"Scarab!"

A solemn girl-child clad in a rust-coloured garment has come up on seeing our donkeys halt and holds out a brilliant blue scarab for sale in a hot little hand. She nods violently, repeating, "Scarab! Verry old." "Found in tombs," says our donkey-boy gravely, willing to help her to take us in. He picks it up and pretends to examine it carefully, "Genuine anteekar," he p.r.o.nounces. Laughing, we hand the "genuine antique" back to its owner, knowing that it is probably "genuine Birmingham," and then we canter after the rest of the party.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NILE STEAMER.]

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE NILE

In my ears is the sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I hear the agonising sc.r.a.pe of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a concert hall and spring up wildly with the intention of getting outside until the music begins, but the movement wakes me, and behold I am not at a concert in London on a dim Sunday afternoon, but in a brilliantly white two-berth cabin with the sun flooding in through the square window! Peering out I see we are running smoothly along up-stream close in to a high mud bank, and that is where the noise comes from. It is caused by the squeaking of one wooden rod against another as hundreds of Egyptian fellaheen raise the water from the Nile to moisten their crops.

It is not long before we are both dressed and out to examine the curious sight. The banks are about the height of a high room, and at the distance of, it may be, fifty yards, all the way along them there are deep cuts like miniature denes, or chines, running down to the water. At the foot of each of these a brown-skinned man stands with his bare feet at the edge of the water, gripping with his toes to save himself from slipping in the mud. At this time in the morning he is clothed in a quant.i.ty of garments, mostly mud-colour, but as the sun grows strong he throws them aside and stands forth a fine bronze statue with his skin gleaming in the clear light. Just above his head there is a pole bridging the cut, or chine, and fastened to the middle of it at right angles is another, which swings up and down upon it like a see-saw.

A huge lump of mud like a swollen football is plastered on to the far end of this, and at the other end a basket or basin made of skin is attached to a string. The mud ball is heavy, and when it is allowed to go free it hangs down to the ground; but the brown man constantly reaches up and raises it by pulling down the basin, which he dips in the Nile water, then lets the heavy end swing it up as high as his head, when he tips it up, and the water from it flows into a pool at that height. Another man stands on the edge of this pool and he has a similar arrangement, by means of which he raises the water out of the pool with a basin like the first, and there may be another above him, and another again. This primitive arrangement is called a _shaduf_, and by its means the water from the Nile is lifted up to the surface of the fields, where it runs away in miniature channels to water the roots of the maize. This is one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Think of all the mills in which machinery does delicate work like that of the human hand; think of the patterns made by the machines, of the newspapers printed and folded with very little human guidance, and then leap back to this clumsy device used now by the Egyptian as it was used by his ancestors thousands of years ago! A few pints of muddy water raised by a weight, half of it falling out of the badly constructed basin as it goes, and the same drop of water handled again and again by four men till the tiny trickle reaches the fields! We watch with amazement. The shrieking and squeaking of the _shadufs_ goes on, the brown figures stoop down, rise again, and swing with regularity, minute after minute. We steam on round the next corner and see more of them and yet more again; how many have we not seen already in the short time we have been on deck? Multiply that times without number for all the miles we came up by train and double it to include both banks! Imagination gives way!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A "SHADUF."]

"I can't bear it," says the nice American who was in the train with us and has now joined us in the trip up to a.s.souan in one of Cook's steamers. "It's maddening! Why can't a whole village form a company and get some sort of machine to work? It would water all their crops in a tenth of the time."

As he speaks there comes into view something just a little better. At the top of one of the deep cuts on the bank two bullocks plod slowly round and round in a circle as if they were threshing corn; they work a wheel, which revolves horizontally and is fitted into another which turns vertically, deep down into the hole it reaches, low enough to touch the water at the bottom. Earthenware jars are strung all round it like beads on a necklet, and as each pot dips into the water it brings up its share, and when it reaches the highest point it tips it into a little channel, where it runs away. This is called a _saddiyeh_. The wheels groan and creak, the patient beasts turn in their dizzy circle, and the youngster seated on the wheel prods them with a sharp-pointed stick when they slacken. At least the water runs away in a continuous stream at the top, however tiny.

Then the steamer takes a sharp turn, leaves the bank, and careers across into midstream! We go up on to the top deck and see three dark-skinned men, warmly wrapped up in brown coats, sitting in a little gla.s.shouse in the bows and watching earnestly the channel ahead.

This is the _reis_, or captain, with his two a.s.sistants. They know every turn and dip in the river; but the river changes ever, no two days is it alike as it falls and washes away a bank or deposits sand so as to make an island where none was before. So the three men watch intently and steer the boat to this side and that wherever they can find the deepest channel. The Nile is low for this time of year and caution is necessary; when there is any doubt as to there being enough water, one of the crew below handles a long pole, dipping it in to find the bottom and calling out the depth as he goes.

There are twenty pa.s.sengers or so on the boat and they sit about the sunny decks watching the panorama of the banks and the wonderful changing scenes ahead, hour by hour. Hardly anywhere would you find a greater variety of nationalities than on one of these Nile boats, for Egypt draws people from all parts of the world with her mystery and beauty. The odd people one meets add to the interest, and the strange manners, which are not ours, are like flavouring in the dish of travel, which, if it were composed only of scenes of perpetual beauty, might be a little insipid.

To begin with, I am English and you are Scottish, we have our friend the American and four of his compatriots, not by any means so delightful as he is. He takes care to steer clear of them, we notice! One of them is a little man who might be any age from twenty to fifty; if we examine him with field-gla.s.ses we shouldn't be able to discover how old he is. His yellow skin, drawn tightly over a bony face, gives no sign of age or youth. He eats sweets all day out of a box as large as a child's coffin, and he is attended by three stout ladies, doubtless "his mother and his aunts." They are veiled and swathed in wraps, and seem to spend their time gossiping or asleep in the innermost recesses of the cabin. We never once catch them admiring the scenery or taking any interest in the wonders we pa.s.s. Then there is a Swiss, a gentle-mannered bronzed man with a brown beard; he speaks only French, and in an un.o.btrusive way seems to have seen a great deal of the world; we discover, for one thing, that he has lived out in the desert near Tunis for many years.

There are three Russians, mother, father, and daughter, who speak practically nothing but Russian, with a few words of French; they are brave to have started out on such a journey so ill-equipped. Coming across a Russian dragoman in Cairo they trusted him joyfully; he bought three temple tickets for them at their expense and promised to meet them somewhere up the Nile. They seem to expect to find him sitting on every sandbank, and their faith is pathetic; they'll never see those tickets again, for the man will sell them to the next party of victims. Then there is a Belgian, also a couple of lively pleasant French people, and two Germans, a sister and brother, who dress in clothes intended to be very sporting.

It is an interesting crowd, and it is well kept in hand by the manager, who looks like a fair-haired, brown-faced boy of two-and-twenty, but has been everywhere and speaks half a dozen languages fluently. In addition to this he sketches in water colours, plays the fiddle, and breaks in horses! You have to travel to come across people like that! Here he is nothing so out of the way--every dragoman is able to talk in three languages at least. Doesn't it spur you on to feel how much we have to learn and how ignorant we are in our stay-at-home villages?

All the morning we sit about and watch the graceful white-sailed boats coming down with cargoes of every kind. Sometimes we see them stranded on a hidden sandbank with the crew making frantic efforts to get them off again. We see the reaches lying ahead glittering like jewels in the sun, and then we land and ride a short way to a temple, under the care of the dragoman of the boat. The most moving thing in all that temple is a set of scenes of a hippopotamus hunt shown with great spirit; the poor little hippo looks more like a pig when he is at the bottom of the water with a spear or harpoon sticking in him, but when they haul him up by means of a noose round one leg the ancient artist represents him becoming bigger and bigger as he comes to the surface!

The walls are, besides, covered with all the usual scenes of the king making offerings to the G.o.ds, and overriding his enemies, and doing all those n.o.ble things which kings wanted their posterity to know about them.

A high-pitched voice, speaking in a hyper-refined affected tone, breaks in on our enjoyment; it belongs to one of the English people from the boat, a lady who evidently considers it her mission in life to instruct people; information flows from her ten finger-tips, she cannot help it, she was born to be a schoolmistress certainly.

"That is the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt," she says, "that the king is wearing; sometimes you see him with one and sometimes with the other, here he has both together."

As this is about the first thing a dragoman tells anyone in the first temple he sees, and as it is repeated at least once at every temple afterwards, only an idiot could fail to know it. We murmur something politely and turn away. Round a corner we stop to admire the rich colour still left in the ceiling, where a heavenly blue, covered with golden stars, represents the sky.

"When we were here three years ago," says the lady at our elbows, "they had not uncovered those pillars, but we are told--that----"

The peace and beauty are spoilt! Again we murmur something and make a dive to get away, but are confronted by a clean-shaven man in gla.s.ses.

"When we were here three years ago," he begins, "perhaps my wife has told you----"

It is rude, but there is nothing for it but to bolt; people like that would take the effervescence off newly opened champagne! We leave them confronting each other, and wonder what they do when they are alone together! Do they force their mixture of guidebook and water on each other?

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DAM AT a.s.sOUAN.]

When we look back upon Egypt these river days will stand out most clearly, for the glory of them and the interest of them are unfailing.

We have to leave this boat at a.s.souan, but we shall come back and go right down the Nile to Cairo on our return journey, so that is something to look forward to.

At a.s.souan we are not going to stop but to change on to another steamer, one belonging to the Government this time, and we shall penetrate farther into the heart of the land to see something, which, after the Sphinx, is the most wonderful thing in Egypt.

But we can't step off one steamer on to another, for at a.s.souan is the first of the many cataracts that for ages has hindered the navigation of the Nile. The river, hemmed in between two rocky sides, tears down, dashing over stones and whirling round corners in a dangerous way. So the steamer for the upper part of the river waits above the cataract and we have to make a short train journey of half an hour or so to join it.

Picture the scene at an English railway station of any size, with its solidly-built platform and its gloomy roof and its row of uniformed porters drawn up waiting the arrival of the incoming train. I don't suppose anywhere you could find anything less like this than the station at a.s.souan where we await our train this afternoon. There are great palm trees springing out of the platform itself, not fenced in in any way.

There are ma.s.ses of scarlet poinsettias growing. And the porters! yes, they _are_ porters, not criminals waiting to be hanged! There they stand, a ragged regiment indeed, dressed in any sort of garment that takes their fancy. Most of them look as if they had collected all the dish-clouts and dusters which had seen service and piled them on anyhow.

To add to their adornment each man has a double coil of shabby-looking rope hung round his neck, this is to fasten together the luggage he hopes to carry. The men are of all sizes and all colours. That good-looking fellow at the end is not darker than a sun-browned Englishman, while that stout, round-faced, thick-lipped one next to him is as black as the polished boot seen in an advertis.e.m.e.nt. He is a Nubian, for here we are on the borders of Nubia, now counted part of Egypt. The porters are making a tremendous hullabaloo, chattering and quarrelling at the tops of their voices, so a native policeman in khaki comes along and smacks one of them hard on the side of his face, and then catches him a crack on the other side to make him keep his balance; the man does not resent it at all--he rubs his cheek and takes the hint.

Fancy a policeman in our country smacking a porter on the face; what a row there would be!

Here is the train! The engine-driver and his mate are dressed in shabby European clothes crowned by turbans which have gaudy orange and red handkerchiefs twisted round them. They get down on the platform, and suddenly the fireman sees a rather unpleasant-looking man, with a beard, standing away from the others; he rushes at him, bows low before him, and finally kisses both his hands. The man is probably a sheikh of the Mohammedan church.

The train is a corridor one, and we mount the platform at the end of a carriage and find ourselves in a compartment thick with dust, where the seats vary from straight leather-covered benches to comfortable-looking basket-chairs. The place is crammed with "kit"; dispatch-boxes, helmet-cases, sword-cases and leather bags fill every corner.

"Allow me," says a pleasant-voiced sunburnt man as he stoops to remove some of his things to make room for us. "We've come right up from Cairo and things get a bit scattered," he adds apologetically.

When we get clear of the town we find that in addition to gla.s.s windows and wooden shutters there are also windows of blue gla.s.s to keep off the glare, a splendid idea, as they do not hinder the view. One of these is up, and peeping through it we get our first real glimpse of the desert, transformed as if it lay beneath bright moonlight. From the other side we can see it as it is in its yellow colouring. How fascinating! Its runs away in sweeping low waves to a line of hills and is crossed by caravan tracks; even as we watch we see a man riding a small donkey ahead of a string of camels laden with huge bales. The railway is still but a small thing in Egypt; it runs right ahead, with few side-lines, and from it the desert tracks lead off in many directions. The camel, who has been the bearer of Egyptian traffic for generations, still does a large share of the transport. A good camel is expensive, but a man who owns one is sure of a livelihood, for he works backwards and forwards across the great solitudes, eating his handful of dates or grain, and drinking the water he carries with him, if he is not lucky enough to camp near a well. Oddly enough camels are not represented on the wall-drawings of the ancient Egyptians, and though it is true they were probably not to be found in the country in the very earliest times, yet they were certainly introduced as early as the horse, who is often shown in battle-scenes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEN OF THE BISHARIN TRIBE.]

What rivets our attention directly it comes into sight is an encampment of low mat huts like beehives right out in the midst of the sand.

"Those belong to the Bisharin," says the same fair-haired, keen-faced man who had first spoken; "tribe of fuzzy-wuzzies! They extend right away from here to the Red Sea. Live on raw grain mostly. Quaint lot!"

Some of the men from the camp are standing near the railway line, so we can see them well; they are very tall and extremely handsome, with well-cut features and well-proportioned figures. Their hair is cut exactly after the fashion of the palm trees, with a tuft standing up in the middle and two tufts dropping away from it on each side. These men are quiet enough now that they have learnt the British power, but not so long ago they were inflamed with fanatical hatred.

You have heard of the dervishes who were killed in thousands at Omdurman, outside Khartoum, in the great battle at which Lord Kitchener won his t.i.tle when he freed the Soudan from the power of the Mahdi? Now, having seen the Bisharin, you can imagine what dervishes looked like.

For they dressed their hair in the same way, they wore the same dirty-white garments, and as they came yelling onward at a run, brandishing their weapons, it must have taken some courage for the Egyptian soldiers to meet them steadily.

All the men in the carriage with us are going on up to Khartoum and beyond. They are soldiers, administrators, and Government officials, men whose lives are pa.s.sed on the outposts of civilisation, and who carry the British ideals of cleanliness, honesty, and straight-dealing far into the desert; but they do not talk about it, as Kipling says they speak:--"After the use of the English in straight-flung words and few--"

"Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, Baulking the end half won for an instant dole of praise.

Stand to your work and be wise--certain of sword and pen, Who are neither children nor G.o.ds, but men in a world of men."

Khartoum is the capital of the Soudan, but we have not arrived in the Soudan yet. This great province was won from barbarism and brutality by the English, who had trained and commanded the Egyptian army for the purpose through years of heart-breaking work, and it is held jointly by England and Egypt.

Then we arrive at Sh.e.l.lal, the station where the steamer waits, and in a moment we are plunged into a turmoil of confusion and shouting.

The red sun is setting in a flame of glory over the great lake-like expanse studded with black rocks; this is the huge dam or reserve of water held up for the use of the crops when the Nile goes down. The scene beggars description; bags, bundles, bales, boxes are pitched out pell-mell. Gleaming black faces are lit up by the flames of leaping fires lit on the sand. Petticoated porters thrust metal numbers at us so that we may be able to recognise them again and reclaim our luggage safely. We make our way to the steamer and mount to the first-cla.s.s deck and look down on the whirl of turbans and red fezes (also called tarbooshes) below. The perpetual chatter, the long low cries, the beating shout of men staggering under heavy loads make up a resounding din. Clamped boxes, camp-chairs, enamel basins, dispatch-boxes, helmet-cases are carried swinging up the gangway. Here is a man wildly waving a gun-case which a non-commissioned officer wrenches from him; another is struggling under a folded tent, the end of which catches on a post and nearly precipitates him into the water. Black Nubian sailors in white and blue jumpers are wrestling with an endless series of mail-bags; third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, lost under piles of bedding, straggle into a great barge alongside. In the midst of it all one sailor detaches himself a little from the rest and drops down on his knees on the quay, prostrating himself and bowing with his forehead to the ground; he rises again, stands straight, with head erect, then down he goes again. He is praying at sunset, as a good Mohammedan is told to do. No one notices him or ridicules him. What would happen to an English sailor who knelt to say his prayers on an English dock? We feel that we have something to learn from this people, who are at all events not ashamed of their religion.

A man is selling oranges on the quay, another has large round flat loaves of bread tucked well under his arms and hugged against his body.