Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

Which was the popular enemy, the Desert or the Pasha, I cannot undertake to say.

      Our kandjia was hired for twenty-five days, for the sum of £ 13 10 S.; this including all the charges of ascending the Cataract, and of the crew (eight men), except the steersman. Of these eight men, I think four were from our dahabieh. Our Rais and the rest of our crew were left at Aswan, in charge of the boat and such of our property as we did not take with us. Among those whom we carried up were two of our quiet, serviceable Nubians. Among those who remained behind was the Buck, as we called him: perhaps the least serviceable of the whole crew, and certainly the least quiet and most troublesome; but he was so extremely amusing with his pranks that we missed him, during this fortnight, more than we should a better lad. Our other buffoon was with us – the cook. An excellent cook he was; but I do not know that he was much else, except a long story-teller and a consummate coxcomb. He was a bad riser in this (to him) winter weather; not a good hand at giving us breakfast early; and we were therefore not sorry that he declined going through the Desert with us afterwards. The manner of declining, however, smacked of his coxcombry. »I!« said he. »I go through the Desert to Syria! No, no: it is all very well for these English, whom nobody inquires after, to go and be killed in Syria: but I am a man whose life is of importance to his family. They may go without me.« And we went with a better man in his place. During this Nubian voyage, however, he was in his glory – among stranger comrades who would listen to his long stories. As I sat on deck in the evenings, I used to see him at the bows, flattering himself that he was doing his proper work, – holding by the wings a poor fluttering turkey about to have his throat cut, and brandishing his great glittering knife, in the energy of his story-telling. How many times have I chafed at the suspense of one poor bird after another, thus held, head downwards, till the magniloquent cook should have finished his anecdote! He fed us well, however, making a variety very honourable to him in the mutton, fowls, and eggs, which we lived on during the voyage. Beef and veal have been out of the question since the murrain in 1843. Since that time, the cattle have not been enough to work the sakias; and, of course, there are none for food. Mr. Y. once had the luck to fall in with a piece of beef – at least, we were assured it was beef: but the only good we got out of it was a lesson not to look for beef any more. There is great variety to be made out of a sheep, however, as our cook continually proved to us. I have said that he succeeded well in our Christmas plum-pudding. The only fire we had last winter was that which he made with a pool of brandy in the middle of our pudding. Almost the only failure he made was with a goose which we got at Thebes. We thought much of this goose, as a change from the everlasting fowls and turkeys; but the cook boiled it; and it looked anything but tempting. His excuse was that he feared, if he roasted it, that it would be »stiff« – meaning tough.

      All the people on board, and we ourselves, found the weather cold in Nubia; that is, in the evenings and mornings; for at noon it was hot enough to make us glad of fans and water-melon. We entered the tropic at three P.M. of December 30: and from that time till our return, we seemed sentenced to shiver early and late, in cold strong winds, such as we had hardly met with in the more northerly parts of the river. But the mild nights when we were at anchor were delicious – none more so than that of the first day of this year. We sauntered along the camel-track which ran between the shore and the fine overhanging rocks of the Arabian desert. The brilliant moonlight cast deep shadows on the sand, and showed us what mighty blocks had fallen, and how others were about to fall. These African nights, soft, lustrous, and silent, are worth crossing the world to feel. We met a party of three men, a boy and a donkey, one of the men carrying a spear. They returned our greeting courteously, but stopped to look after us in surprise. Their tread and ours was noiseless on the sand; and the only sound within that wide horizon was of a baying dog, far away on the opposite shore.

      The next morning we passed Korosko, and saw the surveying flag of M. Arnault, and the tents of his party of soldiers: but we could not learn how his survey and his search for water proceeded, in preparation for his road to the Red Sea. We were passing temples, from stage to stage, all the way up: and very clearly we saw them, each standing on its platform of sand or rock: but we left them all for examination on our return. This return must now be soon: we sighed to think how soon, when we met, on the morning of January 3rd, the two boats of a party who told us that if we wished to send letters to England, we must prepare them, as some gentlemen were at Aboo-Simbil, and would presently be passing us. The great temple of Aboo-Simbil, the chief object of our Nubian voyage, and almost at the extremity of it, so near us! It damped our spirits; but we wrote our letters; and before we had done, the expected boat came up. We little thought that morning, any of us, that our three parties would join in the Desert, and that we should live together in Arabia for five weeks. Yet so it turned out.

      I had been watching the winds and the hours in the fear that we should pass Aboo-Simbil in the dark. But when I came on deck, on the morning of the 4th, I found, to my great joy, that we were only a few miles from it, while a fresh breeze was carrying us well on our course. We passed it before breakfast.

      The façade is visible from a considerable distance: and as soon as it becomes visible, it fixes the eye by the singularity of such an object as this smoothed recess of the rugged rock. I found it unlike what I expected, and unlike, I thought, all the representations of it that I had seen. The portal looked low in proportion to the colossi: the façade was smaller, or at least narrower, than I had supposed; and the colossi much nearer together. The whitewash which Champollion (it is said) left on the face of the northernmost colossus has the curious effect of bringing out the expression of countenance, so as to be seen far off. Nothing can be more strange than so extremely distinct a revelation of a face, in every feature, perhaps a mile off. It is stranger than the first apparition of the goodly profile of the bronze Borromeo, near Lago Maggiore: because not only the outline of the features stands out clear, but every prominence and shadow of the face. The expression of this colossus is very agreeable; – it is so tranquil and cheerful. We had not yet experienced the still stranger sensation of seeing a row of statues precisely alike in all respects. We did not feel it now: for one of the faces being white, and another being broken, and many details lost by distance, the resemblance was not complete enough to cause in us that singular emotion.

      The smaller temple of »the Lady of Aboshek«, – Athor, – beside the large one, is very striking, as seen from the river. The six statues on the façade stand out boldly between buttresses; and their reclining backwards against the rock has a curious effect. All about both temples are inscribed tablets, which look like doors opening into the rock. We had now seen, for the first time, a rock temple: and we were glad that it was the noblest that we saw first. In estimating it, we must remember what Ethiopia was to the Egyptians of its time. The inscription »foreign land« is appended to the titles of Athor in the smaller temple: and the establishment of these edifices here is what it would have been to the Romans who, conquering Great Britain, should have carried their most solemn worship to the Orkneys, and enthroned it there in the noblest edifice they could erect. But we could not fully estimate this till we had examined the temple on our return: nor can my readers do so till the time comes for a fuller account of these great works.

      The wind was favourable all day, and at night, as we approached Wadee Halfa, very strong. It is to be wished that we had some full meteorological reports of these regions, both for the sake of science and the guidance of travellers. Every voyager, I believe, speaks of strong wind, and, in the travelling season, north wind, near. Wadee Halfa. Has anyone heard of calm weather there? On inquiry, on the spot, we were told that there is almost always a strong wind and frequent gales: sometimes from the south, but usually from the north. This night we had experience of a Nile gale.

      Our sail was rarely tied, any part of the way; and our Nubian Rais had it always held. To-night it was held by a careful personage, who minded his business. First, our foresail was taken in, as the wind rose. Then we went sounding on, the poles on each side being kept constantly going. Nevertheless, we struck on a sand-bank with a great shock, and the main-sail was let fly. Half a dozen poor fellows, already shivering with cold, went over the side, and heaved us off. The wind continued to rise; the night was growing dark; and presently we grounded again. The sail was let go; but it would not fly. The wind strengthened; the sail was obstinate, and the men who had sprung aloft to furl it could not get it in. We seemed to be slowly but surely going over: and for several minutes (a long time in such