# From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV
A KHEDIVIAL PROGRESS
When the Mudîr of Keneh presented his compliments to the officers and passengers of Messrs. Cook and Sons' Nile steamer, Rameses, and requested the pleasure of their company on the evening of Wednesday, January 10, at the reception to be given by him in honour of the visit of his Highness the Khedive, the Mudîr of Keneh reckoned without the inhabitants of Keneh and the surrounding villages, and without his own available staff of police. That is to say, he failed to form a concise estimate of the very considerable numbers of the one or the extremely slender force of the other. The consequence was that when the said Nile steamer Rameses had brought up alongside the Keneh landing-place, and ​those of the passengers who "felt like it" had landed and made their way on foot or donkey-back to the Mudîr's house, to be presented to that worshipful functionary and receive from him the ceremonial coffee and cigarette, it became necessary for the chief of the police to break it gently to the spokesman of the party that the hospitable design of the Governor would have to be foregone. His house was over a mile from the shore; the crowd, drawn together from many miles round by the Khedivial visit, was dense, and, except under the actual kourbash, inclined to be disorderly; and, to put the matter briefly, there was not enough kourbash to "go round." In other words, the chief of the police did not see his way to providing an escort sufficiently large to conduct a party some five and twenty strong, and largely consisting of ladies, in safety from the steamer to the Mudîr's "At Home." The male passengers might risk their less valuable lives—or garments—by endeavouring to ​make their way through the crowd if they pleased, but the softer sex was recommended to remain on shipboard. So the project was abandoned, and the "disinvited" guests assembled on the upper deck of their steamer to console themselves by viewing the arrival and reception of the Khedive from that excellent vantage-ground.
The occasion was certainly an interesting one. It is not often that one has the opportunity of seeing a newly succeeded Prince make his first acquaintance with the most famous and anciently historic portion of his dominions; yet, strange as it seems—or as it may, perhaps, seem until we remind ourselves of his extreme youth—the present Khedive of Egypt had never before been up the Nile. He was now making his first State progress up its sacred stream as far as Wady Haifa, the virtual limit of his effective rule. Assuan, which we left two days ago, was gay with streamers and triumphal arches in readiness for his coming; it is the next place after this ​at which he is to touch on his upward journey. Luxor, where he will stop only on his return voyage to Cairo, has still its preparations to make; but Keneh, as indeed we could see half a mile off, on our approach to it, is determined to show that—like Todgers's—it "can do it when it likes." A specially constructed flight of landing-steps, gorgeous with crimson cloth, ascends the high river bank some hundred yards or so above the point at which we are moored, and at the entrance of the long straight road which leads to the town of Keneh rises a lofty arch of really light and graceful line, flanked on each side by a row of smaller ones, all of them thickly hung from base to summit with coloured lamps. A score or two of yards below us crowds quite a little fleet of dahabiyehs, every one of them all a-flutter with flags from hull to topmost "top-joint" of its fishing-rod of a yard. And exactly opposite us, though, indeed, by no undesigned coincidence, appears the most curious sight of all—the native crowd.
​Probably enough it is one of the largest Egyptian gatherings ever got together outside, or at least at any distance from, the walls of a great city. Oriental hyperbole puts it down in our hearing at forty thousand; but in all likelihood the speaker had never himself seen one-fifth of that number gathered together. Keneh, to be sure, is no "one-horse" place, as Egyptian townships go. It is the capital town of a district, and contains from fifteen to twenty thousand souls. If we suppose all its adult males to have turned out—there is, of course, only the merest sprinkling of women—and their strength to have been doubled by the recruits from the surrounding villages, we shall still be safe in halving the estimate given above. Nevertheless, there are enough of them within eyeshot, and, as we know to our cost, within earshot of us to make not merely a good show but an extraordinary and even bewildering spectacle.
The bank of the river lends itself admirably ​to the theatrical coup d'œil. From water's edge to summit it ascends for some ten or twelve yards at an angle apparently steeper than forty-five degrees. To pack it with a European crowd would be impossible; the European boot and shoe, if nothing else, would forbid it. The naked and almost prehensile foot of the Egyptian fellah can only just manage to maintain him on the slope and no more; and inasmuch as the dry soil breaks away beneath him almost every other minute in a cloud of dust, continual readjustments of his position are necessary to keep him from slipping gradually into the Nile. It would be difficult for the most powerful imagination to conceive a situation of more hideous discomfort; yet for three mortal hours did the crowd occupy it, on and off, clinging to it as long as possible, and returning to it whenever the coercion, professional or amateur, which was from time to time applied to them, relaxed even for a moment. For a space of some fifty yards along the ​shore, the whole of this steep declivity was packed from brow to base with white turbans, blue gullabias, brown faces, and flashing teeth. Not a foot of the bank was visible, save at the very edge of the water, so completely was it submerged beneath this cascade, this cataract of Oriental humanity.
It was as though notice had been given that "Egyptian fellahs may be shot here," and some colossus, suddenly endowed with life, had emptied a gigantic barrow-load of them down the bank. The little ones being the lightest, would naturally have rolled out first, and there, indeed, they are at the bottom of the slope, up to their knees in water and Nile mud, a dirty rag, which may have been a shirt under the Ptolemies, their only garment, and they themselves a mere incarnate cry for bakshîsh. Few of them get it, perhaps only one, the sole artist of the assembled multitude—a blind youth with an endearing gift of mimicry, which enables him to delight us for a quarter ​of an hour, and madden us for an hour and a half with curiously faithful imitations of a steamer's whistle, the bray of a donkey, the clucking of a hen, and other familiar sounds. Roars of laughter, in which an attentive ear may perhaps detect a note of satire, burst from the crowd as the performer passes with singular psychological insight through each one of those varied phases of emotion which agitate the donkey between the broken gasps from which his bray begins, the passionate cri du cœur in which it culminates, and the long, desolate wail with which it concludes. And the blind artist gets his piastres ultimately, though there is a scramble among the mudlarks to grasp them first, the popular feeling being apparently opposed to robbing the afflicted. Still he greatly outstays his welcome. Indeed, he prolongs his performance as unconscionably as though he were giving imitations of eminent actors at an English evening party, and the incessant yelling which has, as at all times, considerably impaired ​the effect of his subtler efforts now drowns them altogether.
The crowd, in fact, appears to grow noisier and more restless every half-hour. The laughter and shouting and chatter of a British gathering of expectant sightseers would have died away into the silence of fatigue and of its dogged endurance long ere this; but the animation and mobility, the bird-like chirp and hop and twitter of these people seem inexhaustible. Except for a row or two of greybeards on the upper tiers, they are never still. Every turban seems in perpetual movement, every eye rolling, every mouth grinning, every hand gesticulating. The mere shifting play of colours which it produces is wearying to the eye and brain. It is almost a relief when, at certain, or rather uncertain intervals, the bank is cleared, and another side of the almost infantile Egyptian character is exhibited, as childish fear and submissiveness take the place of childish merriment and noise. The Mudir, as we ​soon see, has not underrated the deficiencies of Keneh in the matter of police. No doubt the whole available force is engaged at the town, for the professional guardian of order rarely shows up at the river-side during these hours. This, however, matters comparatively little in provincial Egypt, where, apparently, any man with a kourbash and a consciousness of good intentions may play the part of policeman without any previous formality of a commission to discharge that office. The Arab crew of our steamer cheerfully undertake it, with pails of water discharged over the side, upon the heads of the too obtrusive crowd. The dragoman occasionally springs ashore and lays about him with his whip. An elderly man with a turban, but with no visible official badge of authority, "teaches" the men of Keneh every now and then, as Gideon taught the men of Succoth, though with a half-broken bamboo used flail-fashion instead of with "thorns and briars."
And every time this blunt Arabic form of ​our English "Further back, please!" is administered there is a hasty scurrying of robes and turbans up the bank, as though a gust of wind had swept suddenly over a blue and white flower-bed; and for a few minutes the bare and dusty shore, lately hidden by a forest of brown legs, once more becomes visible, and a blessed silence reigns. No sooner, however, is the hand of "authority" removed than, pair by pair, the legs creep back again, wet and whipped, but supporting meekly, not to say abjectly, contented and unresentful owners, and again the bank is covered and the shrill, distracting clamour is renewed. Towards dusk it abates a little, but not with any signs of exhaustion on the part of the clamourers. It is merely that their audience is thinning as the hour for the Khedives arrival draws near, and the unspeakable beauty of the Nile sunset attracts us to the opposite side of the boat. The sun has not long disappeared behind the Libyan mountains, and we are still in the midst of ​that mysterious interval of twilight which seems in this wonderful atmosphere to divide the sunset from the afterglow, when, as though instinctively seizing upon the exact moment for throwing down their challenge to the departing day, the lights start out upon the triumphal arches along the shore and festoon the dahabiyehs on the water. The effect, as the sky gradually lightens again with the afterglow, and the lamps twinkle in silver through the flood of liquid gold that bathes land and water alike, is of an almost unearthly beauty. Minute by minute it changes, and the colours on shore and river, on the darkening hulls of the little fleet oi pleasure-vessels, on the distant mountains, on the intervening tracts of verdure, and on the ever-moving crowd upon the bank, are changing every minute; but it is a full half-hour before its last splendours fade away, and night settles down upon the Nile.
By this time we on the steamer begin to grow impatient, for though the Khedive shows ​no signs of arriving the dinner-hour does. He was due at six, we had been told. Why tarry the wheels—or the screw—of his steam dahabiyeh? What if he should have changed his plans and determined not to arrive tonight at all? He is Oriental, in itself an element of uncertainty; he is believed to be something froward and self-willed, and he has probably no English adviser on board to remonstrate with him. Above all, he is young, and has perhaps not yet learnt that punctuality is the cardinal virtue of princes. It is with no little relief that we at last see the lights of His Highness's approaching dahabiyeh. Steaming past us amid the weird, barbaric chant of a body of Egyptian schoolchildren greeting him from a brilliantly illuminated vessel moored amid-stream, it makes for the decorated landing-place. Guns salute, a band strikes up the somewhat Salvation-Army-like strains of the Khedivial Hymn; the boat is brought alongside. His Highness has arrived. We pull out our ​watches, and anxiously consult them. He has beaten our dinner-hour by the shortest of heads. It might have been worse, and, well content, we betake ourselves to our meal, as he to his, for he is to dine and hold a reception of his own on board, before proceeding to the Mudîr's.
So long an affair, indeed, was this reception, that it afforded ample opportunity of studying the methods of Oriental State functions, and the striking contrast which they illustrate between the East and the West. In a European country, on an occasion of this kind, "programme" would be everything. The whole course of the day's or the night's ceremonial would have been fixed beforehand to the minutest detail, and the humblest spectator in the crowd would have the means, if he cared to avail himself of them, of ascertaining how, when, and where everything was to happen. Here, not only did nobody know anything for certain about Abbas Pasha's intended movements, but nobody, ​not even perhaps the Mudîr himself, his prospective host, knew whether certainty was even attainable. The Khedive would not land till a much later hour than had been originally fixed. The Khedive would not land at all. The Khedive would land when his horses arrived. The Khedive's horses had arrived, but he would not land, as he had resolved to receive the notables of Keneh on board his steamer. In the meantime the one thing certain was that the Khedive was actually receiving the notables of Keneh, and that the ceremony promised to last a considerable time. For the best part of two hours an interminable procession of turbaned heads might be seen filing gravely from the bank on to the steamer, along its deck, up one of the stairways to the saloon, and down the other on to the deck again. Ulemas, judges, court officials of the district, Coptic priests, foreign consuls, local merchants, sheiks of the villages—there seemed no end to them. ​But, all the while, the more watchful of the observers had noticed that a sort of spacious floating horse-box had been brought up at a "dummy" near the landing-stage, and that with much clatter of hoofs on woodwork the frightened animals were being landed. Then, all of a sudden, at about eleven o'clock there was a banging of explosive fireworks and a rocket soared into the air. The Khedive had landed! A minute more and he was dashing in a carriage-and-four up the mile-long lighted avenue to the Mudîr's house, in front of which stood the doomed bullocks, with their slaughterers standing over them ready to deliver the death-stroke in token of Oriental welcome as soon as he set foot on his servant's threshold. Through the gaps in the crowd could be seen the white chargers of his escort streaming at full gallop behind him, between two dense rows of dark and voiceless spectators, like riders in a dream. It was a strange, wild sight, but stranger far was the almost total absence of sound. Amid ​all this flashing light and movement there was something positively uncanny in the accompanying silence. The roar of an English crowd as large as this would have been heard a mile off; yet this multitude, which for hours past had been deafening us with their incessant din, now stood before the Prince whose coming they had so long and patiently awaited, without uttering a single cry of welcome! True types of that mute and unresisting people who have known so many masters, and through and over whom, from the earliest ages of recorded history, conqueror after conqueror has swept as swift and dreamlike as Abbas Pasha and his train.