CHAPTER XLII—A VOYAGE UP THE NILE.—THE MYSTERIES OF EGYPTIAN ART AND WORSHIP.
Up the Nile in a Sail-Boat—Starting for the Cataracts—Advantages of a Drago man—A Tricky Lot—Frauds on Travellers—Our Party—Rather Cosmopolitan—Getting Ahead of Mr. Cook—Our Little Game, and How it Worked—A Bath with Spectators—Decidedly Cool—Getting Aground—A Picturesque Landscape—Last Glimpse of the Pyramids—Spending Night on Shore—Among the Ruins of Memphis—The Wonders of Egyptian Art—What Marriette Bey Discovered—Laying Bare a Mysterious Sepulchre—Ancient Egyptian Worship—Sacred Bulls and Beetles—A History Written in Stone—Bricks Made by the Israelites.
A JOURNEY to Egypt without a trip up the Nile is something like Hamlet without the melancholy Dane. Time and money are the insignificant requisites for the excursion, and it is necessary to be pretty well provided with both, in order to make the journey a comfortable one.
The proper way to do the Nile trip is in a sail boat or dahabeeah, as it is called there; this is the way that most travellers have made it, and the way in which all were obliged to make it until a few years ago, when steamers were introduced. For a dahabeeah voyage you must be prepared to take your own time, and not be restricted to getting back to Cairo at a certain date, unless you make that date so far distant as to cover all contingencies. You can hire the boat by the day or by the course; either way is not altogether satisfactory, as I have heard that no matter which mode you select, you will afterwards advise intending voyagers to take the other. If you go by the day, it is for the interest of the boatman to be on the river as long as possible, and he will invent all sorts of excuses for delays.
