Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ groove, and no crack. Its sides are as smooth as any tablet; and its breadth appears to be uniform – about an inch wide at the top. Its depth is about three inches; and it is smooth and sound all along the bottom. Near it is a slight fault in the stone – a skin-deep crack, little more than a roughness of the surface. Across the upper face were some remarkable holes. Besides those which are usually prepared for wedges or pegs, there were two deep grooves, slanting and not parallel. If they had been straight and parallel, we should have immediately supposed them intended to hold the chains or ropes by which the mass was to be raised: and it is still possible that they were so. But we do not know what to make of the groove which is commonly called the fissure. It is deep; it is longitudinal; and it is devious; not intended, evidently, to bear any relation to the centre of the face, nor to be parallel with either side, nor to be straight in its direction. The only conjecture we could form was, that it was in preparation for the dressing of the stone, after the erection of the obelisk: but then its depth appears too great for such a purpose. We observed a considerable bulge on the upper face of this obelisk. We know that this is necessary, to obviate that optical deception which gives an appearance of concavity to a perfectly correct pyramidal line: and we know that the old Egyptians so well understood this architectural secret, that they might be the teachers of it to all the world. But the knowledge of this does not lessen the surprise, when the proof of it, in so gigantic a form, is under one's hand. – The block was ninety feet long above the sand, when we were there; and the guide said that the sand covered thirty more. Judging of the proportions of the apex from what we saw, it must either require much cutting away in the dressing, or be a little spire. It would doubtless be much reduced by cutting, – We left the quarries, full of speculation about what manner of men they were who cut and carved their granite mountains in this noble style, and by what inconceivable means they carried away their spoils. It would hardly surprise me more to see a company of ants carrying a life-size statue, than it did to measure the building stones and colossi of the East.

      In our walk this evening we saw a pretty encampment of Albanian soldiers among the palms. One had to rub one's eyes to be sure that one was not in a theatre. The open tent, with the blue smoke rising, the group of soldiers, in their Greek dress, on the ground and seen between the palm stems; the arms piled against a tree, and glittering in the last rays of the sun; – all this was like a sublimated opera scene. And there was another, the next morning, when they took their departure southwards, their file of loaded camels winding away from under the shade into the hot light.

      We went early to Elephantine, this morning (the 27th), after seeing the Scotch boat arrive. The remains of Elephantine are not now very interesting – at least, we did not find them so: and we do not enter into the ordinary romance about this »Island of Flowers.« Not only we saw no flowers, but we could perceive no traces of any: and our guide could not be made to understand what flowers were. Conversation was carried on in Italian, of which the man appeared to have no lack. First he said there were many flowers there: then that there were none: and he ended by asking what »fiori« were. He shook his head in despair when we showed him. The northern end of the island is green and fertile, but the southern end is one dreary heap of old stones and broken pottery. The quantity of broken pottery in these places is unaccountable – incredible.

      The quays are gone, and the great flight of steps to the river. The little ancient temple of Kneph is gone; and another, and the upper portion of the Nilometer, were pulled down, some years since, to supply building stone for an official's palace at Aswan. We saw, at the Nilometer, sculptured stones built in among rough ones – some being upside down, some set on end. And this is all we could make out of this edifice. There is a granite gateway of the time of Alexander: and this is the only erect work of any interest. – There is a statue of red granite, with the Osiride emblems – a mean and uncouth image, in comparison with most that we saw. Some slender and broken granite pillars lie about, a little to the north of the gateway; and one of them bears a sculptured cross, which shows that they were part of a Christian temple.

      The people on the island are Nubians. Many of their faces, as well as their forms, are fine: and they have the same well-fed and healthy appearance as we observe among the people generally, all along the great valley, and especially in the Nubian part of it. Some of the children were naked; some had ragged clothing; and many were dressed in substantial garments, though of the dusty or brown colours, which convey an impression of dirt to an English eye. The children's hair was shining, even dripping, with the castor-oil which was to meet our senses everywhere in Nubia.

      Our Scotch friends called while we were at breakfast, and offered us their small boat for an expedition to Philae. Much as I longed to see Philae, I was startled at the idea of going by water in a small boat, as a mere morning trip: and I was sorry to see our saddles put away, as it appeared to me more practicable to go by the shorter way of the desert, taking a boat from Mahatta. If we had known what we soon learned about the water passage, we should not have dreamed of such an adventure. My next uneasiness was at finding that we were going with only Arab rowers, without an interpreter. It certainly was foolish: but the local Rais had arranged the affair; and it was not for us to dispute the wisdom of the man who must know best. I am glad we went; for we obtained admirable views of this extraordinary part of the river, at more leisure and with more freedom than when ascending the Cataract in our kandjia, amidst the hubbub of a hundred natives.

      The wear of the rocks by thousands of annual inundations exhibits singular effects, in holes, unaccountable fissures, grotesque outlines, and gigantic piling up of blocks. The last deposit of soil on the slopes of smooth stones, and in every recess and crevice, reminded me of the old tillage one sees in Switzerland, where a miniature field is made on the top of a boulder, by confining the deposited earth with a row of, stones. And when we were driven to land, in the course of the morning, it was striking to see in what small and parched recesses a few feet of millet and vetches were grown, where the soil would yield anything. The deposit was always graduated, always in layers, however little there might be of it. In some stones in the middle of the current there were wrought grooves and holes for wedges: for what purpose, and whether these stones were always in the middle of the current, let those say who can. They looked like a preparation for the erection of colossal statues, which would have a finer effect amidst this frontier cataract than any Madonna del Mare has amidst the lagoons of Venice. The water here was less turbid than we had yet seen it. Its gushings round the rocks were glorious to see, and, in my opinion, to feel, as we made directly towards them, in order to be swirled away by them to some opposite point which we could not otherwise reach. The only time I was really startled was when we bumped tremendously upon a sunken rock. I saw, however, that the rowers were confident and merry; and when this is the case with local residents, in any critical passage of foreign travel, one may always feel secure. Remembering this, I found our hard-won passages through sharp little rapids, and the eagerness and hubbub of the rowers, delightful. But all did not find it so: and truly there was a harum-scarum appearance about the adventure which justified a pause and reconsideration what we should do.

      It was impossible to obtain any information from the Arabs. Pantomime may go a good way with any people in Europe, from a general affinity of ideas, and of their signs, which prevails over a continent where there is a nearly uniform civilisation: but it avails nothing, and is even misleading, between Europeans and the natives of Oriental countries. Our gentlemen were much given to pantomime, in the absence of an interpreter; and it was amusing to me to see, with the practised eye of a deaf person, how invariably they were misunderstood; and often when they had no suspicion of this themselves. They naturally employed many conventional signs; and, of course, so did the Arabs; and such confusion arose out of this, that I begged my friends never to put down in their journals any information which they believed they had obtained by means of pantomime. It might be that while they were inquiring about a pyramid, the Arabs might be replying about the sun: while they were asking questions about distance, the Arabs might be answering about ploughing: and so on. To-day we could make out nothing: so we offered very intelligible signs that we wished to land. We landed in a cove of a desert region on the eastern shore: and while Mr. E. was drawing maps on the sand, and the rowers were clamouring and gesticulating about him, I made for a lofty pile of rocks, a little way inland, to seek for a panoramic СКАЧАТЬ