One of the great wants of Egypt is the discovery of coal. At present fuel is costly, and all the coal used in the mills and on railways and steamers, must be imported, and, of course, at heavy expense. Explorations have been made on the upper Nile, and elsewhere, in the hope of finding coal, but they have not yet been successful. Small deposits have been found in isolated localities, but none that could be profitably worked. Lower Egypt does not offer much hope to the coal-searcher, but there are parts of the Soudan where the prospect is better. A wide coal-bed, accessible from the river, so as to ensure a low cost, would be a great boon to the country. There is very little wood for fuel, and among the peasants, dry camel-dung is extensively used.
After looking at the sugar mill, we strolled through the town of Minieh, and at the farther side, found a large crowd of people. They were looking at a juggler, who was performing a variety of tricks, none of them specially interesting, and compelling a couple of small boys to go through a comic dialogue, that evidently pleased the people very much, to judge by their immoderate laughter. The fellow had a large snake, which he wound around his neck, and had taught to dance, but his snake-charming was evidently the least of his performances.
Occasionally he allowed the snake to run on the ground, and when thus free, the reptile went around the circle with his head raised, and created a great deal of disturbance among the boys in the front row.
The snake-charmers are a peculiar class in Egypt; they will go to houses, and for a stipulated sum, will charm snakes from the walls or other localities, and they perform their work so well that nobody has ever succeeded in detecting them in a fraud I do not mean to say that they can find snakes where none exist; their art consists in enticing snakes that may be in a house to come out from their concealment, and allow themselves to be put in a bag and carried away. They do this by burning a sort of incense, and playing a doleful tune on a reed flute.
Our introduction to sight-seeing, at Beni-Hassan, in upper Egypt, was not prepossessing. There were donkeys on the bank, without saddles or bridles, and the worst donkeys that I ever saw offered for anybody to ride. The people were as bad as the donkeys, and presented a forlorn appearance; the inhabitants of this locality were formerly famous for their thieving propensities, and so bad were they in this respect that Ibrahim Pasha sent a military force to destroy their village and scatter its occupants. It would not be safe for a small-boat to lie there now over night, except with a very watchful guard. They beset us when we went on shore, and there was a crowd around me, with a dozen donkeys offering at once. I found a donkey that was fairly decent, but, while my back was turned, somebody else mounted him, and I was forced to take another and a poorer beast.
The donkey that I obtained must have been one of those possessed by the Beni-Hassanites when their village was destroyed by the Pasha’s order, forty years ago, and I am not sure but that he dated from one of the dynasties of ancient Egypt. He had much less hair than mud on his back, and I suspected that he passed his time in a mud-hole when not otherwise engaged. The saddle fitted him in a manner fearful and wonderful to behold, and there was some doubt as to whether it touched him anywhere. When I mounted him, he sat down in a manner perfectly natural for a dog, but not altogether so for a donkey. The result of this performance was to send me over backwards and leave me with my shoulders on the ground and my feet in the air. I found this position inconvenient, and also provocative of mirth in others, and therefore did not long maintain it. Even the donkey boy laughed, a proceeding which showed how little he knew of polite society.
The next time I mounted I sat on the beast’s shoulders and prevented his sitting down. But I could not prevent his kneeling, and I leave you to imagine the result. A regard for my personal feelings prevents my giving a detailed description of this harrowing tale.
