Crossing the Nile

“I afterwards crossed the Nile¹ in a small barge, with an Arab for a steersman, and the only one then to be found on the river; a river once embellished with all the pomp of imperial state, with temples, gardens, and even the floating houses of its ancient masters which it supported. What are become of those gilded vessels, those purple sails, that cordage, tissued with silver? All those images, those vivid and pleasurable emotions which so rapidly succeeded each other, are done away! A serious silence, like that of death, replaces the dashing of the oars, the applauding cries of the multitude, the chaunting of the priest, and the harmony of that music with which all-conquering sound effected a moral calm, tamed a whole muster-roll of mighty passions in the perturbed bosoms of the people. The melody of sweet music has flown to other regions, presides among other nations – that music which arms all the affections of nature with a new force, and can disarm even brutal insensibility. In the present state of things, to realize happiness, imagination must transport us to another sphere, where peace and tranquil pleasures reign in perfection.”

From Travels in Egypt
by Count de Forbin, 1817-18

Notes

¹ This river was first called by general name of Jaro, (a river,) it afterwards was known by that of Neilon, which signifies increasing at stated periods. The priests celebrated festivals to his honour, on the banks, without which sacred and mysterious ceremony, the Egyptian people would never have looked for the ordinary physical effects of an inundation. The periodical increase of the Nile appears to be just what it was in ancient times, 16 cubits. It begins at the end of June, and terminates at the beginning of September; its rise is about four inches a-day, and it then sinks gradually till the next solstice.