Assouan is, as it were, the gate of the Cataracts, and is on the borders of Nubia, the great desert of Syene being to the left of the village. The Nubian caravans were tented on the shore, and tempting the Europeans with daggers, knives, [{775}] ostrich-eggs, poisoned arrows, rhinoceros hide shields, lances and monkeys. The climate was delicious. There is no country in the world to be compared with Egypt at this time of the year, because, in spite of the heat, there is a lightness and exhilaration in the air which makes every one well and hungry. To an artist the coloring is equally perfect. No one who has not been there can imagine what the sunrises and sunsets are, especially the after-glow at sunset. No artificial red, orange, or purple can approach it. Then the gracefulness of the palms on the banks, the rosy color of the mountains, the picturesque sakeels or water-wheels, and the still prettier shadoof, with its mournful sound, which seems as the wail of the patient slave who works it day and night, and thereby produces the exquisite tender green vegetation on the banks of the river, due to this artificial irrigation alone--all are a continual feast to the eye of the painter. And if all this is felt below Assouan, what can be said of Philae--beautiful Philae--that "dream of loveliness," as a modern writer justly calls it?
Our travellers, while waiting for the interminable arrangements with the Reis of the Cataracts, took the road along the shore; and after passing through a succession of curious and picturesque villages, arrived at one called Mahatta, where they hired a little boat to take them across to the beautiful island. Rocks of the most fantastic shapes are piled up on both sides of the shore; but when once you have emerged from these into the deep water, "Pharaoh's Bed" and the other temples stand out against the sky in all their wonderful beauty. Philae was the burial-place of Osiris, and "By him who sleeps in Philae" was the common oath of the old Egyptians. The temples are too well known by drawings to need description; but what is less often mentioned by travellers is that the larger one, originally dedicated to the sun, was used for a long time by the Christians as a church. Consecration crosses are deeply engraved on every one of these grand old pillars; and at one end is an altar, with a cross in the centre, in white marble, and a piscina at the side, with a niche for the sacred elements; and above this recess is a beautiful cross deeply cut in the stone, together with the emblem of the vine. The cross is also let into the principal gateways. There was an Italian inscription commemorating the arrival of the first Roman mission sent by Gregory XVI., and a tablet in French recording the arrival of the French army there under Napoleon in 1799, signed by General Davoust.
The gentlemen of the party decided to pitch their tents in the island till the question of the passing of the Cataracts was decided; and while this operation was going on, one of the ladies sat down to sketch. She was quietly painting, luxuriating in the beauty and silence around her, and watching the sun setting gloriously behind the temple, when all of a sudden a deep bell boomed across the water and was repeated half-a-dozen times. It was the "Angelus." Even the least Catholic of the party was struck and impressed by this unexpected sound, so unusual in a country where bells are unknown, and the only call for prayer is from the minaret top. Instinctively they knelt, and then arose the question "Where could the bell come from?" There was no sign of habitation or human beings either on the island itself or on the opposite shores, and the dragoman himself was equally at fault. At last, on questioning the boatmen, they found that behind some hills a short distance off was a convent--sort of "convalescent home" for the sick monks of the Barri mission. The English lady decided at once to go and see it, and on arriving at the long low stone building, found that the Franciscan father, who was almost its solitary occupant, had just returned from the White Nile, being one of a mission to the blacks in the Barri country, a month's journey south of Khartoun. [{776}] He had been at death's door from fever; and on leaving Khartoun for Philae, an eighteen days' ride on camels, had been attacked by dysentery, and left for dead in the burning desert by the caravan; only a faithful black convert remained by his side, and he felt that his last hour was come; when the arrival of poor Captain Speke, on his way home from one of his last explorations, changed the state of things. With true Christian charity our countryman at once ordered a halt, and devoted himself to the nursing and doctoring of the dying monk; so that in a few days he was so far recovered as to be able to resume his journey, and arrived safely at Philae. He said he owed his life, under God, entirely to the kindness of this Englishman; and his only anxiety seemed to be to show his gratitude by doing everything he could for those of his nation. He invited our travellers to take up their abode in the convent, and gave them a most interesting account of the missionary work of his order. They have chartered a small vessel, which they have called the "Stella Matutina," and which plies up and down the river, and enables them to visit their stations on each bank. But they have every kind of hardship to encounter from the treachery or stupidity or positive hostility of the different tribes, from the intense heat, and above all, from the deadly malaria which had carried off seventy of their brothers in three years. But there are ever fresh soldiers of this noble army ready and eager to fill up the ranks.
The ladies rode home by the way of the desert, and reached their boats in safety. The next morning, at five o'clock, the same road was resumed by two of the party who were anxious to to reach the convent in time for the early mass. They met nothing on their seven-miles' ride but a hyaena, who was devouring a camel which they had left dying the night before. The little convent chapel was very nice; and among the vestments sent by the oeuvre apostolique and worked by the ladies of the Leopoldstadt mission, one of the party recognized a court-dress which had been presented for the purpose by a Hungarian friend of hers at Rome. It was strange to find it again in the depths of Nubia. The mass was served by two little woolly-haired negro boys from the good old father's school, whose attachment to him was like that of a dog to its master. He was in some trouble as to finding clothes for them. The Nubians dispense with every thing of the kind except a fringed leathern girdle round the loins, decorated with shells. The children have not even that. However, in the dahabièh a piece of rhododendron-patterned chintz was found, carefully sent from England for the covering of the divans; and with that, certain articles of dress were manufactured, gorgeous in coloring, and therefore perfect in native eyes, however ludicrous and incongruous they might appear to Europeans. The following day was fixed for one of the boats to go up the cataracts, and the party started early for what is called the "first gate," to see the operation. No one who has not lived for some months with this "peuple criard," as Lamartine calls them, can imagine the din and screaming of the Arabs as each dangerous rapid is passed; the Reis all the time shouting and storming and leaping from one stone to the other like one possessed. But the ascent is child's play compared to the descent. So many accidents have happened in the latter, and so many boats have been swamped, that the captains now insist on the passengers landing on an island near, while their boats rush down the rapids. It is a beautiful sight, the way those apparently unwieldy vessels are steered, and clear the rocks as it were with a bound, amidst the frantic yells and cheers of the whole population. A number of men, for a trifling baksheesh, swam down the current on logs; one with his little child before him; but an Englishman, attempting [{777}] to do it a year or two ago, was caught in the whirlpool and instantly drowned. After watching this exciting operation, the party dined together at Philae in their tent, and then rowed round and round the island by moonlight, which exceeded in loveliness all they had hitherto seen; the vividness of the reflections were beyond belief; and reading or writing was easy in the brilliant light.
Our traveller availed herself of the kind Father Michael Angelo's proposal, and slept at the convent. He gave them some curious arms, and hippopotamus-teeth from the White Nile, and some ostrich-eggs arranged as drinking-vessels, with shells and leather strips: his sole furniture in his native tent. The English, in return, gave him a quantity of medicines, which he eagerly accepted for his mission, to which he was hoping to return. After early mass the next day, he escorted them to see the Island of Biggeh with its picturesque temple, and then to the quarries of Syene, where an uncut obelisk of great size still remains embedded in the sand. Some idea was entertained in England of using it for Prince Albert's monument; but the difficulty of carriage and the distance from the river would make its transfer almost impossible. Far simpler would be the proposal of taking the Luxor obelisk, already given to the English by Mehemet Ali, the sister one to that successfully transported to Paris by the French. It is a thousand pities to leave it where it is, and to miss the occasion of adding so unique and valuable a monument to our art-treasures.
This, the last day of our traveller's stay at Assouan, was spent in making a few last purchases, visiting the old castle overlooking the river, and exploring the island of Elephantine, which offers beautiful sketching. But the inhabitants are even more importunate as beggars than their confraternity at Thebes; and it required all the eloquence of the good priest to prevent their appropriating the contents of the traveller's paint-box. She purchased from them many strings of bright beads, which constitute their sole idea of female dress. A curious funeral took place in the evening, an empty boat being carried for the dead man, who was buried with his arms and his spear; while a funeral dirge was sung over him by his tribe. It was curious, as being identical with the hieroglyphics of similar scenes in the tombs of the kings. Many of the customs of these people are purely pagan; for instance, when an Arab makes his coffee, he pours out the first three cups on the ground as a libation to the sheik, who first invented the beverage. The slave-trade, though nominally abolished by the viceroy, is carried on vigorously at Assouan. The governor goes through the form of confiscating the cargo and arresting the owners of the ship; but, after a few days, a handsome baksheesh on the part of the slave-owner and captain settles the matter; and their live cargo is transported to Cairo, there to be disposed of in the harems or elsewhere.
To the Catholic traveller in this country nothing can be more melancholy than the utterly degraded condition of the people, who are really very little removed from the brute creation. Years of ill-usage, hardship, and wrong have ground down the Fellah to the abject condition of a slave; and the utter extinction of Christianity among them seems to preclude all hope of their rising again. Yet Egypt was once the home of saints. From Alexandria, the seat of all that was most learned and refined, the see of St. Athanasius, and St. Alexander, and St. Cyril, and St. John the Almoner, and a whole string of holy patriarchs, bishops, and martyrs, up to the very desert of Syene, peopled with anchorites, the whole land teemed with saints. And now, the little handful of Franciscan fathers, scattered here and there, sowing once more the good seed at the cost of their lives, is all that remains to bear witness to the truth.
[ORIGINAL.]