From sketch-book and diary Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "_FOSTaT_" BECALMED]

But I have also seen, on rare occasions, delicate effects of veiled sunshine on river, palms, and desert too exquisite in refinement to be easily described. I remember one memorable grey day which we spent in turning the loveliest river reach of the whole series below a.s.souan, the wind having completely dropped--a day which dwells in my memory as a precious pa.s.sage of silvery colour amidst all the gold. The palm-tree stems towards sundown were illuminated with rosy light against the pallid background of sand-hills facing the West, and of the delicate pearl-grey sky. The greens were cool and vivid, the water like a liquid opal. I wrote a whole letter to Mamma on that one grey day on the Nile.

But even that evening the after-glow made itself felt through the clouds, lighting them from behind in an extraordinary manner, so that the filmy screen appeared red-hot. The beautiful cloud-veil could not shut out so fervid a rush of colour.

When a strong wind blows the desert sand into the air, obscuring the sun and thickening the sky, what a change comes over the scene! Egypt is then undoubtedly ugly, and all charm flies away on the wings of the blast.

But the blast speeds the dahabieh on its way, and pleasant it was sitting of an evening in the cosy saloon to see the hanging lamp swinging with the motion of the bounding "_Fostat_," and to hear the creaking of the timbers, for the distance from a.s.souan, where W. was to meet us, was being sensibly diminished. On some other evenings the fair north wind was just enough to quicken the pace without dulling the brilliant light of the moon, and there was to be no tying up under the mud bank those nights. Then again a dead calm might come down upon us, and after poling, tracking, or hauling up to the kedge anchor all day to their monotonous sing-song, the crew would have orders to moor for the night. I would then venture a run along the sh.o.r.e with the children, and have a scamper among the palms and cotton plants, which were waving and rustling mysteriously to imperceptible sighings of the air at the water's edge. One or two armed men, of course, landed also.

At Esneh I had the honour of entertaining the Pasha of that wonderful place, whose temple I had particularly wished to see. He received us with much ceremony, and we all went on sh.o.r.e escorted by his guard in great state, walking through the bazaars accompanied by the wild and ragged population. But for the soldiers and their whips we could not have moved a yard. We visited the wonderful temple, the first we had seen with the ceiling intact, which the colossal pillars were made to support. I prefer the ruins so open to the sky that the sun may be seen amongst them. Here, owing to the unbroken ceiling, all was gloom. At Edfoo I was to see a _whole_ temple with pylons and all, almost in perfect preservation, and to know the Egyptian temple in its entirety.

How funny our party looked--two English ladies, two little children, and English maid, guarded by bashi-bazouks, slowly progressing through a crowd of indescribable dirt and wildness. We looked into an oil mill where the press was exactly like the wine-presses in Tuscany. You remember the one I sketched at Signa, the picturesque _Strettojo_ of the vintage? We poked our noses into the cavernous recesses where gigantic negroes were dyeing the native cloth a splendid indigo, their black arms blue to the shoulder. Oh, what colour!

On going back to the dahabieh we all, except myself, had our fortunes told in a narrow lane where a row of Soudanese fortune-tellers were squatting with patches of smooth sand before them on which they made the person interested impress his or her hand. Upon the impression they made many signs and marks. Everything was quite satisfactory. The children were to have "pleasant paths in life and _strong loins_." The maid was to marry a white man, which was a comfort.

In the evening the Pasha dined on board. He spoke in French, and nothing could surpa.s.s the florid eulogies he bestowed on "his brother, that lion," my husband. I saw him depart on his sleek and fat white a.s.s, which stood quite fourteen hands, and was equipped in Arab trappings of indigo and dead gold. In the morning I received the Pasha's presents of fruit, vegetables, eggs in hundreds, two live turkeys, and a black lamb.

A gorgeous cava.s.s in sky blue and carrying a wand of office was installed on board for the rest of the voyage to a.s.souan. There had been feasting and much thumping of tom-toms and whinings of curious fiddles on deck during dinner the night before, where the crew were entertaining the Pasha's body-guard. My dragoman's bill next day included these items: "Trinks and trymbals for the crew"; "hay for the limp." The poor black "limp" with his hay was put into the little boat in tow, and I had to deliver him up, as a matter of course, to the crew a few days later.

Then came Edfoo, whose temple is one of the most conspicuous in Egypt. I had been on the look-out for its mighty pylons with especial eagerness, and I was glad that we had time to spend two hours on land while some repairs were being done on the "_Fostat_." The Esneh cava.s.s was useful as well as extremely ornamental, as he kept off the wild crowd in the village by magical waves of his wand of office, and an occasional thump on a screaming villager.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT PHILae]

The guard turned out and saluted our party, and altogether things went very well, and I enjoyed my long-looked-forward-to Edfoo.

Then on board again, with a steady north breeze which, if it had filled our eyes with sand at Edfoo, was making up for the discomfort by carrying us in spanking style towards a.s.souan and the meeting.

After one of our fair-wind nights, when the "_Fostat_" was bowling along over the lumpy water, I asked the reis if we had come to Comombos. He made vigorous signs showing we had pa.s.sed it in the night. "Silsileh?"; again the welcome backward wave of his arm. That, too, was long pa.s.sed.

We were getting very near. I noticed the people on the banks were becoming blacker and there were fewer of them; the mountains had vanished and were replaced by lion-coloured sand-hills, typically African. The black rocks looked like sleeping crocodiles.

A faint whisp of smoke presently rose beyond a bend of the river, far ahead. "What is that?" I asked the dragoman. "English steamer." Great excitement. The little armed steamer puffs into sight; some one is waving a red handkerchief from the turret! "Furl the "_Fostat's_"

mainsail!" The crew swarm up the spar. _Ding_, _ding_ goes the electric bell on the gunboat. The meeting is an accomplished fact--we from Plymouth, he from Wady Halfa. We are soon at a.s.souan, and while the "_Fostat_" is being hauled by great gangs of negroes through the cataract, we are guests of the General in that command on board his charming dahabieh moored under Philae. There the solemn rocks echo the waltzes of the military band and the talk and laughter of our _reunions_ on board the "_Pharaon_."

If the Egyptian desert answered back in harmonious tones the light of the sun and moon, what a _crescendo_ of glowing response came from the Nubian sands! Immediately we crossed the frontier my eyes were surprised by the golden tone the desert had a.s.sumed, and the polished rocks that studded it had suddenly put on the richest colours granite holds--deep red and purple, and the black of basalt. It was a new scheme of colouring. The sunset and the after-glow were still more astonishing than those of Egypt, the colour of the shadows on the golden sands at sundown more positive in their limpid colours. One felt looking at the stars and planets as though one had been lifted to a world nearer to them than before, so large and clear had they grown even from the extraordinary clearness they had at Luxor. Oh! land of enchantment, is it any wonder the Nile is so pa.s.sionately loved, especially by the artist, to whom the joy of the eye is supreme? As to worthily painting the Egyptian landscape, I cannot think any one will ever do it--the light is its charm, and this light is unattainable. There is one thing very certain, oil paints are hopelessly "out of it," and in water-colours alone can one hope to suggest that light. I soon gave up oils in Egypt, not only on account of their heaviness, but the miseries I endured from flies and sand were heart-breaking; your skies are seamed with the last wanderings and struggles of moribund flies, and coated with whiffs of sand suddenly flung on them by a desert gust! I was particularly anxious to get a _souvenir_ of the doorway in the court of the temple on Philae Island, where Napoleon's soldiers engraved their high-sounding "_Une page d'histoire ne doit pas_," etc. Unfortunately, on the day I chose, we had a high wind, a very exasperating ordeal, and my attempt at oil-sketching this subject was a fiasco. After persevering with one half-blinded eye open at a time and with sand thickly mixed with my paints, I saw the panel I had been desperately holding on the easel hurled to the ground on its b.u.t.tered side as for a moment I turned to answer a remark of Mrs. C.'s. She said I bore it angelically. As since those days lovely Philae Island is being submerged and the temple melting away, the poor little panel has become more historically valuable than I thought it ever would do at the time, and I insert its replica in water-colours _minus_ the smudges.

Many pleasant hours we spent at Philae, which, I suppose, is the culminating point of the Nile's beauties and marvels. One day, while W.

was gone to a.s.souan for provisions, I went over with Mrs. C. to the opposite bank of the river by boat, an imp of a small boy taking upon himself to escort us. He divested himself of his one garment, which he carried in a bundle on his head, and swam alongside our "felucca." Our approach had been observed from a wild mud hamlet up on the fantastic rocks, and a bevy of black and brown women came hopping and skipping down to us. Little shrivelled old hags and wild little young women with nose rings and anklets, their hair plaited in hundreds of little tails reeking with castor oil, each little tail ending in a lump of mud.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A "LAMENT" IN THE DESERT]

Mrs. C. asked them to unfasten and display their locks, and in return let down her own six-foot-long auburn tresses and stood on them to "astonish the natives." They danced and wailed in slow cadence, softly clapping their hands and wagging their heads in admiration as they made the round of the tall, rosy Englishwoman. There she stood, on her hair, that trailed on the sand, in a golden halo of sunshine, the grim hypaethral temple and the huge rocks as background, and surrounded by little skinny, skipping, half-naked, barbarian women and quite-naked little children. They turned to me and made signs that I should also let my hair down. Because I excused myself, the little boy imp, still with his garment on his head, came forward and took upon himself condescendingly to explain to the little women, shouting "_Mafeesh_, _mafeesh_!" ("Nothing, nothing!") and dismissing me with a wave of his arm.

From Philae we soon glided into the Tropics. I say in a letter: "The moonlight in Nubia also surpa.s.ses that of Egypt, and I see in it a light I never saw before I came to this wonderful land. It is difficult to describe this light. It is brilliant yet soft; light in darkness; not like the day; not like the dawn: the sky at full moon is so bright that only the larger stars are seen; and the yellow sand, the ashen bloom on the tops of the sand-hills, the various tones of green in palm-tree, tamarisk, and mimosa keep distinctly their local tints, yet softened and darkened and changed into a mysterious vision of colour too subtle for words of mine. Every night Venus and other great planets and stars shed reflections in the still water like little moons in every part of the Great Stream wherever one turns."

W. could not spare the time for lotus-eating under sail, so a "stern-wheeler" towed us from Philae to Wady Halfa. It took very little away from the romance, and the steady progress was very grateful. On that gla.s.sy river, as it was now, we would have been an age getting to our goal.

I was greatly struck with Korosko, a place which, besides its natural desolate and most strange appearance, was sad with memories of Gordon.

This was his starting-point as he left the Nile to travel across the desert to Khartoum, never to return. From a height one can see the black and grey burnt-up landscape which lonely Gordon traversed. It is a most repellent tract of desert just there, calcined and blasted. A view I had of the Nile, southward, from the mountains of Thebes one day, though bathed in sunshine, has remained most melancholy in my mind, because, looking towards Khartoum, I thought of the hundreds of my countrymen who lay buried in already obliterated graves all along those lonely banks, away, away to the remote horizon and beyond, sacrificed to the achievement of a great disaster. Others like them have arisen since and will arise, eager to offer their lives for success or failure, honours or a nameless grave.

One evening, as the "_Fostat_," in tow, was skimming through the calm water with a rippling sound, and we were all sitting on deck, W.

described to us so vividly a memorable night before the fight that put a stop to hostilities, that I could see the whole scene as though I had been there. They were out in the desert, the moon was full; the Dervishes were "sniping" at long range, when afar off was heard a Highland "lament." The "sniping" ceased all along the enemy's line and dead silence fell upon the night but for the wail of the bagpipes. The Dervishes seemed to be listening. The "lament" increased in sound, and presently the Cameron Highlanders approached, bearing, under the Union Jack, the body of an officer who had died that day of fever, to add yet another grave to the number that lay at intervals along the sh.o.r.es of the great river. You should hear the pipes in the desert, as well as on the mountain-side, to understand them.

"Every phase of the day and night" (letter, 12th January '86), "appeals to me on the Nile, not forgetting those few moments that follow the after-glow which are like the last sigh of the dying day. The delicacy of those pure tints is such that one scarcely dares to handle them in writing. Evening after evening I have watched by the desert death-bed of the day, looking eastward so as to have the light upon the hills.

"Those tender, sad, pathetic hills, and beyond them the mournful mountains, possessing nothing,--not a blade of gra.s.s, not a lichen, not a herb; they are absolute paupers amongst mountains, and they might be in the moon, these derelicts, so bereft are they of all things.

"And yet the light, the atmosphere, give them a consoling beauty. What a poem might be written to them as they look thus for a minute or two before the dark-blue pall of night sinks down!"

Wady Sabooah, the "Valley of Lions," was one of the most striking things I had seen on this exquisite section of our river voyage. The abrupt sand-hills held shadows of the most delicate amethyst at noonday which, combined with the gold of the sunlit parts, produced a delicacy of vibrating tones which enchanted the eye but saddened the artist's mind, recognising as it did the futility of trying to record such things in paint! But I shall weary you with all this daily rapture, and I will bid good-bye in these pages to the desert, well named by the Moslems "The Garden of Allah." There is no pollution there, and He may walk in His garden unoffended.

In the first really hot days of March I and the children came home--Wady Halfa was becoming no place for us, and W. remained with his Brigade through the weary days of summer, unknown in their exhausted and horrible listlessness to me who will always think of the Nile as an earthly paradise. One halt I must make on our way down, at Abu Simbel, that mysterious rock temple I had longed to see in the first ray of sunrise, for it faces due east. W., who accompanied us as far as a.s.souan, gave orders that our stern-wheeler (the old "_Fostat_" had been dismissed) should tie up overnight at the temple, and before daylight I was up and ready. I had packed my water-colours and had only a huge canvas and oil-paints available. With these I climbed the hill and waited for the first ray in the wild wind of dawn.

The event was all I hoped for as regards the effect of those "scarlet shafts" on the four great figures (how many sunrises had they already awakened to?) "A great cameo," Miss Amelia Edwards calls that facade at sunrise in her fascinating book, and that phrase had made me long for years for this moment. But alas! my canvas acted as a sail before the wind and nearly carried me into the river, the sand powdered the wet paint more viciously than ever, and I returned very blue to breakfast.

Still, I had got my "Abu Simbel at Sunrise," and I insert a water-colour taken in comfort from the hard-earned but scarcely presentable original.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ABU SIMBEL AT SUNRISE]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER III

ALEXANDRIA

Our subsequent experiences of Egypt at Alexandria from '90 to '93 made me acquainted with the Delta and that "Lower Nile" which has a very particular charm of its own, and possesses the precious advantage of being out of the tourist track altogether.

Not the least amongst the attractions of an Egyptian command (to Madame!) is the yearly autumn journey to that country through Italy, with Venice as an embarkation point. Madame knows nothing of the horrors of the summer months endured by the "man on duty" out there, and serenely enjoys "the best," without the seamy side ever turning up. She thinks that to spend one's winters on the Nile, and one's summers in the "Emerald Isle," is as near an ideal existence as this world allows us.

It is good to be a woman!

That farewell scene at Venice on board the P. & O., when friends came to see us off with bouquets and "bon voyage"--how I should like just one more of those gay leave-takings! I see again the dancing gondolas on the sparkling ripples as they wait round the ship; the hat and handkerchief wavings ash.o.r.e and afloat, and Venice encircling the sprightly little drama with her gracious arms.

Who that has plied between Italy and Egypt does not know the poetry of that first night at sea, when the cloud-like mountains behind the vanished Venice have also faded away, and there is nothing for it now but to turn to the darkling Adriatic, heaving dimly beyond the ship's bows, and commit oneself to the mercies of the deep. "And the dinner-bell," some one is sure to add. Never shall it be said of me that I chronicle the meals of my little travels.

The next morning the cessation of vibrations and throbbings wakes you.

Behold through the port-hole Ancona's white church high up overhead, shining in the level sunbeams of the young day.

The morning after that it is Brindisi, where they wait for the "long sea" pa.s.sengers and the mails, and the Italian chatter and laughter along the quays never stops. Here, in the course of a stroll, you may pat the two pillars that form the winning-post of that Appian Way whose starting-post you know in Rome.

There is very little monotony in a voyage of this kind, for you are never for long out of sight of land. The Albanian coast, the Ionian Islands, Crete, "Morea's Hills"--what a series of lovely things to beguile the six days' pa.s.sage! Yet, all the same, one has a thrill of delight one day when an unusual stir amongst the crew begins, and the hatches over the heavy baggage-hold are opened, and the lifting gear is got into position. "We shall be in at daybreak." Bless the captain for those words! And the "man on duty" aforesaid will be standing on the landing-stage.

W. arranged a good studio for me at our new post, but I had distractions. British and Foreign naval squadrons occasionally bore down on us with thundering salutes, and had to be attended to; distinguished and even august personages paused at Alexandria on their way "up"; picnics on horse-back, donkey-back, camel-back, by road, rail, and river, to Aboukir, Aboo-sir, and sundry oases all claimed my delighted co-operation, plus my unsociable sketch-book.

Ah, the good good time, the golden Egyptian days!

But I found nothing so interesting as a holiday we managed to squeeze in and spend on board a little dahabieh for two, on a nine days' cruise to Rosetta and back. I then knew the Western Delta and, superficially, the life of its neglected and forgotten people. I am much afraid that since the a.s.souan Dam and its doings, their meagre water-supply is anything but increased, and I pray that the English authorities may remember those poor people at last. They are like fish in a pond that is slowly drying up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME'S "AT HOME" DAY; SERVANTS AT THE GATE]