AMELIA BLANFORD EDWARDS.

Burt’s Library of the World’s Best Books.

A THOUSAND MILES
UP THE NILE.

By AMELIA B. EDWARDS.

Author of “Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys,” “Lord Brackenbury,” “Barbara’s History,” etc.

“It flows through old hush’d Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream.”
—Leigh Hunt.

ILLUSTRATED.

NEW YORK:
A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER.

PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION.

“Un voyage en Égypte, c’est une partie d’ânes et une promenade en bateau entremêlées de ruines.”—Ampère.

Ampere has put Egypt in an epigram. “A donkey ride and a boating trip interspersed with ruins” does, in fact, sum up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile traveler. Apropos of these three things—the donkeys, the boat, and the ruins—it may be said that a good English saddle and a comfortable dahabeeyah add very considerably to the pleasure of the journey; and that the more one knows about the past history of the country, the more one enjoys the ruins.

Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats, and steamers, I am not qualified to speak. We, however, saw one iron dahabeeyah aground upon a sand-bank, where, as we afterward learned, it remained for three weeks. We also saw the wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and the first cataract. It certainly seemed to us that the old-fashioned wooden dahabeeyah—flat-bottomed, drawing little water, light in hand, and easily poled off when stuck—was the one vessel best constructed for the navigation of the Nile. Other considerations, as time and cost, are, of course, involved in this question. The choice between dahabeeyah and steamer is like the choice between traveling with post-horses and traveling by rail. The one is expensive, leisurely, delightful; the other is cheap, swift, and comparatively comfortless. Those who are content to snatch but a glimpse of the Nile will doubtless prefer the steamer. I may add that the whole cost of the Philæ—food, dragoman’s wages, boat-hire, cataract, everything included, except wine—was about £10 per day.

With regard to temperature, we found it cool—even cold, sometimes—in December and January; mild in February; very warm in March and April. The climate of Nubia is simply perfect. It never rains; and once past the limit of the tropic there is no morning or evening chill upon the air. Yet even in Nubia, and especially along the forty miles which divide Abou Simbel from Wady Halfeh, it is cold when the wind blows strongly from the north.[1]

Touching the title of this book, it may be objected that the distance from the port of Alexandria to the second cataract falls short of a thousand miles. It is, in fact, calculated at nine hundred and sixty four and a half miles. But from the Rock of Abusîr, five miles above Wady Halfeh, the traveler looks over an extent of country far exceeding the thirty or thirty-five miles necessary to make up the full tale of a thousand. We distinctly saw from this point the summits of mountains which lie about one hundred and forty-five miles to the southward of Wady Halfeh, and which look down upon the third cataract.

Perhaps I ought to say something in answer to the repeated inquiries of those who looked for the publication of this volume a year ago. I can, however, only reply that the writer, instead of giving one year, has given two years to the work. To write rapidly about Egypt is impossible. The subject grows with the book, and with the knowledge one acquires by the way. It is, moreover, a subject beset with such obstacles as must impede even the swiftest pen; and to that swiftest pen I lay no claim. Moreover, the writer who seeks to be accurate, has frequently to go for his facts, if not actually to original sources (which would be the texts themselves), at all events to translations and commentaries locked up in costly folios, or dispersed far and wide among the pages of scientific journals and the transactions of learned societies. A date, a name, a passing reference, may cost hours of seeking.

More pleasant is it to remember labor lightened than to consider time spent; and I have yet to thank the friends who have spared no pains to help this book on its way. To S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc., so justly styled “the parent in this country of a sound school of Egyptian philology,” who, besides translating the hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions contained in chapter eighteen, has also, with infinite kindness, seen the whole of that chapter through the press; to Reginald Stuart Poole, Esq.; to Professor R. Owen, C. B., etc.; to Sir G. W. Cox, I desire to offer my hearty and grateful acknowledgments. It is surely not least among the glories of learning that those who adorn it most and work hardest should ever be readiest to share the stores of their knowledge.

Of the fascination of Egyptian travel, of the charm of the Nile, of the unexpected and surpassing beauty of the desert, of the ruins which are the wonder of the world, I have said enough elsewhere. I must, however, add that I brought home with me an impression that things and people are much less changed in Egypt than we of the present day are wont to suppose. I believe that the physique and life of the modern fellâh is almost identical with the physique and life of that ancient Egyptian laborer whom we know so well in the wall paintings of the tombs. Square in the shoulders, slight but strong in the limbs, full-lipped, brown-skinned, we see him wearing the same loin-cloth, plying the same shâdûf, plowing with the same plow, preparing the same food in the same way, and eating it with his fingers from the same bowl, as did his forefathers of six thousand years ago.

The household life and social ways of even the provincial gentry are little changed. Water is poured on one’s hands before going to dinner from just such a ewer and into just such a basin as we see pictured in the festival scenes at Thebes. Though the lotus-blossom is missing, a bouquet is still given to each guest when he takes his place at table. The head of the sheep killed for the banquet is still given to the poor. Those who are helped to meat or drink touch the head and breast in acknowledgment, as of old. The musicians still sit at the lower end of the hall, the singers yet clap their hands in time to their own voices; the dancing-girls still dance and the buffoon in his high cap still performs his uncouth antics, for the entertainment of the guests. Water is brought to table in jars of the same shape manufactured at the same town, as in the days of Cheops and Chephren; and the mouths of the bottles are filled in precisely the same way with fresh leaves and flowers. The cucumber stuffed with minced-meat was a favorite dish in those times of old; and I can testify to its excellence in 1874. Little boys in Nubia yet wear the side-lock that graced the head of Rameses in his youth; and little girls may be seen in a garment closely resembling the girdle worn by young princesses of the time of Thothmes I. A sheik still walks with a long staff; a Nubian belle still plaits her tresses in scores of little tails; and the pleasure-boat of the modern governor or mudîr, as well as the dahabeeyah hired by the European traveler, reproduces in all essential features the painted galleys represented in the tombs of the kings.

In these and in a hundred other instances, all of which came under my personal observation and have their place in the following pages, it seemed to me that any obscurity which yet hangs over the problem of life and thought in ancient Egypt originates most probably with ourselves. Our own habits of life and thought are so complex that they shut us off from the simplicity of that early world. So it was with the problem of hieroglyphic writing. The thing was so obvious that no one could find it out. As long as the world persisted in believing that every hieroglyph was an abstruse symbol, and every hieroglyphic inscription a profound philosophical rebus, the mystery of Egyptian literature remained insoluble. Then at last came Champollion’s famous letter to Dacier, showing that the hieroglyphic signs were mainly alphabetic and syllabic, and that the language they spelled was only Coptic, after all.

If there were not thousands who still conceive that the sun and moon were created and are kept going for no other purpose than to lighten the darkness of our little planet; if only the other day a grave gentleman had not written a perfectly serious essay to show that the world is a flat plain, one would scarcely believe that there could still be people who doubt that ancient Egyptian is now read and translated as fluently as ancient Greek. Yet an Englishman whom I met in Egypt—an Englishman who had long been resident in Cairo, and who was well acquainted with the great Egyptologists who are attached to the service of the khedive—assured me of his profound disbelief in the discovery of Champollion. “In my opinion,” said he, “not one of these gentlemen can read a line of hieroglyphics.”

As I then knew nothing of the Egyptian I could say nothing to controvert this speech. Since that time, however, and while writing this book, I have been led on step by step to the study of hieroglyphic writing; and I now know that Egyptian can be read, for the simple reason that I find myself able to read an Egyptian sentence.

My testimony may not be of much value; but I give it for the little that it is worth.

The study of Egyptian literature has advanced of late years with rapid strides. Papyri are found less frequently than they were some thirty or forty years ago; but the translation of those contained in the museums of Europe goes on now more diligently than at any former time.

Religious books, variants of the ritual, moral essays, maxims, private letters, hymns, epic poems, historical chronicles, accounts, deeds of sale, medical, magical and astronomical treatises, geographical records, travels and even romances and tales, are brought to light, photographed, fac-similed in chromo-lithography, printed in hieroglyphic type and translated in forms suited both to the learned and to the general reader.

Not all this literature is written, however, on papyrus. The greater proportion of it is carved in stone. Some is painted on wood, written on linen, leather, potsherds and other substances. So the old mystery of Egypt, which was her literature, has vanished. The key to the hieroglyphs is the master-key that opens every door. Each year that now passes over our heads sees some old problem solved. Each day brings some long-buried truth to light.

Some thirteen years ago,[2] a distinguished American artist painted a very beautiful picture called “The Secret of the Sphinx.” In its widest sense the secret of the sphinx would mean, I suppose, the whole uninterpreted and undiscovered past of Egypt. In its narrower sense, the secret of the sphinx was, till quite lately, the hidden significance of the human-headed lion which is one of the typical subjects of Egyptian art.

Thirteen years is a short time to look back upon; yet great things have been done in Egypt and in Egyptology, since then. Edfu, with its extraordinary wealth of inscriptions, has been laid bare. The whole contents of the Boulak Museum have been recovered from the darkness of the tombs. The very mystery of the sphinx has been disclosed; and even within the last eighteen months, M. Chabas announces that he has discovered the date of the pyramid of Mycerinus; so for the first time establishing the chronology of ancient Egypt upon an ascertained foundation. Thus the work goes on; students in their libraries, excavators under Egyptian skies, toiling along different paths toward a common goal. The picture means more to-day than it meant thirteen years ago—means more, even, than the artist intended. The sphinx has no secret now, save for the ignorant.

In the picture we see a brown, half-naked, toil-worn fellâh laying his ear to the stone lips of a colossal sphinx, buried to the neck in sand. Some instinct of the old Egyptian blood tells him that the creature is godlike. He is conscious of a great mystery lying far back in the past. He has, perhaps, a dim, confused notion that the Big Head knows it all, whatever it may be. He has never heard of the morning-song of Memnon; but he fancies, somehow, that those closed lips might speak if questioned. Fellâh and sphinx are alone together in the desert. It is night and the stars are shining. Has he chosen the right hour? What does he seek to know? What does he hope to hear?

Mr. Vedder has permitted me to enrich this book with an engraving from his picture. It tells its own tale; or rather it tells as much of its own tale as the artist chooses.

Each must interpret for himself
The secret of the sphinx.

AMELIA B. EDWARDS.

Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire, December, 1877.

PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.

First published in 1877, this book has been out of print for several years. I have, therefore, very gladly revised it for a new and cheaper edition. In so revising it, I have corrected some of the historical notes by the light of later discoveries; but I have left the narrative untouched. Of the political changes which have come over the land of Egypt since that narrative was written, I have taken no note; and because I in no sense offer myself as a guide to others, I say nothing of the altered conditions under which most Nile travelers now perform the trip. All these things will be more satisfactorily, and more practically, learned from the pages of Baedeker and Murray.

AMELIA B. EDWARDS.

Westbury-on-Trym, October, 1888.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.

CHAPTER I.
CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID.

It is the traveler’s lot to dine at many table-d’hôtes in the course of many wanderings; but it seldom befalls him to make one of a more miscellaneous gathering than that which overfills the great dining-room at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo during the beginning and height of the regular Egyptian season. Here assemble daily some two to three hundred persons of all ranks, nationalities, and pursuits; half of whom are Anglo-Indians homeward or outward bound, European residents, or visitors established in Cairo for the winter. The other half, it may be taken for granted, are going up the Nile. So composite and incongruous is this body of Nile-goers, young and old, well-dressed and ill-dressed, learned and unlearned, that the new-comer’s first impulse is to inquire from what motives so many persons of dissimilar tastes and training can be led to embark upon an expedition which is, to say the least of it, very tedious, very costly, and of an altogether exceptional interest.

His curiosity, however, is soon gratified. Before two days are over, he knows everybody’s name and everybody’s business; distinguishes at first sight between a Cook’s tourist and an independent traveler; and has discovered that nine-tenths of those whom he is likely to meet up the river are English or American. The rest will be mostly German, with a sprinkling of Belgian and French. So far en bloc; but the details are more heterogeneous still. Here are invalids in search of health; artists in search of subjects; sportsmen keen upon crocodiles; statesmen out for a holiday; special correspondents alert for gossip; collectors on the scent of papyri and mummies; men of science with only scientific ends in view; and the usual surplus of idlers who travel for the mere love of travel or the satisfaction of a purposeless curiosity.

Now in a place like Shepheard’s, where every fresh arrival has the honor of contributing, for at least a few minutes, to the general entertainment, the first appearance of L—— and the writer, tired, dusty, and considerably sunburned, may well have given rise to some of the comments in usual circulation at those crowded tables. People asked each other, most likely, where these two wandering Englishwomen had come from; why they had not dressed for dinner; what brought them to Egypt; and if they also were going up the Nile—to which questions it would have been easy to give satisfactory answers.

We came from Alexandria, having had a rough passage from Brindisi, followed by forty-eight hours of quarantine. We had not dressed for dinner because, having driven on from the station in advance of dragoman and luggage, we were but just in time to take seats with the rest. We intended, of course, to go up the Nile; and had any one ventured to inquire in so many words what brought us to Egypt, we should have replied: “Stress of weather.”

For in simple truth we had drifted hither by accident, with no excuse of health, or business, or any serious object whatever; and had just taken refuge in Egypt as one might turn aside into the Burlington Arcade or the Passage des Panoramas—to get out of the rain.

And with good reason. Having left home early in September for a few weeks’ sketching in central France, we had been pursued by the wettest of wet weather. Washed out of the hill country, we fared no better in the plains. At Nismes it poured for a month without stopping. Debating at last whether it were better to take our wet umbrellas back at once to England, or push on farther still in search of sunshine, the talk fell upon Algiers—Malta—Cairo; and Cairo carried it. Never was distant expedition entered upon with less premeditation! The thing was no sooner decided than we were gone. Nice, Genoa, Bologna, Ancona flitted by, as in a dream; and Bedreddin Hassan when he awoke at the gates of Damascus was scarcely more surprised than the writer of these pages when she found herself on board of the Simla and steaming out of the port of Brindisi.

Here, then, without definite plans, outfit, or any kind of oriental experience, behold us arrived in Cairo on the 29th of November, 1873, literally, and most prosaically, in search of fine weather.

But what had memory to do with rains on land, or storms at sea, or the impatient hours of quarantine, or anything dismal or disagreeable, when one awoke at sunrise to see those gray-green palms outside the window solemnly bowing their plumed heads toward each other, against a rose-colored dawn? It was dark last night, and I had no idea that my room overlooked an enchanted garden, far-reaching and solitary, peopled with stately giants beneath whose tufted crowns hung rich clusters of maroon and amber dates. It was a still, warm morning. Grave gray and black crows flew heavily from tree to tree, or perched, cawing meditatively, upon the topmost branches. Yonder, between the pillared stems, rose the minaret of a very distant mosque; and here, where the garden was bounded by a high wall and a windowless house, I saw a veiled lady walking on the terraced roof in the midst of a cloud of pigeons. Nothing could be more simple than the scene and its accessories; nothing, at the same time, more eastern, strange, and unreal.

But in order thoroughly to enjoy an overwhelming, ineffaceable first impression of oriental out-of-door life one should begin in Cairo with a day in the native bazaars; neither buying, nor sketching, nor seeking information, but just taking in scene after scene, with its manifold combinations of light and shade, color, costume, and architectural detail. Every shop front, every street corner, every turbaned group is a ready-made picture. The old Turk who sets up his cake stall in the recess of a sculptured doorway; the donkey boy, with his gayly caparisoned ass, waiting for customers; the beggar asleep on the steps of the mosque; the veiled woman filling her water jar at the public fountain—they all look as if they had been put there expressly to be painted.

Nor is the background less picturesque than the figures. The houses are high and narrow. The upper stories project; and from these again jut windows of delicate turned lattice work in old brown wood, like big bird-cages. The street is roofed in overhead with long rafters and pieces of matting, through which a dusty sunbeam straggles here and there, casting patches of light upon the moving crowd. The unpaved thoroughfare—a mere narrow lane, full of ruts and watered profusely twice or thrice a day—is lined with little wooden shop fronts, like open cabinets full of shelves, where the merchants sit cross-legged in the midst of their goods, looking out at the passers-by and smoking in silence. Meanwhile, the crowd ebbs and flows unceasingly—a noisy, changing, restless, party-colored tide, half European, half oriental, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages. Here are Syrian dragomans in baggy trousers and braided jackets; barefooted Egyptian fellaheen in ragged blue shirts and felt skull-caps; Greeks in absurdly stiff white tunics, like walking pen-wipers; Persians with high miter-like caps of dark woven stuff; swarthy Bedouins in flowing garments, creamy-white, with chocolate stripes a foot wide, and head-shawl of the same bound about the brow with a fillet of twisted camel’s hair; Englishmen in palm-leaf hats and knickerbockers, dangling their long legs across almost invisible donkeys; native women of the poorer class, in black veils that leave only the eyes uncovered, and long trailing garments of dark blue and black striped cotton; dervishes in patchwork coats, their matted hair streaming from under fantastic head-dresses; blue-black Abyssinians with incredibly slender, bowed legs, like attenuated ebony balustrades; Armenian priests, looking exactly like Portia as the doctor, in long black gowns and high square caps; majestic ghosts of Algerine Arabs, all in white; mounted Janissaries with jingling sabers and gold-embroidered jackets; merchants, beggars, soldiers, boatmen, laborers, workmen, in every variety of costume, and of every shade of complexion from fair to dark, from tawny to copper-color, from deepest bronze to bluest black.

Now a water-carrier goes by, bending under the weight of his newly replenished goatskin, the legs of which being tied up, the neck fitted with a brass cock, and the hair left on, looks horribly bloated and life-like. Now comes a sweetmeat-vender with a tray of that gummy compound known to English children as “lumps of delight”; and now an Egyptian lady on a large gray donkey led by a servant with a showy saber at his side. The lady wears a rose-colored silk dress and white veil, besides a black silk outer garment, which, being cloak, hood, and veil all in one, fills out with the wind as she rides, like a balloon. She sits astride; her naked feet, in their violet velvet slippers, just resting on the stirrups. She takes care to display a plump brown arm laden with massive gold bracelets, and, to judge by the way in which she uses a pair of liquid black eyes, would not be sorry to let her face be seen also. Nor is the steed less well dressed than his mistress. His close-shaven legs and hindquarters are painted in blue and white zigzags picked out with bands of pale yellow; his high-pommeled saddle is resplendent with velvet and embroidery; and his head-gear is all tags, tassels, and fringes. Such a donkey as this is worth from sixty to a hundred pounds sterling. Next passes an open barouche full of laughing Englishwomen; or a grave provincial sheik all in black, riding a handsome bay Arab, demi-sang; or an Egyptian gentleman in European dress and Turkish fez, driven by an English groom in an English phaeton. Before him, wand in hand, bare-legged, eager-eyed, in Greek skull-cap and gorgeous gold-embroidered waistcoat and fluttering white tunic, flies a native saïs, or running footman. No person of position drives in Cairo without one or two of these attendants. The saïs (strong, light and beautiful, like John of Bologna’s Mercury) are said to die young. The pace kills them. Next passes a lemonade-seller, with his tin jar in one hand and his decanter and brass cups in the other; or an itinerant slipper-vender with a bunch of red and yellow morocco shoes dangling at the end of a long pole; or a London-built miniature brougham containing two ladies in transparent Turkish veils, preceded by a Nubian outrider in semi-military livery; or, perhaps, a train of camels, ill-tempered and supercilious, craning their scrannel necks above the crowd, and laden with canvas bales scrawled over with Arabic addresses.

But the Egyptian, Arab and Turkish merchants, whether mingling in the general tide or sitting on their counters, are the most picturesque personages in all this busy scene. They wear ample turbans, for the most part white; long vests of striped Syrian silk reaching to the feet; and an outer robe of braided cloth or cashmere. The vest is confined round the waist by a rich sash; and the outer robe, or gibbeh, is generally of some beautiful degraded color, such as maize, mulberry, olive, peach, sea-green, salmon-pink, sienna-brown, and the like. That these stately beings should vulgarly buy and sell, instead of reposing all their lives on luxurious divans and being waited upon by beautiful Circassians, seems altogether contrary to the eternal fitness of things. Here, for instance, is a grand vizier in a gorgeous white and amber satin vest, who condescends to retail pipe-bowls—dull red clay pipe-bowls of all sizes and prices. He sells nothing else, and has not only a pile of them on the counter, but a binful at the back of his shop. They are made at Siout, in Upper Egypt, and may be bought at the Algerine shops in London almost as cheaply as in Cairo. Another majestic pasha deals in brass and copper vessels, drinking-cups, basins, ewers, trays, incense-burners, chafing-dishes, and the like; some of which are exquisitely engraved with arabesque patterns or sentences from the poets. A third sells silks from the looms of Lebanon and gold and silver tissues from Damascus. Others, again, sell old arms, old porcelian, old embroideries, second-hand prayer-carpets, and quaint little stools and cabinets of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Here, too, the tobacco merchant sits behind a huge cake of latakia as big as his own body; and the sponge merchant smokes his long chibouk in a bower of sponges.

Most amusing of all, however, are those bazaars in which each trade occupies its separate quarter. You pass through an old stone gateway or down a narrow turning, and find yourself amid a colony of saddlers, stitching, hammering, punching, riveting. You walk up one alley and down another, between shop fronts hung round with tasseled head-gear and hump-backed saddles of all qualities and colors. Here are ladies’ saddles, military saddles, donkey saddles, and saddles for great officers of state; saddles covered with red leather, with crimson and violet velvet, with maroon, and gray, and purple cloth; saddles embroidered with gold and silver, studded with brass-headed nails, or trimmed with braid.

Another turn or two, and you are in the slipper bazaar, walking down avenues of red and yellow morocco slippers; the former of home manufacture, the latter from Tunis. Here are slippers with pointed toes, turned-up toes, and toes as round and flat as horseshoes; walking slippers with thick soles, and soft yellow slippers to be worn as inside socks, which have no soles at all. These absurd little scarlet bluchers with tassels are for little boys; the brown morocco shoes are for grooms; the velvet slippers embroidered with gold and beads and seed pearls are for wealthy hareens, and are sold at prices varying from five shillings to five pounds the pair.

The carpet bazaar is of considerable extent, and consists of a network of alleys and counter-alleys opening off to the right of the Muski, which is the Regent street of Cairo. The houses in most of these alleys are rich in antique lattice windows and Saracenic doorways. One little square is tapestried all round with Persian and Syrian rugs, Damascus saddle-bags, and Turkish prayer-carpets. The merchants sit and smoke in the midst of their goods; and up in one corner an old “kahwagee,” or coffee-seller, plies his humble trade. He has set up his little stove and hanging-shelf beside the doorway of a dilapidated khan, the walls of which are faced with arabesque panelings in old carved stone. It is one of the most picturesque “bits” in Cairo. The striped carpets of Tunis; the dim gray and blue, or gray and red fabrics of Algiers; the shaggy rugs of Laodicea and Smyrna; the rich blues and greens and subdued reds of Turkey; and the wonderfully varied, harmonious patterns of Persia, have each their local habitation in the neighboring alleys. One is never tired of traversing these half-lighted avenues all aglow with gorgeous color and peopled with figures that come and go like the actors in some Christmas piece of oriental pageantry.

In the Khan Khaleel, the place of the gold and silver smiths’ bazaar, there is found, on the contrary, scarcely any display of goods for sale. The alleys are so narrow in this part that two persons can with difficulty walk in them abreast; and the shops, tinier than ever, are mere cupboards with about three feet of frontage. The back of each cupboard is fitted with tiers of little drawers and pigeon-holes, and in front is a kind of matted stone step, called a mastabah, which serves for seat and counter. The customer sits on the edge of the mastabah; the merchant squats, cross-legged, inside. In this position he can, without rising, take out drawer after drawer; and thus the space between the two becomes piled with gold and silver ornaments. These differ from each other only in the metal, the patterns being identical; and they are sold by weight, with a due margin for profit. In dealing with strangers who do not understand the Egyptian system of weights, silver articles are commonly weighed against rupees or five-franc pieces, and gold articles against napoleons or sovereigns. The ornaments made in Cairo consist chiefly of chains and earrings, anklets, bangles, necklaces strung with coins or tusk-shaped pendants, amulet-cases of filigree or repoussé work, and penannular bracelets of rude execution, but rich and ancient designs. As for the merchants their civility and patience are inexhaustible. One may turn over their whole stock, try on all their bracelets, go away again and again without buying, and yet be always welcomed and dismissed with smiles. L—— and the writer spent many an hour practicing Arabic in the Khan Khaleel, without, it is to be feared, a corresponding degree of benefit to the merchants.

There are many other special bazaars in Cairo, as the sweetmeat bazaar; the hardware bazaar; the tobacco bazaar; the sword-mounters’ and coppersmiths’ bazaars; the Moorish bazaar, where fez caps, burnouses and Barbary goods are sold; and some extensive bazaars for the sale of English and French muslins and Manchester cotton goods; but these last are for the most part of inferior interest. Among certain fabrics manufactured in England expressly for the eastern market, we observed a most hideous printed muslin representing small black devils capering over a yellow ground, and we learned that it was much in favor for children’s dresses.

But the bazaars, however picturesque, are far from being the only sights of Cairo. There are mosques in plenty; grand old Saracenic gates; ancient coptic churches; the museum of Egyptian antiquities; and, within driving distance, the tombs of the Caliphs, Heliopolis, the Pyramids and the Sphinx. To remember in what order the present travelers saw these things would now be impossible; for they lived in a dream and were at first too bewildered to catalogue their impressions very methodically. Some places they were for the present obliged to dismiss with only a passing glance; others had to be wholly deferred till their return to Cairo.

In the meanwhile, our first business was to look at dahabeeyahs; and the looking at dahabeeyahs compelled us constantly to turn our steps and our thoughts in the direction of Boulak—a desolate place by the river, where some two or three hundred Nile boats lay moored for hire. Now, most persons know something of the miseries of house-hunting, but only those who have experienced them know how much keener are the miseries of dahabeeyah-hunting. It is more bewildering and more fatiguing, and is beset by its own special and peculiar difficulties. The boats, in the first place, are all built on the same plan, which is not the case with houses; and, except as they run bigger or smaller, cleaner or dirtier, are as like each other as twin oysters. The same may be said of their captains, with the same differences; for, to a person who has been only a few days in Egypt, one black or copper-colored man is exactly like every other black or copper-colored man. Then each reïs, or captain, displays the certificates given him by former travelers; and these certificates, being apparently in active circulation, have a mysterious way of turning up again and again on board different boats and in the hands of different claimants. Nor is this all. Dahabeeyahs are given to changing their places, which houses do not do; so that the boats which lay yesterday alongside the eastern bank may be over at the western bank to-day, or hidden in the midst of a dozen others half a mile lower down the river. All this is very perplexing; yet it is as nothing compared with the state of confusion one gets into when attempting to weigh the advantages or disadvantages of boats with six cabins and boats with eight; boats provided with canteen, and boats without; boats that can pass the cataract, and boats that can’t; boats that are only twice as dear as they ought to be, and boats with that defect five or six times multiplied. Their names, again—ghazal, sarawa, fostat, dongola—unlike any names one has ever heard before, afford as yet no kind of help to the memory. Neither do the names of their captains; for they are all Mohammeds or Hassans. Neither do their prices; for they vary from day to day, according to the state of the market as shown by the returns of arrivals at the principal hotels.

Add to all this the fact that no reïs speaks anything but Arabic, and that every word of inquiry or negotiation has to be filtered, more or less inaccurately, through a dragoman, and then perhaps those who have not yet tried this variety of the pleasures of the chase may be able to form some notion of the weary, hopeless, puzzling work which lies before the dahabeeyah-hunter in Cairo.

Thus it came to pass that, for the first ten days or so, some three or four hours had to be devoted every morning to the business of the boats; at the end of which time we were no nearer a conclusion than at first. The small boats were too small for either comfort or safety, especially in what Nile travelers call “a big wind.” The medium-sized boats (which lie under the suspicion of being used in summer for the transport of cargo) were for the most part of doubtful cleanliness. The largest boats, which alone seemed unexceptionable, contained from eight to ten cabins, besides two saloons, and were obviously too large for a party consisting of only L——, the writer and a maid. And all were exorbitantly dear. Encompassed by these manifold difficulties; listening now to this and now to that person’s opinion; deliberating, haggling, comparing, hesitating, we vibrated daily between Boulak and Cairo and led a miserable life. Meanwhile, however, we met some former acquaintances; made some new ones; and when not too tired or downhearted, saw what we could of the sights of Cairo—which helped a little to soften the asperities of our lot.

One of our first excursions was, of course, to the pyramids, which lie within an hour and a half’s easy drive from the hotel door. We started immediately after an early luncheon, followed an excellent road all the way and were back in time for dinner at half-past six. But it must be understood that we did not go to see the pyramids. We went only to look at them. Later on (having meanwhile been up the Nile and back and gone through months of training), we came again, not only with due leisure, but also with some practical understanding of the manifold phases through which the arts and architecture of Egypt had passed since those far-off days of Cheops and Chephren. Then, only, we can be said to have seen the pyramids; and till we arrive at that stage of our pilgrimage it will be well to defer everything like a detailed account of them or their surroundings. Of this first brief visit, enough, therefore, a brief record.

The first glimpse that most travelers now get of the pyramids is from the window of the railway carriage as they come from Alexandria; and it is not impressive. It does not take one’s breath away, for instance, like a first sight of the Alps from the high level of the Neufchâtel line, or the outline of the Acropolis at Athens as one first recognizes it from the sea. The well-known triangular forms look small and shadowy, and are too familiar to be in any way startling. And the same, I think, is true of every distant view of them—that is, of every view which is too distant to afford the means of scaling them against other objects. It is only in approaching them, and observing how they grow with every foot of the road, that one begins to feel they are not so familiar after all.

But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the great pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one’s head, the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder.

Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of the pyramids, and only their forms, that one had been acquainted all these years past. Of their surface, their color, their relative position, their number (to say nothing of their size), one had hitherto entertained no kind of definite idea. The most careful study of plans and measurements, the clearest photographs, the most elaborate descriptions, had done little or nothing, after all, to make one know the place beforehand. This undulating table-land of sand and rock, pitted with open graves and cumbered with mounds of shapeless masonry, is wholly unlike the desert of our dreams. The pyramids of Cheops and Chephren are bigger than we had expected; the pyramid of Mycerinus is smaller. Here, too, are nine pyramids, instead of three. They are all entered in the plans and mentioned in the guide-books; but, somehow, one is unprepared to find them there, and cannot help looking upon them as intruders. These six extra pyramids are small and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, is little more than a big cairn.

Even the great pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected sense of unlikeness. We all know and have known from childhood, that it was stripped of its outer blocks some five hundred years ago to build Arab mosques and palaces; but the rugged, rock-like aspect of that giant staircase takes us by surprise, nevertheless. Nor does it look like a partial ruin either. It looks as if it had been left unfinished, and as if the workmen might be coming back to-morrow morning.

The color again is a surprise. Few persons can be aware beforehand of the rich tawny hue that Egyptian limestone assumes after ages of exposure to the blaze of an Egyptian sky. Seen in certain lights, the pyramids look like piles of massy gold.

Having but one hour and forty minutes to spend on the spot, we resolutely refused on this first occasion to be shown anything, or told anything, or to be taken anywhere—except, indeed, for a few minutes to the brink of the sand hollow in which the Sphinx lies couchant. We wished to give our whole attention, and all the short time at our disposal, to the great pyramid only. To gain some impression of the outer aspect and size of this enormous structure—to steady our minds to something like an understanding of its age—was enough, and more than enough, for so brief a visit.

For it is no easy task to realize, however imperfectly, the duration of six or seven thousand years; and the great pyramid, which is supposed to have been some four thousand two hundred and odd years old at the time of the birth of Christ, is now in its seventh millenary. Standing there close against the base of it; touching it; measuring her own height against one of its lowest blocks; looking up all the stages of that vast, receding, rugged wall, which leads upward like an Alpine buttress and seems almost to touch the sky, the writer suddenly became aware that these remote dates had never presented themselves to her mind until this moment as anything but abstract numerals. Now, for the first time, they resolved themselves into something concrete, definite, real. They were no longer figures, but years with their changes of season, their high and low Niles, their seed-times and harvests. The consciousness of that moment will never, perhaps, quite wear away. It was as if one had been snatched up for an instant to some vast height overlooking the plains of time, and had seen the centuries mapped out beneath one’s feet.

To appreciate the size of the great pyramid is less difficult than to apprehend its age. No one who has walked the length of one side, climbed to the top, and learned the dimensions from Murray, can fail to form a tolerably clear idea of its mere bulk. The measurements given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson are as follows: Length of each side, 732 feet; perpendicular height, 480 feet 9 inches; area, 535,824 square feet.[3] That is to say it stands 115 feet 9 inches higher than the cross on the top of St. Paul’s and about 20 feet lower than Box Hill in Surrey; and if transported bodily to London, it would a little more than cover the whole area of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. These are sufficiently matter-of-fact statements and sufficiently intelligible; but, like most calculations of the kind, they diminish rather than do justice to the dignity of the subject.

More impressive by far than the weightiest array of figures or the most striking comparisons, was the shadow cast by the great pyramid as the sun went down. That mighty shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the stony platform of the desert and over full three quarters of a mile of the green plain below. It divided the sunlight where it fell, just as its great original divided the sunlight in the upper air; and it darkened the space it covered, like an eclipse. It was not without a thrill of something approaching to awe that one remembered how this self-same shadow had gone on registering not only the height of the most stupendous gnomon ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage day by day of more than sixty centuries of the world’s history.

It was still lengthening over the landscape as we went down the long sand-slope and regained the carriage. Some six or eight Arabs in fluttering white garments ran on ahead to bid us a last good-by. That we should have driven over from Cairo only to sit quietly down and look at the great pyramid had filled them with unfeigned astonishment. With such energy and dispatch as the modern traveler uses, we might have been to the top and seen the temple of the Sphinx and done two or three of the principal tombs in the time.

“You come again!” said they. “Good Arab show you everything. You see nothing this time!”

So, promising to return ere long, we drove away; well content, nevertheless, with the way in which our time had been spent.

The pyramid Bedouins have been plentifully abused by travelers and guide-books, but we found no reason to complain of them now or afterward. They neither crowded round us, nor followed us, nor importuned us in any way. They are naturally vivacious and very talkative; yet the gentle fellows were dumb as mutes when they found we wished for silence. And they were satisfied with a very moderate bakhshîsh at parting.

As a fitting sequel to this excursion, we went, I think next day, to see the mosque of Sultan Hassan, which is one of those mediæval structures said to have been built with the casing-stones of the great pyramid.

CHAPTER II.
CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE.

The mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most beautiful in Cairo, is also perhaps the most beautiful in the Moslem world. It was built at just that happy moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and early Christian edifices. The mosques of a few centuries earlier (as, for instance, that of Tulûn, which marks the first departure from the old Byzantine model) consisted of little more than a court-yard with colonnades leading to a hall supported on a forest of pillars. A little more than a century later, and the national style had already experienced the beginnings of that prolonged eclipse which finally resulted in the bastard Neo-Byzantine renaissance represented by the mosque of Mehemet Ali. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan, built ninety-seven years before the taking of Constantinople, may justly be regarded as the highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after it had used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and before its new-born originality became modified by influences from beyond the Bosporus. Its pre-eminence is due neither to the greatness of its dimensions nor to the splendor of its materials. It is neither so large as the great mosque at Damascus, nor so rich in costly marbles as Saint Sophia in Constantinople; but in design, proportion, and a certain lofty grace impossible to describe, it surpasses these, and every other mosque, whether original or adapted, with which the writer is acquainted.

The whole structure is purely national. Every line and curve in it, and every inch of detail, is in the best style of the best period of the Arabian school. And above all, it was designed expressly for its present purpose. The two famous mosques of Damascus and Constantinople having, on the contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidences of adaptation. In Saint Sophia, the space once occupied by the figure of the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the mosaic work of the apsis, filled in with gold tesseræ of later date; while the magnificent gates of the great mosque at Damascus are decorated, among other Christian emblems, with the sacramental chalice. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan, built by En Nasîr Hassan in the high and palmy days of the Memlook rule, is marred by no discrepancies. For a mosque it was designed, and a mosque it remains. Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin.

A number of small streets having lately been demolished in this quarter, the approach to the mosque lies across a desolate open space littered with débris, but destined to be laid out as a public square. With this desirable end in view, some half-dozen workmen were lazily loading as many camels with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting rubbish. If they persevere, and the minister of public works continues to pay their wages with due punctuality, the ground will perhaps get cleared in eight or ten years’ time.

Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great steps, which were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, we observed a long and apparently fast-widening fissure reaching nearly from top to bottom of the main wall of the building, close against the minaret. It looked like just such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake, and, being still new to the east, we wondered the government had not set to work to mend it. We had yet to learn that nothing is ever mended in Cairo. Here, as in Constantinople, new buildings spring up apace, but the old, no matter how venerable, are allowed to molder away, inch by inch, till nothing remains but a heap of ruins.

Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some more steps and along a gloomy corridor, we came to the great court, before entering which, however, we had to take off our boots and put on slippers brought for the purpose. The first sight of this court is an architectural surprise. It is like nothing one has seen before, and its beauty equals its novelty. Imagine an immense marble quadrangle, open to the sky and inclosed within lofty walls, with, at each side, a vast recess framed in by a single arch. The quadrangle is more than one hundred feet square, and the walls are more than one hundred feet high. Each recess forms a spacious hall for rest and prayer, and all are matted; but that at the eastern end is wider and considerably deeper than the other three, and the noble arch that incloses it like the proscenium of a splendid stage, measures, according to Fergusson, sixty-nine feet five inches in the span. It looks much larger. This principal hall, the floor of which is raised one step at the upper end, measures ninety feet in depth and ninety in height. The dais is covered with prayer-rugs, and contains the holy niche and the pulpit of the preacher. We observed that those who came up here came only to pray. Having prayed, they either went away or turned aside into one of the other recesses to rest. There was a charming fountain in the court with a dome roof as light and fragile looking as a big bubble, at which each worshiper performed his ablutions on coming in. This done, he left his slippers on the matting and trod the carpeted dais barefoot.

This was the first time we had seen moslems at prayer, and we could not but be impressed by their profound and unaffected devotion. Some lay prostrate, their foreheads touching the ground; others were kneeling; others bowing in the prescribed attitudes of prayer. So absorbed were they, that not even our unhallowed presence seemed to disturb them. We did not then know that the pious moslem is as devout out of the mosque as in it; or that it is his habit to pray when the appointed hours come round, no matter where he may be, or how occupied. We soon became so familiar, however, with this obvious trait of Mohammedan life, that it seemed quite a matter of course that the camel-driver should dismount and lay his forehead in the dust by the roadside; or the merchant spread his prayer-carpet on the narrow mastabah of his little shop in the public bazaar; or the boatman prostrate himself with his face to the east, as the sun went down behind the hills of the Libyan desert.

While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the intricate arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custode came up with a big key and invited us to visit the tomb of the founder. So we followed him into an enormous vaulted hall a hundred feet square, in the center of which stood a plain, railed-off tomb, with an empty iron-bound coffer at the foot. We afterward learned that for five hundred years—that is to say, ever since the death and burial of Sultan Hassan—this coffer had contained a fine copy of the Korân, traditionally said to have been written by Sultan Hassan’s own hand; but that the khedive, who is collecting choice and antique Arabic manuscripts, had only the other day sent an order for its removal.

Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the proportions of this noble sepulchral hall, the walls of which are covered with tracery in low relief incrusted with disks and tesseræ of turquoise-colored porcelain; while high up, in order to lead off the vaulting of the roof, the corners are rounded by means of recessed clusters of exquisite arabesque woodwork, like pendent stalactites. But the tesseræ are fast falling out, and most of their places are vacant; and the beautiful woodwork hangs in fragments, tattered and cobwebbed, like time-worn banners, which the first touch of a brush would bring down.

Going back again from the tomb to the court-yard, we everywhere observed traces of the same dilapidation. The fountain, once a miracle of Saracenic ornament, was fast going to destruction. The rich marbles of its basement were cracked and discolored, its stuccoed cupola was flaking off piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like wood tracery shredding away by inches.

Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with pretty confidence on the brink of the basin, and having splashed, and drunk, and preened its feathers like a true believer at his ablutions, flew up to the top of the cupola and sang deliciously. All else was profoundly still. Large spaces of light and shadow divided the quadrangle. The sky showed overhead as a square opening of burning solid blue; while here and there, reclining, praying, or quietly occupied, a number of turbaned figures were picturesquely scattered over the matted floors of the open halls around. Yonder sat a tailor cross-legged, making a waistcoat; near him, stretched on his face at full length, sprawled a basket-maker with his half-woven basket and bundle of rushes beside him; and here, close against the main entrance, lay a blind man and his dog; the master asleep, the dog keeping watch. It was, as I have said, our first mosque, and I well remember the surprise with which we saw that tailor sewing on his buttons and the sleepers lying about in the shade. We did not then know that a Mohammedan mosque is as much a place of rest and refuge as of prayer; or that the houseless Arab may take shelter there by night or day as freely as the birds may build their nests in the cornice, or as the blind man’s dog may share the cool shade with his sleeping master.

From the mosque of this Memlook sovereign it is but a few minutes’ uphill drive to the mosque of Mehemet Ali, by whose orders the last of that royal race were massacred just sixty-four years ago.[4] This mosque, built within the precincts of the citadel on a spur of the Mokattam Hills overlooking the city, is the most conspicuous object in Cairo. Its attenuated minarets and clustered domes show from every point of view for miles around, and remain longer in sight, as one leaves, or returns to, Cairo, than any other landmark. It is a spacious, costly, gaudy, commonplace building, with nothing really beautiful about it, except the great marble court-yard and fountain. The inside, which is entirely built of oriental alabaster, is carpeted with magnificent Turkey carpets and hung with innumerable cut-glass chandeliers, so that it looks like a huge vulgar drawing-room from which the furniture has been cleared out for dancing.

The view from the outer platform is, however, magnificent. We saw it on a hazy day, and could not therefore distinguish the point of the delta, which ought to have been visible on the north; but we could plainly see as far southward as the pyramids of Sakkârah, and trace the windings of the Nile for many miles across the plain. The pyramids of Ghizeh, on their daïs of desert rock about twelve miles off, looked, as they always do look from a distance, small and unimpressive; but the great alluvial valley dotted over with mud villages and intersected by canals and tracts of palm forest; the shining river specked with sails; and the wonderful city, all flat roofs, cupolas, and minarets, spread out like an intricate model at one’s feet, were full of interest and absorbed our whole attention. Looking down upon it from this elevation, it is as easy to believe that Cairo contains four hundred mosques, as it is to stand on the brow of the Pincio and believe in the three hundred and sixty-five churches of modern Rome.

As we came away, they showed us the place in which the Memlook nobles, four hundred and seventy[5] in number, were shot down like mad-dogs in a trap, that fatal first of March, A.D. 1811. We saw the upper gate which was shut behind them as they came out from the presence of the pasha, and the lower gate which was shut before them to prevent their egress. The walls of the narrow roadway in which the slaughter was done are said to be pitted with bullet marks; but we would not look for them.

I have already said that I do not very distinctly remember the order of our sight-seeing in Cairo, for the reason that we saw some places before we went up the river, some after we came back, and some (as for instance the museum at Boulak) both before and after, and indeed as often as possible. But I am at least quite certain that we witnessed a performance of howling dervishes, and the departure of the caravan for Mecca, before starting.

Of all the things that people do by way of pleasure, the pursuit of a procession is surely one of the most wearisome. They generally go a long way to see it; they wait a weary time; it is always late; and when at length it does come, it is over in a few minutes. The present pageant fulfilled all these conditions in a superlative degree. We breakfasted uncomfortably early, started soon after half-past seven, and had taken up our position outside the Báb en-Nasr, on the way to the desert, by half-past eight. Here we sat for nearly three hours, exposed to clouds of dust and a burning sun, with nothing to do but to watch the crowd and wait patiently. All Shepheard’s Hotel were there, and every stranger in Cairo; and we all had smart open carriages drawn by miserable screws and driven by bare-legged Arabs. These Arabs, by the way, are excellent whips, and the screws get along wonderfully; but it seems odd at first, and not a little humiliating, to be whirled along behind a coachman whose only livery consists of a rag of dirty white turban, a scant tunic just reaching to his knees, and the top boots with which nature has provided him.

Here, outside the walls, the crowd increased momentarily. The place was like a fair with provision stalls, swings, story-tellers, serpent-charmers, cake-sellers, sweetmeat-sellers, sellers of sherbet, water, lemonade, sugared nuts, fresh dates, hard-boiled eggs, oranges and sliced watermelon. Veiled women carrying little bronze Cupids of children astride upon the right shoulder, swarthy Egyptians, coal-black Abyssinians, Arabs and Nubians of every shade from golden-brown to chocolate, fellahs, dervishes, donkey boys, street urchins and beggars with every imaginable deformity, came and went; squeezed themselves in and out among the carriages; lined the road on each side of the great towered gateway; swarmed on the top of every wall; and filled the air with laughter, a babel of dialects, and those of Araby that are inseparable from an eastern crowd. A harmless, unsavory, good-humored, inoffensive throng, one glance at which was enough to put to flight all one’s preconceived notions about oriental gravity of demeanor! For the truth is that gravity is by no means an oriental characteristic. Take a Mohammedan at his devotions, and he is a model of religious abstraction; bargain with him for a carpet, and he is as impenetrable as a judge; but see him in his hours of relaxation, or on the occasion of a public holiday, and he is as garrulous and full of laughter as a big child. Like a child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake of noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fire-works as the height of human felicity. Now swings and fire-works are Arabic for bread and circuses, and our pleb’s passion for them is insatiable. He not only indulges in them upon every occasion of public rejoicing, but calls in their aid to celebrate the most solemn festivals of his religion. It so happened that we afterward came in the way of several Mohammedan festivals both in Egypt and Syria, and we invariably found the swings at work all day and the fire-works going off every evening.

To-day the swings outside the Báb en-Nasr were never idle. Here were creaking Russian swings hung with little painted chariots for the children; and plain rope swings, some of them as high as Haman’s gallows, for the men. For my own part, I know no sight more comic and incongruous than the serene enjoyment with which a bearded, turbaned, middle-aged Egyptian squats upon his heels on the tiny wooden seat of one of these enormous swings, and, holding on to the side-ropes for dear life, goes careering up forty feet high into the air at every turn.

At a little before midday, when the heat and glare were becoming intolerable, the swings suddenly ceased going, the crowd surged in the direction of the gate, and a distant drumming announced the approach of the procession. First came a string of baggage-camels laden with tent furniture; then some two hundred pilgrims on foot, chanting passages from the Korân; then a regiment of Egyptian infantry, the men in a coarse white linen uniform, consisting of coat, baggy trousers and gaiters, with cross-belts and cartouche-boxes of plain black leather, and the red fez, or tarboosh, on the head. Next after these came more pilgrims, followed by a body of dervishes carrying green banners embroidered with Arabic sentences in white and yellow; then a native cavalry regiment headed by a general and four colonels in magnificent gold embroidery and preceded by an excellent military band; then another band and a second regiment of infantry; then more colonels, followed by a regiment of lancers mounted on capital gray horses and carrying lances topped with small red and green pennants. After these had gone by there was a long stoppage, and then, with endless breaks and interruptions, came a straggling, irregular crowd of pilgrims, chiefly of the fellah class, beating small darabukkehs, or native drums. Those about us estimated their number at two thousand. And now, their guttural chorus audible long before they arrived in sight, came the howling dervishes—a ragged, wild-looking, ruffianly set, rolling their heads from side to side, and keeping up a hoarse, incessant cry of “Allàh! Allàh! Allàh!” Of these there may have been a couple of hundred. The sheiks of the principal order of dervishes came next in order, superbly dressed in robes of brilliant colors embroidered with gold and mounted on magnificent Arabs. Finest of all, in a green turban and scarlet mantle, rode the Sheik of Hasaneyn, who is a descendant of the prophet; but the most important, the Sheik el Bekree, who is a sort of Egyptian Archbishop of Canterbury, and head of all the dervishes, came last, riding a white Arab with gold-embroidered housings. He was a placid-looking old man, and wore a violet robe and an enormous red and green turban.

This very reverend personage was closely followed by the chief of the carpet-makers’ guild—a handsome man, sitting sidewise on a camel.

Then happened another break in the procession—an eager pause—a gathering murmur. And then, riding a gaunt dromedary at a rapid trot, his fat sides shaking and his head rolling in a drunken way at every step, appeared a bloated, half-naked Silenus, with long fuzzy black locks and triple chin, and no other clothing than a pair of short white drawers and red slippers. A shiver of delight ran through the crowd at sight of this holy man—the famous Sheik of the Camel (Sheik el-Gemel), the “great, good priest”—the idol of the people. We afterward learned that this was his twentieth pilgrimage, and that he was supposed to fast, roll his head and wear nothing but this pair of loose drawers all the way to and from Mecca.

But the crowning excitement was yet to come and the rapture with which the crowd had greeted the Sheik el-Gemel was as nothing compared with their ecstasy when the mahmal, preceded by another group of mounted officers and borne by a gigantic camel, was seen coming through the gateway. The women held up their children; the men swarmed up the scaffoldings of the swings and behind the carriages. They screamed, they shouted, they waved handkerchiefs and turbans; they were beside themselves with excitement. Meanwhile the camel, as if conscious of the dignity of his position and the splendor of his trappings, came on slowly and ponderously with his nose in the air, and passed close before our horses’ heads. We could not possibly have had better view of the mahmal; which is nothing but a sort of cage, or pagoda, of gilded tracery very richly decorated. In the days of the Memlooks, the mahmal represented the litter of the sultan, and went empty, like a royal carriage at the public funeral;[6] but we were told that it now carried the tribute-carpet sent annually by the carpet-makers of Cairo to the tomb of the prophet.

This closed the procession. As the camel passed, the crowd surged in, and everything like order was at an end. The carriages all made at once for the gate, so meeting the full tide of the outpouring crowd and causing unimaginable confusion. Some stuck in the sand half-way—our own among the number; and all got into an inextricable block in the narrow part just inside the gate. Hereupon the drivers abused each other and the crowd got impatient, and some Europeans got pelted.

Coming back, we met two or three more regiments. The men, both horse and foot, seemed fair average specimens, and creditably disciplined. They rode better than they marched, which was to be expected. The uniform is the same for cavalry and infantry throughout the service; the only difference being that the former wear short black riding-boots, and the latter, zouave gaiters of white linen. They are officered up to a certain point by Egyptians; but the commanding officers and the staff (among whom are enough colonels and generals to form an ordinary regiment) are chiefly Europeans and Americans.

It had seemed, while the procession was passing, that the proportion of pilgrims was absurdly small when compared with the display of military; but this, which is called the departure of the caravan, is in truth only the procession of the sacred carpet from Cairo to the camp outside the walls; and the troops are present merely as part of the pageant. The true departure takes place two days later. The pilgrims then muster in great numbers; but the soldiery is reduced to a small escort. It was said that seven thousand souls went out this year from Cairo and its neighborhood.

The procession took place on Thursday, the 21st day of the Mohammedan month of Showwál, which was our 11th of December. The next day, Friday, being the Mohammedan Sabbath, we went to the convent of the Howling Dervishes, which lies beyond the walls in a quiet nook between the river side and the part known as old Cairo.

We arrived a little after two, and passing through a court-yard shaded by a great sycamore were ushered into a large, square, whitewashed hall with a dome roof and a neatly matted floor. The place in its arrangements resembled none of the mosques that we had yet seen. There was, indeed, nothing to arrange—no pulpit, no holy niche, no lamps, no prayer-carpets; nothing but a row of cane-bottomed chairs at one end, some of which were already occupied by certain of our fellow-guests at Shepheard’s Hotel. A party of some forty or fifty wild-looking dervishes were squatting in a circle at the opposite side of the hall, their outer kuftâns and queer pyramidal hats lying in a heap close by.

Being accommodated with chairs among the other spectators, we waited for whatever might happen. More deverishes and more English dropped in from time to time. The new dervishes took off their caps and sat down among the rest, laughing and talking together at their ease. The English sat in a row, shy, uncomfortable, and silent; wondering whether they ought to behave as if they were in church, and mortally ashamed of their feet. For we had all been obliged to take off or cover our boots before going in, and those who had forgotten to bring slippers had their feet tied up in pocket handkerchiefs.

A long time went by thus. At last, when the number of dervishes had increased to about seventy, and every one was tired of waiting, eight musicians came in—two trumpets, two lutes, a cocoanut fiddle, a tambourine, and two drums. Then the dervishes, some of whom were old and white haired and some mere boys, formed themselves into a great circle, shoulder to shoulder; the band struck up a plaintive, discordant air; and a grave middle aged man, placing himself in the center of the ring and inclining his head at each repetition, began to recite the name of Allàh.

Softly at first, and one by one, the dervishes took up the chant: “Allàh! Allàh! Allàh!” Their heads and their voices rose and fell in unison. The dome above gave back a hollow echo. There was something strange and solemn in the ceremony.

Presently, however, the trumpets brayed louder—the voices grew hoarser—the heads bowed lower—the name of Allàh rang out faster and faster, fiercer and fiercer. The leader, himself cool and collected, began sensibly accelerating the time of the chorus; and it became evident that the performers were possessed by a growing frenzy. Soon the whole circle was madly rocking to and fro; the voices rose to a hoarse scream; and only the trumpets were audible above the din. Now and then a dervish would spring up convulsively some three or four feet above the heads of the others; but for the most part they stood firmly rooted to one spot—now bowing their heads almost to their feet—now flinging themselves so violently back that we, standing behind, could see their faces foreshortened upside down; and this with such incredible rapidity that their long hair had scarcely time either to rise or fall, but remained as if suspended in mid-air. Still the frenzy mounted; still the pace quickened. Some shrieked—some groaned—some, unable to support themselves any longer, were held up in their places by the by-standers. All were mad for the time being. Our own heads seemed to be going round at last; and more than one of the ladies present looked longingly toward the door. It was, in truth, a horrible sight, and needed only darkness and torchlight to be quite diabolical.

At length, just as the fury was at its height and the very building seemed to be rocking to and fro above our heads, one poor wretch staggered out of the circle and fell, writhing and shrieking, close against our feet. At the same moment the leader clapped his hands; the performers, panting and exhausted, dropped into a sitting posture; and the first zikr, as it is called, came abruptly to an end. Some few, however, could not stop immediately, but kept on swaying and muttering to themselves; while the one in the fit having ceased to shriek, lay out stiff and straight, apparently in a state of coma.

There was a murmur of relief and a simultaneous rising among the spectators. It was announced that another zikr, with a re-enforcement of fresh dervishes, would soon begin; but the Europeans had had enough of it, and few remained for the second performance.

Going out we paused beside the poor fellow on the floor, and asked if nothing could be done for him.

“He is struck by Mohammed,” said gravely an Egyptian official who was standing by.

At that moment the leader came over, knelt down beside him, touched him lightly on the head and breast, and whispered something in his ear. The man was then quite rigid and white as death. We waited, however, and after a few more minutes saw him struggle back into a dazed, half-conscious state, when he was helped to his feet and led away by his friends.

The court-yard as we came out was full of dervishes sitting on cane benches in the shade and sipping coffee. The green leaves rustled overhead with glimpses of intensely blue sky between; and brilliant patches of sunshine flickered down upon groups of wild-looking, half-savage figures in party-colored garments. It was one of those ready-made subjects that the sketcher passes by with a sigh, but which live in his memory forever.

From hence, being within a few minutes’ drive of old Cairo, we went on as far as the Mosque of Amr—an uninteresting ruin stands alone among the rubbish-mounds of the first Mohammedan capital of Egypt. It is constructed on the plan of a single quadrangle two hundred and twenty-five feet square, surrounded by a covered colonnade one range of pillars in depth on the west (which is the side of the entrance); four on the north; three on the south; and six on the east, which is the place of prayer, and contains three holy niches and the pulpit. The columns, two hundred and forty-five in number, have been brought from earlier Roman and Byzantine buildings. They are of various marbles and have all kinds of capitals. Some being originally too short, have been stilted on disproportionately high bases; and in one instance the necessary height has been obtained by adding a second capital on the top of the first. We observed one column of that rare black and white speckled marble of which there is a specimen in the pulpit of St. Mark’s in Venice; and one of the holy niches contains some fragments of Byzantine mosaics. But the whole building seems to have been put together in a barbarous way, and would appear to owe its present state of dilapidation more to bad workmanship than to time. Many of the pillars, especially on the western side, are fallen and broken; the octagonal fountain in the center is a roofless ruin; and the little minaret at the southeast corner is no longer safe.

Apart, however, from its poverty of design and detail, the Mosque of Amr is interesting as a point of departure in the history of Saracenic architecture. It was built by Amr Ebn el-As, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, in the twenty-first year of the hegira (A.D. 642), just ten years after the death of Mohammed; and it is the earliest Saracenic edifice in Egypt. We were glad, therefore, to have seen it for this reason, if for no other. But it is a barren, dreary place; and the glare reflected from all sides of the quadrangle was so intense that we were thankful to get away into the narrow streets beside the river.

Here we presently fell in with a wedding procession consisting of a crowd of men, a band, and some three or four hired carriages full of veiled women, one of whom was pointed out as the bride. The bridegroom walked in the midst of the men, who seemed to be teasing him, drumming round him, and opposing his progress; while high above the laughter, the shouting, the jingle of tambourines and the thrumming of darabukkehs, was heard the shrill squeal of some instrument that sounded exactly like a bagpipe.

It was a brilliant afternoon, and we ended our day’s work, I remember, with a drive on the Shubra road and a glance at the gardens of the khedive’s summer palace. The Shubra road is the Champs Elysées of Cairo, and is thronged every day from four to half-past six. Here little sheds of roadside cafés alternate with smart modern villas; ragged fellâheen on jaded donkeys trot side by side with elegant attachés on high-stepping Arabs; while tourists in hired carriages, Jew bankers in unexceptionable phaetons, veiled hareems in London built broughams, Italian shop-keepers in preposterously fashionable toilets, grave sheiks on magnificent Cairo asses, officers in frogged and braided frocks, and English girls in tall hats and close-fitting habits, followed by the inevitable little solemn-looking English groom, pass and repass, precede and follow each other, in one changing, restless, heterogeneous stream, the like of which is to be seen in no other capital in the world. The sons of the khedive drive here daily, always in separate carriages and preceded by four saïses and four guards. They are of all ages and sizes, from the hereditary prince, a pale, gentlemanly looking young man of four or five and twenty, down to one tiny, imperious atom of about six, who is dressed like a little man, and is constantly leaning out of the carriage window and shrilly abusing his coachman.[7]

Apart however, from those who frequent it, the Shubra road is a really fine drive, broad, level, raised some six or eight feet above the cultivated plain, closely planted on both sides with acacias and sycamore fig trees, and reaching straight away for four miles out of Cairo, counting from the railway terminus to the summer palace. The carriage-way is about as wide as the road across Hyde Park which connects Bayswater with Kensington; and toward the Shubra end, it runs close beside the Nile. Many of the sycamores are of great size and quite patriarchal girth. Their branches meet overhead nearly all the way, weaving a delicious shade and making a cool green tunnel of the long perspective.

We did not stay long in the khedive’s gardens, for it was already getting late when we reached the gates; but we went far enough to see that they were tolerably well kept, not over formal and laid out with a view to masses of foliage, shady paths and spaces of turf inlaid with flower-beds, after the style of the famous Sarntheim and Moser gardens at Botzen in the Tyrol. Here are sont trees (Acacia Nilotica) of unusual size, powdered all over with little feathery tufts of yellow blossom; orange and lemon trees in abundance; heaps of little green limes; bananas bearing heavy pendent bunches of ripe fruit; winding thickets of pomegranates, oleanders and salvias; and great beds and banks and trellised walks of roses. Among these, however, I observed none of the rarer varieties. As for the pointsettia, it grows in Egypt to a height of twenty feet, and bears blossoms of such size and color as we in England can form no idea of. We saw large trees of it both here and at Alexandria that seemed as if bending beneath a mantle of crimson stars, some of which cannot have measured less than twenty-two inches in diameter.

A large Italian fountain, in a rococo style, is the great sight of the place. We caught a glimpse of it through the trees, and surprised the gardener who was showing us over by declining to inspect it more nearly. He could not understand why we preferred to give our time to the shrubs and flower-beds.

Driving back presently toward Cairo with a big handful of roses apiece, we saw the sun going down in an aureole of fleecy pink and golden clouds, the Nile flowing by like a stream of liquid light, and a little fleet of sailing boats going up to Boulak before a puff of north wind that had sprung up as the sun neared the horizon. That puff of north wind, those gliding sails, had a keen interest for us now and touched us nearly; because—I have delayed this momentous revelation till the last moment—because we were to start to-morrow!

And this is why I have been able, in the midst of so much that was new and bewildering, to remember quite circumstantially the dates and all the events connected with these last two days. They were to be our last two days in Cairo; and to-morrow morning, Saturday, the 13th of December, we were to go on board a certain dahabeeyah now lying off the iron bridge at Boulak, therein to begin that strange aquatic life to which we had been looking forward with so many hopes and fears, and toward which we had been steering through so many preliminary difficulties.

But the difficulties were all over now and everything was settled; though not in the way we had at first intended. For, in place of a small boat, we had secured one of the largest on the river; and instead of going alone we had decided to throw in our lot with that of three other travelers. One of these three was already known to the writer. The other two, friends of the first, were on their way out from Europe and were not expected in Cairo for another week. We knew nothing of them but their names.

Meanwhile L—— and the writer, assuming sole possession of the dahabeeyah, were about to start ten days in advance; it being their intention to push on as far as Rhoda (the ultimate point then reached by the Nile railway), and there to await the arrival of the rest of the party. Now Rhoda (more correctly Roda) is just one hundred and eighty miles south of Cairo, and we calculated upon seeing the Sakkârah pyramids, the Turra quarries, the tombs of Beni Hassan, and the famous grotto of the Colossus on the Sledge, before our fellow-travelers should be due.

“It depends on the wind, you know,” said our dragoman, with a lugubrious smile.

We knew that it depended on the wind; but what then? In Egypt the wind is supposed always to blow from the north at this time of the year, and we had ten good days at our disposal. The observation was clearly irrelevant.

CHAPTER III.
CAIRO TO BEDRESHAYN.

A rapid raid into some of the nearest shops for things remembered at the last moment—a breathless gathering up of innumerable parcels—a few hurried farewells on the steps of the hotel—and away we rattle as fast as a pair of raw-boned grays can carry us. For this morning every moment is of value. We are already late; we expect visitors to luncheon on board at midday; and we are to weigh anchor at two P.M. Hence our anxiety to reach Boulak before the bridge is opened, that we may drive across to the western bank, against which our dahabeeyah lies moored. Hence, also, our mortification when we arrive just in time to see the bridge swing apart and the first tall mast glide through.

Presently, however, when those on the look-out have observed our signals of distress, a smart-looking sandal, or jolly-boat, decked with gay rugs and cushions, manned by five smiling Arabs, and flying a bright little new union jack, comes swiftly threading its way in and out among the lumbering barges now crowding through the bridge. In a few more minutes we are afloat. For this is our sandal and these are five of our crew; and of the three dahabeeyahs moored over yonder in the shade of the palms the biggest by far, and the trimmest, is our dear, memorable Philæ.

Close behind the Philæ lies the Bagstones, a neat little dahabeeyah in the occupation of two English ladies who chanced to cross with us in the Simla from Brindisi, and of whom we have seen so much ever since that we regard them by this time as quite old friends in a strange land. I will call them the M. B.’s. The other boat, lying off a few yards ahead, carries the tri-color, and is chartered by a party of French gentlemen. All three are to sail to-day.

And now we are on board and have shaken hands with the captain and are as busy as bees; for there are cabins to put in order, flowers to arrange, and a hundred little things to be seen to before the guests arrive. It is wonderful, however, what a few books and roses, an open piano, and a sketch or two will do. In a few minutes the comfortless hired look has vanished, and long enough before the first comers are announced the Philæ wears an aspect as cozy and home-like as if she had been occupied for a month.

As for the luncheon, it certainly surprised the givers of the entertainment quite as much as it must have surprised their guests. Being, no doubt, a pre-arranged display of professional pride on the part of dragoman and cook, it was more like an excessive Christmas dinner than a modest midday meal. We sat through it unflinchingly, however, for about an hour and three quarters, when a startling discharge of firearms sent us all running upon deck and created a wholesome diversion in our favor. It was the French boat signaling her departure, shaking out her big sail, and going off triumphantly.

I fear that we of the Bagstones and Philæ—being mere mortals and Englishwomen—could not help feeling just a little spiteful when we found the tri-color had started first; but then it was a consolation to know that the Frenchmen were going only to Assuân. Such is the esprit du Nil. The people in dahabeeyahs despise Cook’s tourists; those who are bound for the second cataract look down with lofty compassion upon those whose ambition extends only to the first; and travelers who engage their boat by the month hold their heads a trifle higher than those who contract for the trip. We, who were going as far as we liked and for as long as we liked, could afford to be magnanimous. So we forgave the Frenchmen, went down again to the saloon, and had coffee and music.

It was nearly three o’clock when our Cairo visitors wished us “bon voyage” and good-by. Then the M. B.’s, who, with their nephew, had been of the party, went back to their own boat; and both captains prepared to sail at a given signal. For the M. B.’s had entered into a solemn convention to start with us, moor with us, and keep with us, if practicable, all the way up the river. It is pleasant now to remember that this sociable compact, instead of falling through as such compacts are wont to do, was quite literally carried out as far as Aboo Simbel; that is to say, during a period of seven weeks’ hard going and for a distance of upward of eight hundred miles.

At last all is ready. The awning that has all day roofed in the upper deck is taken down; the captain stands at the head of the steps; the steersman is at the helm; the dragoman has loaded his musket. Is the Bagstones ready? We wave a handkerchief of inquiry—the signal is answered—the mooring ropes are loosened—the sailors pole the boat off from the bank—bang go the guns, six from the Philæ and six from the Bagstones, and away we go, our huge sail filling as it takes the wind!

Happy are the Nile travelers who start thus with a fair breeze on a brilliant afternoon. The good boat cleaves her way swiftly and steadily. Water-side palaces and gardens glide by and are left behind. The domes and minarets of Cairo drop quickly out of sight. The mosque of the citadel and the ruined fort that looks down upon it from the mountain ridge above diminish in the distance. The pyramids stand up sharp and clear.

We sit on the high upper deck, which is furnished with lounge-chairs, tables and foreign rugs, like a drawing-room in the open air, and enjoy the prospect at our ease. The valley is wide here and the banks are flat, showing a steep verge of crumbling alluvial mud next the river. Long belts of palm groves, tracts of young corn only an inch or two above the surface, and clusters of mud huts, relieved now and then by a little whitewashed cupola or a stumpy minaret, succeed each other on both sides of the river, while the horizon is bounded to right and left by long ranges of yellow limestone mountains, in the folds of which sleep inexpressibly tender shadows of pale violet and blue.

Thus the miles glide away, and by and by we approach Turra—a large, new-looking mud village, and the first of any extent that we have yet seen. Some of the houses are whitewashed; a few have glass windows, and many seem to be unfinished. A space of white, stony, glaring plain separates the village from the quarried mountains beyond, the flanks of which show all gashed and hewn away. One great cliff seems to have been cut sheer off for a distance of perhaps half a mile. Where the cuttings are fresh the limestone comes out dazzling white and the long slopes of débris heaped against the foot of the cliffs glisten like snow-drifts in the sun. Yet the outer surface of the mountains is orange-tawny, like the pyramids. As for the piles of rough hewn blocks that lie ranged along the bank ready for transport, they look like salt rather than stone. Here lies moored a whole fleet of cargo boats, laden and lading; and along the tramway that extends from the river side to the quarries we see long trains of mule-carts coming and going.

For all the new buildings in Cairo, the khedive’s palaces, the public offices, the smart modern villas, the glaring new streets, the theaters and foot pavements and cafés, all come from these mountains—just as the pyramids did more than six thousand years ago. There are hieroglyphed tablets and sculptured grottoes to be seen in the most ancient part of the quarries, if one were inclined to stop for them at this early stage of the journey; and Champollion tells of two magnificent outlines done in red ink upon the living rock by some master hand of Pharaonic times, the cutting of which was never even begun. A substantial new barrack and an esplanade planted with sycamore figs bring the straggling village to an end.

And now, as the afternoon wanes, we draw near to a dense, wide-spreading forest of stately date-palms on the western bank, knowing that beyond them, though unseen, lie the mounds of Memphis and all the wonders of Sakkârah. Then the sun goes down behind the Libyan hills; and the palms stand out black and bronzed against a golden sky; and the pyramids, left far behind, look gray and ghostly in the distance.

Presently, when it is quite dusk and the stars are out, we moor for the night at Bedreshayn, which is the nearest point for visiting Sakkârah. There is a railway station here, and also a considerable village, both lying back about half a mile from the river; and the distance from Cairo, which is reckoned at fifteen miles by the line, is probably about eighteen by water.

Such was our first day on the Nile. And perhaps, before going farther on our way, I ought to describe the Philæ and introduce Reïs Hassan and his crew.

A dahabeeyah, at the first glance, is more like a civic or an Oxford University barge, than anything in the shape of a boat with which we in England are familiar. It is shallow and flat-bottomed, and is adapted for either sailing or rowing. It carries two masts; a big one near the prow and a smaller one at the stern. The cabins are on deck and occupy the after-part of the vessel; and the roof of the cabins forms the raised deck, or open-air drawing-room already mentioned. This upper deck is reached from the lower deck by two little flights of steps, and is the exclusive territory of the passengers. The lower deck is the territory of the crew. A dahabeeyah is, in fact, not very unlike the Noah’s ark of our childhood, with this difference—the habitable part, instead of occupying the middle of the vessel, is all at one end, top heavy and many-windowed; while the fore-deck is not more than six feet above the level of the water. The hold, however, is under the lower deck, and so counterbalances the weight at the other end. Not to multiply comparisons unnecessarily, I may say that a large dahabeeyah reminds one of old pictures of the Bucentaur; especially when the men are at their oars.

The kitchen—which is a mere shed like a Dutch oven in shape, and contains only a charcoal stove and a row of stew-pans—stands between the big mast and the prow, removed as far as possible from the passengers’ cabins. In this position the cook is protected from a favorable wind by his shed; but in the case of a contrary wind he is screened by an awning. How, under even the most favorable circumstances, these men can serve up the elaborate dinners which are the pride of a Nile cook’s heart, is sufficiently wonderful; but how they achieve the same results when wind-storms and sand-storms are blowing and every breath is laden with the fine grit of the desert, is little short of miraculous.

Thus far, all dahabeeyahs are alike. The cabin arrangements differ, however, according to the size of the boat; and it must be remembered that in describing the Philæ I describe a dahabeeyah of the largest build—her total length from stem to stern being just one hundred feet, and the width of her upper deck at the broadest part little short of twenty.

Our floor being on a somewhat lower level than the men’s deck, we went down three steps to the entrance door, on each side of which was an external cupboard, one serving as a store-room and the other as a pantry. This door led into a passage out of which opened four sleeping-cabins, two on each side. These cabins measured about eight feet in length by four and a half in width, and contained a bed, a chair, a fixed washing-stand, a looking-glass against the wall, a shelf, a row of hooks, and under each bed two large drawers for clothes. At the end of this little passage another door opened into the dining-saloon—a spacious, cheerful room, some twenty-three or twenty-four feet long, situated in the widest part of the boat, and lighted by four windows on each side and a skylight. The paneled walls and ceiling were painted in white picked out with gold; a cushioned divan covered with a smart woolen reps ran along each side; and a gay Brussels carpet adorned the floor. The dining-table stood in the center of the room, and there was ample space for a piano, two little book-cases, and several chairs. The window-curtains and portières were of the same reps as the divan, the prevailing colors being scarlet and orange. Add a couple of mirrors in gilt frames; a vase of flowers on the table (for we were rarely without flowers of some sort, even in Nubia, where our daily bouquet had to be made with a few bean blossoms and castor-oil berries); plenty of books; the gentlemen’s guns and sticks in one corner; and the hats of all the party hanging in the spaces between the windows, and it will be easy to realize the homely, habitable look of our general sitting-room.

Another door and passage opening from the upper end of the saloon led to three more sleeping-rooms, two of which were single and one double; a bath-room; a tiny back staircase leading to the upper deck; and the stern-cabin saloon. This last, following the form of the stern, was semicircular, lighted by eight windows, and surrounded by a divan. Under this, as under the saloon divans, there ran a row of deep drawers, which, being fairly divided, held our clothes, wine, and books. The entire length of the dahabeeyah being exactly one hundred feet, I take the cabin part to have occupied about fifty-six or fifty-seven feet (that is to say, about six or seven feet over the exact half), and the lower deck to have measured the remaining forty-three feet. But these dimensions, being given from memory, are approximate.

For the crew there was no sleeping accommodation whatever, unless they chose to creep into the hold among the luggage and packing-cases. But this they never did. They just rolled themselves up at night, heads and all, in rough brown blankets, and lay about the lower deck like dogs.

The reïs, or captain, the steersman, and twelve sailors, the dragoman, head cook, assistant cook, two waiters, and the boy who cooked for the crew, completed our equipment. Reïs Hassan—short, stern-looking, authoritative—was a Cairo Arab. The dragoman, Elias Talhamy, was a Syrian of Beyrout. The two waiters, Michael and Habîb, and the head cook (a wizened old cordon bleu named Hassan Bedawee) were also Syrians. The steersman and five of the sailors were from Thebes; four belonged to a place near Philæ; one came from a village opposite Kom Ombo; one from Cairo, and two were Nubians from Assuân. They were of all shades, from yellowish bronze to a hue not far removed from black; and though, at the first mention of it, nothing more incongruous can well be imagined than a sailor in petticoats and a turban, yet these men in their loose blue gowns, bare feet, and white muslin turbans, looked not only picturesque but dressed exactly as they should be. They were for the most part fine young men, slender but powerful, square in the shoulders, like the ancient Egyptian statues, with the same slight legs and long, flat feet. More docile, active, good-tempered, friendly fellows never pulled an oar. Simple and trustful as children, frugal as anchorites, they worked cheerfully from sunrise to sunset, sometimes towing the dahabeeyah on a rope all day long, like barge-horses; sometimes punting for hours, which is the hardest work of all; yet always singing at their task, always smiling when spoken to, and made as happy as princes with a handful of coarse Egyptian tobacco, or a bundle of fresh sugar-canes bought for a few pence by the river side. We soon came to know them all by name—Mehemet Ali, Salame, Khalîfeh, Riskali, Hassan, Mûsa, and so on; and as none of us ever went on shore without one or two of them to act as guards and attendants, and as the poor fellows were constantly getting bruised hands or feet and coming to the upper deck to be doctored, a feeling of genuine friendliness was speedily established between us.

The ordinary pay of a Nile sailor is two pounds a month, with an additional allowance of about three and sixpence a month for flour. Bread is their staple food, and they make it themselves at certain places along the river where there are large public ovens for the purpose. This bread, which is cut up in slices and dried in the sun, is as brown as gingerbread and as hard as biscuit. They eat it soaked in hot water, flavored with oil, pepper and salt, and stirred in with boiled lentils till the whole becomes of the color, flavor, and consistence of thick pea soup. Except on grand occasions, such as Christmas day or the anniversary of the flight of the prophet, when the passengers treat them to a sheep, this mess of bread and lentils, with a little coffee twice a day, and now and then a handful of dates, constitutes their only food throughout the journey.

The Nile season is the Nile sailors’ harvest time. When the warm weather sets in and the travelers migrate with the swallows, these poor fellows disperse in all directions; some to seek a living as porters in Cairo; others to their homes in Middle and Upper Egypt, where, for about four-pence a day, they take hire as laborers, or work at Shâdûf irrigation till the Nile again overspreads the land. The Shâdûf work is hard, and a man has to keep on for nine hours out of every twenty-four; but he prefers it, for the most part, to employment in the government sugar factories, where the wages average at about the same rate, but are paid in bread, which, being doled out by unscrupulous inferiors, is too often of light weight and bad quality. The sailors who succeed in getting a berth on board a cargo-boat for the summer are the most fortunate.

Our captain, pilot, and crew were all Mohammedans. The cook and his assistant were Syrian Mohammedans. The dragoman and waiters were Christians of the Syrian Latin church. Only one out of the fifteen natives could write or read; and that one was a sailor named Egendi, who acted as a sort of second mate. He used sometimes to write letters for the others, holding a scrap of tumbled paper across the palm of his left hand, and scrawling rude Arabic characters with a reed pen of his own making. This Egendi, though perhaps the least interesting of the crew, was a man of many accomplishments—an excellent comic actor, a bit of a shoemaker, and a first-rate barber. More than once, when we happened to be stationed far from any village, he shaved his messmates all round and turned them out with heads as smooth as billiard balls.

There are, of course, good and bad Mohammedans as there are good and bad churchmen of every denomination; and we had both sorts on board. Some of the men were very devout, never failing to perform their ablutions and say their prayers at sunrise and sunset. Others never dreamed of doing so. Some would not touch wine—had never tasted it in their lives, and would have suffered any extremity rather than break the law of their prophet. Others had a nice taste in clarets and a delicate appreciation of the respective merits of rum or whisky punch. It is, however, only fair to add that we never gave them these things except on special occasions, as on Christmas day, or when they had been wading in the river, or in some other way undergoing extra fatigue in our service. Nor do I believe there was a man on board who would have spent a para of his scanty earnings on any drink stronger than coffee. Coffee and tobacco are, indeed, the only luxuries in which the Egyptian peasant indulges; and our poor fellows were never more grateful than when we distributed among them a few pounds of cheap native tobacco. This abominable mixture sells in the bazaars at sixpence the pound, the plant from which it is gathered being raised from inferior seed in a soil chemically unsuitable, because wholly devoid of potash.

Also it is systematically spoiled in the growing. Instead of being nipped off when green and dried in the shade, the leaves are allowed to wither on the stalk before they are gathered. The result is a kind of rank hay without strength or flavor, which is smoked by only the very poorest class, and carefully avoided by all who can afford to buy Turkish or Syrian tobacco.

Twice a day, after their midday and evening meals, our sailors were wont to sit in a circle and solemnly smoke a certain big pipe of the kind known as a hubble-bubble. This hubble-bubble (which was of most primitive make and consisted of a cocoanut and two sugar-canes) was common property; and, being filled by the captain, went round from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, while it lasted.

They smoked cigarettes at other times, and seldom went on shore without a tobacco-pouch and a tiny book of cigarette-papers. Fancy a bare-legged Arab making cigarettes! No Frenchman, however, could twist them up more deftly or smoke them with a better grace.

A Nile sailor’s service expires with the season, so that he is generally a landsman for about half the year; but the captain’s appointment is permanent. He is expected to live in Cairo, and is responsible for his dahabeeyah during the summer months, while it lies up at Boulak. Reïs Hassan had a wife and a comfortable little home on the outskirts of old Cairo, and was looked upon as a well-to-do personage among his fellows. He received four pounds a month all the year round from the owner of the Philæ—a magnificent broad-shouldered Arab of about six foot nine, with a delightful smile, the manners of a gentleman, and the rapacity of a Shylock.

Our men treated us to a concert that first night, as we lay moored under the bank near Bedreshayn. Being told that it was customary to provide musical instruments, we had given them leave to buy a tar and darabukkeh before starting. The tar, or tambourine, was pretty enough, being made of rosewood inlaid with mother-of-pearl; but a more barbarous affair than the darabukkeh was surely never constructed. This primitive drum is about a foot and a half in length, funnel-shaped, molded of sun-dried clay like the kullehs, and covered over the top with strained parchment. It is held under the left arm and played like a tomtom with the fingers of the right hand; and it weighs about four pounds. We would willingly have added a double pipe or a cocoanut fiddle[8] to the strength of the band but none of our men could play them. The tar and darabukkeh, however, answered the purpose well enough, and were perhaps better suited to their strange singing than more tuneful instruments.

We had just finished dinner when they began. First came a prolonged wail that swelled, and sank, and swelled again, and at last died away. This was the principal singer leading off with the keynote. The next followed suit on the third of the key; and finally all united in one long, shrill, descending cry, like a yawn, or a howl, or a combination of both. This, twice repeated, preluded their performance and worked them up, apparently, to the necessary pitch of musical enthusiasm. The primo tenore then led off in a quavering roulade, at the end of which he slid into a melancholy chant, to which the rest sang chorus. At the close of each verse they yawned and howled again; while the singer, carried away by his emotions, broke out every now and then into a repetition of the same amazing and utterly indescribable vocal wriggle with which he had begun. Whenever he did this, the rest held their breath in respectful admiration and uttered an approving “Ah!”—which is here the customary expression of applause.

We thought their music horrible that first night, I remember; though we ended, as I believe most travelers do, by liking it. We, however, paid them the compliment of going upon deck and listening to their performance. As a night-scene, nothing could be more picturesque than this group of turbaned Arabs sitting in a circle, cross-legged, with a lantern in their midst. The singer quavered; the musicians thrummed; the rest softly clapped their hands to time and waited their turn to chime in with the chorus. Meanwhile the lantern lit up their swarthy faces and their glittering teeth. The great mast towered up into the darkness. The river gleamed below. The stars shone overhead. We felt we were indeed strangers in a strange land.

CHAPTER IV.
SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS.

Having arrived at Bedreshayn after dark and there moored for the night, we were roused early next morning by the furious squabbling and chattering of some fifty or sixty men and boys, who, with a score or two of little rough-coated, depressed-looking donkeys, were assembled on the high bank above. Seen thus against the sky, their tattered garments fluttering in the wind, their brown arms and legs in frantic movement, they looked like a troop of mad monkeys let loose. Every moment the uproar grew shriller. Every moment more men, more boys, more donkeys appeared upon the scene. It was as if some new Cadmus had been sowing boys and donkeys broadcast and they had all come up at once for our benefit.

Then it appeared that Talhamy, knowing how eight donkeys would be wanted for our united forces, had sent up to the village for twenty-five, intending, perhaps with more wisdom than justice, to select the best and dismiss the others. The result was overwhelming. Misled by the magnitude of the order and concluding that Cook’s party had arrived, every man, boy and donkey in Bedreshayn and the neighboring village of Mîtrahîneh had turned out in hot haste and rushed down to the river; so that by the time breakfast was over there were steeds enough in readiness for all the English in Cairo. I pass over the tumult that ensued when our party at last mounted the eight likeliest beasts and rode away, leaving the indignant multitude to disperse at leisure.

And now our way lies over a dusty flat, across the railway line, past the long straggling village, and through the famous plantations known as the Palms of Memphis. There is a crowd of patient-looking fellaheen at the little whitewashed station, waiting for the train, and the usual rabble of clamorous water, bread and fruit sellers. Bedreshayn, though a collection of mere mud-hovels, looks pretty, nestling in the midst of stately date-palms. Square pigeon towers, imbedded round the top with layers of wide-mouthed pots and stuck with rows of leafless acacia boughs like ragged banner poles, stand up at intervals among the huts. The pigeons go in and out of the pots, or sit preening their feathers on the branches. The dogs dash out and bark madly at us as we go by. The little brown children pursue us with cries of “Bakhshïsh!” The potter, laying out rows of soft, gray, freshly molded clay bowls and kullehs[9] to bake in the sun, stops, open-mouthed, and stares as if he had never seen a European till this moment. His young wife snatches up her baby and pulls her veil more closely over her face, fearing the evil eye.

The village being left behind, we ride on through one long palm-grove after another; now skirting the borders of a large sheet of tranquil back-water; now catching a glimpse of the far-off pyramids of Ghîzeh, now passing between the huge irregular mounds of crumbled clay which mark the site of Memphis. Next beyond these we come out upon a high embanked road some twenty feet above the plain, which here spreads out like a wide lake and spends its last dark-brown alluvial wave against the yellow rocks which define the edge of the desert. High on this barren plateau, seen for the first time in one unbroken panoramic line, there stand a solemn company of pyramids; those of Sakkârah straight before us, those of Dahshûr to the left, those of Abusîr to the right and the great pyramids of Ghîzeh always in the remotest distance.

It might be thought that there would be some monotony in such a scene and but little beauty. On the contrary, however, there is beauty of a most subtle and exquisite kind—transcendent beauty of color and atmosphere and sentiment; and no monotony either in the landscape or in the forms of the pyramids. One of these which we are now approaching is built in a succession of platforms gradually decreasing toward the top. Another down yonder at Dahshûr curves outward at the angles, half dome, half pyramid, like the roof of the Palais de Justice, in Paris. No two are of precisely the same size, or built at precisely the same angle; and each cluster differs somehow in the grouping.

Then again the coloring—coloring not to be matched with any pigments yet invented. The Libyan rocks, like rusty gold—the paler line of the driven sand-slopes—the warm maize of the nearer pyramids which, seen from this distance, takes a tender tint of rose, like the red bloom on an apricot—the delicate tone of these objects against the sky—the infinite gradations of that sky, soft and pearly toward the horizon, blue and burning toward the zenith—the opalescent shadows, pale blue and violet and greenish-gray, that nestle in the hollows of the rock and the curves of the sand-drifts—all this is beautiful in a way impossible to describe, and, alas! impossible to copy. Nor does the lake-like plain with its palm-groves and corn-flats form too tame a foreground. It is exactly what is wanted to relieve that glowing distance.

And now, as we follow the zigzags of the road, the new pyramids grow gradually larger; the sun mounts higher; the heat increases. We meet a train of camels, buffaloes, shaggy brown sheep, men, women, and children of all ages. The camels are laden with bedding, rugs, mats, and crates of poultry, and carry, besides, two women with babies and one very old man. The younger men drive the tired beasts. The rest follow behind. The dust rises after them in a cloud. It is evidently the migration of a family of three, if not four generations. One cannot help being struck by the patriarchal simplicity of the incident. Just thus, with flocks and herds and all his clan, went Abraham into the land of Canaan close upon four thousand years ago; and one at least of these Sakkârah pyramids was even then the oldest building in the world.

It is a touching and picturesque procession—much more picturesque than ours and much more numerous; notwithstanding that our united forces, including donkey boys, porters and miscellaneous hangers-on, number nearer thirty than twenty persons. For there are the M. B.’s and their nephew, and L—— and the writer, and L——’s maid, and Talhamy, all on donkeys; and then there are the owners of the donkeys, also on donkeys; and then every donkey has a boy; and every boy has a donkey; and every donkey-boy’s donkey has an inferior boy in attendance. Our style of dress, too, however convenient, is not exactly in harmony with the surrounding scenery; and one cannot but feel, as these draped and dusty pilgrims pass us on the road, that we cut a sorry figure with our hideous palm-leaf hats, green veils, and white umbrellas.

But the most amazing and incongruous personage in our whole procession is unquestionably George. Now George is an English north-country groom whom the M. B.’s have brought out from the wilds of Lancashire, partly because he is a good shot and may be useful to “Master Alfred” after birds and crocodiles, and partly from a well-founded belief in his general abilities. And George, who is a fellow of infinite jest and infinite resource, takes to eastern life as a duckling to the water. He picks up Arabic as if it were his mother tongue. He skins birds like a practiced taxidermist. He can even wash and iron on occasion. He is, in short, groom, footman, house-maid, laundry-maid, stroke-oar, gamekeeper and general factotum all in one. And, besides all this, he is gifted with a comic gravity of countenance that no surprises and no disasters can upset for a moment. To see this worthy anachronism cantering along in his groom’s coat and gaiters, livery-buttons, spotted neckcloth, tall hat, and all the rest of it; his long legs dangling within an inch of the ground on either side of the most diminutive of donkeys; his double-barreled fowling-piece under his arm, and that imperturbable look in his face, one would have sworn that he and Egypt were friends of old, and that he had been brought up on pyramids from his earliest childhood.

It is a long and shelterless ride from the palms to the desert; but we come to the end of it at last, mounting just such another sand-slope as that which leads up from the Ghîzeh road to the foot of the great pyramid. The edge of the plateau here rises abruptly from the plain in one long range of low perpendicular cliffs pierced with dark mouths of rock-cut sepulchers, while the sand-slope by which we are climbing pours down through a breach in the rock, as an Alpine snow-drift flows through a mountain gap from the ice-level above.

And now, having dismounted through compassion for our unfortunate little donkeys, the first thing we observe is the curious mixture of débris underfoot. At Ghîzeh one treads only sand and pebbles; but here at Sakkârah the whole plateau is thickly strewn with scraps of broken pottery, limestone, marble, and alabaster; flakes of green and blue glaze; bleached bones; shreads of yellow linen, and lumps of some odd-looking, dark-brown substance, like dried-up sponge. Presently some one picks up a little noseless head of one of the common blue-ware funereal statuettes, and immediately we all fall to work, grubbing for treasure—a pure waste of precious time; for, though the sand is full of débris, it has been sifted so often and so carefully by the Arabs that it no longer contains anything worth looking for. Meanwhile, one finds a fragment of iridescent glass—another, a morsel of shattered vase—a third, an opaque bead of some kind of yellow paste. And then, with a shock which the present writer, at all events, will not soon forget, we suddenly discover that these scattered bones are human—that those linen shreds are shreds of cerement cloths—that yonder odd-looking brown lumps are rent fragments of what once was living flesh! And now for the first time we realize that every inch of this ground on which we are standing, and all these hillocks and hollows and pits in the sand, are violated graves.

“Ce n’est que le premier pas que coûte.” We soon became quite hardened to such sights and learned to rummage among dusty sepulchers with no more compunction than would have befitted a gang of professional body-snatchers. These are experiences upon which one looks back afterward with wonder and something like remorse; but so infectious is the universal callousness, and so over-mastering is the passion for relic-hunting, that I do not doubt we should again do the same things under the same circumstances. Most Egyptian travelers, if questioned, would have to make a similar confession. Shocked at first, they denounce with horror the whole system of sepulchral excavation, legal as well as predatory; acquiring, however, a taste for scarabs and funerary statuettes, they soon begin to buy with eagerness the spoils of the dead; finally, they forget all their former scruples and ask no better fortune than to discover and confiscate a tomb for themselves.

Notwithstanding that I had first seen the pyramids of Ghîzeh, the size of the Sakkârah group—especially of the pyramid in platforms—took me by surprise. They are all smaller than the pyramids of Khufu and Khafra and would no doubt look sufficiently insignificant if seen with them in close juxtaposition; but taken by themselves they are quite vast enough for grandeur. As for the pyramid in platforms (which is the largest at Sakkârah, and next largest to the pyramid of Khafra), its position is so fine, its architectural style so exceptional, its age so immense that one altogether loses sight of these questions of relative magnitude. If Egyptologists are right in ascribing the royal title hieroglyphed on the inner door of this pyramid to Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first dynasty, then it is the most ancient building in the world. It had been standing from five to seven hundred years when King Khufu began his great pyramid at Ghîzeh. It was over two thousand years old when Abraham was born. It is now about six thousand eight hundred years old according to Manetho and Mariette, or about four thousand eight hundred according to the computation of Bunsen. One’s imagination recoils upon the brink of such a gulf of time.

The door of this pyramid was carried off with other precious spoils by Lepsius and is now in the museum at Berlin. The evidence that identifies the inscription is tolerably direct. According to Manetho, an Egyptian historian who wrote in Greek and lived in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphia, King Ouenephes built for himself a pyramid at a place called Kokhome. Now a tablet discovered in the Serapeum by Mariette gives the name of Ka-kem to the necropolis of Sakkârah; and as the pyramid in stages is not only the largest on this platform, but is also the only one in which a royal cartouche has been found, the conclusion seems obvious.

When a building has already stood for five or six thousand years in a climate where mosses and lichens, and all those natural signs of age to which we are accustomed in Europe, are unknown, it is not to be supposed that a few centuries more or less can tell upon its outward appearance; yet to my thinking the pyramid of Ouenephes looks older than those of Ghîzeh. If this be only fancy, it gives one, at all events, the impression of belonging structurally to a ruder architectural period. The idea of a monument composed of diminishing platforms is in its nature more primitive than that of a smooth four-sided pyramid. We remarked that the masonry on one side—I think on the side facing eastward—was in a much more perfect condition than on either of the others.

Wilkinson describes the interior as “a hollow dome supported here and there by wooden rafters,” and states that the sepulchral chamber was lined with blue porcelain tiles.[10] We would have liked to go inside, but this is no longer possible, the entrance being blocked by a recent fall of masonry.

Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the house built in 1850 for Mariette’s accommodation during the excavation of the Serapeum—a labor which extended over a period of more than four years. The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and long-lost sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls (honored by the Egyptians as successive incarnations of Osiris) inhabited the temple of Apis at Memphis while they lived; and, being mummied after death, were buried in catacombs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, Mariette, traveling in the interests of the French government, discovered both the temple and the catacombs, being, according to his own narrative, indebted for the clew to a certain passage in Strabo, which describes the Temple of Serapis as being situate in a district where the sand was so drifted by the wind that the approach to it was in danger of being overwhelmed; while the sphinxes on either side of the great avenue were already more or less buried, some having only their heads above the surface. “If Strabo had not written this passage,” says Mariette, “it is probable that the Serapeum would still be lost under the sands of the necropolis of Sakkârah. One day, however (in 1850), being attracted to Sakkârah by my Egyptological studies, I perceived the head of a sphinx showing above the surface. It evidently occupied its original position. Close by lay a libation-table on which was engraved a hieroglyphic inscription to Apis-Osiris. Then that passage in Strabo came to my memory, and I knew that beneath my feet lay the avenue leading to the long and vainly sought Serapeum. Without saying a word to any one I got some workmen together and we began excavating. The beginning was difficult; but soon the lions, the peacocks, the Greek statues of the Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the Temple of Nectanebo[11] rose up from the sands. Thus was the Serapeum discovered.”

The house—a slight, one-storied building on a space of rocky platform—looks down upon a sandy hollow which now presents much the same appearance that it must have presented when Mariette was first reminded of the fortunate passage in Strabo. One or two heads of sphinxes peep up here and there in a ghastly way above the sand and mark the line of the great avenue. The upper half of a boy riding on a peacock, apparently of rude execution, is also visible. The rest is already as completely overwhelmed as if it had never been uncovered. One can scarcely believe that only twenty years ago the whole place was entirely cleared at so vast an expenditure of time and labor. The work, as I have already mentioned, took four years to complete. This avenue alone was six hundred feet in length and bordered by an army of sphinxes, one hundred and forty-one of which were found in situ. As the excavation neared the end of the avenue, the causeway, which followed a gradual descent between massive walls, lay seventy feet below the surface. The labor was immense and the difficulties were innumerable. The ground had to be contested inch by inch. “In certain places,” says Mariette, “the sand was fluid, so to speak, and baffled us like water continually driven back and seeking to regain its level.”[12]

If, however, the toil was great, so also was the reward. A main avenue terminated by a semicircular platform, around which stood statues of famous Greek philosophers and poets; a second avenue at right angles to the first; the remains of the great temple of the Serapeum; three smaller temples; and three distinct groups of Apis catacombs were brought to light. A descending passage opening from a chamber in the great temple led to the catacombs—vast labyrinths of vaults and passages hewn out of the solid rock on which the temples were built. These three groups of excavations represent three epochs of Egyptian history. The first and most ancient series consists of isolated vaults dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-second dynasty; that is to say, from about B.C. 1703 to B.C. 980. The second group, which dates from the reign of Sheshonk I (twenty-second dynasty, B.C. 980) to that of Tirhakah, the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, is more systematically planned, and consists of one long tunnel bordered on each side by a row of funereal chambers. The third belongs to the Greek period, beginning with Psammetichus I (twenty-sixth dynasty, B.C. 665) and ending with the latest Ptolemies. Of these, the first are again choked with sand; the second are considered unsafe; and the third only is accessible to travelers.

After a short but toilsome walk and some delay outside a prison-like door at the bottom of a steep descent, we were admitted by the guardian—a gaunt old Arab with a lantern in his hand. It was not an inviting looking place within. The outer daylight fell upon a rough step or two, beyond which all was dark. We went in. A hot, heavy atmosphere met us on the threshold; the door fell to with a dull clang, the echoes of which went wandering away as if into the central recesses of the earth; the Arab chattered and gesticulated. He was telling us that we were now in the great vestibule and that it measured ever so many feet in this and that direction; but we could see nothing—neither the vaulted roof overhead, nor the walls on any side, nor even the ground beneath our feet. It was like the darkness of infinite space.

A lighted candle was then given to each person and the Arab led the way. He went dreadfully fast and it seemed at every step as if one were on the brink of some frightful chasm. Gradually, however, our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and we found that we had passed out of the vestibule into the first great corridor. All was vague, mysterious, shadowy. A dim perspective loomed out of the darkness. The lights twinkled and flitted like wandering sparks of stars. The Arab held his lantern to the walls here and there, and showed us some votive tablets inscribed with records of pious visits paid by devout Egyptians to the sacred tombs. Of these they found five hundred when the catacombs were first opened; but Mariette sent nearly all to the Louvre.

A few steps farther and we came to the tombs—a succession of great vaulted chambers hewn out at irregular distances along both sides of the central corridor and sunk some six or eight feet below the surface. In the middle of each chamber stood an enormous sarcophagus of polished granite. The Arab, flitting on ahead like a black ghost, paused a moment before each cavernous opening, flashed the light of his lantern on the sarcophagus and sped away again, leaving us to follow as we could.

So we went on, going every moment deeper into the solid rock and farther from the open air and the sunshine. Thinking it would be cold underground, we had brought warm wraps in plenty; but the heat, on the contrary, was intense, and the atmosphere stifling. We had not calculated on the dryness of the place, nor had we remembered that ordinary mines and tunnels are cold because they are damp. But here for incalculable ages—for thousands of years probably before the Nile had even cut its path through the rocks of Silsilis—a cloudless African sun had been pouring its daily floods of light and heat upon the dewless desert overhead. The place might well be unendurable. It was like a great oven stored with the slowly accumulated heat of cycles so remote and so many, that the earliest periods of Egyptian history seem, when compared with them, to belong to yesterday.

Having gone on thus for a distance of nearly two hundred yards, we came to a chamber containing the first hieroglyphed sarcophagus we had yet seen; all the rest being polished, but plain. Here the Arab paused; and, finding access provided by means of a flight of wooden steps, we went down into the chamber, walked round the sarcophagus, peeped inside by the help of a ladder, and examined the hieroglyphs with which it is covered. Enormous as they look from above, one can form no idea of the bulk of these huge monolithic masses except from the level on which they stand. This sarcophagus, which dates from the reign of Amasis, of the twenty-sixth dynasty, measured fourteen feet in length by eleven in height, and consisted of a single block of highly wrought black granite. Four persons might sit in it round a small card-table, and play a rubber comfortably.

From this point the corridor branches off for another two hundred yards or so, leading always to more chambers and more sarcophagi, of which last there are altogether twenty-four. Three only are inscribed; none measure less than from thirteen to fourteen feet in length; and all are empty. The lids in every instance have been pushed back a little way, and some are fractured; but the spoilers have been unable wholly to remove them. According to Mariette, the place was pillaged by the early Christians, who, besides carrying off whatever they could find in the way of gold and jewels, seem to have destroyed the mummies of the bulls and razed the great temple nearly to the ground. Fortunately, however, they either overlooked, or left as worthless, some hundreds of exquisite bronzes and the five hundred votive tablets before mentioned, which, as they record not only the name and rank of the visitor, but also, with few exceptions, the name and year of the reigning Pharaoh, afford invaluable historical data, and are likely to do more than any previously discovered documents toward clearing up disputed points of Egyptian chronology.

It is a curious fact that one out of the three inscribed sarcophagi should bear the oval of Cambyses—that Cambyses of whom it is related that, having desired the priests of Memphis to bring before him the god Apis, he drew his dagger in a transport of rage and contempt and stabbed the animal in the thigh. According to Plutarch, he slew the beast and cast out its body to the dogs; according to Herodotus, “Apis lay some time pining in the temple, but at last died of his wound, and the priests buried him secretly;” but according to one of these precious Serapeum tablets, the wounded bull did not die till the fourth year of the reign of Darius. So wonderfully does modern discovery correct and illustrate tradition.

And now comes the sequel to this ancient story in the shape of an anecdote related by M. About, who tells how Mariette, being recalled suddenly to Paris some months after the opening of the Serapeum, found himself without the means of carrying away all his newly excavated antiquities, and so buried fourteen cases in the desert, there to await his return. One of these cases contained an Apis mummy which had escaped discovery by the early Christians; and this mummy was that of the identical Apis stabbed by Cambyses. That the creature had actually survived his wound was proved by the condition of one of the thigh-bones, which showed unmistakable signs of both injury and healing.

Nor does the story end here. Mariette being gone, and having taken with him all that was most portable among his treasures, there came to Memphis one whom M. About indicates as “a young and august stranger” traveling in Egypt for his pleasure. The Arabs, tempted perhaps by a princely bakhshîsh, revealed the secret of the hidden cases; whereupon the archduke swept off the whole fourteen, dispatched them to Alexandria, and immediately shipped them for Trieste.[13] “Quant au coupable,” says M. About, who professes to have had the story direct from Mariette, “il a fini si tragiquement dans un autre hemisphère que, tout bien pesé, je renonce à publier son nom.” But through so transparent a disguise it is not difficult to identify the unfortunate hero of this curious anecdote.

The sarcophagus in which the Apis was found remains in the vaults of the Serapeum; but we did not see it. Having come more than two hundred yards already, and being by this time well-nigh suffocated, we did not care to put two hundred yards more between ourselves and the light of day. So we turned back at the half distance—having, however, first burned a pan of magnesian powder, which flared up wildly for a few seconds; lit the huge gallery and all its cavernous recesses and the wondering faces of the Arabs, and then went out with a plunge, leaving the darkness denser than before.

From hence, across a farther space of sand we went in all the blaze of noon to the tomb of one Ti, a priest and commoner of the fifth dynasty, who married with a lady named Neferhotep-s, the granddaughter of a Pharaoh, and here built himself a magnificent tomb in the desert.

On the façade of this tomb, which must originally have looked like a little temple, only two large pillars remain. Next comes a square court-yard, surrounded by a roofless colonnade, from one corner of which a covered passage leads to two chambers. In the center of the court-yard yawns an open pit some twenty-five feet in depth, with a shattered sarcophagus just visible in the gloom of the vault below. All here is limestone—walls, pillars, pavements, even the excavated débris with which the pit had been filled in when the vault was closed forever. The quality of this limestone is close and fine like marble, and so white that, although the walls and columns of the court-yard are covered with sculptures of most exquisite execution and of the greatest interest, the reflected light is so intolerable that we find it impossible to examine them with the interest they deserve. In the passage, however, where there is shade, and in the large chamber, where it is so dark that we can see only by the help of lighted candles, we find a succession of bas-reliefs so numerous and so closely packed that it would take half a day to see them properly. Ranged in horizontal parallel lines about a foot and a half in depth, these extraordinary pictures, row above row, cover every inch of wall-space from floor to ceiling. The relief is singularly low. I should doubt if it anywhere exceeds a quarter of an inch. The surface, which is covered with a thin film of very fine cement, has a quality and polish like ivory. The figures measure an average height of about twelve inches, and all are colored.

Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. His whole life, his pleasures, his business, his domestic relations, are brought before us with just that faithful simplicity which makes the charm of Montaigne and Pepys. A child might read the pictured chronicles which illuminate these walls and take as keen a pleasure in them as the wisest of archæologists.

Ti was a wealthy man and his wealth was of the agricultural sort. He owned flocks and herds and vassals in plenty. He kept many kinds of birds and beasts—geese, ducks, pigeons, cranes, oxen, goats, asses, antelopes and gazelles. He was fond of fishing and fowling, and used sometimes to go after crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which came down as low as Memphis in his time. He was a kind husband, too, and a good father, and loved to share his pleasures with his family. Here we see him sitting in state with his wife and children, while professional singers and dancers perform before them. Yonder they walk out together and look on while the farm-servants are at work, and watch the coming in of the boats that bring home the produce of Ti’s more distant lands. Here the geese are being driven home; the cows are crossing a ford; the oxen are plowing; the sower is scattering his seed; the reaper plies his sickle; the oxen tread the grain; the corn is stored in the granary. There are evidently no independent tradesfolk in these early days of the world. Ti has his own artificers on his own estate, and all his goods and chattels are home-made. Here the carpenters are fashioning new furniture for the house; the shipwrights are busy on new boats; the potters mold pots; the metal-workers smelt ingots of red gold. It is plain to see that Ti lived like a king within his own boundaries. He makes an imposing figure, too, in all these scenes, and, being represented about eight times as large as his servants, sits and stands a giant among pigmies. His wife (we must not forget that she was of the blood royal) is as big as himself; and the children are depicted about half the size of their parents. Curiously enough, Egyptian art never outgrew this early naîveté. The great man remained a big man to the last days of the Ptolemies, and the fellah was always a dwarf.[14]

Apart from these and one or two other mannerisms, nothing can be more natural than the drawing, or more spirited than the action, of all these men and animals. The most difficult and transitory movements are expressed with masterly certitude. The donkey kicks up his heels and brays—the crocodile plunges—the wild duck rises on the wing; and the fleeting action is caught in each instance with a truthfulness that no landseer could distance. The forms, which have none of the conventional stiffness of later Egyptian work, are modeled roundly and boldly yet finished with exquisite precision and delicacy. The coloring, however, is purely decorative; and, being laid on in single tints, with no attempt at gradation or shading, conceals rather than enhances the beauty of the sculptures. These, indeed, are best seen where the color is entirely rubbed off. The tints are yet quite brilliant in parts of the larger chamber; but in the passage and court-yard, which have been excavated only a few years and are with difficulty kept clear from day to day, there is not a vestige of color left. This is the work of the sand—that patient laborer whose office it is not only to preserve but to destroy. The sand secretes and preserves the work of the sculptor, but it effaces the work of the painter. In sheltered places where it accumulates passively like a snow-drift, it brings away only the surface detail, leaving the under colors rubbed and dim. But nothing, as I had occasion constantly to remark in the course of the journey, removes color so effectually as sand which is exposed to the shifting action of the wind.

HEAD OF TI.

This tomb, as we have seen, consists of a portico, a court-yard, two chambers, and a sepulchral vault; but it also contains a secret passage of the kind known as a “serdab.” These “serdabs,” which are constructed in the thickness of the walls and have no entrances, seem to be peculiar to tombs of the ancient empire (i.e. the period of the pyramid kings); and they contain statues of the deceased of all sizes, in wood, lime-stone, and granite. Twenty statues of Ti were here found immured in the “serdab” of his tomb, all broken save one—a spirited figure in lime-stone, standing about seven feet high, and now in the museum at Boulak. This statue represents a fine young man in a white tunic, and is evidently a portrait. The features are regular; the expression is good-natured; the whole tournure of the head is more Greek than Egyptian. The flesh is painted of a yellowish brick tint, and the figure stands in the usual hieratic attitude, with the left leg advanced, the hands clenched, and the arms straightened close to the sides. One seems to know Ti so well after seeing the wonderful pictures in his tomb, that this charming statue interests one like the portrait of a familiar friend.[15]

How pleasant it was, after being suffocated in the Serapeum and broiled in the tomb of Ti, to return to Mariette’s deserted house and eat our luncheon on the cool stone terrace that looks northward over the desert! Some wooden tables and benches are hospitably left here for the accommodation of travelers, and fresh water in ice-cold kullehs is provided by the old Arab guardian. The yards and offices at the back are full of broken statues and fragments of inscriptions in red and black granite. Two sphinxes from the famous avenue adorn the terrace and look down upon their half-buried companions in the sand-hollow below. The yellow desert, barren and undulating, with a line of purple peaks on the horizon, reaches away into the far distance. To the right, under a jutting ridge of rocky plateau not two hundred yards from the house, yawns an opened-mouthed black-looking cavern shored up with heavy beams and approached by a slope of débris. This is the forced entrance to the earlier vaults of the Serapeum, in one of which was found a mummy described by Mariette as that of an Apis, but pronounced by Brugsch to be the body of Prince Kha-em-nas, governor of Memphis and the favorite son of Rameses the Great.

This remarkable mummy, which looked as much like a bull as a man, was found covered with jewels and gold chains and precious amulets engraved with the name of Kha-em-nas, and had on its face a golden mask; all which treasures are now to be seen in the Louvre. If it was the mummy of an Apis, then the jewels with which it was adorned were probably the offering of the prince at that time ruling in Memphis. If, on the contrary, it was the mummy of a man, then, in order to be buried in a place of peculiar sanctity, he probably usurped one of the vaults prepared for the god. The question is a curious one and remains unsolved to this day; but it could no doubt be settled at a glance by Professor Owen.[16]

Far more startling, however, than the discovery of either Apis or jewels was the sight beheld by Mariette on first entering that long-closed sepulchral chamber. The mine being sprung and the opening cleared he went in alone; and there, on the thin layer of sand that covered the floor he found the footprints of the workmen who, three thousand seven hundred years[17] before, had laid that shapeless mummy in its tomb and closed the doors upon it, as they believed, forever.

And now—for the afternoon is already waning fast—the donkeys are brought round and we are told that it is time to move on. We have the sight of Memphis and the famous prostrate colossus yet to see and the long road lies all before us. So back we ride across the desolate sands; and with a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid in platforms, go down from the territory of the dead into the land of the living.

There is a wonderful fascination about this pyramid. One is never weary of looking at it—of repeating to one’s self that it is indeed the oldest building on the face of the whole earth. The king who erected it came to the throne, according to Manetho, about eighty years after the death of Mena, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. All we have of him is his pyramid; all we know of him is his name. And these belong, as it were, to the infancy of the human race. In dealing with Egyptian dates one is apt to think lightly of periods that count only by centuries; but it is a habit of mind which leads to error and it should be combated. The present writer found it useful to be constantly comparing relative chronological eras; as, for instance, in realizing the immense antiquity of the Sakkârah pyramid, it is some help to remember that from the time when it was built by King Ouenephes to the time when King Khufu erected the great pyramid of Ghizeh, there probably lies a space of years equivalent to that which, in the history of England, extends from the date of the conquest to the accession of George II.[18] And yet Khufu himself—the Cheops of the Greek historians—is but a shadowy figure hovering upon the threshold of Egyptian history.

And now the desert is left behind and we are nearing the palms that lead to Memphis. We have, of course, been dipping into Herodotus—every one takes Herodotus up the Nile—and our heads are full of the ancient glories of this famous city. We know that Mena turned the course of the river in order to build it on this very spot, and that all the most illustrious Pharaohs adorned it with temples, palaces, pylons and precious sculptures. We had read of the great Temple of Ptah that Rameses the Great enriched with colossi of himself; and of the sanctuary where Apis lived in state, taking his exercise in a pillared court-yard where every column was a statue; and of the artificial lake and the sacred groves and the obelisks and all the wonders of a city which, even in its later days, was one of the most populous in Egypt.

Thinking over these things by the way, we agree that it is well to have left Memphis till the last. We shall appreciate it the better for having first seen that other city on the edge of the desert to which, for nearly six thousand years, all Memphis was quietly migrating, generation after generation. We know now how poor folk labored, and how great gentlemen amused themselves, in those early days when there were hundreds of country gentlemen like Ti, with town-houses at Memphis and villas by the Nile. From the Serapeum, too, buried and ruined as it is, one cannot but come away with a profound impression of the splendor and power of a religion which could command for its myths such faith, such homage, and such public works.

And now we are once more in the midst of the palm-woods, threading our way among the same mounds that we passed in the morning. Presently those in front strike away from the beaten road across a grassy flat to the right; and the next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a muddy pool, in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate colossus of Rameses the Great, which belongs to the British nation, but which the British government is too economical to remove.[19] So here it lies, face downward; drowned once a year by the Nile; visible only when the pools left by the inundation have evaporated, and all the muddy hollows are dried up. It is one of two which stood at the entrance to the great Temple of Ptah; and by those who have gone down into the hollow and seen it from below in the dry season, it is reported of as a noble and very beautiful specimen of one of the best periods of Egyptian art.

Where, however, is the companion colossus? Where is the temple itself? Where are the pylons, the obelisk, the avenues of sphinxes? Where, in short, is Memphis?

The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the barren mounds among the palms.

They look like gigantic dust-heaps and stand from thirty to forty feet above the plain. Nothing grows upon them, save here and there a tuft of stunted palm; and their substance seems to consist chiefly of crumbled brick, broken potsherds, and fragments of limestone. Some few traces of brick foundations and an occasional block or two of shaped stone are to be seen in places low down against the foot of one or two of the mounds; but one looks in vain for any sign which might indicate the outline of a boundary wall or the position of a great public building.

And is this all?

No—not quite all. There are some mud-huts yonder, in among the trees; and in front of one of these we find a number of sculptured fragments—battered sphinxes, torsos without legs, sitting figures without heads—in green, black, and red granite. Ranged in an irregular semicircle on the sward, they seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little Arab children hiding behind them.

Near this, in another pool, lies another red-granite colossus—not the fellow to that which we saw first, but a smaller one—also face downward.

And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities—a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found—the Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of Strabo, of Abd-el-Latîf? Where are those stately ruins which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at “half a day’s journey in every direction”? One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood—here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we see the village of Mitrâhîneh and catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Ghîzeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf[20]—just as Sakkârah fossilizes the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Memphite Osiris.

No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second only to Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry from which Fostât (old Cairo) was built; and as the new city rose on the eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient capital to desolation and decay.

Still a vast field of ruins remained. Abd-el-Latîf, writing at the commencement of the thirteenth century, speaks with enthusiasm of the colossal statues and lions, the enormous pedestals, the archways formed of only three stones, the bas-reliefs and other wonders that were yet to be seen upon the spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes had led him to the Nile, might have found some of the palaces and temples of Memphis still standing; and Sandys, who in A.D. 1610 went at least as far south of Cairo as Kafr el Iyat, says that “up the river for twenty miles space there was nothing but ruines.” Since then, however, the very “ruines” have vanished; the palms have had time to grow; and modern Cairo has doubtless absorbed all the building material that remained from the middle ages.

Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and remember; but it is a disappointing place to see. To miss it, however, would be to miss the first link in the whole chain of monumental history which unites the Egypt of antiquity with the world of to-day. Those melancholy mounds and that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only that they may take their due place in the picture-gallery of one’s memory.

It had been a long day’s work, but it came to an end at last; and as we trotted our donkeys back toward the river a gorgeous sunset was crimsoning the palms and pigeon-towers of Bedreshayn. Everything seemed now to be at rest. A buffalo, contemplatively chewing the cud, lay close against the path and looked at us without moving. The children and pigeons were gone to bed. The pots had baked in the sun and been taken in long since. A tiny column of smoke went up here and there from amid the clustered huts; but there was scarcely a moving creature to be seen. Presently we passed a tall, beautiful fellah woman standing grandly by the wayside, with her veil thrown back and falling in long folds to her feet. She smiled, put out her hand, and murmur’d “bakhshîsh!” Her fingers were covered with rings and her arms with silver bracelets. She begged because to beg is honorable, and customary, and a master of inveterate habit; but she evidently neither expected nor needed the bakhshîsh she condescended to ask for.

A few moments more and the sunset has faded, the village is left behind, the last half-mile of plain is trotted over. And now—hungry, thirsty, dusty, worn out with new knowledge, new impressions, new ideas—we are once more at home and at rest.

CHAPTER V.
BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH.

It is the rule of the Nile to hurry up the river as fast as possible, leaving the ruins to be seen as the boat comes back with the current; but this, like many another canon, is by no means of universal application. The traveler who starts late in the season has, indeed, no other course open to him. He must press on with speed to the end of his journey, if he would get back again at low Nile without being irretrievably stuck on a sand-bank till the next inundation floats him off again. But for those who desire not only to see the monuments, but to follow, however superficially, the course of Egyptian history as it is handed down through Egyptian art, it is above all things necessary to start early and to see many things by the way.

For the history of ancient Egypt goes against the stream. The earliest monuments lie between Cairo and Siout, while the latest temples to the old gods are chiefly found in Nubia. Those travelers, therefore, who hurry blindly forward with or without a wind, now sailing, now tracking, now punting, passing this place by night, and that by day, and never resting till they have gained the farthest point of their journey, begin at the wrong end and see all their sights in precisely inverse order. Memphis and Sakkârah and the tombs of Beni Hassan should undoubtedly be visited on the way up. So should El Kâb and Tell el Amarna, and the oldest parts of Karnak and Luxor. It is not necessary to delay long at any of these places. They may be seen cursorily on the way up, and be more carefully studied on the way down; but they should be seen as they come, no matter at what trifling cost of present delay and despite any amount of ignorant opposition. For in this way only is it possible to trace the progression and retrogression of the arts from the pyramid-builders to the Cæsars; or to understand at the time and on the spot in what order that vast and august procession of dynasties swept across the stage of history.

For ourselves, as will presently be seen, it happened that we could carry only a part of this programme into effect; but that part, happily, was the most important. We never ceased to congratulate ourselves on having made acquaintance with the pyramids of Ghîzeh and Sakkârah before seeing the tombs of the kings at Thebes; and I feel that it is impossible to overestimate the advantage of studying the sculptures of the tomb of Ti before one’s taste is brought into contact with the debased style of Denderah and Esneh. We began the great book, in short, as it always should be begun—at its first page; thereby acquiring just that necessary insight without which many an after-chapter must have lost more than half its interest.

If I seem to insist upon this point it is because things contrary to custom need a certain amount of insistence and are sure to be met by opposition. No dragoman, for example, could be made to understand the importance of historical sequence in a matter of this kind; especially in the case of a contract trip. To him, Khufu, Rameses and the Ptolemies are one. As for the monuments, they are all ancient Egyptian, and one is just as odd and unintelligible as another. He cannot quite understand why travelers come so far and spend so much money to look at them; but he sets it down to a habit of harmless curiosity—by which he profits.

The truth is, however, that the mere sight-seeing of the Nile demands some little reading and organizing, if only to be enjoyed. We cannot all be profoundly learned; but we can at least do our best to understand what we see—to get rid of obstacles—to put the right thing in the right place. For the land of Egypt is, as I have said, a great book—not very easy reading, perhaps, under any circumstances; but at all events quite difficult enough already without the added puzzlement of being read backward.

And now our next point along the river, as well as our next link in the chain of early monuments, was Beni Hassan, with its famous rock-cut tombs of the twelfth dynasty; and Beni Hassan was still more than a hundred and forty-five miles distant. We ought to have gone on again directly—to have weighed anchor and made a few miles that very evening on returning to the boats; but we insisted on a second day in the same place. This, too, with the favorable wind still blowing. It was against all rule and precedent. The captain shook his head, the dragoman remonstrated in vain.

“You will come to learn the value of a wind when you have been longer on the Nile,” said the latter, with that air of melancholy resignation which he always assumed when not allowed to have his own way. He was an indolent, good-tempered man, spoke English fairly well, and was perfectly manageable; but that air of resignation came to be aggravating in time.

The M. B.’s being of the same mind, however, we had our second day, and spent it at Memphis. We ought to have crossed over to Turra and have seen the great quarries from which the casing-stones of the pyramids came, and all the finer limestone with which the temples and palaces of Memphis were built. But the whole mountain side seemed as if glowing at a white heat on the opposite side of the river, and we said we would put off Turra till our return. So we went our own way; and Alfred shot pigeons; and the writer sketched Mitrâhîneh and the palms and the sacred Lake of Mena; and the rest grubbed among the mounds for treasure, finding many curious fragments of glass and pottery, and part of an engraved bronze Apis; and we had a green, tranquil, lovely day, barren of incident, but very pleasant to remember.

The good wind continued to blow all that night, but fell at sunrise, precisely when we were about to start. The river now stretched away before us, smooth as glass, and there was nothing for it, said Reïs Hassan, but tracking. We had heard of tracking often enough since coming to Egypt, but without having any definite idea of the process. Coming on deck, however, before breakfast, we found nine of our poor fellows harnessed to a rope like barge-horses, towing the huge boat against the current. Seven of the M. B.s’ crew, similarly harnessed, followed at a few yards’ distance. The two ropes met and crossed and dipped into the water together. Already our last night’s mooring place was out of sight, and the pyramid of Ouenephes stood up amid its lesser brethren on the edge of the desert, as if bidding us good-by. But the sight of the trackers jarred, somehow, with the placid beauty of the picture. We got used to it, as one gets used to everything, in time; but it looked like slaves’ work and shocked our English notions disagreeably.

That morning, still tracking, we pass the pyramids of Dahshûr. A dilapidated brick pyramid standing in the midst of them looks like an aiguille of black rock thrusting itself up through the limestone bed of the desert. Palms line the bank and intercept the view, but we catch flitting glimpses here and there, looking out especially for that dome-like pyramid which we observed the other day from Sakkârah. Seen in the full sunlight, it looks larger and whiter and more than ever like the roof of the old Palais de Justice far away in Paris.

Thus the morning passes. We sit on deck writing letters, reading, watching the sunny river-side pictures that glide by at a foot’s pace, and are so long in sight. Palm-groves, sand-banks, patches of fuzzy-headed dura[21] and fields of some yellow-flowering herb succeed each other. A boy plods along the bank, leading a camel. They go slowly, but they soon leave us behind. A native boat meets us, floating down sidewise with the current. A girl comes to the water’s edge with a great empty jar on her head and waits to fill it till the trackers have gone by. The pigeon-towers of a mud village peep above a clump of lebbek trees, a quarter of a mile inland. Here a solitary brown man, with only a felt skull-cap on his head and a slip of scanty tunic fastened about his loins, works a shâdûf,[22] stooping and rising, stooping and rising, with the regularity of a pendulum. It is the same machine which we shall see by and by depicted in the tombs at Thebes; and the man is so evidently an ancient Egyptian, that we find ourselves wondering how he escaped being mummified four or five thousand years ago.

THE SHADUF.

By and by a little breeze springs up. The men drop the rope and jump on board—the big sail is set—the breeze freshens—and away we go again, as merrily as the day we left Cairo. Toward sunset we see a strange object, like a giant obelisk broken off halfway, standing up on the western bank against an orange-gold sky. This is the pyramid of Meydûm, commonly called the false pyramid. It looks quite near the bank; but this is an effect of powerful light and shadow, for it lies back at least four miles from the river. That night, having sailed on till past nine o’clock, we moor about a mile from Beni Suêf, and learn with some surprise that a man must be dispatched to the governor of the town for guards. Not that anything ever happened to anybody at Beni Suêf, says Talhamy; but that the place is supposed not to have a first-rate reputation. If we have guards, we at all events make the governor responsible for our safety and the safety of our possessions. So the guards are sent for; and being posted on the bank, snore loudly all night long, just outside our windows.

Meanwhile the wind shifts round to the south, and next morning it blows full in our faces. The men, however, track up to Beni Suêf to a point where the buildings come down to the water’s edge and the towing-path ceases; and there we lay to for awhile among a fleet of filthy native boats, close to the landing-place.

The approach to Beni Suêf is rather pretty. The khedive has an Italian-looking villa here, which peeps up white and dazzling from the midst of a thickly wooded park. The town lies back a little from the river. A few coffee-houses and a kind of promenade face the landing-place; and a mosque built to the verge of the bank stands out picturesquely against the bend of the river.

And now it is our object to turn that corner, so as to get into a better position for starting when the wind drops. The current here runs deep and strong, so that we have both wind and water dead against us. Half our men clamber round the corner like cats, carrying the rope with them; the rest keep the dahabeeyah off the bank with punting poles. The rope strains—a pole breaks—we struggle forward a few feet and can get no farther. Then the men rest awhile; try again; and are again defeated. So the fight goes on. The promenade and the windows of the mosque become gradually crowded with lookers on. Some three or four cloaked and bearded men have chairs brought and sit gravely smoking their chibouques on the bank above, enjoying the entertainment. Meanwhile the water-carriers come and go, filling their goat-skins at the landing-place; donkeys and camels are brought down to drink; girls in dark-blue gowns and coarse black veils come with huge water-jars laid sidewise upon their heads and, having filled and replaced them upright, walk away with stately steps, as if each ponderous vessel were a crown.

So the day passes. Driven back again and again, but still resolute, our sailors, by dint of sheer doggedness, get us round the bad corner at last. The Bagstones follows suit a little later; and we both moor about a quarter of a mile above the town. Then follows a night of adventures. Again our guards sleep profoundly; but the bad characters of Beni Suêf are very wide awake. One gentleman, actuated no doubt by the friendliest motives, pays a midnight visit to the Bagstones; but being detected, chased and fired at, escapes by jumping overboard. Our turn comes about two hours later, when the writer, happening to be awake, hears a man swim softly round the Philæ. To strike a light and frighten everybody into sudden activity is the work of a moment. The whole boat is instantly in an uproar. Lanterns are lighted on deck; a patrol of sailors is set; Talhamy loads his gun; and the thief slips away in the dark like a fish.

The guards, of course, slept sweetly through it all. Honest fellows! They were paid a shilling a night to do it and they had nothing on their minds.

Having lodged a formal complaint next morning against the inhabitants of the town, we received a visit from a sallow personage clad in a long black robe and a voluminous white turban. This was the chief of the guards. He smoked a great many pipes; drank numerous cups of coffee; listened to all we had to say; looked wise; and finally suggested that the number of our guards should be doubled.

I ventured to object that if they slept unanimously forty would not be of much more use than four. Whereupon he rose, drew himself to his full height, touched his beard and said with a magnificent melodramatic air: “If they sleep they shall be bastinadoed till they die!”

And now our good luck seemed to have deserted us. For three days and nights the adverse wind continued to blow with such force that the men could not even track against it. Moored under that dreary bank, we saw our ten days’ start melting away and could only make the best of our misfortunes. Happily the long island close by and the banks on both sides of the river were populous with sand-grouse; so Alfred went out daily with his faithful George and his unerring gun and brought home game in abundance, while we took long walks, sketched boats and camels and chaffered with native women for silver torques and bracelets. These torques (in Arabic Tók) are tubular but massive, penannular, about as thick as one’s little finger and finished with a hook at one end and a twisted loop at the other. The girls would sometimes put their veils aside and make a show of bargaining; but more frequently, after standing for a moment with great wondering black velvety eyes staring shyly into ours, they would take fright like a troop of startled deer and vanish with shrill cries, half of laughter, half of terror.

At Beni Suêf we encountered our first sand-storm. It came down the river about noon, showing like a yellow fog on the horizon and rolling rapidly before the wind. It tore the river into angry waves and blotted out the landscape as it came. The distant hills disappeared first; then the palms beyond the island; then the boats close by. Another second and the air was full of sand. The whole surface of the plain seemed in motion. The banks rippled. The yellow dust poured down through every rift and cleft in hundreds of tiny cataracts. But it was a sight not to be looked upon with impunity. Hair, eyes, mouth, ears, were instantly filled and we were driven to take refuge in the saloon. Here, although every window and door had been shut before the storm came, the sand found its way in clouds. Books, papers, carpets, were covered with it; and it settled again as fast as it was cleared away. This lasted just one hour, and was followed by a burst of heavy rain; after which the sky cleared and we had a lovely afternoon. From this time forth, we saw no more rain in Egypt.

At length, on the morning of the fourth day after our first appearance at Beni Suêf and the seventh since leaving Cairo, the wind veered round again to the north, and we once more got under way. It was delightful to see the big sail again towering up overhead, and to hear the swish of the water under the cabin windows; but we were still one hundred and nine miles from Rhoda, and we knew that nothing but an extraordinary run of luck could possibly get us there by the twenty-third of the month, with time to see Beni Hassan on the way. Meanwhile, however, we make fair progress, mooring at sunset when the wind falls, about three miles north of Bibbeh. Next day, by help of the same light breeze which again springs up a little after dawn, we go at a good pace between flat banks, fringed here and there with palms, and studded with villages more or less picturesque. There is not much to see, and yet one never wants for amusement. Now we pass an island of sand-bank covered with snow-white paddy-birds, which rise tumultuously at our approach. Next comes Bibbeh, perched high along the edge of the precipitous bank, its odd-looking Coptic convent roofed all over with little mud domes, like a cluster of earth-bubbles. By and by we pass a deserted sugar factory, with shattered windows and a huge, gaunt, blackened chimney, worthy of Birmingham or Sheffield. And now we catch a glimpse of the railway and hear the last scream of a departing engine. At night, we moor within sight of the factory chimneys and hydraulic tubes of Magagha, and next day get on nearly to Golosanèh, which is the last station-town before Minieh.

It is now only too clear that we must give up all thought of pushing on to Beni Hassan before the rest of the party shall come on board. We have reached the evening of our ninth day; we are still forty-eight miles from Rhoda; and another adverse wind might again delay us indefinitely on the way. All risks taken into account, we decide to put off our meeting till the twenty-fourth, and transfer the appointment to Minieh; thus giving ourselves time to track all the way in case of need. So an Arabic telegram is concocted, and our fleet runner starts off with it to Golosanèh before the office closes for the night.

The breeze, however, does not fail, but comes back next morning with the dawn. Having passed Golosanèh, we come to a wide reach in the river, at which point we are honored by a visit from a Moslem santon of peculiar sanctity, named “Holy Sheik Cotton.” Now Holy Sheik Cotton, who is a well-fed, healthy-looking young man of about thirty, makes his first appearance swimming, with his garments twisted into a huge turban on the top of his head, and only his chin above water. Having made his toilet in the small boat, he presents himself on deck and receives an enthusiastic welcome. Reïs Hassan hugs him—the pilot kisses him—the sailors come up one by one, bringing little tributes of tobacco and piasters, which he accepts with the air of a pope receiving Peter’s pence. All dripping as he is, and smiling like an affable Triton, he next proceeds to touch the tiller, the ropes, and the ends of the yards, “in order,” says Talhamy, “to make them holy;” and then, with some kind of final charm or muttered incantation, he plunges into the river again, and swims off to repeat the same performance on board the Bagstones.

From this moment the prosperity of our voyage is assured. The captain goes about with a smile on his stern face, and the crew look as happy as if we had given them a guinea. For nothing can go wrong with a dahabeeyah that has been “made holy” by Holy Sheik Cotton. We are certain now to have favorable winds—to pass the cataract without accident—to come back in health and safety, as we set out. But what, it may be asked, has Holy Sheik Cotton done to make his blessing so efficacious? He gets money in plenty; he fasts no oftener than other Mohammedans; he has two wives; he never does a stroke of work; and he looks the picture of sleek prosperity. Yet he is a saint of the first water; and when he dies, miracles will be performed at his tomb, and his eldest son will succeed him in the business.

We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a good many saints in the course of our eastern travels; but I do not know that we ever found they had done anything to merit the position. One very horrible old man named Sheik Saleem has, it is true, been sitting on a dirt heap near Farshût, unclothed, unwashed, unshaven, for the last half-century or more, never even lifting his hand to his mouth to feed himself; but Sheik Cotton had gone to no such pious lengths, and was not even dirty.

We are by this time drawing toward a range of yellow cliffs that have long been visible on the horizon, and which figure in the maps as Gebel et Tâyr. The Arabian desert has been closing up on the eastern bank for some time past and now rolls on in undulating drifts to the water’s edge. Yellow bowlders crop out here and there above the mounded sand, which looks as if it might cover many a forgotten temple. Presently the clay bank is gone and a low barrier of limestone rock, black and shiny next the water-line, has taken its place. And now, a long way ahead, where the river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far distance, a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the Pulley. Perched on the brink of the precipice it looks no bigger than an ant-heap. We had heard much of the fine view to be seen from the platform on which this convent is built, and it had originally entered into our programme as a place to be visited on the way. But Minieh has to be gained now at all costs; so this project has to be abandoned with a sigh.

And now the rocky barrier rises higher, quarried here and there in dazzling gaps of snow-white cuttings. And now the convent shows clearer; and the cliffs become loftier; and the bend in the river is reached; and a long perspective of flat-topped precipice stretches away into the dim distance.

It is a day of saints and swimmers. As the dahabeeyah approaches, a brown poll is seen bobbing up and down in the water a few hundred yards ahead. Then one, two, three bronze figures dash down a steep ravine below the convent walls, and plunge into the river—a shrill chorus of voices, growing momentarily more audible, is borne upon the wind—and in a few minutes the boat is beset by a shoal of mendicant monks, vociferating with all their might “Ana Christian ya Hawadji!—Ana Christian ya Hawadji!” (“I am a Christian, oh, traveler!”) As these are only Coptic monks and not Moslem santons, the sailors, half in rough play, half in earnest, drive them off with punting poles; and only one shivering, streaming object, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, is allowed to come on board. He is a fine, shapely man, aged about forty, with splendid eyes and teeth, a well-formed head, a skin the color of a copper beech-leaf, and a face expressive of such ignorance, timidity, and half-savage watchfulness as makes one’s heart ache.

And this is a Copt; a descendant of the true Egyptian stock; one of those whose remote ancestors exchanged the worship of the old gods for Christianity under the rule of Theodosius some fifteen hundred years ago, and whose blood is supposed to be purer of Mohammedan intermixture than any in Egypt. Remembering these things, it is impossible to look at him without a feeling of profound interest. It maybe only fancy, yet I think I see in him a different type to that of the Arab—a something, however slight, which recalls the sculptured figures in the tomb of Ti.

But while we are thinking about his magnificent pedigree, our poor Copt’s teeth are chattering piteously. So we give him a shilling or two for the sake of all that he represents in the history of the world; and with these and the donation of an empty bottle, he swims away contented, crying out again and again: “Ketther-kháyrak Sittát! Ketther-kháyrak keteer!” (“Thank you, ladies! thank you much!”)

And now the convent with its clustered domes is passed and left behind. The rock here is of the same rich tawny hue as at Turra, and the horizontal strata of which it is composed have evidently been deposited by water. That the Nile must at some remote time have flowed here at an immensely higher level seems also probable; for the whole face of the range is honeycombed and water-worn for miles in succession. Seeing how these fantastic forms—arched, and clustered, and pendent—resemble the recessed ornamentation of Saracenic buildings, I could not help wondering whether some early Arab architect might not once upon a time have taken a hint from some such rocks as these.

Thus the day wanes, and the level cliffs keep with us all the way—now breaking into little lateral valleys and culs-de-sac in which nestle clusters of tiny huts and green patches of lupin; now plunging sheer down into the river; now receding inland and leaving space for a belt of cultivated soil and a fringe of feathery palms. By and by comes the sunset, when every cast shadow in the recesses of the cliffs turns to pure violet; and the face of the rock glows with a ruddier gold; and the palms on the western bank stand up in solemn bronze against a crimson horizon. Then the sun dips, and instantly the whole range of cliffs turns to a dead, greenish gray, while the sky above and behind them is as suddenly suffused with pink. When this effect has lasted for something like eight minutes, a vast arch of deep-blue shade, about as large in diameter as a rainbow, creeps slowly up the eastern horizon and remains distinctly visible as long as the pink flush against which it is defined yet lingers in the sky. Finally the flush fades out; the blue becomes uniform; the stars begin to show; and only a broad glow in the west marks which way the sun went down. About a quarter of an hour later comes the after-glow, when for a few minutes the sky is filled with a soft, magical light, and the twilight gloom lies warm upon the landscape. When this goes it is night; but still one long beam of light streams up in the track of the sun and remains visible for more than two hours after the darkness has closed in.

Such is the sunset we see this evening as we approach Minieh; and such is the sunset we are destined to see, with scarcely a shade of difference, at the same hour and under precisely the same conditions for many a month to come. It is very beautiful, very tranquil, full of wonderful light and most subtle gradations of tone, and attended by certain phenomena of which I shall have more to say presently; but it lacks the variety and gorgeousness of our northern skies. Nor, given the dry atmosphere of Egypt, can it be otherwise. Those who go up the Nile expecting, as I did, to see magnificent Turneresque pageants of purple, and flame-color, and gold, will be disappointed as I was. For your Turneresque pageant cannot be achieved without such accessories of cloud and vapor as in Nubia are wholly unknown, and in Egypt are of the rarest occurrence. Once, and only once, in the course of an unusually protracted sojourn on the river, had we the good fortune to witness a grand display of the kind; and then we had been nearly three months in the dahabeeyah.

Meanwhile, however, we never weary of these stainless skies, but find in them, evening after evening, fresh depths of beauty and repose. As for that strange transfer of color from the mountains to the sky, we had repeatedly observed it while traveling in the Dolomites the year before, and had always found it take place, as now, at the moment of the sun’s first disappearance. But what of this mighty after-shadow, climbing half the heavens and bringing night with it? Can it be the rising shadow of the world projected on the one horizon as the sun sinks on the other? I leave the problem for wiser travelers to solve. We had not science enough among us to account for it.

That same evening, just as the twilight came on, we saw another wonder—the new moon on the first night of her first quarter; a perfect orb, dusky, distinct, and outlined all round with a thread of light no thicker than a hair. Nothing could be more brilliant than this tiny rim of flashing silver; while every detail of the softly glowing globe within its compass was clearly visible. Tycho, with its vast crater, showed like a volcano on a raised map; and near the edge of the moon’s surface, where the light and shadow met, keen sparkles of mountain-summits catching the light and relieved against the dusk were to be seen by the naked eye. Two or three evenings later, however, when the silver ring was changed to a broad crescent, the unilluminated part was as if it were extinguished, and could no longer be discerned even by help of a glass.

The wind having failed as usual at sunset, the crew set to work with a will and punted the rest of the way, so bringing us to Minieh about nine that night. Next morning we found ourselves moored close under the khedive’s summer palace—so close that one could have tossed a pebble against the lattice windows of his highness’ hareem. A fat gate-keeper sat outside in the sun, smoking his morning chibouque and gossiping with the passers by. A narrow promenade scantily planted with sycamore figs ran between the palace and the river. A steamer or two, and a crowd of native boats, lay moored under the bank; and yonder, at the farther end of the promenade, a minaret and a cluster of whitewashed houses showed which way one must turn in going to the town.

It chanced to be market-day; so we saw Minieh under its best aspect, than which nothing could well be more squalid, dreary, and depressing. It was like a town dropped unexpectedly into the midst of a plowed field; the streets being mere trodden lanes of mud dust, and the houses a succession of windowless mud prisons with their backs to the thoroughfare. The bazaar, which consists of two or three lanes a little wider than the rest, is roofed over here and there with rotting palm-rafters and bits of tattered matting; while the market is held in a space of waste ground outside the town. The former, with its little cupboard-like shops, in which the merchants sit cross-legged like shabby old idols in shabby old shrines—the ill-furnished shelves—the familiar Manchester goods—the gaudy native stuffs—the old red saddles and faded rugs hanging up for sale—the smart Greek stores where Bass’ ale, claret, curaçoa, Cyprus, Vermouth, cheese, pickles, sardines, Worcester sauce, blacking, biscuits, preserved meats, candles, cigars, matches, sugar, salt, stationery, fire-works, jams, and patent medicines can all be bought at one fell swoop—the native cook’s shop exhaling savory perfumes of Kebabs and lentil soup, and presided over by an Abyssinian Soyer blacker than the blackest historical personage ever was painted—the surging, elbowing, clamorous crowd—the donkeys, the camels, the street-cries, the chatter, the dust, the flies, the fleas, and the dogs, all put us in mind of the poorer quarters of Cairo. In the market it is even worse. Here are hundreds of country folk sitting on the ground behind their baskets of fruits and vegetables. Some have eggs, butter, and buffalo-cream for sale, while others sell sugar-canes, limes, cabbages, tobacco, barley, dried lentils, split beans, maize, wheat, and dura. The women go to and fro with bouquets of live poultry. The chickens scream; the sellers rave; the buyers bargain at the top of their voices; the dust flies in clouds; the sun pours down floods of light and heat; you can scarcely hear yourself speak; and the crowd is as dense as that other crowd which at this very moment, on this very Christmas eve, is circulating among the alleys of Leadenhall Market.

The things were very cheap. A hundred eggs cost about fourteen pence in English money; chickens sold for five pence each; pigeons from two-pence to two-pence-half-penny; and fine live geese for two shillings a head. The turkeys, however, which were large and excellent, were priced as high as three-and-sixpence; being about half as much as one pays in Middle and Upper Egypt for a lamb. A good sheep may be bought for sixteen shillings or a pound. The M. B.’s, who had no dragoman and did their own marketing, were very busy here, laying in stores of fresh provision, bargaining fluently in Arabic, and escorted by a body-guard of sailors.

A solitary dôm palm, the northernmost of its race and the first specimen one meets with on the Nile, grows in a garden adjoining this market-place; but we could scarcely see it for the blinding dust. Now, a dôm palm is just the sort of tree that De Wint should have painted—odd, angular, with long forked stems, each of which terminates in a shock-headed crown of stiff finger-like fronds shading heavy clusters of big shiny nuts about the size of Jerusalem artichokes. It is, I suppose, the only nut in the world of which one throws away the kernel and eats the shell; but the kernel is as hard as marble, while the shell is fibrous, and tastes like stale gingerbread. The dôm palm must bifurcate, for bifurcation is the law of its being; but I could never discover whether there was any fixed limit to the number of stems into which it might subdivide. At the same time, I do not remember to have seen any with less than two heads or more than six.

Coming back through the town, we were accosted by a withered one-eyed hag like a reanimated mummy, who offered to tell our fortunes. Before her lay a dirty rag of handkerchief full of shells, pebbles and chips of broken glass and pottery. Squatting, toad-like, under a sunny bit of wall, the lower part of her face closely veiled, her skinny arms covered with blue and green glass bracelets and her fingers with misshapen silver rings, she hung over these treasures, shook, mixed and interrogated them with all the fervor of divination, and delivered a string of the prophecies usually forthcoming on these occasions.

“You have a friend far away, and your friend is thinking of you. There is good fortune in store for you; and money coming to you; and pleasant news on the way. You will soon receive letters in which there will be something to vex you, but more to make you glad. Within thirty days you will unexpectedly meet one whom you dearly love,” etc., etc., etc.

It was just the old familiar story, retold in Arabic, without even such variations as might have been expected from the lips of an old fellâha born and bred in a provincial town of Middle Egypt.

It may be that ophthalmia especially prevailed in this part of the country, or that, being brought unexpectedly into the midst of a large crowd, one observed the people more narrowly, but I certainly never saw so many one-eyed human beings as that morning at Minieh. There must have been present in the streets and market-place from ten to twelve thousand natives of all ages, and I believe it is no exaggeration to say that at least every twentieth person, down to little toddling children of three and four years of age, was blind of an eye. Not being a particularly well-favored race, this defect added the last touch of repulsiveness to faces already sullen, ignorant and unfriendly. A more unprepossessing population I would never wish to see—the men half stealthy, half insolent; the women bold and fierce; the children filthy, sickly, stunted and stolid. Nothing in provincial Egypt is so painful to witness as the neglected condition of very young children. Those belonging to even the better class are for the most part shabbily clothed and of more than doubtful cleanliness; while the offspring of the very poor are simply incrusted with dirt and sores and swarming with vermin. It is at first hard to believe that the parents of these unfortunate babies err, not from cruelty, but through sheer ignorance and superstition. Yet so it is; and the time when these people can be brought to comprehend the most elementary principles of sanitary reform is yet far distant. To wash young children is injurious to health, therefore the mothers suffer them to fall into a state of personal uncleanliness, which is alone enough to engender disease. To brush away the flies that beset their eyes is impious; hence ophthalmia and various kinds of blindness. I have seen infants lying in their mothers’ arms with six or eight flies in each eye. I have seen the little helpless hands put down reprovingly if they approached the seat of annoyance. I have seen children of four and five years old with the surface of one or both eyes eaten away; and others with a large, fleshy lump growing out where the pupil had been destroyed. Taking these things into account, the wonder is, after all, not that three children should die in Egypt out of every five—not that each twentieth person in certain districts should be blind, or partially blind; but that so many as forty per cent of the whole infant population should actually live to grow up, and that ninety-five per cent should enjoy the blessing of sight. For my own part I had not been many weeks on the Nile before I began systematically to avoid going about the native towns whenever it was practicable to do so. That I may so have lost an opportunity of now and then seeing more of the street-life of the people is very probable; but such outside glimpses are of little real value, and I at all events escaped the sight of much poverty, sickness and squalor. The condition of the inhabitants is not worse, perhaps, in an Egyptian beled[23] than in many an Irish village; but the condition of the children is so distressing that one would willingly go any number of miles out of the way rather than witness their suffering, without the power to alleviate it.[24]

If the population in and about Minieh are personally unattractive, their appearance at all events matches their reputation, which is as bad as that of their neighbors. Of the manners and customs of Beni Suêf we had already some experience; while public opinion charges Minieh, Rhoda and most of the towns and villages north of Siût with the like marauding propensities. As for the villages at the foot of Beni Hassan, they have been mere dens of thieves for many generations; and though razed to the ground some years ago by way of punishment, are now rebuilt and in as bad odor as ever. It is necessary, therefore, in all this part of the river, not only to hire guards at night, but, when the boat is moored, to keep a sharp lookout against thieves by day. In Upper Egypt it is very different. There the natives are good-looking, good-natured, gentle and kindly; and though clever enough at manufacturing and selling modern antiquities, are not otherwise dishonest.

That same evening (it was Christmas eve), nearly two hours earlier than their train was supposed to be due, the rest of our party arrived at Minieh.

CHAPTER VI.
MINIEH TO SIUT.

It is Christmas day. The M. B.’s are coming to dinner; the cooks are up to their eyes in entrées; the crew are treated to a sheep in honor of the occasion; the new-comers are unpacking; and we are all gradually settling down into our respective places. Now the new-comers consist of four persons: a painter, a happy couple and a maid. The painter has already been up the Nile three times and brings a fund of experience into the council. He knows all about sand-banks and winds and mooring-places; is acquainted with most of the native governors and consuls along the river; and is great on the subject of what to eat, drink and avoid. The stern-cabin is given to him for a studio and contains frames, canvases, drawing-paper and easels enough to start a provincial school of art. He is going to paint a big picture at Aboo-Simbel. The happy couple it is unnecessary to say are on their wedding tour. In point of fact, they have not yet been married a month. The bridegroom is what the world chooses to call an idle man; that is to say, he has scholarship, delicate health and leisure. The bride, for convenience, shall be called the little lady. Of people who are struggling through that helpless phase of human life called the honeymoon, it is not fair to say more than that they are both young enough to make the situation interesting.

Meanwhile the deck must be cleared of the new luggage that has come on board and the day passes in a confusion of unpacking, arranging and putting away. Such running to and fro as there is down below; such turning-out of boxes and knocking-up of temporary shelves; such talking, and laughing, and hammering! Nor is the bustle confined to down-stairs. Talhamy and the waiters are just as busy above, adorning the upper deck with palm branches and hanging the boat all round with rows of colored lanterns. One can hardly believe, however, that it is Christmas day—that there are fires blazing at home in every room; that the church field, perhaps, is white with snow; and that familiar bells are ringing merrily across the frosty air. Here at midday it is already too hot on deck without the awning, and when we moor toward sunset near a riverside village in a grove of palms, the cooler air of evening is delicious.

There is novelty in even such a commonplace matter as dining out, on the Nile. You go and return in your felucca, as if it were a carriage; and your entertainers summon you by firing a dinner gun, instead of sounding a gong. Wise people who respect the feelings of their cooks fire a dressing gun as well; for watches soon differ in a hopeless way for want of the church clock to set them by, and it is always possible that host and guest may be an hour or two apart in their reckoning.

The customary guns having therefore been fired and the party assembled, we sat down to one of cook Bedawee’s prodigious banquets. Not, however, till the plum-pudding, blazing demoniacally, appeared upon the scene, did any of us succeed in believing that it was really Christmas day.

Nothing could be prettier or gayer than the spectacle that awaited us when we rose from table. A hundred and fifty colored lanterns outlined the boat from end to end, sparkled up the masts, and cast broken reflections in the moving current. The upper-deck, hung with flags and partly closed in with awnings, looked like a bower of palms. The stars and the crescent moon shone overhead. Dim outlines of trees and headlands, and a vague perspective of gleaming river, were visible in the distance; while a light gleamed now and then in the direction of the village, or a dusky figure flitted along the bank.

Meanwhile, there was a sound of revelry by night; for our sailors had invited the Bagstones’ crew to unlimited coffee and tobacco, and had quite a large party on the lower deck. They drummed, they sang, they danced, they dressed up, improvised a comic scene, and kept their audience in a roar. Reïs Hassan did the honors. George, Talhamy and the maids sat apart at the second table and sipped their coffee genteelly. We looked on and applauded. At ten o’clock a pan of magnesium powder was burned, and our fantasia ended with a blaze of light, like a pantomime.

In Egypt, by the way, any entertainment which is enlivened by music, dancing, or fire-works is called a fantasia.

And now, sometimes sailing, sometimes tracking, sometimes punting, we go on day by day, making what speed we can. Things do not, of course, always fall out exactly as one would have them. The wind too often fails when we most need it, and gets up when there is something to be seen on shore. Thus, after a whole morning of tracking, we reach Beni Hassan at the moment when a good breeze has suddenly filled our sails for the first time in forty-eight hours; and so, yielding to counsels which we afterward deplored, we pass on with many a longing look at the terraced doorways pierced along the cliffs. At Rhoda, in the same way, we touch for only a few minutes to post and inquire for letters, and put off till our return the inland excursion to Dayr el Nakhl, where is to be seen the famous painting of the Colossus on the Sledge. But sights deferred are fated sometimes to remain unseen, as we found by and by to our exceeding loss and regret.

Meanwhile, the skies are always cloudless, the days warm, the evenings exquisite. We of course live very much in the open air. When there is no wind, we land and take long walks by the river side. When on board, we sketch, write letters, read Champollion, Bunsen, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson: and work hard at Egyptian dynasties. The sparrows and water-wagtails perch familiarly on the awnings and hop about the deck; the cocks and hens chatter, the geese cackle, the turkeys gobble in their coops close by; and our sacrificial sheep, leading a solitary life in the felucca, comes baaing in the rear. Sometimes we have as many as a hundred chickens on board (to say nothing of pigeons and rabbits) and two or even three sheep in the felucca. The poultry-yard is railed off, however, at the extreme end of the stern, so that the creatures are well away from the drawing-room; and when we moor at a suitable place, they are let out for a few hours to peck about the banks and enjoy their liberty. L—— and the little lady feed these hapless prisoners with breakfast-scraps every morning, to the profound amusement of the steersman, who, unable to conceive any other motive, imagines they are fatting them for the table.

Such is our Noah’s ark life—pleasant, peaceful and patriarchal. Even on days when there is little to see and nothing to do it is never dull. Trifling incidents which have for us the excitement of novelty are continually occurring. Other dahabeeyahs, their flags and occupants, are a constant source of interest. Meeting at mooring-places for the night, we now and then exchange visits. Passing each other by day we dip ensigns, fire salutes, and punctiliously observe the laws of maritime etiquette. Sometimes a Cook’s excursion steamer hurries by crowded with tourists; or a government tug towing three or four great barges closely packed with wretched-looking, half-naked fellâheen bound for forced labor on some new railway or canal. Occasionally we pass a dahabeeyah sticking fast upon a sand-bank; and sometimes we stick on one ourselves. Then the men fly to their punting poles or jump into the river like water-dogs, and, grunting in melancholy cadence, shove the boat off with their shoulders.

The birds, too, are new, and we are always looking out for them. Perhaps we see a top-heavy pelican balancing his huge yellow bill over the edge of the stream and fishing for his dinner—or a flight of wild geese trailing across the sky toward sunset—or a select society of vultures perched all in a row upon a ledge of rock and solemn as the bench of bishops. Then there are the herons who stand on one leg and doze in the sun; the strutting hoopoes with their legendary top-knots; the blue and green bee-eaters hovering over the uncut dura. The pied kingfisher, black and white like a magpie, sits fearlessly under the bank and never stirs, though the tow-rope swings close above his head and the dahabeeyah glides within a few feet of the shore. The paddy-birds whiten the sand-banks by hundreds and rise in a cloud at our approach. The sacred hawk, circling overhead, utters the same sweet, piercing, melancholy note that the Pharaohs listened to of old.

The scenery is for the most part of the ordinary Nile pattern; and for many a mile we see the same things over and over again—the level bank shelving down steeply to the river; the strip of cultivated soil, green with maize or tawny with dura; the frequent mud-village and palm-grove; the deserted sugar factory with its ungainly chimney and shattered windows; the water-wheel slowly revolving with its necklace of pots; the shâdûf worked by two brown athletes; the file of laden camels; the desert, all sand-hills and sand-plains, with its background of mountains; the long reach and the gleaming sail ahead. Sometimes, however, as at Kom Ahmar, we skirt the ancient brick mounds of some forgotten city, with fragments of arched foundations, and even of walls and doorways, reaching down to the water’s edge; or, sailing close under ranges of huge perpendicular cliffs, as at Gebel Abufayda, startle the cormorants from their haunts, and peer as we pass into the dim recesses of many a rock-cut tomb excavated just above the level of the inundation.

This Gebel Abufayda has a bad name for sudden winds; especially at the beginning and end of the range, where the Nile bends abruptly and the valley opens out at right angles to the river. It is fine to see Reïs Hassan, as we approach one of the worst of these bad bits—a point where two steep ravines divided by a bold headland command the passage like a pair of grim cannon, and rake it with blasts from the northeastern desert. Here the current, flowing deep and strong, is met by the wind and runs high in crested waves. Our little captain, kicking off his shoes, himself springs up the rigging and there stands silent and watchful. The sailors, ready to shift our mainsail at the word of command, cling some to the shoghool[25] and some to the end of the yard; the boat tears on before the wind; the great bluff looms up darker and nearer. Then comes a breathless moment. Then a sharp, sudden word from the little man in the main rigging; a yell and a whoop from the sailors; a slow, heavy lurch of the flapping sail; and the corner is turned in safety.

The cliffs are very fine; much loftier and less uniform than at Gebel et Tayr; rent into strange forms, as of sphinxes, cheesewrings, towers, and bastions; honeycombed with long ranges of rock-cut tombs; and undermined by water-washed caverns in which lurk a few lingering crocodiles. If at Gebel et Tayr the rock is worn into semblances of arabesque ornamentation, here it looks as if inscribed all over with mysterious records in characters not unlike the Hebrew. Records they are, too, of prehistoric days—chronicles of his own deeds carved by the great god Nile himself, the Hapimu of ancient time—but the language in which they are written has never been spoken by man.

As for the rock-cut tombs of Gebel Abufayda, they must number many hundreds. For nearly twelve miles the range runs parallel to the river, and throughout that distance the face of the cliffs is pierced with innumerable doorways. Some are small and square, twenty or thirty together, like rows of port-holes. Others are isolated. Some are cut so high up that they must have been approached from above; others again come close upon the level of the river. Some of the doorways are faced to represent jambs and architraves; some, excavated laterally, appear to consist of a series of chambers, and are lit from without by small windows cut in the rock. One is approached by a flight of rough steps leading up from the water’s edge; and another, hewn high in the face of the cliff, just within the mouth of a little ravine, shows a simple but imposing façade supported by four detached pillars. No modern travelers seem to visit these tombs; while those of the old school, as Wilkinson, Champollion, etc., dismiss them with a few observations. Yet, with the single exception of the mountains behind Thebes, there is not, I believe, any one spot in Egypt which contains such a multitude of sepulchral excavations. Many look, indeed, as if they might belong to the same interesting and early epoch as those of Beni Hassan.

I may here mention that about half-way, or rather less than half-way, along the whole length of the range I observed two large hieroglyphed stelæ incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff at a height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river. These stelæ, apparently royal ovals, and sculptured as usual side by side, may have measured from twelve to fifteen feet in height; but in the absence of any near object by which to scale them, I could form but a rough guess as to their actual dimensions. The boat was just then going so fast that to sketch or take notes of the hieroglyphs was impossible. Before I could adjust my glass they were already in the rear; and by the time I had called the rest of the party together they were no longer distinguishable.

Coming back several months later, I looked for them again, but without success; for the intense midday sun was then pouring full upon the rocks, to the absolute obliteration of everything like shallow detail. While watching vainly, however, for the stelæ, I was compensated by the unexpected sight of a colossal bas-relief high up on the northward face of a cliff standing, so to say, at the corner of one of those little recesses or culs-de-sac which here and there break the uniformity of the range. The sculptural relief of this large subject was apparently very low; but, owing to the angle at which it met the light, one figure, which could not have measured less than eighteen or twenty feet in height, was distinctly visible. I immediately drew L——’s attention to the spot; and she not only discerned the figure without the help of a glass, but believed like myself that she could see traces of a second.