Chapter 21

UP THE RIVER

Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence.
What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank
boredom of all who took part in the ritual.

'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '_You_
come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's
only part of their daily work to _them_. I expect,' he added, 'I should
have found it the same if--er--I'd gone on to the finish.'

He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at
its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance.

For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks,
carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt,
under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice
daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles
were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt
round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might
be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly
returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say
padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our
passengers were citizens of the United States--Egypt in winter ought to
be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory--there was no lack
of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a
placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of
information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men
meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit
cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of
the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of
their towns;--Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded
like a duel between two cash-registers.

One forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them,
and as Los Angeles spoke Rochester visualised. Next day I met an
Englishman from the Soudan end of things, very full of a little-known
railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and
therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. He was in the
full-tide of it when Los Angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor,
fascinated by the mere roll of numbers.

'Haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause.

He was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that
railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any
darn' thing that's being made anywheres,'

'So you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing Abyssinian cattle
into Cairo.'

'On the hoof?' One quick glance at the