The Caucasian. (Shreveport, La.) 1900-192?, 1903-03-29


and creak and sputter the old water
wheels that supply the irrigation ditch
es of the Nile fields; still the sandy hill
mountains around ancient Thebes CLEAN
yellow and pink and purple in the
splendid tropical sunset, still wave
feathery foliaged palm and tamarisk
trees in the irrigated groves that fringe
the great river sea.
But now the up to date American.
who regards civilized comfort and con-
yenience at least as much as anything
else. and quite rightly. too, usually
hires steam dahabeah or launch at
or near Cairo and makes of it genuine
houseboat for himself and friends while
he is doing the Nile. A party of few
friends may club together and hire
vessel of this kind for not great ex-
pense. The dahabeah is a sort OF
house barge, with kitchen In the bow
and raised cabin aft, containing
sleeping rooms, saloon and promenade
deck. Over this deck is stretched an
awning, under which passengers may
sit and watch the Nile country as they
glide onward and upward or downward,
as the case may be.
The temples and ruins of Egypt may
be studied at home from guidebook.
history and encyclopedia. Modern
Egypt as pictured on the Nile today Is
greatly more interesting to anybody
except an antiquarian than the Egypt
of the pyramids and tumbledown tenn
pies. There is the strange mixture OF
past and present that makes the whole
seem unreal, a phantasmagoria OF
which the new view comes on the
scene before the former one has disap-
peared. The universal Yankee, son OF
the newest great nation on the globe,
wakes the echo banks of the old Nile
In a suffering steamboat. He and his
wife-he in the latest British, she IN
the latest Paris clothes-sit under
machine woven canvas awning and
look out upon the banks Of the great
river where camel caravans come down
for water precisely as they did 5000
years ago. Still the Arab men have
their heads swathed in big white tur-
bans, still the women are swathed all
over and yelled in black. the most per-
spiration producing, torturing hue that
can be worn In tropical country.
Their men keep the women mummied
in the uncomfortable black probably
because it serves them right for having
had the presumption to be born fe-
males.
It is surprising how the women can
walk, NJ UGH less work. under their
quantity of draping. But all along the
Nile you will see them. black robed fig
ures, not an outline of the form visible,
move down to the rivers edge with
earthen water Jars upon their heads
and fill and carry these away without
splitting drop. A white woman would
have to practice year before she
could do it. Again you will see an
Egyptian woman. driving number Of
water buffaloes down the Nile bank to
get their morning drink and bath.
These buffaloes are kindred to those In
southern China, in India and the Phil
ippines. The women pillow and tend
the soil; they move to and fro the rude
machinery that turns the water wheels
which pump water from the Nile river
into the irrigation bitches. Their kind
did it in Scripture times; they do it to-
day with the same sort of rude lever
and wheel.
These Glow. ungain1y beasts are fond
er of bath than some members of the
human species are. For that reason
are they called water buffaloes. They
must have their bath every day or two
er die. Perhaps it is pity the human
race is not built like them In this re-
spect. While the Egyptian woman
stands rlpon the bank. watching her
huffaIoes go TO drink. the tourist dis
covers that though she seems to have