66 PASHA'S CAVALRY. a group 217 volubility. Near these was a group of itinerant female linen-drapers, each with a piece of coarse linen on her lap; farther on, a man with mats; another with printed cottons; and a third with carrots, or other vegetables. In the midst of these, as if to shame the meanness" of their humble dress, we observed a number of cavalry officers, in their rich variegated costume, mounted on superb horses, galloping up the steep mounds, then down again, checking their fiery steeds in mid-gallop. Their principal commander, dressed in a magnificent scarlet cloak, embroidered vest, and costly shawl, with a fine horse and sabre, appeared, from his luxuriant carroty mustachios, to be some German renegade : though, on the day before, I had seen an Arab with a red beard; and even mummies have been found with hair of this colour. A large building, with numerous glass windows and green blinds, situated at the northern entrance to the town, is one of the Pasha's abandoned cotton manufactories, now converted into a hospital. One of the principal mosques of the city has been undermined by the Nile; which, unless artificially dammed off, will soon wash away the whole town. CXLVI. The great sugar plantations of Egypt commence a little to the north of Benisooëf; and these, together with the dhourra, seem to occupy all the industry of the inhabitants, there being few fields of tobacco, wheat, or cotton, or indigo plantations. Sucking the raw sugar-cane is a great piece of luxury 218 ARAB SHEPHERDS. with the Arabs; and, in reality, the juice has a pleasant taste. One of my crew, a Nubian, having obtained a small advance from the reis, here deserted. The Arab servants of Europeans generally behave very insolently towards their countrymen. This morning, in the bazăr, the hajji took an old man by the beard, because he laughed at him for offering too little for his goods; and struck another person in the face for daring to speak, no doubt impertinently, about the article which he was buying. He depended upon the respect which is every where shown to the English: alone, he would not have dared to act thus for his life. Reprimands, however, have very little effect in checking his passions, for as often as the occasion presents itself, the fault is repeated. In the course of the day, we passed Beni Amrous, Isment, and Halabieh; and moored, in the evening, on a wild uninhabited part of the shore, not far from the village of Malakhah. The doves seem to prefer the mimosa to the palm tree, being generally found most numerous in groves where the former predominates. In this part of the country, the dhourra stalk acquires the height of twelve feet, as in Rajpootana; and women stand in the midst of the fields, on small towers, to watch the grain, and frighten away the birds with slings. We have, to-day, passed several Arab shepherds following their flocks, playing on a double-reed pipe, much resembling in tone a bad bagpipe. Much rain fell during the morning, and several storms passed at a distance over the eastern desert. Our mooringplace being far from houses, the jackals were exceed MAGNIFICENT REACH OF THE RIVER. 219 ingly numerous in the neighbourhood; and their loud, shrill, agonising cry, mingling with the whistling of the wind, sounded fearfully in the darkness of the night. Wednesday, Dec. 19. Off Bibbé. CXLVII. Started with the dawn; and, soon after sunrise, came in sight of the united villages of Baranga and Beni Maadi; the site of which, on a noble bend of the river, is worthy of a capital city, and, in many respects, resembles that of Benares. The Nile here makes a large semicircular sweep; into which, on the Arabian side, there projects a low sandy promontory, backed by cultivated fields, terminating behind at the foot of the lofty rampart of rocks which bound the sacred valley towards the east. On the African shore, which, together with the river, stretches round this promontory in the form of a halfmoon, stand Baranga and Beni Maadi, with their lofty castellated dove-houses, embosomed in superb groves of palms, which extend in stately avenues along the margin of the Nile, united, as it were, below, by a thick undergrowth of tamarisks and mimosas. The fields round the villages were covered with fine young grass, and bersim, or Egyptian clover. Here we observed, for the first time in Egypt, a number of turkeys among the barn-door fowl. CXLVIII. A little below Bibbé, and the island which there divides the channel of the river, the Arabian mountains literally project their bases into 220 DELIGHTS OF TRAVELLING. the stream, and with their bare and rugged front, unrelieved by a single blade of verdure, with the edges of their different strata all laid open to the eye, present an exceedingly desolate and barren aspect; yet their summits, viewed from the groves of Baranga, through the silvery haze of the morning, wore a beautiful cerulean tint, like the airy pinnacles of the Alps. On the island off Bibbé there is a small hamlet in a grove; the first I saw on any island in the Nile. It may not, perhaps, be considered foreign to the subject, if with exceeding thankfulness I here remark, for the encouragement of future travellers, that ever since I had been on the river my health appeared to be improving daily, until at length mere physical existence, the very act of breathing, was a luxury. Persons who have passed over lofty table-lands, or along the summits of vast mountains, or even traversed the desert, have often observed in themselves the same pleasurable sensations, which in all such cases they would no doubt attribute to the lightness and purity of the air. But in the low humid valley of the Nile some other cause must be sought; and this I suppose to be the lightness of our food, the excellence of the water, constant exercise, and the gentle excitement of the imagination by novel objects; for the changes of the weather were frequent and violent. In the morning of this day, for example, it was mild and balmy, like spring; in the afternoon, a keen cold wind swept over the river, which made the extremities tingle, as in sharp frosty weather. When the sun was out, it was, in fact, summer; if a cloud covered him, the rigours of winter were felt. Up to this period, we every day had clouds at intervals, generally rain. Indeed, nothing can be more incorrect than the opinion that it never rains in this part of Egypt. During the first week we were on the Nile, it rained at least ten times, not slightly or sparingly, as if the climate were not used to it, but in long, heavy, drenching showers, which thoroughly soaked the earth, and must have been greatly useful in forwarding the processes of vegetation. All these vicissitudes of the atmosphere appeared, however, to have no ill effect upon our constitution; and, indeed, if travelling in general be productive of such health, and physical and mental elasticity, as we experienced in Egypt and Nubia, we need no longer wonder at man's passion for locomotion, or at his aversion for sedentariness and inactivity. CXLIX. Herodotus, who yet had curiously studied whatever related to Egypt and its river, asserts that there springs up from the Nile no breeze, as from other streams. In this, however, he is certainly mistaken, for I have always felt, on approaching its banks, a cool air stirring, even when its surface was most smooth and unruffled; and this atmospheric current invariably appeared, in calm days, to move in the same direction as the watery current below. This evening, a little before sunset, I observed two rainbows, one after the other, the first I had witnessed in Egypt; and not long afterwards |