Wednesday, October 14, 1868.—Went on board, dined and slept.Thursday, 15th.—Started at about 7A.M.There had been a storm in the night, and the east was still heavy with clouds; but the western sky was pure and soft.At about ten caught up the Sterlings, becalmed in their dahabyeh; their crew was making a futile attempt to tow them against the current. I let out a rope and tugged them as far as Benisoëf, which, owing to the additional weight, I did not reach till Friday morning (16th).The first day's journey up the Nile is enchanting, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The sky was bright, but tempered by a glimmering haze which produced the loveliest effects; those of the early morning were the most striking. The course of the river being nearly due north, the western bank was glowing in varied sunny lights; the other seemed made up of shadowy veils of gauze fainting gradually towards the horizon. The boats that passed on the left, dark in the blaze of light, looked, with their outspread wings, like large moths of dusky brown; those on the right shone against the violet sky like gilded ivory. The keynote of this landscape is a soft, variant, fawn-coloured brown, than which nothing could take more gratefully the warm glow of sunlight or the cool purple mystery of shadow; the latter perhaps especially, deep and powerful near the eye (the local brown slightly overruling the violet), but fading as it receded into tints exquisitely vague, and so faint that they seem rather to belong to the sky than to the earth. At this time of year the broad coffee-coloured sweep of the river is bordered on either side by a fillet of green of the most extraordinary vivacity, but redeemed from any hint of crudity by the golden light which inundates it.The brightest green is that of the Indian corn—the softest and most luminous that of an exquisite grass, tall as pampas (perhaps itisa kind of pampas, I have not seen it close yet), and like it crowned with a beautiful plume-like blossom of the most delicate hue; seen against a dark shady bank, and with the sun shining through it, it shimmers with the sheen of gossamer.Frequent villages animate the river's edge; they are built of unbaked bricks coated with mud, and have a most striking effect. The simplicity and variety of the shapes of the houses, with their slightly sloping sides and flat roofs, give them a certain dignity in their picturesqueness which delights me; the colour, too, is particularly agreeable, and is the most beautiful foil to the bronze-brown of the naked, or nearly naked, fellaheen and the indigo of the robes of their wives; to the sparkling white of the doves that swarm in the gardens, and to the cinder-colour of the buffaloes that wink and snooze along the bank. Every village nestles in a dense grove of date-palms, and one cannot conceive a lovelier harmony than that which is made by the combination of the browns below with the sea-green of the sweeping branches and the flame-like orange of the fruit. The acacia (here a large, massive tree, with a vigorous dark green foliage) is frequent in the villages.The shape of the hills and mountains is very peculiar and striking. It gives the idea of a choppy sea of sand thrown up into abrupt peaks and then uniformly truncated by a sweep of a vast scythe, sweeping everything from horizon to horizon. Here and there a little peak, too low to be embraced in the general decapitation, raises its head amongst innumerable table-lands and gives great value and relief to the general outline.Meanwhile an occasional train and not infrequent lines of telegraph poles don't add to the poetry of the scene.Nor the flies to one's comfort! What a curse they are! theyinfestone's face. I wonder what the epiderm of Egyptian children is made of; you see babies with a dozen flies settled, no, stuck, embedded in and round each of their eyes, and as many in and about their noses and mouths; and they make no attempt to remove them—seem absolutely unconscious of them.Scenery this afternoon less interesting—river wider—banks more monotonous.Opposite a place called Magaga, some fine mountains on the east bank, scored with innumerable horizontal lines marking the monotonous parallel strata of which they are composed; a characteristic peculiarity in all the Egyptian hills I have seen as yet. (The finest in outline are the Quarries opposite Sakkara, on the right bank, and like those behind the Citadel at Cairo.)Spent the night at a village called Kolosana, not having made Minyeh owing to delay at Benisoëf, where we coaled, and took leave of the Sterlings, with whom I breakfasted. The sunset before reaching Kolosana was magnificent, like a sunset at sea; almost as grand in its simplicity. Between the broad flaming sky and the broad flaming river there was only a long narrow strip of dark bronze-green bank, that seemed to burst into flame where the almost white hot sun sank scowling behind it. The after-glow was also very fine, though less grand than I should have expected. The sky was of a deep violet, and the distant rolling sand-tracks wore the most mysterious tints, faint, glimmering, uncanny, vague fawn colours, pale dun browns, and ghostly pinks.Saturday, 17th.—Started at dawn, and arrived at Minyeh about eight o'clock.Stayed two hours and coaled.Obeying the custom of the country, I have presented the crew with a sheep—great satisfaction.Took a stroll in the Bazaars, which are rather picturesque. Minyeh is a largish place (chef lieu), and, like every second village on the Nile, disfigured by the tall chimneys of sugar factories.There is a striking line of hills opposite Minyeh, quaintly jagged in outline and curiously regular in the marking of its strata.Passed Beni Hassan, where I shall stop on my return.It is curious to see the incessant toiling of the natives at irrigation. The poor people literallymaketheir country every year, and it is marvellous to see how a narrow fillet of water will, as by enchantment, conjure up in a few weeks an oasis out of an arid desert. The land of Egypt is born afresh out of the Nile every returning year.I observe, with pleasure, in this part of the country thoselittle white-domed tombs of Sheykhs which make such a pretty feature in the landscape of Algeria.At Minyeh there is one, close to the riverside, in which rests the "Sheykh of the Crocodiles" whose holy dust prevents those man-eating ornaments of the Upper Nile from going any further towards Cairo—below this tomb they never venture.Not having reached Manfalût by sunset, we have drawn up for the night by the bank of the river, nowhere in particular. This entire freedom in our movements (I should saymine, for the steamer stops exactly where, when, and as often as I choose) is very agreeable. Less pleasant is the storm of flies and insects of every kind, that rush in literally by myriads as soon as candles are lighted within reach of shore; my tablecloth is darkened with thousands of little flies no larger, wings and all, than a moderate flea; the nuisance is intolerable.A wonderful sunset again this evening. The western bank like yesterday was low and brown and green, but, unlike yesterday, it was alive with the sweet clamour of many birds. On the eastern side the long wall of rock which seems to enclose the whole length of the valley of the Nile came flush, or almost flush, to the water's edge; and with what an intense glory it glowed! The great hills seemed clad in burnished armour of gold fringed and girt below with green and dark purple; but the smooth face of the water was like copper, burnished and inlaid with sapphire.I sat in the long gloaming enjoying the soft, warm, supple air, and watching the tints gradually change and die round the sweep of the horizon, and across the immense mirror of the Nile as broad as a lake. It was enchanting to watch the subtle gradations by which the tawny orange trees that glowed like embers in the west, passed through strange golden browns to uncertain gloomy violet, and finally to the hot indigo of the eastern sky where some lingering after-glow still flushed the dusky hills; and still more enchanting to watch the same tones on the unruffled expanse of the water, slightly tempered by its colour and subdued to greater mystery. A solemn peace was over everything. Occasionally a boat drifted slowly past with outspread wings, in colour like an opal or lapis lazuli, and then vanished. It was a thing to remember.I hear an altercation between Ottilio (my Italian waiter) and a stoker who has put down his grease can on one of the Pasha's smartest plates. "O—(adjective)—Madonna! se si può vedere una carogua simile! e se me la rompi pas? costa più di te—sa!"My young dragoman having fastened a hook to a bit of string, and the bit of string to the stern of the steamer, has been waiting some hours for a fish. After the first hour he reasoned with himself, and said: "Brabs (perhaps?) he know!"—then, dolefully, "He come touch the 'ook, and then he go run away!"—cela c'est vu. To-morrow to Asyoot. 10½ P.M. Just been on deck again. Dragoman still fishing! He says, "I tink hewon't." I incline to agree with him.Sunday, 18th.—Started about six. Reached Syoot, or rather El Hamza for Syoot, which is a mile inland, at eleven. Between Manfalût and Syoot the Nile takes an immense sweep west, and assumes altogether a tortuous course; the plain opens out, the eastern mountains recede, and for the first time an important chain closes in on the west. Game is already beginning to be abundant. I saw a sandbank full of pelicans and geese just below this place. I wish I could get at the names of the small birds I see here, which are mostly new to me; an Arab invariably answers your questions on this subject by the word "asfoor,"i.e.a bird—thankee! The peasants here all wear a loose dark brown robe like that of a Franciscan monk; and as they squat fishing on the brown bank of the river with their skull-caps and black beards, I fancy I see the monks of the Thebaïd coming, as in old days, to get their daily meat out of the Nile.Irrigation seems to go on more actively even than lower down; I saw to-day no less than twenty-four shadoofs all in a row, and in full play. The men that worked them, mostly naked, were of every colour between a new halfpenny and an old shoe, and the effect of them all toiling away and surrounded by groups of squatting onlookers was very striking.Hosseyn, my servant, the angler, is having his head shaved on deck; when he has done I shall visit the town.Meanwhile I have had a visit from the government doctor, a rather intelligent man who made his studies in Pisa.Pipes and coffee as usual.Here comes Hosseyn clean-shaven. He is a nice boy, eager and willing—but wants varnish; he can never address me without scratching his spine at its lowest extremity; Audrey herself could not have done it in a manner more naïvely unconventional. Though only twenty, he has had two wives; not liking the first, who snubbed his relations, he gave her three months' wages and dismissed her. To avoid further unpleasantness he then married his cousin: "She good woman—very quiet—good tongue."The village at which we have landed is very picturesque. The mud and brick architecture is here carried out with some care and is entirely delightful. The walls are mostly crowned with an openwork finish made by a simple arrangement of the bricks which is most effective. Sometimes, as, for instance, in the cemetery, they are surmounted by crenulations like those we see in the old Assyrian monuments; the heads of the doorways are decorated with a charming sort of diapered ornament, capable of great variety and produced entirely by the arrangement in patterns of the bricks; the patterns being painted black and the ground filled in with white. The woodwork in the windows is also very pretty, and altogether the general aspect of the houses most novel and striking.Beyond the village I wandered into a delightful garden; a half cultivated wilderness of palm and gum trees in which one came on unexpected pergolas, and lovely garden trees all pouring out their most intoxicating scents under the fiercest sun I ever walked beneath. I saw oleanders, the flowers of which were as thick as roses and smelt like a quintessence of nectarines; there were also some beautiful olive trees with weeping branches—a thing I had never seen before—and with berries as large as plums. Overhead, amongst the yellow dates, sat doves the colour of pale violets.Syoot itself is beautifully situated amongst groves and gardens; except in that it is brown and not white, it reminded me much of an Algerine town; it is very unlike Cairo. The rock-cut tombs in the mountain above the town are so mutilated and disfigured that little can be made of them; but they have thatstamp of vastness which is so characteristic of all the ancient monuments of this country.The view from the height is very fine. The river has barely begun to fall yet, so that everything is reflected in the great sheets of water that cover the land. At evening I saw the sunset through the tall palm trees, with the domes of Syoot dark against its flaming light.For a fine showy assertion that looks very original and striking, but is not calculated for pedantic verification, commend me to a Frenchman. The other day, at Boulay, Mariette Bey, the creator and the curator of the Museum of that ilk, and a man of high standing as an Egyptologist, told me that the Nile was turned into its actual course by a great chain of hills at Syoot which, serving as a rampart, alone prevented it from following its obvious tendency to flow into the Red Sea. "Il allaitévidemmentse jeter dans la Mer Rouge;" in fact, but for this hill, there would have been no Lower Egypt, that country being literally the child of the Nile which alone prevents the sands of the central deserts from ruling over the whole breadth of the land. Here was a dramatic revelation of coincidences! Here was a startling suggestion of contingencies!It fairly took your breath away! without that hill no Nile north of Syoot! half Egypt would not have been! No Memphis! Memphis with its wisdom! No Alexandria with its schools! No Cairo with its four thousand mosques! No Pharaohs! No Moses! (The poor devil of a sculptor who drowned himself in his own fountain because he found he had madehisMoses too short might have died in his bed.) No Cleopatra! (turn in your grave, noble dust of Antony!)—"forty centuries" would have had no Pyramids from which to look down on the conquering arms of Buonaparte. Mr. Albert Smith's popular entertainment would have been shorn of half its glories! Let me breathe! To what fantastic proportions did that hill grow as one thought of it!Alas! then, for prosaic fact; and oh! for unimaginative maps! On consulting the latter I observed that, by the time it reached Syoot, the Nile had been flowing for nearly two hundred miles in anorth-westerlydirection, away from the Red Sea rather than towards it; and on visiting the spot I saw, oh confusion! thatthe hills which bore the responsibility (according to Mariette) of making the history of the world what it is, were on thewesternbank of the river!—there, at least, or nowhere, for a vast plain closes in on the east.This evening more visitors on board—lemonade and cigars—pour changer; Consuls, &c. &c.—tedious.Monday, 19th.—Left Syoot at six, and arrived at Sohag before three. Suffered a good deal in the morning from spasms of some sort, and was not in a frame of mind to appreciate the scenery. Was, moreover, driven near the verge of exasperation by the steersman (Reis Ali), who droned select passages from the Koran,sotto voce, within two yards of my ears from 8A.M.till 2P.ditto; the same four bars over and over, for ever and for ever in one unceasing guttural strain. I trust the pious exercise did more for his soul than for my temper. Hosseyn informs me that he is about to buy a lamb, and "make him big sheep." It appears that, during a serious illness three years ago, he vowed a votive sheep to Sitteh Zehneb—the granddaughter of the Prophet—on condition that he should recover. Since then he has put her off (oh, humanity!) with candles and occasional prayer; now, at last, he is going to fulfil his vow. Admire thrift combined with piety, and observe the economy on thelamb.Habit is a strange thing! Hosseyn, whose manners have been corrupted by evil communication with Europeans, occasionally attempts to use aforkin the bosom of his family—particularly when salad is put before him. On these occasions his elder brother invariably asks him with grim sarcasm whether he has no fingers. Hosseyn desists at once—"Brabs he beat me!—he big!"This evening I went out shooting amongst the palms and gum trees. It was very delightful, though ferociously hot. The village is charmingly situated; the ground prettily tumbled about, and trees and houses group themselves in the most picturesque manner. (I noticed some new mouldings over the doorways that had a very artistic effect.) I can't shoot at all; but the birds are so plentiful that something is sure to cross your gun if you only fire. I got a hawk, some doves, a dozen little birds nameless for me, and two little green birds of a kind that I have not seenbefore; they are quite lovely; must ascertain what they are called. The sun had set when I reached the boat, and all the dark plumes of the palm trees stood clear over the black outlines of the village; above, the new moon, a keen, golden sickle.Hosseyn has given up fishing. "Oh, oh! nasty fish! he to laugh me!"Was much amused this morning by the device and trade-mark on a tin of jam. (Jam, if you please, of Messrs. Barnes & Co. of Little Bush LaneandTooley Street.) The device was "Non sine labore"—and the trade-mark?—a beehive?—no!—the Pyramid of Cheops!Excusez.Some twenty miles above Syoot, or, say, fifteen, the eastern chain of mountains makes a bend towards the river, and for some distance ranges near it; the stream, in its usual tortuous course, sometimes flowing for a few hundred yards towards them and then for a few hundred yards in the opposite direction. I wonder whether one of these bends served as a foundation, or rather as a blind, for Mariette's astounding assertion that the Nile "allait évidemment se jeter dans la Mer Rouge." Did he "to laugh me," as the fish did by Hosseyn? Or did he merely mean to say that, if the Valley of the Nile had not turned north-west between Keneh and Manfaloot, it might have turned north-east? If so, joke for joke, I prefer the great Pyramid on the jam-pot of Mr. Barnes of Little Bush Lane and Tooley Street.Tuesday, 20th.—Started at about half-past five, and reached Disneh in the evening. There was a dead calm in the morning, and I congratulated myself, not for the first time, on my steamer; in a dahabieh I might have taken a week, and more, over the stretch of river I have just covered in a day; and the scenery just here, though fine, is monotonous. I am sorry for the Sterlings, who will, I fear, be unusually long getting up. This afternoon I saw Sheykh Selim, a sort of St. Simeon Stylites without the column. This holy man's peculiar form of piety consists in sitting stark naked on the bank of the river and exacting presents in money and kind from all passers-by.Hosseyn had spoken to me at great length of his wisdom and piety, and assured me that when the crocodiles, which are numerous about here, presented themselves before the eyes ofthe Sheykh, he merely waved his hand and said "Biz, biz!" whereat they fled, rebuked. He informed me also that no boat refusing him tribute could expect to get on—it would infallibly be becalmed until his holiness was propitiated. To my surprise I found that my captain, a sensible old gentleman in other respects, believed this just as firmly, though he expressed his faith more vaguely. When I asked him whether the Sheykh's power extended also to steamers, which did not wait on the wind, he said: "Well, Allah was great, and though, certainly, asteamermight, no doubt—so well appointed a steamer particularly—might, no doubt, get past—yet who should say? Allah was great!" In fact he believed with the best; so, of course, I said, by all means let the Sheykh be propitiated. Accordingly when we hove in sight of the little mound where he sits, and has sat for God knows how many years, we turned the steamer (a vessel of seventy-five horse-power) and ran straight in for the bank at considerable risk, it struck me, of not getting off again. The whole crew then went ashore in great excitement, headed by the captain, and surrounded the Saint, kissing his hand and salaaming. As I did not wish to hurt the old gentleman's feelings by not kissing his hand, I stayed on board and looked on. Sheykh Selim is a very vigorous-looking old fellow of the colour of a very dusky mahogany table; his hair and beard are woolly and of a dirty white; his countenance, as far as I could judge from a little distance, good-humoured and sagacious. He squats on the ground with his knees up and his arms folded across them. He inspects his presents, and asks for more. After the levée was over, and when our crew were about to come on board, he called after them and asked for roast meat, and then again a second time for oil wherewith to anoint himself. "There," said Hosseyn triumphantly, "he know everything! he know we have roast meat—how he know that?"I was amused at the intellectual superiority of Ottilio, the Italian waiter. "Quanto sono stupidi questi Arabi!" For my part I don't see much more difficulty in swallowing Sheykh Selim than a stigmatised nun or a winking picture—I told him so.We should have reached Keneh to-day, but the coals were bad, and we had to stop at Dishulh, three hours this side ofthat place. Where was thy favouring grace, O Sheykh? It appears that, like the gods of ancient Greece, the Sheykhs of Egypt have their little misunderstandings; I am told that on one occasion Selim, having a few words with another holy man thirty-five miles up the river, by name Sheykh Fadl, and waxing wroth, threw a stone at him (what are thirty or forty miles to a saint?) and blinded him of one eye; whereon Sheykh Fadl returned the amenity by throwing "some fire" at Sheykh Selim, thereby sorely burning him. "I have seen the scar," my coxswain informs me.Killed another fatted sheep for the crew.Wednesday, 21st.—Arrived at Lougsor (El Uker) about three. It was too hot for sightseeing, so I waited till evening and went out shooting in a boat; at least I went out with the idea of shooting—if possible a pelican or a crane—but the birds were too shy—I could not get within fair shooting distance; wounded a pelican, but could not get after him in the deep mud. Got belated on the river, and the crew had to pull hard for an hour and a half to reach the steamer; fortunately there was a moon. Anything more good-humoured or more ineffective than the way in which the sailors pulled and shoved, I never saw; they hopped in and out of the boat in the shallows, up to their hips in the water—pushed, tugged, rowed and sangdie era im piacus; they can do nothing without the accompaniment of some rhythmic, droning refrain, which they can keep up for an indefinite time. Anything will do; my fellows pulled on this occasion to the following words—"Min Minyehfi Benisoef,"which is as who should say—"From Henleeto CookhamReach,"giving the stroke and the emphasis on the last syllable.In the evening was visited by Mustafa Aga, H.B.M. Consular Agent, one of his sons, the Turkish Governor (Hassan Effendi), and the local doctor. Mustafa is a very courteous old gentleman, with half a nose, and much respected by all who knowhim; I observed that Saïd, his son, would not smoke in his father's presence, in accordance with an Arab custom, which did not much remind me of the manner in which "the gov'nor" is treated in England.On Thursday morning, 22nd, I started to see the tombs of the kings, leaving the eastern bank and Karnak for my return. It was a lovely morning, and I crossed the Nile before the air had had time to get thoroughly heated. On the other side I found horses, kindly lent me by Mustafa (whose son accompanied me), and donkeys for the rest of the party. There were a good many of us, and we made a very absurd-looking procession—en tête, a couple of fine brawny Arabs, one of whom has been the guide to these ruins since Champollion; then Saïd and I on our horses—mine a good-looking chestnut, caparisoned with scarlet finery; behind us, on their respective donkeys, the captain in full uniform holding a large umbrella over his head, Hosseyn in his Arab dress, the French cook in his official white jacket and cap, the Italian waiter with a large handkerchief over his head, and the engineer; further behind, lesser menials and the hamper. I forgot the Turkish Cawass in uniform and armed to the teeth. Hovering round, brandishing water-bottles, was a swarm of Arab boys and girls, in sizes, and of various qualities of chocolate; they were dressed in the most fantastically tattered remnants of dark brown shirts that I ever saw; there was one little monkey of a dull ebony colour turned up with pale blue, whose form was revealed rather than covered by a few incoherent brown shreds of garment, and who was inexpressibly droll from the way in which he cocked his little head demurely on one side with a half-consciousness of insufficient drapery.The ride to the tombs, which takes about an hour, and the latter half of which lies through an arid valley, is very striking from the form and colour of the mountains. Nothing announces that one is approaching the city of the dead, and it is not till you stand before them that you become aware of the plain square openings which lead down to these magnificent last resting-places of the kings. It was a right royal idea this, of the old rulers of Egypt, to plunge these shafts into the bowelsof the rock, and give themselves a mountain for a tombstone over the palace which was their grave. The design of these houses of the dead is simple and apparently always much the same: a long corridor, sometimes with lateral galleries, sometimes with recesses or small chambers on each side, leads downwards by a not very rapid incline to a great hall, in the centre of which is the sarcophagus which contained the mummy of the king in its magnificent case; these cases have of course been all removed. All these lateral chambers were also originally filled with mummies—those, I believe, of the relations of the sovereign. The walls of these subterranean palaces and the ceilings are adorned throughout with coloured hieroglyphs and flat sculptured "graven images" representing mostly sacred and mystical scenes, but often, also, illustrating the different trades and crafts practised by the Egyptians. These paintings are of high interest from an ethnographic point of view—Poynter would have a fit over them. In the innermost places scores of bats dart about in intense alarm. The effect of the scanty light from the candles on these painted walls and on the dark bony forms of the Arabs is extremely fine—what your literary tourist would call "worthy of the pencil of Rembrandt."After lunching in a shady spot we took an anything but shady ride to the temple-palace of Koorneh, and from thence to the Memnonium. Both are very interesting, but the latter by far the finest; there is about it a breadth and a vastness, together with much elegance and variety, that are very impressive. Nothing that I have seen is comparable to the monuments of Egypt, for the expression of gigantic thoughts and limitless command of material and labour; withal there is about them something stolid and oppressive that is unsatisfactory; and as I looked at these vast ruins, vivid memories of Athens and its Acropolis invaded me, and the Parthenon in all its serene splendour rose before my mind; mighty, too, in its measured sobriety, stately in the noble rhythm of its forms; infinitely precious in the added glory of its sculptures; lovable as a living thing; and then more, perhaps, than ever before, I felt what a divine breath informed that marvellous Attic people, and what an ineffaceable debt of gratitude is due to them from us, blind fumblers in their footsteps.I was less struck than I had expected to be by the two colossal statues, of one of which it was poetically fabled by the ancients that a mysterious clang rose from it as the first rays of the rising sun smote its forehead. The myth is more striking than the statues, though their size and isolation give them something impressive. I had expected them, too, I don't know why, to be in a desert, and they are in a field. How infinitely grander is the great Sphinx, with its strange, far-gazing, haunting eyes, fixed, for ever, on the East, as if expecting the dawn of a day that never comes; immovable, unchanging, without shadow of sorrow, or light of gladness, whilst the gladness of men has turned to sorrow and their thoughts to ashes before them, through three times a thousand years! Century by century the desert has been gathering and growing round it—the feet are buried, the body, the breast are hidden. How soon will the sealing sands give rest at last to those steadfast, expectant eyes?In the evening Hosseyn had a great "fantasia" and fulfilled his vow—and spent all his money. He killed his sheep and roasted it, bought some rice and boiled it, some flour and had it made into bread; then mixing the whole, he distributed it in six very large trays; three were put before the crew, one he had placed on the wayside for all comers (and they all came); the other two were sent to the nearest mosque for the same purpose, and with similar results; then, being unable to read himself, he paid five men to recite from the Koran at night, in the mosque, and invited thereto the captain, Mustafa Aga, and his son and several others; he, the while, sitting outside and offering coffee to whoever passed by. When it was all over he came to me radiant: "El Hamdul illah," he said, throwing up his hands, "this is good! I am happy, everybody to be satisfied! this is rich day! El Hamdul illah! my money is all gone! why shall I mind? I spend it for God! brabs something good happen for me, el Hamdul illah!" His delight at the performance of his vow and his absolute faith were the prettiest thing one could see. Talking of faith, I am much struck by the dignified simplicity with which Mahometans practise the observances of their religion; praying at the appointed times without concealment, wherever they happen to be, and as a matter of course.Friday, 23rd.—Started early and coaled, first at Erment and then again at Esne, after which, being stopped by the night and shallow water, we anchored off a bank nowhere in particular. Heavens, what a hot day! this is indeed "the fire that quickens Nilus' slime," but has a vastly different effect on me. Sketching will be quite out of the question unless it gets rapidly cooler.At Esne I was visited by the chief magistrate, and by the governor of the province; the former a jolly oldbonhommewho offered me snuff, the other a very refined old gentleman with most charming manners. Both were Turks; and as they spoke no Christian tongue our conversation was carried on entirely through a dragoman; I was, however, pleased to find that I recognised several words that I learnt last year at Constantinople; I was glad, too, to hear again that fine vigorous language, the sound of which is extremely agreeable to me. Eastern manners are certainly very pleasing, and the frequent salutations, which consist in laying the hand first on the breast and then on the forehead, making at the same time a slight inclination, are graceful without servility. When an Egyptian wishes to express great respect he first lowers his hands to the level of his knees, exactly as in the days of Herodotus.Talking of Herodotus, here is a first-rate subject for Gérôme suggested by that author; it is ethnographical and ghastly. The scene is laid in the establishment of an ancient Egyptian embalmer and undertaker, fitted up with all the implements and appliances of the trade; in the background, but not so far as to exclude detail, groups of assistants should be shown busied over a number of corpses and illustrating all the different stages of preparation, embalsamation, swathing, &c. &c. In the centre a bereaved family have brought their lamented relative, and are selecting, from specimens submitted to them by the master undertaker, a style of treatment suited to their taste and means, and expressive of their particular shade of grief. A large assortment of mummy-cases would form appropriate accessories and give great scope for the display of knowledge and the use of a fine brush. It seems to me that so pleasing a mixture of corpses and archæology, impartially treated by that polite and accomplished hand, could not fail to create considerable sensation.Took a stroll through Esne whilst the ship was coaling. The darker tints of skin are beginning to preponderate more and more; mummy colour is in the ascendant here, together with a fine Brunswick black. Themen, I observe, spin in this country. The children are quite fascinating; they have nothing on but a little tuft of hair on the top of their shaven heads; those dazzling little teeth of theirs are wonderful to see, and funny—like a handful of rice in a coal-scuttle. Fine sunset again; the hills, ranged in an amphitheatre from east to west, showed a most wonderful gradation from extreme dark on one side to glowing light on the other. I make the profound reflection that no two sunsets are alike; this remark, however, does not extend todescriptionsof sunsets—verb. sap.When I saw Holman Hunt's "Isabel," his pot of basil puzzled me sorely; I had seen a great deal of basil, and have an especial love for it; but I had never seen it except with a very small leaf. I was sure, however, knowing his great accuracy, that Hunt had sufficient foundation for the large leaf he gave the plant in his picture; the very fellow of it is now before me in a nosegay of flowers, very kindly sent me by the old governor of Esne. As I smell it I am assailed by pleasant memories of Lindos—"Lindos the beautiful"—and Rhodes, and that marvellous blue coast across the seas, that looks as if it could enclose nothing behind its crested rocks but the Gardens of the Hesperides; and I remember those gentle, courteous Greeks of the island (so unlike their swaggering kinsfolk—if they are their kinsfolk—of the mainland), and the little nosegay, a red carnation and a fragrant sprig of basil, with which they always dismiss a guest.As we lay anchored by the shore in the evening, the dahabiehs came sweeping past in the moonlight; and the faint glimmering of the shell-like sails, and the flutter of the water against the swift, cutting keels, and the silence of the huddled groups, and the dark watchful figure of the helmsman at the helm, were strangely fantastic and beautiful.Saturday, 24th.—Started at half-past five—passed Edfou (which I leave for my return) at half-past seven. Shall we reach Assouan to-day? Hosseyn's pious orgies have, I fear, turned his head, for I observed yesterday that he has taken to fishing again."Brabs!—Insha Allah!" His interpretation of dreams is worthy of the ancient oracle-mongers; on the night before his sacrifice he dreamt that he had bought a slave, and then released it: "Wull! the slave is my sheep—is it not my slave? Wull, have I not buy it? Wull, I give it to the beebles—go!—I release it!" Whether the sheep, personally, considered itself released is problematic.Saturday Evening.—Reached Assouan this afternoon at four, and, after the usual visit from the governor, took a stroll. I don't yet know whether I am disappointed in the place or not. At all events it is quite unlike my expectations of it. I had imagined, I suppose from descriptions, a narrower gorge and higher rocks; in point of fact there is no gorge at all, but the river is narrowed, or, rather, split by several islands and some fine granite boulders cropping up here and there to fret the river, and announcing the rapids; otherwise the country is open enough, and original and striking in aspect; I shall know better to-morrow what I think of it all. I saw during my evening stroll, and for the first time in my life, a group of slaves, mostly girls. If I had seen them subjected to any ill-treatment I should have felt very indignant; but I am bound to own that, seeing them squatting round a fire like any other children, showing no mark of slavery, and occupied in cooking their food, scratching themselves (as well, no doubt, they might!) and looking otherwise very like monkeys, I found it difficult to realise to myself the hardship of their position, however much it may revolt one in the abstract. They were black, and uglier than young negroes generally are; their hair was arranged in an infinity of minute, highly-greased plaits all round their heads; the elder ones were draped; the youngest wore a fringepour tout potage. This is a noisy night; there is a "moolid" going on on the high bank to which we have made fast, and which borders the public square. A double row of howling dervishes are squatting and rocking and howling after their kind, almost over my head. In the brief lulls during which they take breath for further efforts, I hear from the other side of the river the mournful, weary, incessant creak of the water-wheel (with its blindfold cow or camel plodding round and round and round, apparently for ever), which in thisregion almost entirely supersedes the hand-worked bucket. The contrast is very curious.I have just returned the governor's visit. I found him sitting on a sofa in the piazza opposite the Government House, with half-a-dozen hand lanterns brought by the guests in front of him, and on each side a long row of benches (forming an avenue up to his seat) on which squatted and smoked numbers of picturesque folk, who looked to great advantage by the flickering glimmer of the lamps and under the soft warm light of an African moon. I sat in the place of honour, smoked my conventionaltchibouque, drank my inevitable cup of coffee, conveyed through my dragoman the usual traveller's remarks and questions (cardboard questions, so to speak, of which I knew the answers) to my host, who, like all the Turkish officials that I have seen, has the manners of a perfect gentleman and much natural dignity.Sunday, 25th.—Started for Phylæ at half-past seven; arrived there at nine o'clock. The road leads through a broad tract of yellow sand (where, I believe, an arm of the Nile is supposed to have flowed in remote antiquity) along which on either side crop up, in wild, irregular fashion, bumps and hillocks and hills of dark red granite, covered over with innumerable fragments of the same stone, scattered in the most incredible confusion, and having rather a ludicrous appearance of having beenleft aboutand forgotten. You could get an excellent notion of the thing in miniature, by hastily spilling a coal-scuttle on a gravel walk and running away.Above Assouan we are fairly in Nubia, and of course none but the darkest complexions are to be seen; but so large a number of negroes make their way here from the Soudan (the Nubians are notblack, but of a beautiful dark cairngorm brown), that the whole place has an air of negro-land which is disagreeable to me. The young men, indeed, both black and brown, are sometimes extremely fine fellows (bar the legs, which are never good), but the girls, as far as one can see them, are tolerably ill-favoured, and the old women, of an ugliness which passes all belief. They arefarworse than apes. The ladies in this part of the country gladden the hearts of their admirers by anointing their bodies with castor oil, so that the atmosphereof their villages, however full of sweet suggestion to a native, is much the reverse to a traveller with a nose not attuned to these perfumes; the smell that greets you through an open door is a mixture of the bouquet just named, and a penetrating flavour of accumulated stuffed beasts, and naturally interferes much with my enjoyment.At Mahatter we left our donkeys and took a boat to Phylæ, a quarter of a mile, which takes half an hour owing to the rapidity of the current just above the cataract. The scenery about Phylæ has been spoken of as Paradise; I never saw anything less like my notion of Paradise, and so far, therefore, I am disappointed. Original and strange it is, in a high degree. It is in fact exactly like the valley of which I spoke a little further back, only that the hills are four times as high, and water takes the place of the sand; the same breaking up of the rocks into a myriad of fragments, putting all grandeur and massiveness of form out of the question—and, with the exception of a few palm trees and a sycamore or two, the same barrenness. Looking up in the direction of Wâdy Halfâ, the mountains appear to grow finer in outline, and a tract of very yellow sand amongst their highest crests is striking and original—gold dust in a cup of lapis lazuli. With the island itself and its beautiful group of temples it is impossible not to be delighted. Nothing could be more fantastic or more stately than the manner in which it rises out of the bosom of the river like a vast ship, surrounded as it is on all sides by a high wall sheer from the water to the level on which the temples stand. One hall in the main temple, and one only, shows still a sufficient amount of colour to give a very good idea of what the effect must have been originally; the green and blue capitals must have been very lovely. It is needless to say that here, as elsewhere, travellers have left by hundreds lasting memorials of their brutality, in the shape of names and dates drawn, painted, scratched, and cut on every wall and column, so that the eye finds no rest from them. This strange and ineffably vulgar mania is as old as the world, and the tombs of the kings at Thebes are scrawled over with inscriptions left there by ancient Greek and Roman visitors. I shall return to Phylæ shortly to make a sketch or two—Insha Allah.Here, at last, I have found that absolutely clear crystalline atmosphere of which I had so often heard; I own it is not pleasing to me; a sky of burnished steel over a land of burning granite would no doubt be grand if the outlines of the granite were fine—but they are not. Meanwhile, perspective is abolished—everything is equally and obtrusively near, and I sadly miss the soft mysterious veils and pleasant doubts of distance that enchant one in other lands. I think it very likely that in winter one has great compensation from the exhilarating purity of the air; but just now the heat, which is simply infernal, is too trying for me to do justice to these advantages; no doubt the air is light and dry, but I feel unfortunately so very heavy and wet, that I am not in a position fully to appreciate it. Returning to Assouan in the evening, saw a dahabieh that had just got through the jaws of the cataracts, always rather a nervous matter; at least so they say; "to be very dyinger" (dangerous?), according to Hosseyn; the men were chanting a monotonous strain that had little of triumph in it, but rather conveyed a feeling of an always impending calamity escapedthistime; it was melancholy and very striking, I thought, in the silence of the gloaming; very likely pure fancy on my part, for I doubt whether more than a couple of boats are lost in a season, and the sailors of the Nile must be well accustomed to the dangers of these rapids; but the impression on me at the time was very strong.Monday, 26th.—The dragoman of the ship having a swelling of some sort on his arm, an Arab doctor was sent for, and forthwith informed him that his arm was possessed of the devil!! Went to see the island of Elephantina opposite Assouan, but saw nothing to suggest its ancient magnificence. Gave a silver farthing to a funny little child, which (the farthing) being perforated, his mother immediately tied into one of his little oily locks—an ingenious substitute for a pocket. I observed several little boys simply attired in a piece of string tied round their loins—there, Diogenes!Tuesday, 27th.—Began sketching, but am out of form from the heat. I am working chiefly because I am weary of idleness. I don't much care for the two sketches I have begun; they will therefore probably turn out badly. Going to try another presently.Tuesday Evening.—Have begun a sketch which interests memore than the others; it is taken amongst the tombs and shrines on the hills south of the town towards Phylæ. As my evening's work was drawing to a close, I heard a shuffling of feet a little behind me, and, turning round, saw, in the full fire of sunset, what appeared to me at first to be a procession of golden apes with dark blue robes, light blue lips, and nose-rings; on closer inspection they turned out to be Nubian women going home to their village. Hosseyn,qui a le mot pour rire, apparently, engaged in conversation with them, and convulsed them with laughter; the flashes of teeth were very funny to see. At last he gave them a few halfpence, and desired them to sing; whereon they set up a series of the most uncouth howls I ever heard; one baboon in particular got up and, using a flat date basket as a tambourine, accompanied her vocal performance with hops and jumps that would have done honour to any inmate of the monkey-house in the Zoological Gardens.The twilight, walking home, was lovely. The earth was in colour like a lion's skin; the sky of a tremulous violet, fading in the zenith to a mysterious sapphire tint. "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro."Slew another sheep—"Allah hou akbar!" (without which formula in the killing a good Muslim must not touch the meat): this sheep is no empty formality, for the unfortunate sailors would never see meat without it; they live on bread and occasional beans. This is the fourth night of the moolid, which is to last the whole week! At this very moment the tambourines of the dervishes are driving me nearly wild with their diabolic din.Wednesday, 28th.—Got on indifferently with my sketches; only one of them interests me much. The morning was almost cool and really delightful, but the heat was as great as ever in the daytime. I have always been unable to see the extraordinary difference which is said to exist between the length of the twilight in the north, and in southern countries; I could have read large print to-night three-quarters of an hour after sunset. Habit is everything, no doubt, as we are reminded by Herodotus,à proposof a certain people who ate their dead relatives instead of burning them; but I wonder whether I should ever get accustomed to the aching, straining, creaking complaint of the water-wheel far andnear, morning, noon and night, morning, noon and night; I canjustfancy its becoming attaching as the clacking of a mill.I have often wondered why, contrary to all analogy, the Spaniards call oilazedo, which at first sight appears to be the same word as the Italianaceto. I find that the word is Arabic:zeyd. Mem.: Look up the etymology of the English wordcough, to which no European word that I remember has any affinity, and which rather appears to be onomatopœic. The Arabs saykokh(guttural ending); is this a mere coincidence, and does the word date beyond the Crusades? I find a good many words that have a curious likeness to English. My endeavours to pick up a little Arabic are almost entirely frustrated by Hosseyn's utter inability to pull a sentence to pieces for me. In an Arabic sentence of two words (e.g.azekan tareed—if you please) he could not tell me which word was the verb! literally; I had to find out as best I could. I never saw anything to approach his obtuseness in the matter, except perhaps that of Georgi, my dragoman in Turkey. As I was sketching this evening a Nubian passed me, very grandly draped and erect, and followed by two green monkeys that were fastened by leading-strings to his belt. They toddled very snugly after their stately master and made a queer group.Sunday, November 1.—I am in a state of appreciative enjoyment of the comforts and civilised cleanliness of my steamer, having just returned from three or four days' roughing in the ruins of Phylæ. "Roughing" is a relative term, and my trials were of a very mild description, for though I sleptà la belle étoile(or rather tried to sleep), at all events I had a bed to rest in, and the air at night was delightful; moreover, the commissariat was very satisfactorily managed, so that food and drink were abundant; nevertheless, I must maintain that living in an open ruin is not comfortable. I made two or three sketches, and should probably have enjoyed myself, but that on the second day I was entirely thrown off the rails by the heat whilst sketching; I thought I should get acoup de soleil; I was very indisposed in the evening, and utterly unable to work the next morning, so that I took the placeen grippe, and could see nothing but the ugliness of the rocks and the wearing monotony of the hieroglyphs. Picked up in theevening, and liked the place better; made some original and striking reflections about the desirability of health.Having heard much of the beauty of the full moon at Phylæ, timed my visit to see it, and was entirely delighted. The light was so brilliant that one could read with ease, but at the same time so soft, so rich, and so mellow that one seemed not to see the night, but to be dreaming of the day. The Arabs say of a fine night, "it is a night like milk," but there is more of amber than of milk in the nights of Phylæ. The rising of the moon last night was the first thing of the sort I ever saw; the disc was perfectly golden, not as in a mist, but set sharp and clear in the sky, and exactly like the sun, except that you could look at it without pain to the eyes. The effect of this effulgent light on the shoulder of the hill was magical. The last hour of the afternoon I spent in strolling about the villages, which are picturesque. The cottages are four brown, roofless walls, built of the usual unburnt brick, and coated with mud; but the doorways are always highly decorated with painted geometrical devices which, in the mass of plain, sober brown, have a very cheerful and artistic effect. The people, too, amuse me; a pleasant, gentle, grinning folk these Nubians seem; I like their jargon—after the guttural Arabic it sounds so soft and round, and the women have funny, cooing inflections of voice (pretty voices, often) that are pleasing. Some of the girls are good-looking; chiefly through the brightness of their eyes and the milky whiteness of their teeth. The coiffure of the children is too funny; it consists in tufts of hair of various shapes and patterns left on an otherwise shaven head; often a crest all down the middle and a tuft on each side, exactly like the clown's wig in a pantomime; it is irresistibly droll.A grand sight is to see the villagers keeping the birds from their crops; they all serve in their turn, men, women, and children; they stand each on a rude sort of scaffold which rises about two feet clear of the corn; they are armed with slings from which they hurl lumps of clay at the birds, uttering loud cries at the same time. Their movements are full of grandeur and character. I wonder Gérôme has never treated a subject so well suited to him. Why, too, has he never painted mine enemy the sakkea, which is even more emphatically in his way, for, besides the scope for fineand quaint forms both in the men and the animals that work it, the accessories are abundant and interesting, and there are ropes in great abundance.Isthe sakkea my friend or my enemy? Its chant is so incessant that I should have to make up my mind if I stayed longer in the country; it would either fascinate me or drive me mad. As I listen in the silence of the evening, the rise and fall, the shifting and swaying of the wind bring its complaint from across the gurgling river in such a fitful way that it has the strangest and most unexpected effects: sometimes I fancy I hear deep, drowsy tones of a distant organ, sometimes the shrill quavering of a bagpipe; sometimes it is like a snatch of a song, sometimes like a whole chorus of voices singing a solemn strain in the sad, empty night; sometimes, alas! too often, like a snarling, creaking door-post.Phylæ being above the cataracts, my steamer stopped at Assouan, and I went there by donkey as before; returning, I chartered a dahabieh to see the said cataracts, of which for some days I had heard so much; amongst other things, that a ship was wrecked there three weeks ago (I saw it stuck on its rock to-day). The cowardice of the people here, at least in this particular matter, is very funny; too naïf to inspire disgust: my captain, an old sailor, and the nicest old gentleman possible, told Hosseyn that nothing would induce him to go down them; I thought I observed a shade of respectful interest in his reception of me on my return from an exploit which most Englishwomenwould consider good fun. I make no doubt that when the water is much lower, and your dahabieh shoots a good six or eight feet drop, and goes half into the water besides, considerable excitement may be got out of it; but now that the drop is not or does not look more than about a yard, and that the whole affair consists in a few plunges and shipping a little water, the emotion is very mild, and I own to considerable disappointment, though as far as it went it was pleasant. Nevertheless I did not for a moment regret coming if only on account of the amusement I got out of the sailors and pilots; the latter were men of years; the former, fine, jolly-looking lads as one could wish to see; but their demeanour throughout was infinitely droll; they rested their feet (according to custom here) oninclined planks, up which they ran three steps with their arms well forward to fetch the stroke, getting back into the sitting position as they pulled through the water (and wonderfully fine the action looks in a large crew all pulling well together); but the contortions in which they indulged, the gnashing and grinding of teeth, the throwing back of agonised heads, the frowns, the setting of jaws, the straining of veins, the rolling of eyes, the groans, and, absurdest of all, the coming down on one another's laps and the cutting of crabs, were ineffably grotesque, and would have convulsed me with laughter if I had not controlled myself manfully. Meanwhile the pilots were howling at one another and them with all the vehemence of a violent altercation, and for no discernible reason. When they were not shrieking at one another, the crew took up the usual Arab boatmen's chant (I know no better word); one man gives out a short sentence, or name, or form of prayer (not exceeding four syllables) in a quavering treble, and the rest then repeat it in chorus in a graver key—the effect is very original. As we got within sight of the big cataract and the stranded ship, Hosseyn loudly exhorted the crew to pray to the Prophet, and all the saints who have their shrines on the heights of Assouan, to see them safely through the danger; the invitation was loudly responded to, and everybody who had not an oar to pull held up his hands and prayed with great fervour—which was very pretty, and done with the dignified simplicity which always accompanies an Arab's devotions; but it was certainly disproportionate to the emergency. When we had danced up and down (or rather down and up) three or four times, I had the curiosity to look about for thesailorand waiter I had brought with me from the steamer; they were respectively green and yellow in their unfeigned terror. Then there was a nominalsmallcataract (the first one is called thegreatcataract), and indeed I believe there was athirdlittle commotion; then Hosseyn, throwing up his arms, exclaimed, "El Hamdul illah!! finish!!" and it was, as he said, "finish." I am utterly ignorant of the mysteries of navigation, but one figure we executed between the cataracts and Assouan struck me as novel: it consisted in turning entirely round in a wide circle to take (as it were) a fresh start; this manœuvre we performed with much gravity and success two successive times. An elaborate salutefrom the guns of the dragoman and engineer, responded to with appropriate solemnity by Hosseyn, announced my return to my steamer—and, oh joy! my tub.In the evening governor of course.Monday, 2nd.—Resumed work; painted for a couple of hours—badly—in a high wind at an ugly study of a view I don't like. I consider it a sort of discipline. The wind to-day is tremendously high; the dahabiehs will come flying up now. I saw my friend the captain just now sitting on the bank in the midst of an interested circle having his fortune told. There is a blessing for them that wait. Hosseyn has caught a fish! two fishes, to-day! his glee is unlimited, he is radiant; when that boy is at the near end of his fishing rope, he is so absorbed I can't get him to attend to me or to answer a question. His brilliant piscatorial success is an opportune set-off against a chagrin the poor boy had this morning; he was taking a dip somewhere under the paddle-box, and lost, in putting away his clothes (hethinks by a black but improbable theft), a Koran with which he travels and to which he attributes much luck; he was greatly cut up, and after telling me how much he valued the book, proceeded to inform me that it contained a little piece of wood from Abyssinia with something written on it, "some, what you call, scription," which, when worn round the neck, infallibly cured the bite of the scorpion; seeing that this announcement did not impress me as much as he had expected, he asked me with some warmth how I supposed, pray, that the snake-charmers prevented the snakes from biting them if it was not by saying something out of the Bible.Another sheep to-day; there was some hitch about the manner of the killing which caused a little excitement; his throat was not turned to the sun (or the East?) whilst he was being slaughtered; an important matter. I observe that Turkish officials are not expected to be able to write; my captain can, but I remarked that when his secretary, a poor, wizened little thing, whose nose and trousers are far too short, but whose mouth and ears offer ample compensation through their length, brought him to-day the ship's accounts, he stamped his signature at the foot of the page instead of writing it, although he happened to have a pen in his hand; I was giving him his English lesson. Talking of accounts,the Arabs have a curious way of singing or rather intoning their sums, rocking all the while backwards and forwards like so many Dervishes. I have seen a large house of business (at Sohag) whereallthe clerks were doing it at once; it was like a madhouse. Oh, Lombard Street, and oh, Mark Lane! what would you have felt at the sight?Tuesday, 3rd.—My last day at Assouan. Finished my sketches, took leave of the governor, and had a final stroll about the streets of the town, which seemed to me unusually picturesque. I remark that I invariably like a place best the day I leave it; if I am sorry to go, my regret casts a halo over it; if I am glad, my gladness makes everything brighter. How picturesque the people are! their flowing, flying draperies are wonderfully grand. I hope I may carry away with me some general impressions, but the immense multitude and rapid succession of striking things drive individual memories fatally out of the field. Sketching figures is out of the question—the effects are all too fugitive. This was also the last day of the moolid, and high time too; I met in the morning, in a narrow street, a procession of sailors carrying a boat, which they were about to deposit in the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held, and whose name they were loudly invoking. In front, drums and flags, and cawasses firing guns; behind, in front, everywhere, a host of most paintable ragamuffins enjoying the fun; above, over the brown house-tops, dark blue figures of women huddled peering at the procession; over them a blue sky with a minaret standing against it, a palm tree; some doves—there was the picture, it was charming. The children as usual called out, "Baksheesh howaga;" the so-called begging of the people has been ludicrously exaggerated; in the first place, only the children ask for baksheesh (I mean, of course, without the pretext of a service rendered), and in the next, they treat the whole thing as an excellent joke, and evidently have seldom the slightest expectation that they are to get anything. When you approach a village, every child, from as far as it sees you, whether from a window, or a doorway, or half-way up a palm tree, or the middle of the road, holloas out lustily, "Baksheesh, baksheesh," generally with much laughter, and frequently with a universal scamper in every direction except towards you. What I callbegging is that importunate whining that clings to you, and harasses you wherever you turn in the south of Italy or Spain, and with which this clamorous performance has nothing in common. I have remarked, with regard to grown-up Arabs, that though they wrangle vehemently with the dragoman on the subject of payment, they invariably show the master a pleasant and satisfied face. I speak, of course, only of my own experience. As strange a thing as a satisfied man is abarkingfish; the fish that Hosseyn has caught of late—for Fortune is his handmaid now—all utter a sound which I can only describe as a faint bark; perhaps everybody knows that some fishes do this, but I did not, and my surprise was extreme. They are nasty-looking objects, all fins and teeth (a thick row of little bristle-like teeth). They are fat and shiny and most insipid eating.Wednesday, 4th.—Started at six down stream; my face is turned towards bonny old England again, and I feel as if I had wings. At Kom Ombo (the first halt to-day) there are some ruins on a rock which crops up abruptly by the riverside in the midst of a flat country. The morning was divine, and the view from the temple, looking north, surpassingly lovely in colour. The form was nothing much; a vast sandy plain (tigered here and there with stripes of green), and in the distance a long low nest of mountain peaks; but the colour!—the gradation from the fawn-coloured glimmering sands in the foreground to the faint horizon with its hem of amethyst and sapphire was as enchanting a thing, in the sweet morning light, as I have ever seen. The temple is fine though heavy, and less delicate in detail than Phylæ. On the under surface of the architrave, between the columns, are some most curious and interesting unfinished decorations, on squares marked out in red, and showing (slight sketch) such as for instance a figure tried two ways on the same spot. The outlines are drawn out, in red also, with extraordinary firmness and freedom. Speaking of the squares, Gardiner Wilkinson—in his, I am told, most erudite, and, I am certain, most dry and heavy, guide-book—says that they were used (in the manner in which "squaring off" is practised in the present day) for the purpose of transferring a design. In this, however, he is obviously mistaken, because the squares are adapted not to the pictures butto the space to be decorated; the hieroglyphs and the figures being adapted to the squares, not the squares to them: that these squares, once made thebasisof the decoration and fixing its proportions and distribution, may then have been used also for enlarging a small design, or even, instead of tracing, for transferring one of the same size, is probable enough; but that was not their original function. In corroboration of this view, compare the frets and ornaments painted on thebackof the architrave of the Parthenon, which I have examined closely; they are painted in squares marked out with a sharp instrument, and determining the space to be decorated exactly as at Kom Ombo. The case is so entirely parallel as to suggest the idea that the Greeks learnt the practice in Egypt. The great temple of Edfou, where we stopped next, far surpasses anything I have yet seen in Egypt; not so much, perhaps, for any especial beauty of detail—although the sculptures are extremely fine—as for its general aspect, which is superb, and its wonderful state of preservation; many parts of it look as if they had been finished yesterday. The gigantic Propylæa, and the no less gigantic wall which encloses the whole of this fortress-temple, are almost entirely intact, and make it unlike any other ruin I know. The great court, a giant cloister into which one first enters, discloses the temple itself, blocked out in vast masses of light and gulfs of shade, and tunnelled through by a corridor which reaches to its extremest end; the absence of some portions of the roof, by letting the light play fantastically into the inner spaces, only adds to the mysterious grandeur of the effect. A broad, open peribolus runs round the temple, dividing it from the toweringmur d'enceintewhich encloses the whole building. The western part of the temple is as full of staircases, secret passages, and dark chambers as any Gothic castle. Every square inch of the whole immense fabric is covered with sculptures and hieroglyphs.I forgot to say that I stopped between Kom Ombo and Edfou at the ancient quarries of Gebel Silsily, from which the material of the sandstone temples was mostly quarried. They are extremely striking, and have a grandeur of their own. It was curious to compare them mentally with the marble quarries of Pentelicus from which Ictinus carved the Parthenon and Pheidias the Fates.In a tomb at El Kab are some most amusing and interesting sculptures (with the colour almost intact on them) representing the various occupations of Egyptian life, agricultural, &c. The reaping of the corn and durrah is pretty—a vintage and wine-treading pleased me vastly. Had they wine in this district?Coming upon a magnificent view, stopped the steamer for the night; want to see it by sunrise. The absurd spurious importance my steamer confers on me in the eyes of the natives is too funny. At Edfou I found the whole placeen émoi; horses handsomely caparisoned, a most polite governor, sheykhs, and a general profusion of salaams. It appears that the viceroy had the authorities in the different places telegraphed to be civil to me; and God knows they are. I was struck with the magnificence of the population here, the men at least; they are most stately fellows. I should like immensely to paint some of them, but for that there is no time; I can only hope that something will stick to me from this dazzling multitude of fine things. We are now again in the region of doves, whose presence in large numbers affects the architecture of the villages in a most curious manner. Every house has, or rather,is, a dovecot, the chiefcorps de bâtimentbeing a tower, or several towers, of which the whole upper part is exclusively affected to the doves. Their sides are inclined like the sides of the propylæa of the temples, with which they harmonise amazingly well; they are divided horizontally by bands of colour which have an excellent effect, recalling strongly the marked parallel strata of the mountains. (There is no more curious study than the concord which constantly manifests itself between national (and notably domestic) architecture, and the nature in the midst of which it grows up.) The construction of these towers is both peculiar and ingenious; they are built up entirely with earthen jars, sometimes placed topsy-turvy, but most often on their sides, and tier above tier like bottles in a cellar. The exterior is then filled in with mud, and the interior presents the appearance of a honeycomb, the cells being formed by the hollow jars; in these jars the doves have their abode. It is easy to see that by turning a few of the jarsoutwardsa very simple but pretty decoration may be obtained; a crest is added at the top by placing jars upside down at certain intervals; the bands ofcolour are generally divided by a string-course of bricks something after this fashion, but with much variety; and each of these string-courses is garnished with a perfect hedge of branches and twigs projecting horizontally a yard or more, and forming resting places for thousands of doves. Many houses have two towers, and the wealthier people have towers of great size subdivided again into small turrets; but in all cases the height of these edifices is the same, or nearly so, so that the villages received from them a very monumental look. The large towers are divided after the manner shown in the sketch. The natives also make to themselves curious pillar cupboards of mud (about man high), which from a distance have the oddest appearance; they look like raised pies on pedestals.Thursday, 5th.—Made a little sketch from the paddle-box before starting. Then to Esne to return the visit of my amiable friend, the governor; him of the flowers. There is a temple here; a heavy-looking portico of the Roman period, coarsely executed, but with a grand, cavernous look, buried as it is in the ground which rises all round it to half the height of the columns, so that you have to descend a considerable flight of steps to get at it. At Arnout, or at least within three miles of it, are a few fragments of the Cæsarium. The portraits of Cleopatra and Cæsarion (he is always seated on her lap), which occur here several times, would be of the greatest interest if they were not utterly conventional, and exactly like everybody else in every temple of the date. Got to Lougsor at sunset, and found no letters, no Sterlings, no Lady Duff Gordon. I trust the letters may still turn up before I go, for, if not, I shall probably lose them entirely, through my desire to get them a little earlier. In the evening dined with Mustafa Aga, and met there the American Consul-General, Mr. Hale, who had run up from Alexandria to show the Nile to a friend of his; both are agreeable men (Mr. Hale earned my warmest blessings by lending me a pile of English newspapers); there was also the Consul from Syoot with a friend of his. After dinner the dancing girls were asked in, and, presently, a buffoon who stripped to his waist and performed various antics; he was clever and a good mimic, but became terribly tedious after a short time. His performance was of the most Aristophanic coarseness. With thegirls, of whom I had heard so much, I was decidedly disappointed; in the first place they were mostly ugly, one or two only were tolerably good-looking—et encore!Then they were clumsily built, and their dress was quite ludicrous: it consisted in a body fitting tight to the figure and four inches too long in the waist, tight sleeves, a petticoat, in shape exactly like a pen-wiper, and very full, loose trowsers (bags) down to the feet; the whole of printed calico. In front of their waists hung a sort ofbreloque, or chain, looped up at intervals in festoons, the object of which was to jingle as they moved, and to add to the effect of certain little brasscastagnettecymbals which they held on the middle finger and thumb of either hand. A profusion of ornaments hung round their necks. Their dancing is very inferior to that of the Andalusian dancers of the same class, whose performance is full of a quaint grace and even dignity—inferior, too, to the Algerine dancing, to which that of the south of Spain more nearly approaches in character; it is monotonous in the extreme—very ugly for the most part, and remarkable only as a gymnastic feat; sleight of loins, so to speak. These are, however, no doubt, unfavourable specimens; I shall see the best of the kind in Keneh at the house of the Consul, who has come all the way here from that place to invite me thereto.Friday, 6th.—Went to the palace and temples of Medinet Haboo, with which I was delighted beyond my expectation. What pleased me most, and was an entire surprise to me, was a bit of purely secular architecture—the remains of a royal residence, with its towers flanking the great entrance, its windows of various shapes, balconies, semicircular crenelations, outer wall; in fact, identically such a building as one sees occasionally in Egyptian sculptures, and, curiously enough, as if it were a portrait of it, on the walls of the very temple to which this palace leads. The temple, too (the large one), interested me extremely from the wonderful preservation of the coloured decoration in parts of it; one really gathers an excellent idea of the original effect, and a most brilliant and magnificent (though barbarous) effect it must have been. The columns in the great hall here are of what, for want of a better word, I shall call the "ninepin" pattern; and I think on the whole I prefer it to the bell-capped pattern;because, besides its character and massive strength, there is no suggestion in it (as in the other) of the Doric order, with which comparison is obviously dangerous. As far as I can observe, there is no trace of colour on any of the propylæa, but the pylon is always richly decorated and highly coloured. This decorative importance given to the door must have had a very striking effect, and reminds me of the same peculiarity in the dwellings of Upper Egypt.
Wednesday, October 14, 1868.—Went on board, dined and slept.
Thursday, 15th.—Started at about 7A.M.There had been a storm in the night, and the east was still heavy with clouds; but the western sky was pure and soft.
At about ten caught up the Sterlings, becalmed in their dahabyeh; their crew was making a futile attempt to tow them against the current. I let out a rope and tugged them as far as Benisoëf, which, owing to the additional weight, I did not reach till Friday morning (16th).
The first day's journey up the Nile is enchanting, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The sky was bright, but tempered by a glimmering haze which produced the loveliest effects; those of the early morning were the most striking. The course of the river being nearly due north, the western bank was glowing in varied sunny lights; the other seemed made up of shadowy veils of gauze fainting gradually towards the horizon. The boats that passed on the left, dark in the blaze of light, looked, with their outspread wings, like large moths of dusky brown; those on the right shone against the violet sky like gilded ivory. The keynote of this landscape is a soft, variant, fawn-coloured brown, than which nothing could take more gratefully the warm glow of sunlight or the cool purple mystery of shadow; the latter perhaps especially, deep and powerful near the eye (the local brown slightly overruling the violet), but fading as it receded into tints exquisitely vague, and so faint that they seem rather to belong to the sky than to the earth. At this time of year the broad coffee-coloured sweep of the river is bordered on either side by a fillet of green of the most extraordinary vivacity, but redeemed from any hint of crudity by the golden light which inundates it.The brightest green is that of the Indian corn—the softest and most luminous that of an exquisite grass, tall as pampas (perhaps itisa kind of pampas, I have not seen it close yet), and like it crowned with a beautiful plume-like blossom of the most delicate hue; seen against a dark shady bank, and with the sun shining through it, it shimmers with the sheen of gossamer.
Frequent villages animate the river's edge; they are built of unbaked bricks coated with mud, and have a most striking effect. The simplicity and variety of the shapes of the houses, with their slightly sloping sides and flat roofs, give them a certain dignity in their picturesqueness which delights me; the colour, too, is particularly agreeable, and is the most beautiful foil to the bronze-brown of the naked, or nearly naked, fellaheen and the indigo of the robes of their wives; to the sparkling white of the doves that swarm in the gardens, and to the cinder-colour of the buffaloes that wink and snooze along the bank. Every village nestles in a dense grove of date-palms, and one cannot conceive a lovelier harmony than that which is made by the combination of the browns below with the sea-green of the sweeping branches and the flame-like orange of the fruit. The acacia (here a large, massive tree, with a vigorous dark green foliage) is frequent in the villages.
The shape of the hills and mountains is very peculiar and striking. It gives the idea of a choppy sea of sand thrown up into abrupt peaks and then uniformly truncated by a sweep of a vast scythe, sweeping everything from horizon to horizon. Here and there a little peak, too low to be embraced in the general decapitation, raises its head amongst innumerable table-lands and gives great value and relief to the general outline.
Meanwhile an occasional train and not infrequent lines of telegraph poles don't add to the poetry of the scene.
Nor the flies to one's comfort! What a curse they are! theyinfestone's face. I wonder what the epiderm of Egyptian children is made of; you see babies with a dozen flies settled, no, stuck, embedded in and round each of their eyes, and as many in and about their noses and mouths; and they make no attempt to remove them—seem absolutely unconscious of them.
Scenery this afternoon less interesting—river wider—banks more monotonous.
Opposite a place called Magaga, some fine mountains on the east bank, scored with innumerable horizontal lines marking the monotonous parallel strata of which they are composed; a characteristic peculiarity in all the Egyptian hills I have seen as yet. (The finest in outline are the Quarries opposite Sakkara, on the right bank, and like those behind the Citadel at Cairo.)
Spent the night at a village called Kolosana, not having made Minyeh owing to delay at Benisoëf, where we coaled, and took leave of the Sterlings, with whom I breakfasted. The sunset before reaching Kolosana was magnificent, like a sunset at sea; almost as grand in its simplicity. Between the broad flaming sky and the broad flaming river there was only a long narrow strip of dark bronze-green bank, that seemed to burst into flame where the almost white hot sun sank scowling behind it. The after-glow was also very fine, though less grand than I should have expected. The sky was of a deep violet, and the distant rolling sand-tracks wore the most mysterious tints, faint, glimmering, uncanny, vague fawn colours, pale dun browns, and ghostly pinks.
Saturday, 17th.—Started at dawn, and arrived at Minyeh about eight o'clock.
Stayed two hours and coaled.
Obeying the custom of the country, I have presented the crew with a sheep—great satisfaction.
Took a stroll in the Bazaars, which are rather picturesque. Minyeh is a largish place (chef lieu), and, like every second village on the Nile, disfigured by the tall chimneys of sugar factories.
There is a striking line of hills opposite Minyeh, quaintly jagged in outline and curiously regular in the marking of its strata.
Passed Beni Hassan, where I shall stop on my return.
It is curious to see the incessant toiling of the natives at irrigation. The poor people literallymaketheir country every year, and it is marvellous to see how a narrow fillet of water will, as by enchantment, conjure up in a few weeks an oasis out of an arid desert. The land of Egypt is born afresh out of the Nile every returning year.
I observe, with pleasure, in this part of the country thoselittle white-domed tombs of Sheykhs which make such a pretty feature in the landscape of Algeria.
At Minyeh there is one, close to the riverside, in which rests the "Sheykh of the Crocodiles" whose holy dust prevents those man-eating ornaments of the Upper Nile from going any further towards Cairo—below this tomb they never venture.
Not having reached Manfalût by sunset, we have drawn up for the night by the bank of the river, nowhere in particular. This entire freedom in our movements (I should saymine, for the steamer stops exactly where, when, and as often as I choose) is very agreeable. Less pleasant is the storm of flies and insects of every kind, that rush in literally by myriads as soon as candles are lighted within reach of shore; my tablecloth is darkened with thousands of little flies no larger, wings and all, than a moderate flea; the nuisance is intolerable.
A wonderful sunset again this evening. The western bank like yesterday was low and brown and green, but, unlike yesterday, it was alive with the sweet clamour of many birds. On the eastern side the long wall of rock which seems to enclose the whole length of the valley of the Nile came flush, or almost flush, to the water's edge; and with what an intense glory it glowed! The great hills seemed clad in burnished armour of gold fringed and girt below with green and dark purple; but the smooth face of the water was like copper, burnished and inlaid with sapphire.
I sat in the long gloaming enjoying the soft, warm, supple air, and watching the tints gradually change and die round the sweep of the horizon, and across the immense mirror of the Nile as broad as a lake. It was enchanting to watch the subtle gradations by which the tawny orange trees that glowed like embers in the west, passed through strange golden browns to uncertain gloomy violet, and finally to the hot indigo of the eastern sky where some lingering after-glow still flushed the dusky hills; and still more enchanting to watch the same tones on the unruffled expanse of the water, slightly tempered by its colour and subdued to greater mystery. A solemn peace was over everything. Occasionally a boat drifted slowly past with outspread wings, in colour like an opal or lapis lazuli, and then vanished. It was a thing to remember.
I hear an altercation between Ottilio (my Italian waiter) and a stoker who has put down his grease can on one of the Pasha's smartest plates. "O—(adjective)—Madonna! se si può vedere una carogua simile! e se me la rompi pas? costa più di te—sa!"
My young dragoman having fastened a hook to a bit of string, and the bit of string to the stern of the steamer, has been waiting some hours for a fish. After the first hour he reasoned with himself, and said: "Brabs (perhaps?) he know!"—then, dolefully, "He come touch the 'ook, and then he go run away!"—cela c'est vu. To-morrow to Asyoot. 10½ P.M. Just been on deck again. Dragoman still fishing! He says, "I tink hewon't." I incline to agree with him.
Sunday, 18th.—Started about six. Reached Syoot, or rather El Hamza for Syoot, which is a mile inland, at eleven. Between Manfalût and Syoot the Nile takes an immense sweep west, and assumes altogether a tortuous course; the plain opens out, the eastern mountains recede, and for the first time an important chain closes in on the west. Game is already beginning to be abundant. I saw a sandbank full of pelicans and geese just below this place. I wish I could get at the names of the small birds I see here, which are mostly new to me; an Arab invariably answers your questions on this subject by the word "asfoor,"i.e.a bird—thankee! The peasants here all wear a loose dark brown robe like that of a Franciscan monk; and as they squat fishing on the brown bank of the river with their skull-caps and black beards, I fancy I see the monks of the Thebaïd coming, as in old days, to get their daily meat out of the Nile.
Irrigation seems to go on more actively even than lower down; I saw to-day no less than twenty-four shadoofs all in a row, and in full play. The men that worked them, mostly naked, were of every colour between a new halfpenny and an old shoe, and the effect of them all toiling away and surrounded by groups of squatting onlookers was very striking.
Hosseyn, my servant, the angler, is having his head shaved on deck; when he has done I shall visit the town.
Meanwhile I have had a visit from the government doctor, a rather intelligent man who made his studies in Pisa.
Pipes and coffee as usual.
Here comes Hosseyn clean-shaven. He is a nice boy, eager and willing—but wants varnish; he can never address me without scratching his spine at its lowest extremity; Audrey herself could not have done it in a manner more naïvely unconventional. Though only twenty, he has had two wives; not liking the first, who snubbed his relations, he gave her three months' wages and dismissed her. To avoid further unpleasantness he then married his cousin: "She good woman—very quiet—good tongue."
The village at which we have landed is very picturesque. The mud and brick architecture is here carried out with some care and is entirely delightful. The walls are mostly crowned with an openwork finish made by a simple arrangement of the bricks which is most effective. Sometimes, as, for instance, in the cemetery, they are surmounted by crenulations like those we see in the old Assyrian monuments; the heads of the doorways are decorated with a charming sort of diapered ornament, capable of great variety and produced entirely by the arrangement in patterns of the bricks; the patterns being painted black and the ground filled in with white. The woodwork in the windows is also very pretty, and altogether the general aspect of the houses most novel and striking.
Beyond the village I wandered into a delightful garden; a half cultivated wilderness of palm and gum trees in which one came on unexpected pergolas, and lovely garden trees all pouring out their most intoxicating scents under the fiercest sun I ever walked beneath. I saw oleanders, the flowers of which were as thick as roses and smelt like a quintessence of nectarines; there were also some beautiful olive trees with weeping branches—a thing I had never seen before—and with berries as large as plums. Overhead, amongst the yellow dates, sat doves the colour of pale violets.
Syoot itself is beautifully situated amongst groves and gardens; except in that it is brown and not white, it reminded me much of an Algerine town; it is very unlike Cairo. The rock-cut tombs in the mountain above the town are so mutilated and disfigured that little can be made of them; but they have thatstamp of vastness which is so characteristic of all the ancient monuments of this country.
The view from the height is very fine. The river has barely begun to fall yet, so that everything is reflected in the great sheets of water that cover the land. At evening I saw the sunset through the tall palm trees, with the domes of Syoot dark against its flaming light.
For a fine showy assertion that looks very original and striking, but is not calculated for pedantic verification, commend me to a Frenchman. The other day, at Boulay, Mariette Bey, the creator and the curator of the Museum of that ilk, and a man of high standing as an Egyptologist, told me that the Nile was turned into its actual course by a great chain of hills at Syoot which, serving as a rampart, alone prevented it from following its obvious tendency to flow into the Red Sea. "Il allaitévidemmentse jeter dans la Mer Rouge;" in fact, but for this hill, there would have been no Lower Egypt, that country being literally the child of the Nile which alone prevents the sands of the central deserts from ruling over the whole breadth of the land. Here was a dramatic revelation of coincidences! Here was a startling suggestion of contingencies!
It fairly took your breath away! without that hill no Nile north of Syoot! half Egypt would not have been! No Memphis! Memphis with its wisdom! No Alexandria with its schools! No Cairo with its four thousand mosques! No Pharaohs! No Moses! (The poor devil of a sculptor who drowned himself in his own fountain because he found he had madehisMoses too short might have died in his bed.) No Cleopatra! (turn in your grave, noble dust of Antony!)—"forty centuries" would have had no Pyramids from which to look down on the conquering arms of Buonaparte. Mr. Albert Smith's popular entertainment would have been shorn of half its glories! Let me breathe! To what fantastic proportions did that hill grow as one thought of it!
Alas! then, for prosaic fact; and oh! for unimaginative maps! On consulting the latter I observed that, by the time it reached Syoot, the Nile had been flowing for nearly two hundred miles in anorth-westerlydirection, away from the Red Sea rather than towards it; and on visiting the spot I saw, oh confusion! thatthe hills which bore the responsibility (according to Mariette) of making the history of the world what it is, were on thewesternbank of the river!—there, at least, or nowhere, for a vast plain closes in on the east.
This evening more visitors on board—lemonade and cigars—pour changer; Consuls, &c. &c.—tedious.
Monday, 19th.—Left Syoot at six, and arrived at Sohag before three. Suffered a good deal in the morning from spasms of some sort, and was not in a frame of mind to appreciate the scenery. Was, moreover, driven near the verge of exasperation by the steersman (Reis Ali), who droned select passages from the Koran,sotto voce, within two yards of my ears from 8A.M.till 2P.ditto; the same four bars over and over, for ever and for ever in one unceasing guttural strain. I trust the pious exercise did more for his soul than for my temper. Hosseyn informs me that he is about to buy a lamb, and "make him big sheep." It appears that, during a serious illness three years ago, he vowed a votive sheep to Sitteh Zehneb—the granddaughter of the Prophet—on condition that he should recover. Since then he has put her off (oh, humanity!) with candles and occasional prayer; now, at last, he is going to fulfil his vow. Admire thrift combined with piety, and observe the economy on thelamb.
Habit is a strange thing! Hosseyn, whose manners have been corrupted by evil communication with Europeans, occasionally attempts to use aforkin the bosom of his family—particularly when salad is put before him. On these occasions his elder brother invariably asks him with grim sarcasm whether he has no fingers. Hosseyn desists at once—"Brabs he beat me!—he big!"
This evening I went out shooting amongst the palms and gum trees. It was very delightful, though ferociously hot. The village is charmingly situated; the ground prettily tumbled about, and trees and houses group themselves in the most picturesque manner. (I noticed some new mouldings over the doorways that had a very artistic effect.) I can't shoot at all; but the birds are so plentiful that something is sure to cross your gun if you only fire. I got a hawk, some doves, a dozen little birds nameless for me, and two little green birds of a kind that I have not seenbefore; they are quite lovely; must ascertain what they are called. The sun had set when I reached the boat, and all the dark plumes of the palm trees stood clear over the black outlines of the village; above, the new moon, a keen, golden sickle.
Hosseyn has given up fishing. "Oh, oh! nasty fish! he to laugh me!"
Was much amused this morning by the device and trade-mark on a tin of jam. (Jam, if you please, of Messrs. Barnes & Co. of Little Bush LaneandTooley Street.) The device was "Non sine labore"—and the trade-mark?—a beehive?—no!—the Pyramid of Cheops!Excusez.
Some twenty miles above Syoot, or, say, fifteen, the eastern chain of mountains makes a bend towards the river, and for some distance ranges near it; the stream, in its usual tortuous course, sometimes flowing for a few hundred yards towards them and then for a few hundred yards in the opposite direction. I wonder whether one of these bends served as a foundation, or rather as a blind, for Mariette's astounding assertion that the Nile "allait évidemment se jeter dans la Mer Rouge." Did he "to laugh me," as the fish did by Hosseyn? Or did he merely mean to say that, if the Valley of the Nile had not turned north-west between Keneh and Manfaloot, it might have turned north-east? If so, joke for joke, I prefer the great Pyramid on the jam-pot of Mr. Barnes of Little Bush Lane and Tooley Street.
Tuesday, 20th.—Started at about half-past five, and reached Disneh in the evening. There was a dead calm in the morning, and I congratulated myself, not for the first time, on my steamer; in a dahabieh I might have taken a week, and more, over the stretch of river I have just covered in a day; and the scenery just here, though fine, is monotonous. I am sorry for the Sterlings, who will, I fear, be unusually long getting up. This afternoon I saw Sheykh Selim, a sort of St. Simeon Stylites without the column. This holy man's peculiar form of piety consists in sitting stark naked on the bank of the river and exacting presents in money and kind from all passers-by.
Hosseyn had spoken to me at great length of his wisdom and piety, and assured me that when the crocodiles, which are numerous about here, presented themselves before the eyes ofthe Sheykh, he merely waved his hand and said "Biz, biz!" whereat they fled, rebuked. He informed me also that no boat refusing him tribute could expect to get on—it would infallibly be becalmed until his holiness was propitiated. To my surprise I found that my captain, a sensible old gentleman in other respects, believed this just as firmly, though he expressed his faith more vaguely. When I asked him whether the Sheykh's power extended also to steamers, which did not wait on the wind, he said: "Well, Allah was great, and though, certainly, asteamermight, no doubt—so well appointed a steamer particularly—might, no doubt, get past—yet who should say? Allah was great!" In fact he believed with the best; so, of course, I said, by all means let the Sheykh be propitiated. Accordingly when we hove in sight of the little mound where he sits, and has sat for God knows how many years, we turned the steamer (a vessel of seventy-five horse-power) and ran straight in for the bank at considerable risk, it struck me, of not getting off again. The whole crew then went ashore in great excitement, headed by the captain, and surrounded the Saint, kissing his hand and salaaming. As I did not wish to hurt the old gentleman's feelings by not kissing his hand, I stayed on board and looked on. Sheykh Selim is a very vigorous-looking old fellow of the colour of a very dusky mahogany table; his hair and beard are woolly and of a dirty white; his countenance, as far as I could judge from a little distance, good-humoured and sagacious. He squats on the ground with his knees up and his arms folded across them. He inspects his presents, and asks for more. After the levée was over, and when our crew were about to come on board, he called after them and asked for roast meat, and then again a second time for oil wherewith to anoint himself. "There," said Hosseyn triumphantly, "he know everything! he know we have roast meat—how he know that?"
I was amused at the intellectual superiority of Ottilio, the Italian waiter. "Quanto sono stupidi questi Arabi!" For my part I don't see much more difficulty in swallowing Sheykh Selim than a stigmatised nun or a winking picture—I told him so.
We should have reached Keneh to-day, but the coals were bad, and we had to stop at Dishulh, three hours this side ofthat place. Where was thy favouring grace, O Sheykh? It appears that, like the gods of ancient Greece, the Sheykhs of Egypt have their little misunderstandings; I am told that on one occasion Selim, having a few words with another holy man thirty-five miles up the river, by name Sheykh Fadl, and waxing wroth, threw a stone at him (what are thirty or forty miles to a saint?) and blinded him of one eye; whereon Sheykh Fadl returned the amenity by throwing "some fire" at Sheykh Selim, thereby sorely burning him. "I have seen the scar," my coxswain informs me.
Killed another fatted sheep for the crew.
Wednesday, 21st.—Arrived at Lougsor (El Uker) about three. It was too hot for sightseeing, so I waited till evening and went out shooting in a boat; at least I went out with the idea of shooting—if possible a pelican or a crane—but the birds were too shy—I could not get within fair shooting distance; wounded a pelican, but could not get after him in the deep mud. Got belated on the river, and the crew had to pull hard for an hour and a half to reach the steamer; fortunately there was a moon. Anything more good-humoured or more ineffective than the way in which the sailors pulled and shoved, I never saw; they hopped in and out of the boat in the shallows, up to their hips in the water—pushed, tugged, rowed and sangdie era im piacus; they can do nothing without the accompaniment of some rhythmic, droning refrain, which they can keep up for an indefinite time. Anything will do; my fellows pulled on this occasion to the following words—
"Min Minyehfi Benisoef,"
"Min Minyehfi Benisoef,"
which is as who should say—
"From Henleeto CookhamReach,"
"From Henleeto CookhamReach,"
giving the stroke and the emphasis on the last syllable.
In the evening was visited by Mustafa Aga, H.B.M. Consular Agent, one of his sons, the Turkish Governor (Hassan Effendi), and the local doctor. Mustafa is a very courteous old gentleman, with half a nose, and much respected by all who knowhim; I observed that Saïd, his son, would not smoke in his father's presence, in accordance with an Arab custom, which did not much remind me of the manner in which "the gov'nor" is treated in England.
On Thursday morning, 22nd, I started to see the tombs of the kings, leaving the eastern bank and Karnak for my return. It was a lovely morning, and I crossed the Nile before the air had had time to get thoroughly heated. On the other side I found horses, kindly lent me by Mustafa (whose son accompanied me), and donkeys for the rest of the party. There were a good many of us, and we made a very absurd-looking procession—en tête, a couple of fine brawny Arabs, one of whom has been the guide to these ruins since Champollion; then Saïd and I on our horses—mine a good-looking chestnut, caparisoned with scarlet finery; behind us, on their respective donkeys, the captain in full uniform holding a large umbrella over his head, Hosseyn in his Arab dress, the French cook in his official white jacket and cap, the Italian waiter with a large handkerchief over his head, and the engineer; further behind, lesser menials and the hamper. I forgot the Turkish Cawass in uniform and armed to the teeth. Hovering round, brandishing water-bottles, was a swarm of Arab boys and girls, in sizes, and of various qualities of chocolate; they were dressed in the most fantastically tattered remnants of dark brown shirts that I ever saw; there was one little monkey of a dull ebony colour turned up with pale blue, whose form was revealed rather than covered by a few incoherent brown shreds of garment, and who was inexpressibly droll from the way in which he cocked his little head demurely on one side with a half-consciousness of insufficient drapery.
The ride to the tombs, which takes about an hour, and the latter half of which lies through an arid valley, is very striking from the form and colour of the mountains. Nothing announces that one is approaching the city of the dead, and it is not till you stand before them that you become aware of the plain square openings which lead down to these magnificent last resting-places of the kings. It was a right royal idea this, of the old rulers of Egypt, to plunge these shafts into the bowelsof the rock, and give themselves a mountain for a tombstone over the palace which was their grave. The design of these houses of the dead is simple and apparently always much the same: a long corridor, sometimes with lateral galleries, sometimes with recesses or small chambers on each side, leads downwards by a not very rapid incline to a great hall, in the centre of which is the sarcophagus which contained the mummy of the king in its magnificent case; these cases have of course been all removed. All these lateral chambers were also originally filled with mummies—those, I believe, of the relations of the sovereign. The walls of these subterranean palaces and the ceilings are adorned throughout with coloured hieroglyphs and flat sculptured "graven images" representing mostly sacred and mystical scenes, but often, also, illustrating the different trades and crafts practised by the Egyptians. These paintings are of high interest from an ethnographic point of view—Poynter would have a fit over them. In the innermost places scores of bats dart about in intense alarm. The effect of the scanty light from the candles on these painted walls and on the dark bony forms of the Arabs is extremely fine—what your literary tourist would call "worthy of the pencil of Rembrandt."
After lunching in a shady spot we took an anything but shady ride to the temple-palace of Koorneh, and from thence to the Memnonium. Both are very interesting, but the latter by far the finest; there is about it a breadth and a vastness, together with much elegance and variety, that are very impressive. Nothing that I have seen is comparable to the monuments of Egypt, for the expression of gigantic thoughts and limitless command of material and labour; withal there is about them something stolid and oppressive that is unsatisfactory; and as I looked at these vast ruins, vivid memories of Athens and its Acropolis invaded me, and the Parthenon in all its serene splendour rose before my mind; mighty, too, in its measured sobriety, stately in the noble rhythm of its forms; infinitely precious in the added glory of its sculptures; lovable as a living thing; and then more, perhaps, than ever before, I felt what a divine breath informed that marvellous Attic people, and what an ineffaceable debt of gratitude is due to them from us, blind fumblers in their footsteps.
I was less struck than I had expected to be by the two colossal statues, of one of which it was poetically fabled by the ancients that a mysterious clang rose from it as the first rays of the rising sun smote its forehead. The myth is more striking than the statues, though their size and isolation give them something impressive. I had expected them, too, I don't know why, to be in a desert, and they are in a field. How infinitely grander is the great Sphinx, with its strange, far-gazing, haunting eyes, fixed, for ever, on the East, as if expecting the dawn of a day that never comes; immovable, unchanging, without shadow of sorrow, or light of gladness, whilst the gladness of men has turned to sorrow and their thoughts to ashes before them, through three times a thousand years! Century by century the desert has been gathering and growing round it—the feet are buried, the body, the breast are hidden. How soon will the sealing sands give rest at last to those steadfast, expectant eyes?
In the evening Hosseyn had a great "fantasia" and fulfilled his vow—and spent all his money. He killed his sheep and roasted it, bought some rice and boiled it, some flour and had it made into bread; then mixing the whole, he distributed it in six very large trays; three were put before the crew, one he had placed on the wayside for all comers (and they all came); the other two were sent to the nearest mosque for the same purpose, and with similar results; then, being unable to read himself, he paid five men to recite from the Koran at night, in the mosque, and invited thereto the captain, Mustafa Aga, and his son and several others; he, the while, sitting outside and offering coffee to whoever passed by. When it was all over he came to me radiant: "El Hamdul illah," he said, throwing up his hands, "this is good! I am happy, everybody to be satisfied! this is rich day! El Hamdul illah! my money is all gone! why shall I mind? I spend it for God! brabs something good happen for me, el Hamdul illah!" His delight at the performance of his vow and his absolute faith were the prettiest thing one could see. Talking of faith, I am much struck by the dignified simplicity with which Mahometans practise the observances of their religion; praying at the appointed times without concealment, wherever they happen to be, and as a matter of course.
Friday, 23rd.—Started early and coaled, first at Erment and then again at Esne, after which, being stopped by the night and shallow water, we anchored off a bank nowhere in particular. Heavens, what a hot day! this is indeed "the fire that quickens Nilus' slime," but has a vastly different effect on me. Sketching will be quite out of the question unless it gets rapidly cooler.
At Esne I was visited by the chief magistrate, and by the governor of the province; the former a jolly oldbonhommewho offered me snuff, the other a very refined old gentleman with most charming manners. Both were Turks; and as they spoke no Christian tongue our conversation was carried on entirely through a dragoman; I was, however, pleased to find that I recognised several words that I learnt last year at Constantinople; I was glad, too, to hear again that fine vigorous language, the sound of which is extremely agreeable to me. Eastern manners are certainly very pleasing, and the frequent salutations, which consist in laying the hand first on the breast and then on the forehead, making at the same time a slight inclination, are graceful without servility. When an Egyptian wishes to express great respect he first lowers his hands to the level of his knees, exactly as in the days of Herodotus.
Talking of Herodotus, here is a first-rate subject for Gérôme suggested by that author; it is ethnographical and ghastly. The scene is laid in the establishment of an ancient Egyptian embalmer and undertaker, fitted up with all the implements and appliances of the trade; in the background, but not so far as to exclude detail, groups of assistants should be shown busied over a number of corpses and illustrating all the different stages of preparation, embalsamation, swathing, &c. &c. In the centre a bereaved family have brought their lamented relative, and are selecting, from specimens submitted to them by the master undertaker, a style of treatment suited to their taste and means, and expressive of their particular shade of grief. A large assortment of mummy-cases would form appropriate accessories and give great scope for the display of knowledge and the use of a fine brush. It seems to me that so pleasing a mixture of corpses and archæology, impartially treated by that polite and accomplished hand, could not fail to create considerable sensation.
Took a stroll through Esne whilst the ship was coaling. The darker tints of skin are beginning to preponderate more and more; mummy colour is in the ascendant here, together with a fine Brunswick black. Themen, I observe, spin in this country. The children are quite fascinating; they have nothing on but a little tuft of hair on the top of their shaven heads; those dazzling little teeth of theirs are wonderful to see, and funny—like a handful of rice in a coal-scuttle. Fine sunset again; the hills, ranged in an amphitheatre from east to west, showed a most wonderful gradation from extreme dark on one side to glowing light on the other. I make the profound reflection that no two sunsets are alike; this remark, however, does not extend todescriptionsof sunsets—verb. sap.
When I saw Holman Hunt's "Isabel," his pot of basil puzzled me sorely; I had seen a great deal of basil, and have an especial love for it; but I had never seen it except with a very small leaf. I was sure, however, knowing his great accuracy, that Hunt had sufficient foundation for the large leaf he gave the plant in his picture; the very fellow of it is now before me in a nosegay of flowers, very kindly sent me by the old governor of Esne. As I smell it I am assailed by pleasant memories of Lindos—"Lindos the beautiful"—and Rhodes, and that marvellous blue coast across the seas, that looks as if it could enclose nothing behind its crested rocks but the Gardens of the Hesperides; and I remember those gentle, courteous Greeks of the island (so unlike their swaggering kinsfolk—if they are their kinsfolk—of the mainland), and the little nosegay, a red carnation and a fragrant sprig of basil, with which they always dismiss a guest.
As we lay anchored by the shore in the evening, the dahabiehs came sweeping past in the moonlight; and the faint glimmering of the shell-like sails, and the flutter of the water against the swift, cutting keels, and the silence of the huddled groups, and the dark watchful figure of the helmsman at the helm, were strangely fantastic and beautiful.
Saturday, 24th.—Started at half-past five—passed Edfou (which I leave for my return) at half-past seven. Shall we reach Assouan to-day? Hosseyn's pious orgies have, I fear, turned his head, for I observed yesterday that he has taken to fishing again."Brabs!—Insha Allah!" His interpretation of dreams is worthy of the ancient oracle-mongers; on the night before his sacrifice he dreamt that he had bought a slave, and then released it: "Wull! the slave is my sheep—is it not my slave? Wull, have I not buy it? Wull, I give it to the beebles—go!—I release it!" Whether the sheep, personally, considered itself released is problematic.
Saturday Evening.—Reached Assouan this afternoon at four, and, after the usual visit from the governor, took a stroll. I don't yet know whether I am disappointed in the place or not. At all events it is quite unlike my expectations of it. I had imagined, I suppose from descriptions, a narrower gorge and higher rocks; in point of fact there is no gorge at all, but the river is narrowed, or, rather, split by several islands and some fine granite boulders cropping up here and there to fret the river, and announcing the rapids; otherwise the country is open enough, and original and striking in aspect; I shall know better to-morrow what I think of it all. I saw during my evening stroll, and for the first time in my life, a group of slaves, mostly girls. If I had seen them subjected to any ill-treatment I should have felt very indignant; but I am bound to own that, seeing them squatting round a fire like any other children, showing no mark of slavery, and occupied in cooking their food, scratching themselves (as well, no doubt, they might!) and looking otherwise very like monkeys, I found it difficult to realise to myself the hardship of their position, however much it may revolt one in the abstract. They were black, and uglier than young negroes generally are; their hair was arranged in an infinity of minute, highly-greased plaits all round their heads; the elder ones were draped; the youngest wore a fringepour tout potage. This is a noisy night; there is a "moolid" going on on the high bank to which we have made fast, and which borders the public square. A double row of howling dervishes are squatting and rocking and howling after their kind, almost over my head. In the brief lulls during which they take breath for further efforts, I hear from the other side of the river the mournful, weary, incessant creak of the water-wheel (with its blindfold cow or camel plodding round and round and round, apparently for ever), which in thisregion almost entirely supersedes the hand-worked bucket. The contrast is very curious.
I have just returned the governor's visit. I found him sitting on a sofa in the piazza opposite the Government House, with half-a-dozen hand lanterns brought by the guests in front of him, and on each side a long row of benches (forming an avenue up to his seat) on which squatted and smoked numbers of picturesque folk, who looked to great advantage by the flickering glimmer of the lamps and under the soft warm light of an African moon. I sat in the place of honour, smoked my conventionaltchibouque, drank my inevitable cup of coffee, conveyed through my dragoman the usual traveller's remarks and questions (cardboard questions, so to speak, of which I knew the answers) to my host, who, like all the Turkish officials that I have seen, has the manners of a perfect gentleman and much natural dignity.
Sunday, 25th.—Started for Phylæ at half-past seven; arrived there at nine o'clock. The road leads through a broad tract of yellow sand (where, I believe, an arm of the Nile is supposed to have flowed in remote antiquity) along which on either side crop up, in wild, irregular fashion, bumps and hillocks and hills of dark red granite, covered over with innumerable fragments of the same stone, scattered in the most incredible confusion, and having rather a ludicrous appearance of having beenleft aboutand forgotten. You could get an excellent notion of the thing in miniature, by hastily spilling a coal-scuttle on a gravel walk and running away.
Above Assouan we are fairly in Nubia, and of course none but the darkest complexions are to be seen; but so large a number of negroes make their way here from the Soudan (the Nubians are notblack, but of a beautiful dark cairngorm brown), that the whole place has an air of negro-land which is disagreeable to me. The young men, indeed, both black and brown, are sometimes extremely fine fellows (bar the legs, which are never good), but the girls, as far as one can see them, are tolerably ill-favoured, and the old women, of an ugliness which passes all belief. They arefarworse than apes. The ladies in this part of the country gladden the hearts of their admirers by anointing their bodies with castor oil, so that the atmosphereof their villages, however full of sweet suggestion to a native, is much the reverse to a traveller with a nose not attuned to these perfumes; the smell that greets you through an open door is a mixture of the bouquet just named, and a penetrating flavour of accumulated stuffed beasts, and naturally interferes much with my enjoyment.
At Mahatter we left our donkeys and took a boat to Phylæ, a quarter of a mile, which takes half an hour owing to the rapidity of the current just above the cataract. The scenery about Phylæ has been spoken of as Paradise; I never saw anything less like my notion of Paradise, and so far, therefore, I am disappointed. Original and strange it is, in a high degree. It is in fact exactly like the valley of which I spoke a little further back, only that the hills are four times as high, and water takes the place of the sand; the same breaking up of the rocks into a myriad of fragments, putting all grandeur and massiveness of form out of the question—and, with the exception of a few palm trees and a sycamore or two, the same barrenness. Looking up in the direction of Wâdy Halfâ, the mountains appear to grow finer in outline, and a tract of very yellow sand amongst their highest crests is striking and original—gold dust in a cup of lapis lazuli. With the island itself and its beautiful group of temples it is impossible not to be delighted. Nothing could be more fantastic or more stately than the manner in which it rises out of the bosom of the river like a vast ship, surrounded as it is on all sides by a high wall sheer from the water to the level on which the temples stand. One hall in the main temple, and one only, shows still a sufficient amount of colour to give a very good idea of what the effect must have been originally; the green and blue capitals must have been very lovely. It is needless to say that here, as elsewhere, travellers have left by hundreds lasting memorials of their brutality, in the shape of names and dates drawn, painted, scratched, and cut on every wall and column, so that the eye finds no rest from them. This strange and ineffably vulgar mania is as old as the world, and the tombs of the kings at Thebes are scrawled over with inscriptions left there by ancient Greek and Roman visitors. I shall return to Phylæ shortly to make a sketch or two—Insha Allah.
Here, at last, I have found that absolutely clear crystalline atmosphere of which I had so often heard; I own it is not pleasing to me; a sky of burnished steel over a land of burning granite would no doubt be grand if the outlines of the granite were fine—but they are not. Meanwhile, perspective is abolished—everything is equally and obtrusively near, and I sadly miss the soft mysterious veils and pleasant doubts of distance that enchant one in other lands. I think it very likely that in winter one has great compensation from the exhilarating purity of the air; but just now the heat, which is simply infernal, is too trying for me to do justice to these advantages; no doubt the air is light and dry, but I feel unfortunately so very heavy and wet, that I am not in a position fully to appreciate it. Returning to Assouan in the evening, saw a dahabieh that had just got through the jaws of the cataracts, always rather a nervous matter; at least so they say; "to be very dyinger" (dangerous?), according to Hosseyn; the men were chanting a monotonous strain that had little of triumph in it, but rather conveyed a feeling of an always impending calamity escapedthistime; it was melancholy and very striking, I thought, in the silence of the gloaming; very likely pure fancy on my part, for I doubt whether more than a couple of boats are lost in a season, and the sailors of the Nile must be well accustomed to the dangers of these rapids; but the impression on me at the time was very strong.
Monday, 26th.—The dragoman of the ship having a swelling of some sort on his arm, an Arab doctor was sent for, and forthwith informed him that his arm was possessed of the devil!! Went to see the island of Elephantina opposite Assouan, but saw nothing to suggest its ancient magnificence. Gave a silver farthing to a funny little child, which (the farthing) being perforated, his mother immediately tied into one of his little oily locks—an ingenious substitute for a pocket. I observed several little boys simply attired in a piece of string tied round their loins—there, Diogenes!
Tuesday, 27th.—Began sketching, but am out of form from the heat. I am working chiefly because I am weary of idleness. I don't much care for the two sketches I have begun; they will therefore probably turn out badly. Going to try another presently.
Tuesday Evening.—Have begun a sketch which interests memore than the others; it is taken amongst the tombs and shrines on the hills south of the town towards Phylæ. As my evening's work was drawing to a close, I heard a shuffling of feet a little behind me, and, turning round, saw, in the full fire of sunset, what appeared to me at first to be a procession of golden apes with dark blue robes, light blue lips, and nose-rings; on closer inspection they turned out to be Nubian women going home to their village. Hosseyn,qui a le mot pour rire, apparently, engaged in conversation with them, and convulsed them with laughter; the flashes of teeth were very funny to see. At last he gave them a few halfpence, and desired them to sing; whereon they set up a series of the most uncouth howls I ever heard; one baboon in particular got up and, using a flat date basket as a tambourine, accompanied her vocal performance with hops and jumps that would have done honour to any inmate of the monkey-house in the Zoological Gardens.
The twilight, walking home, was lovely. The earth was in colour like a lion's skin; the sky of a tremulous violet, fading in the zenith to a mysterious sapphire tint. "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro."
Slew another sheep—"Allah hou akbar!" (without which formula in the killing a good Muslim must not touch the meat): this sheep is no empty formality, for the unfortunate sailors would never see meat without it; they live on bread and occasional beans. This is the fourth night of the moolid, which is to last the whole week! At this very moment the tambourines of the dervishes are driving me nearly wild with their diabolic din.
Wednesday, 28th.—Got on indifferently with my sketches; only one of them interests me much. The morning was almost cool and really delightful, but the heat was as great as ever in the daytime. I have always been unable to see the extraordinary difference which is said to exist between the length of the twilight in the north, and in southern countries; I could have read large print to-night three-quarters of an hour after sunset. Habit is everything, no doubt, as we are reminded by Herodotus,à proposof a certain people who ate their dead relatives instead of burning them; but I wonder whether I should ever get accustomed to the aching, straining, creaking complaint of the water-wheel far andnear, morning, noon and night, morning, noon and night; I canjustfancy its becoming attaching as the clacking of a mill.
I have often wondered why, contrary to all analogy, the Spaniards call oilazedo, which at first sight appears to be the same word as the Italianaceto. I find that the word is Arabic:zeyd. Mem.: Look up the etymology of the English wordcough, to which no European word that I remember has any affinity, and which rather appears to be onomatopœic. The Arabs saykokh(guttural ending); is this a mere coincidence, and does the word date beyond the Crusades? I find a good many words that have a curious likeness to English. My endeavours to pick up a little Arabic are almost entirely frustrated by Hosseyn's utter inability to pull a sentence to pieces for me. In an Arabic sentence of two words (e.g.azekan tareed—if you please) he could not tell me which word was the verb! literally; I had to find out as best I could. I never saw anything to approach his obtuseness in the matter, except perhaps that of Georgi, my dragoman in Turkey. As I was sketching this evening a Nubian passed me, very grandly draped and erect, and followed by two green monkeys that were fastened by leading-strings to his belt. They toddled very snugly after their stately master and made a queer group.
Sunday, November 1.—I am in a state of appreciative enjoyment of the comforts and civilised cleanliness of my steamer, having just returned from three or four days' roughing in the ruins of Phylæ. "Roughing" is a relative term, and my trials were of a very mild description, for though I sleptà la belle étoile(or rather tried to sleep), at all events I had a bed to rest in, and the air at night was delightful; moreover, the commissariat was very satisfactorily managed, so that food and drink were abundant; nevertheless, I must maintain that living in an open ruin is not comfortable. I made two or three sketches, and should probably have enjoyed myself, but that on the second day I was entirely thrown off the rails by the heat whilst sketching; I thought I should get acoup de soleil; I was very indisposed in the evening, and utterly unable to work the next morning, so that I took the placeen grippe, and could see nothing but the ugliness of the rocks and the wearing monotony of the hieroglyphs. Picked up in theevening, and liked the place better; made some original and striking reflections about the desirability of health.
Having heard much of the beauty of the full moon at Phylæ, timed my visit to see it, and was entirely delighted. The light was so brilliant that one could read with ease, but at the same time so soft, so rich, and so mellow that one seemed not to see the night, but to be dreaming of the day. The Arabs say of a fine night, "it is a night like milk," but there is more of amber than of milk in the nights of Phylæ. The rising of the moon last night was the first thing of the sort I ever saw; the disc was perfectly golden, not as in a mist, but set sharp and clear in the sky, and exactly like the sun, except that you could look at it without pain to the eyes. The effect of this effulgent light on the shoulder of the hill was magical. The last hour of the afternoon I spent in strolling about the villages, which are picturesque. The cottages are four brown, roofless walls, built of the usual unburnt brick, and coated with mud; but the doorways are always highly decorated with painted geometrical devices which, in the mass of plain, sober brown, have a very cheerful and artistic effect. The people, too, amuse me; a pleasant, gentle, grinning folk these Nubians seem; I like their jargon—after the guttural Arabic it sounds so soft and round, and the women have funny, cooing inflections of voice (pretty voices, often) that are pleasing. Some of the girls are good-looking; chiefly through the brightness of their eyes and the milky whiteness of their teeth. The coiffure of the children is too funny; it consists in tufts of hair of various shapes and patterns left on an otherwise shaven head; often a crest all down the middle and a tuft on each side, exactly like the clown's wig in a pantomime; it is irresistibly droll.
A grand sight is to see the villagers keeping the birds from their crops; they all serve in their turn, men, women, and children; they stand each on a rude sort of scaffold which rises about two feet clear of the corn; they are armed with slings from which they hurl lumps of clay at the birds, uttering loud cries at the same time. Their movements are full of grandeur and character. I wonder Gérôme has never treated a subject so well suited to him. Why, too, has he never painted mine enemy the sakkea, which is even more emphatically in his way, for, besides the scope for fineand quaint forms both in the men and the animals that work it, the accessories are abundant and interesting, and there are ropes in great abundance.
Isthe sakkea my friend or my enemy? Its chant is so incessant that I should have to make up my mind if I stayed longer in the country; it would either fascinate me or drive me mad. As I listen in the silence of the evening, the rise and fall, the shifting and swaying of the wind bring its complaint from across the gurgling river in such a fitful way that it has the strangest and most unexpected effects: sometimes I fancy I hear deep, drowsy tones of a distant organ, sometimes the shrill quavering of a bagpipe; sometimes it is like a snatch of a song, sometimes like a whole chorus of voices singing a solemn strain in the sad, empty night; sometimes, alas! too often, like a snarling, creaking door-post.
Phylæ being above the cataracts, my steamer stopped at Assouan, and I went there by donkey as before; returning, I chartered a dahabieh to see the said cataracts, of which for some days I had heard so much; amongst other things, that a ship was wrecked there three weeks ago (I saw it stuck on its rock to-day). The cowardice of the people here, at least in this particular matter, is very funny; too naïf to inspire disgust: my captain, an old sailor, and the nicest old gentleman possible, told Hosseyn that nothing would induce him to go down them; I thought I observed a shade of respectful interest in his reception of me on my return from an exploit which most Englishwomenwould consider good fun. I make no doubt that when the water is much lower, and your dahabieh shoots a good six or eight feet drop, and goes half into the water besides, considerable excitement may be got out of it; but now that the drop is not or does not look more than about a yard, and that the whole affair consists in a few plunges and shipping a little water, the emotion is very mild, and I own to considerable disappointment, though as far as it went it was pleasant. Nevertheless I did not for a moment regret coming if only on account of the amusement I got out of the sailors and pilots; the latter were men of years; the former, fine, jolly-looking lads as one could wish to see; but their demeanour throughout was infinitely droll; they rested their feet (according to custom here) oninclined planks, up which they ran three steps with their arms well forward to fetch the stroke, getting back into the sitting position as they pulled through the water (and wonderfully fine the action looks in a large crew all pulling well together); but the contortions in which they indulged, the gnashing and grinding of teeth, the throwing back of agonised heads, the frowns, the setting of jaws, the straining of veins, the rolling of eyes, the groans, and, absurdest of all, the coming down on one another's laps and the cutting of crabs, were ineffably grotesque, and would have convulsed me with laughter if I had not controlled myself manfully. Meanwhile the pilots were howling at one another and them with all the vehemence of a violent altercation, and for no discernible reason. When they were not shrieking at one another, the crew took up the usual Arab boatmen's chant (I know no better word); one man gives out a short sentence, or name, or form of prayer (not exceeding four syllables) in a quavering treble, and the rest then repeat it in chorus in a graver key—the effect is very original. As we got within sight of the big cataract and the stranded ship, Hosseyn loudly exhorted the crew to pray to the Prophet, and all the saints who have their shrines on the heights of Assouan, to see them safely through the danger; the invitation was loudly responded to, and everybody who had not an oar to pull held up his hands and prayed with great fervour—which was very pretty, and done with the dignified simplicity which always accompanies an Arab's devotions; but it was certainly disproportionate to the emergency. When we had danced up and down (or rather down and up) three or four times, I had the curiosity to look about for thesailorand waiter I had brought with me from the steamer; they were respectively green and yellow in their unfeigned terror. Then there was a nominalsmallcataract (the first one is called thegreatcataract), and indeed I believe there was athirdlittle commotion; then Hosseyn, throwing up his arms, exclaimed, "El Hamdul illah!! finish!!" and it was, as he said, "finish." I am utterly ignorant of the mysteries of navigation, but one figure we executed between the cataracts and Assouan struck me as novel: it consisted in turning entirely round in a wide circle to take (as it were) a fresh start; this manœuvre we performed with much gravity and success two successive times. An elaborate salutefrom the guns of the dragoman and engineer, responded to with appropriate solemnity by Hosseyn, announced my return to my steamer—and, oh joy! my tub.
In the evening governor of course.
Monday, 2nd.—Resumed work; painted for a couple of hours—badly—in a high wind at an ugly study of a view I don't like. I consider it a sort of discipline. The wind to-day is tremendously high; the dahabiehs will come flying up now. I saw my friend the captain just now sitting on the bank in the midst of an interested circle having his fortune told. There is a blessing for them that wait. Hosseyn has caught a fish! two fishes, to-day! his glee is unlimited, he is radiant; when that boy is at the near end of his fishing rope, he is so absorbed I can't get him to attend to me or to answer a question. His brilliant piscatorial success is an opportune set-off against a chagrin the poor boy had this morning; he was taking a dip somewhere under the paddle-box, and lost, in putting away his clothes (hethinks by a black but improbable theft), a Koran with which he travels and to which he attributes much luck; he was greatly cut up, and after telling me how much he valued the book, proceeded to inform me that it contained a little piece of wood from Abyssinia with something written on it, "some, what you call, scription," which, when worn round the neck, infallibly cured the bite of the scorpion; seeing that this announcement did not impress me as much as he had expected, he asked me with some warmth how I supposed, pray, that the snake-charmers prevented the snakes from biting them if it was not by saying something out of the Bible.
Another sheep to-day; there was some hitch about the manner of the killing which caused a little excitement; his throat was not turned to the sun (or the East?) whilst he was being slaughtered; an important matter. I observe that Turkish officials are not expected to be able to write; my captain can, but I remarked that when his secretary, a poor, wizened little thing, whose nose and trousers are far too short, but whose mouth and ears offer ample compensation through their length, brought him to-day the ship's accounts, he stamped his signature at the foot of the page instead of writing it, although he happened to have a pen in his hand; I was giving him his English lesson. Talking of accounts,the Arabs have a curious way of singing or rather intoning their sums, rocking all the while backwards and forwards like so many Dervishes. I have seen a large house of business (at Sohag) whereallthe clerks were doing it at once; it was like a madhouse. Oh, Lombard Street, and oh, Mark Lane! what would you have felt at the sight?
Tuesday, 3rd.—My last day at Assouan. Finished my sketches, took leave of the governor, and had a final stroll about the streets of the town, which seemed to me unusually picturesque. I remark that I invariably like a place best the day I leave it; if I am sorry to go, my regret casts a halo over it; if I am glad, my gladness makes everything brighter. How picturesque the people are! their flowing, flying draperies are wonderfully grand. I hope I may carry away with me some general impressions, but the immense multitude and rapid succession of striking things drive individual memories fatally out of the field. Sketching figures is out of the question—the effects are all too fugitive. This was also the last day of the moolid, and high time too; I met in the morning, in a narrow street, a procession of sailors carrying a boat, which they were about to deposit in the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held, and whose name they were loudly invoking. In front, drums and flags, and cawasses firing guns; behind, in front, everywhere, a host of most paintable ragamuffins enjoying the fun; above, over the brown house-tops, dark blue figures of women huddled peering at the procession; over them a blue sky with a minaret standing against it, a palm tree; some doves—there was the picture, it was charming. The children as usual called out, "Baksheesh howaga;" the so-called begging of the people has been ludicrously exaggerated; in the first place, only the children ask for baksheesh (I mean, of course, without the pretext of a service rendered), and in the next, they treat the whole thing as an excellent joke, and evidently have seldom the slightest expectation that they are to get anything. When you approach a village, every child, from as far as it sees you, whether from a window, or a doorway, or half-way up a palm tree, or the middle of the road, holloas out lustily, "Baksheesh, baksheesh," generally with much laughter, and frequently with a universal scamper in every direction except towards you. What I callbegging is that importunate whining that clings to you, and harasses you wherever you turn in the south of Italy or Spain, and with which this clamorous performance has nothing in common. I have remarked, with regard to grown-up Arabs, that though they wrangle vehemently with the dragoman on the subject of payment, they invariably show the master a pleasant and satisfied face. I speak, of course, only of my own experience. As strange a thing as a satisfied man is abarkingfish; the fish that Hosseyn has caught of late—for Fortune is his handmaid now—all utter a sound which I can only describe as a faint bark; perhaps everybody knows that some fishes do this, but I did not, and my surprise was extreme. They are nasty-looking objects, all fins and teeth (a thick row of little bristle-like teeth). They are fat and shiny and most insipid eating.
Wednesday, 4th.—Started at six down stream; my face is turned towards bonny old England again, and I feel as if I had wings. At Kom Ombo (the first halt to-day) there are some ruins on a rock which crops up abruptly by the riverside in the midst of a flat country. The morning was divine, and the view from the temple, looking north, surpassingly lovely in colour. The form was nothing much; a vast sandy plain (tigered here and there with stripes of green), and in the distance a long low nest of mountain peaks; but the colour!—the gradation from the fawn-coloured glimmering sands in the foreground to the faint horizon with its hem of amethyst and sapphire was as enchanting a thing, in the sweet morning light, as I have ever seen. The temple is fine though heavy, and less delicate in detail than Phylæ. On the under surface of the architrave, between the columns, are some most curious and interesting unfinished decorations, on squares marked out in red, and showing (slight sketch) such as for instance a figure tried two ways on the same spot. The outlines are drawn out, in red also, with extraordinary firmness and freedom. Speaking of the squares, Gardiner Wilkinson—in his, I am told, most erudite, and, I am certain, most dry and heavy, guide-book—says that they were used (in the manner in which "squaring off" is practised in the present day) for the purpose of transferring a design. In this, however, he is obviously mistaken, because the squares are adapted not to the pictures butto the space to be decorated; the hieroglyphs and the figures being adapted to the squares, not the squares to them: that these squares, once made thebasisof the decoration and fixing its proportions and distribution, may then have been used also for enlarging a small design, or even, instead of tracing, for transferring one of the same size, is probable enough; but that was not their original function. In corroboration of this view, compare the frets and ornaments painted on thebackof the architrave of the Parthenon, which I have examined closely; they are painted in squares marked out with a sharp instrument, and determining the space to be decorated exactly as at Kom Ombo. The case is so entirely parallel as to suggest the idea that the Greeks learnt the practice in Egypt. The great temple of Edfou, where we stopped next, far surpasses anything I have yet seen in Egypt; not so much, perhaps, for any especial beauty of detail—although the sculptures are extremely fine—as for its general aspect, which is superb, and its wonderful state of preservation; many parts of it look as if they had been finished yesterday. The gigantic Propylæa, and the no less gigantic wall which encloses the whole of this fortress-temple, are almost entirely intact, and make it unlike any other ruin I know. The great court, a giant cloister into which one first enters, discloses the temple itself, blocked out in vast masses of light and gulfs of shade, and tunnelled through by a corridor which reaches to its extremest end; the absence of some portions of the roof, by letting the light play fantastically into the inner spaces, only adds to the mysterious grandeur of the effect. A broad, open peribolus runs round the temple, dividing it from the toweringmur d'enceintewhich encloses the whole building. The western part of the temple is as full of staircases, secret passages, and dark chambers as any Gothic castle. Every square inch of the whole immense fabric is covered with sculptures and hieroglyphs.
I forgot to say that I stopped between Kom Ombo and Edfou at the ancient quarries of Gebel Silsily, from which the material of the sandstone temples was mostly quarried. They are extremely striking, and have a grandeur of their own. It was curious to compare them mentally with the marble quarries of Pentelicus from which Ictinus carved the Parthenon and Pheidias the Fates.
In a tomb at El Kab are some most amusing and interesting sculptures (with the colour almost intact on them) representing the various occupations of Egyptian life, agricultural, &c. The reaping of the corn and durrah is pretty—a vintage and wine-treading pleased me vastly. Had they wine in this district?
Coming upon a magnificent view, stopped the steamer for the night; want to see it by sunrise. The absurd spurious importance my steamer confers on me in the eyes of the natives is too funny. At Edfou I found the whole placeen émoi; horses handsomely caparisoned, a most polite governor, sheykhs, and a general profusion of salaams. It appears that the viceroy had the authorities in the different places telegraphed to be civil to me; and God knows they are. I was struck with the magnificence of the population here, the men at least; they are most stately fellows. I should like immensely to paint some of them, but for that there is no time; I can only hope that something will stick to me from this dazzling multitude of fine things. We are now again in the region of doves, whose presence in large numbers affects the architecture of the villages in a most curious manner. Every house has, or rather,is, a dovecot, the chiefcorps de bâtimentbeing a tower, or several towers, of which the whole upper part is exclusively affected to the doves. Their sides are inclined like the sides of the propylæa of the temples, with which they harmonise amazingly well; they are divided horizontally by bands of colour which have an excellent effect, recalling strongly the marked parallel strata of the mountains. (There is no more curious study than the concord which constantly manifests itself between national (and notably domestic) architecture, and the nature in the midst of which it grows up.) The construction of these towers is both peculiar and ingenious; they are built up entirely with earthen jars, sometimes placed topsy-turvy, but most often on their sides, and tier above tier like bottles in a cellar. The exterior is then filled in with mud, and the interior presents the appearance of a honeycomb, the cells being formed by the hollow jars; in these jars the doves have their abode. It is easy to see that by turning a few of the jarsoutwardsa very simple but pretty decoration may be obtained; a crest is added at the top by placing jars upside down at certain intervals; the bands ofcolour are generally divided by a string-course of bricks something after this fashion, but with much variety; and each of these string-courses is garnished with a perfect hedge of branches and twigs projecting horizontally a yard or more, and forming resting places for thousands of doves. Many houses have two towers, and the wealthier people have towers of great size subdivided again into small turrets; but in all cases the height of these edifices is the same, or nearly so, so that the villages received from them a very monumental look. The large towers are divided after the manner shown in the sketch. The natives also make to themselves curious pillar cupboards of mud (about man high), which from a distance have the oddest appearance; they look like raised pies on pedestals.
Thursday, 5th.—Made a little sketch from the paddle-box before starting. Then to Esne to return the visit of my amiable friend, the governor; him of the flowers. There is a temple here; a heavy-looking portico of the Roman period, coarsely executed, but with a grand, cavernous look, buried as it is in the ground which rises all round it to half the height of the columns, so that you have to descend a considerable flight of steps to get at it. At Arnout, or at least within three miles of it, are a few fragments of the Cæsarium. The portraits of Cleopatra and Cæsarion (he is always seated on her lap), which occur here several times, would be of the greatest interest if they were not utterly conventional, and exactly like everybody else in every temple of the date. Got to Lougsor at sunset, and found no letters, no Sterlings, no Lady Duff Gordon. I trust the letters may still turn up before I go, for, if not, I shall probably lose them entirely, through my desire to get them a little earlier. In the evening dined with Mustafa Aga, and met there the American Consul-General, Mr. Hale, who had run up from Alexandria to show the Nile to a friend of his; both are agreeable men (Mr. Hale earned my warmest blessings by lending me a pile of English newspapers); there was also the Consul from Syoot with a friend of his. After dinner the dancing girls were asked in, and, presently, a buffoon who stripped to his waist and performed various antics; he was clever and a good mimic, but became terribly tedious after a short time. His performance was of the most Aristophanic coarseness. With thegirls, of whom I had heard so much, I was decidedly disappointed; in the first place they were mostly ugly, one or two only were tolerably good-looking—et encore!Then they were clumsily built, and their dress was quite ludicrous: it consisted in a body fitting tight to the figure and four inches too long in the waist, tight sleeves, a petticoat, in shape exactly like a pen-wiper, and very full, loose trowsers (bags) down to the feet; the whole of printed calico. In front of their waists hung a sort ofbreloque, or chain, looped up at intervals in festoons, the object of which was to jingle as they moved, and to add to the effect of certain little brasscastagnettecymbals which they held on the middle finger and thumb of either hand. A profusion of ornaments hung round their necks. Their dancing is very inferior to that of the Andalusian dancers of the same class, whose performance is full of a quaint grace and even dignity—inferior, too, to the Algerine dancing, to which that of the south of Spain more nearly approaches in character; it is monotonous in the extreme—very ugly for the most part, and remarkable only as a gymnastic feat; sleight of loins, so to speak. These are, however, no doubt, unfavourable specimens; I shall see the best of the kind in Keneh at the house of the Consul, who has come all the way here from that place to invite me thereto.
Friday, 6th.—Went to the palace and temples of Medinet Haboo, with which I was delighted beyond my expectation. What pleased me most, and was an entire surprise to me, was a bit of purely secular architecture—the remains of a royal residence, with its towers flanking the great entrance, its windows of various shapes, balconies, semicircular crenelations, outer wall; in fact, identically such a building as one sees occasionally in Egyptian sculptures, and, curiously enough, as if it were a portrait of it, on the walls of the very temple to which this palace leads. The temple, too (the large one), interested me extremely from the wonderful preservation of the coloured decoration in parts of it; one really gathers an excellent idea of the original effect, and a most brilliant and magnificent (though barbarous) effect it must have been. The columns in the great hall here are of what, for want of a better word, I shall call the "ninepin" pattern; and I think on the whole I prefer it to the bell-capped pattern;because, besides its character and massive strength, there is no suggestion in it (as in the other) of the Doric order, with which comparison is obviously dangerous. As far as I can observe, there is no trace of colour on any of the propylæa, but the pylon is always richly decorated and highly coloured. This decorative importance given to the door must have had a very striking effect, and reminds me of the same peculiarity in the dwellings of Upper Egypt.