CHAPTER XVIII. VALLEY OF THE NILE. It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands, That roamed through the young earth;-the flag extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The laughing Queen that caught the world's great hands. As of a world left empty of its throng; And the void weighs on us; and then to wake, LEIGH HUNT SOON after daylight on the 8th of February, we gave the word to start; the capacious tent shrank into a little bag; its furniture resumed its place in the cabins of the boat; and our voyage began indeed. Eight Arabs towed us along, for there was not a breath of wind: they went capering, singing, and laughing, as if labor was their sport: a red skull-cap, a loose blue shirt, and red slippers, was their only dress. Sometimes the breeze would freshen suddenly, and the boat shot a-head; then, they swam on board, let fall the sails, and with tambourine and pipe struck up their everlasting song. Generally, however, in the day-time, they were towing from morning until sunset; the pilot squatted motionless on the poop; the rais reclining at the bow, now and then exchanging a joke with the two servants, who alone busied about, in the constant preparation of pipes, coffee, dinner, and other refreshment. Keenly we enjoyed this, our first essay at Nile navigation. Reclined on cushions, under a thick awning that made twilight of the blazing sunshine; surrounded by the strange African scenery, every change of which had so much interest for us; our books and maps lay beside us, ever ready to explain or illustrate what we saw; and our guns, lying close at hand, were in at least as frequent exercise. Along our left ran the chain of the Mokattam, or Arabian hills; now receding, now approaching, to the river, with an interval of level ground, varying from three to nine miles. This is, for the most part, desert, and utterly barren are those hills; but a rich green stripe of vegetation runs along the banks, parked off from the sandy tract by groups, or forests of palm-trees. On the right is a wider tract of cultivation, millet, bearded wheat, lupines, &c.; and this plain is bounded by the Libyan desert and its hills. The banks are enlivened by frequent villages, always sheltered by palm groves; and now and then, in some lonely spot, appear the ruins of some city of the olden time, or column skeletons of a temple; and, far as the eye can reach, pyramids peer at intervals over the sand-hill, or the forest. The concentration of vitality along the Nile is very striking. In the desert there is no sign of life; along the river it seems to swarm under every aspect. The waters themselves are thronged by huge, strange-looking fishes; myriads of flies and gnats buzz in chorus to the ripple of the waters: on the bank innumerable lizards are glancing, snakes are twining, and countless insects, of unimaginable forms, are crawling. The rank vegetation teems with inhabitants, from the grub to the grasshopper; and the low spits of sand, that run occasionally into the river, are all of a quiver with wild fowl: could one throw a net over "Those quick, restless wings that gleam Variously in the sun's bright beam," one would enclose a rare aviary; snow-white pelicans, purple Nile geese, herons, ibis, lapwings, and a crowd of nameless birds, seem masquerading there. The very air is darkened, and rustling with flocks of beautiful turtle-doves, birds of paradise, hoopoes, and strange swallows; and, high over all, soar the eagle and the hawk on the watch for the living, and the vulture scenting for the dead. Flocks of sheep and goats are browsing about each village; troops of wild dogs prowling, camels stalking along the foot-path, and buffaloes making their eternal rounds in the waterwheels that irrigate the land. Amidst all this exuberance of life, man only languishes; yet the fecundity of the Egyptian is proverbial. Vainly do the fish prey on the insects, and the eagle and the hawk on the feathered tribes; they multiply notwithstanding; but man has his tyrant, whose influence is deadlier far; and 500,000 souls have withered from Egypt, within the last ten years, under the blight of conscription and oppression. It is not only the loss of men that is caused by enrolment, battle, and disease; but, when the Pasha's pressgangs are out recruiting, whole villages become deserted. The men fly to the deserts, to escape his odious service, and their wives and children dare not remain behind them, to meet the vengeance of the baffled pursuer. In the desert they perish by thousands; and when pursuit has passed by, and the man-catchers have returned to their camp, many a roof remains deserted, for those who made a home there lie with bleached bones upon the desert. The dread of conscription is painfully illustrated in the number of the maimed you meet everywhere. At least two-thirds of the male population of Egypt have deprived themselves of the right eye, or of the fore-finger of the right hand. There are even professional persons, who go about to poison the eye, which they do with verdigris, or sew it up altogether. Our equipment consisted of twelve men; of these only ten were liable to conscription, and seven of them were either one-eyed or fore-fingerless. As we are upon a melancholy subject, I will here relate a circumstance we witnessed at a village near Minyeh. A man had been drowned; his body had been recovered from the river, and lay upon a mat under the shelter of some palms; a crowd of women, with dishevelled hair, were seated round the corpse, beating their naked bosoms, and screaming out their lamentations over one who had suddenly become endowed with every virtue in the Koran. That undulating circle, with their flashing eyes, and dark faces, and loose blue drapery, was a striking group. One woman, with a loud, wailing voice, would recapitulate some of the perfections of the dead; and, when she paused, the rest all cried in chorus, "Wiley! Wiley! Wo! Wo!" As I have before remarked, this lamentation is singularly like that of the keening women of Ireland, and a passage in the Edinburgh Review has just been pointed out to me, in which the same coincidence is observed. Mr. Jones thought he could even recognize the "Ululu ;" and affirms that the African asks the same pathetic but unanswerable question that the bereaved Irish put to their dead; "Why did you die, darling? Why did you die ?" There is something very time-stealing in the pleasant monotony of Nile travel: evening comes on so softly, morning rises with such unvarying brightness; the occupations of each day are so similar, that days become weeks, and weeks months, almost imperceptibly. We rise early, for the sake of the cool: on emerging from our cabin, a cup of coffee and a pipe meet us on the threshold; we take our guns, and walk along the edge of the cultivated land, in pursuit of quail, or red-legged partridge, or unknown birds, by whose death ornithology profits as little as our cuisine. Mahmoud, at the same time (while the sailors are towing), pays a morning visit to the villages in search of poultry, eggs, butter, and milk: sometimes we accompany him to explore; and sometimes visit a temple, or a jungle, with Abdallah. About nine, we take a breakfast that Ude might approve, for Mahmoud is a first-rate artiste; and then the unfailing pipe promotes thought, and conversation, and repose of mind and body; for the noonday sun is blazing fiercely, and the very Arabs move languidly along. It is passing pleasant, with a pleasant companion, and such was my rare lot, to find one's-self for the first and only time in life, in the enjoyment of perfect, unbroken, unreproachful leiThe calm life we lead, the calm climate that we breathe, the absence of all disturbance, of anxiety, or care, or hope, or sure. fear-all this presents such a contrast to the life we have left, and must soon return to, that we can scarcely believe in our own identity. This sense of enjoyment only lasts for a season, however, and we were long enough upon the Nile to wear it out; the instinct of action, the force of habit, and Norman restlessness, soon returned. Long before our voyage was concluded, we pined for Europe and its working world, with all its wear and tear, and struggles and distractions. At first, however, as I have observed, this life of indolence was very enjoyable. We read during the heat of the day; about sunset took a swim in the river; and then dined on such variety as Mahmoud's ingenuity could devise out of chickens, eggs, vegetables, and mutton. Beef is never seen in Egypt, since the late murrain, which carried off 240,000 head of cattle, or 320,000, as Mehemet Ali told a friend of mine. The mortality still continues, and every day we see carcases of oxen floating down the river,-apparently navigated by a crew of vultures, who seem to take to this sort of yachting with as much gusto as if they had been reared at Cowes. At sunset, if there is no wind, we moor for the night alongside the bank, and then there is always time for a pleasant stroll by starlight, with good promise of adventure. Then coffee, pipes, books, and bed. Thus we lived a pleasant week, and arrived at the prettiest city on the Nile, called Minyeh, the abode of the good Ebn Khasid, whose history forms an interesting episode in Lord Lindsay's "Letters." Soon after leaving Minyeh, we arrived at a dangerous pass in the river, where the Arabian hills approach the banks, or rather frown over the river, in steep and menacing cliffs, at whose base the waters welter fearfully, and a storm is always howling. It was late when we approached them; our boat was reeling along under the pressure of enormous sails which we could not furl, as this process requires men to go aloft, and she staggered so much that they feared to venture. A lurid-looking moon peeped occasionally from behind some ragged clouds, as if to see how |