A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

As for the idle man, he flew at once to arms and made ready for the fray. He caused a shallow grave to be dug for himself a few yards from the spot; then went and lay in it for hours together, morning after morning, under the full blaze of the sun—flat, patient, alert—with his gun ready cocked, and a Pall Mall Budget up his back. It was not his fault if he narrowly escaped sunstroke and had his labor for his reward. That crocodile was too clever for him and took care never to come back.

Our sailors, meanwhile, though well pleased with an occasional holiday, began to find Abou Simbel monotonous. As long as the Bagstones stayed, the two crews met every evening to smoke, and dance, and sing their quaint roundelays together. But when rumors came of wonderful things already done this winter above Wady Halfeh—rumors that represented the second cataract as a populous solitude of crocodiles—then our faithful consort slipped away one morning before sunrise and the Philæ was left companionless.

At this juncture, seeing that the men’s time hung heavy on their hands, our painter conceived the idea of setting them to clean the face of the northernmost colossus, still disfigured by the plaster left on it when the great cast[121] was taken by Mr. Hay more than half a century before. This happy thought was promptly carried into effect. A scaffolding of spars and oars was at once improvised, and the men, delighted as children at play, were soon swarming all over the huge head, just as the carvers may have swarmed over it in the days when Rameses was king.

All they had to do was to remove any small lumps that might yet adhere to the surface, and then tint the white patches with coffee. This they did with bits of sponge tied to the ends of sticks; but Reïs Hassan, as a mark of dignity, had one of the painter’s old brushes, of which he was immensely proud.

It took them three afternoons to complete the job; and we were all sorry when it came to an end. To see Reïs Hassan artistically touching up a gigantic nose almost as long as himself; Riskalli and the cook-boy staggering to and fro with relays of coffee, brewed “thick and slab” for the purpose; Salame perched cross-legged, like some complacent imp, on the towering rim of the great pschent overhead; the rest chattering and skipping about the scaffolding like monkeys, was, I will venture to say, a sight more comic than has ever been seen at Abou Simbel before or since.

Rameses’ appetite for coffee was prodigious. He consumed I know not how many gallons a day. Our cook stood aghast at the demand made upon his stores. Never before had he been called upon to provide for a guest whose mouth measured three feet and a half in width.

Still, the result justified the expenditure. The coffee proved a capital match for the sandstone; and though it was not possible wholly to restore the uniformity of the original surface, we at least succeeded in obliterating those ghastly splotches, which for so many years have marred this beautiful face as with the unsightliness of leprosy.

What with boating, fishing, lying in wait for crocodiles, cleaning the colossus, and filling reams of thin letter paper to friends at home, we got through the first week quickly enough—the painter and the writer working hard, meanwhile, in their respective ways; the painter on his big canvas in front of the temple; the writer shifting her little tent as she listed.

Now, although the most delightful occupation in life is undoubtedly sketching, it must be admitted that the sketcher at Abou Simbel works under difficulties. Foremost among these comes the difficulty of position. The great temple stands within about twenty-five yards of the brink of the bank, and the lesser temple within as many feet; so that to get far enough from one’s subject is simply impossible. The present writer sketched the small temple from the deck of the dahabeeyah; there being no point of view obtainable on shore.

Next comes the difficulty of color. Everything, except the sky and the river, is yellow—yellow, that is to say, “with a difference”; yellow ranging through every gradation of orange, maize, apricot, gold and buff. The mountains are sandstone; the temples are sandstone; the sandslope is powdered sandstone from the sandstone desert. In all these objects, the scale of color is necessarily the same. Even the shadows, glowing with reflected light, give back tempered repetitions of the dominant hue. Hence it follows that he who strives, however humbly, to reproduce the facts of the scene before him, is compelled, bon gré, mal gré, to execute what some of our young painters would nowadays call a symphony in yellow.