Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/747

Rh an enormous lateen-sail placed well in the bows, assisted by a smaller steering-sail at the extreme stern. For an existence of absolute comfort and freedom from every care, saved from monotony by the new sights and sounds—for the river, even to an old inhabitant, is wonderful in its unique gift of continual surprises,—and rendered as nearly perfect as may be by the marvellous climate, sailing on the Nile carries the palm over any river life in the world. Of course you must be willing to go slowly, for keeping time engagements means breaking the hearts of your crew, and they cannot be trained otherwise.

Our first day on the river some years ago we thought a foretaste of all the days to come. Cairo dropped slowly behind in the warm, still afternoon; the breeze which filled the enormous sail in front, and its smaller sister behind, was scarcely perceptible on the upper deck, which, rug-covered and palm-decorated, and sheltered from the sun by gay canvas appliques, breathed comfort and peace from its great billowy divans. Past the yellow walls and overhanging balconies of old Cairo,—past the island of Roda, perfuming the river with its myriad scented gardens and tickling the eye with the color-play of its palaces,—past the seven different spots where Moses sprang fully armed from the bulrushes,—past the noise and glare of the sweltering city to the cool green of the cultivated land lying dim and gray under the slanting western glow, we drifted on in languid dignity. As the sun set in a golden level behind the blue triangles of the pyramids, we sent some late-lingering guests ashore to catch the evening train for Cairo, bade our last good-by to the Citadel—the twin shafts of which showed hazily against the dark-blue shadow of the earth rushing up out of the eastern sky,—and went below to our first dinner on the Nile.

The tourist-boats start in quite another way — a breakneck rush from the hotel to the boat, off in the cool of the morning, and up to Bedrachein by noon for the excursion to Sakkarah. It seems like pandemonium, this first crowded bankside, with the donkey-boys shrieking and gesticulating over their diminutive donkeys, to a running accompaniment of blows from the dragoman's stick on well-seasoned brown shoulders. It is all so new and strange, and we seem so curiously out of scale with our means of locomotion as we jog along the bank and up through the palms to Memphis and the Step Pyramid.

That first ride will never be forgotten. A chance acquaintance who had just "done" the river had told us when we arrived at Sakkarah to be sure and pick out Fair Rosalie as the best donkey in the place, but of course when the time came we were only too thankful to find ourselves safely on any donkeys at all, in the midst of that screeching Bedlam. We ambled along, and the donkey-boy—a