 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, Section Zero. First published in 1877, this book has been out of print for several years. I have therefore very gladly revised it for a new and cheaper edition. In so revising it I have corrected some of the historical notes by the light of later discoveries, but I have left the narrative untouched. Of the political changes which have come over the land of Egypt since that narrative was written, I have taken no note. Because I, in no sense, offer myself as a guide to others, I say nothing of the altered conditions under which most Nile travelers now perform the trip. All these things will be more satisfactorily and more practically learned from the pages of Bedaker and Murray. Amelia B. Edwards, Westbury on Trim, October 1888. Preface to the first edition. Voyage en Egypt, c'est une partie dans une promenade, une bateau entre mes lèvres de ruin. Empere. Empere has put Egypt in an epigramme. A donkey ride and a boating trip interspersed with ruins does, in fact, sum up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile traveler. At propose of these three things, the donkeys, the boat, and the ruins, it may be said that a good English saddle and a comfortable Dahabia add very considerably to the pleasure of the journey, and that the more one knows about the past history of the country, the more one enjoys the ruins. Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats, and steamers I am not qualified to speak. We, however, saw one iron Dahabia aground upon a sandbank where, as we afterwards learned, it remained for three weeks. We also saw the wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and the First Cataract. It certainly seemed to us that the old-fashioned wooden Dahabia, flat bottom drawing little water, light in hand, and easily pulled off when stuck, was the one vessel best constructed for the navigation of the Nile. Other considerations, as time and cost, are, of course, involved in this question. The choice between Dahabia and steamer is like the choice between traveling with post-horses and traveling by rail. The one is expensive, leisurely, delightful, the other is cheap, swift, and comparatively comfortless. Those who are content to snatch but a glimpse of the Nile will doubtless prefer the steamer. I may add that the whole cost of the filet, food, Drago Man's wages, boat hire, cataract, everything included except wine, was about ten pounds per day. With regard to temperature we found it cool, even cold sometimes, in December and January, mild in February, very warm in March and April. The climate of Nubia is simply perfect. It never rains, and once past the limit of the tropic there is no morning or evening chill upon the air. Yet even in Nubia, and especially along the forty miles which divide Abu Sembel from Wadi Halfa, it is cold when the wind blows strongly from the north. Touching the title of this book, it may be objected that the distance from the port of Alexandria to the second cataract falls short of a thousand miles. It is, in fact, calculated at nine hundred and sixty-four and one-half miles. But from the rock of Abusir, five miles above Wadi Halfa, the traveler looks over an extent of country far exceeding the thirty or thirty-five miles necessary to make up the full tail of a thousand. We distinctly saw from this point the summits of mountains which lie about one hundred and forty-five miles to the southward of Wadi Halfa, and which looked down upon the third cataract. Perhaps I ought to say something in answer to the repeated inquiries of those who looked for the publication of this volume a year ago. I can, however, only repeat that the writer, instead of giving one year, has given two years to the work. To write rapidly about Egypt is impossible. The subject grows with the book, and with the knowledge one acquires, by the way. It is, moreover, a subject beset with such obstacles as must impede even the swiftest pen, and to that swiftest pen I lay no claim. Moreover, the writer, who seeks to be accurate, has frequently to go for his facts, if not actually to original sources, which would be the texts themselves, at all events to translations and commentaries locked up in costly folios, or dispersed far and wide among the pages of scientific journals and the transactions of learned societies. A date, a name, a passing reference may cost hours of seeking. To revise so large a number of illustrations, and to design tailpieces from jottings taken here and there in that pocket sketchbook, which is the sketcher's constant companion, has also consumed no small amount of time. This, by way of apology. More pleasant it is to remember labor lightened than to consider time spent, and I have yet to thank the friends who have spared no pains to help this book on its way. To S. Birch, Esquire, LLD, etc., etc., so justly styled the parent in this country of a sound school of Egyptian philology, who besides translating the hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions contained in Chapter 18, has also with infinite kindness seen the whole of that chapter through the press, to Reginald Stuart Poole, Esquire, to Professor R. Owen, C. B., etc., etc., to Sir. G. W. Cox, I desire to offer my hearty and grateful acknowledgments. It is surely not least among the glories of learning that those who adorn it most and work hardest should ever be readiest to share the stores of their knowledge. I am anxious to express my cordial thanks to Mr. G. Pearson, under whose superintendents the whole of the illustrations have been engraved. To say that his patience and courtesy have been inexhaustible, and that he has spared neither time nor cost in the preparation of the blocks, is but a dry statement of facts, and conveys no idea of the kind of labor involved. Where engravings of this kind are executed, not from drawings made at first hand upon the wood, but from watercolor drawings, which have not only to be reduced in size, but to be, as it were, translated into black and white, the difficulty of the work is largely increased. In order to meet this difficulty and to ensure accuracy, Mr. Pearson has not only called in the services of an accomplished draftsman, but in many instances has even photographed the subjects direct upon the wood. Of the engraver's work, which speaks for itself, I will only say that I do not know in what way it could be bettered. It seems to me that some of these blocks may stand, for examples, of the farthest point to which the art of engraving upon wood has yet been carried. The principal illustrations have all been drawn upon the wood by Mr. Percival Skelton, and no one so fully as myself can appreciate how much the subjects owe to the delicacy of his pencil, and to the artistic feelings with which he has interpreted the original drawings. Of the fascination of Egyptian travel and of the charm of the Nile, of the unexpected and surpassing beauty of the desert, of the ruins which are the wonder of the world, I have said enough elsewhere. I must, however, add that I brought home with me an impression that things and people are much less changed in Egypt than we of the present day are want to suppose. I believe that the physique and life of the modern fella is almost identical with the physique and life of that ancient Egyptian laborer whom we know so well in the wall paintings of the tombs. Square in the shoulders, slight but strong in the limbs, full-lipped, brown-skinned, we see him wearing the same loincloth, plying the same shadoof, plowing with the same plow, preparing the same food in the same way, and eating it with his fingers from the same bowl as did his forefathers of six thousand years ago. The household life and social ways of even the provincial gentry are little changed. Water is poured on one's hands before going to dinner from just such an ear and into just such a basin as we see pictured in the festival scenes at Thebes. Though the lotus blossom is missing, a bouquet is still given to each guest when he takes this place at table. The head of the sheet killed for the banquet is still given to the poor. Those who are helped to meet or drink touch the head and breast in acknowledgment as of old. The musicians still sit at the lower end of the hall. The singers yet clap their hands in time to their own voices. The dancing girl still dance, and the buffoon in his high cap still performs uncouth antics for the entertainment of the guests. Water is brought to table in jars of the same shape manufactured at the same town as in the days of Kyops and Kefren, and the mouths of the bottles are filled in precisely the same way with fresh leaves and flowers. The cucumber stuffed with mincemeat was a favorite dish in those times of old, and I can testify to its existence in 1874. Little boys in Nubia yet wear the sidewalk that graced the head of rompsies in his youth, and little girls may be seen in a garment closely resembling the girdle worn by young princesses of the time of Tutmos I. A shake still walks with a long staff, a Nubian bell still plates her tresses in scores of little tales, and the pleasure boat of the modern governor or mutter, as well as the Dahabia hired by the European traveler, reproduces in all essential features the painted galleys represented in the tombs of the kings. In these and in a hundred other instances, all of which came under my personal observation and have their place in the following pages, it seemed to me that any obscurity which yet hangs over the problem of life and thought in ancient Egypt originates most probably with ourselves. Our own habits of life and thought are so complex that they shut us off from the simplicity of that early world. So it was with the problem of hieroglyphic writing. The thing was so obvious that no one could find it out. As long as the world persisted in believing that every hieroglyph was an obtuse symbol and every hieroglyphic inscription a profound philosophical rebus, the mystery of Egyptian literature remained insoluble. Then at last came Shampoleon's famous letter to dossier, showing that the hieroglyphic signs were mainly alphabetic and syllabic, and that the language they spelt was only Coptic after all. If there were not thousands who still conceived that the sun and moon were created and are kept going for no other purpose than to lighten the darkness of our little planet, if only the other day a grave gentleman had not written a perfectly serious essay to show that the world is a flat plain, one would scarcely believe that there could still be people who doubt that ancient Egyptian is now read and translated as fluently as ancient Greek. Yet an Englishman whom I met in Egypt, an Englishman who had long been resident in Cairo and who was well acquainted with the great Egyptologist who are attached to the service of the Kediv, assured me of his profound disbelief in the discovery of Shampoleon. In my opinion, said he, not one of these gentlemen can read a line of hieroglyphics. As I then knew nothing of Egyptian I could say nothing to controvert his speech. Since that time, however, and while writing this book, I have been led on step by step to the study of hieroglyphic writing, and I now know that Egyptian can be read for the simple reason that I find myself able to read an Egyptian sentence. My testimony may not be of much value, but I give it for the little that it is worth. The study of Egyptian literature has advanced of late years with rapid strides. Papyri are found less frequently than they were some thirty or forty years ago, but the translation of those contained in the museums of Europe goes on now more diligently than at any form or time. Religious books, variants of the ritual, moral essays, maxims, private letters, hymns, epic poems, historical chronicles, accounts, deeds of sale, medical, magical, and astronomical treatises, geographical records, travels, and even romances and tales are brought to light. Photographed, facsimilead in chromolithography, printed in hieroglyphic type, and translated in forms suited both to the learned and to the general reader. Not all this literature is written, however, on papyrus. The greater proportion of it is carved in stone. Some is painted on wood, written on linen, leather, pot-shirts, and other substances. So the old mystery of Egypt, which was her literature, has vanished. The key to the hieroglyphs is the master key that opens every door. Each year that now passes over our heads sees some old problem solved. Each day brings some long-buried truth to light. Some thirteen years ago a distinguished American artist painted a very beautiful picture called the Secret of the Sphinx. In its widest sense the secret of the Sphinx would mean, I suppose, the whole uninterpreted and undiscovered past of Egypt. In its narrower sense the secret of the Sphinx was, till quite lately, the hidden significance of the human-headed lion, which is one of the typical subjects of Egyptian art. Thirteen years is a short time to look back upon, yet great things have been done in Egypt and in Egyptology since then. Edfu, with its extraordinary wealth of inscriptions, has been laid bare. The whole contents of the Bulak Museum have been recovered from the darkness of the tombs. The very mystery of the Sphinx has been disclosed, and even within the last eighteen months, Mr. Shabbas announces that he has discovered the date of the pyramid of Mysarennes, so for the first time establishing the chronology of ancient Egypt upon an ascertained foundation. Thus the work goes on, students in their libraries, excavators under Egyptian skies, toiling along different paths towards a common goal. The picture means more today than it meant thirteen years ago, means more even than the artist intended. The Sphinx has no secret now, save for the ignorant. In this picture we see a brown, half-naked, toil-worn fella laying his ear to the stone lips of a colossal Sphinx. Buried to the neck in sand. Some instinct of the old Egyptian blood tells him that the creature is godlike. He is conscious of a great mystery lying far back in the past. He has, perhaps, a dim, confused notion that the big head knows it all, whatever it may be. He has never heard of the morning song of Memnon, but he fancies somehow that those closed lips might speak if questioned. Fella and Sphinx are alone together in the desert. It is night and the stars are shining. Has he chosen the right hour? What does he seek to know? What does he hope to hear? Mr. Vetter has permitted me to enrich this book with an engraving from his picture. It tells its own tale, or rather it tells as much of its own tale as the artist chooses. Each must interpret for himself the secret of the Sphinx. Amelia B. Edwards. Westbury on Trim. Gloucestershire. December, 1877. End of Section Zero. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile. Section One. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter One. Cairo in the Great Pyramid. Part One. It is the traveler's lot to dine at many tabla dot in the course of many wanderings, but it seldom befalls him to make one of a more miscellaneous gathering than that which overfills the great dining room at Shepherd's Hotel in Cairo during the beginning and height of the regular Egyptian season. Here assemble daily some two to three hundred persons of all ranks, nationalities, and pursuits, half of whom are Anglo-Indians, homeward or outward bound, European residents, or visitors established in Cairo for the winter. The other half, if it may be taken for granted, are going up the Nile. So composite and incongruous is this body of Nile-goers, young and old, well-dressed and ill-dressed, learned and unlearned, that the newcomer's first impulse is to inquire from what motives so many persons of dissimilar taste and training can be led to embark upon an expedition which is, to say the least of it, very tedious, very costly, and of an altogether exceptional interest. His curiosity, however, is soon gratified. Before two days are over he knows everybody's name and everybody's business, distinguishes at first sight between a cook's tourist and an independent traveler, and has discovered that nine-tenths of those whom he is likely to meet up the river are English or American. The rest will be mostly German, with a sprinkling of Belgian and French. So far on block, but the details are more heterogeneous still. Here are invalids in search of health, artists in search of subjects, sportsmen keen upon crocodiles, statesmen out for a holiday, special correspondence alert for gossip, collectors on the scent of papyri and mummies, men of science with only scientific ends in view, and the usual surplus of idlers who travel for the mere love of travel or the satisfaction of a purposeless curiosity. Now, in a place like Shepherds where every fresh arrival has the honor of contributing for at least a few minutes to the general entertainment, the first appearance of El and the rider, tired, dusty, and considerably sunburnt, may well have given rise to some of the comments in usual circulation at those crowded tables. People ask each other most likely where these two wandering English women had come from, why they had not dressed for dinner, what brought them to Egypt, and if they were also going up the Nile, to which questions it would have been easy to give satisfactory answers. We came from Alexandria, having had a rough passage from Brindisi followed by forty-eight hours of quarantine. We had not dressed for dinner because, having driven on from the station in advance of dregelmen and luggage, we were but just in time to take seats with the rest. We intended, of course, to go up the Nile, and had anyone ventured to inquire in so many words what brought us to Egypt, we should have replied, stress of weather. For in simple truth we had drifted hither by accident, with no excuse of health or business or any serious object whatever, and had just taken refuge in Egypt as one might turn aside into the Burlington Arcade, or the Passage des Panoramas, to get out of the rain. And with good reason, having left home early in September for a few weeks sketching in central France, we had been pursued by the wettest of wet weather. Washed out of the hill-country, we fared no better in the plains. At Nims it poured for a month without stopping, debating at last whether it were better to take our wet umbrellas back at once to England, or push on further still in search of sunshine. The talk fell upon Algiers, Malta, Cairo, and Cairo carried it. Never was distant expedition entered upon with less premeditation. The thing was no sooner decided than we were gone. Nice, Genoa, Bologna, and Kona flitted by as in a dream, and Bedridden Hassan, when he awoke at the gates of Damascus, was scarcely more surprised than the writer of these pages, when she found herself on board the Simla and steaming out of the port of Brindisi. Here, then, without definite plans, outfit, or any kind of oriental experience, behold us arrived in Cairo the 29th of November, 1873, literally and most prosaically in search of fine weather. But what had memory to do with rains on land, or storms at sea, or the impatient hours of quarantine, or anything dismal or disagreeable, when one awoke at sunrise to see those gray green palms outside the window, solemnly bowing their plumed heads towards each other against a rose-colored dawn? It was dark last night, and I had no idea that my room overlooked an enchanted garden, far reaching and solitary, peopled with stately giants beneath whose tufted crowns hung rich clusters of maroon and amber dates. It was a still, warm morning. Grave, gray and black crows flew heavenly from tree to tree, or perched, culling meditatively upon the topmost branches. Yonder between the pillared stems rose the minaret of a very distant mosque, and here, where the garden was bounded by a high wall in a windowless house, I saw a veiled lady walking on the terraced roof in the midst of a cloud of pigeons. Nothing could be more simple than the scene and its accessories, nothing at the same time more eastern, strange and unreal. But in order thoroughly to enjoy an overwhelming, ineffacable first impression of Oriental out-of-doors life, one should begin in Cairo with a day in the native bazaars, neither buying nor sketching nor seeking information, but just taking in scene after scene with its manifold combinations of light and shade, color, costume and architectural detail. Every shopfront, every street corner, every turbaned group is a ready-made picture. The old Turk who sets up his cake-stall in the recess of a sculpture doorway, the donkey boy with his gaily comparisoned ass waiting for customers, the beggar asleep on the steps of the mosque, the veiled woman filling her water-jar at the public fountain. They all look as if they had been put there expressly to be painted. Nor is the background less picturesque than the figures. The houses are high and narrow. The upper stories project, and from these again jut windows of delicate turned latticework in old brown wood, like big bird cages. The street is rubed in overhead with long rafters and pieces of matting, through which a dusty sum-beam struggles here and there, casting patches of light upon the moving crowd. The unpaved thoroughfare, a mere lane full of ruts and watered profusely twice or thrice a day, is lined with little wooden shop-prints, like open cabinets full of shelves, where the merchants sit cross-legged in the midst of their goods looking out at the passer's-by and smoking in silence. Meanwhile the crowd ebbs and flows unceasingly, a noisy, changing, restless, party-colored tide, half European, half oriental, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages. Here are Syrian dregomans in baggy trousers and braided jackets, barefoot Egyptian fellaheen in ragged blue shirts and felt skull-caps, Greeks in absurdly stiff white tunics like walking pen-wiper's, Persians with high meter-like caps of dark woven stuff, swarthy bedowins in flowing garments, creamy white with chocolate stripes afoot wide, and head-shall of the same bound about the brow with the fillet of twisted camel's hair. Englishmen in palm-leafed hats and knicker-bockers dangling their long legs across almost invisible donkeys. Native women of the poorer class in black veils that leave only the eyes uncovered, and long-trailing garments of dark blue and black-striped cotton. Dervishes in patchwork coats, their matted hair streaming from under fantastic head-dresses, blue-black Abyssinians with incredibly slender, bowed legs like attenuated ebony balustrades. Armenian priests looking exactly like Portia as the doctor in long black gowns and high square caps, majestic ghosts of Algerine Arabs all in white, mounted janissaries with jingling sabers and gold embroidered jackets, merchants, beggars, soldiers, boatmen, laborers, workmen in every variety of costume and of every shade of complexion from fair to dark, from tawny to copper-color, from deepest bronze to bluest black. Now a water-carrier goes by, bending under the weight of his newly replenished goat-skin, the legs of which being tied up, the neck fitted with a brass cock and the hair left on, looks horribly bloated and lifelike. Now comes a sweet-meat vendor with a tray of that gummy compound known to English children as lumps of delight, and now an Egyptian lady on a large gray donkey led by a servant with a showy sabre at his side. The lady wears a rose-colored silk dress and white veil, besides a black silk outer garment, which, being cloak, hood, and veil all in one, fills out with the wind as she rides like a balloon. She sits astride her naked feet in their violet velvet slippers just resting on the stirrups. She takes care to display a plump brown arm laden with massive gold bracelets, and to judge by the way in which she uses a pair of liquid black eyes would not be sorry to let her face be seen also, nor is the steed less well-dressed than his mistress. His close-shaven legs and hindquarters are painted in blue and white zigzag, picked out with bands of pale yellow. His high-pombelled saddle is resplendent with velvet and embroidery, and his headgear is all tags, tassels, and fringes. Such a donkey as this is worth from sixty to a hundred pounds sterling. Next passes an open barouche full of laughing English women, or a grave provincial shake all in black riding a handsome bay Arab, demisang, or an Egyptian gentleman in European dress and Turkish fez driven by an English groom and an English faton. Before him, wand in hand, bare-legged, eager-eyed in Greek skullcap and gorgeous gold embroidered waistcoat and fluttering white tunic flies a native Saïse or running footman. No person of position drives in Cairo without one or two of these attendants. The Saïse, strong, light, and beautiful like John of Bologna's Mercury, are said to die young. The pace kills them. Next passes a lemonade cellar with his tin jar in one hand and his decanter and brass cups in the other, or an itinerant slipper-vendor with a bunch of red and yellow Morocco shoes dangling at the end of a long pole, or a London-built miniature browam containing two ladies in transparent Turkish veils, preceded by a Nubian outrider in semi-military livery, or perhaps a train of camels, ill-tempered and supercilious craning their scrantle necks above the crowd and laden with canvas bales scrawled over with Arabic addresses. End of Section 1 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile Section 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 1 Cairo and the Great Pyramid Part 2 But the Egyptian, Arab, and Turkish merchants, whether mingling in the general tide or sitting on their counters, are the most picturesque personages in all this busy scene. They wear ample turbans for the most part white, long vests of striped Syrian silk reaching to the feet, and an outer robe of braided cloth or cashmere. The vest is confined round the waist by a rich sash and the outer robe or gibba is generally of some beautiful degraded color, such as maize, mulberry, olive, peach, sea green, salmon pink, sienna brown, and the like. That these stately beings should vulgarly buy and sell instead of reposing all their lives on luxurious demands and being waited on by beautiful Circassians seems altogether contrary to the eternal fitness of things. Here, for instance, is a grand vizier in a gorgeous white and amber satin vest, who condescends to retail pipe bowls. Dull red clay pipe bowls of all sizes and prices. He sells nothing else and has not only a pile of them on the counter but a bin full at the back of his shop. They are made at Siaut in Upper Egypt and may be bought at the Algerian shops in London almost as cheaply as in Cairo. Another majestic pasha deals in brass and copper vessels. Drinking cups, basins, ewers, trays, incense burners, chafing dishes, and the like, some of which are exquisitely engraved with arabesque patterns or sentences from the poets. A third sells silk from the looms of Lebanon and gold and silver tissues from Damascus. Others again sell old arms, old porcelain, old embroideries, second-hand prayer carpets, and quaint little stools and cabinets of ebony inlaid with mother of pearl. Here, too, the tobacco merchant sits behind a huge cake of latakia as big as his own body, and the sponge merchant smokes his long shabuque in a bower of sponges. Most amusingly of all, however, are those bazaars in which each trade occupies its separate quarter. You pass through an old stone gateway or down a narrow turning and find yourself amid a colony of saddler stitching, hammering, punching, riveting. You walk up one alley and down another, between shop fronts hung round with tasseled headgear and humpback saddles of all qualities and colors. Here are ladies' saddles, military saddles, donkey saddles, and saddles for great officers of state. Saddles covered with red leather, with crimson and violet velvet, with maroon and gray and purple cloth. Saddles embroidered with gold and silver, studded with brass-headed nails, or trimmed with braid. Another turn or two, and you are in the Slipper Bazaar, walking down avenues of red and yellow Morocco slippers, the former of home manufacturer, the latter from Tunis. Here are slippers with pointed toes, turned-up toes, and toes as round and flat as horseshoes, walking slippers with thick soles and soft yellow slippers to be worn as inside socks, which have no soles at all. These absurd little scarlet butchers with tassels are for little boys, the brown Morocco shoes are for grooms, the velvet slippers embroidered with gold and beads and seed pearls are for wealthy harems, and are sold at prices varying from five shillings to five pounds the pair. The carpet bazaar is of considerable extent and consists of a network of alleys and counter-allies opening off to the right of the muski, which is the Regent Street of Cairo. The houses and most of these alleys are rich in antique lattice windows and sericinic doorways. One little square is tapestry all around with Persian and Syrian rugs, Damascus saddlebags, and Turkish prayer carpets. The merchants sit and smoke in the midst of their goods, and up in one corner an old kawaji or coffee-seller applies his humble trade. He has set up his little stove and hanging shelf beside the doorway of a dilapidated con, the walls of which are faced with arabesque panelings in old carved stone. It is one of the most picturesque bits in Cairo, the striped carpets of Tunis, the dim gray and blue or gray and red fabrics of Algiers, the shaggy rugs of Laodicea and Smyrna, the rich blues and greens and subdued reds of Turkey, and the wonderfully varied harmonious patterns of Persia have each their local habitation in the neighboring alleys. One is never tired of traversing these half-lighted avenues, all aglow with gorgeous color and peopled with figures that come and go like the actors in some Christmas piece of Oriental pageantry. In the Khan Khalil, the place of the gold and silversmiths' bazaar, there is found on the contrary scarcely any display of goods for sale. The alleys are marked that two persons can with difficulty walk in them abreast, and the shops tinier than ever are mere cupboards with about three feet of frontage. The back of each cupboard is fitted with tiers of little drawers and pigeonholes, and in front is a kind of matted stone step called a mastaba, which serves for seat and counter. The customer sits on the edge of the mastaba, the merchant squats cross-legged inside. This position he can without rising take out drawer after drawer, and thus the space between the two becomes piled with gold and silver ornaments. These differ from each other only in the metal, the patterns being identical, and they are sold by weight with a due margin for profit. In dealing with strangers who do not understand the Egyptian system of weights, silver articles are commonly weighed against rupees or five-frame pieces, and gold articles are sovereigns. The ornaments made in Cairo consist chiefly of chains and earrings, anklets, bangles, necklaces strung with coins, or tusks-shaped pendants, amulet cases of filigree or repoussé work, and penannular bracelets of rude execution but rich and ancient designs. As for the merchants, their civility and patience are inexhaustible. One may turn over their whole stock, try on all their bracelets, go away again and again without buying, and yet be always welcomed and dismissed with smiles. El and the riders spent many an hour practicing Arabic in the Khan Khalil, without is to be feared a corresponding degree of benefit to the merchants. There are many other special bazaars in Cairo as the sweet-meat bazaar, the hardware bazaar, the tobacco bazaar, the sword-mounters and coppersmiths' bazaars, the Moorish bazaar where spices and barberry goods are sold, and some extensive bazaars for the sale of English and French muslins and Manchester cotton goods, but these last are for the most part of inferior interest. Among certain fabrics manufactured in England, expressly for the eastern market, we observed a most hideous printed muslin representing small black devils capering over a yellow ground, and we learned that it was much in favor for children's stresses. However picturesque are far from being the only sites of Cairo. There are mosques in plenty, grand old Saracenic gates, ancient Coptic churches, the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, and within driving distance the tombs of the Caliphs, Heliopolis, the Pyramids, and the Spinks. To remember in what order the present traveller saw these things would now be impossible, for they lived in a dream, and we were at first bewildered to catalog their impressions very methodically. Some places they were for the present obliged to dismiss with only a passing glance, others had to be wholly deferred till their return to Cairo. Meanwhile our first business was to look at Dahabiyahs, and the looking at Dahabiyahs compelled us constantly to turn our steps and thoughts in the direction of Bulak, a desolate place by the river where some two or three hundred Nile boats lay moored for hire. Now most persons know something of the miseries of house hunting, but only those who have experienced them know how much keener are the miseries of Dahabiyah hunting. It is more bewildering and more fatiguing, and is beset by its own special and peculiar difficulties. The boats in the first place are built on the same plan, which is not the case with houses, and except as they run bigger or smaller, cleaner or dirtier, are as like each other as twin oysters. The same may be said of their captains with the same difference, for to a person who has been only a few days in Egypt, one black or copper-colored man is exactly like every other black or copper-colored man. Then each race or captain displays the certificates given to him by former travelers, and these certificates being apparently in active circulation, have a mysterious way of turning up again and again on board different boats and in the hands of different claimants. Nor is this all. Dahabiyahs are given to changing their places, which houses do not, so that the boat which lay yesterday alongside the eastern bank may be over at the western bank today, or hidden in the midst of a dozen others half a mile lower down the river. All this is very perplexing, yet it is as nothing compared with the state of confusion one gets into when attempting to weigh the advantages or disadvantages of boats with six cabins and boats with eight, boats provided with canteen and boats without, boats that can pass the cataract and boats that can't, boats that are only twice as dear as they ought to be, and boats with that defect five or six times multiplied. Their names again, Ghazal, Sarawah, Fustat, Dongala, unlike any names one has ever heard before, a fort is yet no kind of help to the country. Neither do the names of their captains, for they are all Muhammad's or Hassan's. Neither do their prices, for they vary from day to day according to the state of the market as shown by the returns of arrivals of the principal hotels. Add to all this the fact that no raiz speaks anything but Arabic, and that every word of inquiry or negotiation has to be filtered more or less inaccurately through a Drago-man, and then perhaps those who have not yet tried this measure of the chase may be able to form some notion of the weary, hopeless, puzzling work which lies before the Dahabiya Hunter in Cairo. End of Section 2 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, Section 3 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org A Thousand Miles Up the Nile By Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 1. Cairo and the Great Pyramid, Part 3 Thus it came to pass that, for the first ten days or so, some three or four hours had to be devoted every morning to the business of the boats, at the end of which time we were no nearer a conclusion than at first. The small boats were too small for either comfort or safety, especially in what Nile travelers call a big wind. The medium-sized boats, which lie under the suspicion of being used in the summer for the transport of cargo, were for the most part of doubtful cleanliness. The largest boats, which alone seemed unexceptionable, contained from eight to ten cabins, besides two saloons, and were obviously too large for a party consisting of only L, the writer, and a maid. And all were exorbitantly dear, encompassed by these manifold difficulties listening now to this and that person's opinion, deliberating, haggling, comparing, hesitating. We vibrated daily between Bullock and Cairo and led a miserable life. Meanwhile, however, we met some former acquaintances, made some new ones, and when not too tired or down-hearted saw what we could of the sights of Cairo, which helped a little to soften the asperities of our lot. One of our first excursions was, of course, to the pyramids, which lie within an hour and a half's easy drive from the hotel door. We started immediately after an early luncheon, followed an excellent road all the way, and were back in time for dinner at half-past six. But it must be understood that we did not go to see the pyramids, we went only to look at them. Later on, having meanwhile been up the Nile and back, and gone through months of training, we came again certainly with due leisure, but also with some practical understanding of the manifold phases through which the arts and architecture of Egypt had passed, since those far-off days of Cairops and Kefren. Then only we can be said to have seen the pyramids, until we arrived at that stage of our pilgrimage it will be well to defer everything like a detailed account of them or their surroundings. Of this first brief visit, enough, therefore, a brief record. The first glimpse that most travelers now get of the pyramids is from the window of the railway carriage as they come from Alexandria, and it is not impressive. It does not take one's breath away, for instance, like a first side of the Alps from the high level of the Neufchatel line, or the outline of the Acropolis at Athens as one first recognizes it from the sea. The well-known triangular forms look small and shadowy, and are too familiar to be in any way startling, and the same, I think, is true of every distant view of them, that is, of every view which is too distant to afford the means of scaling them against other objects. It is only in approaching them and observing how they grow with every foot of the road that one begins to feel they are not so familiar after all. But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long sand slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the great pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder. Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of the pyramids and only their forms that one had been acquainted all those years past. Of their surface, their color, their relative position, their number, to say nothing of their size, one had hitherto entertained no kind of definite plan. The most careful study of plans and measurements, the clearest photographs, the most elaborate descriptions, had done little or nothing after all to make one know the place beforehand. This undulating table-land of sand and rock pitted with open graves and mounds of shapeless masonry is wholly unlike the desert of our dreams. The pyramids of Keops and Kefren are bigger than we had expected. The pyramid of Mysarenis is smaller. Here, too, are nine pyramids instead of three. They are all entered in the plans and mentioned in the guidebooks, but somehow one is unprepared to find them there and cannot help looking upon them as intruders. These six extra pyramids are small and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, is little more than a big carn. Even the Great Pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected sense of unlikeness. We know and have known from childhood that it was stripped of its outer blocks some five hundred years ago to build Arab mosques and palaces. But the rugged, rock like aspect of that giant staircase takes us by surprise nevertheless. Nor does it look like a partial ruin, either. It looks as if it had been left unfinished and as if the workmen might be coming back tomorrow morning. The color again is a surprise. A few persons can be aware beforehand of the rich, tawny hue that Egyptian limestone assumes after ages exposed to the blaze of an Egyptian sky. Seen in certain lights, the pyramids look like piles of massy gold. Having but one hour and forty minutes to spend on the spot, we resolutely refused on this first occasion to be shown anything or told anything or to be taken anywhere except, indeed, for a few minutes to the brink of the sand hollow in which the sphinx lies cushion. We wish to give our whole attention and all the short time at our disposal to the Great Pyramid only. To gain some impression of the outer aspect and size of this enormous structure, to set our minds to something like an ending of its age, was enough, and more than enough for so brief a visit. For it is no easy task to realize, however imperfectly, the duration of six or seven thousand years, and the pyramid, which is supposed to have been some four thousand two hundred and odd years old at the time of the birth of Christ, is now in its seventh milleniary. Standing there close against the base of it, touching it, measuring her own weight against one of its lowest blocks, looking up all the stages of that vast, receding, rugged wall which leads upward like an alpine buttress and seems almost to touch the sky, the writer suddenly became aware that these remote dates had never presented themselves to her mind until this moment as anything but abstract numerals. Now for the first time they resolved themselves into something concrete, definite, real. They were no longer figures but years with their changes of season, their high and low niles, their seed-times and harvests. The consciousness of that moment will never, perhaps, quite wear away. It was as if one had been snatched up for an instant to some vast height overlooking the plains of time, and had seen the centuries mapped out beneath one's feet. To appreciate the size of the great pyramid is less difficult than to apprehend its age. No one who has walked the length of one side, climbed to the top, and learned the dimensions for Murray can fail to form a tolerably clear idea of its mere bulk. The measurements given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson are as follows. The length of each side, 732 feet. Perpendicular height, 480 feet 9 inches. Area, 535,824 square feet. That is to say it stands 115 feet 9 inches higher than the cross on the top of St. Paul's, and about 20 feet lower than Box Hill and Surrey, and if transported bodily to London it would a little more than cover the whole area of Lincoln's in-fields. These are sufficiently matter-of-fact statements and sufficiently intelligible, but like most calculations of the kind they diminish rather than do justice to the dignity of the subject. More impressive by far than the weightiest array of figures of the most striking comparisons was the shadow cast by the great pyramid as the sun went down. That mighty shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the stony platform of the desert and over full three-quarters of a mile to the green plain below. It divided the sunlight where it fell, just as its great original divided the sunlight in the upper air and it darkened the space it covered like an eclipse. It was not without a thrill of something approaching to all that one remembered how the self-same shadow had gone on registering, not only the height of the most stupendous nomen ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage day by day of more than sixty centuries of the world's history. It was still lengthening over the landscape as we went down the long sand slope and regained the carriage. Some six or eight arams in fluttering white garments had gone ahead to bid us alas good-bye. That we should have driven over from Cairo only to sit quietly down and look at the great pyramid had filled them with unfamed astonishment. With such energy and dispatch as the modern traveler uses we might have been to the top and seen the Temple of the Sphinx and done two or three of the principal tombs in the time. You come again, said they. Good Arabs show you everything. You see nothing this time. So when air long we drove away, well content nevertheless with the way in which our time had been spent. The pyramid Bedouins had been plentifully abused by travelers and guidebooks, but we found no reason to complain of them now or afterwards. They neither crowded round us nor followed us, nor impertuned us in any way. They are naturally vivacious and very talkative, yet the gentle fellows were dumb as mutes when they found we wished for silence. And they were satisfied with a very moderate back sheesh at parting. As a fitting sequel to this excursion we went, I think, next day to see the Mosque of Sultan Hasan which is one of those medieval structures said to have been built with the casing stones of the great pyramid. End of Section 3 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, Section 4 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 2 Cairo and the Mecca Pilgrimage, Part 1 The Mosque of Sultan Hasan, confessedly the most beautiful in Cairo, is also perhaps the most beautiful in the Muslim world. It was built at just that happy moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and early Christian edifices. The Mosques of a few centuries earlier, as for instance that of Tulum, which marks the first departure from the old Byzantine model, consisted of little more than a courtyard with colonnades leading to a hall supported on a forest of pillars. A little more than a century later, and the national style had already experienced the beginnings of that prolonged eclipse, which finally resulted in the bastard neo-Byzantine renaissance represented by the Mosque of Mehmet Ali. But the Mosque of Sultan Hasan, built 97 years before the taking of Constantinople, may justly be regarded as the highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after it had used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and before its newborn originality became modified by influences from beyond the Bosphorus. Its preeminence is due neither to the greatness of its dimensions nor to the splendor of its materials. It is neither so large as the great Mosque at Damascus nor so rich in costly marbles as Saint Sophia in Constantinople, but in design, proportion, and a certain lofty grace impossible to describe, it surpasses these, and every other Mosque, whether original or adapted, with which the writer is acquainted. The whole structure is purely national. Every line and curve in it, and every inch of detail, is in the best style of the period of the Arabian school. And above it it was designed expressly for its present purpose. The two famous Mosques of Damascus and Constantinople having, on the contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidence of adaptation. In Saint Sophia the space once occupied by the figure of the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the mosaic work of the apse, filled in with gold tessere of later date, while the magnificent gates of the great Mosque at Damascus are decorated, among other Christian emblems, with the sacramental chalice. But the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, built by N. Nasir Hassan in the high and palmy days of the Memluk rule, is marred by no discrepancies. For a Mosque it was designed, and a Mosque it remains. Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin. A number of small streets having lately been demolished in this quarter the approach to the Mosque lies across a desolate open space littered with debris, but destined to be laid out as a public square. With this desirable end in view some half-dozen workmen were lazily loading as many camels with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting rubbish. If they persevere and the Minister of Public Works continues to pay their wages with due punctuality, the ground will perhaps get cleared in eight or ten years' time. Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great steps, which were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, we observed a long and apparently fast widening fissure reaching nearly from the top to the bottom of the main wall of the building, close against the minaret. It looked like just such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake and being still new to the east, we wondered the government had not set to work to mend it. We had yet to learn that nothing is ever mended in Cairo. Here, as in Constantinople, new buildings spring up apace, but the old, no matter how venerable, are allowed to mould or away inch by inch till nothing remains but a heap of ruins. Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some more steps and along a gloomy corridor we came to the great court. Before entering which, however, we had to take off our boots and put on slippers brought for the purpose. The first side of this court is an architectural surprise. It is like nothing one has seen before and its beauty equals its novelty. Imagine an immense marble quadrangle open to the sky and enclosed within lofty walls with, at each side, a vast recess formed in by a single arch. The quadrangle is more than one hundred feet square and the walls are more than one hundred feet high. Each recess forms a spacious hall for rest and prayer and all are matted, but that at the eastern end is wider and considerably deeper than the other three and the noble arch that encloses it like the proscenium of a splendid stage measures, according to Ferguson, sixty-nine feet five inches in the span. It looks much larger. This principal hall, the floor of which is raised one step at the upper end, measures ninety feet in length and ninety in height. The dais is covered with prayer rugs and contains the holy niche and the pulpit of the preacher. We observed that those who came up here came only to pray. Having prayed they either went away or turned aside into one of the other recesses to rest. There was a charming fountain in the court with a dome roof as light and fragile looking as a big bubble, at which each worshiper performed his ablutions on coming in. This done he left his slippers on the matting and trod the carpeted dais barefoot. This was the first time we had seen Muslims at prayer and we could not but be impressed by their profound and unaffected devotion. Some lay prostrate, their foreheads touching the ground, others were kneeling, others bowing in the prescribed attitudes of prayer. So absorbed were they that not even our unhallowed presence seemed to disturb them. We did not then know that the pious Muslim is as devout out of the mosque as in it or that it is his habit to pray when the appointed hours come round no matter where he may be or how occupied. We soon became so familiar, however, with this obvious trait of Muhammad in life, that it seemed quite a matter of course that the camel-driver should dismount and lay his forehead in the dust by the roadside or the merchant spread his prayer carpet on the narrow mastaba of his little shop in the public bazaar or the boatman prostrate himself with his face to the east, as the sun went down behind the hills of the Libyan desert. While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the intricate arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custodian came up with a big key and invited us to visit the tomb of the founder. So we followed him into an enormous vaulted hall a hundred feet square in the center of which stood a plain, railed-off tomb with an empty iron-bound coffer at the foot. We afterwards learned that for five hundred years that is to say ever since the death and burial of Sultan Hassan this coffer had contained a fine copy of the Quran traditionally said to have been written by Sultan Hassan's own hand but that the kadeev who is collecting choice and antique arabic manuscripts had only the other day sent an order for its removal. Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the proportions of this noble sepulchre hall the walls of which are covered with tracery and low relief encrusted with discs and tessere of turquoise colored porcelain. While high up in order to lead off the vaulting of the roof the corners are rounded by means of recessed clusters of exquisite arabesque woodwork, like pendants to lactites. But the tessere are fast falling out and most of their places are vacant and the beautiful woodwork hangs in fragments, tattered and cobwebbed like time-warm banners which the first touch of a brush would bring down. Going back again from the tomb to the courtyard we everywhere observed traces of the same dilapidation. The fountain, once a miracle of Saracenic ornament, was fast going to destruction. The rich marbles of its basement were covered, its stuccoed cupola was flaking off piece mail, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like wood tracery shredding away by inches. Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with pretty confidence on the brink of the basin, and having splashed and drunk and preened its feathers like a true believer at his ablutions flew to the top of the cupola and sang deliciously. All else was profoundly still. Large spaces of light and shadow divided the quadrangle. The sky showed overhead as a square opening of burning solid blue, while here and there reclining, preying or quietly occupied, a number of turban figures were picturesquely scattered over the matted floors of the open halls round. Yonder sat a tailor cross-legged making a waistcoat. Near him stretched on his face at full length sprawled a basket-maker with his half-woven basket and bundle of rushes beside him. And here, close against the main entrance lay a blind man in his dog, the master asleep the dog keeping watch. It was, as I have said, our first mosque, and I well remember the surprise with which I saw that tailor sewing on his buttons and the sleepers lying about in the shade. We did not then know that a Mohammedine mosque is as much a place of rest and refuge as of prayer, or that the houseless era may take shelter there night or day as freely as the birds may build their nests in the cornice, or the blind man's dog may share the cool shade with his sleeping master. From the mosque of this memlook sovereign it is but a few minutes uphill drive to the mosque of Mohammed Ali, by whose orders the last of that royal race were massacred just sixty-four years ago. This mosque, built within the precincts of the citadel on a spur of the Makkadam hills overlooking the city, is the most conspicuous object in Cairo. Its attenuated minarets and clustered domes show from every point of view for miles around and remain longer in sight as one leaves or returns to Cairo than any other landmark. It is a spacious, costly, gaudy, commonplace building with nothing really beautiful about it except the great marble courtyard and fountain. The inside, which is entirely built of Oriental alabaster is carpeted with magnificent turkey carpets and hung with innumerable cut-glass chandeliers so that it looks like a huge vulgar drawing-room from which the furniture has been cleared out for dancing. The view from the outer platform is, however, magnificent. We saw it on a hazy day and could not therefore distinguish the point of the delta, which ought to have been visible on the north. But we could plainly see as far southward as the pyramids of Sakara and trace the windings of the Nile for many miles across the plain. The pyramids of Giza on their dais of desert rock about twelve miles off looked as they always do look from a distance small and unimpressive but the great alluvial valley dotted over with mud villages and intersected by canals and tracts of palm forest. The shining rivers speckled with sails and the wonderful city all flat roofs, cupolas and minarets spread out like an intricate model at one's feet, were full of interest and absorbed our whole attention. Looking down upon it from this elevation it is easy to believe that Cairo contains four hundred mosques as it is to stand on the brow of the Pincio and believe in the three hundred and sixty-five churches of modern Rome. As we came away they showed us the place in which the Memluk nobles, four hundred and seventy in number, were shot down like mad dogs in a trap that fatal first of March, A.D. 1811. We saw the upper gate which was shut behind them as they came out from the presence of the Pasha and the lower gate which was shut before them to prevent their egress. The walls of the narrow roadway in which the slaughter was done are said to be pitted with bullet marks but we would not look for them. I have already said that I do not very distinctly remember the order of sightseeing in Cairo. For the reason that we saw some places before we went up the river some after we came back and some as for instance the museum at Bulac both before and after and indeed as often as possible. But I am at least quite certain that we witnessed a performance of howling dervishes and the departure of the caravan for Mecca before starting. End of section four. A thousand miles up the Nile section five. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter Two Cairo and the Mecca Pilgrimage Part Two Of all the things that people do by way of pleasure the pursuit of a procession is surely one of the reason. They generally go a long way to see it. They wait a weary time. It is always late and when at length it does come it is over in a few minutes. The present pageant fulfilled all these conditions in a superlative degree. We breakfasted uncomfortably early started soon after half past seven and had taken up our position outside the bob and nasser on the way to the desert by half past eight. Here we sat for nearly three hours, exposed to clouds of dust and a burning sun, with nothing to do but watch the crowd and wait patiently. All Shepherd's Hotel was there and every stranger in Cairo and we all had smart open carriages drawn by miserable screws and driven by bare-legged Arabs. These Arabs, by the way are excellent whips and the screws get along wonderfully, but it seems odd at first and not a little humiliating to be whirled along behind a fisherman whose only livery consists of a rag of dirty white turban, a scant tunic just reaching to his knees, and the top boots with which nature has provided him. Here outside the walls the crowd increased momentarily. The place was like a fair with provision stalls, swings, storytellers, serpent charmers, cake sellers, sweet-meat sellers, sellers of sherbet, water, lemonade, sugared nuts, fresh dates, hard-boiled fruits, oranges, and sliced watermelon. Veiled women carrying little bronze cupids of children astride upon the right shoulder swore the Egyptians, coal-black Abyssinians, Arabs and Nubians of every shade from golden brown to chocolate. Fellas, dervices, donky boys, street urchins, and beggars with every imaginable deformity came and went, squeezed themselves in and out among the carriages, lined the road on each side of the great towered gateway, swarmed on the top of every wall and fitted the air with laughter, a babble of dialects, and those odors of Arabi that are inseparable from an eastern crowd. A harmless, unsabery, good-humored, inoffensive throng, one glance at which was enough to put to flight all one's preconceived notions about oriental gravity of demeanor. For the truth is that gravity is by no means an oriental characteristic. He is prominent at his devotions, and he is a model of religious abstraction, bargain with him for a carpet, and he is as impenetrable as a judge. But see him in his hours of relaxation or on the occasion of a public holiday, and he is as garulous and full of laughter as a big child. Like a child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake of noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fireworks as the height of human felicity. Now swings and fireworks are Arabic for bread and circuses, and our plebe's passion for them is insatiable. He not only indulges in them upon every occasion of public rejoicing, but calls in their aid to celebrate the most solemn festivals of his religion. It so happened that we afterwards came in the way of several Mohammedan festivals, both in Egypt and Syria, and we invariably found the swings at work all day and the fireworks going off every evening. Today the swings outside the Babel Nasser were never idle. Here were creaking Russian swings hung with little painted chariots for the children, and plain rope swings, some of them as high as Hammond's gallows for the men. For my own part I know no sight much more comic and incongruous than the serene enjoyment with which a bearded, turbaned, middle-aged Egyptian squats upon his heels on the tiny wooden seat holding onto the side ropes for dear life goes careering up forty feet high into the air at every turn. At a little before mid-day when the heat and glare were becoming intolerable, the swings suddenly ceased going. The crowds surged in the direction of the gate and a distant drumming announced the approach of the procession. First came a string of baggage camels laden with tent furniture, then some two hundred pilgrims on foot, chanting passages on the Quran, then a regiment of Egyptian infantry, the men in coarse white linen uniform consisting of coat, baggy trousers and gaiters, with cross-belts and cartouche-boxes of plain black leather, and the red fez or tabouche on the head. Next after these came more pilgrims followed by a body of dervishes carrying green banners embroidered with Arabic sentences in white and yellow, then a native cavalry regiment headed by a general and four kernels in magnificent gold embroidery and preceded by an excellent military band, then another band and a second regiment of infantry, then more kernels followed by a regiment of lancers mounted on capital grey horses and carrying lances topped with small red and green penance. After these had gone by there was a long stoppage and then with endless breaks and interruptions came a straggling, irregular crowd of pilgrims, roughly of the Fela class beating small Darabukkas or native drums. Those about us estimated their number at two thousand and now their guttural chorus audible long before they arrived in sight came the howling dervishes a ragged, wild-looking, ruffianly set, rolling their heads from side to side and keeping up a hoarse, incessant cry of Allah, Allah, Allah. Of these there may have been a couple of hundred the shakes of the principal orders of dervishes came in necks superbly dressed in robes of brilliant colors embroidered with gold and mounted on magnificent Arabs. Finest of all in a green turban in Scarlet Mantle rode Shake of the Hassanin who was a descendant of the prophet but the most important the Shake al-Baqri who was a sort of Egyptian archbishop of Canterbury and head of all the dervishes came last riding a white Arab with gold embroidered housings. He was a placid looking old man and he wore a violet robe and an enormous red and green turban. This very reverend personage was closely followed by the chief of the carpet-makers guild a handsome man sitting sideways on a camel. Then came another break in the procession an eager pause a gathering murmur and then writing a gaunt dromedary at a rapid trot his fat side shaking in his head rolling in a stupid drunken way at every step appeared a bloated half-naked selenus with long fuzzy black locks and a triple chin and no other clothing than a pair of short white drawers and red slippers. A shiver of delight ran through the crowd at the sight of this holy man the famous Shake of the Camel Shake al-Gamal the great good priest the idol of the people. We afterwards learned that this was his 20th pilgrimage and that he was supposed to fast, roll his head and wear nothing but this pair of loose drawers all the way to and from Mecca. But the crowning excitement was yet to come and the rapture with which the crowd had greeted the Shake al-Gamal was as nothing compared with their ecstasy when the mamal, preceded by another group of mounted officers and borne by a gigantic camel was seen coming through the gateway. The women held up their children and swarmed up the scaffolding of the swings and behind the carriages. They screamed, they shouted, they waved handkerchiefs and turbans, they were beside themselves with excitement. Meanwhile the camel, as if conscious of the dignity of his position in the splendor of his trappings came on slowly and pondrously with his nose in the air and passed close before our horses' heads. We could not possibly have had a better view of the mamal which is nothing but a sort of cage or pagoda of gilded tracery very richly decorated. In the days of the mamluks the mamal represented the litter of the sultan and went empty like a royal carriage at a public funeral. But we were told that it now carried the tribute carpet sent annually by the carpet-makers of Cairo to the tomb of the prophet. This closed the procession. As the camel passed the crowd surged in and everything like order was at an end. And it is all made at once for the gate, so meeting the full tide of the outpouring crowd and causing unimaginable confusion. Some stuck in the sand half way, our own among the number, and all got into an inextricable block in the narrow part just outside the gate. Hereupon the drivers abused each other and the crowd got impatient and some Europeans got pelted. Coming back we met two or three more regiments. Fair average specimens and creditably disciplined. They rode better than they marched which was to be expected. The uniform is the same for cavalry and infantry throughout the service. The only difference being that the former wear short black riding boots and the latter suave gators of white linen. They are officered up to a certain point by Egyptians, but the commanding officers and the staff, among whom are enough colonels and military regiment, are chiefly Europeans and Americans. It had seemed while the procession was passing that the proportion of pilgrims was absurdly small when compared with the display of military, but this which is called the departure of the caravan is in truth only the procession of the sacred carpet from Cairo to the camp outside the walls and the troops are present merely as part of the pageant. The true departure takes place two days later. The pilgrims then muster their great numbers, but the soldiery is reduced to a small escort. It was said that 7,000 souls went out this year from Cairo and its neighborhood. The procession took place on Thursday the 21st of the Mohammedan month of Shawwal, which was our 11th of December. The next day, Friday being the Mohammedan Sabbath, we went to the convent of the howling dervishes which lies beyond the walls in a quiet nook between the riverside and its old Cairo. We arrived a little after two and passing through a courtyard shaded by a great sycamore were ushered into a large square whitewashed hall with a dome roof and a neatly matted floor. The place in its arrangements resembled none of the mosques that we had yet seen. There was indeed nothing to arrange no pulpit, no holy niche, no lamps, no prayer carpets, nothing but a row of cane-bottomed chairs at one end, some of which were already occupied by certain of our fellow guests at Shepherd's Hotel. A party of some forty or fifty wild-looking dervishes were squatting in a circle at the opposite side of the hall, their outer kufdans and queer pyramidal hats lying in heat close by. Being accommodated with chairs among the other spectators, we waited for whatever might happen. More dervishes and more English time to time, the new dervishes took off their caps and sat down among the rest, laughing and talking together at their ease. The English sat in a row, shy, uncomfortable and silent, wondering whether they ought to behave as if they were in church and mortally ashamed of their feet. For we had all been obliged to take off or cover our boots before going in, and those who had forgotten to bring slippers had their feet tied up in pocket-hanker-chips. At last, when the number of dervishes had increased to about seventy and everyone was tired of waiting, eight musicians came in, two trumpets, two lutes, a coconut fiddle, a tambourine and two drums. Then the dervishes, some of whom were old and white-haired and some mere boys, formed themselves into a great circle, shoulder to shoulder, the band struck up a plaintive discordant air and a grave middle-aged man placing himself in the center of the ring and inclining his head at each repetition began to recite the name of Allah. End of Section 5 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile Section 6 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 2 The Brewery Row in the Mecca Pilgrimage Part 3 Softly at first and one by one the dervishes took up the chant Allah Allah Allah Their heads and their voices rose and fell in unison. The dome above gave back a hallow echo. There was something strange and solemn in the ceremony Presently, however, the trumpets braed louder, the voices grew harser, heads bowed lower. The name of Allah rang out faster and faster, fiercer and fiercer. The leader, himself cool and collected, began sensibly accelerating the time of the chorus, and it became evident that the performers were possessed by a growing frenzy. Soon the whole circle was madly rocking to and fro, the voices rose to a hoarse scream, and only the trumpets were audible above the din. Now and then a dervish would spring up convulsively some three or four feet above the heads of the others, but for the most part they stood firmly rooted to one spot, now bowing their heads almost to their feet, now flinging themselves so violently back that we, standing behind, could see their faces foreshortened upside down, and this with such incredible rapidity that their long hair had scarcely time either to rise or fall, but remained as if suspended in mid-air. Still the frenzy pace quickened. Some shrieked, some groaned, some unable to support themselves any longer, were held up in their places by the bystanders. All were mad for the time being. Our own heads seemed to be going round at last and more than one of the ladies present looked longingly towards the door. It was in truth a horrible sight and needed only darkness and torchlight to be quite diabolical. At length, just as the fury was at its height and the very buildings seemed to be rocking to and fro above our heads, one poor wretch staggered out of the circle and fell writhing and shrieking close against our feet. At the same moment the leader clapped his hands, the performers, panting and exhausted, dropped into a sitting posture, and the first seeker, as it is called, came abruptly to an end. Some few, however, could not stop immediately, but kept on swaying and muttering to themselves, while the one in the fit, having ceased to shriek, lay stiff and straight, apparently, in a state of coma. There was a murmur of relief and a simultaneous rising among the spectators. It was announced that another seeker, with the reinforcement of fresh services, would begin soon, but the Europeans had had enough of it, and few remained for the second performance. Going out we paused beside the poor fellow on the floor and asked if nothing could be done for him. He is struck by Muhammad, said gravely an Egyptian official who was standing by. At that moment the leader came over, knelt down beside him, touched him lightly on the head and breast, and whispered something in his ear. The man was then quite rigid and white as death. We waited, however, and after a few more minutes saw him struggle back into a dazed, half-conscious state when he was helped to his feet and led away by his friends. The courtyard as we came out was full of dervishes sitting on cane benches in the shade and sipping coffee. The green leaves rustled overhead with glimpses of intensely blue sky between, and brilliant patches of sunshine flickered down upon groups of wild-looking, half-savage figures in party-colored garments. It was one of those ready-made subjects that the sketcher passes by with a sigh, but which live in his memory forever. From hence, being within a few minutes drive of old Cairo, we went on as far as the Mosque of Emmer, an uninteresting ruin standing alone among the rubbish mounds of the first Muhammadan capital of Egypt. It is constructed on the plan of a single quadrangle two hundred and twenty-five feet square, surrounded by a covered colonnade one range of pillars in depth on the west, which is the side of the entrance, four on the north, three on the south, and six on the east, which is the place of prayer, and contains three holy niches and a pulpit. The columns two hundred and forty-five in number have been brought from earlier Roman and Byzantine buildings. They are of various marbles and have all kinds of capitals. Some being originally too short have been stilted on disproportionately high bases, and in one instance the necessary height has been obtained by adding a second capital on the top of the first. We observed one column of that rare black-and-white speckled marble of which there is a specimen in the pulpit of St. Mark's in Venice, and one of the holy niches contains some fragments of Byzantine mosaics. But the whole building seems to have been put together in a barbarous way, and would appear to owe its present state of dilapidation more to bad workmanship than to time. Many of the pillars, especially on the western side, are fallen and broken. The octagonal fountain in the center is a ruthless ruin, and the little minaret at the southeast corner is no longer safe. Apart, however, from its poverty of design and detail, the Mosque of Amur is interesting as a point of departure in the history of Saracenic architecture. It was built by Amur ebn al-As, the Arab conqueror of Egypt in the twenty-first year of the Hegera, A.D. 642, just ten years after the death of Muhammad, and it is the earliest Saracenic edifice in Egypt. We were glad, therefore, to have seen it for this reason, if for no other. But it is a barren, dreary place, and the glare reflected from all sides of the quadrangle was so intense that we were thankful to get away again into the narrow streets beside the river. Here we presently fell in with a wedding procession consisting of a crowd of men, a band, and some three or four hired carriages full of veiled women, one of whom was pointed out as the bride. The bridegroom walked in the midst of the men, who seemed to be teasing him, drumming round him, and opposing his progress, while high above the laughter, the shouting, the jingle of tambourines, and the drumming of derabucas, was heard the shrill squeal of some instrument like a bagpipe. It was a brilliant afternoon, and we ended our day's work, I remember, with a drive on the Shabra Road and a glance at the gardens of the Kediv Summer Palace. The Shabra Road is the Champs Elysees of Cairo, and is thronged every day from four to half past six. Here little sheds of roadside cafes alternate with smart modern villas. Ragged Felaen on jaded donkeys trot side by side with elegant attachés on high-stepping Arabs, while tourists in hired carriages, Jew bankers in unexceptionable fatins, veiled harems in London-built brohems, Italian shopkeepers in preposterously fashionable toilettes, grave shakes on magnificent Cairo asses, officers in frogged and braided frocks, and English girls in tall hats and close-fitting habits, followed by the inevitable little solemn-looking English groom, pass and repass, proceed and follow each other in one changing, restless, heterogeneous stream, the like of which is to be seen in no other capital in the world. The sons of the Kediv drive here daily, always in separate carriages and preceded by four sayeses and four guards. They are of all ages and sizes from the hereditary prince, a pale, gentlemanly-looking young man of four or five and twenty, down to one tiny, imperious atom of about six, who is dressed like a little man and is constantly leaning out of his carriage window and shrilly abusing his coachman. Apart, however, from those who frequent it, the Shub Your Road is really a fine drive. Broad level raised some six or eight feet above the cultivated plain, closely planted on both sides with acacia and sycamore fig trees, and reaching straight away for four miles out of Cairo, counting from the railway terminus to the summer palace. The carriageway is about as wide as the road across Hyde Park, which connects Bayswater with Kensington, and towards the Shubra End it runs closely beside the Nile. Many of the sycamores are of great size and quite patriarchal girth. Their branches meet overhead nearly all the way, weaving a delicious shade and making a cool tunnel of the long perspective. We did not stay long in the Kediv's Gardens, for it was already getting late when we reached the gates. But we went far enough to see that they were tolerably well kept, not over-formal, and laid out with a view to masses of foliage, shady paths, and spaces of turf inlaid with flower beds, after the style of the famous Sarthim and Moser Gardens at Botzen in the Tyrol. Here are saunt trees, acacia, nylotisha, of unusual size, powdered all over with little feathery tufts of yellow blossom, orange and lemon trees in abundance, heaps of little green limes, bananas bearing heavy, pendant bunches of ripe fruit, winding thickets of pomegranates, oleanders, and salviers, and great beds and banks and trellised walks of roses. Among these, however, I observed none of the rarer varieties. As for the poinsettia, it grows in Egypt to a height of twenty feet, and bears blossoms of such size and colour as we in England can form no idea of. We saw large trees of it, both here and at Alexandria, that seemed as if bending beneath a mantle of crimson stars, some of which cannot have measured less than twenty-two inches in diameter. A large Italian fountain in a Rococo style is the great sight of the place. We caught a glimpse of it through the trees and surprised the gardener who was showing us over by declining to inspect it more nearly. He could not understand why we preferred to give our time to the shrubs and flower beds. Driving back presently towards Cairo with a big handful of roses apiece, we saw the sun going down in an ariole of fleecy pink and golden clouds, the nile flowing by like a stream of liquid light, and a little fleet of sailing boats going up to Bulac before a puff of north wind that had sprung up as the sun neared the horizon. That puff of north wind, those gliding sails had a keen interest for us now and touched us nearly, because I have delayed this momentous revelation till the last moment, because we were to start tomorrow. And this is why I have been able, in the midst of so much that was new and bewildering, to remember quite circumstantially the dates, and all the events connected with these last two days. They were to be our last two days in Cairo, and tomorrow morning, Saturday the 13th of December, we were to go on board a certain Dahabian now lying off the Iron Bridge at Bulac, therein to begin that strange aquatic life to which we had been looking forward with so many hopes and fears, and towards which we had been steering through so many preliminary difficulties. But the difficulties were now all over, and everything was settled, though not in the way we had at first intended. For in place of a small boat we had secured one of the largest on the river, and instead of going alone we had decided to throw our lot in with that of three other travelers. One of these three was already known to the rider. The other two friends of the first were on their way out from Europe and were not expected in Cairo for another week. We knew nothing of them but their names. Meanwhile, El and the rider assuming sole possession of the Dahabia were about to start ten days in advance, it being their intention to push on as far as Rhoda, the ultimate point then reached by the Nile Railway, and there to await the arrival of the rest of the party. Now Rhoda, more correctly Rhoda, is just one hundred and eighty miles south of Cairo, and we calculated upon seeing the Sakhar pyramids, the Tura quarries, the tombs of Benny Hassan, and the famous grotto of the Colossus on the sledge before our fellow travelers should be due. It depends on the wind, you know, said our Drago man with a lugubrious smile. We knew that it depended on the wind, but what then? In Egypt the wind is supposed always to blow from the north at this time of the year, and we had a good ten days at our disposal. The observation was clearly irrelevant. End of Section Six A Thousand Miles Up the Nile Section Seven This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter Three Cairo to Bedrishane, Part One A rapid raid into some of the nearest shops for things remembered at the last moment, a breathless gathering up of innumerable parcels, a few hurried farewells on the steps of the hotel, and a way we rattle as fast as a pair of raw-boned greys can carry us. For this morning every moment is of value. We are already late, we expect visitors to luncheon on board at midday, and we are to weigh anchor at two p.m. Hence our anxiety to reach the dock before the bridge is opened that we may drive across to the western bank against which our Dahabie lies moored. Hence also our mortification when we arrive just in time to see the bridge swing apart and the first tall mast glide through. Presently, however, when those on the lookout have observed our signals of distress, a smart-looking sandal or jolly-boat decked with gay rugs and cushions, manned by five smiling Arabs and flying a bright little new Union jack comes swiftly threading her way in and out among the lumbering barges now crowding through the bridge. In a few more moments we are afloat, for this is our sandal and these are five of our crew, and of the three Dahabie's moored over yonder in the shade of the palms, the biggest by far and the trimest is our dear memorable filet. Close behind the filet lies the bagstones, a neat little Dahabie in the occupation of two English ladies who chanced to cross with us in the Simla from Brindisi and of whom we have seen so much ever since that we regard them by this time as quite old friends in a strange land. I will call them the M.B.'s. The other boat, lying off a few yards ahead, carries the tricolor and is chartered by a party of French gentlemen. All three are to sail today. And now we are on board and have shaken hands with the captain and are as busy as B.'s, for there are cabins to put in order, flowers to arrange, and a hundred little things to be seen to before the guests arrive. It is wonderful, however, what a few books and roses, an open piano, and a sketch or two will do. In a few minutes the comfortless hired look has vanished and long enough before the first comers are announced the filet wears an aspect as cozy and home-like as if she had been occupied for a month. As for the luncheon it certainly surprised the givers of the guests as much as it must have surprised their guests. Being, no doubt, a prearranged display of professional pride on the part of Drago Man and Cook, it was more like an excessive Christmas dinner than a modest midday meal. We sat through it unflinchingly, however, for about an hour and three-quarters when a startling discharge of firearms sent us all running upon deck and created a wholesome diversion in our favor. It was the French boat signaling sail and going off triumphantly. I fear that we of the bagstones in Filet, being mere mortals and English women, could not help feeling just a little spiteful when we found the tricolor had started first, but then it was a consolation to know that the Frenchmen were going only to Aswan. Such is the Esprit du Nil. The people in Dahabia's despise Cook's tourists, those who are bound for the second cataract looked down with lofty compassion for those whose ambition extends only to the first, and travelers who engage their boat by the month hold their heads a trifle higher than those who contract for the trip. We, who were going as far as we liked and for as long as we liked, could afford to be magnanimous. So we forgave the Frenchmen, went down again to the saloon, and had coffee and music. It was nearly three o'clock when our Cairo visitors wished us bon voyage and goodbye. Then the M.B.s, who with their nephew had been of the party, went back to their own boat, and both captains prepared to sail at a given signal, for the M.B.s had entered into a solemn convention to start with us, more with us, and keep with us, if practicable, all the way up the river. It is pleasant now to remember that this social compact, instead of falling through as such compacts are want to do, was quite literally carried out as far as Abu Simbel, is to say, during a period of seven weeks hard going, and for a distance of upwards of eight hundred miles. At last all is ready. The awning that has all day rooved in the upper deck is taken down. The captain stands at the head of the steps. The steersman is at the helm. The drago man has loaded his musket. Is the bag stones ready? We wave a handkerchief of inquiry. The signal is answered. The mooring robes are left behind. The sailors pull the boat off from the bank. Bang go the guns, six from the filet, and six from the bag stones, and away we go, our huge sail filling up as it takes the wind. Happy are the nile travelers who start thus with a fair breeze on a brilliant afternoon. The good boat cleaves her way swiftly and steadily. Waterside palaces and gardens glide by, and are left behind. The domes and minarets of Cairo drop quickly out of sight. The mosque of the citadel and the ruined fort that looks down upon it from the mountain ridge above diminish in the distance. The pyramids stand up sharp and clear. We sit on the high supper deck which is furnished with lounge chairs, tables, and foreign rugs, like a drawing room in the open air, and enjoy the prospect at our ease. The valley is wide here and the banks are flat, showing a steep verge of crumbling alluvial mud next the river. Long belts of palm groves, tracks of young corn only an inch or two above the surface, and clusters of mud huts relieved now and then by a little whitewashed cupola or a stumpy minaret. Succeed each other on both sides of the river while the horizon is bounded to right and left by long ranges of yellow limestone mountains in the folds of which sleep inexpressibly tender shadows of pale violet and blue. Thus the miles glide away and by we approach Turra, a large new-looking mud village and the first of any extent that we have yet seen. Some of the houses are whitewashed, a few have glass windows, and many seem to be unfinished. A space of white, stony glaring plains separates the village from the quarried mountains beyond, the flanks of which show all gashed and hewn away. One great cliff seems to have been cut sheer off for a distance of perhaps a mile. Where the cuttings are fresh the limestone comes out dazzling white and the long slopes of debris heaped up against the foot of the cliffs glisten like snowdrifts in the sun. Yet the outer surface of the mountains is orange tawny like the pyramids. As for the piles of rough-hewn blocks that lie ranged along the bank ready for transport they look like salt rather than stone. Here lies more to whole fleet of cargo carts laden and lading, and along the tramway that extends from the river side to the quarries we see long trains of mule carts coming and going. For all the new buildings in Cairo the Kediv's palaces, the public offices, the smart modern villas, the glaring new streets, the theaters and foot pavements and cafes all come from these mountains just as the pyramids did more than six thousand years ago. There are hieroglyphed sculptured grottoes to be seen in the most ancient part of the quarries. If one were inclined to stop for them at this early stage of the journey and Champollion tells of two magnificent outlines done in red ink upon the living rock by some master hand of pharaonic tines the cutting of which was never even begun. A substantial new barrack and an esplanade planted with sycamore figs bring the straggling village to an end. End of section 7 A thousand miles up the Nile section 8 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A thousand miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 3 Cairo to Bedrishane Part 2 And now as the afternoon wanes we draw near to a dense, widespread spreading forest of stately-date palms on the western bank, knowing that beyond them, though unseen, lie the mounds of Memphis and all the wonders of Sakara. Then the sun goes down behind the Libyan hills, and the palms stand out black and bronzed against a golden sky, and the pyramids left far behind look gray and ghostly in the distance. Presently when it is quite dusk and the stars are out we mour for the night at Bedrishane, the nearest point for visiting Sakara. There is a railway station here and also a considerable village, both lying back about half a mile from the river, and the distance from Cairo, which is reckoned at 15 miles by the line, is probably about 18 by water. Such was our first day on the Nile, and perhaps before going farther on our way I ought to describe the filet and introduce Rais Hassan and his crew. A Dahabia, at the first glance, is more like a civic or an Oxford University barge than anything in the shape of a boat with which we in England are familiar. It is shallow and flat bottomed, and is adapted for either sailing or rowing. It carries two masts, a big one near the prow, and a smaller one at the stern. The cabins are on deck, and occupy the after part of the vessel, and on the roof of the cabins forms deck or open-air drawing room already mentioned. This upper deck is reached from the lower deck by two little flights of steps, and is the exclusive territory of the passengers. The lower deck is the territory of the crew. A Dahabia is, in fact, not very unlike the Noah's Ark of our childhood with this difference. The habitable part, instead of occupying the middle of the vessel is all at one end, heavy and many-windowed, while the four-deck is not more than six feet above the level of the water. The hold, however, is under the lower deck, and so counterbalances the weight at the other end. Not to multiply comparisons unnecessarily, I may say that a large Dahabia reminds one of old pictures of the Bucintar, especially when the men are at their oars. The kitchen, which is a mere shed like a Dutch oven in shape, and with a full stove and a row of stupans, stands between the big mast and the prow, removed as far as possible from the passengers' cabins. In this position the cook is protected from a favorable wind by his shed, but in the case of a contrary wind he is screened by an awning. How, under even the most favorable circumstances, these men can serve up the elaborate dinners which are the pride of a Nile cook's heart when they achieve the same results when windstorms and sandstorms are blowing and every breath is laden with the fine grid of the desert is a little short of miraculous. Thus far all Dahabias are alike. The cabin arrangements differ, however, according to the size of the boat, and it must be remembered that in describing the filet I describe a Dahabia of the largest build. Her total length from stem to stern being just one hundred feet, and the width of her upper deck at the broadest part a little short of twenty. Our floor being on a somewhat lower level than the men's deck, we went down three steps to the entrance door, on each side of which was an external cupboard, one serving as a storeroom and the other as a pantry. This door led into a passage out of which opened four sleeping cabins, two on each side. These cabins measured about eight feet in length and four and a fifth, and contained a bed, a chair, a fixed washing stand, a looking glass against the wall, a shelf, a row of books, and under each bed two large drawers for clothes. At the end of this little passage another door opened into the dining saloon, a spacious, cheerful room some twenty-three or twenty-four feet long situate in the widest part of the boat and lighted by four windows on each side and a skylight. The paneled walls and ceilings were painted in white picked out with gold, a cushioned divan covered with a smart woollen reps ran along each side and a gay Brussels carpet adorned the floor. The dining table stood in the center of the room and there was ample space for a piano, two little bookcases, and several chairs. The window curtains and porchiers were of the same reps as the divan, the prevailing colors being scarlet and orange. Add a couple of mirrors and guilt frames, a vase of flowers on the table for we were rarely without flowers of some sort, even in Nubia where our daily bouquet had to be made with a few bean blossoms and castor oil berries, plenty of books, the gentleman's guns and sticks in one corner, and the hats of all the party hanging in the spaces between the windows and it will be easy to realize the homely, habitable look of our general sitting room. Another door and passage opening from the upper end of the saloon led more sleeping rooms, two of which were single and one double, a bathroom, a tiny back staircase leading to the upper deck and the stern cabin saloon. This last, following the form of the stern, was semi-circular lighted by eight windows and surrounded by a divan. Under this, as under the saloon divans, there ran a row of deep drawers which being fairly divided held our clothes, wine, and books. The entire length of the Dahabia being exactly one hundred feet I take the cabin part to have occupied about fifty-six or fifty-seven feet, that is to say about six or seven feet over the exact half, and the lower deck to have measured the remaining forty-three feet. But these dimensions being given from memory are approximate. For the crew there was no sleeping accommodation whatever unless they chose to creep into the hold among the luggage and packing cases. But this they never did. They just rolled themselves up at night heads and all in rough brown blankets and lay about the lower deck like dogs. The raïs or captain, the steersmen and twelve sailors, the dregoman head cook, assistant cook, two waiters and the boy who cooked for the crew completed our equipment. Raïs Hassan, short, stern-looking, authoritative, was a Cairo Arab. The dregoman, Elias Talhami, was a Syrian of Beirut. The two waiters, Michael and Habib and the head cook, a whizzened old cordon blue named Hassan Bedouin, were also Syrians. The steersmen and five of the sailors were from Thebes, four belonged to a place near Filet, one came from a village opposite Qam Ambo, one from Cairo, and two were Nubians from Aswan. They were of all shades from yellowish bronze to a hue not far removed from black, and though at the first mention of it nothing more in congruence can well be imagined than a sailor in petticoats and a turban, yet these men in their loose blue gowns, bare feet, and white muslin turbans, looked not only picturesque but dressed exactly as they should be. They were, for the most part, fine young men, slender but powerful, square in the shoulders like the ancient Egyptian statues, with the same slight legs and long flat feet. More docile, active, good-tempered, friendly fellows never pulled an oar. Simple and trustful as children, frugal as acorites, they worked cheerfully from sunrise to sunset, sometimes towing the Diabea on a rope all day long like barge horses, sometimes punting for hours, which is the hardest work of all, yet always singing at their task, always smiling when spoken to, and made as happy as princes with Egyptian tobacco, or a bundle of fresh sugar canes bought for a few pence by the riverside. We came to know them all by name, Mehmet Ali, Salome, Khalifa, Riskali, Hassan, Musa, and so on, and as none of us ever went on shore without one or two of them to act as guards and attendants, and as the poor fellows were constantly getting bruised hands or feet and coming to the upper deck to be doctored, a feeling of genuine kindness was speedily established between us. End of Section 8 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile Section 9 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 3 Cairo to Bed Reshame Part 3 The ordinary pay of a Nile sailor is two pounds a month with an additional allowance of about three and six pence a month for flour. Bread is their staple food and they make it themselves at certain places along the river where there are large public ovens for the purpose. This bread, which is cut up in slices and dried in the sun, is as brown as gingerbread and as hard as biscuit. They eat it soaked in hot water flavored with oil, pepper, and salt and stirred in with boiled lentils till the whole becomes of the color, flavor, and consistency of thick pea soup. Except on grand occasions such as Christmas Day or the anniversary of the flight of the Prophet when the passengers treat them to a sheep, this mess of bread and lentils with a little coffee twice a day and now and then a handful of dates constitutes their only food throughout the journey. The Nile season is the Nile Sailor's Harvest Time Warm weather sets in and the travelers migrate with the swallows, these poor fellows dispersed in all directions. Some to seek a living as porters in Cairo, others to their homes in Middle and Upper Egypt where for about four pence a day they take hire as laborers or work as Shadoof irrigation till the Nile again overspreads the land. The Shadoof work is hard and a man has to keep on for nine hours out of every twenty-four but he prefers it for the most part of his employment in the government sugar factories where the wages average at about the same rate but are paid in bread which being doled out by unscrupulous inferiors is too often of lightweight and bad quality. The soldiers who succeed in getting a berth on board a cargo boat for the summer are the most fortunate. Our captain, pilot and crew were all Mohammedans, the cook and his assistant were Syrian Mohammedans, the Drago-man and waiters were Christians of the Syrian Latin church. Only one out of the fifteen natives could read or write and that one was a sailor named Engedi who acted as a sort of second mate. He used sometimes to write letters for the others holding a scrap of tumbled paper across the palm of his left hand and scrawling rude Arabic characters with a reed pen of his own making. This Engendi though perhaps the least interesting of the crew was a man of many accomplishments, an excellent comic actor, a bit of a shoemaker and a first rate barber. More than once when we happened to be stationed far from any village he shaved his mess mates all around and turned them out with heads as smooth as billiard balls. There are, of course, good and bad Mohammedans as there are good and bad churchmen of every denomination and we had both sorts on board. Some of the men were very devout, never failing to perform their ablutions and say their prayers at sunrise and sunset. Others never dreamed of doing so. Some would not touch wine had never tasted it in their lives and would have suffered any extremity rather than break the law of their prophet. Others had a nice taste in clerits and a delicate appreciation of the respective merits of rum or whiskey punch. It is, however, only fair to add that we never gave them these things except on special occasions as on Christmas Day or when they had been waiting in the river or in some other way undergoing extra fatigue in our service. Nor do I believe there was a man on board who would have spent a para of his scanty earnings on any drink stronger than coffee. Coffee and tobacco are, indeed, the only luxuries in which the Egyptian peasant indulges and our poor fellows were never more grateful than when we distributed among them a few pounds of cheap native tobacco. This abominable mixture sells in the bazaars at six pints the pound the plant from which it is gathered being raised from inferior seed in a soil chemically unsuitable because wholly devoid of potash. Also, it is systematically spoiled in the growing. Instead of being nipped off when green and dried in the shade, the leaves are allowed to wither on the stalk before they are gathered. The result is a kind of rank hay without strength or flavor which is smoked by only the poorest class and carefully avoided by all who can afford to buy Turkish or Syrian tobacco. Twice a day after their midday and evening meals our sailors were wont to sit in a circle and solemnly smoke a certain big pipe of the kind known as a Hubble bubble. This Hubble bubble, which was of most primitive make and consisted of a coconut and two sugar canes, was common property and being filled by the captain went round from hand from mouth to mouth while it lasted. They smoked cigarettes at other times and seldom went on shore without a tobacco pouch and a tiny book of cigarette papers. Fancy a bare-legged Arab making cigarettes. No Frenchmen, however, could twist them up more deftly or smoke them with a better grace. An Isle Sailor's service expires with the season so that he is generally a landsman for about half the year but the captain's appointment is permanent. He is expected to live in Cairo and is responsible for his Dahabia during the summer months while it lies up at Bulak. Rais Hassan had a wife and a comfortable little home on the outskirts of old Cairo and was looked upon as a well-to-do personage among his fellows. He received four pounds a month all the year from the owner of the filet a magnificent broad-shouldered Arab of about six foot nine with a delightful smile the manners of a gentleman and the rapacity of a Shylock. Our men treated us to a concert that first night as we lay moored under the bank near Bedrashayn. Being told that it was customary to provide musical instruments we had given them leave to buy a tar and a Darabuka before starting. The tar or tambourine was pretty enough being made of rosewood inlaid with mother of pearl but a more barbarous affair than the Darabuka was surely never constructed. This primitive drum is about a foot and a half in length funnel-shaped, molded of sun-dried clay like the culas uncovered over at the top with a strained parchment. It is held under the left arm and played like a tom-tom with the fingers of the right hand and it weighs about four pounds. We would willingly have added a double pipe or a coconut fiddle to the strength of the band but none of our men could play them. The tar and Darabuka, however, answered the purpose well enough and were perhaps better suited to their strange singing than more tuneful instruments. We had just finished dinner when they began. First came a prolonged wail that swelled and sank and swelled again and at last died away. This was the principal singer leading off with the keynote. The next followed suit on the third of the key and finally all united a long, shrill, descending cry like a yawn or a howl or a combination of both. This, twice repeated, pre-looted their performance and worked them up apparently to the necessary pitch of musical enthusiasm. The primo tenore then led off in a quavering roulade at the end of which he slid into a melancholy chant to which the rest sang chorus. At the close of each verse they yawned and howled again while the singer hurried away by his emotions broke out every now and then into a repetition of the same amazing and utterly indescribable vocal wriggle with which he had begun. Whenever he did this the rest held their breath in respectful admiration and uttered an approving ah, which is here the customary expression of applause. We thought their music horrible that first night, I remember, though we ended, as I believe most travelers do, by liking it. We, however, paid them the compliment of going up on deck and listening to their performance. As a night scene, nothing could be more picturesque than this group of turbaned Arabs sitting in a circle cross-legged with a lantern in the midst. The singer quavered, the musicians thrummed, the rest softly clapped their hands to time and waited their turn to chime in with the chorus. Meanwhile the lantern lit up their squirty faces and their glittering teeth. The great mast towered up into the darkness. The river gleamed below. The stars shone overhead. We felt we were indeed strangers in a strange land. End of section 9