CHAPTER XIX.—PASSING THE CATARACT OF THE NILE.
AT LAST, twenty-four days from Cairo, the Nubian hills are in sight, lifting themselves up in the south, and we appear to be getting into the real Africa—Africa, which still keeps its barbarous secret, and dribbles down this commercial highway the Nile, as it has for thousands of years, its gums and spices and drugs, its tusks and skins of wild animals, its rude weapons and its cunning work in silver, its slave-boys and slave-girls. These native boats that we meet, piled with strange and fragrant merchandise, rowed by antic crews of Nubians whose ebony bodies shine in the sun as they walk backward and forward at the long sweeps, chanting a weird, barbarous refrain,—what tropical freights are these for the imagination!
At sunset we are in a lonesome place, the swift river flowing between narrow rocky shores, the height beyond Assouan grey in the distance, and vultures watching our passing boat from the high crumbling sandstone ledges. The night falls sweet and cool, the soft new moon is remote in the almost purple depths, the thickly strewn stars blaze like jewels, and we work slowly on at the rate of a mile an hour, with the slightest wind, amid the granite rocks of the channel. In this channel we are in the shadow of the old historical seat of empire, the island of Elephantine; and, turning into the narrow passage to the left, we announce by a rocket to the dalabeehs moored at Assouan the arrival of another inquisitive American. It is Sunday night. Our dragoman des patches a messenger to the chief reïs of the cataract, who lives at Philæ, five miles above. A second one is sent in the course of the night; and a third meets the old patriarch on his way to our boat at sunrise. It is necessary to impress the Oriental mind with the importance of the travelers who have arrived at the gate of Nubia.
The Nile voyager who moors his dahabeëh at the sandbank, with the fleet of merchant boats, above Assouan, seems to be at the end of his journey. Travelers from the days of Herodotus even to this century have followed each other in saying that the roar of the cataract deafened the people for miles around. Civilization has tamed the rapids. Now there is neither sight nor sound of them here at Assouan. To the southward, the granite walls which no doubt once dammed the river have been broken through by some pre-historic convulsion that strewed the fragments about in grotesque confusion. The island of Elephantine, originally a long heap of granite, is thrown into the middle of the Nile, dividing it into two narrow streams. The southern end rises from the water, a bold mass of granite. Its surface is covered with ruins, or rather with the débris of many civilizations; and into this mass and hills of brick, stone, pottery and ashes, Nubian women and children may be seen constantly poking, digging out coins, beads and images, to sell to the howadji. The north portion of the island is green with wheat; and it supports two or three mud-villages, which offer a good field for the tailor and the missionary.
The passage through the east channel, between Assouan and Elephantine, is through walls of granite rocks; and southward at the end of it the view is bounded by a field of broken granite gradually rising, and apparently forbidding egress in that direction. If the traveler comes for scenery, as some do, nothing could be wilder and at the same time more beautiful than these fantastically piled crags; but considered as a navigable highway the river here is a failure.
Early in the morning the head sheykh of the cataract comes on board, and the long confab which is preliminary to any undertaking, begins. There are always as many difficulties in the way of a trade or an arrangement as there are quills on a porcupine; and a great part of the Egyptian bargaining is the preliminary plucking out of these quills. The cataracts are the hereditary property of the Nubian sheykhs and their tribes who live near them—belonging to them more completely than the rapids of the St. Lawrence to the Indian pilots; almost their whole livelihood comes from helping boats up and down the rapids, and their harvest season is the winter when the dahabeëhs of the howadji require their assistance. They magnify the difficulties and dangers and make a mystery of their skill and knowledge. But, with true Orientalism, they appear to seek rather to lessen than to increase their business. They oppose intolerable delays to the traveler, keep him waiting at Assouan by a thousand excuses, and do all they can to drive him discouraged down the river. During this winter boats have been kept waiting two weeks on one frivolous excuse or another—the day was unlucky, or the wind was unfavorable, or some prince had the preference. Princes have been very much in the way this winter; the fact would seem to be that European princes are getting to run up the Nile in shoals, as plenty as shad in the Connecticut, more being hatched at home than Europe has employment for.
Several thousand people, dwelling along the banks from Assouan to three or four miles above Philæ, share in the profits of the passing boats; and although the sheykhs, and head reises (or captains) of the cataract get the elephant's share, every family receives something—it may be only a piastre or two—on each dahabeëh; and the sheykhs draw from the villages as many men as are required for each passage. It usually takes two days for a boat to go up the cataract and not seldom they are kept in it three or four days, and sometimes a week. The first day the boat gets as far as the island of Séhayl, where it ties up and waits for the cataract people to gather next morning. They may take it into their heads not to gather, in which case the traveler can sun himself all day on the rocks, or hunt up the inscriptions which the Pharaohs, on their raids into Africa for slaves and other luxuries, cut in the granite in their days of leisure three or four thousand years ago, before the world got its present impetus of hurry. Or they may come and pull the boat up a rapid or two, then declare they have not men enough for the final struggle, and leave it for another night in the roaring desolation. To put on force enough, and cables strong enough not to break, and promptly drag the boat through in one day would lessen the money-value of the achievement perhaps, in the mind of the owner of the boat. Nature has done a great deal to make the First Cataract an obstacle to navigation, but the wily Nubian could teach nature a lesson; at any rate he has never relinquished the key to the gates. He owns the cataracts as the Bedowees own the pyramids of Geezeh and the routes across the desert to Sinai and Petra.
The aged reïs comes on board; and the preliminary ceremonies, exchange of compliments, religious and social, between him and our astute dragoman begin. Coffee is made, the reïs's pipe is lighted, and the conversation is directed slowly to the ascent of the cataracts. The head reïs is accompanied by two or three others of inferior dignity and by attendants who squat on the deck in attitudes of patient indifference. The world was not made in a day. The reïs looks along the deck and says: “This boat is very large; it is too long to go up the cataract.” There is no denying it. The dahabeëh is larger than almost any other on the river; it is one hundred and twenty feet long. The dragoman says: