BEING STRAY NOTES OF FIVE YEARS OF TRAVEL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 16, 14 October 1908, Page 30

BEING STRAY NOTES OF FIVE YEARS OF TRAVEL.

By

WINIFRED H. LEYS, AUCKLAND.

EGYPT: 11. FROM CAIRO TO LUXOR BY RAIL. THE TEMPLE OF THEBES.

THERE ;»>•<• undoubted drawback* to be encountered when one lands in a country out of season, I* or instance. the most interesting route to Luxor was closed to us that (letobcr because the passenger steamers bad not started their regular journeys up the Nile. so we perforce must go by rail. (hi tin platform, we met a man with whom .we had travelled some mouths pre\ioiis|y. when <>n a voyage from New Zealand to America. He was an Australian with a history a strange improbable history. part of which came to our ears some time after we had quitted America. (hi the xteamer he had not been a favourite, being of a noisy type, but associated with him was a very quiet. unobtrusive young Englishman. who became most popular with the passengers, owing to his genial manners and liberal donations to the sport'* fund-, ami collections of one sort and another, lb* and tin- Au-trilian were on terms of apparent friendship, that naluiallx created neither comment nor interesj. Neither of the me.i was a gambler, and the\ -car. e|\ played card* at all during the voyage, (hi our arrival at Sin Eran cisco, when the u-ual good byes were being -aid. tin* \<mng Englishman distri bated a sui prising number of cards with the heartily expressed wish that people would ** L ok him up ” when they got to London. So he disappeared, ami most of its forgot all al ount him. While strolling along the Strand one day. a gentleman who had been with us on the journey from New Zealand to American ran into the Australian who but-ton-holed him. and poured forth a long tale about his former friend. d’his quiet young Englishman, it appeare 1. was a decox tor a set of confidence t rick men who cai lied on their game in a l*ig wax in London. His business was to mak« him.sell popular in the four corners «»l Hie globe and induce people to “ look hill up” at hi* London addles* on-Lis card I; 1 hex did so. they were met by a set o men who treated them to sumptuous din ner*. but who either took them down a’ <ards or enticed them on to a ra (our*c

where the unsophisticated invariably lost heavily. Our Australian ship-mate had known all this, having elsewhere met the Englishman playing his apparently lucrative, if uncertain, calling, and travelling under a different name to that which he had assumed when we met him. But the Englishman possessed knowledge of an unpleasant episode in the Australian's

lite, whi h he threatened to disclose if the othe: peached on him. So there the scheming scoundrel lived among us for three weeks unsuspected. When we met the Australian on the Cairo platform he was in the employ of some gold-mining syndicate, and off. with a couple of other white men and a number of Arabs, into some almost unexplored country beyond Khartoum. The

other man, he informed us, was in gaol, one of his gang having overstepped the mark and landed them all in trouble. That journey from Cairo to Luxor was the hottest night I ever spent. The .irrnx ollieer's wife toil’ to join her husband in Khartoum) who shared my eom partinent, was quite as stifled as I. and after several hours of tossing and turn ing in our berths we lit the light and spied round for some means of ventilation. Windows and doors were closed to keep out the desert sand, but at last we decided that the door simply must be tied open, if ever such a little bit. Then ensued a vigorous search for something wherewith to tie the door, but all that could be found was our two pairs of suspenders which, with a woman's inventiveness, the lady proceeded to call into service. Even with the door open, the night seemed long and hot, and to make matters more unbearable the train stopped for close on four hours, in consequence of which delay we did not arrive at Luxor until 12.30 p.m. next day. Everybody protested loudly next morning at this unaccountable delav. but once dressed and out into the air. however dusty. I felt rather glad of this opportunity of seeing the country. The impression I received of Egypt on that morning journey through the land iirigated by the waters of tin* great Nile, as we passed through miles and miles of corn, green and tall and fresh, was as different from my preconceived ideas of the land of the Pharaoh's as it possibly could be. W'e read in our Bibles of the corn which came out of Egypt, but we are apt to forget that it must first grow there. The surprise is so great that for the time one forgets that this wonderful vast green sea of maize and barley is. after all, only a fringe on the enormous areas of desert land that lie beyond; but where water is obtainable in Egypt, the crops are marvellous; not. one but two and even three, a year. The world seemed a new one to me. Absolutely nothing looked the same as 1 had seen it in other count ries. On Ihe edges of the canals, half-naked fellahin worked the creaking shadufs, drawing water and emptying it into small channels, by which it is conduct el all over those enormous fields of corn. How they worked at the toilsome old things! So patiently, so mechanically, the sweat pouring olf their painfully thin bodies, never even glancing up as we shot by, and all for 10d a day. Men. women, and children swarmed in the fields, and on the canal banks. Sometimes they were working among the corn, or scurrying along beside the canals, on foot, on camels, or on donkeys; or, again, they were herded together in hundreds in the market i 'aces of the numerous towns. Suddenly

one* was wafted back to Old Testament days, for, without a doubt, there was a man at work spreading on the bank a number of oblong cakes of mud—nothing more nor less than the famous Nile bricks, that would soon be baked hard in that intense, scorching sun. Clusters of date palms raised their fruit-laden heads in all directions—near the towns, away in a great inland sea, or sheltering some isolated mosque. Blindfolded oxen paced slowly round and round under their shade, working the sakiyehs, or water-wheels, that pump the water from wells, ami distribute it over the land. Away on the horizon the slanting masts and white sails of the ships located for us the position of the great river whose water was abroad over I lie land. The Egyptian children are mostly very bright and pretty, but the poor little babies are aimost eaten alive with Hies, which their superstitious mothers will not drive away. 1 have seen a child’s eyes so covered by sticking Hies that it could not r&ise its poor little lids, and yet it seemed to feel no irritation. These Hies, however, carry much disease with them, and what with the desert sandstorms and the perpetual plague of Hies, many hundreds of Egyptians lose the sight of at least one eye. 1 never saw so many one-eyed folk in all the rest of my life as during the few weeks we spent in Egypt. The little boys, where they come much in contact with Europeans, are as full of

cheeky confidence as it is possible to imagine them. 1 here was a young page boy at the Luxor Hotel, whose behaviour would have set the smartest of London “buttons’* thinking. I was writing letters in the writingroom one night when tliis jfiece of Egyptian impudence came in and fussed around, making so much rattling of papers that I looked up to remonstrate with him. The moment I glanced at him he came over to me saying : “Would the English lady like a lamp, it is very dark when* she is writing.” I agreed that I would like a lamp, so oil he Hew. and was back with one in a moment- He placed it on the writing desk, but showed mt signs of moving away. “Did the English lady sleep well last nrght,” he asked. I answered that I had slept excellently, and so turned to my writing. “Is that your husband, lady, you are with?” he next inquired. “No,” I answered, “it is my brother ' I was not a little surprised at the question, and looked at the boy. who was aged about eighteen, and was sitting hail on the table, and swinging his shoulders about rather nervously. “Have vou a husband, ladv?” In* next asked. “No.” I replied.

“Oh!” said tin* boy. “hope lady will have beautiful husband some day." “What is your mum*?” I asked him. “Ahmed Abdulla. I am page boy here and I work for my mother and dster. who live in the village,” he answered. “Has your gentleman brother a wife?” he eon t inued a t once. “No. Abdulla.*' I answered. “Oh! Hope your gentleman brother will have beautiful wife some day. Where do you live lady?" he went on again, gazing at me out of a half squinting eye. with intense curiosity. “Ear away. Abdulla : you wouldn't know when* it was if I told you. and I must write my letters now," I replied, hoping s<> to freeze him oil’. But Abdulla was of a much more persevering nature than that. “You write inan\ letters, lady. When you go away will you write a letter to me?” “But van you read English?” I asked “I cannot write Arabic, and if you cannot read English, what would be the good of writing you a letter?” “My uncle reads English he would read it to me.” said the undaunted Abdulla. “And who is your uncle?" I asked. “’l'he big hall porter.” said Abdulla, with unmistakable pride*. I well remembered the big hall por ter. and I did not like* him. and I began to have visions of Abdulla and tin* hall porter surrounded by a crowd of gaping Arabs while the* uncle read aloud the letter Abdulla had received from “the English lady.” and I coni I see Abdulla’s

squinty eye and boastful swagger as he eyed his friends. I thought the dialogue had gone on long enough, so I just turned to my letter, saying—- “ Until you learn to read your own letters, Abdulla, you must not expect to get any. You had better go to the school in the village again.” “But lady,” said the nowise abashed Abdulla, “if I get letter from you, it will be the same as if I saw you—it will be very nice. You will say how long you stay in Cairo, and I will write to you letter—my big uncle will write to you letter.” I turned again in sheer astonishment. “Abdulla,” I said, “you must never ask English ladies to write you letters. Now go away, I am busy.” “Hope lady will sleep well,” said Abdulla, “and think about letter,” and so he went. For the rest of my stay he avoided me so long as my brother was present, but would dart out from the hall on to the terrace if he saw me alone, and say, “Hope lady feels well. You won’t forget the letter, lady—me get letter, same’s see you.” I never answered or looked at him. and as we were remaining only a couple

more days, it was not worth while to complain, but he was not to be discouraged by being ignored. The last I saw of Abdulla was as the train bore us out of the Luxor station, when he came rushing up to the window of our compartment, and panted out, “You won't forget the letter, lady—the letter, lady.” The Egyptian women are rather a disappointment, the better class keeping heavily and most unbecomingly veiled, and the fellah women having no claim whatsoever to beauty. On the other hand, the men, and especially the young men of the cities, are exceedingly handsome; the present day fashion of wearing a red fez, suiting their dark skins to perfection. As our train slowed up in the Luxor station, before it had even stopped, a man poked his head in the window of our carriage crying out, “You, Mr Leys? Me get wire from Cairo say you come, me Moustapha, the Dragoman.” So our persistent hotel porter had actually wired to his friend the dragoman, he having obtained our name by coming to the Cairo station the night before and examining our luggage. Tourists are scarce in October, and we were nearly torn to pieces by dragomans rehearsing their various capabilities. So we were thankful enough to grab Moustapha and drive off to the Luxor hotel. Afterwards Moustapha proved a treasure, for, quite apart from any informa-

tion we got out of him. most of which was of doubtful veracity, he saved us much annoyance from temple guides and the sellers of antiquities. Oh! those sellers of spurious antiquities! Not even at the baths of Caracalla at Rome are they so clamorous as we find them among the ruins of Thebes. Luxor positively thrives on the manufacture of mummy cats and l£rds, pieces of old stone jars and scarabs. If anyone really wishes to buy scarabs, the Museum at Cairo will sell him some, and provide a guarantee of their genuineness, but very few of these old ring-stones are pretty. Five days we spent at Luxor, filling our minds with wonder at the enormous extent of the temples of Thebes, and each day getting a little more into the realisation of the greatness of the men who ruled four thousand years ago. Four thousand years ago! That is the hardest truth that Thebes asks us to believe. Where these great, unimaginably great temples have not been ruthlessly overthrown by the invading armies of the Assyrians, the Macedonians, and the Romans, we see everything, even to the inscriptions and paintings on the walls, as fresh as if their claim to an-

tiquity was measured by hundreds, rather than by thousands of years. Nowhere save in this dry, unchanging climate of Egypt could such wonderful preservation be found. Of the dwellings within Thebes of the Thousand Gates, Thebes that spread for miles on either side of the Nile, there is naw no trace. Even the palaces of the Pharaohs that must have stood on both banks of the noble river are completely obliterated. Yet do we need any more convincing testimony to the power of ancient Egypt than may be found in the temples of her gods—those huge erections of sandstone that have defied the sunshine and storm for so many ages. From about ICOO to 300 8.C., each king vied with the last in glorifying and enlarging the many temples at Thebes; especially did they pay honour to the great temple of Ammon at Karnak. An amazingly large portion of the treasures won by Seti and both Rameses 11. and Raineses 111. in their successful campaigns seems to have gone to enrich the temples at Thebes. The extraordinary individual power and rule of these Pharaohs, who could so command hordes of slaves as to erect, each in his lifetime, several such colossal sanctuaries, and at the same time cause to be hewn out the wonderful tombs we see at Biban-el-Muluk, is a most, fascinating study in these democratic days. Though the greatness of Ammon and

the other gods has for hundreds of years been wiped from the fears of men. yet the power of the men iwho worshipped them seems as though it would live for ever in those huge broken statues and indestructible monuments. With one’s ignorance of Egyptian history and the scurry of our visit, it is quite impossible to carry away any detailed memories of the various temples. Three only can I remember with any definiteness —that of Luxor. of Medinet Habu and of Karnak. Each night as the setting sun cast a unique red glow over its double row of columns, we would wander down to the Temple of Luxor. It is one of the grandest temples in the land, and was commenced by Amenhotep 111. and embellished by Rameses the Great, two of the most powerful of the builder kings of Egypt. The atmosphere of Upper Egypt is peculiar, and not the sky alone but the very air looks tinged with pink at sunset. There was never anyone in the temple—it always seemed so enormous, so unalterable, so very, very lonely. After a couple of days among these ruins of Ancient Thebes, one’s brain is just buzzing with memories of papyrus columns, of huge courtyards and tumbled masses of stone, of broken columns and tall, shining obelisks, of many gods and their various names, and to sort all these out and decide which belongs to which particular ruin and temple is a task no one need expect to accomplish. After all, what does it matter when we shall always see the sun shining on the great columns of Luxor—when the picture still remains clear which met our eyes as we came over the hill from Biban-el-Muluk and saw the many ruins below us, and on the flooded flat the two great Colossi of Memnon, with the Nile far beyond; when we cam remember how we looked along the great avenue of columns in the Ramesseura towards the colossal red granite statue of Rameses 11., that lay, greatest statue in all Egypt though it be, now a fearful broken mass; when •the two great courts of Medimet Habu, with their wonderful mural pictures and innumerable Rameses-Osiris statues, and tiny treasure rooms, can never be forgotten? Surely the length and breadth of the halls and courts, the number of the statues and the heights of the obelisks, matter very little. It is interesting enough at the time to trace out the meaning of the pictures on the walls, since one scene is crowded on another in a most bewildering way; but to expect to remember it after one is far away is just absurd. The great Temple of Ammon, at Karnak, “the work of fourteen kings, in the golden age of Egypt,” is the crowning triumph of Thebes, and really deserves many visits; yet I doubt whether anyone remembers much of the details of those hundred and more acres of Halls and Courts and Sanctuaries than the view he gained from the top of the front Pylon, whence the stupendous extent is comprehensible, and also the bewitched, bewildered feeling he experienced on entering the great Hypostyle Hall, which, with its 134 columns, owes its conception to the days of Seti. and Rameses 11., somewhere about 1500 8.C., and, it is said covers a space large enough to accommodate four churches the size of the Church of Notre Dame, at Paris. How hard it is to put a pure sensation

into comprehensive words! 1 am not, however, merely making a guide book quotation when 1 say that this forest of stone pillars is the grandest thing in Upper Egypt- The 134 columns are arranged in sixteen rows—the height of the twelve central columns being seventy feet, and the circumference of their shafts thirty-four feet six inches. The other columns are forty-two feet in height and twenty-eight feet in circumference. All are minutely engraved with figures and inscriptions, and show traces of their once brilliant colouring. But the power of this famous hall over the mind cannot alone be accounted for bv its colossal dimensions, for after a few weeks among the ruins of ancient Egypt mere size loses its capacity to astound. The truth is that there is real architectural beauty in this Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, which impresses even where it is not understood, making the memory of it something greater than a name. What a triumphal procession it must have been when Rameses 11. went up to worship in his sanctuary at the stupendous temple of Karnak! The very roadway along which he must have passed was a triumph in itself. The distance between the temple of Luxor and that of Karnak is two miles, yet the road that led between these two magnificent temples was flanked on either side by huge stone figures of couchant rams. Most of these are now broken or buried beneath the present road], but some hundreds have been located and unearthed. and it is reckoned that on the avenue between Luxor and Karnak were placed 500 of these figures. This is not all, since a similar avenue connected the temple of Ammon with the temple of Mut, and to complete the triangle, a third avenue of sphinxes connected the eastern avenue with the western. Ah! we can only dimly imagine the stern nobility of these long avenues that led straight across the flat valley to the masses of stone where the much feared gods were worshipped. Yet we can imagine it—more vividly here than in Rome, or Palestine, or India, the magnificence an I power of the far, far past comes home to the dweller of the twentieth century. All our conveyance to the various temples was on donkeys; some days we rode quite 12 miles, hot riding too, under the blazing October sun, but the Egyptian donkey is excellently trained, and ambles along at a pace that is as comfortable as heart could desire.

The longest and hottest ride is up the Valley to Biban-el-Muluk or the tombs of the kings. Crossing the Nile in the cool of the morning, we paused at the opposite shore to endeavour to snap the fellahin as they worked the tiresome shadufs or pumps, but the almost ludicrous clamour for bakshish that was raised at the sight of my brother’s camera compelled him to desist, and to mount his waiting donkey. The day was hot, yet the donkey boys, in spite of the difference in their ages, mine being a boy of eleven years and my brother’s a man of fortyfive, seemed incapable of weariness, and trotted behind us all day. poking and prodding the donkeys at stated intervals. After we had left the enormous field of corn, and passed the Temple of Seti I. at Kurna, our path, if path it might be called, led over sandy and amazingly rocky ground, where scarcely a desert plant has courage enough to thrust its head forth, and face tbe perpendicular

rays of the sun. All was yellow, sand and stone, and yet on the flat behind us, where the irrigation canals run, was corn taller and greener than I had ever seen before. Again, while viewing the tombs of the many Hannses. of Seti I. and of Amenhotep 11. and HI., we were impressed by the authority of these rulers, whose vanity could gratify itself at the cost of such stupendous labour. Most of the tombs are built on the same plan. A long corridor leads away into the hill side to a sort of chapel, out of which another corridor leads to a smaller open room in which, down in a nollow in the floor, was placed the Sarcophagus of the king. Sometimes 'there a»r‘e (Small treasure room's loll' the first corridor, also large chambers off the second corridor, ami everywhere on walls and ceiling are paintings of gods and sacred animals and funeral boats —- inscript ions and stories taken from three sacred books with which it was considered the dead must be acquainted to gain admission to the underworld. In spite of the care that was taken to prevent robbery of the valuable household gods buried with the kings, in spite of the fact that, after the walling up of the tombs, great masses of earth were thrown in front of the entrance and the hillside smoothed over until it regained its original appearance, all save one have been plundered. Great pieces have been chipped off those brilliant walls, mummies have been carried away and lost or placed in museums to prevent destruction, and now only one tomb a recently discovered one—is as it was the day the king was placed there. Not a ( hip is broken from the brilliantly painted walls, which are fresh and vivid in colour, and away down at the far end, lying in his sarcophagus, under a recently-placed lid of glass, is the blackened. shrivelled body of the king. The days were for us so full of interest, the nights almost burdened with a quiet heavy peace. How sweet it was to return from those monuments of the great, from the dusty roads, to cross the Nile as the sun set, and to hear the creaking of the shadufs grow fainter and fainter,

and be replaced in our ears by the cry of the Mueddin as he calls the faithful to prayer. “Allah is great; I testify that there is no god but Allah, and Mahoniiued is the prophet of Allah;

come to prayer; come to worship; Allah is great; there is no god but Allah,” he cries, as he stands in the tall minaret of the mosque with his back towards the temple

of the long-forgotten gods. As we move through the village streets and peep into the courtyards of the houses, we see the people all busily engaged in washing ere going to the mosque. Even the squalid village of Luxor, though inhabited mostly by Copts and Arabs, who gain their livelihood by the manufacture and sale of antiquities, grows strangely attractive at sundown. The very funeral square looks bright, hung as it is with carpets of many colours. There were always a few gathered here after the day's work was done. Perhaps the mourned-for one had been many days dead, for those friends and relations who collected in the square ostensibly to mourn for the dear departed seemed remarkably cheerful about it. I think it must have been so, for I remember one occasion when the cries and wailings in the village for one just called to his final account lasted far into the night. Night comes quickly, but the air is so warm that dinner is served on the terrace with only the light of delicately shaded lamps and the twinkling of the stars, and With all around an intense stillness. Surely in no other latitudes do the stars twinkle so; surely nowhere is the night air so delightful and full of such peace—a peace that overcomes all worries, drives away all cares, and bestows such faith in the possibilities of the morrow. Next Week : PALESTINE—EROM JAFFA TO THE DEAD SEA