Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Late in September Mr. Lowell reached Smyrna, and visited the ruins of Magnesia, Tralles, Nysa, Laodicea, Tripolis, and Hierapolis. He writes to a friend in America; "I then crossed Mount Messogis in the rain, and descended into the basin of the river Hermus, visited Philadelphia, the picturesque site of Sardis, with its inaccessible citadel, and two solitary but beautiful Ionic columns."

Early in December Mr. Lowell sailed from Smyrna in a Greek brig, coasting along the islands of Mitylene, Samos, Patmos, and Rhodes, arrived in Alexandria in the latter part of the month, and proceeded up the river Nile. On Feb. 12, 1835, he writes to his friends from the top of the great pyramid:—

"The prospect is most beautiful. On the one side is the boundless desert, varied only by a few low ridges of limestone hills. Then you have heaps of sand, and a surface of sand reduced to so fine a powder, and so easily agitated by the slightest breeze that it almost deserves the name of fluid. Then comes the rich, verdant valley of the Nile, studded with villages, adorned with green date-trees, traversed by the Father of Rivers, with the magnificent city of Cairo on its banks; but far narrower than one could wish, as it is bounded, at a distance of some fifteen miles, by the Arabian desert, and the abrupt calcareous ridge of Mokattam. Immediately below the spectator lies the city of the dead, the innumerable tombs, the smaller pyramids, the Sphinx, and still farther off and on the same line, to the south, the pyramids of Abou Seer, Sakkârà, and Dashoor."

While journeying in Egypt, Mr. Lowell, from the effects of the climate, was severely attacked by intermittent, fever; but partially recovering, proceeded to Thebes, and established his temporary home on the ruins of a palace at Luxor. After examining many of its wonderful structures carved with the names and deeds of the Pharaohs, he was again prostrated by illness, and feared that he should not recover. He had thought out more details about his noble gift to the people of Boston; and, sick and among strangers, he completed in that ancient land his last will for the good of humanity. "The few sentences," says Mr. Everett, "penned with a tired hand, on the top of a palace of the Pharaohs, will do more for human improvement than, for aught that appears, was done by all of that gloomy dynasty that ever reigned."

Mr. Lowell somewhat regained his health, and proceeded to Sioot, the capital of Upper Egypt, to lay in the stores needed for his journey to Nubia. While at Sioot, he saw the great caravan of Darfour in Central Africa, which comes to the Nile once in two years, and is two or three months in crossing the desert. It usually consists of about six hundred merchants, four thousand slaves, and six thousand camels laden with ivory, tamarinds, ostrich-feathers, and provisions for use on the journey.

Mr. Lowell writes in his journal: "The immense number of tall and lank but powerful camels was the first object that attracted our attention in the caravan. The long and painful journey, besides killing perhaps a quarter of the original number, had reduced the remainder to the condition of skeletons, and rendered their natural ugliness still more appalling. Their skins were stretched, like moistened parchment scorched by the fire, over their strong ribs. Their eyes stood out from their shrunken foreheads; and the arched backbone of the animals rose sharp and prominent above their sides, like a butcher's cleaver. The fat that usually accompanies the middle of the backbone, and forms with it the camel's bunch, had entirely disappeared. They had occasion for it, as well as for the reservoir of water with which a bountiful nature has furnished them, to enable them to undergo the laborious journey and the painful fasts of the desert. Their sides were gored with the heavy burdens they had carried.

"The sun was setting. The little slaves of the caravan had just driven in from their dry pasture of thistles, parched grass, and withered herbage these most patient and obedient animals, so essential to travellers in the great deserts, and without which it would be as impossible to cross them as to traverse the ocean without vessels. Their conductors made them kneel down, and gradually poured beans between their lengthened jaws. The camels, not having been used to this food, did not like it; they would have greatly preferred a bit of old, worn-out mat, as we have found to our cost in the desert. The most mournful cries, something between the braying of an ass and the lowing of a cow, assailed our ears in all directions, because these poor creatures were obliged to eat what was not good for them; but they offered no resistance otherwise. When transported to the Nile, it is said that the change of food and water kills most of them in a little time."

In June Mr. Lowell resumed his journey up the Nile, and was again ill for some weeks. The thermometer frequently stood at 115 degrees. He visited Khartoom, and then travelled for fourteen days across the desert of Nubia to Sowakeen, a small port on the western coast of the Red Sea. Near here, Dec. 22, he was shipwrecked on the island of Dassá, and nearly lost his life. In a rainstorm the little vessel ran upon the rocks. "All my people behaved well," Mr. Lowell writes. "Yanni alone, the youngest of them, showed by a few occasional exclamations that it is hard to look death in the face at seventeen, when all the illusions of life are entire. As for swimming, I have not strength for that, especially in my clothes, and so thorough a ducking and exposure might of itself make an end of me."