Chapter III (3)

_Sunday, 15th._--Made a sketch, a little after sunrise, of the
chain of hills on the west bank of the Nile, then crossed the
river to see the ruins of Denderah. Horses were waiting on the
other side, and would have been most enjoyable if the weather
had been cool; but, under a fierce sun, absolutely incessant
prancing and waltzing ("he make 'fantasia,'" quoth Hosseyn) was
fatiguing after a bit. Was so much struck with the beauties of
the mountains, as seen from the left bank, that I resolved to
stay a couple of days to paint them. The temple is extremely
fine, and in parts unusually well preserved--_the sculpture_,
that is, for the colour is almost entirely lost. These
sculptures, being of a late period (Roman), are clumsy enough;
on the other hand the general scheme of decoration is more
artistic, more varied in distribution and rhythm than in most of
the temples. On the external wall I remarked here, as at Edfou
and at Medinet Haboo, massive and very handsome gargoyles--half
a lion, couchant, on a large bracket, the water flowing from a
spout between the paws--a more important feature in the
architectural aspect of the wall than in northern countries, and
calculated for five months' rain rather than for five minutes',
which is the average annual fall here, I believe. This temple
boasts a portrait of Cleopatra on a large scale, but, like those
of Armout and Karnak, it is absolutely conventional, and any
pretence of detecting an individuality is mere humbug. One
fancies at first one has discovered some peculiarity in the
features, but on a candid examination one must own that the same
peculiarities occur in other faces on the same wall, or that
they are owing to the mutilation to which two-thirds of the
figures in all Egyptian temples has been assiduously subjected.
In a lateral chamber of the temple, on the ceiling, is a most
striking mystical design, representing the firmament and the sun
fecundating the land of Egypt. It is fantastic and poetic in the
extreme; it would delight Rossetti. In the evening made another
sketch, and then rode to Keneh to dine with the Consul--a most
interesting glimpse into a real old-fashioned Muslim interior.
Si Syed Achmet (forty-five years British Agent in this town and
at Khossayr) is a very wealthy old gentleman with large property
in this part of the world. He is of the blood of the Prophet, a
good and pious Muslim, tolerant and full of kindliness. A son,
three nephews and a daughter form his immediate family circle,
living with him in the house to which I was bidden--a bald,
uninteresting place enough. It is entered from a narrow,
irregular triangular court, ornamented on one side with some
good brick and wood work, but ugly and plain on the others, and
disfigured by something between a ladder and a staircase which
leads to the clean but singularly naked room in which we were to
spend the evening. This room was whitewashed, but so roughly
bedaubed that the plain deal cupboards, the doors of which
formed the only embellishment (?) of the walls, were all
besmeared with ragged edges of white. Three windows, innocent of
glass, and protected by a close, plain trellis-work of ordinary
white wood, lighted the room, which boasted in the way of
furniture the usual ugly divans, three red muslin curtains, a
small deal table, two lanterns and two candles in candlesticks.
Shortly after my arrival and most kindly reception by the old
gentleman, who had come up from the country expressly _ad hoc_,
dinner was served. The son, as the eldest, sat at table; the
nephews waited on us; we squatted, I on a cushion, they on the
floor, round a very low table on which was a large, round, brass
tray, containing four plates, some wooden spoons, and a great
many small loaves of bread arranged round it in a circle; a soup
tureen, into which, after washing of hands, everybody plunged
his spoon, was the central feature. After the soup, came in
rapid succession several dishes containing savoury messes which
were really very good, though perhaps too rich, but which I was
entirely unable to enjoy in the sight of a number of hands,
shining with gravy, mopping in succession at the dishes with
crusts of bread, or fetching out a coveted morsel with fingers
too recently licked. It is a delicate and hospitable attention
to put a bit with your own hand on to your guest's plate--an
attention of which I was the frequent but unworthy recipient.
After the made dishes had been done justice to, half a
sheep--head and all--was put on the table and _clawed_ asunder
by Hosseyn. The roast being disposed of, the sweets appeared,
and were eaten out of the common dish with spoons, like the
soup: I was not sorry when it was over, for I had gone through
all the sensations of a sea voyage. I observe that Arabs make a
point of eating with as much noise and smacking of lips as
possible; it is as if they were endeavouring to convey a sort of
oblique expression of thanks to Providence by manifesting their
relish of the blessings vouchsafed. When dinner was over, and a
by no means superfluous washing of hands had been gone through,
we had pipes and coffee. Hosseyn having gone to dine, I was now
thrown on my own extremely limited stock of Arabic for
conversation; and as I had about exhausted that during my ride
to Keneh with one of the nephews, I was hard put to it. However,
I just managed to get through a few broken sentences, to the
great satisfaction of Achmet, who informed me that he had been
for forty years the servant of the English, of whom he thought
very highly, chiefly because, as he expressed it, they have "one
word"--a satisfactory character to leave behind. In the evening
the governor (Mudir) came to see me with a tail of employes and,
if you please, a pocket-handkerchief, of which he was not a
little conscious, holding it in his hand rolled into a neat
tube, which he occasionally drew with dignity across the basis
of the official nose. The Consul for France and Prussia also
came and made his salaam. My borrowed and temporary plumes have
been of real use to somebody here, for the Mudir, hearing that
an Englishman (whom he erroneously supposed to be somebody) was
on board a viceroy's steamer, immediately gave the crew two
months' pay--an alacrity not sufficiently often displayed in
this country, if I am not much misinformed. The dancing-girls
who came to entertain us in the evening were no doubt better
than those of Lougsor, though, with one exception, at least as
ugly; but some of them were gorgeously attired (from the
dancing-dog point of view), and all were a mass of gold
necklaces and coins and glittering headgear, which produced at a
certain distance and in the doubtful light a prodigiously fine
effect of colour. The dancing was a little more varied than that
of the Lougsor women, chiefly, no doubt, because they got more
to drink; but, _en somme_, I am confirmed in my first impression
that it is an eminently ugly performance, though a very
remarkable gymnastic feat. Of course a graceful and good-looking
girl may do a good deal to redeem it by personal charm, and this
was in some degree the case with Zehneb, who is a noted dancer
and the _fine fleur_ of the profession. She is pretty though
coarse in feature, and not without grace; but has a
semi-European smack about her dress and ways that spoils her in
my eyes--hers, by-the-bye, are splendid. Just as the "fantasia"
was at its height, a ragged, dust-soiled, old beggar came,
chattering and grinning, into the room, and at once installed
himself, uninvited but unhindered, on the divan, from which
comfortable post he proceeded to witness the performance and
apparently thoroughly to enjoy his evening. The contrast between
his beggar's garb and the scrupulously cleanly attire of his
neighbours was very curious. He is a fakeer, as I am told;
everybody feeds him, no doors are closed to him; he is not, I
believe, exactly an idiot, but is certainly in his second
childhood--"rimbambito," as the Italians say. On one side of him
squatted a sweet little brown girl, Achmet's daughter, of about
five or six, in a pink cotton shift and with anklets hanging
about her little naked feet. On the other side, a little further
off, was an umber-coloured dancing-girl, with bright bold eyes
painted round with black, covered with a mass of gold coins on
her head, in her hair, on her ears, and round her neck, and
wearing a blue silk dress all bespangled with gold. He looked
like a dust-heap between them. It was a queer picture, taken out
of the "Thousand and One Nights"; from which work also, I
presume, the numerous one-eyed people that I see everywhere in
Egypt, are copied. (I prefer this view to that of unimaginative
pedants who, attaching undue importance to facts, inform me that
this blindness is self-inflicted, to avoid conscription.) My
ride home was a fitting close to such an evening; a fantastic
procession we made, headed by a handful of torch and lantern
bearers, brandishing enormous staves; after which "Meine
Wenigkeit" on a sumptuously caparisoned steed, the consul's
nephew, the captain, Hosseyn, a cawass, all of them on horses,
others on donkeys, and odd men bustling about amongst us and
dispersing the few stragglers that were to be found at that late
hour in the streets. The fitful flare of the torches, dressing
in fugitive, fantastic lights the gateways and dim walls of the
slumbering town, had a very fine effect. More curious still was
our ride _through_ a quarter of a mile of _dourah_ that stood at
least ten or twelve feet high all round us; the train of light
and shower of sparks in the tall graceful corn was of a
surprising aspect. Except that nothing took fire, it was as if
Samson's foxes had been let loose in front of us.

_Monday, 16th._--Sketched. In the evening, yielding, I own, with
some reluctance, to a pressing invitation, returned to Keneh to
dine with Si Achmet. Had, except the roast, exactly the same
dinner as on the previous day, which leads me to conjecture that
the _repertoire_ of Arab cookery is limited. After dinner we
rode out to see the moolid, which is just beginning here. It is
_the_ great moolid of Central Egypt, and to it, but only towards
the end, flock people from all parts of the country till the
concourse is enormous. It must be an interesting sight when in
full swing, but as yet there is little or nothing worth seeing
except the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held
(Sheykh Abd-er-Rahim, the "Genani") to which I was taken by my
host. The building was like most others of the same class in
Egypt: a square chamber with a dome, and windows through which
the coffin, placed conspicuously in the centre, can be seen by
the pious crowds outside. On entering, I was conducted, after
taking off my boots, to a post of honour, on the ground of
course, in the midst of a grave circle of worthies who were
squatting in the _ruelle_ between one side of the coffin and the
wall. On my right was one of the civic functionaries, on my left
the priest attached to the tomb. The spectacle before me was
wonderful both in colour and form, though composed in great part
of the simplest elements. It was like the finest Delacroix in
aspect and tone, but with a gravity and stateliness of form very
foreign to that brilliant but epileptic genius. To the left of
me, covered with a showy embroidered cloth, stood behind a
railing the sarcophagus of the saint, illuminated from above by
various lanterns hung from the ceiling (the central one, and the
handsomest, the gift of Lady Duff Gordon) and from the corners
by gigantic candles, standing in candlesticks of proportionate
dimensions; at the same corners stood great banners of sober but
rich tone, which added much to the general colour. On each side
of the carpet at the head of which I squatted, squatted, in far
more picturesque attire, some of the notables of Keneh, half
hidden in the shadow, their large turbans cast on the rich
carpet they sat on. At the further end stood and stared, with
the solemnity of a chorus in an opera, a motley, dazzling group
of lesser folk; magnificent, too, in the flow of their
draperies, the grace of the half untwisted turbans wreathed
round their necks or hanging from their shoulders, the
stateliness of their forms, and the fiery glow of colour in
which they burnt under the clustered lanterns. Unfortunately, I
could not gaze with attention as undivided as I could have
wished, because the gentleman on my right insisted on making
conversation, the very meagrest form of which exercise absorbed
for the time my powers of attention. Hosseyn, who is very pious,
bled me of an enormous baksheesh for the shrine of the saint.

_Tuesday, 17th._--Completed my sketches in the morning. In the
evening, Si Achmet, his son, and three nephews, one of whom I
neither knew nor had invited (this is entirely Arabic--I might,
also, have taken any one with me to dine with them) came to dine
on board. It was a very droll ceremony--the Arabs had, with one
exception, probably never sat at a table on a chair before, but
they were so entirely simple as not to be (also, by-the-bye,
with one exception) at all ridiculous. Ottilio had, perhaps with
a little malice, arranged the napkins in a most artistic and
intricate fashion; these edifices so impressed my friends that
they did not sit down opposite to their plates but on one side
of them. I set them at once comparatively at their ease by
requesting them, through Hosseyn, to consider themselves at home
and eat with their fingers, forgiving me if I followed the
custom of my country; the proposal was received with great
satisfaction by the old gentleman and his son, who fell to in
their own way, the father muttering his appreciation of the
dishes in low, sonorous ejaculations: "Allah!"--"Mash
Allah!"--"Ou Allah!"--"Ameer! Ameer!" &c. &c. &c. The son, a man
of about forty, with a broken nose and a very strong squint, and
whose movements carried a general impression of contemplative
dreaminess, always verging on surprise, ate with his usual
deliberation and spent his odd moments in contemplating a
shining bunch of fingers, which he periodically and slowly
licked with the utmost impartiality; he did not mix in the
conversation. Of the three cousins on my left, two made a very
fair attempt at using the knife and fork, though it must have
been a virgin effort; the third, who had been a great deal with
English people when he was consul at Khossayr, ate his dinner
and put down his wine like the best European; I suspect, in
fact, that he was brought as a show man. Achmet, in a climax of
gratification, exclaimed towards the end of dinner, "By Allah!
if the Ameer comes to my house another year, he shall be served
after the Frankish custom." Arabs appear to be much devoted to
_limonade gazeuse_--without being the forbidden fruit of wine
itself, it dwells in bottles, and has a sort of air of crime
about it which no doubt pleases them; my left-hand neighbour
took off at least two bottles during dinner.

Hosseyn, whose father was a great friend of Si Achmet, proved
invaluable; he hopped about like a delighted child, filling the
glasses, cutting the meat of the two digitarians, and generally
making conversation--a great relief to me. In the evening one of
the nephews asked for some tea to take home, which I gave him;
another pocketed all the tobacco that was brought them to make
cigarettes. Arabs are hospitable and generous, and I like them
much, but they are indiscreet in the extreme. "Arabs," says
Hosseyn, "have no face; they never take shame." I have seen
instances of this which I won't put down; one only, for it is
very droll: my squinting friend with the pensive look asked Lady
Ely last year if she would just procure for him from the Queen a
title, or an order, as a mark of her regard. I am the bearer of
a letter to her from him now, which I have no doubt is a
reminder. Slew a sheep again.

_Wednesday, 18th._--Left Keneh early, and with regret; the
place, the people and the scenery have left many pleasing
pictures in my memory. I little expected at starting the
annoyance that awaited me! As we approached the spot where
Sheykh Selim receives his devout visitors, I sent word to the
captain that I did not wish to lose any time in landing, but
that the bag of money which had been collected for the saint was
to be delivered, and we were to go on. I had scarcely uttered
this almost sacrilegious order, when the steamer, which had been
judiciously steered within ten yards of a flat, shelving bank,
ran hard and fast into the mud, with the apparent intention of
sticking there permanently, the engine being utterly powerless
to get her out. Nobody on board doubted for an instant but that
Sheykh Selim had stopped us in his resentment; the captain
instantly dispatched sailors with money to propitiate him, and
after a few futile attempts on the part of five or six of the
crew (to loud cries of "Help us, O Prophet! help us, O Sheykh
Selim!") to heave out a vessel that was four or five feet in the
mud, jumped himself into a boat, and hurried, of course
accompanied by Hosseyn, and leaving his vessel to take care of
herself, to beseech the sheykh to get us off. Their conversation
was afterwards reported to me by one who was present. "What is
this, O Sheykh, that thou hast done to us? in what have we been
wanting towards thee? did I not give thee a shirt when we last
came by? and the tobacco, was it not good? was the roast meat
not sufficient? why are we thus punished?"--to whom the sheykh:
"Don't be a fool! why do you come to me about your boat? am I a
sailor? how do you expect me to get her off--or on? Allah got
her on the sand, not I, who am a man like yourselves." The
captain: "Allah is indeed great, but if he ran us aground it was
on thy instigation--thou knowest it, O Sheykh!" &c. &c. In this
strain the conversation lasted at least twenty minutes, during
which time and for the rest of the day I was literally sick with
disgust and anger at the lot of them. Everything that ought not
to be done under the circumstances, including losing the anchor
(which is still at the bottom of the river), was done before
evening; everything that should have been done was left undone.

Next morning (Thursday, 19th) we obtained (by force, after the
fashion of this country) through the governor of the
neighbouring town a gang of two hundred Arabs, magnificent
fellows some of them, who, at last, by heaving and tugging,
contrived to get her off--not without the most unearthly
_charivari_ I ever heard. In the morning I made a sketch;
reached Bellianeh in the evening, appeased, at last, and rather
amused at the abject condition of the captain, to whom I had
conveyed my mind (he had never seen me angry before), and who
swore that in future one hundred sheykhs should not take him out
of his course. My misadventure will benefit my successors in the
good ship _Sheberkheyt_--_a quelque chose malheur est bon._

_Friday, 20th._--Started at seven on horseback to see Abydos,
and had a delightful morning. The weather was fresh and clear,
and the canter of six or seven miles across a fine open plain to
the foot of the mountains where the ruins lie was most
enjoyable. The temples, very strikingly situated on a slope
which sweeps down from a grand amphitheatre of bastion-like
rocks, have a great advantage over all those that I have yet
seen, viz. that their sculptures have almost entirely escaped
mutilation, and are in admirable preservation. This is the more
fortunate, that they are of a very fine period, and most
delicate in workmanship; the type of the faces has considerable
beauty and refinement. The colours, notably in the more recently
excavated temple of Osiris, are often extremely well preserved,
and I am confirmed in my conjecture, that they must have been
much less beautiful in their freshness than now that time has
toned and tuned them. In the larger temple are some very
beautiful wagon-head vaults _cut in the thickness of two layers
of stone_, the upper ones laid on end to get more thickness of
material. They are charmingly decorated with cartouches and
stars on a blue ground, and divided by a band of hieroglyphs
running like a ridge-rib along the head of the vault. The stars
on Egyptian ceilings are always pentagonal, and placed very near
together. At the temple I was joined by the obligato governor, a
puffy Turk with a tight, shiny face that had a look of having
been stung all over by a wasp; he was heavy and stupid, and I
left him in the hands of Hosseyn, galloping ahead myself with
the mounted cawass, a very picturesque Arnout on a very good
horse. _N.B._--Never come to the East again without an English
saddle; the back-board of a Turkish saddle is in the long run an
intolerable nuisance, as are also, though in a less degree, the
shovel-stirrups in which one's feet are imprisoned. In the
afternoon reached Sohag, a sail, or rather a steam, of three or
four hours, in time for a most pleasant evening's walk.

_Saturday, 21st._--Got to Syoot in the afternoon, and was very
glad to catch Lady Duff Gordon on her way up the river. Was
received with great hospitality by the American and Spanish
consuls, wealthy Copts of this town who kindly put their
carriages at my disposal and, better still, their
donkeys--splendid Arabian donkeys, looking, in their trappings,
like cardinals' mules. Nothing is more pleasant than the swift
amble of a good donkey from the Hejaz. Dined in the evening with
Mr. Wonista, the consul for Spain, quite "a la Franca" with
knives and forks and the whole thing. A curious house, and the
rooms small but of enormous height, so that they looked as if
they had been set _on end_ by mistake. The walls were bare
whitewash, but the furniture was of the most gorgeous brocade,
as were also the curtains; there was a European carpet all over
the floor and as many candles on the walls (in glass bells) as
in a _cafe chantant_. I met there a Scotch clergyman belonging
to the American Mission (Episcopalian) which is very active in
Egypt. After dinner the singer from Lady Duff Gordon's boat was
sent for, and in a short time arrived with some of the crew who
acted as chorus; it is this chorus, I find, that gives the
approving murmur after each strophe. He sang well, but his
performance of course lost three-fourths of its charm by not
being heard in its proper place and surroundings. I remember
once in the Sabine hills hearing unexpectedly at a distance, in
the silent dimness of night, the droning song of a _piffera_;
nothing could be more strangely pathetic than this voice rising
in the utter silence from out of the heart of the valley
below--yet those same sounds heard close in the broad daylight
would have seemed uncouth and strident. Arab singing has a
similar quality, and is equally dependent on time and place for
its full effect. Whilst the performance was at its height, and
the minstrel was tuning his note to the most ambitious
_fioriture_, I heard in the room overhead some European
part-singing of a melancholy order, and was informed that the
Scotch minister had been invited by a few proselytes to retire
upstairs "to worship and explain an obscure passage in the
Gospel." On the invitation of the master of the house, I went up
and joined the congregation, who thought it right to favour me
with another psalm. The clergyman then read in Arabic, and
expounded in the same language a chapter from the Bible, and I
must say did it (I speak of his manner only, for Koran and Bible
Arabic is so different from the current idiom, here at all
events, that I did not understand four words in the whole
sermon) in a very simple and impressive way. He had, too, an
admirable accent. He tells me that in spite of vehement
opposition from the Coptic prelates he finds a good deal of
sympathy amongst the people.

_Sunday, 22nd._--Lovely day. Strolled about with a gun. This
place is full of "sparrows of paradise," a little bird of an
exquisite golden green. Since I was here last, the aspect of the
country has changed very much and for the better. Where I saw, a
few weeks back, nothing but pools and mud, is now a vast expanse
of clover and grass of an intense green, sunny and brilliant to
a wonderful degree. The plain looks like one immense jewel, and
contrasts deliciously with the tawny sand-rock which walls it in
on the west, behind the gleaming white domes of the cemetery.
Dined with the other consul in the evening. Same sort of house,
but much larger. No Scotch clergyman this time, but an
Anglo-Arab who teaches in the Coptic school, and, embracing
Coptic views, inveighs bitterly against the converts to
Protestantism. At sunset, to my agreeable surprise, the
Sterlings turned up, _musique en tete_, the singer in the bows
quavering a jubilant strain, and the vessel magnificent with
fresh paint.

_Monday, 23rd._--Killed a sheep. Sketched. Had the consuls and
the Scotch missionary to dine with me. The latter brought me
some newspapers, which I read greedily.

_Tuesday, 24th._--Sketched. At last an evening to myself!--these
festive gatherings are an ineffable bore, if the truth were
told.

_Wednesday, 25th._--Completed my sketches with one exception--a
study of my beautiful grey (_hechtgrau_) donkey. Unless I make a
study at Sakkara, which is just possible, this will be the end
of my work on the Nile. In twenty-two skies which I have painted
there is not a vestige of a cloud, such has been the divinely
serene weather I have had all along. This evening, indeed,
faint, shining flakes of vapour were drawn across the sky,
breaking and tempering the last rays of the sun; but by a
curious piece of luck they did not appear till I was just giving
the last touches to my day's work. Saw a beautiful and original
effect at sunset. Just as the sun was about to sink behind the
hills, a dahabieh drifted past with its sails spread, and
reaching up into the region where the light was still golden,
whilst the face of the water was darkened, and the long, low
banks were already shadowy and grey, the burning sail was
reflected in the night of the river, and looked astonishingly
beautiful. It was like the mellow splendour of the rising moon.

I delight in seeing the sailors climbing the tall, oblique yards
of the Nile boats. Sometimes five or six of them perch on one
yard at the same time, looking at a distance like great birds.

_Thursday, 26th._--Finished my donkey and started; as I get
further north, the weather is much cooler--the mornings and
evenings are quite fresh, though not so cold but that I can
sketch in the shade an hour after sunrise in summer clothes. The
natives, however, seem to take a severe view of the temperature,
and leave nothing unmuffled but their mouths, with which they
occasionally blow their fingers in the most approved winter
fashion. Was more struck than before with Gebel Aboofada--the
infinite and strongly marked strata of which it is made up
writhe and heave in a very grand and fantastic manner. Some of
the Egyptian mountains are ruled like a copy book from head to
foot, and are very monotonous.

At the foot of Aboofada, I saw, for an instant, my first and
last crocodile; a small one. They are very seldom seen from a
steamer below the cataracts, as the noise frightens away the few
there are. I had looked forward to getting a shot at one, and
was a good deal disappointed at finding none up the river. It is
curious how rapidly time lends its perspective to the past.
Every now and then a boat from the cataracts laden with dates
comes floating down the river, and the melancholy chant of the
Nubian sailors, as they strain at the oars, already falls on my
ear as a sudden memory of an almost distant past--not a month
old.

Arrived at Roda this evening. I have been reading, amongst other
things, a book everybody else read thirty years ago, "Les
Natchez," and am greatly disappointed with it. I am especially
struck with the extraordinary contrast between the masterful
sobriety and simplicity of the style, and the far-fetched
affectation of the ideas which are, more often than not,
distorted, tawdry and inflated, sometimes disgusting and not
seldom maudlin in the extreme. This singular discrepancy between
form and matter is especially French, and may frequently be
traced in the works of their painters and sculptors. No living
people has so sensitive a perception of form or so artistic an
epiderm, but an ineradicable self-consciousness develops in them
a theatrical attitude of mind which too often betrays itself in
their artistic and literary conceptions. It is the absolute
consent between conception and execution which constitutes one
of the chief sources of delight in the art of the Greeks, to
whom they are fond, too rashly, of comparing themselves.[41]

I notice in the Natchez a peculiar use of comparisons. That mode
of adding light and colour to an idea which consists in
suggesting analogies, has always been the delight of poets; but
Chateaubriand (whose analogies, by the way, are often singularly
far fetched and unfortunate) occasionally, in a morbid endeavour
to be original, seeks his effects in a suggestion of
dissimilarities; I remember an instance: he has been describing
with minute and gratuitously sickening detail a mangled heap of
dead and dying warriors after a ferocious encounter. "How
different," he exclaims, but in more flowery terms, "is a
haycock in a field with girls rolling down it!" Few will be
disposed to contradict him. His exorbitant personal vanity which
continues to peep through everywhere, and makes even his
unbounded praise of his country seem an oblique tribute to
himself, is droll and nauseating at the same time.

Took a stroll in the evening, and met an English baby! pink and
delicate like a flower; with cape and cockade complete--a pretty
sight.

Thick folds of rose and violet-coloured cloud hung along the
horizon at sunset, and looked autumnal. I have left eternal
summer behind me.

_Friday, 27th._--Such a morning as the evening of yesterday
foreboded; rather chilly and misty, and as near an approach to
winter as Upper Egypt may be expected to afford. The sky was
veiled on all sides with soft grey clouds, wrinkled and fretted
like the grey sands when the sea has left them. It was a fitting
background to the desolate tombs of Beni Hassan, which I visited
an hour or two after sunrise. The range of hills on the face of
which these tombs are excavated is not unlike Gebel Aboofada in
its configuration, except that the strata with which it is
scored are more level and regular. This monotony is, however,
relieved by the sky-line, which is extremely fine. Along the
foot of these hills runs a level strip of barren land, broken
abruptly in its whole length by a steep bank which rises like a
ruined wall from the plain below, and which is, when the Nile is
exceptionally high, the bank of the river itself. Standing, as
it now does, nearly a mile inland, and crested with two deserted
villages, it has a grand but uncanny aspect. I had long been
eager to see the tombs, which show what is considered by many to
be the first rudiment of the Doric order. The similarity, more
striking even than I expected, is so great that, taken with our
knowledge of the early and frequent intercourse of the Greeks
with Egypt and of the assimilating power of their genius, it
certainly offers a strong _prima facie_ presumption in favour of
this view. It may be objected that the echinus, the conical form
of the shaft and its entasis, all three inseparable features and
especial beauties of the Greek order, are wanting here, though
they are present in the earliest specimen of the style preserved
in Greece, the temple of Corinth. This argument would deserve
more consideration if it could be conceived that the order as
seen at Corinth was a spontaneous conception, and not a
development of some more elementary form which, whether native
or imported at a remote period, has not been handed down to us.
In point of fact, the chamfering of a simple stone pier into an
octagon and then further to a polygon of sixteen, or more,
sides (specimens of the two forms are seen side by side in two
of the tombs of Beni Hassan) is so elementary an effort of
architecture and one so obvious, that its independent and
spontaneous adoption by two different nations would be matter
for no surprise. On the other hand, it is to be remarked that
these tombs and the early temple at Karnak already mentioned are
the only instances of this style known in Africa--that not only
are they isolated in themselves, but they form a step to no
further developments--a link in no chain; that in character and
conception they have nothing in common with any of the great
monuments of Egypt, to which indeed they are antagonistic in
feeling; that they stand side by side with other monuments of
the _same_ date (about 2000 B.C.?) of a developed and absolutely
different type--a type certainly indigenous and based on the
imitation of natural forms which is especially characteristic of
Egyptian architecture; and lastly, that the tombs of Beni Hassan
show certain dissonances, such as one might expect to find in
the case of an unintelligent and unperceptive manipulation of a
foreign style. In the face of these considerations, I find it
difficult to resist a suspicion that the view generally received
exactly reverses the truth of the case, and that these tombs are
not indeed the prototypes of the Doric temple, but rather the
results, themselves, of contact at some remote period between
the Egyptians and that branch of the great Aryan family which,
at long intervals, and in successive waves, covered the shores
of the Egean Sea, and one of the latest offshoots of which
poured down into Greece from the heights of Thessaly under the
name of Dorians. I believe the earliest Egyptian _record_ of the
pressure of Greeks in this country goes no further back than
1500 B.C.; but a peaceful intercourse between the two races may
have existed over a long period, without necessarily finding a
place in public records.

The (quasi) Doric tombs are divided into a nave and aisles by
two rows of piers, carrying an architrave and disposed at right
angles to the portico, agreeably carrying out the likeness of a
Greek temple. The circles which intersect the extremity of the
other group of tombs are _parallel_ to the portico, and have a
deplorable effect, much heightened by the shape of the ceiling,
which is that of a very flat pediment. The architrave follows
the line of the roof, but at a still more open angle. It would
be difficult to conceive anything more hideous. Nearly all the
tombs are decorated with frescoes of a rude kind, but displaying
frequently an amount of freedom unusual in Egyptian art.

Our guide was a splendid fellow, looking, in his flowing robes,
like a figure from the "School of Athens" on the "Disputa." The
longer I live, the more I am struck by the identity of Raphael's
frescoes with the noblest aspects of Nature.

To Benisoef in the evening. Passed some travellers; nothing
looks so gay and pretty as a dahabieh with its colours flying
and its sails spread.

_Saturday, 28th._--Lovely morning once again. Reached Sakkara
early, but found that the road to the Pyramids was obstructed by
water, so moved on at once to Ghizeh, opposite to Old Cairo,
where I shall remain till to-morrow morning; meanwhile I have
sent on Hosseyn to secure a room at the inn, and to fetch the
means of leaving a pleasant memory of me on board the
_Sheberkheyt_.

I have stripped the walls of my cabin of the paintings I had
hung round them, and they look desolate and like the coffin of
my now past journey. A most enjoyable journey it has been, full
of pleasant things to remember; full, too, I hope, of artistic
profit and teaching. I have been indeed fortunate, for, as I now
see more clearly than ever, in a dahabieh I could not have
achieved a third of the journey, and in a passenger steamer I
could not have done a stroke of work. Every study I take home I
owe entirely to the viceroy's munificent kindness.

_Sunday, 29th._--Left for Boulay, my destination--gave a parting
sheep to the crew, distributed _largesse_, shook hands all
round, and drove off to the hotel.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] See Chap. IV. p. 239.