Our crew consisted of fourteen, including the Rais. Of these, five were Nubians, and the rest Cairenes. We had, besides, our dragoman, Alee, and his assistant, Hasan; and the cook, a grotesque and amusing personage. The hire of the boat and crew, who provided themselves with food, was £ 40 per month. Times are changed since some acquaintance of ours went up to the Second Cataract, two years since, for £ 12. Those of our crew who afforded us the most amusement were some of the Cairenes: but we liked best the quiet and peaceable Nubians. When we set off, the whole crew messed together, sitting on their haunches in a circle round their pan of lentile or dourrha pottage. But before we returned, the Cairenes had all quarrelled; and the five Nubians were eating together, as amicably as ever, while each Cairene was picking his bread by himself.
When I came on deck in the morning, I found that we were not to start till the afternoon, and that we must put up with extraordinary confusion till then. There was abundant employment for us all, however, and after breakfast the gentlemen went up to the city, to make some more purchases, and Mrs. Y. and I sat on deck, under the awning, making a curtain for the cabin, a table-cover, etc. The doings of the Arabs on shore were amusing and interesting enough. Among others, I saw a blind man bringing, as he would say, his donkey down to drink; but the donkey led the man. The creature went carefully down the steep and rough bank, and the man followed, keeping his hands on its hind quarters, and scarcely making a false step. – The Scotch party came down in the course of the morning, and presently put off, and went full sail up the river. The American boat was, I believe, already gone. Soon after three, Alee announced that the last crate of fowls was on board; the signal was given, and away we went.
III. Nile incidents – Crew – Birds – Face of the Country – The Heavens – Towns and Shores, between Cairo and Asyoot
As we swept up the broad river, we passed some fine houses, sheltered by dark masses of acacias; and presenting, to the river, spacious overhanging balconies, and picturesque water-wheels. My friends said this was very like the Bosphorus. Presently, Cairo arose in the distance, backed by the white citadel and the yellow range of the Mokuttam hills, with their finely broken outline. On the western shore was El Geezeh, with its long range of hospital buildings, relieved by massy foliage, behind which towered the Pyramids; and further on were more Pyramids, lessening in the distance. We were aground once and again within an hour; and, while we were at dinner, we drove upon a shoal with a great shock. This was not the way to overtake the Scotch party, whose boat could not be supposed ever to get aground; and our Rais was informed that if he stuck again, he should be bastinadoed. – The wind was too fresh to allow of our dining on deck; and the sun was declining behind the palms when we went down to the cabin. – When we came up again, the yellow glow remained, while the rich foliage of the eastern shore was quivering in the moonlight. Jupiter was as lustrous as if there had been no moon. The breeze now fell, now rose; and the crew set up their wild music – the pipe and drum, with intervals of mournful song.
I do not know whether all the primitive music in the world is in the minor key; but I have been struck by its prevalence among all the savage, or half-civilized, or uneducated people whom I have known. The music of Nature is all in the minor key – the melodies of the winds, the sea, the waterfall, birds, and the echoes of bleating flocks among the hills: and human song seems to follow this lead, till men are introduced at once into the new world of harmony and the knowledge of music in the major key. Our crew sang always in unison, and had evidently no conception of harmony. I often wished that I could sing loud enough to catch their ear, amidst their clamour, that I might see whether my second would strike them with any sense of harmony: but their overpowering noise made any such attempt hopeless. – We are accustomed to find or make the music which we call spirit-stirring in the major key: but their spirit-stirring music, set up to encourage them at the oar, is all of the same pathetic character as the most doleful, and only somewhat louder and more rapid. They kept time so admirably, and were so prone to singing, that we longed to teach them to substitute harmony for noise, and meaning for mere sensation. The nonsense that they sing is provoking. When we had grown sad under the mournful swell of their song, and were ready for any wildness of sentiment, it was vexatious to learn from Alee what they were singing about. Once it was, »Put the saddle on the horse. Put the saddle on the horse.« And this was all. Sometimes it was, »Pull harder. Pull harder.« This was expanded into a curious piece of Job's comfort, one evening when they had been rowing all day, and must have been very weary. »Pull hard: pull harder. The nearer you come to Alexandria, the harder you will have to pull. God give help!« Another song might be construed by some vigilant people near the court to have a political meaning. »We have seen the Algerine bird singing on the walls of Alexandria.« Another was, »The bird in the tree sings better than we do. The bird comes down to the river to wash itself.« The concluding song of the voyage was the best as to meaning, though not as to music – in which I must say I preferred the pathetic chaunt about the horse and saddle. As we were approaching Cairo on our return, they sang, »This is nearly our last day on the river, and we shall soon be at the city. He who is tired of rowing may go ashore, and sit by the sakia in the shade.« I may observe that if the dragoman appears unwilling to translate any song, it is as well not to press for it; for it is understood that many of their words are such as it would give European ears no pleasure to hear.
The water-wagtails were very tame, we observed already. They ran about on the deck, close to our feet as we sat, and looked in at our cabin windows in the most friendly manner. Next morning, we began to acquire some notion of the multitude of birds we were to see in Egypt – a notion which, I think, could hardly be obtained anywhere else. On a spit of sand, I saw, when I came forth, a flock of pelicans which defied counting, while a flight, no less large, was hovering above. A heron was standing fishing on another point: clouds of pigeons rose above every group of dwellings and clump of palms; and multitudes of geese occupied the air at various heights; now in strings which extended almost half across the sky, and now furling and unfurling their line like an immeasurable pennon. The birds of Egypt did not appear to us to be in great variety or remarkable beauty; but from their multitude, and being seen in all their wildness, they were everywhere a very interesting feature of the scenery. The ostrich I never saw, except tame, in a farmyard; though we had ostrich's eggs in Nubia. We came upon an eagle here and there – and always where we could most wish to see one. Sometimes, when in the temples, and most interested in the monuments, I caught myself thinking of home, and traced the association to the sparrows which were chirping overhead. I found swallows' nests in these temples, now and then, in a chink of the wall, or a recess of roof or niche. A devout soul of an old Egyptian, returning from its probation of three thousand years, would see that »the sparrow had found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she might lay her young« – even the altars of the Lord God, so sacred once to the most imposing worship the world ever saw. Vultures are not uncommon. I used to see them sometimes during my early walk on shore, busy about the skull of some dead horse or other carcase. The crested woodpecker was often a pretty object among the mournful piles of ruins at Thebes or elsewhere, hopping about so spruce and gay. Where the Arabian hills approached the river, or the shores presented perpendicular rocks, long rows of cormorants sat perched before their holes, as still and staid as so many hermits in contemplation. On every islet and jutting point were flocks of pelicans, whose plumage looked snow-white when set off by a foil of black geese: and now and then, a single bird of this tribe might be seen in the early morning, balancing itself on the little billows, and turning its head about in the coyest manner, to prevent its long beak touching the water. The Aboo-gerdan (the paddy-bird of India) is elegant in form and most delicate in plumage, as everyone knows who has stroked its snowy feathers. It looked best when standing under the banks, or wading among the reeds in a cove. It looked most strange and out of place when perched on the back of a buffalo, as I occasionally saw it. We once saw five buffalo in one field, with each a delicate white bird perched on its back. And from the nose of one of these buffalo two little birds were at the same time picking insects, or something else that they relished.
As to the birds which have such a mysterious connexion with the sleeping crocodile, I can give no new information about them. I can only say that on almost every occasion of our seeing a crocodile, two or three of these birds were standing beside him; and that I never, saw them fly away till he had moved. It is believed in the country that these birds