Part 18 (1/2)

The first fellahin villages seen on the right and left of the road impress one curiously They are collections of huts of unbaked brick cemented with mud, with flat roofs occasionally topped with a sort of ashed turret for pigeons, the sloping walls of which faintly recall the outline of a truncated Egyptian pylon A door as low as that of a tomb, and two or three holes pierced in the wall are the only openings in these huts, which look more like the work of tere--if such a naiven to these earthen huts--has been washed away by the rains or sapped by the flood; but no great harm is done; with a few handfuls of mud the house is soon rebuilt, and five or six days of sunshi+ne suffice to make it inhabitable

This description, scrupulously exact, does not give a very attractive idea of a fellahin village; but plant by the side of these cubes of gray earth a clump of date palms, have a camel or two kneel down in front of the doors, which look like the mouths of warrens, let a woown, holding a child by the hand and bearing a jar of water on her head, light it all up with sunlight, and you have a char which strikes the most inattentive traveller as soon as he steps into this Lower Egypt, where fro its mud in thin layers, is the close intimacy of the fellah and the earth Autochthone is the nas from the clay which he treads, he is ed from it He manipulates it, presses it as a child presses its nurse's breast, to draw from its brown bosom the milk of fertility

He sinks waist-deep into its fertileto its needs; cuts canals in it, builds up levees upon it, draws fro and hich he will cement his tomb Never was a respectful son more careful of his old abond children who forsake their natal roof in search of adventures He remains there, always attentive to the least want of his antique ancestor, the black earth of Kaives her drink, if she is troubled by too much humidity, he dries it; in order not to wound her, he works her alh merely scratches the telluric skin, which the inundation covers each year with a new epiderround, you feel that he is in his elearment, which resee of earth and water, he unites the two principles which, warive birth to life Nowhere is this harmony between man and the soil so visible; nowhere does the earth play so i The houses have the earth tint; the bronze complexion of the fellahs recalls it; the trees covered with fine dust, the waters laden with mud, conform to that fundamental harmony; the aniray ass, the slate-blue buffalo, the ash-coloured pigeon, and the reddish birds all fit in with the general tone

Another thing which surprises one is the ani the canals and on those which traverse the inundated portions, there moves a mob of passers-by and of travellers There is no road so frequented in France, even in the neighbourhood of a populous city Eastern people do not remain much in their houses, and the smallest pretext is sufficient for them to set forth, especially as they have not to think, as we have, of the weather; the barometer is always at set fair, and rain is so unco

There is nothing more enjoyable, more varied and instructive than the procession of people who are going about their business and who show in succession in the opening of the carriage , as in a fraing

First, caing their long necks, curious animals whose aard shapes recall the attempts of a vanished creation On the hump of the foremost is perched the turbaned driver, asto Mesopotamia to seek a wife for Isaac; he yields with lazy suppleness to the rough, but regularhis chibouque as if he were seated at the door of a cafe, or pressing the slow pace of his steed Cale file; they are accustoether, so quaint against the flat lines of the horizon, and for want of any object of comparison, apparently of vast size On either side of the line trot three or four swift-footed lads, armed ands; for in the East beasts of burden never lack hostlers and whippers-in Some of the camels are reddish, others sorrel, others brown, some even are white, but dun is the rass bound with esparto cords, bundles of sugar-cane, boxes, furniture,--in fact, whatever in our country would be loaded on carts Just noethose gray stretches of subround, but the illusion is soon dispelled; as the ca the canal bank, you feel that you are approaching Cairo, and not A thin, but spirited horses; droves of small donkeys, their masters perched on their cruppers, alround, ready to be used in case the tricky anies, as it often does, in a roll in the dust of the road In the East the ass is neither contemned nor considered ridiculous as it is in France; it has preserved its Homeric and biblical nobility, and every one bestrides it without hesitation, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, wo the canal co blue mantle, the folds of which fall chastely around her, is seated upon an ass which a ray and white hairs, leads carefully In front of the mother, who supports it with one hand, is a naked child, exquisitely beautiful, happy and delighted at his trip It is a picture of the Flight into Egypt; the figures lack nothing but a fine golden halo around their heads The Virgin, the Child Jesus, and Saint Joseph ht have been in the living and sie was not ino, Raphael, or Albert Durer, does not happen to be here

Damanhur, which the railroad traverses, looks very ypt, now buried under the sand or fallen into dust It is surrounded by sloping walls built of unbaked bricks or of pise which preserves its earthy colour The flat-roofed houses rise one above another like a collection of cubes dotted with little black holes A few dovecotes, the cupolas of which are ashed, and one or two minarets striped with red and white, alone impart to the antique appearance of that city the modern aspect of Isla onrobes of brilliant colours, are looking at us, no doubt attracted by the passing of the train As they show against the sky, they are wondrously elegant and graceful They look like statues erected on the top of buildings or the front of temples

The moment the train stopped, it was invaded by a band of woes, and honey confections to the travellers; and it was delightful to see these brown faces showing at the carriagetheir bright smile and their white teeth I should have liked to remain some time in Damanhur, but travel, like life, is s one is compelled to leave by the roadside, if one wishes to reach the end Aa few things So I had to leave Da able to traverse it As far as I could see, even through lass, the land reached to the horizon line, intersected by canals, broken by gutters, shi+ with pools of water, with scattered clu strips of cultivated ground, water-wheels rising here and there, and enlivened by the incessant co of the labourers who followed, on the backs of camels, horses, or asses, or on foot, the narrow road bordering the levees At intervals there arose, under the shade of a mimosa, the white cupola of a toe of the water in the attitude of unconscious reverie, not even turning his head to see the train fly along This deep gravity in childhood is peculiar to the East What could that boy, standing on his lu of? Fro, flew off with a sudden whir as the train passed by, and alighted farther away on the plain; aquatic birds siftly through the reeds that outstretched behind the their tails, on the crest of the levees; and in the heavens at a vast height, soared hawks, falcons, and gerfalcons, sweeping in great circles Buffaloes ed in theears, very like goats, were hurrying along driven by the shepherds The antique si herdsmen, with their short tunics, white or blue, faded by the sun, their bare legs, their dusty, naked feet, their felt caps, their crooks, recalled the patriarchal scenes of the Bible

At the next station we stopped, and I got out to have a look at the landscape I had scarcely gone a few steps when a wondrous sight ive it its ancient Egyptian nah one of those involuntary plastic iination, the Nile called up to my mind the colossal marble God in one of the lower halls of the Louvre, carelessly leaning on his elbow and, with paternal kindliness, allowing himself to be climbed over by the little children which represent cubits, and the various phases of the inundation Well, it was not under this reat river appeared toout broadly like a torrent of reddish mud which scarcely looked like water as it swelled and rushed by irresistibly It looked like a river of soil; scarcely did the reflection of the sky ilooht touches of azure It was still alht of its rise, but the flood had the tranquil power of a regular phenoe Theious impression How many vanished civilisations have been reflected for a tiazed at it, sunk in thought, and feeling that strange sinking of the heart which one experiences after desire has been fulfilled, and reality has taken the place of the drea at was indeed the Nile, the real Nile, the river which I had so often endeavoured to discover by intuition A sort of stupor nailedthat I should coypt in the very centre of the Delta But man is subject to such artless astonishreat lateen sails were tacking across the river, passing fro the shape of the ain The aspect of the country was still the same; fields of cotton, maize, doora, stretched as far as the eye could reach Here and there gliround covered by the flood

Slate-blue buffaloes ed in the pools and ees, and sometimes flew off as the train passed, watched by fa on the banks of the ditches Along the road travelled the endless procession of caers, which enlivened to such an extent that peaceful, flat landscape I had already noticed when in Holland the additional iures by a flat country; the lack of hills ainst the sky they looer I seemed to see pass by the zones of painted _bassi-relievi_ representing agricultural scenes which occasionally foryptian toes or farray walls recalled the substructures of antique temples Groups of sycaht out the soft tones of the walls by the contrast of their rich verdure Elsewhere I caught sight of fellahin huts surmounted by ashed dovecotes, placed side by side like beehives or the minarets of a mosque We soon reached Tantah, a somewhat important town, to which the fine rims twice a year, and the fairs of which are frequented by the caravans

Tantah, froh to allow travellers to visit the town,--has an animated and picturesque aspect Amid the houses in the Arab style with their look-outs and their awnings, rise buildings in that Oriental-Italian style dear to persons of progress and of modern ideas, painted in soft colours, ochre, salmon, or sky-blue; flat-roofed clay huts; over all, the minarets of the mosque, the white cupolas of a few to above the low garden walls

Between the town and the station stretches waste ground, a sort of fair-ground, on which are camps, huts of reed or of date-pals of cloth and sometimes of the linen of an unrolled turban The inhabitants of these frail dwellings cook in the open air The coffee is made, a cup at a time, in a small brass kettle, and on plates of tin are cooked the thin doora cakes The fuel is caerly the sweetish juice of the sugar-cane cut into short pieces, and the slices of waterreen skin their ripe, rosy, flesh, spotted with black seeds

Wo the end of their veil between their teeth so as to conceal one half of the face, and bearing on their heads Theban jars or copper vases; while the round or on s an acute angle like the legs of locusts, in an attitude which no European could assued in rows one behind another on the papyri of funeral rituals, preserve that drea to do; for to move about merely for exercise, as Christians do, strikes therouped in circles, kneeling under their burdens, stretch out their long legs on the sand,sun

asses, some of which are daintily harnessed, with saddles of redin a boss on the withers, and with headstalls adorned with tufts, and others with an old carpet for a saddle-cloth, aiting for the travellers ere to stop at Tantah to bear them from the station to the town The donkey drivers, clothed in short blue and white tunics, bare-ared, their heads covered with a fez, a wand in their hand, and reseures of shepherds or youths which are so exquisitely drawn on the bodies of Greek vases, stood near their animals in an indolent attitude, which they abandoned as soon as a chance custoesticulations, guttural cries, and fought with each other until the unfortunate tourist ran the risk of being torn to pieces or stripped of the best part of his gars with jackal ears, fallen indeed fro apparently that they counted Anubis, the dog-headed _Anubis latrator_, aroups, but without taking the least interest in as going on

The bonds which in Europe unite the dog to man do not exist in the East; its social instinct has not been developed, its sympathies have not been appealed to; it has no e state No services are asked of it, and it is not cared for; it has no home and dwells in holes which it makes, unless it stays in so on dead bodies and unnamable debris

There is a proverb which says that wolves do not eat each other; Eastern dogs are less scrupulous; they readily devour their sick, wounded, or dead cos which did not make any advances to me, and did not seek to be caressed, but irls in blue gowns and little negroes in white tunics caes, lemons, and apples,--yes, apples Eastern people see retched, granulous pears, forets either pos, or any native fruits, which are no doubt left to the coine sounded, and ere again carried away through that very hureen Delta However, as we advanced there showed on the horizon lines of rosy land froetable life holly absent The sand of the desert advances with its waves, as sterile as those of the sea, eternally disturbed by the winds and beating upon the islet of cultivated earth surrounded and stormed by dusty foaypt, whatever lies above the level of the flood is smitten with death There is no transition; where stops Osiris, Typhon begins; here luxuriant vegetation, there not a blade of grass, not a bit of row in solitary and lonely places,--nothing but ground-up sandstone without any mixture of loahtway the barren sand is covered with verdure These strips of pale salmon-colour forreat plain of verdure spread out before us

Soon we came upon another arm of the Nile, the Phatnitic branch, which flows into the sea near Damietta It is crossed by the railway, and on the other side lie the ruins of ancient Athrebys, over which has been built a fellahin village The train sped along, and soon on the right, above the line of green, turning alht, showed in the azure distance the triangular silhouette of the pyra, frole mountain with a piece taken out of the summit The marvellous clearness of the atmosphere made them appear nearer, and had I not been aware of the real distance I should have found it difficult to estiht of the pyramids as one approaches Cairo; it is to be expected and it is expected, yet the sight causes extraordinary emotion and surprise It is impossible to describe the effect produced by that vaporous outline so faint that it almost melts into the colour of the sky, and that, if one had not been forewarned, it ht escape notice Neither years nor barbarians have been able to overthrow these artificial antic monuments, except, perhaps, the Tower of Babel, ever raised bythere,--al to the biblical account Even our own civilisation, with its powerful e to tear thees and dynasties flow by like billows of sand, and the colossal Sphinx with its noseless face ever smiles at their feet with its ironical and mysterious smile Even after they were opened they kept their secret, and yielded up but the bones of oxen by the side of an e that Europe, perchance, had not eazed upon them from where I ae races of men since swept from the surface of the earth; they have beheld civilisations that we know nothing of; heard spoken the tongues which lyphics, known e as a dreaed their places, and they belong to a past so prodigiously fabulous that behind them the dawn of the world seehCairo,--Cairo, of which I had talked so often with poor Gerard de Nerval, with Gustave Flaubert, and Maxihest pitch In the case of cities which one has desired to see fro inhabited in dreams, one is apt to conceive a fantastic notion which it is very difficult to efface, even in presence of reality The sight of an engraving, of a picture, often for-point My Cairo, built out of the hts,” centred around the Ezbekiyeh Place, the strange painting of which Marilhat had sent froypt to one of the first exhibitions which followed the Revolution of July Unless I am mistaken, it was his first picture, and whatever the perfection which he afterwards attained, I do not believe that he ever painted a work fuller of life,

It ain to see it; I could not take ic fascination It was fro that h the narrow streets of ancient Cairo once traversed by Caliph Haroun al Raschid and his faithful vizier Jaffier, under the disguise of slaves or co was so well known that Marilhat's faave me, after the death of the famous artist, the pencil sketch of the subject made on the spot, and which he had used as a study for the finished work

And noe had arrived A great uides, dragomans, rioted in front of the railway station, which is at Boulah, a short distance froe, and I had been installed with e preceded by a _sas_, it ith secret delight that I heard the Egyptian providence which watched over us in its _Nizaenta fez, call out to the coache in my dream

EZBEKiYEH SQUARE