_Leave Metrahenny--Come to the Island Halouan--False Pyramid--These buildings end--Sugar Canes--Ruins of Antinopolis--Reception there._
Our wind was fair and fresh, rather a little on our beam; when, in great spirits, we hoisted our main and fore-sails, leaving the point of Metrahenny, where our reader may think we have too long detained him. We saw the Pyramids of Saccara still S. W. of us; several villages on both sides of the river, but very poor and miserable; part of the ground on the east side had been overflowed, yet was not sown; a proof of the oppression and distress the husbandman suffers in the neighbourhood of Cairo, by the avarice and disagreement of the different officers of that motely incomprehensible government.
After sailing about two miles, we saw three men fishing in a very extraordinary manner and situation. They were on a raft of palm branches, supported on a float of clay jars, made fast together. The form was like an Isosceles triangle, or face of a Pyramid; two men, each provided with a casting net, stood at the two corners, and threw their net into the stream together; the third stood at the apex of the triangle, or third corner, which was foremost, and threw his net the moment the other two drew theirs out of the water. And this they repeated, in perfect time, and with surprising regularity. Our Rais thought we wanted to buy fish; and letting go his main-sail, ordered them on board with a great tone of superiority.
They were in a moment alongside of us; and one of them came on board, lashing his miserable raft to a rope at our stern. In recompence for their trouble, we gave them some large pieces of tobacco, and this transported them so much, that they brought us a basket, of several different kinds of fish, all small; excepting one laid on the top of the basket, which was a clear salmon-coloured fish, silvered upon its sides, with a shade of blue upon its back[101]. It weighed about 10 lib. and was most excellent, being perfectly firm and white like a perch. There are some of this kind 70 lib. weight. I examined their nets, they were rather of a smaller circumference than our casting nets in England; the weight, as far as I could guess, rather heavier in proportion than ours, the thread that composed them being smaller. I could not sufficiently admire their success, in a violent stream of deep water, such as the Nile; for the river was at least twelve feet deep where they were fishing, and the current very strong.