Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

As it steps by you mark its wide, deliberate, noiseless stride. You observe that the head of the tall slim Arab who walks by its side only reaches half way up its shoulder. Its long neck is elevated and stretched forward. It neither seeks, nor flinches from notice. In its eye there is no wonder, or eagerness, or fear. It is carrying its head horizontally, with its upper lip drawn down. In this drawn-down lip, and in its whole demeanour, there is an expression of contempt—of contempt for the modern world. You can read its thoughts, ‘I belong,’ it is saying to itself, for it cares nothing about you, still you can’t help understanding it, ‘I belong to the old world. There was time and room enough then for everything. What reason can there be in all this crowding and hastening? I move at a pace which used to satisfy kings and patriarchs. My fashion is the old-world fashion. That world did well enough without railways and telegraphs. Before the pyramids were thought of it had been settled what my burden was to be, and at what pace it was to be carried. If any of these unresting pale-faces (what business have they with me?) wish not to be knocked over, they must get out of my way. I give no notice of my approach; I make way for no man. What has the grand and calm old world come to! There is nothing anywhere now but noise, and pushing, and money-grubbing.’ And every camel that you will meet will be going at the same measured pace, holding its head in the same position, with the same composed look, drawing down its lip with the same contempt, and soliloquizing in the same style.

In Alexandria this anachronism of an animal appears to be chiefly employed in carrying goods to and from the harbour, and in bringing forage into the city. This consists mainly of fresh-cut lucern, the historical forage-plant of the East, and of chopped straw—always chopped, and always carried in rope nets made of the fibres of the palm. It is always the same, because in the East there are never two ways of doing anything. As to this chopped straw, it is difficult to say how it comes to pass that the small fractions of it do not fall through the large meshes of the rope net; and that the net itself, with its contents, always retains the same rectangular form. These rope nets are used also on the river for forming the stacks of chopped straw one sees floating down the stream on boats.

On leaving Alexandria for Cairo you begin to see the camel in the fields. In that first journey in Egypt everything is new, and strange, and interests. Sometimes he is at plough, with a buffalo, or cow, or ass, for a mate. Sometimes he is tethered in a piece of lucern. From the absence of enclosures all animals are tethered in Egypt.

In Cairo you see more camels than in Alexandria. They stalk along in Indian file, not swerving an inch from the direct line, full in the middle of the street. In Jerusalem I counted as many as two-and-twenty in line, all roped together, tail and head. This is necessary there, where the streets are so narrow, that if the train of beasts were not thus vertebrated into the form of a single reptile, it would be impossible to keep them together. They bring into Cairo, besides forage, all the wood, and fuel, and grain consumed in the city, and the stone, too, that is used for building. All Cairo has in this way been carried on camels’ backs.

As you ascend the river you are never long without seeing a camel, or a string of camels, on the bank. As you look up at them, for at the season when you are in Egypt the river has subsided many feet, their long legs and long necks, seen from your boat against the sky, appear longer than they have been really made by nature, and you think that you are looking upon some arachnoid creatures, of the megatherium epoch, moving along the bank. At Siout, where the caravan road from Darfur, through the great Oasis, strikes the Nile, I saw a whole kafileh of camels that had just arrived. They were all down on the ground, on their bellies, a hundred or more of them, and filled the great market place. Their owners were busy taking off and inspecting their precious loads. It was to us a strange scene as we threaded our way through the midst of them. Some made an angry noise, and snapped at us with their ugly mouths. I know not what disturbed their equanimity. They might have been, by the grace of nature, exceptionally malcontent; or it might have been the sight of the Frank dress, or the absence of the odour of the Arab dress, that irritated them.

Camels, like horses, are of many colours, black, white, mouse-colour of varying shades, and rusty red of varying shades. The coat, indeed, of all domesticated animals, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, donkeys, pigs, as also the feathers of our gallinaceous poultry, and even the human hair, appear to acquire a tendency to vary into these colours; of which, however, in the camel none are glossy and bright. As they do not lie on their sides, their packs and saddles are often left on all night. I have seen a long string of camels at midnight all resting on their bellies on the ground, and all still saddled, just as they had been during the day. The long manger, out of which they were eating their chopped straw, was also laid on the ground; and so was the Arab in charge of them. The fire, too, by which he was sleeping, was fed, like his camels, with chopped straw.

The camel is one of the cheapest of all means of land carriage. Its load is six hundredweight. In Syria you frequently see their loads lying in the middle of the road, while the animals themselves have been let go on the hill, or the roadside waste, to pick up a feed from the almost sapless and often thorny bushes; this costs nothing. One driver manages several, and his keep costs little. This, and the original cost of the animal, are all the outgoing in the half-desert tracts through which the caravans generally make their way. He lasts in work eighteen or twenty years.

At Assouan, for the first time in ascending the river, you find that you are expected yourself to mount a camel, for the ride across the bit of desert to Philæ. For weeks you have been observing that the Arab on his back is jerked forward at every stride, and so you say, perhaps, to yourself, ‘Now for a ride on a camel; but I wonder whether my vertebræ will be dislocated. I wonder whether I shall be able to sit with my legs crossed over the creature’s neck! Perhaps I shall be pitched off as he jerks himself up from the ground!’ All that are for hire are down on their bellies on the bank. You jump on the one that has the best saddle, because you argue that the man, who can afford the best saddle, can probably afford the best beast; and that it would be unreasonable to put a good saddle on a bad beast. You jump on jauntily, as if you had been to the manner born. As you are crossing your legs before the front crotch of the saddle, up goes the beast. You are jerked forward, and get a dig in the stomach from the front crotch. Then you are jerked backwards, and get a dig from the hind crotch in your back. You steady yourself, and think those digs might have been bad, but so far all right. You observe that you are very high up in the air. The earth seems a long way off. But now for the desert on a camel.

A slender-limbed Nubian lad, to show his zeal, and that he is up to his work, immediately begins to beat the beast with a long stick. You don’t like the pace, and so you think him an imp of darkness, or the near relative of an African monkey. You submit for a few minutes, but the tossings up (you have no stirrups, and your legs are crossed) and the jerks backwards and forwards are bad, and you don’t know how far it will go, and so you call out, ‘You little Afreet, leave the beast alone!’ This is said with a sweep of your stick towards him. He dodges off with a grin. You are not disposed to laugh. Ina moment he is back again like a fly. He will keep his camel up to the front if he can. But you soon get accustomed to the swing. As you notice that the desert is strewn with sharp angular pieces of granite of all sizes, some jutting through the sand, some lying loose on the surface, you again feel, as you did at first, that you are very far up above the earth. The sun is blazing overhead. A thermometer on the sand registers 140 degrees. There is, however, a pleasant breeze. You are not long in getting to Philæ. You are surprised that the distance has been done in so short a time. You get back to Assouan in the evening not at all dissatisfied with your ride on a camel. The next day you repeat the same journey in the same way. It has lost its novelty, and you take it as a matter of course, and even expect to find it pleasant. You go as much for the sake of a second day on a camel as for Philæ itself. You now wish you could spare time for a trip to the great Oasis on camel-back. Ever afterwards you talk of the camel with an air of authority, as if you had been bred in tents.