CHAPTER XII.—SPENDING CHRISTMAS ON THE NILE.
PROBABLY this present writer has the distinction of being the only one who has written about the Nile and has not invented a new way of spelling the name of the town whose many minarets and brown roofs are visible over the meadows.
It is written Asioot, Asyoot, Asiüt, Ssout, Siôout, Osyoot, Osioot, O'Sioôt, Siüt, Sioot, O'siout, Si-ôôt, Siout, Syouth, and so on, indefinitely. People take the liberty to spell names as they sound to them, and there is consequently a pleasing variety in the names of all places, persons, and things in Egypt; and when we add to the many ways of spelling an Arabic word, the French the German, and the English translation or equivalent, you are in a hopeless jumble of nomenclature. The only course is to strike out boldly and spell everything as it seems good in your eyes, and differently in different moods. Even the name of the Prophet takes on half a dozen forms; there are not only ninety-nine names of the attributes of God, but I presume there are ninety-nine ways of spelling each of them.
This Asioot has always been a place of importance. It was of old called Lycopolis, its divinity being the wolf or the wolf-headed god; and in a rock-mountain behind the town were not only cut the tombs of the inhabitants, but there were deposited the mummies of the sacred wolves. About these no one in Asioot knows or cares much, to day. It is a city of twenty-five thousand people, with a good many thriving Copt Christians; the terminus, to day, of the railway, and the point of arrival and departure of the caravans to and from Darfoor—a desert march of a month. Here are made the best clay pipe-bowls in Egypt, and a great variety of ornamented dishes and vases in clay, which the traveler buys and doesn't know what to do with. The artisans also work up elephants' tusks and ostrich feathers into a variety of “notions.”
Christmas day opens warm and with an air of festivity. Great palm-branches are planted along the bank and form an arbor over the gang-plank. The cabin is set with them, in gothic arches over windows and doors, with yellow oranges at the apex. The forward and saloon decks are completely embowered in palms, which also run up the masts and spars. The crew have entered with zeal into the decoration, and in the early morning transformed the boat into a floating bower of greenery; the effect is Oriental, but it is difficult to believe that this is really Christmas day. The weather is not right, for one thing. It is singularly pleasant, in fact like summer. We miss the usual snow and ice and the hurtling of savage winds that bring suffering to the poor and make charity meritorious. Besides, the Moslems are celebrating the day for us and, I fear, regarding it simply as an occasion of backsheesh. The sailors are very quick to understand so much of our religion as is profitable to themselves.
In such weather as this it would be possible for “shepherds to watch their flocks by night.”
Early in the day we have a visit from Wasef el Khyat, the American consul here for many years, a Copt and a native of Asioot, who speaks only Arabic; he is accompanied by one of his sons, who was educated at the American college in Beyrout. So far does that excellent institution send its light; scattered rays to be sure, but it is from it and such schools that the East is getting the real impetus of civilization.