Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

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СКАЧАТЬ the most imposing worship the world ever saw. Vultures are not uncommon. I used to see them sometimes during my early walk on shore, busy about the skull of some dead horse or other carcase. The crested woodpecker was often a pretty object among the mournful piles of ruins at Thebes or elsewhere, hopping about so spruce and gay. Where the Arabian hills approached the river, or the shores presented perpendicular rocks, long rows of cormorants sat perched before their holes, as still and staid as so many hermits in contemplation. On every islet and jutting point were flocks of pelicans, whose plumage looked snow-white when set off by a foil of black geese: and now and then, a single bird of this tribe might be seen in the early morning, balancing itself on the little billows, and turning its head about in the coyest manner, to prevent its long beak touching the water. The Aboo-gerdan (the paddy-bird of India) is elegant in form and most delicate in plumage, as everyone knows who has stroked its snowy feathers. It looked best when standing under the banks, or wading among the reeds in a cove. It looked most strange and out of place when perched on the back of a buffalo, as I occasionally saw it. We once saw five buffalo in one field, with each a delicate white bird perched on its back. And from the nose of one of these buffalo two little birds were at the same time picking insects, or something else that they relished.

      As to the birds which have such a mysterious connexion with the sleeping crocodile, I can give no new information about them. I can only say that on almost every occasion of our seeing a crocodile, two or three of these birds were standing beside him; and that I never, saw them fly away till he had moved. It is believed in the country that these birds relieve the crocodile of the little leeches which infest his throat; and that they keep watch while he sleeps on the sand, and give him warning to escape on the approach of danger. What the crocodile does for the birds in return, we never heard. As for the pigeons, they abound beyond the conception of any traveller who has not seen the pigeon flights of the United States. They do not here, as there, darken the air in an occasional process of migration, breaking down young trees on which they alight, and lying in heaps under the attack of a party of sportsmen: but they flourish everywhere as the most prolific of birds may do under the especial protection of man. The best idea that a stranger can form of their multitude is by supposing such a bird population as that of the doves of Venice inhabiting the whole land of Egypt. The houses of the villages throughout Egypt are surmounted by a sort of battlements built for the pigeons, and supplied with fringes of boughs, inserted, in several rows to each house, for the birds to rest on. The chief object is the dung, which is required for manure for the garden, and for other purposes; but it is a mistake to say that the inhabitants do not eat them. They are taken for food, but not to such an extent as to interfere with the necessary supply of dung. One of our party occasionally shot a few wild ones, near the villages; and he met with no hindrance. But it was otherwise with our Scotch friend. Though he had asked leave, and believed he had obtained it, to let fly upon the pigeons in a village, the inhabitants rose upon him; and his Rais had some difficulty in securing his safe return to his boat. He did it by a device which his employer was shocked to hear of afterwards. He declared our friend to be the Pasha's dentist! To form a notion of the importance of this functionary, it is necessary to remember that the Pasha's having a dentist is one of the most remarkable signs of our times. That a Mohammedan ruler should have permitted his beard to be handled, is a token of change more extraordinary than the adoption of the Frank dress in Turkey, or the introduction of wine at Mohammedan dinners: and the man who was permitted by the Pasha to touch his beard must be regarded throughout the country as a person inestimably powerful with his Highness. Such a personage was our Scotch friend compelled to appear, for some way up the river; and very reluctant he was to bear the dignity to which his assent had not been asked. – A pretty bird, of the kingfisher kind apparently, coloured black, grey, and tawny, was flitting about on the shore when I took my first walk on shore this morning. And I think I have now mentioned nearly all the birds we observed in the course of our voyage.

      Our object, like that of Egyptian travellers generally, was to sail up the river as fast as the wind would carry us, seeing by the way only as much as would not interfere with the progress of the boat. It was the season when the north wind prevailed; and this advantage was not to be trifled with in a voyage of a thousand miles, certain as we were of the help of the current to bring us back. We were, therefore, to explore no pyramids or temples on our way up; and to see only so much of the country as we could get a glimpse of on occasion of the failure of the wind, or other accidental delays. To this there was no objection in our minds; for we found at once that in doing up the Nile in any manner we should meet with as much novelty and interest as we could bear. The face of the country was enough at one time. To have explored its monuments immediately would have been too much. Moreover, there was great advantage in going up quickly while the river was yet high enough to afford some view of the country. In returning, we found such a change produced by the sinking of the waters only a few feet, that we felt that travellers going up late in the season can hardly be said to have seen the country from the river. At all times, the view of the interior from the Nile must be very imperfect, and quite insufficient to justify any decision against the beauty of the great valley. This arises from the singular structure of the country. Everywhere else, where a river flows through the centre of a valley, the land either slopes from the base of the hill down to the river, or it is level. In Egypt, on the contrary, the land rises from the mountains up to the banks of the Nile: and where, as usually happens, the banks are higher than the eye of the spectator on the deck of his boat, all view of the interior, as far as the hills, is precluded. He sees nothing but the towns, villages, and palm-groves on the banks, and the mountains on the horizon. My attention had been directed upon this point before I went, by the complaints of some readers of Eastern travels, that, after all their reading, they knew no more what the Egyptian valley looked like than if it had never been visited. As this failure of description appeared to regard Egypt alone, there must be some peculiar cause for it; and thus we found it. The remedy was, of course, to go ashore as often as possible, and to mount every practicable eminence. I found this so delightful, and every wide view that I obtained included so much that was wonderful and beautiful, that mounting eminences became an earnest pursuit with me. I carried compass and note-book, and noted down what I saw, from eminence to eminence, along the whole valley, from Cairo to the Second Cataract. Sometimes I looked abroad from the top of a pylon; sometimes from a rock on the banks; sometimes from a sandy ridge of the desert; sometimes from a green declivity of the interior; once from a mountain above Thebes, and once from the summit of the Great Pyramid. My conclusion is, that I differ entirely from those who complain of the sameness of the aspect of the country. The constituent features of the landscape may be more limited in number than in other tracts of country of a thousand miles: but they are so grand and so beautiful, so strange, and brought together in such endless diversity, that I cannot conceive that anyone who has really seen the country can complain of its monotony. Each panoramic survey that I made is now as distinct in my mind as the images I retain of Niagara, Iona, Salisbury Plain, the Vaiais, and Lake Garda.

      Our opportunities of going ashore were not few, even at the beginning of our voyage, when the wind was fair, and we sailed on, almost continuously, for three days. In the early mornings, one of the crew was sent for milk, and he was to be taken up at a point further on. And if, towards night, the Rais feared a rock, or a windy reach ahead, he would moor at sunset; and this allowed us nearly an hour before it was dark enough for us to mind the howling jackals. When the wind ceased to befriend us, the crew had to track almost all day, following the bends of the river; and we could either follow these also, or strike across the fields to some distant point of the bank. And when on board, there was so much to be seen on the ordinary banks that I was rarely in the cabin. Before breakfast, I was walking the deck. After breakfast, I was sewing, reading, or writing, or idling on deck, under the shade of the awning. After dinner, we all came out eagerly, to enjoy the last hour of sunshine, and the glories of the sunset and the after-glow, and the rising of the moon and constellations. And sorry was I every night when it was ten o'clock, and I must go under a lower roof than that of the dazzling heavens. All these hours of our first days had their ample amusement from what we saw on the banks alone, till we could penetrate further.

      There were the pranks of the crew, whose oddities were unceasing, and particularly rich in the early morning. Then it was that they mimicked whatever they saw us do – sometimes for the joke, but as often with СКАЧАТЬ