Monday (Nov. 17th) came, and the Egyptian cook, Salame, whom we had engaged for the Nile voyage, was despatched to the markets to lay in a supply of fowls, eggs, butter and vegetables. My letters home—the last I expected to send, for months to come—were committed to the Post Office, and after an early dinner, we saw our baggage and stores laden upon carts and started for Boulak, under Achmet’s guidance. We took leave of the few friends we had made in Cairo, and followed. The Cleopatra was still lying in the midst of a crowd of dahabiyehs, but the American flag, hoisted at the peak of her little mizzenmast, was our “cornet,” proclaiming departure. We found Achmet unjacketed and unturbaned, stowing away the stores, with one eye on the raïs, and another (as it seemed to me) on each of the tardy sailors. There was still charcoal to be bought, and bois gras for kindling fires, and clubs for the men, to prevent invasions from the shore, with many more of those wants which are never remembered until the last moment. The afternoon wore away; the shadows of the feathery date-trees on the island of Rhoda stretched long and cool across the Nile; but before the sun had touched the tops of the Pyramids, we had squeezed out from the shipping of Boulak, and were slowly working up the Nile before a light wind, while our boatmen thumped the tarabooka, and sang their wild Arab songs of departure. The raïs came up to know whether he had not fulfilled his contract, and Achmet with a cheerful face, turned to me and said: “Praised be Allah, master! we shall have a lucky journey.”
Achmet.
CHAPTER V.
THE PYRAMIDS AND MEMPHIS.
Howling Dervishes—A Chicken Factory—Ride to the Pyramids—Quarrel with the Arabs—The Ascent—View from the Summit—Backsheesh—Effect of Pyramid climbing—The Sphinx—Playing the Cadi—We obtain Justice—Visit to Sakkara and the Mummy Pits—The Exhumation of Memphis—Interview with M. Mariette—Account of his Discoveries—Statue of Rameses II.—Return to the Nile.
“And Morning opes in haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids.”—Emerson.
We went no further than the village of Gizeh, three or four miles above Cairo, on the first evening, having engaged our donkeys and their drivers to meet us there and convey us to the Pyramids on the following morning. About dusk, the raïs moored our boat to the bank, beside a College of dervishes, whose unearthly chants, choruses and clapping of hands, were prolonged far into the night. Their wild cries, and deep, monotonous bass howlings so filled our ears that we could not choose but listen, and, in spite of our fatigue sleep was impossible. After performing for several hours, they gradually ceased, through sheer exhaustion, though there was one tough old dervish, who continued to gasp out, “Allah! Allah!” with such a spasmodic energy, that I suspected it was produced by the involuntary action of his larynx, and that he could not have stopped, even had he been so minded.
When we threw open the latticed blinds of our cabin, before sunrise, the next morning, the extraordinary purity of the air gave rise to an amusing optical delusion on the part of my friend. “See that wall!” said he, pointing to a space between two white houses; “what a brilliant color it is painted, and how those palms and these white houses are relieved against it!” He was obliged to look twice before he perceived that what he had taken for a wall close at hand, was really the sky, and rested upon a far-off horizon. Our donkeys were in readiness on the bank, and I bestrode the same faithful little gray who had for three days carried me through the bazaars of Cairo. We left orders for the raïs to go on to Bedracheyn, a village near the supposed site of Memphis, and taking Achmet with us, rode off gayly among the mud hovels and under the date-trees of Gizeh, on our way to the Pyramids. Near the extremity of the village, we entered one of the large chicken-hatching establishments for which the place is famed, but found it empty. We disturbed a numerous family of Fellahs, couched together on the clay floor, crept on our hands and knees through two small holes and inspected sundry ovens covered with a layer of chaff, and redolent of a mild, moist heat and a feathery smell. The owner informed us that for the first four or five days the eggs were exposed to smoke as well as heat, and that when the birds began to pick the shell, which generally took place in fifteen days, they were placed in another oven and carefully accouched.