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

150 A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.

(and it must be owned that he is the most brilliant liar
under heaven), he remains a singularly transparent piece
of humanity, easily amused, easily deceived, easily angered,
easily pacified. • lie steals a little, cheats a little, lies a
great deal; but on the other hand he is patient, hospitable,
affectionate, trustful. He suspects no malice and bears
none. He commits no great crimes. He is incapable of
oevenge. In short, his good points outnumber his bad
cnes; and what man or nation need hope for a much better
rharacter?

To generalize in this way may seem like presumption on
the part of a passing stranger; yet it is more excusable as
regards Egypt than it would be of any other equally
accessible country. In Europe, and indeed in most rnirtsof
the east, one sees too little of the people to be able to form
an opinion about them; but it is not so on the Nile. Cut
off from hotels, from railways, from Europeanized cities,
you are brought into continual intercourse with natives.
The sick who come to you for medicines, the country
gentlemen and government officials who visit you on board
your boat and entertain you on shore, your guides, your
donkey boys, the very dealers who live by cheating you,
furnish endless studies of character, and teach you more
of Egyptian life than all the books of Nile-travel that were
ever written.

Then your crew, part Arab, part Nubian, are a little
world in themselves. One man was born a slave, and will
carry the dealer's brand-marks to his grave. Another
has two children in Miss Whateley's school at
Cairo. A third is just married, and has left his young
wife sick at home. She may be dead by the time he gets
back, and we will hear no news of her meanwhile. So
with them all. Each has his simple story—a story in
which the local oppressor, the dreaded conscription, and
the still more dreaded corvee, form the leading incidents.
The poor fellows are ready enough to jiour out their hopes,
their wrongs, their sorrows. Through sympathy with
these, one comes to know the men; and through the men,
the nation. For the life of the beled repeats itself with
but little variation wherever the Nile flows and the khe-
dive rules. The characters are the same; the incidents are
the same. It is only the mise en scene which varies.

And thus it comes to pass that the mere traveler who