UBRARV OF CONGRESS 0n77272A -^A V^ X^^^o "^^, ^/^r, .^^-^. o Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2010 witii funding from Tine Library of Congress ^, Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/pliotograpliicview01 thorn PHOTOGEAPHIC VIEWS OP EGYPT, PAST AND PEESENT. •V BY JOSEPH PjP^THOMPSON. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY. CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR, AND WORTHINGTON 1856. ^t.' \ k1 Entered according to Act of Congress, in ttie year 1854, by JOHN P. JEWETT & CO. in tlie Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachnsetts. .^x;3^^- CAMBRIDGE: ALLEN AND FARNHAM, STEEEOTYPERS AND PRINTEKS. boston: engravings by daniel t. smith. TO MY COMPANIONS U TRAVEL, PEOF, THOMAS C. UPIIAM, D. D., OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE, ME., AND BENJAMIN S. WALCOTT, ESQ., AND LADY OP NEW YORK MILLS, N. T., THIS M E M. E N T O OF OUR HAPPY VOYAGE UPON THE NILE IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, PREFACE In the montli of January, 1853, I found myself afloat upon the Nile. Six months before, I had left New York in the uncertainty of pulmonary disease, to try the benefit of a year of travel in more genial climes. The balmy air of Egypt brought healing to my lungs, and with this came an almost boyish gush of life ; so that in the soul, as in the outer world, it was the. "Season of Vegetation" after the "Season of the Waters." For three months the light of each "morning without clouds" pictured in the mind the scenery of the Nile, the passing scenes of Egyptian life, and the lingering monuments of Egyptian history, in lines that can never be effaced ; and in the abundant leisure of boat life, these views were transferred from the mind to paper. Each view was taken by the light which itself threw upon the mind; — photographed by the outward upon the inward, and again transferred from the inward to the outward. These impressions, as taken at the time, were laid by for future reference. A few have been exhibited to friends in public journals and in lectures; and now the whole are bound together in this volume, for whoever cares to look •A* VI PREFACE, at life pictures of a distant land. If the picture is gay or grotesque, it is because the reality was gay or gro- tesque ; if the picture is sombre, it is because the reality was sombre. If in turning over these leaves, any shall find innocent amusement for a passing hour, the humble copyist of nature will be glad of such a measure of .'suc- cess in transferring her mirthful phases; — if any shall be saddened by these life pictures — why he too was often sad at seeing under the sunniest sky, deeper shadows than clouds can throw ; if any shall find instruction in the pictures, he will be thankful that he did not see and study Egypt for himself alone. For this, his first attempt in the photography of nature, of history, and of human life, his only claim is that the pictures are faithful; — taken as they were, and given as they were taken. The Illustrations of this volume are copied chiefly from the works of Bartlett and Lane, which, in this respect, are the common plunder of American authors. As the autlior knows nothing of the Arabic language, he has been perplexed with the orthography of Arabic words, in which authorities differ. The following are examples of diverse spellings : Tarhouch, tarboosh ; Cawass, cavasse ; Hawdgee, Howadji ; Janissary, Janizary ; Ghihouque, she- hooh ; Backshish, huchsheesh ; Mameluke, Memlooh ; Amrou, Amer, Amr ; Sheik, sheikh, shekh. In either mode the English sound is but an approximation to the Arabic. In English orthography the author is a pertinacious disciple ' of Webster, but he has yielded throughout to the printer's use of Worcester. PREFACE. VU The author feels indebted to the printers for their extremely careful reading of the proofs. If errors are still found, the reader will excuse them when he thinks of the difficulties of revising proofs from stereotype plates, at a distance of three hundred miles from the offiice. New York, May, 1854. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGB First Impressions — Alexandria, Ancient and Modern . 1 CHAPTER II. Preparations for the Voyage — Donkeys — Cooks — Mar- keting 17 CHAPTER III. The Embarkation — Maiimoodeeii Canal — The Nile . . 26 CHAPTER IV. Nile Comforts — A Nile Boat and Crew .... 32 CHAPTER V. Navigation — Villages — Bazaar — Houses — Children . 45 CHAPTER VI. Occupations of the People — Water Jars — Productiojss — Tillage — The Shadoof and the Sakia .... 54 CHAPTER VII. Tenure of Land — Disposition And Manners of the People 64 CHAPTER VIII. The Desert and the Railroad 70 CHAPTER IX. "Cairo the Magnificent" 74 X. CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. Scenery of the Nile — Day and Night . . . . . 82 CHAPTER XL MiNiEH — A Sugar Factory — Visit to a Bey .... 90 CHAPTER XII. KiVER Saints, and Coptic Hermits 96 CHAPTER Xm. Sabbath on the Nile— A Missionary Incident . . . 100 CHAPTER XIV. Marriage and Mourning • 112 CHAPTER XV. Orientalizing— A Village Coffee House .... 115 CHAPTER XVI. Crocodiles 122 CHAPTER XVII. Denderah — Keneh — A Human Heart 125 CHAPTER XVIII. Trees and Birds 132 CHAPTER XIX. Negadeh — Salutations — A Coptic Church . . . .137 CHAPTER XX. Mother Egypt — Thebes— Temples and Monuments — The Nineteenth Century 143 CHAPTER XXI. Memnon still Sounds 152 ' CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XXII. Fragments of Theban History — Sources — Eosetta Stone — hieroglyfhics — antiquities 158 CHAPTER XXIII. Chronology of the Bible 177 CHAPTER XXIV. History continued — Correspondences with the Bible , 18i CHAPTER XXV. Kecent Discoveries at Thebes — Memorials of Early Chris- tianity 190 CHAPTER XXVI. The Tombs of Thebes — Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians 197 CHAPTER XXVII. Gods of the Egyptians — Doctrine of Immortality . . 210 CHAPTER XXVIII. Dissolving Views — Panorama of Karnac .... 218 CHAPTER XXIX. A Chapter of Items — Parting rR03i Thebes — Getting News — The Sirocco — Emigration — Inauguration Day 231 CHAPTER XXX. GlEGEH AND AbYDOS — FERTILITY AND DESOLATION . . 241 CHAPTER XXXI. Italians and Copts . 247 CHAPTER XXXII. OsiooT, or Wolf-to wisr — The Old and the New — A Modern Cemetery— Soldier Making— John the Hermit . . 253 XU CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIII. Antiquity of Art and Science — Tkue Antiquity of Egypt 263 CHAPTEK XXXIV. Climate of the Nile — A Chapter for Invalids . . . 274 CHAPTER XXXV. Cairo again — Shoobra — Ehoda — Old Cairo — The Der- wiSHES 283 CHAPTER XXXVI. MoHAMMEDi^^isM — Mosques and Prayers . . . . 289 CHAPTER XXXVII. Mohammedan Infidels — Prospects of Evangelization — Toleration 298 CHAPTER XXXVIII. Early Christianity in Egypt — Persecutions and Tri- umphs — Destruction of Idolatry 308 CHAPTER XXXIX. Hope for Egypt — The Copts, their History and Ritual- A Plea for Missions CHAPTER XL. Heliopolts, the City of Joseph— The Pyramids and Sphinx — Egypt a Sepulchre 338 APPENDIX .347 Religious Chant 347 Table of Egyptian Dynasties, by Lepsius . . .348 " " •' » " Poole . . .355 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT CHAPTER I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. The sun rose gloriously over the ancient Pharos, and shone into the very eye of our steamer as she hovered about the harbor awaiting her pilot ; a sun that had already wakened Memnon to his daily music, and had kissed the pyramids upon its way to greet the bounding, laughing sea. Th^N gates of the Orient opened wide before us upon hinges of gold and amber and rubies. Sea-sickness and the dis- comforts of the voyage were in a moment forgotten, and I felt that I would again travel six thousand miles to stand where I then stood. And this is Egypt ! That just expiring light marks the site of one of the seven wonders of the world — the first great light-house that illumined the Mediterranean, when Greece and Rome began to share the commerce of the Orient ; and within that rocky headland which guards so well the approach to the long, narrow, egg-shaped harbor, — all along that level shore, now studded with windmills above, and crowded with catacombs beneath, — lies the city of Alexander the Great. I look upon the land that in the time of Moses was in its prime, and that has been old and 1 2 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. decaying through all the growth and history of the present living world. At this moment a small boat, propelled by eight or ten barelegged rowers in smocks and turbans, comes along-side, and two pilots mount the gangway and take their station on the wheelbox. They are barelegged like the rest, but they wear leathern sandals, and their turbans are of a better quality, and their smocks are girdled about the w^aist with a wdiite cord ; on the whole they make a very neat appear- ance. They seem deeply impressed with the magnitude of their office, and hold grave consultations together, the result of which is signified by sundry motions of the hand to the steersman, accompanied with a spasmodic guttural jargon ; — for the familiar " Port " and " Steady " are now uttered in Arabic to a French officer, and by him translated to the man at the wheel. Altogether it is quite a pic- turesque affair — these two Arabs with their unshorn beards, their heads wrapped about with huge white folds crowned with green and crimson, their bodies cased in a single loose frock descending to the knees, and their naked bronze calves terminating in light-colored sandals without string or buckle, standing in the eye of old Pharos, and guiding into the port of Alexander, a steamer bearing his name, manned and freighted by the " barbaric Gaul." It would require two pilots, one would think, if not twenty, to steer a vessel through all the twists and turnings of this channel, where the waves are dashing over rocks at every twenty rods ; and one can accord something to the self-complacent air with which our two turbaned worthies slowly descend to the deck after the signal to let go the anchors. But -what a din comes up on all sides from the small boats by which we must be conveyed ashore ! At least twenty of these boats with their motley crews, are crowding about the larboard side of the steamer, jostling ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 3 each other and struggling for the nearest place. In some the crews are half naked ; in others decently dressed ; but everywhere the bare legs, the single smock, and in lieu of the turban the tarhouch — a close-fitting red Fez * cap, with a black silk tassel. Now and then a turbaned head, surmounting a white frock and a pair of loose frilled trowsers of the same material, indicates some superiority in the wearer, who sits leisurely smoking his j)ipe in the midst of the confusion. Indeed it is one of the comicalities of the scene, that a fellow standing on the prow of his boat and gouging his neighbor into the water in order to make his own boat fast to the gangway, will stop in the very act to take a whiff of the tobacco which he is smoking through a curled paper. Nobody can come on board, nobody can go ashore, till the health officer has gone through with his formalities, nor till the mail has been despatched in a ship's boat under the French flag. Just here, two brawny French sailors pitch headlong down the gangway a troop of Arab boatmen who were climbing up on deck, and the mate dashes over their heads a bucket of cold water. Through the energy of our courier we are the first to put off from the ship, which is anchored about a third of a mile from the shore ; for here, as at almost every port of the Mediterranean, the whole business of receiving and of landing passengers and freight, is done by means of small boats. The harbor is filled with vessels of every European nation, but the American flag is not represented; there being almost no direct commerce between Egypt and the United States. Some noble men-of-war, from seventy-four * FeZy so called from the place of its manufacture, Fez, a principal city of Morocco, celebrated for the manufacture of milled woollen fabrics. This is the headdress of soldiers and sailors, and of the common people. It is worn also by the &ultan at Constantinople. It is gradually super- seding the turban. 4 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. guns upward, and one or two war steamers, assert tlie dominion of the Crescent over the kingdom of the Pharaohs. A few old dismantled hulks are lying in the great dockyard near the palace, and immense piles of timber are stored there for future use. Every thing looks substantial and respectable. Even our own steamer, that just now tumbled about like a cockle-shell, has put on a calm and dignified air in harmony with the surrounding scene; — I mean the scene in the harbor, for there is not much of calmness or dignity here at the quay where we have now arrived. What a confusion of tongues ! Arabic, French, Maltese, Italian, and broken English, all rush upon the ear at the same instant, while the language of signs expresses still more emphatically than words the one idea upon every tongue ; — " Good donkey, sir," " Want ver fine donkey," " Donkey for hotel, good, English ride my donkey, ver good." About fifty of these little creatures are huddled together on the dock, unmoved by the clamor of their drivers or the punching of their sticks, while all around lazy lumbering camels are sprawling in the mud, or reaching out their gaunt ungainly necks as they deliver their loads of hay or of water-skins. We happily avoid this turmoil by steering for the far side of a stone wall that divides the dock, — but from Scylla we escape into the jaws of Charybdis, for here the custom-house Cawasses await us to see if gentlemen professedly bound for Upper Egypt on a travelling excur- sion, are in reality smuggling contraband goods in their carpet-bags or portmanteaus ; — into the jaws, of a truth, for nothing wags so briskly in Egypt, not even a donkey's tail, jerked every way by its driver, as does that member of an Arab's frame. However, as in Sardinia the franc, and in Tuscany and Eome the paul, and in Naples the carline, so here the piastre soon settles the question, and our baggage passes without even a showing of the keys. But ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. O tliis is not the end of it. The custom-house is just without the precincts of the city, and as we enter the gate another official rushes out and seizes the horses by the head, and insists upon inspecting the baskets, bundles, carpet-bags, etc., that by permission of the first set of officials and in con- sideration of one dollar, we have taken with us. After a long altercation in Arabic between the officers and the driver, the former take a survey of the exterior of each bag, judge by feeling of its probable contents, and permit us to proceed. This fairly over, a short ride brings us to the Hotel de V Europe, where a prisoner of the sea who has not eaten a meal for four days must be allowed to do justice to a well spread breakfast. This hotel, kept by an Italian, is quite unpromising, even shabby in external appear- ance and in its general furniture ; but its taUe-d'hote affi^rds good living at about $2.50 a day. It is reputed to be the best, and is situated upon the large parallelogram called the Frank square, where are most of the European shops and offices. With the thermometer at seventy, and an abun- dance of flies and mosquitoes, it is hard to realize that the true date is January 11th. But with the ever-recurring thought that we were in Egypt, we could not long remain shut up in an Italian hotel, overlooking a modern square surrounded with houses in the Frank style, and with shops displaying English cottons and French perfumery, and covered with French, Greek, Italian, and English signs. We must somewhere find the dreamy Orient. After a hasty but hearty breakfast, we set out on foot to visit the Mahmoodeeh canal, at a distance of a mile from our quarters, there to inspect the boats for the Nile. Our road lay through the principal streets to the gate of the Necropolis. Immediately without this gate we came for the first time upon a truly oriental scene. Upon a large open area, camels, sheep, and buffalo oxen were reposing, 1* 6 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. while their owners were chaffering, pipe in hand ; a caravan of camels, laden with merchandise of various sorts, was entering the gate ; the tall palm tree lifted its spreading top toward the noonday sun, while groves of acacias lining the roads, offered their cooling shade ; on a neighboring mound stood a solitary Arab, his gaunt figure and turbaned head in bold relief against the sky ; the diminutive donkey, urged forward by his driver's prong, went nimbly by ; a score of wolfish dogs barked and howled at the approach of strangers ; but above their clamor were heard the myriad voices of birds, whose freedom had never been invaded by the sportsman, and whose song was in harmony with the delicious air and the gorgeous drapery in which all nature was enwrapped; — to complete the picture, the minaret that overlooks the bazaar, loomed in the distance, and immedi- ately before us Pompey's Pillar reared its stupendous mass of polished granite, in solitary grandeur — a monument of buried empires, a sentinel over recent tombs. This pillar is the one solitary monument of the old city upon its southern front, and answers to the one standing obelisk that is its solitary monument on the north. Of its origin history is as silent as the mummy of Belzoni's tomb ; but there is no doubt that " Pompey's Pillar is really a misnomer ; " for the inscription " shows it to have been erected by Publius, the prsefect of Egypt, in honor of Dio- cletian," * who subdued a revolt at Alexandria by capturing the city, A. d. 296. But whether it was then first hewn from the quarry, or was transported from some decaying temple up the Nile, the Greek lettering does not inform us. If the latter, — which, considering the decline of art and the pilfering propensities of the Romans, is probable — then this now lonely sentinel, an Egyptian column with a * Wilkinson, who first deciphered it. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 7 Greek inscription to a Roman emperor, has witnessed in turn the decay of Egypt, of Greece, and of Rome, upon the soil where it still disputes with Time the empire of the Past. To the reader of Gibbon, it may seem strange that a monument should have been reared at Alexandria in honor of a conqueror, who, during a siege of eight months, wasted the city by the sword and by fire, and who, when it finally capitulated and implored his clemency, caused it to feel " the full extent of his severity," and destroyed " thousands of its citizens in a promiscuous slaughter." The fact may serve to show the worthlessness of such monuments as testimonials to character, or as expressions of public esteem. But whatever may be its history or its associations, one cannot look upon this column without a feeling of astonish- ment and awe. Outside of the modern city walls and some six hundred yards to the south of them, away from the present homes of men', but on an eminence that overlooks the entire city, and in striking contrast with the meagre, attenuated style of its present architecture, stands this stupendous column of red granite, ninety-nine feet in height by thirty in circumference, its shaft an elegant monolith measuring seventy-three feet between the pedestal and the capital. It marks the site of an ancient stadium, and as some conjecture, of the gymnasium, which was surrounded with majestic porticos of granite. Now it looks down upon the rude and garish cemetery of the Mohammedans, whose plastered tombs glaring in the sun, crowd around its dis- mantled base. As we slowly sauntered away, the gorgeous memories of the past were broken by the mourning scenes of the present. Two funeral processions approached the pillar on their way to the burial-ground. First came a group of about twenty boys, ragged, barefoot, and bareheaded, chanting a 8 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. wailing strain ; then followed twice as many men, walking two or four abreast, and uttering the same monotonous wail ; these were mostly clothed in turbans, long frocks, and trowsers, and wore a venerable appearance. I noticed in particular several blind men — so common in the East — led by the hand and supported by their staves ; next came the bier borne upon the shoulders of four men, the body wrapped in a white cloth and covered with a shawl, — the turban lay on top to indicate that the deceased was a male ; after this, straggling at intervals, came a few women, clothed in the long white veil, covering the face with the exception of the eyes and reaching to the anldes ; these uttered a different cry — a piercing shriek or a sustained waving howl that blended fearfully with the wailing of the men. The custom here is to bury on the day of death ; no coffin is used, but a grave is dug and the body, wrapped only in a cloth, is put into it; the grave is then covered with an arched stone laid in cement. The graveyard presents the singular appearance of a field of low stone mounds. The second procession consisted only of about twenty persons, in the centre of whom was a man who carried in his arms a dead child wrapped in a shawl, of which it would be divested at the grave, leaving only a light covering of cloth. From Pompey's Pillar to Cleopatra^ s Needles is a distance of more than a mile through the city in a north-easterly direction. These obelisks have no more relation to Cleopa- tra than the pillar has to Pompey. Their hieroglyphics date as far back as the Exodus,* and they were brought to Alexandria from the city of Heliopolis or On, about a hundred miles to the south. Each pillar is a single block of red granite, about seventy feet high and nearly eight feet * Thothmes III. Wilkinson and Lepsius. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 9 in diameter at the base. How sucli huge blocks were cut from the quarry, transported hundreds of miles, and erected upon their pedestals, is a mystery not solved by any thing yet discovered of ancient mechanic arts. But one of the obehsks is standing. The other was taken down to be transported to England, but now lies half buried in the mud and sand. On one side of the standing obelisk the hieroglyph- ics are distinctly legible, but on the northern or seaward side they are much defaced by the action of the weather. It stands upon the edge of the Great Harbor, in a line with the rock of Pharos that forms the extreme northern point of the horseshoe port. Besides the Pillar and the Needles nothing remains to testify the former splendor of Alexandria ; — a capital that once vied with Rome, containing a population equal to that of New York, (three hundred thousand freemen and as many slaves,) and that so late as the seventh century, accord- ing to the testimony of Amrou, its Saracenic conqueror, contained " four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres, tivelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetables, and forty thousand tributary Jews." A few ruins are pointed out, but these are fast disappearing with the ravages of time. Its name is the only memorial of its founder ; and the long range of catacombs along the shore to the west of the city, the sole vestige of its ancient popu- lation. The sagacity of Alexander is apparent in the site of the city, which with its safe and commodious harbor on the Mediterranean, and its ample harbor on the lake Mareo- tis, on the south, then fed by canals from the Nile, monopo- lized the rising commerce of Europe, as well as that of Ethiopia, Arabia, and the Indies. The convenient fiction of a dream -sufficed to impart to his sagacity the reputation of a divine prescience. So rapid was the growth of the city, that at the com- 10 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. mencement of the Christian era, it was " second only to Rome itself," and " comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles " within its walls. It was a great seat of commerce. "Idleness was unknown. Either sex, and every age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry;" — the blowing of glass, the weaving of linen, manufacturing the papyrus, or con- ducting the lucrative trade of the port.* Alexander, fresh from the conquest of Tyre, boasted that he would here build an emporium of commerce surpassing that which he had ruined, and thus would recreate in his own image the world he had destroyed. The site of Alexandria, more felicitous than that of Tyre, promised to realize his ambitious dream. Its gates " looked out on the gilded barges of the Nile, on fleets at sea under full sail, on a harbor that sheltered navies, and a light-house that was the mariner's star, and the wonder of the world." f But neither the felicity of its location, nor the enterprise of its Ptolemaic rulers, nor the wealth of its commerce, nor the learning that gathered to its schools the students of art, of philosophy, of medicine, of science, and of religion, could withstand the march of empire from Asia to Europe, nor the laws of trade that followed in its track. It was the ambition of Mohammed Ali to restore Alexan- dria to its ancient rank as a seaport, and to make it the real capital of Egypt. For this purpose he dug a canal to connect it with the Nile, thus reopening the communication that the sands of the desert had filled up ; through the old buildings and the rubbish of centuries, he opened new streets, making them straight, wide, and rectangular, after the manner of modern European cities ; he encouraged the building of a railroad from Alexandria to Cairo ; he made improvements in the modern harbor, which lies to the west * Gibbon. t Campbell. ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 11 of tlie ancient port, — the island of Pharos, now annexed to the main land, jutting as a promontory between the old and the new, and still serving as a landmark to the mariner. But the improvements of Mohammed Ali were made by the force of one despotic will, and not by the intelligent progress of the people ; and though they have restored to Alexandria something of its former commercial activity, many years must elapse before their benefits will be fully realized by the sluggish natives. The present population of Alexandria is somewhat less than one hundred thousand, — a mixture of' all African and oriental races, with many Europeans, though the Jews have dwindled to about a thousand, where they once counted a hundred times that number, and where the Seventy made the Greek version of the Old Testament at the time when " salvation was of the Jews." Both they and their former oppressors are in the lowest degradation. • In the city where the eloquent Apollos was born, and where the learned and astute Athanasius conducted his theological controversies, where Theodosius by imperial edict destroyed the temple of Serapis, and publicly inaugurated Christianity in place of the outcast divinities of the Egyptian Greeks, — Chris- tianity is now represented by a Greek church, a Roman Catholic church, and a chapel pertaining to the Church of England. A beautiful edifice for the latter is building upon the Frank Square, in the Romanesque style, which I should be glad to see more generally copied in the United States, in preference to the Gothic. In roaming the narrow and dirty streets of the modern city, now occupied with a motley and poverty-stricken popu- lation, in traversing the villages of hovels within the walls, where the Arab hes down with his sheep, his goat, his dog, and his donkey, in a mud inclosure of a few feet square 12 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. whicli must be entered by stooping, and in climbing the buge mounds, in part overgrown witb date-palms, tbat are said to cover tlie ancient capital, it is difficult to realize tbat bere was a scbool to which the sages of Greece resorted for instruction in philosophy, in science, and in letters, and where Jewish Rabbis and Christian apologists vied with Greek diaj.ecticians in the various pursuits of learning ; and that here was a library of seven hundred thousand manu- script volumes, — a British Museum or a Smithsonian Insti- tute boasting the originals or the duplicates of many of the most valuable works of the then current literature, — and which, after the accidental destruction of a part of it in the insurrection against Julius Caesar, and the wilful destruction of another portion in the sanguinary religious wars under Theodosius, yet contained enough of written papyrus to heat for six months the four thousand baths of the city, under the summary decree of Omar ; — "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are use- less, and need not be preserved ; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." It is difficult amid such surroundings, to realize that here Ceesar and Antony dallied with the charms of Cleopatra. It is difficult to realize that where now bigotry, fanaticism, and superstition hold sway over an ignorant and degraded people, were schools of theology, and learned fathers, and astute contro- versialists of the early Christian church ; that here Chris- tianity triumphed over Paganism in popular tumults backed by imperial decrees ; that here Mark preached the gospel of the kingdom where the Ethiopian eunuch had preceded him with the tidings of the great salvation. And yet that old Alexandria, which began to be in the fourth century before Christ, and of all whose palaces and temples and monuments only two columns are now standing, was the youngest of Egyptian cities, and was built by the ALEXANDRIA', ANCIENT AND MODERN. 13 conqueror of Egypt when Thebes, and Memphis, and the university city of Heliopolis, were already in their decline. Such is the antiquity that meets us at the threshold of the land of the Nile. The most interesting modern building in Alexandria, indeed the only one worthy of notice, is the palace of Mo- hammed Ali. This stands upon the old Pharos, now united, as I have already said, to the main land by a causeway. The exterior of the palace has no architectural pretension, but in the style and furniture of the interior it is a model of simple elegance, surpassing the palaces of England, of France, and of Italy, in true richness and taste. It com- bines the best points of the oriental and the occidental styles. Instead of walls all bedizened with gold leaf, and tawdry mirrors and pictures such as one sees at Windsor, here are walls covered with the richest silk, of subdued color and tasteful patterns, and ceilings of a hard and beautiful finish, unbedecked with gaudy and indecent frescoes ; floors of pohshed wood, inlaid, or exhibiting the grain in beautiful combinations, tables of rich mosaic, every thing in keeping "We all pronounced it the most beautiful palace we had seen. The balcony commands a fine view of the harbor — just such a view as enchanted Alexander and determined him here to found a city, — and the garden affords a choice collection of fruits and flowers, and is enlivened by a multitude of songsters of every hue. As the present Pasha resides at Cairo, this palace is only used occasionally for the entertain- ment of a passing Pasha. A view of Alexandria would be incomplete without a visit to the slave market, which still exists here in open day. The market is an inclosed area of about one hundred feet square, with rows of cells upon three sides, in which the slaves are kept until a purchaser is found for them. They are not kept in close confinement, but may go from cell to 2 14 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. cell, and have the range of the yard. Several are huddled together into one apartment, and eat and sleep upon the naked ground. There were but a few slaves in the market, and these were principally women and children. The children, too young to comprehend their condition, seemed happy as children are everywhere, but the adults wore an air of extreme dejection and misery. One in particular interested me exceedingly. She was a Nubian girl of about sixteen, jet black, with coarse features, and hair twisted into coils that stretched across her head about an inch apart, and resembled a rope mat; her only clothing was a piece of blue cotton cloth not made into a garment, which hung from one shoulder about her waist to her knees ; she was stout and hearty, but her countenance was as sad as any I ever looked upon, and in her nakedness and degradation she showed the native modesty of woman, by shrinking from the presence of strangers into the den allotted to her. I asked her price, and was told she could be put-chased for $100. Perchance she was the daughter of some Nubian chief whose misfor- tunes in war had doomed his family to slavery ; no doubt she had a home^ however rude, — perhaps father, mother, brothers, sisters — from which she had been torn away for ever. Slave hunting is still carried on in Nubia and Abys- smia, and the slave-trade is still active upon the Nile. The principal market is Cairo. No Georgians or Circassians are brought to Alexandria, but these are still to be had at Cairo. Our guide informed us, however, that Enghsh gen- tlemen — whom he supposed us to be — would not be allowed to see them, '' because English don't want to buy." Had he known the price demanded for the Edmonson girls in the United States, he might have thought dijfferently of the marketable qualities of some fair Circassian in the eyes of some Americans. Ah, but to buy these girls here and carry them to America, would be piracy by the laws of the ALEXANDRIA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 15 United States ; and so it is a felony condemned by all nations, to steal them from their homes and transport them to Alexandria or to Cairo to be sold ; but if they could only be smuggled into the slave market in that other Alexandria, and sold to some lustful planter in Georgia or Louisiana, or to some brute in Arkansas, — why, that, is quite another matter ! But is not the slave-trade as much a crime upon the Mississippi as upon the Nile ; at Alexandria on the Potomac as at Alexandria on the Mediterranean ? It is a greater crime there, where there is greater light, and where the slavery is made tenfold worse than anywhere in the East. The respectable and devout Mussulman who attended us to the slave market, told us that before he took up the profession of a dragoman, he used to buy his own people in Nubia and bring them to Alexandria for sale. He had given up the business, not for moral but for pecuniary reasons. I did not see but his conscience stood as well in the matter as the conscience of a certain Presbyterian elder, who sent his female servant — a member of the Baptist church — to the slave market in Alexandria to be sold to the far South. I would not take it upon me to judge either, or to draw the line between the Mohammedan and the Christian ! Returning froni the market, it was grateful to see a hospital tended by the Sisters of Charity, where the sick and the famishing of every age may find nourishment, medicine, and succor. I noticed some of the Sisters dressing the sores of beggars, and others ministering to the necessities of children. If they may do good in Alexandria, why not some Protestant missionary also ? A second Dr. Parker, who should relieve the ophthalmia here universally prevalent, might also open the eyes of some spiritually blind. I do not know, however, that the relief of blindness would be considered a favor by a people of whom multitudes have put 16 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. out their right eje in order to avoid conscription for the army. Many too for the same reason have cut off the fore- finger of the right hand. The sight of sore-eyed children here is most distressing ; that of sore-eyed men and women everywhere is as disgusting. I see not why Alexandria would not be a hopeful mis- sionary field, for one who would labor quietly among the foreign population. Incidentally a few Mohammedans might be reached. I asked the guide who showed us about the city, why our dragoman, who has renounced Mohammedan- ism for Christianity, had not had his head taken off; — -his reply was, " The governor does not know, and nobody knows " — meaning nobody will tell. Perhaps a silent work of grace might go forward here, as in Tuscany, even in face of the penalty of death. CHAPTER II. PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. DONKEYS, COOKS, MARKETING. With the thei'mometer at sixty in the middle of January, and a good mosquito-net to keep oflf intruders, one could have slept well even upon an indifferent bed, but for the barking of the dogs, and the loud dismal cry of the pohce, who in challenging each other's wakefulness contrive to keep everybody else awake. But sleep or no sleep we must be up early for the great business of the day. A visit to the banker — usually about the first call to be made in every place — supplies the lack of a "Broker's Board " by the practical discovery that exchange and com- missions are here from three to five per cent., though nominally but one ! I never yet saw a banker who charged on paper more than one per cent., and yet through the thimble-rigging of j^iastres, I somehow never get but about nineteen pounds sterling on a draft of twenty. The facihty with which a pound which is worth ninety-seven piastres in the banker's reckoning on paper, becomes worth a hundred and one or more piastres when he pays it over to you in discharge of said reckoning, would elicit the applause of Signor Blitz — provided he were not the victim. The money transaction settled, the next thing is to arrange for a voyage up the Nile. The little steamboat of the Transit Company will not leave until the 16th — and that will be the Sabbath, — so we decide to take a dahaheeh ; and since 2* 18 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. there is little cliance of a steamboat from Cairo up the Nile, we conclude to make our contract from Alexandria to Thebes. And now the all-important business of selecting a boat and laying in a store of provisions for a six weeks' voyage, must receive immediate attention. It is surprising of how much importance one becomes in an eastern city, if he has any business to transact, or any money to spend, or if he even holes as if he had either. If you step into the street you are instantly surrounded by donkey boys, each recommending his own animal, and abso- lutely thrusting him upon you. I counted ten right about me at the door of the hotel, blocking up the passage and even forcing their way into the court, so that it was only by main strength that I could get into the street. "Wherever you go, a troop of donkeys is taggling after you. Then if you stop to make a purchase, a score of persons gather round to witness the whole transaction, watching every motion, giving their opinion, and especially scrutinizing the coin offered in payment. These are persons who have no connection with the seller of the goods, mere idlers or passers-by, or persons looking for a job in the way of carrying home the articles purchased, in their baskets or on their heads, or by directing you to some other shop. It is a great evil in Italy, in Malta, and in Egypt, that in the poorer classes the common charities and courtesies of life are extinguished by the hope of gain ; so that one will not answer you the simplest question, tell you the name of a street, the way to the post-office, to the bank, to your hotel, without teasing you by actions or by words for a reward. How different from France, where the humblest person will do you a favor with evident satisfaction, and without looldng for compensation! Commend me to the French people, above any I have yet seen, for true kindness of heart and inbred politeness. PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 19 The persistent donkey-boys followed us in hope of an hour's employment for their beasts, and as we found that our tour of inspection would carry us a mile or two along the canal, we were no longer indifferent to their importunity. My first attempt at donkey-riding was a decided failure ; the poor brute's saddle-girth was not fast, and no sooner was my weight upon the stirrup than over went rider, saddle, and accoutrements into the mud. Such a fall from a horse might have been of some consequence ; but from a donkey two and a half feet high, it was as ludicrous as it was provoking, especially as the insignificant creature himself regarded it with the most profound simplicity. It was, however, a great event to the other donkey-boys, who at once clustered around me, crying, "That bad donkey; here good donkey, good saddle." I was soon astride of another, and our cavalcade moved gaily forward. Each donkey is followed by a driver, and obeys his orders instead of his rider's. "When you are walking or gently trotting, an unseen thrust of the driver's stick into the donkey's haunches almost jerks you from your saddle as the poor beast jumps to quicken his pace, and again at the top of his speed, a pull at his tail brings him and you to a dead halt. The natives have a knack of guiding the beast with their heels ; but he never minds the bridle, and you have nothing to do but to look out for yourself, especially when in some narrow or crowded street he brings you into the predicament into which Balaam's ass brought his master. The pace of a donkey is generally a very pleasant amble, and he is such a patient and docile little creature that he would make a desirable addition to the sports of children in our country villages. While awaiting the arrival of the owner of a boat, we sauntered in the garden of an English gentleman whose villa borders upon the canal, where, besides the rich aroma 20 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. and the gauay hues of flowers of every clime, the ample shade of sycamores and acacias, and the luscious vista of orange groves, we enjoyed the more famihar vegetable growths that, excepting in the season, reminded us of home. An oriental garden such as this covers hundreds of acres, and is a compendium of the whole vegetable kingdom. At this season, tomatoes, peas, beans, celery, cabbages, cauH- flowers, radishes, turnips, together with vegetables peculiar to the country, are ripe and abundant for the market. Having concluded a bargain for a boat, we had a donkey race back to the hotel, at the close of which we found our- selves debtors to the extent of twelve and a half cents each, for animals which with their drivers had been in attendance upon us for four hours. January 12. — The boat engaged, the next thing was to fit it up with the utmost expedition. Ours was furnished with every requisite for the voyage excepting provisions ; — beds, bedding, tables, chairs, kitchen utensils, table furniture, to be supplied by the owner, we to provide our own cook, our own fuel, and our own food. This is upon the whole the best arrangement — better than to take an unfurnished boat and have the trouble and responsibility of fitting it up at short notice, and better than to have your dragoman provide for you at so much a day, because it allows you to live as you list. The first item was to engage a cook, and as I had been designated to the post of commissary-general, it devolved upon me to examine the credentials of sundry candidates. Our choice rested upon one recommended by a recent French traveller, " egalement pour son exactitude, sa bonne volonte, et ses talens culinaires;" — promptness, good- nature, and culinary talent, were three capital qualities in a cuisinier ; — but I was attracted to him also by liis name, made up of two that I hold in great respect — Ihrahimj Abraham, and Sulliman, pronounced SilUman ; and if his PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 21 skill in dietetic chemistry shall prove him at all worthy of his illustrious scientific cognomen, we shall have every reason to be satisfied with our culinary professor. He is modest and respectful, and unlike many of his countrymen has two sound and very beautiful eyes ! Other things being equal, it is, desirable that your cook should be "good- looking," and I hereby give our professor a certificate to' that effect. The item of cleanliness was not overlooked, including an inspection of the digital extremities. For wages we offered a hundred and fifty piastres — about $7.50 a month ; Ibraham wanted two hundred — $10. "We com- promised by engaging him at the first sum, with the promise of two pounds sterling if he should give satisfaction — and especially if he should prove apt in following any instruc- tions- of the lady of our party — and the threat of dismissal at Cairo, if he should prove untidy or incompetent ; to all which Ibrahim meekly and gratefully assented. From that instant the culinary professor was my devoted attendant ; in .all my purchases he followed me like a shadow ; looking reverently into my eyes, catching every sign, touching his hand to his lips and to his forehead ; in short, showing all proper regard for the newly-inaugurated Hawagee. The cook engaged, the dragoman — a native Egyptian who had been in the service of one of the party from London — accompanied me to lay in stores. Knowing the adhesive property of money in an Arab's fingers, we did not dare to trust him to make the purchases alone. It was a new responsibility to calculate how much would be required to sustain a party of four persons, or rather six, including the dragoman and the culinary professor, for a six weeks' voyage. Mutton, fowls, affd occasionally milk, eggs, butter, and vegetables, might from time to time be procured at villages along the way ; but groceries and delicacies no- where except at Cairo, four days distant. Much of the 22 EGYPT, PAST AND PKESENT. trade of Alexandria is in the hands of French and Italian merchants — there are few English, — and in dealing with these there was nothing novel. But for many articles it was necessary to go to the Egyptian bazaar, a quarter con- sisting of narrow and dirty streets lined on both sides with little stalls, and of one or two squares where goods are displayed in the open air by scores of natives sitting upon stones or divans, pipe in hand. It had rained hard in the morning, as is usual at Alexandria at this season, and the mud was of the consistency of Broadway mud without the relief of a side-walk. Besides the more substantial and bulky articles, our list comprised all manner of fruits, fresh and dried, sauces, pickles, and preserves, ham, tongues, etc. etc. To a taste formed upon the Philadelphia market, and exercised uj^on the dairies of Orange county, butter was the most difficult article to be supplied. The best quality of butter in Egypt, as in Italy, is made without salt ; — this can be got at intervals along the Nile. A second quality for cooking, is made by melting down all sorts of butter to the consistency of lard or of carriage grease. I went to the stall of a venerable Arab who sat cross-legged among jars of butter and oil, and empty jars for the accommodation of custoni- ers. His butter was the best in market, and to assure nie of its good quality, he took up a wooden ladle filled with the grease, bit off a large mouthful, smacked his lips, and dipped the ladle in again to fill my jar. Each time the ladle came out, his great greasy fingers that had just been in oil, were used to scrape it clean, and when the scales were emptied he scooped u]) what remained with his fingers and wiped them upon my jar, aftd then sucked them in his mouth. The termination of this disgusting process so moved my risibles that he observed it, laughed also, and repeated the motion. I told him that was not American ; PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 23 to which he replied through the dragoman, that " an Egyptian eats with his whole heart, and does not look at every thing as if he was afraid to put it in his mouth ! " In Alexandria almost every thing is sold by weight, — the olca, which weighs about three pounds, being the com- mon standard. Oil, vinegar, and even wine, are sold by the oka ; salt is sold in blocks, by weight. Flour of a good quality is dear, and so are potatoes, both being imported from Europe. The Egyptian flour is commonly dark and rank, and makes a coarse black bread. The potatoe is little used in southern Europe, in Egypt, or in Asia. Good tea is scarce and dear in Alexandria, and the traveller had better bring this from Malta. The native sugar of Egypt is good enough for common purposes, and is comparatively cheap. But the prices of "all articles of food are steadily advancing in Egypt, in consequence of the increase of travel, and the stories of the extraordinary cheapness of living here, so far as travellers are concerned, will soon be classed with other oriental legends. A store of charcoal and wood was necessary. This was to be obtamed, not as in New York at docks or yards appropriated to storing fuel, but at little shops about eight feet square, in streets about as many feet in width. The vender, of wood had his stock cut up into small pieces which he sold by the oka ; and if a stick chanced to be too large or too long, he delibei*ately squatted down upon his haunches, laid it upon a little block before him, and hewed it down to a smaller compass. He had also little bundles of pitch pine splinters for kindling-wood. The wood I bought weighed altogether about a hundred and fifty pounds, and cost fifty cents ; it was thrown into a large basket — such as are used for packing dates — and one of the supernumeraries already mentioned, took it upon his back, and carrying the rope around his forehead, marched off with it to the boat. 24 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. Nutmegs are cheap in this market — only two cents apiece, — and large, fresh, sweet, luscious oranges, that have ripened on the tree, can be bought for fifty cents the hundred. At an orange merchant's I witnessed the per- sistency of a Mussulman in his devotions. The old man with a gray beard, knew doubtless that a customer stood before his door — indeed I was at his very side ; but it was his hour of prayer, and he stood facing the East with rapt attention, gazing upon vacancy, and muttering with incon- ceivable rapidity, then prostrated himself upon his knees, then kissed the ground, then rose and muttered again, then down upon his knees and thence to the ground, and so on in endless repetition. I never entered a Catholic church in Europe but all eyes were turned from beads and altars and breviaries, — and often too the eyes of priests and their attendants, — to regard the stranger; but this Mussulman did not once turn his eyes from the imaginary point upon which they were fixed, until he had finished his devotions, though he ran the risk of losing a bargain. The dragoman warned me not to speak to him, for if he should chance to reply, " he would have to do it all over again." A dealer in comfortables, afforded a good specimen of oriental trading as it was before the innovations of the Franks. He was a man of fifty, in good condition, wore a handsome turban, a long white jacket with blue bands, gathered in ample folds about his waist, white loose trowsers, leggings, sandals, and a long flowing scarf. His shop, like the rest, was about eight feet square ; he sat in one corner by the door, cross-legged upon a mat, smoking a long pipe, the bowl of which rested in a pan of ashes, and sipping a tiny cup of jet black coffee, without sugar or milk, while a little tin pot of the same beverage was steam- ing at his side. When we stopped at his door, or rather in front of the shop, for the whole front was open to the street, PREPAEATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE. 25 he very deliberately handed his pipe and cup to his servant who stood behind him, then rose and handed us the article for which we inquired. His entire stock amounted to three comforters, three baskets of cotton, and half a dozen small articles of bedding. After we had made our examination and comments, he resumed his deliberate attitude as if quite indifferent to the result. The offer of a sovereign in payment of our purchase, led to a general consultation among the bystanders. It was passed from hand to hand, stared over gravely, and its value computed in piastres, when lo, it proved that the whole assembled company could not change the piece, and I was obliged to borrow silver of the dragoman. The money of all countries is current in Egypt ; Spanish doubloons, English sovereigns, French Napoleons, dollars Spanish, Austrian, American, Neapolitan, besides the money of Constantinople, — the currency of the country being exceed- ingly ill-regulated. It is a great perplexity to a stranger to reduce all these to their valuation in piastres (five cent pieces), and almost equally so to small shopkeepers, the limited extent of whose resources is illustrated by the fact that I seldom found one who was able to change a CHAPTER III. THE EMBARKATION — MAHMOODe'eH CANAL— THE NILE. We had searched everywhere for an American flag, but without success ; but at length, just on the eve of starting, we found a tailor who eno;a^ed to make one in two hours for six dollars. As its size would not admit of the entire constellation, we inserted the " glorious old thirteen," which would serve to remind us at once of the original States, and also, by '"'the digits reversed," of the present number. This flag was voted to the Commissary-General as his perquisite. It had occurred to us that good Yankee gingerbread v/ould not be amiss upon the Nile ; but neither ginger nor " treacle " could be found except at a chemist's, prepared for medical uses ; — the ginger at twenty-five cents an ounce, and the treacle at the same price per pound. I paid a dollar for about three pints of this luxury. Being duly fortified with consular and Turkish passports, — which, without being in the least required by the govern- ment, are forced upon the traveller by a copartnership of the consuls and the local authorities for the plunder of travellers, — the party proceeded to the boat in a car- riage with the exception of the dragoman and myself, who remained to marshal the cavalcade of provisions. And a most imposing cavalcade it was. Two long, low, narrow wagons, with wheels about eighteen inches in diameter, driven by swarthy men in long frocks and red caps, carried THE embarkation; mahmoode'eh canal. 27 the major part of the stores. These were preceded by a Janissary, or more properly a Caw ass, mounted on a donkey; he was dressed m a blue frock reachmg to his knees, loose trowsers gathered about his calves, neat leggings and sandals, and a red cap with a black tassel ; a long, crooked sword dangled at his side ; he was a fine looking man, and regarded the whole cavalcade with a most complacent air. Next followed the writer on a donkey, in the capacity of Commissary- General ; then the two wagons, one of them mounted by a stout Nubian in smock and turban, — who was an oificer of the customs, and without whom we could not pass the gate, — and flanked by sundry boys and men, caiTymg parcels, or testifying their interest in the movement; and the rear was brought up by our dragoman and the culinary professor, both mounted on donkeys and wearing red caps. The donkey boys ran after us, and as we approached the canal, we put their speed to the test, so as to bring up in proper style before the boat. On the way my attention was arrested by a continuous murmuring and wailing sound, which j^roceeded from sev- eral parties of Mohammedans in the burial ground, repeat- ing prayers for the dead, according to their custom upon Friday of each week. Dashing by Pompey's Pillar, we were presently at the place of embarkation upon the Mahmoodeeh canal, which was to bear us to the Nile forty miles distant. Everybody knows the story of this canal. It. was opened in 1820. Its construction was a part of the scheme of Mohammed Ali for reviving the commerce of Alexan- dria with the East. Taking as a base the old canal of Fooah, which was yet in use in the time of the Venetians, and following in part the ancient Canopic branch of the Nile, he opened a communication of forty miles between Alexandria and Atfeh on the Rosetta branch. An army 28 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. of two hundred and fifty thousand persons was gathered to dig this canal, the dirt being scooped out by the hand or with a common hoe, and all removed in sacks or baskets carried on the shoulders ; and so miserable was the pro- vision of food, clothing, and shelter for this multitude of laborers, and so severe were the daily tasks exacted of them, that " no less than twenty thousand are said to have perished by accidents, hunger, and plague." It was the counterpart of the old scenes of brickmaking among the Israelites in bondage. The will of the tyrant made the lives of his subjects as the dirt beneath his feet. The dead level of the canal presents nothing of interest. A sail of a few hours brings us to the Nile. And now we are fairly afloat upon the most historical, the most fertiliz- ing, the most wonderful fiver of the world. Just here, at this season — when the waters are receding toward their lowest level — it is about half a mile wide ; its banks are low and unrelieved by mounds or trees ; its waters are muddy, and its current swift ; and its commerce is limited to boats of thirty or forty tons laden with cotton and wheat for Alexandria. But what a dreamy atmosphere is this; bland, bright, pure, dry, the thermometer at nearly seventy in the shade ; what a soil is this, ten, twelve, twenty feet deep of rich black alluvial deposit, covering even the borders of the desert with fertility; what an illimitable extent of field without fence or tree or any landmark, clothed with the richest verdure, — the springing wheat, the fresh and fragrant clover, — or upturned by recent plowing to the cheerful sun; what vast herds of cattle, mingled with flocks of goats and sheep, the patient donkey and the lazy camel stretched upon the sward ; what mul- titudes of birds making the air vocal with their song, skimming the surface of the water, and alighting with pleasing confidence upon the deck of our vessel; what THE NILE. 29 numbers of boats descending broadside with the current, now swell the commerce of the Nile to the flat-boat commerce of the Mississippi ; how picturesque those villages scattered along the banks, shielded by strong levees from the swift and changeful current ; adorned with tall and graceful palms, through which the minaret peeps like the spire of a distant church ; their round mud houses resembling from a distance the towers and bastions of a fort, and the bazaar with its little grove of sycamores, like the garden walk of a king ; how majestic is this flood, now widening to a sea, now sweeping through some new made channel and depositing fresh acres upon the opposite bank, ever rolling its alluvial wealth from Nubia to the delta; — from Noah to Moses, from Moses to Herodotus and Strabo, from Herodotus and Strabo until now, the same mighty ceaseless river, whose banks have been the h^me of patriarchs and the burial- place of kings, the seat of empire and its grave, the treasure-house and the mausoleum of Learning and of Art. This is the Nile, the rich, the glorious Nile. No wonder that more than two thousand years ago the king of Egypt, lying hke a dragon in the midst of his rivers, said, " My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." * No wonder that in an age when all blessings were symbolized by objects of worship, the gigantic form of Nilus pouring forth his floods was the adoration of Egypt. I am on the Nile ; let me dream awhile of its gorgeous Past, before I look upon its desolated Present. The shrill cadence of the Muezzin call from yonder minaret, has died away ; the bark of the village dogs has ceased ; the monoto- nous song of the boatmen is ended ; the water ripples gently against the vessel's side, and the young moon steals through my curtain, as I lie down to sleep upon the bosom of the Nile. * Ezekiel xxix. 3. 3* 30 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. Before me opens the Egypt of four thousand years. I walk with the patriarch of Mamre upon the plains of Mizraim ; I tread with awe the city of Menes, the first of Egypt's kings — the city Abraham saw, now flanked with its stupendous pyramids, and guarded by its mysterious sphinx; from Noph I turn toward On, and through the vista of forty centuries behold the mighty temple of the Sun ; amid these monuments I meet the youthful shepherd, brought as a captive to the house of Pharaoh ; I see him in his dungeon cheered with heavenly visions ; I see him in his chariot of state, the head of all the realm ; I behold his venerable father meeting his long-lost son ; I see the long funereal tram that bears the bones of Jacob to the grave of his fathers ; I see the land of Goshen teeming with flocks and herds, and peopled with the seed of Abra- ham ; I behold the spreading power of the Pharaohs, and their oppression of the chosen of the Lord; I hear the groaning of the people from the sweltering plains ; I see the infant Moses floating on the Nile in his bark of reeds ; I follow him through all the wealth and pomp of Pharaoh's court, into the grand and solemn wilderness of Sinai, till as the leader of an emancipated nation, he begins the march from the delta of the Nile, to the Red Sea and the Jordan ; I behold the envious and maddened monarch struggling with ■ the returning waves ; — the moon expires, and dark- ness comes over Egypt so thick that it can be felt ; — my boat sails onward up the Nile : I pass by Denderah and its zodiac of Ptolemaic origin, and now I stand before the city of the hundred gates ; its twenty thousand chariots of war are gathered in the plain to defy the invading hosts of Persia ; Karnak looms grandly through its avenue of sphinxes and its propylon of obelisks and statues, and the colossi raised in rude majesty above the plain, from their seats assert the empire of the world ; the Father of song THE NILE. 31 here gathers fresh numbers for his great epic ; the Father of history here gathers the treasured learning of ,the past ; the wealth, the grandeur, the power of the world's kingdoms' concentrated thus near its source, now fill the panorama of the Nile ; — my boat heads onward to Syene — but Memnon answers to the Sun — and my dream is broken. The dream is broken, for inore mournful than the Muez- zin cry comes the voice of the prophet over the abyss of time, " Behold I am against thee and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even to the border of Ethiopia .... It shall be the basest of the kingdoms ; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations ; for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations."* I look out upon a little mud village, so picturesque from a distance, and find it the abode of filth, and squalor, and poverty; the children naked and lying with the dogs ; the miserable representatives of a fallen race mixed with the race of their conquerors, without knowledge, without energy, without ambition, held in the iron grasp of Fatalism, and making it a religious virtue to abide in the degradation to which they are born ; — dimin- ished in numbers, impoverished, enslaved, indeed '-^ the basest of the kingdoms." * Ezekiel xxix. 10, 15. CHAPTER IV. NILE COMFORTS ; A NILE BOAT AND CEEW. " O MY eyes ! O my love ! O the sun ! O the moon ! O my father ! O my mother ! O my sister ! the river ! O the pilgrimage to Mecca ! O the procession of the Sultan ! O the prophet ! O the Effendi ! O Abbas Pasha! O Mohammed ! The hawagee (travellers) are with us ! "We are going up the Nile ! " Such is the senseless song with which our Arab boatmen divert themselves in endless repetition. When laboring at the oar, the reis (captain) leads in each invocation, and the crew keep time with a chorus, which, translated into English, signifies " Pull, pull away ; " when lolling about the deck, while the wind carries the boat forward, they sing it all together, in an unvarying round ; and at evening they gather on the deck, and with the accompaniment of a rude tambourine and a reed fife, clapping their palms as in an ecstasy of joy, at every sentiment, they repeat forever- more, " my eyes, and my love, and my father, and my mother, and my sister, and the river, and the sun, and the moon, and Mecca, and the Sultan, and Mohammed ! " * I think I could suggest a variation that would at least have the merit of appealing to the feelings of the hawagee. It would run somewhat after this style : " the fleas ! O * The range of this chorus is represented by a yery few notes, used also as a religious chant. The Captain intones the invocation, and the crew respond at every pause. [See music in Appendix.] NILE COMFORTS. 33 the mosquitoes ! the bugs ! O the spiders ! O the flies ! O the cockroaches ! O the wood-lice ! the ants ! O the earwigs ! " the rats ! the braying of the donkeys ! O the barking of the dogs ! Oo-oo-oh ! the fleas ! O Moham- med ! the hawagee are going up the Nile ! " Yet it would be a profanation to sing such a song — so animal — so earthly — on this celestial night upon the Nile. The sun has just dipped behind the apex of the great pyramid, which, for four thousand years, has watched his daily decline, and gathered his last rays from the sands of the Lybian Desert ; and now the full moon silvers the rippling surface of the river, as our bark skims over it before the wind. The atmosphere is perfectly transparent, and, like the sky of Italy, it has a liquid depth that lures the soul onward and upward to the infinite. Nay, such a sky does not shine on Italy, — so pure, so serene, so resplendent in the radiance of its stars, and the groupings of its constel- lations. Nor is there in all Europe such a river to give back her lustre to the moon. After all, in keeping with this glorious scene is that closing cadence of the boatman's song, mvoking all that to the rude Arab is praiseworthy : " ! the sun, and the moon, and the river, and the Sultan, and Mohammed!" So " WuUuhhee hal^-saw/" — we are going up the Nile. Our boat is a cross between a sloop and a canal boat. It is about seventy feet long and eighteen wide at its greatest breadth, and would measure between thirty and forty tons. From stern to midships is a raised or poop cabin, which is divided into several compartments. The rear-most, a room ' about seven feet square, is the sanctum of the worthy couple who have domesticated our journey from Paris hither ; next to this is a space of nearly equal dimensions, occupied by a wash-room, dressing-room, and pantry ; then comes cabin No. 2, seven feet by fifteen, upon 34 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. the opposite sides of which, behind curtains of coarse cotton cloth, the professor and myself assert our respective rights ; in front of this, and facing the deck, is another cabin, six feet by sixteen, which serves as dining and sitting room. These cabins are furnished on both sides with double sets of sashes, glass and Venetian, and the dining- room is lighted also from the front. Beyond the dining- room is a cushioned verandah two feet in width extending across the boat. Each cabin is furnished with divans — raised benches fastened to the sides of the boat — which serve as seats or lounges by day and are converted into beds at night. We have all manner of contrivances for writing and for stowing things compactly. The deck in front of the cabins, is occupied by the crew when working the boat, and also serves as the place for their meals and for their devotions. Below this is a shallow hold, not deep enough for a man to sit erect in it, where they stow themselves to sleep when the night is not warm enough for them to lie upon the open deck. In this also, the heavier stores of the company are kept. In the bow of the vessel is a neat little cubby for culinary purposes ; containing an oven and all sorts of miniature compartments for cooking with a thimble full of charcoal. Over this our newly inaugurated professor of dietetics has absolute control; and so satis- factorily have his " culinary talents " developed themselves, such is his punctuality, his docility, his neatness, and his skill, that I have already assured him of his £2 per month and of an engagement for the desert and for Palestine, and furthermore have volunteered to make honorable mention of him in a certain newspaper in New York ; whereat Ibrahim opens his eyes wonderingly, kisses his hand and touches his forehead, laughs till his eyes sparkle, again touches his hand to his lips and his forehead, and dishes up the breakfast " with alacrity." Favored indeed of the A NILE BOAT AND CREW. 35 Prophet will that Hawagee be, whose palate is daily tempted from the caboose of Ibrahim Sulliman, and served by his faithful boy Mohammed. Our boat is rigged after a fashion never seen upon the Hudson. In the bow is an enormous lateen-sail,* fastened to a spar, which' is swung as upon a pivot on the top of a mast, some forty feet in height ; the spar is about a hundred feet long, and swings at an angle of forty-five degrees ; this position, and the facility of rotary motion bring the sail readily before the wind, so that it fills easily. In the stern of the boat is a sail similarly adjusted, but upon a much smaller scale. Here also is the tiller, which the helmsman manages from the top of the poop. Twelve banks of oars, and twelve huge poles pointed with iron to be used in shallow water, complete the equipment of the bark "Lotus" of Alexandria, bound for Thebes. From her flagstaff wave the stars and stripes, and from the forward mast the pennon of the senior member of the firm of "W , U , T , & Co., the charterers of this present expedition. The boat is manned by a reis (cap- tain), a •steersman, and twelve hands, making our entire company, including the dragoman and the professor culi- nary, twenty souls. An Arab crew is an interesting study. Ours is a mixture of all the races that inheritance or successive conquests have gathered upon the soil of Egypt. The reis hails from Keneh oj^posite the ancient Tentyra, and in the vicinity of Thebes. He is a slender, graceful man, of a dark copper color, with a keen eye, a pleasant expression, and a voice as musical as the Pope's at Vespers in the Sistine * " A ?aieew-sail is a triangular sail, extended by a long yard, ■which is swung about one quarter the distance from the lower end, which is brought down at the tack, while the other end is elevated at an angle of about forty-live degrees." — {Websta^) Ilaritime Diciionary. 36 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. ctapel. He dresses riclily and in good taste, wears a tui'ban of red silk wreathed about a white skullcap, a white gown descending nearly to the knees and terminating in two loose bags fastened about the legs, and a striped silk waistcoat of gay colors, the back being of the same mate- rial. His kamees is frilled and filigreed upon the breast, and copiously adorned with buttons, and has Avide sleeves reaching below the elbows. When the weather is cool, he throws over all a flowing mantle of blue calico. He has not attained to the dignity of shoes, but goes with the legs bare from the knees. When the wind blows, he sits cross- legged all day long in the bow of the boat, smoking his chibouque as if he were a youthful Hawagee on the lookout for pyramids, sphinxes, and crocodiles ; and when the boat is becalmed, he still sits dreamily whiffing, as if the Prophet had given liim a foretaste of his Paradise in Latakia * and sleep. But when the boat is aground, an almost daily occurrence — or when the poles, the oars, or the rope must be used to start her on her way, then the word of command goes forth with the most violent guttural energy, and in strange contrast, that soft plaintive voice leads in the invoca- tions to the sun, and the moon, and father, and mother, and sister, and the Sultan, and Mecca, and the Effendi, and Mohammed, while after each comes in the full monotonous chorus, " Wulleh hd holy-saw" Nor does the reis disdain at times to lay aside his mantle and his pipe, and in flowing turban, striped vest, and puffing knee-bags, to put his brawny arm to pole and oar, and to foUow the invocations of his mate with a "-hee-haly-saw" At early morning and at sunset, and many times in the day, he washes his feet, goes up on the quarter-deck, spreads out his mantle, and turning * Latakia, the representative of the ancient Laodicea, is a small town on the coast of Syria, celebrated for its tobacco. The mild flavor of the plant here grown, causes it to be highly prized throughout the Levant. A NILE BOAT AND CREW. 37 his face toward Mecca, bows, and kneels, and prostrates liimself, and prays, and kisses, and gesticulates, according to the formula, with a gravity and a sincerity that excite at once sympathy and charity. To me this is more impressive than the genuflections, the marchings and countermarchings of the Pope at High Mass in St. Peter's ; and the singsong invocations, which continually remind me of the Pope's recitatives, are also to unbelieving ears quite as significant in the one case as in the other. Such is our reis on board the boat. But when the boat halts at the little villages along the river, no turbaned head moves with greater dignity and grace than his, as he exchanges oriental salutations with the chief men, sips of their coffee, and inhales through their amber mouth-pieces, the choicest weed of Syria. Most complacently too doth the reis then smile upon the Ilawagee as they saunter through the bazaar, and no doubt he unfoldeth wondrous tales of the Occidental travellers committed to his care ; — for it is a pardonable weakness of the Arab to magnify himself by extolling his employers. And well may he be proud of the " Lotus " — a dahaheeh of the largest class, on this her first voyage, with the waving stars and stripes, with three six- footed American rdgel-zereef, and especially with an Ame- rican sit, who is the wonder of all the women and children of the villages. His sense of responsibility sometimes keeps him on the watch the livelong night against robbers at the stopping places. Bating the loss of the forefinger of his right hand, which has been amputated to avoid impressment in the army, our reis Makzug may be set down for a complete man. The pay of such a turbaned dignitary, commander, priest, and guard, is twenty-five cents a day, out of which he feeds himself twice a day with a wooden bowl of black bread stewed with lentils, fills the little earthen bowl of his 4 38 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. chibouque with the fragrant weed, and liis iinj fingdn with a decoction of strong hot black coffee. The reis is the character of the boat. We have with him a solemn con- tract, prescribing his duties, and our rights, and giving us power to settle any dispute or to punish any dehnquency by citing him before the nearest local governor. I presume that the Arabic version of this important document, sleeps as quietly in his private box as the English does in mine. But the laws of Egypt are very strict towards the captains of the Nile boats. Constructive responsibility is the inva- riable rule. We lately met the reis of another, boat, who was in great concern lest he should be imprisoned for two years, because by the order of the charterers he had gone forward without a servant of the party, who had wandered from the boat. The reis is answerable for the good conduct of the crew, and for the property of the boat and of its occupants. The other day when an altercation arose be- tween two of our crew, the reis, though far from being a match for cither of them physically, cowed them down in an instant by raising his stick, and speaking with authority. When all our party leave the boat every thing is safe, with the key in his hands. Indeed the captain of a travelling boat upon the Nile, though its passengers never exceed half a dozen, nor its crew a dozen persons, is the most important personage upon this ancient river. I doubt whether Cleo- patra's barge, with its poop of gold, its oars of silver, and its perfumed silken sails, surpassed a modern dahaheeh in size and stateliness, or in the substantial comforts of Ameri- can Hawagee, whose stores Avere bought in the Egyptian bazaar of Alexandria. The guiding spirit of our boat is the steersman, Hassan. The reis for dignity, Jlassa?! for power. Always at his post, leaning over the tiller with the same steady watchful eye, you would take liim for old Nilus in e&igy, were it not A NILE BOAT AND CKEW. 39 that when the boat gets fast aground, he leaps upon the deck, and with loudest voice, and stoutest arm, assists to shove her off. Hassan is a Nubian, as black as Egyptian darkness in the days of Pharaoh ; of a finely proportioned frame, and wearing upon his shoulders as noble a head as the Anglo-Saxon can boast. His expression is intelligent and kind, and his manner the perfection of natural dignity and grace. He knows his business thoroughlj", and sticks to it faithfully. He is not noisy and loquacious like the Arab sailors, but when an extra pull is needed, he shows a wonderful energy and an instinctive capacity to command, which his copper-colored associates as instinctively recog- nize. His teeth are the fairest pearls of the Orient, and most benignly does he smile upon the Hawagee each morn- ing with his " sabdl hhayr,'' (good morning,) to which he often adds, " may your day be* blessed." But with many a nod and grin does he greet us when the wind promises fair, and, pointing to the sails, he repeats the Italian " huono, huono" (good, good,) which every Arab has picked up for EngHsh. He is withal a natural orator, in every gesture and expression. A noble fellow is Hassan, worth more surely than twelve and a half cents a day. He has depth of character and>indliness of spirit. He never gets uito a passion, he never shows signs of weariness. The first object you see in the morning when you go upon deck, is the white teeth of Hassan smiling his morning salutation through his curling black beard : and the last object that fades upon your vision as you enter your cabin for the ■ night, is the blue and white turban, the blue cotton gown, and the naked black legs of the prince of the tiller. If the wind blows from the north he keeps to the tiller the live- lono- night, and always while the boat is in motion he is there smoking liis chibouque, or scooping out his little dish of stewed bread and beans with one hand upon the tiller. 40 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. No, not always ; for twice a day or oftener does Hassan summon a sailor to his post, then reverently descending the stern of the boat, he washes his feet, and, returning to the quarter-deck, faces the east, and bows and prostrates himself toward the tomb of the prophet. In all this, he shows the seriousness of a deep conviction, and the absorption of a rapt devotion ; but if meanwhile the boat gets off her course, his prayers ended, he grasps the tiller, and shouts to the men with an energy M'hicli shovv^s that with all his fatalism he holds that " faith without vvorks is dead." Most devout is Plassan of all the crew. Like the shepherd of Salisbury Plain, he meekly expects to-morrow such wind as Allah may please to send. We tried, through our drago- man, to offer him some inducements to go to America, but his answer was that he was " too religious ! " The twelve men composing the crew, are of all ages, sizes, and sorts, but chiefly Arabs blind of one eye, or maimed of a forefinger, so as to avoid impressment for the a?-my ; — for how can a man take sight if his right eye is gone, or how pull trigger if the forefinger of his right hand is wanting? — but they work well together, and are as jolly as the nature of the Arab will allow. Their usual working dress consists of a coarse cotton shirt descending to the knees, and tied loosely about the waist. When the weather is cold, that is, when the thermometer is about fifty degrees, they put on over this a loose mantle of blue cotton, or of the coarse brown woollen cloth of the country ; they wear nothing below the knees, and on their heads, in lieu of the turban, they wear the common tarbouch of red felt, or the still plainer takeea, a close fitting skullcap of cotton or woollen cloth. Their dress is suited not only to the climate, but also to the navigation of the Mle, in many of whose operations clothes would be a serious incumbrance. Not a native on board regularly sports a pair of shoes except the A NILE BOAT AND CREW. 41 professor culinaire, who moves delicately from the store- chest to the caboose, in red morocco slippers with pointed toes ; and he alone displays a vest of silk, embroidered with threads of gold. Only on great occasions, when stopping • for a day at some chief town, do the men bag themselves, and roll endless folds of cotton about their heads, and put on huge coarse-grained red shoes, and then, too, the re'is and Hassan having enveloped their heads in coils of purest white, grafted upon the crimson taheea, loom majestically in red shppers of pointed toes. Once I saw Hassan bargaining with a peddling merchant who visited our boat, — (all oriental merchants are a sort of peddlers, and hence the name Hawagee "merchant," is apphed to all travellers,) — for a piece of common cotton cloth, evidently of English or American manufacture. Next day the wind was ahead, and the boat laid by ; but Hassan was not idle ; all day long he sat by his favorite tiller, cutting and stitching; he hardly stopped for the dish of lentils and bread that was brought to him from the mess on. deck ; but before evening, I saw his fat black arms and legs emerging from a robe of spotless white. It was his only garment, but, set off by a red turban, it became him admira- bly, and in make and fit it would have done credit to any " Dorcas Society," or " Ladies' Sewing Circle," not to say any " Patent Sewing Machine," in the United States. Indeed the sculptured toga of the Eoman senator is not more graceful than the flowing kirtle of the Nubian steers- man. After all, Hassan can " do " upon twelve and a half cents a day, with corn-bread and lentils, and a cotton shirt made by Ms own hands. I forgot to say that two piastres and a half, or about twelve and a half cents a day, is the pay of the hands on board the boat, the captain having double wages. While the owners of the boat receive nearly eight dollars a day — an extravagant price, to which at the time 4* 42 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. we had to submit — tlie pay of the officers and men all told is hardly two dollars a day. In their living, the crew have a perfect community of goods. As they are obliged to " find themselves " out of their slender wages, it is an object with them to study economy. One of their number acts as purser and cook ; and it is an indication of the generous traits of the Arabian character, that they have selected for this office, one who is somewhat deformed, and not capable of heavy work. Their principal diet is bread made from very coarse wheat. Some- times they buy this ready made, at the principal villages, but to save expense they commonly buy the grain, and have it ground and baked to order, or grind and bake it them- selves. Hence it is always stipulated in the hiring of a boat that the crew shall be allowed time, — about thirty-six hours, — at certain places, to bake their bread. Once or twice, in order to take advantage of a wind, we have paid them the difference between baking and buying a three days' stock of bread, — about two dollars, or one day's wages for the crew. Their meals are all prepared in one dish, and with little variation. Their steward takes a quantity of the black bread, that has been cut into small pieces and dried in the sun, and lays it in the bottom of a wooden bowl, holding from six to eight gallons. He then dips up a jar of muddy water from the river, and pours this over it to cleanse it and soften it. Next he adds a few hard brown beans or lentils, — a kind of spht pea, — or perhaps throws in a few onions or greens, with a little salt. The whole is then put into an iron pot, and stirred over the fire till it is reduced to the consistency of a bran poultice, when it is poured back into the wooden bowl. This is then placed in the middle of the deck, or if the boat is tied up, it is set upon the bank of the river, and the men squat in a circle about it, and each dips in his hand and eats by the fist full, carefully sucking his I A NILE BOAT AND CREW. 43 fingers. When the bowl is emptied, a jar of muddy water is passed round, and each man rinses his mouth and takes a drink. This is the meal at morning and at evening. At noon they lunch apart, upon dry bread and raw onions ; but the onions of Egypt are long, white, tender, and sweet. A piece of sugar-cane is a great luxury. They always seem to enjoy their meal. Whenever I have chanced to be a spectator, they have smacked their lips and cried " huono" '•He'ieb'^' and have invited me to partake with them, which I did — once ! They eat no flesh except on great occasions. At three or four principal towns along the river it is cus- tomary for the voyagers to give the crew a hacTcshish — a present — in the shape of a sheep, or which is better, of money to the value of a sheep, with w^hich they buy fish, mutton, or what they list. But buy what they will, it all goes into the pot together, is reduced to one consistency, and then eaten by the fist full from the wooden bowl. Sometimes the reis and Hassan have their meals in smaller bowls apart, sometimes they sit together with the rest. After each meal comes the pipe, or more strictly, the pipe which had been laid aside for the meal, is resumed as soon as this is finished. Smoking is to the Arab what coffee, tea, and other stimulants are to the Anglo-Saxon : it is a great part of his nourishment. His tobacco is mild, plenty, cheap, and is his greatest comfort. In point of character these Arab sailors are altogether superior to American sailors or boatmen who are not pledged teetotalers. I would rather trust myself with them, ten times over, than with such crews as I have seen upon the Mississippi. They are not wichedly profane, though they sometimes in sport invoke the prophet's curse upon a passing boat. They are not passionate, for though a storm of words would sometimes indicate great wrath, they seldom come to blows. They have no strong drink of any kind on 44 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. board the boat, and only once or tmce have I seen any of them drink drakee (date-brandy) or beer, at some of the larger towns. The cofifee-shop takes the place of the dram-shop, and the chief indulgence of sailors on shore seems to be, lounging about a coffee-shop, sipping coffee and smoking the pipe. The sailors on the Nile are not, as is too often true of American sailors and boatmen, a degraded and vicious set of men. In dress and appearance they are superior to the fellahs or common field laborers. Though looked down upon as an inferior class, they are respectable, wellbehaved, frugal of their money, and comparatively free from the grosser forms of wickedness. The crew of the Lotus seem part and parcel of the family. CHAPTER V NAVIGATION, VILLAGES, BAZAAR, HOUSES, AND CHILDREN. It is difficult to convey to one familiar only with American rivers a definite idea of the navigation of the Nile. There is no river in the United States that corresponds with it. Like the Mississippi, the Nile has a rapid current — about three miles an hour — and its channel is continually chang- ing. But the Nile has no bluffs, — - though sometimes the banks rise some twenty feet above the highest watermark, — and it has no wooded islands or bottoms, and no snags or sawyers. In the Delta the soil varies from ten to fifteen feet in depth, and during the inundation this whole section is over- flowed — the villages being protected by embankments, and communication being kept up by means of boats. The Delta is a triangular piece of land comprised within the Rosetta and the Damietta branches of the Nile, the only two that remain of the original six or seven mouths of the river. The base of this triangle on the sea-coast is eighty- one miles ; but it is very narrow at its apex, where the Nile divides into its two branches. The Delta contains about two thousand square miles. The northern district of Egypt, extending from the pyramids to the sea, and embracing the Delta with the arable ground upon either side of it, contains four thousand five hundred square miles — a surface equal to the State of Connecticut, or one tenth the 46 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. size of New York. " The Nile marks on either side the extent of fertility by the measure of its inundations." We entered the Eosetta branch at Atfeh. At this season this branch varies from one half to three quarters of a mile in width, and in some parts it is exceedingly shallow and obstructed by sand-banks, ncAV formed islands, or large alluvial deposits upon either hand. Unlike the Mississippi, it receives no tributary for more than a thousand miles from its mouth. The Nile is navigable only for boats of fifty or sixty tons, and drawing from three to five feet of water ; and all the river boats are built with reference to the canal. The only craft upon the river, are a few steamboats of small dimensions, belonging to the government or to the Transportation Company, and employed chiefly in its ser- vice, pleasure-boats or travelling-boats such as I have described, and freight-boats built upon the same scale for carrying corn, cotton, and earthen-ware. In going up the river every thing depends upon a north wind. Without this but little headway can be made against the current. Sometimes this wind blows almost a hurricane, and blowing against the current lashes the river into a tumult that revives the disagreeable sensation of sea-sick- ness. Then the boat bounds along at the rate of five or six miles an hour, while the current deludes you into the notion that it is running eight or ten ; but if such a wind holds, two or three days will carry you to Cairo, and ten or fifteen more to Thebes. But do not deceive yourself with any such expectation. The " Lotus " started from Alexandria with such a wind, and made one fourth the distance to Cairo the first afternoon, but it was nine days before she reached the "Magnificent" capital. Again she left Cairo with such a wind, and as the pyramids faded, Kai'nac loomed up only ten days ahead, yet it was twenty-seven days before we saw any other than a looming Karnac. The average voyage to NAVIGATION. 47 Cairo is four days, and from tliere to Thebes twenty. We were thirty-eight days from Alexandria to Tliebes, about six hundred and thirty miles, including a stay of two days at Cairo, and a day and a half at Denderah. In all that time we had but three or four days of the north wind, which at this season is said to prevail. When there is no wind, the boat can be impelled against the current only by pulling — not with oars, for these are useless in going up stream — but with a long rope which passes through a loop about thirty feet up the mast, and is fastened to the upper deck near the tiller. This rope is taken ashore, and the crew attach to it small cords, which they bind about their breasts or foreheads, and then march wearily in procession, chanting doleful songs, and making four or five miles a day. Sometimes a light wind assists this towing, but it is tedious work. When the wind is ahead, as with us it often was — the south wind" prevailing — it is hardly possible to proceed at all, for the tortuous channel of the Nile does not admit of "beating," and the boat must lie by. A huge wooden pin, driven into the ground by a mallet, answers the purpose of a temporary pier, and as there are no wharves along the Nile, every boat carries its own peg. Coming down the stream the boat either sails by the south wind, using the small sail only for safety, floats along with the current, stern foremost, broad- side, anywise, or is prof>elled by the oars as long as the strength of the crew holds out ; but v/hen the north wind blows stiffly she must be tied up to her peg for hours or days. At first one is ready to impute the dilatory progress of the boat to the indolence or the incompetence of the reis and crew. And undoubtedly these have it in their power in various ways to retard the boat for their own interest. With them time is nothing ; and the leisurely occupation of a long voyage relieves the monotony of utter idleness at 48 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. home, while it yields a daily support and the scanty means of dress and of amusement. The traveller should retain in his own hands the authoritative direction of the boat. I have never seen more nimble sailors than the Arabs are when acting under authority. But after all, the Nile must continue to be navigated at about the same dull rate. The same process of tracking and poling is dehneated in the sculptures of ancient Egypt. Parties sometimes charter a small steamer for the upper Nile. Tliis is well enough for travellers who are greatly pressed for time. But in order to bring the expenses within reasonable limits, such a party must be made larger than is consistent with comfort in such narrow accommoda- tions, or larger at least than will admit of proper privacy and independence. Then there is the constant annoyance of heat, vapors, gas, and noise ; and besides, the loss of •much that is worthy of observation along the river, — for the steamboat stops only at prominent points, and does not give opportunities for daily walks, and for the near inspec- tion of fields and villages. It would avail but little to sharpen the model of the dahabeeh, for the windings of the river and the numerous sand-bars preclude tacking and beating as expedients for progress. Besides, a sharp built boat carrying much sail, would be apt to capsize in the sudden flaws and whirlwinds that sweep over the river. As the waters of the inunda- tion subside, the forming of new islands, the opening of new sluices, and the shrinking of the main channel, make it difficult for those most familiar with the river to avoid running aground. This is a very frequent occurrence ; but one for which the sailors are fully prepared. Throwing aside their single garment, they leap overboard like dogs, and in puris naturalihus apply their shoulders to the bow, and with a hee-haly-saw shove and shove until the boat is VILLAGES. 49 afloat again. American sailors would not consent to such work as this, or to such a style of dress as it requires. But theoretical boating will not answer here. And if the navigation of the Nile should be "improved," and light clipper yachts should take the place of the dahaheeh, who would care to visit the river of Egypt? Herein at least we must do as Egyptians do. I have spoken of a Nile village as a picture ; let me now introduce the reader to one as it is. The first that I explored was a very favorable specimen, the village of Negeeleh in the Delta. The houses are built of bricks made of the mud of the Nile mixed with straw, just as it was in the time of Moses, and dried in the sun. Each house is but one story, or about ten feet in height, and consists usually of a court or yard a few feet square, and of two apartments, one of which has a mud chimney for cooking, and the other, raised benches of mud brick, upon which mats are spread for sitting by day and for sleeping by night. There are also mats upon the roof for the same purpose. * In the yard the " stock," cows, camels, sheep, goats, donkeys, are huddled by night, and the place is redolent of their ordure. Each house has one or more dog, which lies about the door or on the roof, and yelps hideously at the approach of a stranger. In this village the houses are arranged in rectangular blocks, and the streets are about eight feet wide. No wheeled vehicle ever passes through them. Indeed, except at Alexandria and Cairo, there is not a wheeled vehicle in all Egypt, and it is only within a few years that carriages have been introduced into these cities. All burdens are carried on the backs of donkeys or of camels. Outside of the village lie heaps of rubbish and filth — the common deposit of the inhabi- tants ; and here, too, are larger folds for the cattle that cannot be accommodated in the house-yards. Along the 5 50 EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT. river is a bazaar, in front of which is a rude garden planted with acanthus trees. The bazaar is a row of stalls, each about six feet square, sometimes not more than three feet front, in which the stock of the village merchants is deposited under lock by night, and in front of which it is exposed for sale by day. The bazaar everywhere wears the same general character. In Cairo, of course, it presents a rich display of goods, and covers an extensive area. In all the larger towns it occupies several of the little winding alleys called streets ; but each particular shop is of the same diminutive size, and the entire stock of a bazaar in a to^vn of ten or twenty thousand inhabitants, would hardly fill a respectable store on Broadway. The standard articles exposed for sale are tobacco, lentils, bread in flat loaves as big as one's hand, pipes and pipe bowls, little coffee-cups, onions, dates, slippers, shawls, and turbans. Occasionally you will find articles of beauty or of delicacy, but usually every alternate stall is for tobacco or bread, and interspersed with these are coffee-shops occupying the space of two or three stalls. The bazaar at Negeeleh has about forty stalls ; in front of each, the proprietor squats upon his haunches, smoking his pipe or sipping his coffee, and waiting for a customer. Two or three dollars a day must be the extent of business done at one of these stalls on an average, even on a market- day ; — twenty-five cents profit would doubtless be consid- ered a good day's business, even in many of the larger towns. In front of the bazaar a few women veiled with the universal yashmak sat with little piles of bread or a few beans, eggs, or oranges for sale, rarely accosting any one, and hardly exposing their faces when addressed. In one quarter of the village is a little open square planted with palm-trees, and on one side of this a diminu- tive mosque with a slender minaret — a round tapering tower BAZAAR AND HOUSES. 51 of brick stuccoed, surrounded with tiers of galleries, and terminating in a ball pointed with a three-pronged rod. There is no bell in the mosque-tower, but from these galleries the hour of prayer is called in a shrill waving voice that resounds far over the plain.* In all Egypt I never heard a bell of any size or kind, except two little tinkling cow-bells attached to Roman Catholic convents far up the Nile. What a contrast to the perpetual din and clash in Malta, and everywhere in Italy. The village I have described was an average specimen. Sometimes the houses are the merest hovels with but one room, and a hole about two and a half feet high, that answers for a door. Yet even here the poor man's goat or sheep, or the donkey that earns a living for the family while he eats nothing himself, sleeps in the common inclosure. On the upper Nile the houses often have a mere roofing of twisted palm leaves, for in a climate where rain never falls, they need protection only from the sun. Sometimes the palm is gracefully disposed among the houses. In the largest towns are many houses of a better quality, built of burnt brick, two or three stories high, with windows and balconies, and interior courts open to the air. But the streets are seldom more than from six to eight feet wide, and are seldom as regular as at Negeeleh ; the houses are- crowded together very compactly, and the bazaar, though it may cover a range of a mile, is lined only Avith the same little shops. In such towns there are gates at the entrances of all the principal streets or quarters, which are closed at night. To\Mis built on the confines of the desert, are usually surrounded with a crude brick wall mounted with a palisade of cornstalks, to protect them from the predatory * Al-ld-hu ah-bdr, AUd-hu