A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

Thanks to a light breeze that sprang up in the afternoon, we were able to hoist our big sail again and to relieve the men from tracking. Thus we glided past the ruins of Maharrakeh, which, seen from the river, looked like a Greek portico set in a hollow waste of burning desert. Next came Wady Sabooah, a temple half-buried in sand, near which we met a tiny dahabeeyah, manned by two Nubians and flying the star and crescent. A shabby government inspector, in European dress and a fez, lay smoking on a mat outside his cabin door; while from a spar overhead there hung a mighty crocodile. The monster was of a greenish-brown color and measured at least sixteen feet from head to tail. His jaws yawned; and one flat and flabby arm and ponderous paw swung with the motion of the boat, looking horribly human.

The painter, with an eye to foregrounds, made a bid for him on the spot; but the shabby inspector was not to be moved by considerations of gain. He preferred his crocodile to infidel gold, and scarcely deigned even to reply to the offer.

Seen in the half-light of a tropical after-glow—the purple mountains coming down in detached masses to the water’s edge on the one side; the desert with its volcanic peaks yet rosy upon the other—we thought the approach to Korosko more picturesque than anything we had yet seen south of the cataract. As the dusk deepened the moon rose; and the palms that had just room to grow between the mountains and the river turned from bronze to silver. It was half-twilight, half-moonlight, by the time we reached the mooring-place where Talhamy, who had been sent forward in the small boat half an hour ago, jumped on board laden with a packet of letters and a sheaf of newspapers. For here, where the great caravan-route leads off across the desert to Khartûm, we touched the first Nubian postoffice. It was only ten days since we had received our last budget at Assûan; but it seemed like ten weeks.

CHAPTER XIV.
KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL.

It so happened that we arrived at Korosko on the eve of El-Id el-Kebîr, or the anniversary of the sacrifice of Abraham; when, according to the Moslem version, Ishmael was the intended victim and a ram the substituted offering. Now El-Id el-Kebîr, being one of the great feasts of the Mohammedan calendar, is a day of gifts and good wishes. The rich visit their friends and distribute meat to the poor; and every true believer goes to the mosque to say his prayers in the morning. So, instead of starting as usual at sunrise, we treated our sailors to a sheep and waited till past noon, that they might have a holiday.

They began the day by trooping off to the village mosque in all the glory of new blue blouses, spotless turbans and scarlet leather slippers; then loitered about till dinner-time, when the said sheep, stewed with lentils and garlic, brought the festivities to an end. It was a thin and ancient beast and must have been horribly tough; but an epicure might have envied the childlike enjoyment with which our honest fellows squatted, cross-legged and happy, round the smoking cauldron; chattering, laughing, feasting; dipping their fingers in the common mess; washing the whole down with long draughts of Nile water; and finishing off with a hubble-bubble passed from lip to lip and a mouthful of muddy coffee. By a little after midday they had put off their finery, harnessed themselves to the tow-rope and set to work to haul us through the rocky shoals which here impede the current.

From Korosko to Derr, the actual distance is about eleven miles and a half; but what with obstructions in the bed of the river, and what with a wind that would have been favorable but for another great bend which the Nile takes toward the east, those eleven miles and a half cost us the best part of two days’ hard tracking.

Landing from time to time when the boat was close in shore, we found the order of planting everywhere the same, lupins and lentils on the slope against the water-line; an uninterrupted grove of palms on the edge of the bank; in the space beyond, fields of cotton and young corn; and then the desert. The arable soil was divided off, as usual, by hundreds of water channels, and seemed to be excellently farmed as well as abundantly irrigated. Not a weed was to be seen; not an inch of soil appeared to be wasted. In odd corners where there was room for nothing else, cucumbers and vegetable-marrows flourished and bore fruit. Nowhere had we seen castor-berries so large, cotton-pods so full, or palms so lofty.

Here also, for the first time out of Egypt, we observed among the bushes a few hoopoes and other small birds; and on a sand-slope down by the river a group of wild ducks. We—that is to say, one of the M. B.’s and the writer—had wandered off that way in search of crocodiles. The two dahabeeyahs, each with its file of trackers, were slowly laboring up against the current about a mile away. All was intensely hot and intensely silent. We had walked far and had seen no crocodile. What we should have done if we had met one I am not prepared to say. Perhaps we should have run away. At all events, we were just about to turn back when we caught sight of the ducks sunning themselves, half asleep, on the brink of a tiny pool about an eighth of a mile away.

Creeping cautiously under the bank, we contrived to get within a few yards of them. They were four—a drake, a duck, and two young ones—exquisitely feathered and as small as teal. The parent-birds could scarcely have measured more than eight inches from head to tail. All alike had chestnut-colored heads with a narrow buff stripe down the middle, like a parting; maroon backs; wing-feathers maroon and gray; and tails tipped with buff. They were so pretty, and the little family party was so complete, that the writer could not help secretly rejoicing that Alfred and his gun were safe on board the Bagstones.