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Updated: June 2, 2025
As the wind set toward us, we soon became aware of an evil smell petroleum and sulphureted hydrogen at once which gave some of us a headache. The pitch here is yellow and white with sulphur foam; so are the water-channels; and out of both water and pitch innumerable bubbles of gas arise, loathsome to the smell. We became aware that the pitch was soft under our feet.
Edfou is situated at a little distance inland on the western bank of the Nile. As usual, the land in the neighbourhood of the river is high in comparison with that which is beyond that is to say, there is a continual descending slope to the edge of the desert, where at this time of year there is, as it were, a succession of large ponds, water-channels, and marshes.
Several hundred acres of bare rocks, with grassy flats sloping down from them to the west, and forming little watercourses or flat water-channels; there were great numbers of crows, many fresh natives' tracks, and the smoke of several fires in the surrounding scrub. Tommy took the lower ground, while I searched the rocks.
Moreover, wherever the cliffs seemed likely to afford a means of ascent Shere Ali had directed the water-channels, and since the nights were frosty these points were draped with ice as smooth as glass. Finally, however, Mrs. Linforth received a third letter which set her heart beating with pride, and for the moment turned all her fears to joy. "The war is over," it began.
It seemed to him there could be but one answer; other water-channels beyond the drift, under which they now traveled, were being closed by counter-currents. And if they closed, one after the other, more rapidly than the advance of the submarine, what was finally to become of the submarine crew? Would they not perish for lack of air?
Beyond it the tunnel continued for twenty or thirty paces, leading them at length into a vast chamber with arched roof and cemented sides and bottom, which in some bygone age had been a water-tank. Here lights were burning, and even a charcoal fire, at which a brother was engaged in cooking. Also the air was pure and sweet, doubtless because of the winding water-channels that ran upwards.
A great Indian river, at low water, suggests the familiar anatomical picture of a skinned human body, the intricate mesh of interwoven muscles and tendons to stand for water-channels, and the archipelagoes of fat and flesh inclosed by them to stand for the sandbars. Somewhere on this journey we passed such a river, and on a later journey we saw in the Sutlej the duplicate of that river.
Their absolute steepness is indicated in the photograph which I took over the stony desert. "Surely," said I, as we discussed the situation, "the rain must find its way down somehow. There are bound to be water-channels in the rocks." "Our young friend has glimpses of lucidity," said Professor Challenger, patting me upon the shoulder. "The rain must go somewhere," I repeated.
It lay bare enough in the early winter long stretches of stone-walled paddocks where the red soil showed through the sparse, native grass; steep, stony hillsides, with little sheep grazing on them pygmies, after the great English sheep; oases of irrigation, with the deep green of lucerne growing rank among weed-fringed water-channels; and so on and on, past little towns and tiny settlements, and now and then a stop at some place of more importance.
The mud huts which constituted the dwelling-places of by far the greater portion of the inhabitants have disappeared, and their materials overlie the rocky plain and form the support of a scanty and sparse vegetation. But the old water-channels remain, and by their aid the hollows and low ground have been converted into rich gardens and fields, bearing full crops of waving rice and sugar-cane.
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