A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

A sand-bank which we passed next morning was scored all over with fresh trails and looked as if it had been the scene of a crocodile-parliament. There must have been at least twenty or thirty members present at the sitting; and the freshness of the marks showed that they had only just dispersed.

A keen and cutting wind carried us along the last thirty miles of our journey. We had supposed that the farther south we penetrated the hotter we should find the climate; yet now, strange to say, we were shivering in sealskins, under the most brilliant sky in the world and in a latitude more southerly than that of Mecca or Calcutta. It was some compensation, however, to run at full speed past the dullest of Nile scenery, seeing only sand-banks in the river; sand-hills and sand-flats on either hand; a disused shâdûf or a skeleton-boat rotting at the water’s edge; a wind-tormented Dôm palm struggling for existence on the brink of the bank.

At a fatal corner about six miles below Wady Halfeh, we passed a melancholy flotilla of dismantled dahabeeyahs—the Fostât, the Zenobia, the Alice, the Mansoorah—all alike weather-bound and laid up helplessly against the wind. The Mansoorah, with Captain and Mrs. E—— on board, had been three days doing these six miles; at which rate of progress they might reasonably hope to reach Cairo in about a year and a month.

The palms of Wady Halfeh, blue with distance, came into sight at the next bend; and by noon the Philæ was once more moored alongside the Bagstones under a shore crowded with cangias, covered with bales and packing-cases and, like the shores of Mahatta and Assûan, populous with temporary huts. For here it is that traders going by water embark and disembark on their way to and fro between Dongola and the first cataract.

There were three temples—or at all events three ancient Egyptian buildings—once upon a time on the western bank over against Wady Halfeh. Now there are a few broken pillars, a solitary fragment of brick pylon, some remains of a flight of stone steps leading down to the river, and a wall of inclosure overgrown with wild pumpkins. These ruins, together with a rambling native Khan and a noble old sycamore, form a picturesque group backed by amber sand-cliffs, and mark the site of a lost city[124] belonging to the early days of Usurtesen III.

The second, or great, cataract begins a little way above Wady Halfeh and extends over a distance of many miles. It consists, like the first cataract, of a succession of rocks and rapids, and is skirted for the first five miles or so by the sand-cliff ridge which, as I have said, forms a background to the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This ridge terminates abruptly in the famous precipice known as the Rock of Abusîr. Only adventurous travelers bound for Dongola or Khartûm go beyond this point; and they, for the most part, take the shorter route across the desert from Korosko. L—— and the writer would fain have hired camels and pushed on as far as Semneh; which is a matter of only two days’ journey from Wady Halfeh, and, for people provided with sketching-tents, is one of the easiest of inland excursions.

One may go to the Rock of Abusîr by land or by water. The happy couple and the writer took two native boatmen versed in the intricacies of the cataract and went in the felucca. L—— and the painter preferred donkeying. Given a good breeze from the right quarter, there is, as regards time, but little to choose between the two routes. No one, however, who has approached the Rock of Abusîr by water, and seen it rise like a cathedral front from the midst of that labyrinth of rocky islets—some like clusters of basaltic columns, some crowned with crumbling ruins, some bleak and bare, some green with wild pomegranate trees—can doubt which is the more picturesque.

Landing among the tamarisks at the foot of the cliff, we come to the spreading skirts of a sand-drift steeper and more fatiguing to climb than the sand-drift at Abou Simbel. We do climb it, however, though somewhat sulkily, and, finding the donkey-party perched upon the top, are comforted with draughts of ice-cold lemonade, brought in a kullah from Wady Halfeh.

The summit of the rock is a mere ridge, steep and overhanging toward east and south, and carved all over with autographs in stone. Some few of these are interesting; but for the most part they record only the visits of the illustrious-obscure. We found Belzoni’s name; but looked in vain for the signatures of Burckhardt, Champollion, Lepsius and Ampère.

Owing to the nature of the ground and the singular clearness of the atmosphere, the view from this point seemed to be the most extensive I had ever looked upon. Yet the height of the Rock of Abusîr is comparatively insignificant. It would count but as a mole-hill, if measured against some Alpine summits of my acquaintance. I doubt whether it is as lofty as even the great pyramid. It is, however, a giddy place to look down from, and seems higher than it is.