A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

“Where Nile reflects the endless length

Of dark-red colonnades.”—Macaulay.

We had scarcely moored our vessel to the beach at Assouan, before a messenger of the Governor arrived to ask if there was an American on board. He received the information, and we were occupied in preparing ourselves for an excursion to the island of Elephantine, when Achmet called to us: “The Governor is coming.” We had no time to arrange our cabin for his reception; he was already at the door, with two attendants, and the most I could do was to clear sufficient space for a seat on my divan. His Excellency was a short, stout, broad-faced man, with large eyes, a gray beard and a flat nose. He wore a semi-European dress of brown cloth, and was blunt though cordial in his manners. His attendants, one of whom was the Captain of the Cataract, wore the Egyptian dress, with black turbans. They saluted us by touching their hands to the lips and forehead, and we responded in similar manner, after which the Governor inquired after our health and we inquired after his. I delivered my letter, and while he was occupied in reading it, Achmet prepared the coffee and pipes. Luckily, we had three shebooks, the best of which, having an amber mouth-piece, was presented to the Governor. I waited for the coffee with some trepidation, for I knew we had but two Turkish finjans, and a Frank cup was out of the question. However, Achmet was a skilful servant. He presented the cups at such intervals that one was sure to be empty while the other was full, and artfully drew away the attention of our guests by his ceremonious presentations; so that not only they but both of us partook twice of coffee, without the least embarrassment, and I believe, had there been ten persons instead of five, he would have given the two cups the effect of ten.

After the Governor had expressed his pleasure in flowing Oriental phrases, and promised to engage me a boat for Korosko, he took his leave and we crossed in a ferry barge to Elephantine. This is a small but fertile island, whose granite foundations are fast anchored in the Nile. It once was covered with extensive ruins, but they have all been destroyed except a single gateway and an altar to Amun, both of red granite, and a sitting statue of marble. The southern part is entirely covered with the ruins of a village of unburnt brick, from the topmost piles of which we enjoyed a fine view of the picturesque environs of Assouan. The bed of the Nile, to the south, was broken with isles of dark-red granite rock, the same formation which appears in the jagged crests of the mountains beyond the city. Scattered over them were the tombs of holy men, dating from the times of the Saracens. A thin palm-grove somewhat concealed the barren aspect of the city, but our glances passed it, to rest on the distant hills, kindling in the setting sun.

The island is inhabited by Nubians, and some twenty or thirty children, of from six to ten years of age—the boys entirely naked, the girls wearing the ràhad, a narrow leathern girdle, around the loins—surrounded us, crying “backsheesh!” and offering for sale bits of agate, coins, and fragments of pottery. Some of them had cunning but none of them intelligent faces; and their large black eyes had an astonishingly precocious expression of sensuality. We bought a few trifles and tried to dismiss them, but their numbers increased, so that by the time we had made the tour of the island we had a retinue of fifty followers. I took the branches of henna they offered me and switched the most impudent of them, but they seemed then to consider that they had a rightful claim to the backsheesh, and were more importunate than ever. As we left, they gathered on the shore and sang us a farewell chorus, but a few five para pieces, thrown among them, changed the harmony into a scramble and a fight, in which occupation these lovely children of Nature were engaged until we lost sight of them.

The next day we visited Philæ. We took donkeys and a guide and threaded the dismal valley of Saracenic tombs south of the town, into a pass leading through the granite hills. The landscape was wintry in its bleakness and ruggedness. The path over which we rode was hard sand and gravel, and on both sides the dark rocks were piled in a thousand wonderful combinations. On the surface there is no appearance of regular strata, but rather of some terrible convulsion, which has broken the immense masses and thrown them confusedly together. Russegger noticed that the structure of the primitive strata of Assouan was exactly similar to that of Northern Lapland. The varieties of landscape, in different climates, depend therefore upon the difference of vegetation and of atmospheric effect, rather than that of geological forms, which always preserve their identity. Dr. Kane also found in the bleak hills of Greenland the same structure which he had observed in the Ghauts of tropical India.

After three or four miles of this travel the pass opened upon the Nile, just above the Cataract. At the termination of the portage is a Nubian village, whose plantations of doum and date-palms and acacias are dazzling in their greenness, from contrast with the bleak pyramids of rock and the tawny drifts of the Lybian sands on the western bank. We rode down to the port, where a dozen trading vessels lay at anchor, and took a large boat for Philæ. The Governor of Assouan was there, and His Excellency showed me the vessel he had engaged for me—a small and rather old dahabiyeh, but the best to be had. The price was one hundred and fifty piastres for the trip—about one hundred and twenty miles—besides something for the men. Achmet attributed this moderate demand to the effect of a timely present, which had been delicately conveyed into the Governor’s hands the night before. There was a tall gentleman, in the official Egyptian costume, in company with the Governor. Achmet said he was a French engineer in the service of Abbas Pasha, and I afterwards learned that he was none other than M. Linant, or Linant Bey whose name is so well known through his connection with the exploration of Petra, and of the antiquities in Ethiopia. He was accompanied by his wife, a French lady, who greeted us courteously, and two daughters of semi-Abyssinian origin. The latter were dressed in Oriental costume, but unveiled. M. Linant is a tall, grave person, about fifty years of age. He wore a crescent of diamonds on his breast, and his features expressed all the dignity and repose of one who had become thoroughly naturalized in the East.

As the wind carried us out into the stream, we saw the towers of the temple of Isis, on Philæ, through a savage gorge of the river. The enormous masses of dark granite were piled on either side to a height of several hundred feet, taking in some places the forms of monoliths and sitting colossi, one of which appeared so lightly balanced on the loose summit that a strong gale might topple it down the steep. The current in the narrow channel was so violent that we could make no headway, but a Nubian boy, swimming on a palm-log, carried a rope to the shore, and we were at length towed with much labor into the more tranquil basin girdling Philæ. The four lofty towers of the two pylons, the side corridors of pillars and the exterior walls of the temple seem perfectly preserved, on approaching the island, the green turf of whose banks and the grouping of its palms quite conceal the ruins of a miserable mud village which surrounds the structures. Philæ is the jewel of the Nile, but these ruins are an unsightly blotch, which takes away half its lustre. The setting is nevertheless perfect. The basin of black, jagged mountains, folding on all sides, yet half-disclosing the avenues to Egypt and Nubia; the hem of emerald turf at their feet, sprinkled with clusters of palm, and here and there the pillar or wall of a temple; the ring of the bright river, no longer turbid as in Lower Egypt: of these it is the centre, as it was once the radiant focus of their beauty.

The temple, which belongs to the era of the Ptolemies, and is little more than two thousand years old, was built by various monarchs, and is very irregular in its plan. Instead of preserving a fixed direction, it follows the curve of the island, and its various corridors and pylons have been added to each other with so little regard to proportion, that the building is much more agreeable when viewed as a collection of detached parts, than as a whole. From its locality, it has suffered comparatively little from the ravages of man, and might be restored to almost its original condition. The mud which Coptic Christians plastered over the walls of its sanctuaries has concealed, but not defaced, their richly-colored sculptures, and the palm-leaf and lotus capitals of its portico retain the first brilliancy of their green and blue tints. The double corridor of thirty-six columns, in front of the temple, reaching to the southern end of the island, has never been finished, some of the capitals last erected being unsculptured, and others exhibiting various stages of completion. In Egypt one so accustoms himself to looking back four thousand years, that Philæ seems but of yesterday. The Gothic Cathedrals of the Middle Ages are like antediluvian remains, compared with its apparent newness and freshness.

We examined the interior chambers with the aid of a torch, and I also explored several secret passages, inclosed in the thickness of the walls. The sculptures are raised on the face of the stone, and painted in light and brilliant colors. They represent Isis and Osiris, with their offspring, the god Horus, which three constituted the Trinity worshipped in Philæ. In one place Isis is seen giving suck to the infant god—a group which bore a singular resemblance to some painting I have seen of the Virgin and Child. The gods are here painted of fair, Greek complexion, and not, as in the oldest tombs and temples, of a light red. Their profiles are symmetrical and even beautiful, and the emblems by which they are surrounded, are drawn and colored in admirable taste. Those friends of the African Race, who point to Egypt as a proof of what that race has accomplished, are wholly mistaken. The only negro features represented in Egyptian sculpture are those of slaves and captives taken in the Ethiopian wars of the Pharaohs. The temples and pyramids throughout Nubia, as far as the frontiers of Dar-Fūr and Abyssinia, all bear the hieroglyphs of these monarchs, and there is no evidence in all the valley of the Nile that the Negro Race ever attained a higher degree of civilization than is at present exhibited in Congo and Ashantee.