Round the Wonderful World

by G. E. Mitton

"I can't bear it," says the nice American who was in the train with us and has now joined us in the trip up to Assouan in one of Cook's steamers. "It's maddening! Why can't a whole village form a company and get some sort of machine to work? It would water all their crops in a tenth of the time."

As he speaks there comes into view something just a little better. At the top of one of the deep cuts on the bank two bullocks plod slowly round and round in a circle as if they were threshing corn; they work a wheel, which revolves horizontally and is fitted into another which turns vertically, deep down into the hole it reaches, low enough to touch the water at the bottom. Earthenware jars are strung all round it like beads on a necklet, and as each pot dips into the water it brings up its share, and when it reaches the highest point it tips it into a little channel, where it runs away. This is called a saddiyeh. The wheels groan and creak, the patient beasts turn in their dizzy circle, and the youngster seated on the wheel prods them with a sharp-pointed stick when they slacken. At least the water runs away in a continuous stream at the top, however tiny.

Then the steamer takes a sharp turn, leaves the bank, and careers across into midstream! We go up on to the top deck and see three dark-skinned men, warmly wrapped up in brown coats, sitting in a little glasshouse in the bows and watching earnestly the channel ahead.

This is the reis, or captain, with his two assistants. They know every turn and dip in the river; but the river changes ever, no two days is it alike as it falls and washes away a bank or deposits sand so as to make an island where none was before. So the three men watch intently and steer the boat to this side and that wherever they can find the deepest channel. The Nile is low for this time of year and caution is necessary; when there is any doubt as to there being enough water, one of the crew below handles a long pole, dipping it in to find the bottom and calling out the depth as he goes.

There are twenty passengers or so on the boat and they sit about the sunny decks watching the panorama of the banks and the wonderful changing scenes ahead, hour by hour. Hardly anywhere would you find a greater variety of nationalities than on one of these Nile boats, for Egypt draws people from all parts of the world with her mystery and beauty. The odd people one meets add to the interest, and the strange manners, which are not ours, are like flavouring in the dish of travel, which, if it were composed only of scenes of perpetual beauty, might be a little insipid.

To begin with, I am English and you are Scottish, we have our friend the American and four of his compatriots, not by any means so delightful as he is. He takes care to steer clear of them, we notice! One of them is a little man who might be any age from twenty to fifty; if we examine him with field-glasses we shouldn't be able to discover how old he is. His yellow skin, drawn tightly over a bony face, gives no sign of age or youth. He eats sweets all day out of a box as large as a child's coffin, and he is attended by three stout ladies, doubtless "his mother and his aunts." They are veiled and swathed in wraps, and seem to spend their time gossiping or asleep in the innermost recesses of the cabin. We never once catch them admiring the scenery or taking any interest in the wonders we pass. Then there is a Swiss, a gentle-mannered bronzed man with a brown beard; he speaks only French, and in an unobtrusive way seems to have seen a great deal of the world; we discover, for one thing, that he has lived out in the desert near Tunis for many years. There are three Russians, mother, father, and daughter, who speak practically nothing but Russian, with a few words of French; they are brave to have started out on such a journey so ill-equipped. Coming across a Russian dragoman in Cairo they trusted him joyfully; he bought three temple tickets for them at their expense and promised to meet them somewhere up the Nile. They seem to expect to find him sitting on every sandbank, and their faith is pathetic; they'll never see those tickets again, for the man will sell them to the next party of victims. Then there is a Belgian, also a couple of lively pleasant French people, and two Germans, a sister and brother, who dress in clothes intended to be very sporting.

It is an interesting crowd, and it is well kept in hand by the manager, who looks like a fair-haired, brown-faced boy of two-and-twenty, but has been everywhere and speaks half a dozen languages fluently. In addition to this he sketches in water colours, plays the fiddle, and breaks in horses! You have to travel to come across people like that! Here he is nothing so out of the way—every dragoman is able to talk in three languages at least. Doesn't it spur you on to feel how much we have to learn and how ignorant we are in our stay-at-home villages?

All the morning we sit about and watch the graceful white-sailed boats coming down with cargoes of every kind. Sometimes we see them stranded on a hidden sandbank with the crew making frantic efforts to get them off again. We see the reaches lying ahead glittering like jewels in the sun, and then we land and ride a short way to a temple, under the care of the dragoman of the boat. The most moving thing in all that temple is a set of scenes of a hippopotamus hunt shown with great spirit; the poor little hippo looks more like a pig when he is at the bottom of the water with a spear or harpoon sticking in him, but when they haul him up by means of a noose round one leg the ancient artist represents him becoming bigger and bigger as he comes to the surface!

The walls are, besides, covered with all the usual scenes of the king making offerings to the gods, and overriding his enemies, and doing all those noble things which kings wanted their posterity to know about them.

A high-pitched voice, speaking in a hyper-refined affected tone, breaks in on our enjoyment; it belongs to one of the English people from the boat, a lady who evidently considers it her mission in life to instruct people; information flows from her ten finger-tips, she cannot help it, she was born to be a schoolmistress certainly.