DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0229
PIIILJE TO KOROSKO. 211
CHAPTER XIII.
PHILiE TO KOROSKO.
Sailing gently southward — the river opening wide
before us, Philre dwindling in the rear—we feel that we
are now fairly over the border; and that if Egypt was
strange and far from home, Nubia is stranger and farther
still. The Nile here flows deep and broad. The rocky
heights that hem it in so close on either side are still black
on the one hand, golden on the other. The banks are
narrower than ever. The space in some places is little
wider than a towing-path. In others, there is barely
room for a belt of date-palms and a slip of alluvial soil,
every foot of which produces its precious growth of dnrra
or barley. The steep verge below is green with lentils to
the water's edge. As the river recedes, it leaves each day
a margin of fresh, wet soil, in which the careful husband-
man hastens to scratch a new furrow and sow another line
of seeds. He cannot afford to let so much as an inch of
that kindly mud lie idle.
Gliding along with half-filled sail, we observe how
entirely the population seems to be regulated by the extent
of arable soil. Where the inundation has room to spread,
villages come thicker; more dusky figures are seen moving
to and fro in the shade of the palms; more children race
along the banks, shrieking for backshish. When the shelf
of soil is narrowed, on the contrary, to a mere fringe of
luminous green dividing the rock from the river, there is
a startling absence of everything like life. Mile after mile
drags its slow length along, uncheered by any sign of
human habitation. When now and then a solitary native,
armed with gun or spear, is seen striding along the edge of
the desert, he only seems to make the general solitude
more apparent.
Meanwhile, it is not only men and women whom we miss
■—men laboring by the river side; women with babies
CHAPTER XIII.
PHILiE TO KOROSKO.
Sailing gently southward — the river opening wide
before us, Philre dwindling in the rear—we feel that we
are now fairly over the border; and that if Egypt was
strange and far from home, Nubia is stranger and farther
still. The Nile here flows deep and broad. The rocky
heights that hem it in so close on either side are still black
on the one hand, golden on the other. The banks are
narrower than ever. The space in some places is little
wider than a towing-path. In others, there is barely
room for a belt of date-palms and a slip of alluvial soil,
every foot of which produces its precious growth of dnrra
or barley. The steep verge below is green with lentils to
the water's edge. As the river recedes, it leaves each day
a margin of fresh, wet soil, in which the careful husband-
man hastens to scratch a new furrow and sow another line
of seeds. He cannot afford to let so much as an inch of
that kindly mud lie idle.
Gliding along with half-filled sail, we observe how
entirely the population seems to be regulated by the extent
of arable soil. Where the inundation has room to spread,
villages come thicker; more dusky figures are seen moving
to and fro in the shade of the palms; more children race
along the banks, shrieking for backshish. When the shelf
of soil is narrowed, on the contrary, to a mere fringe of
luminous green dividing the rock from the river, there is
a startling absence of everything like life. Mile after mile
drags its slow length along, uncheered by any sign of
human habitation. When now and then a solitary native,
armed with gun or spear, is seen striding along the edge of
the desert, he only seems to make the general solitude
more apparent.
Meanwhile, it is not only men and women whom we miss
■—men laboring by the river side; women with babies