The Nile
has sunk away from the feet of the Colossi that it has bathed through
many days. It has freed the plain to the fellaheen, though still
it keeps my island in its clasp. And Hapi, or Kam-wra, the "Great
Extender," and Ra, have made this wonderful spring to bloom on the dark
earth before the Christian's Christmas.
What a pastoral it is, this plain of Thebes, in the dawn of day! Think
of the reed flute, I have said, not because you will hear it, as you
ride toward the mountains, but because its voice would be utterly in
place here, in this arcady of Egypt, playing no tarantella, but one of
those songs, half bird-like, and half sadly, mysteriously human, which
come from the soul of the East. Instead of it, you may catch distant
cries from the bank of the river, where the shadoof-man toils, lifting
ever the water and his voice, the one to earth, the other, it seems, to
sky; and the creaking lay of the water-wheel, which pervades Upper Egypt
like an atmosphere, and which, though perhaps at first it irritates, at
last seems to you the sound of the soul of the river, of the sunshine,
and the soil.
Much of the land looks painted. So flat is it, so young are the growing
crops, that they are like a coating of green paint spread over a mighty
canvas. But the doura rises higher than the heads of the naked children
who stand among it to watch you canter past. And in the far distance
you see dim groups of trees--sycamores and acacias, tamarisks and palms.
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