The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

With this arrangement you can lean, lie down, sit sideways or cross-legged, or with your feet in the stirrups; and if you want to be luxurious, you can fasten a huge umbrella so as to shade you from the sun. A suggestion of my own is that you add a soda fountain, a billiard table, and a fish-pond, and also a light carriage for driving around your platform. Other comforts would doubtless occur to the imaginative reader.

There is a peculiar rocking motion to the camel, and the experienced rider moves his body backwards and forwards, bending at the hips, at each step of the beast.

The night after my camel ride, I dreamed that I had a backbone of glass, and could not move without breaking in two; and when I got up in the morning it seemed as if I was all backbone and that an iron rod had been passed through it for purposes of rigidity. I went around rather pompously for all that day, and I couldn’t have made a bow if I had been in front of the king of the Cannibal Islands and threatened with instant death for any appearance of incivility. I dropped my cane while walking on shore and had to hire an Arab to pick it up, and as for putting on my boots it was as great an effort as to turn a somersault in a peck measure. My camel was an ordinary baggage beast, and the saddle was such as they use for transporting freight around the cataract. The two round sticks that run from pommel to cantle were painfully perceptible beneath the blanket that hid them, and the rubbing, rocking motion over them made a couple of abrasions of the skin as large as a soda cracker.

The result of my camel riding was to teach a great deal of dignity, and to cause me to sit as little as possible in the presence of my elders or of any body else. What with stiffness and soreness I was not agile in my movements, and it took as long for me to sit down or rise from a seat, and was about as laborious, as to lay the corner-stone of an eight-story building.

From Assouan to the quarries the scenery was wild and striking, especially so at the point where we caught sight of the river and had Philae in the midst of the Nile as the centre of the picture. We had at one view the desert, black rocks and white sand, green trees, a flowing river, and the beautiful island with its coronet of temples. Under the tall trees on the river bank, there was a crowd of Arabs and Nubians, waiting for us to dismount, and beyond them lay the boats which were to ferry us over. The scene was unlike that of any other part of the Nile that we had yet encountered, and we readily realized that we had passed the frontier of Egypt and had entered Nubia.

Leaving my camel in the hands of his driver—a scantily-dressed boy of Nubian origin,—I entered the boat and waited till the rest of the party were on board. Half a dozen merchants of ostrich feathers and ornaments of silver were trying to strike up bargains, but did not create much business. In the river some Nubian urchins were sitting astride of logs and paddling about, and they showed great dexterity in balancing themselves. These logs are generally a foot in diameter and six or eight feet long, and you can see them lying around on the banks; they appear to be common property for use as ferry boats, but whether they are supplied by government I am unable to say. A native comes to the Nile and wishes to cross; he removes his clothing and makes it into a bundle that he places on the top of his head, and thus prepared he takes a log, strides it, plunges into the river and paddles over. On the other side he draws the log well on the land, and as soon as his body is dry he dons his clothing and moves on. Sometimes and generally he does not happen to have any clothing, and in this event he is saved a great deal of trouble.

Philæ has always excited the admiration of travellers, many of whom have characterized it as the most lovely spot they ever beheld.

To the ancient Egyptian it was the most sacred place on earth. It was the resting-place of his god of gods, the all-powerful Osiris, who was identified with the annual overflow of the Nile, and the consequent fertility of the land.