The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-28
ON A TRIP UP NILE RIVER.
SOME 1iLLEGED PLEASURES TOLD BY IN OBSERVLNGf TRAYELER.

Filthy and SO Are the Inhabitants-
 QuarreIs by the Passengers on the
 Steamer.
 Up the Nile, Opposite Sohag Jan. s.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 If people like temperature of forty degrees in the morning, eighty at noon
 Nile during the month of January will
 suit them exactly. You may take off a
 few degrees added for picturesque eff
 feet, but don't take off over five at each end
 If you like being crowded on a steam
 boat with twice as many people as the
 boat should be allowed to carry, all sorts. languages, tints. ages and tenn pers of people, most of whom you never saw before, and all of whom within five l days you will never want to see again,
 become a "Cooky" and take one of 1 Cooks steamers up the Nile. There are French Italians, Germans, English and Americans. The French grab the best seats at starting and try to hold on to
 them by the deposit of worn glove or a soiled handkerchief. The Germans
 will address you in English, though | they neither understand nor speak it. l There are English hogs, and there are American hogs who are quite up to | their English prototypes in hoggish-
 ness. There are English Quakers who | insist upon eXpounding the Bible to you. There are Psychologists of all na-
 tions who know all about it, who quar-
 rel every night till the lights are put
 out, and who are quite above giving any information to ordinary folks. Ev- cry Psychologist has a theory by which
 he measures all things. Though he
 will fight everybody who won't accept his theory, he at the same time consid- CTS himself the only person in the uni- verse capable of understanding it. He would rather impose his theory than explain it. If room eight by six win l satisfy you for a month, here 1t is, There is nothing in 1t but bunk and a camp stool, and every day it seems to grow smaller and more uncomfortable. | Space is so precious and partitions are so thin that you can't indulge in an l aesthetic snore without reverberating every board on the deck and exciting a | Babel of vehement remonstrances. If | you like to dine with your elbows pressed to your sides by crowdlng neighbors and your chair bumped off its Hines of stability by every passing waiter, here you are again. If you like to see things you have read about for scores of years, and have desired to see l ever since you had desires, in crowds of kicking and steaming donkeys, filthy | donkey boys, dusty and impatient tour | ists, you can be accommodated to the full. Every day you will be afforded the best opportunities for swearing your life ever gave you. Every day you will wonder how you and others could have been such internal fools as to start in on journey from which there is no relief, no exit but at its le- gitimate and far away terminus,
 The Egyptian donkey differs from his European and American brother. He and the saddle Of the country produce a combination unequal for torture When perched thereon you are about as secure as astlide a clothes-line If thin, small and carrying the center of gravity low down, you may probably stick on for the first five minutes. If of goodly proportions, and especially if legs be short, you are about as sure of your perpendicular as when you first put on skates. The Egyptian donkey stops, tumbles down and kicks his neighbors whenever he feels like it. He tumbles on his nose with com pleteness, a suddenness and an abrupt ness without parallel. If not carefully watched by his attendant he will have you off before you know that you are fairly on. And when he has put you off once, and thus established his superb ority, he will put you off whenever he pleases, and at times and places when it won't please you at all. He likes to go in crowds and kick up all the dust possible. Egypt dust is a very fine, dust and goes through and through your duds and your anatomy as through a large seive The clothes you wear in Egypt you will wear no more.
 The towns up and down the Nile are all very much like the one at which we are fastened. A dirty bank about ten feet high, up which you must struggle. Along it, and back of it, mud novels. The Nile mud is partly clay and drys into walls that will stand the climate, Most of the hovel walls are but one sto- ry high and are covered over with the refuse of the sugar cane, or with some other vegetation long enough. No win dows or doors, of course. No streets, but narrow and irregular lanes filled with filth. Filth everywhere. Nothing more filthy than the people themselves, One originally white shirt and one dark blue shirt constitute the ordinary cos tune. In the morning the native clam bers down the bank, squats on the bor- der of the river, washes his hands and his face, dries them on the outer or in ner shirt, and thus completes his toilet for the day. If he should take it into his head to wash one of his shirts, he puts 1t right on again and lets it dry at it's leisure. His smell is the combined smell of a Chicago slaughter house and the steerage of an ocean steamer. If you walk through his village the smell will accompany you for an hour out on the river. He is so utterly filthy and seems to be so content to be filthy that you can't feel pity, but regard him with bathing not unmixed with fear; O. I,n ,In nl p1,rNt1