Charles Dudley Warner

“ When the anchor is reached it is time for the crew to eat dinner.
We make not more than a mile all day, with hard work, but we reach the shore. We have been two days in this broad, beautiful bend of the river, surrounded by luxuriant fields and palm-groves, the picture framed in rosy mountains of limestone, which glow in the clear sunshine. It is a becalmment in an enchanted place, out of which there seems to be no way, and if there were we are losing the desire to go. At night, as we lie at the bank, a row of ragged fellaheen line the high shore, like buzzards, looking down on us. ”

“ We meet flat boats coming down the harbor loaded with laborers, dark, immobile groups in turbans and gowns, squatting on deck in the attitude which is the most characteristic of the East; no one stands or sits—everybody squats or reposes cross-legged. Soldiers are on the move; smart Turkish officers dart by in light boats with half a dozen rowers; the crew of an English man-of-war pull past; in all directions the swift boats fly, and with their freight of color, it is like the thrusting of quick shuttles, in the weaving of a brilliant carpet, before our eyes. ”

“ You set out with a cavalcade of mules, servants, water-carriers, and a retinue of hungry, begging Arabs, over the fields and through the desert to the temples and tombs. The distances are long, the sand is glaring, the incandescent sun is reflected in hot waves from the burning Libyan chain. It requires hours to master the plan of a vast temple in its ruins, and days to follow out the story of the wonderful people who built it, in its marvelous sculptures—acres of inside and outside walls of picture cut in stone. ”

“ The sail is always set, the ripples are running always along the sides, the shores slide by as in a dream; the reïs is at the bow, the smiling steersman is at the helm; if we were enchanted we could not go on more noiselessly. There is something ghostly about this night-voyage through a land so imperfectly defined to the senses but so crowded with history. If only the dead who are buried on these midnight shores were to rise, we should sail through a vast and ghastly concourse packing the valley and stretching away into the desert.
About midnight I step out of the cabin to look at the night. ”

“ Before we know it, the nose of the boat is in the rapid, which flings it up in the air; the next second we are tossed on the waves. The bow dips, and a heavy wave deluges the cook's domain; we ship a tun or two of water, the dragoman, who stands forward, is wet to his breast; but the boat shakes it off and rises again, tossed like an egg-shell. It is glorious. The boat obeys her helm admirably, as the half-dozen pilots, throwing their weight upon the tiller, skillfully veer it slightly or give it a broad sweep. ”

“ Whenever we get in Egypt this extensive view over mountains, desert, arable land, and river it is always both lovely and grand. There was this afternoon on the bare limestone precipices a bloom as of incipient spring verdure. There is always some surprise of color for the traveler who goes ashore, or looks from his window, on the Nile,—either in the sky, or in the ground which has been steeped in color for so many ages that even the brown earth is rich. ”

“ We are amid heaps of rubbish, small mountains of it, perhaps the ruins of old Alexandria, perhaps only the accumulated sweepings of the city for ages, piles of dust, and broken pottery. Every Egyptian town of any size is surrounded by these—the refuse of ages of weary civilization.
What a number of old men, of blind men, ragged men—though rags are no disgrace! What a lot of scrawny old women, lean old hags, some of them without their faces covered—even the veiled ones you can see are only bags of bones. There is a derweesh, a naked holy man, seated in the dirt by the wall, reading the Koran. ”

“ Before we can distinguish land, we see the so-called Pompey's Pillar and the light-house, the palms, the minarets, and the outline of the domes painted on the straw-color of the sky—a dream-like picture. The curtain draws up with Eastern leisure—the sun appears to rise more deliberately in the Orient than elsewhere; the sky grows more brilliant, there are long lines of clouds, golden and crimson, and we seem to be looking miles and miles into an enchanted country. ”

“ What we see immediately before us is a basin, it may be a quarter of a mile, it may be half a mile broad, and two miles long; a wild expanse of broken granite rocks and boulders strewn hap-hazard, some of them showing the red of the syenite and others black and polished and shining in the sun; a field of rocks, none of them high, of fantastic shapes; and through this field the river breaks in a hundred twisting passages and chutes, all apparently small, but the water in them is foaming and leaping and flashing white; and the air begins to be pervaded by the multitudinous roar of rapids. ”

“ It is a day of incomparable beauty. We see very little labor along the Nile; the crops are maturing. But the whole population comes to the river, to bathe, to sit in the shallows, to sit on the bank. All the afternoon we pass groups, men, women, children, motionless, the picture of idleness. There they are, hour after hour, in the sun. Women, coming for water, put down their jars, and bathe and frolic in the grateful stream. In some distant reaches of the river there are rows of women along the shore, exactly like the birds which stand in the shallow places or sun themselves on the sand. ”

“ A little later we see from our boat the young moon through the columns of the lesser temple. The January night is clear and perfectly dry; no dew is falling—no dew ever falls here—and the multiplied stars burn with uncommon lustre. When everything else is still, we hear the roar of the rapids coming steadily on the night breeze, sighing through the old and yet modern palace-temples of the parvenu Ptolemies, and of Cleopatra—a new race of conquerors and pleasure-hunters, who in vain copied the magnificent works of the ancient Pharaohs. ”

“ I remind myself of one looking, always in the desert, for the pearl of great price, which all the markets and jewelers of the world wait for. It seems possible, here under this serene sky, on this expanse of sand, which has been trodden for thousands of years by all the Oriental people in turn, by caravans, by merchants and warriors and wanderers, swept by so many geologic floods and catastrophes, to find it. I never tire of looking, and curiously examine every bit of translucent and variegated flint that sparkles in the sand. ”

“ As we pass the desolate Kom Ombos, a solitary figure emerges from the ruins and comes down the slope of the sand-hill, with turban flowing, ragged cotton robe, and a long staff; he runs along the sandy shore and then turns away into the desert, like a fleeing Cain, probably with no idea that it is Sunday, and that the “first bell” is about to ring in Christian countries.
The morning air is a little too sharp for idle comfort, although we can sit in the sun on deck and read. This west wind coming from the mountains of the desert brings always cold weather, even in Nubia. ”

“ But the wide streets are uninteresting, and the sojourner in the city likes to escape out of their glare and dust into the cool and shady recesses of the old town. And he has not far to go to do so. A few minutes walk from the Ezbekeëh brings one into a tangle like the crossing paths of an ants nest, into the very heart of the smell and color of the Orient, among people among shops, in the presence of manners, habits, costumes, occupations, centuries old, into a life in which the western man recognizes nothing familiar. ”

“ It looks like war or revolution, picturesque war in the bright sun on the yellow sand, with all attention to disposition of raiment and color and striking attitudes. There are hurryings to and fro, incessant clamors of noise and shoutings and blows of cudgels; some are running away, and some are climbing into palm trees, but we notice that no one is hit by cane or sword. Neither is anybody taken into custody, though there is a great show of arresting somebody. ”

“ There are the fat, sleek Greek merchant, in sumptuous white Oriental costume, lounging amid his merchandise; the Syrian in gay apparel, with pistols in his shawl-belt, preparing for his journey to Kartoom; and the black Nubian sailors asleep on the sand. To add a little color to the picture, a Ghawazee, or dancing-girl, in striped flaming gown and red slippers, dark but comely, covered with gold or silver-gilt necklaces and bracelets, is walking about the shore, seeking whom she may devour.
At twelve o'clock we are ready to push off. The wind is strong from the north. ”

“ No human royal family dare be uglier than the camel. He is a mass of bones, faded tufts, humps, lumps, splay-joints and callosities. His tail is a ridiculous wisp, and a failure as an ornament or a fly-brush. His feet are simply big sponges. For skin covering he has patches of old buffalo robes, faded and with the hair worn off. His voice is more disagreeable than his appearance. With a reputation for patience, he is snappish and vindictive. His endurance is over-rated—that is to say he dies like a sheep on an expedition of any length, if he is not well fed. ”

“ Some of them are full of mummy-cloths and skeletons, and smell of mortality, to that degree that it needs all the wind of the desert to take the scent of death out of our nostrils.
All this plain and its mounds and hills are dug over and pawed out for remnants of the dead, scarabæi, beads, images, trinkets sacred and profane. It is the custom of some travelers to descend into the horrible and common mummy-pits, treading about among the dead, and bring up in their arms the body of some man, or some woman, who may have been, for aught the traveler knows, not a respectable person. ”

“ The girl in yellow, she of the oblong eyes, straight nose and high type of Oriental beauty, dances down alone; she is slender, she has the charm of grace, her eyes never wander to the spectators. Is there in her soul any faint contempt for herself or for the part she plays? Or is the historic consciousness of the antiquity of both her profession and her sin strong enough to throw yet the lights of illusion over such a performance? ”

“ Do we gain in the chute? It is difficult to say; the boat hangs back and strains at the cables; but just as we are in the pinch of doubt, the big sail unfurls its wing with exciting suddenness, a strong gust catches it, we feel the lift, and creep upward, amid an infernal din of singing and shouting and calling on the Prophet from the gangs who haul in the sail-rope, who tug at the cables attached to the rocks, who are pulling at the hawsers on the shore. ”

“ A morning walk takes us over a rocky desert; the broken shale is distributed as evenly over the sand as if the whole had once been under water, and the shale were a dried mud, cracked in the sun. The miserable dwellings of the natives are under the ledges back of the strip of arable land. The women are shy and wild as hawks, but in the mode; they wear a profusion of glass beads and trail their robes in the dust. ”

“ At sunset we are in a lonesome place, the swift river flowing between narrow rocky shores, the height beyond Assouan grey in the distance, and vultures watching our passing boat from the high crumbling sandstone ledges. The night falls sweet and cool, the soft new moon is remote in the almost purple depths, the thickly strewn stars blaze like jewels, and we work slowly on at the rate of a mile an hour, with the slightest wind, amid the granite rocks of the channel. In this channel we are in the shadow of the old historical seat of empire, the island of Elephantine ”