A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

We had now been long enough afloat to find out that we had almost always one man on the sick list, and were therefore habitually short of a hand for the navigation of the boat. There never were such fellows for knocking themselves to pieces as our sailors. They were always bruising their feet, wounding their hands, getting sunstrokes, and whitlows, and sprains, and disabling themselves in some way. L——, with her little medicine chest and her roll of lint and bandages, soon had a small but steady practice, and might have been seen about the lower deck most mornings after breakfast, repairing these damaged Alis and Hassans. It was well for them that we carried “an experienced surgeon,” for they were entirely helpless and despondent when hurt, and ignorant of the commonest remedies. Nor is this helplessness confined to natives of the sailor and fellâh class. The provincial proprietors and officials are to the full as ignorant, not only of the uses of such simple things as poultices or wet compresses, but of the most elementary laws of health. Doctors there are none south of Cairo; and such is the general mistrust of state medicine, that when, as in the case of any widely spread epidemic, a medical officer is sent up the river by order of the government, half the people are said to conceal their sick, while the other half reject the remedies prescribed for them. Their trust in the skill of the passing European is, on the other hand, unbounded. Appeals for advice and medicine were constantly being made to us by both rich and poor; and there was something very pathetic in the simple faith with which they accepted any little help we were able to give them. Meanwhile L——’s medical reputation, being confirmed by a few simple cures, rose high among the crew. They called her the hakîm sitt (the doctor-lady); obeyed her directions and swallowed her medicines as reverently as if she were the college of surgeons personified; and showed their gratitude in all kinds of pretty, child-like ways—singing her favorite Arab song as they ran beside her donkey—searching for sculptured fragments whenever there were ruins to be visited—and constantly bringing her little gifts of pebbles and wild flowers.

Above Siût, the picturesqueness of the river is confined for the most part to the eastern bank. We have almost always a near range of mountains on the Arabian side, and a more distant chain on the Libyan horizon. Gebel Sheik el Raáineh succeeds to Gebel Abufayda, and is followed in close succession by the cliffs of Gow, of Gebel Sheik el Hereedee, of Gebel Ayserat and Gebel Tûkh—all alike rigid in strongly marked beds of level limestone strata; flat-topped and even, like lines of giant ramparts; and more or less pierced with orifices which we know to be tombs, but which look like loop-holes from a distance.

Flying before the wind with both sails set, we see the rapid panorama unfold itself day after day, mile after mile, hour after hour. Villages, palm groves, rock-cut sepulchers, flit past and are left behind. To-day we enter the region of the dôm palm. To-morrow we pass the map-drawn limit of the crocodile. The cliffs advance, recede, open away into desolate-looking valleys, and show faint traces of paths leading to excavated tombs on distant heights. The headland that looked shadowy in the distance a couple of hours ago is reached and passed. The cargo-boat on which we have been gaining all the morning is outstripped and dwindling in the rear. Now we pass a bold bluff sheltering a sheik’s tomb and a solitary dôm palm—now an ancient quarry from which the stone has been cut out in smooth masses, leaving great halls, and corridors, and stages in the mountain side. At Gow,[31] the scene of an insurrection headed by a crazy dervish some ten years ago, we see, in place of a large and populous village, only a tract of fertile corn ground, a few ruined huts, and a group of decapitated palms. We are now skirting Gebel Sheik el Hereedee; here bordered by a rich margin of cultivated flat; yonder leaving space for scarce a strip of roadway between the precipice and the river. Then comes Raáineh, a large village of square mud towers, lofty and battlemented, with string-courses of pots for the pigeons—and later on, Girgeh, once the capital town of Middle Egypt, where we put in for half an hour to post and inquire for letters. Here the Nile is fast eating away the bank and carrying the town by storm. A ruined mosque with pointed arches, roofless cloisters, and a leaning column that must surely have come to the ground by this time, stands just above the landing-place. A hundred years ago it lay a quarter of a mile from the river; ten years ago it was yet perfect; after a few more inundations it will be swept away. Till that time comes, however, it helps to make Girgeh one of the most picturesque towns in Egypt.

At Farshût we see the sugar-works in active operation—smoke pouring from the tall chimneys; steam issuing from the traps in the basement; cargo-boats unlading fresh sugar-cane against the bank; heavily burdened Arabs transporting it to the factory; bullock trucks laden with cane-leaf for firing. A little higher up, at Sahîl Bajûra on the opposite side of the river, we find the bank strewn for full a quarter of a mile with sugar-cane en masse. Hundreds of camels are either arriving laden with it, or going back for more—dozens of cargo-boats are drawn up to receive it—swarms of brown fellâheen are stacking it on board for unshipment again at Farshût. The camels snort and growl; the men shout; the overseers, in blue-fringed robes and white turbans, stalk to and fro, and keep the work going. The mountains here recede so far as to be almost out of sight, and a plain rich in sugar-cane and date-palms widens out between them and the river.

And now the banks are lovely with an unwonted wealth of verdure. The young corn clothes the plain like a carpet, while the yellow-tasseled mimosa, the feathery tamarisk, the dôm and date palm, and spreading sycamore-fig, border the towing-path like garden trees beside a garden walk.

Farther on still, when all this greenery is left behind and the banks have again become flat and bare, we see to our exceeding surprise what seems to be a very large grizzled ape perched on the top of a dust-heap on the western bank. The creature is evidently quite tame, and sits on its haunches in just that chilly, melancholy posture that the chimpanzee is wont to assume in his cage at the Zoological Gardens. Some six or eight Arabs, one of whom has dismounted from his camel for the purpose, are standing round and staring at him, much as the British public stand and stare at the specimen in the Regent’s Park. Meanwhile a strange excitement breaks out among our crew. They crowd to the side; they shout; they gesticulate; the captain salaams; the steersman waves his hand; all eyes are turned toward the shore.

“Do you see Sheik Selîm?” cries Talhamy, breathlessly, rushing up from below. “There he is! Look at him! That is Sheik Selîm!”

And so we find out that it is not a monkey but a man—and not only a man, but a saint. Holiest of the holy, dirtiest of the dirty, white-pated, white-bearded, withered, bent, and knotted up, is the renowned Sheik Selîm—he who, naked and unwashed, has sat on that same spot every day through summer heat and winter cold for the last fifty years; never providing himself with food or water; never even lifting his hand to his mouth; depending on charity not only for his food but for his feeding! He is not nice to look at, even by this dim light, and at this distance; but the sailors think him quite beautiful, and call aloud to him for his blessing as we go by.

“It is not by our own will that we sail past, O father!” they cry. “Fain would we kiss thy hand; but the wind blows and the mérkeb (boat) goes, and we have no power to stay!”

But Sheik Selîm neither lifts his head nor shows any sign of hearing, and in a few minutes the mound on which he sits is left behind in the gloaming.