The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II Part 16

Pipes and coffee as usual.

Here comes Hosseyn clean-shaven. He is a nice boy, eager and willing--but wants varnish; he can never address me without scratching his spine at its lowest extremity; Audrey herself could not have done it in a manner more navely unconventional.

Though only twenty, he has had two wives; not liking the first, who snubbed his relations, he gave her three months' wages and dismissed her. To avoid further unpleasantness he then married his cousin: "She good woman--very quiet--good tongue."

The village at which we have landed is very picturesque. The mud and brick architecture is here carried out with some care and is entirely delightful. The walls are mostly crowned with an openwork finish made by a simple arrangement of the bricks which is most effective. Sometimes, as, for instance, in the cemetery, they are surmounted by crenulations like those we see in the old a.s.syrian monuments; the heads of the doorways are decorated with a charming sort of diapered ornament, capable of great variety and produced entirely by the arrangement in patterns of the bricks; the patterns being painted black and the ground filled in with white. The woodwork in the windows is also very pretty, and altogether the general aspect of the houses most novel and striking.

Beyond the village I wandered into a delightful garden; a half cultivated wilderness of palm and gum trees in which one came on unexpected pergolas, and lovely garden trees all pouring out their most intoxicating scents under the fiercest sun I ever walked beneath. I saw oleanders, the flowers of which were as thick as roses and smelt like a quintessence of nectarines; there were also some beautiful olive trees with weeping branches--a thing I had never seen before--and with berries as large as plums. Overhead, amongst the yellow dates, sat doves the colour of pale violets.

Syoot itself is beautifully situated amongst groves and gardens; except in that it is brown and not white, it reminded me much of an Algerine town; it is very unlike Cairo. The rock-cut tombs in the mountain above the town are so mutilated and disfigured that little can be made of them; but they have that stamp of vastness which is so characteristic of all the ancient monuments of this country.

The view from the height is very fine. The river has barely begun to fall yet, so that everything is reflected in the great sheets of water that cover the land. At evening I saw the sunset through the tall palm trees, with the domes of Syoot dark against its flaming light.

For a fine showy a.s.sertion that looks very original and striking, but is not calculated for pedantic verification, commend me to a Frenchman. The other day, at Boulay, Mariette Bey, the creator and the curator of the Museum of that ilk, and a man of high standing as an Egyptologist, told me that the Nile was turned into its actual course by a great chain of hills at Syoot which, serving as a rampart, alone prevented it from following its obvious tendency to flow into the Red Sea. "Il allait _evidemment_ se jeter dans la Mer Rouge;" in fact, but for this hill, there would have been no Lower Egypt, that country being literally the child of the Nile which alone prevents the sands of the central deserts from ruling over the whole breadth of the land. Here was a dramatic revelation of coincidences! Here was a startling suggestion of contingencies!

It fairly took your breath away! without that hill no Nile north of Syoot! half Egypt would not have been! No Memphis! Memphis with its wisdom! No Alexandria with its schools! No Cairo with its four thousand mosques! No Pharaohs! No Moses! (The poor devil of a sculptor who drowned himself in his own fountain because he found he had made _his_ Moses too short might have died in his bed.) No Cleopatra! (turn in your grave, n.o.ble dust of Antony!)--"forty centuries" would have had no Pyramids from which to look down on the conquering arms of Buonaparte. Mr.

Albert Smith's popular entertainment would have been shorn of half its glories! Let me breathe! To what fantastic proportions did that hill grow as one thought of it!

Alas! then, for prosaic fact; and oh! for unimaginative maps! On consulting the latter I observed that, by the time it reached Syoot, the Nile had been flowing for nearly two hundred miles in a _north-westerly_ direction, away from the Red Sea rather than towards it; and on visiting the spot I saw, oh confusion! that the hills which bore the responsibility (according to Mariette) of making the history of the world what it is, were on the _western_ bank of the river!--there, at least, or nowhere, for a vast plain closes in on the east.

This evening more visitors on board--lemonade and cigars--_pour changer_; Consuls, &c. &c.--tedious.

_Monday, 19th._--Left Syoot at six, and arrived at Sohag before three. Suffered a good deal in the morning from spasms of some sort, and was not in a frame of mind to appreciate the scenery.

Was, moreover, driven near the verge of exasperation by the steersman (Reis Ali), who droned select pa.s.sages from the Koran, _sotto voce_, within two yards of my ears from 8 A.M. till 2 P.

ditto; the same four bars over and over, for ever and for ever in one unceasing guttural strain. I trust the pious exercise did more for his soul than for my temper. Hosseyn informs me that he is about to buy a lamb, and "make him big sheep." It appears that, during a serious illness three years ago, he vowed a votive sheep to Sitteh Zehneb--the granddaughter of the Prophet--on condition that he should recover. Since then he has put her off (oh, humanity!) with candles and occasional prayer; now, at last, he is going to fulfil his vow. Admire thrift combined with piety, and observe the economy on the _lamb_.

Habit is a strange thing! Hosseyn, whose manners have been corrupted by evil communication with Europeans, occasionally attempts to use a _fork_ in the bosom of his family--particularly when salad is put before him. On these occasions his elder brother invariably asks him with grim sarcasm whether he has no fingers. Hosseyn desists at once--"Brabs he beat me!--he big!"

This evening I went out shooting amongst the palms and gum trees. It was very delightful, though ferociously hot. The village is charmingly situated; the ground prettily tumbled about, and trees and houses group themselves in the most picturesque manner. (I noticed some new mouldings over the doorways that had a very artistic effect.) I can't shoot at all; but the birds are so plentiful that something is sure to cross your gun if you only fire. I got a hawk, some doves, a dozen little birds nameless for me, and two little green birds of a kind that I have not seen before; they are quite lovely; must ascertain what they are called. The sun had set when I reached the boat, and all the dark plumes of the palm trees stood clear over the black outlines of the village; above, the new moon, a keen, golden sickle.

Hosseyn has given up fishing. "Oh, oh! nasty fish! he to laugh me!"

Was much amused this morning by the device and trade-mark on a tin of jam. (Jam, if you please, of Messrs. Barnes & Co. of Little Bush Lane _and_ Tooley Street.) The device was "Non sine labore"--and the trade-mark?--a beehive?--no!--the Pyramid of Cheops! _Excusez._

Some twenty miles above Syoot, or, say, fifteen, the eastern chain of mountains makes a bend towards the river, and for some distance ranges near it; the stream, in its usual tortuous course, sometimes flowing for a few hundred yards towards them and then for a few hundred yards in the opposite direction. I wonder whether one of these bends served as a foundation, or rather as a blind, for Mariette's astounding a.s.sertion that the Nile "allait evidemment se jeter dans la Mer Rouge." Did he "to laugh me," as the fish did by Hosseyn? Or did he merely mean to say that, if the Valley of the Nile had not turned north-west between Keneh and Manfaloot, it might have turned north-east? If so, joke for joke, I prefer the great Pyramid on the jam-pot of Mr. Barnes of Little Bush Lane and Tooley Street.

_Tuesday, 20th._--Started at about half-past five, and reached Disneh in the evening. There was a dead calm in the morning, and I congratulated myself, not for the first time, on my steamer; in a dahabieh I might have taken a week, and more, over the stretch of river I have just covered in a day; and the scenery just here, though fine, is monotonous. I am sorry for the Sterlings, who will, I fear, be unusually long getting up. This afternoon I saw Sheykh Selim, a sort of St. Simeon Stylites without the column. This holy man's peculiar form of piety consists in sitting stark naked on the bank of the river and exacting presents in money and kind from all pa.s.sers-by.

Hosseyn had spoken to me at great length of his wisdom and piety, and a.s.sured me that when the crocodiles, which are numerous about here, presented themselves before the eyes of the Sheykh, he merely waved his hand and said "Biz, biz!"

whereat they fled, rebuked. He informed me also that no boat refusing him tribute could expect to get on--it would infallibly be becalmed until his holiness was propitiated. To my surprise I found that my captain, a sensible old gentleman in other respects, believed this just as firmly, though he expressed his faith more vaguely. When I asked him whether the Sheykh's power extended also to steamers, which did not wait on the wind, he said: "Well, Allah was great, and though, certainly, a _steamer_ might, no doubt--so well appointed a steamer particularly--might, no doubt, get past--yet who should say? Allah was great!" In fact he believed with the best; so, of course, I said, by all means let the Sheykh be propitiated. Accordingly when we hove in sight of the little mound where he sits, and has sat for G.o.d knows how many years, we turned the steamer (a vessel of seventy-five horse-power) and ran straight in for the bank at considerable risk, it struck me, of not getting off again. The whole crew then went ash.o.r.e in great excitement, headed by the captain, and surrounded the Saint, kissing his hand and salaaming. As I did not wish to hurt the old gentleman's feelings by not kissing his hand, I stayed on board and looked on. Sheykh Selim is a very vigorous-looking old fellow of the colour of a very dusky mahogany table; his hair and beard are woolly and of a dirty white; his countenance, as far as I could judge from a little distance, good-humoured and sagacious. He squats on the ground with his knees up and his arms folded across them. He inspects his presents, and asks for more. After the levee was over, and when our crew were about to come on board, he called after them and asked for roast meat, and then again a second time for oil wherewith to anoint himself.

"There," said Hosseyn triumphantly, "he know everything! he know we have roast meat--how he know that?"

I was amused at the intellectual superiority of Ottilio, the Italian waiter. "Quanto sono stupidi questi Arabi!" For my part I don't see much more difficulty in swallowing Sheykh Selim than a stigmatised nun or a winking picture--I told him so.

We should have reached Keneh to-day, but the coals were bad, and we had to stop at Dishulh, three hours this side of that place.

Where was thy favouring grace, O Sheykh? It appears that, like the G.o.ds of ancient Greece, the Sheykhs of Egypt have their little misunderstandings; I am told that on one occasion Selim, having a few words with another holy man thirty-five miles up the river, by name Sheykh Fadl, and waxing wroth, threw a stone at him (what are thirty or forty miles to a saint?) and blinded him of one eye; whereon Sheykh Fadl returned the amenity by throwing "some fire" at Sheykh Selim, thereby sorely burning him. "I have seen the scar," my c.o.xswain informs me.

Killed another fatted sheep for the crew.

_Wednesday, 21st._--Arrived at Lougsor (El Uker) about three. It was too hot for sightseeing, so I waited till evening and went out shooting in a boat; at least I went out with the idea of shooting--if possible a pelican or a crane--but the birds were too shy--I could not get within fair shooting distance; wounded a pelican, but could not get after him in the deep mud. Got belated on the river, and the crew had to pull hard for an hour and a half to reach the steamer; fortunately there was a moon.

Anything more good-humoured or more ineffective than the way in which the sailors pulled and shoved, I never saw; they hopped in and out of the boat in the shallows, up to their hips in the water--pushed, tugged, rowed and sang _die era im piacus_; they can do nothing without the accompaniment of some rhythmic, droning refrain, which they can keep up for an indefinite time.

Anything will do; my fellows pulled on this occasion to the following words--

"Min Min_yeh_ fi Beniso_ef_,"

which is as who should say--

"From Hen_lee_ to Cookham _Reach_,"

giving the stroke and the emphasis on the last syllable.

In the evening was visited by Mustafa Aga, H.B.M. Consular Agent, one of his sons, the Turkish Governor (Ha.s.san Effendi), and the local doctor. Mustafa is a very courteous old gentleman, with half a nose, and much respected by all who know him; I observed that Sad, his son, would not smoke in his father's presence, in accordance with an Arab custom, which did not much remind me of the manner in which "the gov'nor" is treated in England.

On Thursday morning, 22nd, I started to see the tombs of the kings, leaving the eastern bank and Karnak for my return. It was a lovely morning, and I crossed the Nile before the air had had time to get thoroughly heated. On the other side I found horses, kindly lent me by Mustafa (whose son accompanied me), and donkeys for the rest of the party. There were a good many of us, and we made a very absurd-looking procession--_en tete_, a couple of fine brawny Arabs, one of whom has been the guide to these ruins since Champollion; then Sad and I on our horses--mine a good-looking chestnut, caparisoned with scarlet finery; behind us, on their respective donkeys, the captain in full uniform holding a large umbrella over his head, Hosseyn in his Arab dress, the French cook in his official white jacket and cap, the Italian waiter with a large handkerchief over his head, and the engineer; further behind, lesser menials and the hamper.

I forgot the Turkish Cawa.s.s in uniform and armed to the teeth.

Hovering round, brandishing water-bottles, was a swarm of Arab boys and girls, in sizes, and of various qualities of chocolate; they were dressed in the most fantastically tattered remnants of dark brown shirts that I ever saw; there was one little monkey of a dull ebony colour turned up with pale blue, whose form was revealed rather than covered by a few incoherent brown shreds of garment, and who was inexpressibly droll from the way in which he c.o.c.ked his little head demurely on one side with a half-consciousness of insufficient drapery.

The ride to the tombs, which takes about an hour, and the latter half of which lies through an arid valley, is very striking from the form and colour of the mountains. Nothing announces that one is approaching the city of the dead, and it is not till you stand before them that you become aware of the plain square openings which lead down to these magnificent last resting-places of the kings. It was a right royal idea this, of the old rulers of Egypt, to plunge these shafts into the bowels of the rock, and give themselves a mountain for a tombstone over the palace which was their grave. The design of these houses of the dead is simple and apparently always much the same: a long corridor, sometimes with lateral galleries, sometimes with recesses or small chambers on each side, leads downwards by a not very rapid incline to a great hall, in the centre of which is the sarcophagus which contained the mummy of the king in its magnificent case; these cases have of course been all removed.

All these lateral chambers were also originally filled with mummies--those, I believe, of the relations of the sovereign.

The walls of these subterranean palaces and the ceilings are adorned throughout with coloured hieroglyphs and flat sculptured "graven images" representing mostly sacred and mystical scenes, but often, also, ill.u.s.trating the different trades and crafts practised by the Egyptians. These paintings are of high interest from an ethnographic point of view--Poynter would have a fit over them. In the innermost places scores of bats dart about in intense alarm. The effect of the scanty light from the candles on these painted walls and on the dark bony forms of the Arabs is extremely fine--what your literary tourist would call "worthy of the pencil of Rembrandt."

After lunching in a shady spot we took an anything but shady ride to the temple-palace of Koorneh, and from thence to the Memnonium. Both are very interesting, but the latter by far the finest; there is about it a breadth and a vastness, together with much elegance and variety, that are very impressive.

Nothing that I have seen is comparable to the monuments of Egypt, for the expression of gigantic thoughts and limitless command of material and labour; withal there is about them something stolid and oppressive that is unsatisfactory; and as I looked at these vast ruins, vivid memories of Athens and its Acropolis invaded me, and the Parthenon in all its serene splendour rose before my mind; mighty, too, in its measured sobriety, stately in the n.o.ble rhythm of its forms; infinitely precious in the added glory of its sculptures; lovable as a living thing; and then more, perhaps, than ever before, I felt what a divine breath informed that marvellous Attic people, and what an ineffaceable debt of grat.i.tude is due to them from us, blind fumblers in their footsteps.

I was less struck than I had expected to be by the two colossal statues, of one of which it was poetically fabled by the ancients that a mysterious clang rose from it as the first rays of the rising sun smote its forehead. The myth is more striking than the statues, though their size and isolation give them something impressive. I had expected them, too, I don't know why, to be in a desert, and they are in a field. How infinitely grander is the great Sphinx, with its strange, far-gazing, haunting eyes, fixed, for ever, on the East, as if expecting the dawn of a day that never comes; immovable, unchanging, without shadow of sorrow, or light of gladness, whilst the gladness of men has turned to sorrow and their thoughts to ashes before them, through three times a thousand years! Century by century the desert has been gathering and growing round it--the feet are buried, the body, the breast are hidden. How soon will the sealing sands give rest at last to those steadfast, expectant eyes?

In the evening Hosseyn had a great "fantasia" and fulfilled his vow--and spent all his money. He killed his sheep and roasted it, bought some rice and boiled it, some flour and had it made into bread; then mixing the whole, he distributed it in six very large trays; three were put before the crew, one he had placed on the wayside for all comers (and they all came); the other two were sent to the nearest mosque for the same purpose, and with similar results; then, being unable to read himself, he paid five men to recite from the Koran at night, in the mosque, and invited thereto the captain, Mustafa Aga, and his son and several others; he, the while, sitting outside and offering coffee to whoever pa.s.sed by. When it was all over he came to me radiant: "El Hamdul illah," he said, throwing up his hands, "this is good! I am happy, everybody to be satisfied! this is rich day! El Hamdul illah! my money is all gone! why shall I mind? I spend it for G.o.d! brabs something good happen for me, el Hamdul illah!" His delight at the performance of his vow and his absolute faith were the prettiest thing one could see. Talking of faith, I am much struck by the dignified simplicity with which Mahometans practise the observances of their religion; praying at the appointed times without concealment, wherever they happen to be, and as a matter of course.

_Friday, 23rd._--Started early and coaled, first at Erment and then again at Esne, after which, being stopped by the night and shallow water, we anch.o.r.ed off a bank nowhere in particular.

Heavens, what a hot day! this is indeed "the fire that quickens Nilus' slime," but has a vastly different effect on me.

Sketching will be quite out of the question unless it gets rapidly cooler.

At Esne I was visited by the chief magistrate, and by the governor of the province; the former a jolly old _bonhomme_ who offered me snuff, the other a very refined old gentleman with most charming manners. Both were Turks; and as they spoke no Christian tongue our conversation was carried on entirely through a dragoman; I was, however, pleased to find that I recognised several words that I learnt last year at Constantinople; I was glad, too, to hear again that fine vigorous language, the sound of which is extremely agreeable to me. Eastern manners are certainly very pleasing, and the frequent salutations, which consist in laying the hand first on the breast and then on the forehead, making at the same time a slight inclination, are graceful without servility. When an Egyptian wishes to express great respect he first lowers his hands to the level of his knees, exactly as in the days of Herodotus.

Talking of Herodotus, here is a first-rate subject for Gerome suggested by that author; it is ethnographical and ghastly. The scene is laid in the establishment of an ancient Egyptian embalmer and undertaker, fitted up with all the implements and appliances of the trade; in the background, but not so far as to exclude detail, groups of a.s.sistants should be shown busied over a number of corpses and ill.u.s.trating all the different stages of preparation, embalsamation, swathing, &c. &c. In the centre a bereaved family have brought their lamented relative, and are selecting, from specimens submitted to them by the master undertaker, a style of treatment suited to their taste and means, and expressive of their particular shade of grief. A large a.s.sortment of mummy-cases would form appropriate accessories and give great scope for the display of knowledge and the use of a fine brush. It seems to me that so pleasing a mixture of corpses and archaeology, impartially treated by that polite and accomplished hand, could not fail to create considerable sensation.

Took a stroll through Esne whilst the ship was coaling. The darker tints of skin are beginning to preponderate more and more; mummy colour is in the ascendant here, together with a fine Brunswick black. The _men_, I observe, spin in this country. The children are quite fascinating; they have nothing on but a little tuft of hair on the top of their shaven heads; those dazzling little teeth of theirs are wonderful to see, and funny--like a handful of rice in a coal-scuttle. Fine sunset again; the hills, ranged in an amphitheatre from east to west, showed a most wonderful gradation from extreme dark on one side to glowing light on the other. I make the profound reflection that no two sunsets are alike; this remark, however, does not extend to _descriptions_ of sunsets--_verb. sap._

When I saw Holman Hunt's "Isabel," his pot of basil puzzled me sorely; I had seen a great deal of basil, and have an especial love for it; but I had never seen it except with a very small leaf. I was sure, however, knowing his great accuracy, that Hunt had sufficient foundation for the large leaf he gave the plant in his picture; the very fellow of it is now before me in a nosegay of flowers, very kindly sent me by the old governor of Esne. As I smell it I am a.s.sailed by pleasant memories of Lindos--"Lindos the beautiful"--and Rhodes, and that marvellous blue coast across the seas, that looks as if it could enclose nothing behind its crested rocks but the Gardens of the Hesperides; and I remember those gentle, courteous Greeks of the island (so unlike their swaggering kinsfolk--if they are their kinsfolk--of the mainland), and the little nosegay, a red carnation and a fragrant sprig of basil, with which they always dismiss a guest.

As we lay anch.o.r.ed by the sh.o.r.e in the evening, the dahabiehs came sweeping past in the moonlight; and the faint glimmering of the sh.e.l.l-like sails, and the flutter of the water against the swift, cutting keels, and the silence of the huddled groups, and the dark watchful figure of the helmsman at the helm, were strangely fantastic and beautiful.

_Sat.u.r.day, 24th._--Started at half-past five--pa.s.sed Edfou (which I leave for my return) at half-past seven. Shall we reach a.s.souan to-day? Hosseyn's pious orgies have, I fear, turned his head, for I observed yesterday that he has taken to fishing again. "Brabs!--Insha Allah!" His interpretation of dreams is worthy of the ancient oracle-mongers; on the night before his sacrifice he dreamt that he had bought a slave, and then released it: "Wull! the slave is my sheep--is it not my slave?

Wull, have I not buy it? Wull, I give it to the beebles--go!--I release it!" Whether the sheep, personally, considered itself released is problematic.

_Sat.u.r.day Evening._--Reached a.s.souan this afternoon at four, and, after the usual visit from the governor, took a stroll. I don't yet know whether I am disappointed in the place or not. At all events it is quite unlike my expectations of it. I had imagined, I suppose from descriptions, a narrower gorge and higher rocks; in point of fact there is no gorge at all, but the river is narrowed, or, rather, split by several islands and some fine granite boulders cropping up here and there to fret the river, and announcing the rapids; otherwise the country is open enough, and original and striking in aspect; I shall know better to-morrow what I think of it all. I saw during my evening stroll, and for the first time in my life, a group of slaves, mostly girls. If I had seen them subjected to any ill-treatment I should have felt very indignant; but I am bound to own that, seeing them squatting round a fire like any other children, showing no mark of slavery, and occupied in cooking their food, scratching themselves (as well, no doubt, they might!) and looking otherwise very like monkeys, I found it difficult to realise to myself the hardship of their position, however much it may revolt one in the abstract. They were black, and uglier than young negroes generally are; their hair was arranged in an infinity of minute, highly-greased plaits all round their heads; the elder ones were draped; the youngest wore a fringe _pour tout potage_. This is a noisy night; there is a "moolid" going on on the high bank to which we have made fast, and which borders the public square. A double row of howling dervishes are squatting and rocking and howling after their kind, almost over my head. In the brief lulls during which they take breath for further efforts, I hear from the other side of the river the mournful, weary, incessant creak of the water-wheel (with its blindfold cow or camel plodding round and round and round, apparently for ever), which in this region almost entirely supersedes the hand-worked bucket. The contrast is very curious.

I have just returned the governor's visit. I found him sitting on a sofa in the piazza opposite the Government House, with half-a-dozen hand lanterns brought by the guests in front of him, and on each side a long row of benches (forming an avenue up to his seat) on which squatted and smoked numbers of picturesque folk, who looked to great advantage by the flickering glimmer of the lamps and under the soft warm light of an African moon. I sat in the place of honour, smoked my conventional _tchibouque_, drank my inevitable cup of coffee, conveyed through my dragoman the usual traveller's remarks and questions (cardboard questions, so to speak, of which I knew the answers) to my host, who, like all the Turkish officials that I have seen, has the manners of a perfect gentleman and much natural dignity.

_Sunday, 25th._--Started for Phylae at half-past seven; arrived there at nine o'clock. The road leads through a broad tract of yellow sand (where, I believe, an arm of the Nile is supposed to have flowed in remote antiquity) along which on either side crop up, in wild, irregular fashion, b.u.mps and hillocks and hills of dark red granite, covered over with innumerable fragments of the same stone, scattered in the most incredible confusion, and having rather a ludicrous appearance of having been _left about_ and forgotten. You could get an excellent notion of the thing in miniature, by hastily spilling a coal-scuttle on a gravel walk and running away.