Semi-weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1852-1853, 1853-04-02

stree, or trotting gently by on asses, or urging
/ forward laden canlels. We had galop on dom
/ keys, attended by dragoman richly dressed for
the occasion, to attract custom, and three or tour
idonkey drivers running on foot, to Cleopatras
Needle and Pompey's Pillar, which will not tire
YOU with describing. have scarcely time to notice
spacious garden by which we passed, full oflofty
datc-palms and large-leaved bananas or to observe
/ the beauty of an avenue through which we went,
planted with cassia trees in full verdure. In
short time we were on board the boat destined 70
take us to the Nile through the broad canal open
ed by the late pacha Mehemet Ali. Here forty
or fifty passengers who had come by the steamer
Ripon to Alexandria, passed the night, as well as
they might on benches tables and camp stools
GREW tired of nv hard couch, aud went on deck
before the day dawned. The moon, in her wane,
was in the armament, which seemed enlarged to
an immense Depth and the deck in the transpar-
ent atmosphere, was drenched with dew. A small
steamer was drawing us along the canal, and at
the helm of our boat stood Egyptian, in shay
gy brown capote, silent statue, with one or two
in the same garb squatted on the deck near him.
| To the right and left nothing was to be seen but
the heaps Of mould formed in digging the canal.
! When the day broke we found ourselves gliding
on between rows of large trees in luxuriant leaf !:
the cassia, the thorny acacia, called by the ancents
the acanthus, and the sycamore, tree producing
a kind of fig, which forms a considerable part of
the food of the Egyptians. From time to time we
passed villages the bank, built of unburnt brick,
with low fiat roofs, looking like the habtations of
mud-wasps magnifed, Each had its mosque, with
a minaret of hewn stone, from which the hour of
PRAYER is proclaimed Their inmates in turbans
and long blue or white cotton shirts, creeping
out of them in the early sunshine, and walking
carefully on the wet and slippery declivity. Among
! them were women in blue cotton gowns, barefoot
ed, with infants perched on their shoulders. This
is the way in which the Arab mothers, of the labo
ring class in Egypt, carry their children; soon
the little get the voluntary of their
limbs, they are transferred from the arms to the
shoulders. l have seen instances of this custom
which would supply striking subjects for the pen
Gil. At Old Cairo, the other day, Coptic woman
in the loose blue dress of the country, barefooted
her face unveiled, with dark symmetrical features,
silent and sadlookng, opened to the door ofthe
old worn-eaten church in which is the little grotto
where the Holy Virgin, with her child, is said to
have euded the pursuit of IIarod. On the wo-
mans shoulder sat infant of seven eight
months, as silent as the mother, with we'll burned
brown cheeks and long dark eyelashes its head
bowed upon hers, and one little hand pressed
against her forehead, while the other arm was pas
sed around the back of the neck. The Egyptian
mothers treat their children with great tenderness,
and though see infants everywhere, | do not
know that have yet heard one of them cry. The
quite touching. The Egyptian, born to a lot of
dirt, poverty and OPPRESSION may well learn patti
ence early.
At eight o'clock in the morning we reached the
Nile, and were transferred to a steamer About
half Of the passengers of the Rpon had been sent
on little before Us by another. We passed day
on the Nile, and had ample opportunity to observe
the character of the great river and its banks 1t
is turbid stream, ike the Mississippi, flowing rap
Ill h. lrE,, L.. -
mould, which are easily undermined and crumbe
into the current The broad level tracts by which
it is bordered have the same dark rich soil as that
which lies about our rivers of the west Along the
bank where the current has worn it away, you see
distinctly the layers of mould, which, year after
year, have been deposited by the successive mum
dations, and which attest that the land of Egypt
has been gradually rising for ages. The BED of
the river appears to have been raised also in an
equal degree, and have been told by those who
have made the examination fDr themselves, that,
although in some places the sands of the desert,
blown by the winds, have encroached upon the
fertile grounds in others the of fertility has
been extended. Broad tracts of sand which the
waters never reached BEFORE have been overlaid by
the slime of the river, and after or two inunda-
tons, covered with harvests.
Tho country each side of the Nile was green
with tracts of clover entles bailey and other grains
and pulse. Groves of the palm appeared by
the riverside, and showed their lofty tops at dis
lance; here and there were clumps of the cassia
and acanthus, or huge branching sycamore, over
shadowing the tomb of Mohammedan saint. AS
the day wore on, we saw men beginning their daily
toll OF raising water from the river by means of a
wheel turned by donkey, and furnished with
buckets, to irrgate the surrounding fields. Wo-
men, of them carefully concealing their faces
and Others leaving them exposed, came down to
the stream and filled large earthen jars with the
water which they bore off on their heads. People
in turbans, carrying long pipes, walking
or riding donkeys, sometimes with an attendant |
running foot, along the causeys built to form
passage from place to place during the floods.
Our captain and his crew were E ryptians, !
though the engineer was an Englishman, and set
US an edifying example of Mohamlnedan devotion. |
As the Mussulmen prays four times day. and not |
more than one of the hands could be spared from |
his employment at any one time, there was scarcely
an hour of the day in which some ono of them |
was not in the act of prayer Each of them, as
his turn came, mounted the wheel house and made |
his prostrations, and murmured his devotons with
closed eyes and moving lips in the presence of all
the passengers.
At length, after second uncomfortable night |
passed on benches and stools, reached the land
ing place of the steamer Baluk, mile or therea- |
bouts below Cairo. We were conveyed with omni-
buses through fine avenue of trees with dense TO-
age, to hotels in the Frank quarter of the city
The free and easy in which our people !