Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau
pyramidal form. Mud walls, it must be remembered, are in Nubia quite a different affair from what they are in rainy countries. The smooth plastering gives the dwelling a neat appearance inside and out: and it is so firmly done, and so secure from wet in that climate, as not to crumble away, or, apparently, to give out dust, as it would with us. The flat roof of this house was neatly made of palm, the stems lying along, and the fronds forming a sort of thatch. A deewán of mud was raised along the whole of both the side-walls, and two large jars, not of the same size, were fixed at the end; one, no doubt, to hold water, the other grain. The large jar for grain is often fixed outside the house, opposite the door, and we were assured that it is never plundered. Some dwellings have partitions, one or two feet high, separating, as we suppose, the sleeping-places of the family. If the peasant has the rare fortune of possessing a cow and calf, or if there is an ox in the establishment, to work the sakia, there is a mud shed with a flat roof, like the house. The fences are of dry millet-stalks, which rise from eleven to fourteen feet high. In the garden or field-plot is often seen a pillar of stones, whereon stands the slinger, whose business it is to scare away the birds from the crops. The field-plot is often no more than a portion of the sloping river bank. At the season of our visit the plots were full of wheat, barley, and lupins. The kidney bean, with a purple blossom and very dark leaves, was beautiful; and so were the castor-oil and cotton plants.
Behind the dwelling which we visited, the dark stony desert came down to the very path, and among its scattered rocks lay, not at once distinguishable to the eye, the primitive burying-ground of the region. The graves were marked out with ovals of stones, and thorns were laid thick on the more recent ones. A dreary place it looked for the dead to lie in, but the view from it was beautiful; and especially of the hedge-like Lybian bank over the river, where the fringe of mimosas was all overgrown and compacted with bindweed of the brightest green.
I do not at present see that much can be done for the Nubians, as there certainly may for the Egyptians. In Egypt, the population once amounted to 8,000,000, or nearly so, while now it is supposed to be not more than 2,500,000; and there seems no reason why it should not, with the knowledge and skill of our own time, rise to what it once was, and exceed it. Everywhere there are tokens, even to the careless eye of a passing traveller, of land let out of cultivation – yielded up without a struggle to the great old enemy, the Desert, and even to the encroachments of the friendly Nile. There are signs that drainage is as much wanted as irrigation. However much the natural face of the country may be supposed to have changed, there is abundant evidence of wilful and careless lapse. In Nubia it is far otherwise. There, not only are the villages diminutive, – almost too small to be called hamlets, – and the sprinkling of people between them is so scanty as barely to entitle the country to be called inhabited, but this is clearly from the scarcity of cultivable land. That it was always so is hardly conceivable, when we think of the number of temples still visible between the first and second cataracts, and the many villages declared by Pliny to have studded both shores; but that it is to be helped now I do not see how anyone can show who has beheld the hopeless yellow desert, with its black volcanic rocks, coming down to the very river. As the people have no raw material for any manufacture, it is not easy to tell how they could prosper by other kinds of industry, if Egypt supplied them ever so plentifully with food. It appeared to us that they were diligent and careful in making the most of what they have. As soon as we crossed their frontier, we saw the piers which they preserve – the stone barriers once built out into the stream to arrest the mud as it is carried down, and thus obtain new land. There are so many of these as to be mischievous in some parts; as, when these piers are opposite to each other, they alter the currents and narrow the river. We saw dusky labourers on the banks, toiling with the hoe to form the soil into terraces and ledges, so as to make the most of it. From their diligence, it seems as if the Nubians had sufficient security to induce them to work, and their appearance is that of health, cheerfulness, and content. What more can be done for them, beyond perhaps improving their simple arts of life, it is difficult to say.
Simple enough, indeed, are their arts. Early one morning, when walking ashore, I came upon a loom which would excite the astonishment of my former fellow-townsmen, the Norwich weavers. A little pit was dug in the earth, under a palm; – a pit just big enough to hold the treadles and the feet of the weaver, who sits on the end of the pit. The beam was made of a slender palm stem, fixed into two blocks. The treadles were made of spines of the palm fixed into bits of stick. The shuttle was, I think, a forked twig. The cotton yarn was even, and the fabric good, that is, evenly woven. It was, though coarse, so thin that one might see the light through; but that was intended, and only appropriate to the climate. I might have wondered at such a fabric proceeding from such an apparatus, if I had not remembered the muslins of India, produced in looms as rude as this. It appears, too, from the paintings in the tombs, that the old Egyptian looms were of nearly as simple a construction, though the people were celebrated for their exports of fine linen and woollen stuffs. The stout-looking gay chequered sails of the boats, and the diversified dresses of the people represented in the tombs, were no doubt the produce of the rude looms painted up beside them. – The baskets made by the Nubians are strong and good. Their mats are neat; but neither so serviceable nor so pretty as those of India: but, then, these people have not such material as the Hindoos. Their ropemaking is a pretty sight – prettier even than an English ropewalk; though that is a treat to the eye. We often saw men thus employed – one end of their strands being tied to the top of a tall palm, while they stood at the other, throwing the strands round till they would twist no more.
As for the rent paid by the Nubians for their land, what we learned is this; but it must be observed that it is very difficult, in these countries, to obtain reliable information. In the most civilised parts, there are so few data, and in the more primitive, the people are so little in the habit of communicating with persons who are not familiar with their condition and ways, that it is scarcely possible to find any uniformity of testimony on any. matters of custom or arrangement, even the simplest. When the people tell of their taxes, the English traveller finds them so enormous that he is incredulous, or too indignant to carry away any accurate knowledge of the facts, unless he remembers that taxes in Egypt are not the same thing as taxes in Europe.
As I understand the matter, it is thus, with regard to these Nubians. The Pasha holds the whole land and river of Egypt and Nubia in fee-simple, except as much as he has given away, for its revenues, to favoured individuals; and his rents are included in what are called his taxes. In Egypt, the people pay tax on the land. In Nubia, they pay it on the sakias and paints. The palms, when large, pay a piastre and a quarter (about 3 d.) each, per annum: when small, three-fourths of a piastre. Each sakia pays a tax of three hundred and fifty piastres, or £ 3 10 S.; and the payer may appropriate as much land as the sakia will water. The quantity taken is usually from eight hundred to twelve hundred square yards.
The mode of collecting the taxes is quite another matter. By corruption in the agents, or a bad practice of taking the amount in kind, or on account, the collector fixing the marketable value of the produce, there may be cruel oppression. In Egypt, it is certain this oppression does exist to a dreadful extent. We did not happen to hear of it in Nubia; and I cannot say how it is there. But, be it as it may, it is a different question from the amount of tax.
What the peasant actually pays for is the land, as above-mentioned, the water-wheel itself, the excavation in which it works, the shed under which it stands, and the ox or pair of oxen by which it is driven. How far his bargain answers to him must depend on the marketable value of his produce, in a country little affected by variations of seasons. He has not, however, the advantage of an open market. There is nobody at hand to purchase, unless by the accident of a trading kandjia coming by; and he has not usually the means of sending far. The tax-collector must therefore commonly be his market; and not such a one as to enable the stranger to estimate his affairs with any accuracy. All we could do was to observe whether he seemed to have enough of his produce left over for the support of his family, and whether his land appeared to be well tilled. I can only repeat that the people we saw in Nubia looked generally healthful and contented; and that they seemed to be making the most of their little belts and corners of cultivable land. It is to be observed, however, that we remarked a great number of ruined villages, and that we could obtain no answer from either dragoman or Rais as to how this happened. They declared they did not know; and for once Alee had neither