My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

It has not rained for four thousand years, and the evidence of this is that no representation of rain is found in any of the sculptures on temples or monuments; and all Egyptologists know that what is not found thus represented has had no existence.

To-day, it rained for the first time in four thousand years The circumstances were these. We were crossing at sunset from the west side to the island, in a nasty little ferry, built like a canal-barge, its depths being full of all uncleanliness and smell—donkeys, peasants, and camels using it for crossing. (The getting of a camel in and out of such a deep trough is a work of time and considerable pounding and roaring of beast and men.) The boat was propelled by two half-clad, handsome, laughing Egyptian boys, who rowed with some crooked limbs of trees, and sang “Hà! Yâlesah,” and “Yah! Mohammed” as they stood and pulled the unwieldy oars.

We were standing, above the reek, on a loose platform of sticks at the stern, when my comrade said, “It rains, I think I felt a drop on my hand.”

“It can't be,” I said, “it has not rained here in four thousand years;” and I extended my hand. I felt nothing. And yet I could not swear that a drop or two did not fall into the river.

It had that appearance, nearly. And we have seen no flies skipping on the Nile at this season.

In the sculpture we remember that the king is often represented extending his hand. He would not put it out for nothing, for everything done anciently in Egypt, every scratch on a rock, has a deep and profound meaning. Pharaoh is in the attitude of fearing that it is going to rain. Perhaps it did rain last night. At any rate, there were light clouds over the sky.

The morning opens with a cool west wind, which increases and whirls the sand in great clouds over the Libyan side of the river, and envelopes Luxor in its dry storm. Luxor is for the most part a collection of miserable mud-hovels on a low ridge, with the half-buried temple for a nucleus, and a few houses of a better sort along the bank, from which float the consular flags.

The inhabitants of Luxor live upon the winter travelers. Sometimes a dozen or twenty gay dahabeëhs and several steamboats are moored here, and the town assumes the appearance of a fashionable watering-place. It is the best place on the river on the whole, considering its attractions for scholars and sightseers, to spend the winter, and I have no doubt it would be a great resort if it had any accommodations for visitors. But it has not; the stranger must live in his boat. There is not indeed in the whole land of Egypt above Cairo such a thing as an inn; scarcely a refuge where a clean Christian, who wishes to keep clean, can pass a night, unless it be in the house of some governor or a palace of the Khedive. The perfection of the world's climate in winter is, to be sure, higher up, in Nubia; but that of Thebes is good enough for people accustomed to Europe and New England. With steamboats making regular trips and a railroad crawling up the river, there is certain to be the Rameses Hotel at Thebes before long, and its rival a Thothmes House; together with the Mummy Restaurant, and the Scarabæus Saloon.

You need two or three weeks to see properly the ruins of Thebes, though Cook's “personally conducted tourists” do it in four days, and have a soiree of the dancing-girls besides. The region to be traveled over is not only vast (Strabo says the city was nine miles long) but it is exceedingly difficult getting about, and fatiguing, if haste is necessary. Crossing the swift Nile in a sandal takes time; you must wade or be carried over shallows to the island beach; there is a weary walk or ride over this; another stream is to be crossed, and then begins the work of the day. You set out with a cavalcade of mules, servants, water-carriers, and a retinue of hungry, begging Arabs, over the fields and through the desert to the temples and tombs. The distances are long, the sand is glaring, the incandescent sun is reflected in hot waves from the burning Libyan chain. It requires hours to master the plan of a vast temple in its ruins, and days to follow out the story of the wonderful people who built it, in its marvelous sculptures—acres of inside and outside walls of picture cut in stone.

Perhaps the easiest way of passing the time in an ancient ruin was that of two Americans, who used to spread their rugs in some shady court, and sit there, drinking brandy and champagne all day, letting the ancient civilization gradually reconstruct itself in their brains.