Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau
to me that our only chance was in the mud-bank on which we had struck being within our depth. But it was a poor chance; for there was deep water and a strong current between us and the shore: and it was in an uninhabited part of the country. Of our own party, no one spoke. Mr. E. was the only one of us who understood these matters; and as he stood on the watch, we would not interrupt him by questions. Indeed, the case was plain enough; and I saw under his calmness that he felt this to be, as he afterwards told me, the most anxious moment of our adventures. Alee flew about giving orders amidst the rush of the wind; and the cook worked at the poling with all his strength. Even at such a moment I could not but be struck with the lights from the kitchen and the cabin shining on the struggling men and restless sail which were descending together to the water, and on the figures of the Rais, Alee, and another, as they stood on the gunwale, hauling at a rope which was fastened to the top of the mast. Amidst the many risks of the moment, the chief was that our tackle would not hold: and a crack was heard now and then among other awful noises. By this time, the inclination of the deck was such that it was impossible to stand, and I had to cling with all my strength to the window of the vestibule. For some time, the Rais feared to quit his hold of the rope on the gunwale; but at last he flung it away, threw off his clothes in a single instant, and sprang up the mast like a cat. His strong arms were what was wanted aloft. The sail was got in, and we righted. The standing straight on one's feet was like a strange new sensation after such a peril.
It was still some time before we were afloat again; and our crew were busy in the water till we were quite sorry for them. When we drifted off at last, our sail was spread again, and we went seething on through the opposing currents to find our proper anchorage at Wadee Halfa. And there again we had almost as much difficulty as before in getting in our sail. This is the worst of the lateen sails, which look so pretty, and waft one on so well. We were wrenched about, and carried down some way before we could moor.
The next morning was almost as cold as the night: but we preferred this to heat, – as our Business to-day was to ride through the western desert to the rock of Abooseer – the furthest point of our African travel. Before breakfast, the gentlemen took a walk on shore, being carried over the intervening mud. They saw a small village, and a school of six scholars. The boys wrote, to the master's dictation, with reed pens, on tablets of wood, smoothed over with some white substance. They wrote readily, and apparently well. The lesson was from the Kurán; and the master delivered it in a chaunting tone.
Two extremely small asses were brought down, to cross with us to the western bank. We crossed in a ferry-boat whose sail did not correspond very well with the climate. It was like a lace veil mended with ticking. Our first visit was to the scanty remains of an interesting old temple near the landing-place. On our way to it, we passed some handsome children, and a charming group of women under a large sycamore. We thought the people we saw here – the most southerly we should ever see – open-faced and good-looking. There are large cattle-yards and sheds in this scarcely-inhabited spot, which the Pasha has made a halting-place for his droves of cattle from Dongola. He continues to import largely from thence, to make up his losses from the murrain of 1843. We saw two large droves of as noble beasts as can be seen.
Near the remains of two other unmarked and less interesting buildings stand the columns of the temple begun, if not wholly erected, by two of the Theban kings, soon after the expulsion of the Shepherd race. The dates exist in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the pillars. This temple was built when the great edifices of Thebes were, for the most part, unthought of. El-Karnac was begun – its more humble halls – and El-Uksur might be surveyed, by that time, as a fitting site for a temple to answer to El-Karnac, but the El-Kurneh temple and the Ramaséum were not conceived of; for the sovereigns who built them were not born. The Memnon statues were yet in the quarry. The Pyramids were, it is now thought, about two thousand years old: and about this time Moses was watching the erection of the great obelisk (which we call Cleopatra's Needle) at Heliopolis, where he studied. If learned men are right in saying that the Philistines4 were of the race expelled from Thebes, they had, by the time this temple was built, settled themselves under the Lebanon and along the southern Syrian coasts, whence they were to be driven out when Moses should be in his grave. If, as some poets tell, Egyptus and Cadmus were among the Shepherd intruders driven out from the Thebaid, the fifty nieces of the one had by this time murdered his sons, their husbands, and the dragon's teeth of the other had sprung up into armed men. It is worth while to mention such fables as these last under their assigned dates; because we learn thereby to value as we ought the tangible and reliable records we meet in the Egyptian monuments, in contrast with the dim traditions of later born nations. We may also gather useful hints on the history and philosophy of art and science, from the mythi and the monuments together. There is writing on this temple: there is writing on the much older Pyramids: and it was only at the time of the erection of this temple that letters were carried into Greece. Here is a pillar which is believed to have suggested, in a subsequent age, the Doric column; the oldest of Greek pillars. Here it stands, remarkable for its many-sided form. It was to us now the oldest we had ever seen: but we afterwards saw some, more precisely what is called Doric, in the tombs of Benee Hasan. The columns of this temple are little more than bases. They are nearly all of the same height: some like mere heaps of stone; others bearing uninjured inscriptions. They are small remains: but long may they last! They are the ultimate record of their kind on the ordinary route of Nile travellers, and usually the first subject to their examination.
Our ride to the rock of Abooseer occupied an hour and a half. Thanks to the cool north wind, we highly enjoyed it. Our way lay through a complete desert, over sand-hills, and among stony tracts, where scarcely a trace of vegetation is to be seen. In such places the coloquintus is a welcome object, with its thick, milky leaves and stalks, and its velvet blossom. The creeping, thorny coloquintida, too, with its bitter apples, is a handsome plant: or it looked so to us, in the absence of others. Here and there amidst the dreary expanse, or half-hidden in some sandy dell, lay the bleached skeleton of a camel. The only living things seen were a brood of partridges and a jerboa – a graceful and most agile little creature, whose long, extended tail, with its tufted end, gave it a most distinctive appearance. Some of our people started off in pursuit, and would not give up for a long time, making extreme efforts to keep the little creature in view, and drive it in one another's way; but it baffled them at last, and got back to its hole.
We rode to the foot of the rock of Abooseer, and then ascended it – in rather heavy spirits, knowing that this was to be our last look southwards. The summit was breezy and charming. I looked down the precipice on which I stood, and saw a sheer descent to the Nile of two hundred feet. The waters were gushing past the foot of this almost perpendicular crag: and from holes in its strata flew out flocks of pigeons, blue in the sunshine. The scene all round under that wide heaven was wild beyond description. There was no moving creature visible but ourselves and the pigeons; and no trace of human habitation but the ruins of two mud huts, and of a white building on the Arabian shore. The whole scene was composed of desert, river, and black basaltic rocks. Round to the north, from the south-west, there is actually nothing to be seen but blackish, sand-streaked rocks near at hand, and sandy desert further off. To the north-east, the river winds away, blue and full, between sands. Two white sails were on it at the moment. From the river, a level sand extended to the soft tinted Arabian hills, whose varied forms and broken lights and shadows were on the horizon nearly from the north round to the south-east. These level sands then give place to a black rugged surface, which extends to where two summits – to-day of a bright amethyst hue – close the circuit of vision. These summits are at a considerable distance on the way to Dongola. The river is hidden among the black rocks to the south, and its course is not traceable till it peeps out, blue and bright, in two or three places, and hides itself again among the islets. It makes a great bend while thus hidden, and reappears much more to the east. It has now reached the part properly called the Second Cataract; and it comes sweeping down towards the rock on which we stood, dashing and driving among its thousand islets, and then gathering its thousand currents into one, to proceed calmly on its course. Its waters were turbid in the rapids, and looked as muddy where they poured down from shelf or boulder as in the Delta itself: but in all its calm reaches it reflected the sky in a blue so deep as it would not do to paint. The islets were of fantastic forms – worn by the cataracts of ages; but still, the outlines were angular, and the black ledges were graduated by the action