The banks of the river are full of bird life, as every bird in Egypt must daily come to the river to drink.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE EGYPTIAN TURTLE.
Cum ventre humano tibi negotium est, qui nec ratione mitigatur, nec prece ullâ flectitur.—Livy.
It is hard lines for an Egyptian turtle when he once gets turned on his back in Aboukir Bay. After that, for the remaining term of his natural life, it is all Ramadan with him, after sunset as well as after sunrise. He is carried to Alexandria, and sold there, if a fine well-grown reptile, for half a sovereign: the smaller reptiles go for less. He is put on board a P. and O. boat, and carried to Southampton, all the way on his back, for another half sovereign. Add to this whatever one may have to pay for his railway journey, and you may take him home with you, and two or three more with him for your friends, at no great cost. Though perhaps it would be hardly worth while to give a turtle to one who knows no other way of having him cooked than converting him into soup.
Something ought to be done, and might be done to mitigate their long fast from Aboukir Bay to London. At sea, gourmandizing is the order of the day; but the turtle on board are famishing all the while. It might not be ill done, if those, whose only occupation is eating, and then eating again, were to give a thought to the difference in this matter between themselves and those of their fellow-travellers who are getting nothing at all to eat. It makes the matter worse that we inflict starvation on the very creature we are contemplating as a feast for ourselves. It is no justification to say, learnedly, that Chelonians can dispense with food for long periods. It is bad for all concerned. It is morally hardening to those who inflict unnecessary suffering, and to those—the passengers on the P. and O. boats—who witness its effects, progressing regularly from day to day. As the poor wretches lie on their backs—there were about fifty on board the boat I came home by—you see that the plastron, that is the name the belly shell goes by, is changing its shape. At first it is convex. It gradually, as the fasting is prolonged, loses its convexity, and becomes flat. This must be bad, but there is worse yet to come. Times goes on, and what had become flat, begins to sink, and becomes concave. The fifty owners of these shrinking and subsiding stomachs must have found the process very pinching: and the more so as they had nothing else in particular to think about while lying all this time on their backs. The alterations of shape they have been passing through measured their sufferings. They had never themselves done anything so bad to what they had fed on. How could they without reason?
CHAPTER LV.
INSECT PLAGUES.
Who can war with thousands wage?—Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry.
As to the insect plagues of Egypt, I found the mosquitoes alone annoying. Had I been in the country in the summer or autumn, my experience would, I have no doubt, have been different. And as to the mosquitoes, I found them seriously annoying only at Alexandria. At one time I had my face, hands, and ankles very badly bitten. My own carelessness, however, was the cause of this, for I was at that time in the habit of reading and writing at night with open windows. This was giving my bloodthirsty assailants, who had been attracted by the candle, every facility. They had free ingress, and found their victim off his guard and exposed to their attacks. At Zech’s hotel at Cairo, I found no mosquitoes. In going up the river I had a chasse every night, before I turned in, to clear off the few that might be in my berth. I generally found one or two. Herodotus mentions the use by the Egyptians of the mosquito net.