VIII. AN ARRIVAL (part 2 of 2)
We are about to stop under the cliffs of Gebel Aboo Layda, the Arabian chain, which here borders immediately on the river――not a very safe place, either; for Ali requests me to fire some pistol-shots to frighten away the thieves. There is no village near, and we have no guard. When we stop near a village, two or three miserable-looking creatures crouch around a fire on the bank. They are our guard. I feel morally certain that as soon as we leave the quarter-deck the guard goes to sleep. I have come to this determination from a study of these Arabs. Their idea of worldly happiness is eating, smoking, and sleeping; of heavenly bliss, the same, with the beautiful houri added. The next day we reach Manfaloot. It is market-day, and the sailors are going ashore to buy provisions. The strange sights and scenes so confused me that I was not quite sure of being awake. Sometimes it seemed like a play; I was nervous, and hurried for fear the curtain should fall before everything could be seen. How I wished my ears changed into eyes, and a pair set in the back of my head! Now I begin to comprehend the scenes about me. Perhaps this is real life after all. That tall, handsome woman carrying herself so erect, with the jar balanced on her head, is perhaps not doing this for our amusement merely. I can sleep now without laughing. I am becoming part of this strange world. Let us look around Manfaloot while the sailors are laying in our stock of provisions. Here is the shopping street. Nature has kindly spared these people the need of a committee on highways. Each individual has resolved himself into a pavier. No taxes for these streets――two rows of houses built of sun-dried bricks, running parallel, with a space of seventy feet between. Sidewalks and gutters are trodden hard by the passers-by――a cheap, primitive mode of paving; a little dusty at times, ’tis true, but then Allah sends the dust: it can do no great harm, and there is no need of repairs. Look at this house. The owner has visited Mecca. How do we know it? See that railway train painted over the door, with a bright blue engine; two engineers, each three times as tall as the engine, smoke-stack and all; the cars red, green, yellow, running up and down hill at the same time. Six of them are filled with giants painted green――apt color, too, for men who would travel on such a train. It looks like the slate-drawing of a school-boy. Yes; but these are modern Egyptian hieroglyphics. The train tells us that the owner has travelled; and where should a good Moslem go but to Mecca? So the owner is a hadji and wears a green turban. All the children suffer with ophthalmia. This ophthalmia must be something like lumps of sugar; the flies seem to think so, at least. What a crowd is following us! But they are respectful; seem amused at the pale faces and curious garments of the howadjii. How their eyes dilate at the sight of Madam’s gloves! “The Sitta has a white face and black hands. Allah preserve us! she is actually taking off her hands. No, it is the outer skin; and now they are pale like her face. By the Prophet! this is strange.” They crowd around her, touch her hands, then her gloves, timidly and respectfully; no, they cannot understand it. Abiad is going to ask for a sheep; the crew have selected him, for they feel confident we cannot refuse him when he asks in his humorous way. Followed by the grinning crew, he appears before us, and, putting up his hands to the sides of his head to represent long ears, ejaculates, “Ba-a! ba-a!” We were not convulsed with laughter, but the good-hearted “Sitta” promised them a sheep for Christmas-time, which was near at hand.
This fertile country contains about five millions of inhabitants. Above Cairo the valley of the Nile and Egypt are synonymous. For, where neither artificial irrigation nor the magic waters of the Nile give life to the parched soil, the sand of the desert renders the country as utterly unproductive as the bitter waters of the Dead Sea. The river varies in width from three hundred and sixty-five yards at Hagar Silseleh to a mile or more in other parts. The narrow strip of productive soil is in no part more than ten miles in width, save where the quasi-oasis of the Fyoom joins the west bank near Benisoeef. In many places the banks of the river mark the boundaries of the available soil. The cultivation of the land follows the receding waters. The rising of the Nile commences in July, and the greatest height is reached about the end of September, from which time the waters gradually recede. In December we grounded upon a certain sandbank covered with two feet of water. I noted the spot, and when we passed it on our return voyage, about the 6th of March following, the natives were planting melons upon it in a layer of the richest and most productive soil, left there by the receding waters, borne upon their bosom from the far-distant sources of the Blue Nile. From its far-off Abyssinian home the fertilizing Blue Nile flows on to Khartoom, where it meets the White Nile coming from still more distant parts, and from there the single river rushes on in its long, uninterrupted voyage to the sea. Until quite recently the cause of the annual overflow of the Nile was unknown. The priests, the most learned men of ancient Egypt, were unable to give Herodotus any reason for it. Some of the Greeks, wishing, says he, to be distinguished for their wisdom, attempted to account for these inundations in three different ways. But the careful historian, placing no confidence in them, repeats them, as he says, merely to show what they are: The Etesian winds, preventing the Nile from discharging itself into the sea, cause the river to swell. The ocean flowing all around the world, and the Nile flowing from it, produce this effect――an opinion, he observes, showing more ignorance than the former, but more marvellous. The third way of resolving this difficulty is by far the most specious, but most untrue: the Nile flowing from melted snow. For how, he asks in his quaint way, since it runs from a very hot, from Libya through the middle of Ethiopia to a colder region――Egypt――can it flow from snow? And he then goes on, with seeming modesty, to venture his own opinion: “During the winter season the sun being driven from his former course by storms, retires to the upper part of Libya. This, in a few words, comprehends the whole matter; for it is natural that the country which the god is nearest to, and over which he is, should be most in want of water, and that the native river streams (i.e., the sources of the Nile) should be dried up. He attracts the water to himself, and, having so attracted it, throws it back upon the higher regions. I do not think, however, that the sun on each occasion discharges the annual supply of water from the Nile, but that some remains about him. When the winter grows mild, the sun returns again to the middle of the heavens, and from that time attracts water equally from all rivers. Up to this time those other rivers, having much rain-water mixed with them, flow with full streams; but when the showers fail them, and they are attracted in summer by the sun, they become weak, and the Nile alone, being destitute of rain, is hard pressed by the sun’s attraction in winter. In summer it is equally attracted with all other waters, but in winter it alone is attracted. Thus I consider the sun is the cause of these things” (Herodotus, Euterpe). From that time many able minds have given to the world vain conjectures upon this most interesting subject. The extensive discoveries of modern African explorers have furnished a much clearer idea of the cause of this beneficent overflow than the ingenious theory of Herodotus or the opinions of his wise Grecian friends. During the first few days of the inundation the water has a green tint, which is supposed to be caused by the first rush of the descending torrents, carrying off the stagnant waters from the interior of Darfour. This is thought to be unwholesome, and the natives store up beforehand what water they may need for these few days. A red tint follows this, caused by the surface-washing of red-soiled districts. When the inundation subsides, the water is of a muddy color, pleasant to drink, and quite innocuous. The paintings of the old Egyptians represent these three conditions of the river by waters colored green, red, and blue.
SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.