dahabiya

I remember those clear evenings when, after the peaceful navigation of the day, I used to stop and draw up my dahabiya to the bank of the river.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

It is there, it seems, where we must stop our dahabiya in order to proceed to the fabulous palace which the rising sun has just disclosed to us.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

The waters of the Nile being already low my dahabiya -- delayed by strandings -- had not been able to reach Luxor, and we had moored ourselves, as the darkness began to fall, at a casual spot on the bank.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

How shall I find a quiet place for my dahabiya, where the functionaries of Messrs. Cook will not come to disturb me?

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

It is necessary to proceed farther and for the halt of the night to seek an obscure hamlet, a silent recess, where we may moor our dahabiya against the venerable earth of the bank.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

Whoever has journeyed in a dahabiya up the old river will remember this song of the water-drawers, with its accompaniment, in slow cadence, of creakings of wet wood.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

But the classic expedition by dahabiya, the ascent of the river from Cairo to Nubia, will soon have ceased to be worth making.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

One may travel for league after league along this slimy water and make head for days and weeks against its current -- which glides everlastingly past the dahabiya, in little hurrying waves -- without seeing this warm, fecundating river, compared with which our rivers of France are mere negligible streams, either diminish or increase or hasten.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

I set out from Luxor, where for many days my dahabiya had slumbered against the bank of the Nile.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886

Leaving the cosmopolitan town of modern Cairo, the iron bridges, and the pretentious hotels, with their flaunting inscriptions, it imparts a sense of sudden peacefulness to pass along the large and rapid waters of this river, between the curtains of palm-trees on the banks, borne by a dahabiya where one is master and, if one likes, may be alone.

Egypt (La Mort de Philae) Pierre Loti 1886