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I should still be a penniless prince, more useless than ever." He sat down on the broad lintel capping the parapet, but retained her hand. "Ta-user," he continued, as she opened her lips to speak, "what wouldst thou have me do?" "I would have thee be useful." "I shall throw away my lordly trappings," he said, "and become a lifter of the shadoof this day."
The shadoof will raise six hundred gallons ten feet in an hour, and consists of a pole weighted at one end, with a bucket at the other; when the water is raised the weight counterbalances the weight of the full bucket.
River, green plains, yellow plains, pink, brown, steel-grey, or pale-yellow mountains, wail of shadoof, wail of sakieh. Yes, I suppose there is a sameness, a sort of golden monotony, in this land pervaded with light and pervaded with sound.
I sailed up the Nile, delightful journeys on board the Nile boats, forgetting Miss Pinshon and mathematics, except when I rather pitied the ancient Egyptians for being so devoted to the latter; forgetting Magnolia, and all the home things I could not do and would have liked to do; forgetting everything, and rapt in the enjoyment of tropical airy, and Eastern skies; hearing the plash of water from the everlasting shadoof, and watching the tints and colours on the ranges of hills bordering the Nile valley.
And the sakieh raises its wailing, wayward voice and sings to the shadoof; and the shadoof sings to the sakieh; and the lifted water falls and flows away into the green wilderness of doura that, like a miniature forest, spreads on every hand to the low mountains, which do not perturb the spirit, as do the iron mountains of Algeria.
I know something of the shadoof of Egypt, the same arrangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs to those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the Puritan exile as it spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite.
At last we came gradually upon a gently undulating and beautiful district of country, enriched by the annual deposits of the Nile, where careful, intelligent cultivation produced its natural results. Here we began to see small herds of brown buffaloes, and peasants plying the irrigating buckets of the shadoof. Everything seemed verdant and thriving.
There is also a double shadoof worked by two men, and even steam pumps are used in extreme cases where the volume of water desired is unusually large. Steam, no doubt, is ultimately to drive out the shadoof, ancient as it is. We had a strange meeting at Cairo upon entering the breakfast-room the morning after our arrival. Whom should we be placed opposite to but my friend the Rev. Mr.
The primitive shadoof of native origin figured on a monument as far back as 3,300 years ago, and the more modern sakieh was apparently introduced in later times from Syria and Persia. The shadoof is used on small farms, and the sakieh is more often used for larger farms and plantations. These contrivances line the whole course of the Nile from Lower Egypt to above Khartum.
Along the banks of the river at short intervals, the shadoof man, or drawer of water, with his shadoof resembling an old-fashioned spring-pole or well sweep, drew up his dripping bucket and lowered it again, his only garment an apron at the waist. All through the day the red-brown man Stands on his perch in the red-brown bank; Waters never more gratefully ran, Cucumbers never more greedily drank.
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