Tb 'tamped belo\v NILE NOTES. suft L** LO. NILE NOTES OF A HOWADJI. BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. NEW YORK: HAEPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN S Q L' A I>. E. \ O G3 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 1> T 5 O C 3 PREFACE, WHEN the Persian Poet Hafiz was asked by the Philoso- >Ler Zenda what he was good for, he replied: " Of what use is i ^c v .e\ 9 '" " A flower is good to smell," said the philosopher. " And I a,m good to emell it," said the poet. A foutra for the world and worldlings base, I sing of Africa and golden joys." King Henry IV., Part ii. " or I described Great Egypt's flaring sky, or Spain's cork groves." Robert Browning's " Paracelsus. " " If it be asked why it is called the Nile, the answer is, because it has beautiful and good water." Werne's " White Nile." " What, then, is a Howadji ?" said the Emperor of Ethiopia, draining a beaker of crocodile tears. " Howadji," replied the astute Arabian, " is our name for merchants ; and as only merchants travel, we so call travellers." " Allah- hu Akbar," said the Emperor of Ethiopia. " God is great." Linkum Fidelius's " Calm Crocodile, or the Sphinx unriddled." " He saw all the rarities at Cairo, as also the Pyramids, and sailing up the Nile, viewed the famous towns on each side of that river." Story of Ali Cogia, in the Arabian Nights. " Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices." Sir Thomas Browne. " There can one chat with mummies in a pyramid, and breakfast on basilisks' eggs. Thither, then, Homunculus Mandrake, son of the great Paracelsus ; languish no more in the ignorance of those clims, but abroad with alembic and crucible, and weigh anchor for Egypt." Death's Jest Book, or the Fool's Tragedy. CONTENTS, TAIil I. GOING TO BOULAK, .... .1 II. THE DRAG-6-MEN, ... .10 III. HADJI HAMED, 22 IV. THE IBIS SINGS, .... .29 V. THE CREW, 37 VI. THE IBIS FLIES, 47 VII. THE LANDSCAPE 54 VIII. TRACKING, 61 IX. FLYING, 67 X. VERDE GIOTANE AND FELLOW-MARINERS, . 71 XI. VERDE nu GIOVANE, 77 XII. ASYOOT, 85 XIII. THE SUN, 69 XIV. THEBES TRIUMPHANT, . . . . '.103 XV. THE CROCODILE, 105 XVI. GETTING ASHORE, 114 XVII. FAIR FRAILTY, 117 XVIII. FAIR FRAILTY CONTINUED, . . . 124 XIX. KUSHUK ARNEM, 130 XX. TERPSICHORE, 14C XXI. SAKIAS, 146 XXII. UNDER THE PALMS, 1 152 XXIIL ALMS! SHOPKEEPER! . . .165 X CONTEN TS. PAG* XXIV. SYENE, 168 XXV. TREATY OF SYENE 175 XXVI. THE CATARACT, 184 XXVII. NUBIAN WELCOME 192 XXVIII. PHILJS, 197 XXIX. A CROW THAT FLIES IN HEAVEN'S SWEETEST Am, 206 XXX. SOUTHWARD, 215 XXXI. ULTIMA THULE, 224 XXXII. NORTHWARD, 234 XXXIII. BY THE GRACE OF GOD, . . ... .250 XXXIV. FLAMINGOES 260 XXXV. CLEOPATRA .265 XXXVI. MEMNON 283 XXXVII. DEAD KINGS, 293 XXXVIII. BURIED, 300 XXXIX. DEAD QUEENS, 308 XL. ET CETERA, 312 XLl. THE MEMNONIUM, .... . 316 XLII. MEDEENET HABOO, 321 XLIII. KARNAK, 329 XLIV. PRUNING . 339 XLV. PER CONTRA, .346 XLVL MEMPHIS, 352 XI- VII. SUNSET, . ....... 361 NILE NOTE'3. I. GOING TO BOULAK, IN a gold and purple December sunset, the Pacha and I walked down to the boat at Boulak, the port of Cairo. The Pacha was my friend, and it does not concern you, gracious reader, to know if he were Sicilian, or Syrian ; whether he wore coat or kaftan, had a hareem, or was a baleful bachelor The air was warm, like a May evening in Italy Behind us, the slim minarets of Cairo spired shin- ingly in the brilliance, like the towers of a fairy city, under the sunset sea. These minarets make the Eastern cities so beauti- ful. The heavy mound-like domes and belfries of western Europe are of the earth, earthy. But the mingled mass of building, which a city is, soars lightly to the sky, in the lofty minarets on whose gold crescent crown the sun lingers and lingers, making them the earliest stars of evening. To our new eyes every thing was picture. Vainly the broad road was crowded with Muslin' artisans 1 2 NILE NOTES home-returning from their work. To the mere Muslim observer, they were carpenters, masons laborers, and tradesmen of all kinds. We passed many a meditating Cairene, to whom there was no- thing but the monotony of an old story in that even- ing and on that road. But we saw all the pageantry of oriental romance quietly donkeying into Cairo. Camels, too, swaying and waving like huge phantoms of the twilight, horses with strange gay trappings curbed by tawny, turbaned equestrians, the peaked toe of the red slipper resting in the shovel stirrup. It was a fair festal evening. The whole world was masquerading, and so well that it seemed reality. I saw Fadladeen with a gorgeous turban and a gay sash. His chibouque, wound with colored silk and gold threads, was borne behind him by a black slave. Fat and funny was Fadladeen as of old ; and thoffgh Fermorz was not by, it was clear to see in the languid droop of his eye, that choice Arabian verses were sung by the twilight in his mind. Yet was Venus still the evening star ; for behind him, closely veiled, came Lalla Rookh. She was wrapped in a vast black silken bag, that bulged like a balloon over her donkey. But a star-suffused evening cloud w T as that bulky blackness, as her twin eyes shone forth liquidly lustrous. Abon Hassan sat at the city gate, and I saw Har- GOING TO BOULAK. 3 oun Alrashid quietly coming up in that disguise of a Moussoul merchant. I. could not but wink at Abon, for I knew him so long ago in the Arabian Nights. But he rather stared than saluted, as friends may, in a masquerade. There was Sinbad the porter, too, hurrying to Sinbad the Sailor. I turned and watched his form fade in the twilight, yet I doubt if he reached Bagdad in time for the eighth history. Scarce had he passed, when a long string of donkeys ambled by, bearing, each, one of the inflated balloons. It was a hareem taking the evening air. A huge eunuch was the captain, and rode before. They are bloated, dead-eyed creatures, the eunuchs but there be no eyes of greater importance to marital minds. The ladies came gaily after, in single file, chatting together, and although Araby's daughters are still born to blush unseen, they looked earnestly upon the staring strangers. Did those strangers long to behold that hidden beauty? Could they help it if all the softness and sweetness of hidden faces radiated from melting eyes ? Then came Sakkas men with hog skins slung over their backs, full of water. I remembered the land and the time of putting wine into old bottles, and was shoved back beyond glass. Pedlers swarthy fatalists in lovely lengths of robe and tur- 4 NILE NOTES. ban, cried their wares. To our Frank ears, it was mere Babel jargon. Yet had erudite Mr. Lane accompanied us, Mr. Lane, the eastern Englishman, who has given us so many golden glimpses into the silence and mystery of oriental life, like a good genius revealing to ardent lovers the very hallowed heart of the hareem, we should hare understood those cries. We should have heard "Sycamore figs O Grapes" meaning that said figs were offered, and the sweetness of sense and sound that " grape ' hath was only bait for the attention ; or " Odors of Paradise, O flowers of the henna," causing Muslim maidens to tingle to their very nails' ends ; or, indeed, these pedler poets, vending water-melons, sang, "Con- soler of the embarrassed, O Pips." Were they not poets, these pedlers, and full of all oriental extrava- gance ? For the sweet association of poetic names shed silvery sheen over the actual article offered. The unwary philosopher might fancy that he was buy- ing comfort in a green water-melon, and the pietist dream of mementoes of heaven, in the mere earthly vanity of henna. But the philanthropic merchant of sour limes cries, " God make them light limes" meaning not the fruit nor the stomach of the purchaser, but his purse. And what would the prisoners of the pass- GOING TO BOULAK. 3 ing black balloons say to the ambiguousness of " The work of the bull, O maidens !" innocently indicating a kind of cotton cloth made by bull- moved machinery ? Will they never have done with hieroglyphics and sphinxes, these Egyptians? Here a man, rose-embowered, chants, "The rose is a thorn, from the sweat of the prophet it bloomed" meaning simply, "Fresh roses." These are masquerade manners, but they are pleasant. The maiden buys not henna only, but a thought of heaven. The poet not water-melons only, but a dream of consolation, which truly he will need. When shall we hear in Broadway, " Spring blush of the hillsides, strawberries," or "Breast buds of Venus, O milk." Never, never, until milkmen are turbaned and berrywomen bal- looned. A pair of Persians wound among these pedlers, clad in their strange costume. They wore high shaggy hats and undressed skins, and in their girdles shone silver-mounted pistols and daggers. They had come into the West, and were loitering along, amazed at what was extremest East to us. They had been famous in Gotham, no Muscat envoy more admired. But nobody stared at them here except us. We were the odd and observed. We had stray ecTTn to The universal revel, and had forgotten 6 NILE NOTES. to don turbans at the gate. Pyramids ! thought I, to be where Persians are commonplace. In this brilliant bewilderment we played only the part of Howadji, which is the universal name foi traveller the " Forestiero" of Italy. It signifies merchant or shopkeeper ; and truly the Egyptians must agree with the bilious Frenchman that the English are a nation of shopkeepers, seeing them swarm forever through his land. For those who dwell at Karnak and in the shadow of Memnon, who build their mud huts upon the Edfoo Temple, and break up Colossi for lime, can not imagine any travel but that for direct golden gain. Belzoni was held in the wiser native mind to be a mere Douster- swivel of a treasure-hunter. Did not Hamed Aga come rushing two days' journey with two hundred men, and demand of him that large golden cock full of diamonds and pearls ? Think how easily the Arabian Nights must have come to such men ! Sublime stupidity ! O Egyptians. And so advancing, ttye massively foliaged acacias bowered us in golden gloom. They fringed and arched the long road. Between their trunks, like noble columns of the foreground, we saw the pyra- mids rosier in the western rosiness. Their forms were sculptured sharply in the sunset. We knew that they were on the edge of the desert ; that their GOINOTOBODLAK. 7 awful shadows darkened the sphinx. For so fair and festal is still the evening picture in that delicious climate, in that poetic land. We breathed the golden air, and it bathed our eyes with new vision. Peach-Blossom, who came with us from Malta, solemnly intent " to catch the spirit of the East,'' could not have resisted the infection of that en- chanted evening. I know you will ask me if an Eastern book can not be written without a dash of the Arabian Nights, if we can not get on without Haroun Alrashid. No, impatient reader, the East hath, throughout, that fine flavor. The history of Eastern life is embroidered to our youngest eyes in that airy arabesque. What, to even many of us very wise ones, is the history of Bagdad, more than the story of our revered caliph ? Then the romance of travel is real. It is the man going to take possession of the boy's heritage, those dear dreams of stolen school-hours over wild ro- mance ; and in vain would he separate his poetry from his prose. Given a turban, a camel, or a palm tree, and Zobeide, the Princess Badoura and the youngest brother of the Barber step forward into the prose of experience. For as we leave the main road and turn finally from the towers, whose gold is graying now, behold the parting picture and confess the East. 8 NILE NOTES. The moon has gathered the golden light in hei shallow cup, and pours it paler over a bivouac of camels, by a sheik's white-domed tomb. They growl and blubber as they kneel with their packs of dates, and almonds, and grain, oriental freight mostly, while others are already down, still as sphinxes. The rest sway their curved necks silently, and glance contemptuously at the world. The drivers, in dark turbans and long white robes, coax and command. The dome of the sheik's crumbling tomb is whiter in the moonlight. The brilliant bustle recedes behind those trees. A few Cairenes pass by unnoticing, but we are in desert depths. For us all the caravans of all Arabian ro- mance are there encamping. The Howadji reached at length the Nile, gleam- ing calm in the moonlight. A fleet of river boats lay moored to the steep stony bank. The Nile and the Pyramids had bewitched the night ; for it was full of marvellous pictures and told tales too fair. Yet do not listen too closely upon the shore, lest we hear the plash and plunge of a doomed wife or slave. These things have not passed away. This luxuriant beauty, this poetry of new impressions, have their balance. This tropical sun suckles serpents with the same light that adorns the gorgeous flow ers. In the lush jungle, splendid tigers lurk ah GOING TO BOULAK. 9 in our poetic Orient beauty is more beautiful, but deformity more deformed. The excellent EfFendi or paternal Pacha has twenty or two hundred wives, and is, of necessity, unfaithful. But if the ballooned Georgian or Circassian slips up, it is into the re- morseless river. Yet with what solemn shadows do these musings endow the Egyptian moonlight. They move invisi- ble over the face of the waters, and evoke another creation. Columbus sailed out of the Mediterranean to a new world. We have sailed into it, to a new one. The South seduces now, as the West of old. When we reach one end of the world, the other has receded into romantic dimness, and beckons us backward to explore,. The Howadji seek Cathay In the morning, with wide-winged sails, we shall fly beyond our history. Listen ! How like a ped- ler-poet of Cairo chanting his wares, moans Time through the Eternity " Cobwebs and fable, history!" II. THE DRAG'-O-MEN. As we stepped on board, we should have said, " In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful." For so say all pious Muslim, undertaking an arduous task ; and so let all pious Howadji exclaim when they set forth with any of those " guides, 'philoso- phers, and friends," the couriers of the Orient the Dragomen. These gentry figure well in the Eastern books. The young traveller, already enamored of Eothen's Dhemetri, or "VVarburton's Mahmoud, or Harriet Marti neau's Alee, leaps ashore, expecting to find a very Pythias to his Damon mood, and in his constant companion to embrace a concrete Orient. These are his Alexandrian emotions and hopes. Those poets, Harriet and Eliot, are guilty of much. Possibly as the youth descends the Lebanon to Beyrout, five months later, he will still confess that it was the concrete Orient ; but own that he knew not the East, in those merely Mediterranean moods of hope and romantic reading. THE DRAGOMEN. 11 The Howadji lands at Alexandria, and is immedi- ately invested by long lines of men in bright tur- bans and baggy breeches. If you have a slight poetic tendency, it is usually too much for you You succumb to the rainbow sash and red slippers. " Which is Alee ?" cry you, in enthusiasm ; and lo ! all are Alee. No, but with Dhemetri might there not be rich Eastern material and a brighter Eothen ? Yes, but all are Dhemetri. " Mahmoud, Mah- moud !" and the world of baggy breeches responds, " Yes, sir." If you are heroic, you dismiss the confusing crowd, and then the individuals steal separately and secret- ly to your room and claim an audience. They have volumes of their own praise. Travelling Cockaigne has striven to express its satisfaction in the most graceful and epigrammatic manner. The " charac- ters" in all the books have a sonnet-like air, each fill- ing its page, and going to the same tune. There is no scepticism, and no dragoman has a fault. Records of such intelligence, such heroism, such perseverance, honesty and good cooking, exist in no other litera- ture. It is Eothen and the other poets in a more portable form. Some Howadji can not resist the sonnets and the slippers, and take the fatal plunge even at Alexan- dria. Wines and the ecstatic Irish doctor did so 12 A* I LE NOTES. under our eyes, and returned six weeks later to Cairo, from the upper Nile, with just vigor enough remaining to get rid of their man. For the Turkish costume and the fine testimonials are only the illu- minated initials of the chapter. Very darkly mo- notonous is the reading that follows. The Dragoman is of four species : the Maltese, or the able knave, the Greek, or the cunning knave, the Syrian, or the active knave, and the Egyp- tian, or the stupid knave. They wear, generally, the Eastern costume. But the Maltese and the Greeks often sport bad hats and coats, and call themselves Christians. They are the most igno- rant, vain, incapable, and unsatisfactory class of men that the wandering Howadji meets. They travel constantly the same route, yet have no eyes to see nor ears to hear. If on the Kile, they smoke and sleep in the boat. If on the desert, they smoke and sleep on the camel. If in Syria, they smoke and sleep, if they can, on the horse. It is their own comfort their own convenience and profit, which they constantly pursue. The Howadji is a bag of treasure thrown by a kind fate upon their shores, and they are the wreckers who squeeze, tear, and pull him, top, bottom, and sideways, to bleed him of his burden. They should be able to give you every information THE UKAGOMEN. 13 about your boat, and what is necessary, and what useless. Much talk you do indeed get, and assurance that every tiling will be accurately arranged ; but you are fairly afloat upon the Nile before you dis- cover how lost upon the dragoman have been all his previous voyages. With miserable weakness they seek to smooth the moment, and perpetually baffle your plans, by tell- ing you not the truth, but what they suppose you wish the truth to be. . Nothing is ever more than an hour or two distant. They involve you in absurd arrangements because " it is the custom ;" and he is a hardy Howadji who struggles against the vis iner- tiae of ignorant incapacity and miserable cheating through the whole tour. Active intelligence on the Howadji's part is very disgusting to them. If he scrutinize his expenses, if he pretend to know his own will or way much more to have it executed, the end of things clearly approaches to the dragomanic mind. The small knaveries of cheating in the price of every thing purchased, and in the amount of bucksheesh or gra- tuity on all occasions, are not to be seriously heeded, because they are universal. The real evils are the taking you out of your way for their, own comfort, the favoring a poor resting place or hotel, because they are well paid there, and the universally 14 NILE NOTES. unreliable information that they afford. "Were they good servants, it were some consolation. But a ser- vile Eastern can not satisfy the western idea of good service. Perhaps it was a bad year for dragomen, as it was for potatoes. But such was the result of universal testimony. Nero found a Greek at Alexandria, whose recom- mendations from men known to him were quite en- thusiastic. He engaged him, and the dragoman was the sole plague of Nero's Egyptian experience, but one combining the misery of all the rest. There were Wind and Rain, too, whose man was a crack dragoman, and of all such, oh ! enthusiastic reader, especially beware. They returned to Cairo chant- ing "miserere miserere" and in the spring, sought solace in the bosom of the scarlet Lady at Jerusalem. For which latter step, however, not even irate I, hold the dragoman responsible. Mutton Suet's man furnished his Nile larder, at the rate of eight boxes of sweet biscuit, and twenty bottles of pickles to two towels a lickerous larder, truly, but I am convinced Mutton Suet's man's palate required sharp stimulants. The little Verde Giovane and Gunning changed their dragoman weekly while they remained at Cairo. The difficulty was not all on one side. The THE DRAGOMEN 1 . 15 dragoman wanted to be master, and Verde knew not how to help it, and Gunning was ill of a fever. Those excellent Howadji did not recover from the East without a course of a half-dozen dragomen. But most melancholy was the case of a Howadji, whom we met wandering in the remote regions of the Nile. He was a kind of flying Dutchman, al- ways gliding about in a barque haunted by a drago- man, and a reis or captain, who would not suffer him to arrive anywhere. The moons of three months had waxed and waned since they left Cairo. Winds never blew for that unhappy boat, currents were always adverse, illness and inability seized the crew. Landing at lonely towns the dragoman sold him his own provisions, previously sent ashore for the purpose, at an admirable advance. Gradu- ally he was becoming the Ancient Mariner of the Nile. He must have grown grisly, I am sure that he was sad. One day as the fated boat ordahabieh came spec- trally sliding over the calm, our dragoman told us the story with sardonic smiles, and we looked with awful interest at the haunted barque. I saw the demoniac dragoman smoking by the kitchen, and the crew, faintly rowing, sang the slowest of slow songs. The flag, wind-rent and sun-bleached, clung in motionless despair to the mast. The sails were 16 NILE NOTES. furled away almost out of sight. It was a windless day, and the sun shone spectrally. I looked for the mariner, but saw only a female figure in a London bonnet sitting motionless at the cabin window. The dragoman-ridden was probable putting on his hat. Was it a game of their despair to play arriving, and getting ready to go for the lady sat as ladies sit in steamers, when they near the wharf or was this only a melancholy remembrance of days and places, when they could don hat and bon- net, and choose their own way or simply a mood of madness ? They passed, and we saw them no more. I never heard of them again. They are still sailing on, doubtless, and you will hear the slow song and see the unnecessary bonnet, and behold a Howadji buy- ing his "own provisions. Say " Pax vobiscum" as they pass, nor bless the dragomen. I heard but one Howadji speak well of his drago- man, and he only comparatively and partially. At Jerusalem the Rev. Dr. Duck dismissed his Maltese, and took an Egyptian which was the Rev. Dr. Duck's method of stepping from the pan into the fire. At the same time, . Eschylus, not our Greek, but a modern man of affairs, and not easily appalled at circumstances, banished his brace of Maltese, and THE DRAGOMEN. 17 declared that he was wild with dragomen, and did not believe a decent one could exist. Yet Eschylus, in sad seriousness of purpose to accomplish the East, took another dragoman at Jerusalem, a baleful mortal with one eye, and a more able bandit than the rest. For this man Eschylus paid twenty piastres a day, board, at the hotel in Jerusalem. Polyphemus requested him with a noble frankness not to give the money to him, but to pay it directly to the landlord in person meanwhile he delayed him, and delayed, in Jerusalem, until at parting, the landlord with equal frankness told Eschylus, that he was obliged to refund to the drago- men every thing paid for them, as otherwise he would discover that some cat or dog had twitched his table cloths, and destroyed whole services of glass and china and this best hotel in the East, was to be discontinued for that and similar reasons. For the landlord had sparks of human sympathy even with mere Howadji, and the dragomen had sworn his ruin. All Howadji were taken to another house, and it was only by positive insistance that we reached this. Of all the knavery of Polyphemus, this book would not contain the history. At the end Eschy- lus told him quietly, that he had robbed him re- peatedly that since engaging him he had heard 18 NILE NOTES. that he was a noted scamp, that he had been inso- lent to Madame Eschylus that, in short waxing warm as he perorated, that he was a damned rascal- Then he paid him, for litigation is useless in the East, where the Christian word is valueless, in formed him that all English Howadji should be informed of his name and nature, after which, Poly- phemus endeavored to kiss his hand ! Then consider Leisurelie's Domenico Chiesa, Sunday Church, " begging your pardon, sir, I am il primo dragomano del mondo, the first dragoman in the world." " Domenico," said Leisurelie one day in Jerusa- lem, "where is Mount Calvary?" You know, my young friend of fourteen years, that it is in the church of the holy sepulchre but il primo drago- mano del mondo waved his hand vaguely around the horizon, with his eyes wandering about the far blue mountains of Moab, and " O begging your pardon, sir, it's there, just there." Such are our Arabic interpreters, such your con- crete Orient. Yet if you believe all your dragoman says if you will only believe that he does know something, and put your nose into his fingers, you will go very smoothly to Beyrout, dripping gold all the way, and then improvise a brief pean in the book of sonnets. But if the Howadji mean to be THE DRAGOMEN. 19 master u* : , romance will unroll like a cloud wreath from tt .it T.oetic tawny friend, and he will find all and more than the faults of a European courier, with none of his capacities. O, golden-sleeved Commander of the Faithful, what a prelude to your praises. For Mohammed was the best we saw, and so agreed all who knew him. Dogberry *?as already his Laureate. Moham- med was truly " volerable and not to be endured." He was ignorant, vain, and cowardly, but fairly honest, extremelv good-humored, and an abomina- ble cook. He was t devout Muslim, and had a pious abhorrence of ham. His deportment was grave and pompous, blending ihe Turkish and Egyptian ele- ments of his parentage. Like a child he shrunk and shrivelled under the least pain or exposure. But he loved the high places and the sweet morsels ; and to be called of men, Effendi, dilated his soul with delight. He was always well dressed in the Egyptian manner, and bent in awful reverence be- fore " them old Turks" who, surrounded by a mul- titudinous hareem, and an army of slaves, were the august peerage of his imagination. His great glory, however, was a golden-sleeved bournouse of goat's hair, presented to him at Da- mascus by some friendly Howadji. This he gath- ered about him on all convenient occasions to 20 NILE NOTES. create an impression. At the little towns on the Nile, and among the Arabs of the desert, how im- posing was the golden-sleeved Commander ! Occa- sionally he waited at dinner in this robe and then was never Jove so superbly served. Yet the gran- deur, as usual, was inconsonant with agility, and many a wrecked dish of pudding or potatoes paid the penalty of splendor. So here our commander of the faithful steps into history, goldenly arrayed. Let him not speak for himself. For, although his English was intelligi- ble and quite sufficient, yet he recognized no auxili- ary but " fo," and no tense but the present. Hence, when he wished to say that the tobacco would be milder when it had absorbed the water, he darkly suggested. " He be better when he be drink his water ;" and a huge hulk of iron lying just outside Cairo, was " the steamer's saucepan ;" being the boiler of a Suez steamer. Nor will the Pacha for- get that sunny Syrian morning, when the com- mander led us far and far out of our way for a " short cut." Wandering, lost, and tangled in flaunting flowers, through long valleys and up steep hillsides, we emerged at length upon the path which we ought never to have left, and the good commander lighting his chibouque with the air of a general lighting his cigar after victory, announced impres- THE DRAGOMEN. 21 sively, " I be found that way by my sense, by my head!" Too vain to ask or to learn, he subjected us to the same inconveniences day after day, for the past disappears from the dragomanic mind as ut- terly as yesterday's landscape from his eye. The moon brightened the golden sleeve that first Nile evening, as the commander descended the steep bank, superintending the embarking of the luggage ; and while he spreads the cloth and the crew gather about the kitchen to sing, we will hang in our gallery the portrait of his coadjutor, Hadji Hamed, the cook. III. HADJI HAMED. I WAS donkeying one morning through the bazaars of Cairo, looking up at the exquisitely elaborated overhanging lattices, wondering if the fences of Paradise were not so rarely inwrought, dreaming of the fair Persian slave, of the Princess Shemselnihar, the three ladies of Bagdad, and other mere star dust, my eye surfeiting itself the while with forms and costumes that had hitherto existed only in poems and pictures, when I heard suddenly, " Have you laid in any potatoes ?" and beheld beam- ing elderly John Bull by my side. "It occurred to me." said he, "that the long days upon the Nile might be a little monotonous, and I thought the dinner would be quite an event." " Allah !" cried I, as the three ladies of Bagdad faded upon my fancy, " I thought we should live on sunsets on the Nile." The beaming elderly Bull smiled quietly and glanced at his gentle rotundity, while I saw bottles. HADJI HAMED. 23 boxes, canisters, baskets, and packages of all sizes laid aside in the shop little anti-monotonous arrangements for the Nile. " I hope you have a good cook," said John Bull, as he moved placidly away upon his donkey, and was lost in the dim depths of the bazaar. Truly we were loved of the Prophet, for our cook was also a Mohammed, an Alexandrian, and doubt- less especially favored, not for his name's sake only, but because he had been a pilgrim to Mecca, and hence a Hadji forever after. It is a Mohammedan title, equivalent to our "major" and "colonel" as a term of honor, with this difference, that with us it is not always necessary to have been a captain to be called such ; but in Arabia is no man a Hadji who has not performed the Mecca pilgrimage. Whether a pilgrimage to Paris, and devotion to sun- dry shrines upon the Boulevards, had not been as advantageous to Hadji Hamed as kissing the holy Mecca-stone, was a speculation which we did not indulge ; for his cuisine was admirable. Yet I sometimes fancied the long lankness of the Hadji Hamed's figure, streaming in his far-flowing whiteness of garment up the Boulevards, and claim- ing kindred with the artistes of the " Cafe" or of the "Maison doree." They would needs have sacrebleu'd. Yet might the Hadji have well challenged them to 24 NILE NOTES. the " kara kooseh," or " vvarah inahshee," or the " yakhnee," nor have feared the result. Those are the cabalistic names of stuffed gourds, of a kind of mince-pie in a pastry of cabbage leaves, and of a stewed meat seasoned with chopped onions. Nor is the Christian palate so hopelessly heretic that it can not enjoy those genuine Muslim morsels. For we are nothing on the Nile if not eastern. The Egyptians like sweet dishes ; even fowls they stuff with raisins, and the rich conclude their repasts with draughts of khushaf a water boiled with raisins and sugar, and flavored with rose. Mr. Lane says it is the " sweet water" of the Persians. And who has dreamed through the Arabian Nights that could eat without a thrill, lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts, or quaff sherbet of roses, haply of violet, without a vision of Haroun's pavilion and his lovely ladies ? Is a pastry cook's shop a mere pastry cook's shop, when you eat cheesecakes there ? Shines not the Syrian sun suddenly over it, making all the world Damascus, and all people Agib, and Benreddin Hassan, and the lady of beauty? Even in these slightest details no region is so purely the property of the imagination as the East. We know it only in poetry, and although there is dirt and direful deformity, the traveller sees it no more than the fast-flying swallow, to whom the dreadful HADJI HAMED. 25 mountain abysses and dumb deserts are but soft shadows and shining lights in his air-seen picture of the world. The materials for this poetic Eastern larder are very few upon the Nile ; chickens and mutton are the staple, and chance pigeons shot on the shore, during a morning's stroll. The genius of the artiste is shown in his adroit arrangement and concealment of this monotonous material. Hadji Hamed's genius was Italian, and every dinner was a success. He made every dinner the event which Bull was con- vinced it would be, or ought to be ; and, perhaps, after all, the Hadji's soft custard was much the same as the sunset diet of which, in those Cairo days, I dreamed. Our own larder was very limited j for as we sailed slowly along those shores of sleep, we observed too intense an intimacy of the goats with the sheep. The white-bearded goats wandered too much at their own sweet will with the unsuspecting lambs, or the not all unwilling elderly sheep. The natives are not fastidious, and do not mind a mellow goat- flavor. They drink a favorite broth made of the head, feet, skin, wool, and hoofs, thrust into a pot and half boiled. Then they eat, with unction, the unctuous remains. We began bravely with roast and boiled ; but orders were issued, at length, that o 26 NILE NOTES. no more sheep should be bought, so sadly convinced were the Howadji that evil communications corrupt good mutton. Yet in Herodotean days, the goats were sacred to one part of Egypt, and sheep to another. The Thebans abstained from sheep, and sacrificed goats only. For they said, that Hercules was very desir- ous of seeing Jupiter, but Jupiter was unwilling to be seen. As Hercules persisted, however, Jupiter flayed a ram, cut off the head and held it before his face, and having donned the fleece, so showed himself to Hercules hence, our familiar Jupiter Ammon. But those of the Mendesian district, still says Herodotus, abstained from goats, and sacrificed sheep. For $hey said that Pan was one of the origi- nal eight gods, and their sculptors and painters represented him with the face and legs of a goat. Why they did so, Herodotus prefers not to mention ; as, indeed, our good father of history was so careful of his children's morals, that he usually preferred not to mention precisely what they most wish to know. It is curious to find that the elder Egyptians had the Jewish and Mohammedan horror of swine. The swine-herds were a separate race, like the headsmen of some modern lands, and married among them- HADJI HAMEP. 27 selves. Herodotus knows, as usual, why swine were abhorred, except on the festivals of the moon and of Bacchus, but as usual considers it more becoming not to mention the reason. Is it not strange, as we sweep up the broad river, to see the figure of that genial, garrulous old gossip, stalking vaguely through the dim morning twilight of history, plainly seeing what we can never know, audibly conversing with us of what he will, but ignoring what we wish, and answering no questions forever? One of the profoundest mysteries of the Egyptian belief, and, in lesser degrees, of all antique faiths, constantly and especially symbolized through- out Egypt, Herodotus evidently knew perfectly from his friendship with the priests, but perpetually his conscience dictates silence. Amen, O venerable Father. I knew some bold Howadji who essayed a croco- dile banquet. They were served with crocodile chops and steaks, and crocodile boiled, roasted, and stewed. They talked very cheerfully of it afterward ; but ' each one privately confessed that the flesh tasted like abortive lobster, saturated with musk. Hadji Hamed cooked no crocodile, and had no golden-sleeved garment. He wore 'eree or cotton drawers, past their prime, and evidently originally made for lesser legs. That first evening he fluttered 28 NILE NOTES. about the deck in a long white robe, like a solemn- faced wag playing ghost in a churchyard. By day he looked like a bird of prey, with long legs and a hooked bill. IV. THE IBIS SINGS, WHILE the Hadji Hamed fluttered about the deck, and the commander served his kara kooseh, the crew gathered around the bow and sang. . The stillness of early evening had spelled the river, nor was the strangeness dissolved by that singing. The men crouched in a circle upon the deck, and the reis, or captain, thrummed the tara- buka, or Arab drum, made of a fish-skin stretched upon a gourd. Raising their hands, the crew clap- ped them above their heads, in perfect time, not ringingly, but with a dead dull thump of the palms moving the whole arm to bring them together. They swung their heads from side to side, and one clanked a chain in unison. So did these people long before the Ibis nestled to this bank, long before there were Americans to listen. For when Diana was divine, and thousands of men and women came floating down the Nile in 30 NILE NOTES. barges tc celebrate her festival, they sang and clapped, played the castanets and flute, stifling the voices of Arabian and Lybian echoes with a wild roar of revelry. They, too, sang a song that came to them from an unknown antiquity, Linus, their first and only song, the dirge of the son of the first, king of Egypt. This might have been that dirge that the crew sang in a mournful minor. Suddenly one rose and led the song, in sharp jagged sounds, formless as lightning. " He fills me the glass full and gives me to drink," sang the leader, and the low meas- ured chorus throbbed after him, " Hummeleager malooshee." The sounds were not a tune, but a kind of measured recitative. It went on constantly faster and faster, exciting them, as the Shakers excite themselves, until a tall gaunt Nubian rose in the moonlight and danced in trie centre of the cir- cle, like a gay ghoul among his fellows. The dancing was monotonous, like the singing, a simple jerking of the muscles. He shook his arms from the elbows like a Shaker, and raised himself alternately upon both feet. Often the leader re- peated the song as a solo, then the voices died away, the ghoul crouched again, and the hollow throb of the tarabuka continued as an accompani- ment to the distant singing of Nero's crew, which THE IBIS SINGS. 31 came in fitful gusts through the little grove of sharp slim masts " If you meet my sweetheart, Give her my respects." The melancholy monotony of this singing in unison harmonized with the vague feelings of that first Nile night. The simplicity of the words became the perpetual childishness of the men, so that it was not ludicrous. It was clearly the music and words of a race just better than the brutes. If a poet could translate into sound the expression of a fine dog's face, or that of a meditative cow, the Howadji would fancy that he heard Nile music. For, after all, that placid and perfect animal ex- pression would be melancholy humanity. And with the crew only the sound was sad ; they smiled and grinned and shook their heads with intense satisfaction. The evening and the scene c? were like a chapter of Mungo Park. I heard the African mother sing to him as he lay sick upon her mats, and the world and history forgotten, those strange sad sounds drew me deep into the dumb mystery of Africa. But the musical Howadji will find a fearful void in his Eastern life. The Asiatic has no ear and no soul for music. Like other savages and children 32 NILE NOTES. he loves a noise and he plays on shrill jipes on the tarabuka, on the tar or tambourine, and a sharp one-stringed fiddle, or rabab. Of course, in your first oriental days, you will decline no invitation, but you will grow gradually deaf to all entreaties of friends ox dragomen to sally forth and hear music. You will remind him that you did not come to the East to go to Bedlam. This want of music is not strange, for silence is natural to the East and the tropics. When, sitting quietly at home, in midsummer, sweeping ever sun- ward in the growing heats, we at length reach the tropics in the fixed fervor of a July noon, the day is rapt, the birds are still, the wind swoons, and the burning sun glares silence on the world. The Orient is that primeval and perpetual noon. That very heat explains to you the voluptuous elaboration of its architecture, the brilliance of its costume, the picturesqueness of its life. But no* Mozart was needed to sow Persian gardens with roses breathing love and beauty, no Beethoven to build mighty Himalayas, no Rossini to sparkle and sing with the birds and streams. Those realities are there, of w r hich the composers are the poets to western imaginations. In the East, you feel and see music, but hear it never. Yet in Cairo and Damascus the poets sit at the THE IBIS SINGS. 33 cafes, surrounded by the forms and colors of their songs, and recite the romances of the Arabian Nights, or of Aboo Zeyd, or of Antar, with no other accompaniment than the tar or the rabab, then called the " poet's viol," and in the same monotonous strain. Sometimes the single strain is touching, as when on our way to Jerusalem, the too enamored camel-driver, leading the litter of the fair Armenian, saddened the silence of the desert noon with a Syrian song. The high shrill notes trembled and rang in the air. The words said little, but the sound was a lyric of sorrow. The fair Armenian listened silently as the caravan wound slowly along, her eyes musily fixed upon the east, where the flower-fringed Euphrates flows through Bagdad to the sea. The fair Armenian had her thoughts and the camel-driver his ; also the accompanying Howadji listened and had theirs. The Syrian songs of the desert are very sad. They harmonize with the burning monotony of the landscape in their long recitative and shrill wail. The camel steps more willingly to that music, but the Howadji, swaying upon his back, is tranced in the sound, so naturally born of si lence. Meanwhile our crew are singing, although we 34 NILE NOTES. have slid upo'n their music and the moonlight, far forward into the desert. But these are the forms and feelings that their singing suggested. While they sang I wandered over Sahara, and was lost in the lonely Libyan hills, a thousand simple stories, thousand ballads of love and woe, trooped like drooping birds through the sky-like vagueness of my mind. Rosamond Grey, and the child of Elle passed phantom-like with veiled faces, for love, and sorrow, and delight, are cosmopolitan, building bowers indiscriminately of palm-treees or of pines. The voices died away like the muezzins', whose cry is the sweetest and most striking of all eastern sounds. It trembles in long rising and falling cadences from the balcony of the minaret, more humanly alluring than bells, and more respectful of the warm stillness of Syrian and Egyptian days. Heard in Jerusalem it has especial power. You sit upon your housetop reading the history whose pro- foundest significance is simple and natural in that inspiring clime and as your eye wanders from the aerial dome of Omar, beautiful enough to have been a dome of Solomon's temple, and over the olives of Gethsemane climbs the mount of Olives the balmy air is suddenly filled with a murmurous cry like a cheek suddenly rose-suffused a sound near, and far, and everywhere, but soft, and vibrating, and alluring, THE IBIS SINGS. 35 until you would fain don turban, kaftan, and slip- pers, arid kneeling in the shadow of a cypress on the sun-flooded marble court of Omar, would be the mediator of those faiths, nor feel yourself a recreant Christian. Once I heard the muezzin cry from a little village on the edge of the desert, in the starlight, before the dawn. It was only a wailing voice in the air. The spirits of the desert were addressed in their own language, or was it themselves lamenting, like water spirits to the green boughs overhanging them, that they could never know the gladness of the green world, but were forever demons and deni- zens of the desert? But the tones trembled away without echo or response into the starry solitude ; Al-la-hu ak-bar, Al-la-hu ak-bar ! So with songs and pictures, with musings, and the dinner of a Mecca pilgrim, passed the first evening upon the Nile. The Ibis clung to the bank at Boulak all that night. We called her Ibis be- cause the sharp lateen sails are most like wings, upon the Egyptian Nile was no winged thing of fairer fame. We prayed Osiris that the law of his religion might yet be enforced against winds and waves. For whoever killed an Ibis, by accident or willfully, necessarily suffered death. The Lotus is a sweeter name, but consider all the 36 NILE NOTES. poets who have so baptized their boats ! Besides, soothly saying, this dahabieh of ours, hath no flower semblance, and is rather fat than fairy. The zealous have even called their craft Papyrus, but poverty has no law. V. WE are not quite off yet. Eastern life is leisurely. It has the long crane neck of enjoyment and you, impatient reader, must leave your hasty habits, and no longer bolt your pleasure as you do your Tre- mont or Astor dinner, but taste it all the way down, as our turbaned friends do. Ask your dragoman casually, and he will regale you with choice in- stances of this happy habitude of the Orientals or read the Arabian Nights in the original, or under- stand literally the romances that the poets recite at at the cafes, and you will learn how much you are born to lose being born as you were, an American, with no time to live. Your Nile crew is a dozen nondescripts. They are Arabs Egyptians Nubians, and half-breeds of all kinds. They wear a white or red cap, and a long flowing garment which the Howadji naturally calls " night-gown," but which they term " zaa- boot" although as Mrs. Bull said, she thought 38 NILE NOTES. night-gown the better name. It is a convenient dress for river mariners ; for they have only to throw it off, and are at once ready to leap into the stream if the boat grounds with no more incumbrance than Undine's uncle Kiihleborn always had. On great occasions of reaching a town they wear the 'eree or drawers, and a turban of white cotton. Our reis was a placid little Nubian, with illim- itable lips, and a round, soft eye. He was a femi- nine creature, and crept felinely about the boat on his little spongy feet, often sitting all day upon the bow, somnolently smoking his chibouque, and let- ting us run aground. He was a Hadji too ; but, except that he did no work, seemed to have no especial respect from the crew. He put his finger into the dish with them, and fared no better. Had he been a burly brute, the savages would have feared him ; and, with them, fear is the synonym of respect. The grisly Ancient Mariner was the real captain an old, gray Egyptian, who crouched all day long over the tiller, with a pipe in his mouth, and his firm eye fixed upon the river and the shore. He looked like a heap of ragged blankets, smouldering away internally, and emitting smoke at a chance orifice. But at evening he descended to the deck, took a cup of coffee, and chatted till midnight. As THE CREW. 39 long as the wind held to the sail, he held to the tiller. The Ancient Mariner was the real worker of the Ibis, and never made faces at it, although the crew bemoaned often enough their hard fate. Of course, he tried to cheat at first, but when he felt the eye of the Pacha looking through him and turning up his little cunning, he tried it no more, or only spasmodically, at intervals, from habit. Brawny, one-eyed Seyd was first officer, the lead- er of the working chorus, and of the hard pulling and pushing. He had put out his own eye, like other Egyptians, many of whom did the same office to their children to escape Mehemet Ali's con- scription. He was a good-natured, clumsy boor a being in the ape stage of development. He proved the veracity of the " Vestiges," that we begin in a fishy state, and advance through the tailed and winged ones. " We have had fins, we may have wings." I doubt if Seyd had yet fairly taken in his tail he was growing. Had I been a German natu- ralist, I should have seized the good Seyd and pre- sented him to some " Durchlauchtiger," king or kaiser, as an ourang-outang from the white Nile ; and I am sure the Teutons would have decreed it, a " sehr ausgezeichnete" specimen. Seyd, I fear, was slightly sensual. He had ulte- rior views upon the kitchen drippings. While the 40 NILE NOTES. Howadji dined, he sat like an ourang-outang, gazing with ludicrous intensity at the lickerish morsels, then shifted into some clumsier squat, so that the Howadji could not maintain becoming gravity. At times he imbibed cups of coffee privately in the kitchen regions, then gurgled his cocoa-nut nargileh with spasmodic vigor. Seyd fulfilled other functions not strictly within his official walk. He w r ashed the deck, brought coals to the chibouque, cleaned the knives and scraped kettles and pans. But after much watch- ing, I feared that Seyd was going backward devel- oping the wrong way ; for he became more baboonisli and less human every day. His feet were incredi- ble. I had not seen the Colossi then. Generally, he was barefooted. But sometimes, O goddess of Paris kids ! he essayed slippers. Then no bemired camel ever extricated himself more ponderously pe- dalled. These leather cases, that might have been heir-looms of Memnon, were the completion of his full dress. Ah, Brummell! Seyd en grande tenve was a stately spectacle. There was Saleh or Satan, a cross between the porcupine and the w r ild-cat, whom I disliked as de- voutly as the Rev. Dr. Duck did the devil. And Aboo Seyd, a little old-maidish Bedoueen, who told wonderful stories to the crew and prayed endlessly. THE CREW. 41 He was very vain and direfully ugly, short, and speckled, and squat. On the Nile I believed in necromancy, and knew Aboo Seyd to be really a tree-toad humanized. I speculated vainly upon his vanity. It was the only case wlfere I never could suspect the secret. f Great gawky Abdallah then, God's favorite as his name imports, and a trusty mastiff of a man. Ab- dallah had few human characteristics, and was much quizzed by the crew under Satan's lead. He was invaluable for plunging among the grass and bushes, or into the water for pigeons which the Pacha had shot. And he loved his townsman Aboo Tar, or Congo, as we called him, as if his heart were as huge as his body. Congo was the youngest and brightest of the crew. He was black and slim, and although not graceful, moved rapidly and worked well. The little Congo was the only one of the crew who inspired human interest. They are all bad workers, and. lazy exceedingly. Never was seen such confused imbecility of action and noise, as in the shifting of sail. The ropes are twisted and tangled, and the red and black legs are twisted and tangled in the trouble to extricate them. Meanwhile the boat conies into the wind, the great sails flap fiercely, mad to be deprived of it ; the boats that had drifted behind come up, even pass, 42 NILE NOTES. and the Pacha, wrapped in his capote, swears a little to ease his mind. Yet that Nile poet, Harriet Martineau, speaks of the " savage faculty" in Egypt. But " faculty" is a Western gift. Savages with faculty may become a leading race. But a leading race never degener- ates, so long as faculty remains. The Egyptians and Easterns are not savages, they are imbeciles. It is the English fashion to laud the Orient, and to prophecy a renewed grandeur, as if the East could ever again be as bright as at sunrise. The Easterns are picturesque and handsome, as is no nation with faculty. The coarse costume of a Nile sailor shames, in dignity and grace, the most elaborate toilet of Western saloons. It is drapery whose grace all men admire, and which all artists study in the antique. Western life is clean, and comely, and comfortable, but it is not picturesque. Therefore, if you would enjoy the land, you must be a poet, and not a philosopher. To the hurrying Howadji, the prominent interest is the picturesque one. For any other purpose, he need not be there. Be a pilgrim of beauty and not of morals or of poli- tics, if you would realize your dream. History sheds moonlight over the antique years of Egypt, and by that light you cannot study. Believe, be- fore you begin, that the great Asian mystery which THE CREW. 43 Disraeli's mild-minded Tancred sougb.t to pene- trate, is the mystery of death. If you do not, then settle it upon the data you have at home ; for unless you come able and prepared for profoundest research and observation, a rapid journey through a land whose manners and language you do not understand, and whose spirit is utterly novel to you, will ili qualify you to discourse of its fate and position. That the East will never regenerate itself, con- temporary history shows ; nor has any nation of history culminated twice. The spent summer re- blooms no more the Indian summer is but a memo- ry and a delusion. The sole hope of the East is Western inoculation. The child must suckle the age of the parent, and even " Medea's wondrous alchemy" will not restore its peculiar prime. If the East awaken, it will be no longer in the turban and red slippers, but in hat and boots. The West is the sea that advances forever upon the shore, the shore cannot stay it, but becomes the bottom of the ocean. The Western who lives in the Orient, does not assume the kaftan and the baggy breeches, and those of his Muslim neighbors shrink and disap- pear before his coat and pantaloons. The Turkish army is clothed like the armies of Europe. The grand Turk himself, Mohammed's vicar, the Com- mander of the Faithful, has laid away the magnifi 44 NILE NOTES. cence of Haroun Alrashid. and wears the simple red tarboosh, and a stiff suit of military blue. Cairo is an English station to India, and the Howadji does not drink sherbet upon the Pyramids, but cham- pagne. The choice Cairo of our eastern imagination is contaminated with carriages. They are showing the secrets of the streets to the sun. Their silence is no longer murmurous, but rattling. The Uzbee- keeyah public promenade of Cairo is a tea-garden, of a Sunday afternoon crowded with ungainly Franks, listening to bad music. Ichabod, Ichabod ' steam has towed the Mediterranean up the Nile to Boulak, and as you move on to Cairo, through the still surviving masquerade of the Orient, the cry of the melon-merchant seems the significant cry of each sad-eyed Oriental, " Consoler of the embar- rassed, O Pips !'' The centuiy has seen the failure of the Eastern experiment, headed as it is not likely to be headed again, by an able and wise leader. Mehemet AH nad mastered Egypt and Syria, and was mounting the steps of the Sultan's throne. Then he would nave marched to Bagdad, and sat down in Haroun Alrashid's seat, to draw again broader and more deeply the lines of the old Eastern empire. But the West would not suffer it. Even had it done so, the world of Meliemet AH would have crumbled THE CltEW. 45 f o chaos again when he died, for it existed only by his imperial will, and not by the perception of the people. At this moment the East is the El Dorado of Eu- ropean political hope. No single power dares to grasp it, but at last England and Russia will meet there, face to face, and the lion and the polar bear will shiver the desert silence with the roar of their struggle. It will be the return of the children to claim the birthplace. They may quarrel among themselves, but whoever wins> will introduce the life of the children and not of the parent. A pos- session and a province it may be, but no more an independent empire. Father Ishmael shall be a shekh of honor, but of dominion no longer, and sit turbaned in the chimney corner, while his hatted heirs rule the house. The children will cluster around him, fascinated with his beautiful traditions, and curiously compare their little black shoes with his red slippers. Here, then, we throw overboard from the Ibis all solemn speculation, reserving only for ballast this chapter of erudite Eastern reflection and prophecy. The shade of the Poet Martineau moves awfully along these clay terraces, and pauses minatory under the palms, declaring that " He who derives from his travels nothing but picturesque and amusing 46 NILE NOTES. impressions * * * uses like a child a most serious and manlike privilege." It is reproving, but some can paint, and some can preach, Poet Harriet, so runs the world away. That group of palms waving feathery in the moon- light over the gleaming river is more soul-solacing than much conclusive speculation. ^ VI. THE IBIS FLIES, AT noon the wind rose. The Ibis shook oat her wings, spread them and stood into the stream. Nero was already off. Stretching before us southward were endless groups of masts and sails. Palms fringed the west- ern shore, and on the east, rose the handsome sum- mer palaces of Pachas and rich men. They were deep retired in full foliaged groves and gardens, or rose white and shining directly over the water. The verandahs were shaded with cool, dark-green blinds, and spacious steps descended stately to the water, as proudly as from Venetian palaces. Grace- ful boats lay moored to the marge, the lustrous dark- ness of acacias shadowed the shore, and an occasional sakia or water-wheel began the monotonous music of the river. Behind us from the city, rose the alabaster mina- rets of the citadel mosque snow spires in the deep blue and the aerial elegance of the minor minaiets 48 N I L E X O T E S . mingling with palms, that seemed to grow in un- known hanging-gardens of delight, were already a graceful arabesque upon the sky. The pyramids watched us as we went staring themselves stonily into memory forever. The great green plain between us came gently to the water, over whose calm gleam skimmed the Ibis with almost conscious delight that she was flying to the South. The Howadji, meanwhile, fascinated with the fair auspices of their voyage, sat cross-legged upon Persian carpets sip- ping mellow Mocha, and smoking the cherry-sticked chibouque. As life without love, said the Cairene poet to me as I ordered his nargileh to be refilled with tum- bak choice Persian tobacco is the chibouque without coffee. And as I sipped that Mocha, and perceived that for the first time I was drinking coffee, I felt that all Hadji Hamed's solemnity and painful Mecca pilgrimages were not purposeless nor without ambition. Why should not he prepare coffee for the choicest coterie of houris even in the Prophet's celestial pavilion? For a smoother sip is not offered the Prophet by his fairest favorite, than his namesake prepared, and his other name- sake offered to us, on each Nile day. The Mocha is so fragrant and rich, and so per- fectly prepared, that the sweetness of s - igar seems THE IBIS FLIES. 49 at length quite coarse and unnecessary. Et destroys the most delicate delight of the palate, which craves at last the purest flavor of the berry, and tastes all Arabia Felix therein. A glass of imperial Tokay in Hungary, and a fingan of Mocha in the East, are the most poetic and inspiring draughts. Whether the Greek poets, born between the two, did not fore- shadow the fascination of each, when they cele- brated nectar and ambrosia as divine delights, I leave to the most erudite Teutonic commentator. Sure am I that the delight of well-prepared Mocha transcends the sphere of sense, and rises into a spiritual satisfaction or is it that Mocha is the magic that spiritualizes sense ? Yet it must be sipped from the fingan poised in the delicate zarf. The fingan is a small blue and gold cup, or of any color, of an egg's calibre, borne upon an exquisitely wrought support of gold or silver. The mouth must slide from the cup's brim to the amber mouth-piece of the chibouque, draw- ing thence azure clouds of Latakia, the sweet mild weed of Syria. Then, wildered Western, you taste the Orient, and awake in dreams. So waned the afternoon, as we glided gently be- fore a failing breeze, between the green levels of the Kile valley. The river was lively with boats. Dig- nified dahabieh sweeping along like Pachas of im- 3 50 NILE NOTES. portance and of endless tails. Crafty little cangie, smaller barques, creeping on like Effendi of lesser rank. The far rippling reaches were white with the sharp saucy sails, bending over and over, reproach- ing the water for its resistance, and, like us, pur- suing the South. The craft was of every kind. Huge lumbering country boats, freighted with filth and vermin, covered with crouching figures in * o O blankets, or laden with grain ; or there were boats curiously crowded, the little cabin windows over- flowing with human blackness and semi-naked boys and girls, sitting in close rows upon the deck. These are first class frigates of the Devil's navy. They are slave boats floating down from Dongola and Sennaar. The wind does not blow for them. They alone are not white with sails, and running merrily over the \vater, but they drift slowly, slowly, with the weary beat of a few oars. The little slaves stare at us with more wonder than we look at them. They are not pensive or silent. The smile, and chat, and point at the How- idji and the novelties of the Nile, very contentedly. Aot one kneels and inquires if he is not a man and u brother, and the Venuses, " carved in ebony," aeem fully satisfied with their crisp, closely curling ^air, smeared with castor oil. In Egypt and the /Jast generally, slavery does not appear so sadly as THE IBIS PLIES. 51 elsewhere. The contrasts are not so vivid. It seems only an accident that one is master and the other slave. A reverse of relations would not appear strange, for the master is as ignorant and brutal as the servant. Yet a group of disgusting figures lean and lounge upon the upper deck, or cabin roof. Nature, in iustice to herself, has discharged humanity from their faces only the human form remains for there is nothing so revolting as a slave-driver with his booty bagged. In the chase, there may be ex- citement and danger, but the chase once successful, they sink into a torpidity of badness. But this is only a cloud floating athwart the setting sun. To our new Nile eyes, this is only proof that there are crocodiles beyond happily not so repulsive, for they are not in the human shape. The slavers passed and the sun set over the gleam- ing river. A solitary heron stood upon a sandy point. In a broad beautiful bay beyond, the thin lines of masts were drawn dark against the sky. Palms and the dim lines of Arabian hills dreamed in the tranquil air, a few boats clung to the western bank, that descended in easy clay terraces to the water, their sails hanging in the dying wind. Sud- denly we were among them, close under the bank. The moon sloped westward behind a group of 52 NILE NOTES. palms, and the spell was upon us. We had drifted into the dream world. From the ghostly highlands and the low shore, came the baying of dogs, mel- lowed by distance and the moonlight, into the weird measures of a black forest hunting. Drifted away from the world, yet, like Ferdinand, moved by voiceless music in the moonlight. " Come unto these yellow sands. And then take hands Curtsied when you have, and list, (The wild waves whist.) Foot it featly here and there, And sweet sprites the burden bear. Hark, hark! , The watch-dog's bark." Such aerial witchery was in the night, for our Shakespeare was a Nile necromancer also. Drifted beyond the world, yet not beyond the poet. Flutes, too, were blown upon the shore, and horns and the chorus of a crew came sadly across the water with the faint throb of the tarabuka. Under those warm southern stars, was a sense of solitude and isolation. Might we not even behold the southern cross, when the clouds of Latakia rolled away? Our own crew were silent, but a belated boat struggling for a berth among our fleet, disturbed the slumbers of a neighboring crew. One sharp, fierce cackle of dis- pute suddenly shattered the silence like a tropical THE IBIS FLIES. 53 whirlwind, nor was it stiller by the blows mutually bestowed. Our chat of Bagdad knd the desert was for a moment suspended. Nor did we wonder at the struggle, since Mars shone so redly over. But it died away as suddenly; and inexplicably mournful as the Sphinx's smile, streamed the setting moon- light over the world. Not a ripple of Western feeling readied that repose. We were in the dream of the death of the deadest land. VII. THE LANDSCAPE, . THE Nile landscape is not monotonous, although of one general character. In that soft air the lines change constantly, but imperceptibly, and aro always so delicately lined and drawn, that the eye swims satisfied along the warm tranquillity of the scenery. Egypt is the valley of the Nile. At iU widest part it is, perhaps, six or seven miles broad, and is walled upon the west by the Libyan mountains, and upon the east by the Arabian. The scenery is simple and grand. The forms of the landscape harmonize with the forms of the impression of Egypt in the mind. Solemn, and still, and inexpli- cable, sits that antique mystery among the flowery fancies and broad green fertile feelings of your mind and contemporary life, as the sphinx sits upon the edge of the graiu-green plain. No scenery is grand- er in ,-ts impression, for none is so symbolical. The Is*, J rp."g