XXI.

SAKIAS.

WE departed at dawn. Before a gentle gale the Ibis fleetly flew, in the starlight, serenaded by the sakias.

These endless sighing sakias! There are fifty thousand of them in Egypt, or were, when Grandfather Mehemet was. They required a hundred and fifty thousand oxen to work them. But the murrain swept away the cattle, and now the Nile shores are strewn with the falling mud walls of sakias, ruins of the last great Egyptian reign. Like huge summer insects, they doze upon the bank, droning a melancholy, monotonous song. The slow, sad sound pervades the land-one calls to another, and he sighs to his neighbor, and the Nile is shored with sound no less than sand. Their chorus is the swan-song of Egypt. For Egypt is effete. The race is more ruined than the temples. Nor shall there be a resurrection of an exhausted people, until fading roses, buried in the ground,

take root again, or Memnon calls musically once more, down the far glad valley of the Nile.

The sakia is the great instrument of irrigation. It is a rude contrivance of two perpendicular wheels, turned by a horizontal cog. The outer wheel is girdled with a string of earthen jars, which descend with every revolution into the pit open to the river, in which the wheel turns. As the jars ascend, they empty themselves into a trough, thence conducted away, or directly into a channel of earth; and the water flowing into the fields, by little canals, invests each separate small square patch. There are no fences, and the valley of the Nile is divided into endless inclosures by these shallow canals. The surface of the country is regularly veined, and the larger channels are the arteries fed by the great sakia heart. Overflowing or falling, the Nile is forever nourishing Egypt, and far forth-looking from the propylons of temples, you may see the land checkered with slight silver streaks-tokens of its fealty and the Nile's devotion.

The sakia is worked by a pair of oxen. Upon the tongue of the crank which they turn, sits a boy, drowsing and droning, and beating their tail-region all day long. Nor is the sad creak of the wheel ever soothed by any unctuous matter, which the proprietor appropriates to his own proper person,

and which would also destroy the cherished creek. So sit the boys along the Nile, among the cotton, tobacco, corn, beans, or whatever other crop, and by beating the tail-region of many oxen, cause the melancholy music of the river. It has infinite variety, but a mournful monotony of effect. Some sakias are sharp and shrill; they almost shriek in the tranced stillness. These you may know for the youth-these are the gibes of greenness. But sedater creaks follow. A plaintive monotony of moan that is helpless and hopeless. This is the general sakia sigh. It is as if the air simmered into sound upon the shore. It is the overtaxed labor of the land complaining, a slave's plaining-low, and lorn, and lifeless. Yet, as the summer seems not truly summer, until the locusts wind their dozy reeds, so Egypt seems not truly Egypt, except when the water-wheels sadden the silence. It is the audible weaving of the spell. The stillness were not so still without it, nor the temples so antique, nor the whole land so solitary and dead.

In books I read that it is the Ranz des Vaches of the Féllaheen, and that away from the Nile they sigh for the sakia, as it sighs with them at home. And truly, no picture of the river would be perfect that had not the water-wheels upon the shore. They abound in Nubia, and are there taxed heavily

-some seventeen of our dollars, each one. The Howadji wonders how such a tax can be paid, and the Nubian live. But if it be not promptly rendered the owner is ejected. He may have as much land as he can water, as much Arabian sand or Libyan, as he can coax the Nile to fructify. And there nature is compassionate. For out of what seems sheer sand you will see springing a deepgreen patch of grain.

In upper Egypt and Nubia, the shadoof is seldom seen. That is a man-power sakia, consisting simply of buckets swinging upon a pole, like a well bucket, and dipped into the river, and emptied above by another, into the channel. There are always two buckets, and the men stand opposite, only girded a little about the loins, or more frequently, not at all, and plunging the bucket rapidly. It is exhausting labor, and no man is engaged more than two or three hours at a time. If the bank is very high, there are two or more ranges of shadoofs, the lower pouring into the reservoirs of the upper. The shadoofs abound in the sugar-cane region about Minyeh. They give a spectral life to the shore. The bronze statues moving as if by pulleys, and the regular swing of the shadoof. There is no creak, but silently in the sun the poles swing, and the naked laborers sweat.

Sakia-spelled the Ibis flew, and awakening one midnight, I heard the murmurous music of distant bells filling all the air. As one on summer Sundays loiters in flowery fields suburban, and catches the city chimes hushed and far away, so lingered and listened the Howadji along the verge of dreaming. Has the ear mirages, mused he, like the eye?

He remembered the day, and it was Sunday— Sunday morning across the sea. Still the clanging confusion, hushed into melody, rang on. He heard the orthodox sonorousness of St. John's, the sweet solemnity of St. Paul's, then the petulant peal of the dissenting bells dashed in. But all so sweet and far, until the belfry of the old Brick bellowed with joy, as if the head of giant Despair were now finally broken. Had Nilus wreathed these brows with magic lotus?

Now, mused the Howadji, haply dreaming still, now contrite Gotham, in its Sunday suit of sackcloth and ashes, hies humbly forth to repentance and prayer. Perchance some maiden tarries that her hair may be fitly folded, that she may wait upon the Lord en grande tenue. In godly Gotham such things have been. Divers of its daughters once tarried from the service and sermon that a French barber might lay his hand upon their heads, before the bishop. Then, like coiffed cherubim, they stole