The unmercifulness of these boys to their donkeys—travellers would do well to discourage it—arises partly from a wish that the present engagement should be got through as quickly as possible, in order that the boy and donkey may be ready for another, and partly from a wish that you should think so well of the donkey’s pace as to be induced to hire it again. You see what is passing in their little minds, by their frequently asking you whether the donkey is not a good one. Should they carry their way of making their poor beasts appear good too far for your humanity, it may be allowable to administer to them the means for understanding that you think the donkey ill-used, and the boy bad, and that, for this purpose, it is the stick that is good. Theoretically, they may not disagree with you, for they hear at home a saying that the stick came down from heaven—by which is inculcated on the youthful mind the lesson that it is a great gain to get off a payment that is demanded of one, by submitting, instead, to the bastinado.
With this single exception of unmercifulness, I have nothing to say against these juvenile Mustaphas and Mahommeds. They are always smiling, and never tired. I had one run by my side from Bellianéh to Abydos and back, which, I suppose, must be seventeen miles. They will gladly do you any little service they can, carrying anything for you, or running a long way to get you what you may want—of course, for a few piastres. When we had got on board the steamer at Ismailia, and were on the point of starting for Port Saïd, my companion found that he had left his binocular at the hotel. He told a donkey-boy, who happened to be at hand, to ride off, as fast as he could go, to the hotel, and ask for the instrument. The boy went, and brought it back as quickly as his donkey could carry him. Had he been dishonestly inclined, he might have ridden home with it, for he knew that the steamer was on the point of starting. With this probable piece of honesty in my mind, on the following day, while rowing about the harbour of Port Saïd, I asked the Arab boatman what his father had taught him. Had he taught him to be honest? ‘Yes, he had.’ Had he taught him to speak the truth? ‘No, he had not.’ And small blame to him for the omission, seeing that deception and endurance are the only means the people have for meeting the never-ending exactions of every one in authority.
CHAPTER XXIII.
SCARABS.
His quondam signis, atque hæc exempla secuti,
Esse apibus partem divinæ mentis, et haustus
Ætherios dixere.—Virgil.
It would have been strange, indeed, if the Egyptians, who were so sharp-sighted in detecting what, from their point of view, appeared to be the fragments of Deity scattered among the lower animals—bird, beast, fish, reptile, and insect—had failed to observe what we regard as the instincts of the common Egyptian beetle.
Few people visit Egypt without bringing back an antique scarab or two. They are to be found everywhere throughout the country; and yet it must be nearly two thousand years since one of these antiques was carved, or moulded. In what vast numbers, then, must they have been manufactured by the old Egyptians. The scarab is also as common in their hieroglyphics as it is in the rubbish-mounds of their old cities. These facts give us the measure of the impression the habits of the insect made upon them.
It is one of the commonest out-o’-door insects in Egypt. At the season for depositing its eggs it alights upon the bank of the river, where the soil is still moist, about the consistency of tough dough, or clay sufficiently trodden for brick-making. Upon this it lays its eggs, arranging them closely together. It then forms the spot on which it has laid them into a perfect sphere, by adding clay to the top of it, and cutting away the earth around and beneath it. The sphere being thus completed, it thrusts the extremities of its two inward curved hind legs into the opposite sides of it, and by pushing backwards gives to it a revolving motion; the inserted points of its hind legs forming the axis on which it revolves. In this way it pushes and rolls it back to the edge of the desert, often a long way off.