I left next day on the train for Assuan, and reached that place in time to hear the afternoon concert. I was now nearly six hundred miles from the last “hotel” for homeless wanderers, and I was again obliged to go to a native inn and to put up with the companionship of half-savage Arabians. But my bedroom on the roof was airy, and the bawling of the priest who stood on the balcony of a Mohammedan church steeple calling out the hour of prayer awoke me early enough to see the glorious sunrise of a new day.
Some miles beyond Assuan lay the new dam, where there was work for any one who wanted it. Just how far, I could not know; neither did I know that it was connected with the village by rail. From morning till high noon I clawed my way along the ragged rocks overhanging the weakened falls of the river, before I came in sight of the great dam that had robbed them of their waters.
This dam was built by the British for the purpose of irrigating the surrounding country. Among the rocks in what was once the bed of the Nile sat a dozen wooden shanties for the workmen. But I had arrived too late. The superintendent of the work told me that the dam had been completed that very day, and he and his men were going back to England in the morning.
I still had left fifty piasters, so I decided to push on up the Nile.
I came to the end of the railway. But steamers left twice a week from Shellal, a town above the dam. At the landing a swarm of natives were loading a rickety old barge, and a native agent was dozing behind the bars of a home-made ticket-office.
“Yes,” he yawned, in answer to my question; “there is to-night leaving steamer. Soon be here. The fare is two hundred fifty piasters.”
“Two hundred!” I gasped. “Why, that must be first-class.”
“Yes, very first-class. But gentleman not wish travel second-class?”
“Certainly not. Give me a third-class ticket.”
The Egyptian jumped to his feet and stared at me through the bars.