So long as
the season remains at its height they are bedecked with a number of
little flags of red cotton-cloth, or even of simple paper. The rowers,
moreover, have been instructed to sing all the time the native songs
which are accompanied by a derboucca player seated in the prow. Nay,
they have even learnt to utter that rousing, stimulating cry which
Anglo-Saxons use to express their enthusiasm or their joy: "Hip! Hip!
Hurrah!" and you cannot conceive how well it sounds, coming between
the Arab songs, which otherwise might be apt to grow monotonous.
*****
But the triumph of Assouan is its desert. It begins at once without
transition as soon as you pass the close-cropped turf of the last
square. A desert which, except for the railroad and the telegraph
poles, has all the charm of the real thing: the sand, the chaos of
overthrown stones, the empty horizons - everything, in short, save the
immensity and infinite solitude, the horror, in a word which formerly
made it so little desirable. It is a little astonishing, it must be
owned, to find, on arriving there, that the rocks have been carefully
numbered in white paint, and in some cases marked with a large cross
"which catches the eye from a greater distance still"(sic). But I
agree that the effect of the whole has lost nothing.
In the morning before the sun gets too hot, between breakfast and
luncheon to be precise, all the good ladies in cork helmets and blue
spectacles (dark-coloured spectacles are recommended on account of the
glare) spread themselves over these solitudes, domesticated as it were
to their use, with as much security as in Trafalgar Square or
Kensington Gardens. Not seldom even you may see one of them making her
way alone, book in hand, towards one of the picturesque rocks - No.
363, for example, or No. 364, if you like it better - which seems to be
making signs to her with its white ticket, in a manner which, to the
uninitiated observer, might seem even a little improper.
But what a sense of safety families may feel here, to be sure! In
spite of the huge numbers, which at first sight look a little
equivocal, nothing in the least degree reprehensible can happen among
these granites; which are, moreover, in a single piece, without the
least crack or hole into which the straggler could contrive to crawl.
No. The figures and the crosses denote simple blocks of stones,
covered with hieroglyphics, and correspond to a chaste catalogue where
each Pharaonic inscription may be found translated in the most
becoming language.
This ingenious ticketing of the stones of the desert is due to the
initiative of an English Egyptologist.
CHAPTER XX
THE PASSING OF PHILAE
Leaving Assouan - as soon as we have passed the last house - we come at
once upon the desert. And now the night is falling, a cold February
night, under a strange, copper-coloured sky.
Incontestably it is the desert, with its chaos of granite and sand,
its warm tones and reddish colour. But there are telegraph poles and
the lines of a railroad, which traverse it in company, and disappear
in the empty horizon. And then too how paradoxical and ridiculous it
seems to be travelling here on full security and in a carriage! (The
most commonplace of hackney-carriages, which I hired by the hour on
the quay of Assouan.) A desert indeed which preserves still its
aspects of reality, but has become domesticated and tamed for the use
of the tourists and the ladies.
First, immense cemeteries surrounded by sand at the beginning of these
quasi-solitudes. Such old cemeteries of every epoch of history. The
thousand little cupolas of saints of Islam are crumbling side by side
with the Christian obelisks of the first centuries; and, underneath,
the Pharaonic hypogea. In the twilight, all these ruins of the dead,
all the scattered blocks of granite are mingled in mournful groupings,
outlined in fantastic silhouette against the pale copper of the sky;
broken arches, tilted domes, and rocks that rise up like tall
phantoms.
Farther on, when we have left behind this region of tombs, the
granites alone litter the expanse of sand, granites to which the usury
of centuries has given the form of huge round beasts. In places they
have been thrown one upon the other and make great heaps of monsters.
Elsewhere they lie alone among the sands, as if lost in the midst of
the infinitude of some dead sea-shore. The rails and the telegraph
poles have disappeared; by the magic of twilight everything is become
grand again, beneath one of those evening skies of Egypt which, in
winter, resemble cold cupolas of metal. And now it is that you feel
yourself verily on the threshold of the profound desolations of
Arabia, from which no barrier, after all separates you. Were it not
for the lack of verisimilitude in the carriage that has brought us
hither, we should be able now to take this desert quite seriously - for
in fact it has no limits.
After travelling for about three-quarters of an hour, we see in the
distance a number of lights, which have already been kindled in the
growing darkness. They seem too bright to be those of an Arab
encampment. And our driver turning round and pointing to them says:
"Chelal!"
Chelal - that is the name of the Arab village, on the riverside, where
you take the boat for Philae. To our disgust the place is lighted by
electricity. It consists of a station, a factory with a long smoking
chimney, and a dozen or so suspicious-looking taverns, reeking of
alcohol, without which, it would seem, our European civilisation could
not implant itself in a new country.
And here we embark for Philae.
