CHAPTER XXIII.—APPROACHING THE SECOND CATARACT.
THERE are two ways of going to see the Second Cataract and the cliff of Aboosir, which is about six miles above Wady Haifa; one is by small boat, the other by dromedary over the desert. We chose the latter, and the American officers gave us a mount and their company also. Their camp presented a lively scene when we crossed over to it in the morning. They had by requisition pressed into their service three or four hundred camels, and were trying to select out of the lot half a dozen fit to ride. The camels were, in fact, mostly burden camels and not trained to the riding-saddle; besides, half of them were poor, miserable rucks of bones, half-starved to death; for the Arabs, whose business it had been to feed them, had stolen the government supplies. An expedition which started south two weeks ago lost more than a hundred camels, from starvation, before it reached Semneh, thirty-five miles up the river. They had become so weak, that they wilted and died on the first hard march. For his size and knotty appearance, the camel is the most disappointing of beasts. He is a sheep as to endurance. As to temper, he is vindictive.
Authorities differ in regard to the distinction between the camel and the dromedary. Some say that there are no camels in Egypt, that they are all dromedaries, having one hump; and that the true camel is the Bactrian, which has two humps. It is customary here, however, to call those camels which are beasts of burden, and those dromedaries which are trained to ride; the distinction being that between the cart-horse and the saddle-horse.
The camel-drivers, who are as wild Arabs as you will meet anywhere, select a promising beast and drag him to the tent. He is reluctant to come; he rebels against the saddle; he roars all the time it is being secured on him, and when he is forced to kneel, not seldom he breaks away from his keepers and shambles off into the desert. The camel does this always; and every morning on a inarch he receives his load only after a struggle. The noise of the drivers is little less than the roar of the beasts, and with their long hair, shaggy breasts, and bare legs they are not less barbarous in appearance.
Mounting the camel is not difficult, but it has some sweet surprises for the novice. The camel lies upon the ground with all his legs shut up under him like a jackknife. You seat yourself in the broad saddle, and cross your legs in front of the pommel. Before you are ready, something like a private earthquake begins under you. The camel raises his hindquarters suddenly, and throws you over upon his neck; and, before you recover from that he straightens up his knees and gives you a jerk over his tail; and, while you are not at all certain what has happened, he begins to move off with that dislocated walk which sets you into a see-saw motion, a waving backwards and forwards in the capacious saddle. Not having a hinged back fit for this movement, you lash the beast with your koorbâsh to make him change his gait. He is nothing loth to do it, and at once starts into a high trot which sends you a foot into the air at every step, bobs you from side to side, drives your backbone into your brain, and makes castanets of your teeth. Capital exercise. When you have enough of it, you pull up, and humbly enquire what is the heathen method of riding a dromedary.
It is simple enough. Shake the loose halter-rope (he has neither bridle nor bit) against his neck as you swing the whip, and the animal at once swings into an easy pace; that is, a pretty easy pace, like that of a rocking-horse. But everything depends upon the camel. I happened to mount one that it was a pleasure to ride, after I brought him to the proper gait We sailed along over the smooth sand, with level keel, and (though the expression is not nautical) on cushioned feet. But it is hard work for the camel, this constant planting of his spongy feet in the yielding sand.
Our way lay over the waste and rolling desert (the track of the southern caravans,) at some little distance from the river; and I suppose six miles of this travel are as good as a hundred. The sun was blazing hot, the yellow sand glowed in it, and the far distance of like sand and bristling ledges of black rock shimmered in waves of heat. No tree, no blade of grass, nothing but blue sky bending over a sterile land. Yet, how sweet was the air, how pure the breath of the desert, how charged with electric life the rays of the sun!
The rock Aboosir, the ultima Thule of pleasure-travel on the Nile, is a sheer precipice of perhaps two to three hundred feet above the Nile; but this is high enough to make it one of the most extensive lookouts in Egypt. More desert can be seen here than from almost anywhere else. The Second Cataract is spread out beneath us. It is less a “fall” even than the First. The river is from a half mile to a mile in breadth and for a distance of some five miles is strewn with trap-rock, boulders and shattered fragments, through which the Nile swiftly forces itself in a hundred channels. There are no falls of any noticeable height. Here, on the flat rock, where we eat our luncheon, a cool breeze blows from the north. Here on this eagle's perch, commanding a horizon of desert and river for a hundred miles, fond visitors have carved their immortal names, following an instinct of ambition that is well-nigh universal, in the belief no doubt that the name will have for us who come after all the significance it has in the eyes of him who carved it. But I cannot recall a single name I read there; I am sorry that I cannot, for it seems a pitiful and cruel thing to leave them there in their remote obscurity.
From this rock we look with longing to the southward, into vast Africa, over a land we may not further travel, which we shall probably never see again; or the far horizon the blue peaks of Dongola are visible, and beyond these we know are the ruins of Meroë, that ancient city, the capital of that Ethiopian Queen, Candace, whose dark face is lighted up by a momentary gleam from the Scriptures.