In this connection I should like to record an incident which happened while we were at Sohag. Upholding the sporting traditions of the neighbourhood, the Deputy-Governor thought he would organise some shooting expeditions among the notables of the town, there being a few gazelle in the desert and plenty of duck in the pools at its edge. He therefore sent to Cairo for his three sporting-guns and some ammunition. These were forwarded to him by railway; but some over-suspicious official examined the package, and immediately the rumour spread that a haul of contraband arms had been made. The Coptic papers next day published the astounding news, which was copied in the European press, that twenty guns and a large amount of ammunition had been seized, and that an anti-Coptic rising in Sohag, led by the Deputy-Governor, was imminent. Much excitement was caused thereby, and not a little trepidation amongst the Copts of Akhmîm and elsewhere, at which the kindly owner of the guns, with a twinkle in his eye, expressed his concern to us, as we sat with him one evening in the club which he and his friends had recently founded for the purpose of bringing Copts and Mussulmans together. Thus is the Unrest kept in the forefront of men’s minds.
Proceeding slowly up the valley, we rode, slipping and scrambling, along the narrow pathway: the noise of our going echoed from cliff to cliff. Occasionally the shrill cry of a hawk rang through the wady, and its soaring flight would lead the eye up from the mellow tones of the rocks to the deep colour of the sky.
Two views in the Wady Salamûni: early morning
Then a stumbling step would bring the attention down to the pathway once more, where a lizard, scuttling away over the stones, would direct one’s glance into some shadowed cranny where the creepers flowered amongst the gravel. At intervals along the path small piles of stones had been placed upon the rocks at the wayside, either to mark the road or to act as the record of the passage of a pilgrim, this latter being the custom obtaining amongst desert people from remote times, though I have never been able to ascertain clearly whether it has a religious origin. Guiding ourselves by these little heaps when the path was obscure, at length we came, quite suddenly, upon the Coptic ruins to which the pilgrims were wont to journey; and here we dismounted for a few minutes.
High upon a ledge of rock, a hundred feet from the valley, a small, ruined building of unburnt bricks clung perilously to the cliff, and marked the site where a forgotten Coptic hermit had dwelt in the early centuries of the Christian era. A chimney in the rock appears to have led up to it, for there is some more brickwork to be seen here. But probably a rope-ladder against the face of the cliff was also used, for these anchorites were not uncommonly as agile as they were saintly, choosing to live, as they so often did, in inaccessible caverns, or on the perilous topes of ruined temples, or even upon the capital of an ancient column. Upon the shelving cliff-side ran a ledge of rock, a continuation of that on which the building was erected. This had been made into a kind of promenade about a hundred yards in length, blocked at the far end by a stout wall. A low fender of stone passed along the brink of the ledge, thus preventing the danger of a headlong fall into the valley below on the part of the star-gazing hermit, who, presumably, took his daily constitutional at this fine elevation.
In honour of the saint, as it would appear, a small chapel had been built at the foot of the cliff; and, though this is now much ruined, two of its arches, constructed of thin, red bricks, are still intact, and some of the white-washed walls are yet standing. Near this chapel there are the much-destroyed ruins of what seems to have been a small monastic settlement, perhaps founded in honour of the hermit of the cliff dwelling; but very little now remains of the settlement.
A dramatic residence, indeed, for a man of God and for his followers! Here, in the splendid desolation of this valley amongst the hills, one could well imagine an anchorite turning his thoughts to things beyond the ken of the dweller in the cities. There is an atmosphere of expectancy in these desert cañons, a feeling that something lies waiting around the corner, a sense of elusiveness inviting a search, a mysterious suggestion of an impending event which I do not know how to describe, but which might well be interpreted by a religious mystic as a revelation of a higher power. The feeling that one is watched, and indeed watched benevolently, is experienced, I should think, by almost all travellers in the desert; and there is no locality where one may lie down o’ nights with a greater sense of security, nor any place where words may be whispered to the unknown, with better hope that they are heard. The people of the Greek age in Egypt, offering prayer to Pan in this desert, were wont to make their supplication to Pan who was “within hearing”; and now, though the old gods are dead and the new God sometimes seems very far off, those who journey in the wilderness still may believe that there is Something listening and always “within hearing.”
Continuing our way up the valley a short distance farther, we came, just before sunset, to Bir el Ain, where we proposed to spend the night. As we approached the end of our journey we had noticed that the vegetation, such as there was, was fresher in colour, as though more fully watered; and several birds were observed hereabouts. A black and white wheatear flew from rock to rock beside us; two little pink-beaked finches rose from a tamarisk as we passed; and, in a soft feathery tree of the acacia family, which grew solitary in the gravel bed, two very small birds—warblers of some kind—flitted silently from branch to branch, their little weight hardly stirring the twigs upon which they alighted. The nearness of the water thus was obvious; but the charmed surroundings of the well were an extraordinary surprise. After the heat and exertion of the day, and the long ride through the almost sterile valley, the scene of our cool camping-ground beside the water possessed a charm which perhaps it would have held in lesser degree under other circumstances. To me it appeared as a kind of fairyland.