We were all a happy party on that river. Our steward had laid in abundantly, and provisions along the Nile were plentiful and cheap; we had books and musical instruments, and chessmen and society. We changed back and forward among the boats, and sometimes gave tea-parties; and often landed for a stroll along the river banks, or among the palm-groves of the villages. The officers unanimously voted that it was far preferable to keeping watch on shipboard. Nor must I forget another source of real and actual pleasure, in drinking the Nile water. It is a delicious fluid, and the natives have a saying handed down from father to son, “that if Mahomet had ever tasted the waters of the Nile, he would have placed his Paradise along its banks.” An earthern vessel, that would hold twenty or twenty-five gallons, was lashed at the stern of our boat, and kept filled, so as to allow the sediment to subside. The river, when we were ascending, was about one fourth advanced in the yearly flood, and the waters were of a light yellow color; on being allowed to rest in the jar, they took the color of lemonade, and were the most agreeable we had ever tasted. We drank prodigious quantities, but without having our health at all affected by them. The wind at this season blows constantly up stream during the day, but subsides a little after sunset, when we were obliged to come to and secure ourselves to the shore for the night. Descending boats take advantage of this interval of calm to drop down with the current.
We stopped first at Atfour, the city noticed above, where we found that what had seemed to us a palace was a large manufactory of Egyptian caps belonging to the Pasha. Thence we glided up the stream, the American ensign at the peak of each of our high lateen yards, fluttering, and seeming to rejoice as much as we at being on the Egyptian river. The banks, villages, islands, and groves, slipped along by our sides, presenting views sometimes highly picturesque, and always of a strikingly oriental character. The country, however, is generally at this season of the year tame and monotonous. The crops had been gathered in, and the open plains (for there are no enclosures, except occasionally to a garden) were burnt to a cinder by the fierce raging sun; the earth was gaping, and seemed to pant under its fury; and, except the neighborhood of the villages, and now and then a garden watered by artificial means, there was not a speck of verdure to be seen. The villages also, when we came to inspect them, we found to be miserable in the extreme. They consist of one or two hundred houses, made of bricks hardened in the sun and covered with domes of the same material. The bricks retain the original color of the muddy deposite, and the villages have a dull, gloomy appearance. Whitewash is never used within; but on the outside a mottled appearance is sometimes given to the houses by the custom of sticking cakes of camels’ ordure against their front and sides to dry; this being the only fuel used in the country. It is said to burn very well, and when thus prepared, to have no disagreeable odour. If the reader will imagine a collection of houses thus daubed on the outside, with earthern floors and bare walls of mud, a small hole for a window, excessively filthy within, and abounding in vermin; he will have an idea of an Egyptian village. He must add also now and then a large, well-filled granary of the Pasha in the neighborhood of the villages; and in the villages themselves a number of dwellings in ruins; for the bricks often yield to the operation of the weather, and the badly constructed domes tumble in. As we sailed along, our attention was very often drawn to the houses for hatching chickens, one or more of which may be seen in each of their villages. They are formed by taking a number of pots, of the capacity of about a gallon, contracted at the neck, which is turned towards the exterior. About fifty or sixty of these are built up with bricks and mud into an edifice like an elongated bee-hive, twelve or fifteen feet in height. The eggs are small and the fowls diminutive, but of a very pleasant flavor.
I examined the Egyptian bricks with reference to the complaint of the Hebrews, that straw was not allowed them in the manufacture. A few here have straw mixed up with them, and it will doubtless check the process of disintegration to which they are exposed, but it does not seem at present to be considered a necessary ingredient. But it is universally employed in the process of manufacturing, or rather in drying the bricks. They are in size like our bricks, and are cut with a spade from the earth when moistened by the yearly floods. Fine straw is then scattered on the adjoining grounds, and the bricks are spread over this to dry; and were this precaution not used, the bricks in drying would adhere to the earth and be spoiled. I conclude, then, that here was occasioned the dilemma in which the Israelites soon found themselves; they could make the tale of bricks, but when they came to remove them at the close of their labors, they found them attached to the soil and their labors lost. I frequently saw bricks exposed for drying, but never without a layer of fine straw beneath.
Their villages occur at intervals of five or six miles; generally they are on the river bank, but are often scattered over the interior, and with the groves of the graceful palm-tree often formed pretty groupings in the landscape. The natives are of a light ash color; and the men, though rather slender, are remarkably well-formed, light, and active, and capable of enduring fatigue. Their dress is sometimes like that of the Turks, but often simply a long piece of white cloth, like the Roman toga, wrapped around the body, with the ends thrown across the shoulders or supported under the arm; it is a graceful, but not very modest dress. But the women! How strange are the caprices of fashion, and often how extravagant and silly! In Turkey a woman is not allowed to show her face at all; a handkerchief drawn across the forehead, and another just below this, so as to cover all the face, and leave room only for the eyes to fall bashfully on the ground and pick out the lady’s way, secures their modesty. In Egypt a lady may expose all her face except the nose and mouth: these it would be the height of indelicacy to exhibit, and she protects them by a strip of black cotton stuff (black, think you!) about three feet in length and four inches wide. One end of this is fastened by a string passing across her forehead and tied at the back of her head; the cloth falls down over her nose and mouth, and the lady’s modesty is secure. It would be well for them to cover all the face, for a more ugly set of ladies I have never met with in any country. The Turkish costume has at least the advantage of making us imagine beauty; and many a stranger is put in raptures of love by a pair of flashing eyes glancing on him from beneath the jealous muslins, when, if the covering was removed from the face, he would be ungallant enough to turn with disgust from both face and eyes. The Egyptian ladies show a want of taste in not adopting the Turkish fashion.
At one of the villages, called Negila, we saw some of the dancing girls of the country. They were dressed in the national costume, but were decked off with beads and a great variety of tawdry ornaments, and were disgusting objects. Here is a large granary belonging to the Pasha, with vast stores of every kind; in our way to and from it we were beset with beggars, whose appearance exhibited the utmost wretchedness.
The breeze was fresh and our boats were comfortable, and the banks and the hours glided swiftly along. We had music, we played chess, we read, we chatted, we dozed when we preferred doing so. When meal-time came we slipped the leather trunks together for a table, and brought good appetites to the repast. Cleopatra herself had not a more cheerful party than ours.
Our boatmen often amused us by their agility. The sand banks at the bends of the river are planted with water-melons, and as the flood was beginning to reach the fruit, the inhabitants were busy gathering it in, though it was not yet fully ripe. The Arabs of our boat would often make a dash at these melons, and would have just time to select the best when the owners would rush with cries to the scene of plunder. Down they would all go together into the river, flouncing and tugging; the one for revenge, the other, amid so many witnesses of his exploit, struggling for fame as well as for the water-melon, and pushing it before him with all his might. Sometimes they would grapple, and in the consequent struggle of fierce passions the melon would escape from both, and glide quietly down the river: but generally the boatman succeeded in depositing it safely under the wing of the Cavass.
Towards evening of the 17th we came to a range of sand hills stretching along on our right; they are the commencement of the chain that higher up assists in forming the valley of the Nile. Up to this point our view on either side took in an unbroken level as far as the eye could reach.
The Pyramids.—It was with a thrill of joy that, on the morning of the 18th, as we sat at breakfast, at an exclamation from one of our party, we looked up, and saw before us the Pyramids. We were then twenty-four miles distant, but, though thin and airy-like, they were very distinct. These monuments are most impressive when the spectator is either close beneath them or at a distance like this. On the present occasion they produced a very powerful effect. Their regularity of outline kept their impression clear on the mind as works of art; their shadowy appearance showed them to be very distant, while their great elevation at so remote a point affected the mind strongly with their astonishing vastness. They were in sight, with brief intervals, during the whole day, and to the last were grand and sublime objects.
About noon we found ourselves approaching a spot, in which, from the representations of our Cavass, we had become highly interested. We were near the head of the Delta, a place which Mohammed Ali has selected for a work, which, if successful, will place him far above the constructors of the Pyramids, and make him one of the greatest benefactors that Egypt has ever known. The place opened upon us at length, but on looking up our first impression was one of deep and unqualified disgust. Before us was a busy scene. On the high bank at our left men were appearing in great numbers, with baskets of earth in their hands, and after discharging it down the bank, were retiring to give place for others; but as they stood out in strong relief against the sky, we could see others with whips, which they were using freely upon the poor wretches, whose writhings and accelerated movements gave proof of the smart.