My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

These women wear black; all the countrywomen we have seen are dressed in sombre gowns and shawls of black or deep blue-black; none of them have a speck of color in their raiment, not a bit of ribbon nor a bright kerchief, nor any relief to the dullness of their apparel. And yet they need not fear to make themselves too attractive. The men have all the colors that are worn; though the Fellaheen as a rule wear brownish garments, blue and white are not uncommon, and a white turban or a red fez, or a silk belt about the waist gives variety and agreeable relief to the costumes. In this these people imitate that nature which we affect to admire, but outrage constantly. They imitate the birds. The male birds have all the gay plumage; the feathers of the females are sober and quiet, as befits their domestic position. And it must be admitted that men need the aid of gay dress more than women.

The next morning when the sun shows over the eastern desert, the sailors are tracking, hauling the boat slowly along an ox-bow in the river, until at length the sail can catch the light west wind which sprang up with the dawn. When we feel that, the men scramble aboard, and the dahabeëh, like a duck that has been loitering in an eddy for days, becomes instinct with life and flies away to the cliffs opposite, the bluffs called Gebel Aboofayda, part of the Mokattam range that here rises precipitously from the river and overhangs it for ten or twelve miles. I think these limestone ledges are two or three hundred feet high. The face is scarred by the slow wearing of ages, and worn into holes and caves innumerable. Immense numbers of cranes are perched on the narrow ledges of the cliff, and flocks of them are circling in front of it, apparently having nests there. As numerous also as swallows in a sand-bank is a species of duck called the diver; they float in troops on the stream, or wheel about the roosting cranes.

This is a spot famed for its sudden gusts of wind which sometimes flop over the brink and overturn boats. It also is the resort of the crocodile, which seldom if ever comes lower down the Nile now. But the crocodile is evidently shy of exhibiting himself, and we scan the patches of sand at the foot of the rocks with our glasses for a long time in vain. The animal dislikes the puffing, swashing steamboats, and the rifle-balls that passing travelers pester him with. At last we see a scaly log six or eight feet long close to the water under the rock. By the aid of the glass it turns out to be a crocodile. He is asleep, and too far off to notice at all the volley of shot with which we salute him. It is a great thing to say you saw a crocodile. It isn't much to see one.

And yet the scaly beast is an interesting and appropriate feature in such a landscape,# and the expectation of seeing a crocodile adds to your enjoyment. On our left are these impressive cliffs; on the right is a level island. Half-naked boys and girls are tending small flocks of black sheep on it. Abd-el-Atti raises his gun as if he would shoot the children and cries out to them, “lift up your arm,” words that the crocodile hunter uses when he is near enough to fire, and wants to attract the attention of the beast so that it will raise its fore-paw to move off, and give the sportsman a chance at the vulnerable spot. The children understand the allusion and run laughing away.

Groups of people are squatting on the ground, doing nothing, waiting for nothing, expecting nothing; buffaloes and cattle are feeding on the thin grass, and camels are kneeling near in stately indifference; women in blue-black robes come—the everlasting sight—to draw water. The whole passes in a dumb show. The hot sun bathes all.

We pass next the late residence of a hermit, a Moslem “welee” or holy man. On a broad ledge of the cliff, some thirty feet above the water, is a hut built of stone and plaster and whitewashed, about twelve feet high, the roof rounded like an Esquimau snow-hut and with a knob at the top. Here the good man lived, isolated from the world, fed by the charity of passers-by, and meditating on his own holiness. Below him, out of the rock, with apparently no better means of support than he had, grows an acacia-tree, now in yellow blossoms. Perhaps the saint chewed the gum-arabic that oozed from it. Just above, on the river, is a slight strip of soil, where he used to raise a few cucumbers and other cooling vegetables. The farm, which is no larger than two bed blankets, is deserted now. The saint died, and is buried in his house, in a hole excavated in the rock, so that his condition is little changed, his house being his tomb, and the Nile still soothing his slumber.

But if it is easy to turn a house into a tomb it is still easier to turn a tomb into a house. Here are two square-cut tombs in the rock, of which a family has taken possession, the original occupants probably having moved out hundreds of years ago. Smoke is issuing from one of them, and a sorry-looking woman is pulling dead grass among the rocks for fuel. There seems to be no inducement for any one to live in this barren spot, but probably rent is low. A little girl seven or eight years old comes down and walks along the bank, keeping up with the boat, incited of course by the universal expectation of backsheesh. She has on a head-veil, covering the back of the head and neck and a single shirt of brown rags hanging in strings. I throw her an apple, a fruit she has probably never seen, which she picks up and carries until she joined is by an elder sister, to whom she shows it. Neither seems to know what it is. The elder smells it, sticks her teeth into it, and then takes a bite. The little one tastes, and they eat it in alternate bites, growing more and more eager for fair bites as the process goes on.

Near the southern end of the cliffs of Gebel Aboofayda are the crocodile-mummy pits which Mr. Prime explored; caverns in which are stacked up mummied crocodiles and lizards by the thousands. We shall not go nearer to them. I dislike mummies; I loathe crocodiles; I have no fondness for pits. What could be more unpleasant than the three combined! To crawl on one's stomach through crevices and hewn passages in the rock, in order to carry a torch into a stifling chamber, packed with mummies and cloths soaked in bitumen, is an exploit that we willingly leave to Egyptologists. If one takes a little pains, he can find enough unpleasant things above ground.

It requires all our skill to work the boat round the bend above these cliffs; we are every minute about to go aground on a sand-bar, or jibe the sail, or turn about. Heaven only knows how we ever get on at all, with all the crew giving orders and no one obeying. But by five o'clock we are at the large market-town of Manfaloot, which has half a dozen minarets and is sheltered by a magnificent palm-grove. You seem to be approaching an earthly paradise; and one can keep up the illusion if he does not go ashore. And yet this is a spot that ought to interest the traveler, for here Lot is said to have spent a portion of the years of his exile, after the accident to his wife.

At sunset old Abo Arab comes limping along the bank with a tin pail, having succeeded at length in overtaking the boat; and in reply to the question, where he has been asleep all day, pulls out from his bosom nine small fish as a peace-offering. He was put off at sunrise to get milk for breakfast. What a happy-go-lucky country it is.