Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ beam was made of a slender palm stem, fixed into two blocks. The treadles were made of spines of the palm fixed into bits of stick. The shuttle was, I think, a forked twig. The cotton yarn was even, and the fabric good, that is, evenly woven. It was, though coarse, so thin that one might see the light through; but that was intended, and only appropriate to the climate. I might have wondered at such a fabric proceeding from such an apparatus, if I had not remembered the muslins of India, produced in looms as rude as this. It appears, too, from the paintings in the tombs, that the old Egyptian looms were of nearly as simple a construction, though the people were celebrated for their exports of fine linen and woollen stuffs. The stout-looking gay chequered sails of the boats, and the diversified dresses of the people represented in the tombs, were no doubt the produce of the rude looms painted up beside them. – The baskets made by the Nubians are strong and good. Their mats are neat; but neither so serviceable nor so pretty as those of India: but, then, these people have not such material as the Hindoos. Their ropemaking is a pretty sight – prettier even than an English ropewalk; though that is a treat to the eye. We often saw men thus employed – one end of their strands being tied to the top of a tall palm, while they stood at the other, throwing the strands round till they would twist no more.

      As for the rent paid by the Nubians for their land, what we learned is this; but it must be observed that it is very difficult, in these countries, to obtain reliable information. In the most civilised parts, there are so few data, and in the more primitive, the people are so little in the habit of communicating with persons who are not familiar with their condition and ways, that it is scarcely possible to find any uniformity of testimony on any. matters of custom or arrangement, even the simplest. When the people tell of their taxes, the English traveller finds them so enormous that he is incredulous, or too indignant to carry away any accurate knowledge of the facts, unless he remembers that taxes in Egypt are not the same thing as taxes in Europe.

      As I understand the matter, it is thus, with regard to these Nubians. The Pasha holds the whole land and river of Egypt and Nubia in fee-simple, except as much as he has given away, for its revenues, to favoured individuals; and his rents are included in what are called his taxes. In Egypt, the people pay tax on the land. In Nubia, they pay it on the sakias and paints. The palms, when large, pay a piastre and a quarter (about 3 d.) each, per annum: when small, three-fourths of a piastre. Each sakia pays a tax of three hundred and fifty piastres, or £ 3 10 S.; and the payer may appropriate as much land as the sakia will water. The quantity taken is usually from eight hundred to twelve hundred square yards.

      The mode of collecting the taxes is quite another matter. By corruption in the agents, or a bad practice of taking the amount in kind, or on account, the collector fixing the marketable value of the produce, there may be cruel oppression. In Egypt, it is certain this oppression does exist to a dreadful extent. We did not happen to hear of it in Nubia; and I cannot say how it is there. But, be it as it may, it is a different question from the amount of tax.

      What the peasant actually pays for is the land, as above-mentioned, the water-wheel itself, the excavation in which it works, the shed under which it stands, and the ox or pair of oxen by which it is driven. How far his bargain answers to him must depend on the marketable value of his produce, in a country little affected by variations of seasons. He has not, however, the advantage of an open market. There is nobody at hand to purchase, unless by the accident of a trading kandjia coming by; and he has not usually the means of sending far. The tax-collector must therefore commonly be his market; and not such a one as to enable the stranger to estimate his affairs with any accuracy. All we could do was to observe whether he seemed to have enough of his produce left over for the support of his family, and whether his land appeared to be well tilled. I can only repeat that the people we saw in Nubia looked generally healthful and contented; and that they seemed to be making the most of their little belts and corners of cultivable land. It is to be observed, however, that we remarked a great number of ruined villages, and that we could obtain no answer from either dragoman or Rais as to how this happened. They declared they did not know; and for once Alee had neither information nor theory to offer. Which was the popular enemy, the Desert or the Pasha, I cannot undertake to say.

      Our kandjia was hired for twenty-five days, for the sum of £ 13 10 S.; this including all the charges of ascending the Cataract, and of the crew (eight men), except the steersman. Of these eight men, I think four were from our dahabieh. Our Rais and the rest of our crew were left at Aswan, in charge of the boat and such of our property as we did not take with us. Among those whom we carried up were two of our quiet, serviceable Nubians. Among those who remained behind was the Buck, as we called him: perhaps the least serviceable of the whole crew, and certainly the least quiet and most troublesome; but he was so extremely amusing with his pranks that we missed him, during this fortnight, more than we should a better lad. Our other buffoon was with us – the cook. An excellent cook he was; but I do not know that he was much else, except a long story-teller and a consummate coxcomb. He was a bad riser in this (to him) winter weather; not a good hand at giving us breakfast early; and we were therefore not sorry that he declined going through the Desert with us afterwards. The manner of declining, however, smacked of his coxcombry. »I!« said he. »I go through the Desert to Syria! No, no: it is all very well for these English, whom nobody inquires after, to go and be killed in Syria: but I am a man whose life is of importance to his family. They may go without me.« And we went with a better man in his place. During this Nubian voyage, however, he was in his glory – among stranger comrades who would listen to his long stories. As I sat on deck in the evenings, I used to see him at the bows, flattering himself that he was doing his proper work, – holding by the wings a poor fluttering turkey about to have his throat cut, and brandishing his great glittering knife, in the energy of his story-telling. How many times have I chafed at the suspense of one poor bird after another, thus held, head downwards, till the magniloquent cook should have finished his anecdote! He fed us well, however, making a variety very honourable to him in the mutton, fowls, and eggs, which we lived on during the voyage. Beef and veal have been out of the question since the murrain in 1843. Since that time, the cattle have not been enough to work the sakias; and, of course, there are none for food. Mr. Y. once had the luck to fall in with a piece of beef – at least, we were assured it was beef: but the only good we got out of it was a lesson not to look for beef any more. There is great variety to be made out of a sheep, however, as our cook continually proved to us. I have said that he succeeded well in our Christmas plum-pudding. The only fire we had last winter was that which he made with a pool of brandy in the middle of our pudding. Almost the only failure he made was with a goose which we got at Thebes. We thought much of this goose, as a change from the everlasting fowls and turkeys; but the cook boiled it; and it looked anything but tempting. His excuse was that he feared, if he roasted it, that it would be »stiff« – meaning tough.

      All the people on board, and we ourselves, found the weather cold in Nubia; that is, in the evenings and mornings; for at noon it was hot enough to make us glad of fans and water-melon. We entered the tropic at three P.M. of December 30: and from that time till our return, we seemed sentenced to shiver early and late, in cold strong winds, such as we had hardly met with in the more northerly parts of the river. But the mild nights when we were at anchor were delicious – none more so than that of the first day of this year. We sauntered along the camel-track which ran between the shore and the fine overhanging rocks of the Arabian desert. The brilliant moonlight cast deep shadows on the sand, and showed us what mighty blocks had fallen, and how others were about to fall. These African nights, soft, lustrous, and silent, are worth crossing the world to feel. We met a party of three men, a boy and a donkey, one of the men carrying a spear. They returned our greeting courteously, but stopped to look after us in surprise. Their tread and ours was noiseless on the sand; and the only sound within that wide horizon was of a baying dog, far away on the opposite shore.

      The next morning we passed Korosko, and saw the surveying flag of M. Arnault, and the tents of his party of soldiers: but we could not learn how his survey and his search for water proceeded, in preparation for his road to the Red Sea. We were passing temples, from stage to stage, all the way up: and very clearly we saw them, each standing on its platform of sand or rock: but we left them all for СКАЧАТЬ