If you go by the course, you are hurried along as fast as he can crowd you, and if you wish to stop at a place while ascending the river, he will make a variety of objections to your doing so, unless there is an adverse wind or some other cause to prevent the advance of the boat. Most travellers charter the boat by the course, and, all things considered, this is the best plan,—with a stipulation for a certain number of days for stoppages at various points. From fourteen to twenty days delay are the ordinary stipulation, and the whole journey can be made from Cairo to the First Cataract and back in about fifty days. Three weeks must be added if the trip is prolonged to the Second Cataract. These periods are approximations, as the trip has been made to the First Cataract and back inside of forty, and in excess of eighty days, and to the Second inside of sixty, and beyond a hundred.
A few years ago the Egyptian government placed some steamers on the Nile, and arranged to run them to the First Cataract and back at stated intervals during the winter season. For a sailboat journey, much preparation is required, as you must hire a boat, stock it with provisions, engage a dragoman, and do a variety of things before you start, and the preparations will take from a week to a fortnight, according to circumstances. Sometimes a dragoman will take you for a stipulated sum per day, and supply you with boat and everything, but in this case you can be sure that you will not be well supplied, unless you pay a high price.
With the steamboat trip you have no trouble at all; you have only to buy your ticket, and go on board at the appointed time; you are fed, lodged, furnished with guides and donkeys, told when to admire, and how much you can admire, and have a given number of days, hours, and minutes in which to do everything. If no accident happens, you will be back in Cairo twenty days and five hours from the time of your departure, and will have been put through the Nile trip, as though you were a trunk or a bale of goods. You have a printed programme of the places to be visited, and of the time to be devoted to each, and also of the sights at each of those places. You are instructed not to stray from the party, but to follow the dragoman and observe the orders he gives.
There is in London a man, named Cook, who has been for a quarter of a century or more a dealer in excursion tickets for England and the Continent. A few years ago he extended his excursion business to the East, and latterly he has extended it to America, and around the globe. He has a rival named Gaze, and they are very savage on each other. Gaze says (in polite phraseology) that Cook is a liar, and Cook (in equally polite phraseology) says Gaze is a liar.
I have read both their pamphlets, and have come to the conclusion, when perusing their personal anathemas, that they both tell the truth.
Cook sells tourist and single tickets for almost everywhere, and Gaze does likewise. To travel on one of the tourist tickets is beautiful in theory, but to me, at least, a great nuisance in practice. I always avoid the tourist tickets when I can, but sometimes you find a line of transit monopolized by one of these enterprising agents, and are obliged to take his ticket or not go at all. Cook has managed to obtain the appointment of sole and exclusive, agent for the Nile steamers, and consequently the traveller who cannot spare the time and money for a dahabeeah journey, must patronize Cook.
To ascend by sail-boat to the First Cataract, and return to Cairo, will cost two persons about fifteen hundred dollars, and four persons about two thousand dollars. To go to the Second Cataract will cost about five hundred more in each case. If the party is larger, the charge is somewhat lower for each person. For these figures one can get a large, well-fitted boat, and be entitled to live with every possible comfort; lower rates can be made for smaller boats, and less luxury; the best terms I heard of when I was in Egypt, were sixty-five Napoleons (two hundred and sixty dollars gold) each for a party of five to the First Cataract, and allowing them fourteen days for stoppages on the return trip. I was several times offered a contract at seventy or eighty Napoleons each, for a party of five or six to the First Cataract, and for a hundred Napoleons each, to the Second. But this was late in the season (early in January), in fact too late to have a reasonable chance of reaching the Second Cataract. To go there, one should start in the latter part of November, or early in December, and for the First Cataract one should start in December. Early in the season the prices are high; later on they are more reasonable, as the dragomen and owners of boats begin to be doubtful of securing an engagement.
The price by steamer is forty-six pounds sterling, including everything except saddles for donkey-riding and one or two insignificant items, which rouse the temper much more than they deplete the purse. After you have paid an exorbitantly high price, and are told that it includes everything, you are then told that you must pay five shillings extra for a saddle, and eight shillings for a chair; then when you reach the First Cataract, you are told it will cost from two to five shillings more to see the cataract, although the advertisement specially says “The ticket includes the trip to the First Cataract and back.” These petty frauds are of course inseparable from the tourist business, as I never yet knew of a person who had bought a ticket to include everything who was not called on to pay something more. The nearest one can come to it, is on an ocean steamer, and on some of the river boats in America, but even there you are liable to be bled considerably in the course of your journey. You are sometimes very forcibly reminded of the story of the traveller, who said that the terms of a certain hotel out west were four dollars per day, with meals and lodging extra.
We were a party of thirty persons altogether, and included six nationalities,—American, English, French, German, Danish, and Italian.