Warner Charles Dudley
My Winter on the Nile
We are still flying along with the unfailing wind, and the merry progress communicates its spirit to the crew. Before sunset they get out their musical instruments, and squatting in a circle on the forward deck, prepare to enjoy themselves. One thumps and shakes the tambourine, one softly beats with his fingers the darabooka drum, and another rattles castanets. All who are not so employed beat time by a jerking motion of the raised hands, the palms occasionally coming together when the rhythm is properly accented. The leader, who has a very good tenor voice, chants a minor and monotonous love-song to which the others respond, either in applause of the sentiment or in a burst of musical enthusiasm which they cannot contain. Ahmed, the Nubian, whose body is full of Congoism, enters into it with a delightful abandon, swaying from side to side and indulging in an occasional shout, as if he were at a camp-meeting. His ugly and good-natured face beams with satisfaction, an expression that is only slightly impaired by the vacant place where two front teeth ought to shine. The song is rude and barbarous but not without a certain plaintiveness; the song, and scene belong together. In this manner the sailors of the ancient Egyptians amused themselves without doubt; their instruments were the same; thus they sat upon the ground, thus they clapped hands, thus they improvised ejaculations to the absent beloved:—
“The night! The night! O thou with sweet hands!
Holding the dewy peach.”
The sun goes down, leaving a rosy color in the sky, that changes into an ashes-of-roses color, that gradually fades into the indefinable softness of night punctured with stars.
We are booming along all night, under the waxing moon. This is not so much a voyage as a flight, chased by the north wind. 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. I stumble over a sleeping Arab. Two sailors, set to hold the sail-rope and let it go in case of a squall of wind, are nodding over it. The night is not at all gloomy or mysterious, but in all the broad sweep of it lovely and full of invitation. We are just passing the English dahabeëh, whose great sail is dark as we approach, and then takes the moon full upon it as we file abreast. She is hugging the bank and as we go by there is a snap. In the morning Abd-el-Atti says that she broke the tip of her yard against the bank. At any rate she lags behind like a crippled bird.
In the morning we are in sight of four dahabeëhs, but we overhaul and pass them all. We have contracted a habit of doing it. One of them gets her stern-sprit knocked off as she sheers before us, whereupon the sailors exchange compliments, and our steersman smiles just as he would have done if he had sent the Prussian boat to the bottom. The morning is delicious, not a cloud in the sky, and the thermometer indicating a temperature of 56°; this moderates speedily under the sun, but if you expected an enervating climate in the winter on the Nile you will be disappointed; it is on the contrary inspiring.
We pass the considerable town of Golosaneh, not caring very much about it; we have been passing towns and mounds and vestiges of ancient and many times dug-up civilizations, day and night. We cannot bother with every ash-heap described in the guide-book. Benisooef, which has been for thousands of years an enterprising city, we should like to have seen, but we went by in the night. And at night most of these towns are as black as the moon will let them be, lights being very rare. We usually receive from them only the salute of a barking dog. Inland from Golosaneh rises the tall and beautiful minaret of Semaloot, a very pretty sight above the palm-groves; so a church spire might rise out of a Connecticut meadow. At 10 o’clock we draw near the cliffs of Gebel e’ Tayr, upon the long flat summit of which stands the famous Coptic convent of Sitteh Miriam el Adra, “Our Lady Mary the Virgin,”—called also Dayr el Adra.
We are very much interested in the Copts, and are glad of the opportunity to see something of the practice of their religion. For the religion is as peculiar as the race. In fact, the more one considers the Copt, the more difficult it is to define him. He is a descendant of the ancient Egyptians, it is admitted, and he retains the cunning of the ancients in working gold and silver; but his blood is crossed with Abyssinian, Nubian, Greek and Arab, until the original is lost, and to-day the representatives of the pure old Egyptian type of the sculptures are found among the Abyssinians and the Noobeh (genuine Nubians) more frequently than among the Copts. The Copt usually wears a black or brown turban or cap; but if he wore a white one it would be difficult to tell him from a Moslem. The Copts universally use Arabic; their ancient language is practically dead, although their liturgy and some of their religious books are written in it. This old language is supposed to be the spoken tongue of the old Egyptians.
The number of Christian Copts in Egypt is small—but still large enough; they have been persecuted out of existence, or have voluntarily accepted Mohammedanism and married among the faithful. The Copts in religion are seceders from the orthodox church, and their doctrine of the Trinity was condemned by the council of Chalcedon; they consequently hate the Greeks much more than they hate the Moslems. They reckon St. Mark their first patriarch.
Their religious practice is an odd jumble of many others. Most of them practice circumcision. The baptism of infants is held to be necessary; for a child dying unbaptized will be blind in the next life. Their fasts are long and strict; in their prayers they copy both Jews and Moslems, praying often and with endless repetitions. They confess before taking the sacrament; they abstain from swine’s flesh, and make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Like the Moslems they put off their shoes on entering the place of worship, but they do not behave there with the decorum of the Moslem; they stand always in the church and as the service is three or four hours long, beginning often at daybreak, the long staff or crutch upon which they lean is not a useless appendage. The patriarch, who dwells in Cairo, is not, I think, a person to be envied. He must be a monk originally and remain unmarried, and this is a country where marriage is so prevalent. Besides this, he is obliged to wear always a woolen garment next the skin, an irritation in this climate more constant than matrimony. And report says that he lives under rules so rigid that he is obliged to be waked up, if he sleeps, every fifteen minutes. I am inclined to think, however, that this is a polite way of saying that the old man has a habit of dropping off to sleep every quarter of an hour.
The cliffs of Gebel e’ Tayr are of soft limestone, and seem to be two hundred feet high. In one place a road is cut down to the water, partly by a zig-zag covered gallery in the face of the rock, and this is the usual landing-place for the convent. The convent, which is described as a church under ground, is in the midst of a mud settlement of lay brothers and sisters, and the whole is surrounded by a mud wall. From below it has the appearance of an earthwork fortification. The height commands the river for a long distance up and down, and from it the monks are on the lookout for the dahabeëhs of travelers. It is their habit to plunge into the water, clothed on only with their professions of holiness, swim to the boats, climb on board and demand “backsheesh” on account of their religion.
It is very rough as we approach the cliffs, the waves are high, and the current is running strong. We fear we are to be disappointed, but the monks are superior to wind and waves. While we are yet half a mile off, I see two of them in the water, their black heads under white turbans, bobbing about in the tossing and muddy waves. They make’ heroic efforts to reach us; we can hear their voices faintly shouting: Ana Christian, O Howadji, “I am a Christian, O! Howadji.”
“We have no doubt you are exceptional Christians,” we shout to them in reply, “Why don’t you come aboard—back-s-h-e-e-s-h!”
They are much better swimmers than the average Christian with us. But it is in vain. They are swept by us and away from us like corks on the angry waves, and even their hail of Christian fellowship is lost in the whistling wind. When we are opposite the convent another head is seen bobbing about in the water; he is also swept below us, but three-quarters of a mile down-stream he effects a landing on another dahabeëh. As he climbs into the jolly-boat which is towed behind and stands erect, he resembles a statue in basalt.
It is a great feat to swim in a current so swift as this and lashed by such a wind. I should like to have given these monks something, if only to encourage so robust a religion. But none of them succeeded in getting on board. Nothing happens to us as to other travelers, and we have no opportunity to make the usual remarks upon the degraded appearance of these Coptic monks at Dayr el Adra. So far as I saw them they were very estimable people.
At noon we are driving past Minieh with a strong wind. It appears to be—but if you were to land you would find that it is not—a handsome town, for it has two or three graceful minarets, and the long white buildings of the sugar-factory, with its tall chimneys, and the palace of the Khedive, stretching along the bank give it an enterprising and cheerful aspect. This new palace of his Highness cost about half a million of dollars, and it is said that he has never passed a night in it. I confess I rather like this; it must be a royal sensation to be able to order houses made like suits of clothes without ever even trying them on. And it is a relief to see a decent building and a garden now and then, on the river.
We go on, however, as if we were running away from the sheriff, for we cannot afford to lose the advantage of such a wind. Along the banks the clover is growing sweet and green as in any New England meadow in May, and donkeys are browsing in it tended by children; a very pleasant sight, to see this ill-used animal for once in clover and trying to bury his long ears in luxury. Patches of water-melon plants are fenced about by low stockades of dried rushes stuck in the sand—for the soil looks like sand.
This vegetation is not kept alive, however, without constant labor; weeds never grow, it is true, but all green things would speedily wither if the shadoofs were not kept in motion, pouring the Nile into the baked and thirsty soil.
These simple contrivances for irrigation, unchanged since the time of the Pharaohs, have already been described. Here two tiers are required to lift the water to the level of the fields; the first dipping takes it into a canal parallel with the bank, and thence it is raised to the top. Two men are dipping the leathern buckets at each machine, and the constant bending down and lifting up of their dark bodies are fatiguing even to the spectator. Usually in barbarous countries one pities the woman; but I suppose this is a civilized region, for here I pity the men. The women have the easier tasks of washing clothes in the cool stream, or lying in the sand. The women all over the East have an unlimited capacity for sitting motionless all day by a running stream or a pool of water.
In the high wind the palm-trees are in constant motion tossing their feather tufts in the air; some of them are blown like an umbrella turned wrong side out, and a grove presents the appearance of crowd of people overtaken by a sudden squall. The acacia tree, which the Arabs call the sont, the acanthus of Strabo (Mimosa Nilotica) begins to be seen with the palm. It is a thorny tree, with small yellow blossoms and bears a pod. But what interests us most is the gum that exudes from its bark; for this is the real Gum Arabic! That Heaven has been kind enough to let us see that mysterious gum manufacturing itself! The Gum Arabic of our childhood!
How often have I tried to imagine the feelings of a distant and unconverted boy to whom Gum Arabic was as common as spruce gum to a New England lad.
As I said, we go on as if we were evading the law; our daha-beëh seems to have taken the bit in its teeth and is running away with us. We pass everything that sails, and begin to feel no pride in doing so; it is a matter of course. The other dalabeëhs are left behind, some with broken yards. I heard reports afterwards that we broke their yards, and that we even drowned a man. It is not true. We never drowned a man, and never wished to. We were attending to our own affairs. The crew were busy the first day or two of the voyage in cutting up their bread and spreading it on the upper deck to dry—heaps of it, bushels of it. It is a black bread, made of inferior unbolted wheat, about as heavy as lead, and sour to the uneducated taste. The Egyptians like it, however, and it is said to be very healthful. The men gnaw chunks of it with relish, but it is usually prepared for eating by first soaking it in Nile-water and warming it over a fire, in a big copper dish. Into the “stodge” thus made is sometimes thrown some “greens” snatched from the shore. The crew seat themselves about this dish when it is ready, and each one dips his right hand into the mass and claws out a mouthful The dish is always scraped clean. Meat is very rarely had by them, only a few times during the whole voyage; but they vary their diet by eating green beans, lettuce, onions, lentils, and any sort of “greens” they can lay hands on. The meal is cooked on a little fire built on a pile of stones near the mast. When it is finished they usually gather about the fire for a pull at the “hubble-bubble.” This is a sort of pipe with a cocoa-nut shell filled with water, through which the smoke passes. Usually a lump of hasheesh is put into the bowl with the tobacco. A puff or two of this mixture is enough; it sets the smoker coughing and conveys a pleasant stupor to his brain. Some of the crew never smoke it, but content themselves with cigarettes. And the cigarettes, they are always rolling up and smoking while they are awake.
The hasheesh-smokers are alternately elated and depressed, and sometimes violent and noisy. A man addicted to the habit is not good for much; the hasheesh destroys his nerves and brain, and finally induces idiocy. Hasheesh intoxication is the most fearful and prevalent vice in Egypt. The government has made many attempts to stop it, but it is too firmly fixed; the use of hasheesh is a temporary refuge from poverty, hunger, and all the ills of life, and appears to have a stronger fascination than any other indulgence. In all the towns one may see the dark little shops where the drug is administered, and generally rows of victims in a stupid doze stretched on the mud benches. Sailors are so addicted to hasheesh that it is almost impossible to make up a decent crew for a dahabeëh.
Late in the afternoon we are passing the famous rock-tombs of Beni Hassan, square holes cut in the face of the cliff, high up. With our glasses we can see paths leading to them over the debris and along the ledges. There are two or three rows of these tombs, on different ledges; they seem to be high, dry, and airy, and I should rather live in them, dead or alive, than in the mud hovels of the fellaheen below. These places of sepulchre are older than those at Thebes, and from the pictures and sculptures in them, more than from any others, the antiquarians have reconstructed the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians. This is a desolate spot now; there is a decayed old mud village below, and a little south of it is the new town; both can barely be distinguished from the brown sand and rock in which and in front of which they stand. This is a good place for thieves, or was before Ibraheem Pasha destroyed these two villages. We are warned that this whole country produces very skillful robbers, who will swim off and glean the valuables from a dahabeëh in a twinkling.
Notwithstanding the stiff breeze the thermometer marks 74°; but both wind and temperature sink with the sun. Before the sun sets, however, we are close under the east bank, and are watching the play of light on a magnificent palm-grove, beneath which stand the huts of the modern village of Sheykh Abâdeh. It adds romance to the loveliness of the scene to know that this is the site of ancient Antinoë, built by the Emperor Adrian. To be sure we didn’t know it till this moment, but the traveler warms up to a fact of this kind immediately, and never betrays even to his intimate friends that he is not drawing upon his inexhaustible memory.
“That is the ancient Antinoë, built by Adrian.”
Oh, the hypocrisy and deceit of the enthusiastic,
“Is it?”
“Yes, and handsome Antinous was drowned here in the Nile.”
“Did they recover his body?”
Upon the bank there are more camels, dogs, and donkeys than we have seen all day; buffaloes are wallowing in the muddy margin. They are all in repose; the dogs do not bark, and the camels stretch their necks in a sort of undulatory expression of discontent, but do not bleat, or roar, or squawk, or make whatever the unearthly noise which they make is called. The men and the women are crouching in the shelter of their mud walls, with the light of the setting sun upon their dark faces. They draw their wraps closer about them to protect themselves from the north wind, and regard us stolidly and without interest as we go by. And when the light fades, what is there for them? No cheerful lamp, no book, no newspaper. They simply crawl into their kennels and sleep the sleep of “inwardness” and peace.
Just here the arable land on the east bank is broader than usual, and there was evidently a fine city built on the edge of the desert behind it. The Egyptians always took waste and desert land for dwellings and for burial-places, leaving every foot of soil available for cultivation free. There is evidence all along here of a once much larger population, though I doubt if the east bank of the river was ever much inhabited. The river banks would support many more people than we find here if the land were cultivated with any care. Its fertility, with the annual deposit, is simply inexhaustible, and it is good for two and sometimes three crops a year. But we pass fields now and then that are abandoned, and others that do not yield half what they might. The people are oppressed with taxes and have no inducement to raise more than is absolutely necessary to keep them alive. But I suppose this has always been the case in Egypt. The masters have squeezed the last drop from the people, and anything like an accumulation of capital by the laborers is unknown. The Romans used a long rake, with fine and sharp teeth, and I have no doubt that they scraped the country as clean as the present government does.
The government has a very simple method of adjusting its taxes on land and crops. They are based upon the extent of the inundation. So many feet rise, overflowing such an area, will give such a return in crops; and tax on this product can be laid in advance as accurately as when the crops are harvested. Nature is certain to do her share of the work; there will be no frost, nor any rain to spoil the harvest, nor any freakishness whatever on the part of the weather. If the harvest is not up to the estimate, it is entirely the fault of the laborer, who has inadequately planted or insufficiently watered. In the same manner a tax is laid upon each palm-tree, and if it does not bear fruit, that is not the fault of the government.
There must be some satisfaction in farming on the Nile. You are always certain of the result of your labor.1 Whereas, in our country farming is the merest lottery. The season will open too wet or too dry, the seed may rot in the ground, the young plant may be nipped with frost or grow pale for want of rain, the crop runs the alternate hazards of drought or floods, it is wasted by rust or devoured by worms; and, to cap the climax, if the harvest is abundant and of good quality, the price goes down to an unremunerative figure. In Egypt you may scratch the ground, put in the seed, and then go to sleep for three months, in perfect certainty of a good harvest, if only the shadoof and the sakiya are kept in motion.
By eight o’clock in the evening, on a falling wind, we are passing Rhoda, whose tall chimneys have been long in sight. Here is one of the largest of the Khedive’s sugar-factories, and a new palace which has never been occupied. We are one hundred and eighty-eight miles from Cairo, and have made this distance in two days, a speed for which I suppose history has no parallel; at least our dragoman says that such a run has never been made before at this time of the year, and we are quite willing to believe a statement which reflects so much honor upon ourselves, for choosing such a boat and such a dragoman.
This Nile voyage is nothing, after all; its length has been greatly overestimated. We shall skip up the river and back again before the season is half spent, and have to go somewhere else for the winter. A man feels all-powerful, so long as the wind blows; but let his sails collapse and there is not a more crest-fallen creature. Night and day our sail has been full, and we are puffed up with pride.
At this rate we shall hang out our colored lanterns at Thebes on Christmas night.
