favourable to the inundation; but if they flew all abroad, or darted northwards, calamity might be looked for.
When proclamation is made that the river is rising, the people, in every age, rush to the banks to see and smell the waters. If there is, day after day, any green tinge, and any bad smell, men’s hearts fail them for fear; and yet more if live creatures are found in any portion which is drawn from the river. The current is then slow; and there is little hope. If the water is sweet and of its natural brown, there is plenty, so far. While this is observed, a priestly dignitary is anointing and perfuming the Nilometer,—the graduated column which is to mark the rise of the flood.
For some days, no result can be even conjectured: but the people cannot keep away from the river. They come to the banks, to see their kine go into the flood, and come up again,—to see their acquaintance go by on floats of reeds,—to watch the rising line of the surface. Then they go and open the sluices of their fields, and fetch and carry news between the villages and the river bank.
At length, the channel is filled in one place or another, and the waters spread over the dusty land. By degrees the people are driven to the causeways for communication; and busily they throng the dykes. The most active of the men and boys are gone towards Cairo, or are acting as news-carriers in the space between. There are endless disputes about the marks on the palm stems or the rocks, which indicate eight, ten, or twelve cubits being reached; but the cannon from the heights at Cairo will settle that point. Meantime, as soon as the water is seen to assume the true Nile tint, the family cisterns are everywhere opened; and water for domestic purposes is secured for the year to come. Thus passes the time till September arrives,—a few nervous persons fancying that the tide has not advanced since yesterday, but the fact being that there has been more or less rise every day.
By this time the current is very strong, and it sweeps down portions of the cracked banks, and wasted or neglected embankments: such accidents are easily borne in full prospect of plenty; but they revive the tradition of every landslip which at any time has caused loss of life. News now travels up the river, and back to the convents in the mountains, that the flood has reached sixteen cubits: in other words, there will be produce enough next year for the support of the country, and to pay government dues. Then, among the timid, hope is fulfilled, and at once begins to turn—the least in the world—to fear. Their neighbours remind them that eighteen cubits will afford a double provision of food. This is true; but it will also throw down all the weaker dwellings, and drown some of the live stock of the peasantry: and if it should not stop at eighteen! And nineteen is famine at the other end of the scale. The optimists are in full swing at such times. If some mischief is done, and the accustomed fields cannot be sown, there are other lands, behind and above, which will be fertile for once: and so they comfort their neighbours.
The waters continue to rise: and now the rarer aspects of Egyptian life appear. The village groups leave their dwellings, and cluster on any ground which may be high and dry. Some are weeping, some are noisy, some are still. By day they see one dwelling after another melt down into the mud: the square chevaux-de-frise of boughs which mark the pigeon houses begin to tumble; and the birds flutter abroad, and hide among the palms. Messengers ride through the water, bringing food or tidings: the sun goes down behind the Lybian mountains, leaving broad flushes of orange, crimson, lilac, and green hues on the heaving mass of waters. When these die out all is colourless and ghastly; but in that remarkable climate the afterglow lights up the scene again for ten minutes or so; the rocks are again orange with blue shadows; and the groups on the hillocks are again brought out by the radiance which lights upon them. Then the twilight deepens rapidly, and the Arabs, who dread cold and damp, shiver at the thought of the night they must pass. Those who have dwellings on some exceptional rise of the ground may sleep under a roof; but every hour now adds to the number of those who have no home.
The night spectacle then begins; and the Coptic monks, in their convents on pinnacles of the rock, must have the best view of it. Fires are kindled from terrace to terrace, as far as eye can reach, north and south; torches are waved over the rushing waters; and their yellow flare contrasts strongly with the blue light of the moon. The splendid planets (by whose position the dates of traditionary inundations may be fixed) and the magnified stars (as they appear to foreign eyes) have a new majesty and charm when they shine out above rushing floods and agitated lights, and find quiet nooks in the world of waters in which to mirror themselves. The islands of shadow here and there are from clusters of palms intercepting the moonlight. In some point or another within view darkness is broken up, and the roar of the flood is mixed with other sounds. The Governor of the district comes down with his band of soldiers to learn the real state of the case. Now they find standing room for their horses on the bank; and now they are wading from point to point, the white dresses of the soldiers and the foam of the stream shining out in the torchlight. The people look up wistfully to the Governor; but what can he say? He can only promise food as long as the stock lasts. The still-rising flood chokes the voice of hope.
Thus do the people wait, day after day, night after night. They can see for themselves that the turning-point is not yet passed: but they almost dread the confirmation of this from Cairo. From Cairo the news is that nineteen cubits are reached; and then the peasants know that they cannot sow their lands this year. They are pauperised,—hundreds of thousands of them in a night. It is not stopping at nineteen cubits. Carcases of beasts now come swirling along, and palm-roofs and walls of reeds floating by tell of villages destroyed. What will become of everybody? It seems like the whole earth melting back into chaos, as it once arose from it. When the fear, hunger, and cold have become almost unbearable, an echo passes along the valley, from
