A thousand miles up the Nile, with upwards - NYU | Digital Library ...

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
" Un voyage en Egypte, c'est une partie d'ines et une promenade en bateau
entrem61ees de ruines."
—
Ampere.
Ampere has put Egypt in an epigram. "A donkey-ride
and a boating-trip interspersed with ruins" does, in fact, sum
up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile traveller.
Apropos of these three things—the donkeys, the boat, and the
ruins—it may be said that a good English saddle and a com-
fortable dahabeeyah add very considerably to the pleasure of
the journey ; and that the more one knows about the past
history of the country, the more one enjoys the ruins.
Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats, and
steamers, I am not qualified to speak. We, however, saw one
iron dahabeeyah aground upon a sandbank, where, as we after-
wards learned, it remained for three weeks. We also saw the
wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and the First Cataract.
It certainly seemed to us that the old-fashioned wooden daha-
beeyah—flat-bottomed, drawing little water, light in hand, and
easily poled off when stuck—was the one vessel best constructed
for the navigation of the Nile. Other considerations, as time
and cost, are, of course, involved in this question. The choice
between dahabeeyah and steamer is like the choice between
travelling with post-horses and travelling by rail. The one
is expensive, leisurely, delightful ; the other is cheap, swift.