Part 20 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS IS A PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA AND HER SON.]
Mahmoud took great pride in showing his many references in prose and rhyme, and the members of our party were glad to contribute in prose to his collection. But at the end of the week we presented him with another testimonial of a more practical kind.
”The Nile is a most wonderful river,” remarked the professor one evening as we sat on the open deck watching the moonlight glisten on the green water. ”Several other rivers rival it in length; the Congo is noted for its size; the Amazon, swelled by great tributaries, discharges a volume of water immensely greater; and the Missouri, including the Mississippi to the Gulf, may be longer; but the Nile is unique in that for twelve hundred miles it flows without a tributary through a rainless region.
Not a drop of rain nor a single brook adds to its volume in all that distance, and a hot sun, ca.n.a.ls, ditches, sakiyehs, shadoofs, and water carriers are continually taking away from it throughout every mile of its winding course. The river is wider here but it has less volume than one thousand miles farther up the stream. It is unique also in the regularity of the annual inundations, which begin on almost the same day, continue the same length of time, and rise to an almost similar height each year, and have done so annually for untold centuries. In our land a flood is a disaster causing loss and sorrow; in this country it is a blessing producing wealth and joy. When the slowly rising waters each year reach the figures on the stone column of the Nilometer which show that the Nile has spread abroad his fertile bounty by covering the cultivable lands, and has filled the dams and ditches for future needs, the news is spread abroad and the people rejoice with festivities and processions.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 'TWAS SCENES LIKE THESE WE LOOKED UPON.]
Before taking the trip on the Nile we had thought that the days on the river might become monotonous and tiresome; but we found, on the contrary, that every hour was full of interest. Each day some excursion on sh.o.r.e was taken. One day the patient donkeys carried the tourists on a long trip to the ruins of the great temple of Seti at Abydos to view its sculptured columns and famous list of kings. On another day carriages conveyed us to the rock tombs on the limestone hills above a.s.siout and we visited the bazaars and the noted potteries of that busy town. On the last day of our sail the donkeys of Bedrashen were called into service for a ride through the palm forest and green fields, past the fallen columns of Ramses, to Sakkara, the tombs of the sacred bulls, and the pictured tombs of Ptahhotep and Ti.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TROD ROUND AND ROUND THE WHEEL.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLUMNS AT ABYDOS ARE OF GREAT SIZE.]
”This is the height of enjoyment,” said a member of our party one day while we were lounging in easy chairs taking afternoon tea on the deck, and lazily watching the panoramic scenes as the Amasis steamed down the river.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DOTTED WITH PILES OF YELLOW WATER-JARS.]
It was scenes like these we looked upon. Along the banks of the river at short intervals, the shadoof man, or drawer of water, with his shadoof resembling an old-fas.h.i.+oned spring-pole or well sweep, drew up his dripping bucket and lowered it again, his only garment an ap.r.o.n at the waist.
All through the day the red-brown man Stands on his perch in the red-brown bank; Waters never more gratefully ran, Cuc.u.mbers never more greedily drank.
--Canon Rawnsley.
Where the bank was very high, a series of two, three, or four natives, each with his spring-pole, raised the water one to the other until it reached the top and was poured into the little channels that carried it over the rich, but very thirsty soil of a rainless land. On the river-bank, also, interspersed with the shadoofs of the poorer cla.s.s of agriculturists, the more prosperous farmers, who were the happy possessors of buffaloes or camels, lifted the irrigating water from the stream by means of sakiyehs, or wooden power wheels, which creaked unceasingly as the patient camels or buffaloes, with eyes covered by blinders of mud, trod round and round the wheel.
Rough clout upon his patient head, The stately camel round doth go, With gentle hesitating tread; And yoked, and blind with frontlets, made Of black Nile mud, the buffalo Plies with him his unequal trade.
--Canon Rawnsley.
A large Dahabeah with rugs, easy chairs, and piano on deck, and the stars and stripes hanging listlessly overhead, floated by, propelled by fourteen Arab rowers--there being no wind to fill the sails. A drove of gray buffaloes, forty in number, were taking their bath, splas.h.i.+ng the water like a party of schoolboys in a swimming pool. A group of women filled earthen jars at the water's edge, and with the dripping jars on their heads mounted the steep river bank. Here and there were irregular groups of mud huts, intersected by crooked alleys and surrounded by date palms, little villages where doves were flying overhead and from which came the sound of barking dogs to mingle with the puffs of the steamer.
Flat-bottomed boats freighted with sugar cane lay with drooping sails in a noonday calm, or, later in the day, sped before the evening breeze.
Near the pottery towns the river banks were dotted with yellow water jars in scattered piles ready for s.h.i.+pment to the city market. Immense stacks of the sugar-cane just harvested had been brought to the sh.o.r.e for conveyance to the sugar factories. And fields of cotton covered with white bloom extended into the distance.
We could see, too, the fertile Nile valley, not more than ten miles in breadth at its widest part, bounded on both sides by ranges of yellow, barren cliffs. On the western side the cliffs were farthest away; on the eastern side the valley was narrow, and the cliffs were sometimes distant, sometimes so near that they completely crowded out the cultivable soil and approached to the water's edge.
”There is something peculiar in the air of this dry land,” observed one of the tourists after sitting quiet awhile. ”The atmosphere lends a softness to the outlines of distant objects and adds delicate tints in the afternoon light. See how the barren cliffs are glorified with a flush of pink, the wheat fields are a brilliant green, and the barley fields, almost ready for the harvest, are golden. Even the mud huts and the white-washed mosque of that village on the western sh.o.r.e have lost their crude outlines and have become picturesque. At sunset the western sky will change to crimson and the eastern cliffs will change to gold.
The sunsets, though, are not so gorgeous in coloring, nor do they show such striking contrasts as I have seen occasionally in my western home, but they are beautiful.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALL EYES WERE FIXED ON THE MAGICIAN'S MOVEMENTS.]
During the latter part of our sail down the Nile, where the river broadened and was shallow, we had some interesting experiences with sandbars.
”This is the Amasis' last trip of the season,” said one of the officers as we stood on the upper deck at the bow of the steamer watching two sailors poling below. ”The Nile always falls rapidly in the spring, the channels change, new sandbars form, and navigation becomes difficult.
The water is now very low, and we have to be careful and alert wherever the river broadens as it does here before us.”
On account of the indications of shallowness ahead the Amasis was steaming very slowly, occasionally merely drifting with the current. The two Arab boatmen stationed in the bow continually tested the depth of the water with poles and shouted in Arabic the results of their measurements to the anxious commander on the deck above. Notwithstanding these precautions, our steamer occasionally sc.r.a.ped on the sandbars, sometimes sticking on them for a short time.