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

CAIRO AND TUB GREAT PYRAMID. 9

constantly to turn our steps and our thoughts in the direc-
tion of Boulak—a desolate place by the river, where some
two or three hundred Nile boats lay moored for hire. Now,
most persons know something of the miseries of house-
hunting, but only those who have experienced them know
how much keener are the miseries of dahabeeyah-hunting. It
is more bewildering and more fatiguing, and is beset by its
own special and peculiar difficulties. The boats, in the first
place, are all built on the same plan, which is not the case"
with houses; and, except as they run bigger or smaller,
cleaner or dirtier, are as like each other as twin oysters.
The same may be said of their captains, with the same dif-
ferences; for, to a person who has been only a few days
in Egypt, one black or copper-colored man is exactly like
every other black or copper-colored man. Then each rei's,
or captain, displays the certificates given him by former
travelers; and these certificates, being apparently in
active circulation, have a mysterious way of turning
up again and again on board different boats and in the
hands of different claimants. Nor is this all. Dahabee-
yahs are given to changing their places, which houses do
not do; so that the boats which lay yesterday alongside
the eastern bank may be over at the western bank to-day,
or hidden in the midst of a dozen others half a mile lower
down the river. All this is very perplexing; yet it is as
nothing compared with the state of confusion one gets into
when attempting to weigh the advantages or disadvantages
of boats with six cabins and boats with eight; boats pro-
vided with canteen, and boats without; boats that can pass
the cataract, and boats that can't; boats that are only twice
as dear as they ought to be, and boats with that defect five
or six times multiplied. Their names, again—ghazal, sar-
iiwa, fostat, dongola — unlike any names one has ever
heard before, afford as yet no kind of help to the
memory. Neither do the names of their captains; for they
are all Mohammeds or Hassans. Neither do their prices;
for they vary from day to day, according to the state of
the market as shown by the returns of arrivals at the prin-
cipal hotels.

Add to all this the fact that no rei's speaks anything
but Arabic, and that every word of inquiry or negotiation
has to be filtered, more or less inaccurately, through a
dragoman, and then perhaps those who have not yet tried