Notes from Egypt

My dear E

A charming breeze is wafting us merrily up the Nile, and the plague of flies has ceased for the present, as by dint of brushing them out of the cabin with flyflaps and towels, we have succeeded in reducing their numbers within the limits of moderation, and so long as we continue in mid-channel, we may reckon safely on enjoying freedom from one of the most serious annoyances to which travellers in Egypt are exposed. The nights are now always chilly, and the early mornings, till about nine o'clock, or even later, quite cold. Even in this quarter of the world, the tendency to extremes, evinced by the climates of the Eastern side of all large tracts of land, is manifested; for Mr. Headland, the superintendent of the sugar factory at Rhodah, told me this morning, that the canes are occasionally much injured by frost in this latitude, 28°, and that in January sharp hoar frosts are not un frequent, ice having been formed last winter there one fourth of an inch in thickness.

Minieh is one of the largest provincial towns of Central Egypt, and has a garrison of 800 troops, the depot of four regiments of cavalry. Like all other towns in this country, it is a confused assemblage of narrow streets and alleys, made up of dirt and rubbish, and dilapidation; the abodes of the lower classes mere mud hovels, and those of the higher, pigsties on a larger scale. We had letters to M. Mounier, who has the management of a very extensive sugar manufactory close to the town, belonging to the eldest son of Abbas Pasha, a boy of twelve years of age. M. Mounier received us with great politeness, and conducted us over the works, which are very complete, where the sugar undergoes every process, from its extraction from the cane, to its refinement as loaf sugar. The evaporation of the cane juice is carried on in vacuo, as in the great English refineries, and the purification is effected by animal charcoal, obtained from immense neaps ot bones, calcined on the spot in proper furnaces. The machinery is of the most complete description, and consists not only of the sugar mills, &c, required for refining, but of powerful English steam engines for driving them, and pumps of great calibre for irrigating the land, of which 1500 acres are planted with canes. The labour in this, and another sugar manufactory at Rhodah, a few miles further up, is forced; and the poor workmen, to whom no day of rest is allowed, (not even Friday, the Moslem sabbath), are paid their scanty earnings in kind, never in money, and this payment consists of molasses or the refuse sugar, the delivery of which is often withheld from them for weeks, whilst they are driven to the work chained together like convicted felons. The accounts we hear from persons of the highest respectability of the oppressive exactions and barbarities of the Egyptian government, and of the venality, falsehood, and dishonesty of every official in its employ, would appear incredible, did not every thing we see around us bear witness to their truth. The fearful picture of the desolation of Egypt drawn by the prophet Ezekiel, chap. 29 to 31, is a vivid representation of what she is at the present moment, and a signal instance of the fulfilment of Scripture prophecy. Between Minieh and Manfalout we stopped to deliver letters and newspapers to Mr. Headland, at Ehodah, (which word signifies in Arabic a garden), the property of Ismael Bey. We saw there a steam pump, &c, for irrigation, and others in course of erection; the works are extensive, but the sugar is sent from the manufactory to Cairo to be refined, by a large English firm in that city. The appearance of tall factory chimneys vomiting out smoke, and huge boilers emitting clouds of steam, not to mention an occasional steam-boat puffing and splashing against the turbid stream, that has its sources in the heart of a barbarous and unknown land, divests, it must be owned, the valley of the Nile of some of that romance which early associations have attached to it, and perhaps speaks in significant language of its restoration at no very distant day to more than its ancient glory and prosperity. Mr. H. received us with great civility, and would have shewn us the works, had we not declined his offer on the plea that we were anxious to profit by the then favourable wind for continuing our voyage upwards; besides which, w r e had no desire to see a second sugar manufactory, similar to, but less complete, than that which we had so lately visited, and with the details of which we were so well acquainted. We contented ourselves therefore, ( I mean Mr. Pengelly and myself, for Mr. Lakes could not of course accompany us), with walking over the gardens of the governor of the district, in which Mr. Headland keeps a fine young lion, just five months old, and already nearly as large as a mastiff, lately brought from Nubia, and intended, I believe, as a present for Abbas Pasha. The beast is allowed to roam at large over the garden, and although now only exhibiting the amiable traits of leonine juvenility, he gives evidence in his rough play, of great strength, and when feeding, of some ferocity; tokens, it will be well to attend to in time, as in a few more months, the unrestrained liberty he now enjoys, may be perverted to the harm of those about him.

Manfalout, December 7th. We arrived at this place, the ancient Crocodilopolis, about noon, and have now completed the half of our voyage between Cairo and Thebes. The wind has been exceedingly variable, and often, none at all, which has obliged us to get on by polling and tracking; but on the whole, we have made thus far a fair average passage for the time of year, for the month of December is always considered unfavourable for ascending the river, from the unsteadiness and uncertainty of the wind, which as often blows from the south as from the north, and calms, or very light airs are constantly intervening. We went ashore at every large town or village on our way. Manfalout is a small place compared with Minieh, and like every other Egyptian town, is principally built of unburnt brick. There are two handsome minarets belonging to the principal mosques, which last, with the residence of the governor or other principal officer of the district, are the only buildings at all distinguishable in the cities of this country, from the mass of dirty, dilapidated, or half finished habitations which compose them.

A pretty little Egyptian boy, about ten or eleven years of age, volunteered to conduct us where doves were to be found, on which gentle bipeds, I am ashamed to say, we have been satiating our carnivorous appetites for this fortnight past, for which I can only plead by way of excuse, their delicate flavour, so superior to that of domestic poultry, and the means their death affords us of economising, or rendering the purchase of the latter almost unnecessary. The little fellow failed to find us many birds, but gambolled and frolicked along with us outside the town, perfectly at his ease with the giaours, and at last bade us adieu at the door of his mother's house. Mr. Pengelly took such a fancy to him, that he fain would have taken him away with us up the river, an arrangement we should all have been equally charmed with, and to which the boy shewed no sort of repugnance; but his mother told us when we made the proposition, that she could not bear to part with him, although she had tour other children at home, of which he was the eldest, and she appeared to entertain no distrust of our intentions. At parting, Mr. Pengelly gave him a small silver coin, value a quarter piastre, or about a halfpenny sterling, no despicable baksheesh to a child in this poverty stricken country. The poor little fellow looked at it, and seemed for a moment as if hesitating to accept it, then deposited it, on our encouraging him to do so, in a fold of his vesture, with an air of shame at becoming the recipient, which astonished us in a country where avarice is the ruling passion from the highest to the lowest, and where a present or remuneration is demanded by every man, woman, and child, for the smallest service.

Manfalout boasts a tolerable bazaar, where, during our visit we were much amused by the curiosity of the rude Arnout soldiery, some of whom are quartered here, in inspecting our fire arms, my highly finished double barrelled gun exciting their greatest admiration, especially the strength and mechanism of the percussion lock, the principle of which the Oriental gunsmiths are but imperfectly acquainted with, and cannot yet imitate. The fineness of our English powder too astonished them exceedingly, and we parted with these intractable warriors on the best of terms. We find the people in every town and village we enter extremely well disposed towards us, ready to give every information in their power, and to shew us where any game is to be found; only disagreeable when a bargain for meat, vegetables, bread, charcoal, fec, is negotiating, when their disposition to over-reach and haggle about a para seldom fails to shew itself: but this unpleasant intercourse we find it on every account best to leave to Mr. L's Nubian (Berber) servant, Ameen, who speaks the language, and knowing the value of the various articles we consume, conducts the greater part of our marketing, rendering us an account of the money disbursed every day or two. Ameen is brother to the Nubian attendant on the hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens, who accompanied the animal from its native country to England, where he still is. Ameen sometimes receives letters from his brother, who wishes him to join him at the gardens, and says he has got money in a Savings bank. He occasionally finds means of sending his brother Ameen little presents, such as an English penknife, but the latter does not seem to relish the idea of quitting Egypt for England, as from his known respectability at Cairo, Ameen is sure of a comfortable livelihood, as servant or dragoman to travellers going up the Nile. Ameen is much pleased at my offer to become the bearer of a letter to his brother on my return home next year.

The scenery for several days past has been interesting, the left, or eastern bank of the Nile, being uniformly bounded by a lofty limestone ridge, increasing in height and boldness as we advance southward, sometimes receding to a distance of several miles from the river banks, and at other times almost skirting the shore, and often jutting out into bold headlands, or occasionally rising into peaks of considerable elevation. This ridge, which now (at Siout, Dec. 9th,) begins to close in on the valley of the Nile on both sides like a vast and magnificent wall, is a continuation of the Mokattan chain which commences at the Red Sea, and is already of respectable height at Cairo, but here assumes quite a mountainous aspect. The range is the boundary of the great western (Lybian) and eastern deserts, and is perfectly devoid like them of even a blade of grass; it now" quite shuts out by its continuous elevation every glimpse of the desert, which before, (at least on the east side) often discovered its ocean-like expanse of sand billows as we held on our course; now, we see only the nearlyperpendicular and stratified face of its abrupt, cliff-like terminations, below which, is a broad or narrow strip of land diversified with rich crops of maize, guinea-corn, sugar, clover, wheat, colewort, beans, peas, carrots, cotton, and various garden esculents, as onions, garlic, cabbage, ochras, fennel, coriander, Corchorus olitorius, &c. blended at short intervals with villages standing amidst extensive date groves, full of doves and wild pigeons, and with here and there a lovely grove of 6e Sant" (Acacia Nilotica), Gum tree (Acacia vera), which in Nubia and Abyssinia yields the Gum Arabic of commerce. Both these trees are now loaded with all their sweet scented flowers closely compacted into globose heads like little golden balls. The single fields of guinea-corn especially, are of incredible extent, and afford food and shelter to wild boars, and harbour packs of jackalls that nightly serenade us with their melancholy noise, a whining kind of barking, much like that of a fox, but louder, and more disagreeable. Mr. Lakes shot the other day with his rifle, a very large jackall, when we were out together looking for game, and we anticipate fine sport during the moonlight nights, now coming on, amongst the ruins of Karnac and Luxor, where we hope to eat a pic-nic dinner on Christmas day, and to feast on plum pudding made by the hands of Saad, the only christian, by the way, of our party, besides our three selves, and who has proved a most able cook, in addition to his character as a steady, and we believe too, an honest servant. I cannot say as much for his skill as a laundress, for the display of which, did he possess it, our very limited means afloat afford him little opportunity; for we quite forgot to add a board and smoothing irons to our outfit on leaving Cairo. We dress in linen, which has only been washed over, and hastily dried in the sun and air; the fronts are all puckers, and the collars the same, and without a particle of starch in them. Shaving we have quite abjured in these wild regions as a tedious and unnecessary toilette operation: so we are all decorated with black bushy beards and moustaches of three week's growth, and since we have adopted the tarboosh, a close cap of scarlet cloth, with a huge tassel of dark blue silk, worn over another small skull cap of cotton, called a takeelzel, we are half moslem in appearance, if not in creed. I am sure our friends at home would laugh were they to see us, nor am I certain that they would not envy us our river life, and river home in this most splendid and rainless climate.

The soil of the valley of the Nile, particularly that part left dry by the now receding waters, is a sandy loam of a deep brown colour, and of the consistence nearly of paste, so that like that, it is quite plastic, and can be kneaded with the fingers as dough. It is an error to suppose that the soil of the Nile is slime: it can hardly even be called mud when in its state of softest consistence; and its aspect conveys the impression of its exuberant fertility, which might be still further increased by the use of manures, and a proper rotation of crops, of which the Egyptian farmers have no idea. The towns and villages are constructed of unburnt brick made of the alluvial earth, and consequently present the same colour as that of the ground they stand upon, while the skins of the inhabitants are of a hue very closely approaching that of their native soil, and the scanty clothing of the fellahs or agricultural labourers, as well as that of the greater part of the poor in the towns and villages, is a single wrapper of a very coarse and thick cloth, also of a deep brown, made probably of the undyed wool of the native sheep, whose fleeces are exactly of that colour, white sheep being seldom seen in this country; hence, brown is the prevailing colour in an Egyptian landscape; the desert, the river, the people, the cattle, the houses, are all brown, or of a tint in which brown is the chief constituent; it is a swart land of grave and sombre colours, even the green of the few species of trees indigenous to, or cultivated in Egypt, is of a deep and dark, rather than of a light and lively shade, that of the date palm and olive is greyish or glaucous; of the acacia, mimosa, and sycamore, either dark or dull, viewed in the mass. I have seen nothing as yet like the verdure I was led to expect from the descriptions usually given by travellers in this country; there is no lack of green it is true, but it is in strips or patches, intersecting which the native brown of the soil is ever presenting itself in strong contrast. No vegetation adorns either bank of the Nile along any part of the vast distance I have yet traversed from Alexandria hither (to Osiout); its shores gradually increase in height as we advance, and although of a rocky character in a few places, are for the most part composed of a soft dark brown alluvium, which is constantly crumbling, and falling into the stream, often in masses from a few hundred weight to several tons at a time, by which the course of the river is constantly undergoing alteration: so that even were it navigable for vessels of any great burden, which the innumerable shallows and shifting banks preclude, any survey would in a few years be wholly obsolete and useless.

Siout, Esiout, or Osiout, December 9th. We arrived at this place, at present the capital of Upper Egypt, and the ancient Lycopolis, after a tedious passage from Manfalout, owing to the wind failing us entirely. As we propose stopping a day or two here on our return voyage, to visit the tombs and grottos in the mountains behind the town, I will not now attempt a description of a place imperfectly seen by us as yet, but will only give a slight sketch of its situation, which is the most picturesque of any town we have yet visited in Egypt. The valley of the Nile is here exceedingly broad, and the range of lofty limestone hills which shuts it out from the desert, recedes from both banks, leaving a wide plain of great fertility, and in a high state of cultivation between the river banks and the hills. The town is the third in size of those in Egypt, and is stated to have a population of 20,000 souls. Like Cairo, it is walled round, and the bazaars rank next to those of that city for the variety of goods they display. Siout is noted for its manufactures of pipe bowls, some of which we inspected, and were surprised at the elegance of the designs of the better kinds, and the finish of the workmanship. The limestone ranges on the western, or Lybian side of the valley, assuming here quite a mountainous character, are pierced with innumerable tombs quite visible from the plain below. The approach to Siout from the small village of El Khamra, which may be called its port, and about the same distance from the town as Boulak is from Cairo, is exceedingly pretty, passing along a broad raised causeway planted with willows, and running across fertile fields and gardens to the very gate of the town. We rode to the city on excellent donkeys to make purchases, followed by the greater part of our Nubians, decked out in their best attire, Ameen in particular, and our boy Mohammed, far outshining the others in the taste and gaiety of their costume, and bent like ourselves, on marketiog at the last town where coffee, tobacco, and other requisites can be obtained of good quality. Having spent an hour or two in visiting the bazaars and the few other objects of interest it presents, we took leave for a time of the capital of Upper Egypt, and returned to our boat at El Khamra.

Believe me, Dear E Your affectionate Brother, William Arnold Beomfield.