CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE NILE
It was a callous country inhabited by a callous race, thought Calder, as
he travelled down the Nile from Wadi Halfa to Assouan on his three
months' furlough. He leaned over the rail of the upper deck of the
steamer and looked down upon the barge lashed alongside. On the lower
deck of the barge among the native passengers stood an angareb,[2]
whereon was stretched the motionless figure of a human being shrouded in
a black veil. The angareb and its burden had been carried on board early
that morning at Korosko by two Arabs, who now sat laughing and
chattering in the stern of the barge. It might have been a dead man or a
dead woman who lay still and stretched out upon the bedstead, so little
heed did they give to it. Calder lifted his eyes and looked to his right
and his left across glaring sand and barren rocks shaped roughly into
the hard forms of pyramids. The narrow meagre strip of green close by
the water's edge upon each bank was the only response which the Soudan
made to Spring and Summer and the beneficent rain. A callous country
inhabited by a callous people.
[Footnote 2: The native bedstead of matting woven across a four-legged
frame.
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