Notes from Egypt

My dear E

Since my last, dated December 6th, was finished, we have advanced, as far as the town opposite to which I am now writing, towards the great centre of our Nilotic aspirations, Thebes, which we may confidently expect io iedon in a weeK at iariiiesi. Our voyage progresses merrily, if not rapidly, but we all heartily wish the weather warmer in the mornings and evenings, for it is now so cold that we cannot remain up with comfort, even in our snug cabin, unless very warmly-clad. To day, we have been shivering in a north wind, even at noon, and sitting out in the forepart of the boat has hardly been practicable at any hour, nor indeed have we been able for some days past to enjoy the evening breeze at and after sunset; whilst the mornings, till nine o'clock at least, are so cold, that the water we wash in makes our fingers almost numb when dipped into it. The whole of this day the sky has been without a cloud: the strong northern breeze blowing directly against the course of the stream, has raised its broad expanse into minature billows, on which our little craft rocks as if at sea, and sometimes heels over in a manner rather alarming to nervous landsmen, under the pressure of the gale on her huge lateen sail. This obliquity of position is very well during the day, when every door is open fore and aft, and in case of capsizing, a chance of escape would be offered by clinging to the hull should she float, or of being rescued by the Arabs, who are all expert swimmers, from a watery grave; but at night it is far from pleasant to feel oneself vibrating alternately between the two extremities of an inclined plane, with the multifarious impediments of bedclothes, musquito curtains, and two pairs of folding cabin doors bolted on the outside, interposed to bar free egress in an attempt to gain the open deck, the only part where assistance and safety could be looked for should a sudden flaw of wind from the lofty hills that now hem in the valley of Egypt, lay our little floating tenement on her beam ends. Our crew would gladly make fast to the bank every night at sunset, and after having tired themselves out with singing to the darrabatakako or small drum of the country, which we jocosely call the Arabian night's entertainment, quietly turn in, or rather lie about on deck, for the night; but we are so anxious to reach the second cataract in the hope of being able to penetrate into Nubia, that we have issued standing orders to the Keis to make sail at all times of the night when the wind serves. The present cold weather is agreeable neither to ourselves, nor to our Nubian boatmen, and the desire of getting into warmer latitudes is shared by every one on board, each one of us looking forward with satisfaction to the prospect of passing the coldest part of the winter between the tropics, which we shall probably enter before the new year dawns upon us. Today has been the only one hitherto that could be called really disagreeable; for though brilliantly clear, the sun had little power to temper the chilliness of the high northerly wind, which whilst it blew so keenly as to render exercise indispensable during exposure to it, raised clouds of sand from the adjoining desert like mist from the river, which annoyed us when ashore by getting into our eyes, and powdering our clothes all over.

Ekhmim, the ancient Panopolis, is a considerable town to all appearance, for we did not land there, as we ran past it with a cold north wind on the evening of this day, reserving our visit to its lions till our return. It was once celebrated amongst the cities of Egypt for its temples to Pan, and in later times for a line of powerful princes. The hills forming the abrupt termination of the table-land of the desert on either side of the Nile, are here very bold; and on the eastern bank rise immediately behind the city of Ekhmim, which with its palm-groves and the broad river now washing its very walls, once a quarter of a mile distant from the banks, has a very picturesque appearance. The scenery of the Nile in Upper Egypt is far bolder and more romantic than I could have supposed, and appears to become more and more so as we advance. In one place, the mountain verge of the eastern desert is actually washed by the river; the western desert (the Lybian) is mostly much more distant, and looks like a majestic wall, behind which the sunsets, in cloudless skies, are truly magnificent.

Girgeh, December ISth. This, almost the last town of any considerable size before reaching the cataracts, derives its name from St. George, the tutelar saint of the Copts, and is not on the site of any ancient place of note. We arrived here early in the morning, when Mr. P. and myself accompanied by Ameen, went into the town to lay in a stock of bread, and other articles of consumption which are beginning to run low. Girgeh forms no exception to other Egyptian towns, which are all pretty exact counterparts of one another in the main points of dirt, dust, dogs and squalidness, although many of the villages are very pretty, embowered as they mostly are in groves of date-palms and acacias, Acacia nilotica. Marketing in an Egyptian town is at once a very amusing and difficult business, involving a vast waste of time and words in the purchase of goods not amounting perhaps to sixpence in value. In another place I shall hope to give you some account of our bargains for flour, bread, charcoal, mishmish (dried apricots,) and sundry other articles, mostly comestibles, some of which we find are always needed, or on the point of being exhausted. At Girgeh we bought four fine live turkeys at sixteen and nineteen piastres the pair, or a at a rough estimate, in English money, two shil- shillings and eightpence and three shillings and twopence.

We hope to be at Thebes in a few days, probably on the 18th, if we can get a wind to take us; for at present we have only calms, and light baffling breezes, with occasionally a brisk and favourable wind from the northward for a few hours; and even this is often made of little avail, or rendered contrary, by the turnings and curves in the river, or in rounding the numerous islands and sand banks.

When marketing in the bazaars and shops of Girgeh, (where by the bye, as well as at Siout, there are one or two elaborately designed minarets to the principal mosques,) we were beset by the natives offering us antique coins for sale, amongst which was an English farthing of Queen Victoria ! and stranger still, the top of a green glass bottle with the name of the liquor it contained or that of the vendor cast on it, such as we so often see upon these vessels in England. As the poor fellows who offered us these curious samples of antique numismatics, were wholly unable to read the inscriptions on them, I cannot doubt that the farthing and bottle label, were both proffered in perfect singleness of heart, with the genuine coins, of which several were purchased by Mr. P. for a few paras each. These were mostly Roman or Greek, and I believe were truly what they appeared to be; as Dr. Abbott of Cairo tells me that coins and other relics of ancient times are commonly found at the present day, and that those offered for sale, may in general be depended on as genuine antiques; but that articles of real interest or value are, as they ever have been, rare, and for the most part find their way into the hands of those who know how to turn their possession to advantage.

December 10th, bmce leaving Eknmim, our progress has been exceedingly slow from the want of wind, the turnings of the river, and the numerous shoals and sand banks amongst which we have to work our way. Still, our voyage has not been without great interest, from the bold and beautiful scenery of the valley of the Nile in this part, and from the appearance during the last few days of a couple of Egyptian memorabilia, the Doum or Thebaic palm (Cucifera Thebaica), and Crocodiles. The first of these lions of the Nile, shewed itself in a solitary specimen w T hich caught the eye in a grove of date trees a few miles on this side of Ekhmim, which city is close upon the northern limit of the Theban palm, beyond which it is only seen occasionally in a cultivated condition. Yesterday, however, (December 14th,) we came upon them growing in plenty along the eastern bank of the river between Girgeh and Farshoot, whilst taking our evening ramble; the trees bore plenty of fruit, but still unripe. The Cucifera Thebaica is a small palm, at least I have not as yet seen any exceeding twenty-five or thirty feet in height, and is remarkable amongst the trees composing this numerous family, for having the stems repeatedly branched at top in a forked manner, the branches terminating in a tuft of large fan shaped leaves, with prickly foot stalks. The fruit which is produced in long clusters, is of the size of a good large apple, and of a russet brown when ripe, consisting, like the cocoa nut, of a central nucleus, surrounded by a tough, fibrous outer coat,, which when chewed has a sweet taste, compared with truth to that of gingerbread, which it resembles almost exactly; but the outer coat, although eatable, is so dry and husky, and withal so sparing in quantity, and difficult to separate from the nut it encloses, that as a fruit tree, this palm can never rival the date, and whoever has tasted one of the fruits, will I think hardly be at the trouble of eating a second. Perhaps the only ripe specimens I have seen, which were in the market at Cairo, might not have been the best of their kind; but the fact that the fruit of the Doum palm is but occasionally brought from Upper to Lower Egypt, and is eaten only by the peasantry, and poorer classes in the towns, proves the little estimation in which it is held, and which is probably equal to its real merit in its best state of perfection. At the time I am writing, (Monday evening, December 15th,) we have passsd Farshoot, and the Doum palm now mixes with the more majestic date tree everywhere along the river banks, and in some places grows by itself, or is the prevailing species.

The scenery at this part of our voyage is extremely bold and picturesque, the banks of the river are very steep, and basaltic rock has appeared in some places cropping out at the Avater's edge, whilst the cliffs that bound the valley on the east present a magnificent aspect from their mountainous elevation, and the vast sanddrifts that fill every nook and hollow from the deserts at their back; and especially beautiful do they look when their bare yellow sides reflect the rays of the setting sun, which for some days past, has gone down in a glowing and cloudless, but cold sky. Nearly coequal with the limits of the Doum palm, is the line that bounds the distribution of the crocodile northwards, at the present day; for in ancient times it would appear to have ranged much lower in the Nile, and it is said to have even inhabited the Delta, and Lower Egypt properly so called. In our day, the crocodile is said first to make its appearance at or near Osiout, but we saw none of them during our short stay at that city; but on Sunday morning (December 14th,) on arriving about a quarter of a mile from a sand bank, which we learned from our boatmen was a favourite resort of these reptiles, and which is a little beyond Girgeh, between that town and Farshoot, we had the great gratification of seeing a whole herd, if I may use the term, of these river monsters emerge one by one from the stream as the sun gained power, and assemble on the sand bank, where we soon counted no less than sixteen of various sizes, huddled together, and evidently enjoying the warmth of the bright and unclouded morningray. The smallest of those we saw, as we watched them through our telescopes, seemed to be at least eight or nine feet in length, and several were absolute leviathan monsters, as hideous and terrific as can well be imagined, not less certainly than sixteen or eighteen feet long, with bodies as thick as that of a horse; the huge jaws of some gaping wide apart as they lay listless and motionless on the sand, or occasionally dragged themselves forth from the water to he along like huge logs or trunks of palm trees, to which they have no inconsiderable general resemblance in the rough and scaly covering of their unwieldy forms, knotted with crested protuberances. We were so near them, that by aid of our telescopes, we could perfectly watch their motions, and discover their minutest cha- racters, longing all the time to be amongst them with our guns, and planning an attack we intend making on their strong hold when we return down the river. We propose to throw up a masked battery of sand the day previous to our attack, and landing on the beach before daybreak the following morning, to open fire on them from behind our temporary fort as they come up out of the river to bask in the sun. We have furnished ourselves with balls of hardened lead expressly for the purpose, and trust to be able to achieve the feat ot shooting a crocodile, and carrying off his jaws and scull as trophies of our campaign against the ancient monster deities of Egypt's river. The young specimens of the crocodile of the Nile that are occasionally brought alive to England, give no idea whatever of the hideous deformity, and ferocious aspect of the full grown animal. A more revolting creature does not exist; yet I believe that to man they are seldom, if ever, dangerous, being extremely watchful and timid, waddling slowly down to, and sliding into the water, on the too near approach of any person; and we observed the sand banks occupied by numbers of aquatic birds, geese, cranes, pelicans, &c, walking about the outstretched monsters as if possessed with a feeling that they were in no peril of their lives in the society of these ugly reptiles. A boat, in rounding the bank, fired a gun at the crocodiles, but not within range, which had the effect of sending them all pell mell into the water, but in a few minutes afterwards the noses of one or two might be seen emerging, and soon the sand bank became repeopled with the fugitives. We little expected at this season to find crocodiles half so numerous, seeing how cold the morn- ings are now, and how low the temperature of the Nile is, compared with that which it attains a few months later or earlier than the present.

Always my dear E., Your affectionate Brother, William Arnold Bromfield.