DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0057
CAIRO TO BEBBE8HATN. 39
month for flour. Bread is their staple food, and they
make it themselves at certain places along the river where
there are large public ovens for the purpose. This bread,
which is cut up in slices and dried in the sun, is as brown
as gingerbread and as hard as biscuit. They eat it soaked
in hot water, flavored with oil, pepper and salt, and
stirred in with boiled lentils till the whole becomes of the
color, flavor, and consistence of thick pea soup. Except
on grand occasions, such as Christmas day or the anniver-
sary of the flight of the prophet, when the passengers
treat them to a sheep, this mess of bread and lentils, with
a little coffee twice a day, and now and then a handful of
dates, constitutes their only food throughout the journey.
The Nile season is the Kile sailors' harvest time. When
the warm weather sets in and the travelers migrate with
the swallows, these poor fellows disperse in all directions;
some to seek a living as porters in Cairo; others to their
homes in Middle and Upper Egypt, where, for about four-
pence a day, they take hire as laborers, or work at Shadiif
irrigation till tile Nile again overspreads the land. The
Shaduf work is hard, and a man has to keep on for nine
hours out of every twenty-four ; but he prefers it, for the
most part, to employment in the government sugar fac-
tories, where the wages average at about the same rate, but
are paid in bread, which, being doled out by unscrupulous
inferiors, is too often of light weight and bad quality. The
sailors who succeed in getting a berth on board a cargo-
boat for the summer are the most fortunate.
Our captain, pilot, and crew were all Mohammedans.
The cook and his assistant were Syrian Mohammedans. The
dragoman and waiters were Christians of the Syrian Latin
church. Only one out of the fifteen natives could write or
read; and that one was a sailor named Egendi, who acted
as a sort of second mate. He used sometimes to write let-
ters for the others, holding a scrap of tumbled paper across
the palm of his left hand, and scrawling rude Arabic char-
acters with a reed pen of his own making. This Egendi,
though perhaps the least interesting of the crew, was a
man of many accomplishments—an excellent comic actor,
a bit of a shoemaker, and a first-rate barber. More than
once, when we happened to be stationed far from any vil-
lage, he shaved his messmates all round and turned them
out with heads as smooth as billiard balls.
month for flour. Bread is their staple food, and they
make it themselves at certain places along the river where
there are large public ovens for the purpose. This bread,
which is cut up in slices and dried in the sun, is as brown
as gingerbread and as hard as biscuit. They eat it soaked
in hot water, flavored with oil, pepper and salt, and
stirred in with boiled lentils till the whole becomes of the
color, flavor, and consistence of thick pea soup. Except
on grand occasions, such as Christmas day or the anniver-
sary of the flight of the prophet, when the passengers
treat them to a sheep, this mess of bread and lentils, with
a little coffee twice a day, and now and then a handful of
dates, constitutes their only food throughout the journey.
The Nile season is the Kile sailors' harvest time. When
the warm weather sets in and the travelers migrate with
the swallows, these poor fellows disperse in all directions;
some to seek a living as porters in Cairo; others to their
homes in Middle and Upper Egypt, where, for about four-
pence a day, they take hire as laborers, or work at Shadiif
irrigation till tile Nile again overspreads the land. The
Shaduf work is hard, and a man has to keep on for nine
hours out of every twenty-four ; but he prefers it, for the
most part, to employment in the government sugar fac-
tories, where the wages average at about the same rate, but
are paid in bread, which, being doled out by unscrupulous
inferiors, is too often of light weight and bad quality. The
sailors who succeed in getting a berth on board a cargo-
boat for the summer are the most fortunate.
Our captain, pilot, and crew were all Mohammedans.
The cook and his assistant were Syrian Mohammedans. The
dragoman and waiters were Christians of the Syrian Latin
church. Only one out of the fifteen natives could write or
read; and that one was a sailor named Egendi, who acted
as a sort of second mate. He used sometimes to write let-
ters for the others, holding a scrap of tumbled paper across
the palm of his left hand, and scrawling rude Arabic char-
acters with a reed pen of his own making. This Egendi,
though perhaps the least interesting of the crew, was a
man of many accomplishments—an excellent comic actor,
a bit of a shoemaker, and a first-rate barber. More than
once, when we happened to be stationed far from any vil-
lage, he shaved his messmates all round and turned them
out with heads as smooth as billiard balls.