Читать книгу Eastern Life - Harriet Martineau - Страница 10

The next morning (Sunday, December 20th), we found we must still have patience, as we should not see Thebes for another day. The wind had dropped at seven, the evening before, and had brought us only three miles this morning. In the course of the day we were made fully sensible of our happiness in having plenty of time, and in not being pressed to speed by any discomfort on board our boat. We were walking on shore at noon, among men and children busy about their tillage and sheep and asses and shadoofs, when we saw two boats, bearing the British and American flags, floating down the stream. They wore round and landed their respective parties, who were Cairo acquaintances of ours. Neither party had been beyond Thebes. How we pitied them when we thought of Philae and the Cataracts, and the depths of Nubia, which we were on our way to see! The English gentlemen were pressed for time, and were paying their crew to work night and day; by which they did not appear to be gaining much. The American gentleman and his wife were suffering cruelly under the misery of vermin in their boat: a trouble which all travellers in Egypt must endure in a greater or less degree, but which we found much less terrible than we had expected, and reducible to something very trifling by a little housewifely care and management.¹³ The terms in which they spoke of Thebes, after even their hasty journey, warmed our hearts and raised our spirits high.

The next day was the shortest day. It was curious to observe how we had lately gained five minutes of sunlight by our progress southwards. Though we cared to-day for nothing but Thebes, we condescended to examine, in our early walk, a strange, dreary-looking place which we were informed was one of the Pasha's schools. It was a large square mud building, crumbling away in desolation. No children were there; but two officers stared at us out of a window. Another, armed to the teeth, entered the enclosure, and spoke to us, we suppose in Arabic, as he passed. The plots of ground were neglected, and the sheds losing their roofs. It is evident that all is over with this establishment, while the people of the district appear in good condition. There were shadoofs at small distances, and so many husbandmen at hand that they relieve each other every two hours at this laborious work, a crier making known along the bank the expiration of the time. – We walked through flourishing fields of tobacco and millet; and we gathered, for the first time, the beautiful yellow blossom of the cotton shrub. The castor-oil plant began here to be almost as beautiful as the cotton.

Whenever we went for a walk, we were most energetically warned against the dogs of the peasantry: and one of the crew always sprang ashore with a club for our defence when we were seen running into the great danger of going where we might meet a dog. I suppose the danger is real, so invariably did the peasants rush towards us, on the barking of a dog, to pelt the animal away. I never saw any harm done by a dog, however; and I never could remember to be on my guard; so that one of the crew had often to run after me at full speed, when I had forgotten the need of a club-bearer, and gone alone.

From breakfast time this day, we were looking over southwestwards, to the Lybian hills which we knew contained the Tombs of the Kings: and before noon, we had seen what we can never forget. On our return we spent eight days at Thebes; eight days of industrious search, which make us feel familiar with the whole circuit of monuments. But the first impression remains unimpaired and undisturbed. I rather shrink from speaking of it; it is so absolutely incommunicable! The very air and sunshine of the moment, the time of day, the previous mood of mind, have so much share in such a first impression as this, that it can never come alike to any two people. I can but relate what the objects were; and that most meagrely.

The wind was now carrying us on swiftly; and as we, of course, stood as high as we could on the roof of the cabin, the scene unfolded before us most favourably. Every ridge of hills appeared to turn, and every recess to open, to show us all sides of what we passed. To our left spread a wide level country, the eastern expanse of the plain of Thebes, backed by peaked mountains, quite unlike the massive Arabian rocks which had hitherto formed that boundary. There was a thick wood on that bank; and behind that wood Alee pointed out to us the heavy masses of the ruins of El Karnac. Vast and massy indeed they looked. But, as yet, the chief interest was on the western shore. The natural features were remarkable enough, the vastness of the expanse, especially, which confounded all anticipation. The modern world obtruded itself before the ancient, – the shores dressed in the liveliest green, and busy with Arabs, camels, and buffalo, partially intercepting the view behind, Between these, vivid shores, and before and behind the verdant promontories, lay reach after reach of the soft grey, brimming river. Behind this brilliant foreground stretched immeasurable slopes of land, interrupted here and there by ranges of mounds or ridges of tawny rocks, and dotted over with fragments of ruins, and teeming with indications of more. In the rear was the noble guard of mountains which overlooks and protects the plain of Thebes: mountains now nearly colourless, tawny as the expanse below; but their valleys and hollows revealed by the short, sharp shadows of noon. The old name for this scene was running in my head – »the Lybian suburb«: and when I looked for the edifices of this suburb, what did I not see? I could see, even with the naked eye, and perfectly with the glass, traces of the mighty works which once made this, for greatness, the capital of the world. Long rows of square apertures indicated the ranges of burying places. Straggling remains of building wandered down the declivities of sand. And then the Rameséum was revealed, and I could distinguish its colossal statues. And next appeared, and my heart stood still at the sight, – the Pair. There they sat, together yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt. I can never believe that anything else so majestic as this Pair has been conceived of by the imagination of Art. Nothing even in nature certainly ever affected me so unspeakably; no thunderstorm in my childhood, nor any aspect of Niagara, or the great Lakes of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years. I saw them afterwards, daily, and many times a day, during our stay at Thebes: and the wonder and awe grew from visit to visit. Yet no impression exceeded the first; and none was like it. Happy the traveller who sees them first from afar; that is, who does not arrive at Thebes by night!

We had not thought of stopping at Thebes on our way up the river: but we were delighted to find that the Rais wanted to have his head shaved, and Alee to buy a sheep and some bread. We drew to the El-Uksur (Luxor) shore, and ran up to the ruins. The most conspicuous portion from the river is the fourteen pillars which stand parallel with it, in a double row: but we went first to the great entrance to the temple. I find here in my journal the remark which occurs oftener than any other; that no preconception can be formed of these places. I know that it is useless to repeat it here: for I meet everywhere at home people who think, as I did before I went, that between books, plates, and the stiff and peculiar character of Egyptian architecture and sculpture, Egyptian art may be almost as well known and conceived of in England as on the spot. I can only testify, without hope of being believed, that it is not so; that instead of ugliness, I found beauty; instead of the grotesque, I found the solemn: and where I looked for rudeness, from the primitive character of Art, I found the sense of the soul more effectually reached than by works which are the result of centuries of experience and experiment. The mystery of this fact sets one thinking, laboriously – I may say, painfully. Egypt is not the country to go to for the recreation of travel. It is too suggestive and too confounding to be met but in the spirit of study. One's powers of observation sink under the perpetual exercise of thought: and the lightest-hearted voyager, who sets forth from Cairo eager for new scenes and days of frolic, comes back an antique, a citizen of the world of six thousand years ago, kindred with the mummy. Nothing but large knowledge and sound habits of thought can save him from returning perplexed and borne down – unless, indeed, it be ignorance and levity. A man who goes to shoot crocodiles and flog Arabs, and eat ostrich's eggs, looks upon the monuments as so many strange old stone-heaps, and comes back »bored to death with the Nile«; as we were told we should be. He turns back from Thebes, or from the First Cataract, perhaps without having ever seen the Cataract, when within a mile of it, as in a case I know; and he pays his crew to work night and day, to get back to Cairo as fast as possible. He may return gay and unworn: and so may the true philosopher, to whom no tidings of Man in any age come amiss; who has no prejudices to be painfully weaned from, and an imagination too strong to be overwhelmed by mystery, and the rush of a host of new ideas. But for all between these two extremes of levity and wisdom, a Nile voyage is as serious a labour as the mind and spirits can be involved in; a trial even to health and temper such as is little dreamed of on leaving home. The labour and care are well bestowed, however, for the thoughtful traveller can hardly fail of returning from Egypt a wiser, and therefore a better man.

There is something very interesting in meeting with a fellow-feeling in ancient travellers so strong as may be found in the following passage from Abdallatif with that of some modern Egyptian voyagers. The passage is almost the same as some entries in my journal, made when I had never heard of the Bagdad physician. He speaks of Memphis, as seen in his day, and as, alas! one fears it will be seen no more. »Notwithstanding the immense extent of this city, and its high antiquity: notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the different governments under which it has passed: notwithstanding the efforts that various nations have made to destroy it in obliterating the minutest traces, effacing its smallest remains, carrying off the materials, even to the very stones of which it was constructed; laying waste its edifices, mutilating the figures which adorned them; and notwithstanding all that four thousand years and more have been able to add to such causes of destruction, these ruins yet offer to the eye of the spectator such a combination of wonders as confounds his understanding, and as the most eloquent man would vainly attempt to describe. The longer he contemplates, the more admiration he feels: and each returning glance at these ruins causes new ecstasy. Scarcely has the spectacle suggested one idea to the mind of the spectator, when it overpowers it by a greater; and when he thinks he has obtained a perfect knowledge of what is before him, he presently learns that his conceptions are still far below the truth.«¹⁴ A yet older traveller, Herodotus, says the same thing more briefly. »I shall enlarge upon what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is no other country where we may see so many works which are admirable, and beyond all expression.«¹⁵

It is not the vastness of the buildings which strikes one first at El-Uksur, vast as they are; it is the marvel of the sculptures with which they are covered – so old, so spirited, and so multitudinous. It is Homer, alive before one's eyes. And what a thought it is, to one standing here, how long this very sculpture has been an image and a thought to great minds placed one far behind another in the stages of human history! Herodotus, who here seems a modern brother-traveller, stood on this spot, and remembered the Iliad as we were now remembering it. He spoke of Homer, his predecessor by four hundred years, as we speak of those who lived in the crusading times. And Homer told of wars which were the same old romance to the people of his time as the Crusades are to us. And at the time of these wars, this Thebes was a city of a thousand years; and these battle-pictures now before our eyes were antiquities, as our cathedrals are to us. Here we were standing before one of the »hundred gates« through which Homer says the Theban warriors passed in and out; and on the flanks of this gateway were sculptured the achievements of the ancestors of these warriors. There are the men and horses and chariots, as if in full career – as full of life as if painted, and painted in a modern time! The stones of the edifice are parting in many places; and these battle-figures extend over the cracks, almost uninjured by the decay. These graven epics will last some time longer, though the stone records will give way before the paper.

The guardian colossi are mighty creatures, with their massive shoulders and serene heads rising out of the ground. A third helmet is visible; and among the Arab huts near, a fourth. We saw here for the first time columns with the lotus-shaped capitals; the capitals being painted, and the blossoms, buds, and leaves which filled up the outline being very distinct. One test of the massive character of the work was curious. A huge block of the architrave has fallen from its place, and rests on the rim of the cup of the lotus, without breaking it. We were now introduced to some of the details of Egyptian architecture, and to some of its great separate features: but all unity of impression was obviated by the intrusion of the mud huts which are plastered up against the ruins throughout their range. When we came down the river, and had become familiar with the structure of Egyptian temples, we could make out the plan of this, and somewhat discharge from view the blemishes which spoiled everything now. But at present we were not qualified, and we carried away a painful impression of confusion as well as ruin.

As we sailed away, I obtained another view of the Pair; and I watched them till I could hardly tell whether it was distance or the dusk which hid them at last.

The wind carried us on well: too well; for a stay of the foremast gave way; and this hindered our progress. The calm and pathetic-looking Rais rushed towards us, vociferated, and pulled Mr. E. by the wrist to the forepart, to see the crack, – of which Mr. E., with all his experience in such matters, thought little. The Rais. however, is responsible for the condition of the boat, and he feared that the owner would »cut his neck off« if anything was carried away, So we moored to the bank, and some little nails were driven in, so as to do no good whatever; and then it came out that the Rais wanted to stop here for the night. We so protested against this that he appeared to yield; but at the end of a mile or so, he drove us decisively into the eastern bank.

As I was walking the deck before tea, I saw two lights moving up under the opposite bank; and supposed them to be from Selim Pasha's boats. They crossed the stream, however; and the boats they belonged to drove into the bank so immediately behind us as to lift our rigging. It was our Scotch friends, and the American party. The gentlemen immediately exchanged visits; and our own party brought us some amusement when they returned. Mr. E.'s first exclamation, as he threw down his hat, was, »What a lucky fellow that is! He has shot a crocodile.« »And why not, if he carries ball?« »Ah! I should have brought ball. He has done it very cleverly, though.« And when the Scotchman returned the call after tea, we found that he had indeed done a difficult and hazardous feat very well: and he was in possession of the stuffed hide as a trophy.

The next morning, we had an amusement which seemed ridiculous enough in the Thebaid, but certainly rather exciting – a boat-race. When I came on deck, the Scotch gentlemen were just mounting the bank, with their fowling-pieces; and their crew and ours were preparing to track. I was about to go ashore also for a walk, when I observed that our Rais was getting out the sail, though there was not a breath of wind. It was clear that he expected to fall in with a wind at the next reach of the river: so I remained on board. Our sail caught the eye of our Scotch friends. I saw the halt of their red tarbooshes over the bushes that fringed the bank. They scampered back, and leaped on board their boat; and in another moment, up went their sail. In another, up went the American's! Three sails, no wind, and three crews tracking, at a pace scarcely less funereal than usual! – At the expected point, the sails filled, all at the same instant, and off we went. For an hour or more, I could not believe that we were gaining ground, though Mr. E. declared we were. When it was becoming clear that we were, he told that, provoking as it was, we must take in sail and yield the race, as we had to take up, in yonder bay, our milk messenger. There he was, accordingly; and quick was the manoeuvre of putting in, and snatching up the poor fellow. Half a dozen hands hauled him in, and helped to spill the milk. Then what a shout of laughter there was when the Scotchman shortened sail, and took up his milkman too: and after him the Americans! We could relish the milk now, which we had thought so much in our way before. The race was fairly decided before ten o'clock. We beat, as we ought, from the superiority of our boat: and before noon our Scotch friends put into Isna (Esneh), where their crew were to bake their bread. This was the last place north of the Cataract where they could do so.

Isna looks well from the river; but we could see nothing of the temple, which is lost to view in the town. We left it for our return: and we meant to do the same with that of Adfoo (Edfou). But it came in sight while we were at dinner the next day, just when there was no wind. We decided that no time would be lost by a run up to the temple: so we sprang ashore, among cotton and castor-oil plants, and walked a mile in dust, through fields and under rows of palms, and among Arab dwellings, to the front of the mighty edifice. No one of the temples of Egypt struck me more with the conviction that these buildings were constructed as fortifications, as much as for purposes of religious celebration. I will not here give any detailed account of this temple; partly because I understood these matters better when I afterwards saw it again: and yet more, because it was now almost buried in dust, much of which was in course of removal on our return, for manuring the land. – It was here, and now, that I was first taken by surprise with the beauty; – the beauty of everything; – the sculptured columns, with their capitals, all of the same proportion and outline, though exhibiting in the same group the lotus, the date palm, and the doum palm; the decorations, – each one with its fulness of meaning, – a delicately sculptured message to all generations, through all time: and, above all, the faces. I had fancied the faces, even the portraits, grotesque: but the type of the old Egyptian face has great beauty, though a beauty little resembling that which later ages have chosen for their type. It resembles, however, some actual modern faces. In the sweet girlish countenances of Isis and Athor, I often observed a likeness to persons – and especially one very pretty one – at home.

The other thing that surprised me most was the profusion of the sculptured inscriptions. I had often read of the whole of the surfaces of these temples being covered with inscriptions: but the fact was never fairly in my mind till now: and the spectacle was as amazing as if I had never heard of it. The amount of labour invested here seems to shame all other human industry. It reminds one more of the labours of the coral insect than of those of men.

After taking a look at the scanty means of the smaller temple, we returned to the boat, to set foot on land no more, we hoped, till we reached the boundary of Egypt, at the old Syene. My friends at home had promised to drink our healths at the First Cataract on Christmas-day: and, when the wind sprang up, on our leaving Adfoo, and we found, on the morning of the 24th, that it had carried us twenty-five miles in the night, we began to believe we should really keep our appointment.

The quarries of Silsilis have a curious aspect from the river; halfway between rocks and buildings; for the stones were quarried out so regularly as to leave buttresses which resemble pillars or colossal statues. Here, where men once swarmed, working that machinery whose secret is lost, and moving those masses of stone which modern men can only gaze at, in this once busy place, there is now only the hyaena and its prey. In the bright daylight, when the wild beast is hidden in its lair, all is as still as when we passed.

We saw this morning a man crossing the river, here very wide, on a bundle of millet stalks. His clothes were on his head, like a huge turban, and he paddled himself over with the branch of a tree.

At sunset, the contrasting colours of the limestone and sandstone ranges were striking. The limestone was of a bright pale yellow: the Sandstone purplish. By moonlight, we saw the ruins of Kóm Umboo (Kom Ombos), which looked fine on the summit of their rock on the eastern bank.

Christmas morning was like a July morning in England. We had made good progress during the night, and were now only eleven miles from Aswán (Essouan), the old Syene, the frontier between Egypt and Nubia. When we came within two miles, we left our letter-writing. The excitement was too strong to allow of any employment. At present, we saw nothing of the wildness of the scenery, of which we had read so much. We found that higher up. The river became more and more lake-like; and there was a new feature in the jutting black rocks. The shores were green and tranquil; and palms abounded more than in any place we had passed. Behind these rich woods, however, the Lybian desert rose, yellow with sand drifts. – Our crew became merry in the near prospect of rest. One of them dressed himself very fine, swathing himself with turbans, and began to dance, to the music and clapping of the rest. He danced up to us, with insinuating cries of »baa« and »baksheesh«, as a hint for a present of a sheep. In the midst of this, we ran aground, and the brisk fellows threw down their drum, pipe, and finery, and went to work as usual. We were now making for the shore, in order to land a man who had begged a passage from Cairo. He was a Rais; and had served at Constantinople and elsewhere for twenty-five years, during which time he had never been home. For many years he had had no tidings of wife or children; and now, when within a mile or two of his home, he showed no signs of perturbation. He made his acknowledgments to us with an easy, cheerful grace, put off his bright red slippers, and descended into the mud, and then thrust his muddy feet into his new slippers with an air of entire tranquillity. We watched him as long as we could see him among the palms, and should have been glad to know how he found all at home. – The scene around looked far indeed out of the bounds of Christendom, this Christmas-day, till I saw, on a steep, the ruins of the Coptic convent of St. George. Aswán was now peeping over the palms on the eastern shore; and opposite to it was the island of Elephantine, half rubbish, half verdure. We moored to the shore below Aswán just at two o'clock; and thus we kept our appointment, to dine at the First Cataract on Christmas-day. Our dinner included turkey and plum-pudding. Our Arab cook succeeded well with the last-mentioned novelty. We sent a huge cantle of it to the Rais, who ate it all in a trice, and gave it his emphatic approbation.

 1 Waterwheel.

 2 Abdallatif. Relation de l'Egypte. Livre I. ch. 4.

 3 Appendix A.

 4 Since this was first printed, the Pasha and his next heir, Ibraheem Pasha, have died, and the Government of Egypt has descended to a grandson of Mohammed Alee.

 5 These Sheikhs' tombs are very like village ovens: square huts, with each a white cupola rising from the walls.

 6 Pole and bucket, for raising water.

 7 Five paras are a farthing and one-fifth.

 8 About 7 d.

 9 Quite a different personage from the Greek Hercules.

 10 Abdallatif. Relation de l'Egypte. Livre II. ch. 2,

 11 Even the Gothic spire is believed by those who know best to be an attenuated obelisk; as the obelisk is an attenuated pyramid. Our Gothic aisles are sometimes conjectured to be a symmetrical stone copy of the glades of a forest; but there are pillared aisles at El Karnac and Medeenet Haboo, which were constructed in a country which had no woods, and before the forests of northern Europe are discernible in the dim picture of ancient history.

 12 Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 45.

 13 Appendix B.

 14 Relation de l'Egypte. Livre I. ch. 4.

 15 Herod. II. 35.