As in India, there is a great dearth of farmhouses in these rich lands. The peasants are herded in squalid villages, the mud huts jammed close together, and the whole place overrun with goats, donkeys, pigs, chickens and pigeons. The houses are the crudest huts, with no window and no roof.
Life in these villages along the Nile is as primitive as it is among the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico. Although their religion admonishes them to wash before prayers, these peasants appear to pay little heed to such rites. Men, women and children are extremely dirty, and it is unusual to find anyone with good eyes. Inflammation of the eyelids is the most common complaint and this disease is aggravated by the fact that the natives make no effort to drive away the flies that fasten upon the sore eyes of their little children. This is due to the common superstition that it brings ill luck to brush off flies. At every small station where the steamer stopped to land native passengers and freight a score of villagers would be lined up, each afflicted with some eye complaint, and all swarming with small black flies.
At only a few towns along the Nile from Luxor to Cairo were there any houses which looked like comfortable homes. The great majority of the houses were of sun-dried brick, and these were often in a ruinous condition. Yet with their framework of graceful date palms, these squalid villages would delight the eye of an artist. For nearly the whole distance the west side of the Nile is marked off from the desert by the high Libyan mountains, gleaming white and yellow in the brilliant sunshine. These limestone cliffs were chosen for the tombs of the kings at Thebes, and all along the river one could make out with a glass frequent tombs carved in the steep sides of these hills. The other side of the river was flat, with low ranges of hills. At sunrise and at sunset the most exquisite colors transformed the country into a veritable fairyland. The sun sank behind bands of purple and amethyst, and his last rays brought out in sharp silhouette the statuesque forms of women water-carriers and long lines of laden camels moving in ghostly silence along the river bank. Very beautiful also were the pictures made by the dahabiehs and other native boats, with their big lateen sails and with the motley gathering of natives in the stern. All these boats have enormous rudders which rise high out of the water and add greatly to the effectiveness of the picture as seen against the sunset glow.
The atmosphere along the Nile is wonderfully clear, the sky is as blue and lustrous as fine silk, and the wind blows up clouds in fantastic shapes, which add greatly to the beauty of the scenery. All day the little steamer passes half-ruined villages, embowered in feathery palms, with camels in the background and an occasional bullock straining at the wheel which lifts the Nile water on the shadouf. All day natives passed along the sky line, some on donkeys, others on camels, still others driving in front laden animals, whose forms could scarcely be distinguished amid the thick clouds of dust raised by their heavy feet. The creak of the shadoufs could be heard before we came abreast of the tireless workers.
Seen from the steamer the glamour of the Orient was over all this poverty-stricken land, but seen near at hand were revealed all the ugly features of dirt, disease, hopeless poverty, unending work that yields only the coarsest and scantiest food. We passed miles on miles of waving fields of sugar cane, with great factories where this cane was worked up into sugar. We passed broad fields of cotton, with factories near at hand for converting the product into cloth. Principalities of wheat—great seas of emerald green that stood out against a background of sandy desert—lined the banks at frequent intervals. But all these evidences of the new wealth that scientific irrigation has brought to this ancient valley of the Nile means nothing to the Egyptian peasant. These great industries are in the hands of native or foreign millionaires, who see to it that the wages of the native workers are kept down to the lowest level.
Before the Pyramids and the Sphinx
Wintry winds in Cairo, which raised clouds of dust and sand, prevented me from seeing the pyramids until after my return from Luxor. Then one still, warm day it was my good fortune to see at their best these oldest monuments of man's work on this earth. Yet impressive as are these great masses of stone rising from barren wastes of sand, they did not affect me so powerfully as the ruins of Karnak and the tombs of the Kings of Thebes. Three pyramids were constructed at Gizeh and four other groups at Sakkara, the site of the ancient city of Memphis. That these pyramids were built for the tombs of kings has now been demonstrated beyond question, so that the many elaborate theories of the religious significance of these monuments may be dismissed. The ancient city of Memphis was for centuries the seat of the government of Egypt, and the tombs that may be seen to-day at Sakkara preceded the rock-hewn tombs at Thebes in Upper Egypt. The great antiquity of the tombs at Sakkara makes these of importance, although much of the work is inferior to that at Thebes.
The pictures of the pyramids are misleading. They give the impression that these great masses of stone rise near palm groves and that the Sphinx is almost as huge as the pyramid of Cheops which overshadows it. In reality, the pyramids are set on a sandy plateau, about fifteen feet high, while the Sphinx is practically buried in a hollow to the west of the great pyramid and can only be seen from one direction. When you stand in front of the big pyramid you can form no idea of its size, but you know from the guide book that it is seven hundred and fifty feet long and four hundred and fifty-one feet high. The height of each side is five hundred and sixty-eight feet, while the angle of the sides is fifty-one degrees fifty minutes. These statistics do not make much impression on the mind but, when it is said that this huge pyramid actually covers thirteen acres, the mind begins to grasp the stupendous size of this great mass of masonry. This pyramid to-day is of dirty brown color, but when finished it was covered with blocks of white limestone.