From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
AN AQUATIC INDUSTRY
Every great river begets its own peculiar industries which may vary indefinitely in dignity and emolument, as, for instance, from the occupation of the boat-builders who let steam-launches on the Upper Thames, to that of the mudlarks who scramble for coppers in the ooze at Greenwich. The Nile itself is not without its children of this description, though the simple life of the dwellers on its banks does much, of course, to restrict their number. There is no brisk demand for pleasure-boats among the fellahs of the Nile Valley, and even ferries do not seem much in demand, as one might have expected. For countless generations, in fact, the toiling cultivator can have known little or nothing of the great river on whose banks he lives save in its sole aspect of the beneficent helpmeet in his labours. He knows it in its annual bounty of rich alluvium, and as the great reservoir from which, at vast expenditure of labour, he irrigates his plot of land; but otherwise he recks little of it, and asks nothing save that it shall offer its broad bosom to the heavy-laden lateen-sailed grain-boats that bear his produce to the market.
See him as he bends at the shadûf with which, unchanged in form and mechanic principle, his forefathers of three thousand years ago drew water under the Pharoahs. Spare, graceful, active, trained "to fiddlestrings," and looking as fit to run for his life as the fleetest and most Mercury-like of those saïses who do actually run for their living before the carriages of the "quality" at Cairo, behold him, one of two, sometimes one of three or four, men engaged together hour after hour in the monotonous and, to a European, the heart-breaking labour of watering a plain with a vessel about the size of a stable bucket. Imagination can conceive nothing more primitive than the process or more rude than the appliance by which the work is performed. The wooden lever from one end of which the bucket is suspended, hangs midway in its length upon a thick upright which serves as a fulcrum; the end at which the power is applied is weighted with nothing more elaborate than a large lump of sun-dried mud. The steep bank is terraced in one, two, or three places, according to its height, by a rough-cut ledge or ledges, of only a few feet in breadth, and hollowed out to form a shallow tank. Into this tank the labourer at the waters edge empties the bucket which he has just filled from the river, and from the tank his comrade or comrades ladle it by the same rudimentary leverage at one or more stages, as the case may be, to the top of the bank, for diffusion over the soil. In its utter simplicity, in its profound yet contented inadequacy, the whole operation is pathetic in the highest degree. It is the childhood of Labour appealing for assistance to the infancy of Mechanics. On one side the mighty volume of moving water; on the other the far-stretching belt of tilth and verdure, and between them these two or three patient adscripts of the glebe emptying spoonfuls of the one upon acres of the other.
For a full hour I have stood watching the toiler on the lowest shelf of that shadûf. It is past noon and he has stood there, like enough, since sunrise. Three or four times in every minute he draws down one end of the lever till the bucket is immersed, fills it, steadies the full vessel as, with the descent of the weighted lever, it ascends to the level of the tank at his shoulder, empties it with his disengaged hand and stoops again for another bucketful. His movements repeat themselves with the regularity of a machine; but there is the perfect ease and living grace of strong, untiring manhood in every stoop and recovery of his supple frame. He is in much too "hard condition" to perspire, but he is plentifully besprinkled with the splashings from the tank. His toes dabble in the river mud; the loin cloth, which is his only garment, has become a sodden rag; but he works on cheerily, wet and warm in the delicious air, and fanned by that desert breeze which would leave him as dry as a biscuit if he paused for five minutes in his work. His rhythmic motions are so springy and elastic, his countenance is so placid and painless, his harmony with his surroundings is so complete, his understanding with his work so thorough, that one might almost see in him the original of that Perfectly Contented Man of Eastern story, whom the emissaries of the Sultan sought everywhere far and wide that their master might wear his shirt and be healed, and on whom at last they lighted—to find him shirtless, like this one, but not perhaps more free from care. For what, after all, is there to trouble him? The times are good; he is sure of his simple daily meal of rice and sugar-cane, sure of the tax in hand when the collector comes round, sure, above all, that so long as the English redcoats are at Cairo once paying it will be enough, and that, come what may, the soles of those muddy feet of his have nothing to fear from the bamboo.
But this, after all, is no aquatic industry in the ordinary sense of the word. The Nile is to him but a huge reservoir which once a year beneficially bursts and provides him with soil for the planting of his crops, but from which afterwards he must pump long and patiently ere he can raise and gather them. As a river or a waterway for navigation his concern with it ceases, and he does not attempt to eke out his livelihood by the practice of any art upon its stream. Nor, indeed, do any of the riparian population lower down than Assouan—or not now at least since the enterprising inmates of the Coptic monastery at Gebel-el-Tayr have discontinued their peculiar method of seeking contributions to the support of their brotherhood. Formerly it was the practice of these "religious" to dive from the rock on which their monastery is situated, and swim out to the passing steamer or dahabiyeh to solicit bakshîsh. It seems a pity that so picturesque and adventurous a custom should have been put an end to by the Patriarch of the Coptic Church; but, after all, one can hardly wonder at his disapproval of it. If the minor clergy of the riparian parishes of the Upper Thames took to diving, scantily clad, into the river, and importuning the occupants of house-boats for aid to the Curates' Augmentation Fund, it is eminently probable that their diocesan would interfere. Anyhow the monks of Gebel-el-Tayr take their headers no longer, and an aquatic industry of an absolutely unique character has in consequence disappeared from the Nile. Nor is it till we reach the First Cataract that we meet with another, of somewhat the same description, and almost if not quite as extraordinary—an industry which fears the frown of no Patriarch, and which so long as European tourists throng to the Upper Nile and human nature remains unaltered, may be regarded as pretty certain to endure. Yet its existence, were it not for the marplot guide-books which discount half the delightful surprises of a new country—as dramatic critics do of a new play—might well be unsuspected until it confronts you in full activity.
You have taken, let us say, the first and favourite expedition from Assuan. That is to say, you have ridden over the flat strip of desert that divides you from Philæ to that most beautiful of islands; you have duly admired the gem-like little ruin that crowns its precipitous sides; you have thoroughly explored the Temple of Isis; too probably, you have desecrated that beautiful kiosque by lunching on "Pharaoh's bed"; and then, having started for that row home through the smaller rapids, which is somewhat grandiloquently described as "shooting the cataract," you are landed at a rocky point on the left bank of the river, and find yourself unexpectedly—or what would be unexpectedly were it not for the marplots aforesaid—in presence of the singular aquatic industry of which I have spoken.
At your feet some couple of fathoms below you races the First Cataract, no genuine "waterfall" even here at its point of greatest force and volume, but only a pretty swift, tolerably deep, and very moderately steep rapid. Here, where it is at its steepest, the river twists round a sharpish corner, and descends to a level some thirty or forty feet lower by a gradient of, say, fifty or sixty yards in length. This incline of one in five or so can hardly be considered very abrupt for a river, whatever it might be for a road; and, indeed, the so-called cataract is merely a brisk and lively, but in no sense a formidable, or even an imposing, water-race. "At this rate," it was remarked, "we have rivers in Scotland which are pretty nearly all cataract"; and you are marvelling greatly to yourself at that union of Eastern cupidity and Western fatuity which has fixed the boatman's tariff for shooting this "one-horse" cataract at from £10 to £12, when lo! you find yourself suddenly surrounded by a swarm of Nubians, clad in blue bathing caleçons of an almost laconic brevity, but otherwise in a state of natal nakedness. Some of them are leaning on light, though bulky, logs of the dom-palm; others—and these for the most part the younger and more vigorous—rely solely upon their own limbs and muscles for the successful practice of their industry. There must be a good deal more than a score of them, all told, and they range in age from here and there a white-polled blackamoor who looks well on in the sixties, down to a sable urchin of not more than ten or twelve. But however they may vary in age, in one respect, at any rate, they are unvarying—in their hunger and thirst after the piastre.
What common impulse prompted them to plunge with one accord into the Nile in pursuit of it it would be difficult to determine. A hint from some curious spectator, a mere nod from the dragoman of a party would no doubt suffice; but anyhow, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole herd of amphibia are in the water together. The palm-log men have scampered off a few yards up stream to get a better launching place; the swimmers, old and young, simply take headers from the top of the ten-foot bank, or flop like seals into the water from some lower perch, and in a few seconds a dozen woolly heads are being swept at racing speed in mid-torrent toward the brow of the water slope, while half a dozen black bodies astride on palm logs drift more sedately in their rear.
For a moment they appear as though suspended on the summit of the watery declivity and then over—and under—they go. For some seconds scarcely the head of a single swimmer is to be seen. The suck of the under-current has drawn them down; but soon the jet black knobs come bobbing up again like so many burnt corks some twenty yards down the river; and then, while the "log-rollers" drift away still further down stream in search of a smoother landing-place, every swimmer—for is not bakshîsh limited and time of importance?—turns over in an instant towards the left bank. Every pair of arms is flung out of the water and set revolving like a couple of paddle wheels in the effort of cutting across the powerful current, and one by one they spring ashore and race each other up the bank to where we are standing, their heaving flanks and quivering nostrils telling plainly enough of the exertion of their brief but sharp struggle with the river. Their fuzzy wigs seem to curl tighter than ever for their dip, and in the brilliant afternoon their wet bodies gleam like burnished bronze. For strength and symmetry and inches, for natural grace of pose and splendid ease of movement, some of these cataract shooters are unsurpassable. Look at that youth of twenty or thereabouts who is approaching us and say what he reminds you of. Truly, you need but to clap a negroid skull with a Nubian nose and lips on that noble Perseus of Cellini who stands in bronze before the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence holding the dripping Gorgon's head in his hand and you have him!
The African demigod advances with hand outstretched; he wants a piastre. If half a dozen of us unwieldy and ill-shapen Westerns would each contribute a sum equal to twopence halfpenny English his display of godlike strength and skill would seem to him amply rewarded. But alas! the supply even of such "ridiculously small" coins is limited, and these divine athletes reverse the proportion between the harvest and the reapers in the parable. They are many in number, from the aged man who is a little "out of it" among his younger competitors in the hunt for bakshîsh, to the urchin at whose precocious pluck you have been wondering, till you reflect how excellent a training for the nerves of childhood it must be to have been carried down the cataract on the shoulders of your big brother from as early a date of your life as you can recall. The piastre hunt is soon concluded tant bien que mal, and the hunters are ready to try their luck a second time. Again there is a sudden stampede to the water's edge; again the headers from the high bank, and the flop-flopping of the shiny-coated little seals from the lower ledges, and away once more goes the flying procession of woolly pates down the water-race, now visible, now whelmed, until the deepest and swiftest swathes of hurrying water bury them and foam over them, and jerk them up to the surface again in the stiller pools below.
Well, it is an occupation like another, though to be sure it is not very like any other that is commonly practised in the West. Still there are points of resemblance, moral if not physical, between it and certain well reputed and indeed eminently respectable pursuits of civilised man. The life of the Nubian cataract shooter is, of course, more picturesque, more highly coloured than that of the English man of business who goes to the City every morning by 'bus or Underground; but the nature of his industry after one or other of those conveyances has deposited him in the neighbourhood of Capel Court, has often more points of resemblance to that of the poor benighted African brother than he might care to admit. Shooting the cataract is unquestionably a more or less "casual" kind of business to go into; it would not supply a prudent father with an entirely satisfactory answer to the question: "What to do with our boys." You cannot "plunge" every day in the Nile with a prospect of profit, as you can on the Stock Exchange. Nay, you cannot even seek your own market for yourself; it is necessary to await its coming to you at the uncertain intervals which separate dahabiyehs if not tourist steamers from each other. Yet somehow this band of Nubian swimmers and "log-rollers" are always on the spot.
Where do they spring from? Who knows? No one whom we asked could tell. There is no village visible; for aught that appears the spot is miles from any human habitation. Yet just as neither man nor beast can die in the desert but within a few minutes those tiny specks which are to grow into vultures appear mysteriously on the horizon, so the European tourists cannot show in any force in the neighbourhood of this rocky bend, but straightway the desert sand is dotted with the black nude figures of these singular athletes ready and eager to plunge into a torrent and be whirled down a water-slope for little more than what an English working man would call the "price of a pint."