Chapter XVI

The Cataracts — Fogs — Keneh — A gang of convicts — Nile thieves — Domestic merchants — Shadoofs — Taxation — Ossioot — The Conscription — Female relations — Coffee shops.

Arrived at Korosko, we at once made our crew aware that they must make every exertion to reach Cairo as speedily as possible, and that if they really worked hard, they would receive much higher pay for the journey down; and we began by offering them five dollars to reach Assuan in thirty hours. This they accomplished. At nine o’clock, February 1st, we anchored at Philæ.

It was a beautiful calm morning, as we left Philæ on our way down to the Cataracts. Not a ripple ruffled the waters, as we glided slowly down from our moorings to the little village of Mahatta, where the cataract authorities were to be taken on board. We turned round to take a last look at the beautiful temples on the “romantic isle,” and the grotesque rocks surrounding it. It was an enchanting scene, though we viewed it with different feelings from those we had experienced on that most pleasant Sunday when we were last there. The sun was just rising behind the mountains, while a haze rose from the still waters almost hiding the beauteous prospect.

The Reis and the pilot came on board just above the Cataracts, and we were struck by the respect and the sympathy in our misfortune which they expressed.

These men immediately took possession of the oars, leaving our own crew at liberty to take care of the boat with their long poles. After rowing most vigorously to the rapids, pulling till they were actually in the falls, they dropt their oars. The kitchen and whole head of the boat were immediately hidden by the surge, which rose like two waves on each side of us, pouring into the boat, and wetting everybody and everything. The prow of the boat rose again and again, pitched, and then giving a swerve, clashed up against the rocks, breaking several oars on that side, and overturning all the men who were at them. In less time than it takes to tell it, all was over, and we were lying quietly against the bank of lupins and beans, where we were detained on our way up, and all the men were employed in baling out the water.

In a few hours we arrived at Assuan, where we only stayed to get our letters, and then set off again. Our voyage was as pleasant as it could become under the melancholy circumstances that had preceded it, though for some days our progress was but slow. On the 3rd of February we passed the Temple of Komombo, which we beheld from the river in all the glory of its numerous pylons and columns.

We found the temperature cool—rather too much so at night. Sometimes the voyage was enlivened by our passing other diabeheehs, containing parties of our countrymen, some bound for one place, some for another, and all apparently intent on enjoying life in the East in the most approved Oriental fashion.

After passing the temples of Edfo, the grottoes of Eilethya, and the quarries of Gebel Silsilis, we arrived, at rather a late hour, at Esneh. Here I rested for a short time in one of the large _cafés_, indulging in a narghileh and a cup of thick coffee, whilst Mahomet entertained the company, who were pouring in from the different mosques, with an account of our tour.

At about eight o’clock we left Esneh; but scarcely had we started, when our crew became clamorous to return, and refused to go on, demanding a rest of four and twenty hours. This was not in the bond, and we would not hear of it. We knew that it was merely a scheme to extort money, and therefore were very decided in our proceedings, threatening the men, if they returned, to confiscate the bread, of which we had brought for them a liberal supply, and complain to the proper authorities of their breach of contract.

This menace staggered them, and in a few hours it was evident that they preferred bread to stick, for they resumed their oars, and worked with an energy I had never seen them display. The consequence was, that we were at Thebes by nine o’clock, where we rested for the night.

Before sunrise the next morning we arrived opposite where Carnac was; but we could see nothing of it, owing to the height of the banks. The morning was cold, rainy, misty, and in every way most disagreeable. Luxor, or rather as much of it as we could see for the fog, looked dirty and uninviting. Thebes, Memnonia, Medeenet Haboo, and the sphinxes were concealed by the thick stream that rose from the calm waters. How very different was all this from the aspect under which we had before beheld the same scene!

At a late hour, and in hard rain, we arrived at Keneh, where I paid a visit to five Americans, who had been wrecked the day before on a neighbouring sand-bank, in the middle of the night, and were glad to escape with their lives—and their nightgowns.

Keneh is the great Goolah manufactory, and our servants supplied themselves with about two hundred and fifty, between them. The small branch of the river by which we had previously approached this village was then almost dry.

While inspecting the town, I came upon twelve men, who were fastened together not only by their legs, but also by a chain passing through a ring attached to an iron collar round their necks; in addition to which they carried a log of wood, their hands being in the stocks.

Daireh assured me that they were conscripts, so secured to prevent escape; but this seemed so incredible that I made inquiries from a source in which I could place confidence, and found that they were convicts in course of transit, by order of government, to Khartoum, or rather to Fazokl.

With our dragoman and my sister, we next visited the market-place, where half a dozen field-pieces were being manœuvred by about fifty soldiers, who were presided over by two or three wretchedly-dressed officers sitting in arm-chairs.

While at the Consul’s, waiting for letters, my sister was invited to visit the hareem. A respectable-looking old gentlewoman—probably sister to Garf Hossein—received her, and she was conducted to a spacious, uncomfortable, and badly-furnished room, where there were several women, badly-dressed, possessed of scarcely any personal recommendation, except fine eyes. Presently other ladies joined the circle, making about a dozen in all. They could not understand a word that was said to them; they were, however, very respectful, and produced coffee, pipes, and an inferior kind of sherbet. This was her fourth visit of a similar nature; but this hareem was but a humble affair compared to the others.

We resumed our voyage, and began to make considerable progress. The men, tired with rowing all night, stopped, at five o’clock in the morning, near some mountains overhanging the river. They dared not have halted there during the night, for fear of the thieves that are said to lurk among the rocks.

Our Reis related marvellous anecdotes of such gentry coming by hundreds in boats, and boarding the diabeheehs that were sailing unsuspiciously along, or had anchored for the night. The latest date of any outrage of this nature, was in Mehemet Ali’s reign, when a boat was plundered, and the robbers gave their names and cards, with a receipt of the stolen grain, lest the boatmen might be accused of the theft.

We continued to make much progress, as Daireh had found out a new moving power, which, though not likely to supersede steam, proved a good substitute for it. This was the exhibition of a bottle of brandy; it had the most extraordinary effect upon our rowers, and we arrived at Ekmire on the afternoon of the next day.

Our Reis took two men from each boat, and went in the jolly-boat to purchase some indigo-stained cloth for dresses. All our men, by the way, are merchants, and make investments in every town they come to, in the produce for which it happens to be famed. At Assuan, charcoal, baskets, &c.; at Eilethya, henna; at Esneh, coffee, baskets, henna, butter, and eggs; at Keneh, goolahs and the best tombac for narghilehs; at Girgeh, turkeys, fowls, and butter particularly cheap and good; at Ossioot, the best native linen shirtings; and the best blue dresses at Ekmire.

The shadoofs are much more numerous here than I have observed them anywhere, as many as twenty-five being visible in half a mile, many of them double, and four between the water and the land, employing eight men.

I have often wondered why they do not dig a hole of considerable depth, which would make one shadoof last several months. Now as the river is constantly going down, every other shadoof is already useless, and its fellahs are obliged to exert themselves to fabricate another, which, in its turn, will be left high and dry the week after next, while at its neighbour, the men are bucketting up the last few skinfulls with all possible expedition, knowing that they must pass to-morrow in building a tier below.

An English peasant, with the smallest intelligence, would construct one of the necessary depth, and lengthen the rope as the river fell, but the Egyptian makes one that will last a week, and next week will make another to last another week. The difference, however, between these two men lies in the certainty with which one can point to his position next week, and the uncertainty of the other on the same subject.

Indeed, it is not at all improbable that the Egyptian, after drawing water all day, instead of returning to his wife and family at night, is sent to play at soldiers at the Kaisoon palace at Cairo, or is marched till he finds himself standing in a shower of wooden clubs, weighed with iron, and native spears of peculiar sharpness, waiting for orders to charge the Shellook, above Fazokl, or he may be hurried off till he finds himself shivering with cold and sea-sickness on board the Pasha’s fleet, or suffocated by the smell of oil, and terrified by the flying machinery, in the Pasha’s cotton factory.

The Englishman knows that no power can force him against his will to become a soldier, sailor, cotton-manufacturer, or anything else.

This is one of the smallest of the evils of despotic government. The sense of insecurity, however, pervades all classes. The Cairenes spend more on their persons than a Parisian exquisite; the Fellah hardly cares to gather his only crop; the Nubian is quite as indifferent to plant date-trees that he knows are to be taxed; and the Bedouin will with difficulty be persuaded to convey you through the desert, though you pay him one third more than the tariff, because his appearance at the town from which you start, or the one at which you arrive, is sure to produce some misunderstanding about taxing.

The aspect of the river varies very little; the banks are some ten feet higher, and the opposite shore more sandy than usual, but this is all the change since we were there, three months ago. The weather, too, seems rarely to alter; the breezes from the south being so frequent as to suggest the idea of their being unalterable.

We got a-ground about four times a-day, and then the crew of the other boat came to help to get us off, or _vice-versâ_, the men dashing into the water to assist more effectually. On one occasion, one fellow, it appears, could not make up his mind to immerse his limbs in so cold an element, and he got abused by his more hardy associates. Words soon led to blows, and in a short time there was a fight, and it took the Reis and six men to part the combatants. The former laid about him lustily with a rope, which fell on the naked shoulders of one of the belligerents with startling effect. In about five minutes afterwards, the men were all saying their prayers on the top of our cabin, as calmly as if nothing had happened.

On arriving at Ossioot we proceeded to pay a visit to the Governor, renowned for his knowledge of geography. The road had improved since I last had seen it, a few months ago; instead of running as a kind of mud embankment, or viaduct through sheets of water and banks of mud, it now runs between two fields of corn, about two feet high, as far as the eye can reach, with groves of mimosas, acacias, and palm-trees, making a pleasant shade for hundreds of camels, buffaloes, and goats which tethered by the leg to a stake, only eat the clover assigned to them. The trees have not shared in this improvement, owing to the dust and sun; and they contrast conspicuously with the green of the wheat-sprouts.

Ossioot might put forward claims to the picturesque, visible in the glaring white of the Governor’s offices, hareem, and palace, set off by the large mimosas and gum-trees, which by their fragrance are extremely suggestive of an English green-house. Eleven minarets rose from the dark verdure, and the river ran through the bridge, which was covered with soldiers, government officers, Coptic clerks, with their ink-bottles in their girdles, and wearing black turbans on their heads; and Arab merchants in their magnificent black cloth mantles, with richly caparisoned horses or asses, waiting till their owners had transacted their business in this eastern Rialto.

An hour afterwards I repassed the bridge, and it had become a veritable Bridge of Sighs. The conscription, that curse of despotic governments, was in full career in Egypt, and Ossioot being the head-quarters of the recruits, they were arming in vast numbers. We counted eight batches of twenty-five at one time, fastened together by ropes, attached to iron or wooden handcuffs. They seemed indifferent, or stupid; and were between twelve and forty years of age—at least two-thirds were under eighteen. They were accompanied by a dozen janissaries, with loaded muskets, and were followed by hundreds of women, in whose faces might be traced every shade of feeling.

There was rage, venting itself in imprecations from the feeble grandmother, now deprived of her only protection, and left a beggar in the streets. There was the wailing sorrow of mothers mourning the deprivation of their eldest sons or of the youngest and most beloved Benjamin. There was the tender grief of the newly-wedded bride, and the frantic despair of the young mother, at one blow robbed of the father of her children and the support of their existence.

And lastly there was the cool indifference of the passers-by; who remember how they had to endure the loss of father, husband, son, or brother, and no one pitied them. We must, however, add that there was the intense indignation of two Englishmen: who, while pitying the fate of these poor victims of despotism, felt a sensible satisfaction in remembering the blessings of the liberal Government, that made their home the envy of surrounding nations.

But the procession moves on, till the poor fellows arrive at the Government offices. Then comes a long halt, for every man must be examined; and those will escape who have put out the right eye, or cut off the fore-finger of the right hand. In three hours the procession resumes its march—minus about seventy, rejected—the women accompanying them, and shouting, kissing, yelling and sobbing, till the well-laden diabeheeh turns slowly down the stream in the direction of Cairo; then they return, and as they retrace their steps on the shady road to their native town, they besmear their faces and clothes with mud to denote their desolate state.

The Pasha of Egypt is said to have issued orders for recruiting, to the extent of twenty thousand men: of these Ossioot must provide one hundred, and the neighbourhood three hundred more. Ismael Pasha whom I found as affable as handsome, and as learned as ever, told me that he had been perfectly disgusted at the daily scenes in which he was obliged to be an actor, in the exercise of his disagreeable duties. On the first day he let off an only son, and a young man just married—since when, if the Arabs are to be credited, no second son or unmarried man has been taken. He said: you will be surprised to learn that in six months these identical boys will return to this place, to escort with loaded muskets, their brothers, cousins, and friends—and that they are, at this very moment, in the enjoyment of the best supper they have ever eaten, rapidly forgetting all that they have left behind them.

Every picture, however dark, has a bright side; it is so in this instance. The grief of a Moslem mother may be as acute as that of a Christian, but she will never suffer in her circumstances for the deprivation of her children; for by Moslem, as well as by Egyptian rule, she must be supported by her family. As long as one man remains in it, he is obliged to provide for the whole of his helpless female relatives. Daireh assured me, that in this way he had to provide for fifteen women.

No Moslem can ever starve; no Moslem will let a beggar pass him without giving five paras for “the God’s sake.” I noticed a woman with a child taking alms fifteen times in one bazaar, while I was buying some pipes; the sum thus obtained would keep her comfortably for a fortnight. What prevents professional begging I cannot say, but except the Dervishes, no one begs unless forced to do so, and then not a day longer than is absolutely necessary.

I visited the city at night, and found it the most beautiful sight I had ever beheld, except the Nubian sunsets. All the streets were completely deserted, but the native bazaar, which was so full of life that it reminded me of the lower streets in some of our largest towns. Crowds of women were selling eggs, butter, and fowls; there were stalls where hot cutlets, and “biftecs” were frizzling, with a savoury odour that made one’s mouth water; and there were coffee-rooms, the clubs of Egypt, filled with narghileh and chibouque smokers, who ought to have been at home, according to their wives.

I went into one of these coffee-shops which are also used as hotels, and discovered a very large apartment in the rear with a mud divan all round, in which some twenty men were reposing, wrapt in their capotes.

With the assistance of my servant, I entered into conversation with some of them, and soon learnt as a reason for their being here, that one man had quarrelled with his wife, another was a widower, this one was unmarried, that was about to become a father when the house is invariably surrendered to the female relations, and another was alone at home, his wife having gone to her home for a few nights. They came in one by one, smoked a pipe, drank a cup of coffee, fell asleep, and snored in almost as short a time as is taken by the description. They pay about five paras for a narghileh, the same for a cup of coffee, and the same for the couch—total fifteen paras, not quite one penny.

As I rode back, there was an exquisite sense of stillness over everything; sheep, camels, buffaloes, and even dogs seemed asleep, a thick haze rose from the well-watered meadows all around: and the death- like silence that pervaded the scene was preserved till I reached the river, when I easily distinguished sounds of music and dancing proceeding from our crew who were making merry in a coffee house of the lowest order.