THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



JUNE, 1865. 



EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 



BY P. W. PAIKHOLT, P.S.A. 

 {With a Coloured Plate.) 



Peksons who only know the East through the glowing pages? 

 of the poet and romancist, and who consequently believe it to 

 be entirely composed of sunshine, birds, flowers, palm-trees, 

 and poetry, would be greatly surprised, on taking the prosaic 

 view of the realities of life, that would be forced upon their 

 notice wherever they went as travellers. Crabbe has for ever 

 destroyed the romance of English village life by his stern and 

 truthful pictures of its privations ; but that of Egypt may be 

 said to resemble the worst phases our own would exhibit de- 

 prived of a poor-law, or the least honest government. 



Few persons look beyond the surface of things, and very 

 many travellers delight in dressing up their narratives accord- 

 ing to their own notions, taking only such facts as please them- 

 selves, or prop their preconceived theories, and persistently 

 ignoring all others. In this way we obtain delightful books, 

 utterly untrue. Equally blameable are others, belonging to* 

 the school of detraction, who have eyes only for evil. In both, 

 instances there is truth as a foundation for all ; but bane and. 

 antidote are not together, hence the two travellers can scarcely 

 be believed as describing the same thing. While drifting 

 down the Nile, the author endeavoured to embody these two 

 styles of narrative, as " a written picture " of a village he had 

 just visited, and in the hope of amusing the reader they ara 

 here transcribed : — 



an evening in Egypt. — (Couleur-de-rose.) 



The evening closed in, and our excellent captain prepared 



to make all snug for the night in a charming spot, near a 



village sheltered by groves of date-palms. Here the playful 



eddies of the ever-flowing Nile had formed a small bay, in 



VOL. VII. — no. v. y 



