A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

As we sat on the bank in the moonlight, quietly smoking our pipes, the howling of a company of dervishes sounded from the town, whose walls are a few hundred paces distant from the river. We inquired of the guard whether a Frank dare visit them. He could not tell, but offered to accompany me and try to procure an entrance. I took Achmet and two of our sailors, donned a Bedouin capote, and set out in search of the dervishes. The principal gate of the town was closed, and my men battered it vainly with their clubs, to rouse the guard. We wandered for some time among the mounds of Panopolis, stumbling over blocks of marble and granite, under palms eighty feet high, standing clear and silvery in the moonlight. At last, the clamor of the wolfish dogs we waked up on the road, brought us one of the watchers outside of the walls, whom we requested to admit us into the city. He replied that this could not be done. “But,” said Achmet, “here is on Effendi who has just arrived, and must visit the mollahs to-night; admit him and fear nothing.” The men thereupon conducted us to another gate and threw a few pebbles against the window above it. A woman’s voice replied, and presently the bolts were undrawn and we entered. By this time the dervishes had ceased their howlings, and every thing was as still as death. We walked for half an hour through the deserted streets, visited the mosques and public buildings, and heard no sound but our own steps. It was a strangely interesting promenade. The Arabs, armed with clubs, carried a paper lantern, which flickered redly on the arches and courts we passed through. My trusty Theban walked by my side, and took all possible trouble to find the retreat of the dervishes—but in vain. We passed out through the gate, which was instantly locked behind us, and had barely reached our vessel, when the unearthly song of the Moslem priests, louder and wilder than ever, came to our ears.

The prejudice of the Mohammedans against the Christians is wearing away with their familiarity with the Frank dress and their adoption of Frankish vices. The Prophet’s injunction against wine is heeded by few of his followers, or avoided by drinking arakee, a liquor distilled from dates and often flavored with hemp. Their conscience is generally satisfied with a pilgrimage to Mecca and the daily performance of the prescribed prayers, though the latter is often neglected. All of my sailors were very punctual in this respect, spreading their carpets on the forward deck, and occupying an hour or two every day with genuflexions, prostrations, and salutations toward Mecca, the direction of which they never lost, notwithstanding the windings of the Nile. In the cathedrals of Christian Europe I have often seen pantomimes quite as unnecessary, performed with less apparent reverence. The people of Egypt are fully as honest and well-disposed as the greater part of the Italian peasantry. They sometimes deceive in small things, and are inclined to take trifling advantages, but that is the natural result of living under a government whose only rule is force, and which does not even hesitate to use fraud. Their good humor is inexhaustible. A single friendly word wins them, and even a little severity awakes no lasting feeling of revenge. I should much rather trust myself alone among the Egyptian Fellahs, than among the peasants of the Campagna, or the boors of Carinthia. Notwithstanding our men had daily opportunities of plundering us, we never missed a single article. We frequently went ashore with our dragoman, leaving every thing in the cabin exposed, and especially such articles as tobacco, shot, dates, &c., which would most tempt an Arab, yet our confidence was never betrayed. We often heard complaints from travellers in other boats, but I am satisfied that any one who will enforce obedience at the start, and thereafter give none but just and reasonable commands, need have no difficulty with his crew.

The next morning, the wind being light, we walked forward to El Menschieh, a town about nine miles distant from Ekhmin. It was market-day, and the bazaar was crowded with the countrymen, who had brought their stock of grain, sugar-cane and vegetables. The men were taller and more muscular than in Lower Egypt, and were evidently descended from a more intelligent and energetic stock. They looked at us curiously, but with a sort of friendly interest, and courteously made way for us as we passed through the narrow bazaar. In the afternoon the wind increased to a small gale, and bore us rapidly past Gebel Tookh to the city of Girgeh, so named in Coptic times from the Christian saint, George. Like Manfalout, it has been half washed away by the Nile, and two lofty minarets were hanging on the brink of the slippery bank, awaiting their turn to fall. About twelve miles from Girgeh, in the Libyan Desert, are the ruins of Abydus, now covered by the sand, except the top of the portico and roof of the temple-palace of Sesostris, and part of the temple of Osiris. We held a council whether we should waste the favorable wind or miss Abydus, and the testimony of Achmet, who had visited the ruins, having been taken, we chose the latter alternative. By this time Girgeh was nearly out of sight, and we comforted ourselves with the hope of soon seeing Dendera.

The pilgrims to Mecca, by the Kenneh and Kosseir route, were on their return, and we met a number of boats, crowded with them, on their way to Cairo from the former place. Most of the boats carried the red flag, with the star and crescent. On the morning after leaving Girgeh, we took a long stroll through the fields of Farshoot, which is, after Siout, the richest agricultural district of Upper Egypt. An excellent system of irrigation, by means of canals, is kept up, and the result shows what might be made of Egypt, were its great natural resources rightly employed. The Nile offers a perpetual fountain of plenty and prosperity, and its long valley, from Nubia to the sea, would become, in other hands, the garden of the world. So rich and pregnant a soil I have never seen. Here, side by side, flourish wheat, maize, cotton, sugar-cane, indigo, hemp, rice, dourra, tobacco, olives, dates, oranges, and the vegetables and fruits of nearly every climate. The wheat, which, in November, we found young and green, would in March be ripe for the sickle, and the people were cutting and threshing fields of dourra, which they had planted towards the end of summer. Except where the broad meadows are first reclaimed from the rank, tufted grass which has taken possession of them, the wheat is sowed upon the ground, and then ploughed in by a sort of crooked wooden beam, shod with iron, and drawn by two camels or buffaloes. I saw no instance in which the soil was manured. The yearly deposit made by the bountiful river seems to be sufficient. The natives, it is true, possess immense numbers of pigeons, and every village is adorned with towers, rising above the mud huts like the pylons of temples, and inhabited by these birds. The manure collected from them is said to be used, but probably only in the culture of melons, cucumbers, and other like vegetables with which the gardens are stocked.

The fields of sugar-cane about Farshoot were the richest I saw in Egypt. Near the village, which is three miles from the Nile, there is a steam sugar-refinery, established by Ibrahim Pasha, who seems to have devoted much attention to the culture of cane, with a view to his own profit. There are several of these manufactories along the Nile, and the most of them were in full operation, as we passed. At Radamoon, between Minyeh and Siout, there is a large manufactory, where the common coarse sugar made in the Fellah villages is refined and sent to Cairo. We made use of this sugar in our household, and found it to be of excellent quality, though coarser than that of the American manufactories. The culture of cotton has not been so successful. The large and handsome manufactory built at Kenneh, is no longer in operation, and the fields which we saw there, had a forlorn, neglected appearance. The plants grow luxuriantly, and the cotton is of fine quality, but the pods are small and not very abundant. About Siout, and in Middle and Lower Egypt, we saw many fields of indigo, which is said to thrive well. Peas, beans and lentils are cultivated to a great extent, and form an important item of the food of the inhabitants. The only vegetables we could procure for our kitchen, were onions, radishes, lettuce and spinage. The Arabs are very fond of the tops of radishes, and eat them with as much relish as their donkeys.

One of the principal staples of Egypt is the dourra (holcus sorghum), which resembles the zea (maize) in many respects. In appearance, it is very like broom-corn, but instead of the long, loose panicle of red seeds, is topped by a compact cone of grains, smaller than those of maize, but resembling them in form and taste. The stalks are from ten to fifteen feet high, and the heads frequently contain as much substance as two ears of maize. It is planted in close rows, and when ripe is cut by the hand with a short sickle, after which the heads are taken off and threshed separately. The grain is fed to horses, donkeys and fowls, and in Upper Egypt is used almost universally for bread. It is of course very imperfectly ground, and unbolted, and the bread is coarse and dark, though nourishing. In the Middle and Southern States of America this grain would thrive well and might be introduced with advantage.

The plains of coarse, wiry grass (halfeh), which in many points on the Nile show plainly the neglect of the inhabitants, who by a year’s labor might convert them into blooming fields, are devoted to the pasturage of large herds of sheep, and goats, and sometimes droves of buffaloes. The sheep are all black or dark-brown, and their bushy heads remind one of terriers. The wool is rather coarse, and when roughly spun and woven by the Arabs, in its natural color, forms the mantle, something like a Spanish poncho, which is usually the Fellah’s only garment. The mutton, almost the only meat to be found, is generally lean, and brings a high price, considering the abundance of sheep. The flesh of buffaloes is eaten by the Arabs, but is too tough, and has too rank a flavor, for Christian stomachs. The goats are beautiful animals, with heads as slender and delicate as those of gazelles. They have short, black horns, curving downward—long, silky ears, and a peculiarly mild and friendly expression of countenance. We had no difficulty in procuring milk in the villages, and sometimes fresh butter, which was more agreeable to the taste than the sight. The mode of churning is not calculated to excite one’s appetite. The milk is tied up in a goat’s skin, and suspended by a rope to the branch of a tree. One of the Arab housewives (who are all astonishingly ugly and filthy) then stations herself on one side, and propels it backward and forward till the process is completed. The cheese of the country resembles a mixture of sand and slacked lime, and has an abominable flavor.

Leaving Farshoot, we swept rapidly past Haou, the ancient Diospolis parva, or Little Thebes, of which nothing is left but some heaps of dirt, sculptured fragments, and the tomb of a certain Dionysius, son of a certain Ptolemy. The course of the mountains, which follow the Nile, is here nearly east and west, as the river makes a long curve to the eastward on approaching Kenneh. The valley is inclosed within narrower bounds, and the Arabian Mountains on the north, shooting out into bold promontories from the main chain, sometimes rise from the water’s edge in bluffs many hundred feet in height. The good wind, which had so befriended us for three days, followed us all night, and when we awoke on the morning of December 4th, our vessel lay at anchor in the port of Kenneh, having beaten by four hours the boat of our American friend, which was reputed to be one of the swiftest on the river.

Kenneh, which lies about a mile east of the river, is celebrated for the manufacture of porous water-jars, and is an inferior mart of trade with Persia and India, by means of Kosseir, on the Red Sea, one hundred and twenty miles distant. The town is large, but mean in aspect, and does not offer a single object of interest. It lies in the centre of a broad plain. We rode through the bazaars, which were tolerably well stocked and crowded with hadji, or pilgrims of Mecca. My friend, who wished to make a flag of the Saxe-Coburg colors, for his return voyage, tried in vain to procure a piece of green cotton cloth. Every other color was to be had but green, which, as the sacred hue, worn only by the descendants of Mohammed, was nowhere to be found. He was finally obliged to buy a piece of white stuff and have it specially dyed. It came back the same evening, precisely the color of the Shereef of Mecca’s turban.

On the western bank of the Nile, opposite Kenneh, is the site of the city of Tentyra, famed for its temple of Athor. It is now called Dendera, from the modern Arab village. After breakfast, we shipped ourselves and our donkeys across the Nile, and rode off in high excitement, to make our first acquaintance with Egyptian temples. The path led through a palm grove, which in richness and beauty rivalled those of the Mexican tierra caliente. The lofty shafts of the date and the vaulted foliage of the doum-palm, blended in the most picturesque groupage, contrasted with the lace-like texture of the flowering mimosa, and the cloudy boughs of a kind of gray cypress. The turf under the trees was soft and green, and between the slim trunks we looked over the plain, to the Libyan Mountains—a long train of rosy lights and violet shadows. Out of this lovely wood we passed between magnificent fields of dourra and the castor-oil bean, fifteen feet in height, to a dyke which crossed the meadows to Dendera. The leagues of rank grass on our right rolled away to the Desert in shining billows, and the fresh west-wind wrapped us in a bath of intoxicating odors. In the midst of this green and peaceful plain rose the earthy mounds of Tentyra, and the portico of the temple, almost buried beneath them, stood like a beacon, marking the boundary of the Desert.