The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II Part 17

Above a.s.souan we are fairly in Nubia, and of course none but the darkest complexions are to be seen; but so large a number of negroes make their way here from the Soudan (the Nubians are not _black_, but of a beautiful dark cairngorm brown), that the whole place has an air of negro-land which is disagreeable to me. The young men, indeed, both black and brown, are sometimes extremely fine fellows (bar the legs, which are never good), but the girls, as far as one can see them, are tolerably ill-favoured, and the old women, of an ugliness which pa.s.ses all belief. They are _far_ worse than apes. The ladies in this part of the country gladden the hearts of their admirers by anointing their bodies with castor oil, so that the atmosphere of their villages, however full of sweet suggestion to a native, is much the reverse to a traveller with a nose not attuned to these perfumes; the smell that greets you through an open door is a mixture of the bouquet just named, and a penetrating flavour of acc.u.mulated stuffed beasts, and naturally interferes much with my enjoyment.

At Mahatter we left our donkeys and took a boat to Phylae, a quarter of a mile, which takes half an hour owing to the rapidity of the current just above the cataract. The scenery about Phylae has been spoken of as Paradise; I never saw anything less like my notion of Paradise, and so far, therefore, I am disappointed. Original and strange it is, in a high degree. It is in fact exactly like the valley of which I spoke a little further back, only that the hills are four times as high, and water takes the place of the sand; the same breaking up of the rocks into a myriad of fragments, putting all grandeur and ma.s.siveness of form out of the question--and, with the exception of a few palm trees and a sycamore or two, the same barrenness.

Looking up in the direction of Wady Halfa, the mountains appear to grow finer in outline, and a tract of very yellow sand amongst their highest crests is striking and original--gold dust in a cup of lapis lazuli. With the island itself and its beautiful group of temples it is impossible not to be delighted.

Nothing could be more fantastic or more stately than the manner in which it rises out of the bosom of the river like a vast s.h.i.+p, surrounded as it is on all sides by a high wall sheer from the water to the level on which the temples stand. One hall in the main temple, and one only, shows still a sufficient amount of colour to give a very good idea of what the effect must have been originally; the green and blue capitals must have been very lovely. It is needless to say that here, as elsewhere, travellers have left by hundreds lasting memorials of their brutality, in the shape of names and dates drawn, painted, scratched, and cut on every wall and column, so that the eye finds no rest from them. This strange and ineffably vulgar mania is as old as the world, and the tombs of the kings at Thebes are scrawled over with inscriptions left there by ancient Greek and Roman visitors. I shall return to Phylae shortly to make a sketch or two--_Insha Allah._

Here, at last, I have found that absolutely clear crystalline atmosphere of which I had so often heard; I own it is not pleasing to me; a sky of burnished steel over a land of burning granite would no doubt be grand if the outlines of the granite were fine--but they are not. Meanwhile, perspective is abolished--everything is equally and obtrusively near, and I sadly miss the soft mysterious veils and pleasant doubts of distance that enchant one in other lands. I think it very likely that in winter one has great compensation from the exhilarating purity of the air; but just now the heat, which is simply infernal, is too trying for me to do justice to these advantages; no doubt the air is light and dry, but I feel unfortunately so very heavy and wet, that I am not in a position fully to appreciate it. Returning to a.s.souan in the evening, saw a dahabieh that had just got through the jaws of the cataracts, always rather a nervous matter; at least so they say; "to be very dyinger" (dangerous?), according to Hosseyn; the men were chanting a monotonous strain that had little of triumph in it, but rather conveyed a feeling of an always impending calamity escaped _this_ time; it was melancholy and very striking, I thought, in the silence of the gloaming; very likely pure fancy on my part, for I doubt whether more than a couple of boats are lost in a season, and the sailors of the Nile must be well accustomed to the dangers of these rapids; but the impression on me at the time was very strong.

_Monday, 26th._--The dragoman of the s.h.i.+p having a swelling of some sort on his arm, an Arab doctor was sent for, and forthwith informed him that his arm was possessed of the devil!! Went to see the island of Elephantina opposite a.s.souan, but saw nothing to suggest its ancient magnificence. Gave a silver farthing to a funny little child, which (the farthing) being perforated, his mother immediately tied into one of his little oily locks--an ingenious subst.i.tute for a pocket. I observed several little boys simply attired in a piece of string tied round their loins--there, Diogenes!

_Tuesday, 27th._--Began sketching, but am out of form from the heat. I am working chiefly because I am weary of idleness. I don't much care for the two sketches I have begun; they will therefore probably turn out badly. Going to try another presently.

Tuesday Evening._--Have begun a sketch which interests me more than the others; it is taken amongst the tombs and shrines on the hills south of the town towards Phylae. As my evening's work was drawing to a close, I heard a shuffling of feet a little behind me, and, turning round, saw, in the full fire of sunset, what appeared to me at first to be a procession of golden apes with dark blue robes, light blue lips, and nose-rings; on closer inspection they turned out to be Nubian women going home to their village. Hosseyn, _qui a le mot pour rire_, apparently, engaged in conversation with them, and convulsed them with laughter; the flashes of teeth were very funny to see. At last he gave them a few halfpence, and desired them to sing; whereon they set up a series of the most uncouth howls I ever heard; one baboon in particular got up and, using a flat date basket as a tambourine, accompanied her vocal performance with hops and jumps that would have done honour to any inmate of the monkey-house in the Zoological Gardens.

The twilight, walking home, was lovely. The earth was in colour like a lion's skin; the sky of a tremulous violet, fading in the zenith to a mysterious sapphire tint. "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro."

Slew another sheep--"Allah hou akbar!" (without which formula in the killing a good Muslim must not touch the meat): this sheep is no empty formality, for the unfortunate sailors would never see meat without it; they live on bread and occasional beans.

This is the fourth night of the moolid, which is to last the whole week! At this very moment the tambourines of the dervishes are driving me nearly wild with their diabolic din.

_Wednesday, 28th._--Got on indifferently with my sketches; only one of them interests me much. The morning was almost cool and really delightful, but the heat was as great as ever in the daytime. I have always been unable to see the extraordinary difference which is said to exist between the length of the twilight in the north, and in southern countries; I could have read large print to-night three-quarters of an hour after sunset. Habit is everything, no doubt, as we are reminded by Herodotus, _a propos_ of a certain people who ate their dead relatives instead of burning them; but I wonder whether I should ever get accustomed to the aching, straining, creaking complaint of the water-wheel far and near, morning, noon and night, morning, noon and night; I can _just_ fancy its becoming attaching as the clacking of a mill.

I have often wondered why, contrary to all a.n.a.logy, the Spaniards call oil _azedo_, which at first sight appears to be the same word as the Italian _aceto_. I find that the word is Arabic: _zeyd_. Mem.: Look up the etymology of the English word _cough_, to which no European word that I remember has any affinity, and which rather appears to be onomatopoeic. The Arabs say _kokh_ (guttural ending); is this a mere coincidence, and does the word date beyond the Crusades? I find a good many words that have a curious likeness to English. My endeavours to pick up a little Arabic are almost entirely frustrated by Hosseyn's utter inability to pull a sentence to pieces for me. In an Arabic sentence of two words (_e.g._ _azekan tareed_--if you please) he could not tell me which word was the verb! literally; I had to find out as best I could. I never saw anything to approach his obtuseness in the matter, except perhaps that of Georgi, my dragoman in Turkey. As I was sketching this evening a Nubian pa.s.sed me, very grandly draped and erect, and followed by two green monkeys that were fastened by leading-strings to his belt. They toddled very snugly after their stately master and made a queer group.

_Sunday, November 1._--I am in a state of appreciative enjoyment of the comforts and civilised cleanliness of my steamer, having just returned from three or four days' roughing in the ruins of Phylae. "Roughing" is a relative term, and my trials were of a very mild description, for though I slept _a la belle etoile_ (or rather tried to sleep), at all events I had a bed to rest in, and the air at night was delightful; moreover, the commissariat was very satisfactorily managed, so that food and drink were abundant; nevertheless, I must maintain that living in an open ruin is not comfortable. I made two or three sketches, and should probably have enjoyed myself, but that on the second day I was entirely thrown off the rails by the heat whilst sketching; I thought I should get a _coup de soleil_; I was very indisposed in the evening, and utterly unable to work the next morning, so that I took the place _en grippe_, and could see nothing but the ugliness of the rocks and the wearing monotony of the hieroglyphs. Picked up in the evening, and liked the place better; made some original and striking reflections about the desirability of health.

Having heard much of the beauty of the full moon at Phylae, timed my visit to see it, and was entirely delighted. The light was so brilliant that one could read with ease, but at the same time so soft, so rich, and so mellow that one seemed not to see the night, but to be dreaming of the day. The Arabs say of a fine night, "it is a night like milk," but there is more of amber than of milk in the nights of Phylae. The rising of the moon last night was the first thing of the sort I ever saw; the disc was perfectly golden, not as in a mist, but set sharp and clear in the sky, and exactly like the sun, except that you could look at it without pain to the eyes. The effect of this effulgent light on the shoulder of the hill was magical. The last hour of the afternoon I spent in strolling about the villages, which are picturesque. The cottages are four brown, roofless walls, built of the usual unburnt brick, and coated with mud; but the doorways are always highly decorated with painted geometrical devices which, in the ma.s.s of plain, sober brown, have a very cheerful and artistic effect. The people, too, amuse me; a pleasant, gentle, grinning folk these Nubians seem; I like their jargon--after the guttural Arabic it sounds so soft and round, and the women have funny, cooing inflections of voice (pretty voices, often) that are pleasing. Some of the girls are good-looking; chiefly through the brightness of their eyes and the milky whiteness of their teeth. The coiffure of the children is too funny; it consists in tufts of hair of various shapes and patterns left on an otherwise shaven head; often a crest all down the middle and a tuft on each side, exactly like the clown's wig in a pantomime; it is irresistibly droll.

A grand sight is to see the villagers keeping the birds from their crops; they all serve in their turn, men, women, and children; they stand each on a rude sort of scaffold which rises about two feet clear of the corn; they are armed with slings from which they hurl lumps of clay at the birds, uttering loud cries at the same time. Their movements are full of grandeur and character. I wonder Gerome has never treated a subject so well suited to him. Why, too, has he never painted mine enemy the sakkea, which is even more emphatically in his way, for, besides the scope for fine and quaint forms both in the men and the animals that work it, the accessories are abundant and interesting, and there are ropes in great abundance.

_Is_ the sakkea my friend or my enemy? Its chant is so incessant that I should have to make up my mind if I stayed longer in the country; it would either fascinate me or drive me mad. As I listen in the silence of the evening, the rise and fall, the s.h.i.+fting and swaying of the wind bring its complaint from across the gurgling river in such a fitful way that it has the strangest and most unexpected effects: sometimes I fancy I hear deep, drowsy tones of a distant organ, sometimes the shrill quavering of a bagpipe; sometimes it is like a s.n.a.t.c.h of a song, sometimes like a whole chorus of voices singing a solemn strain in the sad, empty night; sometimes, alas! too often, like a snarling, creaking door-post.

Phylae being above the cataracts, my steamer stopped at a.s.souan, and I went there by donkey as before; returning, I chartered a dahabieh to see the said cataracts, of which for some days I had heard so much; amongst other things, that a s.h.i.+p was wrecked there three weeks ago (I saw it stuck on its rock to-day). The cowardice of the people here, at least in this particular matter, is very funny; too naf to inspire disgust: my captain, an old sailor, and the nicest old gentleman possible, told Hosseyn that nothing would induce him to go down them; I thought I observed a shade of respectful interest in his reception of me on my return from an exploit which most English _women_ would consider good fun. I make no doubt that when the water is much lower, and your dahabieh shoots a good six or eight feet drop, and goes half into the water besides, considerable excitement may be got out of it; but now that the drop is not or does not look more than about a yard, and that the whole affair consists in a few plunges and s.h.i.+pping a little water, the emotion is very mild, and I own to considerable disappointment, though as far as it went it was pleasant. Nevertheless I did not for a moment regret coming if only on account of the amus.e.m.e.nt I got out of the sailors and pilots; the latter were men of years; the former, fine, jolly-looking lads as one could wish to see; but their demeanour throughout was infinitely droll; they rested their feet (according to custom here) on inclined planks, up which they ran three steps with their arms well forward to fetch the stroke, getting back into the sitting position as they pulled through the water (and wonderfully fine the action looks in a large crew all pulling well together); but the contortions in which they indulged, the gnas.h.i.+ng and grinding of teeth, the throwing back of agonised heads, the frowns, the setting of jaws, the straining of veins, the rolling of eyes, the groans, and, absurdest of all, the coming down on one another's laps and the cutting of crabs, were ineffably grotesque, and would have convulsed me with laughter if I had not controlled myself manfully. Meanwhile the pilots were howling at one another and them with all the vehemence of a violent altercation, and for no discernible reason. When they were not shrieking at one another, the crew took up the usual Arab boatmen's chant (I know no better word); one man gives out a short sentence, or name, or form of prayer (not exceeding four syllables) in a quavering treble, and the rest then repeat it in chorus in a graver key--the effect is very original. As we got within sight of the big cataract and the stranded s.h.i.+p, Hosseyn loudly exhorted the crew to pray to the Prophet, and all the saints who have their shrines on the heights of a.s.souan, to see them safely through the danger; the invitation was loudly responded to, and everybody who had not an oar to pull held up his hands and prayed with great fervour--which was very pretty, and done with the dignified simplicity which always accompanies an Arab's devotions; but it was certainly disproportionate to the emergency. When we had danced up and down (or rather down and up) three or four times, I had the curiosity to look about for the _sailor_ and waiter I had brought with me from the steamer; they were respectively green and yellow in their unfeigned terror. Then there was a nominal _small_ cataract (the first one is called the _great_ cataract), and indeed I believe there was a _third_ little commotion; then Hosseyn, throwing up his arms, exclaimed, "El Hamdul illah!! finis.h.!.+" and it was, as he said, "finish." I am utterly ignorant of the mysteries of navigation, but one figure we executed between the cataracts and a.s.souan struck me as novel: it consisted in turning entirely round in a wide circle to take (as it were) a fresh start; this manoeuvre we performed with much gravity and success two successive times.

An elaborate salute from the guns of the dragoman and engineer, responded to with appropriate solemnity by Hosseyn, announced my return to my steamer--and, oh joy! my tub.

In the evening governor of course.

_Monday, 2nd._--Resumed work; painted for a couple of hours--badly--in a high wind at an ugly study of a view I don't like. I consider it a sort of discipline. The wind to-day is tremendously high; the dahabiehs will come flying up now. I saw my friend the captain just now sitting on the bank in the midst of an interested circle having his fortune told. There is a blessing for them that wait. Hosseyn has caught a fis.h.!.+ two fishes, to-day! his glee is unlimited, he is radiant; when that boy is at the near end of his fis.h.i.+ng rope, he is so absorbed I can't get him to attend to me or to answer a question. His brilliant piscatorial success is an opportune set-off against a chagrin the poor boy had this morning; he was taking a dip somewhere under the paddle-box, and lost, in putting away his clothes (_he_ thinks by a black but improbable theft), a Koran with which he travels and to which he attributes much luck; he was greatly cut up, and after telling me how much he valued the book, proceeded to inform me that it contained a little piece of wood from Abyssinia with something written on it, "some, what you call, scription," which, when worn round the neck, infallibly cured the bite of the scorpion; seeing that this announcement did not impress me as much as he had expected, he asked me with some warmth how I supposed, pray, that the snake-charmers prevented the snakes from biting them if it was not by saying something out of the Bible.

Another sheep to-day; there was some hitch about the manner of the killing which caused a little excitement; his throat was not turned to the sun (or the East?) whilst he was being slaughtered; an important matter. I observe that Turkish officials are not expected to be able to write; my captain can, but I remarked that when his secretary, a poor, wizened little thing, whose nose and trousers are far too short, but whose mouth and ears offer ample compensation through their length, brought him to-day the s.h.i.+p's accounts, he stamped his signature at the foot of the page instead of writing it, although he happened to have a pen in his hand; I was giving him his English lesson. Talking of accounts, the Arabs have a curious way of singing or rather intoning their sums, rocking all the while backwards and forwards like so many Dervishes. I have seen a large house of business (at Sohag) where _all_ the clerks were doing it at once; it was like a madhouse. Oh, Lombard Street, and oh, Mark Lane! what would you have felt at the sight?

_Tuesday, 3rd._--My last day at a.s.souan. Finished my sketches, took leave of the governor, and had a final stroll about the streets of the town, which seemed to me unusually picturesque. I remark that I invariably like a place best the day I leave it; if I am sorry to go, my regret casts a halo over it; if I am glad, my gladness makes everything brighter. How picturesque the people are! their flowing, flying draperies are wonderfully grand. I hope I may carry away with me some general impressions, but the immense mult.i.tude and rapid succession of striking things drive individual memories fatally out of the field.

Sketching figures is out of the question--the effects are all too fugitive. This was also the last day of the moolid, and high time too; I met in the morning, in a narrow street, a procession of sailors carrying a boat, which they were about to deposit in the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held, and whose name they were loudly invoking. In front, drums and flags, and cawa.s.ses firing guns; behind, in front, everywhere, a host of most paintable ragam.u.f.fins enjoying the fun; above, over the brown house-tops, dark blue figures of women huddled peering at the procession; over them a blue sky with a minaret standing against it, a palm tree; some doves--there was the picture, it was charming. The children as usual called out, "Baksheesh howaga;" the so-called begging of the people has been ludicrously exaggerated; in the first place, only the children ask for baksheesh (I mean, of course, without the pretext of a service rendered), and in the next, they treat the whole thing as an excellent joke, and evidently have seldom the slightest expectation that they are to get anything. When you approach a village, every child, from as far as it sees you, whether from a window, or a doorway, or half-way up a palm tree, or the middle of the road, holloas out l.u.s.tily, "Baksheesh, baksheesh,"

generally with much laughter, and frequently with a universal scamper in every direction except towards you. What I call begging is that importunate whining that clings to you, and hara.s.ses you wherever you turn in the south of Italy or Spain, and with which this clamorous performance has nothing in common.

I have remarked, with regard to grown-up Arabs, that though they wrangle vehemently with the dragoman on the subject of payment, they invariably show the master a pleasant and satisfied face. I speak, of course, only of my own experience. As strange a thing as a satisfied man is a _barking_ fish; the fish that Hosseyn has caught of late--for Fortune is his handmaid now--all utter a sound which I can only describe as a faint bark; perhaps everybody knows that some fishes do this, but I did not, and my surprise was extreme. They are nasty-looking objects, all fins and teeth (a thick row of little bristle-like teeth). They are fat and s.h.i.+ny and most insipid eating.

_Wednesday, 4th._--Started at six down stream; my face is turned towards bonny old England again, and I feel as if I had wings.

At Kom Ombo (the first halt to-day) there are some ruins on a rock which crops up abruptly by the riverside in the midst of a flat country. The morning was divine, and the view from the temple, looking north, surpa.s.singly lovely in colour. The form was nothing much; a vast sandy plain (tigered here and there with stripes of green), and in the distance a long low nest of mountain peaks; but the colour!--the gradation from the fawn-coloured glimmering sands in the foreground to the faint horizon with its hem of amethyst and sapphire was as enchanting a thing, in the sweet morning light, as I have ever seen. The temple is fine though heavy, and less delicate in detail than Phylae. On the under surface of the architrave, between the columns, are some most curious and interesting unfinished decorations, on squares marked out in red, and showing (slight sketch) such as for instance a figure tried two ways on the same spot. The outlines are drawn out, in red also, with extraordinary firmness and freedom. Speaking of the squares, Gardiner Wilkinson--in his, I am told, most erudite, and, I am certain, most dry and heavy, guide-book--says that they were used (in the manner in which "squaring off" is practised in the present day) for the purpose of transferring a design. In this, however, he is obviously mistaken, because the squares are adapted not to the pictures but to the s.p.a.ce to be decorated; the hieroglyphs and the figures being adapted to the squares, not the squares to them: that these squares, once made the _basis_ of the decoration and fixing its proportions and distribution, may then have been used also for enlarging a small design, or even, instead of tracing, for transferring one of the same size, is probable enough; but that was not their original function. In corroboration of this view, compare the frets and ornaments painted on the _back_ of the architrave of the Parthenon, which I have examined closely; they are painted in squares marked out with a sharp instrument, and determining the s.p.a.ce to be decorated exactly as at Kom Ombo. The case is so entirely parallel as to suggest the idea that the Greeks learnt the practice in Egypt. The great temple of Edfou, where we stopped next, far surpa.s.ses anything I have yet seen in Egypt; not so much, perhaps, for any especial beauty of detail--although the sculptures are extremely fine--as for its general aspect, which is superb, and its wonderful state of preservation; many parts of it look as if they had been finished yesterday. The gigantic Propylaea, and the no less gigantic wall which encloses the whole of this fortress-temple, are almost entirely intact, and make it unlike any other ruin I know. The great court, a giant cloister into which one first enters, discloses the temple itself, blocked out in vast ma.s.ses of light and gulfs of shade, and tunnelled through by a corridor which reaches to its extremest end; the absence of some portions of the roof, by letting the light play fantastically into the inner s.p.a.ces, only adds to the mysterious grandeur of the effect. A broad, open peribolus runs round the temple, dividing it from the towering _mur d'enceinte_ which encloses the whole building.

The western part of the temple is as full of staircases, secret pa.s.sages, and dark chambers as any Gothic castle. Every square inch of the whole immense fabric is covered with sculptures and hieroglyphs.

I forgot to say that I stopped between Kom Ombo and Edfou at the ancient quarries of Gebel Silsily, from which the material of the sandstone temples was mostly quarried. They are extremely striking, and have a grandeur of their own. It was curious to compare them mentally with the marble quarries of Pentelicus from which Ictinus carved the Parthenon and Pheidias the Fates.

In a tomb at El Kab are some most amusing and interesting sculptures (with the colour almost intact on them) representing the various occupations of Egyptian life, agricultural, &c. The reaping of the corn and durrah is pretty--a vintage and wine-treading pleased me vastly. Had they wine in this district?

Coming upon a magnificent view, stopped the steamer for the night; want to see it by sunrise. The absurd spurious importance my steamer confers on me in the eyes of the natives is too funny. At Edfou I found the whole place _en emoi_; horses handsomely caparisoned, a most polite governor, sheykhs, and a general profusion of salaams. It appears that the viceroy had the authorities in the different places telegraphed to be civil to me; and G.o.d knows they are. I was struck with the magnificence of the population here, the men at least; they are most stately fellows. I should like immensely to paint some of them, but for that there is no time; I can only hope that something will stick to me from this dazzling mult.i.tude of fine things. We are now again in the region of doves, whose presence in large numbers affects the architecture of the villages in a most curious manner. Every house has, or rather, _is_, a dovecot, the chief _corps de batiment_ being a tower, or several towers, of which the whole upper part is exclusively affected to the doves. Their sides are inclined like the sides of the propylaea of the temples, with which they harmonise amazingly well; they are divided horizontally by bands of colour which have an excellent effect, recalling strongly the marked parallel strata of the mountains. (There is no more curious study than the concord which constantly manifests itself between national (and notably domestic) architecture, and the nature in the midst of which it grows up.) The construction of these towers is both peculiar and ingenious; they are built up entirely with earthen jars, sometimes placed topsy-turvy, but most often on their sides, and tier above tier like bottles in a cellar. The exterior is then filled in with mud, and the interior presents the appearance of a honeycomb, the cells being formed by the hollow jars; in these jars the doves have their abode. It is easy to see that by turning a few of the jars _outwards_ a very simple but pretty decoration may be obtained; a crest is added at the top by placing jars upside down at certain intervals; the bands of colour are generally divided by a string-course of bricks something after this fas.h.i.+on, but with much variety; and each of these string-courses is garnished with a perfect hedge of branches and twigs projecting horizontally a yard or more, and forming resting places for thousands of doves. Many houses have two towers, and the wealthier people have towers of great size subdivided again into small turrets; but in all cases the height of these edifices is the same, or nearly so, so that the villages received from them a very monumental look. The large towers are divided after the manner shown in the sketch. The natives also make to themselves curious pillar cupboards of mud (about man high), which from a distance have the oddest appearance; they look like raised pies on pedestals.

_Thursday, 5th._--Made a little sketch from the paddle-box before starting. Then to Esne to return the visit of my amiable friend, the governor; him of the flowers. There is a temple here; a heavy-looking portico of the Roman period, coa.r.s.ely executed, but with a grand, cavernous look, buried as it is in the ground which rises all round it to half the height of the columns, so that you have to descend a considerable flight of steps to get at it. At Arnout, or at least within three miles of it, are a few fragments of the Caesarium. The portraits of Cleopatra and Caesarion (he is always seated on her lap), which occur here several times, would be of the greatest interest if they were not utterly conventional, and exactly like everybody else in every temple of the date. Got to Lougsor at sunset, and found no letters, no Sterlings, no Lady Duff Gordon. I trust the letters may still turn up before I go, for, if not, I shall probably lose them entirely, through my desire to get them a little earlier. In the evening dined with Mustafa Aga, and met there the American Consul-General, Mr. Hale, who had run up from Alexandria to show the Nile to a friend of his; both are agreeable men (Mr. Hale earned my warmest blessings by lending me a pile of English newspapers); there was also the Consul from Syoot with a friend of his. After dinner the dancing girls were asked in, and, presently, a buffoon who stripped to his waist and performed various antics; he was clever and a good mimic, but became terribly tedious after a short time. His performance was of the most Aristophanic coa.r.s.eness. With the girls, of whom I had heard so much, I was decidedly disappointed; in the first place they were mostly ugly, one or two only were tolerably good-looking--_et encore!_ Then they were clumsily built, and their dress was quite ludicrous: it consisted in a body fitting tight to the figure and four inches too long in the waist, tight sleeves, a petticoat, in shape exactly like a pen-wiper, and very full, loose trowsers (bags) down to the feet; the whole of printed calico. In front of their waists hung a sort of _breloque_, or chain, looped up at intervals in festoons, the object of which was to jingle as they moved, and to add to the effect of certain little bra.s.s _castagnette_ cymbals which they held on the middle finger and thumb of either hand. A profusion of ornaments hung round their necks. Their dancing is very inferior to that of the Andalusian dancers of the same cla.s.s, whose performance is full of a quaint grace and even dignity--inferior, too, to the Algerine dancing, to which that of the south of Spain more nearly approaches in character; it is monotonous in the extreme--very ugly for the most part, and remarkable only as a gymnastic feat; sleight of loins, so to speak. These are, however, no doubt, unfavourable specimens; I shall see the best of the kind in Keneh at the house of the Consul, who has come all the way here from that place to invite me thereto.

_Friday, 6th._--Went to the palace and temples of Medinet Haboo, with which I was delighted beyond my expectation. What pleased me most, and was an entire surprise to me, was a bit of purely secular architecture--the remains of a royal residence, with its towers flanking the great entrance, its windows of various shapes, balconies, semicircular crenelations, outer wall; in fact, identically such a building as one sees occasionally in Egyptian sculptures, and, curiously enough, as if it were a portrait of it, on the walls of the very temple to which this palace leads. The temple, too (the large one), interested me extremely from the wonderful preservation of the coloured decoration in parts of it; one really gathers an excellent idea of the original effect, and a most brilliant and magnificent (though barbarous) effect it must have been. The columns in the great hall here are of what, for want of a better word, I shall call the "ninepin" pattern; and I think on the whole I prefer it to the bell-capped pattern; because, besides its character and ma.s.sive strength, there is no suggestion in it (as in the other) of the Doric order, with which comparison is obviously dangerous. As far as I can observe, there is no trace of colour on any of the propylaea, but the pylon is always richly decorated and highly coloured. This decorative importance given to the door must have had a very striking effect, and reminds me of the same peculiarity in the dwellings of Upper Egypt.

Visited a private tomb near Medinet Haboo, which is full of the most curious paintings, many of them in excellent preservation, and representing every sort of domestic and professional occupation. They are very superior in execution and character to those of El Kab. In the evening had a dinner on board: Mr. Hale and friend, Mustafa Aga and the Syoot Consuls (one of whom does not speak a word of anything but Arabic). I had also invited Mustafa's younger son, but find that he may not sit down with his father. (He accompanied me this morning, and insisted on lunching with the servants; on the other hand, my servant is addressed as Hosseyn _Effendi_, if you please! and conversed with as a gentleman. Service appears to be looked upon in an entirely patriarchal light.) The entertainment went off successfully, and Ottilio, the Italian waiter, covered himself with glory by his excellent waiting. After dinner Mr. Hale received a telegram to the effect that General Grant had been elected President of the United States, with Mr. Colfax as Vice.

He was in great excitement and delight; we had a recrudescence of champagne, and gave the new President three cheers in British fas.h.i.+on. The news had come in _three days_ from Was.h.i.+ngton to Thebes! it is marvellous.

_Sat.u.r.day, 7th._--Went to Karnak. Wilkinson advises the traveller to see this group of temples last; and wisely, for it is indeed the crowning glory of all, and must satisfy, if it does not surpa.s.s, the most sanguine expectations. The vast unfinished propylaea of the large temple prepare one by their colossal dimensions for the gigantic grandeur of the great central hall, in which one is at a loss what most to admire--the originality of the general design, combining, as it does in a surprising degree, freedom and variety with the gravest simplicity--the ma.s.sive and reposeful breadth of the forms or the exquisite subtlety of the colour. The latter has of course gained very much from the blending hand of time, and is now of a most delightful mellowness, but, judging from the better preserved portions, it must have been at all times of singular beauty. It seems strange at first that a decoration consisting entirely of small blots of vivid colour on a white ground, like b.u.t.terflies on a wall, can have a _large_ architectural effect; but, in fact, the _repet.i.tion_ over large surfaces of wall and column restores, through its monotony, the balance of breadth.

The design of this hall is very curious: the great central nave, flanked on each side by two aisles of the same height as itself, but of less breadth (diminis.h.i.+ng, roughly, in a proportion of 10, 7, 5), runs, as in a Gothic cathedral, perpendicular to the main entrance; beyond the second aisle, however, on either side, the lintels or architraves which connect the columns run at _right angles_ to the nave; the effect of this arrangement must have been peculiar and striking. (Too little remains now, except the columns, to enable one to form a distinct idea.) The central nave, with the aisles immediately adjoining, rises in a clerestory thirty or forty feet above the rest of the building, and was lighted by ma.s.sive square windows filled with slabs of stone (sketch), perforated vertically, and of a severe and very fine (sketch) effect. These windows fill the s.p.a.ce between the entablature of the lateral columns and of the roof of the clerestory, and must be some twenty to twenty-five feet high. I find it difficult to reconcile my eye to the far-fetched "asymetria" in the arrangement of the columns, the lesser ones standing in no definite relations.h.i.+p, on the plan, to the two central rows, neither immediately behind them nor half-way between them. How differently the Greeks managed these things!

The inner row of columns at the east and west ends of the Parthenon differs also in size, height, and level from the outer row, and also stands back; but it is only _one row_ at each end; so that variety and play of form are obtained without a repeated jar on the eye; and an otherwise uniform rectangular plan is not gratuitously distorted. In a very ancient temple beyond and behind that of the great hall are some curious polygonal columns that have a very Doric look about them, though they are very rude and undeveloped.

The walls of Karnak are of course defaced and disfigured by the usual amount of inscriptions; one commemorative tablet, however, like a similar one at Phylae, inspires a different feeling. Both are memorials of the French Campaign in Egypt; the one at Phylae, dated "an VIII. de la Republique Francaise,"

alludes with simple dignity to the victorious march of the French army to the first cataract, giving the names of the generals who were fighting "sous les ordres de Bonaparte"; the other, under the same date, is a simple scientific memorandum giving the lat.i.tude and longitude of the chief towns on the Nile. It is impossible to read the first of these inscriptions without emotion: how remote from us, already, seems that stern, invincible French Republic, tracing its proud name with an undoubting finger here in the grave-dust of an empire that stood more centuries than this young giant completed years! How thickly, already, does the dust lie now on the grave of this thing of yesterday!

In writing about Phylae, I forgot to notice the henna tree, which grows in great quant.i.ties round the skirts of the temple, and has a delicious scent. In this wilderness of granite and most unsavoury haunt of bats, its perfume wafted unexpectedly on the air is infinitely delightful.

_Sunday, 8th._--Sketched.

_Monday, 9th._--Ditto. In the evening went out to shoot, but could not get near the pelicans and crows--they see you half a mile off. Returning, against stream, Hosseyn, anxious to be useful, took a _punting pole_ and _rowed_ away with an air of conviction which was worthy of the fly on the coach-wheel in the fable.

The heat, though still considerable (greater than with us at midsummer), has diminished within the last few days, and does not inconvenience me as much as it did in sketching. Towards evening, soft autumnal veils of mist rise from the smooth, swift river, and shroud everything in their mysterious folds; to-night the effect was especially striking; a pale golden sun hung in a pale golden mist, tempered so that one could look at it undazzled, and so shorn of its fires that the eastern bank, instead of burning orange, showed only a faint violet flush over its dark-brown ridges. On a dahabieh alongside me an Arab is singing endless strophes of some poem of love and war, accompanied by the thud and jingle of a tambourine; the melody, a wandering, nasal strain, full of turns and runs and triplets, appears to be entirely improvised, and is full of character and melancholy. At the end of each strophe I hear a prolonged, deep groan of approval uttered in a chorus by the audience, rising in pitch after a particularly happy effort of the rhapsodist, whose song begins again and again in mournful gusts like the song of the wind. It is dark; I only hear--don't see--the singer and his listeners.

_Tuesday, 10th._--Sketched. A frequent companion in my work is my friend, little Fatma, a sweet, small child of about five, with a bright face and two rows of the whitest teeth ever seen.

She squats down snugly by my side, sometimes looking at the picture, sometimes at the painter, most often at the paint-box, at which she twiddles silently; sometimes she pensively draws a pattern with a little brown finger on my dusty boots. I remember at Rhodes, last year, a knot of little girls used to watch me sketching in the Street of the Knights; but the little Turks were not so nice as Fatma, the little Arab; some used to giggle, and some used to frown at the Djiaour; but one very chatty young lady of about six with the manners and graces of sixteen would exclaim in a little fluty voice, "Mash Allah! Mash Allah!

beautiful indeed! n.o.body here can write like you!" (Turk., if my memory helps me: _Guzel! guzel! Bir khimse burda senci zhibi yazamas!_) I had a visit on board the other day from Mustafa Aga's youngest son, bonny and rosy as an apple. He wore a flowing robe of linen, _a ramages_, b.u.t.toned summarily and once for all at the neck, but entirely open from the neck downwards; over this an enormous embroidered jacket with antic.i.p.atory sleeves turned up at the wrists, and on, or rather about, his feet, a pair of his papa's shoes; he was irresistibly funny and pretty; an _amorino_, dressed up as the Dog Toby. He was very chatty; not so his playfellow, "Genani," the son of Abdallah, the servant of Mustafa, a putto by Raphael modelled in chocolate; a wild, black-eyed, trembling, romping, dusty, stark-naked little imp (I used to call him Afreet), and the finest child I ever saw. The nearest approach to social intercourse I could get out of him was a sudden plunge at a proffered cake; after which he would dart off with affected dismay, and frown at me through an ill-suppressed grin from behind the nearest place of safety.

_Wednesday, 11th._--Got on with my sketches. Have begun two or three rough small studies of heads. Hate sketching heads rapidly; it is unavoidably and odiously free and easy, and nearly all that is worth escapes. But I have no time for more, and, I suppose, the sketches will be useful. One man, with a face like a camel, whom I drew in profile, was annoyed (though in a general way complimentary) at seeing only one eye in the picture. This struck me as quaint; for he was _blind_ of the other; he had not been defrauded of much. My delight, in the evening, is to watch the processions of women and girls coming down to the Nile to fetch water. The brown figures, clad in brown, coming, in long rows, along the brown bank in all the glow and glory of sunset, look very grand; very grand, too, returning up the steep bank, along the violet sky, with their long, flowing folds and the full pitchers now erect on their heads (when empty they carry them horizontally). They are neither handsome individually nor particularly well made, but their movements are good, and the repet.i.tion of the same "motive" many times in succession makes the whole scene impressive and stately. There is no more fruitful source of effect in Nature or Art than iteration.

The suppleness of the limbs of the children here is extraordinary. I have seen little girls squatting like gra.s.shoppers in the Nile drinking, _a meme_, the water in which they were standing little more than ankle deep.

An hour after nightfall the dahabieh, my neighbour, slipped her cables and began to drift down the river; but not till the rhapsodist had chanted his ditty to the approving murmurs of his little circle as on the preceding night. His singing has a great charm for me; I shall miss it. It reminds me much of Andalusian singing and moonlight nights in the Bay of Cadiz--there is about it a strangeness and a wayward melancholy that attach and charm me. It was a love song (I am told, for I could not hear the words, and should have understood very few if I had).

"Ya leyl! ya leyl! ya leyl!"--the eternal refrain of Arab songs.

"Oh night! oh night! oh night! you have left a fire in my heart, oh my beloved! Oh my beloved, do not forget me!" &c. &c. &c.

A day or two ago I heard a youth calling the faithful to noonday prayer, from the gallery of a minaret, with one of the finest voices I have ever heard; he was tearing his notes from the inmost depths of his chest with that eagerness of yet unconscious pa.s.sion that I have often noticed in southern children, and which to me is singularly pathetic; he retained his last notes as long as his breath allowed it, and they vibrated in distinct waves like a sonorous metal set in motion: from a little distance the effect was _saisissant_. I could not see him, and the air seemed to throb with sound as well as with heat in the sultry noon.

The departure of the dahabieh was celebrated with the usual Arab waste of powder, and all the echoes of the valley of the tombs across the river were aroused by the popping of many guns. All the consuls fired officially, everybody else fired unofficially.

Hosseyn fired officiously--chuckling and nearly tumbling over; and the dahabieh itself, having opened the ball, fired again at intervals from a long distance as if it had forgotten somebody--they are too funny.

_Thursday, 12th._--More sketching. The weather, which is a little too canicular at noon, is deliciously fresh and cool for an hour after sunrise; the Arabs, however, look much aggrieved at the severity of the cold; they sit huddled in m.u.f.fled groups with a pinched look that would become a British December day.

I observe that half the men in middle life have no forefinger to their right hand. They all of them mutilated themselves to avoid conscription under Said Pasha, who, however, having found them out, enlisted them all the same. A curious equality prevails here: whilst sketching two of Mustafa Aga's servants this morning, I learnt from his son that they were both his relations. One of them appears to be a particularly nice fellow, and is a perfect gentleman in his manners.