Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

Until 1100 B.C. this country was a dependency of the Pharaohs. It then became independent, and later its armies overran and conquered Egypt. As other nations came into this part of the Nile valley they sent their armies against the Nubians, but were driven back, and at the time the Romans came the country was ruled by a succession of queens named Candace, one of whom made war upon the Romans. The Nubian people very early adopted Christianity, but later, when the Mohammedans took possession of Egypt and the Upper Nile valley, they were converted to Islam. They are still followers of the Prophet, and were among the boldest soldiers of the fanatical Mahdi in his fights against the troops of Egypt and Great Britain.

A land with such a history ought to be a rich one. The Nubia of to-day is about as barren as any country on earth. With the exception of a narrow band along the Nile, it is altogether desert. Beginning in the sands of Libya, it extends several hundred miles eastward to the Red Sea, but only in a few places has the soil enough moisture to furnish even a scanty pasturage for camels and sheep. The bulk of the desert population is made up of Bisharin Bedouins, living in tents made of matting and moving about from place to place with their flocks. Each tribe has a certain number of wells, and water is the principal part of its visible wealth. The British officials of the Sudan have surveyed these wells and investigated their depth and the quality of the flow of the water. The government has also sunk some new wells and found water at a depth of about one hundred feet.

Nubia is now a part of the Upper Nile valley, a cultivated strip, in places only a quarter of a mile wide, winding its way like a snake from north to south as far as from New York City to Detroit, and extending on both sides of the river. It is of irregular width, for in some places the desert comes close to the river, while in others the stream winds through black rocky hills which rise straight above it a thousand feet. Farther on, one sees yellow sand, spotted with black rocks, which show signs of volcanic origin, and then at a low bend in the river the water may be conducted out over the sands and create a cultivated patch three miles in width.

The Nile is so walled in by hills that its waters have to be lifted in order to flow over any level place. This is done chiefly by the sakiehs, of which there are something like four thousand on the Nubian Nile. The great wheels, moving in cogs, can be seen high up on the banks, with their strings of buckets hanging to them. As the buckets descend, each dips into the water and carries to the top a few quarts at a time. In some places men raise the water in baskets or buckets, and in others, the river slopes at such an angle that they carry it up by hand and water little patches twenty or thirty feet wide. Every low place along the river is farmed, and when the Nile falls, the sand banks and islands are planted to crops.

Wherever there is a stretch of cultivated land, a village of mud and stone huts has grown up, and such villages spot the banks for hundreds of miles. At times there is no green except between village and river, and one wonders how men can be born and live and die there. Nevertheless, there are more than one hundred thousand people to whom this region is the centre of the world.

Though much of this Nile border is too narrow for profitable cultivation, it is very fertile and raises excellent cotton. At present the other chief crops are wheat, barley, and millet, and the chief fruit is dates, which are sweeter and larger than those grown farther down the Nile valley. Indeed, the date trees that one sees almost everywhere along the banks are a source of revenue for the government, which taxes them at the rate of ten cents per tree.

“On the Ibis we make about six miles an hour as our dusky Nubian pilot corkscrews up the Nile. Fortunately we are almost free from the myriad flies, the modern plague of Egypt.”

Though the Aswan Dam has been of inestimable benefit to Egypt, the whole world shares regret that when the sluice gates are closed the water backs up and submerges Pharaoh’s Bed and other ancient ruins on the Island of Philæ.