But we cannot stay to mourn with those who mourn a week in this style; and in the evening, when a strong breeze springs up, we spread our sail and go, in the “daylight of the moon,” flying up the river, by black and weird shores; and before midnight pass lonesome Aboo Simbel, whose colossi sit in the moonlight with the impassive mien they have held for so many ages.
In the morning, with an easy wind, we are on the last stage of our journey. We are almost at the limit of dahabeëh navigation. The country is less interesting than it was below. The river is very broad, and we look far over the desert on each side. The strip of cultivated soil is narrow and now and again disappears altogether. To the east are seen, since we passed Aboo Simbel, the pyramid hills, some with truncated tops, scattered without plan over the desert. It requires no stretch of fancy to think that these mathematically built hills are pyramids erected by races anterior to Menes, and that all this waste that they dot is a necropolis of that forgotten people.
The sailors celebrate the finishing of the journey by a ceremony of state and dignity. The chief actor is Farrag, the wit of the crew. Suddenly he appears as the Governor of Wady Haifa, with horns on his head, face painted, a long beard, hair sprinkled with flour, and dressed in shaggy sheepskin. He has come on board to collect his taxes. He opens his court, with the sailors about him, holding a long marline spike which he pretends to smoke as a chibook. His imitation of the town dignitaries along the river is very comical, and his remarks are greeted with roars of laughter. One of the crew acts as his bailiff and summons all the officers and servants of the boat before him, who are thrown down upon the deck and bastinadoed, and released on payment of backsheesh. The travelers also have to go before the court and pay a fine for passing through the Governor's country. The Governor is treated with great deference till the end of the farce, when one of his attendants sets fire to his beard, and another puts him out with a bucket of water.
'The end of our journey is very much like the end of everything else—there is very little in it. When we follow anything to its utmost we are certain to be disappointed—simply because it is the nature of things to taper down to a point. I suspect it must always be so with the traveler, and that the farther he penetrates into any semi-savage continent, the meaner and ruder will he find the conditions of life. When we come to the end, ought we not to expect the end?
We have come a thousand miles not surely to see Wady Haifa but to see the thousand miles. And yet Wady Haifa, figuring as it does on the map, the gate of the great Second Cataract, the head of navigation, the destination of so many eager travelers, a point of arrival and departure of caravans, might be a little less insignificant than it is. There is the thick growth of palm-trees under which the town lies, and beyond it, several miles, on the opposite, west bank, is the cliff of Aboosir, which looks down upon the cataract; but for this noble landmark, this dominating rock, the traveler could not feel that he had arrived anywhere, and would be so weakened by the shock of arriving nowhere at the end of so long a journey (as a man is by striking a blow in the air) that he would scarcely have strength to turn back.
At the time of our arrival, however, Wady Haifa has some extra life. An expedition of the government is about to start for Darfoor. When we moor at the east bank, we see on the west bank the white tents of a military encampment set in right lines on the yellow sand; near them the government storehouse and telegraph-office, and in front a mounted howitzer and a Gatling gun. No contrast could be stronger. Here is Wady Halfah, in the doze of an African town, a collection of mud-huts under the trees, listless, apathetic, sitting at the door of a vast region, without either purpose or ambition. There, yonder, is a piece of life out of our restless age. There are the tents, the guns, the instruments, the soldiers and servants of a new order of things for Africa. We hear the trumpet call to drill. The flag which is planted in the sand in front of the commander's tent is to be borne to the equator.
But this is not a military expedition. It is a corps of scientific observation, simply. Since the Sultan of Darfoor is slain and the Khedive's troops have occupied his capital, and formally attached that empire to Egypt, it is necessary to know something of its extent, resources, and people, concerning all of which we have only the uncertain reports of traders. It is thought by some that the annexation of Darfoor adds five millions to the population of the Khedive's growing empire. In order that he may know what he has conquered, he has sent out exploring expeditions, of which this is one. It is under command of Purdy Bey assisted by Lieutenant-Colonel Mason, two young American officers of the Khedive, who fought on opposite sides in our civil war. They are provided with instruments for making all sorts of observations, and are to report upon the people and the physical character and capacity of the country. They expect to be absent three years, and after surveying Darfoor, will strike southward still, and perhaps contribute something to the solution of the Nile problem. For escort they have a hundred soldiers only, but a large train of camels and intendants. In its purpose it is an expedition that any civilized ruler might be honored for setting on foot. It is a brave overture of civilization to barbarism. The nations are daily drawing nearer together. As we sit in the telegraph-office here, messages are flashed from Cairo to Kartoom.
