INTO THE LAND -OF EGYPT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 16 July 1938, Page 3

INTO THE LAND -OF EGYPT

H. V. Morton Begins Another Great Series

|AS the Paris-Marseilles express thundered through the night. I tried to cheer myself with thoughts of Egypt. ! If I came safely through this night, I told myself as we took a curve at a speed which felt like a hundred miles an hour. I shall be in Egypt in four days’ time —Egypt, the Pyramids, the Nile, tombs, temples, date-palms, and sunlight . . . The wheels began to beat time to my thoughts. They said with maddening monotony:— Egypt-Pyramids, Egypt-Pyramids, Egvpt-Pyramids. Pyramids-Pyramids, Pyramids-Pyramids Then they would change the rhythm, and say— The Nile-Egypt, The Nile-Egypt, The Nile-Egypt, Pyramids, Pyramids, Pyramids . . How strange it is, and how alarming, that trains, specially on the Continent, seem to travel twice as fast in the night. Although I know that French engine-drivers are among the best in the world. I am haunted in the dark by the horrible thought that at least one of them may have fallen off his locomotive, or is sitting with his back to the engine reading “Paris Soir.” Even the confident, boyish whistle with which French locomotives announce their headlong progress, failed to comfort me as the express train poured itself across the dark length of France. How cold it had been in London, j and how grey. Was it really only ! this morning that I had set out, rush* I ing round Victoria Station in a lastj moment panic to buy packets of razor- ■ blades, a new pencil, and an electric ! torch to light the lesser known tombs in the Valley of the Dead? There I go again—the Valley of the Dead! I really must try and /-think of something cheerful! I lay in the rushing darkness, and thought how Wonderful it would be to feel again the warm sunlight of Egypt. I was in Egypt only once before, fourteen years ago, a young reporter on his first job. And what a job that was: the opening of the mummychamber of the Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen.

I Fourteen year* ago I used to get up ' early in the morning and row across the Nile at Luxor, such a breathless “ blue river, hushed in the morning: I and I would ride a donkey up into the I fiery canyon of the Valley of the I Kings, five miles of tawny desolation, I with heat like a furnace where the I hills narrowed to a gorge. I would watch golden chariots carried out into the sunlight. And what I a moment it was when for the first time the sun touched these objects ' after their long sleep of over three thousand years in the darkness of the tomb. I saw little of Egypt in those days. I was chained to one spot, and had no chance to travel about the cquntry. But the memory of Egypt remained with me, the memory of an enchanted land, where a windless river lies in almost perpetual sunlight; and I promised myself that some day I should go back and explore Egypt, visit its tombs and its temples, and sail upon its river. With such thoughts I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes the morning light had CQme to the olive trees of the South, and through openings in the rocks I could see the blue line of the Mediterranean Sea. It was 7 a.m. when I stepped from the train, and Marseilles had not yet awakened. I took a taxi to the docks. There is no moment in travel more thrilling,. I think, than this changeover from the train to the boat at Marseilles. This port is to the modern world ! what Corinth wfes to the Roman Emi pire; the belt-buckle of Orient and ; Occident. j My ship, a French liner, was lying . at the dock-side. She was an old i hand in the Egyptian mail service, the Mariette Pacha. The first thing I j noticed about her was - an enormous 1 French tricolour painted on her side ,! amidships, and stretching dov)n to the j water. j “That is because of Spain and the ! pirate submarines,” I was told. I Festooned in my suit-cases, porters | i mounted the gangway, and I followed I ! them through a black hole in the i ship’s side. j Never. I thought, had I been in a ' more curious ship. She is named in honour of Auguste' Mariette, who was born in Boulogne, and began life as French master in a boys’ school at I Stratford-on-Avon. He died in 1881, | one of the most famous Egyptologists j in the world. j But of all the tributes showered on I Mariette, this ship is surely the most I spectacular. As he comes aboard, the | startled traveller appears to be in I Egypt, or about to cross the sea in a museum, for the Mariette Pacha looks ' like a floating temple. Its public rooms are upheld by lotus columns of veneered wood, decorated ’ with coloured hieroglyphs. Chairs, couches, and even card tables. are copied from furniture found in the tombs of Egypt.

Stiff gods and goddesses gaze from almost every wall. The dining room was clearly inspired by the Valley of the Dead. I wondered whether the stewards would observe the ancient custom of carrying round a mummy after dinner.

It would not be surprising. I thought, if passengers went about the ship Baedecker in hand, or if one encountered late at night a party of excavators, unable any longer to restrain their enthusiasm, busily at work in the lounge with picks and shovels.

I have an idea that the Mariette Pacha must at some time in her career have encountered a tourist who refused to land in Egypt on the plea that he had seen it all on the way across!

As we steamed out of Marseilles I settled down to four days at sea. And each day sea and sky became a deeper blue: each day the sun grew warmer; and each night stars were brighter in the sky as we drew near to the shores of Africa.

What a varied company we were: French and Syrians on their way to Beyrouth; Egyptians; a few English; several Jews bound for Palestine; and a British official on, his way to the Persian Gulf. There was a French officer who wore uniform, with spurs, all the way across the Mediterranean.

There was a couple who looked as though they had strayed from a French farce. They always came to breakfast in their night clothes, the man in red pyjamas, the woman in a black silk wrap over a white nightdress. On the after-deck were seven polo ponies in horse-boxes, in charge of a Swiss and his wife and a’negro groom in plus fours. The ponies hated the sea, nickering and kicking, and baring their teeth between long bouts of headdrooping boredom. The negro would sit on a bale of hay and talk to them, and they would flatten their ears and look as though they would love to take a bite at his Harris tweed. The Swiss and his wife were so fond of the ponies that they slept on deck in a little tent which they had rigged up to cover the fodder. The man told me that the ponies were going to Cairo. Kind-hearted people would often take sugar to the ponies, but after a glance at the white of their eyes, they would put the sugar in their pockets and go away. One night, as I was sitting in the forrard sanctuary after dinner, listening to the creaking of the lotus columns, for a storm had sprung up off Sicily, I heard voices singing on the deck below. They were English voices. They were singing, “Jesu, Lover of my soul.” Who were these English people who sang at night in the rising storm? In the windy darkness I made out with difficulty three women and a man with a concertina, standing in a curious crowd of shadowy forms. They sang one or two hymns, but the storm was gaining on their voices. They concluded with one verse of “Auld Lang Syne”; then the crowd of fellow-passen-gers, among them many a jet-black African face, melted away. In the morning I went down to the forward deck to clear up this mystery. A man who looked English, and turned out to be a Jew from Manchester, told me that the women were missionaries on their way to the Belgian Congo. He knew them because they looked after his baby.

He and his wife had an inside cabin with no port-hole, and the missionaries let him put the baby in their cabin, where it could get some fresh air. He took me below deck and knocked on a cabin door. The three women were sitting there watching the baby. There was scarcely any room, but the young man took away the child, which enabled a missionary to sit on a bunk, and I was able to squeeze into the cabin and sit on a suit case. The woman told me that they belonged to the Heart of Africa Mission at Imbambi, in the Congo. They were returning after a visit home. There was Mrs Harrison, of Edinburgh. who has been a missionary in the Belgian Congo for fourteen years; Miss Harman, of Victoria. British Columbia, who has been a missionary there for ten years; and Miss Shaw, of Glasgow, who has been out in the wilds for. nine years. The young concertina player. they told me. was a Mr Davies, a Welshman, who was going out for the first time. After Alexandria, they would have to travel for five weeks before arriving at their station. Their route lay through Khartum and Juba, and then they would have to journey 500 miles by motortruck to Imbambi. They talked about this motor truck i as a great luxury. Only a few years i ago the missionaries tramped every yard of this 500 miles. They told me the story of theia j work with Pauline fervour. There are! about forty-five missionaries scattered! over a swampy jungle about the size. of England, Wales, and part of Scotland. Their nearest white neighbour at Imbambi is 200 miles off through , the bush. They showed me pictures of j savages innocent of clothes, the women j with bulging stomachs and the men with spindle legs and blubber lips. These were the people among whom they worked. j

“Would you change your lives for any other?” I asked. “Oh no—never” they all exclaimed at once. “We are counting the days until we get back.’ They talked of magic and witchcraft, of spells and curses, of people who die I when a whistle is blown behind them, and of people possessed of evil spirits., 1 They told me of the Secret Society, ' of Leopard men who haunt the Congo ! swamps, masked with leopard skins, i and armed with a five-pronged j This weapon makes a wound so like j that of a leopa» d’s claws that, when a 1 dead body is found in the jungle, it is often difficult to know whether a leopard was the cause of death, or whether the Leopard Men had “bumped off” an opponent, just like any European dictator. These women, who looked as though they should be going home together on . a ’bus to a comfortable suburb and a ' nice cup of tea. refused to be impressed. as I was. by the nature or the scene | of their endeavours. They talked about Leopard Men and ' witches with downcast eyes and an oc- [ casional sigh, just as I have heard | ardent social workers refer to naughty Mrs Jones, who pawns the baby’s clothes for beer. ! It was my regret that I met these in- : teresting women on our last night at sea. for I should like to have asked them more questions about life in Im- J i bambi. The next afternoon there was a gen- j eral air of excitement about the j ship. Everyone gazed to the south. At length someone cried. “Land!” and someone else cried “Egypt.” Far off on the horizon I saw a line of white, just like a sand-bar in the blue sea. Slowly the thin, flat line of the Delta j lifted itself from the wat6r, and we i passed tail-sailed fishing boats full of brown men. A few palm trees showed j against the sky like tiny green starfish! on poles. The white buildings of Alexandria rose from the waves, and the scent of Egypt came out tc meet us from the land. (To be continued)