive kings, as at Luxor? Or has it been re-edifiedab ovo, as at Denderah? These are “puzzling questions,” only to be resolved by the demolition of a quarter of the town. Meanwhile what treasures ofsculptured history, what pictured chambers, what buried bronzes and statues may here await the pick of the excavator!
All next day, while the men were baking, the writer sat in a corner of the outer passage and sketched the portico of the temple. The sun rose upon the one horizon and set upon the other before that drawing was finished; yet for scarcely more than one hour did it light up the front of the temple. At about half-past nineA.M.it first caught the stone fillet at the angle. Then, one by one, each massy capital became outlined with a thin streak of gold. As this streak widened the cornice took fire, and presently the whole stood out in light against the sky. Slowly then, but quite perceptibly, the sun traveled across the narrow space overhead; the shadows became vertical; the light changed sides; and by ten o’clock there was shade for the remainder of the day. Toward noon, however, the sun being then at its highest and the air transfused with light, the inner columns, swallowed up till now in darkness, became illuminated with a wonderful reflected light, and glowed from out the gloom like pillars of fire.
Never to go on shore without an escort is one of the rules of Nile life, and Salame has by this time become my exclusive property. He is a native of Assûan, young, active, intelligent, full of fun, hot-tempered withal, and as thorough a gentleman as I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. For a sample of his good-breeding, take this day at Esneh—a day which he might have idled away in the bazaars and cafés, and which it must have been dull work to spend cooped up between a mud wall and an outlandish birbeh, built by the Djinns who reigned before Adam. Yet Salame betrays no discontent. Curled up in a shady corner, he watches me like a dog; is ready with an umbrella as soon as the sun comes round; and replenishes a water bottle or holds a color box as deftly as though he had been to the manner born. At one o’clock arrives my luncheon, enshrined in a pagoda of plates. Being too busy to leave off work, however, I put the pagoda aside, and dispatch Salame to the market, to buy himself some dinner; for which purpose, wishing to do the thing handsomely, I present him with the magnificent sum of two silver piasters, or about five pence English. With this he contrives to purchase three or four cakes of flabby nativebread, a black-looking rissole of chopped meat and vegetables, and about a pint of dried dates.
Knowing this to be a better dinner than my friend gets every day, knowing also that our sailors habitually eat at noon, I am surprised to see him leave these dainties untasted. In vain I say “Bismillah” (in the name of God); pressing him to eat in vocabulary phrases eked out with expressive pantomime. He laughs, shakes his head, and, asking permission to smoke a cigarette, protests he is not hungry. Thus three more hours go by. Accustomed to long fasting and absorbed in my sketch, I forget all about the pagoda; and it is past four o’clock when I at length set to work to repair tissue at the briefest possible cost of time and daylight. And now the faithful Salame falls to with an energy that causes the cakes, the rissole, the dates, to vanish as if by magic. Of what remains from my luncheon he also disposes in a trice. Never, unless in a pantomime, have I seen mortal man display so prodigious an appetite.
I made Talhamy scold him, by and by, for this piece of voluntary starvation.
“By my prophet!” said he, “am I a pig or a dog, that I should eat when the sitt was fasting?”
It was at Esneh, by the way, that that hitherto undiscovered curiosity, an ancient Egyptian coin, was offered to me for sale. The finder was digging for niter, and turned it up at an immense depth below the mounds on the outskirts of the town. He volunteered to show the precise spot, and told his artless tale with child-like simplicity. Unfortunately, however, for the authenticity of this remarkable relic, it bore, together with the familiar profile of George IV, a superscription of its modest value, which was precisely one farthing. On another occasion, when we were making our long stay at Luxor, a colored glass button of honest Birmingham make was brought to the boat by a fellah who swore that he had himself found it upon a mummy in the tombs of the queens at Kûrnet Murraee. The same man came to my tent one day when I was sketching, bringing with him a string of more than doubtful scarabs—all veritable “anteekahs,” of course, and all backed up with undeniable pedigrees.
“La, la [no, no]! bring me no more anteekahs,” I said, gravely. “They are old and worn out, and cost muchmoney. Have you no imitation scarabs, new and serviceable, that one might wear without the fear of breaking them?”
“These are imitations. O sitt!” was the ready answer.
“But you told me a moment ago they were genuine anteekahs.”
“That was because I thought the sitt wanted to buy anteekahs,” he said, quite shamelessly.
“See now,” I said, “if you are capable of selling me new things for old, how can I be sure that you would not sell me old things for new?”
To this he replied by declaring that he had made the scarabs himself. Then, fearing I should not believe him, he pulled a scrap of coarse paper from his bosom, borrowed one of my pencils, and drew an asp, an ibis, and some other common hieroglyphic forms, with tolerable dexterity.
“Now you believe?” he asked, triumphantly.
“I see that you can make birds and snakes,” I replied; “but that neither proves that you can cut scarabs, nor that these scarabs are new.”
“Nay, sitt,” he protested, “I made them with these hands. I made them but the other day. By Allah! they cannot be newer.”
Here Talhamy interposed.
“In that case,” he said, “they are too new, and will crack before a month is over. The sitt would do better to buy some that are well seasoned.”
Our honest fellâh touched his brow and breast.
“Now in strict truth, O dragoman!” he said, with an air of the most engaging candor, “these scarabs were made at the time of the inundation. They are new; but not too new. They are thoroughly seasoned. If they crack, you shall denounce me to the governor, and I will eat stick for them!”
Now it has always seemed to me that the most curious feature in this little scene was the extraordinary simplicity of the Arab. With all his cunning, with all his disposition to cheat, he suffered himself to be turned inside-out as unsuspiciously as a baby. It never occurred to him that his untruthfulness was being put to the test, or that he was committing himself more and more deeply with every word he uttered. The fact is, however, that the fellâh is half a savage. Notwithstanding his mendacity(and it must be owned that he is the most brilliant liar under heaven), he remains a singularly transparent piece of humanity, easily amused, easily deceived, easily angered, easily pacified. He steals a little, cheats a little, lies a great deal; but on the other hand he is patient, hospitable, affectionate, trustful. He suspects no malice and bears none. He commits no great crimes. He is incapable of revenge. In short, his good points outnumber his bad ones; and what man or nation need hope for a much better character?
To generalize in this way may seem like presumption on the part of a passing stranger; yet it is more excusable as regards Egypt than it would be of any other equally accessible country. In Europe, and indeed in most parts of the east, one sees too little of the people to be able to form an opinion about them; but it is not so on the Nile. Cut off from hotels, from railways, from Europeanized cities, you are brought into continual intercourse with natives. The sick who come to you for medicines, the country gentlemen and government officials who visit you on board your boat and entertain you on shore, your guides, your donkey boys, the very dealers who live by cheating you, furnish endless studies of character, and teach you more of Egyptian life than all the books of Nile-travel that were ever written.
Then your crew, part Arab, part Nubian, are a little world in themselves. One man was born a slave, and will carry the dealer’s brand-marks to his grave. Another has two children in Miss Whateley’s school at Cairo. A third is just married, and has left his young wife sick at home. She may be dead by the time he gets back, and we will hear no news of her meanwhile. So with them all. Each has his simple story—a story in which the local oppressor, the dreaded conscription, and the still more dreadedcorvée, form the leading incidents. The poor fellows are ready enough to pour out their hopes, their wrongs, their sorrows. Through sympathy with these, one comes to know the men; and through the men, the nation. For the life of the beled repeats itself with but little variation wherever the Nile flows and the khedive rules. The characters are the same; the incidents are the same. It is only themise en scènewhich varies.
And thus it comes to pass that the mere traveler whospends but half a year on the Nile may, if he takes an interest in Egypt and the Egyptians, learn more of both in that short time than would be possible in a country less singularly narrowed in all ways—politically, socially, geographically.
And this reminds me that the traveler on the Nile really sees the whole land of Egypt. Going from point to point in other countries, one follows a thin line of road, railway, or river, leaving wide tracts unexplored on either side; but there are few places in Middle or Upper Egypt, and none at all in Nubia, where one may not, from any moderate height, survey the entire face of the country from desert to desert. It is well to do this frequently. It helps one, as nothing else can help one, to an understanding of the wonderful mountain waste through which the Nile has been scooping its way for uncounted cycles. And it enables one to realize what a mere slip of alluvial deposit is this famous land which is “the gift of the river.”
A dull gray morning; a faint and fitful breeze carried us slowly on our way from Esneh to Edfû. The new bread—a heavy boat-load when brought on board—lay in a huge heap at the end of the upper deck. It took four men one whole day to cut it up. Their incessant gabble drove us nearly distracted.
“Uskût, Khaleefeh! Uskût, Ali!” (“Silence, Khaleefeh! Silence, Ali!”) Talhamy would say from time to time. “You are not on your own deck. The Howadji can neither read nor write for the clatter of your tongues.”
And then, for about a minute and a half, they would be quiet.
But you could as easily keep a monkey from chattering as an Arab. Our men talked incessantly; and their talk was always about money. Listen to them when we might, such words as “khámsa gurûsh” (five piasters), “nûs riyâl” (half-a-dollar), “ethneen shilling” (two shillings), were perpetually coming to the surface. We never could understand how it was that money, which played so small a part in their lives, should play so large a part in their conversation.
It was about midday when we passed El Kab, the ancient Eileithyias. A rocky valley narrowing inland; a sheik’s tomb on the mountain-ridge above; a few clumps of datepalms; some remains of what looked like a long, crudebrick wall running at right angles to the river; and an isolated mass of hollowed limestone rock left standing apparently in the midst of an exhausted quarry, were all we saw of El Kab as the dahabeeyah glided by.
And now, as the languid afternoon wears on, the propylons of Edfû loom out of the misty distance. We have been looking for them long enough before they come into sight—calculating every mile of the way; every minute of the daylight. The breeze, such as it was, has dropped now. The river stretches away before us, smooth and oily as a pond. Nine of the men are tracking. Will they pull us to Edfû in time to see the temple before nightfall?
Reïs Hassan looks doubtful; but takes refuge as usual in “Inshallah!” (“God willing”). Talhamy talks of landing a sailor to run forward and order donkeys. Meanwhile the Philæ creeps lazily on; the sun declines unseen behind a filmy veil; and those two shadowy towers, rising higher and ever higher on the horizon, look gray, and ghostly, and far distant still.
Suddenly the trackers stop, look back, shout to those on board, and begin drawing the boat to shore. Reïs Hassan points joyously to a white streak breaking across the smooth surface of the river about half a mile behind. The Fostât’s sailors are already swarming aloft—the Bagstones’ trackers are making for home—our own men are preparing to fling in the rope and jump on board as the Philæ nears the bank.
For the capricious wind, that always springs up when we don’t want it, is coming!
And now the Fostât, being hindmost, flings out her big sail and catches the first puff; the Bagstones’ turn comes next; the Philæ shakes her wings free and shoots ahead; and in fewer minutes than it takes to tell, we are all three scudding along before a glorious breeze.
The great towers that showed so far away half an hour ago are now close at hand. There are palm-woods about their feet, and clustered huts, from the midst of which they tower up against the murky sky magnificently. Soon they are passed and left behind, and the gray twilight takes them and we see them no more. Then night comes on, cold and starless; yet not too dark for going as fast as wind and canvas will carry us.
And now, with that irrepressible instinct of rivalry thatflesh—especially flesh on the Nile—is heir to, we quickly turn our good going into a trial of speed. It is no longer a mere business-like devotion to the matter in hand. It is a contest for glory. It is the Philæ against the Fostât, and the Bagstones against both. In plain English, it is a race. The two leading dahabeeyahs are pretty equally matched. The Philæ is larger than the Fostât; but the Fostât has a bigger mainsail. On the other hand, the Fostât is an iron boat; whereas the Philæ, being wooden-built, is easier to pole off a sand-bank, and lighter in hand. The Bagstones carries a capital mainsail and can go as fast as either upon occasion. Meanwhile, the race is one of perpetually varying fortunes. Now the Fostât shoots ahead; now the Philæ. We pass and repass; take the wind out of one another’s sails; economize every curve; hoist every stitch of canvas, and, having identified ourselves with our boats, are as eager to win as if a great prize depended on it. Under these circumstances, to dine is difficult—to go to bed superfluous—to sleep impossible. As to mooring for the night, it is not to be thought of for a moment. Having begun the contest, we can no more help going than the wind can help blowing; and our crew are as keen about winning as ourselves.
As night advances, the wind continues to rise, and our excitement with it. Still the boats chase each other along the dark river, scattering spray from their bows and flinging out broad foam-tracks behind them. Their cabin windows, all alight within, cast flickering flames upon the waves below. The colored lanterns at their mast-heads, orange, purple and crimson, burn through the dusk-like jewels. Presently the mist blows off; the sky clears; the stars come out; the wind howls: the casements rattle; the tiller scroops; the sailors shout, and race, and bang the ropes about overhead; while we, sitting up in our narrow berths, spend half the night watching from our respective windows.
In this way some hours go by. Then, about three in the morning, with a shock, a recoil, a yell and a scuffle, we all three rush headlong upon a sand-bank! The men fly to the rigging and furl the flapping sail. Some seize punting poles. Others, looking like full-grown imps of darkness, leap overboard and set their shoulders to the work. A strophe and antistrophe of grunts are kept up betweenthose on deck and those in the water. Finally, after some ten minutes’ frantic struggle, the Philæ slips off, leaving the other two aground in the middle of the river.
Toward morning, the noisy night having worn itself away, we all fall asleep—only to be roused again by Talhamy’s voice at seven, proclaiming aloud that the Bagstones and Fostât are once more close upon our heels; that Silsilis and Kom Ombo are passed and left behind; that we have already put forty-six miles between ourselves and Edfû; and that the good wind is still blowing.
We are now within fifteen miles of Assûan. The Nile is narrow here, and the character of the scenery has quite changed. Our view is bounded on the Arabian side by a near range of black granitic mountains; while on the Libyan side lies a chain of lofty sand-hills, each curiously capped by a crown of dark bowlders. On both banks the river is thickly fringed with palms.
Meanwhile the race goes on. Last night it was sport; to-day it is earnest. Last night we raced for glory; to-day we race for a stake.
“A guinée for Reïs Hassan if we get first to Assûan!”
Reïs Hassan’s eyes glisten. No need to call up the dragoman to interpret between us. The look, the tone, are as intelligible to him as the choicest Arabic; and the magical word “guinée” stands for a sovereign now, as it stood for one-pound-one in the days of Nelson and Abercrombie. He touches his head and breast; casts a backward glance at the pursuing dahabeeyahs, a forward glance in the direction of Assûan; kicks off his shoes; ties a handkerchief about his waist; and stations himself at the top of the steps leading to the upper deck. By the light in his eye and the set look about his mouth, Reïs Hassan means winning.
Now to be first in Assûan means to be first on the governor’s list and first up the cataract. And as the passage of the cataract is some two or three days’ work this little question of priority is by no means unimportant. Not for five times the promised “guinée” would we have the Fostât slip in first, and so be kept waiting our turn on the wrong side of the frontier.
And now, as the sun rises higher, so the race waxes hotter. At breakfast time we were fifteen miles from Assûan. Now the fifteen miles have gone down to ten;and when we reach yonder headland they will have dwindled to seven. It is plain to see, however, that as the distance decreases between ourselves and Assûan, so also it decreases between ourselves and the Fostât. Reïs Hassan knows it. I see him measuring the space by his eye. I see the frown settling on his brow. He is calculating how much the Fostât gains in every quarter of an hour, and how many quarters we are yet distant from the goal. For no Arab sailor counts by miles. He counts by time and by the reaches in the river; and these may be taken at a rough average of three miles each. When, therefore, our captain, in reply to an oft-repeated question, says we have yet two bends to make, we know that we are about six miles from our destination.
Six miles—and the Fostât creeping closer every minute! Just now we were all talking eagerly; but as the end draws near, even the sailors are silent. Reïs Hassan stands motionless at his post, on the lookout for shallows. The words “Shamàl—Yemîn” (“left—right”), delivered in a short, sharp tone, are the only sounds he utters. The steersman, all eye and ear, obeys him like his hand. The sailors squat in their places, quiet and alert as cats.
And now it is no longer six miles, but five—no longer five, but four. The Fostât, thanks to her bigger sail, has well-nigh overtaken us; and the Bagstones is not more than a hundred yards behind the Fostât. On we go, however, past palm-woods of nobler growth than any we have yet seen; past forlorn homeward-bound dahabeeyahs lying-to against the wind; past native boats, and riverside huts, and clouds of driving sand; till the corner is turned, and the last reach gained, and the minarets of Assûan are seen as through a shifting fog in the distance. The ruined tower crowning yonder promontory stands over against the town; and those black specks midway in the bed of the river are the first outlying rocks of the cataract. The channel there is hemmed in between reefs and sand-banks, and to steer it is difficult in even the calmest weather. Still our canvas strains to the wind, and the Philæ rushes on full-tilt, like a racer at the hurdles.
Every eye now is turned upon Reïs Hassan; and Reïs Hassan stands rigid, like a man of stone. The rocks are close ahead—so close that we can see the breakers pouring over them and the swirling eddies between. Our waylies through an opening between the bowlders. Beyond that opening the channel turns off sharply to the left. It is a point at which everything will depend on the shifting of a sail. If done too soon, we miss the mark; if too late, we strike upon the rocks.
Suddenly our captain flings up his hand, takes the stairs at a bound, and flies to the prow. The sailors spring to their feet, gathering some round the shoghool, and some round the end of the yard. The Fostât is up beside us. The moment for winning or losing is come.
And now, for a couple of breathless seconds, the two dahabeeyahs plunge onward side by side, making for that narrow passage which is only wide enough for one. Then the iron boat, shaving the sand-bank to get a wider berth, shifts her sail first, and shifts it clumsily, breaking or letting go her shoghool. We see the sail flap and the rope fly, and all hands rushing to retrieve it.
In that moment Reïs Hassan gives the word. The Philæ bounds forward—takes the channel from under the very bows of the Fostât—changes her sail without a hitch—and dips right away down the deep water, leaving her rival hard and fast among the shallows.
The rest of the way is short and open. In less than five minutes we have taken in our sail, paid Reïs Hassan his well-earned guinée, and found a snug corner to moor in. And so ends our memorable race of nearly sixty-eight miles from Edfû to Assûan.
Thegreen Island of Elephantine, which is about a mile in length, lies opposite Assûan and divides the Nile in two channels. The Libyan and Arabian deserts—smooth amber sand-slopes on the one hand; rugged granite cliffs on the other—come down to the brink on either side. On the Libyan shore a sheik’s tomb, on the Arabian shore a bold fragment of Moorish architecture with ruined arches open to the sky, crown two opposing heights, and keep watch over the gate of the cataract. Just under the Moorish ruin, and separated from the river by a slip of sandy beach, lies Assûan.
A few scattered houses, a line of blank wall, the top of a minaret, the dark mouths of one or two gloomy alleys, are all that one sees of the town from the mooring-place below. The black bowlders close against the shore, some of which are superbly hieroglyphed, glisten in the sun like polished jet.[46]The beach is crowded with bales of goods; with camels laden and unladen; with turbaned figures coming and going; with damaged cargo-boats lying up high and dry, and half heeled over, in the sun. Others, moored close together, are taking in or discharging cargo. A little apart from these lie some three or four dahabeeyahs flying English, American, and Belgian flags. Another has cast anchor over the way at Elephantine. Small rowboats cross and recross, meanwhile, from shore to shore;dogs bark; camels snort and snarl; donkeys bray; and clamorous curiosity dealers scream, chatter, hold their goods at arm’s length, battle and implore to come on board, and are only kept off the landing-plank by means of two big sticks in the hands of two stalwart sailors.
The things offered for sale at Assûan are altogether new and strange. Here are no scarabæi, no funerary statuettes, no bronze or porcelain gods, no relics of a past civilization; but, on the contrary, such objects as speak only of a rude and barbarous present—ostrich eggs and feathers, silver trinkets of rough Nubian workmanship, spears, bows, arrows, bucklers of rhinoceros hide, ivory bracelets, cut solid from the tusk, porcupine quills, baskets of stained and plaited reeds, gold nose rings and the like. One old woman has a Nubian lady’s dressing-case for sale—an uncouth, fetich-like object with a cushion for its body, and a top-knot of black feathers. The cushion contains two kohl-bottles, a bodkin and a bone comb.
But the noisest dealer of the lot is an impish boy blessed with the blackest skin and the shrillest voice ever brought together in one human being. His simple costume consists of a tattered shirt and a white cotton skull-cap; his stock in trade of a greasy leather fringe tied to the end of a stick. Flying from window to window of the saloon on the side next the shore, scrambling up the bows of a neighboring cargo-boat so as to attack us in the rear, thrusting his stick and fringe in our faces whichever way we turn, and pursuing us with eager cries of “Madame Nubia! Madame Nubia!” he skips and screams and grins like an ubiquitous goblin, and throws every competitor into the shade.
Having seen a similar fringe in the collection of a friend at home, I at once recognized in “Madame Nubia” one of those curious girdles, which, with the addition of a necklace and a few bracelets, form the entire wardrobe of little girls south of the cataract. They vary in size according to the age of the wearer; the largest being about twelve inches in depth and twenty-five in length. A few are ornamented with beads and small shells; but these areparures de luxe. The ordinary article is cheaply and unpretentiously trimmed with castor-oil. That is to say, the girdle when new is well soaked in the oil, which softens and darkens the leather, besides adding a perfume dear to native nostrils.
For to the Nubian, who grows his own plants and bruises his own berries, this odor is delicious. He reckons castor-oil among his greatest luxuries. He eats it as we eat butter. His wives saturate their plaited locks in it. His little girls perfume their fringes with it. His boys anoint their bodies with it. His home, his breath, his garments, his food are redolent of it. It pervades the very air in which he lives and has his being. Happy the European traveler who, while his lines are cast in Nubia, can train his degenerate nose to delight in the aroma of castor-oil!
The march of civilization is driving these fringes out of fashion on the frontier. At Assûan they are chiefly in demand among English and American visitors. Most people purchase a “Madame Nubia” for the entertainment of friends at home. L——, who is given to vanities in the way of dress, bought one so steeped in fragrance that it scented the Philæ for the rest of the voyage and retains its odor to this day.
Almost before the mooring-rope was made fast our painter, arrayed in a gorgeous keffiyeh[47]and armed with the indispensible visiting-cane, had sprung ashore and hastened to call upon the governor. A couple of hours later the governor (having promised to send at once for the sheik of the cataract and to forward our going by all means in his power) returned the visit. He brought with him the mudîr[48]and kadi[49]of Assûan, each attended by his pipe-bearer.
We received our guests with due ceremony in the saloon. The great men placed themselves on one of the side-divans, and the painter opened the conversation by offering them champagne, claret, port, sherry, curaçoa, brandy, whisky and Angostura bitters. Talhamy interpreted.
The governor laughed. He was a tall young man, graceful, lively, good-looking and black as a crow. The kadi and mudîr both elderly Arabs, yellow, wrinkled and precise, looked shocked at the mere mention of these unholy liquors. Somebody then proposed lemonade.
The governor turned briskly toward the speaker.
“Gazzoso?” he said, interrogatively.
To which Talhamy replied: “Aïwah [yes,] Gazzoso.”
Aerated lemonade and cigars were then brought. The governor watched the process of uncorking with a face of profound interest and drank with the undisguised greediness of a school-boy. Even the kadi and mudîr relaxed somewhat of the gravity of their demeanor. To men whose habitual drink consists of lime-water and sugar, bottled lemonade represents champagne mousseux of the choicest brand.
Then began the usual attempts at conversation; and only those who have tried small talk by proxy know how hard it is to supply topics, suppress yawns and keep up an animated expression of countenance, while the civilities on both sides are being interpreted by a dragoman.
We began, of course, with the temperature; for in Egypt, where it never rains and the sun is always shining, the thermometer takes the place of the weather as a useful platitude. Knowing that Assûan enjoys the hottest reputation of any town on the surface of the globe, we were agreeably surprised to find it no warmer than England in September. The governor accounted for this by saying that he had never known so cold a winter. We then asked the usual questions about the crops, the height of the river, and so forth; to all of which he replied with the ease andbonhomieof a man of the world. Nubia, he said, was healthy—the date-harvest had been abundant—the corn promised well—the Soudan was quiet and prosperous. Referring to the new postal arrangements, he congratulated us on being able to receive and post letters at the second cataract. He also remarked that the telegraphic wires were now in working order as far as Khartûm. We then asked how soon he expected the railway to reach Assûan; to which he replied: “In two years, at latest.”
At length our little stock of topics came to an end and the entertainment flagged.
“What shall I say next?” asked the dragoman.
“Tell him we particularly wish to see the slave market.”
The smile vanished from the governor’s face. The mudîr set down a glass of fizzing lemonade, untasted. The kadi all but dropped his cigar. If a shell had burst in the saloon their consternation could scarcely have been greater.
The governor, looking very grave, was the first to speak.
“He says there is no slave trade in Egypt and no slave market in Assûan,” interrupted Talhamy.
Now, we had been told in Cairo, on excellent authority, that slaves were still bought and sold here, though less publicly than of old; and that of all the sights a traveler might see in Egypt, this was the most curious and pathetic.
“No slave market!” we repeated, incredulously.
The governor, the kadi and the mudîr shook their heads, and lifted up their voices, and said all together, like a trio of mandarins in a comic opera:
“Là, là, là! Mafeesh bazaar—mafeesh bazaar!” (“No, no, no! No bazaar—no bazaar!”)
We endeavored to explain that in making this inquiry we desired neither the gratification of an idle curiosity, nor the furtherance of any political views. Our only object was sketching. Understanding, therefore, that a private bazaar still existed in Assûan——
This was too much for the judicial susceptibilities of the kadi. He would not let Talhamy finish.
“There is nothing of the kind,” he interrupted, puckering his face into an expression of such virtuous horror as might become a reformed New Zealander on the subject of cannibalism. “It is unlawful—unlawful.”
An awkward silence followed. We felt we had committed an enormous blunder, and were disconcerted accordingly.
The governor saw, and with the best grace in the world took pity upon, our embarrassment. He rose, opened the piano, and asked for some music; whereupon the little lady played the liveliest thing she could remember; which happened to be a waltz by Verdi.
The governor, meanwhile, sat beside the piano, smiling and attentive. With all his politeness, however, he seemed to be looking for something—to be not altogether satisfied. There was even a shade of disappointment in the tone of his “Ketther-khayrik ketîr,” when the waltz finally exploded in a shower of arpeggios. What could it be? Was it that he wished for a song? Or would a pathetic air have pleased him better?
Not a bit of it. He was looking for what his quick eye presently detected—namely, some printed music, which heseized triumphantly and placed before the player. What he wanted was “music played from a book.”
Being asked whether he preferred a lively or a plaintive melody, he replied that “he did not care, so long as it wasdifficult.”
Now it chanced that he had pitched upon a volume of Wagner; so the little lady took him at his word and gave him a dose of “Tannhaüser.” Strange to say, he was delighted. He showed his teeth; he rolled his eyes; he uttered the long-drawn “Ah!” which in Egypt signifies applause. The more crabbed, the more far-fetched, the more unintelligible the movement, the better, apparently, he liked it.
I never think of Assûan but I remember that curious scene—our little lady at the piano; the black governor grinning in ecstasies close by; the kadi in his magnificent shawl-turban; the mudîr half asleep; the air thick with tobacco-smoke; and above all—dominant, tyrannous, overpowering—the crash and clang, the involved harmonies, and the multitudinous combinations of Tannhaüser.
The linked sweetness of an oriental visit is generally drawn out to a length that sorely tries the patience and politeness of European hosts. A native gentleman, if he has any business to attend to, gets through his work before noon, and has nothing to do but smoke, chat, and doze away the remainder of the day. For time, which hangs heavily on his hands, he has absolutely no value. His main object in life is to consume it, if possible, less tediously. He pays a visit, therefore, with the deliberate intention of staying as long as possible. Our guests on the present occasion remained the best part of two hours; and the governor, who talked of going to England shortly, asked for all our names and addresses, that he might come and see us at home.
Leaving the cabin, he paused to look at our roses, which stood near the door. We told him they had been given to us by the Bey of Erment.
“Do they grow at Erment?” he asked, examining them with great curiosity. “How beautiful! Why will they not grow in Nubia?”
We suggested that the climate was probably too hot for them.
He stooped, inhaling their perfume. He looked puzzled.
“They are very sweet,” he said. “Are they roses?”
The question gave us a kind of shock. We could hardly believe we had reached a land where roses were unknown. Yet the governor, who had smoked a rose-water narghilé and drunk rose-sherbet and eaten conserve of roses all his days, recognized them by their perfume only. He had never been out of Assûan in his life; not even as far as Erment. And he had never seen a rose in bloom.
We had hoped to begin the passage of the cataract on the morning of the day following our arrival at the frontier; but some other dahabeeyah, it seemed, was in the act of fighting its way up to Philæ; and till that boat was through, neither the sheik nor his men would be ready for us. At eight o’clock in the morning of the next day but one, however, they promised to take us in hand. We were to pay £12 English for the double journey; that is to say, £9 down; and the remaining £3 on our return to Assûan.
Such was the treaty concluded between ourselves and the sheik of the cataract at a solemn conclave over which the governor, assisted by the kadi and mudîr, presided.
Having a clear day to spend at Assûan, we of course gave part thereof to Elephantine, which in the inscriptions is called Abu, or the Ivory Island. There may perhaps have been a depôt, or “treasure-city,” here for the precious things of the Upper Nile country; the gold of Nubia and the elephant-tusks of Kush.
It is a very beautiful island—rugged and lofty to the south; low and fertile to the north; with an exquisitely varied coast-line full of wooded creeks and miniature beaches in which one might expect at any moment to meet Robinson Crusoe with his goat-skin umbrella, or man Friday bending under a load of faggots. They are all Fridays here, however; for Elephantine, being the first Nubian outpost, is peopled by Nubians only. It contains two Nubian villages, and the mounds of a very ancient city which was the capital of all Egypt under the Pharaohs of the sixth dynasty, between three and four thousand years before Christ. Two temples, one of which dated from the reign of Amenhotep III, were yet standing here some seventy years ago. They were seen by Belzoni in 1815, and had just been destroyed to build a palace and barracks when Champollion went up in 1829. A ruined gateway ofthe Ptolemaic period and a forlorn-looking sitting statue of Menephtah, the supposed Pharaoh of the exodus, alone remain to identify the sites on which they stood.
Thick palm-groves and carefully tilled patches of castor-oil and cotton plants, lentils, and durra, make green the heart of the island. The western shore is wooded to the water’s edge. One may walk here in the shade at hottest noon, listening to the murmur of the cataract and seeking for wild flowers—which, however, would seem to blossom nowhere save in the sweet Arabic name of Gezîret-el-Zahr, the island of flowers.
Upon the high ground at the southern extremity of the island, among rubbish heaps, and bleached bones, and human skulls, and the sloughed skins of snakes, and piles of party-colored potsherds, we picked up several bits of inscribed terra-cotta—evidently fragments of broken vases. The writing was very faint, and in part obliterated. We could see that the characters were Greek; but not even our idle man was equal to making out a word of the sense. Believing them to be mere disconnected scraps to which it would be impossible to find the corresponding pieces—taking it for granted, also, that they were of comparatively modern date—we brought away some three or four as souvenirs of the place, and thought no more about them.
We little dreamed that Dr. Birch, in his cheerless official room at the British Museum so many thousand miles away, was at this very time occupied in deciphering a collection of similar fragments, nearly all of which had been brought from this same spot.[50]Of the curious interest attaching tothese illegible scrawls, of the importance they were shortly to acquire in the eyes of the learned, of the possible value of any chance additions to their number we knew, and could know, nothing. Six months later we lamented our ignorance and our lost opportunities.
For the Egyptians, it seems, used potsherds instead of papyrus for short memoranda; and each of these fragments which we had picked up contained a record complete in itself. I fear we should have laughed if any one had suggested that they might be tax-gatherers’ receipts. Yet that is just what they were—receipts for government dues collected on the frontier during the period of Roman rule in Egypt. They were written in Greek, because the Romans deputed Greek scribes to perform the duties of this unpopular office; but the Greek is so corrupt and the penmanship so clownish that only a few eminent scholars can read them.
Not all the inscribed fragments found at Elephantine, however, are tax-receipts, or written in bad Greek. The British Museum contains several in the demotic, or current, script of the people, and a few in the more learned hieratic, or priestly, hand. The former have not yet been translated. They are probably business memoranda and short private letters of Egyptians of the same period.
But how came these fragile documents to be preserved, when the city in which their writers lived, and the temples in which they worshiped, have disappeared and left scarcea trace behind? Who cast them down among the potsherds on this barren hillside? Are we to suppose that some kind of public record office once occupied the site, and that the receipts here stored were duplicates of those given to the payers? Or is it not even more probable that this place was the Monte Testaccio of the ancient city, to which all broken pottery, written as well as unwritten, found its way sooner or later?
With the exception of a fine fragment of Roman quay nearly opposite Assûan, the ruined gateway of Alexander and the battered statue of Menephtah are the only objects of archæological interest in the island. But the charm of Elephantine is the everlasting charm of natural beauty—of rocks, of palm-woods, of quiet waters.
The streets of Assûan are just like the streets of every other mud town on the Nile. The bazaars reproduce the bazaars of Minieh and Siût. The environs are noisy with cafés and dancing-girls, like the environs of Esneh and Luxor. Into the mosque, where some kind of service was going on, we peeped without entering. It looked cool, and clean, and spacious; the floor being covered with fine matting, and some scores of ostrich-eggs depending from the ceiling. In the bazaars we bought baskets and mats of Nubian manufacture, woven with the same reeds, dyed with the same colors, shaped after the same models, as those found in the tombs at Thebes. A certain oval basket with a vaulted cover, of which specimens are preserved in the British Museum, seems still to be the pattern most in demand at Assûan. The basket-makers have neither changed their fashion nor the buyers their taste since the days of Rameses the Great.
Here also, at a little cupboard of a shop near the shoe bazaar, we were tempted to spend a few pounds in ostrich feathers, which are conveyed to Assûan by traders from the Soudan. The merchant brought out a feather at a time, and seemed in no haste to sell. We also affected indifference. The haggling on both sides was tremendous. The by-standers, as usual, were profoundly interested, and commented on every word that passed. At last we carried away an armful of splendid plumes, most of which measured from two and a half to three feet in length. Some were pure white, others white tipped with brown. They had been neither cleaned nor curled, but were just as they came from the hands of the ostrich-hunters.
By far the most amusing sight in Assûan was the traders’ camp down near the landing-place. Here were Abyssinians like slender-legged baboons; wild-looking Bisharîyah and Ababdeh Arabs with flashing eyes and flowing hair; sturdy Nubians the color of a Barbedienne bronze; and natives of all tribes and shades, from Kordofân and Sennâr, the deserts of the Bahuda and the banks of the Blue and White Niles. Some were running from Cairo; others were on their way thither. Some, having disembarked their merchandise at Mahatta (a village on the other side of the cataract), had come across the desert to re-embark it at Assûan. Others had just disembarked theirs at Assûan, in order to re-embark it at Mahatta. Meanwhile, they were livingsub jove; each intrenched in his own little redoubt of piled-up bales and packing-cases, like a spider in the center of his web; each provided with a kettle and coffee-pot, and an old rug to sleep and pray upon. One sulky old Turk had fixed up a roof of matting, and furnished his den with akafas, or palm-wood couch; but he was a self-indulgent exception to the rule.
Some smiled, some scowled, when we passed through the camp. One offered us coffee. Another, more obliging than the rest, displayed the contents of his packages. Great bundles of lion and leopard skins, bales of cotton, sacks of henna-leaves, elephant-tusks swathed in canvas and matting, strewed the sandy bank. Of gum-arabic alone there must have been several hundred bales; each bale sewed up in a raw hide and tied with thongs of hippopotamus leather. Toward dusk, when the camp-fires were alight and the evening meal was in course of preparation, the scene became wonderfully picturesque. Lights gleamed; shadows deepened; strange figures stalked to and fro, or squatted in groups amid their merchandise. Some were baking flat cakes; others stirring soup, or roasting coffee. A hole scooped in the sand, a couple of stones to support the kettle, and a handful of dry sticks, served for kitchen range and fuel. Meanwhile all the dogs in Assûan prowled round the camp, and a jargon of barbaric tongues came and went with the breeze that followed the sunset.
I must not forget to add that among this motley crowd we saw two brothers, natives of Khartûm. We met them first in the town, and afterward in the camp. They wore voluminous white turbans and flowing robes of some kindof creamy cashmere cloth. Their small proud heads and delicate aristocratic features were modeled on the purest Florentine type; their eyes were long and liquid; their complexions, free from any taint of Abyssinian blue or Nubian bronze, were intensely, lustrously, magnificently black. We agreed that we had never seen two such handsome men. They were like young and beautiful Dantes carved in ebony; Dantes unembittered by the world, unsicklied by the pale cast of thought, and glowing with the life of the warm south.
Having explored Elephantine and ransacked the bazaars, our party dispersed in various directions. Some gave the remainder of the day to letter-writing. The painter, bent on sketching, started off in search of a jackal-haunted ruin up a wild ravine on the Libyan side of the river. The writer and the idle man boldly mounted camels and rode out into the Arabian desert.
Now the camel-riding that is done at Assûan is of the most commonplace description, and bears to genuine desert traveling about the same relation that half an hour on the Mer de Glace bears to the passage of the Mortaretsch glacier or the ascent of Monte Rosa. The short cut from Assûan to Philæ, or at least the ride to the granite quarries, forms part of every dragoman’s programme, and figures as the crowning achievement of every Cook’s tourist. The Arabs themselves perform these little journeys much more pleasantly and expeditiously on donkeys. They take good care, in fact, never to scale the summit of a camel if they can help it. But for the impressionable traveler, the Assûan camel isde rigueur. In his interests are those snarling quadrupeds, betasseled and berugged, taken from their regular work, and paraded up and down the landing-place. To transport cargoes disembarked above and below the cataract is their vocation. Taken from this honest calling to perform in an absurd little drama got up especially for the entertainment of tourists, it is no wonder if the beasts are more than commonly ill-tempered. They know the whole proceeding to be essentially cockney, and they resent it accordingly.
The ride, nevertheless, has its advantages; not the least being that it enables one to realize the kind of work involved in any of the regular desert expeditions. At all events, it entitles one to claim acquaintance with the shipof the desert, and (bearing in mind the probable inferiority of the specimen) to form anex pedejudgment of his qualification.
The camel has his virtues—so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface. My Buffon tells me, for instance, that he carries a fresh-water cistern in his stomach; which is meritorious. But the cistern ameliorates neither his gait nor his temper—which are abominable. Irreproachable as a beast of burden, he is open to many objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to ride an animal which not only objects to being ridden, but cherishes a strong personal antipathy to his rider. Such, however, is his amiable peculiarity. You know that he hates you, from the moment you first walk round him, wondering where and how to begin the ascent of his hump. He does not, in fact, hesitate to tell you so in the roundest terms. He swears freely while you are taking your seat; snarls if you but move in the saddle; and stares you angrily in the face if you attempt to turn his head in any direction save that which he himself prefers. Should you persevere, he tries to bite your feet. If biting your feet does not answer, he lies down.
Now the lying down and getting up of a camel are performances designed for the express purpose of inflicting grievous bodily harm upon his rider. Thrown twice forward and twice backward, punched in his “wind” and damaged in his spine, the luckless novice receives four distinct shocks, each more violent and unexpected than the last. For this “execrable hunchback” is fearfully and wonderfully made. He has a superfluous joint somewhere in his legs and uses it to revenge himself upon mankind.
His paces, however, are more complicated than his joints and more trying than his temper. He has four: a short walk, like the rolling of a small boat in a chopping sea; a long walk, which dislocates every bone in your body; a trot that reduces you to imbecility; and a gallop that is sudden death. One tries in vain to imagine a crime for which thepeine forte et dureof sixteen hours on camelback would not be a full and sufficient expiation. It is a punishment to which one would not willingly be the means of condemning any human being—not even a reviewer.
They had been down on the bank for hire all day long—brown camels and white camels, shaggy camels and smoothcamels; all with gay worsted tassels on their heads and rugs flung over their high wooden saddles, by way of housings. The gentlemen of the Fostât had ridden away hours ago, cross-legged and serene; and we had witnessed their demeanor with mingled admiration and envy. Now, modestly conscious of our own daring, we prepared to do likewise. It was a solemn moment when, having chosen our beasts, we prepared to encounter the unknown perils of the desert. What wonder if the happy couple exchanged an affecting farewell at parting?
We mounted and rode away; two imps of darkness following at the heels of our camels and Salame performing the part of body-guard. Thus attended, we found ourselves pitched, swung and rolled along at a pace that carried us rapidly up the slope, past a suburb full of cafés and grinning dancing-girls and out into the desert. Our way for the first half-mile or so lay among tombs. A great Mohammedan necropolis, part ancient, part modern, lies behind Assûan and covers more ground than the town itself. Some scores of tiny mosques, each topped by its little cupola and all more or less dilapidated, stand here amid a wilderness of scattered tombstones. Some are isolated; some grouped picturesquely together. Each covers, or is supposed to cover, the grave of a Moslem santon; but some are mere commemorative chapels dedicated to saints and martyrs elsewhere buried. Of simple headstones defaced, shattered, overturned, propped back to back on cairns of loose stones, or piled in broken and dishonored heaps, there must be many hundreds. They are for the most part rounded at the top like ancient Egyptian stelæ and bear elaborately carved inscriptions, some of which are in the Cufic character and more than a thousand years old. Seen when the sun is bending westward and the shadows are lengthening, there is something curiously melancholy and picturesque about this city of the dead in the dead desert.
Leaving the tombs, we now strike off toward the left, bound for the obelisk in the quarry, which is the stock sight of the place. The horizon beyond Assûan is bounded on all sides by rocky heights, bold and picturesque in form, yet scarcely lofty enough to deserve the name of mountains. The sandy bottom under our camel’s feet is strewn with small pebbles and tolerably firm. Clusteredrocks of black and red granite profusely inscribed with hieroglyphed records crop up here and there and serve as landmarks just where landmarks are needed. For nothing would be easier than to miss one’s way among these tawny slopes and to go wandering off, like lost Israelites, into the desert.
Winding in and out among undulating hillocks and tracts of rolled bowlders, we come at last to a little group of cliffs, at the foot of which our camels halt unbidden. Here we dismount, climb a short slope and find the huge monolith at our feet.
Being cut horizontally, it lies half-buried in drifted sand, with nothing to show that it is not wholly disengaged and ready for transport. Our books tell us, however, that the under-cutting has never been done and that it is yet one with the granite bottom on which it seems to lie. Both ends are hidden; but one can pace some sixty feet of its yet visible surface. That surface bears the tool-marks of the workmen. A slanting groove pitted with wedge-holes indicates where it was intended to taper toward the top. Another shows where it was to be reduced at the sides. Had it been finished, this would have been the largest obelisk in the world. The great obelisk of Queen Hatshepsu at Karnak, which, as its inscriptions record, came also from Assûan, stands ninety-two feet high and measures eight feet square at the base;[51]but this which lies sleeping in the desert would have stood ninety-five feet in the shaft, and have measured over eleven feet square at the base. We can never know now why it was left here, nor guess with what royal name it should have been inscribed. Had the king said in his heart that he would set up a mightier obelisk than was ever yet seen by eyes of men, and did he die before the block could be extracted from the quarry? Or were the quarrymen driven from the desert, and the Pharaoh from his throne, by the hungry hordes of Ethiopia, or Syria, or the islands beyond the sea? The great stone may be older than Rameses the Great, or as modern as the last of the Romans; but to give it a date, or to divine its history, is impossible. Egyptology, which has solved the enigma of the sphinx, is powerless here. The obelisk of the quarry holds its secret safe, and holds it forever.
Ancient Egyptian quarrying is seen under its most striking aspect among extensive limestone or sandstone ranges, as at Turra and Silsilis; but the process by which the stone was extracted can nowhere be more distinctly traced than at Assûan. In some respects, indeed, the quarries here, though on a smaller scale than those lower down the river, are even more interesting. Nothing surprises one at Silsilis, for instance, more than economy with which the sandstone has been cut from the heart of the mountain; but at Assûan, as the material was more precious, so does the economy seem to have been still greater. At Silsilis, the yellow cliffs have been sliced as neatly as the cheese in a cheese-monger’s window. Smooth, upright walls alone mark the place where the work has been done; and the amount of débris is altogether insignificant. But at Assûan, when, extracting granite for sculptural purposes, they attacked the form of the object required and cut it out roughly to shape. The great obelisk is but one of the many cases in point. In the same group of rocks, or one very closely adjoining, we saw a rough-hewn column, erect and three parts detached, as well as the semi-cylindrical hollow from which its fellow had been taken. One curious recess from which a quadrant-shaped mass had been cut away puzzled us immensely. In other places the blocks appeared to have been coffer shaped. We sought in vain, however, for the broken sarcophagus mentioned in Murray.
But the drifted sands, we may be sure, hide more precious things than these. Inscriptions are probably as abundant here as in the breccia of Hamamat. The great obelisk must have had a fellow, if we only knew where to look for it. The obelisks of Queen Hatshepsu, and the sarcophagi of famous kings, might possibly be traced to their beds in these quarries. So might the casing-stones of the Pyramid of Menkara, the massive slabs of the Temple of the Sphinx, and the walls of the sanctuary of Philip Aridæus at Karnak. Above all, the syenite Colossus of the Ramesseum and the Colossus of Tanis,[52]whichwas the largest detached statue in the world, must each have left its mighty matrix among the rocks close by. But these, like the song of the sirens or the alias of Achilles, though “not beyond all conjecture,” are among the things that will never now be discovered.
As regards the process of quarrying at Assûan, it seems that rectangular granite blocks were split off here, as the softer limestone and sandstone elsewhere, by means of wooden wedges. These were fitted to holes already cut for their reception; and, being saturated with water, split the hard rock by mere force of expansion. Every quarried mass hereabouts is marked with rows of these wedge-holes.
Passing by the way a tiny oasis where there were camels and a well, and an idle water-wheel, and a patch of emerald-green barley, we next rode back nearly to the outskirts of Assûan, where, in a dismal hollow on the verge of the desert, may be seen a small, half-buried temple of Ptolemaic times. Traces of color are still visible on the winged globe under the cornice, and on some mutilated bas-reliefs at either side of the principal entrance. Seeing that the interior was choked with rubbish, we made no attempt to go inside; but rode away again without dismounting.
And now, there being still an hour of daylight, we signified our intention of making for the top of the nearest hill, in order to see the sun set. This, clearly, was an unheard of innovation. The camel boys stared, shook their heads, protested there was “mafeesh sikkeh” (no road), and evidently regarded us as lunatics. The camels planted their splay feet obstinately in the sand, tried to turn back, and, when obliged to yield to the force of circumstances, abused us all the way. Arrived at the top, we found ourselves looking down upon the Island of Elephantine, with the Nile, the town, and the dahabeeyahs at our feet. A prolongation of the ridge on which we were standing led, however, to another height crowned by a ruined tomb; and seemed to promise a view of the cataract. Seeing us prepare to go on, the camel boys broke into afurorof remonstrance, which, but for Salame’s big stick, would have ended in downright mutiny. Still we pushed forward, and, still dissatisfied, insisted on attacking a third summit. The boys now trudged on in sullen despair. The sun was sinking; the way was steep and difficult; the night would soon come on. If the howadji chose to break their necks, it concerned nobody but themselves; but if the camels broke theirs, who was to pay for them?
Such—expressed half in broken Arabic, half in gestures—were the sentiments of our youthful Nubians. Nor were the camels themselves less emphatic. They grinned; they sniffed; they snorted; they snarled; they disputed every foot of the way. As for mine (a gawky, supercilious beast with a bloodshot eye and a battered Roman nose), I never heard any dumb animal make use of so much bad language in my life.
The last hill was very steep and stony; but the view from the top was magnificent. We had now gained the highest point of the ridge which divides the valley of the Nile from the Arabian desert. The cataract, widening away reach after reach and studded with innumerable rocky islets, looked more like a lake than a river. Of the Libyan desert we could see nothing beyond the opposite sand-slopes, gold-rimmed against the sunset. The Arabian desert, a boundless waste edged by a serrated line of purple peaks, extended eastward to the remotest horizon. We looked down upon it as on a raised map. The Moslem tombs, some five hundred feet below, showed like toys. To the right, in a wide valley opening away southward, we recognized that ancient bed of the Nile which serves for the great highway between Egypt and Nubia. At the end of the vista, some very distant palms against a rocky background pointed the way to Philæ.
Meanwhile the sun was fast sinking—the lights were crimsoning—the shadows were lengthening. All was silent; all was solitary. We listened, but could scarcely hear the murmur of the rapids. We looked in vain for the quarry of the obelisk. It was but one group of rocks among scores of others, and to distinguish it at this distance was impossible.
Presently, a group of three or four black figures, mounted on little gray asses, came winding in and out among the tombs, and took the road to Philæ. To us they were moving specks; but our lynx-eyed camel boys at once recognized the “Sheik el Shellàl” (sheik of the cataract) and his retinue. More dahabeeyahs had come in;and the worthy man, having spent the day in Assûan visiting, palavering, bargaining, was now going home to Mahatta for the night. We watched the retreating riders for some minutes, till twilight stole up the ancient channel like a flood and drowned them in warm shadows.
The after-glow had faded off the heights when we at length crossed the last ridge, descended the last hillside, and regained the level from which we had started. Here once more we met the Fostât party. They had ridden to Philæ and back by the desert and were apparently all the worse for wear. Seeing us they urged their camels to a trot and tried to look as if they liked it. The idle man and the writer wreathed their countenances in ghastly smiles and did likewise. Not for worlds would they have admitted that they found the pace difficult. Such is the moral influence of the camel. He acts as a tonic; he promotes the Spartan virtues; and if not himself heroic, is, at least, the cause of heroism in others.
It was nearly dark when we reached Assûan. The cafés were all alight and astir. There was smoking and coffee-drinking going on outside; there were sounds of music and laughter within. A large private house on the opposite side of the road was being decorated as if for some festive occasion. Flags were flying from the roof, and two men were busy putting up a gayly-painted inscription over the doorway. Asking, as was natural, if there was a marriage or a fantasia afoot, it was not a little startling to be told that these were signs of mourning, and that the master of the house had died during the interval that elapsed between our riding out and riding back again.
In Egypt, where the worship of ancestry and the preservation of the body were once among the most sacred duties of the living, they now make short work with their dead. He was to be buried, they said, to-morrow morning, three hours after sunrise.