My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

From the summit of this pylon we had an extensive view of the Nile and the fields of ripening wheat. A glance into the squalid town was not so agreeable. I know it would be a severe test of any village if it were unroofed and one could behold its varied domestic life. We may from such a sight as this have some conception of the appearance of this world to the angels looking down. Our view was into filthy courts and roofless enclosures, in which were sorry women and unclad children, sitting in the dirt; where old people, emaciated and feeble, and men and women ill of some wasting disease, lay stretched upon the ground, uncared for, stifled by the heat and swarmed upon of flies.

The heated day lapsed into a delicious evening, a half-moon over head, the water glassy, the shores fringed with palms, the air soft. As we came to El Kab, where we stopped, a carawan was whistling on the opposite shore—a long, shrill whistle like that of a mocking-bird. If we had known, it was a warning to us that the placid appearances of the night were deceitful, and that violence was masked under this smiling aspect. The barometer indeed had been falling rapidly for two days. We were about to have our first experience of what may be called a simoon.

Towards nine o'clock, and suddenly, the wind began to blow from the north, like one of our gusts in summer, proceeding a thunderstorm. The boat took the alarm at once and endeavored to fly, swinging to the wind and tugging at her moorings. With great difficulty she was secured by strong cables fore and aft anchored in the sand, but she trembled and shook and rattled, and the wind whistled through the rigging as if we had been on the Atlantic—any boat loose upon the river that night must have gone to inevitable wreck. It became at once dark, and yet it was a ghastly darkness; the air was full of fine sand that obscured the sky, except directly overhead, where there were the ghost of a wan moon and some spectral stars. Looking upon the river, it was like a Connecticut fog—but a sand fog; and the river itself roared, and high waves ran against the current. When we stepped from the boat, eyes, nose, and mouth were instantly choked with sand, and it was almost impossible to stand. The wind increased, and rocked the boat like a storm at sea; for three hours it blew with much violence, and in fact did not spend itself in the whole night.

“The worser storm, God be merciful,” says Abd-el-Atti, “ever I saw in Egypt.”

When it somewhat abated, the dragoman recognized a divine beneficence in it; “It show that God 'member us.”

It is a beautiful belief of devout Moslems that personal afflictions and illnesses are tokens of a heavenly care. Often when our dragoman has been ill, he has congratulated himself that God was remembering him.

“Not so? A friend of me in Cairo was never in his life ill, never any pain, toothache, headache, nothing. Always well. He begin to have fear that something should happen, mebbe God forgot him. One day I meet him in the Mooskee very much pleased; all right now, he been broke him the arm; God 'member him.”

During the gale we had a good specimen of Arab character. When it was at its height, and many things about the attacked vessel needed looking after, securing and tightening, most of the sailors rolled themselves up, drawing their heads into their burnouses, and went sound asleep. The after-sail was blown loose and flapping in the wind; our reïs sat composedly looking at it, never stirring from his haunches, and let the canvas whip to rags; finally a couple of men were aroused, and secured the shreds. The Nile crew is a marvel of helplessness in an emergency; and considering the dangers of the river to these top-heavy boats, it is a wonder that any accomplish the voyage in safety. There is no more discipline on board than in a district-school meeting at home. The boat might as well be run by ballot.

It was almost a relief to have an unpleasant day to talk about. The forenoon was like a mixed fall and spring day in New England, strong wind, flying clouds, but the air full of sand instead of snow; there was even a drop of rain, and we heard a peal or two of feeble thunder—evidently an article not readily manufactured in this country; but the afternoon settled back into the old pleasantness.

Of the objects of interest at Eilethyas I will mention only two, the famous grottoes, and a small temple of Amunoph III., not often visited. It stands between two and three miles from the river, in a desolate valley, down which the Bisharee Arabs used to come on marauding excursions. What freak placed it in this remote solitude? It contains only one room, a few paces square, and is, in fact, only a chapel, but it is full of capital pieces of sculptures of a good period of art. The architect will find here four pillars, which clearly suggest the Doric style. They are fourteen-sided, but one of the planes is broader than the others and has a raised tablet of sculptures which terminate above in a face, said to be that of Lucina, to whom the temple is dedicated, but resembling the cow-headed Isis. These pillars, with the sculptures on one side finished at the top with a head, may have suggested the Osiride pillars.