DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0038
BANKS OF THE NILE.
31
cities which attract the traveller into Egypt, their
temples and tombs, the enduring monuments of its
former greatness, do not yet present themselves.
The modern villages are all built of mud or of un-
burnt bricks, and sometimes, at a distance, being
surrounded by palm-trees, make a pleasing ap-
pearance ; but this vanishes the moment you ap-
proach them. The houses, or rather huts, are so
low that a man can seldom stand up in them, with
a hole in the front like the door of an oven, into
which the miserable Arab crawls, more like a beast
than a being made to walk in God's image. The
same spectacle of misery and wretchedness, of
poverty, famine, and nakedness, which I had
seen in the suburbs of Alexandria, continued to
afflict me at every village on the Nile, and soon
suggested the interesting consideration whether all
this came from country and climate, from the char-
acter of the people, or from the government of the
great reformer. At one place I saw on the banks
of the river forty or fifty "men, chained together
with iron bands around their wrists, and iron col-
lars around their necks. Yesterday they were
peaceful Fellahs, cultivators of the soil, earning
their scanty bread by hard and toilsome labour,
but eating it at home in peace. Another day, and
the stillness of their life is for ever broken ; chased,
run down, and caught, torn from their homes, from
the sacred threshold of the mosque, the sword and
musket succeed the implements of their quiet pro-
fession; they are carried away to fight battles in a
31
cities which attract the traveller into Egypt, their
temples and tombs, the enduring monuments of its
former greatness, do not yet present themselves.
The modern villages are all built of mud or of un-
burnt bricks, and sometimes, at a distance, being
surrounded by palm-trees, make a pleasing ap-
pearance ; but this vanishes the moment you ap-
proach them. The houses, or rather huts, are so
low that a man can seldom stand up in them, with
a hole in the front like the door of an oven, into
which the miserable Arab crawls, more like a beast
than a being made to walk in God's image. The
same spectacle of misery and wretchedness, of
poverty, famine, and nakedness, which I had
seen in the suburbs of Alexandria, continued to
afflict me at every village on the Nile, and soon
suggested the interesting consideration whether all
this came from country and climate, from the char-
acter of the people, or from the government of the
great reformer. At one place I saw on the banks
of the river forty or fifty "men, chained together
with iron bands around their wrists, and iron col-
lars around their necks. Yesterday they were
peaceful Fellahs, cultivators of the soil, earning
their scanty bread by hard and toilsome labour,
but eating it at home in peace. Another day, and
the stillness of their life is for ever broken ; chased,
run down, and caught, torn from their homes, from
the sacred threshold of the mosque, the sword and
musket succeed the implements of their quiet pro-
fession; they are carried away to fight battles in a