Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ now at Soohaj. He had a crew of twenty-three men, and was proceeding day and night. His interpreter accosted us, offered us service, discussed the wind and weather, and invited us to take coffee on board the Governor's boat. I was sorry to be in the way of Mr. E.'s going; but I could not think of such an adventure in Mrs. Y.'s absence. We saw the Governor leave his boat, supported by the arms, for dignity's sake. He then took his seat under a palm, and received some papers offered him. He looked old, short, and very business-like. A scribe sat on the top of his cabin, with ink-horn and other apparatus; and a man was hurrying about on shore with a handful of papers covered with Arabic writing. All this, with the turbaned and gazing groups under the tamarisks, the white-robed soldiers before the gate of the barracks, the stretch of town-walls beside us, and the minarets of Eckmim rising out of the palm-groves on the opposite shore, made up a new and striking scene. Mr. and Mrs. Y. saw, from the boat, part of the reverse side; they saw eight men in irons, reserved to be bastinadoed for the non-payment of their taxes. – As we walked on, we passed a school, where the scholars were moving their bodies to and fro, and jabbering as usual. Then we descended the embankment of the canal, which winds in towards the town, and crossed its sluice; and then we came out upon a scene of millet-threshing Two oxen, muzzled, were treading out the grain; five men were beating the ears, and a sixth was turning over and shaking the husks with a rake. Such are the groups which incessantly delight the eye in Eastern travel. – Next, we found ourselves among a vast quantity of heavy stones, squared for building. They were deeply embedded, but did not look like the remains of ancient building. And now it was time for us to stop, lest there should be difficulty, if we went further, in getting on board. So we sat down in a dusty but shady place, among some fowl-houses, and beside an oven. I never took a more amusingly foreign walk. – A short ramble that evening was as little like home; but more sad than amusing. We entered a beautiful garden, or cultivated palm orchard, which was in course of rapid destruction by the Nile. Whole plots of soil and a great piece of wall were washed away. Repeatedly we saw signs of this destruction; and we wondered whether an equivalent advantage was given anywhere else. By day we passed towns which, like Manfaloot, were cut away year by year; and by night the sullen plash caused by the fall of masses of earth was heard. In countries where security of property is more thought of than it is here, this liability must seriously affect the value of the best portions of the land – those which have a river frontage. Here it appears to be quietly submitted to, as one of the decrees of inevitable fate. The circumstance of the Nile changing its course must also affect some historical and geographical questions – in the one case as regards the marches of ancient armies, and the sites of old cities; and in the other, the relations of different parts of the country. Many towns, called inland by geographers, are now on the banks of the river. At Manfaloot, it is clear that the divergence from the old course under the rocks is very great; and near Benee Hasan the change is made almost from year to year. When Sir G. Wilkinson visited the caves,¹² the river was so far off as to leave a breadth of two miles between it and the rocks; and Mrs. Romer, who was there the year before us, describes the passage to the caves as something laborious and terrific: whereas, when we visited the caves on our return, we found the river flowing at the base of the acclivity; and we reached the tombs easily in twelve minutes. From the heights, we traced its present and former course, and could plainly see a third bed, in which it had at one time run. We were sorry to see it cut through fine land, where the crops on either bank showed what the destruction must have been. The banks were falling in during the few hours of our stay; and here, as in similar places, we observed that the river was more turbid than usual. These local accidents must largely affect the great question of the rate of rising of the bed of the river, and, in consequence, that of the whole valley: a question which some have attempted to determine by comparison of the dates of the buildings at Thebes with the depth of the sand accumulated above their bases.

      The next place where we went ashore, Girgeh, once stood a quarter of a mile inland: it is now in course of being washed down. It is a miserable place, as might be expected, with such a fate hanging over it. We stayed here an hour for the purchase of bread, fowls, and a sheep. We give 30 paras (1¾ d.) for a fowl; 6 s. for a sheep; and a piastre, (2¼ d.) for 42 eggs. The small bazaars had few people in them at this hour (7 A.M.), and of those few many were blind; and on our return to the boat, we found a row of blind people on the bank, hoping for baksheesh. – The millet stalks here measured eleven feet; and, of course, the fields are a perfect jungle. We saw occasionally the millet stalks burnt, and strewn over the fields for a top-dressing. At other times we observed that where the millet had been cut, wheat was sown broadcast among the stubble, which was left to rot. The only manuring that we saw, besides this top-dressing, was that of the gardens with pigeons' dung; and the qualifying of the Nile mud with sand from the desert, or dust out of the temples, brought in frail-baskets on the backs of asses.

      Two of our sapient crew having quarrelled at mess about which should have a particular morsel of bread, and fought noisily on shore, the Rais administered the bastinado. The first was laid down, and held by the feet and shoulders, while flogged with a boat-pole. He cried out vigorously. The other came forward cheerfully from the file and laid himself down. The Rais broke the pole over him: but he made no noise, jumped up, spat the dust out of his mouth, and went to work at the tow-rope as if nothing had happened. They seem to bear no malice, and joke with one another immediately after the bitterest quarrels. – One of our Nubians wears his knife in a sheath, strapped about the upper part of his left arm. Another wears an amulet in the same manner. Two who come from Dongola have their faces curiously gashed with three cuts on each cheek, and four on each side the eye. These cuts are given them by their parents in childhood for beauty-marks.

      We now began to meet rafts of pottery coming down from Kenneh, the seat of the manufacture of the water-jars which are in general use. Porous earth and burnt grass are the chief materials used. We meet seven or more rafts in a group. First, a layer of palm fronds is put on the raft; and then a layer of jars; then another layer of each. The jars all have their mouths out of the water. They are so porous that their conductors are continually employed in emptying them of water: that is, they are always so employed when we meet them. Not being worth sponges, they dip in and wring out cloths, with strings to them. The oars are mere branches, whose boughs are tied together at the extremity. Though they bend too much, they answer their purpose pretty well; but the whole affair looks rude and precarious enough. In curious contrast with their progress was that of the steamer, conveying the Prince of Prussia, which we met to-day, hurrying down from Thebes. We preferred our method of voyaging, though we now advanced only about twelve miles a day, and had been fourteen days making the same distance that we did the first two.

      We cannot understand why the country boats are so badly laden as they appear to be. The cargo is placed so forward as to sink the bows in the water; and so many founder in consequence that we cannot conceive why the practice is not altered. We have seen several sunk. One was a merchant boat that had gone down in the night, with five people in her. She was a sad spectacle – her masts and rigging appearing above water in the middle of the stream.

      On the morning of the 19th, on leaving our anchorage near the high rock of Chenoboscion, we found that a wind had sprung up; and we enjoyed the sensation of more rapid progress. We might now hope to see the temple of Dendara in a few hours. The Arabian mountains retreated, and the Lybian chain advanced. Crocodiles plunged into the water as we sailed past the mud banks. The doum palms began to congregate, and from clumps they became woods. Behind one of these dark woods, I saw a mass of building which immediately fixed my attention; and when a turn of the river brought us to a point where the sunlight was shining into it, I could clearly distinguish the characteristics of the temple of Dendara. I could see the massive portico, – the dark spaces between the pillars, and the line of the architrave. Thus much we could see for two hours from the opposite shore, as Mr. E. had to ride up to Kenneh for letters; but, as the wind was fair, and the temple was two miles off, we left till our return any closer examination of it.

      While Mr. E. and Alee were gone to the town, Mr. Y. walked along the shore, in the direction of Selim Pasha's boats; and Mrs. Y. and I were busy about domestic business on board. I was sewing on deck when Mr. Y. returned, and told me he had been invited to an audience of Selim Pasha. When pipes and coffee had been brought, СКАЧАТЬ