My Winter on the Nile. Warner Charles Dudley
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New York the soup would not have been made of lentils.
We have passed a night under a mosquito net, more comfortably than on shore to be sure, but we are anxious to get into motion and change the mosquitoes, the flies, the fleas of Cairo for some less rapacious. It is the seventeenth of December. We are in the bazaars, buying the last things, when, at noon we perceive that the wind has shifted. We hasten on board. Where is the dragoman! “Mohammed Effendi Abd-el-Atti goin’ bazaar come directly,” says the waiter. At half-past two the stout dragoman slides off his donkey and hastens on board with all the speed compatible with short legs, out of breath, but issuing a storm of orders like a belated captain of a seventy-two. He is accompanied by a black boy bearing the name of our dahabeëh, rudely painted on a piece of tin, the paint not yet dry. The dragoman regards it with some pride, and well he may, for it has cost time and trouble. No Arab on the river can pronounce the name, but they all understand its signification when the legend attached to it is related, and having a similar tale in the Koran, they have no objection to sail in a dahabeëh called the RIP VAN WINKLE.
The name has a sort of appropriateness in the present awakening of Egypt to modern life, but exactly what it is we cannot explain.
We seat ourselves on deck to watch the start. There is as much noise and confusion as if the boat were on fire. The moment has come to cast off, when it is discovered that two of the crew are absent, no doubt dallying in some coffee-house. We cannot wait, they must catch us as they can. The stake is pulled up; the plank is drawn in; the boat is shoved off from its sand bed with grunting and yah-hoo-ing, some of the crew in the water, and some pushing with poles; the great sail drops down from the yard and the corner is hauled in to a wild chorus, and we take the stream. For a moment it seems as if we should be carried against the bridge; but the sail is large, the wind seizes us, and the three-months’ voyage has begun.
We are going slowly but steadily, perhaps at the rate of three or four miles an hour, past the receding city, drawing away from the fleet of boats and barges on the shore and the multitudinous life on its banks. It is a scene of color, motion, variety. The river is alive with crafts of all sorts, the shores are vocal with song, laughter, and the unending “chaff” of a river population. Beyond, the spires and domes of the city are lovely in the afternoon light. The citadel and the minarets gleam like silver against the purple of the Mokattam hills. We pass the long white palace of the Queen-mother; we are abreast the isle of Rhoda, its yellow palace and its ancient Nilometer. In the cove at Geezeh are passenger-dahabeëhs, two flying the American flag, with which we exchange salutes as we go. The people on their decks are trying with a telescope to make out the device on our pennant at the yard-arm. It affords occupation for a great many people at different times during the voyage. Upon a white ground is a full sun, in red; following it in red letters is the legend Post Nubila Phobus; it is the motto on the coat of arms of the City of Hartford. Here it signifies that we four Hartford people, beginning this voyage, exchange the clouds of New England for the sun of Egypt. The flag extends beyond the motto in a bifurcated blue streamer.
Flag, streamer and sail take the freshening north wind. A smaller sail is set aft. The reïs crouches on the bow, watching the channel; the steersman, a grave figure, pushes slowly back and forth the long iron handle of the tiller at the stern; the crew, waiting for their supper, which is cooking near the mast, begin to sing, one taking the solo and the others striking in with a minor response; it is not a song but a one-line ejaculation, followed by a sympathetic and barbaric assent in chorus.
The shores glide past like that land of the poet’s dream where “it is always afternoon”; reposeful and yet brilliant. The rows of palms, the green fields, the lessening minarets, the groups of idlers in flowing raiment, picturesque in any attitudes they assume, the depth of blue above and the transparent soft air—can this be a permanent condition, or is it only the scene of a play?
In fact, we are sailing not only away from Europe, away from Cairo, into Egypt and the confines of mysterious Africa; we are sailing into the past. Do you think our voyage is merely a thousand miles on the Nile? We have committed ourselves to a stream that will lead us thousands of years backwards in the ages, into the depths of history. When we loosed from Cairo we let go our hold upon the modern. As we recede, perhaps we shall get a truer perspective, and see more correctly the width of the strip of time which we call “our era.” There are the pyramids of Geezeh watching our departure, lifting themselves aloft in the evening sky; there are the pyramids of Sakkara, sentinels of that long past into which we go.
It is a splendid start, for the wind blows steadily and we seem to be flying before it. It is probable that we are making five miles an hour, which is very well against such a current. Our dahabeëh proves to be an excellent sailer, and we have the selfish pleasure of passing boat after boat, with a little ripple of excitement not enough to destroy our placid enjoyment. It is much pleasanter to lift your hat to the travelers on a boat that you are drawing ahead of than it is to those of one that is dropping your boat astern.
The Nile voyage is so peculiar, and is, in fact, such a luxurious method of passing a winter, that it may be well to say a little more concerning our boat. It is about one hundred and twenty feet long, and eighteen broad in the center, with a fiat bottom and no keel; consequently it cannot tack or sail contrary to the wind. In the bow is the cook’s “cubby” with the range, open to the weather forward. Behind it stands the mast, some forty feet high, and on the top of it is lashed the slender yard, which is a hundred feet long, and hangs obliquely. The enormous triangular sail stretches the length of the yard and its point is hauled down to the deck. When it is shifted, the rope is let go, leaving the sail flapping, the end of the yard is carried round the mast and the sail is hauled round in the opposite direction, with an amount of pulling, roaring, jabbering, and chorusing, more than would be necessary to change the-course of an American fleet of war. The flat, open forward deck is capable of accommodating six rowers on a side. It is floored over now, for the sweeps are only used in descending.
Then comes the cabin, which occupies the greater part of the boat, and makes it rather top-heavy and difficult of management in an adverse wind. First in the cabin are the pantry and dragoman’s room; next a large saloon, used for dining, furnished with divans, mirrors, tables, and chairs, and lighted by large windows close together. Next are rows of bedrooms, bathroom etc; a passage between leads to the after or lounging cabin, made comfortable with divans and Eastern rugs. Over the whole cabin runs the deck, which has sofas and chairs and an awning, and is good promenading space. The rear portion of it is devoted to the steersman, who needs plenty of room for the sweep of the long tiller. The steering apparatus is of the rudest. The tiller goes into a stern-post which plays in a hole big enough for four of it, and creakingly turns a rude rudder.
If you are familiar with the Egyptian temple you will see that our dahabeëh is built on this plan. If there is no pylon, there is the mast which was always lashed to it. Then comes the dromos of sphinxes, the forward deck, with the crew sitting along the low bulwarks; the first cabin is the hall of columns, or vestibulum; behind it on each side of the passage are various chambers; and then comes the adytum or sanctuary—the inner cabin. The deck is the flat roof upon which wound the solemn processions; and there is a private stairway to the deck just as there was always an inner passage to the roof from one of the small chambers of the temple.
The boat is manned by a numerous company whose appearance in procession would excite enthusiasm in any American town. Abd-el-Atti has for companion and clerk his nephew, a young Egyptian, (employed in the telegraph office) but in Frank dress, as all government officials are required to be.
The reïs, or captain, is Hassan, Aboo Seyda, a rather stately Arab of sixty years, with a full turban, a long gown of blue cotton, and bare-footed. He walks the deck with an ease and grace that an actor might envy; there is neither stiffness nor strut in it; it is a gait of simple majesty which may be inherited from generations of upright ancestors, but could never be acquired. Hassan is an admirable figure-head to the expedition, but he has no more pluck or authority than an old hen, and was of not much more use on board than a hen would be in a chicken-hatching establishment.
Abdel Hady Hassed, the steersman, is a Nubian from the First Cataract, shiny black in color, but with regular and delicate features. I can see him now, with his turban set well back on his head, in a loose, long-sleeved, brown garment, and without stockings or