We have come to have a singular contempt for anything so modern as the work of the Greeks, or Romans. Ruins pointed out on shore as Roman, do not interest us enough to force us to raise the field-glass. Small antiquities that are of the Roman period are not considered worth examination. The natives have a depreciatory shrug when they say of an idol or a brick-wall, “Roman!”
The Greeks and the Romans are moderns like ourselves. They are as broadly separated in the spirit of their life and culture from those ancients as we are; we can understand them; it is impossible for us to enter into the habits of thought and of life of the early Pharaonic times. When the variation of two thousand years in the assignment of a dynasty seems to us a trifle, the two thousand years that divide us and the Romans shrink into no importance.
In future ages the career of the United States and of Rome will be reckoned in the same era; and children will be taught the story of George Washington suckled by the wolf, and Romulus cutting the cherry-tree with his little hatchet. We must have distance in order to put things in their proper relations. In America, what have we that will endure a thousand years? Even George Washington's hatchet may be forgotten sooner than the fiabellum of Pharaoh.
The day after Christmas we are going with a stiff wind, so fresh that we can carry only the forward sail. The sky is cloudy and stormy-looking. It is in fact as disagreeable and as sour a fall day as you can find anywhere. We keep the cabin, except for a time in the afternoon, when it is comfortable sitting on deck in an overcoat. We fly by Abooteeg; Raâineli, a more picturesque village, the top of every house being a pigeon-tower; Gow, with its remnants of old Antæopolis—it was in the river here that Horus defeated Typhon in a great battle, as, thank God! he is always doing in this flourishing world, with a good chance of killing him outright some day, when Typhon will no more take the shape of crocodile or other form of evil, war, or paper currency; Tahtah, conspicuous by its vast mounds of an ancient city; and Gebel Sheykh Hereédee, near the high cliffs of which we run, impressed by the grey and frowning crags.
As we are passing these rocks a small boat dashes out to our side, with a sail in tatters and the mast carrying a curiously embroidered flag, the like of which is in no signal-book. In the stern of this fantastic craft sits a young and very shabbily clad Sheykh, and demands backsheesh, as if he had aright to demand toll of all who pass his dominions. This right our reïs acknowledges and tosses him some paras done up in a rag. I am sure I like this sort of custom-house better than some I have seen.
We go on in the night past Soohag, the capital of the province of Girgeh; and by other villages and spots of historic interest, where the visitor will find only some~heaps of stones and rubbish to satisfy a curiosity raised by reading of their former importance; by the White Monastery and the Red Convent; and, coming round a bend, as we always are coming round a bend, and bringing the wind ahead, the crew probably asleep, we ignominiously run into the bank, and finally come to anchor in mid-stream.
As if to crowd all weathers into twenty-four hours, it clears off cold in the night; and in the morning when we are opposite the the pretty town of Ekhmeem, a temperature of 51° makes it rather fresh for the men who line the banks working the shadoofs, with no covering but breech-cloths. The people here, when it is cold, bundle up about the head and shoulders with thick wraps, and leave the feet and legs bare. The natives are huddled in clusters on the bank, out of the shade of the houses, in order to get the warmth of the sun; near one group a couple of discontented camels kneel; and the naked boy, making no pretence of a superfluous wardrobe by hanging his shirt on a bush while he goes to bed, is holding it up to dry.
We skim along in almost a gale the whole day, passing, in the afternoon, an American dahabeëh tied up, repairing a broken yard, and giving Bellianeh the go-by as if it were of no importance. And yet this is the landing for the great Abydus, a city once second only to Thebes, the burial-place of Osiris himself, and still marked by one of the finest temples in Egypt. But our business now is navigation, and we improve the night as well as the day; much against the grain of the crew. There is always more or less noise and row in a night-sail, going aground, splashing, and boosting in the water to get off, shouting and chorusing and tramping on deck, and when the thermometer is as low as 520 these night-baths are not very welcome when followed by exposure to keen wind, in a cotton shirt. And with the dragoman in bed, used up like one of his burnt-out rockets, able only to grumble at “dese fellow care for nothing but smoke hasheesh,” the crew are not very subordinate. They are liable to go to sleep and let us run aground, or they are liable to run aground in order that they may go to sleep. They seem to try both ways alternately.
But moving or stranded, the night is brilliant all the same; the night-skies are the more lustrous the farther we go from the moisture of Lower Egypt, and the stars scintillate with splendor, and flash deep colors like diamonds in sunlight. Late, the moon rises over the mountains under which we are sailing, and the effect is magically lovely. We are approaching Farshoot.
Farshoot is a market-town and has a large sugar-factory, the first set up in Egypt, built by an uncle of the Khedive. It was the seat of power of the Howara tribe of Arabs, and famous for its breed of Howara horses and dogs, the latter bigger and fiercer than the little wolfish curs with which Egypt swarms. It is much like other Egyptian towns now, except that its inhabitants, like its dogs, are a little wilder and more ragged than the fellaheen below. This whole district of Hamram is exceedingly fertile and bursting with a tropical vegetation.