After sundown, the crew, who have worked hard all day, on and off, tacking, poling, and shifting sail, get their supper round an open fire on deck, take each some whiffs from the “hubble-bubble,” and, as we sail out over the broad, smooth water, sing a rude and plaintive melody to the subdued thump of the darabooka. Towards dark, as we are about to tie up, the wind, which had failed, rises, and we voyage on, the waves rippling against the sides in a delicious lullaby. The air is soft, the moon is full and peeps out from the light clouds which obscure the sky and prevent dew.
The dragoman asleep on the cabin deck, the reïs crouched, attentive of the course, near him, part of the sailors grouped about the bow in low chat, and part asleep in the shadow of the sail, we voyage along under the wide night, still to the south and warmer skies, and seem to be sailing through an enchanted land.
Put not your trust in breezes. The morning finds us still a dozen miles from Asioot where we desire to celebrate Christmas; we just move with sails up, and the crew poling. The head-man chants a line or throws out a word, and the rest come in with a chorus, as they walk along, bending the shoulder to the pole. The leader—the “shanty man” the English sailors call their leader, from the French chanter I suppose—ejaculates a phrase, sometimes prolonging it, or dwelling on it with a variation, like “O! Mohammed!” or “O! Howadji!” or some scraps from a love-song, and the men strike in in chorus: “Hâ Yàlësah, hâ Yâlësah,” a response that the boatmen have used for hundreds of years.
We sail leisurely past a large mud-village dropped in a splendid grove of palms and acacias. The scene is very poetical before details are inspected, and the groves, we think, ought to be the home of refinement and luxury. Men are building a boat under the long arcade of trees, women are stooping with the eternal water-jars which do not appear to retain fluid any better than the sieves of the Danaïdes, and naked children run along the bank crying “Backsheesh, O Howadji.” Our shot-gun brings down a pigeon-hawk close to the shore. A boy plunges in and gets it, handing it to us on deck from the bank, but not relinquishing his hold with one hand until he feels the half-piastre in the other. So early is distrust planted in the human breast.
Getting away from this idyllic scene, which has not a single resemblance to any civilized town, we work our way up to El Hamra late in the afternoon. This is the landing-place for Asioot; the city itself is a couple of miles inland, and could be reached by a canal at high water. We have come again into an active world, and there are evidences that this is a busy place. New boats are on the stocks, and there is a forge for making some sort of machinery. So much life has not been met with since we left Cairo. The furling our great sail is a fine sight as we round in to the bank, the sailors crawling out on the slender, hundred-feet-long yard, like monkeys, and drawing up the hanging slack with both feet and hands.
It is long since we have seen so many or so gaily dressed people as are moving on shore; a procession of camels passes along; crowds of donkeys are pushed down to the boat by their noisy drivers; old women come to sell eggs, and white grease that pretends to be butter, and one of them pulls some live pigeons from a bag. We lie at the mud-bank, and classes of half-clad children, squatting in the sand, study us. Two other dahabeëhs are moored near us, their passengers sitting under the awning and indolently observing the novel scene, book in hand, after the manner of Nile voyagers.
These are the pictures constantly recurring on the river, only they are never the same in grouping or color, and they never weary one. It is wonderful, indeed, how satisfying the Nile is in itself and how little effort travelers make for the society of each other. Boats pass or meet and exchange salutes, but with little more effusion than if they were on the Thames. Nothing afloat is so much like a private house as a dahabeëh, and I should think, by what we hear, that sociability decreases on the Nile with increase of travel and luxury.
