Kitabı oku: «Eastern Life», sayfa 5
This day was remarkable for our seeing the first doum palm (an angular tree!) and the first crocodile. Alee said he had seen a crocodile two days before, but we had not. And now we saw several. The first was not distinguishable to inexperienced eyes, from the inequalities of the sand. The next I dimly saw slip off into the water. In the afternoon a family of crocodiles were seen basking on a mud-bank which we were to pass. As we drew near, in silence, the whole boat's company being collected at the bows, the largest crocodile slipped into the water, showing its nose at intervals. Another followed, leaving behind the little one, a yellow monster, asleep, with the sunlight full upon it. Mr. E. fired at it, and at the same moment the crew set up a shout. Of course it awoke, and was off in an instant, but unhurt. We had no ball; and crocodile-shooting is hopeless, with nothing better than shot. Our crew seemed to have no fear of these creatures, plunging and wading in the river without hesitation, whenever occasion required. There being no wind, we moored at sunset; and two of us obtained a half-hour's walk before dark. Even then the jackals were howling after us the whole time. Our walk was over mud of various degrees of dryness, and among young wheat and little tamarisks, springing from the cracked soil.
On the 13th we fell in with Selim Pasha, without being aware what we were going to see. Our crew having to track, the Rais and Alee went ashore for charcoal, and Mr. E. and I for a walk Following a path which wound through coarse grass and thorny mimosas, we found ourselves presently approaching the town of Soohaj: and near the arched gate of the town, and everywhere under the palms, were groups and crowds of people, in clean turbans and best clothes. Then appeared, from behind the trees on the margin, three boats at anchor, one being that of Selim Pasha himself, the others for his suite. He had come up the river to receive his dues, and was about to settle accounts now at Soohaj. He had a crew of twenty-three men, and was proceeding day and night. His interpreter accosted us, offered us service, discussed the wind and weather, and invited us to take coffee on board the Governor's boat. I was sorry to be in the way of Mr. E.'s going; but I could not think of such an adventure in Mrs. Y.'s absence. We saw the Governor leave his boat, supported by the arms, for dignity's sake. He then took his seat under a palm, and received some papers offered him. He looked old, short, and very business-like. A scribe sat on the top of his cabin, with ink-horn and other apparatus; and a man was hurrying about on shore with a handful of papers covered with Arabic writing. All this, with the turbaned and gazing groups under the tamarisks, the white-robed soldiers before the gate of the barracks, the stretch of town-walls beside us, and the minarets of Eckmim rising out of the palm-groves on the opposite shore, made up a new and striking scene. Mr. and Mrs. Y. saw, from the boat, part of the reverse side; they saw eight men in irons, reserved to be bastinadoed for the non-payment of their taxes. – As we walked on, we passed a school, where the scholars were moving their bodies to and fro, and jabbering as usual. Then we descended the embankment of the canal, which winds in towards the town, and crossed its sluice; and then we came out upon a scene of millet-threshing Two oxen, muzzled, were treading out the grain; five men were beating the ears, and a sixth was turning over and shaking the husks with a rake. Such are the groups which incessantly delight the eye in Eastern travel. – Next, we found ourselves among a vast quantity of heavy stones, squared for building. They were deeply embedded, but did not look like the remains of ancient building. And now it was time for us to stop, lest there should be difficulty, if we went further, in getting on board. So we sat down in a dusty but shady place, among some fowl-houses, and beside an oven. I never took a more amusingly foreign walk. – A short ramble that evening was as little like home; but more sad than amusing. We entered a beautiful garden, or cultivated palm orchard, which was in course of rapid destruction by the Nile. Whole plots of soil and a great piece of wall were washed away. Repeatedly we saw signs of this destruction; and we wondered whether an equivalent advantage was given anywhere else. By day we passed towns which, like Manfaloot, were cut away year by year; and by night the sullen plash caused by the fall of masses of earth was heard. In countries where security of property is more thought of than it is here, this liability must seriously affect the value of the best portions of the land – those which have a river frontage. Here it appears to be quietly submitted to, as one of the decrees of inevitable fate. The circumstance of the Nile changing its course must also affect some historical and geographical questions – in the one case as regards the marches of ancient armies, and the sites of old cities; and in the other, the relations of different parts of the country. Many towns, called inland by geographers, are now on the banks of the river. At Manfaloot, it is clear that the divergence from the old course under the rocks is very great; and near Benee Hasan the change is made almost from year to year. When Sir G. Wilkinson visited the caves,12 the river was so far off as to leave a breadth of two miles between it and the rocks; and Mrs. Romer, who was there the year before us, describes the passage to the caves as something laborious and terrific: whereas, when we visited the caves on our return, we found the river flowing at the base of the acclivity; and we reached the tombs easily in twelve minutes. From the heights, we traced its present and former course, and could plainly see a third bed, in which it had at one time run. We were sorry to see it cut through fine land, where the crops on either bank showed what the destruction must have been. The banks were falling in during the few hours of our stay; and here, as in similar places, we observed that the river was more turbid than usual. These local accidents must largely affect the great question of the rate of rising of the bed of the river, and, in consequence, that of the whole valley: a question which some have attempted to determine by comparison of the dates of the buildings at Thebes with the depth of the sand accumulated above their bases.
The next place where we went ashore, Girgeh, once stood a quarter of a mile inland: it is now in course of being washed down. It is a miserable place, as might be expected, with such a fate hanging over it. We stayed here an hour for the purchase of bread, fowls, and a sheep. We give 30 paras (1¾ d.) for a fowl; 6 s. for a sheep; and a piastre, (2¼ d.) for 42 eggs. The small bazaars had few people in them at this hour (7 A.M.), and of those few many were blind; and on our return to the boat, we found a row of blind people on the bank, hoping for baksheesh. – The millet stalks here measured eleven feet; and, of course, the fields are a perfect jungle. We saw occasionally the millet stalks burnt, and strewn over the fields for a top-dressing. At other times we observed that where the millet had been cut, wheat was sown broadcast among the stubble, which was left to rot. The only manuring that we saw, besides this top-dressing, was that of the gardens with pigeons' dung; and the qualifying of the Nile mud with sand from the desert, or dust out of the temples, brought in frail-baskets on the backs of asses.
Two of our sapient crew having quarrelled at mess about which should have a particular morsel of bread, and fought noisily on shore, the Rais administered the bastinado. The first was laid down, and held by the feet and shoulders, while flogged with a boat-pole. He cried out vigorously. The other came forward cheerfully from the file and laid himself down. The Rais broke the pole over him: but he made no noise, jumped up, spat the dust out of his mouth, and went to work at the tow-rope as if nothing had happened. They seem to bear no malice, and joke with one another immediately after the bitterest quarrels. – One of our Nubians wears his knife in a sheath, strapped about the upper part of his left arm. Another wears an amulet in the same manner. Two who come from Dongola have their faces curiously gashed with three cuts on each cheek, and four on each side the eye. These cuts are given them by their parents in childhood for beauty-marks.
We now began to meet rafts of pottery coming down from Kenneh, the seat of the manufacture of the water-jars which are in general use. Porous earth and burnt grass are the chief materials used. We meet seven or more rafts in a group. First, a layer of palm fronds is put on the raft; and then a layer of jars; then another layer of each. The jars all have their mouths out of the water. They are so porous that their conductors are continually employed in emptying them of water: that is, they are always so employed when we meet them. Not being worth sponges, they dip in and wring out cloths, with strings to them. The oars are mere branches, whose boughs are tied together at the extremity. Though they bend too much, they answer their purpose pretty well; but the whole affair looks rude and precarious enough. In curious contrast with their progress was that of the steamer, conveying the Prince of Prussia, which we met to-day, hurrying down from Thebes. We preferred our method of voyaging, though we now advanced only about twelve miles a day, and had been fourteen days making the same distance that we did the first two.
We cannot understand why the country boats are so badly laden as they appear to be. The cargo is placed so forward as to sink the bows in the water; and so many founder in consequence that we cannot conceive why the practice is not altered. We have seen several sunk. One was a merchant boat that had gone down in the night, with five people in her. She was a sad spectacle – her masts and rigging appearing above water in the middle of the stream.
On the morning of the 19th, on leaving our anchorage near the high rock of Chenoboscion, we found that a wind had sprung up; and we enjoyed the sensation of more rapid progress. We might now hope to see the temple of Dendara in a few hours. The Arabian mountains retreated, and the Lybian chain advanced. Crocodiles plunged into the water as we sailed past the mud banks. The doum palms began to congregate, and from clumps they became woods. Behind one of these dark woods, I saw a mass of building which immediately fixed my attention; and when a turn of the river brought us to a point where the sunlight was shining into it, I could clearly distinguish the characteristics of the temple of Dendara. I could see the massive portico, – the dark spaces between the pillars, and the line of the architrave. Thus much we could see for two hours from the opposite shore, as Mr. E. had to ride up to Kenneh for letters; but, as the wind was fair, and the temple was two miles off, we left till our return any closer examination of it.
While Mr. E. and Alee were gone to the town, Mr. Y. walked along the shore, in the direction of Selim Pasha's boats; and Mrs. Y. and I were busy about domestic business on board. I was sewing on deck when Mr. Y. returned, and told me he had been invited to an audience of Selim Pasha. When pipes and coffee had been brought, conversation began through the medium of some Italian gentlemen of the Pasha's suite. On Mr. Y.'s expressing his hope that, by means of commerce, a friendly feeling between the Egyptians and English would always subsist and increase, one of these officers exclaimed, »How should that be, when you have robbed us of Syria?« On Mr. Y.'s pacific observations being again received with an angry recurrence to this sore subject, the Pasha interposed, saying, »These are great and important affairs which are for our superiors to settle, and with which we subordinates have nothing to do. Let us talk of something pleasant.« While Mr. Y. was telling me this, an elderly man, with a white beard, hideous teeth, and coarse face altogether, was approaching the boat; and to my dismay, he stepped on board, or rather, was pushed in by his attendants. Mr. Y. had been sitting with his back to the shore; and now, taken by surprise, seeing the white beard, and having his head full of his late interview, he announced to me »his Excellency Selim Pasha.« Up I jumped, with my lapful of work, even more disappointed that this should be the hero of that romantic story than dismayed at the visit. And he looked so unlike the old man I saw under the palm at Souhadj! I called up Mrs. Y. from the cabin. Mr. Y. made signs to the cook (for our only interpreter was absent) for pipes and coffee; and we sat down in form and order, and abundant awkwardness. To complete the absurdity of the scene, a line of towels, just out of the wash-tub, were drying on the top of the cabin; and the ironing-blanket was on the cabin table. – The first relief was Mr. Y.'s telling me »It is not Selim Pasha. These are the son and grandson of the English consul at Kenneh.«
Then I began to remember certain things of the English consul at Kenneh; – what a discreet old Arab he is reported to be, behaving tenderly to European ladies, and pressing parties to go and dine with him; and then, when they are on the way to the town, stepping back to the boat, and laying hands on all the nice provisions he can find, from eggs to Maraschino: so that he extracts a delectable dinner for himself out of his showy hospitality to strangers. While I was reviving all this in my memory, the old man himself was coming down to us. He shook hands with us all round: and, as I expected, kissed the hand of each lady, and pressed us to go up and dine with him. Alee, who had in the meantime returned with Mr. E., and seen from afar that we were holding a levee, had received his instructions to decline decisively all invitations, and convey that we were in a hurry, as the wind was fair for Thebes: so we were let off with a promise that we would dine with the consul on our return, if we could. – But now arrived the Governor of Kenneh, a far superior-looking person, handsomely dressed in fine brown broadcloth. The consul's elderly son took the opportunity of exploring the cabins, peeping into every corner, and examining Mr. E.'s glass and fowling-piece. We feared a long detention by visitors; but these departed before any others came; and it was still early in the afternoon when we spread our sail, and were off for Thebes.
V. Walks ashore – First Sight of Thebes – Adfoo – Christmas Day
The next morning (Sunday, December 20th), we found we must still have patience, as we should not see Thebes for another day. The wind had dropped at seven, the evening before, and had brought us only three miles this morning. In the course of the day we were made fully sensible of our happiness in having plenty of time, and in not being pressed to speed by any discomfort on board our boat. We were walking on shore at noon, among men and children busy about their tillage and sheep and asses and shadoofs, when we saw two boats, bearing the British and American flags, floating down the stream. They wore round and landed their respective parties, who were Cairo acquaintances of ours. Neither party had been beyond Thebes. How we pitied them when we thought of Philae and the Cataracts, and the depths of Nubia, which we were on our way to see! The English gentlemen were pressed for time, and were paying their crew to work night and day; by which they did not appear to be gaining much. The American gentleman and his wife were suffering cruelly under the misery of vermin in their boat: a trouble which all travellers in Egypt must endure in a greater or less degree, but which we found much less terrible than we had expected, and reducible to something very trifling by a little housewifely care and management.13 The terms in which they spoke of Thebes, after even their hasty journey, warmed our hearts and raised our spirits high.
The next day was the shortest day. It was curious to observe how we had lately gained five minutes of sunlight by our progress southwards. Though we cared to-day for nothing but Thebes, we condescended to examine, in our early walk, a strange, dreary-looking place which we were informed was one of the Pasha's schools. It was a large square mud building, crumbling away in desolation. No children were there; but two officers stared at us out of a window. Another, armed to the teeth, entered the enclosure, and spoke to us, we suppose in Arabic, as he passed. The plots of ground were neglected, and the sheds losing their roofs. It is evident that all is over with this establishment, while the people of the district appear in good condition. There were shadoofs at small distances, and so many husbandmen at hand that they relieve each other every two hours at this laborious work, a crier making known along the bank the expiration of the time. – We walked through flourishing fields of tobacco and millet; and we gathered, for the first time, the beautiful yellow blossom of the cotton shrub. The castor-oil plant began here to be almost as beautiful as the cotton.
Whenever we went for a walk, we were most energetically warned against the dogs of the peasantry: and one of the crew always sprang ashore with a club for our defence when we were seen running into the great danger of going where we might meet a dog. I suppose the danger is real, so invariably did the peasants rush towards us, on the barking of a dog, to pelt the animal away. I never saw any harm done by a dog, however; and I never could remember to be on my guard; so that one of the crew had often to run after me at full speed, when I had forgotten the need of a club-bearer, and gone alone.
From breakfast time this day, we were looking over southwestwards, to the Lybian hills which we knew contained the Tombs of the Kings: and before noon, we had seen what we can never forget. On our return we spent eight days at Thebes; eight days of industrious search, which make us feel familiar with the whole circuit of monuments. But the first impression remains unimpaired and undisturbed. I rather shrink from speaking of it; it is so absolutely incommunicable! The very air and sunshine of the moment, the time of day, the previous mood of mind, have so much share in such a first impression as this, that it can never come alike to any two people. I can but relate what the objects were; and that most meagrely.
The wind was now carrying us on swiftly; and as we, of course, stood as high as we could on the roof of the cabin, the scene unfolded before us most favourably. Every ridge of hills appeared to turn, and every recess to open, to show us all sides of what we passed. To our left spread a wide level country, the eastern expanse of the plain of Thebes, backed by peaked mountains, quite unlike the massive Arabian rocks which had hitherto formed that boundary. There was a thick wood on that bank; and behind that wood Alee pointed out to us the heavy masses of the ruins of El Karnac. Vast and massy indeed they looked. But, as yet, the chief interest was on the western shore. The natural features were remarkable enough, the vastness of the expanse, especially, which confounded all anticipation. The modern world obtruded itself before the ancient, – the shores dressed in the liveliest green, and busy with Arabs, camels, and buffalo, partially intercepting the view behind, Between these, vivid shores, and before and behind the verdant promontories, lay reach after reach of the soft grey, brimming river. Behind this brilliant foreground stretched immeasurable slopes of land, interrupted here and there by ranges of mounds or ridges of tawny rocks, and dotted over with fragments of ruins, and teeming with indications of more. In the rear was the noble guard of mountains which overlooks and protects the plain of Thebes: mountains now nearly colourless, tawny as the expanse below; but their valleys and hollows revealed by the short, sharp shadows of noon. The old name for this scene was running in my head – »the Lybian suburb«: and when I looked for the edifices of this suburb, what did I not see? I could see, even with the naked eye, and perfectly with the glass, traces of the mighty works which once made this, for greatness, the capital of the world. Long rows of square apertures indicated the ranges of burying places. Straggling remains of building wandered down the declivities of sand. And then the Rameséum was revealed, and I could distinguish its colossal statues. And next appeared, and my heart stood still at the sight, – the Pair. There they sat, together yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt. I can never believe that anything else so majestic as this Pair has been conceived of by the imagination of Art. Nothing even in nature certainly ever affected me so unspeakably; no thunderstorm in my childhood, nor any aspect of Niagara, or the great Lakes of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years. I saw them afterwards, daily, and many times a day, during our stay at Thebes: and the wonder and awe grew from visit to visit. Yet no impression exceeded the first; and none was like it. Happy the traveller who sees them first from afar; that is, who does not arrive at Thebes by night!
We had not thought of stopping at Thebes on our way up the river: but we were delighted to find that the Rais wanted to have his head shaved, and Alee to buy a sheep and some bread. We drew to the El-Uksur (Luxor) shore, and ran up to the ruins. The most conspicuous portion from the river is the fourteen pillars which stand parallel with it, in a double row: but we went first to the great entrance to the temple. I find here in my journal the remark which occurs oftener than any other; that no preconception can be formed of these places. I know that it is useless to repeat it here: for I meet everywhere at home people who think, as I did before I went, that between books, plates, and the stiff and peculiar character of Egyptian architecture and sculpture, Egyptian art may be almost as well known and conceived of in England as on the spot. I can only testify, without hope of being believed, that it is not so; that instead of ugliness, I found beauty; instead of the grotesque, I found the solemn: and where I looked for rudeness, from the primitive character of Art, I found the sense of the soul more effectually reached than by works which are the result of centuries of experience and experiment. The mystery of this fact sets one thinking, laboriously – I may say, painfully. Egypt is not the country to go to for the recreation of travel. It is too suggestive and too confounding to be met but in the spirit of study. One's powers of observation sink under the perpetual exercise of thought: and the lightest-hearted voyager, who sets forth from Cairo eager for new scenes and days of frolic, comes back an antique, a citizen of the world of six thousand years ago, kindred with the mummy. Nothing but large knowledge and sound habits of thought can save him from returning perplexed and borne down – unless, indeed, it be ignorance and levity. A man who goes to shoot crocodiles and flog Arabs, and eat ostrich's eggs, looks upon the monuments as so many strange old stone-heaps, and comes back »bored to death with the Nile«; as we were told we should be. He turns back from Thebes, or from the First Cataract, perhaps without having ever seen the Cataract, when within a mile of it, as in a case I know; and he pays his crew to work night and day, to get back to Cairo as fast as possible. He may return gay and unworn: and so may the true philosopher, to whom no tidings of Man in any age come amiss; who has no prejudices to be painfully weaned from, and an imagination too strong to be overwhelmed by mystery, and the rush of a host of new ideas. But for all between these two extremes of levity and wisdom, a Nile voyage is as serious a labour as the mind and spirits can be involved in; a trial even to health and temper such as is little dreamed of on leaving home. The labour and care are well bestowed, however, for the thoughtful traveller can hardly fail of returning from Egypt a wiser, and therefore a better man.
There is something very interesting in meeting with a fellow-feeling in ancient travellers so strong as may be found in the following passage from Abdallatif with that of some modern Egyptian voyagers. The passage is almost the same as some entries in my journal, made when I had never heard of the Bagdad physician. He speaks of Memphis, as seen in his day, and as, alas! one fears it will be seen no more. »Notwithstanding the immense extent of this city, and its high antiquity: notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the different governments under which it has passed: notwithstanding the efforts that various nations have made to destroy it in obliterating the minutest traces, effacing its smallest remains, carrying off the materials, even to the very stones of which it was constructed; laying waste its edifices, mutilating the figures which adorned them; and notwithstanding all that four thousand years and more have been able to add to such causes of destruction, these ruins yet offer to the eye of the spectator such a combination of wonders as confounds his understanding, and as the most eloquent man would vainly attempt to describe. The longer he contemplates, the more admiration he feels: and each returning glance at these ruins causes new ecstasy. Scarcely has the spectacle suggested one idea to the mind of the spectator, when it overpowers it by a greater; and when he thinks he has obtained a perfect knowledge of what is before him, he presently learns that his conceptions are still far below the truth.«14 A yet older traveller, Herodotus, says the same thing more briefly. »I shall enlarge upon what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is no other country where we may see so many works which are admirable, and beyond all expression.«15
It is not the vastness of the buildings which strikes one first at El-Uksur, vast as they are; it is the marvel of the sculptures with which they are covered – so old, so spirited, and so multitudinous. It is Homer, alive before one's eyes. And what a thought it is, to one standing here, how long this very sculpture has been an image and a thought to great minds placed one far behind another in the stages of human history! Herodotus, who here seems a modern brother-traveller, stood on this spot, and remembered the Iliad as we were now remembering it. He spoke of Homer, his predecessor by four hundred years, as we speak of those who lived in the crusading times. And Homer told of wars which were the same old romance to the people of his time as the Crusades are to us. And at the time of these wars, this Thebes was a city of a thousand years; and these battle-pictures now before our eyes were antiquities, as our cathedrals are to us. Here we were standing before one of the »hundred gates« through which Homer says the Theban warriors passed in and out; and on the flanks of this gateway were sculptured the achievements of the ancestors of these warriors. There are the men and horses and chariots, as if in full career – as full of life as if painted, and painted in a modern time! The stones of the edifice are parting in many places; and these battle-figures extend over the cracks, almost uninjured by the decay. These graven epics will last some time longer, though the stone records will give way before the paper.
The guardian colossi are mighty creatures, with their massive shoulders and serene heads rising out of the ground. A third helmet is visible; and among the Arab huts near, a fourth. We saw here for the first time columns with the lotus-shaped capitals; the capitals being painted, and the blossoms, buds, and leaves which filled up the outline being very distinct. One test of the massive character of the work was curious. A huge block of the architrave has fallen from its place, and rests on the rim of the cup of the lotus, without breaking it. We were now introduced to some of the details of Egyptian architecture, and to some of its great separate features: but all unity of impression was obviated by the intrusion of the mud huts which are plastered up against the ruins throughout their range. When we came down the river, and had become familiar with the structure of Egyptian temples, we could make out the plan of this, and somewhat discharge from view the blemishes which spoiled everything now. But at present we were not qualified, and we carried away a painful impression of confusion as well as ruin.
As we sailed away, I obtained another view of the Pair; and I watched them till I could hardly tell whether it was distance or the dusk which hid them at last.
The wind carried us on well: too well; for a stay of the foremast gave way; and this hindered our progress. The calm and pathetic-looking Rais rushed towards us, vociferated, and pulled Mr. E. by the wrist to the forepart, to see the crack, – of which Mr. E., with all his experience in such matters, thought little. The Rais. however, is responsible for the condition of the boat, and he feared that the owner would »cut his neck off« if anything was carried away, So we moored to the bank, and some little nails were driven in, so as to do no good whatever; and then it came out that the Rais wanted to stop here for the night. We so protested against this that he appeared to yield; but at the end of a mile or so, he drove us decisively into the eastern bank.