CHAPTER XVI. A VISIT TO KENEH-EGYPTIAN INDUSTRY-LIFE AMONG THE EGYPTIAN FREEMEN ASCENDING THE RIVER TO THE FIRST CATARACT AND THE NUBIAN FRONTIER -ASSOUAN-THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRESENTS INTERESTING INCIDENT-A MAN WHO RIDES-SCENES RETURNING - AN - A VISIT ΤΟ IN ANCIENT BONDAGE Continuing their journey up the Nile, one of the party writes, on the 31st of January, as follows: It was a sad sight, and One visit worth noting was made to the town of Keneh. We tied up to the bank in our summary way, just as the wayfaring horseman dismounts and ties his horse to a tree. There is no question of wharves or quays or permission. When we tied, we all went ashore and picked out our donkeys. The boys had seen our smoke far down the river, and were there to meet us. The town was a mile or so off, and we rode over the plain. Sami Bey told us what a calamity this bad Nile meant to Egypt. When the Nile rises in its season and floods the fields, only departing when it leaves the richness that it brought all the way from Central Africa, then Egypt is rich. The ground teems with fatness, and I could well believe Sami Bey when he told us how he had ridden from the river bank to the town through fields of corn and sugar cane, through fields of waving, living, joyous green. To-day the fields are parched and brown and cracked. The irrigating ditches are dry. You see the stalk stumps of the last season's crop. But with the exception of a few clusters of the castor bean and some weary, drooping date palms, the earth gives forth no fruit. A gust of sand blows over the plain and adds to the sombreness of the scene. Here are hundreds of thousands of acres which, in a good year, would give generous crops. Now they give nothing, and the people who till them must be fed. A bad Nile, therefore, means bad times for the people and bad times for the Government. For when there are no crops there are no taxes, and even an Egyptian taskmaster could not force barren fields to pay revenue to the Khedive's treasury. It is safe to say that a bad Nile costs Egypt millions and millions of dollars. The people must live on last year's grain, and instead of helping the Government, must be helped by the Government. When you remember that the Khedive is under many burdens-the burden of an enormous debt, the interest of which is in default; a burden of a contingent in the Turkish army which he must support, the burden of the annual tribute to the Sultan, over $3,500,000 a year, you can understand the calamity of a bad Nile and why it is that most of the civil and military officers are in arrears for their salary-some of them for a year. Happily such a calamity as a bad Nile does not often occur. If it happened for two or three continuous years a famine would be the result. If the Nile ceased its office Egypt would have to be abandoned and these fertile plains given over to the desert. In fact, Egypt is only an annual struggle between the river and the desert. If ever the river surrenders, Egypt will become a barren, treeless plain of rocks and sand. The sand was blowing heavily as we entered Keneh. We had not been expected, so there were no ceremonies, and we could wander as we pleased. We dismounted under a grove of trees and went on foot into the town, our donkeys and donkey boys following after. We strolled through the bazaars, which meant that we crowded our way through narrow, dusty passages where the tradesman sold his wares. The assortment was not varied-beads, grain, cloths, dates, pipes and trinkets. We went into one house where the potter was busy over his wheel. In Keneh pottery is an industry. The clay makes a fragile, porous vessel, through which the water evaporates in summer, acting as a filter and a water cooler. These vessels are grateful in the summer days, and there is quite a trade in them between Keneh and Lower Egypt. We had observed coming up rafts of stone jars, bound together with boughs, floating down the stream, very much as the old flatboats used to float down the Mississippi to New Orleans, laden with Western produce. The jars kept their own buoyancy, and one raft would require not more than three or four men to ply it. The potter was very skilful. His child moistened the clay, and with deft fingers he fashioned it into form-into graceful lines and curving shapes, showing artistic sense. The cheapness of the work when done was amazing. The retail price was about eighty cents a hundred for small jars useful for the table. We went into a mill where the corn was grinding. It was the same process that we read about in the Bible-the horse going round and round, the grain crushing between an upper and nether stone and running into a pail. We went into one of the houses of the common people. Hassan led the way, and there was evidently no intrusion. A morsel of backsheesh would atone for any invasion of domestic privacy. The house was a collection of rooms; the walls made of dried mud and bricks. It was one story high, thatched with straw. The floor was the ground. The walls were clay. In one room was the donkey, in another the cowa queer kind of buffalo cow, that looked up at us as we went in. In another room slept the members of the family. There was neither bed nor chair nor table. They slept on the ground or on palm leaves, like the donkey. They sat on the ground for meals and ate out of the same dish. The woman was sitting over a fire on which she was roasting some kind of grain. The children were sprawling about her. The woman was a Copt and not doomed to Moslem seclusion. The father stood at the door grinning and waiting for baksheesh. The welcome was as cordial as possible, but I suppose there were not a thousand slaves in the South who were not better housed than these free Egyptian citizens. Their life was virtually that of a savage, but they all seemed happy and cheerful enough. In this land Nature is the friend of the poor. You can sleep on the ground every night of the year secure from rain. You can array yourself in the scantiest of raiment free from the cold. You can live on dates and sugar cane, and, as far as the real ailments that come from want and misery with us are concerned, they are not known in I Egypt. The people are well made, well formed, with unusual powers of endurance, and naturally light. would like to see any of our laboring men at home run up and down the Pyramid of Cheops in eight minutes, as I saw an Arab do for a franc. And we have no damsels among our own dear, tender, lovely maidens at home who could run at your donkey's side for miles and miles, balancing a pitcher of water on their heads and showing no signs of fatigue. We thought we had the town to ourselves to stroll and wander where we listed, when there came one to us in haste to say that the Pacha who governed this province had heard of our coming and would like to see us at the palace. And the General, who is as obliging a soul as one of the laden camels we are constantly passing, said he would call on the Pacha. We threaded our way to the palace, which was a low brick building, like a barracks. The messenger evidently did not expect so prompt an answer to his summons, as we saw him running ahead to tell his lord that we were coming-coming almost on his heels. We passed under a grateful row of trees, through |