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Memphis; Tombs and Pyramids of Sakkara 2^,^,
you in a comfortable steamer to Bedrashen, and provided
you with a stimulating donkey, you will arrive at Colossus
No. I in an appreciative mood. For it is a delightful
excursion. You land and mount a little below Bedrashen,
and scamper under the palm-trees to that sinful and picturesque
village perched on the edge of the flood.
This may be your first introduction to Egyptian rural life,
with its ancleted women going down to the river to fill their
kerosine tins, or beat the family washing ; and its men riding
asses or camels to eternity without any hope of getting there.
The Egyptian fellah is a good worker—he will toil from
dawn to dusk in the blazing sun, throwing up water out of
the Nile, or earth out of an excavation : he is a natural agri-
cultural labourer—but he always seems most in his element
when his legs are hanging down from a stirrupless donkey,
or crossed on a camel's neck. On the donkey he is going to
his business ; on the camel he is a mere incident—an accompaniment
to a load of earth, or a stack of green forage.
Whatever he is riding, if he is only a baby perched upon a
buffalo, he does it with so much dignity and nonchalance
that he looks as if he was part of a procession. Egypt is a
succession of processions, in which white-robed sheikhs with
their heads veiled like brides, on little white donkeys, are the
central figures, and animals—least of all the horse— play the
principal parts.
Engaged in that procession are all sorts and conditions of
riding asses, some of them very ill-conditioned, saddled with
a bit of sackcloth, and bridled with a bit of rope. The office
of beast of burden the ass shares with the camel—he is more
agreeable about it, but accomplishes less ; in haulage the
buffalo comes to their relief. But there is not much wheel
traffic in Egypt, where roads worthy of the name seldom
wander far outside a city's gates. The Egyptian rides or
walks—always as if he never meant to get to his destination.
Having a flock of sheep or goats with him is no perceptible
drag on his movements, and makes him appear in a more
amiable light, for he is generally carrying the weakest lamb
or kid in his arms after the traditional manner of the Good