4 The Nile as a Sanatorium. 



THE NILE AS A SANATOKIUM. 



BY F. W. FAIKHOLT, F.S.A. 

 {With a Coloured Plate.) 



Facilities in travel, more -wonderful than the dreams of 

 ancient poets, await the modern voyager ; annihilating diffi- 

 culties of time and circumstance, smoothing his path in the 

 wildest regions, making his journey a mere question of time 

 and money. Nowhere can these facts be more forcibly felt 

 than when travelling on the railway between Alexandria and 

 Cairo. Seated in comfortable carriages of English construc- 

 tion, it is not difficult to imagine oneself on a dusty road, in a 

 hot day, going through Lincolnshire ; but a glance through 

 the windows over the flat land of the Delta, shows that we are 

 flying through a primitive land where the very existence of 

 a railway seems an anomaly. Fields of cotton and maize, 

 groups of palms, clusters of mud hovels, some gaily painted, 

 tell of a strange country. Groups of natives in dresses with 

 which we have only been familiar in pictures or on the stage, 

 occupy the road, which runs close by the railway the whole 

 distance. Long lines of lazy-paced camels, or active herds of 

 sharp and useful asses, mix with the rest, giving life and variety 

 to a scene without one European feature in it. 



This ease of transit and the constant recommendation of 

 the climate of the Nile by eminent English medical practi- 

 tioners, as a means of soothing, allaying, or even curing disease, 

 has induced so great an accession of travellers that the country 

 has been much enriched thereby, and places that a quarter of a 

 century since were rigidly barred to the stranger, now gladly 

 open their portals at the bidding of infidel gold. When it is 

 remembered that more than two hundred boats usually ascend 

 the river from Cairo every winter, returning there after three 

 or four months' transit ; that these boats are native boats hired 

 at an extravagant rate, chiefly victualled by natives, and include 

 a crew of from fourteen to sixteen men, and that all things are 

 charged to Europeans at nearly double what natives would pay, 

 it may be readily understood that whatever hate to the infidel 

 may warm the heart of the Egyptian true believer, the greed 

 of gain will induce him to keep a placid, smiling countenance. 



Still, health when lost is cheaply re-bought at any price. 

 It is the object of this paper to consider this 'question of the 

 Nile as a watering-place for invalids, and to put before the 

 would-be traveller in search of health a simple statement of 

 facts, that he may be in a fair position to judge for himself if 



