Warner Charles Dudley
My Winter on the Nile
At this village, as in others in Nubia, the old women are the corn-grinders. These wasted skeletons sit on the ground before a stone with a hollow in it; in this they bruise the doora with a smaller stone; the flour is then moistened and rubbed to a paste. The girls and younger women, a great part of the time, are idling about in their finery. But, then, they have the babies and the water to bring; and it must be owned that some of them work in the field—grubbing grass and stuff for “greens” and for fuel, more than the men. The men do the heavy work of irrigation.
But we cannot stay to mourn with those who mourn a week in this style; and in the evening, when a strong breeze springs up, we spread our sail and go, in the “daylight of the moon,” flying up the river, by black and weird shores; and before midnight pass lonesome Aboo Simbel, whose colossi sit in the moonlight with the impassive mien they have held for so many ages.
In the morning, with an easy wind, we are on the last stage of our journey. We are almost at the limit of dahabeëh navigation. The country is less interesting than it was below. The river is very broad, and we look far over the desert on each side. The strip of cultivated soil is narrow and now and again disappears altogether. To the east are seen, since we passed Aboo Simbel, the pyramid hills, some with truncated tops, scattered without plan over the desert. It requires no stretch of fancy to think that these mathematically built hills are pyramids erected by races anterior to Menes, and that all this waste that they dot is a necropolis of that forgotten people.
The sailors celebrate the finishing of the journey by a ceremony of state and dignity. The chief actor is Farrag, the wit of the crew. Suddenly he appears as the Governor of Wady Haifa, with horns on his head, face painted, a long beard, hair sprinkled with flour, and dressed in shaggy sheepskin. He has come on board to collect his taxes. He opens his court, with the sailors about him, holding a long marline spike which he pretends to smoke as a chibook. His imitation of the town dignitaries along the river is very comical, and his remarks are greeted with roars of laughter. One of the crew acts as his bailiff and summons all the officers and servants of the boat before him, who are thrown down upon the deck and bastinadoed, and released on payment of backsheesh. The travelers also have to go before the court and pay a fine for passing through the Governor’s country. The Governor is treated with great deference till the end of the farce, when one of his attendants sets fire to his beard, and another puts him out with a bucket of water.
‘The end of our journey is very much like the end of everything else—there is very little in it. When we follow anything to its utmost we are certain to be disappointed—simply because it is the nature of things to taper down to a point. I suspect it must always be so with the traveler, and that the farther he penetrates into any semi-savage continent, the meaner and ruder will he find the conditions of life. When we come to the end, ought we not to expect the end?
We have come a thousand miles not surely to see Wady Haifa but to see the thousand miles. And yet Wady Haifa, figuring as it does on the map, the gate of the great Second Cataract, the head of navigation, the destination of so many eager travelers, a point of arrival and departure of caravans, might be a little less insignificant than it is. There is the thick growth of palm-trees under which the town lies, and beyond it, several miles, on the opposite, west bank, is the cliff of Aboosir, which looks down upon the cataract; but for this noble landmark, this dominating rock, the traveler could not feel that he had arrived anywhere, and would be so weakened by the shock of arriving nowhere at the end of so long a journey (as a man is by striking a blow in the air) that he would scarcely have strength to turn back.
At the time of our arrival, however, Wady Haifa has some extra life. An expedition of the government is about to start for Darfoor. When we moor at the east bank, we see on the west bank the white tents of a military encampment set in right lines on the yellow sand; near them the government storehouse and telegraph-office, and in front a mounted howitzer and a Gatling gun. No contrast could be stronger. Here is Wady Halfah, in the doze of an African town, a collection of mud-huts under the trees, listless, apathetic, sitting at the door of a vast region, without either purpose or ambition. There, yonder, is a piece of life out of our restless age. There are the tents, the guns, the instruments, the soldiers and servants of a new order of things for Africa. We hear the trumpet call to drill. The flag which is planted in the sand in front of the commander’s tent is to be borne to the equator.
But this is not a military expedition. It is a corps of scientific observation, simply. Since the Sultan of Darfoor is slain and the Khedive’s troops have occupied his capital, and formally attached that empire to Egypt, it is necessary to know something of its extent, resources, and people, concerning all of which we have only the uncertain reports of traders. It is thought by some that the annexation of Darfoor adds five millions to the population of the Khedive’s growing empire. In order that he may know what he has conquered, he has sent out exploring expeditions, of which this is one. It is under command of Purdy Bey assisted by Lieutenant-Colonel Mason, two young American officers of the Khedive, who fought on opposite sides in our civil war. They are provided with instruments for making all sorts of observations, and are to report upon the people and the physical character and capacity of the country. They expect to be absent three years, and after surveying Darfoor, will strike southward still, and perhaps contribute something to the solution of the Nile problem. For escort they have a hundred soldiers only, but a large train of camels and intendants. In its purpose it is an expedition that any civilized ruler might be honored for setting on foot. It is a brave overture of civilization to barbarism. The nations are daily drawing nearer together. As we sit in the telegraph-office here, messages are flashed from Cairo to Kartoom.
CHAPTER XXIII.—APPROACHING THE SECOND CATARACT
THERE are two ways of going to see the Second Cataract and the cliff of Aboosir, which is about six miles above Wady Haifa; one is by small boat, the other by dromedary over the desert. We chose the latter, and the American officers gave us a mount and their company also. Their camp presented a lively scene when we crossed over to it in the morning. They had by requisition pressed into their service three or four hundred camels, and were trying to select out of the lot half a dozen fit to ride. The camels were, in fact, mostly burden camels and not trained to the riding-saddle; besides, half of them were poor, miserable rucks of bones, half-starved to death; for the Arabs, whose business it had been to feed them, had stolen the government supplies. An expedition which started south two weeks ago lost more than a hundred camels, from starvation, before it reached Semneh, thirty-five miles up the river. They had become so weak, that they wilted and died on the first hard march. For his size and knotty appearance, the camel is the most disappointing of beasts. He is a sheep as to endurance. As to temper, he is vindictive.
Authorities differ in regard to the distinction between the camel and the dromedary. Some say that there are no camels in Egypt, that they are all dromedaries, having one hump; and that the true camel is the Bactrian, which has two humps. It is customary here, however, to call those camels which are beasts of burden, and those dromedaries which are trained to ride; the distinction being that between the cart-horse and the saddle-horse.
The camel-drivers, who are as wild Arabs as you will meet anywhere, select a promising beast and drag him to the tent. He is reluctant to come; he rebels against the saddle; he roars all the time it is being secured on him, and when he is forced to kneel, not seldom he breaks away from his keepers and shambles off into the desert. The camel does this always; and every morning on a inarch he receives his load only after a struggle. The noise of the drivers is little less than the roar of the beasts, and with their long hair, shaggy breasts, and bare legs they are not less barbarous in appearance.
Mounting the camel is not difficult, but it has some sweet surprises for the novice. The camel lies upon the ground with all his legs shut up under him like a jackknife. You seat yourself in the broad saddle, and cross your legs in front of the pommel. Before you are ready, something like a private earthquake begins under you. The camel raises his hindquarters suddenly, and throws you over upon his neck; and, before you recover from that he straightens up his knees and gives you a jerk over his tail; and, while you are not at all certain what has happened, he begins to move off with that dislocated walk which sets you into a see-saw motion, a waving backwards and forwards in the capacious saddle. Not having a hinged back fit for this movement, you lash the beast with your koorbâsh to make him change his gait. He is nothing loth to do it, and at once starts into a high trot which sends you a foot into the air at every step, bobs you from side to side, drives your backbone into your brain, and makes castanets of your teeth. Capital exercise. When you have enough of it, you pull up, and humbly enquire what is the heathen method of riding a dromedary.
It is simple enough. Shake the loose halter-rope (he has neither bridle nor bit) against his neck as you swing the whip, and the animal at once swings into an easy pace; that is, a pretty easy pace, like that of a rocking-horse. But everything depends upon the camel. I happened to mount one that it was a pleasure to ride, after I brought him to the proper gait We sailed along over the smooth sand, with level keel, and (though the expression is not nautical) on cushioned feet. But it is hard work for the camel, this constant planting of his spongy feet in the yielding sand.
Our way lay over the waste and rolling desert (the track of the southern caravans,) at some little distance from the river; and I suppose six miles of this travel are as good as a hundred. The sun was blazing hot, the yellow sand glowed in it, and the far distance of like sand and bristling ledges of black rock shimmered in waves of heat. No tree, no blade of grass, nothing but blue sky bending over a sterile land. Yet, how sweet was the air, how pure the breath of the desert, how charged with electric life the rays of the sun!
The rock Aboosir, the ultima Thule of pleasure-travel on the Nile, is a sheer precipice of perhaps two to three hundred feet above the Nile; but this is high enough to make it one of the most extensive lookouts in Egypt. More desert can be seen here than from almost anywhere else. The Second Cataract is spread out beneath us. It is less a “fall” even than the First. The river is from a half mile to a mile in breadth and for a distance of some five miles is strewn with trap-rock, boulders and shattered fragments, through which the Nile swiftly forces itself in a hundred channels. There are no falls of any noticeable height. Here, on the flat rock, where we eat our luncheon, a cool breeze blows from the north. Here on this eagle’s perch, commanding a horizon of desert and river for a hundred miles, fond visitors have carved their immortal names, following an instinct of ambition that is well-nigh universal, in the belief no doubt that the name will have for us who come after all the significance it has in the eyes of him who carved it. But I cannot recall a single name I read there; I am sorry that I cannot, for it seems a pitiful and cruel thing to leave them there in their remote obscurity.
From this rock we look with longing to the southward, into vast Africa, over a land we may not further travel, which we shall probably never see again; or the far horizon the blue peaks of Dongola are visible, and beyond these we know are the ruins of Meroë, that ancient city, the capital of that Ethiopian Queen, Candace, whose dark face is lighted up by a momentary gleam from the Scriptures.
On the beach at Wady Haifa are half a dozen trading-vessels, loaded with African merchandise for Cairo, and in the early morning there is a great hubbub among the merchants and the caravan owners. A sudden dispute arises among a large group around the ferry-boat, and there ensues that excited war, or movement, which always threatens to come to violence in the East but never does; Niagaras of talk are poured out; the ebb and flow of the parti-colored crowd, and the violent and not ungraceful gestures make a singular picture.
Bales of merchandise are piled on shore, cases of brandy and cottons from England, to keep the natives of Soudan warm inside and out; Greek merchants splendid in silk attire, are lounging amid their goods, slowly bargaining for their transportation. Groups of camels are kneeling on the sand with their Bedaween drivers. These latter are of the Bisharee Arabs, and free sons of the desert. They wear no turban, and their only garment is a long strip of brown cotton thrown over the shoulder so as to leave the right arm free, and then wound about the waist and loins. The black hair is worn long, braided in strands which shine with oil, and put behind the ears. This sign of effeminacy is contradicted by their fine, athletic figures; by a bold, strong eye, and a straight, resolute nose.
Wady Haifa (wady is valley, and Haifa is a sort of coarse grass) has a post-office and a mosque, but no bazaar, nor any center of attraction. Its mud-houses are stretched along the shore for a mile and a half, and run back into the valley, under the lovely palm-grove; but there are no streets and no roads through the deep sand. There is occasionally a sign of wealth in an extensive house, that is, one consisting of several enclosed courts and apartments within one large mud-wall; and in one we saw a garden, watered by a sakiya, and two latticed windows in a second story looking on it, as if some one had a harem here which was handsome enough to seclude..
We called on the Kadi, the judicial officer of this district, whose house is a specimen of the best, and as good as is needed in this land of the sun. On one side of an open enclosure is his harem; in the other is the reception-room where he holds court. This is a mud-hut, with nothing whatever in it except some straw mats. The Kadi sent for rugs, and we sat on the mud-bench outside, while attendants brought us dates, popped-corn, and even coffee; and then they squatted in a row in front of us and stared at us, as we did at them. The ladies went into the harem, and made the acquaintance of the judge’s one wife and his dirty children. Not without cordiality and courtesy of manner these people; but how simple are the terms of life here; and what a thoroughly African picture this is, the mud-huts, the sand, the palms, the black-skinned groups.
The women here are modestly clad, but most of them frightfully ugly and castor-oily; yet we chanced upon two handsome girls, or rather married women, of fifteen or sixteen. One of them had regular features and a very pretty expression, and evidently knew she was a beauty, for she sat apart on the ground, keeping her head covered most of the time, and did not join the women who thronged about us to look with wonder at the costume of our ladies and to beg for backsheesh. She was loaded with necklaces, bracelets of horn and ivory, and had a ring on every finger. There was in her manner something of scorn and resentment at our intrusion; she no doubt had her circle of admirers and was queen in it. Who are these pale creatures who come to stare at my charms? Have they no dark pretty women in their own land? And she might well have asked, what would she do—a beauty of New York city, let us say—when she sat combing her hair on the marble doorsteps of her father’s palace in Madison Square, if a lot of savage, impolite Nubians, should come and stand in a row in front of her and stare?
The only shops here are the temporary booths of traders, birds of passage to or from the equatorial region. Many of them have pitched their gay tents under the trees, making the scene still more like a fair or an encampment for the night. In some are displayed European finery and trumpery, manufactured for Africa, calico in striking colors, glass beads and cotton cloth; others are coffee-shops, where men are playing at a sort of draughts—the checker-board being holes made in the sand and the men pebbles. At the door of a pretty tent stood a young and handsome Syrian merchant, who cordially invited us in, and pressed upon us the hospitality of his house. He was on his way to Darfoor, and might remain there two or three years, trading with the natives. We learned this by the interpretation of his girl-wife, who spoke a little barbarous French. He had married her only recently, and this was their bridal tour, we inferred. Into what risks and perils was this pretty woman going? She was Greek, from one of the islands, and had the naïvete and freshness of both youth and ignorance. Her fair complexion was touched by the sun and ruddy with health. Her blue eyes danced with the pleasure of living. She wore her hair natural, with neither oil nor ornament, but cut short and pushed behind the ears. For dress she had a simple calico gown of pale yellow, cut high in the waist, à la Grecque, the prettiest costume women ever assumed. After our long regimen of the hideous women of the Nile, plastered with dirt, soaked in oil, and hung with tawdry ornaments, it may be imagined how welcome was this vision of a woman, handsome, natural and clean, with neither the shyness of an animal nor the brazenness of a Ghawazee.
Our hospitable entertainers hastened to set before us what they had; a bottle of Maraschino was opened, very good European cigars were produced, and a plate of pistachio nuts, to eat with the cordial. The artless Greek beauty cracked the nuts for us with her shining teeth, laughing all the while; urging us to eat, and opening her eyes in wonder that we would not eat more, and would not carry away more. It must be confessed that we had not much conversation, but we made it up in constant smiling, and ate our pistachios and sipped our cordial in great glee. What indeed could we have done more with words, or how have passed a happier hour? We perfectly understood each other; we drank each other’s healths; we were civilized beings, met by chance in a barbarous place; we were glad to meet, and we parted in the highest opinion of each other, with gay salaams, and not in tears. What fate I wonder had these handsome and adventurous merchants among the savages of Darfoor and Kordofan?
The face of our black boy, Gohah, was shining with pleasure when we walked away, and he said with enthusiasm, pointing to the tent, “Sitt tyeb, quéi-is.” Accustomed as he was to the African beauties of Soudan, I do not wonder that Gohah thought this “lady” both “good” and “beautiful.”
We have seen Wady Haifa. The expedition to Darfoor is packing up to begin its desert march in the morning. Our dahabeëh has been transformed and shorn of a great part of its beauty. We are to see no more the great bird-wing sail. The long yard has been taken down and is slung above us the whole length of the deck. The twelve big sweeps are put in place; the boards of the forward deck are taken up, so that the Lowers will have place for their feet as they sit on the beams. They sit fronting the cabin, and rise up and take a step forward at each stroke, settling slowly back to their seats. On the mast is rigged the short stern-yard and sail, to be rarely spread. Hereafter we are to float, and drift, and whirl, and try going with the current and against the wind.
At ten o’clock of a moonlight night, a night of summer heat, we swing off, the rowers splashing their clumsy oars and setting up a shout and chorus in minor, that sound very much like a wail, and would be quite appropriate if they were ferrymen of the Styx. We float a few miles, and then go aground and go to bed.
The next day we have the same unchanging sky, the same groaning and creaking of the sakiyas, and in addition the irregular splashing of the great sweeps as we slide down the river. Two crocodiles have the carelessness to show themselves on a sand-island, one a monstrous beast, whose size is magnified every time we think how his great back sunk into the water when our sandal was yet beyond rifle-shot. Of course he did not know that we carried only a shot-gun and intended only to amuse him, or he would not have been in such haste.
The wind is adverse, we gain little either by oars or by the current, and at length take to the shore, where something novel always rewards us. This time we explore some Roman ruins, with round arches of unburned bricks, and find in them also the unmistakable sign of Roman occupation, the burnt bricks—those thin slabs, eleven inches long, five wide, and two thick, which, were a favorite form with them, bricks burnt for eternity, and scattered all over the East wherever the Roman legions went.
Beyond these is a village, not a deserted village, but probably the laziest in the world. Men, and women for the most part too, were lounging about and in the houses, squatting in the dust, in absolute indolence, except that the women, all of them, were suckling their babies, and occasionally one of them was spinning a little cotton-thread on a spindle whirled in the hand. The men are more cleanly than the women, in every respect in better condition, some of them bright, fine-looking fellows. One of them showed us through his house, which was one of the finest in the place, and he was not a little proud of it. It was a large mud-wall enclosure. Entering by a rude door we came into an open space, from which opened several doors, irregular breaks in the wall, closed by shackling doors of wood. Stepping over the sill and stooping, we entered the living-rooms. First, is the kitchen; the roof of this is the sky—you are always liable to find yourself outdoors in these houses—and the fire for cooking is built in one corner. Passing through another hole in the wall we come to a sleeping-room, where were some jars of dates and doora, and a mat spread in one corner to lie on. Nothing but an earth-floor, and dust and grime everywhere. A crowd of tittering girls were flitting about, peeping at us from doorways, and diving into them with shrill screams, like frightened rabbits, if we approached.
Abd-el-Atti raises a great laugh by twisting a piastre into the front lock of hair of the ugliest hag there, calling her his wife, and drawing her arm under his to take her to the boat. It is an immense joke. The old lady is a widow and successfully conceals her reluctance. The tying the piece of silver in the hair is a sign of marriage. All the married women wear a piastre or some scale of silver on the forehead; the widows leave off this ornament from the twist; the young girls show, by the hair plain, except always the clay dabs, that they are in the market. The simplicity of these people is noticeable. I saw a woman seated on the ground, in dust three inches thick, leaning against the mud-bank in front of the house, having in her lap a naked baby; on the bank sat another woman, braiding the hair of the first, wetting it with muddy water, and working into it sand, clay, and tufts of dead hair. What a way to spend Sunday!
This is, on the whole, a model village. The people appear to have nothing, and perhaps they want nothing. They do nothing, and I suppose they would thank no one for coming to increase their wants and set them to work. Nature is their friend.
I wonder what the staple of conversation of these people is, since the weather offers nothing, being always the same, and always fine.
A day and a night and a day we fight adverse winds, and make no headway. One day we lie at Farras, a place of no consequence, but having, almost as a matter of course, ruins of the time of the Romans and the name Rameses II. cut on a rock. In a Roman wall we find a drain-tile exactly like those we use now. In the evening, after moon-rise, we drop down to Aboo Simbel.
