found a greeting in that tent as warm as the sunshine that shone over it. The fair traveller spoke with pleasure and enthusiasm of all that they had seen; and I do believe that, with all its drawbacks, Egypt is the most interesting and convenient country that a lady can travel over. After dinner, the group in the tent would have surprised their European friends: four turbaned and bearded men sate round a fair and noble lady, whose gracefullooking and fragrant nargileh* puffed and bubbled in harmony with their long chibouques: the complexions of the whole party were almost as dark as those of our crews, and the lady might have passed in a tableau for Cleopatra, but for the ivory white forehead that indicated its proud claim to Norman blood. As soon as it was dark, we parted. Again our Arabs' parting song was raised, shots of salute were fired, and in a few moments more we could only see the glare of their watch-fires far away, reflecting on the tall, white sails as they receded down the dark ening river. Sometimes we met a raft, formed of earthen vessels manufactured at Keneh, and tied together on a slight raft of palmwood; mugs, jugs, pitchers, and pipkins, formed into a floating island, on which lived its navigators, with their wives and chil dren; sometimes a number of bees taking a cruise for change of air and flowery pasture. The Egyptians are very curious in honey; and they say that the greater the variety the bee feeds on, the better is his produce: therefore, they take their hives up and down the river: true to the nomade instinct of their ancestors: -the locality is as much a matter of indifference to them as to their murmuring flocks. The instinct with which the bee finds his way back to the boat, floated perhaps miles away since his last excursion, would argue the possession of some extra sense. Sometimes, again, we met a boat crowded with slaves from Abyssinia and Darfur, on their way to the man-markets at Siout and Cairo; numbers, both boys and girls, are said to drown themselves on every passage, to avoid the brutality of their owners once arrived at their place of destination and sold, how •Water-pipe, consisting of a glass-bell, half-filled with water, through which a very light and odoriferous tobacco is purified before it passes into a long, variegated tube, and jewelled mouth-piece. ever, their lot is happier, as I have before observed, or rather less wretched, than that of the free Egyptian: while our boat passed by, with song and music, as if its progress were all one festival, these poor creatures would turn round to gaze after us, and grin till their faces seemed all teeth. When we anchored for the night near a town, the Turkish governor generally came on board to visit us, accompanied by his janissary and pipe-bearer. We rose as he entered, and made room for him on the divan; then he would lay his hand on his heart, and pray that peace might be upon us; the pipe from our lips was then passed to him, of which he took one whiff, then returned it with a salute, and his own pipe was handed to him by his submissive slave. There was little variety in the conversation. "English very good; very fond of travelling; know great deal; have very good brandy." This last hint was always complied with, Mahmoud assuring the scrupulous Turk that it was made of grapes, or anything else that occurred to him. Sometimes, the curtain of the cabin was to be drawn before he would taste the forbidden draught; and sometimes he carried off the bottle bodily, "for a daughter, or a friend who was sick." There is no denying their taste for brandy, and their passion for maraschino; but we invariably found these authorities extremely courteous, complimentary, and willing to oblige us. Now to our travel once more. CHAPTER XXI. THE NILE UP TO THE FIRST CATARACT. Emblem art thou of Time, memorial Stream ! SIR J. HANMER. IN a constant yet varying succession of such scenes, we advance hourly towards the South. Brighter suns, and starrier skies, and stranger scenery-wilder, lonelier, more silent-receive us sometimes we travel for hours, and even days, through the desert, where nothing but a narrow band of green, that feeds itself from the river exhalations, is visible besides. Then we enter tracts of richly green meadows, flushed with flowers, or wide fields of the blossoming bean that fill the air with their delicious and delicate perfume. Here are gardens of cucumbers, fenced round with twigs and stalks of Indian corn; there, fields of the Indian corn itself, a very forest of yellow grain; there are little farms of lupines, millet, and sweet pea; banks goldspeckled with melons, and, haply, a crocodile or two basking beneath them on the sands, like dragons guarding the golden fruit of the Hesperides. All this produce and luxuriance is pumped out from the Nile, whose scattered waters are returned with rich usury from the grateful soil that has so unexpectedly received them, in shape of every green thing that the heart of (Egyptian) man or beast can desire. At intervals, all along the river, are to be seen little bowers, or sheds, like those that shelter the swans' nests upon the Thames, and under these the Arab and the buffalo are ceaselessly employed in irrigating the land. There are two species of water-engines, called the Shadoof, and the Sakeeah; the former consists of a prop fixed in the earth, on which plays a long lever, with a leather bucket attached to one end, counterpoised at the other with a weight; the pumper lets down his leathern bucket into a trench cut from the river, and, assisted by the counterpoise, lifts it up, and empties it into a trench some five or six feet of higher level. Thence it flows along a little canal, branching off into lesser ones among the crops. Sometimes, the level of the land is so high that there are three, or even four pumps and reservoirs, one over the other, each with its reservoir from which the Arab above pumps out. This is the most severe labor in Egypt, yet it is so associated with ideas of home, and perhaps of prosperity, that it is the burden of many of their national songs. The exile and the soldier (terms synonymous in Egypt) use this word as we might do "our hearths :" notwithstanding its poetry. however, no man can endure it for more than two hours at a time, so they work in gangs in the shade, the reliefs sleeping away their alternate hours of repose. The Sakeeah is a large water-wheel raised on a platform, and turned by two buffaloes; behind these, a black little naked urchin sits on the splinter-bar, continually goading his somnambu listic team. The creaking of these wheels, mingled with the monotonous drip of water, is not unmusical, and, as they are generally at work night and day, I often listened to their sound with pleasure, so blended with other and softer sounds, and refined by distance and the clear atmosphere. These sakeeahs each produce as much irrigation as five shadoofs, and are calculated at 50,000 throughout Egypt and Nubia. So vital are they to the land, that Mehemet Ali himself supplies the buffaloes to work them; for which, however, he charges twenty dollars a year as a tax upon each wheel. We passed an evening at Keneh, to collect some stores and write letters, before leaving the last African town that has any connection with the world of Europe. A Greek merchant from Sennaar, seeing lights in our cabin, came on board to claim the hospitality of pipes and coffee. He spoke Italian very fluently, and gave us an animated and interesting account of his desert journeys, and his trade, which lay in ivory, precious stones, gums, slaves, and other tropical luxuries. He inveighed with all the energy of an English radical against the unjust and impolitic restrictions laid by Mehemet Ali on the slave trade. "Would you believe it," he exclaimed in a tone of the most virtuous indignation, "the Pasha has levied a tax of five dollars on each slave imported into Egypt! Why, sir, it amounts to a prohibition, and will be the ruin of the trade!" Most of our crew were very lax in their religious observances, but some few were very zealous in their devotion: we had been several days without touching land, and this evening Mohammed availed himself of being on terra firma at sunset. He had no carpet, poor fellow, to purify the ground, but he spread his capote, and knelt down with an abstraction and apparent devotion that would have become a purer faith his hands were clasped on his bosom, and at every utterance of the Holy Name, he pressed his forehead to the ground. All this time, an ugly negro, named Asgalani, who was a free-thinker and a wit, was amusing the crew by endeavoring to "put him out ;" and this scoffer was greatly cheered by the rest of the crew, as he skipped about him, squeaking like a monkey, barking like a dog, crowing like a cock, grinning in his face, and inquiring "how he was off for a Prophet ?" This did not for a moment disturb the gravity of the worshipper; and, when he rose from his devotions, he went to his work with perfect good humor and disregard of the joker. Our impatience to proceed became greater every day, until we should reach the Thebes, but the evening fell dead calm, and we lay moored to the bank at Keneh ;* as the Arab sailors cannot, or will not, tow the boat at night. About midnight, I was awakened by a faint ripple against the bank; then came a breeze, sighing through the rigging, which was immediately followed by poking Mahmoud on the ribs through the window. * Keneh is the port of the Nile in connection with Cosseir, on the Red Sea. The desert-way between the two is only seventy miles in length, and offers serious rivalry to Suez as a candidate for railway or canal to connect the Indian trade with that of Europe. This is also one of the Mecca routes. |