CHAPTER XLIV--ADVENTURES IN UPPER EGYPT.--FUN AND FROLIC WITH THE NATIVES.

_Siout, the Capital of Upper Egypt--The Pasha’s Palace--An Egyptian Market-day--A Swift Boat--Going the rounds on a Donkey--Town Scenes--The Bazaars--Buying a Donkey--Tinkers, Peddlers, and Cobblers at work--A Curiosity Shop--Three Card Monte in the land of the Pharaohs--Fighting the Tiger--The Professor takes a Hand--An ignominious Defeat--A doleful Tale--A River where the Wind is always fair--The Temple and Tablet of Abydos--“Backsheesh” as a Medicine--Arab Villages in an Inundation--The Garden of the Valley--Fun with the Natives--A constant resource fora Practical Joker--Scrambling for Money--A severe Joke._

SIOUT, or Assiout, is a large town, with about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, among whom there are said to be not far from a thousand Christians. Its bazaars are quite extensive, and some of them reminded me of those of Cairo.

The town stands a couple of miles from the river, and there is a broad avenue leading to it, with a border of fine shade trees. The entrance to the town is through an old gateway, that is quite picturesque, and evidently formed a strong defence at the time it was erected.

Siout is the capital of the province of the same name, and the most important town of Upper Egypt. It contains some handsome mosques, several baths and some fine houses, all in the Arab style. It was formerly a great resort for caravans from Darfoor and other places in the interior of Africa, but latterly the trade with those regions is much reduced.

It was an hour before our mid-day meal when we reached the town, and immediately after lunch we mounted the waiting donkeys--much better than those at Beni-Hassan--and started out.

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{557}Our first visit was to some tombs cut in the side of the mountain, overlooking the valley; they are quite extensive, and were the burial places of Lycopolis, the ancient city, which occupied the place where Siout now stands.

The present city is modern, only about twenty-five hundred years old, and it has borne its present name through that period.

One of the effects of travelling in Egypt is, that you get in the way of regarding nothing as ancient that has less than three thousand years of age.

When you get back to Rome and Athens, the ruins there seem like those of a house of a first settler in Chicago or St. Louis. Nothing under thirty centuries will be regarded as antique.

It happened to be market day when we reached Siout, and as we rode into the town, we found the public square crowded with people. In the square there were large quantities of sugarcane, palm stalks, squashes, peas and beans exposed for sale, and the natives were squatted around them, or walking slowly about.

The edge of the square was fringed with a lot of solemn old Arabs, smoking their pipes and giving their whole minds to the business, as they squatted in front of the wall. Smoking is universally enjoyed by all classes of the Egyptians. There are many men who are rarely seen without a pipe in their hand, and many of the wealthy people may be seen on the street, attended by a servant, who solemnly walks behind carrying his master’s pipe. The flexible tube of the “_Nargeeleh_” is often seven or eight feet long, and its great length allows the smoke to cool before entering the mouth. {558}Camels and donkeys were very numerous, and you had to look sharp to prevent being run over.

The Professor was nearly overturned by one of the camels, or rather by the load of sugar canes that protruded on each side of the animal’s back, and if I had not pulled him out of the way suddenly, he would have gone into a basket of eggs, with great detriment to both the merchandise and himself.

Just outside the town was the market place for donkeys, and dozens of these animals were standing there, awaiting purchasers. We enquired the prices of some, but the Arabs knew we were not likely to be purchasers, and so they named exorbitant figures. A fair donkey can be bought for twenty-five or thirty dollars, and a good one for forty or fifty Prices range considerably above that, but they are for fancy animals of extra fine appearance. Twenty pounds will purchase a donkey of much style and many fine qualities.

I have a confession to make, which is to be confidential. I gambled that day at Siout, and have felt badly about it ever since. The way of it was this.

The Professor and I were walking in the market place, looking at the crowd of country people and their wares, and at the tinkers, cobblers, and blacksmiths at work in the open air, at the cafés with their patrons smoking their long pipes and sipping coffee’ from little cups, at the peddlers of cakes and oranges, and other edible things, and at the general confusion and bustle that went on with the most perfect good nature.

While the Professor was bargaining for some old coins--he had’ a mania for them and was always ready to buy cheap--I made a table, and he threw the cards with the skill that comes from long practice.

I thought I could name the winning card, and so I ventured a copper piastre--about a cent--on my opinion. Many a man in America has thought he could name the card, and his faith has been lost in sight and cost him a great deal of money; I never ventured to try it among the sharpers of my native land, {559}discovery which recalled California, Pike’s Peak, the Mississippi River, and Coney Island all at once.

An Arab of unusually dark complexion had a crowd around him, and was playing three card monte, the regular game, just as I have seen it many times in America. He was squatted in front of a strip of cloth, which he spread on the ground and used as a {560}but I supposed that an Arab ought not to know how to deceive a New-Yorker.

To my surprise I found that my calculations were wrong, and my piastre went into the pocket of the card thrower. Then I tried to get back the money I had lost---just as many another has tried to do--and my stake went the same way. I kept on a piastre or half a piastre at a time, watching the fellow closely, and thinking I ought to be equal to him in shrewdness. I must have tried as many as twenty times, losing altogether about a franc, and not once did I win.

I gave it up at last, and by this time the Professor came up and concluded to try his hand. He fared no better than I did, but kept on until he lost twice as much as I. We gave the fellow half a franc “backsheesh” for his skill, and credited him with being fitted for his business. If he lives and can find plenty of patrons, he will get rich in the course of time.

Most of the games of the Egyptians are of kinds which suit their sedate dispositions. Games partly or wholly hazardous are very common among all ranks of this people. The game of cards is almost always played for money or for some other stake, and is called by way of distinction “the game of hazard.” Persons of the lower orders in the towns of Egypt are often seen playing at this and other games at the coffee shops; but frequently for no greater stake than that of a cup of coffee. Many of them play chess, draughts, and backgammon. Their chess men are of simple forms, as they are forbidden by their religion to make an image of anything that has life.

Siout is famous for the manufacture of pipe-bowls, coffee cups, and other things out of a fine clay that abounds in the neighborhood, and most of our passengers supplied themselves in the bazaars. We had to bargain a great deal to save ourselves from being swindled, and even then we paid some pretty high prices. Another article they offered us, was fans of ostrich feathers, and their prices were about half what the same things would bring in Cairo. There are some manufactories of cotton goods at Siout, but the most of the articles sold in the bazaars come from other places.

At Siout we met the boat that ascended the Nile two weeks {561}ahead of us, and was now on its return. We were regaled with stories of quarrels, and it seemed that almost from the day of starting there had been a row of some kind on board. The disturbance had not quite reached the point of pistols and coffee, but was very near it, and one of the passengers told me he expected to fight a duel before reaching Cairo. One of the misfortunes of these vexed parties is the liability to quarrel; persons are thrown so closely together, that there must be a great deal of forbearance and concession on the part of everybody to avoid trouble.

The river above and below Siout winds considerably, and sometimes the _dahabeeahs_ are greatly retarded, going around the bends. Nature has very well arranged the navigation of the Nile. The general course of the stream is nearly due North; during the winter the wind blows almost steadily from the North, so that you can be quite sure of reaching your destination without great delay. You can sail up stream with the wind, and in going down the boat floats and is rowed just enough to give her steerage way.

When an ascending boat is becalmed, the crew is sent on shore with a tow rope, to which they are harnessed like so many oxen. They can make twelve or fifteen miles a day by this sort of work, and we frequently saw them engaged at it.

The first of the temples of ancient Egypt as we ascend the river, is the one known as that of Sethe I, and called also the temple of Abydos. All along the river above Siout, there are the remains of temples and traces of ruined cities, and every year fresh discoveries are made, which throw light upon the history of the country.

We landed at Girgeh--named after St. George of Dragon notoriety--to make a visit to Abydos. Girgeh was once at quite a distance inland, but the river has worn away the soil, so that the town has been reached by the stream, and a portion of it has fallen in. It was once an important place, but is now of little consequence, and the inhabitants were not particularly pleasing in appearance. They flocked to the bank with various things to sell, and the Professor was in his element, as he found a good supply of old coins. {562}One man had a scorpion which he wished to sell, and after he had hung around me for some time, I offered him a piastre if he would eat the venomous insect. He indignantly refused, much to the amusement of the rest of the crowd.

It was about breakfast time when we arrived, and as the donkeys had been telegraphed for, they were already waiting for us. We started soon after breakfast, as we had a ride of three hours before us, and it was necessary to get to Abydos before the sun was at meridian.

The road lay through fields of peas in blossom, through other fields of beans, and others of sugar cane and doura stalks. Everywhere the verdure was thick and luxuriant, and remember that we were in the month of January.

We passed several villages and saw many groups of natives at work in the fields, and here and there we saw camels and buffaloes tied to stakes, and feeding upon the rich grass. An animal is tied where he can have a range of forty or fifty feet, and he is not moved until he has eaten the herbage down to the roots, so that there shall be no waste.

The villages consisted of little groups of mud houses, that possessed no attractions, and when one sees the dirt and general wretchedness about them, the surprise is that the inhabitants do not die before reaching a dozen years of age.

The villages are built on mounds to keep them out of the way of the inundation which covers all the flat country and makes it difficult to move about.

I had on this ride a donkey boy, who was the most persistent beggar that I ever encountered in all the course of my life.

When I started on a ride in Egypt, I made it a rule to inform the driver that I would give him a present when the journey was concluded, and this promise was generally satisfactory. If he asked for it at the start, I informed him that he would not get it till we were through with each other, and it was rare indeed that this statement did not quiet him.

The boy that drove my donkey from Girgeh began his appeal as soon as I mounted, and I thought to quiet him with the usual promise. He was silent for five minutes or so, and then he broke out with the same appeal; I repeated my promise, and scolded him {563}him into silence; ten minutes later he broke out again, and this time I threatened to thrash him.

Next I did thrash him, and that insured peace for awhile; then I was bothered again, and thrashed him again, so that I had some pretty fair exercise for my arms.

He was not a large boy, so that I was entirely safe in thrashing him, and every time he renewed his begging, I gave him a cut with the whip.

We kept up this fun all the way to the temple, and after I had dismounted, he followed me with a further appeal, and indicated that he specially wanted to buy something to eat. I gave him some coppers, and when the lunch was spread I gave him a part of mine, in the hope of silencing him. But it was no use; the instant we started back to the river, he began again to beg, and I I thrashed him as usual. Halfway back he began to breathe short, his tongue protruded, and he lay down on the grass. Thinking something was the matter with him, I dismounted and felt his pulse, which seemed to be all right.

“_Aos, eh?_” I asked (“what is the matter with you?”).

“Backsheesh,” was the faint response, and he held out his hand to receive the cure.

I mounted and rode off, and he was up and after me without any sign of illness.

After that he did not try the sick dodge again, but he kept on begging all the way to the boat; and when I had given him a liberal gratuity, he asked for more.

If the beggars of the whole globe ever want to choose a king, I recommend them to hunt out this youth at Girgeh, and offer the crown to him, for he certainly deserves it.

The temple stands on the edge of the desert, quite near some {564}palm trees, and in the midst of heaps of ruins. It was almost completely buried in the sand until a few years ago, when it was cleared out by M. Mariette, and the sculptures it contains were brought to light.

To the ordinary visitor, the attractive features of this temple are its massive proportions, the solidity of its structure, the care shown in all the details, and not least of all, the vast quantity of sculptured scenes and hieroglyphic records that abound everywhere. But the historian of Egypt fixes his eye on the eastern wall of a narrow passage way, leading from the second hall to one of the smaller chambers.

Here King Sethi, and Rameses, his son, are represented making offerings to seventy-six kings who have preceded them, the name of Sethi being the last of the list. The names are there, and apparently in chronological order. This is the famous tablet of Abydos, which has made so much sensation among the students of the history of Ancient Egypt, as it has enabled them to make up the list of the kings from Menes, founder of the First Dynasty, down to Sethi, the second king of the XIXth Dynasty.

Its discovery in 1865 has removed much of the mystery surrounding the old empire, and surpasses in importance any single discovery that has been made. The tablet of Thebes, now in the British Museum, is of far less consequence than this.

There is another temple not far from this, but in a much more ruined state. It was evidently of great beauty at the time of its construction, as the walls were lined throughout with alabaster, and covered with sculptures richly painted with colors that still remain.

All around there are tombs and heaps of rubbish, marking the site of the city and of its necropolis; and whenever the excavations are renewed on an extensive scale, we shall doubtless hear of some important discoveries.

We returned to the river at Bellianeh, the boat having moved on around the bend during our absence. It was late in the afternoon when we came there, and we were ready for dinner. Lunch had been taken among the ruins of the temple. While picking the leg of a chicken, and washing it down with the water of the {565}Nile, I sat with my back against a column whereon was sculptured the figure of a king offering a tribute to one of the divinities of his time. He had had no chicken or anything else for many hundred years, but he stood there perfectly composed, and never once hinted that I ought to divide with him. He was a patient old oyster, and I wanted to shake hands with him at parting, but couldn’t find his flipper.

One of our favorite amusements at each landing-place was to make the natives scramble for money. They came down in large numbers, sometimes two or three hundred of them, and kept up a continual howl of “Backsheesh, O, Howadji!” that sounded very much like the murmurs of a mob. They gathered on the bank opposite the stern of the boat, and were ready to catch all the money we would throw to them. We had a supply of copper for just such cases, and by a judicious use of it, we made a franc go a great ways, and this was the way we would distribute it.

One of us would take a copper, and after balancing and aiming it several times, would give it a toss. A mass of hands would be stretched to receive it, and the crowd would sway in the direction of the falling coin. If it struck in the dirt, a dozen Arabs would spring upon the place where it fell, and there would be a scramble for it. Sometimes the struggle would be so fierce, that the cloud of dust raised thereby would completely conceal the combatants, and they would emerge with torn garments.

Our best fun was in tossing the money so that it would fall just at the river’s edge; the rear of the crowd would sway forward to seize it, and their swaying and surging would press the front rank into the water, so that in a little while we would have half the crowd dripping from an involuntary bath. The small boys were generally on the lookout for this, and removed their clothes at an early part of the performance, so that we had them in _puris naturalibus_. The men and girls were generally more modest, but not always so.

Usually we had half an hour’s sport before the departure of the steamer from a village, and sometimes the entire population, with the exception of a few dignified elders, joined in the scramble. At Bellianeh, the heads of the village thought the affair {566}undignified, and determined to put a stop to it. Two of them appeared on the scene, armed with _courbashes_--whips made from hippopotamus hide--and caused a very lively scattering.

The boys were whipped into their clothes, and public decency was thereby protected, but only for a short time. The boat was to lie there half an hour longer, and we wanted the fun to continue.

So we sent one of the waiters to convey our compliments to the city fathers, and ask them to go home, and to emphasize the request with an offer of “backsheesh.”

They saw the point at once, each accepted a franc, and suddenly remembered that he had business elsewhere. In two minutes they had disappeared up a street, and we had the yelling crowd once more in front of us and once more naked. Evidently bribery is cheap at Bellianeh.

Just back of the landing-place was a heap of loose dust, like a small mountain. It was not less than forty feet from top to bottom, and the sides were at an angle of about fifty degrees. To project a copper into this heap was the height of our ambition, and there were only two men on the boat who could do it. When a coin was fairly landed there the rush was interesting. There was a lot of Arabs at the foot of the heap, and another at the top. Those below scrambled up, and those above scrambled down, and the cloud they created was something fearful; but luckily the wind blew it away from us. Sometimes they rolled in a tangled mass of arms and legs from top to bottom, and the youngsters who had just emerged all wet from the river were speedily veneered with the adhering dust. It may have been the ruins of an ancient city that they rolled in, and not impossibly {567}the ashes of a king may have stuck to the body of one of these begging natives. Little they cared for that; they have no more respect for the old kings than we have for the beggars themselves.

The process of disrobing was not an elaborate one. A boy would peel himself in about ten seconds, as he had only a single garment, a sort of long shirt, to remove. This shirt is almost invariably made of blue cotton, like the material which we call “denims” in America, and such as the hod-carrying Celt and other laboring men generally use for overalls.

All the boys appeared to know how to swim, and they had no hesitation at rushing into the river. We had swimming matches among them, by attaching coppers to doura stalks and throwing them out into the stream, where they were instantly pursued and overtaken.

One of the passengers heated a piastre at the cook’s galley, and then threw it out; the boy who took it immediately dropped it, and it was seized by another and larger boy, who dropped it in turn. It didn’t burn them, but was just warm enough to feel uncomfortable.

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