My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

And they did “not much go.” They stopped indeed, and lay all day at the first gate, and all night. The next morning, two dahabeëhs, carrying persons of rank, passed up, and were given the preference, leaving the first-comers still in the rapids; and two days after, they were in mid-passage, and kept day after day in the roar and desolation of the cataract, at the pleasure of its owners. The only resource they had was to write indignant letters of remonstrance to the governor at Assouan.

This passage of the cataract is a mysterious business, the secrets of which are only mastered by patient study. Why the reises should desire to make it so vexatious is the prime mystery. The traveler who reaches Assouan often finds himself entangled in an invisible web of restraints. There is no opposition to his going on; on the contrary the governor, the reises, and everyone overflow with courtesy and helpfulness. But, somehow, he does not go on, he is played with from day to day. The old sheykh, before he took his affectionate leave of us that morning, let out the reason of the momentary hesitation he had exhibited in agreeing to take our boat up the cataract when we arrived. The excellent owners, honest Aboo Yoosef and the plaintive little Jew of Bagdad, had sent him a bribe of a whole piece of cotton cloth, and some money to induce him to prevent our passage. He was not to refuse, not by any means, for in that case the owners would have been liable to us for the hundred pounds forfeit named in the contract in case the boat could not be taken up; but he was to amuse us, and encourage us, and delay us, on various pretexts, so long that we should tire out and freely choose not to go any farther.

The integrity of the reïs was proof against the seduction of this bribe; he appropriated it, and then earned the heavy fee for carrying us up, in addition. I can add nothing by way of eulogium upon this clever old man, whose virtue enabled him to withstand so much temptation.

We lay for two days at the island Elephantine, opposite Assouan, and have ample time to explore its two miserable villages, and to wander over the heaps on heaps, the débris of so many successive civilizations. All day long, women and children are clambering over these mounds of ashes, pottery, bricks, and fragments of stone, unearthing coins, images, beads, and bits of antiquity, which the strangers buy. There is nothing else on the island. These indistinguishable mounds are almost the sole evidence of the successive occupation of ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Ethiopians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, and conquering Arabs. But the grey island has an indefinable charm. The northern end is green with wheat and palms; but if it were absolutely naked, its fine granite outlines would be attractive under this splendid sky. The days are lovely, and the nights enchanting. Nothing more poetic could be imagined than the silvery reaches of river at night, with their fringed islands and shores, the stars and the new moon, the uplifted rocks, and the town reflected in the stream.

Of Assouan itself, its palm-groves and dirty huddle of dwellings, we have quite enough in a day. Curiosity leads us to visit the jail, and we find there, by chance, one of our sailors, who is locked up for insubordination, and our venerable reïs keeping him company, for being inefficient in authority over his crew. In front of the jail, under the shade of two large acacia trees, the governor has placed his divan and holds his levées in the open air, transacting business, and entertaining his visitors with coffee and cigars. His excellency is a very “smartish,” big black fellow, not a negro nor a Nubian exactly, but an Ababdeh, from a tribe of desert Arabs; a man of some aptitude for affairs and with very little palaver. The jail has an outer guard-room, furnished with divans and open at both ends, and used as a court of justice. A not formidable door leads to the first room, which is some twenty feet square; and here, seated upon the ground with some thirty others, we are surprised to recognize our reïs. The respectable old incapable was greatly humiliated by the indignity. Although he was speedily released, his incarceration was a mistake; it seemed to break his spirit, and he was sullen and uncheerful ever afterwards. His companions were in for trivial offences: most of them for not paying the government taxes, or for debt to the Khedive, as the phrase was. In an adjoining, smaller room, were the great criminals, the thieves and murderers. Three murderers were chained together by enormous iron cables attached to collars about their necks, and their wrists were clamped in small wooden stocks. In this company were five decent-looking men, who were also bound together by heavy chains from neck to neck; we were told that these were the brothers of men who had run away from the draft, and that they would be held until their relations surrendered themselves. They all sat glumly on the ground. The jail does not differ in comfort from the ordinary houses; and the men are led out once a day for fresh air; we saw the murderers taking an airing, and exercise also in lugging their ponderous irons.

We departed from Assouan early in the morning, with water and wind favorable for a prosperous day. At seven o'clock our worthy steersman stranded us on a rock. It was a little difficult to do it, for he had to go out of his way and to leave the broad and plainly staked-out channel. But he did it very neatly. The rock was a dozen feet out of water, and he laid the boat, without injury, on the shelving upper side of it, so that the current would constantly wash it further on, and the falling river would desert it. The steersman was born in Assouan and knows every rock and current here, even in the dark. This accident no doubt happened out of sympathy with the indignity to the reïs. That able commander is curled up on the deck ill, and no doubt felt greatly grieved when he felt the grating of the bottom upon the rock; but he was not too ill to exchange glances with the serene and ever-smiling steersman. Three hours after the stranding, our crew have succeeded in working us a little further on than we were at first, and are still busy; surely there are in all history no such navigators as these.

It is with some regret that we leave, or are trying to leave, Nubia, both on account of its climate and its people. The men, various sorts of Arabs as well as the Nubians, are better material than the fellaheen below, finer looking, with more spirit and pride, more independence and self-respect. They are also more barbarous; they carry knives and heavy sticks universally, and guns if they can get them, and in many places have the reputation of being quarrelsome, turbulent, and thieves. But we have rarely received other than courteous treatment from them. Some of the youngest women are quite pretty, or would be but for the enormous nose and ear rings, the twisted hair and the oil; the old women are all unnecessarily ugly. The children are apt to be what might be called free in apparel, except that the girls wear fringe, but the women are as modest in dress and manner as those of Egypt. That the highest morality invariably prevails, however, one cannot affirm, notwithstanding the privilege of husbands, which we are assured is sometimes exercised, of disposing of a wife (by means of the knife and the river) who may have merely incurred suspicion by talking privately with another man. This process is evidently not frequent, for women are plenty, and we saw no bodies in the river.

But our chief regret at quitting Nubia is on account of the climate. It is incomparably the finest winter climate I have ever known; it is nearly perfect. The air is always elastic and inspiring; the days are full of sun; the nights are cool and refreshing; the absolute dryness seems to counteract the danger from changes of temperature. You may do there what you cannot in any place in Europe in the winter—get warm. You may also, there, have repose without languor.

We went on the rock at seven and got off at two. The governor of Assouan was asked for help and he sent down a couple of boat-loads of men, who lifted us off by main strength and the power of their lungs. We drifted on, but at sunset we were not out of sight of the mosque of Assouan. Strolling ashore, we found a broad and rich plain, large palm-groves and wheat-fields, and a swarming population—in striking contrast to the country above the Cataract. The character of the people is wholly different; the women are neither so oily, nor have they the wild shyness of the Nubians; they mind their own business and belong to a more civilized society; slaves, negroes as black as night, abound in the fields. Some of the large wheat-fields are wholly enclosed by substantial unburnt brick walls, ten feet high.

Early in the evening, our serene steersman puts us hard aground again on a sandbar. I suppose it was another accident. The wife and children of the steersman live at a little town opposite the shoal upon which we have so conveniently landed, and I suppose the poor fellow wanted an opportunity to visit them. He was not permitted leave of absence while the boat lay at Assouan, and now the dragoman says that, so far as he is concerned, the permission shall not be given from here, although the village is almost in sight; the steersman ought to be punished for his conduct, and he must wait till he comes up next year before he can see his wife and children. It seems a hard case, to separate a man from his family in this manner.