Restored to health, nourished with a generous supply of delicious food, my monumental desert mate was more lovely than ever. The peeling process was over and she appeared re-born, a creature of red and gold. How I looked forward to the Nile, with all its romantic associations.
The river came in sight at last after what seemed interminable days crossing the low Wady Mahall hills. Late one afternoon I caught its silver sheen where it wound its way between the fresh green of the rice fields.
“Look!” I pointed. “’Tis the Nile, O, my beloved.”
“My Antony!” ... she scarcely breathed the name. She was really wonderful in her way of catching the spirit and elevation of the moment; her early education must have been thorough.
Our last day’s march was through fields of Egyptian cotton and Lady Sarah made a remark that startled me.
“Horace owns slathers of this,” she said.
I grimaced at the name which showed she was thinking of him, and quickly drew her attention to a lovely field of sesame and lilies planted in alternate rows. Here and there a band of native workmen were weeding the vegetable-ivory-plants in preparation for the annual inundation. So shallow was the alluvial loam that their rude implements frequently reached the underlying sand rich with the records of past centuries, for this entire valley is but the graveyard of earlier civilizations. Our passing excited mild wonder and one brawny Nubian tossed me a skull which Whinney said was clearly that of a man of the bone-age. How petty seemed the ticking of my wrist-watch measured by the chronology of these mute memorials!
We intercepted the river in its upper reaches between the third and fourth cataracts, which are little more than rapids. In the village of Hannik we rested, part of the caravan continuing to Red Sea ports while my camels guided by Ab-Domen turned northward along the river bank. Acting as my advance agent the faithful Turk made splendid arrangements for river boats between the cataracts and lower down at Assouan I found a magnificent dahabeah.
AN EGYPTIAN DEITY
Bel-Toto, one of the lovely servitors of Lady Sarah on her dahabeah, the El-Sali.