How often have I tried to imagine the feelings of a distant and unconverted boy to whom Gum Arabic was as common as spruce gum to a New England lad.
As I said, we go on as if we were evading the law; our daha-beëh seems to have taken the bit in its teeth and is running away with us. We pass everything that sails, and begin to feel no pride in doing so; it is a matter of course. The other dalabeëhs are left behind, some with broken yards. I heard reports afterwards that we broke their yards, and that we even drowned a man. It is not true. We never drowned a man, and never wished to. We were attending to our own affairs. The crew were busy the first day or two of the voyage in cutting up their bread and spreading it on the upper deck to dry—heaps of it, bushels of it. It is a black bread, made of inferior unbolted wheat, about as heavy as lead, and sour to the uneducated taste. The Egyptians like it, however, and it is said to be very healthful. The men gnaw chunks of it with relish, but it is usually prepared for eating by first soaking it in Nile-water and warming it over a fire, in a big copper dish. Into the “stodge” thus made is sometimes thrown some “greens” snatched from the shore. The crew seat themselves about this dish when it is ready, and each one dips his right hand into the mass and claws out a mouthful The dish is always scraped clean. Meat is very rarely had by them, only a few times during the whole voyage; but they vary their diet by eating green beans, lettuce, onions, lentils, and any sort of “greens” they can lay hands on. The meal is cooked on a little fire built on a pile of stones near the mast. When it is finished they usually gather about the fire for a pull at the “hubble-bubble.” This is a sort of pipe with a cocoa-nut shell filled with water, through which the smoke passes. Usually a lump of hasheesh is put into the bowl with the tobacco. A puff or two of this mixture is enough; it sets the smoker coughing and conveys a pleasant stupor to his brain. Some of the crew never smoke it, but content themselves with cigarettes. And the cigarettes, they are always rolling up and smoking while they are awake.
The hasheesh-smokers are alternately elated and depressed, and sometimes violent and noisy. A man addicted to the habit is not good for much; the hasheesh destroys his nerves and brain, and finally induces idiocy. Hasheesh intoxication is the most fearful and prevalent vice in Egypt. The government has made many attempts to stop it, but it is too firmly fixed; the use of hasheesh is a temporary refuge from poverty, hunger, and all the ills of life, and appears to have a stronger fascination than any other indulgence. In all the towns one may see the dark little shops where the drug is administered, and generally rows of victims in a stupid doze stretched on the mud benches. Sailors are so addicted to hasheesh that it is almost impossible to make up a decent crew for a dahabeëh.
Late in the afternoon we are passing the famous rock-tombs of Beni Hassan, square holes cut in the face of the cliff, high up. With our glasses we can see paths leading to them over the debris and along the ledges. There are two or three rows of these tombs, on different ledges; they seem to be high, dry, and airy, and I should rather live in them, dead or alive, than in the mud hovels of the fellaheen below. These places of sepulchre are older than those at Thebes, and from the pictures and sculptures in them, more than from any others, the antiquarians have reconstructed the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians. This is a desolate spot now; there is a decayed old mud village below, and a little south of it is the new town; both can barely be distinguished from the brown sand and rock in which and in front of which they stand. This is a good place for thieves, or was before Ibraheem Pasha destroyed these two villages. We are warned that this whole country produces very skillful robbers, who will swim off and glean the valuables from a dahabeëh in a twinkling.
Notwithstanding the stiff breeze the thermometer marks 74°; but both wind and temperature sink with the sun. Before the sun sets, however, we are close under the east bank, and are watching the play of light on a magnificent palm-grove, beneath which stand the huts of the modern village of Sheykh Abâdeh. It adds romance to the loveliness of the scene to know that this is the site of ancient Antinoë, built by the Emperor Adrian. To be sure we didn't know it till this moment, but the traveler warms up to a fact of this kind immediately, and never betrays even to his intimate friends that he is not drawing upon his inexhaustible memory.
“That is the ancient Antinoë, built by Adrian.”
Oh, the hypocrisy and deceit of the enthusiastic,
“Is it?”
“Yes, and handsome Antinous was drowned here in the Nile.”
“Did they recover his body?”