Kitabı oku: «Eastern Life», sayfa 3
III. Nile incidents – Crew – Birds – Face of the Country – The Heavens – Towns and Shores, between Cairo and Asyoot
As we swept up the broad river, we passed some fine houses, sheltered by dark masses of acacias; and presenting, to the river, spacious overhanging balconies, and picturesque water-wheels. My friends said this was very like the Bosphorus. Presently, Cairo arose in the distance, backed by the white citadel and the yellow range of the Mokuttam hills, with their finely broken outline. On the western shore was El Geezeh, with its long range of hospital buildings, relieved by massy foliage, behind which towered the Pyramids; and further on were more Pyramids, lessening in the distance. We were aground once and again within an hour; and, while we were at dinner, we drove upon a shoal with a great shock. This was not the way to overtake the Scotch party, whose boat could not be supposed ever to get aground; and our Rais was informed that if he stuck again, he should be bastinadoed. – The wind was too fresh to allow of our dining on deck; and the sun was declining behind the palms when we went down to the cabin. – When we came up again, the yellow glow remained, while the rich foliage of the eastern shore was quivering in the moonlight. Jupiter was as lustrous as if there had been no moon. The breeze now fell, now rose; and the crew set up their wild music – the pipe and drum, with intervals of mournful song.
I do not know whether all the primitive music in the world is in the minor key; but I have been struck by its prevalence among all the savage, or half-civilized, or uneducated people whom I have known. The music of Nature is all in the minor key – the melodies of the winds, the sea, the waterfall, birds, and the echoes of bleating flocks among the hills: and human song seems to follow this lead, till men are introduced at once into the new world of harmony and the knowledge of music in the major key. Our crew sang always in unison, and had evidently no conception of harmony. I often wished that I could sing loud enough to catch their ear, amidst their clamour, that I might see whether my second would strike them with any sense of harmony: but their overpowering noise made any such attempt hopeless. – We are accustomed to find or make the music which we call spirit-stirring in the major key: but their spirit-stirring music, set up to encourage them at the oar, is all of the same pathetic character as the most doleful, and only somewhat louder and more rapid. They kept time so admirably, and were so prone to singing, that we longed to teach them to substitute harmony for noise, and meaning for mere sensation. The nonsense that they sing is provoking. When we had grown sad under the mournful swell of their song, and were ready for any wildness of sentiment, it was vexatious to learn from Alee what they were singing about. Once it was, »Put the saddle on the horse. Put the saddle on the horse.« And this was all. Sometimes it was, »Pull harder. Pull harder.« This was expanded into a curious piece of Job's comfort, one evening when they had been rowing all day, and must have been very weary. »Pull hard: pull harder. The nearer you come to Alexandria, the harder you will have to pull. God give help!« Another song might be construed by some vigilant people near the court to have a political meaning. »We have seen the Algerine bird singing on the walls of Alexandria.« Another was, »The bird in the tree sings better than we do. The bird comes down to the river to wash itself.« The concluding song of the voyage was the best as to meaning, though not as to music – in which I must say I preferred the pathetic chaunt about the horse and saddle. As we were approaching Cairo on our return, they sang, »This is nearly our last day on the river, and we shall soon be at the city. He who is tired of rowing may go ashore, and sit by the sakia in the shade.« I may observe that if the dragoman appears unwilling to translate any song, it is as well not to press for it; for it is understood that many of their words are such as it would give European ears no pleasure to hear.
The water-wagtails were very tame, we observed already. They ran about on the deck, close to our feet as we sat, and looked in at our cabin windows in the most friendly manner. Next morning, we began to acquire some notion of the multitude of birds we were to see in Egypt – a notion which, I think, could hardly be obtained anywhere else. On a spit of sand, I saw, when I came forth, a flock of pelicans which defied counting, while a flight, no less large, was hovering above. A heron was standing fishing on another point: clouds of pigeons rose above every group of dwellings and clump of palms; and multitudes of geese occupied the air at various heights; now in strings which extended almost half across the sky, and now furling and unfurling their line like an immeasurable pennon. The birds of Egypt did not appear to us to be in great variety or remarkable beauty; but from their multitude, and being seen in all their wildness, they were everywhere a very interesting feature of the scenery. The ostrich I never saw, except tame, in a farmyard; though we had ostrich's eggs in Nubia. We came upon an eagle here and there – and always where we could most wish to see one. Sometimes, when in the temples, and most interested in the monuments, I caught myself thinking of home, and traced the association to the sparrows which were chirping overhead. I found swallows' nests in these temples, now and then, in a chink of the wall, or a recess of roof or niche. A devout soul of an old Egyptian, returning from its probation of three thousand years, would see that »the sparrow had found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she might lay her young« – even the altars of the Lord God, so sacred once to the most imposing worship the world ever saw. Vultures are not uncommon. I used to see them sometimes during my early walk on shore, busy about the skull of some dead horse or other carcase. The crested woodpecker was often a pretty object among the mournful piles of ruins at Thebes or elsewhere, hopping about so spruce and gay. Where the Arabian hills approached the river, or the shores presented perpendicular rocks, long rows of cormorants sat perched before their holes, as still and staid as so many hermits in contemplation. On every islet and jutting point were flocks of pelicans, whose plumage looked snow-white when set off by a foil of black geese: and now and then, a single bird of this tribe might be seen in the early morning, balancing itself on the little billows, and turning its head about in the coyest manner, to prevent its long beak touching the water. The Aboo-gerdan (the paddy-bird of India) is elegant in form and most delicate in plumage, as everyone knows who has stroked its snowy feathers. It looked best when standing under the banks, or wading among the reeds in a cove. It looked most strange and out of place when perched on the back of a buffalo, as I occasionally saw it. We once saw five buffalo in one field, with each a delicate white bird perched on its back. And from the nose of one of these buffalo two little birds were at the same time picking insects, or something else that they relished.
As to the birds which have such a mysterious connexion with the sleeping crocodile, I can give no new information about them. I can only say that on almost every occasion of our seeing a crocodile, two or three of these birds were standing beside him; and that I never, saw them fly away till he had moved. It is believed in the country that these birds relieve the crocodile of the little leeches which infest his throat; and that they keep watch while he sleeps on the sand, and give him warning to escape on the approach of danger. What the crocodile does for the birds in return, we never heard. As for the pigeons, they abound beyond the conception of any traveller who has not seen the pigeon flights of the United States. They do not here, as there, darken the air in an occasional process of migration, breaking down young trees on which they alight, and lying in heaps under the attack of a party of sportsmen: but they flourish everywhere as the most prolific of birds may do under the especial protection of man. The best idea that a stranger can form of their multitude is by supposing such a bird population as that of the doves of Venice inhabiting the whole land of Egypt. The houses of the villages throughout Egypt are surmounted by a sort of battlements built for the pigeons, and supplied with fringes of boughs, inserted, in several rows to each house, for the birds to rest on. The chief object is the dung, which is required for manure for the garden, and for other purposes; but it is a mistake to say that the inhabitants do not eat them. They are taken for food, but not to such an extent as to interfere with the necessary supply of dung. One of our party occasionally shot a few wild ones, near the villages; and he met with no hindrance. But it was otherwise with our Scotch friend. Though he had asked leave, and believed he had obtained it, to let fly upon the pigeons in a village, the inhabitants rose upon him; and his Rais had some difficulty in securing his safe return to his boat. He did it by a device which his employer was shocked to hear of afterwards. He declared our friend to be the Pasha's dentist! To form a notion of the importance of this functionary, it is necessary to remember that the Pasha's having a dentist is one of the most remarkable signs of our times. That a Mohammedan ruler should have permitted his beard to be handled, is a token of change more extraordinary than the adoption of the Frank dress in Turkey, or the introduction of wine at Mohammedan dinners: and the man who was permitted by the Pasha to touch his beard must be regarded throughout the country as a person inestimably powerful with his Highness. Such a personage was our Scotch friend compelled to appear, for some way up the river; and very reluctant he was to bear the dignity to which his assent had not been asked. – A pretty bird, of the kingfisher kind apparently, coloured black, grey, and tawny, was flitting about on the shore when I took my first walk on shore this morning. And I think I have now mentioned nearly all the birds we observed in the course of our voyage.
Our object, like that of Egyptian travellers generally, was to sail up the river as fast as the wind would carry us, seeing by the way only as much as would not interfere with the progress of the boat. It was the season when the north wind prevailed; and this advantage was not to be trifled with in a voyage of a thousand miles, certain as we were of the help of the current to bring us back. We were, therefore, to explore no pyramids or temples on our way up; and to see only so much of the country as we could get a glimpse of on occasion of the failure of the wind, or other accidental delays. To this there was no objection in our minds; for we found at once that in doing up the Nile in any manner we should meet with as much novelty and interest as we could bear. The face of the country was enough at one time. To have explored its monuments immediately would have been too much. Moreover, there was great advantage in going up quickly while the river was yet high enough to afford some view of the country. In returning, we found such a change produced by the sinking of the waters only a few feet, that we felt that travellers going up late in the season can hardly be said to have seen the country from the river. At all times, the view of the interior from the Nile must be very imperfect, and quite insufficient to justify any decision against the beauty of the great valley. This arises from the singular structure of the country. Everywhere else, where a river flows through the centre of a valley, the land either slopes from the base of the hill down to the river, or it is level. In Egypt, on the contrary, the land rises from the mountains up to the banks of the Nile: and where, as usually happens, the banks are higher than the eye of the spectator on the deck of his boat, all view of the interior, as far as the hills, is precluded. He sees nothing but the towns, villages, and palm-groves on the banks, and the mountains on the horizon. My attention had been directed upon this point before I went, by the complaints of some readers of Eastern travels, that, after all their reading, they knew no more what the Egyptian valley looked like than if it had never been visited. As this failure of description appeared to regard Egypt alone, there must be some peculiar cause for it; and thus we found it. The remedy was, of course, to go ashore as often as possible, and to mount every practicable eminence. I found this so delightful, and every wide view that I obtained included so much that was wonderful and beautiful, that mounting eminences became an earnest pursuit with me. I carried compass and note-book, and noted down what I saw, from eminence to eminence, along the whole valley, from Cairo to the Second Cataract. Sometimes I looked abroad from the top of a pylon; sometimes from a rock on the banks; sometimes from a sandy ridge of the desert; sometimes from a green declivity of the interior; once from a mountain above Thebes, and once from the summit of the Great Pyramid. My conclusion is, that I differ entirely from those who complain of the sameness of the aspect of the country. The constituent features of the landscape may be more limited in number than in other tracts of country of a thousand miles: but they are so grand and so beautiful, so strange, and brought together in such endless diversity, that I cannot conceive that anyone who has really seen the country can complain of its monotony. Each panoramic survey that I made is now as distinct in my mind as the images I retain of Niagara, Iona, Salisbury Plain, the Vaiais, and Lake Garda.
Our opportunities of going ashore were not few, even at the beginning of our voyage, when the wind was fair, and we sailed on, almost continuously, for three days. In the early mornings, one of the crew was sent for milk, and he was to be taken up at a point further on. And if, towards night, the Rais feared a rock, or a windy reach ahead, he would moor at sunset; and this allowed us nearly an hour before it was dark enough for us to mind the howling jackals. When the wind ceased to befriend us, the crew had to track almost all day, following the bends of the river; and we could either follow these also, or strike across the fields to some distant point of the bank. And when on board, there was so much to be seen on the ordinary banks that I was rarely in the cabin. Before breakfast, I was walking the deck. After breakfast, I was sewing, reading, or writing, or idling on deck, under the shade of the awning. After dinner, we all came out eagerly, to enjoy the last hour of sunshine, and the glories of the sunset and the after-glow, and the rising of the moon and constellations. And sorry was I every night when it was ten o'clock, and I must go under a lower roof than that of the dazzling heavens. All these hours of our first days had their ample amusement from what we saw on the banks alone, till we could penetrate further.
There were the pranks of the crew, whose oddities were unceasing, and particularly rich in the early morning. Then it was that they mimicked whatever they saw us do – sometimes for the joke, but as often with the utmost seriousness. I sometimes thought that they took certain of our practices for religious exercises. The solemnity with which one or another tried to walk the deck rapidly, to dance, and to skip the rope, looked like this. The poor fellow who laid hands on the skipping-rope paid (he probably thought) the penalty of his impiety. At the first attempt, down he came, flat on his face. If Mr. E. looked through his glass, some Ibraheem or Mustafa would snatch up an oar for a telescope, and see marvellous things in the plain. If, in the heat, either of the gentlemen nodded over his book, half the crew would go to sleep instantly, peeping every moment to see the effect. – Then, there were the veiled women coming down to the river to fill their water-pots. Or the men, at prayer-time, performing their ablutions and prostrations. And there was the pretty sight of the preparation of the drying banks for the new crop – the hoeing with the short, heavy antique hoe. And the harrow, drawn by a camel, would appear on the ridge of the bank. And the working of the Shadoofs6 was perpetual, and always interesting. Those who know what the shadoof is like, may conceive the picture of its working: the almost naked Arabs, usually in pairs, lowering and raising their skin buckets by the long lever overhead, and emptying them into the trough beside them, with an observance of time as regular as in their singing. Where the bank is high, there is another pair of shadoofs at work above and behind: and sometimes a third, before the water can be sent flowing in its little channels through the fields. – Then, there were the endless manoeuvres of innumerable birds, about the islets and rocks: and a buffalo, here and there, swimming from bank to bank, and finding it, at last, no easy matter to gain the land. Then, there was the ferryboat, with its ragged sail, and its motley freight of turbaned men, veiled women, naked children, brown sheep, frightened asses, and imperturbable buffalo. Then, there were the long palisades of sugar-canes edging the banks; or the steep slopes, all soft and bright with the springing wheat or the bristling lupins. Then, there were the villages, with their somewhat pyramidal houses, their clouds of pigeons, and their shelter of palms: or, here and there, a town, with its minarets rising out of its cincture of acacia. And it was not long before we found our sight sharpened to discern holes in the rocks, far or near – holes so squared at the entrance as to hint of sculpture or painting within. And then, as the evening drew on, there was the sinking of the sun, and the coming out of the colours which had been discharged by the glare in the middle of the day. The vast and dreary and hazy Arabian desert became yellow, melting into the purple hills; the muddy waters took a lilac hue; and the shadows of the sharp-cut banks were as blue as the central sky. As for the moon, we could, for the first time in our lives, see her the first night – the slenderest thread of light, of cup-like form, visible for a few minutes after sunset: the old moon being so clearly marked as to be seen by itself after the radiant rim was gone. I have seen it behind a palm, or resting on the ridge of a mountain like a copper ball. And when the fuller moon came up from the east, and I, forgetting the clearness of the sky, have been struck by the sudden dimness, and have looked up to watch her passing behind a cloud, it was delicious to see, instead of any cloud, the fronds of a palm waving upon her disc. One night, I saw an appearance perfectly new to me. No object was perceptible on the high black eastern bank, above and behind which hung the moon: but in her golden track on the dimpled waters were the shadows of palms, single and in clusters, passing over swiftly, – »authentic tidings of invisible things.« And then, there was the rising of Orion. I have said that the constellations were less conspicuous than at home, from the universal brilliancy of the sky; but Orion shone forth, night by night, till the punctual and radiant apparition became almost oppressive to the watching sense. I came at last to know his first star as it rose clear out of the bank. He never issued whole from a haze on the horizon, as at home. As each star rose, it dropped a duplicate upon the surface of the still waters; and on a calm night, it was hard to say which Orion was the brightest. – And how different was the wind from our cloud-laden winds in England! Except that it carried us on, I did not like wind in Egypt. The palms, bowed from their graceful height, and bent all one way, are as ugly as trees can be: and the dust flies in clouds, looking like smoke or haze on land, and settling on our faces, even in the middle of the stream. Though called sand, it is, for the most part, mere dust from the limestone ranges, forming mud when moistened. The wind served, however, to show us a sand-pillar now and then, like a column of smoke moving slowly along the ground. On this second day of our voyage, when we were approaching Benisooeef, the wind made ugly what on a calm evening would have been lovely. A solitary house, in the midst of a slip of alluvial land, all blown upon with dust, looked to us the most dreary of dwellings. But the lateen sails on the river were a pretty feature, – one or two at a time, winding in and out with the bends of the stream. We saw one before us near Benisooeef, this day. It proved to be our Scotch friend's. Our boat beat his in a strong wind; and we swept past in good style, – the gentlemen uncapping and bowing; the ladies waving their handkerchiefs. I had no idea that the racing spirit had entered into them, till one of the ladies told me, the next time we met, »We were so mortified when you passed us!«
Benisooeef is about eighty miles from Cairo: a good progress for twenty-three hours! It is the largest town in Upper Egypt; but it does not look very imposing from the river. Two or three minarets rise from it; and there is one rather good-looking house, which the Pasha inhabits when he comes. Its aspect was pretty as we looked back to it from the south.
The wind carried us on towards the rocky region where our careful Rais would retard our progress by night, though we had a glorious lamp in the moon, the whole night through. We had a rocky shore to the east this afternoon – the Arabian mountains approaching the river: and in the early morning we passed the precipitous cliffs, on whose flat summit stands the Coptic convent of »Our Lady Mary the Virgin.« The forms of these limestone cliffs are most fantastic; and fantastic was the whole scene: the long rows of cormorants in front of their holes – a sort of burlesque upon the monks in their cells above; the unconnected flights of steps here and there on the rocks; the women and naked children on the ridge, giving notice to the begging monks of our approach; and the monks themselves, leaping and racing down the precipice, and then, two of them, racing through the water, struggling with the strong current, to board us for baksheesh. The one who succeeded was quite satisfied, in the midst of his panting and exhaustion, with five paras7 and an empty bottle. He waited a little, till we had gone about a mile, in order to have the help of the current, and then swam off to his convent.
We passed the pretty town of Minyeh about noon; and then entered upon sugar districts so rich as to make one speculate whether this might not be, some day, one of the great sugar-producing regions of the world. The soil is very rich, and irrigated by perpetually recurring shadoofs; and the crops of canes on the flats between the rocks and the river were very fine, and extending onwards for some days from this time. The tall chimneys of the Rauda sugar manufactory stood up above the wood on a promontory, looking very strange amidst such a scene. – On our return, we visited the sugar manufactory at Hou, and learned something of the condition and prospects of the manufacture. The Hou establishment belongs to Ibraheem Pasha, whom we met there at seven in the morning. It is quite new; and a crowd of little children were employed in the unfinished part, carrying mortar in earthen bowls for 1 d. per day. The engineers are French, and the engine, one hundred-and-twenty horse power, was made at Paris. The managers cannot have here the charcoal formerly in use for clarifying the juice. From the scarcity of wood, charcoal is too dear; and burnt bones are employed instead, answering the purpose much better. We saw the whole process, which seemed cleverly managed; and the gentlemen pronounced the quality of the sugar good. An Englishman employed there said, however, that the canes were inferior to those of the West Indies, for want of rain. There were a hundred people at work in this establishment; their wages being, besides food, a piastre and a quarter (nearly 3 d.) per day. If, however, the payment of wages is managed here as I shall have to show it is usually done in Egypt, the receipts of the work-people must be considered much less than this. We heard so much of the complaints of the people at having to buy, under compulsion, coarse and dear sugar, that it is clear that much improvement in management must take place before Egypt can compete with other sugar-producing countries; but still, what we saw of the extensive growth of the cane, and the quality of the produce, under great disadvantages, made us look upon this as one of the great future industrial resources of Egypt.
The next morning, we could still distinguish the tall chimney of Rauda. We had been at anchor under a bank all night, the Rais being in fear of a rock ahead. The minarets of Melawee were on a flat on the western bank, some way before us: and between us and them lay the caves of Benee Hasan – those wonderful repositories of monumental records of the old Egyptians, which we were to explore on our return, but must now pass by, as if they were no more than what they looked, mere apertures in the face of the mountains.
The crew were tracking this morning, for the first time – stepping along at a funeral pace, and slipping off, one by one, to light a pipe where four or five smokers were puffing in a circle, among the sugar-canes. Our crew never appeared tired with their tracking; but in the mornings they were slow; and the man who was sent for milk moved very lazily, whether the one chosen were the briskest or the quietest of the company. The cook was rather too deliberate about breakfast, and Alee himself was not a good riser. It was their winter; and cold makes the Arabs torpid instead of brisk. Presently, we had to cross to the more level bank; and then we first saw our people row. It was very ridiculous. They sang at the top of their voices, some of them throwing their heads back, shutting their eyes and shaking their heads at every quaver, most pathetically; dipping their oars the while as if they were skimming milk, and all out of time with their singing, and with one another, while their musical time was perfectly good. – The wind presently freshened, and we stood away. It was fitful all day, but blew steadily when the moon rose. Just then, however, the Rais took fright about passing the next point at night, and we moored, beside four other boats, in the deep shadow of a palm-grove. On these occasions, two men of the neighbourhood and a dog are appointed to guard each boat that moors to the bank. The boat pays three piastres;8 and if anything is lost, complaint is made to the governor of the district, whose business it is to recover the property, and punish the guards.
As we approached Manfaloot, we could perceive how strangely old Nile has gone out of his course, as if for the purpose of destroying the town. The bed of the river was once evidently at the base of the hills, – those orange hills with their blue shadows, – where rows of black holes show ancient catacombs. So strong a reflected light shone into one of these caves, that we could see something of its interior. We called it a perfect smuggler's cave, with packages of goods within, and a dog on guard at the entrance. When we looked at it with the glass, however, we were grave in a moment. We saw that the back and roof were sculptured.
Manfaloot is still a large place, sadly washed down – sliced away – by the encroachment of the river. Many houses were carried away last year; and some, which looked as if cut straight through their interior, have probably followed by this time.
The heat was now great in the middle of the day; and the glare oppressive to people who were on the look-out for crocodiles – as we were after passing Manfaloot. We were glad of awning, goggles, fans, and oranges. But the crew were all alive – kicking dust over one another on shore, leaping high in the water to make a splash, and perpetrating all manner of practical jokes. We do not agree with travellers who declare it necessary to treat these people with coldness and severity – to repel and beat them. We treated them as children; and this answered perfectly well. I do not remember that any one of them was ever punished on our account: certainly never by our desire. They were always manageable by kindness and mirth. They served us with heartiness, and did us no injury whatever. The only point we could not carry was inducing them to sing softly. No threats of refusing baksheesh availed. Mr. E. obtained some success on a single occasion by chucking dry bread into the throats of one or two who were quavering with shut eyes and wide-open jaws. This joke availed for the moment more than any threats: but the truth is, they can no more refrain from the full use of their lungs when at work than from that of eyes and ears.
On the evening of Monday the 7th, we approached Asyoot: and beautiful was the approach. After arriving in bright sunshine, apparently at its very skirts, and counting its fourteen minarets, and admiring its position at the foot of what seemed the last hill of the range, we were carried far away by a bend of the river, – saw boats, and groups of people and cattle, and noble palm and acacia woods on the opposite bank, and did not anchor till starlight under El Hamra, the village which is the port of Asyoot.
We were sorry to lose the advantage of the fair wind which had sprung up: but it was here that the crew had to bake their bread for the remainder of the voyage up. We had no reason to regret our detention, occasioning as it did our first real view of the interior of the country. Asyoot is a post town, too; and we were glad of this last certain opportunity of writing home before going quite into the wilds.
