Kitabı oku: «Eastern Life», sayfa 8
VIII. Nubia – The second Cataract
We were not long in finding how different Nubia is from the lower part of the Nile valley, both in its aspect and its people. We soon began to admire these poor Berbers for their industry and thrift, their apparent contentment, and their pleasant countenances. The blue underlip of the women, some tattoo marks here and there, nose rings, and hundreds of tiny braids of hair, all shining and some dripping with castor-oil, might seem likely to make these people appear ugly enough to English eyes: but the open good-humour of most of their countenances, and the pathetic thought-fulness of many, rendered them interesting, I may say charming, to us; to say nothing of the likeness we were constantly tracing in them to the most ancient sculptured faces of the temples. The dyed underlip was the greatest drawback, perhaps from its having a look of disease. The women wore silver bracelets almost universally, and a quantity of bead necklaces. They swathed themselves sufficiently in their blue garments without covering their faces. The men wore very little clothing: the children, for the most part, hone at all, except that the girls had a sort of leather fringe tied round the loins. Sometimes the people would run away from us, or be on the start to do so, as we were walking on the shore. Sometimes the women would permit us to bid for their necklaces, or would offer matting or baskets for sale. Sometimes we found their huts empty, – left open while the family were out at work, – and we were glad of such an opportunity of examining their dwellings, and forming some notion of their household economy.
The first we entered in the absence of the inmates was a neat house, the walls mud, and narrowing upwards, so as to give the building a slightly pyramidal form. Mud walls, it must be remembered, are in Nubia quite a different affair from what they are in rainy countries. The smooth plastering gives the dwelling a neat appearance inside and out: and it is so firmly done, and so secure from wet in that climate, as not to crumble away, or, apparently, to give out dust, as it would with us. The flat roof of this house was neatly made of palm, the stems lying along, and the fronds forming a sort of thatch. A deewán of mud was raised along the whole of both the side-walls, and two large jars, not of the same size, were fixed at the end; one, no doubt, to hold water, the other grain. The large jar for grain is often fixed outside the house, opposite the door, and we were assured that it is never plundered. Some dwellings have partitions, one or two feet high, separating, as we suppose, the sleeping-places of the family. If the peasant has the rare fortune of possessing a cow and calf, or if there is an ox in the establishment, to work the sakia, there is a mud shed with a flat roof, like the house. The fences are of dry millet-stalks, which rise from eleven to fourteen feet high. In the garden or field-plot is often seen a pillar of stones, whereon stands the slinger, whose business it is to scare away the birds from the crops. The field-plot is often no more than a portion of the sloping river bank. At the season of our visit the plots were full of wheat, barley, and lupins. The kidney bean, with a purple blossom and very dark leaves, was beautiful; and so were the castor-oil and cotton plants.
Behind the dwelling which we visited, the dark stony desert came down to the very path, and among its scattered rocks lay, not at once distinguishable to the eye, the primitive burying-ground of the region. The graves were marked out with ovals of stones, and thorns were laid thick on the more recent ones. A dreary place it looked for the dead to lie in, but the view from it was beautiful; and especially of the hedge-like Lybian bank over the river, where the fringe of mimosas was all overgrown and compacted with bindweed of the brightest green.
I do not at present see that much can be done for the Nubians, as there certainly may for the Egyptians. In Egypt, the population once amounted to 8,000,000, or nearly so, while now it is supposed to be not more than 2,500,000; and there seems no reason why it should not, with the knowledge and skill of our own time, rise to what it once was, and exceed it. Everywhere there are tokens, even to the careless eye of a passing traveller, of land let out of cultivation – yielded up without a struggle to the great old enemy, the Desert, and even to the encroachments of the friendly Nile. There are signs that drainage is as much wanted as irrigation. However much the natural face of the country may be supposed to have changed, there is abundant evidence of wilful and careless lapse. In Nubia it is far otherwise. There, not only are the villages diminutive, – almost too small to be called hamlets, – and the sprinkling of people between them is so scanty as barely to entitle the country to be called inhabited, but this is clearly from the scarcity of cultivable land. That it was always so is hardly conceivable, when we think of the number of temples still visible between the first and second cataracts, and the many villages declared by Pliny to have studded both shores; but that it is to be helped now I do not see how anyone can show who has beheld the hopeless yellow desert, with its black volcanic rocks, coming down to the very river. As the people have no raw material for any manufacture, it is not easy to tell how they could prosper by other kinds of industry, if Egypt supplied them ever so plentifully with food. It appeared to us that they were diligent and careful in making the most of what they have. As soon as we crossed their frontier, we saw the piers which they preserve – the stone barriers once built out into the stream to arrest the mud as it is carried down, and thus obtain new land. There are so many of these as to be mischievous in some parts; as, when these piers are opposite to each other, they alter the currents and narrow the river. We saw dusky labourers on the banks, toiling with the hoe to form the soil into terraces and ledges, so as to make the most of it. From their diligence, it seems as if the Nubians had sufficient security to induce them to work, and their appearance is that of health, cheerfulness, and content. What more can be done for them, beyond perhaps improving their simple arts of life, it is difficult to say.
Simple enough, indeed, are their arts. Early one morning, when walking ashore, I came upon a loom which would excite the astonishment of my former fellow-townsmen, the Norwich weavers. A little pit was dug in the earth, under a palm; – a pit just big enough to hold the treadles and the feet of the weaver, who sits on the end of the pit. The beam was made of a slender palm stem, fixed into two blocks. The treadles were made of spines of the palm fixed into bits of stick. The shuttle was, I think, a forked twig. The cotton yarn was even, and the fabric good, that is, evenly woven. It was, though coarse, so thin that one might see the light through; but that was intended, and only appropriate to the climate. I might have wondered at such a fabric proceeding from such an apparatus, if I had not remembered the muslins of India, produced in looms as rude as this. It appears, too, from the paintings in the tombs, that the old Egyptian looms were of nearly as simple a construction, though the people were celebrated for their exports of fine linen and woollen stuffs. The stout-looking gay chequered sails of the boats, and the diversified dresses of the people represented in the tombs, were no doubt the produce of the rude looms painted up beside them. – The baskets made by the Nubians are strong and good. Their mats are neat; but neither so serviceable nor so pretty as those of India: but, then, these people have not such material as the Hindoos. Their ropemaking is a pretty sight – prettier even than an English ropewalk; though that is a treat to the eye. We often saw men thus employed – one end of their strands being tied to the top of a tall palm, while they stood at the other, throwing the strands round till they would twist no more.
As for the rent paid by the Nubians for their land, what we learned is this; but it must be observed that it is very difficult, in these countries, to obtain reliable information. In the most civilised parts, there are so few data, and in the more primitive, the people are so little in the habit of communicating with persons who are not familiar with their condition and ways, that it is scarcely possible to find any uniformity of testimony on any. matters of custom or arrangement, even the simplest. When the people tell of their taxes, the English traveller finds them so enormous that he is incredulous, or too indignant to carry away any accurate knowledge of the facts, unless he remembers that taxes in Egypt are not the same thing as taxes in Europe.
As I understand the matter, it is thus, with regard to these Nubians. The Pasha holds the whole land and river of Egypt and Nubia in fee-simple, except as much as he has given away, for its revenues, to favoured individuals; and his rents are included in what are called his taxes. In Egypt, the people pay tax on the land. In Nubia, they pay it on the sakias and paints. The palms, when large, pay a piastre and a quarter (about 3 d.) each, per annum: when small, three-fourths of a piastre. Each sakia pays a tax of three hundred and fifty piastres, or £ 3 10 S.; and the payer may appropriate as much land as the sakia will water. The quantity taken is usually from eight hundred to twelve hundred square yards.
The mode of collecting the taxes is quite another matter. By corruption in the agents, or a bad practice of taking the amount in kind, or on account, the collector fixing the marketable value of the produce, there may be cruel oppression. In Egypt, it is certain this oppression does exist to a dreadful extent. We did not happen to hear of it in Nubia; and I cannot say how it is there. But, be it as it may, it is a different question from the amount of tax.
What the peasant actually pays for is the land, as above-mentioned, the water-wheel itself, the excavation in which it works, the shed under which it stands, and the ox or pair of oxen by which it is driven. How far his bargain answers to him must depend on the marketable value of his produce, in a country little affected by variations of seasons. He has not, however, the advantage of an open market. There is nobody at hand to purchase, unless by the accident of a trading kandjia coming by; and he has not usually the means of sending far. The tax-collector must therefore commonly be his market; and not such a one as to enable the stranger to estimate his affairs with any accuracy. All we could do was to observe whether he seemed to have enough of his produce left over for the support of his family, and whether his land appeared to be well tilled. I can only repeat that the people we saw in Nubia looked generally healthful and contented; and that they seemed to be making the most of their little belts and corners of cultivable land. It is to be observed, however, that we remarked a great number of ruined villages, and that we could obtain no answer from either dragoman or Rais as to how this happened. They declared they did not know; and for once Alee had neither information nor theory to offer. Which was the popular enemy, the Desert or the Pasha, I cannot undertake to say.
Our kandjia was hired for twenty-five days, for the sum of £ 13 10 S.; this including all the charges of ascending the Cataract, and of the crew (eight men), except the steersman. Of these eight men, I think four were from our dahabieh. Our Rais and the rest of our crew were left at Aswan, in charge of the boat and such of our property as we did not take with us. Among those whom we carried up were two of our quiet, serviceable Nubians. Among those who remained behind was the Buck, as we called him: perhaps the least serviceable of the whole crew, and certainly the least quiet and most troublesome; but he was so extremely amusing with his pranks that we missed him, during this fortnight, more than we should a better lad. Our other buffoon was with us – the cook. An excellent cook he was; but I do not know that he was much else, except a long story-teller and a consummate coxcomb. He was a bad riser in this (to him) winter weather; not a good hand at giving us breakfast early; and we were therefore not sorry that he declined going through the Desert with us afterwards. The manner of declining, however, smacked of his coxcombry. »I!« said he. »I go through the Desert to Syria! No, no: it is all very well for these English, whom nobody inquires after, to go and be killed in Syria: but I am a man whose life is of importance to his family. They may go without me.« And we went with a better man in his place. During this Nubian voyage, however, he was in his glory – among stranger comrades who would listen to his long stories. As I sat on deck in the evenings, I used to see him at the bows, flattering himself that he was doing his proper work, – holding by the wings a poor fluttering turkey about to have his throat cut, and brandishing his great glittering knife, in the energy of his story-telling. How many times have I chafed at the suspense of one poor bird after another, thus held, head downwards, till the magniloquent cook should have finished his anecdote! He fed us well, however, making a variety very honourable to him in the mutton, fowls, and eggs, which we lived on during the voyage. Beef and veal have been out of the question since the murrain in 1843. Since that time, the cattle have not been enough to work the sakias; and, of course, there are none for food. Mr. Y. once had the luck to fall in with a piece of beef – at least, we were assured it was beef: but the only good we got out of it was a lesson not to look for beef any more. There is great variety to be made out of a sheep, however, as our cook continually proved to us. I have said that he succeeded well in our Christmas plum-pudding. The only fire we had last winter was that which he made with a pool of brandy in the middle of our pudding. Almost the only failure he made was with a goose which we got at Thebes. We thought much of this goose, as a change from the everlasting fowls and turkeys; but the cook boiled it; and it looked anything but tempting. His excuse was that he feared, if he roasted it, that it would be »stiff« – meaning tough.
All the people on board, and we ourselves, found the weather cold in Nubia; that is, in the evenings and mornings; for at noon it was hot enough to make us glad of fans and water-melon. We entered the tropic at three P.M. of December 30: and from that time till our return, we seemed sentenced to shiver early and late, in cold strong winds, such as we had hardly met with in the more northerly parts of the river. But the mild nights when we were at anchor were delicious – none more so than that of the first day of this year. We sauntered along the camel-track which ran between the shore and the fine overhanging rocks of the Arabian desert. The brilliant moonlight cast deep shadows on the sand, and showed us what mighty blocks had fallen, and how others were about to fall. These African nights, soft, lustrous, and silent, are worth crossing the world to feel. We met a party of three men, a boy and a donkey, one of the men carrying a spear. They returned our greeting courteously, but stopped to look after us in surprise. Their tread and ours was noiseless on the sand; and the only sound within that wide horizon was of a baying dog, far away on the opposite shore.
The next morning we passed Korosko, and saw the surveying flag of M. Arnault, and the tents of his party of soldiers: but we could not learn how his survey and his search for water proceeded, in preparation for his road to the Red Sea. We were passing temples, from stage to stage, all the way up: and very clearly we saw them, each standing on its platform of sand or rock: but we left them all for examination on our return. This return must now be soon: we sighed to think how soon, when we met, on the morning of January 3rd, the two boats of a party who told us that if we wished to send letters to England, we must prepare them, as some gentlemen were at Aboo-Simbil, and would presently be passing us. The great temple of Aboo-Simbil, the chief object of our Nubian voyage, and almost at the extremity of it, so near us! It damped our spirits; but we wrote our letters; and before we had done, the expected boat came up. We little thought that morning, any of us, that our three parties would join in the Desert, and that we should live together in Arabia for five weeks. Yet so it turned out.
I had been watching the winds and the hours in the fear that we should pass Aboo-Simbil in the dark. But when I came on deck, on the morning of the 4th, I found, to my great joy, that we were only a few miles from it, while a fresh breeze was carrying us well on our course. We passed it before breakfast.
The façade is visible from a considerable distance: and as soon as it becomes visible, it fixes the eye by the singularity of such an object as this smoothed recess of the rugged rock. I found it unlike what I expected, and unlike, I thought, all the representations of it that I had seen. The portal looked low in proportion to the colossi: the façade was smaller, or at least narrower, than I had supposed; and the colossi much nearer together. The whitewash which Champollion (it is said) left on the face of the northernmost colossus has the curious effect of bringing out the expression of countenance, so as to be seen far off. Nothing can be more strange than so extremely distinct a revelation of a face, in every feature, perhaps a mile off. It is stranger than the first apparition of the goodly profile of the bronze Borromeo, near Lago Maggiore: because not only the outline of the features stands out clear, but every prominence and shadow of the face. The expression of this colossus is very agreeable; – it is so tranquil and cheerful. We had not yet experienced the still stranger sensation of seeing a row of statues precisely alike in all respects. We did not feel it now: for one of the faces being white, and another being broken, and many details lost by distance, the resemblance was not complete enough to cause in us that singular emotion.
The smaller temple of »the Lady of Aboshek«, – Athor, – beside the large one, is very striking, as seen from the river. The six statues on the façade stand out boldly between buttresses; and their reclining backwards against the rock has a curious effect. All about both temples are inscribed tablets, which look like doors opening into the rock. We had now seen, for the first time, a rock temple: and we were glad that it was the noblest that we saw first. In estimating it, we must remember what Ethiopia was to the Egyptians of its time. The inscription »foreign land« is appended to the titles of Athor in the smaller temple: and the establishment of these edifices here is what it would have been to the Romans who, conquering Great Britain, should have carried their most solemn worship to the Orkneys, and enthroned it there in the noblest edifice they could erect. But we could not fully estimate this till we had examined the temple on our return: nor can my readers do so till the time comes for a fuller account of these great works.
The wind was favourable all day, and at night, as we approached Wadee Halfa, very strong. It is to be wished that we had some full meteorological reports of these regions, both for the sake of science and the guidance of travellers. Every voyager, I believe, speaks of strong wind, and, in the travelling season, north wind, near. Wadee Halfa. Has anyone heard of calm weather there? On inquiry, on the spot, we were told that there is almost always a strong wind and frequent gales: sometimes from the south, but usually from the north. This night we had experience of a Nile gale.
Our sail was rarely tied, any part of the way; and our Nubian Rais had it always held. To-night it was held by a careful personage, who minded his business. First, our foresail was taken in, as the wind rose. Then we went sounding on, the poles on each side being kept constantly going. Nevertheless, we struck on a sand-bank with a great shock, and the main-sail was let fly. Half a dozen poor fellows, already shivering with cold, went over the side, and heaved us off. The wind continued to rise; the night was growing dark; and presently we grounded again. The sail was let go; but it would not fly. The wind strengthened; the sail was obstinate, and the men who had sprung aloft to furl it could not get it in. We seemed to be slowly but surely going over: and for several minutes (a long time in such circumstances) it seemed to me that our only chance was in the mud-bank on which we had struck being within our depth. But it was a poor chance; for there was deep water and a strong current between us and the shore: and it was in an uninhabited part of the country. Of our own party, no one spoke. Mr. E. was the only one of us who understood these matters; and as he stood on the watch, we would not interrupt him by questions. Indeed, the case was plain enough; and I saw under his calmness that he felt this to be, as he afterwards told me, the most anxious moment of our adventures. Alee flew about giving orders amidst the rush of the wind; and the cook worked at the poling with all his strength. Even at such a moment I could not but be struck with the lights from the kitchen and the cabin shining on the struggling men and restless sail which were descending together to the water, and on the figures of the Rais, Alee, and another, as they stood on the gunwale, hauling at a rope which was fastened to the top of the mast. Amidst the many risks of the moment, the chief was that our tackle would not hold: and a crack was heard now and then among other awful noises. By this time, the inclination of the deck was such that it was impossible to stand, and I had to cling with all my strength to the window of the vestibule. For some time, the Rais feared to quit his hold of the rope on the gunwale; but at last he flung it away, threw off his clothes in a single instant, and sprang up the mast like a cat. His strong arms were what was wanted aloft. The sail was got in, and we righted. The standing straight on one's feet was like a strange new sensation after such a peril.
It was still some time before we were afloat again; and our crew were busy in the water till we were quite sorry for them. When we drifted off at last, our sail was spread again, and we went seething on through the opposing currents to find our proper anchorage at Wadee Halfa. And there again we had almost as much difficulty as before in getting in our sail. This is the worst of the lateen sails, which look so pretty, and waft one on so well. We were wrenched about, and carried down some way before we could moor.
The next morning was almost as cold as the night: but we preferred this to heat, – as our Business to-day was to ride through the western desert to the rock of Abooseer – the furthest point of our African travel. Before breakfast, the gentlemen took a walk on shore, being carried over the intervening mud. They saw a small village, and a school of six scholars. The boys wrote, to the master's dictation, with reed pens, on tablets of wood, smoothed over with some white substance. They wrote readily, and apparently well. The lesson was from the Kurán; and the master delivered it in a chaunting tone.
Two extremely small asses were brought down, to cross with us to the western bank. We crossed in a ferry-boat whose sail did not correspond very well with the climate. It was like a lace veil mended with ticking. Our first visit was to the scanty remains of an interesting old temple near the landing-place. On our way to it, we passed some handsome children, and a charming group of women under a large sycamore. We thought the people we saw here – the most southerly we should ever see – open-faced and good-looking. There are large cattle-yards and sheds in this scarcely-inhabited spot, which the Pasha has made a halting-place for his droves of cattle from Dongola. He continues to import largely from thence, to make up his losses from the murrain of 1843. We saw two large droves of as noble beasts as can be seen.
Near the remains of two other unmarked and less interesting buildings stand the columns of the temple begun, if not wholly erected, by two of the Theban kings, soon after the expulsion of the Shepherd race. The dates exist in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the pillars. This temple was built when the great edifices of Thebes were, for the most part, unthought of. El-Karnac was begun – its more humble halls – and El-Uksur might be surveyed, by that time, as a fitting site for a temple to answer to El-Karnac, but the El-Kurneh temple and the Ramaséum were not conceived of; for the sovereigns who built them were not born. The Memnon statues were yet in the quarry. The Pyramids were, it is now thought, about two thousand years old: and about this time Moses was watching the erection of the great obelisk (which we call Cleopatra's Needle) at Heliopolis, where he studied. If learned men are right in saying that the Philistines4 were of the race expelled from Thebes, they had, by the time this temple was built, settled themselves under the Lebanon and along the southern Syrian coasts, whence they were to be driven out when Moses should be in his grave. If, as some poets tell, Egyptus and Cadmus were among the Shepherd intruders driven out from the Thebaid, the fifty nieces of the one had by this time murdered his sons, their husbands, and the dragon's teeth of the other had sprung up into armed men. It is worth while to mention such fables as these last under their assigned dates; because we learn thereby to value as we ought the tangible and reliable records we meet in the Egyptian monuments, in contrast with the dim traditions of later born nations. We may also gather useful hints on the history and philosophy of art and science, from the mythi and the monuments together. There is writing on this temple: there is writing on the much older Pyramids: and it was only at the time of the erection of this temple that letters were carried into Greece. Here is a pillar which is believed to have suggested, in a subsequent age, the Doric column; the oldest of Greek pillars. Here it stands, remarkable for its many-sided form. It was to us now the oldest we had ever seen: but we afterwards saw some, more precisely what is called Doric, in the tombs of Benee Hasan. The columns of this temple are little more than bases. They are nearly all of the same height: some like mere heaps of stone; others bearing uninjured inscriptions. They are small remains: but long may they last! They are the ultimate record of their kind on the ordinary route of Nile travellers, and usually the first subject to their examination.
Our ride to the rock of Abooseer occupied an hour and a half. Thanks to the cool north wind, we highly enjoyed it. Our way lay through a complete desert, over sand-hills, and among stony tracts, where scarcely a trace of vegetation is to be seen. In such places the coloquintus is a welcome object, with its thick, milky leaves and stalks, and its velvet blossom. The creeping, thorny coloquintida, too, with its bitter apples, is a handsome plant: or it looked so to us, in the absence of others. Here and there amidst the dreary expanse, or half-hidden in some sandy dell, lay the bleached skeleton of a camel. The only living things seen were a brood of partridges and a jerboa – a graceful and most agile little creature, whose long, extended tail, with its tufted end, gave it a most distinctive appearance. Some of our people started off in pursuit, and would not give up for a long time, making extreme efforts to keep the little creature in view, and drive it in one another's way; but it baffled them at last, and got back to its hole.
We rode to the foot of the rock of Abooseer, and then ascended it – in rather heavy spirits, knowing that this was to be our last look southwards. The summit was breezy and charming. I looked down the precipice on which I stood, and saw a sheer descent to the Nile of two hundred feet. The waters were gushing past the foot of this almost perpendicular crag: and from holes in its strata flew out flocks of pigeons, blue in the sunshine. The scene all round under that wide heaven was wild beyond description. There was no moving creature visible but ourselves and the pigeons; and no trace of human habitation but the ruins of two mud huts, and of a white building on the Arabian shore. The whole scene was composed of desert, river, and black basaltic rocks. Round to the north, from the south-west, there is actually nothing to be seen but blackish, sand-streaked rocks near at hand, and sandy desert further off. To the north-east, the river winds away, blue and full, between sands. Two white sails were on it at the moment. From the river, a level sand extended to the soft tinted Arabian hills, whose varied forms and broken lights and shadows were on the horizon nearly from the north round to the south-east. These level sands then give place to a black rugged surface, which extends to where two summits – to-day of a bright amethyst hue – close the circuit of vision. These summits are at a considerable distance on the way to Dongola. The river is hidden among the black rocks to the south, and its course is not traceable till it peeps out, blue and bright, in two or three places, and hides itself again among the islets. It makes a great bend while thus hidden, and reappears much more to the east. It has now reached the part properly called the Second Cataract; and it comes sweeping down towards the rock on which we stood, dashing and driving among its thousand islets, and then gathering its thousand currents into one, to proceed calmly on its course. Its waters were turbid in the rapids, and looked as muddy where they poured down from shelf or boulder as in the Delta itself: but in all its calm reaches it reflected the sky in a blue so deep as it would not do to paint. The islets were of fantastic forms – worn by the cataracts of ages; but still, the outlines were angular, and the black ledges were graduated by the action of the waters, as if they had been soft sand. On one or two islands I saw what I at first took for millet-patches: but they were only coarse grass and reeds. A sombre brownish tamarisk, or dwarfed mimosa, put up its melancholy head here and there; and this was all the vegetation apparent within that wide horizon. – I doubt whether a more striking scene than this, to English eyes, can be anywhere found. It is thoroughly African, thoroughly tropical, very beautiful – most majestic, and most desolate. Something of the impression might be owing to the circumstances of leave-taking under which we looked abroad from our station: but still, if I saw this scene in an unknown land in a dream, I am sure I should be powerfully moved by it. This day, it certainly interested me more than the First Cataract.
