The Crocodile Pits

“I paused a day at Es Siout and then went on to Maabdeh, on the east bank of the river, about five miles above Manfaloot. Here we found ourselves, one morning, on awaking.
Maabdeh is not the site of an ancient city. But it is the nearest point on the river to one of the most remarkable of the ancient catacombs of Egypt. Seven miles from the shore, beyond the eastern mountains, are the celebrated crocodile pits, which many travelers have attempted to explore. None, I think, have succeeded as thoroughly as myself.
These pits have their chief celebrity, in modern times, from the difficulty which travelers have experienced in entering them, and the fatality that attended Mr. Legh’s attempt. As his account has hitherto been most relied on for description of the pits, I give an extract from it, that it may be compared with my own.
He proceeds as follows: (I condense the statement somewhat.)¹

“We formed a party of six; each was to be preceded by a guide. Our torches were lighted; one of the Arabs led the way, and I followed him. We crept for seven or eight yards through an opening at the bottom of the pit, which was partly choked up with the drifted sand of the desert, and found ourselves in a large chamber about fifteen feet high. Here we observed fragments of the mummies of crocodiles; we saw also great numbers of bats flying about, and hanging from the roof. We now entered a low gallery, in which we continued for more than an hour, stooping or creeping as was necessary, and following its windings, till at last it opened into a large chamber, which, after some time, we recognized as the one we had first entered. Our guides at last confessed they had missed their way, but if we would make another attempt, they would undertake to conduct us to the mummies. We had been wandering for more than an hour, in low subterranean passages, and felt considerably fatigued by the irksomeness of the posture in which we had been obliged to move, and the heat of our torches in the narrow and low galleries; but the Arabs spoke so confidently of succeeding in this second trial, that we were induced once more to attend them. We found the opening of the chamber which we now approached, guarded by a trench of unknown depth, and wide enough to require a good leap. The first Arab jumped the ditch, and we all followed him. The passage we entered was extremely small, and so low in some places as to oblige us to crawl flat on the ground, and almost always on our hands and knees. The intricacies of its windings resembled a. labryinth, and it terminated at length in a chamber much smaller than that which we had left, but like it containing nothing to satisfy our curiosity. Our search hitherto had been fruitless, but the mummies might not be far distant; another effort and we might still be successful.
“The Arab whom I followed, and who led the way, now entered another gallery, and we all continued to move in the same manner as before, each preceded by a guide. We had not gone far before the heat became excessive; I found my breathing extremely difficult; my head began to ache most violently, and I had a most distressing sensation of fullness about the heart. We felt we had gone too far, and yet were almost deprived of the power to return. At this moment the torch of the first Arab went out; I was close to him and saw him fall on his side; he uttered a groan; his legs were strongly convulsed, and I heard a rattling noise in his throat – he was dead. The Arab behind me, seeing the torch of his companion extinguished, and conceiving he had stumbled, passed me, advanced to his assistance and stooped. I observed him appear faint, totter, and fall in a moment: he also was dead. The third Arab came forward, and made an effort to approach the bodies, but stopped short. We looked at each other in silent horror. The danger increased every instant; our torches burned faintly; our knees tottered under us, and we felt our strength nearly gone. There was no time to be lost.
“The American cried to us to take courage, and we began to move back as fast as we could. We heard the remaining Arab shouting after us, calling us Kaffirs, imploring our assistance, and upbraiding us with deserting him. But we were obliged to leave him to his fate, expecting every moment to share it with him. The windings of the passage through which we had come increased the difficulty of our escape. We might take a wrong turn, and never reach the great chamber we had first entered. Even supposing we took the shortest road, it was but too probable our strength would fail us before we arrived. We had each of us separately, and unknown to one another, observed attentively the different shapes of the stones which projected into the galleries we had passed, so that each had an imperfect clue to the laby rinth we had now to retrace. We compared notes, and only on one occasion had a dispute-the American differing from my friend and myself. In this dilemma we were determined by the majority, and fortunately were right. Exhausted with fatigue and terror we reached the edge of the deep trench, which remained to be crossed before we got into the great chamber. Mustering all my strength I leaped, and was followed by the American. Smelt stood on the brink ready to drop with fatigue. He called to us, for God’s sake, to help him over the fosse, or at least to stop, if only for five minutes, to allow him time to recover his strength. It was impossible-to stay was death – and we could not resist the desire to push on and reach the open air. We encouraged him to summon all his force, and he cleared the trench. When we reached the open air it was one o’clock, and the heat in the sun about 160°. Our sailors, who were waiting for us, had luckily a bardak full of water, which they sprinkled upon us, but, though a little refreshed, it was not possible to climb the sides of the pit. They then unfolded their turbans, and slinging them round our bodies, drew us to the top. Our appearance alone, without our guides, naturally astonished the Arab who had remained at the entrance of the cavern, and he anxiously inquired for his hahabebas or friends. To have confessed they were dead would have excited suspicion of our having murdered them. We replied they were coming, and were employed in bringing out the mummies we had found. We lost no time in mounting our asses, re-crossed the desert, and passed hastily by the village to regain the ferry of Manfalout. Our kandjia was moored close to the town, and we got safe on board by five o’clock.”

Many travelers since Mr. Legh’s time have, with great justice, condemned him for deserting his men under such circumstances. My own experience in these pits convinces me that he was decidedly wrong. The account of his failure and that of subsequent explorers did not deter me from the attempt I now proposed.
Early in the morning I began to make arrangements for guides among the villagers, but I found great difficulty in persuading any to go with me. The reason was not that given by Mr. Legh, fear of the pits, but they said that we must pass through a village near the mountains, where the inhabitants would assuredly beat them off and take us into their merciful protection, whereby they, the shore guides, would lose their pay beside getting a thrashing. It was only on assurance of pay, beating or no beating, that I could persuade two of them to go with me. Abd-el-Atti and Abdallah, one of my boat’s crew, the two guides and myself, formed the party who started for the mountains, crossing the largest grain field that I have seen in Egypt. It was almost prairie-like in appearance, being three miles or so in breadth, and stretching up and down the river as far as I could see – one long waving field of green wheat flashing in the sunshine.
Crossing this we arrived at a narrow branch of the Nile, now dry, but apparently quite recently filled, and near this a village, the one of which our guides had expressed their fear. The custom which they stood in dread of is said to be prevalent in this neighborhood, but to our and their surprise no molestation was offered us at this crossing, the men of the village being absent on some prowling expedition, or possibly engaged in the fields. Climbing the side of the mountain, which is here not more than six hundred feet high, consisting of beetling cliffs of white rock that overhung our path, and which had, in some ancient times, been quarried for the purposes of a city now wholly gone, we arrived on the elevated table-land of the Arabian desert.
Such appears to be the character of the land on both sides of the Nile, resembling in that respect portions of the upper Mississippi. The valley is a deep depression or rift in a vast table of high land.
We had still some miles to go. I am entirely unable to estimate the distance, but can safely say that it was not less than five miles from the landing place, in all. Our path was over a sandy soil, with broken rocks jutting out here and there, but no sign of vegetation whatever visible. The peculiarity of it was a crystal of what I suppose to be gypsum over which we walked all the way. My feet crushed in it like walking on dry moss. Enormous quantities of it, thousands of bushels, were on the surface of the ground, to be gathered up by any one. I know not what commercial value it has, but it seemed to me a desirable matter to be examined by some one interested in Egyptian agriculture if in nothing else.
In crossing the plain I had been overtaken by a party consisting of two English gentlemen, their dragoman and a sailor from their boat with a guide, who learning of our guarantee had consented to bring them along and take the risk of passing the village safely. Their boat had arrived just as I was coming away from mine.
We had joined forces and come on together, presenting a formidable array which it required some courage in any party of Arabs to attack. At length we found ourselves in a water shed toward the east, and this narrowed to what was apparently the bed of a torrent, finding its way downward to the south-east, the hills on each side sloping toward it.
The ground was still covered with yellow sand but further along the torrent bed was bare gray rock, and now the guides stopped.
I saw no hole or entrance till I was close to them.
They paused on the edge of a hole in the sand, about six feet long by four wide at the widest end, narrowing to a point at the other. It descended perpendicularly about ten feet to a floor of sand. Originally it was much deeper, but the sand flowing into it in every wind, has filled it much. It is only marvelous that it was not long ago quite filled. There was nothing outside to indicate its existence. No ruin, nor stone; persons might pass a hundred times within twenty feet of it and not see it. The sand was unbroken to its very edge.
After resting a few moments I prepared for the entrance to the pit. As it was by no means certain that the villagers from the foot of the mountain would permit us to finish our examination unmolested, and as Abd-el-Atti now strenuously objected to entering the hole himself, I left him sitting on the ground at the entrance with the sailor from the other boat, and the donkey-boys, taking Abdallah with me; he seeming very willing to go in, and not at all influenced by the tales of horror with which the guides had amused us along the way. I took off all the clothes that I had worn and put on an old shirt and a pair of brown linen pantaloons of the coarsest sort. This was my total equipment.
Having no coat and no breast-pocket, and mindful of the disasters which had occurred to various travellers solely from want of stimulants in this cavern, I put my small pocket brandy-flask, a glass flask covered with wicker, into my pantaloons pocket, each of us having in the first place fortified himself with a single swallow of the liquor.
The descent into the cavern was by sitting on the edge, swinging off with one hand on each side of the hole, and dropping into the depths below, where a soft bed of sand received us, in a chamber just large enough to hold the eight persons of whom the party consisted, all standing in a stooping posture while we lighted our candles and arranged for our progress. I tossed my tarbouche and takea up to Abd-el-Atti, and left my head bare. Then, following the principal guide, I lay down flat on my face, holding my candle before me, and began to advance with as close a resemblance to a snake’s motion as human vertebrae will admit of. MIy other guide and Abdallah followed me; the English gentlemen next, and their dragoman and guide bringing up the rear. I progressed slowly, and with great difficulty, constantly bruising my back on the sharp points of the rock above me, some five or six yards. Legh calls it eight, but I think it not so much. We were now able to stand up again, in a stooping posture, the ceiling being a little over four feet high, and thus advanced eight or ten yards further, until we reached the chamber of which Mr. Legh speaks.
I am of opinion that we had now arrived just under the bed of the torrent I have spoken of, and that the entire cavern, which I afterward explored, is a natural fissure in the rock running under this point of meeting of two hills, and following the line of the valley between them. This is, of course, but a conjecture, as I did not take a compass with me to determine the course.
crocodile

This chamber was a small, irregular, cavernous room, the floor of which was covered with shapeless masses of stone that had fallen from the roof. Over these we stepped with great difficulty. I need not remark that the darkness was profound, and the air already became so close that our candles burned but dimly, so that each man was obliged to hold his own at his feet to determine where to set them. Crossing the room, we stepped over a chasm between a mass of rock and the wall of the chamber, to a point in the wall, which presented a rag ged edge, and from this into a narrow doorway, about four feet high. I call it a doorway, for it resembled one, though I could find no signs of artificial origin about it. It was almost square, and opened into a sort of gallery, the floor of which was covered with broken rock, and interrupted by huge deep fissures. A ledge at the side afforded tolerable walking for some distance, in a stooping posture; and then we again lay down on our faces and crawled through a passage twenty feet in length, entering the largest chamber in the pit. It was a vast irregular cavern, perhaps seventy or a hundred feet in diameter. Entrance to it was almost forbidden by clouds of bats that met me in the narrow passage through which I was crawling, dashing into my face, wounding my forehead and cheeks, clinging by scores to my hair and beard, like so many thousand devils disputing the entrance to hell. I can give no adequate idea of this chamber of horrors in which I now found myself. Profoundly silent, we had crawled along, each man having a fast-beating heart, and listening to its throbs; and now, as I emerged into this room, the loud whirr of the myriads of bats was like the sounds of another world into which I had penetrated. I staggered forward to a rock and sat down, when a piercing yell started me to my feet. It rang through the cavern as if the arch-fiend himself were there tormenting some poor soul. But it was only one of my poor friends who were making their first entrance to an Egyptian catacomb, and had never before encountered the bats, with whom I was thoroughly familiar. The one who was in advance was overwhelmed by the army that met him as he approached the room.
“What is it?” I shouted.
“These bats: they are devouring me.”
“Push on; they’ll not harm you.”
“My light is gone, and I can see nothing.”
“Here is my light; come toward it.” I had re-lit my candle, which had been put out as his was, and was now seated in the centre of the cavern, on a black rock, holding it up before my face. As he emerged into the room and caught sight of me, he uttered a howl of mingled astonishment and terror.
“Pluto or Sathanas, by all the gods,” said his friend, coming up behind him, and looking at me. My appearance must have been picturesque in my primitive costume, now begrirmed with dirt, and seven bats (they counted them) hanging on my beard, with a perfect net-work and Medusa-coil of them in my hair. I was very little disturbed by the harmless little fellows; although, before coming to Egypt, I scarcely knew of an animal in the world so disgusting to my mind.
But the atmosphere, if it may be so called, of this chamber was beyond all description horrible. It was not an air to faint in; there was too much ammonia for that. It was foul, vile, terrible. I confess, that, as I found myself panting for breath, and drawing long, deep inspirations, to very choking, without ” reaching the right place” in my lungs (I think every one understands that), I trembled for an instant at the idea of going further. It was but an instant, however, and the desire to see the great repository of the sacred animals overpowered the momentary terror.
“Abdallah.”
“Ya, Howajji.”
“If any thing happens; if I fall down, give out, or faint, don’t you run. Tell the guides that I have ordered Abd-el-Atti to shoot them man by man as they come out, if one of them appears without me. Do you pour this down my throat, and drag me out to the entrance. You understand?”
“Aiowah, Ya Howajji. Fear not; I will do it.”
“Recollect that if I die, you all die. That is arranged, for, as surely as you, one of you, attempt the entrance without me, Abd-el-Atti is ready for you.”
The guides had listened attentively, and, having seen me hand my pistols to my trusty dragoman before coming down, they believed every word of it, though it had never occurred to me till this instant. The guides were all at fault here, precisely as they were in Mr. Legh’s time, and that of every traveler since. This chamber has been the end of most attempts to explore the pits. The intense darkness is some excuse for this, since our eight candles wholly failed to show a wall any where around or above us. The men proposed that we should sit still while they tried various passages opening out of the room. To this I objected, much preferring to trust myself at a juncture like this. In that intense blackness it was not easy to find even the way we had come in at, for, of course, there was no guide to north or south, except my recollection of the shape of the rock on which I was seated, and its bearings as I approached it. The reader will bear in mind that the whole floor of this room was covered with immense masses of rock, among which we moved about in search of outlets, leaving always one person on that rock to mark its locality.
After trying three passages that led nowhere, I hit on that one which the guides pronounced correct, and the party advanced. For the benefit of future explorers, if any such there be, I may explain that it is the first passage which goes out of the chamber to the right as you enter it. That is to say, keeping the right-hand wall will bring you to it, leaping a chasm at its entrance. This is the chasm of which Legh speaks. I found it to be only about six feet deep.
The passage which we now entered ran so low that I found it necessary to creep on my hands and knees, and sometimes to crawl, snake fashion, full length. It continued for a distance that I hesitate to estimate. It is wholly impossible to guess at the progress one is making in such postures. Henniker, I think, makes it four hundred yards. I should think a thousand feet a very large estimate, but it may be as much. The air was now worse, lacking the ammonia. It seemed to be almost pure nitrogen. The lungs operated freely, but took no benefit or refreshment from it, while the heat was awful, and perspiration rolled down our faces and bodies, soaking our clothes and making mud on our features and hands, with the fine dust that filled the atmosphere. At length the passage became so narrow, that my progress was blocked entirely. My broad shoulders would not go through, and I paused to consider the matter. The hole was about eighteen inches wide, and a little more than two feet high. Evidently Mr. Legh did not pass beyond this. I was obliged to lie over on my right side, presenting my body to it narrow way up and down, and pushing with all the strength of my feet as well as pulling with my hands on the floor and rocky projections, I forced myself along about eight feet. In this struggle my brandy flask, which was in my trowsers pocket, being under me, was broken to pieces, and my sole hope, in the event of a giving out of my faculties, was gone. At the time, I thought little of it, laughing at the occurrence as I called out to those who followed me; but afterward I remembered the incident with a shudder. The only argument that had allowed me to persuade myself to attempt this exploration was a promise to myself that I would take brandy with me, which no one else had done, and, if necessary, secure artificial strength thereby. It was gone now, and I was more than a thousand feet from light and air, in a passage that did not average four feet by two its entire length.
A vigorous push sent me out into a more open passage and a sort of doorway opened into a gallery on a level two feet lower. Jumping down this step I was, for the first time in nearly a half hour, where I could stand upright. My English friend shouted for help behind me. His light was gone out, and he was literally stuck in the hole. I returned, touched my candle to his and gave him a hand to drag him through, and in a few moments we were all standing together. We now advanced some hundred feet, perhaps three, perhaps five hundred, in a stooping posture mostly, but occasionally crawling as before, and, at length, as we crept, the rough and very low parts of the gallery and the roof began to lift, and I found that I was actually crawling over mummies. There was just here a sort of blind passage at the side of the chief passage, in which the French expedition had carved their names. The walls were covered with a jet black substance, like the purest lamp black, which the point of a knife would scratch off, exposing the white rock. Numerous stalactites hung from the ceiling, all jet black, and some grotesque stalagmites at the sides of the passage startled me at first with the idea that they were sculptures. This black sooty matter I can not account for unless it be the exhalations in ancient times from the crocodiles which were laid here, for we were at last in the depository.
The floor was covered with crocodile bones and mummy cloths. A spark of fire falling into them would have made this a veritable hell. As this idea was suggested, my English friends, whose experience in the narrow hole had been sufficiently alarming, vanished out of sight. They fairly ran. Having seen the mummies, and seized a few small ones in their hands, they hastened out, and left me with Abdallah and my two guides. Advancing over the mummies and up the hill which they formed, I found that I was in one of a number of large chambers, of the depth of which it was of course impossible to get any idea, as they were piled full of mummied crocodiles to the very ceiling. There was no means of estimating the number of them. WVhen I say there were thousands on thousands of them, I shall not be thought to exaggerate after I describe the manner ill which they were packed and laid in.
Climbing to the top of the hill, and extinguishing all lights but one, which I made Abdallah hold very carefully, I began to throw down the top of the pile to ascertain of what it was composed, and at length I made an opening between the mumnmies and the ceiling, through which I could go on further, descending a sort of hill of these dead animals, such as I had come up. In this way I progressed some distance, in a gallery or chamber that was not less than twenty feet wide and probably twenty or thirty feet deep.
The crocodiles were laid in regular layers, head to tail and tail to head. First on the floor was a layer of large crocodiles, side by side, each one carefully mummied and wrapped up in cloths. Then smaller ones were laid between the tails and filling up the hollows between these. Then, and most curious of all, the remaining interstices were packed fill of young crocodiles, measuring with remarkable uniformity about thirteen inches in length, each one stretched out between two slips of palm-leaf stem, which were bound to its sides like splints, and then wrapped from head to foot in a strip of cloth, wound around, commencing at the tail and fastened at the head. These small ones were made up in bundles, usually of eight, and packed in closely wherever they could be stowed. I brought out more than a hundred of them, of which my friends in Egypt seized on the most as curiosities, but I succeeded in getting some twenty or thirty of them to America with me.
This layer completed, a layer of palm branches was carefully laid over it, spread thick and smooth, and then a second and precisely similar layer of crocodiles was made, and another of palm branches, and thus continued to the ceiling. These palm branches, stems, and mummies lie here in precisely the state they were in two thousand years ago. No leaf of the palm had decayed. There could have been no moisture from the mummies whatever – or if any it had no effect on the palm branches.
Among these crocodiles I found the mummies of many men.
Sitting down on the hill, by the dim candle light, I overhauled gods and men with sacrilegious hand. It was a strange, wild, and awful scene. Among all the pictures that my memory has treasured of wandering life, I have none so fearful and thrilling as this. It was hell – a still, silent, cold hell. All these bodies lay in rows, in close packages, like so many souls damned to eternal silence and sorrow in this prison. Five bodies of men that I drew out of the mass lay before me, and cursed me with their hideous stillness and inaction. I dared them to tell me in words the reproaches of which their silent forms were so liberal; reproaches for penetrating their, abode and disturbing the repose of twenty or forty centuries.
These were of the poorest and most common sort, destitute of any box, wound in coarse cloth and laid in the grave with the beasts that were sacred to their god. One I found afterward in a thin plain box, but it contained no indication of its period, and bore no mark of its owner’s name or position, much to my disappointment.
“Let us go further,” I said to the guides, at length.
“There is no further.”
I was satisfied that the entrance we had effected was not by the passage known to the ancients, and that some other outlet lay beyond these chambers. I pushed my way over the piles of mummies to a point where another low passage went on, but it was too difficult of exploration to tempt me into it. It may lead to an outlet in the desert hitherto unknown, or that outlet may be long ago covered over by the shifting sands.
What was the object of all this preservation of the Nile monsters it is not within the scope of this volume to discuss. It is at least a mystery, for we know so little of the Egyptian theory of a hereafter that we can not understand what part the birds and beasts were to take in the resurrection.
Time flew fast, and I began to think that if I remained much longer I should be in a fair way to await the resurrection of the crocodiles before I should emerge to light.
I much desired to bring out with me a gigantic fellow, nearly twenty feet long, but the impossibility of it made it more manifest that he never came in by the way I had entered. He was one of the ante or immediately postdiluvian sort, a crocodile of the days when there were giants. Perhaps he had survived the flood, who knows? He may have laid that huge jaw on the edge of the ark in stormy times and fixed those hollow eyes on the strange ship of Noah. He may have fed on dainty limbs that were swept down to him from the wrecks of palaces. I wonder how long a crocodile lives. What rags these are that fill this cavern. Rags of grave-clothes. The last thin covering of the dead, torn to tatters! These young fellows have paddled in sacred fountains and been fed in costly vases in temples? These silent men were guardians, keepers, feeders of the sacred animals, and were buried with their charges – or possibly, they were crocodile embalmers, privileged expressly to rot – no – to preservation with their hideous companions.
O friend, there is pleasant thought, in our land, of graves in shadowy church-yard corners, but think of life in such employment and burial here! If I thought that I were to be laid in that horrible company – I would – I would – if they did lay me there I would rise up and walk from very horror and find another grave for myself.
I crawled out as I had crawled in. Before I came away from the chamber of horror (Madame Tussaud’s is nothing like it) I laid the wreck of my brandy-flask on a projecting shelf of rock where the next explorer will find it. The chances are that it will turn up in the British or Prussian Museum, as evidence of the bad habits of the ancient Egyptians thus proved to be strong in death.
I never saw a light so clear and beautiful as was the daylight that fell in the entrance of the cavern. As I approached it its tints appeared deep violet only – exceedingly rich.
“What is that?” I exclaimed, not recognizing the divine sunshine from which I had been for some hours separated.
My appearance must have been hideous as I sprang out on the sand, and fell down exhausted at the very side of the pit. The desert air seemed piercing cold, and the brandy being all gone, I could but wrap myself in a boornoose, and seek to get warmth in the sunshine.
My arrival was opportune. It was about three in the afternoon. The bellicose villagers had been collected after our coming on to the mountain, and were just now making their appearance in a body of about twenty. They paused at a hundred yards’ distance, and sent one, a huge fellow with an uncommonly bold air, to be spokesman in their demands. His brave and impudent way of demanding by what right we were on the mountain was deserving of a better fate than awaited him.
“Is the mountain yours?”
“Yes, it is ours; no one has a right to be here without paying us. Who is to pay me, now?”
“I will,” said Abd-el-Atti, springing at him, koorbash in hand, which he laid on furiously over his head and shoulders. The astounded Arab endeavored to assert his rights again, but the whip fell fast, and at length, completely routed, he fled toward his allies, and they joined him in the flight, while the indefatigable dragoman pursued the entire party, brandishing his weapon in the air, to their immense horror and our infinite amusement.
As he paused, they stood and shouted a defiance that was ludicrous under the circumstances, and preeminently so their threat to go down to Manfaloot and inform the governor that a traveler, with an Egyptian dragoman, had committed this wrong on their prescriptive rights. From Mr. Legh’s account, it seems probable that in his day the Manfaloot governor was, to a certain extent, under the influence of these men, but we laughed at them as we turned to our claret and luncheon, which I devoured with a voracious appetite. I am compelled to admit that it tasted of mummy. I can not deny that every thing that I ate for a week had the same flavor. Countless washings would not clear my mouth and throat of the fine, impalpable dust that covered its interior, and my moustache was mummyish for a month, spite of Lubin and Piver.
Stopping on the way back to visit a small Coptic church near the village at the foot of the mountain, we reached the boat at three o’clock in the afternoon, and my first movement was to plunge over the other side into the river. Until this was accomplished, it was useless to hope to be recognized in the cabin of the Phantom. My complexion was dead crocodile, my odor was dead crocodile, my clothes were dead crocodile – for I had not changed them on coming out of the pit – I was but little removed from being a dead crocodile myself.
While we dined, the boat drifted down the river four miles, to Manfaloot on the west bank.
Reis Hassanein’s request to be allowed togo by without stopping could not be granted, and indeed he had begun to think better of it. He disappeared on our arrival at the city, and reappeared in an hour with smiles on his face.
I went, so soon as we had finished dinner, to the Coptic convent, which is one of the most interesting in Egypt, but that is not saying much.
The Coptic church is most sadly degenerated. Ignorance and stupidity seem to characterize the priests, and I found none of the laity who seemed to have even an ordinary idea of the fundamental truths of the Christian religion.
The church was a low, arched room, the ceiling supported on arches which rested on brick pillars. The altar was behind a latticed door, and at the opposite end of the church was a latticed place for the females. All was cold, damp, and dreary. There were some very curious old pictures on the walls, which were, indeed, my object in coming here, but the bishop was absent, and I did not talk with any one about them. They took us into the convent court, and we sat down a while with a half dozen monks to discuss chibouks and coffee, and some dry wheaten cakes-blessed cakes from the altar, if I mistake not, though we could not get the explanation of their peculiarity – and then I strolled up into the city.
In the bazaar I met the governor on his way down to see me, and I turned him back to go to his own house.
Taking a seat with him in the gloomy court, we lit pipes and had sipped coffee a few minutes, when our interview was interrupted by the entrance of a fellah, who demanded loudly for an audience from the governor, and presenting himself at his feet in the shadowy corner of the court, poured out a furious tale of wrongs that he had suffered on the opposite side of the river from a traveler and his dragoman.
The foolish dog had not once raised his eyes to see that the companion of the governor’s diwan was none other than his enemy. Had he looked, he would scarcely have recognized in the tolerably respectable visage and clothing of Braheem Effendi, the dirty brown, half-naked object just emerged from the crocodile pits.
Terrible was his narration, and a governor of ordinary intellect must have been moved to indignation at some one, the lying narrator or the accused, by his admirable tale. But Ali Rashwan Bey was not the man to be affected by trifles, and his sagacious mind took in the whole.
When the accuser had finished, the governor was silent for a moment, while clouds of smoke – dire portent! – filled the air above the head of the devoted fellah.
“Hast thou heard him, 0 Braheem Effendi?”
“Yea, word for word, 0 high and mighty governor.”
“How much is false, and how much is true, 0 Howajji Braheem?”
“All is false – save only this – that he, with nineteen other men of his village, did set on me in the mountain pass and would verily have robbed me, as they have robbed travelers oftentimes heretofore, but that we put them to flight. There are many bad stories of his village written in the books, and it would be well to punish them once for all, that the traveler may not hereafter be prevented from visiting the crocodile pits at Maabdeh.”
“Lay the unrighteous dog on the ground.” They have a knack at it in Egypt. I have never seen it done as well in other Turkish countries. Before he had time to howl he was lying on his face, a man sitting on his shoulders, and another on his legs.
“Name the nineteen companions who were with you on the mountain.”
No answer.
A nod to the ready slave, and the blow fell. The victim howled, but it was evident that he howled as a matter of course. Eastern flogging, except when the bastinado is used on the feet, is a farce. The blows of a large stick on loose clothes do no harm until they have been often repeated. This is the explanation of the vast number of blows sometimes administered. Five hundred in Egypt is not equal to five dozen in the navy of England, scarcely indeed to one dozen. By the tenth blow there is a perceptible aching, but the hundredth may not be painful at all. After a few blows the character of the performance was changed, and the soles of his feet were turned up. This is a stinging infliction. At the fifteenth blow he shouted the name of a companion, and out came the whole row. Before I left Manfaloot next morning, every one of the nineteen were in prison there, awaiting sentence.
I returned to the Coptic church in the evening. The old bishop was there, and with a dim candle he and I entered the church. I showed him what picture I wished, and he pushed the bishop’s chair under it for me to stand in and look at it, holding up the dip to its surface. But he would not sell it to me.
He insisted on giving it to me, if I would promise not to make him any present in return. He was old, very old, and they would say the old bishop had sold church property, and that would never do. I would not accept it on such terms, and then he lamented that he had offended me, and I, to convince him he had not, took him along down to the boat, where he comforted his old bones with such wine as he had never tasted before. Ali Rashwan came down directly, and sat on the opposite diwan. He was Moslem and could not drink wine. But he took coffee, cup for glass with the bishop, and one emptied the coffee – pot and the other the decanter by bed time. Bed time came early, for I was very weary, having accomplished the hardest day’s work that I did in Egypt.”