Edwards, Amelia B.: A thousand miles up the Nile (New York, [1888])

PREFACE

TO TUB FIRST EDITION.

" Un voyage en Iilgypte, c'est une partie d'anes et une promenade en
bateau entreniSlees de mines."—Ampere.

Ampere has put Egypt in an epigram. " A donkey ride
and a boating trip interspersed with ruins" does, in fact,
sum up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile
traveler. Apropos of these three things—the donkeys,
the boat, and the ruins—it may be said that a good English
saddle and a comfortable dahabeeyah add very considerably
to the pleasure of the journey; and that the more one
knows about the past history of the country, the more one
enjoys the ruins.

Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats,
and steamers, I am not qualified to speak. We, however,
saw one iron dahabeeyah aground upon a sand-bank, where,
as we afterward learned, it remained for three weeks. We
also saw the wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and
the first cataract. It certainly seemed to us that the old-
fashioned wooden dahabeeyah — flat-bottomed, drawing
little water, light in hand, and easily poled off when stuck
—was the one vessel best constructed for the navigation of
the Nile. Other considerations, as time and cost, are, of
course, involved in this question. The choice between
dahabeeyah and steamer is like the choice between
traveling with post-horses and traveling by rail. The one