William Arnold Bromfield
On Board a Nile Boat, between and Damietta, July 12th, 1851.
My dear E
The present time finds me once more in one of Mr. Page's comfortable Diabeeyehs or travelling Nileboats, almost an exact counterpart of the Mary Victoria but rather larger, floating down the mighty river on its now fast rising waters towards the blue Mediterranean, with the Etesian wind still my opponent as heretofore, though now tamed down to a gentler breeze, the extreme coolness and freshness of which make amends for the delay it occasions. Books, botany, my gun, and the hopeless task of teaching Saad to speak English, fill up the solitary hours very pleasantly; the crew of Egyptians are much more tractable than the unmanageable, lazy, and less robust Berbers, who, though they so well manned our bark in our late expedition up the river, gave us no end of trouble on the passage down. I left Cairo on the 10th, and ought to arrive at Damietta in four or five days. For the boat, I paid five pounds, which included every expence. I can retain it, free of all further cost, for two days after reaching Damietta; and have then the option of residing on board as long as I please, by paying one dollar, or twenty piastres per diem, for wages to the crew — should I prefer the boat to pitching my tent on shore, in the interval before embarking for Jaffa which may be of some days duration, since there may not be a vessel ready to sail immediately for that port. I expect to find some good plants in the swamps and rice grounds of Damietta and the Lake Menzeleh, to which last I hope to pay a visit and see the Papyrus, still reported, though on very questionable authority, to flourish there as of yore. I wish also, if time permits, to make an excursion to Tanis or San, the ancient Zoan, in the field "of many Divine wonders at the time of the Exodus.
Damietta, July 16th. I left Cairo in the height of the great Mohammedan fast of Ramadan, which continues about fifty days, and is the most unfortunate time for a traveller to journey in, since everybody observes a strict fast from two hours before sun-rise, till sunset of the same day; an empty stomach being little conducive to continued activity of the body, or to the best humour of mind. Accordingly at this season, it is usual to turn night into day, and day into night, the former being spent chiefly in making amends for the austerities and privations of the latter, and very few of any class are found willing or able to exert themselves in their daily occupations as at other times: hence the requirements of a traveller are very liable to delay from the universal abandonment of the population to sleep and listless inactivity during the day, increased by the vigils, if not the excesses, of the previous night. The protracted fast of Eamadan is followed by three days of joyous festivity, to the no less disarrangement of the traveller's plans and desire for progress; and at this most inauspicious time I found myself at Damietta, both man and the elements opposed to my immediate exit from Egypt, and flight into Asia.
I had a very pleasant, though not short passage of five days to Damietta, this branch of the Nile being far superior in attractions to the other main division of the river, the so-called Kosetta one, which travellers from Alexandria to Cairo join at Adfeh, the embouchure of the Mahmoudieh canal. It abounds in pretty pastoral, and rich agricultural scenery, which in its primitive character recalls the patriarchal days of scripture history. The landscape presents a plain of rich verdure from the abundant crops of cotton, sessame, tobacco, carmiehs, dhourah, flax, &c, the villages and towns succeeding each other at short intervals.
We passed Busiris, near which are the ruins of Zel Basta the ancient Bubastes, where was a famous temple ueuicdLCu. to me -cjgypnan j^idna, wno was caneu. oy mat name; but these circumstances did not allow me to visit.
At Seminood (the ancient Sebennytus) are very lofty and extensive mounds, from the summit of which, I obtained a splendid view over the rich Delta. These mounds sufficiently attest the extent of the city of which they are the crumbling remains; and the number of towns and villages visible from their summits, rising amid palm groves, and fields teeming with the richest products of agriculture, cheat one into the momentary belief, that so fertile a country must be both rich and happy, instead of being the poorest, and most miserable, because the worst governed country upon earth.
July 14th. Between Seminood and Mansoureh stands Bebayt el Hagar, close to which are the ruins of a fine temple of Isis, the ancient Iseum, which I visited. These remains consist of vast blocks of beautifully sculptured granite, parts of massive edifices, in the destruction of which, (by Cambyses ? ) extraordinary violence must have been used; the different parts lying piled one on another in such utter confusion, that one can conceive that no less agency than that of an earthquake has effected such complete disruption and overthrow. There is nothing that strikes me more, than the evidences of extreme violence used in the destruction of the colossal monuments of Egypt: they look as if nothing short of some explosive agent had heaped the different parts on one another, particularly in this instance, not a stone of this once beautiful temple standing in its original situation.
Mansoureh is a large town, and for Egypt, a flourishing place; here, rice cultivation begins extensively, but this grain is even now not in flower, and does not ripen till October.
The country between Mansoureh and Damietta is very pleasing, and gives the idea of exuberant fertility, and the number of towns and villages which succeed one another at short intervals, evinces a well peopled country.
I reached Mansoureh on the 15th in the evening: the weather which had been delightful all day, approached so closely upon cold at night, as to oblige me to draw up the jalousies of my sleeping place. It is this great difference of temperature between the day and night, combined with the humidity and exhalations from the rice fields, which renders the sea board of Egypt liable to fever and ague at this season, as well as to dysentery and ophthalmia. Mansoureh was the prison of Louis IX, in the time of the Crusades, and is connected with the Lake Menzaleh by the fine canal of that name, but which at this time was nearly dry, and in some parts quite so.
I witnessed to day, a singular attempt of a large snake to make his way against the current of the Nile: after persevering for about a quarter of an hour to stem the stream, he, with the wisdom of his race, yielded to the force of circumstances, and turning his head in the contrary direction, was carried without effort on his part towards the Mediterranean, in which quarter, it is probable, whatever affairs had called him abroad would be as well transacted.
The following day (July 16th) I arrived at Damietta (Damyat), the approach to which reminded me considerably of Venice, the houses seeming to rise immediately from the river, as those of that city do from the lagoon; but all further resemblance vanishes at the instant of landing: — a more ugly, uninteresting town than Damietta, I have no where seen in the East; it has not one of the redeeming features of Cairo. The rambling dilapidated houses are of a crumbling, and most perishable brick, giving all the decay of antiquity, without its venerableness. I delivered my credentials, on arriving, to the English Consul, M. Serure, a native of Syria, who received me with much civility, and at whose house in the outskirts of the town I afterwards dined. The Consul speaks no other language than his own Arabic, and Italian, so that we were obliged to converse in a great degree through an interpreter, from my imperfect acquaintance with Italian as a spoken language: but his chief assistant, who conducts the business of the consulate, and is, I believe, called the Cancelliere M. Filliponi, proved extremely kind and attentive to me during my forced stay at Damietta, and doubtless procured for me the best accommodations in his power; a large forlorn unfurnished room, in a tenement (I will not call it house ), of such strange rambling construction, and extravagant dimensions, that I am absolutely at a loss to say whether it w T as a single habitation, or an aggregate of twenty, or upwards; such a labyrinth of passages opening into rooms inhabited, and uninhabited, receptacles of dust, dirt, and rubbish of every kind; — dark, dismal corridors, whose walls were running down with the damp, Avhich had been attracted by the salt and nitrate of lime abounding in the soil of Lower Egypt, and in the mortar and plaster used in the construction of the buildings. Before I could take possession of my forlorn quarters, they had to be swept, and the greater part of the dust and rubbish, ( for enough of both were left behind to have given employment to half a dozen housemaids for an hour, and the cobwebs aloft were not disturbed), removed from the apartment to augment a heap of similar materials on the same iioor, adjoining another deserted room, which baad converted into a kitchen. This latter apartment Saad affirmed to be haunted by a large snake, as I have already related. There being no bedstead in the room, the mattrass was spread on the floor, which I speedily discovered to be peopled by innumerable hosts of fleas, bugs, ants, and cockroaches; whilst from the time the sun went down, there was neither peace nor quiet to be had, when sitting up, and endeavouring to read or write, from the incessant attacks of mosquitoes, which sang their shrill, small, war-notes in my ears without a moment's respite, inflicting punctures on the back of my hands, the instant I relaxed in my efforts to drive them away. From these, to me, far the most annoying of all insect tormentors, I could defend myself during the night, by retiring into my fortress of muslin, as Saad and myself contrived to suspend mosquito-curtains very cleverly over the bedding beneath, by means of strings made fast to nails driven , into the walls of the room, and tied to the window-bars; but this was no barrier to the other insect annoyances, with the exception of the cockroaches, which it effectually kept out, as also a gigantic species of mouse, which replaces in Egypt the common European kind: it is almost the size of a small rat, the body very long, and the ears extremely large and round.
Besides these sources of discomfort, I was awakened every morning at dawn by the discharge of a brass fieldpiece, announcing to every true believer in the Prophet, that the hour had arrived for abstaining from meat and drink till sun-set; a most severe trial for mortal to endure, in so warm a climate and hot a season as this long and principal Mohamedan fast happens to fall upon, in the present year. I may here remark, that from about mid-night, to the time of gun-fire at two hours before sun-rise ( the duration of morning twilight in this latitude), during Ramadan, persons perambulate the cities of Egypt beating a diminutive drum, as an exhortation to the faithful to make the most of the remaining time allowed for breaking the previous days' fast, "to eat, drink, and be merry" whilst they may, as if persons required to be reminded of their dinner or supper, by beat of drum, instead of that unfailing prompter, a good appetite.
There are no ruins, or objects of interest at Damietta, which was once the emporium of Egypt, and was celebrated in the days of the crusaders: it has been also distinguished for its manufacture of dimity, which derived its name from this city Damyat, converted by the Italians into Damietta.
The day after arriving at Damietta, I started with Saad on an excursion to the Lake Menzaleh, and the remains of the ancient Zoan, once the capital of the Pharaohs, and where the wonders of the Almighty, wrought by the hand of Moses and Aaron, were displayed before the stubborn monarch who "would not let Israel go." Through the kindness of the consul or his Cancelliere, a boat was engaged for me at twelve piastres, about 2s. 3d. per diem, and the former, obligingly sent his horse to carry me from Damietta to the borders of the Lake, where the boat awaited my arrival, with my travelling equipage of tent, pots and kettles, &c. &c. Neither M. Serure nor his worthy locum tenens M. Filliponi, couid have had the slightest idea of the condition of the boat they had engaged for my trip; it proved to be a vessel employed to carry salt fish from the village of Ma tare eh ( which subsists on, and by curing, the finny inhabitants of Lake Menzaleh) to Damietta. The bottom and sides of the boat were absolutely saturated with brine, holding as much animal matter in solution as it could take up, and this impure salt, attracting moisture from the atmosphere, kept the boat constantly damp, especially at night, when a heavy dew fell, at which time the effluvium was so acrid, and so intolerably offensive, that I began to fear it might induce an attack of ophthalmia, a disease of extreme frequency in Lower Egypt, and to which travellers are peculiarly liable, from the united effects of the sun, and of the damp and coldness of the air at night, to all which exciting causes, (in addition to the irritating agency of putrid salt fish, the odour of which was at times so strong, as to induce slight nausea, and prevent me from occupying the floor of the boat), I was incessantly exposed by turns for several days.
The first night we made fast to the shore at Matareeh, a wretched little village with a squalid population, as filthy and miserable as the hovels they inhabit: the place, as Sir G. Wilkinson remarks, is "all fish." Here we were detained amongst a fleet of dirty fishing boats by an accident which kept us at Matareeh the greater part of the following day. In hoisting up the yard of the enormous lateen sail, which is spread along a spar of 45 or 50 feet in length, the head of the mast bearing the tackle for raising it, the yard, in its descent, struck the reis of the boat, a powerful athletic Arab, violently on the back of the neck, and across the shoulders, so as to render him for some time nearly insensible. On his being carried ashore, I visited him, and finding him in great pain from severe contusions, I recommended him to be immediately bled, to which, not only the patient himself (who began to cry at the idea) but those around him, men and women, strongly objected, alleging as a reason, that his blood was "good," that is, in a healthy state, and did not require to be abstracted, but on my urging the operation, they so far submitted as to send for the barber, the person so called in the East is what the same class of men used to be in England, a practitioner in Surgery), but as this worthy on his arrival, to my great surprise, joined the ranks of the objectors, I found myself left in a minority so extreme, that I considered it most prudent to give up the point, lest, should the case take an unfavourable turn, I might be held to be the cause of his becoming worse, or it might be, of his death. So I left the matter in the hands of the barber, to be dealt with as he, and the crowd of friends around the injured man, might think proper; and quitted in disgust the patient's bed side, upon hearing the prescription unanimously adopted as the best that could be devised to obviate the ill effects of congestion — namely, the administration, internally, of a pint or more of melted butter, or rancid grease, for such is the socalled butter of this country ! Calling however, the next morning, and finding the patient to my surprise, actually better, and both he and his friends perfectly satisfied of the efficacy of so oleaginous a mode of treating contusions, and having repaired our mast, we left the ill-favoured, and ill-savoured Matareeh, ( so unlike its pretty horticultural name-sake at Heliopolis), for the Moez canal, on the way to San. This practice of administering oily substances for internal contusions appears clearly to be alluded to in Hotspur's relation of his interview with the foppish lord, who tells him that "the sovereign'st thing on earth, was spermaceti for an inward bruise."
Lake Menzaleh is the largest and easternmost of a series of shallow lagoons, that interpose so many sheets of brackish water between the salt billows of the Mediterranean, and the sweet but vapid currents that now from the main branches of the Nile into the various channels natural and artificial, that intersect the Delta. That this, and probably the other lakes, Mareotis, Bourlos, &c. were once inhabited plains, their extreme shallowness, and the remains of buildings still visible beneath their waters sufficiently attest. They probably owe their formation to the gradual elevation of the bed of the Nile, which the present depression of the bases of the ancient Nilometer at Cairo, and Elephantine, and the partial submersion of the two colossal statues at Thebes during the inundation, abundantly prove to have taken place. The effect of this gradual rise in the bed of the river, would be to cover more or less completely, and permanently, the lower levels of the country it flowed through. The greatest depression of the land of Egypt is in the alluvial plain of the Delta along the sea-board; and it is exactly there, that we find those accumulations of water which may be compared to the puddles formed by the stagnation of a streamlet that has found its level, and can flow no further. Accumulations of sand and soil, the former from the Mediterranean, the latter from vegetable and alluvial deposits, form narrow isthmui, which shoot in various directions into these lakes, and on the northern, or sea side, effectually prevent the water they contain from mingling with the waves of the Mediterranean to any great extent. The entire soil however, not only around these lakes, but throughout the Delta, and in various parts of Lower and Upper Egypt, is strongly impregnated with salt (common salt, and the nitrates of lime and potash), and in some districts is covered with a snow white efflorescence of sub-carbonate of soda, as at the Natron Lakes.
The water used tor irrigating the rice nelus, contains sometimes so much salt as to destroy the crop, or make the plants very unhealthy, and stunted, as I remarked around Damietta, and at El Esbeh, where whole fields of rice were destroyed by the influx of salt water into that from the Nile or its branches,, employed in irrigating them.
The boat entered the canal of Moez the same afternoon, when, we reached a spot where it seemed suddenly to terminate, and the further progress of the boat to be interrupted. Here we found a small house, and several people, from whom after some difficulty, we procured a couple of donkeys for Saad and myself, without saddles or bridles, and accompanied by two guides, we set off, late in the day for San, and the interesting remains of the ancient Zoan, not far from the modern village, which has thence derived its Arabic name.
Our road, or rather track, lay across the "fields of Zoan," once, no doubt, a fertile
plain, now, a salt desert, the nitrous soil of which, where not absolutely bare,
nourishes only maritime plants, ( Salsolas, Salicornias) .and a few stunted tamarisks.
Huts and miserable hamlets, are seen dotting its dark and dreary expanse: these, with
some patches of cultivation on its outskirts, are the only visible signs of population,
though traversed by the canal of Moez, a noble work of modern Egyptian enterprise, but
with the history of which, I am not at present well acquainted. Sir G. Wilkinson says
that in summer and autumn, this plain is the seat of malignant fever, and the abode of
venomous reptiles. There are several other canals, as those of Mahmoudieh, and Menzaleh,
connecting different branches of the Nile, but this of Moez, was by far the widest of
any I had seen, although, it appears to me, abandoned for all purposes of traffic above
the point where we landed; from whence to the ruins of Zoan is a good two hours ride on
donkey-back, and about half an hour more to the modern San, which it is scarcely
necessary to say, is as vile a hole, as any place of human habitation can be rendered.
The approach to the ruins is indicated by lofty mounds of broken brick, and the usual
coarse red pottery so abundant on the site of similar ancient cities, and which exactly
resembles the earthernware of which our ordinary garden pots are made. From the top of
these mounds, there is a very extensive, though not picturesque view over the "fields of
Zoan," the Lake Menzaleh, and other parts of the Delta, a treeless waste of saline
plain, and dull salt marsh; bounded by the sea, and the rich fertile lands watered by
the Damietta branch of the Nile, which I had so lately passed through. The ruins of Zoan
lie (for there is not a stone left standing ) 3 not far from the foot of some hills;
they extend, according to Sir Ci. Wilkinson, for above a mile in the direction of San;
consisting of blocks of granite with hieroglyphics, prostrate statues, and obelisks, all
more or less buried in the soil, which is here more sandy, and less saline, than at the
Lake end of the "field." The obelisks are unusually numerous, and are said by the same
writer, I think, to be as many as twelve or fourteen; a greater number, than is to be
found in any other Egyptian group of ruins. I observed on my way to San, protruding from
amidst the mounds, masses of brick work like those to be met with at Memphis; remains,
unquestionably, of those ancient structures which existed before "fire was set in
Zoan"
It was some time after dusk that we regained the boats, when a violent altercation arising between the Arabs about the question as to who was the person legally entitled to receive the money for the hire of the donkeys, some attempt was made to detain me, by seizing the turban of the reis as a pledge, and by endeavouring to prevent our casting loose from the bank to return to the lake. As this was a case in which it was out of my power to arbitrate, and it being at the same time expedient to return to Damietta, I forthwith issued a proclamation prohibiting any person from coming on board for the purpose of hindering our departure, on pain of being fired upon; which soon had the effect desired, of getting the turban of our reis restored to him, and ourselves under weigh for the Lake Menzaleh, on which we continued beating up for Damietta against contrary winds, for two days; nauseated, and half poisoned by the exhalations of stale salt fish, which as I have stated rendered it impossible to make the bottom of the boat my resting place by night; so I was fain to wrap myself up in a thick pilot-cloth great coat, and spread my mattrass on a kind of little deck at the foot of the mast, bidding defiance to the dews, and (if any such existed ? ) to the malaria of night; preferring to risk the more remote chance of an attack of ague, rather than the being stifled with the reeking remains of Matareeh's staple production.
The scenery of Lake Menzaleh is extremely monotonous and uninteresting; the water is so shallow, that our boat was ever getting aground, or entangled amongst the beds of seaweed. The lake is full of small islands, and narrow tongues of land, covered with grass, salt marsh plants, and a few stunted tamarisks. On one of these small islands, the name of which has at this moment escaped me, are numerous Roman remains of baths, grottos, tombs &c. but the wind was so adverse, that I was told it would require at least a whole day longer to be spent on the lake, in order to visit the island, on which account, I gave up all thoughts of doing so. The water of this lake is beautifully clear, and abounding with fish, as the shores and islands do with water fowl of all kinds. Pelicans are numerous, and are to be seen tame on board the fishing boats, and swimming in the water at the villages like ducks.
When at Matareeh, I paid a visit to Menzaleh, a place of some size at the eastern end of the canal, connecting it with Mansoureh; the country around Menzaleh is extremely pretty, but the place at certain times of the year is unhealthy. I searched as far as I could the banks of the canal at Menzaleh for the Papyrus, which is reported to linger still in that locality: but could not perceive a trace of it.
Give my kindest regards to all our friends Believing me, always, Your affectionate
Brother, William Arnold Bromfield.