“Mr Foyster and I keep the wine-store in this boat, to have it under our own eye. The tutor and the young gentleman are in the small boat, and they cannot require wine.”
“If they are to study,” replied Hassan, smiling, “I doubt not that Nile water would be better for them; but you should know better than I, who am not a student or a drinker of wine.”
“That is the only fault you have, my lad,” said Demetri; “there is nothing like wine to open the heart and brighten the eye. Oh! you pig,” shouted he to another burly fellow going towards the cabin door; “are you going to carry that kafass full of fowls into the ladies’ sleeping cabin?” So saying, he jumped upon the luckless porter, and with a few smart blows of his courbatch sent him forward with his chicken-load.
With the assistance of Hassan, Demetri contrived to get the multifarious boxes into something like order and arrangement by the time that a cloud of dust and the braying of half-a-dozen donkeys announced the approach of the Thorpe party.
Once fairly embarked, the boats, sometimes under easy sail, sometimes tracked from the shore, wound their slow way along the waters of the Mahmoudiah.
The voyage from Alexandria to Atfeh, the point at which the canal joins the Nile, is of itself dull, and is so familiar, either by experience or description, to the world in general, that it scarcely merits a separate notice. Still, as Emily Thorpe kept a journal, as many girls are in the habit of doing, a few pages therefrom may be transcribed, to give a further account of the voyage in the dahabiah:—
“I am surprised to hear that the Mahmoudiah canal, although cut by the present Viceroy at an enormous cost of money and of human life, through a country perfectly flat, is as winding in its course as a path through a labyrinth. On asking Demetri, our dragoman, if he could explain the cause of this, he answered me by a story—for he has a story ready for almost every occasion. The very same question, he says, was lately put to Mohammed Ali by a French engineer travelling through Egypt. The Pasha said to the engineer—
“‘Have you ever seen rivers in Europe?’
“‘Yes, sir, many.’
“‘Are they straight or crooked in their course?’