Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 1 (of 5) / In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Date: 2017-02-17T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Nile River; Ethiopia -- Description and travel; Egypt -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Ethiopia -- History

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Title: Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 1 (of 5)

Author: James Bruce

Release date: February 17, 2017 [eBook #54180]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE, VOLUME 1 (OF 5) ***

TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER THE
SOURCE OF THE NILE,
In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773.
IN FIVE VOLUMES.
BY JAMES BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, ESQ. F. R. S.
VOL. I.

Opus aggredior opimum casibus, atrox prœliis, discors seditionibus,
Ipsâ etiam pace sœvum. | Tacit. Lib. iv. Ann.

EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY J. RUTHVEN,
FOR G. G. J. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW,
LONDON.

M.DCC.XC.

TO THE
KING.

SIR,

The study and knowledge of the Globe, for very natural and obvious reasons, seem, in all ages, to have been the principal and favourite pursuit of great Princes; perhaps they were, at certain periods, the very sources of that greatness.

But as Pride, Ambition, and an immoderate thirst of Conquest, were the motives of these researches, no real advantage could possibly accrue to mankind in general, from inquiries proceeding upon such deformed and noxious principles.

In later times, which have been accounted more enlightened, still a worse motive succeeded to that of ambition; Avarice led the way in all expeditions, cruelty and oppression followed: to discover and to destroy seemed to mean the same thing; and, what was still more extraordinary, the innocent sufferer was stiled the Barbarian; while the bloody, lawless invader, flattered himself with the name of Christian.

With Your Majesty‘s reign, which, on many accounts, will for ever be a glorious æra in the annals of Britain, began the emancipation of discovery from the imputation of cruelty and crimes.

It was a golden age, which united humanity and science, exempted men of liberal minds and education, employed in the noblest of all occupations, that of exploring the distant parts of the Globe, from being any longer degraded, and rated as little better than the Buccaneer, or pirate, because they had, till then, in manners been nearly similar.

It is well known, that an uncertainty had still remained concerning the form, quantity, and consistence of the earth; and this, in spite of all their abilities and improvement, met philosophers in many material investigations and delicate calculations. Universal benevolence, a distinguishing quality of Your Majesty, led You to take upon Yourself the direction of the mode, and furnishing the means of removing these doubts and difficulties for the common benefit of mankind, who were all alike interested in them.

By Your Majesty‘s command, for these great purposes, Your fleets penetrated into unknown seas, fraught with subjects, equal, if not superior, in courage, science, and preparation, to any that ever before had navigated the ocean.

But they possessed other advantages, in which, beyond all comparison, they excelled former discoverers. In place of hearts confused with fantastic notions of honour and emulation, which constantly led to bloodshed, theirs were filled with the most beneficent principles, with that noble persuasion, the foundation of all charity, not that all men are equal, but that they are all brethren; and that being superior to the savage in every acquirement, it was for that very reason their duty to set the example of mildness, compassion, and long-suffering to a fellow-creature, because the weakest, and, by no fault of his own, the least instructed, and always perfectly in their power.

Thus, without the usual, and most unwarrantable excesses, the overturning ancient, hereditary kingdoms, without bloodshed, or trampling under foot the laws of society and hospitality, Your Majesty‘s subjects, braver, more powerful and instructed than those destroyers of old, but far more just, generous, and humane, erected in the hearts of an unknown people, while making these discoveries, an empire founded on peace and love of the subject, perfectly consistent with those principles by which Your Majesty has always professed to govern; more firm and durable than those established by bolts and chains, and all those black devices of tyrants not even known by name, in Your happy and united, powerful and flourishing kingdoms.

While these great objects were steadily conducting to the end which the capacity of those employed, the justness of the measures on which they were planned, and the constant care and support of the Public promised, there still remained an expedition to be undertaken which had been long called for, by philosophers of all nations, in vain.

Fleets and armies were useless; even the power of Britain, with the utmost exertion, could afford no protection there, the place was so unhappily cut off from the rest of mankind, that even Your Majesty‘s name and virtues had never yet been known or heard of there.

The situation of the country was barely known, no more: placed under the most inclement skies, in part surrounded by impenetrable forests, where, from the beginning, the beasts had established a sovereignty uninterrupted by man, in part by vast deserts of moving sands, where nothing was to be found that had the breath of life, these terrible barriers inclosed men more bloody and ferocious than the beasts themselves, and more fatal to travellers than the sands that encompassed them; and thus shut up, they had been long growing every day more barbarous, and defied, by rendering it dangerous, the curiosity of travellers of every nation.

Although the least considerable of your Majesty‘s subjects, yet not the least desirous of proving my duty by promoting your Majesty‘s declared plan of discovery as much as the weak endeavours of a single person could, unprotected, forlorn, and alone, or at times associated to beggars and banditti, as they offered, I undertook this desperate journey, and did not turn an ell out of my proposed way till I had completed it: It was the first discovery attempted in Your Majesty‘s reign. From Egypt I penetrated into this country, through Arabia on one side, passing through melancholy and dreary deserts, ventilated with poisonous winds, and glowing with eternal sun-beams, whose names are as unknown in geography as are those of the antediluvian world. In the six years employed in this survey I described a circumference whose greater axis comprehended twenty-two degrees of the meridian, in which dreadful circle was contained all that is terrible to the feelings, prejudicial to the health, or fatal to the life of man.

In laying the account of these Travels at Your Majesty‘s feet, I humbly hope I have shewn to the world of what value the efforts of every individual of Your Majesty‘s subjects may be; that numbers are not always necessary to the performance of great and brilliant actions, and that no difficulties or dangers are unsurmountable to a heart warm with affection and duty to his Sovereign, jealous of the honour of his master, and devoted to the glory of his country, now, under Your Majesty‘s wise, merciful, and just reign, deservedly looked up to as Queen, of Nations. I am,

SIR,

YOUR MAJESTY’s

Most faithful Subject,

And most dutiful Servant,

JAMES BRUCE.

INTRODUCTION.

However little the reader may be conversant with ancient histories, in all probability he will know, or have heard this much in general, that the attempt to reach the Source of the Nile, the principal subject of this publication, from very early ages interested all scientific nations: Nor was this great object feebly prosecuted, as men, the first for wisdom, for learning, and spirit (a most necessary qualification in this undertaking) very earnestly interested themselves about the discovery of the sources of this famous river, till disappointment followed disappointment so fast, and consequences produced other consequences so fatal, that the design was entirely given over, as having, upon the fairest trials, appeared impracticable. Even conquerors at the head of immense armies, who had first discovered and then subdued great part of the world, were forced to lower their tone here, and dared scarcely to extend their advances toward this discovery, beyond the limits of bare wishes. At length, if it was not forgot, it was however totally abandoned from the causes above mentioned, and with it all further topographical inquiries in that quarter.

Upon the revival of learning and of the arts, the curiosity of mankind had returned with unabated vigour towards this object, but all attempts had met with the same difficulties as before, till, in the beginning of his Majesty’s reign, the unconquerable spirit raised in this nation by a long and glorious war, did very naturally resolve itself into a spirit of adventure and inquiry at the return of peace, one of the first-fruits of which was the discovery of these coy fountains1, till now concealed from the world in general.

The great danger and difficulties of this journey were well known, but it was likewise known that it had been completely performed without disappointment or misfortune, that it had been attended with an apparatus of books and instruments, which seldom accompanies the travels of an individual; yet sixteen years had elapsed without any account appearing, which seemed to mark an unusual self-denial, or an absolute indifference towards the wishes of the public.

Men, according to their different genius and dispositions, attempted by different ways to penetrate the cause of this silence. The candid, the learned, that species of men, in fine, for whom only it is worth while to travel or to write, supposing (perhaps with some degree of truth) that an undeserved and unexpected neglect and want of patronage had been at least part of the cause, adopted a manner, which, being the most liberal, they thought likely to succeed: They endeavoured to entice me by holding out a prospect of a more generous disposition in the minds of future ministers, when I should shew the claim I had upon them by having promoted the glory of the nation. Others, whom I mention only for the sake of comparison, below all notice on any other ground, attempted to succeed in this by anonymous letters and paragraphs in the newspapers; and thereby absurdly endeavoured to oblige me to publish an account of those travels, which they affected at the same time to believe I had never performed.

But it is with very great pleasure and readiness I do now declare, that no fantastical or deformed motive, no peevish disregard, much less contempt of the judgment of the world, had any part in the delay which has happened to this publication. I look upon their impatience to see this work as an earnest of their approbation of it, and a very great honour done to me; and if I had still any motive to defer submitting these observations to their judgment, it could only be that I might employ that interval in polishing and making them more worthy of their perusal. The candid and instructed public, the impartial and unprejudiced foreigner, are tribunals merit should naturally appeal to; it is there it always has found sure protection against the influence of cabals, and the virulent strokes of malice, envy, and ignorance.

It is with a view to give every possible information to my reader, that in this introduction I lay before him the motives upon which these travels were undertaken, the order and manner in which they were executed, and some account of the work itself, as well of the matter as the distribution of it.

Every one will remember that period, so glorious to Britain, the latter end of the ministry of the late Earl of Chatham. I was then returned from a tour through the greatest part of Europe, particularly through the whole of Spain and Portugal, between whom there then was an appearance of approaching war. I was about to retire to a small patrimony I had received from my ancestors, in order to embrace a life of study and reflection, nothing more active appearing then within my power, when chance threw me unexpectedly into a very short and very desultory conversation with Lord Chatham.

It was a few days after this that Mr Wood, then under-secretary of state, my very zealous and sincere friend, informed me that Lord Chatham intended to employ me upon a particular service; that, however, I might go down for a few weeks to my own country to settle my affairs, but by all means to be ready upon a call. Nothing could be more flattering to me than such an offer; when so young, to be thought worthy by Lord Chatham of any employment, was doubly a preferment. No time was lost on my side; but, just after my receiving orders to return to London, his Lordship had gone to Bath, and resigned his office.

This disappointment, which was the more sensible to me, that it was the first I had met in public life, was promised to be made up to me by Lord Egremont and Mr George Grenville. The former had been long my friend, but unhappily he was then far gone in a lethargic indisposition, which threatened, and did very soon put a period to his existence. With Lord Egremont’s death my expectations vanished. Further particulars are unnecessary, but I hope that at least, in part, they remain in that breast where they naturally ought to be, and where I shall ever think, not to be forgotten, is to be rewarded.

Seven or eight months were past in an expensive and fruitless attendance in London, when Lord Halifax was pleased, not only to propose, but to plan for me a journey of considerable importance, and which was to take up several years. His Lordship said, that nothing could be more ignoble, than that, at such a time of life, at the height of my reading, health, and activity, I should, as it were, turn peasant, and voluntarily bury myself in obscurity and idleness; that though war was now drawing fast to an end, full as honourable a competition remained among men of spirit, which should acquit themselves best in the dangerous line of useful adventure and discovery. “He observed, that the coast of Barbary, which might be said to be just at our door, was as yet but partially explored by Dr Shaw, who had only illustrated (very judiciously indeed) the geographical labours of Sanson2; that neither Dr Shaw nor Sanson had been, or had pretended to be, capable of giving the public any detail of the large and magnificent remains of ruined architecture which they both vouch to have seen in great quantities, and of exquisite elegance and perfection, all over the country. Such had not been their study, yet such was really the taste that was required in the present times. He wished therefore that I should be the first, in the reign just now beginning, to set an example of making large additions to the royal collection, and he pledged himself to be my supporter and patron, and to make good to me, upon this additional merit, the promises which had been held forth to me by former ministers for other services.”

The discovery of the Source of the Nile was also a subject of these conversations, but it was always mentioned to me with a kind of diffidence, as if to be expected from a more experienced traveller. Whether this was but another way of exciting me to the attempt I shall not say; but my heart in that instant did me justice to suggest, that this, too, was either to be atchieved by me, or to remain, as it had done for these last two thousand years, a defiance to all travellers, and an opprobrium to geography.

Fortune seemed to enter into this scheme. At the very instant, Mr Aspinwall, very cruelly and ignominiously treated by the Dey of Algiers, had resigned his consulship, and Mr Ford, a merchant, formerly the Dey’s acquaintance, was named in his place. Mr Ford was appointed, and dying a few days after, the consulship became vacant. Lord Halifax pressed me to accept of this, as containing all sort of conveniencies for making the proposed expedition.

This favourable event finally determined me. I had all my life applied unweariedly, perhaps with more love than talent, to drawing, the practice of mathematics, and especially that part necessary to astronomy. The transit of Venus was at hand. It was certainly known that it would be visible once at Algiers, and there was great reason to expect it might be twice. I had furnished myself with a large apparatus of instruments, the completest of their kind for the observation. In the choice of these I had been assisted by my friend Admiral Campbell, and Mr Russel secretary to the Turkey Company; every other necessary had been provided in proportion. It was a pleasure now to know that it was not from a rock or a wood, but from my own house at Algiers, I could deliberately take measures to place myself in the list of men of science of all nations, who were then preparing for the same scientific purpose.

Thus prepared, I set out for Italy, through France; and though it was in time of war, and some strong objections had been made to particular passports solicited by our government from the French secretary of state, Monsieur de Choiseul most obligingly waved all such exceptions with regard to me, and most politely assured me, in a letter accompanying my passport, that those difficulties did not in any shape regard me, but that I was perfectly at liberty to pass through, or remain in France, with those that accompanied me, without limiting their number, as short or as long a time as should be agreeable to me.

On my arrival at Rome I received orders to proceed to Naples, there to await his Majesty’s further commands. Sir Charles Saunders, then with a fleet before Cadiz, had orders to visit Malta before he returned to England. It was said, that the grand-master of that Order had behaved so improperly to Mr Hervey (afterwards Lord Bristol) in the beginning of the war, and so partially and unjustly between the two nations during the course of it, that an explanation on our part was become necessary. The grand-master no sooner heard of my arrival at Naples, than guessing the errand, he sent off Cavalier Mazzini to London, where he at once made his peace and his compliments to his Majesty upon his accession to the throne.

Nothing remained now but to take possession of my consulship. I returned without loss of time to Rome, and thence to Leghorn, where, having embarked on board the Montreal man of war, I proceeded to Algiers.

While at Naples, I received from slaves, redeemed from the province of Constantina, accounts of magnificent ruins they had seen while traversing that country in the camp with their master the Bey. I saw the absolute necessity there was for assistance, without which it was impossible for any one man, however diligent and qualified, to do any thing but bewilder himself. All my endeavours, however, had hitherto been unsuccessful to persuade any Italian to put himself wilfully into the hands of a people constantly looked upon by them in no better light than pirates.

While I was providing myself with instruments at London, I thought of one, which, though in a very small form and imperfect state, had been of great entertainment and use to me in former travels; this is called a Camera Obscura, the idea of which I had first taken from the Spectacle de la Nature of the Abbé Vertot. But the present one was constructed upon my own principles; I intrusted the execution of the glasses to Messrs Nairne and Blunt, Mathematical instrument-makers opposite to the Exchange, whom I had usually employed upon such occasions, and with whose capacity and fidelity I had, after frequent trials, the greatest reason to be satisfied.

This, when finished, became a large and expensive instrument; but being separated into two pieces, the top and bottom, and folding compactly with hinges, was neither heavy, cumbersome, nor inconvenient, and the charge incurred by the additions and alterations was considerably more than compensated by the advantages which accrued from them. Its body was an hexagon of six-feet diameter, with a conical top; in this, as in a summer-house, the draughtsman sat unseen, and performed his drawing. There is now, I see, one carried as a show about the streets, of nearly the same dimensions, called a Delineator, made on the same principles, and seems to be an exact imitation of mine.

By means of this instrument, a person of but a moderate skill in drawing, but habituated to the effect of it, could do more work, and in a better taste, whilst executing views of ruined architecture, in one hour, than the readiest draughtsman, so unassisted, could do in seven; for, with proper care, patience, and attention, not only the elevation, and every part of it, is taken with the utmost truth and justest proportion, but the light and shade, the actual breaches as they stand, vignettes, or little ornamental shrubs, which generally hang from and adorn the projections and edges of the several members, are finely expressed, and beautiful lessons given, how to transport them with effect to any part where they appear to be wanting.

Another greater and inestimable advantage is, that all landscapes, and views of the country, which constitute the background of the picture, are real, and in the reality shew, very strikingly indeed, in such a country as Africa, abounding in picturesque scenes, how much nature is superior to the creation of the warmest genius or imagination. Momentary masses of clouds, especially the heavier ones, of stormy skies, will be fixed by two or three unstudied strokes of a pencil; and figures and dress, in the most agreeable attitudes and folds, leave traces that a very ordinary hand might speedily make his own, or, what is still better, enable him with these elements to use the assistance of the best artist he can find in every line of painting, and, by the help of these, give to each the utmost possible perfection; a practice which I have constantly preferred and followed with success.

It is true, this instrument has a fundamental defect in the laws of optics; but this is obvious, and known unavoidably to exist; and he must be a very ordinary genius indeed, and very lame, both in theory and practice, that cannot apply the necessary correction, with little trouble, and in a very short time.

I was so well pleased with the first trial of this instrument at Julia Cæsarea, now Shershell, about 60 miles from Algiers, that I commissioned a smaller one from Italy, which, though negligently and ignorantly made, did me this good service, that it enabled me to save my larger and more perfect one, in my unfortunate shipwreck at Bengazi3, the ancient Berenice, on the shore of Cyrenaicum; and this was of infinite service to me in my journey to Palmyra.

Thus far a great part of my wants were well supplied, at least such as could be foreseen, but I still laboured under many. Besides that single province of ruined architecture, there remained several others of equal importance to the public. The natural history of the country, the manners and languages of the inhabitants, the history of the heavens, by a constant observation of, and attention to which, a useful and intelligible map of the country could be obtained, were objects of the utmost consequence.

Packing and repacking, mounting and rectifying these instruments alone, besides the attention and time necessary in using them, required what would have occupied one man, if they had been continual, which they luckily were not, and he sufficiently instructed. I therefore endeavoured to procure such a number of assistants, that should each bear his share in these several departments; not one only, but three or four if possible. I was now engaged, and part of my pride was to shew, how easy a thing it was to disappoint the idle prophecies of the ignorant, that this expedition would be spent in pleasure, without any profit to the public. I wrote to several correspondents, Mr Lumisden, Mr Strange, Mr Byers, and others in different parts of Italy, acquainting them of my situation, and begging their assistance. These gentlemen kindly used their utmost endeavours, but in vain.

It is true, Mr Chalgrin, a young French student in architecture, accepted the proposal, and sent a neat specimen of rectilineal architecture. Even this gentleman might have been of some use, but his heart failed him; he would have wished the credit of the undertaking, without the fatigues of the journey. At last Mr Lumisden, by accident, heard of a young man who was then studying architecture at Rome, a native of Bologna, whose name was Luigi Balugani. I can appeal to Mr Lumisden, now in England, as to the extent of this person’s practice and knowledge, and that he knew very little when first sent to me. In the twenty months which he staid with me at Algiers, by assiduous application to proper subjects under my instruction, he became a very considerable help to me, and was the only one that ever I made use of, or that attended me for a moment, or ever touched one representation of architecture in any part of my journey. He contracted an incurable distemper in Palestine, and died after a long sickness, soon after I entered Ethiopia, after having suffered constant ill-health from the time he left Sidon.

While travelling in Spain, it was a thought which frequently suggested itself to me, how little informed the world yet was in the history of that kingdom and monarchy. The Moorish part in particular, when it was most celebrated for riches and for science, was scarcely known but from some romances or novels. It seemed an undertaking worthy of a man of letters to rescue this period from the oblivion or neglect under which it laboured. Materials were not wanting for this, as a considerable number of books remained in a neglected and almost unknown language, the Arabic. I endeavoured to find access to some of those Arabian manuscripts, an immense collection of which were every day perishing in the dust of the escurial, and was indulged with several conversations of Mr Wall, then minister, every one of which convinced me, that the objections to what I wished were founded so strongly in prejudice, that it was not even in his power to remove them.

All my success in Europe terminated in the acquisition of those few printed Arabic books that I had found in Holland, and these were rather biographers than general historians, and contained little in point of general information. The study of these, however, and of Maracci’s Koran, had made me a very tolerable Arab; a great field was opening before me in Africa to complete a collection of manuscripts, an opportunity which I did not neglect.

After a year spent at Algiers, constant conversation with the natives whilst abroad, and with my manuscripts within doors, had qualified me to appear in any part of the continent without the help of an interpreter. Ludolf4 had assured his readers, that the knowledge of any oriental language would soon enable them to acquire the Ethiopic, and I needed only the same number of books to have made my knowledge of that language go hand in hand with my attainments in the Arabic. My immediate prospect of setting out on my journey to the inland parts of Africa, had made me double my diligence; night and day there was no relaxation from these studies, although the acquiring any single language had never been with me either an object of time or difficulty.

At this instant, instead of obtaining the liberty I had solicited to depart, orders arrived from the king to expect his further commands at Algiers, and not to think of stirring from thence, till a dispute about passports was settled, in which I certainly had no concern, further than as it regarded me as his Majesty’s actual servant, for it had originated entirely from the neglect of the former consul’s letters directed to the secretary of state at home, before my coming to Algiers.

The island of Minorca had been taken by the French; and when the fort of St Philip surrendered by an article common to all capitulations, it was stipulated, that all papers found in the fort were to be delivered to the captors. It happened that among these was a number of blank Mediterranean passes, which fell therefore into the hands of the French, and the blanks were filled up by the French governor and secretary, who very naturally wished to embroil us with the Barbary states, it being then the time of war with France. They were sold to Spaniards, Neapolitans, and other enemies of the Barbary regencies. The check5 (the only proof that these pirates have of the vessels being a friend) agreed perfectly with the passport filled up by the French governor, but the captor seeing that the crew of these vessels were dark-coloured, wore mustachoes, and spoke no English, carried the vessel to Algiers, where the British consul detected the fraud, and was under the disagreeable necessity of surrendering so many Christians into slavery in the hands of their enemies.

One or two successful discoveries of this kind made the hungry pirates believe that the passport of every vessel they met with, even those of Gibraltar, were false in themselves, and issued to protect their enemies. Violent commotions were excited amongst the soldiery, abetted under hand by several of the neutral consuls there. By every occasion I had wrote home, but in vain, and the Dey could never be persuaded of this, as no answer arrived. Government was occupied with winding up matters at the end of a war, and this neglect of my letters often brought me into great danger. At last a temporary remedy was found, whether it originated from home, or whether it was invented by the governor of Mahon and Gibraltar, was never communicated to me, but a surer and more effectual way of having all the nation at Algiers massacred could certainly not have been hit upon.

Square pieces of common paper, about the size of a quarter-sheet, were sealed with the arms of the governor of Mahon, sometimes with red, sometimes with black wax, as the family circumstances of that officer required. These were signed by his signature, countersigned by that of his secretary, and contained nothing more than a bare and simple declaration, that the vessel, the bearer of it, was British property. These papers were called Passavants. The cruiser, uninstructed in this when he boarded a vessel, asked for his Mediterranean pass. The mailer answered, He had none, he had only a passavant, and shewed the paper, which having no check, the cruiser brought him and his vessel as a good prize into Algiers. Upon my claiming them, as was my duty, I was immediately called before the Dey and divan, and had it not been from personal regard the Turks always shewed me, I should not have escaped the insults of the soldiery in my way to the palace. The Dey asked me, upon my word as a Christian and an Englishman, whether these written passes were according to treaty, or whether the word passavant was to be found in any of our treaties with the Moorish regencies? All equivocation was useless. I answered, That these passes were not according to treaty; that the word passavant was not in any treaty I knew of with any of the Barbary states; that it was a measure necessity had created, by Minorca’s falling into the hands of the French, which had never before been the case, but that the remedy would be found as soon as the greater business of settling the general peace gave the British ministry time to breathe. Upon this the Dey, holding several passavants in his hand, answered, with great emotion, in these memorable terms, “The British government know that we can neither read nor write, no not even our own language; we are ignorant soldiers and sailors, robbers if you will, though we do not wish to rob you; but war is our trade, and we live by that only. Tell me how my cruisers are to know that all these different writings and seals are Governor Mostyn’s, or Governor Johnston’s, and not the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s, or Barcelot’s, captain of the king of Spain’s cruisers?” It was impossible to answer a question so simple and so direct. I touched then the instant of being cut to pieces by the soldiery, or of having the whole British Mediterranean trade carried into the Barbary ports. The candid and open manner in which I had spoken, the regard and esteem the Dey always had shewed me, and some other common methods with the members of the regency, staved off the dangerous moment, and were the means of procuring time. Admiralty passes at last came out, and the matter was happily adjusted; but it was an affair the least pleasing and the least profitable, and one of the most dangerous in which I was ever engaged.

All this disagreeable interval I had given to study, and making myself familiar with every thing that could be necessary to me in my intended journey. The king’s surgeon at Algiers, Mr Ball, a man of considerable merit in his profession, and who lived in my family, had obtained leave to return home. Before I was deprived of this assistance, I had made a point of drawing from it all the advantages possible for my future travels. Mr Ball did not grudge his time or pains in the instruction he gave me. I had made myself master of the art of bleeding, which I found consisted only in a little attention, and in overcoming that diffidence which the ignorance how the parts lie occasions. Mr Ball had shewn me the manner of applying several sorts of bandages, and gave me an idea of dressing some kinds of sores and wounds. Frequent and very useful lessons, which I also received from my friend Doctor Russel at Aleppo, contributed greatly to improve me afterwards in the knowledge of physic and surgery. I had a small chest of the most efficacious medicines, a dispensary to teach me to compound others that were needful, and some short treatises upon the acute diseases of several countries within the tropics. Thus instructed, I flatter myself, no offence I hope, I did not occasion a greater mortality among the Mahometans and Pagans abroad, than may be attributed to some of my brother physicians among their fellow Christians at home.

The rev. Mr Tonyn, the king’s chaplain at Algiers, was absent upon leave before I arrived in that regency. The Protestant shipmasters who came into the port, and had need of spiritual assistance, found here a blank that was not easily filled up; I should therefore have been obliged to take upon myself the disagreeable office of burying the dead, and the more chearful, though more troublesome one, of marrying and baptizing the living; matters that were entirely out of my way, but to which the Roman Catholic clergy would contribute no assistance.

There was a Greek priest, a native of Cyprus, a very venerable man, past seventy years of age, who had attached himself to me from my first arrival in Algiers. This man was of a very social and chearful temper, and had, besides, a more than ordinary knowledge of his own language. I had taken him to my house as my chaplain, read Greek with him daily, and spoke it at times when I could receive his correction and instruction. It was not that I, at this time of day, needed to learn Greek, I had long understood that language perfectly; what I wanted was the pronunciation, and reading by accent, of which the generality of English scholars are perfectly ignorant, and to which it is owing that they apprehend the Greek spoken and written in the Archipelago is materially different from that language which we read in books, and which a few weeks conversation in the islands will teach them it is not. I had in this, at that time, no other view than mere convenience during my passage through the Archipelago, which I intended to visit, without any design of continuing or studying there: But the reader will afterwards see of what very material service this acquaintance was to me, so very essential, indeed, that it contributed more to the success of my views in Abyssinia than any other help that I obtained throughout the whole of it. This man’s name was Padre Christophoro, or Father Christopher. At my leaving Algiers, finding himself less conveniently situated, he went to Egypt, to Cairo, where he was promoted to be second in rank under Mark, patriarch of Alexandria, where I afterwards found him.

Business of a private nature had at this time obliged me to present myself at Mahon, a gentleman having promised to meet me there; I therefore sailed from Algiers, having taken leave of the Dey, who furnished me with every letter that I asked, with strong and peremptory orders to all the officers of his own dominions, pressing recommendatory ones to the Bey of Tunis and Tripoli, states independent, indeed, of the Dey of Algiers, but over which the circumstances of the times had given him a considerable influence.

The violent disputes about the passports had rather raised than lowered me in his esteem. The letters were given with the best grace possible, and the orders contained in them were executed most exactly in all points during my whole stay in Barbary. Being disappointed in the meeting I looked for at Mahon, I remained three days in Quarantine Island, though General Townsend, then deputy-governor, by every civility and attention in his power, strove to induce me to come on shore, that he might have an opportunity of shewing me still more attention and politeness.

My mind being now full of more agreeable ideas than what had for some time past occupied it, I sailed in a small vessel from Port Mahon, and, having a fair wind, in a short time made the coast of Africa, at a cape, or headland, called Ras el Hamra6, and landed at Bona, a considerable town, the ancient Aphrodisium7, built from the ruins of Hippo Regius8, from which it is only two miles distant. It stands on a large plain, part of which seems to have been once overflowed by the sea. Its trade consists now in the exportation of wheat, when, in plentiful years, that trade is permitted by the government of Algiers. I had a delightful voyage close down the coast, and passed the small island Tabarca9, lately a fortification of the Genoese, now in the hands of the regency of Tunis, who took it by surprise, and made all the inhabitants slaves. The island is famous for a coral fishery, and along the coast are immense forests of large beautiful oaks, more than sufficient to supply the necessities of all the maritime powers in the Levant, if the quality of the wood be but equal to the size and beauty of the tree.

From Tabarca I sailed and anchored at Biserta, the Hippozaritus10 of antiquity, and thence went to pay a visit to Utica, out of respect to the memory of Cato, without having sanguine expectations of meeting any thing remarkable there, and accordingly I found nothing memorable but the name. It may be said nothing remains of Utica but a heap of rubbish and of small stones; without the city the trenches and approaches of the ancient besiegers are still very perfect.

After doubling Cape Carthage I anchored before the fortress of the Goletta, a place now of no strength, notwithstanding the figure it made at the time of the expedition of Charles V. Rowing along the bay, between the Cape and this anchorage, I saw several buildings and columns still standing under water, by which it appeared that old Carthage had owed part of its destruction to the sea, and hence likewise may be inferred the absurdity of any attempt to represent the site of ancient Carthage upon paper. It has been, besides, at least ten times destroyed, so that the stations, where its first citizens fell fighting for their liberty, are covered deep in rubbish, far from being trodden upon by those unworthy slaves who now are its masters.

Tunis11 is twelve miles distant from this: It is a large and flourishing city. The people are more civilized than in Algiers, and the government milder, but the climate is very far from being so good. Tunis is low, hot, and damp, and destitute of good water, with which Algiers is supplied from a thousand springs.

I delivered my letters from the Bey, and obtained permission to visit the country in whatever direction I should please. I took with me a French renegado, of the name of Osman, recommended to me by Monsieur Bartheleny de Saizieux, consul of France to that state; a gentleman whose conversation and friendship furnish me still with some of the most agreeable reflections that result from my travels. With Osman I took ten spahi, or horse-soldiers, well armed with firelocks, and pistols, excellent horsemen, and, as far as I could ever discern upon the few occasions that presented, as eminent for cowardice, at least, as they were for horsemanship. This was not the case with Osman, who was very brave, but he needed a sharp look-out, that he did not often embroil us where there was access to women or to wine.

One of the most agreeable favours I received was from a lady of the Bey, who furnished me with a two-wheeled covered cart, exactly like those of the bakers in England. In this I secured my quadrant and telescope from the weather, and at times put likewise some of the feeblest of my attendants. Besides these I had ten servants, two of whom were Irish, who having deserted from the Spanish regiments in Oran, and being British born, though slaves, as being Spanish soldiers, were given to me at parting by the Dey of Algiers.

The coast along which I had sailed was part of Numidia and Africa Proper, and there I met with no ruins. I resolved now to distribute my inland journey through the kingdom of Algiers and Tunis. In order to comprehend the whole, I first set out along the river Majerda, through a country perfectly cultivated and inhabited by people under the controul of government, this river was the ancient Bagrada12.

After passing a triumphal arch of bad taste at Basil-bab, I came the next day to Thugga13, perhaps more properly called Tucca, and by the inhabitants Dugga. The reader in this part should have Doctor Shaw’s Work before him, my map of the journey not being yet published; and, indeed, after Shaw’s, it is scarcely necessary to those who need only an itinerary, as, besides his own observations, he had for basis those of Sanson.

I found at Dugga a large scene of ruins, among which one building was easily distinguishable. It was a large temple of the Corinthian order, all of Parian marble, the columns fluted, the cornice highly ornamented in the very best style of sculpture. In the tympanum is an eagle flying to heaven, with a human figure upon his back, which, by the many inscriptions that are still remaining, seems to be intended for that of Trajan, and the apotheosis of that emperor to be the subject, the temple having been erected by Adrian to that prince, his benefactor and predecessor. I spent fifteen days upon the architecture of this temple without feeling the smallest disgust, or forming a wish to finish it; it is, with all its parts, still unpublished in my collection. These beautiful and magnificent remains of ancient taste and greatness, so easily reached in perfect safety, by a ride along the Bagrada, full as pleasant and as safe as along the Thames between London and Oxford, were at Tunis totally unknown. Doctor Shaw has given the situation of the place, without saying one word about any thing curious it contains.

From Dugga I continued the upper road to Keff14, formerly called Sicca Venerea, or Venerea ad Siccam, through the pleasant plains inhabited by the Welled Yagoube. I then proceeded to Hydra, the Thunodrunum15 of the ancients. This is a frontier place between the two kingdoms of Algiers and Tunis, as Keff is also. It is inhabited by a tribe of Arabs, whose chief is a marabout, or saint; they are called Welled Sidi Boogannim, the “sons of the father of flocks.”

These Arabs are immensely rich, paying no tribute either to Tunis or Algiers. The pretence for this exemption is a very singular one. By the institution of their founder, they are obliged to live upon lions flesh for their daily food, as far as they can procure it; with this they strictly comply, and, in consideration of the utility of this their vow, they are not taxed, like the other Arabs, with payments to the state. The consequence of this life is, that they are excellent and well-armed horsemen, exceedingly bold and undaunted hunters. It is generally imagined, indeed, that these considerations, and that of their situation on the frontier, have as much influence in procuring them exemption from taxes, as the utility of their vow.

There is at Thunodrunum a triumphal arch, which Dr Shaw thinks is more remarkable for its size than for its taste or execution; but the size is not extraordinary; on the other hand, both taste and execution are admirable. It is, with all its parts, in the King’s collection, and, taking the whole together, is one of the most beautiful landscapes in black and white now existing. The distance, as well as the fore-ground, are both from nature, and exceedingly well calculated for such representation.

Before Dr Shaw’s travels first acquired the celebrity they have maintained ever since, there was a circumstance that very nearly ruined their credit. He had ventured to say in conversation, that these Welled Sidi Boogannim were eaters of lions, and this was considered at Oxford, the university where he had studied, as a traveller’s license on the part of the Doctor. They took it as a subversion of the natural order of things, that a man should eat a lion, when it had long passed as almost the peculiar province of the lion to eat man. The Doctor flinched under the sagacity and severity of this criticism; he could not deny that the Welled Sidi Boogannim did eat lions, as he had repeatedly said; but he had not yet published his travels, and therefore left it out of his narrative, and only hinted at it after in his appendix.

With all submission to that learned university, I will not dispute the lion’s title to eating men; but, since it is not founded upon patent, no consideration will make me stifle the merit of Welled Sidi Boogannim, who have turned the chace upon the enemy. It is an historical fact; and I will not suffer the public to be misled by a misrepresentation of it; on the contrary, I do aver, in the face of these fantastic prejudices, that I have ate the flesh of lions, that is, part of three lions, in the tents of Welled Sidi Boogannim. The first was a he-lion, lean, tough, smelling violently of musk, and had the taste which, I imagine, old horse-flesh would have. The second was a lioness, which they said had that year been barren. She had a considerable quantity of fat within her; and, had it not been for the musky smell that the flesh had, though in a lesser degree than the former, and for our foolish prejudices against it, the meat, when broiled, would not have been very bad. The third was a lion’s whelp, six or seven months old; it tasted, upon the whole, the worst of the three. I confess I have no desire of being again served with such a morsel; but the Arabs, a brutish and ignorant folk, will, I fear, notwithstanding the disbelief of the university of Oxford, continue to eat lions as long as they exist.

From Hydra I passed to the ancient Tipasa16, another Roman colony, going by the same name to this day. Here is a most extensive scene of ruins. There is a large temple, and a four-faced triumphal arch of the Corinthian order, in the very best taste; both of which are now in the collection of the King.

I here crossed the river Myskianah, which falls into the Bagrada, and continuing through one of the most beautiful and best-cultivated countries in the world, I entered the eastern province of Algiers, now called Constantina, anciently the Mauritania Cæsariensis, whose capital, Constantina, is the ancient metropolis of Syphax. It was called Cirta17, and, after Julius Cæsar’s conquest, Cirta Sittianorum, from Caius Sittius who first took it. It is situated upon a high, gloomy, tremendous precipice. Part only of its aqueduct remains: the water, which once was carried into the town, now spills itself from the top of the cliff into a chasm, or narrow valley, above four hundred feet below. The view of it is in the King’s collection; a band of robbers, the figures which adorn it, is a composition from imagination; all the rest is perfectly real.

The Bey was at this time in his camp, as he was making war with the Hanneishah, the most powerful tribe of Arabs in that province. After having refreshed myself in the Bey’s palace I set out to Seteef, the Sitifi18 of antiquity, the capital of Mauritania Sitifensis, at some distance from which I joined the Bey’s army, consisting of about 12,000 men, with four pieces of cannon. After staying a few days with the Bey, and obtaining his letters of recommendation, I proceeded to Taggou-zainah, anciently Diana Veteranorum19, as we learn by an inscription on a triumphal arch of the Corinthian order which I found there.

From Taggou-zainah I continued my journey nearly straight S. E. and arrived at Medrashem, a superb pile of building, the sepulchre of Syphax, and the other kings of Numidia, and where, as the Arabs believe, were also deposited the treasures of those kings. A drawing of this monument is still unpublished in my collection. Advancing still to the S. E. through broken ground and some very barren valleys, which produced nothing but game, I came to Jibbel Aurez, the Aurasius Mons of the middle age. This is not one mountain, but an assemblage of many of the most craggy steeps in Africa.

Here I met, to my great astonishment, a tribe, who, if I cannot say they were fair like English, were of a shade lighter than that of the inhabitants of any country to the southward of Britain. Their hair also was red, and their eyes blue. They are a savage and independent people; it required address to approach them with safety, which, however, I accomplished, (the particulars would take too much room for this place), was well received, and at perfect liberty to do whatever I pleased. This tribe is called Neardie. Each of the tribe, in the middle between their eyes, has a Greek cross marked with antimony. They are Kabyles. Though living in tribes, they have among the mountains huts, built with mud and straw, which they call Dashkras, whereas the Arabs live in tents on the plains. I imagine these to be a remnant of Vandals. Procopius20 mentions a defeat of an army of this nation here, after a desperate resistance, a remnant of which may be supposed to have maintained themselves in these mountains. They with great pleasure confessed their ancestors had been Christians, and seemed to rejoice much more in that relation than in any connection with the Moors, with whom they live in perpetual war: they pay no taxes to the Bey, but live in constant defiance of him.

As this is the Mons Audus of Ptolemy, here too must be fixed his Lambesa21, or Lambesentium Colonia, which, by a hundred Latin inscriptions remaining on the spot, it is attested to have been. It is now called Tezzoute: the ruins of the city are very extensive. There are seven of the gates still standing, and great pieces of the walls solidly built with square masonry without lime. The buildings remaining are of very different ages, from Adrian to Aurelian, nay even to Maximin. One building only, supported by columns of the Corinthian order, was in good taste; what its use was I know not. The drawing of this is in the King’s collection. It was certainly designed for some military purpose, by the size of the gates; I should suspect a stable for elephants, or a repository for catapulta, or other large military machines, though there are no traces left upon the walls indicating either. Upon the key-stone of the arch of the principal gate there is a basso-relievo of the standard of a legion, and upon it an inscription, Legio tertia Augusta, which legion, we know from history, was quartered here. Dr Shaw22 says, that there is here a neat, round, Corinthian temple, called Cubb el Arrousah, the Cupola or Dome of the Bride or Spouse. Such a building does exist, but it is by no means of a good taste, nor of the Corinthian order; but of a long disproportioned Doric, of the time of Aurelian, and does not merit the attention of any architect. Dr Shaw never was so far south as Jibbel Aurez, so could only say this from report.

From Jibbel Aurez nothing occurred in the style of architecture that was material. Hydra remained on the left hand. I came to Cassareen, the ancient Colonia Scillitana23, where I suffered something both from hunger and from fear. The country was more rugged and broken than any we had yet seen, and withal less fruitful and inhabited. The Moors of these parts are a rebellious tribe, called Nememshah, who had fled from their ordinary obligation of attending the Bey, and had declared themselves on the part of the rebel-moors, the Henneishah.

My intentions now were to reach Feriana, the Thala24 of the ancients, where I expected considerable subjects for study; but in this I was disappointed, and being on the frontier, and in dangerous times, when several armies were in the field, I thought it better to steer my course eastward, and avoid the theatre of war.

Journeying east, I came to Spaitla25, and again got into the kingdom of Tunis. Spaitla is a corruption of Suffetula26, which was probably its ancient name before it became a Roman colony; so called from Suffetes, a magistrature in all the countries dependent upon Carthage. Spaitla has many inscriptions, and very extensive and elegant remains. There are three temples, two of them Corinthian, and one of the Composite order; a great part of them is entire. A beautiful and perfect capital of the Composite order, the only perfect one that now exists, is designed, in all its parts, in a very large size; and, with the detail of the rest of the ruin, is a precious monument of what that order was, now in the collection of the King.

Doctor Shaw, struck with the magnificence of Spaitla, has attempted something like the three temples, in a stile much like what one would expect from an ordinary carpenter, or mason. I hope I have done them more justice, and I recommend the study of the Composite capital, as of the Corinthian capital at Dugga, to those who really wish to know the taste with which these two orders were executed in the time of the Antonines.

The Welled Omran, a lawless, plundering tribe, inquieted me much in the eight days I staid at Spaitla. It was a fair match between coward and coward. With my company, I was inclosed in a square in which the three temples stood, where there yet remained a precinct of high walls. These plunderers would have come in to me, but were afraid of my fire-arms; and I would have run away from them, had I not been afraid of meeting their horse in the plain. I was almost starved to death, when I was relieved by the arrival of Welled Hassan, and a friendly tribe of Dreeda, that came to my assistance, and brought me, at once, both safety and provision.

From Spaitla I went to Gilma, or Oppidum Chilmanense. There is here a large extent of rubbish and stones, but no distinct trace of any building whatever.

From Gilma I passed to Muchtar, corruptly now so called. Its ancient name is Tucca Terebinthina27. Dr Shaw28 says its modern name is Sbeeba, but no such name is known here. I might have passed more directly from Spaitla southward, but a large chain of mountains, to whose inhabitants I had no recommendation, made me prefer the safer and plainer road by Gilma. At Tucca Terebinthina are two triumphal arches, the largest of which I suppose equal in taste, execution, and mass, to any thing now existing in the world. The lesser is more simple, but very elegant. They are both, with all the particulars of their parts, not yet engraved, but still in my collection.

From Muchtar, or Tucca Terebinthina, we came to Kisser29, which Dr Shaw conjectures to have been the Colonia Assuras of the ancients, by this it should seem he had not been there; for there is an inscription upon a triumphal arch of very good taste, now standing, and many others to be met with up and down, which confirms beyond doubt his conjecture to be a just one. There is, besides this, a small square temple, upon which are carved several instruments of sacrifice, which are very curious, but the execution of these is much inferior to the design. It stands on the declivity of a hill, above a large fertile plain, still called the Plain of Surse, which is probably a corruption of its ancient name Assuras.

From Kisser I came to Musti, where there is a triumphal arch of very good taste, but perfectly in ruins; the merit of its several parts only could be collected from the fragments which lie strewed upon the ground.

From Musti30 I proceeded north-eastward to Tubersoke, thence again to Dugga, and down the Bagrada to Tunis.

My third, or, which may be called my middle journey through Tunis, was by Zowan, a high mountain, where is a large aqueduct which formerly carried its water to Carthage. Thence I came to Jelloula, a village lying below high mountains on the west; these are the Montes Vassaleti of Ptolemy31, as the town itself is the Oppidum Usalitanum of Pliny. I fell here again into the ancient road at Gilma; and, not satisfied with what I had seen of the beauties of Spaitla, I passed there five days more, correcting and revising what I had already committed to paper. Independent of the treasure I found in the elegance of its buildings, the town itself is situated in the most beautiful spot in Barbary, surrounded thick with juniper-trees, and watered by a pleasant stream that sinks there under the earth, and appears no more.

Here I left my former road at Cassareen, and proceeding directly S. E. came to Feriana, the road that I had abandoned before from prudential motives, Feriana, as has been before observed, is the ancient Thala, taken and destroyed by Metellus in his pursuit of Jugurtha. I had formed, I know not from what reason, sanguine expectations of elegant remains here, but in this I was disappointed; I found nothing remarkable but the baths of very warm water32 without the town; in these there was a number of fish, above four inches in length, not unlike gudgeons. Upon trying the heat by the thermometer, I remember to have been much surprised that they could have existed, or even not been boiled, by continuing long in the heat of this medium. As I marked the degrees with a pencil while I was myself naked in the water, the leaf was wetted accidentally, so that I missed the precise degree I meant to have recorded, and do not pretend to supply it from memory. The bath is at the head of the fountain, and the stream runs off to a considerable distance. I think there were about five or six dozen of these fish in the pool. I was told likewise, that they went down into the stream to a certain distance in the day, and returned to the pool, or warmest and deepest water, at night.

From Feriana I proceeded S. E. to Gafsa, the ancient Capsa33, and thence to Tozer, formerly Tisurus34. I then turned nearly N. E. and entered a large lake of water called the Lake of Marks, because in the passage of it there is a row of large trunks of palm-trees set up to guide travellers in the road which crosses it. Doctor Shaw has settled very distinctly the geography of this place, and those about it. It is the Palus Tritonidis35, as he justly observes; this was the most barren and unpleasant part of my journey in Africa; barren not only from the nature of its soil, but by its having no remains of antiquity in the whole course of it.

From this I came to Gabs, or Tacape36, after passing El Hammah, the baths which were the Aquas Tacapitanas of antiquity, where the small river Triton, by the moisture which it furnishes, most agreeably and suddenly changes the desert scene, and covers the adjacent fields with all kinds of flowers and verdure.

I was now arrived upon the lesser Syrtis, and continued along the sea-coast northward to Inshilla, without having made any addition to my observations. I turned again to the N. W. and came to El Gemme37, where there is a very large and spacious amphitheatre, perfect as to the desolation of time, had not Mahomet Bey blown up four arches of it from the foundation, that it might not serve as a fortress to the rebel Arabs. The sections, elevations, and plans, with the whole detail of its parts, are in the King’s collection.

I have still remaining, but not finished, the lower or subterraneous plan of the building, an entrance to which I forced open in my journey along the coast to Tripoli. This was made so as to be filled with water by means of a sluice and aqueduct, which are still entire. The water rose up in the arena, through a large square-hole faced with hewn-stone in the middle, when there was occasion for water-games or naumachia. Doctor Shaw38 imagines this was intended to contain the pillar that supported the velum, which covered the spectators from the influence of the sun. It might have served for both purposes, but it seems to be too large for the latter, though I confess the more I have considered the size and construction of these amphitheatres, the less I have been able to form an idea concerning this velum, or the manner in which it served the people, how it was secured, and how it was removed. This was the last ancient building I visited in the kingdom of Tunis, and I believe I may confidently say, there is not, either in the territories of Algiers or Tunis, a fragment of good taste of which I have not brought a drawing to Britain.

I continued along the coast to Susa, through a fine country planted with olive trees, and came again to Tunis, not only without disagreeable accident, but without any interruption from sickness or other cause. I then took leave of the Bey, and, with the acknowledgments usual on such occasions, again set out from Tunis, on a very serious journey indeed, over the desert to Tripoli, the first part of which to Gabs was the same road by which I had so lately returned. From Gabs I proceeded to the island of Gerba, the Meninx39 Insula, or Island of the Lotophagi.

Doctor Shaw says, the fruit he calls the Lotus is very frequent all over that coast. I wish he had said what was this Lotus. To say it is the fruit the most common on that coast is no description, for there is there no sort of fruit whatever; no bush, no tree, nor verdure of any kind, excepting the short grass that borders these countries before you enter the moving sands of the desert. Doctor Shaw never was at Gerba, and has taken this particular from some unfaithful story-teller. The Wargumma and Noile, two great tribes of Arabs, are masters of these deserts. Sidi Ismain, whose grandfather, the Bey of Tunis, had been dethroned and strangled by the Algerines, and who was himself then prisoner at Algiers, in great repute for valour, and in great intimacy with me, did often use to say, that he accounted his having passed that desert on horseback as the hardiest of all his undertakings.

About four days journey from Tripoli I met the Emir Hadje conducting the caravan of pilgrims from Fez and Sus in Morocco, all across Africa to Mecca, that is, from the Western Ocean, to the western banks of the Red Sea in the kingdom of Sennaar. He was a middle-aged man, uncle to the present emperor, of a very uncomely, stupid kind of countenance. His caravan consisted of about 3000 men, and, as his people said, from 12,000 to 14,000 camels, part loaded with merchandise, part with skins of water, flour, and other kinds of food, for the maintenance of the hadjees; they were a scurvy, disorderly, unarmed pack, and when my horsemen, tho’ but fifteen in number, came up with them in the grey of the morning, they shewed great signs of trepidation, and were already flying in confusion. When informed who they were, their fears ceased, and, after the usual manner of cowards, they became extremely insolent.

At Tripoli I met the Hon. Mr Frazer of Lovat, his Majesty’s consul in that station, from whom I received every sort of kindness, comfort, and assistance, which I very much needed after so rude a journey, made with such diligence that two of my horses died some days after.

I had hopes of finding something at Lebeda, formerly Leptis Magna40, three days journey from Tripoli, where are indeed a great number of buildings, many of which are covered by the sands; but they are of a bad taste, mostly ill-proportioned Dorics of the time of Aurelian. Seven large columns of granite were shipped from this for France, in the reign of Louis XIV. destined for one of the palaces he was then building. The eighth was broken on the way, and lies now upon the shore. Though I was disappointed at Lebeda, ample amends were made me at Tripoli on my return.

From Tripoli I sent an English servant to Smyrna with my books, drawings, and supernumerary instruments, retaining only extracts from such authors as might be necessary for me in the Pentapolis, or other parts of the Cyrenaicum. I then crossed the Gulf of Sidra, formerly known by the name of the Syrtis Major, and arrived at Bengazi, the ancient Berenice41, built by Ptolemy Philadelphus.

The brother of the Bey of Tripoli commanded here, a young man, as weak in understanding as he was in health. All the province was in extreme confusion. Two tribes of Arabs, occupying the territory to the west of the town, who in ordinary years, and in time of peace, were the sources of its wealth and plenty, had, by the mismanagement of the Bey, entered into deadly quarrel. The tribe that lived most to the westward, and which was reputed the weakest, had beat the most numerous that was nearest the town, called Welled Abid, and driven them within its walls. The inhabitants of Bengazi had for a year before been labouring under a severe famine, and by this accident about four thousand persons, of all ages and sexes, were forced in upon them, when perfectly destitute of every necessary. Ten or twelve people were found dead every night in the streets, and life was said in many to be supported by food that human nature shudders at the thoughts of. Impatient to fly from these Thyestean feasts, I prevailed upon the Bey to send me out some distance to the southward, among the Arabs where famine had been less felt.

I encompassed a great part of the Pentapolis, visited the ruins of Arsinoe, and, though I was much more feebly recommended than usual, I happily received neither insult nor injury. Finding nothing at Arsinoe nor Barca, I continued my journey to Ras Sem, the petrified city, concerning which so many monstrous lies were told by the Tripoline ambassador, Cassem Aga, at the beginning of this century, and all believed in England, though they carried falsehood upon the very face of them42. It was not then the age of incredulity, we were fast advancing to the celebrated epoch of the man in the pint-bottle, and from that time to be as absurdly incredulous as we were then the reverse, and with the same degree of reason.

Ras Sem is five long days journey south from Bengazi; it has no water, except a spring very disagreeable to the taste, that appears to be impregnated with alum, and this has given it the name it bears of Ras Sem, or the Fountain of Poison, from its bitterness. The whole remains here consist in the ruins of a tower or fortification, that seems to be a work full as late as the time of the Vandals. How or what use they made of this water I cannot possibly guess; they had no other at the distance of two days journey. I was not fortunate enough to discover the petrified men and horses, the women at the churn, the little children, the cats, the dogs, and the mice, which his Barbarian excellency assured Sir Hans Sloane existed there: Yet, in vindication of his Excellency, I must say, that though he propagated, yet he did not invent this falsehood; the Arabs who conducted me maintained the same stories to be true, till I was within two hours of the place, where I found them to be false. I saw indeed mice43, as they are called, of a very extraordinary kind, having nothing of petrifaction about them, but agile and active, so to partake as much of the bird as the beast.

Approaching now the sea-coast I came to Ptolometa, the ancient Ptolemais44, the work of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the walls and gates of which city are still entire. There is a prodigious number of Greek inscriptions, but there remain only a few columns of the portico, and an Ionic temple, in the first manner of executing that order; and therefore, slight as the remains are, they are treasures in the history of architecture which are worthy to be preserved. These are in the King’s collection, with all the parts that could be recovered.

Here I met a small Greek junk belonging to Lampedosa, a little island near Crete, which had been unloading corn, and was now ready to sail. At the same time the Arabs of Ptolometa told me, that the Welled Ali, a powerful tribe that occupy the whole country between that place and Alexandria, were at war among themselves, and had plundered the caravan of Morocco, of which I have already spoken, and that the pilgrims composing it had mostly perished, having been scattered in the desert without water; that a great famine had been at Derna, the neighbouring town, to which I intended to go; that a plague had followed, and the town, which is divided into upper and lower, was engaged in a civil war. This torrent of ill news was irresistible, and was of a kind I did not propose to wrestle with; besides, there was nothing, as far as I knew, that merited the risk. I resolved, therefore, to fly from this inhospitable coast, and save to the public, at least, that knowledge and entertainment I had acquired for them.

I embarked on board the Greek vessel, very ill accoutred, as we afterwards found, and, though it had plenty of sail, it had not an ounce of ballast. A number of people, men, women, and children, flying from the calamities which attend famine, crowded in unknown to me; but the passage was short, the vessel light, and the master, as we supposed, well accustomed to these seas. The contrary of this, however, was the truth, as we learned afterwards, when too late, for he was an absolute landsman; proprietor indeed of the vessel, but this had been his first voyage. We sailed at dawn of day in as favourable and pleasant weather as ever I saw at sea. It was the beginning of September, and a light and steady breeze, though not properly fair, promised a short and agreeable voyage; but it was not long before it turned fresh and cold; we then had a violent shower of hail, and the clouds were gathering as if for thunder. I observed that we gained no offing, and hoped, if the weather turned bad, to persuade the Captain to put into Bengazi, for one inconvenience he presently discovered, that they had not provision on board for one day.

However, the wind became contrary, and blew a violent storm, seeming to menace both thunder and rain. The vessel being in her trim with large latine sails, fell violently to leeward, and they scarce would have weathered the Cape that makes the entrance into the harbour of Bengazi, which is a very bad one, when all at once it struck upon a sunken rock, and seemed to be set down upon it. The wind at that instant seemed providentially to calm; but I no sooner observed the ship had struck than I began to think of my own situation. We were not far from shore, but there was an exceeding great swell at sea. Two boats were still towed astern of them, and had not been hoisted in. Roger M‘Cormack, my Irish servant, had been a sailor on board the Monarch before he deserted to the Spanish service. He and the other, who had likewise been a sailor, presently unlashed the largest boat, and all three got down into her, followed by a multitude of people whom we could not hinder, and there was, indeed, something that bordered on cruelty, in preventing poor people from using the same means that we had done for preserving their lives; yet, unless we had killed them, the prevention was impossible, and, had we been inclined to that measure, we dared not, as we were upon a Moorish coast. The most that could be done was, to get loose from the ship as soon as possible, and two oars were prepared to row the boat ashore. I had stript myself to a short under-waistcoat and linen drawers; a silk sash, or girdle, was wrapt round me; a pencil, small pocket-book, and watch, were in the breast-pocket of my waistcoat; two Moorish and two English servants followed me; the rest, more wise, remained on board.

We were not twice the length of the boat from the vessel before a wave very nearly filled the boat. A howl of despair from those that were in her shewed their helpless state, and that they were conscious of a danger they could not shun. I saw the fate of all was to be decided by the very next wave that was rolling in; and apprehensive that some woman, child, or helpless man would lay hold of me, and entangle my arms or legs and weigh me down, I cried to my servants, both in Arabic and English, We are all lost; if you can swim, follow me; I then let myself down in the face of the wave. Whether that, or the next, filled the boat, I know not, as I went to leeward to make my distance as great as possible. I was a good, strong, and practised swimmer, in the flower of life, full of health, trained to exercise and fatigue of every kind. All this, however, which might have availed much in deep water, was not sufficient when I came to the surf. I received a violent blow upon my breast from the eddy wave and reflux, which seemed as given me by a large branch of a tree, thick cord, or some elastic weapon. It threw me upon my back, made me swallow a considerable quantity of water, and had then almost suffocated me.

I avoided the next wave, by dipping my head and letting it pass over, but found myself breathless, exceedingly weary and exhausted. The land, however, was before me, and close at hand. A large wave floated me up. I had the prospect of escape still nearer, and endeavoured to prevent myself from going back into the surf. My heart was strong, but strength was apparently failing, by being involuntarily twisted about, and struck on the face and breast by the violence of the ebbing wave: it now seemed as if nothing remained but to give up the struggle, and resign to my destiny. Before I did this I sunk to sound if I could touch the ground, and found that I reached the sand with my feet, though the water was still rather deeper than my mouth. The success of this experiment infused into me the strength of ten men, and I strove manfully, taking advantage of floating only with the influx of the wave, and preserving my strength for the struggle against the ebb, which, by sinking and touching the ground, I now made more easy. At last, finding my hands and knees upon the sands, I fixed my nails into it, and obstinately resisted being carried back at all, crawling a few feet when the sea had retired. I had perfectly lost my recollection and understanding, and after creeping so far as to be out of the reach of the sea, I suppose I fainted, for from that time I was totally insensible of any thing that passed around me.

In the mean time the Arabs, who live two short miles from the shore, came down in crowds to plunder the vessel. One of the boats was thrown ashore, and they had belonging to them some others; there was one yet with the wreck, which scarcely appeared with its gunnel above water. All the people were now taken on shore, and those only lost who perished in the boat. What first wakened me from this semblance of death was a blow with the butt-end of a lance, shod with iron, upon the juncture of the neck with the back-bone. This produced a violent sensation of pain; but it was a mere accident the blow was not with the point, for the small, short waistcoat, which had been made at Algiers, the sash and drawers, all in the Turkish fashion, made the Arabs believe that I was a Turk; and after many blows, kicks, and curses, they stript me of the little cloathing I had, and left me naked. They used the rest in the same manner, then went to their boats to look for the bodies of those that were drowned.

After the discipline I had received, I had walked, or crawled up among some white, sandy hillocks, where I sat down and concealed myself as much as possible. The weather was then warm, but the evening promised to be cooler, and it was fast drawing on; there was great danger to be apprehended if I approached the tents where the women were while I was naked, for in this case it was very probable I would receive another bastinado something worse than the first. Still I was so confused that I had not recollected I could speak to them in their own language, and it now only came into my mind, that by the gibberish, in imitation of Turkish, which the Arab had uttered to me while he was beating and stripping me, he took me for a Turk, and to this in all probability the ill-usage was owing.

An old man and a number of young Arabs came up to me where I was sitting. I gave them the salute Salam Alicum! which was only returned by one young man, in a tone as if he wondered at my impudence. The old man then asked me, Whether I was a Turk, and what I had to do there? I replied, I was no Turk, but a poor Christian physician, a Dervish that went about the world seeking to do good for God’s sake, was then flying from famine, and going to Greece to get bread. He then asked me if I was a Cretan? I said, I had never been in Crete, but came from Tunis, and was returning to that town, having lost every thing I had in the shipwreck of that vessel. I said this in so despairing a tone, that there was no doubt left with the Arab that the fact was true. A ragged, dirty baracan was immediately thrown over me, and I was ordered up to a tent, in the end of which stood a long spear thrust through it, a mark of sovereignty.

I there saw the Shekh of the tribe, who being in peace with the Bey of Bengazi, and also with the Shekh of Ptolometa, after many questions ordered me a plentiful supper, of which all my servants partook, none of them having perished. A multitude of consultations followed on their complaints, of which I freed myself in the best manner I could, alledging the loss of all my medicines, in order to induce some of them to seek for the sextant at least, but all to no purpose, so that, after staying two days among them, the Shekh restored to us all that had been taken from us, and mounting us upon camels, and giving us a conductor, he forwarded us to Bengazi, where we arrived the second day in the evening. Thence I sent a compliment to the Shekh, and with it a man from the Bey, intreating that he would use all possible means to fish up some of my cases, for which I assured him he should not miss a handsome reward. Promises and thanks were returned, but I never heard further of my instruments; all I recovered was a silver watch of Ellicot, the work of which had been taken out and broken, some pencils, and a small port-folio, in which were sketches of Ptolemeta; my pocket-book too was found, but my pencil was lost, being in a common silver case, and with them all the astronomical observations which I had made in Barbary. I there lost a sextant, a parallactic instrument, a time-piece, a reflecting telescope, an achromatic one, with many drawings, a copy of M. de la Caille’s ephemerides down to the year 1775, much to be regretted, as being full of manuscript marginal notes; a small camera obscura, some guns, pistols, a blunderbuss, and several other articles.

I found at Bengazi a small French sloop, the master of which had been often at Algiers when I was consul there. I had even, as the master remembered, done him some little service, for which, contrary to the custom of that sort of people, he was very grateful. He had come there laden with corn, and was going up the Archipelago, or towards the Morea, for more. The cargo he had brought was but a mite compared to the necessities of the place; it only relieved the soldiers for a time, and many people of all ages and sexes were still dying every day.

The harbour of Bengazi is full of fish, and my company caught a great quantity with a small net; we likewise procured a multitude with the line, enough to have maintained a larger number of persons than the family consisted of; we got vinegar, pepper, and some store of onions; we had little bread it is true, but still our industry kept us very far from starving. We endeavoured to instruct these wretches, gave them pack-thread, and some coarse hooks, by which they might have subsisted with the smallest attention and trouble; but they would rather starve in multitudes, striving to pick up single grains of corn, that were scattered upon the beach by the bursting of the sacks, or the inattention of the mariners, than take the pains to watch one hour at the flowing of the tide for excellent fish, where, after taking one, they were sure of being masters of multitudes till it was high water.

The Captain of the small vessel lost no time. He had done his business well, and though he was returning for another cargo, yet he offered me what part of his funds I should need with great frankness. We now sailed with a fair wind, and in four or five days easy weather landed at Canea, a considerable fortified place at the west end of the island of Crete. Here I was taken dangerously ill, occasioned by the bathing and extraordinary exertions in the sea of Ptolometa, nor was I in the least the better from the beating I had received, signs of which I bore very long afterwards.

From Canea I sailed for Rhodes, and there met my books; I then proceeded to Castelrosso, on the coast of Caramania, and was there credibly informed that there were very magnificent remains of ancient buildings a short way from the shore, on the opposite continent. Caramania is a part of Asia Minor yet unexplored. But my illness increasing, it was impossible to execute, or take any measures to secure protection, or do the business safely, and I was forced to relinquish this discovery to some more fortunate traveller.

Mr Peyssonel, French consul at Smyrna, a man not more distinguished for his amiable manners than for his polite taste in literature, of which he has given several elegant specimens, furnished me with letters for that part of Caramania, or Asia Minor, and there is no doubt but they would have been very efficacious. What increased the obligation for this kind attention shewn, was, that I had never seen Mr Peyssonel; and I am truly mortified, that, since my arrival in England, I have had no opportunity to return my grateful thanks for this kindness, which I therefore beg that he will now accept, together with a copy of these travels, which I have ordered my French bookseller to forward to him.

From Castelrosso I continued, without any thing remarkable, till I came to Cyprus; I staid there but half a day, and arrived at Sidon, where I was most kindly received by Mr Clerambaut, brother-in-law to Mr Peyssonel, and French consul at this place; a man in politeness, humanity, and every social quality of the mind, inferior to none I have ever known. With him, and a very flourishing, well-informed, and industrious nation, I continued for some time, then in a weak state of health, but still making partial excursions from time to time into the continent of Syria, through Libanus, and Anti Libanus; but as I made these without instruments, and passed pretty much in the way of the travellers who have described these countries before, I leave the history to those gentlemen, without swelling, by entering into particular narratives, this Introduction, already too long.

While at Canea I wrote by way of France, and again while at Rhodes by way of Smyrna, to particular friends both in London and France, informing them of my disastrous situation, and desiring them to send me a moveable quadrant or sextant, as near as possible to two feet radius, more or less, a time-keeper, stop-watch, a reflecting telescope, and one of Dolland’s achromatic ones, as near as possible to three-feet reflectors, with several other articles which I then wanted.

I received from Paris and London much about the same time, and as if it had been dictated by the same person, nearly the same answer, which was this, That everybody was employed in making instruments for Danish, Swedish, and other foreign astronomers; that all those which were completed had been bought up, and without waiting a considerable, indefinite time, nothing could be had that could be depended upon. At the same time I was told, to my great mortification, that no accounts of me had arrived from Africa, unless from several idle letters, which had been industriously wrote by a gentleman whole name I abstain from mentioning, first, because he is dead, and next, out of respect to his truly great and worthy relations.

In these letters it was announced, that I was gone with a Russian caravan through the Curdistan, where I was to observe the transit of Venus in a place where it was not visible, and that I was to proceed to China, and return by the way of the East Indies:—a story which some of his correspondents, as profligate as himself, industriously circulated at the time, and which others, perhaps weaker than wicked, though wicked enough, have affected to believe to this day.

I conceived a violent indignation at this, and finding myself so treated in return for so complete a journey as I had then actually terminated, thought it below me to sacrifice the best years of my life to daily pain and danger, when the impression it made in the breasts of my countrymen seemed to be so weak, so infinitely unworthy of them or me. One thing only detained me from returning home; it was my desire of fulfilling my promise to my Sovereign, and of adding the ruins of Palmyra to those of Africa, already secured and out of danger.

In my anger I renounced all thoughts of the attempt to discover the sources of the Nile, and I repeated my orders no more for either quadrant, telescope, or time-keeper. I had pencils and paper; and luckily my large camera obscura, which had escaped the catastrophe of Ptolometa, was arrived from Smyrna, and then standing before me. I therefore began to cast about, with my usual care and anxiety, for the means of obtaining feasible and safe methods of repeating the famous journey to Palmyra. I found it was necessary to advance nearer the scene of action. Mr Abbot, British consul for Tripoli in Syria, kindly invited me, and after him Mr Vernon, his successor, a very excellent man, to take up my residence there. From Tripoli there is a trade in kelp carried on to the salt marshes near Palmyra. The Shekh of Cariateen, a town just upon the edge of the desert, had a contract with the basha of Tripoli for a quantity of this herb for the use of the soap-works. I lost no time in making a friendship with this man, but his return amounted to no more than to endeavour to lead me rashly into real danger, where he knew he had not consequence enough to give me a moment’s protection.

There are two tribes almost equally powerful who inhabit the deserts round Palmyra; the one is the Annecy, remarkable for the finest breed of horses in the world; the other is the Mowalli, much better soldiers, but fewer in number, and very little inferior in the excellence of their horses. The Annecy possess the country towards the S. W. at the back of Libanus, about Bozra down the Hawran, and southward towards the borders of Arabia Petrea and Mount Horeb. The Mowalli inhabit the plains east of Damascus to the Euphrates, and north to near Aleppo.

These two tribes were not at war, nor were they at peace; they were upon what is called ill-terms with each other, which is the most dangerous time for strangers to have any dealings with either. I learned this as a certainty from a friend at Hassia, where a Shekh lives, to whom I was recommended by a letter, as a friend of the basha of Damascus. This man maintains his influence, not by a number of forces, but by constantly marrying a relation of one or both of these tribes of Arabs, who for that reason assist him in maintaining the security of his road, and he has the care of that part of it by which the couriers pass from Constantinople into Egypt, belonging to both these tribes, who were then at a distance from each other, and roved in flying squadrons all round Palmyra, by way of maintaining their right of pasture in places that neither of them chose at that time to occupy. These, I suppose, are what the English writers call Wild Arabs, for otherwise, though they are all wild enough, I do not know one wilder than another. This is very certain, these young men, composing the flying parties I speak of, are truly wild while at a distance from their camp and government; and the stranger that falls in unawares with them, and escapes with his life, may set himself down as a fortunate traveller.

Returning from Hassia I would have gone southward to Baalbec, but it was then besieged by Emir Yousef prince of the Druses, a Pagan nation, living upon mount Libanus. Upon that I returned to Tripoli, in Syria, and after some time set out for Aleppo, travelling northward along the plain of Jeune betwixt mount Lebanon and the sea.

I visited the ancient Byblus, and bathed with pleasure in the river Adonis. All here is classic ground. I saw several considerable ruins of Grecian architecture all very much defaced. These are already published by Mr Drummond, and therefore I left them, being never desirous of interfering with the works of others.

I passed Latikea, formerly Laodicea ad Mare, and then came to Antioch, and afterwards to Aleppo. The fever and ague, which I had first caught in my cold bath at Bengazi, had returned upon me with great violence, after passing one night encamped in the mulberry gardens behind Sidon. It had returned in very slight paroxysms several times, but laid hold of me with more than ordinary violence on my arrival at Aleppo, where I came just in time to the house of Mr Belville, a French merchant, to whom I was addressed for my credit. Never was a more lucky address, never was there a soul so congenial to my own as was that of Mr Belville: to say more after this would be praising myself. To him was immediately added Doctor Patrick Russel, physician to the British factory there. Without the attention and friendship of the one, and the skill and anxiety of the other of these gentlemen, it is probable my travels would have ended at Aleppo. I recovered slowly. By the report of these two gentlemen, though I had yet seen nobody, I became a public care, nor did I ever pass more agreeable hours than with Mr Thomas the French consul, his family, and the merchants established there. From Doctor Russel I was supplied with what I wanted, some books, and much instruction. Nobody knew the diseases of the East so well; and perhaps my escaping the fever at Aleppo was not the only time in which I owed him my life.

Being now restored to health, my first object was the journey to Palmyra. The Mowalli were encamped at no great distance from Aleppo. It was without difficulty I found a sure way to explain my wishes, and to secure the assistance of Mahomet Kerfan, the Shekh, but from him I learned, in a manner that I could not doubt, that the way I intended to go down to Palmyra from the north was tedious, troublesome, uncertain, and expensive, and that he did not wish me to undertake it at that time. It is quite superfluous in these cases to press for particular information; an Arab conductor, who proceeds with caution, surely means you well. He told me that he would leave a friend in the house of a certain Arab at Hamath45, about half-way to Palmyra, and if in something more than a month I came there, and found that Arab, I might rely upon him without fear, and he would conduct me in safety to Palmyra.

I returned to Tripoli, and at the time appointed set out for Hamath, found my conductor, and proceeded to Hassia. Coming from Aleppo, I had not passed the lower way again by Antioch. The river which passes through the plains where they cultivate their best tobacco, is the Orontes; it was so swollen with rain, which had fallen in the mountains, that the ford was no longer visible. Stopping at two miserable huts inhabited by a base set called Turcomans, I asked the master of one of them to shew me the ford, which he very readily undertook to do, and I went, for the length of some yards, on rough, but very hard and solid ground. The current before me was, however, so violent, that I had more than once a desire to turn back, but, not suspecting any thing, I continued, when on a sudden man and horse fell out of their depth into the river.

I had a rifled gun flung across my shoulder, with a buff belt and swivel. As long as that held, it so embarrassed my hands and legs that I could not swim, and must have sunk; but luckily the swivel gave way, the gun fell to the bottom of the river, and was pickt up in dry weather by order of the basha, at the desire of the French merchants, who kept it for a relict. I and my horse swam separately ashore; at a small distance from thence was a caphar46, or turnpike, to which, when I came to dry myself, the man told me, that the place where I had crossed was the remains of a stone bridge now entirely carried away; where I had first entered was one of the wings of the bridge, from which I had fallen into the space the first arch occupied, one of the deepest parts of the river; that the people who had misguided me were an infamous set of banditti, and that I might be thankful on many accounts that I had made such an escape from them, and was now on the opposite side. I then prevailed on the caphar-man to shew my servants the right ford.

From Hassia we proceeded with our conductor to Cariateen, where there is an immense spring of fine water, which overflows into a large pool. Here, to our great surprise, we found about two thousand of the Annecy encamped, who were quarrelling with Hassan our old friend, the kelp-merchant. This was nothing to us; the quarrel between the Mowalli and Annecy had it seems been made up; for an old man from each tribe on horseback accompanied us to Palmyra: the tribes gave us camels for more commodious travelling, and we passed the desert between Cariateen and Palmyra in a day and two nights, going constantly without sleeping.

Just before we came in sight of the ruins, we ascended a hill of white gritty stone, in a very narrow-winding road, such as we call a pass, and, when arrived at the top, there opened before us the most astonishing, stupendous sight that perhaps ever appeared to mortal eyes. The whole plain below, which was very extensive, was covered so thick with magnificent buildings as that the one seemed to touch the other, all of fine proportions, all of agreeable forms, all composed of white stones, which at that distance appeared like marble. At the end of it stood the palace of the sun, a building worthy to close so magnificent a scene.

It was impossible for two persons to think of designing ornaments, or taking measures, and there seemed the less occasion for this as Mr Wood had done this part already. I had no intention to publish any thing concerning Palmyra; besides, it would have been a violation of my first principle not to interfere with the labours of others; and if this was a rule I inviolably observed as to strangers, every sentiment of reason and gratitude obliged me to pay the same respect to the labours of Mr Wood my friend.

I divided Palmyra into six angular views, always bringing forward to the first ground an edifice, or principal group of columns, that deserved it. The state of the buildings are particularly favourable for this purpose. The columns are all uncovered to the very bases, the soil upon which the town is built being hard and fixed ground. These views are all upon large paper; the columns in some of them are a foot long; the figures in the fore-ground of the temple of the sun are some of them near four inches.

Before our departure from Palmyra I observed its latitude with a Hadley’s quadrant from reflection. The instrument had probably warped in carriage, as the index went unpleasantly, and as it were by starts, so that I will not pretend to give this for an exact observation; yet, after all the care I could take, I only apprehended that 33° 58´ for the latitude of Palmyra, would be nearer the truth than any other. Again, that the distance from the coast in a straight line being 160 miles, and that remarkable mountainous cape on the coast of Syria, between Byblus and Tripoli, known by the name of Theoprosopon, being nearly due west, or under the same parallel with Palmyra, I conceive the longitude of that city to be nearly 37° 9´ from the observatory of Greenwich.

From Palmyra I proceeded to Baalbec, distant about 130 miles, and arrived the same day that Emir Yousef had reduced the town and settled the government, and was decamping from it on his return home. This was the luckiest moment possible for me, as I was the Emir’s friend, and I obtained liberty to do there what I pleased, and to this indulgence was added the great convenience of the Emir’s absence, so that I was not troubled by the observance of any court-ceremony or attendance, or teazed with impertinent questions.

Baalbec is pleasantly situated in a plain on the west of Anti Libanus, is finely watered, and abounds in gardens. It is about fifty miles from Hassia, and about thirty from the nearest sea-coast, which is the situation of the ancient Byblus. The interior of the great temple of Baalbec, supposed to be that of the sun, surpasses any thing at Palmyra, indeed any sculpture I ever remember to have seen in stone. All these views of Palmyra and Baalbec are now in the King’s collection. They are the most magnificent offering in their line that ever was made by one subject to his sovereign.

Passing by Tyre, from curiosity only, I came to be a mournful witness of the truth of that prophecy, That Tyre, the queen of nations, should be a rock for fishers to dry their nets on47. Two wretched fishermen, with miserable nets, having just given over their occupation with very little success, I engaged them, at the expence of their nets, to drag in those places where they said shell-fish might be caught, in hopes to have brought out one of the famous purple-fish. I did not succeed, but in this I was, I believe, as lucky as the old fishers had ever been. The purple fish at Tyre seems to have been only a concealment of their knowledge of cochineal, as, had they depended upon the fish for their dye, if the whole city of Tyre applied to nothing else but fishing, they would not have coloured twenty yards of cloth in a year. Much fatigued, but satisfied beyond measure with what I had seen, I arrived in perfect health, and in the gayest humour possible, at the hospitable mansion of M. Clerambaut at Sidon.

I found there letters from Europe, which were in a very different style from the last. From London, my friend Mr Russel acquainted me, that he had sent me an excellent reflecting telescope of two feet focal length, moved by rack-work, and the last Mr Short ever made, which proved a very excellent instrument; also an achromatic telescope by Dolland, nearly equal to a three-feet reflector, with a foot, or stand, very artificially composed of rulers fixed together by screws. I think this instrument might be improved by shortening the three principal legs of it. If the legs of its stand were about six inches shorter, this, without inconvenience, would take away the little shake it has when used in the outer air. Perhaps this defect is not in all telescopes of this construction. It is a pleasant instrument, and for its size takes very little packing, and is very manageable.

I have brought home both these instruments after performing the whole journey, and they are now standing in my library, in the most perfect order; which is rather to be wondered at from the accounts in which most travellers seem to agree, that metal speculums, within the tropics, spot and rust so much as to be useless after a few observations made at or near the zenith. The fear of this, and the fragility of glass of achromatic telescopes, were the occasion of a considerable expence to me; but from experience I found, that, if a little care be taken, one reflector would be sufficient for a very long voyage.

From Paris I received a time-piece and a stop-watch made by M. Lepeaute, dearer than Ellicot’s, and resembling his in nothing else but the price. The clock was a very neat, portable instrument, made upon very ingenious, simple principles, but some of the parts were so grossly neglected in the execution, and so unequally finished, that it was not difficult for the meanest novice in the trade to point out the cause of its irregularity. It remains with me in statu quo. It has been of very little use to me, and never will be of much more to any person else. The price is, I am sure, ten times more than it ought to be in any light I can consider it.

All these letters still left me in absolute despair about obtaining a quadrant, and consequently gave me very little satisfaction, but in some measure confirmed me in my resolution already taken, to go from Sidon to Egypt; as I had then seen the greatest part of the good architecture in the world, in all its degrees of perfection down to its decline, I wished now only to see it in its origin, and for this it was necessary to go to Egypt.

Norden, Pococke, and many others, had given very ingenious accounts of Egyptian architecture in general, of the disposition and size of their temples, magnificence of their materials, their hieroglyphics, and the various kinds of them, of their gilding, of their painting, and their present state of preservation. I thought something more might be learnt as to the first proportions of their columns, and the construction of their plans. Dendera, the ancient Tentyra, seemed by their accounts to offer a fair field for this.

I had already collected together a great many observations on the progress of Greek and Roman architecture in different ages, drawn not from books or connected with system, but from the models themselves, which I myself had measured. I had been long of the opinion, in which I am still further confirmed, that taste for ancient architecture, founded upon the examples that Italy alone can furnish, was not giving ancient architects fair play. What was to be learned from the first proportions of their plans and elevations seemed to have remained untouched in Egypt; after having considered these, I proposed to live in retirement on my native patrimony, with a fair stock of unexceptionable materials upon this subject, to serve for a pleasant and useful amusement in my old age. I hope still these will not be lost to the public, unless the encouragement be in proportion to what my labours have already had.

I now received, however, a letter very unexpectedly by way of Alexandria, which, if it did not overturn, at least shook these resolutions. The Comte de Buffon Mons. Guys of Marseilles, and several others well known in the literary world, had ventured to state to the minister, and through him to the king of France, Louis XV. how very much it was to be lamented, that after a man had been found who was likely to succeed in removing that opprobrium of travellers and geographers, by discovering the sources of the Nile, one most unlucky accident, at a most unlucky time, should frustrate the most promising endeavours. That prince, distinguished for every good quality of the heart, for benevolence, beneficence, and a desire of promoting and protecting learning, ordered a moveable quadrant of his own military academy at Marseilles, as the nearest and most convenient port of embarkation, to be taken down and sent to me at Alexandria.

With this I received a letter from Mr Russel, which informed me that astronomers had begun to cool in the sanguine expectations of discovering the precise quantity of the sun’s parallax by observation of the transit of Venus, from some apprehension that errors of the observers would probably be more than the quantity of the equation sought, and that they now ardently wished for a journey into Abyssinia, rather than an attempt to settle a nicety for which the learned had now begun to think the accuracy of our instruments was not sufficient. A letter from my correspondent at Alexandria also acquainted me, that the quadrant, and all other instruments, were in that city.

What followed is the voyage itself, the subject of the present publication. I am happy, by communicating every previous circumstance that occurred to me, to have done all in my power to remove the greatest part of the reasonable doubts and difficulties which might have perplexed the reader’s mind, or biassed his judgment in the perusal of the narrative of the journey, and in this I hope I have succeeded.

I have now one remaining part of my promise to fulfil, to account for the delay in the publication. It will not be thought surprising to any that shall reflect on the distant, dreary, and desert ways by which all letters were necessarily to pass, or the civil wars then raging in Abyssinia, the robberies and violences inseparable from a total dissolution of government, such as happened in my time, that no accounts for many years, one excepted, ever arrived in Europe. One letter, accompanied by a bill for a sum borrowed from a Greek at Gondar, found its way to Cairo; all the rest had miscarried: my friends at home gave me up for dead; and, as my death must have happened in circumstances difficult to have been proved, my property became as it were an hereditas jacens, without an owner, abandoned in common to those whose original title extended no further than temporary possession.

A number of law-suits were the inevitable consequence of this upon my return. One carried on with a very expensive obstinacy for the space of ten years, by a very opulent and active company, was determined finally in the House of Peers, in the compass of a very few hours, by the well-known sagacity and penetration of a noble Lord, who, happily for the subjects of both countries, holds the first office in the law; and so judicious was the sentence, that harmony, mutual confidence, and good neighbourhood has ever since been the consequence of that determination.

Other suits still remained, which unfortunately were not arrived to the degree of maturity to be so cut off; they are yet depending; patience and attention, it is hoped, may bring them to an issue at some future time. No imputation of rashness can possibly fall upon the decree, since the action has depended above thirty years.

To these disagreeable avocations, which took up much time, were added others still more unfortunate. The relentless ague caught at Bengazi maintained its ground at times for a space of more than sixteen years, though every remedy had been used, but in vain; and, what was worst of all, a lingering distemper had seriously threatened the life of a most near relation, which, after nine years constant alarm, where every duty bound me to attention and attendance, conducted her at last, in very early life, to her grave48.

The love of solitude is the constant follower of affliction; this again naturally turns an instructed mind to study. My friends unanimously assailed me in the part most accessible when the spirits are weak, which is vanity. They represented to me how ignoble it was, after all my dangers and difficulties were over, to be conquered by a misfortune incident to all men, the indulging of which was unreasonable in itself, fruitless in its consequences, and so unlike the expectation I had given my country, by the firmness and intrepidity of my former character and behaviour. Among these, the principal and most urgent was a gentleman well known to the literary world, in which he holds a rank nearly as distinguished as that to which his virtues entitle him in civil life; this was the Hon. Daines Barrington, whose friendship, valuable on every account, had this additional merit, that it had existed uninterrupted since the days we were at school. It is to this gentleman’s persuasions, assistance, protection, and friendship, that the world owes this publication, if indeed there is any merit in it; at least, they are certainly indebted to him for the opportunity of judging whether there is any merit in it or not.

No great time has passed since the work was in hand. The materials collected upon the spot were very full, and seldom deferred to be set down beyond the day wherein the events described happened, but oftner, when speeches and arguments were to be mentioned, they were noted the instant afterwards; for, contrary I believe to what is often the case, I can assure the reader these speeches and conversations are absolutely real, and not the fabrication of after-hours.

It will perhaps be said, this work hath faults; nay, perhaps, great ones too, and this I readily confess. But I must likewise beg leave to say, that I know no books of the kind that have not nearly as many, and as great, though perhaps not of the same kind with mine. To see distinctly and accurately, to describe plainly, dispassionately and truly, is all that ought to be expected from one in my situation, constantly surrounded with every sort of difficulty and danger.

It may be said, too, there are faults in the language; more pains should have been taken. Perhaps it may be so; yet there has not been wanting a considerable degree of attention even to this. I have not indeed confined myself to a painful and slavish nicety that would have produced nothing but a disagreeable stiffness in the narrative. It will be remembered likewise, that one of the motives of my writing is my own amusement, and I would much rather renounce the subject altogether than walk in fetters of my own forging. The language is, like the subject, rude and manly. My paths have not been flowery ones, nor would it have added any credit to the work, or entertainment to the reader, to employ in it a stile proper only to works of imagination and pleasure. These trifling faults I willingly leave as food to the malice of critics, who perhaps, were it not for these blemishes, would find no other enjoyment in the perusal of the work.

It has been said that parties have been formed against this work. Whether this is really the case I cannot say, nor have I ever been very anxious in the inquiry. They have been harmless adversaries at least, for no bad effects, as far as I know, have ever as yet been the consequences; neither is it a disquisition that I shall ever enter into, whether this is owing to the want of will or of power. I rather believe it is to the former, the want of will, for no one is so perfectly inconsiderable, as to want the power of doing mischief.

Having now fulfilled my promise to the reader, in giving him the motive and order of my travels, and the reason why the publication has been delayed, I shall proceed to the last article promised, the giving some account of the work itself. The book is a large one, and expensive by the number of engravings; this was not at first intended, but the journey has proved a long one, and matter has increased as it were insensibly under my hands. It is now come to fill a great chasm in the history of the universe. It is not intended to resemble the generality of modern travels, the agreeable and rational amusement of one vacant day, it is calculated to employ a greater space of time.

Those that are the best acquainted with Diodorus, Herodotus, and some other Greek historians, will find some very considerable difficulties removed; and they that are unacquainted with these authors, and receive from this work the first information of the geography, climate, and manners of these countries, which are little altered, will have no great occasion to regret they have not searched for information in more ancient sources.

The work begins with my voyage from Sidon to Alexandria, and up the Nile to the first cataract. The reader will not expect that I should dwell long upon the particular history of Egypt; every other year has furnished us with some account of it, good or bad; and the two last publications of M. Savary and Volney seem to have left the subject thread-bare. This, however, is not the only reason.

After Mr Wood and Mr Dawkins had published their Ruins of Palmyra, the late king of Denmark, at his own expence, sent out a number of men, eminent in their several professions, to make discoveries in the east, of every kind, with these very flattering instructions, that though they might, and ought, to visit both Baalbec and Palmyra for their own studies and improvement, yet he prohibited them to so far interfere with what the English travellers had done, as to form any plan of another work similar to theirs. This compliment was gratefully received; and, as I was directly to follow this mission, Mr Wood desired me to return it, and to abstain as much as possible from writing on the same subjects chosen by M. Niebuhr, at least to abstain either from criticising or differing from him on such subjects. I have therefore passed slightly over Egypt and Arabia; perhaps, indeed, I have said enough of both: if any shall be of another opinion, they may have recourse to M. Niebuhr’s more copious work; he was the only person of six who lived to come home, the rest having died in different parts of Arabia, without having been able to enter Abyssinia, one of the objects of their mission.

My leaving Egypt is followed by my survey of the Arabian gulf as far as the Indian Ocean—Arrival at Masuah—Some account of the first peopling of Atbara and Abyssinia—Conjectures concerning language—First ages of the Indian trade—Foundation of the Abyssinian monarchy, and various revolutions till the Jewish usurpation about the year 900. These compose the first volume.

The second begins with the restoration of the line of Solomon, compiled from their own annals, now first translated from the Ethiopic; the original of which has been lodged in the British Museum, to satisfy the curiosity of the public.

The third comprehends my journey from Masuah to Gondar, and the manners and customs of the Abyssinians, also two attempts to arrive at the fountains of the Nile—Description of these sources, and of every thing relating to that river and its inundation.

The fourth contains my return from the source of the Nile to Gondar—The campaign of Serbraxos, and revolution that followed—My return through Sennaar and Beja, or the Nubian desert, and my arrival at Marseilles.

In overlooking the work I have found one circumstance, and I think no more, which is not sufficiently clear, and may create a momentary doubt in the reader’s mind, although to those who have been sufficiently attentive to the narrative, I can scarce think it will do this. The difficulty is, How did you procure funds to support yourself, and ten men, so long, and so easily, as to enable you to undervalue the useful character of a physician, and seek neither to draw money nor protection from it? And how came it, that, contrary to the usage of other travellers, at Gondar you maintained a character of independence and equality, especially at court; instead of crouching, living out of sight as much as possible, in continual fear of priests, under the patronage, or rather as servant to some men of power.

To this sensible and well-founded doubt I answer with great pleasure and readiness, as I would do to all others of the same kind, if I could possibly divine them:—It is not at all extraordinary that a stranger like me, and a parcel of vagabonds like those that were with me, should get themselves maintained, and find at Gondar a precarious livelihood for a limited time. A mind ever so little polished and instructed has infinite superiority over Barbarians, and it is in circumstances like these that a man sees the great advantages of education. All the Greeks in Gondar were originally criminals and vagabonds; they neither had, nor pretended to any profession, except Petros the king’s chamberlain, who had been a shoemaker at Rhodes, which profession at his arrival he carefully concealed. Yet these were not only maintained, but by degrees, and without pretending to be physicians, obtained property, commands, and places.

Hospitality is the virtue of Barbarians, who are hospitable in the ratio that they are barbarous, and for obvious reasons this virtue subsides among polished nations in the same proportion. If on my arrival in Abyssinia I assumed a spirit of independence, it was from policy and reflection. I had often thought that the misfortunes which had befallen other travellers in Abyssinia arose from the base estimation the people in general entertained of their rank, and the value of their persons. From this idea I resolved to adopt a contrary behaviour. I was going to a court where there was a king of kings, whose throne was surrounded by a number of high-minded, proud, hereditary, punctilious nobility. It was impossible, therefore, too much lowliness and humility could please there.

Mr Murray, the ambassador at Constantinople, in the firman obtained from the grand signior, had qualified me with the distinction of Bey-Adzè, which means, not an English nobleman (a peer) but a noble Englishman, and he had added likewise, that I was a servant of the king of Great Britain. All the letters of recommendation, very many and powerful, from Cairo and Jidda, had constantly echoed this to every part to which they were addressed. They announced that I was not a man, such as ordinarily came to them, to live upon their charity, but had ample means of my own, and each professed himself guarantee of that fact, and that they themselves on all occasions were ready to provide for me, by answering my demands.

The only request of these letters was safety and protection to my person. It was mentioned that I was a physician, to introduce a conciliatory circumstance, that I was above practising for gain. That all I did was from the fear of God, from charity, and the love of mankind. I was a physician in the city, a soldier in the field, a courtier every where, demeaning myself, as conscious that I was not unworthy of being a companion to the first of their nobility, and the king’s stranger and guest, which is there a character, as it was with eastern nations of old, to which a certain sort of consideration is due. It was in vain to compare myself with them in any kind of learning, as they have none; music they have as little; in eating and drinking they were indeed infinitely my superiors; but in one accomplishment that came naturally into comparison, which was horsemanship, I studiously established my superiority.

My long residence among the Arabs had given me more than ordinary facility in managing the horse; I had brought my own saddle and bridle with me, and, as the reader will find, bought my horse of the Baharnagash in the first days of my journey, such a one as was necessary to carry me, and him I trained carefully, and studied from the beginning. The Abyssinians, as the reader will hereafter see, are the worst horsemen in the world. Their horses are bad, not equal to our Welsh or our Scotch galloways. Their furniture is worse. They know not the use of fire-arms on horseback; they had never seen a double-barrelled gun, nor did they know that its effect was limited to two discharges, but that it might have been fired on to infinity. All this gave me an evident superiority.

To this I may add, that, being in the prime of life, of no ungracious figure, having an accidental knack, which is not a trifle, of putting on the dress, and speaking the language easily and gracefully, I cultivated with the utmost assiduity the friendship of the fair sex, by the most modest, respectful distant attendance, and obsequiousness in public, abating just as much of that in private as suited their humour and inclinations. I soon acquired a great support from these at court; jealousy is not a passion of the Abyssinians, who are in the contrary extreme, even to indifference.

Besides the money I had with me, I had a credit of L.400 upon Yousef Cabil, governor of Jidda. I had another upon a Turkish merchant there. I had strong and general recommendations, if I should want supplies, upon Metical Aga, first minister to the sherriffe of Mecca. This, well managed, was enough; but when I met my countrymen, the captains of the English ships from India, they added additional strength to my finances; they would have poured gold upon me to facilitate a journey they so much desired upon several accounts. Captain Thornhill of the Bengal Merchant, and Captain Thomas Price of the Lion, took the conduct of my money-affairs under their direction. Their Saraf, or broker, had in his hands all the commerce that produced the revenues of Abyssinia, together with great part of the correspondence of the east; and, by a lucky accident for me, Captain Price staid all winter with the Lion at Jidda; nay, so kind and anxious was he as to send over a servant from Jidda on purpose, upon a report having been raised that I was slain by the usurper Socinios, though it was only one of my servants, and the servant of Metical Aga, who were murdered by that monster, as is said, with his own hand. Twice he sent over silver to me when I had plenty of gold, and wanted that metal only to apply it in furniture and workmanship. I do not pretend to say but sometimes these supplies failed me, often by my negligence in not applying in proper time, sometimes by the absence of merchants, who were all Mahometans, constantly engaged in business and in journies, and more especially on the king’s retiring to Tigré, after the battle of Limjour, when I was abandoned during the usurpation of the unworthy Socinios. It was then I had recourse to Petros and the Greeks, but more for their convenience than my own, and very seldom from necessity. This opulence enabled me to treat upon equal footing, to do favours as well as to receive them.

Every mountebank-trick was a great accomplishment there, such as making squibs, crackers, and rockets. There was no station in the country to which by these accomplishments I might not have pretended, had I been mad enough to have ever directed my thoughts that way; and I am certain, that in vain I might have solicited leave to return, had not a melancholy despondency, the amor patriæ, seized me, and my health so far declined as apparently to threaten death; but I was not even then permitted to leave Abyssinia till under a very solemn oath I promised to return.

This manner of conducting myself had likewise its disadvantages. The reader will see the times, without their being pointed out to him, in the course of the narrative. It had very near occasioned me to be murdered at Masuah, but it was the means of preserving me at Gondar, by putting me above being insulted or questioned by priests, the fatal rock upon which all other European travellers had split: it would have occasioned my death at Sennaar, had I not been so prudent as to disguise and lay aside the independent carriage in time. Why should I not now speak as I really think, or why be guilty of ingratitude which my heart disclaims. I escaped by the providence and protection of heaven; and so little store do I set upon the advantage of my own experience, that I am satisfied, were I to attempt the same journey again, it would not avail me a straw, or hinder me from perishing miserably, as others have done, though perhaps a different way.

I have only to add, that were it probable, as in my decayed state of health it is not, that I should live to see a second edition of this work, all well-founded, judicious remarks suggested should be gratefully and carefully attended to; but I do solemnly declare to the public in general, that I never will refute or answer any cavils, captious, or idle objections, such as every new publication seems unavoidably to give birth to, nor ever reply to those witticisms and criticisms that appear in newspapers and periodical writings. What I have written I have written. My readers have before them, in the present volumes, all that I shall ever say, directly or indirectly, upon the subject; and I do, without one moment’s anxiety, trust my defence to an impartial, well-informed, and judicious public.

CONTENTS
OF THE
FIRST VOLUME.

Dedication. |
Introduction, | Page i
BOOK I.
THE AUTHOR’S JOURNEY AND VOYAGE FROM SIDON TILL HIS ARRIVAL AT MASUAH.
CHAP. I.

The Author sails from Sidon—Touches at Cyprus—Arrives at Alexandria—Sets out for Rosetto—Embarks on the Nile, and arrives at Cairo,

1

CHAP. II.

Author’s Reception at Cairo—Procures Letters from the Bey and the Greek Patriarch—Visits the Pyramids—Observations on their Construction,

24

CHAP. III.

Leaves Cairo—Embarks on the Nile for Upper Egypt—Visits Metrahenny and Mohannan—Reasons for supposing this the Situation of Memphis,

43

CHAP. IV.

Leaves Metrahenny—Comes to the Island Halouon—False Pyramid—These Buildings end—Sugar Canes—Ruins of Antinopolis—Reception there,

69

CHAP. V.

Voyage to Upper Egypt continued—Ashmounein, Ruins there—Gawe Kibeer Ruins—Mr Norden mistaken—Achmim—Convent of Catholics—Denaera—Magnificent Ruins—Adventure with a Saint there,

91

CHAP VI.

Arrives at Furshout—Adventure of Friar Christopher—Visits Thebes—Luxor and Carnac—Large Ruins at Edfu and Esné—Proceeds on his Voyage,

114

CHAP. VII.

Arrives at Syene—Goes to see the Cataract—Remarkable Tombs—The Situation of Syene—The Aga proposes a visit to Deir and Ibrim—The Author returns to Kenné,

150

CHAP. VIII.

The Author sets out from Kenné—Crosses the Desert of the Thebaid—Visits the Marble Mountains—Arrives at Cosseir on the Red Sea—Transactions there,

169

CHAP. IX.
Voyage to Jibbel Zumrud—Returns to Cosseir—Sails from Cosseir—Jassateen Islands—Arrives at Tor, | 204
CHAP. X.
Sails from Tor—Passes the Elanitic Gulf—Sees Raddua—Arrives at Yambo—Incidents there—Arrives at Jidda, | 239
CHAP. XI.

Occurrences at Jidda—Visit of the Vizir—Alarm of the Factory—Great Civility of the English trading from India—Polygamy—Opinion of Dr Arbuthnot ill-founded—Contrary to Reason and Experience—Leaves Jidda,

265

CHAP. XII.

Sails from Jidda—Konsodah—Ras Heli, Boundary of Arabia Felix—Arrives at Loheia—Proceeds to the Straits of the Indian Ocean—Arrives there—Returns by Azab to Loheia,

294

CHAP. XIII.
Sails for Masuah—Passes a Volcano—Comes to Dahalac—Troubled with a Ghost—Arrives at Masuah, | 327
BOOK II.

ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST AGES OF THE INDIAN AND AFRICAN TRADE—THE FIRST PEOPLING OF ABYSSINIA AND ATBARA—SOME CONJECTURES CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE THERE.

CHAP. I.
Of the Indian Trade in its earliest Ages—Settlement of Ethiopia—Troglodytes—Building of the first Cities, | 365
CHAP. II.

Saba and the South of Africa peopled—Shepherds, their particular Employment and Circumstances—Abyssinia occupied by seven Stranger Nations—Specimens of their several Languages—Conjectures concerning them,

381

CHAP. III.
Origin of Characters or Letters—Ethiopic the first Language—How and why the Hebrew Letter was formed, | 411
CHAP. IV.
Some Account of the Trade-Winds and Monsoons—Application of this to the Voyage to Ophir and Tarshish, | 427
CHAP. V.

Fluctuating State of the India Trade—Hurt by military Expeditions of the Persians—Revives under the Ptolemies—Falls to Decay under the Romans,

447

CHAP. VI.

Queen of Saba visits Jerusalem—Abyssinian Tradition concerning Her—Supposed Founder of that Monarchy—Abyssinia embraces the Jewish Religion—Jewish Hierarchy still retained by the Fatasha—Some Conjectures concerning their Copy of the Old Testament,

471

CHAP. VII.

Books in use in Abyssinia—Enoch—Abyssinia not converted by the Apostles—Conversion from Judaism to Christianity by Frumentius,

493

CHAP. VIII.

War of the Elephant—First Appearance of the Small-Pox—Jews persecute the Christians in Arabia—Defeated by the Abyssinians—Mahomet pretends a Divine Mission—Opinion concerning the Koran—Revolution under Judith—Restoration of the Line of Solomon from Shoa,

510

TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
BOOK I.
THE AUTHOR’S TRAVELS IN EGYPT—VOYAGE IN THE RED SEA, TILL HIS ARRIVAL AT MASUAH.

CHAP. I.

The Author sails from Sidon—Touches at Cyprus—Arrives at Alexandria—Sets out for Rosetto—Embarks on the Nile—and arrives at Cairo.

It was on Saturday the 15th of June, 1768, I sailed in a French vessel from Sidon, once the richest and most powerful city in the world, though now there is not remaining a shadow of its ancient grandeur. We were bound for the island of Cyprus; the weather clear and exceedingly hot, the wind favourable.

This island is not in our course for Alexandria, but lies to the northward of it; nor had I, for my own part, any curiosity to see it. My mind was intent upon more uncommon, more distant, and more painful voyages. But the master of the vessel had business of his own which led him thither; with this I the more readily complied, as we had not yet got certain advice that the plague had ceased in Egypt, and it still wanted some days to the Festival of St John, which is supposed to put a period to that cruel distemper49.

We observed a number of thin, white clouds, moving with great rapidity from south to north, in direct opposition to the course of the Etesian winds; these were immensely high. It was evident they came from the mountains of Abyssinia, where, having discharged their weight of rain, and being pressed by the lower current of heavier air from the northward, they had mounted to possess the vacuum, and returned to restore the equilibrium to the northward, whence they were to come back, loaded with vapour from Mount Taurus, to occasion the overflowing of the Nile, by breaking against the high and rugged mountains of the south.

Nothing could be more agreeable to me than that sight, and the reasoning upon it. I already, with pleasure, anticipated the time in which I should be a spectator first, afterwards historian, of this phænomenon, hitherto a mystery through all ages. I exulted in the measures I had taken, which I flattered myself, from having been digested with greater confederation than those adopted by others, would secure me from the melancholy catastrophes that had terminated these hitherto-unsuccessful attempts.

On the 16th, at dawn of day, I saw a high hill, which, from its particular form, described by Strabo50, I took for Mount Olympus51. Soon after, the rest of the island, which seemed low, appeared in view. We scarce saw Lernica till we anchored before it. It is built of white clay, of the same colour as the ground, precisely as is the case with Damascus, so that you cannot, till close to it, distinguish the houses from the earth they stand upon.

It is very remarkable that Cyprus was so long undiscovered52; ships had been used in the Mediterranean 1700 years before Christ; yet, though only a day’s sailing from the continent of Asia on the north and east, and little more from that of Africa on the south, it was not known at the building of Tyre, a little before the Trojan war, that is 500 years after ships had been passing to and fro in the seas around it.

It was, at its discovery, thick covered with wood; and what leads me to believe it was not well known, even so late as the building of Solomon’s Temple, is, that we do not find that Hiram king of Tyre, just in its neighbourhood, ever had recourse to it for wood, though surely the carriage would have been easier than to have brought it down from the top of Mount Libanus.

That there was great abundance in it, we know from Eratosthenes53, who tells us it was so overgrown that it could not be tilled; so that they first cut down the timber to be used in the furnaces for melting silver and copper; that after this they built fleets with it, and when they could not even destroy it this way, they gave liberty to all strangers to cut it down for whatever use they pleased; and not only so, but they gave them the property of the ground they cleared.

Things are sadly changed now. Wood is one of the wants of most parts of the island, which has not become more healthy by being cleared, as is ordinarily the case.

At 54Cacamo (Acamas) on the west side of the island, the wood remains thick and impervious as at the first discovery. Large stags, and wild boars of a monstrous size, shelter themselves unmolested in these their native woods; and it depended only upon the portion of credulity that I was endowed with, that I did not believe that an elephant had, not many years ago, been seen alive there. Several families of Greeks declared it to me upon oath; nor were there wanting persons of that nation at Alexandria, who laboured to confirm the assertion. Had skeletons of that animal been there, I should have thought them antediluvian ones. I know none could have been at Cyprus, unless in the time of Darius Ochus, and I do not remember that there were elephants, even with him.

In passing, I would fain have gone ashore to see if there were any remains of the celebrated temple of Paphos; but a voyage, such as I was then embarked on, stood in need of vows to Hercules rather than to Venus, and the master, fearing to lose his passage, determined to proceed.

Many medals (scarce any of them good) are dug up in Cyprus; silver ones, of very excellent workmanship, are found near Paphos, of little value in the eyes of antiquarians, being chiefly of towns of the size of those found at Crete and Rhodes, and all the islands of the Archipelago. Intaglios there are some few, part in very excellent Greek style, and generally upon better stones than usual in the islands. I have seen some heads of Jupiter, remarkable for bushy hair and beard, that were of the most exquisite workmanship, worthy of any price. All the inhabitants of the island are subject to fevers, but more especially those in the neighbourhood of Paphos.

We left Lernica the 17th of June, about four o’clock in the afternoon. The day had been very cloudy, with a wind at N. E. which freshened as we got under weigh. Our master, a seaman of experience upon that coast, ran before it to the westward with all the sails he could set. Trusting to a sign that he saw, which he called a bank, resembling a dark cloud in the horizon, he guessed the wind was to be from that quarter the next day.

Accordingly, on the 18th, a little before twelve o’clock, a very fresh and favourable breeze came from the N. W. and we pointed our prow directly, as we thought, upon Alexandria.

The coast of Egypt is exceedingly low, and, if the weather is not clear, you often are close in with the land before you discover it.

A strong current sets constantly to the eastward; and the way the masters of vessels pretend to know their approach to the coast is by a black mud, which they find upon the plummet55 at the end of their sounding-line, about seven leagues distant from land.

Our master pretended at midnight he had found that black sand, and therefore, although the wind was very fair, he chose to lie to, till morning, as thinking himself near the coast; although his reckoning, as he said, did not agree with what he inferred from his soundings.

As I was exceedingly vexed at being so disappointed of making the best of our favourable wind, I rectified my quadrant, and found by the passages of two stars over the meridian, that we were in lat. 32° 1´ 45´´, or seventeen leagues distant from Alexandria, instead of seven, and that by difference of our latitude only.

From this I inferred that part of the assertion, that it is the mud of the Nile which is supposed to shew seamen their approach to Egypt, is mere imagination; seeing that the point where we then were was really part of the sea opposite to the desert of Barca, and had no communication whatever with the Nile.

On the contrary, the Etesian winds blowing all Summer upon that coast, from the westward of north, and a current setting constantly to the eastward, it is impossible that any part of the mud of the Nile can go so high to the windward of any of the mouths of that river.

It is well known, that the action of these winds, and the constancy of that current, has thrown a great quantity of mud, gravel, and sand, into all the ports on the coast of Syria.

All vestiges of old Tyre are defaced; the ports of Sidon, 56Berout, Tripoli, and 57Latikea, are all filled up by the accretion of sand; and, not many days before my leaving Sidon, Mr de Clerambaut, consul of France, shewed me the pavements of the old city of Sidon, 7½ feet lower than the ground upon which the present city stands, and considerably farther back in the gardens nearer to Mount Libanus.

This every one in the country knows is the effect of that easterly current setting upon the coast, which, as it acts perpendicularly to the course of the Nile when discharging itself, at all or any of its mouths, into the Mediterranean, must hurry what it is charged with on towards the coast of Syria, and hinder it from settling opposite to, or making those additions to the land of Egypt, which 58Herodotus has vainly supposed.

The 20th of June, early in the morning, we had a distant prospect of Alexandria rising from the sea. Was not the state of that city perfectly known, a traveller in search of antiquities in architecture would think here was a field for long study and employment.

It is in this point of view the town appears most to the advantage. The mixture of old monuments, such as the Column of Pompey, with the high moorish towers and steeples, raise our expectations of the consequence of the ruins we are to find.

But the moment we are in the port the illusion ends, and we distinguish the immense Herculean works of ancient times, now few in number, from the ill-imagined, ill-constructed, and imperfect buildings, of the several barbarous masters of Alexandria in later ages.

There are two ports, the Old and the New. The entrance into the latter is both difficult and dangerous, having a bar before it; it is the least of the two, though it is what is called the Great Port, by 59Strabo.

Here only the European ships can lie; and, even when here, they are not in safety; as numbers of vessels are constantly lost, though at anchor.

Above forty were cast a-shore and dashed to pieces in March 1773, when I was on my return home, mostly belonging to Ragusa, and the small ports in Provence, while little harm was done to ships of any nation accustomed to the ocean.

It was curious to observe the different procedure of these different nations upon the same accident. As soon as the squall began to become violent, the masters of the Ragusan vessels, and the French caravaneurs, or vessels trading in the Mediterranean, after having put out every anchor and cable they had, took to their boats and fled to the nearest shore, leaving the vessels to their chance in the storm. They knew the furniture of their ships to be too flimsy to trust their lives to it.

Many of their cables being made of a kind of grass called Spartum, could not bear the stress of the vessels or agitation of the waves, but parted with the anchors, and the ships perished.

On the other hand, the British, Danish, Swedish, and Dutch navigators of the ocean, no sooner saw the storm beginning, than they left their houses, took to their boats, and went all hands on board. These knew the sufficiency of their tackle, and provided they were present, to obviate unforeseen accidents, they had no apprehension from the weather. They knew that their cables were made of good hemp, that their anchors were heavy and strong. Some pointed their yards to the wind, and others lowered them upon deck. Afterwards they walked to and fro on their quarter-deck with perfect composure, and bade defiance to the storm. Not one man of these stirred from the ships, till calm weather, on the morrow, called upon them to assist their feeble and more unfortunate brethren, whose ships were wrecked and lay scattered on the shore.

The other port is the 60Eunostus of the ancients, and is to the westward of the Pharos. It was called also the Port of Africa; is much larger than the former, and lies immediately under part of the town of Alexandria. It has much deeper water, though a multitude of ships have every day, for ages, been throwing a quantity of ballast into it; and there is no doubt, but in time it will be filled up, and joined to the continent by this means. And posterity may, probably, following the system of Herodotus (if it should be still fashionable) call this as they have done the rest of Egypt, the Gift of the Nile.

Christian vessels are not suffered to enter this port; the only reason is, least the Moorish women should be seen taking the air in the evening at open windows; and this has been thought to be of weight enough for Christian powers to submit to it, and to over-balance the constant loss of ships, property, and men.

61Alexander, returning to Egypt from the Libyan side, was struck with the beauty and situation of these two ports. 62Dinochares, an architect who accompanied him, traced out the plan, and Ptolemy I. built the city.

The healthy, though desolate and bare country round it, part of the Desert of Libya, was another inducement to prefer this situation to the unwholesome black mud of Egypt; but it had no water; this Ptolemy was obliged to bring far above from the Nile, by a calish, or canal, vulgarly called the Canal of Cleopatra, though it was certainly coeval with the foundation of the city; it has no other name at this day.

This circumstance, however, remedied in the beginning, was fatal to the city’s magnificence ever after, and the cause of its being in the state it is at this day.

The importance of its situation to trade and commerce, made it a principal object of attention to each party in every war. It was easily taken, because it had no water; and, as it could not be kept, it was destroyed by the conqueror, that the temporary possession of it might not turn to be a source of advantage to an enemy.

We are not, however, to suppose, that the country all around it was as bare in the days of prosperity as it is now. Population, we see, produces a swerd of grass round ancient cities in the most desert parts of Africa, which keeps the sand immoveable till the place is no longer inhabited.

I apprehend the numerous lakes in Egypt were all contrived as reservoirs to lay up a store of water for supplying gardens and plantations in the months of the Nile’s decrease. The great effects of a very little water are seen along the calish, or canal, in a number of bushes that it produces, and thick plantations of date-trees, all in a very luxuriant state; and this, no doubt, in the days of the Ptolemies, was extended further, more attended to, and better understood.

Pompey’s pillar, the obelisks, and subterraneous cisterns, are all the antiquities we find now in Alexandria; these have been described frequently, ably, and minutely.

The foliage and capital of the pillar are what seem generally to displease; the fust is thought to have merited more attention than has been bestowed upon the capital.

The whole of the pillar is granite, but the capital is of another stone; and I should suspect those rudiments of leaves were only intended to support firmly leaves of metal63 of better workmanship; for the capital itself is near nine feet high, and the work, in proportionable leaves of stone, would be not only very large, but, after being finished, liable to injuries.

This magnificent monument appears, in taste, to be the work of that period, between Hadrian and Severus; but, though the former erected several large buildings in the east, it is observed of him he never put inscriptions upon them.

This has had a Greek inscription, and I think may very probably be attributed to the time of the latter, as a monument of the gratitude of the city of Alexandria for the benefits he conferred on them, especially since no ancient history mentions its existence at an earlier period.

I apprehend it to have been brought in a block from the Thebais in Upper Egypt, by the Nile; though some have imagined it was an old obelisk, hewn to that round form. It is nine feet diameter; and were it but 80 feet high, it would require a prodigious obelisk indeed, that could admit to be hewn to this circumference for such a length, so as perfectly to efface the hieroglyphics that must have been very deeply cut in the four faces of it.

The tomb of Alexander has been talked of as one of the antiquities of this city. Marmol64 says he saw it in the year 1546. It was, according to him, a small house, in form of a chapel, in the middle of the city, near the church of St Mark, and was called Escander.

The thing itself is not probable, for all those that made themselves masters of Alexandria, in the earliest times, had too much respect for Alexander, to have reduced his tomb to so obscure a state. It would have been spared even by the Saracens; for Mahomet speaks of Alexander with great respect, both as a king and a prophet. The body was preserved in a glass coffin, in 65Strabo’s time, having been robbed of the golden one in which it was first deposited.

The Greeks, for the most part, are better instructed in the history of these places than the Cophts, Turks, or Christians; and, after the Greeks, the Jews.

As I was perfectly disguised, having for many years worn the dress of the Arabs, I was under no constraint, but walked through the town in all directions, accompanied by any of those different nations I could induce to walk with me; and, as I constantly spoke Arabic, was taken for a 66Bedowé by all sorts of people; but, notwithstanding the advantage this freedom gave me, and of which I daily availed myself, I never could hear a word of this monument from either Greek, Jew, Moor, or Christian.

Alexandria has been often taken since the time of Cæsar. It was at last destroyed by the Venetians and Cypriots, upon, or rather after the release of St Lewis, and we may say of it as of Carthage, Periêre ruinæ, its very ruins appear no longer.

The building of the present gates and walls, which some have thought to be antique, does not seem earlier than the last restoration in the 13th century. Some parts of the gate and walls may be of older date; (and probably were those of the last Caliphs before Salidan) but, except these, and the pieces of columns which lie horizontally in different parts of the wall, every thing else is apparently of very late times, and the work has been huddled together in great haste.

It is in vain then to expect a plan of the city, or try to trace here the Macedonian mantle of Dinochares; the very vestiges of ancient ruins are covered, many yards deep, by rubbish, the remnant of the devastations of later times. Cleopatra, were she to return to life again, would scarcely know where her palace was situated, in this her own capital.

There is nothing beautiful or pleasant in the present Alexandria, but a handsome street of modern houses, where a very active and intelligent number of merchants live upon the miserable remnants of that trade, which made its glory in the first times.

It is thinly inhabited, and there is a tradition among the natives, that, more than once, it has been in agitation to abandon it all together, and retire to Rosetto, or Cairo, but that they have been withheld by the opinion of divers saints from Arabia, who have allured them, that Mecca being destroyed, (as it must be as they think by the Russians) Alexandria is then to become the holy place, and that Mahomet’s body is to be transported thither; when that city is destroyed, the sanctified reliques are to be transported to Cairouan, in the kingdom of Tunis: lastly, from Cairouan they are to come to Rosetto, and there to remain till the consummation of all things, which is not then to be at a great distance.

Ptolemy places his Alexandria in lat 30° 31´ and in round numbers in his almagest, lat. 31° north.

Our Professor, Mr Greaves, one of whose errands into Egypt was to ascertain the latitude of this place, seems yet, from some cause or other, to have failed in it, for though he had a brass sextant of five feet radius, he makes the latitude of Alexandria, from a mean of many observations, to be lat 31° 4´ N. whereas the French astronomers from the Academy of Sciences have settled it at 31° 11´ 20´´, so between Mr Greaves and the French there is a difference of 7´ 20´´, which is too much. There is not any thing, in point of situation, that can account for this variance, as in the case of Ptolemy; for the new town of Alexandria is built from east to west; and as all christian travellers necessarily make their observations now on the same line, there cannot possibly be any difference from situation.

Mr Niebuhr, whether from one or more observations he does not say, makes the latitude to be 31° 12´. From a mean of thirty-three observations, taken by the three-feet quadrant I have spoken of, I found it to be 31° 11´ 16´´: So that, taking a medium of these three results, you will have the latitude of Alexandria 31° 11´ 32´´, or, in round number, 31° 11´ 30´´, nor do I think there possibly can be 5´´ difference.

By an eclipse, moreover, of the first satellite of Jupiter, observed on the 23d day of June 1769, I found its longitude to be 30° 17´ 30´´ east, from the meridian of Greenwich.

We arrived at Alexandria the 20th of June, and found that the plague had raged in that city and neighbourhood from the beginning of March, and that two days only before our arrival people had begun to open their houses and communicate with each other; but it was no matter, St John’s day was past, the miraculous nucta, or dew, had fallen, and every body went about their ordinary business in safety, and without fear.

With very great pleasure I had received my instruments at Alexandria. I examined them, and, by the perfect state in which they arrived, knew the obligations I was under to my correspondents and friends. Prepared now for any enterprise, I left with eagerness the thread-bare inquiries into the meagre remains, of this once-famous capital of Egypt.

The journey to Rosetto is always performed by land, as the mouth of the branch of the Nile leading to Rosetto, called the Bogaz67, is very shallow and dangerous to pass, and often tedious; besides, nobody wishes to be a partner for any time in a voyage with Egyptian sailors, if he can possibly avoid it.

The journey by land is also reputed dangerous, and people travel burdened with arms, which they are determined never to use.

For my part, I placed my safety, in my disguise, and my behaviour. We had all of us pistols at our girdles, against an extremity; but our fire-arms of a larger sort, of which we had great store, were sent with our baggage, and other instruments, by the Bogaz to Rosetto. I had a small lance, called a Jerid, in my hand, my servants were without any visible arms.

We left Alexandria in the afternoon, and about three miles before arriving at Aboukeer, we met a man, in appearance of some consequence, going to Alexandria.

As we had no fear of him or his party, we neither courted nor avoided them. We passed near enough, however, to give them the usual salute, Salam Alicum; to which the leader of the troop gave no answer, but said to one of his servants, as in contempt, Bedowé! they are peasants, or country Arabs. I was much better pleased with this token that we had deceived them, than if they had returned the salute twenty times.

Some inconsiderable ruins are at Aboukeer, and seem to denote, that it was the former situation of an ancient city. There is here also an inlet of the sea; and the distance, something less than four leagues from Alexandria, warrants us to say that it is Canopus, one of the most ancient cities in the world; its ruins, notwithstanding the neighbourhood of the branch of the Nile, which goes by that name, have not yet been covered by the increase of the land of Egypt.

At Medea, which we suppose, by its distance of near seven leagues, to be the ancient Heraclium, is the passage or ferry which terminates the fear of danger from the Arabs of Libya; and it is here 68supposed the Delta, or Egypt, begins.

Dr Shaw69 is obliged to confess, that between Alexandria and the Canopic branch of the Nile, few or no vestiges are seen of the increase of the land by the inundation of the river; indeed it would have been a wonder if there had.

Alexandria, and its environs, are part of the desert of Barca, too high to have ever been overflowed by the Nile, from any part of its lower branches; or else there would have been no necessity for going so high up as above Rosetto, to get level enough, to bring water down to Alexandria by the canal.

Dr Shaw adds, that the ground hereabout may have been an island; and so it may, and so may almost any other place in the world; but there is no sort of indication that it was so, nor viable means by which it was formed.

We saw no vegetable from Alexandria to Medea, excepting some scattered roots of Absinthium; nor were these luxuriant, or promising to thrive, but though they had not a very strong smell, they were abundantly bitter; and their leaves seemed to have imbibed a quantity of saline particles, with which the soil of the whole desert of Barca is strongly impregnated.

We saw two or three gazels, or antelopes, walking one by one, at several times, in nothing differing from the species of that animal, in the desert of Barca and Cyrenaicum; and the 70jerboa, another inhabitant of these deserts; but from the multitude of holes in the ground, which we saw at the root of almost every plant of Absinthium, we were very certain its companion, the 71Cerastes, or horned viper, was an inhabitant of that country also.

From Medea, or the Passage, our road lay through very dry sand; to avoid which, and seek firmer footing, we were obliged to ride up to the bellies of our horses in the sea. If the wind blows this quantity of dust or sand into the Mediterranean, it is no wonder the mouths of the branches of the Nile are choked up.

All Egypt is like to this part of it, full of deep dust and sand, from the beginning of March till the first of the inundation. It is this fine powder and sand, raised and loosened by the heat of the sun, and want of dew, and not being tied fast, as it were, by any root or vegetation, which the Nile carries off with it, and buries in the sea, and which many ignorantly suppose comes from Abyssinia, where every river runs in a bed of rock.

When you leave the sea, you strike off nearly at right angles, and pursue your journey to the eastward of north. Here heaps of stone and trunks of pillars, are set up to guide you in your road, through moving sands, which stand in hillocks in proper directions, and which conduct you safely to Rosetto, surrounded on one side by these hills of sand, which seem ready to cover it.

Rosetto is upon that branch of the Nile which was called the Bolbuttic Branch, and is about four miles from the sea. It probably obtained its present name from the Venetians, or Genoese, who monopolized the trade of this country, before the Cape of Good Hope was discovered; for it is known to the natives by the name of Rashid, by which is meant the Orthodox.

The reason of this I have already explained, it is some time or other to be a substitute to Mecca, and to be blessed with all that holiness, that the possession of the reliques, of their prophet can give it.

Dr Shaw72 having always in his mind the strengthening of Herodotus’s hypothesis, that Egypt is created by the Nile, says, that perhaps this was once a Cape, because Rashid has that meaning. But as Dr Shaw understood Arabic perfectly well, he must therefore have known, that Rashid has no such signification in any of the Oriental Languages. Ras, indeed, is a head land, or cape; but Rassit has no such signification, and Rashid a very different one, as I have already mentioned.

Rashid then, or Rosetto, is a large, clean, neat town, or village, upon the eastern side of the Nile. It is about three miles long, much frequented by studious and religious Mahometans; among these too are a considerable number of merchants, it being the entrepot between Cairo and Alexandria, and vice versa; here too the merchants have their factors, who superintend and watch over the merchandise which passes the Bogaz to and from Cairo.

There are many gardens, and much verdure, about Rosetto; the ground is low, and retains long the moisture it imbibes from the overflowing of the Nile. Here also are many curious plants and flowers, brought from different countries, by Fakirs, and merchants. Without this, Egypt, subject to such long inundation, however it may abound in necessaries, could not boast of many beautiful productions of its own gardens, though flowers, trees, and plants, were very much in vogue in this neighbourhood, two hundred years ago, as we find by the observations of Prosper Alpinus.

The study and search after every thing useful or beautiful, which for some time had been declining gradually, fell at last into total contempt and oblivion, under the brutal reign of these last slaves73, the most infamous reproach to the name of Sovereign.

Rosetto is a favourite halting-place of the Christian travellers entering Egypt, and merchants established there. There they draw their breaths, in an imaginary increase of freedom, between the two great sinks of tyranny, oppression, and injustice, Alexandria and Cairo.

Rosetto has this good reputation, that the people are milder, more tractable, and less avaricious, than those of the two last-mentioned capitals; but I must say, that, in my time, I could not discern much difference.

The merchants, who trade at all hours of the day with Christians, are indeed more civilized, and less insolent, than the soldiery and the rest of the common people, which is the case every where, as it is for their own interest; but their priests, and moullahs, their soldiers, and people living in the country, are, in point of manners, just as bad as the others.

Rosetto is in lat. 31° 24´ 15´´ N.; it is the place where we embark for Cairo, which we accordingly did on June the 30th.

There is a wonderful deal of talk at Alexandria of the danger of passing over the desert to Rosetto. The same conversation is held here. After you embark on the Nile in your way to Cairo, you hear of pilots, and masters of vessels, who land you among robbers to share your plunder, and twenty such like stories, all of them of old date, and which perhaps happened long ago, or never happened at all.

But provided the government of Cairo is settled, and you do not land at villages in strife with each other, (in which circumstances no person of any nation is safe) you must be very unfortunate indeed, if any great accident befal you between Alexandria and Cairo.

For, from the constant intercourse between these two cities, and the valuable charge confided to these masters of vessels, they are all as well known, and at the least as much under authority, as the boatmen on the river Thames; and, if they should have either killed, or robbed any person, it must be with a view to leave the country immediately; else either at Cairo, Rosetto, Fuè, or Alexandria, wherever they were first caught, they would infallibly be hanged.

CHAP. II.

Author’s Reception at Cairo—Procures Letters from the Bey and the Greek Patriarch—Visits the Pyramids—Observations on their Construction.

It was in the beginning of July we arrived at Cairo, recommended to the very hospitable house of Julian and Bertran, to whom I imparted my resolution of pursuing my journey into Abyssinia.

The wildness of the intention seemed to strike them greatly, on which account they endeavoured all they could to persuade me against it, but, upon seeing me resolved, offered kindly their most effectual services.

As the government of Cairo hath always been jealous of this enterprise I had undertaken, and a regular prohibition had been often made by the Porte, among indifferent people, I pretended that my destination was to India, and no one conceived any thing wrong in that.

This intention was not long kept secret, (nothing can be concealed at Cairo:) All nations, Jews, Turks, Moors, Cophts, and Franks, are constantly upon the inquiry, as much after things that concern other people’s business as their own.

The plan I adopted was to appear in public as seldom as possible, unless disguised; and I soon was considered as a Fakir, or Dervich, moderately skilled in magic, and who cared for nothing but study and books.

This reputation opened me, privately, a channel for purchasing many Arabic manuscripts, which the knowledge of the language enabled me to chuse, free from the load of trash that is generally imposed upon Christian purchasers.

The part of Cairo where the French are settled is exceedingly commodious, and fit for retirement. It consists of one long street, where all the merchants of that nation live together. It is shut at one end, by large gates, where there is a guard, and these are kept constantly close in the time of the plague.

At the other end is a large garden tolerably kept, in which there are several pleasant walks, and seats; all the enjoyment that Christians can hope for, among this vile people, reduces itself to peace, and quiet; nobody seeks for more. There are, however, wicked emissaries who are constantly employed, by threats, lies, and extravagant demands, to torment them, and keep them from enjoying that repose, which would content them instead of freedom, and more solid happiness, in their own country.

I have always considered the French at Cairo, as a number of honest, polished, and industrious men, by some fatality condemned to the gallies; and I must own, never did a set of people bear their continual vexations with more fortitude and manliness.

Their own affairs they keep to themselves, and, notwithstanding the bad prospect always before them, they never fail to put on a chearful face to a stranger, and protect and help him to the utmost of their power; as if his little concerns, often ridiculous, always very troublesome ones, were the only charge they had in hand.

But a more brutal, unjust, tyrannical, oppressive, avaricious set of infernal miscreants, there is not on earth, than are the members of the government of Cairo.

There is also at Cairo a Venetian consul, and a house of that nation called Pini, all excellent people.

The government of Cairo is much praised by some. It may perhaps have merit when explained, but I never could understand it, and therefore cannot explain it.

It is said to consist of twenty-four Beys; yet its admirers could never fix upon one year in which there was that number. There were but seven when I was at Cairo, and one who commanded the whole.

The Beys are understood to be veiled with the sovereign power of the country; yet sometimes a Kaya commands absolutely, and, though of an inferior rank, he makes his servants, Beys or Sovereigns.

At a time of peace, when Beys are contented to be on an equality, and no ambitious one attempts to govern the whole, there is a number of inferior officers depending upon each of the Beys, such as Kayas, Schourbatchies, and the like, who are but subjects in respect to the Beys, yet exercise unlimited jurisdiction over the people in the city, and appoint others to do the same over villages in the country.

There are perhaps four hundred inhabitants in Cairo, who have absolute power, and administer what they call justice, in their own way, and according to their own views.

Fortunately in my time this many-headed monster was no more, there was but one Ali Bey, and there was neither inferior nor superior jurisdiction exercised, but by his officers only. This happy state did not last long. In order to be a Bey, the person must have been a slave, and bought for money, at a market. Every Bey has a great number of servants, slaves to him, as he was to others before; these are his guards, and these he promotes to places in his household, according as they are qualified.

The first of these domestic charges is that of hasnadar, or treasurer, who governs his whole household; and whenever his master the Bey dies, whatever number of children he may have, they never succeed him; but this man marries his wife, and inherits his dignity and fortune.

The Bey is old, the wife is young, so is the hasnadar, upon whom she depends for every thing, and whom she must look upon as the presumptive husband; and those people who conceal, or confine their women, and are jealous, upon the most remote occasion, never feel any jealousy for the probable consequences of this passion, from the existence of such connection.

It is very extraordinary, to find a race of men in power, all agree to leave their succession to strangers, in preference to their own children, for a number of ages; and that no one should ever have attempted to make his son succeed him, either in dignity or estate, in preference to a slave, whom he has bought for money like a beast.

The Beys themselves have seldom children, and those they have, seldom live. I have heard it as a common observation, that Cairo is very unwholesome for young children in general; the prostitution of the Beys from early youth probably give their progeny a worse chance than those of others.

The instant that I arrived at Cairo was perhaps the only one in which I ever could have been allowed, single and unprotected as I was, to have made my intended journey.

Ali Bey, lately known in Europe by various narratives of the last transactions of his life, after having undergone many changes of fortune, and been banished by his rivals from his capital, at last had enjoyed the satisfaction of a return, and of making himself absolute in Cairo.

The Port had constantly been adverse to him, and he cherished the strongest resentment in his heart. He wished nothing so much as to contribute his part to rend the Ottoman empire to pieces.

A favourable opportunity presented itself in the Russian war, and Ali Bey was prepared to go all lengths in support of that power. But never was there an expedition so successful and so distant, where the officers were less instructed from the cabinet, more ignorant of the countries, more given to useless parade, or more intoxicated with pleasure, than the Russians on the Mediterranean then were.

After the defeat, and burning of the Turkish squadron, upon the coast of Asia Minor, there was not a sail appeared that did not do them homage. They were properly and advantageously situated at Paros, or rather, I mean, a squadron of ships of one half their number, would have been properly placed there.

The number of Bashas and Governors in Caramania, very seldom in their allegiance to the Port, were then in actual rebellion; great part of Syria was in the same situation, down to Tripoli and Sidon; and thence Shekh Daher, from Acre to the plains of Esdraelon, and to the very frontiers of Egypt.

With circumstances so favourable, and a force so triumphant, Egypt and Syria would probably have fallen dismembered from the Ottoman empire. But it was very plain, that the Russian commanders were not provided with instructions, and had no idea how far their victory might have carried them, or how to manage those they had conquered.

They had no confidential correspondence with Ali Bey, though they might have safely trusted him as he would have trusted them; but neither of them were provided with proper negotiators, nor did they ever understand one another till it was too late, and till their enemies, taking advantage of their tardiness, had rendered the first and great scheme impossible.

Carlo Rozetti, a Venetian merchant, a young man of capacity and intrigue, had for some years governed the Bey absolutely. Had such a man been on board the fleet with a commission, after receiving instructions from Petersburgh, the Ottoman empire in Egypt was at an end.

The Bey, with all his good sense and understanding, was still a mamaluke, and had the principles of a slave. Three men of different religions possessed his confidence and governed his councils all at a time. The one was a Greek, the other a Jew, and the third an Egyptian Copht, his secretary. It would have required a great deal of discernment and penetration to have determined which of these was the most worthless, or most likely to betray him.

The secretary, whose name was Risk, had the address to supplant the other two at the time they thought themselves at the pinnacle of their glory; over-awing every Turk, and robbing every Christian, the Greek was banished from Egypt, and the Jew bastinadoed to death. Such is the tenure of Egyptian ministers.

Risk professed astrology, and the Bey, like all other Turks, believed in it implicitly, and to this folly he sacrificed his own good understanding; and Risk, probably in pay to Constantinople, led him from one wild scheme to another, till he undid him—by the stars.

The apparatus of instruments that were opened at the custom-house of Alexandria, prepossessed Risk in favour of my superior knowledge in astrology.

The Jew, who was master of the custom-house, was not only ordered to refrain from touching or taking them out of their places (a great mortification to a Turkish custom-house, where every thing is handed about and shewn) but an order from the Bey also arrived that they should be sent to me without duty or fees, because they were not merchandise.

I was very thankful for that favour, not for the sake of saving the dues at the custom-house, but because I was excused from having them taken out of their cases by rough and violent hands, which certainly would have broken something.

Risk waited upon me the next day, and let me know from whom the favour came; on which we all thought this was a hint for a present; and accordingly, as I had other business with the Bey, I had prepared a very handsome one.

But I was exceedingly astonished when desiring to know the time when it was to be offered; it was not only refused, but some few trifles were sent as a present from the secretary with this message: “That, when I had reposed, he would visit me, desire to see me make use of these instruments; and, in the mean time, that I might rest confident, that nobody durst any way molest me while in Cairo, for I was under the immediate protection of the Bey.” He added also, “That if I wanted any thing I should send my Armenian servant, Arab Keer, to him, without troubling myself to communicate my necessities to the French, or trust my concerns to their Dragomen.”

Although I had lived for many years in friendship and in constant good understanding with both Turks and Moors, there was something more polite and considerate in this than I could account for.

I had not seen the Bey, it was not therefore any particular address, or any prepossession in my favour, with which these people are very apt to be taken at first sight, that could account for this; I was an absolute stranger; I therefore opened myself entirely to my landlord, Mr Bertran.

I told him my apprehension of too much fair weather in the beginning, which, in these climates, generally leads to a storm in the end; on which account, I suspected some design; Mr Bertran kindly promised to sound Risk for me.

At the same time, he cautioned me equally against offending him, or trusting myself in his hands, as being a man capable of the blackest designs, and merciless in the execution of them.

It was not long before Risk’s curiosity gave him a fair opportunity. He inquired of Bertran as to my knowledge of the stars; and my friend, who then saw perfectly the drift of all his conduct, so prepossessed him in favour of my superior science, that he communicated to him in the instant the great expectations he had formed, to be enabled by me, to foresee the destiny of the Bey; the success of the war; and, in particular, whether or not he should make himself master of Mecca; to conquer which place, he was about to dispatch his slave and son-in-law, Mahomet Bey Abou Dahab, at the head of an army conducting the pilgrims.

Bertran communicated this to me with great tokens of joy: for my own part, I did not greatly like the profession of fortune-telling, where bastinado or impaling might be the reward of being mistaken.

But I was told I had most credulous people to deal with, and that there was nothing for it but escaping as long as possible, before the issue of any of my prophecies arrived, and as soon as I had done my own business.

This was my own idea likewise; I never saw a place I liked worse, or which afforded less pleasure or instruction than Cairo, or antiquities which less answered their descriptions.

In a few days I received a letter from Risk, desiring me to go out to the Convent of St George, about three miles from Cairo, where the Greek patriarch had ordered an apartment for me; that I should pretend to the French merchants that it was for the sake of health, and that there I should receive the Bey’s orders.

Providence seemed to teach me the way I was to go. I went accordingly to St George, a very solitary mansion, but large and quiet, very proper for study, and still more for executing a plan which I thought most necessary for my undertaking.

During my stay at Algiers, the Rev. Mr Tonyn, the king’s chaplain to that factory, was absent upon leave. The bigotted catholic priests there neither marry, baptize, nor bury the dead of those that are Protestants.

There was a Greek priest,74Father Christopher, who constantly had offered gratuitously to perform these functions. The civility, humanity, and good character of the man, led me to take him to reside at my country house, where I lived the greatest part of the year; besides that he was of a chearful disposition, I had practised much with him both in speaking and reading Greek with the accent, not in use in our schools, but without which that language, in the mouth of a stranger, is perfectly unintelligible all over the Archipelago.

Upon my leaving Algiers to go on my voyage to Barbary, being tired of the place, he embarked on board a vessel, and landed at Alexandria, from which soon after he was called to Cairo by the Greek patriarch Mark, and made Archimandrites, which is the second dignity in the Greek church under the patriarch. He too was well acquainted in the house of Ali Bey, where all were Georgian and Greek slaves; and it was at his solicitation that Risk had desired the patriarch to furnish me with an apartment in the Convent of St George.

The next day after my arrival I was surprised by the visit of my old friend Father Christopher; and, not to detain the reader with useless circumstances, the intelligence of many visits, which I shall comprehend in one, was, that there were many Greeks then in Abyssinia, all of them in great power, and some of them in the first places of the empire; that they corresponded with the patriarch when occasion offered, and, at all times, held him in such respect, that his will, when signified to them, was of the greatest authority, and that obedience was paid to it as to holy writ.

Father Christopher took upon him, with the greatest readiness, to manage the letters, and we digested the plan of them; three copies were made to send separate ways, and an admonitory letter to the whole of the Greeks then in Abyssinia, in form of a bull.

By this the patriarch enjoined them as a penance, upon which a kind of jubilee was to follow, that, laying aside their pride and vanity, great sins with which he knew them much infected and, instead of pretending to put themselves on a footing with me when I should arrive at the court of Abyssinia, they should concur, heart and hand, in serving me; and that, before it could be supposed they had received instructions from me, they should make a declaration before the king, that they were not in condition equal to me, that I was a free citizen of a powerful nation, and servant of a great king; that they were born slaves of the Turk, and, at best, ranked but as would my servants; and that, in fact, one of their countrymen was in that station then with me.

After having made that declaration publicly, and bona fide, in presence of their priest, he thereupon declared to them, that all their past sins were forgiven.

All this the patriarch most willingly and chearfully performed. I saw him frequently when I was in Cairo; and we had already commenced a great friendship and intimacy.

In the mean while, Risk sent to me, one night about nine o’clock, to come to the Bey. I saw him then for the first time. He was a much younger man than I conceived him to be; he was sitting upon a large sofa, covered with crimson-cloth of gold; his turban, his girdle, and the head of his dagger, all thick covered with fine brilliants; one in his turban, that served to support a sprig of brilliants also, was among the largest I had ever seen.

He entered abruptly into discourse upon the war between Russia and the Turk, and asked me if I had calculated what would be the consequence of that war? I said, the Turks would be beaten by sea and land wherever they presented themselves.

Again, Whether Constantinople would be burned or taken?—I said, Neither; but peace would be made, after much bloodshed, with little advantage to either party.

He clapped his hands together, and swore an oath in Turkish, then turned to Risk, who stood before him, and said, That will be sad indeed! but truth is truth, and God is merciful.

He offered me coffee and sweatmeats, promised me his protection, bade me fear nothing, but, if any body wronged me, to acquaint him by Risk.

Two or three nights afterwards the Bey sent for me again. It was near eleven o’clock before I got admittance to him.

I met the janissary Aga going out from him, and a number of soldiers at the door. As I did not know him, I passed him without ceremony, which is not usual for any person to do. Whenever he mounts on horseback, as he was then just going to do, he has absolute power of life and death, without appeal, all over Cairo and its neighbourhood.

He stopt me just at the threshold, and asked one of the Bey’s people who I was? and was answered, “It is Hakim Englese,” the English philosopher, or physician.

He asked me in Turkish, in a very polite manner, if I would come and see him, for he was not well? I answered him in Arabic, “Yes, whenever he pleased, but could not then stay, as I had received a message that the Bey was waiting.” He replied in Arabic, “No, no; go, for God’s sake go; any time will do for me.”

The Bey was sitting, leaning forward, with a wax taper in one hand, and reading a small slip of paper, which he held close to his face. He seemed to have little light, or weak eyes; nobody was near him; his people had been all dismissed, or were following the janissary Aga out.

He did not seem to observe me till I was close upon him, and started when I said, “Salam.” I told him I came upon his message. He said, I thank you, did I send for you? and without giving me leave to reply, went on, “O true, I did so,” and fell to reading his paper again.

After this was over, he complained that he had been ill, that he vomited immediately after dinner, though he eat moderately; that his stomach was not yet settled, and was afraid something had been given him to do him mischief.

I felt his pulse, which was low, and weak; but very little feverish. I desired he would order his people to look if his meat was dressed in copper properly tinned; I assured him he was in no danger, and insinuated that I thought he had been guilty of some excess before dinner; at which he smiled, and said to Risk, who was standing by, “Afrite! Afrite”! he is a devil! he is a devil! I said, If your stomach is really uneasy from what you may have ate, warm some water, and, if you please, put a little green tea into it, and drink it till it makes you vomit gently, and that will give you ease; after which you may take a dish of strong coffee, and go to bed, or a glass of spirits, if you have any that are good.

He looked surprised at this proposal, and said very calmly, “Spirits! do you know I am a Mussulman?” But I, Sir, said I, am none. I tell you what is good for your body, and have nothing to do with your religion, or your soul. He seemed vastly diverted, and pleased with my frankness, and only said, “He speaks like a man.” There was no word of the war, nor of the Russians that night. I went home desperately tired, and peevish at being dragged out, on so foolish an errand.

Next morning, his secretary Risk came to me to the convent. The Bey was not yet well; and the idea still remained that he had been poisoned. Risk told me the Bey had great confidence in me. I asked him how the water had operated? He said he had not yet taken any of it, that he did not know how to make it, therefore he was come at the desire of the Bey, to see how it was made.

I immediately shewed him this, by infusing some green tea in some warm water. But this was not all, he modestly insinuated that I was to drink it, and so vomit myself, in order to shew him how to do with the Bey.

I excused myself from being patient and physician at the same time, and told him, I would vomit him, which would answer the same purpose of instruction; neither was this proposal accepted.

The old Greek priest, Father Christopher, coming at the same time, we both agreed to vomit the Father, who would not consent, but produced a Caloyeros, or young monk, and we forced him to take the water whether he would or not.

As my favour with the Bey was now established by my midnight interviews, I thought of leaving my solitary mansion at the convent. I desired Mr Risk to procure me peremptory letters of recommendation to Shekh Haman, to the governor of Syene, Ibrim, and Deir, in Upper Egypt. I procured also the same from the janissaries, to these three last places, as their garrisons are from that body at Cairo, which they call their Port. I had also letters from Ali Bey, to the Bey of Suez, to the Sherriffe of Mecca, to the Naybe (so they call the Sovereign) of Masuah, and to the king of Sennaar, and his minister for the time being.

Having obtained all my letters and dispatches, as well from the patriarch as from the Bey, I set about preparing for my journey.

Cairo is supposed to be the ancient Babylon75, at least part of it. It is in lat. 30° 21´ 30´´ north, and in long. 31° 16´ east, from Greenwich. I cannot assent to what is said of it, that it is built in form of a crescent. You ride round it, gardens and all, in three hours and a quarter, upon an ass, at an ordinary pace, which will be above three miles an hour.

The Calish76, or Amnis Trajanus, passes through the length of it, and fills the lake called Birket el Hadje, the first supply of water the pilgrims get in their tiresome journey to Mecca.

On the other side of the Nile, from Cairo, is Geeza, so called, as some Arabian authors say, from there having been a bridge there; Geeza signifies the Passage.

About eleven miles beyond this are the Pyramids, called the Pyramids of Geeza, the description of which is in every body’s hands. Engravings of them had been published in England, with plans of them upon a large scale, two years before I came into Egypt, and were shewn me by Mr Davidson consul of Nice, whose drawings they were.

He it was too that discovered the small chamber above the landing-place, after you ascend through the long gallery of the great Pyramid on your left hand, and he left the ladder by which he ascended, for the satisfaction of other travellers. But there is nothing in the chamber further worthy of notice, than its having escaped discovery so many ages.

I think it more extraordinary still, that, for such a time as these Pyramids have been known, travellers were content rather to follow the report of the ancients, than to make use of their own eyes.

Yet it has been a constant belief, that the stones composing these Pyramids have been brought from the 77Libyan mountains, though any one who will take the pains to remove the sand on the south side, will find the solid rock there hewn into steps.

And in the roof of the large chamber, where the Sarcophagus stands, as also in the top of the roof of the gallery, as you go up into that chamber, you see large fragments of the rock, affording an unanswerable proof, that those Pyramids were once huge rocks, standing where they now are; that some of them, the most proper from their form, were chosen for the body of the Pyramid, and the others hewn into steps, to serve for the superstructure, and the exterior parts of them.

Canja under Sail.

London Publish’d Decr. 1st. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

CHAP. III.

Leaves Cairo—Embarks on the Nile for Upper Egypt—Visits Metrahenny and Mohannan—Reasons for supposing this the situation of Memphis.

Having now provided every thing necessary, and taken a rather melancholy leave of our very indulgent friends, who had great apprehensions that we should never return; and fearing that our stay till the very excessive heats were past, might involve us in another difficulty, that of missing the Etesian winds, we secured a boat to carry us to Furshout, the residence of Hamam, the Shekh of Upper Egypt.

This sort of vessel is called a Canja, and is one of the most commodious used on any river, being safe, and expeditious at the same time, though at first sight it has a strong appearance of danger.

That on which we embarked was about 100 feet from stern to stem, with two masts, main and foremast, and two monstrous Latine sails; the main-sail yard being about 200 feet in length.

The structure of this vessel is easily conceived, from the draught, plan, and section. It is about 30 feet in the beam, and about 90 feet in keel.

The keel is not straight, but a portion of a parabola whose curve is almost insensible to the eye. But it has this good effect in sailing, that whereas the bed of the Nile, when the water grows low, is full of sand banks under water, the keel under the stem, where the curve is greatest, first strikes upon these banks, and is fast, but the rest of the ship is afloat; so that by the help of oars, and assistance of the stream, furling the sails, you get easily off; whereas, was the keel straight, and the vessel going with the pressure of that immense main-sail, you would be so fast upon the bank as to lie there like a wreck for ever.

This yard and sail is never lowered. The sailors climb and furl it as it stands. When they shift the sail, they do it with a thick stick like a quarter staff, which they call a noboot, put between the lashing of the yard and the sail; they then twist this stick round till the sail and yard turn over to the side required.

When I say the yard and sail are never lowered, I mean while we are getting up the stream, before the wind; for, otherwise, when the vessel returns, they take out the mast, lay down the yards, and put by their sails, so that the boat descends like a wreck broadside forwards; otherwise, being so heavy a-loft, were she to touch with her stem going down the stream, she could not fail to carry away her masts, and perhaps be staved to pieces.

The cabin has a very decent and agreeable dining-room, about twenty feet square, with windows that have close and latticed shutters, so that you may open them at will in the day-time, and enjoy the freshness of the air; but great care must be taken to keep these shut at night.

Section of the Canja.

A. Planks sewed together without nailing.

London publish’d Decr 1st. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

A certain kind of robber, peculiar to the Nile, is constantly on the watch to rob boats, in which they suppose the crew are off their guard. They generally approach the boat when it is calm, either swimming under water, or when it is dark, upon goats skins; after which, they mount with the utmost silence, and take away whatever they can lay their hands on.

They are not very fond, I am told, of meddling with vessels whereon they see Franks, or Europeans, because by them some have been wounded with fire-arms.

The attempts are generally made when you are at anchor, or under weigh, at night, in very moderate weather; but oftenest when you are falling down the stream without masts; for it requires, strength, vigour, and skill, to get aboard a vessel going before a brisk wind; though indeed they are abundantly provided with all these requisites.

Behind the dining-room (that is, nearer the stern,) you have a bed-chamber ten feet long, and a place for putting your books and arms. With the latter we were plentifully supplied, both with those of the useful kind, and those (such as large blunderbusses,) meant to strike terror. We had great abundance of ammunition, likewise, both for our defence and sport.

With books we were less furnished, yet our library was chosen, and a very dear one; for, finding how much my baggage was increased by the accession of the large quadrant and its foot, and Dolland’s large achromatic telescope, I began to think it folly to load myself more with things to be carried on mens shoulders through a country full of mountains, which it was very doubtful whether I should get liberty to enter, much more be able to induce savages to carry these incumbrances for me.

To reduce the bulk as much as possible, after considering in my mind what were likeliest to be of service to me in the countries through which I was passing, and the several inquiries I was to make, I fell, with some remorse, upon garbling my library, tore out all the leaves which I had marked for my purpose, destroyed some editions of very rare books, rolling up the needful, and tying them by themselves. I thus reduced my library to a more compact form.

It was December 12th when I embarked on the Nile at Bulac, on board the Canja already mentioned, the remaining part of which needs no description, but will be understood immediately upon inspection.

At first we had the precaution to apply to our friend Risk concerning our captain Hagi Hassan Abou Cuffi, and we obliged him to give his son Mahomet in security for his behaviour towards us. Our hire to Furshout was twenty-seven patakas, or about L.6:15:0 Sterling.

There was nothing so much we desired as to be at some distance from Cairo on our voyage. Bad affairs and extortions always overtake you in this detestable country, at the very time when you are about to leave it.

The wind was contrary, so we were obliged to advance against the stream, by having the boat drawn with a rope.

We were surprised to see the alacrity with which two young Moors bestirred themselves in the boat, they supplied the place of masters, companions, pilots, and seamen to us.

Our Rais had not appeared, and I did not augur much good, from the alacrity of these Moors, so willing to proceed without him.

However, as it was conformable to our own wishes, we encouraged and cajoled them all we could. We advanced a few miles to two convents of Cophts, called Deireteen78.

Here we stopped to pass the night, having had a fine view of the Pyramids of Geeza and Saccara, and being then in sight of a prodigious number of others built of white clay, and stretching far into the desert to the south-west.

Two of these seemed full as large as those that are called the Pyramids of Geeza. One of them was of a very extraordinary form, it seemed as if it had been intended at first to be a very large one, but that the builder’s heart or means had failed him, and that he had brought it to a very mis-shapen disproportioned head at last.

We were not a little displeased to find, that, in the first promise of punctuality our Rais had made, he had disappointed us by absenting himself from the boat. The fear of a complaint, if we remained near the town, was the reason why his servants had hurried us away; but being now out of reach, as they thought, their behaviour was entirely changed; they scarce deigned to speak to us, but smoked their pipes, and kept up a conversation bordering upon ridicule and insolence.

On the side of the Nile, opposite to our boat, a little farther to the south, was a tribe of Arabs encamped.

These are subject to Cairo, or were then at peace with its government. They are called Howadat, being a part of the Atouni, a large tribe that possesses the Isthmus of Suez, and from that go up between the Red Sea and the mountains that bound the east part of the Valley of Egypt. They reach to the length of Cosseir, where they border upon another large tribe called Ababdé, which extends from thence up into Nubia.

Both these are what were anciently called Shepherds, and are now constantly at war with each other.

The Howadat are the same that fell in with Mr Irvine79 in these very mountains, and conducted him so generously and safely to Cairo. Though little acquainted with the manners, and totally ignorant of the language of his conductors, he imagined them to be, and calls them by no other name, than “the Thieves.”

One or two of these straggled down to my boat to seek tobacco and coffee, when I told them, if a few decent men among them would come on board, I should make them partakers of the coffee and tobacco I had. Two of them accepted the invitation, and we presently became great friends.

I remembered, when in Barbary, living with the tribes of Noile and Wargumma (two numerous and powerful clans of Arabs in the kingdom of Tunis) that the Howadat, or Atouni, the Arabs of the Isthmus of Suez, were of the same family and race with one of them.

I even had marked this down in my memorandum-book, but it happened not to be at hand; and I did not really remember whether it was to the Noile or Wargumma they were friends, for these two are rivals, and enemies, so in a mistake there was danger. I, however, cast about a little to discover this if possible; and soon, from discourse and circumstances that came into my mind, I found it was the Noile to whom these people belonged; so we soon were familiar, and as our conversation tallied so that we found we were true men, they got up and insisted on fetching one of their Shekhs.

I told them they might do so if they pleased; but they were first bound to perform me a piece of service, to which they willingly and readily offered themselves. I desired, that, early next morning, they would have a boy and horse ready to carry a letter to Risk, Ali Bey’s secretary, and I would give him a piaster upon bringing back the answer.

This they instantly engaged to perform, but no sooner were they gone a-shore, than, after a short council held together, one of our laughing boat-companions stole off on foot, and, before day, I was awakened by the arrival of our Rais Abou Cuffi, and his son Mahomet.

Abou Cuffi was drunk, though a Sherriffe, a Hagi, and half a Saint besides, who never tasted fermented liquor, as he told me when I hired him.—The son was terrified out of his wits. He said he should have been impaled, had the messenger arrived; and, seeing that I fell upon means to keep open a correspondence with Cairo, he told me he would not run the risk of being surety, and of going back to Cairo to answer for his father’s faults, least, one day or another, upon some complaint of that kind, he might be taken out of his bed and bastinadoed to death, without knowing what his offence was.

An altercation ensued; the father declined staying upon pretty much the same reasons, and I was very happy to find that Risk had dealt roundly with them, and that I was master of the string upon which I could touch their fears.

They then both agreed to go the voyage, for none of them thought it very safe to stay; and I was glad to get men of some substance along with me, rather than trust to hired vagabond servants, which I esteemed the two Moors to be.

As the Shekh of the Howadat and I had vowed friendship, he offered to carry me to Cosseir by land, without any expence, and in perfect safety, thinking me diffident of my boatmen, from what had passed.

I thanked him for this friendly offer, which I am persuaded I might have accepted very safely, but I contented myself with desiring, that one of the Moor servants in the boat should go to Cairo to fetch Mahomet Abou Cuffi’s son’s cloaths, and agreed that I should give five patakas additional hire for the boat, on condition that Mahomet should go with us in place of the Moor servant, and that Abou Cuffi, the father and saint (that never drank fermented liquors) should be allowed to sleep himself sober, till his servant the Moor returned from Cairo with his son’s cloaths.

In the mean time, I bargained with the Shekh of the Howadat to furnish me with horses to go to Metrahenny or Mohannan, where once he said Mimf had stood, a large city, the capital of all Egypt.

All this was executed with great success. Early in the morning the Shekh of the Howadat had passed at Miniel, where there is a ferry, the Nile being very deep, and attended me with five horsemen and a spare horse for myself, at Metrahenny, south of Miniel, where there is a great plantation of palm-trees.

The 13th, in the morning about eight o’clock, we let out our vast sails, and passed a very considerable village called Turra, on the east side of the river, and Shekh Atman, a small village, consisting of about thirty houses, on the west.

The mountains which run from the castle to the eastward of south-east, till they are about five miles distant from the Nile east and by north of this station, approach again the banks of the river, running in a direction south and by west, till they end close on the banks of the Nile about Turra.

The Nile here is about a quarter of a mile broad; and there cannot be the smallest doubt, in any person disposed to be convinced, that this is by very far 80the narrowest part of Egypt yet seen. For it certainly wants of half-a-mile between the foot of the mountain and the Libyan shore, which cannot be said of any other part of Egypt we had yet come to; and it cannot be better described than it is by 81Herodotus; and “again, opposite to the Arabian side, is another stony mountain of Egypt towards Libya, covered with sand, where are the Pyramids.”

As this, and many other circumstances to be repeated in the sequel, must naturally awaken the attention of the traveller to look for the ancient city of Memphis here, I left our boat at Shekh Atman, accompanied by the Arabs, pointing nearly south. We entered a large and thick wood of palm-trees, whose greatest extension seemed to be south by east. We continued in this course till we came to one, and then to several large villages, all built among the plantation of date-trees, so as scarce to be seen from the shore.

These villages are called Metrahenny, a word from the etymology of which I can derive no information, and leaving the river, we continued due west to the plantation that is called Mohannan, which, as far as I know, has no signification either.

All to the south, in this desert, are vast numbers of Pyramids; as far as I could discern, all of clay, some so distant as to appear just in the horizon.

Having gained the western edge of the palm-trees at Mohannan, we have a fair view of the Pyramids at Geeza, which lie in a direction nearly S. W. As far as I can compute the distance, I think about nine miles, and as near as it was possible to judge by sight, Metrahenny, Geeza, and the center of the three Pyramids, made an Isosceles triangle, or nearly so.

I asked the Arab what he thought of the distance? whether it was farthest to Geeza, or the Pyramids? He said, they were sowah, sowah, just alike, he believed; from Metrahenny to the Pyramids perhaps might be farthest, but he would much sooner go it, than along the coast to Geeza, because he should be interrupted by meeting with water.

All to the west and south of Mohannan, we saw great mounds and heaps of rubbish, and calishes that were not of any length, but were lined with stone, covered and choked up in many places with earth.

We saw three large granite pillars S. W. of Mohannan, and a piece of a broken chest or cistern of granite; but no obelisks, or stones with hieroglyphics, and we thought the greatest part of the ruins seemed to point that way, or more southerly.

These, our conductor said, were the ruins of Mimf, the ancient seat of the Pharaohs kings of Egypt, that there was another Mimf, far down in the Delta, by which he meant Menouf, below Terrane and Batn el Baccara82.

Perceiving now that I could get no further intelligence, I returned with my kind guide, whom I gratified for his pains, and we parted content with each other.

In the sands I saw a number of hares. He said, if I would go with him to a place near Faioume, I should kill half a boat-load of them in a day, and antelopes likewise, for he knew where to get dogs; mean-while he invited me to shoot at them there, which I did not choose; for, passing very quietly among the date-trees, I wished not to invite further curiosity.

All the people in the date villages seemed to be of a yellower and more sick-like colour, than any I had ever seen; besides, they had an inanimate, dejected, grave countenance, and seemed rather to avoid, than wish any conversation.

It was near four o’clock in the afternoon when we returned to our boatmen. By the way we met one of our Moors, who told us they had drawn up the boat opposite to the northern point of the palm-trees of Metrahenny.

My Arab insisted to attend me thither, and, upon his arrival, I made him some trifling presents, and then took my leave.

In the evening I received a present of dry dates, and some sugar cane, which does not grow here, but had been brought to the Shekh by some of his friends, from some of the villages up the river.

The learned Dr Pococke, as far as I know, is the first European traveller that ventured to go out of the beaten path, and look for Memphis, at Metrahenny and Mohannan.

Dr Shaw, who in judgment, learning, and candour, is equal to Dr Pococke, or any of those that have travelled into Egypt, contends warmly for placing it at Geeza.

Mr Niebuhr, the Danish traveller, agrees with Dr Pococke. I believe neither Shaw nor Niebuhr were ever at Metrahenny, which Dr Pococke and myself visited; though all of us have been often enough at Geeza, and I must confess, strongly as Dr Shaw has urged his arguments, I cannot consider any of the reasons for placing Memphis at Geeza as convincing, and very few of them that do not go to prove just the contrary in favour of Metrahenny.

Before I enter into the argument, I must premise, that Ptolemy, if he is good for any thing, if he merits the hundredth part of the pains that have been taken with him by his commentators, must surely be received as a competent authority in this case.

The inquiry is into the position of the old capital of Egypt, not fourscore miles from the place where he was writing, and immediately in dependence upon it. And therefore, in dubious cases, I shall have no doubt to refer to him as deserving the greatest credit.

Dr Pococke83 says, that the situation of Memphis was at Mohannan, or Metrahenny, because Pliny says the 84Pyramids were between Memphis and the Delta, as they certainly are, if Dr Pococke is right as to the situation of Memphis.

Dr Shaw does not undertake to answer this direct evidence, but thinks to avoid its force by alledging a contrary sentiment of the same Pliny, “that the Pyramids85 lay between Memphis and the Arsinoite nome, and consequently, as Dr Shaw thinks, they must be to the westward of Memphis.”

Memphis, if situated at Metrahenny, was in the middle of the Pyramids, three of them to the N. W. and above threescore of them to the south.

When Pliny said that the Pyramids were between Memphis and the Delta, he meant the three large Pyramids, commonly called the Pyramids of Geeza.

But in the last instance, when he spoke of the Pyramids of Saccara, or that great multitude of Pyramids southward, he said they were between Memphis and the Arsinoite nome; and so they are, placing Memphis at Metrahenny.

For Ptolemy gives Memphis 29° 50´ in latitude, and the Arsinoite nome 29° 30´ and there is 8´ of longitude betwixt them. Therefore the Arsinoite nome cannot be to the west, either of Geeza or Metrahenny; the Memphitic nome extends to the westward, to that part of Libya called the Scythian Region; and south of the Memphitic nome is the Arsinoite nome, which is bounded on the westward by the same part of Libya.

To prove that the latter opinion of Pliny should outweigh the former one, Dr Shaw cites 86Diodorus Siculus, who says Memphis was most commodiously situated in the very key, or inlet of the country, where the river begins to divide itself into several branches, and forms the Delta.

I cannot conceive a greater proof of a man being blinded by attachment to his own opinion, than this quotation. For Memphis was in lat. 29° 50´, and the point of the Delta was in 30°, and this being the latitude of Geeza, it cannot be that of Memphis. That city must be sought for ten or eleven miles farther south.

If, as Dr Shaw supposes, it was nineteen miles round, and that it was five or six miles in breadth, its greatest breadth would probably be to the river. Then 10 and 6 make 16, which will be the latitude of Metrahenny, according to 87Dr Shaw’s method of computation.

But then it cannot be said that Geeza is either in the key or inlet of the country; all to the westward of Geeza is plain, and desert, and no mountain nearer it on the other side than the castle of Cairo.

Dr Shaw88 thinks that this is further confirmed by Pliny’s saying that Memphis was within fifteen miles of the Delta. Now if this was really the case, he suggests a plain reason, if he relies on ancient measures, why Geeza, that is only ten miles, cannot be Memphis.

If a person, arguing from measures, thinks he is intitled to throw away or add, the third part of the quantity that he is contending for, he will not be at a great stress to place these ancient cities in what situation he pleases.

Nor is it fair for Dr Shaw to suppose quantities that never did exist; for Metrahenny, instead of 89forty, is not quite twenty-seven miles from the Delta; such liberties would confound any question.

The Doctor proceeds by saying, that heaps of ruins 90alone are not proof of any particular place; but the agreeing of the distances between Memphis and the Delta, which is a fixed and standing boundary, lying at a determinate distance from Memphis, must be a proof beyond all exception91.

If I could have attempted to advise Dr Shaw, or have had an opportunity of doing it, I would have suggested to him, as one who has maintained that all Egypt is the gift of the Nile, not to say that the point of the Delta is a standing and determined boundary that cannot alter. The inconsistency is apparent, and I am of a very contrary opinion.

Babylon, or Cairo, as it is now called, is fixed by the Calish or Amnis Trajanus passing through it. Ptolemy92 says so, and Dr Shaw says that Geeza was opposite to Cairo, or in a line east and west from it, and is the ancient Memphis.

Now, if Babylon is lat. 30°, and so is Geeza, they may be opposite to one another in a line of east and west. But if the latitude of Memphis is 29° 50´ it cannot be at Geeza, which is opposite to Babylon, but ten miles farther south, in which case it cannot be opposite to Babylon or Cairo. Again, if the point of the Delta be in lat. 30°, Babylon, or Cairo, 30°, and Geeza be 30°, then the point of the Delta cannot be ten miles from Cairo or Babylon, or ten miles from Geeza.

It is ten miles from Geeza, and ten miles from Babylon, or Cairo, and therefore the distances do not agree as Dr Shaw says they do; nor can the point of the Delta, as he says, be a permanent boundary consistently with his own figures and those of Ptolemy, but it must have been washed away, or gone 10´ northward; for Babylon, as he says, is a certain boundary fixed by the Amnis Trajanus, and, supposing the Delta had been a fixed boundary, and in lat. 30°, then the distance of fifteen miles would just have made up the space that Pliny says was between that point and Memphis, if we suppose that great city was at Metrahenny.

I shall say nothing as to his next argument in relation to the distance of Geeza from the Pyramids; because, making the same suppositions, it is just as much in favour of one as of the other.

His next argument is from 93Herodotus, who says, that Memphis lay under the sandy mountain of Libya, and that this mountain is a stony mountain covered with sand, and is opposite to the Arabian mountain.

Now this surely cannot be called Geeza; for Geeza is under no mountain, and the Arabian mountain spoken of here is that which comes close to the shore at Turra.

Diodorus says, it was placed in the straits or narrowest part of Egypt; and this Geeza cannot be so placed, for, by Dr Shaw’s own confession, it is at least twelve miles from Geeza to the sandy mountain where the Pyramids stand on the Libyan side; and, on the Arabian side, there is no mountain but that on which the castle of Cairo stands, which chain begins there, and runs a considerable way into the desert, afterwards pointing south-west, till they come so near to the eastern shore as to leave no room but for the river at Turra; so that, if the cause is to be tried by this point only, I am very confident that Dr Shaw’s candour and love of truth would have made him give up his opinion if he had visited Turra.

The last authority I shall examine as quoted by Dr Shaw, is to me so decisive of the point in question, that, were I writing to those only who are acquainted with Egypt, and the navigation of the Nile, I would not rely upon another.

Herodotus94 says, “At the time of the inundation, the Egyptians do not sail from Naucratis to Memphis by the common channel of the river, that is Cercasora, and the point of the Delta, but over the plain country, along the very side of the Pyramids.”

Naucratis was on the west side of the Nile, about lat. 30° 30´, let us say about Terrane in my map. They then sailed along the plain, out of the course of the river, upon the inundation, close by the Pyramids, whatever side they pleased, till they came to Metrahenny, the ancient Memphis.

The Etesian wind, fair as it could blow, forwarded their course whilst in this line. They went directly before the wind, and, if we may suppose, accomplished the navigation in a very few hours; having been provided with those barks, or canjas, with their powerful sails, which I have already described, and, by means of which, they shortened their passage greatly, as well as added pleasure to it.

But very different was the case if the canja was going to Geeza.

They had nothing to do with the Pyramids, nor to come within three leagues of the Pyramids; and nothing can be more contrary, both to fact and experience, than that they would shorten their voyage by sailing along the side of them; for the wind being at north and north-west as fair as possible for Geeza, they had nothing to do but to keep as direct upon it as they could lie. But if, as Dr Shaw thinks, they made the Pyramids first, I would wish to know in what manner they conducted their navigation to come down upon Geeza.

Their vessels go only before the wind, and they had a strong steady gale almost directly in their teeth.

They had no current to help them; for they were in still water; and if they did not take down their large yards and sails, they were so top-heavy, the wind had so much purchase upon them above, that there was no alternative, but, either with sails or without, they must make for Upper Egypt; and there, entering into the first practicable calish that was full, get into the main stream.

But their dangers were not still over, for, going down with a violent current, and with their standing rigging up, the moment they touched the banks, their masts and yards would go overboard, and, perhaps, the vessel stave to pieces.

Nothing would then remain, but for safety’s sake to strike their masts and yards, as they always do when they go down the river; they must lie broadside foremost, the strong wind blowing perpendicular on one side of the vessel, and the violent current pushing it in a contrary direction on the other; while a man, with a long oar, balances the advantage the wind has of the stream, by the hold it has of the cabin and upper works.

This would most infallibly be the case of the voyage from Naucratis, unless in striving to sail by tacking, (a manœuvre of which their vessel is not capable) their canja should overset, and then they must all perish.

If Memphis was Metrahenny, I believe most people who had leisure would have tried the voyage from Naucratis by the plain. They would have been carried straight from north to south. But Dr Shaw is exceedingly mistaken, if he thinks there is any way so expeditious as going up the current of the river. As far as I can guess, from ten to four o’clock, we seldom went less than eight miles in the hour, against a current that surely ran more than six. This current kept our vessel stiff, whilst the monstrous sail forced us through with a facility not to be imagined.

Dr Shaw, to put Geeza and Memphis perfectly upon a footing, says95, that there were no traces of the city now to be found, from which he imagines it began to decay soon after the building of Alexandria, that the mounds and ramparts which kept the river from it were in process of time neglected, and that Memphis, which he supposes was in the old bed of the river about the time of the Ptolemies, was so far abandoned, that the Nile at last got in upon it, and overflowing its old ruins, great part of the best of which had been carried first to build the city of Alexandria, that the mud covered the rest, so that no body knew what was its true situation. This is the opinion of Dr Pococke, and likewise of M. de Maillet.

The opinion of these two last-mentioned authors, that the ruins and situation of Memphis are now become obscure, is certainly true; the foregoing dispute is a sufficient evidence of this.

But I will not suffer it to be said, that, soon after the building of Alexandria, or in the time of the Ptolemies, this was the case, because Strabo96 says, that when he was in Egypt, Memphis, next to Alexandria, was the most magnificent city in Egypt.

It was called the Capital97 of Egypt, and there was entire a temple of Osiris; the Apis (or sacred ox) was kept and worshipped there. There was likewise an apartment for the mother of that ox still standing, a temple of Vulcan of great magnificence, a large 98circus, or space for fighting bulls; and a great colossus in the front of the city thrown down: there was also a temple of Venus, and a serapium, in a very sandy place, where the wind heaps up hills of moving sand very dangerous to travellers, and a number of 99sphinxes, (of some only their heads being visible) the others covered up to the middle of their body.

In the 100front of the city were a number of palaces then in ruins, and likewise lakes. These buildings, he says, stood formerly upon an eminence; they lay along the side of the hill, stretching down to the lakes and the groves, and forty stadia from the city; there was a mountainous height, that had many Pyramids standing upon it, the sepulchres of the kings, among which there are three remarkable, and two the wonders of the world.

This is the account of an eye-witness, an historian of the first credit, who mentions Memphis, and this state of it, so late as the reign of Nero; and therefore I shall conclude this argument with three observations, which, I am very sorry to say, could never have escaped a man of Dr Shaw’s learning and penetration.

1st, That by this description of Strabo, who was in it, it is plain that the city was not deserted in the time of the Ptolemies.

2dly, That no time, between the building of Alexandria and the time of the Ptolemies, could it be swallowed up by the river, or its situation unknown.

3dly, That great part of it having been built upon an eminence on the side of a hill, especially the large and magnificent edifices I have spoken of, it could not be situated, as he says, low in the bed of the river; for, upon the giving way of the Memphitic rampart, it would be swallowed up by it.

If it was swallowed up by the river, it was not Geeza; and this accident must have been since Strabo’s time, which Dr Shaw will not aver; and it is by much too loose arguing to say, first, that the place was destroyed by the violent overflowing of the river, and then pretend its situation to be Geeza, where a river never came.

The descent of the hill to where the Pyramids were, and the number of Pyramids that were there around it, of which three are remarkable; the very sandy situation, and the quantity of loose flying hillocks that were there (dangerous in windy weather to travellers) are very strong pictures of the Saccara, the neighbourhood of Metrahenny and Mohannan, but they have not the smallest or most distant resemblance to any part in the neighbourhood of Geeza.

It will be asked, Where are all those temples, the Serapium, the Temple of Vulcan, the Circus, and Temple of Venus? Are they found near Metrahenny?

To this I answer, Are they found at Geeza? No, but had they been at Geeza, they would have still been visible, as they are at Thebes, Diospolis, and Syene, because they are surrounded with black earth not moveable by the wind. Vast quantities of these ruins, however, are in every street of Cairo: every wall, every Bey’s stable, every cistern for horses to drink at, preserve part of the magnificent remains that have been brought from Memphis or Metrahenny.—The rest are covered with the moving sands of the Saccara; as the sphinxes and buildings that had been deserted were in Strabo’s time for want of grass and roots, which always spread and keep the soil firm in populous inhabited places, the sands of the deserts are let loose upon them, and have covered them probably for ever.

A man’s heart fails him in looking to the south and south-west of Metrahenny. He is lost in the immense expanse of desert, which he sees full of Pyramids before him. Struck with terror from the unusual scene of vastness opened all at once upon leaving the palm-trees, he becomes dispirited from the effects of sultry climates.

From habits of idleness contracted at Cairo, from the stories he has heard of the bad government and ferocity of the people, from want of language and want of plan, he shrinks from the attempting any discovery in the moving sands of the Saccara, embraces in safety and in quiet the reports of others, whom he thinks have been more inquisitive and more adventurous than himself.

Thus, although he has created no new error of his own, he is accessary to the having corroborated and confirmed the ancient errors of others; and, though people travel in the same numbers as ever, physics and geography continue at a stand.

In the morning of the 14th of December, after having made our peace with Abou Cuffi, and received a multitude of apologies and vows of amendment and fidelity for the future, we were drinking coffee preparatory to our leaving Metrahenny, and beginning our voyage in earnest, when an Arab arrived from my friend the Howadat, with a letter, and a few dates, not amounting to a hundred.

The Arab was one of his people that had been sick, and wanted to go to Kenné in Upper Egypt. The Shekh expressed his desire that I would take him with me this trifle of about two hundred and fifty miles, that I would give him medicines, cure his disease, and maintain him all the way.

On these occasions there is nothing like ready compliance. He had offered to carry me the same journey with all my people and baggage without hire; he conducted me with safety and great politeness to the Saccara; I therefore answered instantly, “You shall be very welcome, upon my head be it.” Upon this the miserable wretch, half naked, laid down a dirty clout containing about ten dates, and the Shekh’s servant that had attended him returned in triumph.

I mention this trifling circumstance, to shew how essential to humane and civil intercourse presents are considered to be in the east; whether it be dates, or whether it be diamonds, they are so much a part of their manners, that, without them an inferior will never be at peace in his own mind, or think that he has a hold of his superior for his favour or protection.

CHAP. IV.

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 back101. 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.

These fishers offered willingly to take me upon the raft to teach me; but I cannot say my curiosity went so far. They said their fishing was merely accidental, and in course of their trade, which was selling these potter earthen jars, which they got near Ashmounein; and after having carried the raft with them to Cairo, they untie, sell them at the market, and carry the produce home in money, or in necessaries upon their back. A very poor œconomical trade, but sufficient as they said, from the carriage of crude materials, the moulding, making, and sending them to market, to Cairo and to different places in the Delta, to afford occupation to two thousand men; this is nearly four times the number of people employed in the largest iron foundery in England. But the reader will not understand, that I warrant this fact from any authority but what I have given him.

About two o’clock in the afternoon, we came to the point of an island; there were several villages with date trees on both sides of us; the ground is overflowed by the Nile, and cultivated. The current is very strong here. We passed a village called Regnagie, and another named Zaragara, on the east side of the Nile. We then came to Caphar el Hayat, or the Toll of the Tailor; a village with great plantations of dates, and the largest we had yet seen.

We passed the night on the S. W. point of the island between Caphar el Hayat, and Gizier Azali, the wind failing us about four o’clock. This place is the beginning of the Heracleotic nome, and its situation a sufficient evidence that Metrahenny was Memphis; its name is Halouan.

This island is now divided into a number of small ones, by calishes being cut through and through it, and, under different Arabic names, they still reach very far up the stream. I landed to see if there were remains of the olive tree which Strabo102 says grew here, but without success. We may imagine, however, that there was some such like thing; because opposite to one of the divisions into which this large island is broken, there is a village called Zeitoon, or the Olive Tree.

On the 15th of December, the weather being nearly calm, we left the north end of the island, or Heracleotic nome; our course was due south, the line of the river; and three miles farther we passed Woodan, and a collection of villages, all going by that name, upon the east: to the west, or right, were small islands, part of the ancient nome of which I have already spoken.

The ground is all cultivated about this village, to the foot of the mountains, which is not above four miles; but it is full eight on the west, all overflowed and sown. The Nile is here but shallow, and narrow, not exceeding a quarter of a mile broad, and three feet deep; owing, I suppose, to the resistance made by the island in the middle of the current, and by a bend it makes, thus intercepting the sand brought down by the stream.

The mountains here come down till within two miles of Suf el Woodan, for so the village is called. We were told there were some ruins to the westward of this, but only rubbish, neither arch nor column standing. I suppose it is the Aphroditopolis, or the city of Venus, which we are to look for here, and the nome of that name, all to the eastward of it.

The wind still freshening, we passed by several villages on each side, all surrounded with palm-trees, verdant and pleasant, but conveying an idea of sameness and want of variety, such as every traveller must have felt who has sailed in the placid, muddy, green-banked rivers in Holland.

The Nile, however, is here fully a mile broad, the water deep, and the current strong. The wind seemed to be exasperated by the resistance of the stream, and blew fresh and steadily, as indeed it generally does where the current is violent.

We passed Nizelet Embarak, which means the Blessed Landing-place. Mr Norden103 calls it Giesiret Barrakaed, which he says is the watering-place of the cross. Was this even the proper name here given it, it should be translated the Blessed Island; but, without understanding the language, it is in vain to keep a register of names.

The boatmen, living either in the Delta, Cairo, or one of the great towns in Upper Egypt, and coming constantly loaded with merchandise, or strangers from these great places, make swift passages by the villages, either down the river with a rapid current, or up with a strong, fair, and steady wind: And, when the season of the Nile’s inundation is over, and the wind turns southward, they repair all to the Delta, the river being no longer navigable above, and there they are employed till the next season.

They know little, therefore, and care less about the names or inhabitants of these villages, who have each of them barks of their own to carry on their own trade. There are some indeed employed by the Coptic and Turkish merchants, who are better versed in the names of villages than others; but, if they are not, and find you do not understand the language, they will never confess ignorance; they will tell you the first name that comes uppermost, sometimes very ridiculous, often very indecent, which we see afterwards pass into books, and wonder that such names were ever given to towns.

The reader will observe this in comparing Mr Norden’s voyage and mine, where he will seldom see the same village pass by the same name. My Rais, Abou Cuffi, when he did not know a village, sometimes tried this with me. But when he saw me going to write, he used then to tell me the truth, that he did not know the village; but that such was the custom of him, and his brethren, to people that did not understand the language, especially if they were priests, meaning Catholic Monks.

We passed with great velocity Nizelet Embarak, Cubabac, Nizelet Omar, Racca Kibeer, then Racca Seguier, and came in sight of Atsia, a large village at some distance from the Nile; all the valley here is green, the palm-groves beautiful, and the Nile deep.

Still it is not the prospect that pleases, for the whole ground that is sown to the sandy ascent of the mountains, is but a narrow stripe of three quarters of a mile broad, and the mountains themselves, which here begin to have a moderate degree of elevation, and which bound this narrow valley, are white, gritty, sandy, and uneven, and perfectly destitute of all manner of verdure.

At the small village of Racca Seguier there was this remarkable, that it was thick, surrounded with trees of a different nature and figure from palms; what they were I know not, I believe they were pomegranate-trees; I thought, that with my glass I discerned some reddish fruit upon them; and we had passed a village called Rhoda, a name they give in Egypt to pomegranates; Salcah is on the opposite, or east-side of the river. The Nile divides above the village; it fell very calm, and here we passed the night of the fifteenth.

Our Rais Abou Cuffi begged leave to go to Comadreedy, a small village on the west of the Nile, with a few palm-trees about it; he said that his wife was there. As I never heard any thing of this till now, I fancied he was going to divert himself in the manner he had done the night before he left Cairo; for he had put on his black surtout, or great coat, his scarlet turban, and a new scarlet shaul, both of which he said he had brought, to do me honour in my voyage.

I thanked him much for his consideration, but asked him why, as he was a Sherriffe, he did not wear the green turban of Mahomet? He answered, Poh! that was a trick put upon strangers; there were many men who wore green turbans, he said, that were very great rascals; but he was a Saint, which was better than a Sherriffe, and was known as such all over the world, whatever colour of a turban he wore, or whether a turban at all, and he only dressed for my honour; would be back early in the morning, and bring me a fair wind.

“Hassan, said I, I fancy it is much more likely that you bring me some aquavitæ, if you do not drink it all.” He promised that he would see and procure some, for mine was now at an end. He said, the Prophet never forbade aquavitæ, only the drinking of wine; and the prohibition could not be intended for Egypt, for there was no wine in it. But Bouza, says he, Bouza I will drink, as long as I can walk from stem to stern of a vessel, and away he went. I had indeed no doubt he would keep his resolution of drinking whether he returned or not.

We kept, as usual, a very good watch all night, which passed without disturbance. Next day, the 17th, was exceedingly hazy in the morning, though it cleared about ten o’clock. It was, however, sufficient to shew the falsity of the observation of the author, who says that the Nile104 emits no fogs, and in course of the voyage we often saw other examples, of the fallacy of this assertion.

In the afternoon, the people went ashore to shoot pigeons; they were very bad, and black, as it was not the season of grain. I remained arranging my journal, when, with some surprize, I saw the Howadat Arab come in, and sit down close to me; however, I was not afraid of any evil intention, having a crooked knife at my girdle, and two pistols lying by me.

What’s this? How now, friend? said I; Who sent for you? He would have kissed my hand, saying Fiarduc, I am under your protection: he then pulled out a rag from within his girdle, and said he was going to Mecca, and had taken that with him; that he was afraid my boatmen would rob him, and throw him into the Nile, or get somebody to rob and murder him by the way; and that one of the Moors, Hassan’s servant, had been feeling for his money the night before, when he thought him asleep.

I made him count his sum, which amounted to 7½ sequins, and a piece of silver, value about half-a-crown, which in Syria they call Abou Kelb, Father Dog. It is the Dutch Lion rampant, which the Arabs, who never call a thing by its right name, term a dog.—In short, this treasure amounted to something more than three guineas; and this he desired me to keep till we separated. Do not you tell them, said he, and I will throw off my cloaths and girdle, and leave them on board, while I go to swim, and when they find I have nothing upon me they will not hurt me.

But what security, said I, have you that I do not rob you of this, and get you thrown into the Nile some night? No, no, says he, that I know is impossible. I have never been able to sleep till I spoke to you; do with me what you please, and my money too, only keep me out of the hands of those murderers. “Well, well, said I, now you have got rid of your money, you are safe, and you shall be my servant; lye before the door of my dining-room all night, they dare not hurt a hair of your head while I am alive.”

The Pyramids, which had been on our right hand at different distances since we passed the Saccara, terminated here in one of a very singular construction. About two miles from the Nile, between Suf and Woodan, there is a Pyramid, which at first sight appears all of a piece; it is of unbaked bricks, and perfectly entire; the inhabitants call it the 105False Pyramid. The lower part is a hill exactly shaped like a Pyramid for a considerable height. Upon this is continued the superstructure in proportion till it terminates like a Pyramid above; and, at a distance, it would require a good eye to discern the difference, for the face of the stone has a great resemblance to clay, of which the Pyramids of the Saccara are composed.

Hassan Abou Cuffi was as good as his word in one respect; he came in the night, and had not drunk much fermented liquors; but he could find no spirits, he said, and that, to be sure, was one of the reasons of his return; I had sat up a great part of the night waiting a season for observation, but it was very cloudy, as all the nights had been since we left Cairo.

The 18th, about eight o’clock in the morning, we prepared to get on our way; the wind was calm, and south. I asked our Rais where his fair wind was which he promised to bring? He said, his wife had quarrelled with him all night, and would not give him time to pray; and therefore, says he with a very droll face, you shall see me do all that a Saint can do for you on this occasion. I asked him what that was? He made another droll face, “Why, it is to draw the boat by the rope till the wind turns fair.” I commended very much this wise alternative, and immediately the vessel began to move, but very slowly, the wind being still unfavourable.

On looking into Mr Norden’s voyage, I was struck at first sight with this paragraph106: “We saw this day abundance of camels, but they did not come near enough for us to shoot them.”—I thought with myself, to shoot camels in Egypt would be very little better than to shoot men, and that it was very lucky for him the camels did not come near, if that was the only thing that prevented him. Upon looking at the note, I see it is a small mistake of the translator107, who says, “that in the original it is Chameaux d’eau, water-camels; but whether they are a particular species of camels, or a different kind of animal, he does not know.”

But this is no species of camel, it is a bird called a Pelican, and the proper name in Arabic, is Jimmel el Bahar, the Camel of the River. The other bird like a partridge, which Mr Norden’s people shot, and did not know its name, and which was better than a pigeon, is called Gooto, very common in all the desert parts of Africa. I have drawn them of many different colours. That of the Deserts of Tripoli, and Cyrenaicum, is very beautiful; that of Egypt is spotted white like the Guinea-fowl, but upon a brown ground, not a blue one, as that latter bird is. However, they are all very bad to eat, but they are not of the same kind with the partridge. Its legs and feet are all covered with feathers, and it has but two toes before. The Arabs imagine it feeds on stones, but its food is insects.

After Comadreedy, the Nile is again divided by another fragment of the island, and inclines a little to the westward. On the east is the village Sidi Ali el Courani. It has only two palm-trees belonging to it, and on that account hath a deserted appearance; but the wheat upon the banks was five inches high, and more advanced than any we had seen. The mountains on the east-side come down to the banks of the Nile, are bare, white, and sandy, and there is on this side no appearance of villages.

The river here is about a quarter of a mile broad, or something more. It should seem it was the Angyrorum Civitas of Ptolemy, but neither night nor day could I get an instant for observation, on account of thin white clouds, which confused (for they scarce can be said to cover) the heavens continually.

We passed now a convent of cophts, with a small plantation of palms. It is a miserable building, with a dome like to a saint’s or marabout’s, and stands quite alone.

About four miles from this is the village of Nizelet el Arab, consisting of miserable huts. Here begin large plantations of sugar canes, the first we had yet seen; they were then loading boats with these to carry them to Cairo. I procured from them as many as I desired. The canes are about an inch and a quarter in diameter, they are cut in round pieces about three inches long, and, after having been slit, they are steeped in a wooden bowl of water. They give a very agreeable taste and flavour to it, and make it the most refreshing drink in the world, whilst by imbibing the water, the canes become more juicy, and lose a part of their heavy clammy sweetness, which would occasion thirst. I was surprized at finding this plant in such a state of perfection so far to the northward. We were now scarcely arrived in lat. 29°, and nothing could be more beautiful and perfect than the canes were.

I apprehend they were originally a plant of the old continent, and transported to the new, upon its first discovery, because here in Egypt they grow from seed. I do not know if they do so in Brazil, but they have been in all times the produce of Egypt. Whether they have been found elsewhere I have not had an opportunity of being informed, but it is time that some skilful person, versed in the history of plants, should separate some of the capital productions of the old, and new continent, from the adventitious, before, from length of time, that which we now know of their history be lost.

Sugar, tobacco, red podded or Cayenne pepper, cotton, some species of Solanum, Indigo, and a multitude of others, have not as yet their origin well ascertained.

Prince Henry of Portugal put his discoveries to immediate profit, and communicated what he found new in each part in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, to where it was wanting. It will be soon difficult to ascertain to each quarter of the world the articles that belong to it, and fix upon those few that are common to all.

Even wheat, the early produce of Egypt, is not a native of it. It grows under the Line, within the Tropics, and as far north and south as we know. Severe northern winters seem to be necessary to it, and it vegetates vigorously in frost and snow. But whence it came, and in what shape, is yet left to conjecture.

Though the stripe of green wheat was continued all along the Nile, it was interrupted for about half a mile on each side of the coptish convent. These poor wretches know, that though they may sow, yet, from the violence of the Arabs, they shall never reap, and therefore leave the ground desolate.

On the side opposite to Sment, the stripe begins again, and continues from Sment to Mey-Moom, about two miles, and from Mey-Moom to Shenuiah, one mile further. In this small stripe, not above a quarter of a mile broad, besides wheat, clover is sown, which they call Bersine. I don’t think it equals what I have seen in England, but it is sown and cultivated in the same manner.

Immediately behind this narrow stripe, the white mountains appear again, square and flat on the top like tables. They seem to be laid upon the surface of the earth, not inserted into it, for the several strata that are divided lye as level as it is possible to place them with a rule; they are of no considerable height.

We next passed Boush, a village on the west-side of the Nile, two miles south of Shenuiah; and, a little further, Beni Ali, where we see for a minute the mountains on the right or west-side of the Nile, running in a line nearly south, and very high. About five miles from Boush is the village of Maniareish on the east-side of the river, and here the mountains on that side end.

Boush is about two miles and a quarter from the river. Beni Ali is a large village, and its neighbour, Zeytoom, still larger, both on the western shore. I suppose this last was part of the Heracleotic nome, where 108Strabo says the olive-tree grew, and no where else in Egypt, but we saw no appearance of the great works once said to have been in that nome. A little farther south is Baida, where was an engagement between Hussein Bey, and Ali Bey then in exile, in which the former was defeated, and the latter restored to the government of Cairo.

From Maniareish to Beni Suef is two miles and a half, and opposite to this the mountains appear again of considerable height, about twelve miles distant. Although Beni Suef is no better built than any other town or village that we had passed, yet it interests by its extent; it is the most considerable place we had yet seen since our leaving Cairo. It has a cacheff and a mosque, with three large steeples, and is a market-town.

The country all around is well cultivated, and seems to be of the utmost fertility; the inhabitants are better cloathed, and seemingly less miserable, and oppressed, than those we had left behind in the places nearer Cairo.

The Nile is very shallow at Beni Suef, and the current strong. We touched several times in the middle of the stream, and came to an anchor at Baha, about a quarter of a mile above Beni Suef, where we passed the night.

We were told to keep good watch here all night, that there were troops of robbers on the east-side of the water who had lately plundered some boats, and that the cacheff either dared not, or would not give them any assistance. We did indeed keep strict watch, but saw no robbers, and were no other way molested.

The 18th we had fine weather and a fair wind. Still I thought the villages were beggarly, and the constant groves of palm-trees so perfectly verdant, did not compensate for the penury of sown land, the narrowness of the valley, and barrenness of the mountains.

We passed Mansura, Gadami, Magaga, Malatiah, and other small villages, some of them not consisting of fifteen houses. Then follow Gundiah and Kerm on the west-side of the river, with a large plantation of dates, and four miles further Sharuni. All the way from Boush there appeared no mountains on the west side, but large plantations of dates, which extended from Gundiah four miles.

From this to Abou Azeeze, frequent plantations of sugar canes were now cutting. All about Kafoor is sandy and barren on both sides of the river. Etfa is on the west side of the Nile, which here again makes an island. All the houses have now receptacles for pigeons on their tops, from which is derived a considerable profit. They are made of earthen pots one above the other, occupying the upper story, and giving the walls of the turrets a lighter and more ornamented appearance.

We arrived in the evening at Zohora, about a mile south of Etfa. It consists of three plantations of dates, and is five miles, from Miniet, and there we passed the night of the 18th of December.

There was nothing remarkable till we came to Barkaras, a village on the side of a hill, planted with thick groves of palm-trees.

The wind was so high we scarcely could carry our sails; the current was strong at Shekh Temine, and the violence with which we went through the water was terrible. My Rais told me we should have slackened our sails, if it had not been, that, seeing me curious about the construction of the vessel and her parts, and as we were in no danger of striking, though the water was low, he wanted to shew me what she could do.

I thanked him for his kindness. We had all along preserved strict friendship. Never fear the banks, said I; for I know if there is one in the way, you have nothing to do but to bid him begone, and he will hurry to one side directly. “I have had passengers, says he, who would believe that, and more than that, when I told them; but there is no occasion I see to waste much time with you in speaking of miracles.”

“You are mistaken, Rais, I replied, very much mistaken; I love to hear modern miracles vastly, there is always some amusement in them.”—“Aboard your Christian ships, says he, you always have a prayer at twelve o’clock, and drink a glass of brandy; since you won’t be a Turk like me, I wish at least you would be a Christian.”—Very fairly put, said I, Hassan, let your vessel keep her wind if there is no danger, and I shall take care to lay in a stock for the whole voyage at the first town in which we can purchase it.

We passed by a number of villages on the western shore, the eastern seeming to be perfectly unpeopled: First, Feshné, a considerable place; then 109Miniet, or the ancient Phylæ, a large town which had been fortified towards the water, at least there were some guns there. A rebel Bey had taken possession of it, and it was usual to stop here, the river being both narrow and rapid; but the Rais was in great spirits, and resolved to hold his wind, as I had desired him, and nobody made us any signal from shore.

We came to a village called Rhoda, whence we saw the magnificent ruins of the ancient city of Antinous, built by Adrian. Unluckily I knew nothing of these ruins when I left Cairo, and had taken no pains to provide myself with letters of recommendation as I could easily have done. Perhaps I might have found it difficult to avail myself of them, and it was, upon the whole, better as it was.

I asked the Rais what sort of people they were? He said that the town was composed of very bad Turks, very bad Moors, and very bad Christians; that several devils had been seen among them lately, who had been discovered by being better and quieter than any of the rest.—The Nubian geographer informs us, that it was from this town Pharaoh brought his magicians, to compare their powers with those of Moses; an anecdote worthy that great historian.

I told the Rais, that I must, of necessity, go ashore, and asked him, if the people of this place had no regard for saints? that I imagined, if he would put on his red turban as he did at Comadreedy for my honour, it would then appear that he was a saint, as he before said he was known to be all the world over. He did not seem to be fond of the expedition; but hauling in his main-sail, and with his fore-sail full, stood S. S. E. directly under the Ruins. In a short time we arrived at the landing-place; the banks are low, and we brought up in a kind of bight or small bay, where there was a stake, so our vessel touched very little, or rather swung clear.

Abou Cuffi’s son Mahomet, and the Arab, went on shore, under pretence of buying some provision, and to see how the land lay, but after the character we had of the inhabitants, all our fire-arms were brought to the door of the cabin. In the mean time, partly with my naked eye and partly with my glass, I observed the ruins so attentively as to be perfectly in love with them.

These columns of the angle of the portico were standing fronting to the north, part of the tympanum, cornice, frize, and architrave, all entire, and very much ornamented; thick trees hid what was behind. The columns were of the largest size and fluted; the capitals Corinthian, and in all appearance entire. They were of white Parian marble probably, but had lost the extreme whiteness, or polish, of the Antinous at Rome, and were changed to the colour of the fighting gladiator, or rather to a brighter yellow. I saw indistinctly, also, a triumphal arch, or gate of the town, in the very same style; and some blocks of very white shining stone, which seemed to be alabaster, but for what employed I do not know.

No person had yet stirred, when all on a sudden we heard the noise of Mahomet and the Moor in strong dispute. Upon this the Rais stripping off his coat, leaped ashore, and flipped off the rope from the stake, and another of the Moors stuck a strong perch or pole into the river, and twisted the rope round it. We were in a bight, or calm place, so that the stream did not move the boat.

Mahomet and the Moor came presently in sight; the people had taken Mahomet’s turban from him, and they were apparently on the very worst terms. Mahomet cried to us, that the whole town was coming, and getting near the boat, he and the Moor jumped in with great agility. A number of people was assembled, and three shots were fired at us, very quickly, the one after the other.

I cried out in Arabic, “Infidels, thieves, and robbers! come on, or we shall presently attack you:” upon which I immediately fired a ship-blunderbuss with pistol small bullets, but with little elevation, among the bushes, so as not to touch them. The three or four men that were nearest fell flat upon their faces, and slid away among the bushes on their bellies, like eels, and we saw no more of them.

We now put our vessel into the stream, filled our fore-sail, and stood off, Mahomet crying, Be upon your guard, if you are men, we are the Sanjack’s soldiers, and will come for the turban to-night. More we neither heard nor saw.

We were no sooner out of their reach, than our Rais, filling his pipe, and looking very grave, told me to thank God that I was in the vessel with such a man as he was, as it was owing to that only I escaped from being murdered a-shore. “Certainly, said I, Hassan, under God, the way of escaping from being murdered on land, is never to go out of the boat, but don’t you think that my blunderbuss was as effectual a mean as your holiness? Tell me, Mahomet, What did they do to you?” He said, They had not seen us come in, but had heard of us ever since we were at Metrahenny, and had waited to rob or murder us; that upon now hearing we were come, they had all ran to their houses for their arms, and were coming down, immediately, to plunder the boat; upon which he and the Moor ran off, and being met by these three people, and the boy, on the road, who had nothing in their hands, one of them snatched the turban off. He likewise added, that there were two parties in the town; one in favour of Ali Bey, the other friends to a rebel Bey who had taken Miniet; that they had fought, two or three days ago, among themselves, and were going to fight again, each of them having called Arabs to their assistance. “Mahomet Bey, says my Howadat Arab, will come one of these days with the soldiers, and bring our Shekh and people with him, who will burn their houses, and destroy their corn, that they will be all starved to death next year.”

Hassan and his son Mahomet were violently exasperated, and nothing would serve them but to go in again near the shore, and fire all the guns and blunderbusses among the people. But, besides that I had no inclination of that kind, I was very loth to frustrate the attempts of some future traveller, who may add this to the great remains of architecture we have preserved already.

It would be a fine outset for some engraver; the elegance and importance of the work are certain. From Cairo the distance is but four days pleasant and safe navigation, and in quiet times, protection might, by proper means, be easily enough obtained at little expence.

CHAP. V.

Voyage to Upper Egypt continued—Ashmounein, Ruins there—Gawa Kibeer Ruins—Mr Norden mistaken—Achmim—Convent of Catholics—Dendera—Magnificent Ruins—Adventure with a Saint there.

The Rais’s curiosity made him attempt to prevail with me to land at Reremont, three miles and a half off, just a-head of us; this I understood was a Coptic Christian town, and many of Shekh Abadé’s people were Christians also. I thought them too near to have any thing to do with either of them. At Reremont there are a great number of Persian wheels, to draw the water for the sugar canes, which belong to Christians. The water thus brought up from the river runs down to the plantations, below or behind the town, after being emptied on the banks above; a proof that here the descent from the mountains is not an optic fallacy, as Dr Shaw says.

We passed Ashmounein, probably the ancient Latopolis, a large town, which gives the name to the province, where there are magnificent ruins of Egyptian architecture; and after that we came to Melawé, larger, better built, and better inhabited than Ashmounein, the residence of the Cacheff. Mahomet Aga was there at that time with troops from Cairo, he had taken Miniet, and, by the friendship of Shekh Hamam, the great Arab, governor of Upper Egypt, he kept all the people on that side of the river in their allegiance to Ali Bey.

I had seen him at Cairo, and Risk had spoken to him to do me service if he met with me, which he promised. I called at Melawé to complain of our treatment at Shekh Abadé, and see if I could engage him, as he had nothing else to employ him, to pay a visit to my friends at that inhospitable place. This I was told he would do upon the slightest intimation. He, unfortunately, however, happened to be out upon some party; but I was lucky in getting an old Greek, a servant of his, who knew I was a friend, both to the Bey and to his Patriarch.

He brought me about a gallon of brandy, and a jar of lemons and oranges, preserved in honey; both very agreeable. He brought likewise a lamb, and some garden-stuffs. Among the sweetmeats was some horse-raddish preserved like ginger, which certainly, though it might be wholesome, was the very worst stuff ever I tasted. I gave a good square piece of it, well wrapt in honey, to the Rais, who coughed and spit half an hour after, crying he was poisoned.

I saw he did not wish me to stay at Melawé, as he was afraid of the Bey’s troops, that they might engage him in their service to carry them down, so went away with great good will, happy in the acquisition of the brandy, declaring he would carry sail as long as the wind held.

We passed Mollé, a small village with a great number of acacia trees intermixed with the plantations of palms. These occasion a pleasing variety, not only from the difference of the shape of the tree, but also from the colour and diversity of the green.

As the sycamore in Lower Egypt, so this tree seems to be the only indigenous one in the Thebaid. It is the Acacia Vera, or the Spina Egyptiaca, with a round yellow flower. The male is called the Saiel; from it proceeds the gum arabic, upon incision with an ax. This gum chiefly comes from Arabia Petrea, where these trees are most numerous. But it is the tree of all deserts, from the northmost part of Arabia, to the extremity of Ethiopia, and its leaves the only food for camels travelling in those desert parts. This gum is called Sumach in the west of Africa, and is a principal article of trade on the Senega among the Ialofes.

A large plantation of Dates reaches all along the west side, and ends in a village called Masara. Here the river, though broad, happened to be very shallow; and by the violence with which we went, we stuck upon a sand bank so fast, that it was after sun-set before we could get off; we came to an anchor opposite to Masara the night of the 19th of December.

On the 20th, early in the morning, we again set sail and passed two villages, the first called Welled Behi, the next Salem, about a mile and a half distant from each other on the west side of the Nile. The mountains on the west side of the valley are about sixteen miles off, in a high even ridge, running in a direction south-east; while the mountains on the east run in a parallel direction with the river, and are not three miles distant.

We passed Deirout on the east side, and another called Zohor, in the same quarter, surrounded with palms; then Siradé on the east side also, where is a wood of the Acacia, which seems very luxuriant; and, though it was now December, and the mornings especially very cold, the trees were in full flower. We passed Monfalout, a large town on the western shore. It was once an old Egyptian town, and place of great trade; it was ruined by the Romans, but re-established by the Arabs.

An Arabian 110author says, that, digging under the foundation of an old Egyptian temple here, they found a crocodile made of lead, with hieroglyphics upon it, which they imagine to be a talisman, to prevent crocodiles from passing further. Indeed, as yet, we had not seen any; that animal delights in heat, and, as the mornings were very cold, he keeps himself to the southward. The valley of Egypt here is about eight miles from mountain to mountain.

We passed Siout, another large town built with the remains of the ancient city 111Isiu. It is some miles inland, upon the side of a large calish, over which there is an ancient bridge. This was formerly the station of the caravan for Sennaar. They assembled at Monfalout and Siout, under the protection of a Bey residing there. They then passed nearly south-west, into the sandy desert of Libya, to El Wah, the Oasis Magna of antiquity, and so into the great Desert of Selima.

Three miles beyond Siout, the wind turned directly south, so we were obliged to stay at Tima the rest of the 20th. I was wearied with continuing in the boat, and went on shore at Tima. It is a small town, surrounded like the rest with groves of palm-trees. Below Tima is Bandini, three miles on the east side. The Nile is here full of sandy islands. Those that the inundation has first left are all sown, these are chiefly on the east. The others on the west were barren and uncultivated; all of them mostly composed of sand.

I walked into the desert behind the village, and shot a considerable number of the bird called Gooto, and several hares likewise, so that I sent one of my servants loaded to the boat. I then walked down past a small village called Nizelet el Himma, and returned by a still smaller one called Shuka, about a quarter of a mile from Tima. I was exceedingly fatigued with the heat by the south wind112 blowing, and the deep sand on the side of the mountain. I was then beginning my apprenticeship, which I fully compleated.

The people in these villages were in appearance little less miserable than those of the villages we had passed. They seemed shy and surly at first, but, upon conversation, became placid enough. I bought some medals from them of no value, and my servants telling them I was a physician, I gave my advice to several of the sick. This reconciled them perfectly, they brought me fresh water and some sugar-canes, which they split and steeped in it. If they were satisfied, I was very much so. They told me of a large scene of ruins that was about four miles distant, and offered to send a person to conduct me, but I did not accept their offer, as I was to pass there next day.

The 21st, in the morning, we came to Gawa, where is the second scene of ruins of Egyptian architecture, after leaving Cairo. I immediately went on shore, and found a small temple of three columns in front, with the capitals entire, and the columns in several separate pieces. They seemed by that, and their slight proportions, to be of the most modern of that species of building; but the whole were covered with hieroglyphics, the old story over again, the hawk and the serpent, the man sitting with the dog’s head, with the perch, or measuring-rod; in one hand, the hemisphere and globes with wings, and leaves of the banana-tree, as is supposed, in his other. The temple is filled with rubbish and dung of cattle, which the Arabs bring in here to shelter them from the heat.

Mr Norden says, that these are the remains of the ancient Diospolis Parva, but, though very loth to differ from him, and without the least desire of criticising, I cannot here be of his opinion. For Ptolemy, I think, makes Diospolis Parva about lat. 26° 40´, and Gawa is 27° 20´, which is by much too great a difference. Besides, Diospolis and its nome were far to the southward of Panopolis; but we shall shew, by undoubted evidence, that Gawa is to the northward.

There are two villages of this name opposite to each other; the one Gawa Shergieh, which means the Eastern Gawa, and this is by much the largest; the other Gawa Garbieh. Several authors, not knowing the meaning of these terms, call it Gawa Gebery; a word that has no signification whatever, but Garbieh means the Western.

I was very well pleased to see here, for the first time, two shepherd dogs lapping up the water from the stream, then lying down in it with great seeming leisure and satisfaction. It refuted the old fable, that the dogs living on the banks of the Nile run as they drink, for fear of the crocodile.

All around the villages of Gawa Garbieh, and the plantations belonging to them, Meshta and Raany, with theirs also joining them (that is, all the west side of the river) are cultivated and sown from the very foot of the mountains to the water’s edge, the grain being thrown upon the mud as soon as ever the water has left it. The wheat was at this time about four inches in length.

We passed three villages, Shaftour, Commawhaia, and Zinedi; we anchored off Shaftour, and within sight of Taahta. Taahta is a large village, and in it are several mosques. On the east is a mountain called Jibbel Heredy, from a Turkish saint, who was turned into a snake, has lived several hundred years, and is to live for ever. As Christians, Moors, and Turks, all faithfully believe in this, the consequence is, that abundance of nonsense is daily writ and told concerning it. Mr Norden discusses it at large, and afterwards gravely tells us, he does not believe it; in which I certainly must heartily join him, and recommend to my readers to do the same, without reading any thing about it.

On the 22d, at night, we arrived at Achmim. I landed my quadrant and instruments, with a view of observing an eclipse of the moon; but, immediately after her rising, clouds and mist so effectually covered the whole heavens, that it was not even possible to catch a star of any size passing the meridian.

Achmim is a very considerable place. It belonged once to an Arab prince of that name, who possessed it by a grant from the Grand Signior, for a certain revenue to be paid yearly. That family is now extinct; and another Arab prince, Hamam Shekh of Furshout, now rents it for his life-time, from the Grand Signior, with all the country (except Girgé), from Siout to Luxor.

The inhabitants of Achmim are of a very yellow, unhealthy appearance, probably owing to the bad air, occasioned by a very dirty calish that passes through the town. There are, likewise, a great many trees, bushes, and gardens, about the stagnated water, all which increase the bad quality of the air.

There is here what is called a Hospice, or Convent of religious Franciscans, for the entertainment of the converts, or persecuted Christians in Nubia, when they can find them. This institution I speak of at large in the sequel. One of the last princes of the house of Medicis, all patrons of learning, proposed to furnish them with a compleat observatory, with the most perfect and expensive instruments; but they refused them, from a scruple least it would give umbrage to the natives. The fear that it should expose their own ignorance and idleness, I must think, entered a little into the consideration.

They received us civilly, and that was just all. I think I never knew a number of priests met together, who differed so little in capacity and knowledge, having barely a routine of scholastic disputation, on every other subject inconceivably ignorant. But I understood afterwards, that they were low men, all Italians; some of them had been barbers, and some of them tailors at Milan; they affected to be all Anti-Copernicans, upon scripture principles, for they knew no other astronomy.

These priests lived in great ease and safety, were much protected and favoured by this Arab prince Hamam; and their acting as physicians reconciled them to the people. They told me there were about eight hundred catholics in the town, but I believe the fifth part of that number would never have been found, even such catholics as they are. The rest of them were Cophts, and Moors, but a very few of the latter, so that the missionaries live perfectly unmolested.

There was a manufactory of coarse cotton cloth in the town, to considerable extent; and great quantity of poultry, esteemed the best in Egypt, was bred here, and sent down to Cairo. The reason is plain, the great export from Achmim is wheat; all the country about it is sown with that grain, and the crops are superior to any in Egypt. Thirty-two grains pulled from the ear was equal to forty-nine of the best Barbary wheat gathered in the same season; a prodigious disproportion, if it holds throughout. The wheat, however, was not much more forward in Upper Egypt, than that lower down the country, or farther northward. It was little more than four inches high, and sown down to the very edge of the water.

The people here wisely pursuing agriculture, so as to produce wheat in the greatest quantity, have dates only about their houses, and a few plantations of sugar cane near their gardens. As soon as they have reaped their wheat, they sow for another crop, before the sun has drained the moisture from the ground. Great plenty of excellent fish is caught here at Achmim, particularly a large one called the Binny, a figure of which I have given in the Appendix. I have seen them about four feet long, and one foot and a half broad.

The people seemed to be very peaceable, and well disposed, but of little curiosity. They expressed not the least surprise at seeing my large quadrant and telescopes mounted. We passed the night in our tent upon the river side, without any sort of molestation, though the men are reproached with being very great thieves. But seeing, I suppose, by our lights, that we were awake, they were afraid.

The women seldom marry after sixteen; we saw several with child, who they said were not eleven years old. Yet I did not observe that the men were less in size, less vigorous and active in body, than in other places. This, one would not imagine from the appearance these young wives make. They are little better coloured than a corpse, and look older at sixteen, than many English women at sixty, so that you are to look for beauty here in childhood only.

Achmim appears to be the Panopolis of the ancients, not only by its latitude, but also by an inscription of a very large triumphal arch, a few hundred yards south of the convent. It is built with marble by the Emperor Nero, and is dedicated in a Greek inscription, ΠΑΝΙ ΘΕΩ. The columns that were in its front are broken and thrown away; the arch itself is either sunk into the ground, or overturned on the side, with little separation of the several pieces.

The 24th of December we left Achmim, and came to the village Shekh Ali on the west, two miles and a quarter distant. We then passed Hamdi, about the same distance farther south; Aboudarac and Salladi on the east; then Salladi Garbieh, and Salladi Shergieh on the east and west, as the names import; and a number of villages, almost opposite, on each side of the river.

At three o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Girgé, the largest town we had seen since we left Cairo; which, by the latitude Ptolemy has very rightly placed it in, should be the Diospolis Parva, and not Gawa, as Mr Norden makes it. For this we know is the beginning of the Diospolitan nome, and is near a remarkable crook of the Nile, as it should be. It is also on the western side of the river, as Diospolis was, and at a proper distance from Dendera, the ancient Tentyra, a mark which cannot be mistaken.

The Nile makes a kind of loop here; is very broad, and the current strong. We passed it with a wind at north; but the waves ran high as in the ocean. All the country, on both sides of the Nile, to Girgé, is but one continued grove of palm-trees, in which are several villages a small distance from each other, Doulani, Consaed, Deirout, and Berdis, on the west side; Welled Hallifi, and Beni Haled, on the east.

The villages have all a very picturesque appearance among the trees, from the many pigeon-houses that are on the tops of them. The mountains on the east begin to depart from the river, and those on the west to approach nearer it. It seems to me, that, soon, the greatest part of Egypt on the east side of the Nile, between Achmim and Cairo, will be desert; not from the rising of the ground by the mud, as is supposed, but from the quantity of sand from the mountains, which covers the mould or earth several feet deep. This 24th of December, at night, we anchored between two villages, Beliani and Mobanniny.

Next morning, the 25th, impatient to visit the greatest, and most magnificent scene of ruins that are in Upper Egypt, we set out from Beliani, and, about ten o’clock in the forenoon, arrived at Dendera. Although we had heard that the people of this place were the very worst in Egypt, we were not very apprehensive. We had two letters from the Bey, to the two principal men there, commanding them, as they would answer with their lives and fortunes, to have a special care that no mischief befel us; and likewise a very pressing letter to Shekh Hamam at Furshout, in whose territory we were.

I pitched my tent by the river side, just above our bark, and sent a message to the two principal people, first to the one, then to the other, desiring them to send a proper person, for I had to deliver to them the commands of the Bey. I did not choose to trust these letters with our boatman; and Dendera is near half a mile from the river. The two men came after some delay, and brought each of them a sheep; received the letters, went back with great speed, and, soon after, returned with a horse and three asses, to carry me to the ruins.

Dendera is a considerable town at this day, all covered with thick groves of palm-trees, the same that Juvenal describes it to have been in his time. Juvenal himself must have seen it, at least once, in passing, as he himself died in a kind of honourable exile at Syene, whilst in command there.

Terga fugæ celeri, præstantibus omnibus instant,
Qui vicina colunt umbrosæ Tentyra palmæ.
Juv. Sat. 15. v. 75

This place is governed by a cacheff appointed by Shekh Hamam. A mile south of the town, are the ruins of two temples, one of which is so much buried under ground, that little of it is to be seen; but the other, which is by far the most magnificent, is entire, and accessible on every side. It is also covered with hieroglyphics, both within and without, all in relief; and of every figure, simple and compound, that ever has been published, or called an hieroglyphic.

The form of the building is an oblong square, the ends of which are occupied by two large apartments, or vestibules, supported by monstrous columns, all covered with hieroglyphics likewise. Some are in form of men and beasts; some seem to be the figures of instruments of sacrifice, while others, in a smaller size, and less distinct form, seem to be inscriptions in the current hand of hieroglyphics, of which I shall speak at large afterwards. They are all finished with great care.

The capitals are of one piece, and consist of four huge human heads, placed back to back against one another, with bat’s ears, and an ill-imagined, and worse-executed, fold of drapery between them.

Above these is a large oblong square block, still larger than the capitals, with four flat fronts, disposed like pannels, that is, with a kind of square border round the edges, while the faces and fronts are filled with hieroglyphics; as are the walls and ceilings of every part of the temple. Between these two apartments in the extremities, there are three other apartments, resembling the first, in every respect, only that they are smaller.

The whole building is of common white stone, from the neighbouring mountains, only those two in which have been sunk the pirns for hanging the outer doors, (for it seems they had doors even in those days) are of granite, or black and blue porphyry.

The top of the temple is flat, the spouts to carry off the water are monstrous heads of sphinxes; the globes with wings, and the two serpents, with a kind of shield or breast-plate between them, are here frequently repeated, such as we see them on the Carthaginian medals.

The hieroglyphics have been painted over, and great part of the colouring yet remains upon the stones, red, in all its shades, especially that dark dusky colour called Tyrian Purple; yellow, very fresh; sky-blue (that is, near the blue of an eastern sky, several shades lighter than ours); green of different shades; these are all the colours preserved.

I could discover no vestiges of common houses in Dendera more than in any other of the great towns in Egypt. I suppose the common houses of the ancients, in these warm countries, were constructed of very slight materials, after they left their caves in the mountains. There was indeed no need for any other. Not knowing the regularity of the Nile’s inundation, they never could be perfectly secure in their own minds against the deluge; and this slight structure of private buildings seems to be the reason so few ruins are found in the many cities once built in Egypt. If there ever were any other buildings, they must be now covered with the white sand from the mountains, for the whole plain to the foot of these is o’erflowed, and in cultivation. It was no part, either of my plan or inclination, to enter into the detail of this extraordinary architecture. Quantity, and solidity, are two principal circumstances that are seen there, with a vengeance.

It strikes and imposes on you, at first sight, but the impressions are like those made by the size of mountains, which the mind does not retain for any considerable time after seeing them; I think, a very ready hand might spend six months, from morning to night, before he could copy the hieroglyphics in the inside of the temple. They are, however, in several combinations, which have not appeared in the collection of hieroglyphics. I wonder that, being in the neighbourhood, as we are, of Lycopolis, we never see a wolf as an hieroglyphic; and nothing, indeed, but what has some affinity to water; yet the wolf is upon all the medals, from which I apprehend that the worship of the wolf was but a modern superstition.

Dendera stands on the edge of a small, but fruitful plain; the wheat was thirteen inches high, now at Christmas; their harvest is in the end of March. The valley is not above five miles wide, from mountain to mountain. Here we first saw the Doom-tree in great profusion growing among the palms, from which it scarcely is distinguishable at a distance. It is the 113Palma Thebaica Cuciofera. Its stone is like that of a peach covered with a black bitter pulp, which resembles a walnut over ripe.

A little before we came to Dendera we saw the first crocodile, and afterwards hundreds, lying upon every island, like large flocks of cattle, yet the inhabitants of Dendera drive their beasts of every kind into the river, and they stand there for hours. The girls and women too, that come to fetch water in jars, stand up to their knees in the water for a considerable time; and if we guess by what happens, their danger is full as little as their fear, for none of them, that ever I heard of, had been bit by a crocodile. However, if the Denderites were as keen and expert hunters of Crocodiles, as some 114historians tell us they were formerly, there is surely no part in the Nile where they would have better sport than here, immediately before their own city.

Having made some little acknowledgment to those who had conducted me through the ruins in great safety, I returned to the Canja, or rather to my tent, which I placed in the first firm ground. I saw, at some distance, a well-dressed man, with a white turban, and yellow shawl covering it, and a number of ill-looking people about him. As I thought this was some quarrel among the natives, I took no notice of it, but went to my tent, in order to rectify my quadrant for observation.

As soon as our Rais saw me enter my tent, he came with expressions of very great indignation. “What signifies it, said he, that you are a friend to the Bey, have letters to every body, and are at the door of Furshout, if yet here is a man that will take your boat away from you?”

“Softly, softly, I answered, Hassan, he may be in the right. If Ali Bey, Shekh Hamam, or any body want a boat for public service, I must yield mine. Let us hear.”

“Shekh Hamam and Ali Bey! says he; why it is a fool, an idiot, and an ass; a fellow that goes begging about, and says he is a saint; but he is a natural fool, full as much knave as fool however; he is a thief, I know him to be a thief.”

“If he is a saint, said I, Hagi Hassan, as you are another, known to be so all the world over, I don’t see why I should interfere; saint against saint is a fair battle.”—“It is the Cadi, replies he, and no one else.”

“Come away with me, said I, Hassan, and let us see this cadi; if it is the cadi, it is not the fool, it may be the knave.”

He was sitting upon the ground on a carpet, moving his head backwards and forwards, and saying prayers with beads in his hand. I had no good opinion of him from his first appearance, but said, Salam alicum, boldly; this seemed to offend him, as he looked at me with great contempt, and gave me no answer, though he appeared a little disconcerted by my confidence.

“Are you the Cafr, said he, to whom that boat belongs?”

“No, Sir, said I, it belongs to Hagi Hassan.”

“Do you think, says he, I call Hagi Hassan, who is a Sherriffe, Cafr?”

“That depends upon the measure of your prudence, said I, of which as yet I have no proof that can enable me to judge or decide.”

“Are you the Christian that was at the ruins in the morning? says he.”

“I was at the ruins in the morning, replied I, and I am a Christian. Ali Bey calls that denomination of people Nazarani, that is the Arabic of Cairo and Constantinople, and I understand no other.”

“I am, said he, going to Girgé, and this holy saint is with me, and there is no boat but your’s bound that way, for which reason I have promised to take him with me.”

By this time the saint had got into the boat, and sat forward; he was an ill-favoured, low, sick-like man, and seemed to be almost blind.

You should not make rash promises, said I to the cadi, for this one you made you never can perform; I am not going to Girgé. Ali Bey, whose slave you are, gave me this boat, but told me, I was not to ship either saints or cadies. There is my boat, go a-board if you dare; and you, Hagi Hassan, let me see you lift an oar, or loose a sail, either for the cadi or the saint, if I am not with them.

I went to my tent, and the Rais followed me. “Hagi Hassan, said I, there is a proverb in my country, It is better to flatter fools than to fight them: Cannot you go to the fool, and give him half-a-crown? will he take it, do you think, and abandon his journey to Girgé? afterwards leave me to settle with the cadi for his voyage thither.”

“He will take it with all his heart, he will kiss your hand for half-a-crown, says Hassan.”

“Let him have half-a-crown from me, said I, and desire him to go about his business, and intimate that I give him it in charity, at same time expect compliance with the condition.”

In the interim, a Christian Copht came into the tent: “Sir, said he, you don’t know what you are doing; the cadi is a great man, give him his present, and have done with him.”

“When he behaves better, it will be time enough for that, said I?—If you are a friend of his, advise him to be quiet, before an order comes from Cairo by a Serach, and carries him thither. Your countryman Risk would not give me the advice you do?”

Risk! says he; Do you know Risk? Is not that Risk’s writing, said I, shewing him a letter from the Bey? Wallah! (by God) it is, says he, and away he went without speaking a word farther.

The saint had taken his half-crown, and had gone away singing, it being now near dark.—The cadi went away, and the mob dispersed, and we directed a Moor to cry, That all people should, in the night-time, keep away from the tent, or they would be fired at; a stone or two were afterwards thrown, but did not reach us.

I finished my observation, and ascertained the latitude of Dendera, then packed up my instruments, and sent them on board.

Mr Norden seems greatly to have mistaken the position of this town, which, conspicuous and celebrated as it is by ancient authors, and justly a principal point of attention to modern travellers, he does not so much as describe; and, in his map, he places Dendera twenty or thirty miles to the southward of Badjoura; whereas it is about nine miles to the northward. For Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3´, and Dendera is in 26° 10´.

It is a great pity, that he who had a taste for this very remarkable kind of architecture, should have passed it, both in going up and coming down; as it is, beyond comparison, a place that would have given more satisfaction than all Upper Egypt.

While we were striking our tent, a great mob came down, but without the cadi. As I ordered all my people to take their arms in their hands, they kept at a very considerable distance; but the fool, or saint, got into the boat with a yellow flag in his hand, and sat down at the foot of the main-mast, saying, with an idiot smile, That we should fire, for he was out of the reach of the shot; some stones were thrown, but did not reach us.

I ordered two of my servants with large brass ship-blunderbusses, very bright and glittering, to get upon the top of the cabbin. I then pointed a wide-mouthed Swedish blunderbuss from one of the windows, and cried out, Have a care;—the next stone that is thrown I fire my cannon amongst you, which will sweep away 300 of you instantly from the face of the earth; though I believe there were not above two hundred then present.

I ordered Hagi Hassan to cast off his cord immediately, and, as soon as the blunderbuss appeared, away ran every one of them, and, before they could collect themselves to return, our vessel was in the middle of the stream. The wind was fair, though not very fresh, on which we set both our sails, and made great way.

The saint, who had been singing all the time we were disputing, began now to shew some apprehensions for his own safety: He asked Hagi Hassan, if this was the way to Girgé? and had for answer, “Yes, it is the fool’s way to Girgé.”

We carried him about a mile, or more, up the river; then a convenient landing-place offering, I asked him whether he got my money, or not, last night? He said, he had for yesterday, but he had got none for to-day.—“Now, the next thing I have to ask you, said I, is, Will you go ashore of your own accord, or will you be thrown into the Nile? He answered with great confidence, Do you know, that, at my word, I can fix your boat to the bottom of the Nile, and make it grow a tree there for ever?” “Aye, says Hagi Hassan, and make oranges and lemons grow on it likewise, can’t you? You are a cheat.” “Come, Sirs, said I, lose no time, put him out.” I thought he had been blind and weak; and the boat was not within three feet of the shore, when placing one foot upon the gunnel, he leaped clean upon land.

We slacked our vessel down the stream a few yards, filling our sails, and stretching away. Upon seeing this, our saint fell into a desperate passion, cursing, blaspheming, and stamping with his feet, at every word crying “Shar Ullah!” i. e. may God send, and do justice. Our people began to taunt and gibe him, asking him if he would have a pipe of tobacco to warm him, as the morning was very cold; but I bade them be content. It was curious to see him, as far as we could discern, sometimes sitting down, sometimes jumping and skipping about, and waving his flag, then running about a hundred yards, as if it were after us; but always returning, though at a slower pace.

None of the rest followed. He was indeed apparently the tool of that rascal the cadi, and, after his designs were frustrated, nobody cared what became of him. He was left in the lurch, as those of his character generally are, after serving the purpose of knaves.

CHAP. VI.

Arrive at Furshout—Adventure of Friar Christopher—Visit Thebes—Luxor and Carnac—Large Ruins at Edfu and Esné—Proceed on our Voyage.

We arrived happily at Furshout that same forenoon, and went to the convent of Italian Friars, who, like those of Achmim, are of the order of the reformed Franciscans, of whose mission I shall speak at large in the sequel.

We were received more kindly here than at Achmim; but Padre Antonio, superior of that last convent, upon which this of Furshout also depends, following us, our good reception suffered a small abatement. In short, the good Friars would not let us buy meat, because they said it would be a shame and reproach to them; and they would not give us any, for fear that should be a reproach to them likewise, if it was told in Europe they lived well.

After some time I took the liberty of providing for myself, to which they submitted with christian patience. Yet these convents were founded expressly with a view, and from a necessity of providing for travellers between Egypt and Ethiopia, and we were strictly intitled to that entertainment. Indeed there is very little use for this institution in Upper Egypt, as long as rich Arabs are there, much more charitable and humane to stranger Christians than the Monks.

Furshout is in a large and cultivated plain. It is nine miles over to the foot of the mountains, all sown with wheat. There are, likewise, plantations of sugar canes. The town, as they said, contains above 10,000 people, but I have no doubt this computation is rather exaggerated.

We waited upon the Shekh Hamam; who was a big, tall, handsome man; I apprehend not far from sixty. He was dressed in a large fox-skin pelisse over the rest of his cloaths, and had a yellow India shawl wrapt about his head, like a turban. He received me with great politeness and condescension, made me sit down by him, and asked me more about Cairo than about Europe.

The Rais had told him our adventure with the saint, at which he laughed very heartily, saying, I was a wise man and a man of conduct. To me he only said, “they are bad people at Dendera;” to which I answered, “there were very few places in the world in which there were not some bad.” He replied, “Your observation is true, but there they are all bad; rest yourselves however here, it is a quiet place; though there are still some even in this place not quite so good as they ought to be.”

The Shekh was a man of immense riches, and, little by little, had united in his own person, all the separate districts of Upper Egypt, each of which formerly had its particular prince. But his interest was great at Constantinople, where he applied directly for what he wanted, insomuch as to give a jealousy to the Beys of Cairo. He had in farm from the Grand Signior almost the whole country, between Siout and Syene, or Assouan. I believe this is the Shekh of Upper Egypt, whom Mr Irvine speaks of so gratefully. He was betrayed, and murdered some time after, by one of the Beys whom he had protected in his own country.

While we were at Furshout, there happened a very extraordinary phænomenon. It rained the whole night, and till about nine o’clock next morning; and the people began to be very apprehensive least the whole town should be destroyed. It is a perfect prodigy to see rain here; and the prophets said it portended a dissolution of government, which was justly verified soon afterwards, and at that time indeed was extremely probable.

Furshout is in lat 26° 3´30´´; above that, to the southward, on the same plain, is another large village, belonging to Shekh Ismael, a nephew of Shekh Hamam. It is a large town, built with clay like Furshout, and surrounded with groves of palm trees, and very large plantations of sugar canes. Here they make sugar.

Shekh Ismael was a very pleasant and agreeable man, but in bad health, having a violent asthma, and sometimes pleuretic complaints, to be removed by bleeding only. He had given these friars a house for a convent in Badjoura; but as they had not yet taken possession of it, he desired me to come and stay there.

Friar Christopher, whom I understood to have been a Milanese barber, was his physician, but he had not the science of an English barber in surgery. He could not bleed, but with a sort of instrument resembling that which is used in cupping, only that it had but a single lancet; with this he had been lucky enough as yet to escape laming his patients. This bleeding instrument they call the Tabange, or the Pistol, as they do the cupping instrument likewise. I never could help shuddering at seeing the confidence with which this man placed a small brass box upon all sorts of arms, and drew the trigger for the point to go where fortune pleased.

Shekh Ismael was very fond of this surgeon, and the surgeon of his patron; all would have gone well, had not friar Christopher aimed likewise at being an Astronomer. Above all he gloried in being a violent enemy to the Copernican system, which unluckily he had mistaken for a heresy in the church; and partly from his own slight ideas and stock of knowledge, partly from some Milanese almanacs he had got, he attempted, the weather being cloudy, to foretel the time when the moon was to change, it being that of the month Ramadan, when the Mahometans’ lent, or fasting, was to begin.

It happened that the Badjoura people, and their Shekh Ismael, were upon indifferent terms with Hamam, and his men of Furshout, and being desirous to get a triumph over their neighbours by the help of their friar Christopher, they continued to eat, drink, and smoke, two days after the conjunction.

The moon had been seen the second night, by a Fakir115, in the desert, who had sent word to Shekh Hamam, and he had begun his fast. But Ismael, assured by friar Christopher that it was impossible, had continued eating.

The people of Furshout, meeting their neighbours singing and dancing, and with pipes of tobacco in their mouths, all cried out with astonishment, and asked, “Whether they had abjured their religion or not?”—From words they came to blows; seven or eight were wounded on each side, luckily none of them mortally.—Hamam next day came to inquire at his nephew Shekh Ismael, what had been the occasion of all this, and to consult what was to be done, for the two villages had declared one another infidels.

I was then with my servants in Badjoura, in great quiet and tranquillity, under the protection, and very much in the confidence of Ismael; but hearing the hooping, and noise in the streets, I had barricadoed my outer-doors. A high wall surrounded the house and court-yard, and there I kept quiet, satisfied with being in perfect safety.

In the interim, I heard it was a quarrel about the keeping of Ramadan, and, as I had provisions, water, and employment enough in the house, I resolved to stay at home till they fought it out; being very little interested which of them should be victorious.—About noon, I was sent for to Ismael’s house, and found his uncle Hamam with him.

He told me, there were several wounded in a quarrel about the Ramadan, and recommended them to my care. “About Ramadan, said I! what, your principal fast! have you not settled that yet?”—Without answering me as to this, he asked, “When does the moon change?” As I knew nothing of friar Christopher’s operations, I answered, in hours, minutes, and seconds, as I found them in the ephemerides.

“Look you there, says Hamam, this is fine work!” and, directing his discourse to me, “When shall we see it?” Sir, said I, that is impossible for me to tell, as it depends on the state of the heavens; but, if the sky is clear, you must see her to-night; if you had looked for her, probably you would have seen her last night low in the horizon, thin like a thread; she is now three days old.—He started at this, then told me friar Christopher’s operation, and the consequences of it.

Ismael was ashamed, cursed him, and threatened revenge. It was too late to retract, the moon appeared, and spoke for herself; and the unfortunate friar was disgraced, and banished from Badjoura. Luckily the pleuretic stitch came again, and I was called to bleed him, which I did with a lancet; but he was so terrified at its brightness, at the ceremony of the towel and the bason, and at my preparation, that it did not please him, and therefore he was obliged to be reconciled to Christopher and his tabange.—Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3´ 16´´; and is situated on the western shore of the Nile, as Furshout is likewise.

We left Furshout the 7th of January 1769, early in the morning. We had not hired our boat farther than Furshout; but the good terms which subsisted between me and the saint, my Rais, made an accommodation very easy to carry us farther. He now agreed for L. 4 to carry us to Syene and down again; but, if he behaved well, he expected a trifling premium. “And, if you behave ill, Hassan, said I, what do you think you deserve?”—“To be hanged, said he, I deserve, and desire no better.”

Our wind at first was but scant. The Rais said, that he thought his boat did not go as it used to do, and that it was growing into a tree. The wind, however, freshened up towards noon, and eased him of his fears. We passed a large town called How, on the west side of the Nile. About four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at El Gourni, a small village, a quarter of a mile distant from the Nile. It has in it a temple of old Egyptian architecture. I think that this, and the two adjoining heaps of ruins, which are at the same distance from the Nile, probably might have been part of the ancient Thebes.

Shaamy and Taamy are two colossal statues in a sitting posture covered with hieroglyphics. The southmost is of one stone, and perfectly entire. The northmost is a good deal more mutilated. It was probably broken by Cambyses; and they have since endeavoured to repair it. The other has a very remarkable head-dress, which can be compared to nothing but a tye-wig, such as worn in the present day. These two, situated in a very fertile spot belonging to Thebes, were apparently the Nilometers of that town, as the marks which the water has left upon the bases sufficiently shew. The bases of both of them are bare, and uncovered, to the bottom of the plinth, or lowest member of their pedestal; so that there is not the eighth of an inch of the lowest part of them covered with mud, though they stand in the middle of a plain, and have stood there certainly above 3000 years; since which time, if the fanciful rise of the land of Egypt by the Nile had been true, the earth should have been raised so as fully to conceal half of them both.

These statues are covered with inscriptions of Greek and Latin; the import of which seems to be, that there were certain travellers, or particular people, who heard Memnon’s statue utter the sound it was said to do, upon being struck with the rays of the sun.

It may be very reasonably expected, that I should here say something of the building and fall of the first Thebes; but as this would carry me to very early ages, and interrupt for a long time my voyage upon the Nile; as this is, besides, connected with the history of several nations which I am about to describe, and more proper for the work of an historian, than the cursory descriptions of a traveller, I shall defer saying any thing upon the subject, till I come to treat of it in the first of these characters, and more especially till I shall speak of the origin of the Shepherds, and the calamities brought upon Egypt by that powerful nation, a people often mentioned by different writers, but whose history hitherto has been but imperfectly known.

Nothing remains of the ancient Thebes but four prodigious temples, all of them in appearance more ancient, but neither so entire, nor so magnificent, as those of Dendera. The temples at Medinet Tabu are the most elegant of these. The hieroglyphics are cut to the depth of half-a-foot, in some places, but we have still the same figures, or rather a less variety, than at Dendera.

The hieroglyphics are of four sorts; first, such as have only the contour marked, and, as it were, scratched only in the stone. The second are hollowed; and in the middle of that space rises the figure in relief, so that the prominent part of the figure is equal to the flat, unwrought surface of the stone, and seems to have a frame round it, designed to defend the hieroglyphic from mutilation. The third sort is in relief, or basso relievo, as it is called, where the figure is left bare and exposed, without being sunk in, or defended, by any compartment cut round it in the stone. The fourth are those mentioned in the beginning of this description, the outlines of the figure being cut very deep in the stone.

All the hieroglyphics, but the last mentioned, which do not admit it, are painted red, blue, and green, as at Dendera, and with no other colours.

Notwithstanding all this variety in the manner of executing the hieroglyphical figures, and the prodigious multitude which I have seen in the several buildings, I never could make the number of different hieroglyphics amount to more than five hundred and fourteen, and of these there were certainly many, which were not really different, but from the ill execution of the sculpture only appeared so. From this I conclude, certainly, that it can be no entire language which hieroglyphics are meant to contain, for no language could be comprehended in five hundred words, and it is probable that these hieroglyphics are not alphabetical, or single letters only; for five hundred letters would make too large an alphabet. The Chinese indeed have many more letters in use, but have no alphabet, but who is it that understands the Chinese?

There are three different characters which, I observe, have been in use at the same time in Egypt, Hieroglyphics, the Mummy character, and the Ethiopic. These are all three found, as I have seen, on the same mummy, and therefore were certainly used at the same time. The last only I believe was a language.

The mountains immediately above or behind Thebes, are hollowed out into numberless caverns, the first habitations of the Ethiopian colony which built the city. I imagine they continued long in these habitations, for I do not think the temples were ever intended but for public and solemn uses, and in none of these ancient cities did I ever see a wall or foundation, or any thing like a private house; all are temples and tombs, if temples and tombs in those times were not the same thing. But vestiges of houses there are none, whatever116 Diodorus Siculus may say, building with stone was too expensive for individuals; the houses probably were all of clay, thatched with palm branches, as they are at this day. This is one reason why so few ruins of the immense number of cities we hear of remain.

Thebes, according to Homer, had a hundred gates. We cannot, however, discover yet the foundation of any wall that it had; and as for the horsemen and chariots it is said to have sent out, all the Thebaid sown with wheat would not have maintained one-half of them.

Thebes, at least the ruins of the temples, called Medinet Tabu, are built in a long stretch of about a mile broad, most parsimoniously chosen at the sandy foot of the mountains. The Horti117 Pensiles, or hanging gardens, were surely formed upon the sides of these hills, then supplied with water by mechanical devices. The utmost is done to spare the plain, and with great reason; for all the space of ground this ancient city has had to maintain its myriads of horses and men, is a plain of three quarters of a mile broad, between the town and the river, upon which plain the water rises to the height of four, and five feet, as we may judge by the marks on the statues Shaamy and Taamy. All this pretended populousness of ancient Thebes I therefore believe fabulous.

It is a circumstance very remarkable, in building the first temples, that, where the side-walls are solid, that is, not supported by pillars, some of these have their angles and faces perpendicular, others inclined in a very considerable angle to the horizon. Those temples, whose walls are inclined, you may judge by the many hieroglyphics and ornaments, are of the first ages, or the greatest antiquity. From which, I am disposed to think, that singular construction was a remnant of the partiality of the builders for their first domiciles; an imitation of the slope118, or inclination of the sides of mountains, and that this inclination of flat surfaces to each other in building, gave afterwards the first idea of Pyramids119.

A number of robbers, who much resemble our gypsies, live in the holes of the mountains above Thebes. They are all out-laws, punished with death if elsewhere found. Osman Bey, an ancient governor of Girgé, unable to suffer any longer the disorders committed by these people, ordered a quantity of dried faggots to be brought together, and, with his soldiers, took, possession of the face of the mountain, where the greatest number of these wretches were: He then ordered all their caves to be filled with this dry brushwood, to which he set fire, so that most of them were destroyed; but they have since recruited their numbers, without changing their manners.

About half a mile north of El Gourni, are the magnificent, stupendous sepulchres, of Thebes. The mountains of the Thebaid come close behind the town; they are not run in upon one another like ridges, but stand insulated upon their bases; so that you can get round each of them. A hundred of these, it is said, are excavated into sepulchral, and a variety of other apartments. I went through seven of them with a great deal of fatigue. It is a solitary place; and my guides, either from a natural impatience and distaste that these people have at such employments, or, that their fears of the banditti that live in the caverns of the mountains were real, importuned me to return to the boat, even before I had begun my search, or got into the mountains where are the many large apartments of which I was in quest.

In the first one of these I entered is the prodigious sarcophagus, some say of Menes, others of Osimandyas; possibly of neither. It is sixteen feet high, ten long, and six broad, of one piece of red-granite; and, as such, is, I suppose, the finest vase in the world. Its cover is still upon it, (broken on one side,) and it has a figure in relief on the outside. It is not probably the tomb of Osimandyas, because, Diodorus120 says, that it was ten stadia from the tomb of the kings; whereas this is one among them.

There have been some ornaments at the outer-pillars, or outer-entry, which have been broken and thrown down. Thence you descend through an inclined passage, I suppose, about twenty feet broad; I speak only by guess, for I did not measure. The side-walls, as well as the roof of this passage, are covered with a coat of stucco, of a finer and more equal grain, or surface, than any I ever saw in Europe. I found my black-lead pencil little more worn by it than by writing upon paper.

Upon the left-hand side is the crocodile seizing upon the apis, and plunging him into the water. On the right-hand is the 121scarabæus thebaicus, or the thebaic beetle, the first animal that is seen alive after the Nile retires from the land; and therefore thought to be an emblem of the resurrection. My own conjecture is, that the apis was the emblem of the arable land of Egypt; the crocodile, the typhon, or cacodæmon, the type of an over-abundant Nile; that the scarabæus was the land which had been overflowed, and from which the water had soon retired, and has nothing to do with the resurrection or immortality, neither of which at that time were in contemplation.

Farther forward on the right-hand of the entry, the pannels, or compartments, were still formed in stucco, but, in place of figures in relief, they were painted in fresco. I dare say this was the case on the left-hand of the passage, as well as the right. But the first discovery was so unexpected, and I had flattered myself that I should be so far master of my own time, as to see the whole at my leisure, that I was rivetted, as it were, to the spot by the first sight of these paintings, and I could proceed no further.

In one pannel were several musical instruments strowed upon the ground, chiefly of the hautboy kind, with a mouth-piece of reed. There were also some simple pipes or flutes. With them were several jars apparently of potter-ware, which, having their mouths covered with parchment or skin, and being braced on their sides like a drum, were probably the instrument called the tabor, or122tabret, beat upon by the hands, coupled in earliest ages with the harp, and preserved still in Abyssinia, though its companion, the last-mentioned instrument, is no longer known there.

In three following pannels were painted, in fresco, three harps, which merited the utmost attention, whether we consider the elegance of these instruments in their form, and the detail of their parts as they are here clearly expressed, or confine ourselves to the reflection that necessarily follows, to how great perfection music must have arrived, before an artist could have produced so complete an instrument as either of these.

As the first harp seemed to be the most perfect, and least spoiled, I immediately attached myself to this, and desired my clerk to take upon him the charge of the second. In this way, by sketching exactly, and loosely, I hoped to have made myself master of all the paintings in that cave, perhaps to have extended my researches to others, though, in the sequel, I found myself miserably deceived.

My first drawing was that of a man playing upon a harp; he was standing, and the instrument being broad, and flat at the base, probably for that purpose, supported itself easily with a very little inclination upon his arm; his head is close shaved, his eye-brows black, without beard or mustachoes.

He has on him a loose shirt, like what they wear at this day in Nubia (only it is not blue) with loose sleeves, and arms and neck bare. It seemed to be thick muslin, or cotton cloth, and long-ways through it is a crimson stripe about one-eighth of an inch broad; a proof, if this is Egyptian manufacture, that they understood at that time how to dye cotton, crimson, an art found out in Britain only a very few years ago. If this is the fabric of India, still it proves the antiquity of the commerce between the two countries, and the introduction of Indian manufactures into Egypt.

Painting in Fresco, in the Sepulchres of Thebes.

London Publish’d Decr. 1st. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

It reached down to his ancle; his feet are without sandals; he seems to be a corpulent man, of about sixty years of age, and of a complexion rather dark for an Egyptian. To guess by the detail of the figure, the painter seems to have had the same degree of merit with a good sign-painter in Europe, at this day.—If we allow this harper’s stature to be five feet ten inches, then we may compute the harp, in its extreme length, to be something less than six feet and a half.

This instrument is of a much more advantageous form than the triangular Grecian harp. It has thirteen strings, but wants the forepiece of the frame opposite to the longest string. The back part is the sounding-board, composed of four thin pieces of wood, joined together in form of a cone, that is, growing wider towards the bottom; so that, as the length of the string increases, the square of the corresponding space in the sounding-board, in which the sound was to undulate, always increases in proportion. The whole principles, on which this harp is constructed, are rational and ingenious, and the ornamented parts are executed in the very best manner.

The bottom and sides of the frame seem to be fineered, and inlaid, probably with ivory, tortoise-shell, and mother-of-pearl, the ordinary produce of the neighbouring seas and deserts. It would be even now impossible, either to construct or to finish a harp of any form with more taste and elegance. Besides the proportions of its outward form, we must observe likewise how near it approached to a perfect instrument, for it wanted only two strings of having two complete octaves; that these were purposely omitted, not from defect of taste or science, must appear beyond contradiction, when we consider the harp that follows.

I had no sooner finished the harp which I had taken in hand, than I went to my assistant, to see what progress he had made in the drawing in which he was engaged. I found, to my very great surprise, that this harp differed essentially, in form and distribution of its parts, from the one I had drawn, without having lost any of its elegance; on the contrary, that it was finished with full more attention than the other. It seemed to be fineered with the same materials, ivory and tortoise-shell, but the strings were differently disposed, the ends of the three longest, where they joined to the sounding-board below, were defaced by a hole dug in the wall. Several of the strings in different parts had been scraped as with a knife, for the rest, it was very perfect. It had eighteen strings. A man, who seemed to be still older than the former, but in habit perfectly the same, bare-footed, close shaved, and of the same complexion with him, stood playing with both his hands near the middle of the harp, in a manner seemingly less agitated than in the other.

Painting in Fresco, in the Sepulchres of Thebes.

Publish’d Decr. 1st. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

I went back to my first harp, verified, and examined my drawing in all its parts; it is with great pleasure I now give a figure of this second harp to the reader, it was mislaid among a multitude of other papers, at the time when I was solicited to communicate the former drawing to a gentleman then writing the History of Music, which he has already submitted to the public; it is very lately and unexpectedly this last harp has been found; I am only sorry this accident has deprived the public of Dr Burney’s remarks upon it. I hope he will yet favour us with them, and therefore abstain from anticipating his reflections, as I consider this as his province; I never knew any one so capable of affording the public, new, and at the same time just lights on this subject.

There still remained a third harp of ten strings, its precise form I do not well remember, for I had seen it but once when I first entered the cave, and was now preparing to copy that likewise. I do not recollect that there was any man playing upon this one, I think it was rather resting upon a wall, with some kind of drapery upon one end of it, and was the smallest of the three. But I am not at all so certain of particulars concerning this, as to venture any description of it; what I have said of the other two may be absolutely depended upon.

I look upon these harps then as the Theban harps in use in the time of Sesostris, who did not rebuild, but decorate ancient Thebes; I consider them as affording an incontestible proof, were they the only monuments remaining, that every art necessary to the construction, ornament, and use of this instrument, was in the highest perfection, and if so, all the others must have probably attained to the same degree.

We see in particular the ancients then possessed an art relative to architecture, that of hewing the hardest stones with the greatest ease, of which we are at this day utterly ignorant and incapable. We have no instrument that could do it, no composition that could make tools of temper sufficient to cut bass reliefs in granite or porphyry so readily; and our ignorance in this is the more completely shewn, in that we have all the reasons to believe, the cutting instrument with which they did these surprising feats was composed of brass; a metal of which, after a thousand experiments, no tool has ever been made that could serve the purpose of a common knife, though we are at the same time certain, it was of brass the ancients made their razors.

These harps, in my opinion, overturn all the accounts hitherto given of the earliest state of music and musical instruments in the east; and are altogether in their form, ornaments, and compass, an incontestible proof, stronger than a thousand Greek quotations, that geometry, drawing, mechanics, and music, were at the greatest perfection when this instrument was made, and that the period from which we date the invention of these arts, was only the beginning of the æra of their restoration. This was the sentiment of Solomon, a writer who lived at the time when this harp was painted. “Is there (says Solomon) any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new! it hath been already of old time which was before us123.”

We find, in these very countries, how a later calamity, of the same public nature, the conquest of the Saracens, occasioned a similar downfal of literature, by the burning the Alexandrian library under the fanatical caliph Omar. We see how soon after, they flourished, planted by the same hands that before had rooted them out.

The effects of a revolution occasioned, at the period I am now speaking of, by the universal inundation of the Shepherds, were the destruction of Thebes, the ruin of architecture, and the downfal of astronomy in Egypt. Still a remnant was left in the colonies and correspondents of Thebes, though fallen. Ezekiel124 celebrates Tyre as being, from her beginning, famous for the tabret and harp, and it is probably to Tyre the taste for music fled from the contempt and persecution of the barbarous Shepherds; who, though a numerous nation, to this day never have yet possessed any species of music, or any kind of musical instruments capable of improvement.

Although it is a curious subject for reflection, it should not surprise us to find here the harp, in such variety of form. Old Thebes, as we presently shall see, had been destroyed, and was soon after decorated and adorned, but not rebuilt by Sesostris. It was some time between the reign of Menes, the first king of the Thebaid, and the first general war of the Shepherds, that these decorations and paintings were made. This gives it a prodigious antiquity; but supposing it was a favourite instrument, consequently well understood at the building of Tyre125 in the year 1320 before Christ, and Sesostris had lived in the time of Solomon, as Sir Isaac Newton imagines; still there were 320 years since that instrument had already attained to great perfection, a sufficient time to have varied it into every form.

Upon seeing the preparations I was making to proceed farther in my researches, my conductors lost all sort of subordination. They were afraid my intention was to sit in this cave all night, (as it really was,) and to visit the others next morning. With great clamour and marks of discontent, they dashed their torches against the largest harp, and made the best of their way out of the cave, leaving me and my people in the dark; and all the way as they went, they made dreadful denunciations of tragical events that were immediately to follow, upon their departure from the cave.

There was no possibility of doing more. I offered them money, much beyond the utmost of their expectations; but the fear of the Troglodytes, above Medinet Tabu, had fallen upon them; and seeing at last this was real, I was not myself without apprehensions, for they were banditti, and outlaws, and no reparation was to be expected, whatever they should do to hurt us.

Very much vexed, I mounted my horse to return to the boat. The road lay through a very narrow valley, the sides of which were covered with bare loose stones. I had no sooner got down to the bottom, than I heard a great deal of loud speaking on both sides of the valley; and, in an instant, a number of large stones were rolled down upon me, which, though I heard in motion, I could not see, on account of the darkness; this increased my terror.

Finding, by the impatience of the horse, that several of these stones had come near him, and that it probably was the noise of his feet which guided those that threw them, I dismounted, and ordered the Moor to get on horseback; which he did, and in a moment galloped out of danger. This, if I had been wise, I certainly might have done before him, but my mind was occupied by the paintings. Nevertheless, I was resolved upon revenge before leaving these banditti, and listened till I heard voices, on the right side of the hill. I accordingly levelled my gun as near as possible, by the ear, and fired one barrel among them. A moment’s silence ensued, and then a loud howl, which seemed to have come from thirty or forty persons. I took my servant’s blunderbuss, and discharged it where I heard the howl, and a violent confusion of tongues followed, but no more stones. As I found this was the time to escape, I kept along the dark side of the hill, as expeditiously as possible, till I came to the mouth of the plain, when we reloaded our firelocks, expecting some interruption before we reached the boat; and then we made the best of our way to the river.

We found our Rais full of fears for us. He had been told, that, as soon as day light should appear, the whole Troglodytes were to come down to the river, in order to plunder and destroy our boat.

This night expedition at the mountains was but partial, the general attack was reserved for next day. Upon holding council, we were unanimous in opinion, as indeed we had been during the whole course of this voyage. We thought, since our enemy had left us to-night, it would be our fault if they found us in the morning. Therefore, without noise, we cast off our rope that fastened us, and let ourselves over to the other side. About twelve at night a gentle breeze began to blow, which wafted us up to Luxor, where there was a governor, for whom I had letters.

From being convinced by the sight of Thebes, which had not the appearance of ever having had walls, that the fable of the hundred gates, mentioned by Homer, was mere invention, I was led to conjecture what could be the origin of that fable.

That the old inhabitants of Thebes lived in caves in the mountains, is, I think, without doubt, and that the hundred mountains I have spoken of, excavated, and adorned, were the greatest wonders at that time, seems equally probable. Now, the name of these to this day is Beeban el Meluke, the ports or gates of the kings, and hence, perhaps, come the hundred gates of Thebes upon which the Greeks have dwelt so much. Homer never saw Thebes, it was demolished before the days of any profane writer, either in prose or verse. What he added to its history must have been from imagination.

All that is said of Thebes, by poets or historians, after the days of Homer, is meant of Diospolis; which was built by the Greeks long after Thebes was destroyed, as its name testifies; though Diodorus126 says it was built by Busiris. It was on the east side of the Nile, whereas ancient Thebes was on the west, though both are considered as one city; and 127Strabo says, that the river128 runs through the middle of Thebes, by which he means between old Thebes and Diospolis, or Luxor and Medinet Tabu.

While in the boat, I could not help regretting the time I had spent in the morning, in looking for the place in the narrow valley where the mark of the famous golden circle was visible, which Norden says he saw, but I could discern no traces of it any where, and indeed it does not follow that the mark left was that of a circle. This magnificent instrument was probably fixed perpendicular to the horizon in the plane of the meridian; so that the appearance of the place where it stood, would very probably not partake of the circular form at all, or any precise shape whereby to know it. Besides, as I have before said, it was not among these tombs or excavated mountains, but ten stades from them, so the vestiges of this famous instrument129 could not be found here. Indeed, being omitted in the latest edition of Norden, it would seem that traveller himself was not perfectly well allured of its existence.

We were well received by the governor of Luxor, who was also a believer in judicial astrology. Having made him a small present, he furnished us with provisions, and, among several other articles, some brown sugar; and as we had seen limes and lemons in great perfection at Thebes, we were resolved to refresh ourselves with some punch, in remembrance of Old England. But, after what had happened the night before, none of our people chose to run the risk of meeting the Troglodytes. We therefore procured a servant of the governor’s of the town, to mount upon his goat-skin filled with wind, and float down the stream from Luxor to El Gournie, to bring us a supply of these, which he soon after did.

He informed us, that the people in the caves had, early in the morning, made a descent upon the townsmen, with a view to plunder our boat; that several of them had been wounded the night before, and they threatened to pursue us to Syene. The servant did all he could to frighten them, by saying that his master’s intention was to pass over with troops, and exterminate them, as Osman Bey of Girgé had before done, and we were to assist him with our fire-arms.—After this we heard no more of them.

Luxor, and Carnac, which is a mile and a quarter below it, are by far the largest and most magnificent scenes of ruins in Egypt, much more extensive and stupendous than those of Thebes and Dendera put together.

There are two obelisks here of great beauty, and in good preservation, they are less than those at Rome, but not at all mutilated. The pavement, which is made to receive the shadow, is to this day so horizontal, that it might still be used in observation. The top of the obelisk is semicircular, an experiment, I suppose, made at the instance of the observer, by varying the shape of the point of the obelisk, to get rid of the penumbra.

At Carnac we saw the remains of two vast rows of sphinxes, one on the right-hand, the other on the left, (their heads were mostly broken) and, a little lower, a number of termini as it should seem. They were composed of basaltes, with a dog or lion’s head, of Egyptian sculpture. They stood in lines likewise, as if to conduct or serve as an avenue to some principal building.

They had been covered with earth, till very lately a 130Venetian physician and antiquary bought one of them at a very considerable price, as he said, for the king of Sardinia. This has caused several others to be uncovered, though no purchaser hath yet offered.

Upon the outside of the walls at Carnac and Luxor there seems to be an historical engraving instead of hieroglyphics; this we had not met with before. It is a representation of men, horses, chariots, and battles; some of the attitudes are freely and well drawn, they are rudely scratched upon the surface of the stone, as some of the hieroglyphics at Thebes are. The weapons the men make use of are short javelins, such as are common at this day among the inhabitants of Egypt, only they have feathered wings like arrows. There is also distinguished among the rest, the figure of a man on horseback, with a lion fighting furiously by him, and Diodorus131 says, Osimandyas was so represented at Thebes. This whole composition merits great attention.

I have said, that Luxor is Diospolis, and should think, that that place, and Carnac together, made the Jovis Civitas Magna of Ptolemy, though there is 9´ difference of the latitude by my observation compared with his. But as mine was made on the south of Luxor, if his was made on the north of Carnac, the difference will be greatly diminished.

The 17th we took leave of our friendly Shekh of Luxor, and sailed with a very fair wind, and in great spirits. The liberality of the Shekh of Luxor had extended as far as even to my Rais, whom he engaged to land me here upon my return.—I had procured him considerable ease in some complaints he had; and he saw our departure with as much regret as in other places they commonly did our arrival.

On the eastern shore are Hambdé, Maschergarona, Tot, Senimi, and Gibeg. Mr Norden seems to have very much confused the places in this neighbourhood, as he puts Erment opposite to Carnac, and Thebes farther south than Erment, and on the east side of the Nile, whilst he places Luxor farther south than Erment. But Erment is fourteen miles farther south than Thebes, and Luxor about a quarter of a mile (as I have already said) farther south on the East side of the river, whereas Thebes is on the West.

He has fixed a village (which he calls 132Demegeit) in the situation where Thebes stands, and he calls it Crocodilopolis, from what authority I know not; but the whole geography is here exceedingly confused, and out of its proper position.

In the evening we came to an anchor on the eastern shore nearly opposite to Esné. Some of our people had landed to shoot, trusting to a turn of the river that is here, which would enable them to keep up with us; but they did not arrive till the sun was setting, loaded with hares, pigeons, gootos, all very bad game. I had, on my part, staid on board, and had shot two geese, as bad eating as the others, but very beautiful in their plumage.

We passed over to Esné next morning. It is the ancient Latopolis, and has very great remains, particularly a large temple, which, though the whole of it is of the remotest antiquity, seems to have been built at different times, or rather out of the ruins of different ancient buildings. The hieroglyphics upon this are very ill executed, and are not painted. The town is the residence of an Arab Shekh, and the inhabitants are a very greedy, bad sort of people; but as I was dressed like an Arab, they did not molest, because they did not know me.

The 18th, we left Esné, and passed the town of Edfu, where there is likewise considerable remains of Egyptian architecture. It is the Appollinis Civitas Magna.

The wind failing, we were obliged to stop in a very poor, desolate, and dangerous part of the Nile, called Jibbel el Silselly, where a boom, or chain, was drawn across the river, to hinder, as is supposed, the Nubian boats from committing piratical practices in Egypt lower down the stream. The stones on both sides, to which the chain was fixed, are very visible; but I imagine that it was for fiscal rather than for warlike purposes, for Syene being garrisoned, there is no possibility of boats passing from Nubia by that city into Egypt. There is indeed another purpose to which it might be designed; to prevent war upon the Nile between any two states.

We know from Juvenal133, who lived some time at Syene, that there was a tribe in that neighbourhood called Ombi, who had violent contentions with the people of Dendera about the crocodile; it is remarkable these two parties were Anthropophagi so late as Juvenal’s time, yet no historian speaks of this extraordinary fact, which cannot be called in question, as he was an eye-witness and resided at Syene.

Now these two nations who were at war had above a hundred miles of neutral territory between them, and therefore they could never meet except on the Nile. But either one or the other possessing this chain, could hinder his adversary from coming nearer him. As the chain is in the hermonthic nome, as well as the capital of the Ombi, I suppose this chain to be the barrier of this last state, to hinder those of Dendera from coming up the river to eat them.

About noon we passed Coom Ombo, a round building like a castle, where is supposed to have been the metropolis of Ombi, the people last spoken of. We then arrived at Daroo134, a miserable mansion, unconscious that, some years after, we were to be indebted to that paltry village for the man who was to guide us through the desert, and restore us to our native country and our friends.

We next came to Shekh Ammer, the encampment of the Arabs 135Ababdé, I suppose the same that Mr Norden calls Ababuda, who reach from near Cosseir far into the desert. As I had been acquainted with one of them at Badjoura, who desired medicines for his father, I promised to call upon him, and see their effect, when I should pass Shekh Ammer, which I now accordingly did; and by the reception I met with, I found they did not expect I would ever have been as good as my word. Indeed they would probably have been in the right, but as I was about to engage myself in extensive deserts, and this was a very considerable nation in these tracts, I thought it was worth my while to put myself under their protection.

Shekh Ammer is not one, but a collection of villages, composed of miserable huts, containing, at this time, about a thousand effective men: they possess few horse, and are mostly mounted on camels. These were friends to Shekh Hamam, governor of Upper Egypt for the time, and consequently to the Turkish government at Syene, as also to the janissaries there at Deir and Ibrim. They were the barrier, or bulwark, against the prodigious number of Arabs, the Bishareen136, and others, depending upon the kingdom of Sennaar.

Ibrahim, the son, who had seen me at Furshout and Badjoura, knew me as soon as I arrived, and, after acquainting his father, came with about a dozen of naked attendants, with lances in their hands to escort me. I was scarce got into the door of the tent, before a great dinner was brought after their custom; and, that being dispatched, it was a thousand times repeated, how little they expected that I would have thought or inquired about them.

We were introduced to their Shekh, who was sick, in a corner of a hut, where he lay upon a carpet, with a cushion under his head. This chief of the Ababdé, called Nimmer, i. e. the Tiger (though his furious qualities were at this time in great measure allayed by sickness) asked me much about the state of Lower Egypt. I satisfied him as far as possible, but recommended to him to confine his thoughts nearer home, and not to be over anxious about these distant countries, as he himself seemed, at that time, to be in a declining state of health.

Nimmer was a man about sixty years of age, exceedingly tormented with the gravel, which was more extraordinary as he dwelt near the Nile; for it is, universally, the disease with those who use water from draw-wells, as in the desert. But he told me, that, for the first twenty-seven years of his life, he never had seen the Nile, unless upon some plundering party; that he had been constantly at war with the people of the cultivated part of Egypt, and reduced them often to the state of starving; but now that he was old, a friend to Shekh Hamam, and was resident near the Nile, he drank of its water, and was little better, for he was already a martyr to the disease. I had sent him soap pills from Badjoura, which had done him a great deal of good, and now gave him lime-water, and promised him, on my return, to shew his people how to make it.

A very friendly conversation ensued, in which was repeated often, how little they expected I would have visited them! As this implied two things; the first, that I paid no regard to my promise when given; the other, that I did not esteem them of consequence enough to give myself the trouble, I thought it right to clear myself from these suspicions.

“Shekh Nimmer, said I, this frequent repetition that you thought I would not keep my word is grievous to me. I am a Christian, and have lived now many years among you Arabs. Why did you imagine that I would not keep my word, since it is a principle among all the Arabs I have lived with, inviolably to keep theirs? When your son Ibrahim came to me at Badjoura, and told me the pain that you was in, night and day, fear of God, and desire to do good, even to them I had never seen, made me give you those medicines that have eased you. After this proof of my humanity, what was there extraordinary in my coming to see you in the way? I knew you not before; but my religion teaches me to do good to all men, even to enemies, without reward, or without considering whether I ever should see them again.”

“Now, after the drugs I sent you by Ibrahim, tell me, and tell me truly, upon the faith of an Arab, would your people, if they met me in the desert, do me any wrong, more than now, as I have eat and drank with you to-day?”

The old man Nimmer, on this rose from his carpet, and sat upright, a more ghastly and more horrid figure I never saw. “No, said he, Shekh, cursed be those men of my people, or others, that ever shall lift up their hand against you, either in the Desert or the Tell, i. e. the part of Egypt which is cultivated. As long as you are in this country, or between this and Cosseir, my son shall serve you with heart and hand; one night of pain that your medicines freed me from, would not be repaid, if I was to follow you on foot to Messir, that is Cairo.”

I then thought it a proper time to enter into conversation about penetrating into Abyssinia that way, and they discussed it among themselves in a very friendly, and at the same time in a very sagacious and sensible manner.

“We could carry you to El Haimer, (which I understood to be a well in the desert, and which I afterwards was much better acquainted with to my sorrow.) We could conduct you so far, says old Nimmer, under God, without fear of harm, all that country was Christian once, and we Christians like yourself137. The Saracens having nothing in their power there, we could carry you safely to Suakem, but the Bishary are men not to be trusted, and we could go no farther than to land you among them, and they would put you to death, and laugh at you all the time they were tormenting you138. Now, if you want to visit Abyssinia, go by Cosseir and Jidda, there you Christians command the country.”

“I told him, I apprehended, the Kennouss, about the second cataract, above Ibrim, were bad people. He said the Kennouss were, he believed, bad enough in their hearts, but they were wretched slaves, and servants, had no power in their hands, would not wrong any body that was with his people; if they did, he would extirpate them in a day.”

“I told him, I was satisfied of the truth of what was said, and asked him the best way to Cosseir. He said, the best way for me to go, was from Kenné, or Cuft, and that he was carrying a quantity of wheat from Upper Egypt, while Shekh Hamam was sending another cargo from his country, both which would be delivered at Cosseir, and loaded there for Jidda.”

“All that is right, Shekh, said I, but suppose your people meet us in the desert, in going to Cosseir, or otherwise, how should we fare in that case? Should we fight?” “I have told you Shekh already, says he, Cursed be the man who lifts his hand against you, or even does not defend and befriend you, to his own loss, were it Ibrahim my own son.”

I then told him I was bound to Cosseir, and that if I found myself in any difficulty, I hoped, upon applying to his people, they would protect me, and that he would give them the word, that I was yagoube, a physician, seeking no harm, but doing good; bound by a vow, for a certain time, to wander through deserts, from fear of God, and that they should not have it in their power to do me harm.

The old man muttered something to his sons in a dialect I did not then understand; it was that of the Shepherds of Suakem. As that was the first word he spoke, which I did not comprehend, I took no notice, but mixed some lime-water in a large Venetian bottle that was given me when at Cairo full of liqueur, and which would hold about four quarts; and a little after I had done this the whole hut was filled with people.

There were priests and monks of their religion, and the heads of families, so that the house could not contain half of them. The great people among them came, and, after joining hands, repeated a kind of 139prayer, of about two minutes long, by which they declared themselves, and their children, accursed, if ever they lifted their hands against me in the Tell, or Field in the desert, or on the river; or, in case that I, or mine should fly to them for refuge, if they did not protect us at the risk of their lives, their families, and their fortunes, or, as they emphatically expressed it, to the death of the last male child among them.

Medicines and advice being given on my part, faith and protection pledged on theirs, two bushels of wheat and seven sheep were carried down to the boat, nor could we decline their kindness, as refusing a present in that country (however it is understood in ours,) is just as great an affront, as coming into the presence of a superior without a present at all.

I told them, however, that I was going up among Turks who were obliged to maintain me, the consequence therefore will be, to save their own, that they will take your sheep, and make my dinner of them; you and I are Arabs, and know what Turks are. They all muttered curses between their teeth at the name of Turk, and we agreed they should keep the sheep till I came back, provided they should be then at liberty to add as many more.

This was all understood between us, and we parted perfectly content with one another. But our Rais was very far from being satisfied, having heard something of the seven sheep; and as we were to be next day at Syene, where he knew we were to get meat enough, he reckoned that they would have been his property. To stifle all cause of discontent, however, I told him he was to take no notice of my visit to Shekh Ammer, and that I would make him amends when I returned.

CHAP. VII.

Arrives at Syene—Goes to see the Cataract—Remarkable Tombs—the situation of Syene—The Aga proposes a Visit to Deir and Ibrím—The Author returns to Kenné.

We sailed on the 20th, with the wind favouring us, till about an hour before sun-rise, and about nine o’clock came to an anchor on the south end of the palm groves, and north end of the town of Syene, nearly opposite to an island in which there is a small handsome Egyptian temple, pretty entire. It is the temple of140Cnuphis, where formerly was the Nilometer.

Adjoining to the palm trees was a very good comfortable house, belonging to Hussein Schourbatchie, the man that used to be sent from that place to Cairo, to receive the pay of the janissaries in garrison at Syene, upon whom too I had credit for a very small sum.

The reasons of a credit in such a place are three: First, in case of sickness, or purchase of any antiquities: Secondly, that you give the people an idea (a very useful one) that you carry no money about with you: Thirdly, that your money changes its value, and is not even current beyond Esné.

Hussein was not at home, but was gone somewhere upon business, but I had hopes to find him in the course of the day. Hospitality is never refused, in these countries, upon the slightest pretence. Having therefore letters to him, and hearing his house was empty, we sent our people and baggage to it.

I was not well arrived before a janissary came, in long Turkish cloaths, without arms, and a white wand in his hand, to tell me that Syene was a garrison town, and that the Aga was at the castle ready to give me audience.

I returned him for answer, that I was very sensible it was my first duty, as a stranger, to wait upon the Aga in a garrisoned town of which he had the command, but, being bearer of the Grand Signior’s Firman, having letters from the Bey of Cairo, and from the Port of Janissaries to him in particular, and, at present being indisposed and fatigued, I hoped he would indulge me till the arrival of my landlord; in which interim I should take a little rest, change my cloaths, and be more in the situation in which I would wish to pay my respects to him.

I received immediately an answer by two janissaries, who insisted to see me, and were accordingly introduced while I was lying down to rest. They said that Mahomet Aga had received my message, that the reason of sending to me was not either to hurry or disturb me; but the earlier to know in what he could be of service to me; that he had a particular letter from the Bey of Cairo, in consequence of which, he had dispatched orders to receive me at Esné, but as I had not waited on the Cacheff there, he had not been apprised.

After giving coffee to these very civil messengers, and taking two hours rest, our landlord the Schourbatchie arrived; and, about four o’clock in the afternoon, we went to the Aga.

The fort is built of clay, with some small guns mounted on it; it is of strength sufficient to keep people of the country in awe.

I found the Aga sitting in a small kiosk, or closet, upon a stone-bench covered with carpets. As I was in no fear of him, I was resolved to walk according to my privileges; and, as the meanest Turk would do before the greatest man in England, I sat down upon a cushion below him, after laying my hand on my breast, and saying in an audible voice, with great marks of respect, however, Salam alicum! to which he answered, without any of the usual difficulty, Alicum salam! Peace be between us is the salutation; There is peace between us is the return.

After sitting down about two minutes, I again got up, and stood in the middle of the room before him, saying, I am bearer of a hatésherriffe, or royal mandate, to you, Mahomet Aga! and took the firman out of my bosom, and presented it to him. Upon this he stood upright, and all the rest of the people, before sitting with him likewise; he bowed his head upon the carpet, then put the firman to his forehead, opened it, and pretended to read it; but he knew well the contents, and I believe, besides, he could neither read nor write any language. I then gave him the other letters from Cairo, which he ordered his secretary to read in his ear.

All this ceremony being finished, he called for a pipe, and coffee. I refused the first, as never using it; but I drank a dish of coffee, and told him, that I was bearer of a confidential message from Ali Bey of Cairo, and wished to deliver it to him without witnesses, whenever he pleased. The room was accordingly cleared without delay, excepting his secretary, who was also going away, when I pulled him back by the cloaths, saying, “Stay, if you please, we shall need you to write the answer.” We were no sooner left alone, than I told the Aga, that, being a stranger, and not knowing the disposition of his people, or what footing they were on together, and being desired to address myself only to him by the Bey, and our mutual friends at Cairo, I wished to put it in his power (as he pleased or not) to have witnesses of delivering the small present I had brought him from Cairo. The Aga seemed very sensible of this delicacy; and particularly desired me to take no notice to my landlord, the Schourbatchie, of any thing I had brought him.

All this being over, and a confidence established with government, I sent his present by his own servant that night, under pretence of desiring horses to go to the cataract next day. The message was returned, that the horses were to be ready by six o’clock next morning. On the 21st, the Aga sent me his own horse, with mules and asses for my servants, to go to the cataract.

We passed out at the south gate of the town, into the first small sandy plain. A very little to our left, there are a number of tomb-stones with inscriptions in the Cufic character, which travellers erroneously have called unknown language, and letters, although it was the only letter and language known to Mahomet, and the most learned of his sect in the first ages.

The Cufic characters seem to be all written in capitals, which one might learn to read much more easily than the modern Arabic, and they more resemble the Samaritan. We read there—Abdullah el Hejazi el Ansari—Mahomet Abdel Shems el Taiefy el Ansari. The first of these, Abdullah el Hejazi, is Abdullah born in Arabia Petrea. The other is, Mahomet the slave of the sun, born in Taief. Now, both of these are called Ansari, which many writers, upon Arabian history, think, means, born in Medina; because, when Mahomet fled from Mecca, the night of the hegira, the people of Medina received him willingly, and thenceforward got the name of 141Ansari, or Helpers. But this honourable name was extended afterwards to all those who fought under Mahomet in his wars, and after, even to those who had been born in his lifetime.

These of whose tombs we are now speaking, were of the army of Haled Ibn el Waalid, whom Mahomet named, Saif Ullah, the ‘Sword of God,’ and who, in the califat of Omar, took and destroyed Syene, after losing great part of his army before it. It was afterwards rebuilt by the Shepherds of Beja, then Christians, and again taken in the time of Salidan, and, with the rest of Egypt, ever since hath belonged to Cairo. It was conquered by, or rather surrendered to, Selim Emperor of the Turks, in 1516, who planted two advanced posts (Deir and Ibrim) beyond the cataract in Nubia, with small garrisons of janissaries likewise, where they continue to this day.

Their pay is issued from Cairo; sometimes they marry each others daughters, rarely marry the women of the country, and the son, or nephew, or nearest relation of each deceased, succeeds as janissary in room of his father. They have lost their native language, and have indeed nothing of the Turk in them, but a propensity to violence, rapine, and injustice; to which they have joined the perfidy of the Arab, which, as I have said, they sometimes inherit from their mother. An Aga commands these troops in the castle. They have about two hundred horsemen armed with firelocks; with which, by the help of the Ababdé, encamped at Shekh Ammer, they keep the Bishareen, and all these numerous tribes of Arabs, that inhabit the Desert of Sennaar, in tolerable order.

The inhabitants, merchants, and common people of the town, are commanded by a cacheff. There is neither butter nor milk at Syene (the latter comes from Lower Egypt) the same may be said of fowls. Dates do not ripen at Syene, those that are sold at Cairo come from Ibrim and Dongola. There are good fish in the Nile, and they are easily caught, especially at the cataract, or in broken water; there are only two kinds of large ones which I have happened to see, the binny and the boulti. The binny I have described in its proper place.

After passing the tomb-stones without the gate, we come to a plain about five miles long, bordered on the left by a hill of no considerable height, and sandy like the plain, upon which are seen some ruins, more modern than those Egyptian buildings we have described, They seem indeed to be a mixture of all kinds and ages.

The distance from the gate of the town to Termissi, or Marada, the small villages on the cataract, is exactly six English miles. After the description already given of this cataract in some authors, a traveller has reason to be surprised, when arrived on its banks, to find that vessels sail up the cataract, and consequently the fall cannot be so violent as to deprive people of their hearing142.

The bed of the river, occupied by the water, was not then half a mile broad. It is divided into a number of small channels, by large blocks of granite, from thirty to forty feet high. The current, confined for a long course between the rocky mountains of Nubia, tries to expand itself with great violence. Finding, in every part before it, opposition from the rocks of granite, and forced back by these, it meets the opposite currents. The chafing of the water against these huge obstacles, the meeting of the contrary currents one with another, creates such a violent ebullition, and makes such a noise and disturbed appearance, that it fills the mind with confusion rather than with terror.

We saw the miserable Kennouss (who inhabit the banks of the river up into Nubia, to above the second cataract) to procure their daily food, lying behind rocks, with lines in their hands, and catching fish; they did not seem to be either dexterous or successful in the sport. They are not black, but of the darkest brown; are not woolly-headed, but have hair. They are small, light, agile people, and seem to be more than half-starved. I made a sign that I wanted to speak with one of them; but seeing me surrounded with a number of horse and fire-arms, they did not choose to trust themselves. I left my people behind with my firelock, and went alone to see if I could engage them in a conversation. At first they walked off; finding I persisted in following them, they ran at full speed, and hid themselves among the rocks.

Pliny143 says, that, in his time, the city of Syene was situated so directly under the tropic of Cancer, that there was a well, into which the sun shone so perpendicular, that it was enlightened by its rays down to the bottom. Strabo144 had said the same. The ignorance, or negligence, in the Geodesique measure in this observation, is extraordinary; Egypt had been measured yearly, from early ages, and the distance between Syene and Alexandria should have been known to an ell. From this inaccuracy, I do very much suspect the other measure Eratosthenes is said to have made, by which he fixed the sun’s parallax at 10 seconds and a half, was not really made by him, but was some old Chaldaic, or Egyptian observation, made by more instructed astronomers which he had fallen upon.

The Arabs call it Assouan, which they say signifies enlightened; in allusion, I suppose, to the circumstance of the well, enlightened within by the sun’s being stationary over it in June; in the language of Beja its name signifies a circle, or portion of a circle.

Syene, among other things, is famous for the first attempt made by Greek astronomers to ascertain the measure of the circumference of the earth. Eratosthenes, born at Cyrene about 276 years before Christ, was invited from Athens to Alexandria by Ptolemy Evergetes, who made him keeper of the Royal Library in that city. In this experiment two positions were assumed, that Alexandria and Syene were exactly 5000 stades distant from each other, and that they were precisely under the same meridian. Again, it was verified by the experiment of the well, that, in the summer solstice at mid-day, when the sun was in the tropic of Cancer, in its greatest northern declination, the well145 at that instant was totally and equally illuminated; and that no style, or gnomon, erected on a perfect plane, did cast, or project, any manner of shadow for 150 stades round, from which it was justly concluded, that the sun, on that day, was so exactly vertical to Syene, that the center of its disk immediately corresponded to the center of the bottom of the well. These preliminaries being fixed, Eratosthenes set about his observation thus:—

On the day of the summer solstice, at the moment the sun was stationary in the meridian of Syene, he placed a style perpendicularly in the bottom of a half-concave sphere, which he exposed in open air to the sun at Alexandria. Now, if that style had cast no shade at Alexandria, it would have been precisely in the same circumstance with a style in the well in Syene; and the reason of its not casting the shade would have been, that the sun was directly vertical to it. But he found, on the contrary, this style at Alexandria did cast a shadow; and by measuring the distance of the top of this shadow from the foot of the style, he found, that, when the sun cast no shadow at Syene, by being in the zenith, at Alexandria he projected a shadow; which shewed he was distant from the vertical point, or zenith, 7⅕°=7° 12´, which was 1/50th of the circumference of the whole heavens, or of a great circle.

This being settled, the conclusion was, that Alexandria and Syene must be distant from each other by the 50th part of the circumference of the whole earth.

Now 5000 stades was the distance already assumed between Alexandria and the well of Syene; and all that was to be done was to repeat 5000 stades fifty times, or multiply 5000 stades by 50, and the answer was 250,000 stades, which was the total of the earth’s circumference. This, admitting the French contents of the Egyptian stadium to be just, will amount to 11,403 leagues for the circumference of the earth sought; and as our present account fixes it to be 9000, the error will be 2403 leagues in excess, or more than one-fourth of the whole sum required.

This observation surely therefore is not worth recording, unless to shew the insufficiency or imperfection of the method; it cannot deserve the encomiums146 that have been bestowed upon it, if justice has been done to Eratosthenes’ geodesique measures, which I do not, by any manner of means, warrant to be the case, because the measure of his arch of the meridian seems to have been conducted with a much greater degree of success and precision than that of his base.

On the 22d, 23d, and 24th of January, being at Syene, in a house immediately east of the small island in the Nile (where the temple of Cnuphis is still standing, very little injured, and which 147Strabo, who was himself there, says was in the ancient town, and near the well built for the observation of the solstice) with a three-foot brass quadrant, made by Langlois, and described by 148Monsieur de la Lande, by a mean of three observations of the sun in the meridian, I concluded the latitude of Syene to be 24° 0´ 45´´ north.

And, as the latitude of Alexandria, by a medium of many observations made by the French academicians, and more recently by Mr Niebuhr and myself, is beyond possibility of contradiction 31° 11´ 33´´, the arch of the meridian contained between Syene and Alexandria, must be 7° 10´ 48´´, or 1´ 12´´ less than Eratosthenes made it. And this is a wonderful precision, if we consider the imperfection of his instrument, in the probable shortness of his radius, and difficulty (almost insurmountable) in distinguishing the division of the penumbra.

There certainly is one error very apparent, in measuring the base betwixt Syene and Alexandria; that is, they were not (as supposed) under the same meridian; for though, to my very great concern afterwards, I had no opportunity of fixing the longitude at this first visit to Syene, as I had done the latitude, yet on my return, in the year 1772, from an eclipse of the first satellite of Jupiter, I found its longitude to be 33° 30´; and the longitude of Alexandria, being 30° 16´ 7´´, there is 3° 14´ that Syene is to the eastward of the meridian of Alexandria, or so far from their being under the same meridian as supposed.

It is impossible to fix the time of the building of Syene; upon the most critical examination of its hieroglyphics and proportions, I would imagine it to have been founded some time after Thebes, but before Dendera, Luxor, or Carnac.

It would be no less curious to know, whether the well, which Eratosthenes made use of for one of the terms of the geodesique base, and his arch of the meridian, between Alexandria and Syene, was coeval with the building of that city, or whether it was made for the experiment. I should be inclined to think the former was the case; and the placing this city first, then the well under the tropic, were with a view of ascertaining the length of the solar year. In short, this point, so material to be settled, was the constant object of attention of the first astronomers, and this was the use of the dial of Osimandyas; this inquiry was the occasion of the number of obelisks raised in every ancient city in Egypt. We cannot mistake this, if we observe how anxiously they have varied the figure of the top, or point of each obelisk; sometimes it is a very sharp one; sometimes a portion of a circle, to try to get rid of the great impediment that perplexed them, the penumbra.

The projection of the pavements, constantly to the northward, so diligently levelled, and made into exact planes by large slabs of granite, most artificially joined, have been so substantially secured, that they might serve for the observation to this day; and it is probable, the position of this city and the well were coeval, the result of intention, and both the works of these first astronomers, immediately after the building of Thebes. If this was the case, we may conclude, that the fact of the sun illuminating the bottom of the well in Eratosthenes’s time was a supposed one, from the uniform tradition, that once it had been so, the periodical change of the quantity of the angle, made by the equator and ecliptic, not being then known, and therefore that the quantity of the celestial arch, comprehended between Alexandria and Syene, might be as erroneous from another cause, as the base had been by assuming a wrong distance on the earth, in place of one exactly measured.

There is at Axum an obelisk erected by Ptolemy Evergetes, the very prince who was patron to Eratosthenes, without hieroglyphics, directly facing the south, with its top first cut into a narrow neck, then spread out like a fan in a semicircular form, with a pavement curiously levelled to receive the shade, and make the reparation of the true shadow from the penumbra as distinct as possible.

This was probably intended for verifying the experiment of Eratosthenes with a larger radius, for, by this obelisk, we must not imagine Ptolemy intended to observe the obliquity of the ecliptic at Axum. Though it was true, that Axum, by its situation, was a very proper place, the sun passing over that city and obelisk twice a-year, yet it was equally true, that, from another circumstance, which he might have been acquainted with, at less expence of time than building the obelisk would have cost him, that he himself could not make any use of the sun’s being twice vertical to Axum; for the sun is vertical at Axum about the 25th of April, and again about the 20th of August; and, at both these seasons, the heaven is so overcast with clouds, and the rain so continual, especially at mid-day, that it would be a wonder indeed, if Ptolemy had once seen the sun during the months he staid there.

Though Syene, by its situation should be healthy, the general complaint is a weakness and soreness in the eyes; and this not a temporary one only, but generally ending in blindness of one, or both eyes; you scarce ever see a person in the street that sees with both eyes. They say it is owing to the hot wind from the desert; and this I apprehend to be true, by the violent soreness and inflammation we were troubled with in our return home, through the great Desert, to Syene.

We had now finished every thing we had to do at Syene, and prepared to descend the Nile. After having been quiet, and well used so long, we did not expect any altercation at parting; we thought we had contented every body, and we were perfectly content with them. But, unluckily for us, our landlord, the Schourbatchie, upon whom I had my credit, and who had distinguished himself by being very serviceable and obliging to us, happened to be the proprietor of a boat, for which, at that time, he had little employment; nothing would satisfy him but my hiring that boat, instead of returning in that which brought us up.

This could by no means be done, without breaking faith with our Rais, Abou Cuffi, which I was resolved not to do on any account whatever, as the man had behaved honestly and well in every respect. The janissaries took the part of their brother against the stranger, and threatened to cut Abou Cuffi to pieces, and throw him to the crocodiles.

On the other part, he was very far from being terrified. He told them roundly, that he was a servant of Ali Bey, that, if they attempted to take his fare from him, their pay should be stopped at Cairo, till they surrendered the guilty person to do him justice. He laughed most unaffectedly at the notion of cutting him to pieces; and declared, that, if he was to complain of the usage he met when he went down to Lower Egypt, there would not be a janissary from Syene who would not be in much greater danger of crocodiles, than he.

I went in the evening to the Aga, and complained of my landlord’s behaviour, I told him positively, but with great shew of respect, I would rather go down the Nile upon a raft, than set my foot in any other boat but the one that brought me up. I begged him to be cautious how he proceeded, as it would be my story, and not his, that would go to the Bey. This grave and resolute appearance had the effect. The Schourbatchie was sent for, and reprimanded, as were all those that sided with him; while privately, to calm all animosities against my Rais, I promised him a piece of green cloth, which was his wish; and so heartily were we reconciled, that, the next day, he made his servants help Abou Cuffi to put our baggage on board the boat.

The Aga hinted to me, in conversation, that he wondered at my departure, as he heard my intention was to go to Ibrim and Deir. I told him, those garrisons had a bad name; that a Danish gentleman, some years ago, going up thither, with orders from the government of Cairo, was plundered, and very nearly assassinated, by Ibrahim, Cacheff of Deir. He looked surprised, shook his head, and seemed not to give me credit; but I persisted, in the terms of Mr Norden’s 149Narrative; and told him, the brother of the Aga of Syene was along with him at the time. “Will any person, said he, tell me, that a man who is in my hands once a month, who has not an ounce of bread but what I furnish him from this garrison, and whose pay would be stopt (as your Rais truly said) on the first complaint transmitted to Cairo, could assassinate a man with Ali Bey’s orders, and my brother along with him? Why, what do you think he is? I shall send a servant to the Cacheff of Deir to-morrow, who shall bring him down by the beard, if he refuses to come willingly.” I said, “Then times were very much changed for the better; it was not always so, there was not always at Cairo a sovereign like Ali Bey, nor at Syene a man of his prudence, and capacity in commanding; but having no business at Deir and Ibrim, I should not risk finding them in another humour, exercising other powers than those he allowed them to have.”

The 26th we embarked at the north end of the town, in the very spot where I again took boat above three years afterwards. We now no longer enjoyed the advantage of our prodigious main-sail; not only our yards were lowered, but our masts were taken out; and we floated down the current, making the figure of a wreck. The current, pushing against one of our sides, the wind directly contrary, pressing us on the other, we went down broad side foremost; but so steadily, as scarce to be sensible the vessel was in motion.

In the evening I stopt at Shekh Ammer, and saw my patient Nimmer, Shekh of the Ababdé. I found him greatly better, and as thankful as ever; I renewed my prescriptions, and he his offers of service.

I was visited, however, with a pretty smart degree of fever by hunting crocodiles on the Nile as I went down, without any possibility of getting near them.

On the 31st of January we arrived at Negadé, the fourth settlement of the Franciscan friars in Upper Egypt, for the pretended mission of Ethiopia. I found it to be in lat. 25° 53´ 30´´. It is a small neat village, covered with palm-trees, and mostly inhabited by Cophts, none of whom the friars have yet converted, nor ever will, unless by small pensions, which they give to the poorest of them, to be decoy-ducks· to the rest.

Opposite to Negadé, on the other side of the river about three miles, is Cus, a large town, the Appollonis Civitas Parva of the ancients. There are no antiquities at this place; but the caravan, which was to carry the corn for Mecca, across the desert to Cosseir, was to assemble there. I found they were not near ready; and that the Arabs Atouni had threatened they would be in their way, and would not suffer them to pass, at any rate, and that the guard commanded to escort them across the desert, would come from Furshout, and therefore I should have early warning.

It was the 2d of February I returned to Badjoura, and took up my quarters in the house formerly assigned me, greatly to the joy of Shekh Ismael, who, though he was in the main reconciled to his friend, friar Christopher, had not yet forgot the wounding of the five men by his miscalculating ramadan; and was not without fears that the same inadvertence might, some day or other, be fatal to him, in his pleurisy and asthma, or, what is still more likely, by the operation of the tabange.

As I was now about to launch into that part of my expedition, in which I was to have no further intercourse with Europe I set myself to work to examine all my observations, and put my journal in such forwardness by explanations, where needful, that the labours and pains I had hitherto been at, might not be totally lost to the public, if I should perish in the journey I had undertaken, which, every day, from all information I could procure, appeared to be more and more desperate.

Having finished these, at least so far as to make them intelligible to others, I conveyed them to my friends Messrs Julian and Rosa at Cairo, to remain in their custody till I should return, or news come that I was otherwise disposed of.

CHAP. VIII.

The Author sets out from Kenné—Crosses the Desert of the Thebaid—Visits the Marble Mountains—Arrives at Cosseir, on the Red Sea—Transactions there.

It was Thursday, the 16th of February 1769, we heard the caravan was ready to set out from Kenné, the Cæne Emporium of antiquity. From Kenné our road was first East, for half an hour, to the foot of the hills, which here bound the cultivated land; then S. E. when, at 11 o’clock in the forenoon, we passed a very dirty small village called Sheraffa. All the way from Kenné, close on our left, were desert hills, on which not the least verdure grew, but a few plants of a large species of Solanum, called Burrumbuc.

At half past two we came to a well, called Bir Ambar, the well of spices, and a dirty village of the same name, belonging to the Azaizy, a poor inconsiderable tribe of Arabs. They live by letting out their cattle for hire to the caravans that go to Cosseir, and attending themselves, when necessary. It got its name, I suppose, from its having formerly been a station of the caravans from the Red Sea, loaded with this kind of merchandise from India. The houses of the Azaizy are of a very particular construction, if they can be called houses. They are all made of potter-clay, in one piece, in shape of a bee-hive; the largest is not above ten feet high, and the greatest diameter six.

There are no vestiges here of any canal, mentioned to have been cut between the Nile and the Red Sea. The cultivated land here is not above half a mile in extent from the river, but the inundation of the Nile reaches much higher, nor has it left behind it any appearance of soil. After passing Bir Ambar, we pitched our tent about four o’clock at Gabba150, a short mile from Cuft, on the borders of the desert—here we passed the night.

On the 17th, at eight o’clock in the morning, having mounted my servants all on horseback, and taken the charge of our own camels, (for there was a confusion in our caravan not to be described, and our guards we knew were but a set of thieves) we advanced slowly into the desert. There were about two hundred men on horseback, armed with firelocks; all of them lions, if you believed their word or appearance; but we were credibly informed, that fifty of the Arabs, at first sight, would have made these heroes fly without any bloodshed.

I had not gone two miles before I was joined by the Howadat Arab, whom I had brought with me in the boat from Cairo. He offered me his service with great professions of gratitude, and told me, that he hoped I would again take charge of his money, as I had before done from Cairo. It was now for the first time he told me his name, which was Mahomet Abdel Gin, “the Slave of the Devil, or the Spirit.” There is a large tribe of that name, many of which come to Cairo from the kingdom of Sennaar; but he had been born among the Howadat, opposite to Metrahenny, where I found him.

Our road was all the way in an open plain, bounded by hillocks of sand, and fine gravel, perfectly hard, and not perceptibly above the level of the plain country of Egypt. About twelve miles distant there is a ridge of mountains of no considerable height, perhaps the most barren in the world. Between these our road lay through plains, never three miles broad, but without trees, shrubs, or herbs. There are not even the traces of any living creature, neither serpent nor lizard, antelope nor ostrich, the usual inhabitants of the most dreary deserts. There is no sort of water on the surface, brackish or sweet. Even the birds seem to avoid the place as pestilential, not having seen one of any kind so much as flying over. The sun was burning hot, and, upon rubbing two sticks together, in half a minute they both took fire, and flamed; a mark how near the country was reduced to a general conflagration!

At half past three, we pitched our tent near some draw-wells, which, upon tasting, we found bitterer than soot. We had, indeed, other water carried by the camels in skins. This well-water had only one needful quality, it was cold, and therefore very comfortable for refreshing us outwardly. This unpleasant station is called Legeta; here we were obliged to pass the night, and all next day, to wait the arrival of the caravans of Cus, Esné, and part of those of Kenné, and Ebanout.

While at the wells of Legeta, my Arab, Abdel Gin, came to me with his money, which had increased now to nineteen sequins and a half. “What! said I, Mahomet, are you never safe among your countrymen, neither, by sea nor land?” “Oh, no, replied Mahomet; the difference, when we were on board the boat, was, we had three thieves only; but, when assembled here, we shall have above three thousand.—But I have an advice to give you.”—“And my ears,” said I, “Mahomet, are always open to advice, especially in strange countries.”—“These people,” continued Mahomet, “are all afraid of the Atouni Arabs; and, when attacked, they will run away, and leave you in the hands of these Atouni, who will carry off your baggage. Therefore, as you have nothing to do with their corn, do not kill any of the Atouni if they come, for that will be a bad affair, but go aside, and let me manage. I will answer with my life, though all the caravan should be stripped stark-naked, and you loaded with gold, not one article belonging to you shall be touched.” I questioned him very particularly about this intimation, as it was an affair of much consequence, and I was so well satisfied, that I resolved to conform strictly to it.

In the evening came twenty Turks from Caramania, which is that part of Asia Minor immediately on the side of the Mediterranean opposite to the coast of Egypt; all of them neatly and cleanly dressed like Turks, all on camels, armed with swords, a pair of pistols at their girdle, and a short neat gun; their arms were in very good order, with their flints and ammunition stowed in cartridge-boxes, in a very soldier-like manner. A few of these spoke Arabic, and my Greek servant, Michael, interpreted for the rest. Having been informed, that the large tent belonged to an Englishman, they came into it without ceremony. They told me, that they were a number of neighbours and companions, who had set out together to go to Mecca, to the Hadje; and not knowing the language, or customs of the people, they had been but indifferently used since they landed at Alexandria, particularly somewhere (as I guessed) about Achmim; that one of the Owam, or swimming thieves, had been on board of them in the night, and had carried off a small portmanteau with about 200 sequins in gold; that, though a complaint had been made to the Bey of Girgé, yet no satisfaction had been obtained; and that now they had heard an Englishman was here, whom they reckoned their countryman, they had come to propose, that we should make a common cause to defend each other against all enemies.—What they meaned by countryman was this:—

There is in Asia Minor, somewhere between Anatolia and Caramania, a district which they call Caz Dagli, corruptly Caz Dangli, and this the Turks believe was the country from which the English first drew their origin; and on this account they never fail to claim kindred with the English wherever they meet, especially if they stand in need of their assistance.

I told them the arrangement I had taken with the Arab. At first, they thought it was too much confidence to place in him, but I convinced them, that it was greatly diminishing our risk, and, let the worst come to the worst, I was well satisfied that, armed as we were, on foot, we were more than sufficient to beat the Atouni, after they had defeated the clownish caravan of Egypt, from whose courage we certainly had nothing to expect.

I cannot conceal the secret pleasure I had in finding the character of my country so firmly established among nations so distant, enemies to our religion, and strangers to our government. Turks from Mount Taurus, and Arabs from the desert of Libya, thought themselves unsafe among their own countrymen, but trusted their lives and their little fortunes implicitly to the direction and word of an Englishman whom they had never before seen.

These Turks seemed to be above the middling rank of people; each of them had his little cloak bag very neatly packed up; and they gave me to understand that there was money in it. These they placed in my servants tent, and chained them all together, round the middle pillar of it; for it was easy to see the Arabs of the caravan had those packages in view, from the full moment of the Turk’s arrival.

We staid all the 18th at Legeta, waiting for the junction of the caravans, and departed the 19th at six o’clock in the morning. Our journey, all that day, was through a plain, never less than a mile broad, and never broader than three; the hills, on our right and left, were higher than the former, and of a brownish calcined colour, like the stones on the sides of Mount Vesuvius, but without any herb or tree upon them.

At half past ten, we passed a mountain of green and red marble, and at twelve we entered a plain called Hamra, where we first observed the sand red, with a purple cast, of the colour of porphyry, and this is the signification of Hamra, the name of the valley. I dismounted here, to examine of what the rocks were composed; and found, with the greatest pleasure, that here began the quarries of porphyry, without the mixture of any other stone; but it was imperfect, brittle, and soft. I had not been engaged in this pursuit an hour, before we were alarmed with a report that the Atouni had attacked the rear of the caravan; we were at the head of it. The Turks and my servants were all drawn together, at the foot of the mountain, and posted as advantageously as possible. But it soon appeared that they were some thieves only, who had attempted to steal some loads of corn from camels that were weak, or fallen lame, perhaps in intelligence with those of our own caravans.

All the rest of the afternoon, we saw mountains of a perfectly purple colour, all of them porphyry; nor has Ptolemy151 much erred in the position of them. About four o’clock, we pitched our tent at a place called Main el Mafarek. The colour of the valley El Hamra continued to this station; and it was very singular to observe, that the ants, or pismires, the only living creatures I had yet observed, were all of a beautiful red colour like the sand.

The 20th, at six o’clock in the morning, we left Main el Mafarek, and, at ten, came to the mouth of the defiles. At eleven we began to descend, having had a very imperceptible ascent from Kenné all the way.

We were now indemnified for the sameness of our natural productions yesterday; for, on each side of the plain, we found different sorts of marble, twelve kinds of which I selected, and took with me.

At noon, we came to a plain planted with acacia-trees, at equal distances; single trees, spreading broader than usual, as if on purpose to proportion the refreshment they gave to the number of travellers who stood in need of it. This is a station of the Atouni Arabs after rain. From our leaving Legeta, we had no water that, nor the following day.

On the right-hand side of this plain we found porphyry and granite, of very beautiful kinds. All the way, on both sides of the valley, this day, the mountains were of porphyry, and a very few of stone.

At a quarter past four, we encamped at Koraim, a small plain, perfectly barren, consisting of fine gravel, sand, and stones, with a few acacia-trees, interspersed throughout.

The 21st, we departed early in the morning from Koraim, and, at ten o’clock, we passed several defiles, perpetually alarmed by a report, that the Arabs were approaching; none of whom we ever saw. We then proceeded through several defiles, into a long plain that turns to the east, then north-east, and north, so as to make a portion of a circle. At the end of this plain we came to a mountain, the greatest part of which was of the marble, verde antico, as it is called in Rome, but by far the most beautiful of the kind I had ever seen.

Having passed this, we had mountains on both sides of us, but particularly on our right. The only ones that I myself examined were of a kind of granite, with reddish veins throughout, with triangular and square black spots. These mountains continued to Mesag el Terfowey, where we encamped at twelve o’clock; we were obliged to bring our water from about five miles to the south-east. This water does not appear to be from springs, it lies in cavities and grottos in the rock, of which there are twelve in number, whether hollowed by nature or art, or partly by both, is more than I can solve. Great and abundant rains fall here in February. The clouds, breaking on the tops of these mountains, in their way to Abyssinia, fill these cisterns with large supplies, which the impending rocks secure from evaporation.

It was the first fresh water we tasted since we left the Nile; and the only water of any kind since we left Legeta. But such had been the foresight of our caravan, that very few resorted thither, having all laid in abundant store from the Nile; and some of them a quantity sufficient to serve them till their return. This was not our case. We had water, it is true, from the Nile; but we never thought we could have too much, as long as there was room in our water-skins to hold more; I therefore went early with my camel-drivers, expecting to have seen some antelopes, which every night come to drink from the well, having no opportunity to do it throughout the day.

I had not concealed myself half an hour, above a narrow path leading to the principal cave, before I saw, first one antelope walking very stately alone; then four others, closely following him. Although I was wholly hid as long as I lay still, he seemed to have discerned me from the instant that I saw him. I should have thought it had been the smell that had discovered me, had not I used the precaution of carrying a piece of burnt turf along with me, and left, one with my horse likewise; perhaps it was this unusual smell that terrified him. Whatever was the cause, he advanced apparently in fear, and seemed to be trusted with the care of the flock, as the others testified no apprehension, but were rather sporting or fighting with each other. Still he advanced slower, and with greater caution; but, being perfectly within reach, I did not think proper any longer to risk the whole from a desire to acquire a greater number. I shot him so justly, that, giving one leap five or six feet high, he fell dead upon his head. I fired at the others, retiring all in a crowd; killed one likewise, and lamed another, who fled among the mountains, where darkness protected him. We were perfectly content with our acquisition, and the nature of the place did not prompt us to look after the wounded. We continued at the well to assist our· companions who came in want of water, a duty with which necessity binds us all to comply.

We returned near midnight with our game and our water. We found our tents all lighted, which, at that time of night, was unusual. I thought, however, it was on account of my absence, and to guide me the surer home. We were however surprised, when, coming within a moderate distance of our tent, we heard the word called for; I answered immediately, Charlotte; and, upon our arrival, we perceived the Turks were parading round the tents in arms, and soon after our Howadat Arab came to us, and with him a messenger from Sidi Hassan, desiring me to come instantly to his tent, while my servants advised me first to hear what they had to say to me in mine.

I soon, therefore, perceived that all was not well, and I returned my compliments to Hassan, adding, that, if he had any thing to say to me so late, he would do well to come, or send, as it was past my hour of visiting in the desert, especially as I had not eat, and was tired with having the charge of the water. I gave orders to my servants to put out all the extraordinary lights, as that seemed to be a mark of fear; but forbade any one to sleep, excepting those who had the charge of our beasts, and had been fetching the water.

I found that, while our people had been asleep, two persons had got into the tent and attempted to steal one of the portmanteaus; but, as they were chained together, and the tent-pole in the middle, the noise had awakened my servants, who had seized one of the men; and that the Turks had intended instantly to have dispatched him with their knives, and with great difficulty had been prevented by my servants, according to my constant orders, for I wished to avoid all extremities, upon such occasions, when possible. They had indeed leave to deal with their sticks as freely as their prudence suggested to them; and they had gone, in this case, fully beyond the ordinary limits of discretion, especially Abdel Gin, who was the first to seize the robber. In short, they had dealt so liberally with their sticks, that the thief was only known to be living by his groans, and they had thrown him at a small distance, for any person to own him that pleased. It appeared, that he was a servant of Sidi Hassan, an Egyptian slave, or servant to Shekh Hamam, who conducted or commanded the caravan, if there was any conduct or command in it.

There were with me ten servants, all completely armed, twenty-five Turks, who seemed worthy to be depended upon, and four janissaries, who had joined us from Cairo, so that there were of us forty men perfectly armed, besides attendants on the cattle. As we had people with us who knew the wells, and also a friend who was acquainted with the Atouni, nothing, even in a desert, could reasonably alarm us.

With great difficulty we pulled down an old acacia-tree, and procured some old-dried camels dung, with which we roasted our two antelopes: very ill-roasted they were; and execrable meat, though they had been ever so well dressed, and had had the best sauce of Christendom. However, we were in the desert, and every thing was acceptable. We had some spirits, which finished our repast that night: it was exceedingly cold, and we sat thick about the fire.

Five men with firelocks, and a number of Arabs with lances, having come towards us, and being challenged by the centinel for not giving the word, were then desired to stand, or they would be fired upon. They all cried out, Salam Alicum! and I intimated that any three of them might come forward, but desired them to keep away the Arabs. Three of them accordingly came, and then two more. They delivered a message from Sidi Hassan, that my people had killed a man; they desired that the murderer might be delivered to them, and that I should come to his tent, and see justice done. “I told them, that none of my people, however provoked, would put a man to death in my absence, unless in defence of their own lives; that, if I had been there, I should certainly have ordered them to fire upon a thief catched in the act of stealing within my tent; but, since he was dead, I was satisfied as to him, only expected that Sidi Hassan would give me up his companion, who had fled; that, as it was near morning, I should meet him when the caravan decamped, and hear what he had to say in his defence. In the mean time I forbade any person to come near my tent, or quarters, on any pretence whatever, till-day light.” Away they went murmuring, but what they said I did not understand. We heard no more of them, and none of us slept. All of us, however, repeated our vows of standing by each other; and we since found, that we had stood in the way of a common practice, of stripping these poor strangers, the Turks, who come every year this road to Mecca.

At dawn of day, the caravan was all in motion. They had got intelligence, that two days before, about 300 Atouni had watered at Terfowey; and, indeed, there were marks of great resort at the well, where we filled the water. We had agreed not to load one of our camels, but let the caravan go on before us, and meet the Atouni first; that I only should go on horseback, about two hundred yards into the plain from the tent, and all the rest follow me on foot with arms in their hands.

Hassan, too, was mounted on horseback, with about a hundred of his myrmidons, and a number of Arabs on foot. He sent me word that I was to advance, with only two servants; but I returned for answer, that I had no intention to advance at all; that if he had any business, he should say so, and that I would meet him one to one, or three to six, just as he pleased. He sent me again word, that he wanted to communicate the intelligence he had of the Atouni, to put me on my guard. I returned for answer, that I was already upon my guard, against all thieves, and did not make any distinction, if people were thieves themselves, or encouraged others to be so, or whether they were Atouni or Ababdé. He then sent me a message, that it was a cold morning, and wished I would give him a dish of coffee, and keep those strangers away. I therefore desired one of my servants to bring the coffee-pot, and directing my people to sit down, I rode up to him, and dismounted, as he did also, when twenty or thirty of his vagabonds came, and sat down likewise. He said he was exceedingly surprised, after sending to me last night, that I did not come to him; that the whole camp was in murmur at beating the man, and that it was all that he could do to hinder his soldiers from falling upon us, and extirpating us all at once; that I did wrong to protect those Turks, who carried always money to Mecca for merchandise, and defrauded them of their dues.

My servant having just poured out a dish of coffee to give him, I said, Stay, Sir, till we know whether we are in peace. Sidi Hassan, if that is the way of levying dues upon the Turks, to send thieves to rob them in my tent, you should advise me first of it, and then we should have settled the business. With regard to your preventing people from murdering me, it is a boast so ridiculous that I laugh at it. Those pale-faced fellows who are about you muffled up in burnooses for fear of cold in the morning, are they capable to look janissaries in the face like mine? Speak lowly, and in Arabic, when you talk at this rate, or perhaps it will not be in my power to return you the compliment you did me last night, or hinder them from killing you on the spot. Were ever such words spoken! said a man behind; tell me, master, are you a king? If Sidi Hassan, answered I, is your master, and you speak to me on this occasion, you are a wretch; get out of my sight; I swear I will not drink a dish of coffee while you are here, and will mount my horse directly.

I then rose, and the servant took back the coffee-pot; upon which Hassan ordered his servant out of his presence, saying, “No, no; give me the coffee if we are in peace;” and he drank it accordingly. Now, says he, past is past; the Atouni are to meet us at the 152mouth of Beder; your people are better armed than mine, are Turks, and used to fighting. I would wish you to go foremost, and we will take charge of your camels, though my people have 4000 of their own, and they have enough to do to take charge of the corn. “And I,” said I, “if I wanted water or provision, would go to meet the Atouni, who would use me well. Why, you don’t know to whom you are speaking, nor that the Atouni are Arabs of Ali Bey, and that I am his man of confidence, going to the Sherriffe of Mecca? The Atouni will not hurt us; but, as you say, you are commander of the caravan, we have all sworn we will not fire a shot, till we see you heartily engaged; and then we will do our best; to hinder the Arabs from stealing the Sherriffe of Mecca’s corn, for his sake only.” They all cried out El Fedtah! El Fedtah! so I said the prayer of peace as a proxy; for none of the Turks would come near him.

Opposite to where we were encamped is Terfowey, a large mountain, partly green-marble, partly granite, with a red blush upon a grey ground, with square oblong spots. About forty yards within the narrow valley, which separates this mountain from its neighbour, we saw a part of the fust or shaft of a monstrous obelisk of marble, very nearly square, broken at the end, and towards the top. It was nearly thirty feet long, and nineteen feet in the face; about two feet of the bottom were perfectly insulated, and one whole side separated from the mountain. The gully had been widened and levelled, and the road made quite up to underneath the block.

We saw likewise, throughout the plain, small pieces of jasper, having green, white, and red spots, called in Italy, “Diaspo Sanguineo.” All the mountains on both sides of the plain seemed to be of the same sort, whether they really were so or not, I will not say, having had no time to examine them.

The 22d, at half past one in the morning, we set out full of terror about the Atouni. We continued in a direction nearly east, till at three we came to the defiles; but it was so dark, that it was impossible to discern of what the country on each side consisted. At day-break, we found ourselves at the bottom of a mountain of granite, bare like the former.

We saw quantities of small pieces of various sorts of granite, and porphyry scattered over the plain, which had been carried down by a torrent, probably from quarries of ancient ages; these were white, mixed with black spots; red, with green veins, and black spots. After this, all the mountains on the right hand were of red marble in prodigious abundance, but of no great beauty. They continued, as the granite did, for several miles along the road, while the opposite side was all of dead-green, supposed serpentine marble.

It was one of the most extraordinary sights I ever saw. The former mountains were of considerable height, without a tree, or shrub, or blade of grass upon them; but these now before us had all the appearance, the one of having been sprinkled over with Havannah, the other with Brazil snuff. I wondered, that, as the red is nearest the sea, and the ships going down the Abyssinian coast observe this appearance within lat. 26°, writers have not imagined this was called the Red Sea upon that account, rather than for the many weak reasons they have relied upon.

About eight o’clock we began to descend smartly, and, half an hour after, entered into another defile like those before described, having mountains of green marble on every side of us. At nine, on our left, we saw the highest mountain we had yet passed. We found it, upon examination, to be composed of serpentine marble; and, thro’ about one-third of the thickness, ran a large vein of jasper, green, spotted with red. Its exceeding hardness was such as not to yield to the blows of a hammer; but the works of old times were more apparent in it, than in any mountain we had seen. Ducts, or channels, for carrying water transversely, were observed evidently to terminate in this quarry of jasper: a proof that water was one of the means used in cutting these hard stones.

About ten o’clock, descending very rapidly, with green marble and jasper on each side of us, but no other green thing whatever, we had the first prospect of the Red Sea, and, at a quarter past eleven, we arrived at Cosseir. It has been a wonder with all travellers, and with myself among the rest, where the ancients procured that prodigious quantity of fine marble, with which all their buildings abound. That wonder, however, among many others, now ceases, after having passed, in four days, more granite, porphyry, marble, and jasper, than would build Rome, Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, Memphis, Alexandria, and half a dozen such cities. It seemed to be very visible, that those openings in the hills, which I call Defiles, were not natural, but artificial; and that whole mountains had been cut out at these places, to preserve a slope towards the Nile as gentle as possible: this, I suppose, might be a descent of about one foot in fifty at most; so that, from the mountains to the Nile, those heavy carriages must have moved with as little draught as possible, and, at the same time, been sufficiently impeded by friction, so as not to run amain, or acquire an increased velocity, against which, also, there must have been other provisions contrived. As I made another excursion to these marble mountains from Cosseir, I will, once for all, here set down what I observed concerning their natural appearance.

The porphyry shews itself by a fine purple sand, without any gloss or glitter on it, and is exceedingly agreeable to the eye. It is mixed with the native white sand, and fixed gravel of the plains. Green unvariegated marble, is generally seen in the same mountain with the porphyry. Where the two veins meet, the marble is for some inches brittle, but the porphyry of the same hardness as in other places.

The granite is covered with sand, and looks like stone of a dirty, brown colour. But this is only the change and impression the sun and weather have made upon it; for, upon breaking it, you see it is grey granite, with black spots, with a reddish cast, or blush over it. This red seems to fade and suffer from the outward air, but, upon working or polishing the surface, this colour again appears. It is in greater quantity than the porphyry, and nearer the Red Sea. Pompey’s pillar seems to have been from this quarry.

Next to the granite, but never, as I observed, joined with it in the same mountain, is the red marble. It is covered with sand of the same colour, and looks as if the whole mountain were spread over with brick dust. There is also a red marble with white veins, which I have often seen at Rome, but not in principal subjects, I have also seen it in Britain. The common green (called Serpentine) looks as if covered over with Brazil snuff. Joined with this green, I saw two samples of that beautiful marble they call Isabella; one of them with a yellowish cast, which we call Quaker-colour; the other with a blueish, which is commonly termed Dove-colour. These two seem to divide the respective mountains with the serpentine. In this green, likewise, it was we saw the vein of jasper; but whether it was absolutely the same with this which is the bloody jasper, or blood-stone, is what we had not time to settle.

I should first have made mention of the verde antico, the dark green with white irregular spots, because it is of the greatest value, and nearest the Nile. This is produced in the mountains of the plain green, or serpentine, as is the jasper, and is not discoverable by the dust, or any particular colour upon it. First, there is a blue fleaky stone, exceedingly even and smooth in the grain, solid, and without sparks or colour. When broken, it is something lighter than a slate, and more beautiful than most marble; it is like the lava of volcanoes, when polished. After lifting this, we come to the beds of verde antico; and here the quarrying is very obvious, for it has been uncovered in patches, not above twenty feet square. Then, in another part, the green stone has been removed, and another pit of it wrought.

I saw, in several places in the plain, small pieces of African marble scattered about, but no rocks or mountains of it. I suppose it is found in the heart of some other coloured marble, and in strata, like the jasper and verde antico, and, I suspect, in the mountains of Isabella marble, especially of the yellowest sort of it, but this is mere conjecture. This prodigious store of marble is placed upon a ridge, whence there is a descent to the east or west, either to the Nile or Red Sea. The level ground and hard-fixed gravel are proper for the heaviest carriages, and will easily and smoothly convey any weight whatever to its place of embarkation on the Nile; so that another wonder ceased, how the ancients transported those vast blocks to Thebes, Memphis, and Alexandria.

Cosseir is a small mud-walled village, built upon the shore, among hillocks of floating sand. It is defended by a square fort of hewn stone, with square towers in the angles, which have in them three small cannon of iron, and one of brass, all in very bad condition; of no other use but to terrify the Arabs, and hinder them from plundering the town when full of corn, going to Mecca in time of famine. The walls are not high; nor was it necessary, if the great guns were in order. But as this is not the case, the ramparts are heightened by clay, or by mud-walls, to screen the soldiers from the fire-arms of the Arabs, that might otherwise command them from the sandy hills in the neighbourhood.

There are several wells of brackish water on the N. W. of the castle, which, for experiment’s sake, I made drinkable, by filtering it through sand; but the water in use is brought from Terfowey, a good day’s journey off.

The port, if we may call it so, is on the south-east of the town. It is nothing but a rock which runs out about four hundred yards into the sea, and defends the vessels, which ride to the west of it, from the north and north-east winds, as the houses of the town cover them from the north-west.

There is a large inclosure with a high mud-wall, and, within, every merchant has a shop or magazine for his corn and merchandise: little of this last is imported, unless coarse India goods, for the consumption of Upper Egypt itself, since the trade to Dongola and Sennaar has been interrupted.

I had orders from Shekh Hamam to lodge in the castle. But a few hours before my arrival, Hussein Bey Abou Kersh landed from Mecca, and Jidda, and he had taken up the apartments which were destined for me. He was one of those Beys whom Ali Bey had defeated, and driven from Cairo. He was called Abou Kersh, i. e. Father Belly, from being immoderately fat; his adversity had brought him a little into shapes. My servants, who had gone before, thinking that a friend of the Bey in power was better than an enemy outlawed, and banished by him, had inadvertently put some of my baggage into the castle just when this potentate was taking possession. Swords were immediately drawn, death and destruction threatened to my poor servants, who fled and hid themselves till I arrived.

Upon their complaint, I told them they had acted improperly; that a sovereign was a sovereign all the world over; and it was not my business to make a difference, whether he was in power or not. I easily procured a house, and sent a janissary of the four that had joined us from Cairo, with my compliments to the Bey, desiring restitution of my baggage, and that he would excuse the ignorance of my servants, who did not know that he was at Cosseir; but only, having the firman of the Grand Signior, and letters from the Bey and Port of janissaries of Cairo, they presumed that I had a right to lodge there, if he had not taken up the quarters.

It happened, that an intimate friend of mine, Mahomet Topal, captain of one of the large Cairo ships, trading to Arabia, was a companion of this Hussein Bey, and had carried him to see Captain Thornhill, and some of our English captains at Jidda, who, as their very laudable custom is, always shew such people some civilities. He questioned the janissary about me, who told him I was English; that I had the protection I had mentioned, and that, from kindness and charity, I had furnished the stranger Turks with water, and provision at my own expence, when crossing the desert. He professed himself exceedingly ashamed at the behaviour of his servants, who had drawn their sabres upon mine, and had cut my carpet and some cords. After which, of his own accord, he ordered his kaya, or next in command, to remove from the lodging he occupied, and instead of sending back my baggage by my servant, he directed it to be carried into the apartment from which the kaya had removed. This I absolutely refused, and sent word, I understood he was to be there for a few days only; and as I might stay for a longer time, I should only desire to succeed him after his departure, in order to put my baggage in safety from the Arabs; but for the present they were in no danger, as long as he was in the town. I told him, I would pay my respects to him in the evening, when the weather cooled. I did so, and, contrary to his expectations, brought him a small present. Great intercourse of civility passed; my fellow-travellers, the Turks, were all seated there, and he gave me, repeatedly, very honourable testimonials of my charity, generosity, and kindness to them.

These Turks, finding themselves in a situation to be heard, had not omitted the opportunity of complaining to Hussein Bey of the attempt of the Arab to rob them in the desert. The Bey asked me, If it happened in my tent? I said, It was in that of my servants. “What is the reason, says he, that, when you English people know so well what good government is, you did not order his head to be struck off, when you had him in your hands, before the door of the tent?”—“Sir,” said I, “I know well what good government is; but being a stranger, and a Christian, I have no sort of title to exercise the power of life and death in this country; only in this one case, when a man attempts my life, then I think I am warranted to defend myself, whatever may be the consequence to him. My men took him in the fact, and they had my orders, in such cases, to beat the offenders so that they should not steal these two months again: They did so; that was punishment enough in cold blood.”—“But my blood,” says he, “never cools with regard to such rascals as these: Go (and he called one of his attendants) tell Hassan, the head of the caravan, from me, that unless he hangs that Arab before sun-rise to-morrow, I will carry him in irons to Furshout.”

Upon this message I took my leave; saying only, “Hussein Bey, take my advice; procure a vessel and send these Turks over to Mecca before you leave this town, or, be assured they will all be made responsible for the death of this Arab; will be stripped naked, and perhaps murdered, as soon as your back is turned.” It was all I could do to get them protected thus far. This measure was already provided for, and the poor Turks joyfully embarked next morning. The thief was not at all molested: he was sent out of the way, under pretence that he had fled.

Cosseir has been mistaken by different authors. Mr Huet, Bishop of Avranches, says, It is the Myos Hormos of antiquity; others, the Philoteras Portus of Ptolemy. The fact is, that neither one nor other is the port, both being considerably farther to the northward. Nay, more, the present town of Cosseir was no ancient port at all; old Cosseir was five or six miles to the northward. There can be no sort of doubt, that it was the Portus Albus, or the White Harbour; for we find the steep descent from Terfowey, and the marble mountains, called, to this day, the Accaba, which, in Arabic, signifies a steep ascent or descent, is placed here by Ptolemy with the same name, though in Greek that name has no signification. Again, Ptolemy places 153Aias Mons, or the mountain Aias, just over Cosseir, and this mountain, by the same name, is found there at this day. And, upon this mountain, and the one next it, (both over the port) are two very remarkable chalky cliffs; which, being conspicuous and seen far at sea, have given the name of the White Port, which Cosseir bore in all antiquity.

I found, by many meridian altitudes of the sun, taken at the castle, that Cosseir is in lat. 26° 7´ 51´´ north; and, by three observations of Jupiter’s satellites, I found its longitude to be 34° 4´ 15´´ east of the meridian of Greenwich.

The caravan from Syené arrived at this time, escorted by four hundred Ababdé, all upon camels, each armed with two short javelins. The manner of their riding was very whimsical; they had two small saddles on each camel, and sat back to back, which might be, in their practice, convenient enough; but I am sure, that, if they had been to fight with us, every ball would have killed two of them, what their advantage would have been, I know not.

The whole town was in terror at the influx of so many barbarians, who knew no law whatever. They brought a thousand camels loaded with wheat to transport to Mecca. Every body shut their doors, and I among the rest, whilst the Bey sent to me to remove into the castle. But I had no fear, and resolved to make an experiment, after hearing these were people of Nimmer, whether I could trust them in the desert or not. However, I sent all my instruments, my money, and the best of my baggage, my medicines and memorandums, into a chamber in the castle: after the door was locked, and the key brought to me, the Bey ordered to nail up pieces of wood across it, and set a centinel to watch it all day, and two in the night.

I was next morning down at the port looking for shells in the sea, when a servant of mine came to me in apparent fright and hurry. He told me the Ababdé had found out that Abdel Gin, my Arab, was an Atouni, their enemy, and that they had either cut his throat, or were about to do it; but, by the fury with which they seized him, in his sight, he could not believe they would spare him a minute.

He very providently brought me a horse, upon which I mounted immediately, seeing there was no time to be lost; and in the fishing-dress, in which I was, with a red turban about my head, I galloped as hard as the horse could carry me through the town. If I was alarmed myself, I did not fail to alarm many others. They all thought it was something behind, not any thing before me, that occasioned this speed. I only told my servant at passing, to send two of my people on horseback after me, and that the Bey would lend them horses.

I was not got above a mile into the sands, when I began to reflect on the folly of the undertaking. I was going into the desert among a band of savages, whose only trade was robbery and murder, where, in all probability, I should be as ill treated as the man I was attempting to save. But, seeing a crowd of people about half a mile before me, and thinking they might be at that time murdering that poor, honest, and simple fellow, all consideration of my own safety for the time vanished.

Upon my coming near them, six or eight of them surrounded me on horseback, and began to gabble in their own language. I was not very fond of my situation. It would have cost them nothing to have thrust a lance through my back, and taken the horse away; and, after stripping me, to have buried me in a hillock of sand, if they were so kind as give themselves that last trouble. However, I picked up courage, and putting on the best appearance I could, said to them steadily, without trepidation, “What men are these before?” The answer, after some pause, was, they are men; and they looked very queerly, as if they meant to ask each other, What sort of a spark is this? “Are those before us Ababdé, said I; are they from Shekh Ammer?” One of them nodded, and grunted sullenly, rather than said “Aye, Ababdé from Shekh Ammer.” “Then Salam Alicum! said I, we are brethren. How does the Nimmer? Who commands you here? Where is Ibrahim?”

At the mention of Nimmer, and Ibrahim, their countenance changed, not to any thing sweeter or gentler than before, but to a look of great surprise. They had not returned my salutation, peace be between us; but one of them asked me who I was?—“Tell me first, said I, who that is you have before?”—“It is an Arab, our enemy, says he, guilty of our blood.”—“He is, replied I, my servant. He is a Howadat Arab, his tribe lives in peace at the gates of Cairo, in the same manner your’s at Shekh Ammer does at those of Assouan.” “I ask you, Where is Ibrahim your Shekh’s’ son?”—“Ibrahim, says he, is at our head, he commands us here. But who are you?”—“Come with me, and shew me Ibrahim, said I, and I will shew you who I am.”

I passed by these, and by another party of them. They had thrown a hair rope about the neck of Abdel Gin, who was almost strangled already, and cried out most miserably, for me not to leave him. I went directly to the black tent which I saw had a long spear thrust up in the end of it, and met at the door Ibrahim and his brother, and seven or eight Ababdé. He did not recollect me, but I dismounted close to the tent-door, and had scarce taken hold of the pillar of the tent, and said Fiarduc154, when Ibrahim, and his brother both knew me. “What! said they, are you Yagoube our physician, and our friend?”—“Let me ask you, replied I, if you are the Ababdé of Shekh Ammer, that cursed yourselves, and your children, if you ever lifted a hand against me, or mine, in the desert, or in the plowed field: If you have repented of that oath, or sworn falsely on purpose to deceive me, here I am come to you in the desert.” “What is the matter, says Ibrahim, we are the Ababdé of Shekh Ammer, there are no other, and we still say, Cursed be he, whether our father, or children, that lifts his hand against you, in the desert, or in the plowed field.” “Then, said I, you are all accursed in the desert, and in the field, for a number of your people are going to murder my servant. They took him indeed from my house in the town, perhaps that is not included in your curse, as it is neither in the desert nor the plowed field.”—I was very angry. “Whew! says Ibrahim with a kind of whistle, that is downright nonsense. Who are those of my people that have authority to murder, and take prisoners while I am here? Here one of you, get upon Yagoube’s horse, and bring that man to me.” Then turning to me, he desired I would go into the tent and sit down: “For God renounce me and mine, (says he), if it is as you say, and one of them hath touched the hair of his head, if ever he drinks of the Nile again.”

A number of people who had seen me at Shekh Ammer, now came all around me; some with complaints of sickness, some with compliments; more with impertinent questions, that had no relation to either. At last came in the culprit Abdel Gin, with forty or fifty of the Ababdé who had gathered round him, but no rope about his neck. There began a violent altercation between Ibrahim, and his men, in their own language. All that I could guess was, that the men had the worst of it; for every one present said something harsh to them, as disapproving the action.

I heard the name of Hassan Sidi Hassan often in the dispute. I began to suspect something, and desired in Arabic to know what that Sidi Hassan was, so often mentioned in discourse, and then the whole secret came out.

The reader will remember, that this Arab, Abdel Gin, was the person that seized the servant of Hassan, the Captain of the Caravan, when he was attempting to steal the Turk’s portmanteau out of my tent; that my people had beat him till he lay upon the ground like dead, and that Hussein Bey, at the complaint of the Caramaniots, had ordered him to be hanged. Now, in order to revenge this, Hassan had told the Ababdé that Abdel Gin was an Atouni spy, that he had detected him in the Caravan, and that he was come to learn the number of the Ababdé, in order to bring his companions to surprise them. He did not say one word that he was my servant, nor that I was at Cosseir; so the people thought they had a very meritorious sacrifice to make, in the person of poor Abdel Gin.

All passed now in kindness, fresh medicines were asked for the Nimmer, great thankfulness, and professions, for what they had received, and a prodigious quantity of meat on wooden platters very excellently dressed, and most agreeably diluted with fresh water, from the coldest rock of Terfowey, was set before me.

In the mean time, two of my servants, attended by three of Hussein Bey, came in great anxiety to know what was the matter; and, as neither they nor the Arabs chose much each others company, I sent them with a short account of the whole to the Bey; and soon after took my leave, carrying Abdel Gin along with me, who had been clothed by Ibrahim from head to foot. We were accompanied by two Ababdé, in case of accident.

I cannot help here accusing myself of what, doubtless, may be well reputed a very great sin. I was so enraged at the traitorous part which Hassan had acted, that, at parting, I could not help saying to Ibrahim, “Now, Shekh, I have done every thing you have desired, without ever expecting fee, or reward; the only thing I now ask you, and it is probably the last, is, that you revenge me upon this Hassan, who is every day in your power.” Upon this, he gave me his hand, saying, “He shall not die in his bed, or I shall never see old age.”

We now returned all in great spirits to Cosseir, and I observed that my unexpected connection with the Ababdé had given me an influence in that place, that put me above all fear of personal danger, especially as they had seen in the desert, that the Atouni were my friends also, as reclaiming this Arab shewed they really were.

The Bey insisted on my supping with him. At his desire I told him the whole story, at which he seemed to be much surprised, saying, several times, “Menullah! Menullah! Mucktoub!” It is God’s doing, it is God’s doing, it was written so. And, when I had finished, he said to me, “I will not leave this traitor with you to trouble you further; I will oblige him, as it is his duty, to attend me to Furshout.” This he accordingly did; and, to my very great surprise, though he might be assured I had complained of him to Shekh Hamam, meeting me the next day, when they were all ready to depart, and were drinking coffee with the Bey, he gave me a slip of paper, and desired me, by that direction, to buy him a sabre, which might be procured in Mecca. It seems it is the manufacture of Persia, and, though I do not understand in the least, the import of the terms, I give it to the reader that he may know by what description he is to buy an excellent sabre. It is called Suggaro Tabanne Haresanne Agemmi, for Sidi Hassan of Furshout.

Although pretty much used to stifle my resentment upon impertinences of this kind, I could not, after the trick he had played me with the Ababdé, carry it indifferently; I threw the billet before the Bey, saying to Hassan, “A sword of that value would be useless and misemployed in the hand of a coward and a traitor, such as surely you must be sensible I know you to be.” He looked to the Bey as if appealing to him, from the incivility of the observation; but the Bey, without scruple, answered, “It is true, it is true what he says, Hassan; if I was in Ali Bey’s place, when you dared use a stranger of mine, or any stranger, as you have done him, I would plant you upon a sharp stake in the market-place, till the boys in the town stoned you to death; but he has complained of you in a letter, and I will be a witness against you before Hamam, for your conduct is not that of a Mussulman.”

While I was engaged with the Ababdé, a vessel was seen in distress in the offing, and all the boats went out and towed her in. It was the vessel in which the twenty-five Turks had embarked, which had been heavily loaded. Nothing is so dreadful as the embarkation in that sea; for the boats have no decks; the whole, from stern to stem, being filled choak-full of wheat, the waste, that is the slope of the vessel, between the height of her stem and stern, is filled up by one plank on each side, which is all that is above the surface of the waves. Sacks, tarpaulins, or mats, are strowed along the surface of the wheat upon which all the passengers lye. On the least agitation of the waves, the sea getting in upon the wheat, increases its weight so prodigiously, that, falling below the level of the gunnel, the water rushes in between the plank and that part of the vessel, and down it goes to the bottom.

Though every day produces an accident of this kind from the same cause, yet such is the desire of gaining money in that season, which offers but once a-year, that every ship sails, loaded in the same manner as the last which perished. This was just the case with the vessel that had carried the Turks. Anxious to go away, they would not wait the signs of the weather being rightly settled. Ullah Kerim! they cry, ‘God is great and is merciful’; and upon that they embark in a navigation, where it needs indeed a miracle to save them.

The Turks all came ashore but one; the youngest, and, according to all appearance, the best, had fallen over board, and perished. The Bey received them, and with great charity entertained them all at his own expence, but they were so terrified with the sea, as almost to resolve never to make another attempt.

The Bey had brought with him from Jidda, a small, but tight vessel belonging to 155Sheher; which came from that country loaded with frankincense, the commodity of that port. The Rais had business down the Gulf at Tor, and he had spoken to the Bey, to recommend him to me. I had no business at Tor, but as we had grown into a kind of friendship, from frequent conversation, and as he was, according to his own word, a great saint, like my last boatman, a character that I thought I could perfectly manage, I proposed to the Bey, that he and I should contribute something to make it worth this Captain’s pains, to take our friends the Turks on board, and carry them to Yambo, that they might not be deprived of that blessing which would result from their visit to the Prophet’s tomb, and which they had toiled so much to earn. I promised, in that case, to hire his vessel at so much a month upon its return from Yambo; and, as I had then formed a resolution of making a survey of the Red Sea to the Straits of Babelmandeb, the Rais was to take his directions from me, till I pleased to dismiss him.

Nothing was more agreeable to the views of all parties than this. The Bey promised to stay till they sailed, and I engaged to take him after he returned; and as the captain, in quality of a saint, assured us, that any rock that stood in our way in the voyage, would either jump aside, or become soft like a spunge, as it had often happened before, both the Turks and we were now assured of a voyage without danger.

All was settled to our mutual satisfaction, when, unluckily, the Turks going down to their boat, met Sidi Hassan, whom, with reason, they thought the author of all their misfortunes. The whole twenty-four drew their swords, and, without seeking sabres from Persia, as he had done, they would have cut Sidi Hassan in pieces, but, fortunately for him, the Turks had great cloth trowsers, like Dutchmen, and they could not run, whilst he ran very nimbly in his. Several pistols, however, were fired, one of which shot him in the back part of the ear; on which he fled for refuge to the Bey, and we never saw him more.

CHAP. IX.

Voyage to Jibbel Zumrud—Return to Cosseir—Sails from Cosseir—Jaffateen Islands—Arrive at Tor.

The Turks and the Bey departed, and with the Turks I dispatched my Arab, Abdel Gin, not only giving him something myself, but recommending him to my beneficent countrymen at Jidda, if he should go there.

I now took up my quarters in the castle, and as the Ababdé had told strange stories about the Mountain of Emeralds, I determined, till my captain should return, to make a voyage thither. There was no possibility of knowing the distance by report; sometimes it was twenty-five miles, sometimes it was fifty, sometimes it was a hundred, and God knows how much more.

I chose a man who had been twice at these mountains of emeralds; with the best boat then in the harbour, and on Tuesday the 14th of March, we sailed, with the wind at North East, from the harbour of Cosseir, about an hour before the dawn of day. We kept coasting along, with a very moderate wind, much diverted with the red and green appearances of the marble mountains upon the coast. Our vessel had one sail, like a straw mattress, made of the leaves of a kind of palm-tree, which they call Doom. It was fixed above, and drew up like a curtain, but did not lower with a yard like a sail; so that upon stress of weather, if the sail was furled, it was so top-heavy, that the ship must founder, or the mast be carried away. But, by way of indemnification, the planks of the vessel were sewed together, and there was not a nail, nor a piece of iron, in the whole ship; so that, when you struck upon a rock, seldom any damage ensued. For my own part, from an absolute detestation of her whole construction, I insisted upon keeping close along shore, at an easy sail.

The Continent, to the leeward of us, belonged to our friends the Ababdé. There was great plenty of shell-fish to be picked up on every shoal. I had loaded the vessel with four skins of fresh water, equal to four hogsheads, with cords, and buoys fixed to the end of each of them, so that, if we had been shipwrecked near land, as rubbing two slicks together made us fire, I was not afraid of receiving succour, before we were driven to the last extremity, provided we did not perish in the sea, of which I was not very apprehensive.

On the 15th, about nine o’clock, I saw a large high rock, like a pillar, rising out of the sea. At first, I took it for a part of the Continent; but, as we advanced nearer it, the sun being very clear, and the sea calm, I took an observation, and as our situation was lat. 25° 6´, and the island about a league distant, to the S. S. W. of us, I concluded its latitude to be pretty exactly 25° 37´ North. This island is about three miles from the shore, of an oval form, rising in the middle. It seems to me to be of granite; and is called, in the language of the country, Jibbel Siberget, which has been translated the Mountain of Emeralds. Siberget, however, is a word in the language of the Shepherds, who, I doubt, never in their lives saw an emerald; and though the Arabic translation is Jibbel Zumrud, and that word has been transferred to the emerald, a very fine stone, oftener seen since the discovery of the new world, yet I very much doubt, that either Siberget or Zumrud ever meant Emerald in old times. My reason is this, that we found, both here and in the Continent, splinters, and pieces of green pellucid chrystaline substance; yet, though green, they were veiny, clouded, and not at all so hard as rock-crystal; a mineral production certainly, but a little harder than glass, and this, I apprehend, was what the Shepherds, or people of Beja, called Siberget, the Latins Smaragdus, and the Moors Zumrud.

The 16th, at day-break in the morning, I took the Arab of Cosseir with me, who knew the place. We landed on a point perfectly desert; at first, sandy like Cosseir, afterwards, where the soil was fixed, producing some few plants of rue or absinthium. We advanced above three miles farther in a perfectly desert country, with only a few acacia-trees scattered here and there, and came to the foot of the mountains. I asked my guide the name of that place; he said it was Saiel. They are never at a loss for a name, and those who do not understand the language, always believe them. This would have been the case in the present conjuncture. He knew not the name of the place, and perhaps it had no name, but he called it Saiel, which signifies a male acacia-tree; merely because he saw an acacia growing there; and, with equal reason, he might have called every mile Saiel, from the Gulf of Suez to the line.

We see this abuse in the old Itineraries, especially in the 156Antonine, from such a town to such a town, so many miles; and what is the next station? (el seggera) ten miles. This el seggera157, the Latin readers take to be the name of a town, as Harduin, and all commentators on the classics, have done. But so far from Seggera signifying a town, it imports just the contrary, that there is no town there, but the traveller must be obliged to take up his quarters under a tree that night, for such is the meaning of Seggera as a station, and so likewise of Saiel.

At the foot of the mountain, or about seven yards up from the base of it, are five pits or shafts, none of them four feet in diameter, called the Zumrud Wells, from which the ancients are said to have drawn the emeralds. We were not provided with materials, and little endowed with inclination, to descend into any one of them, where the air was probably bad. I picked up the nozzels, and some fragments of lamps, like those of which we find millions in Italy: and some worn fragments, but very small ones, of that brittle green chrystal, which is the siberget and bilur of Ethiopia, perhaps the zumrud, the smaragdus described by Pliny, but by no means the emerald, known since the discovery of the new world, whose first character absolutely defeats its pretension, the true Peruvian emerald being equal in hardness to the ruby.

Pliny158 reckons up twelve kind of emeralds, and names them all by the country where they are found. Many have thought the smaragdus to be but a finer kind of jasper. Pomet assures us it is a mineral, formed in iron, and says he had one to which iron-ore was sticking. If this was the case, the finest emeralds should not come from Peru, where, as far as ever has been yet discovered, there is no iron.

With regard to the Oriental emeralds, which they say come from the East Indies, they are now sufficiently known, and the value of each stone pretty well ascertained; but all our industry and avarice have not yet discovered a mine of emeralds there, as far as I have heard. That there were emeralds in the East Indies, upon the first discovery of it by the Cape, there is no sort of doubt; that there came emeralds from that quarter in the time of the Romans, seems to admit of as little; but few antique emeralds have ever been seen; and so greatly in esteem, and rare were they in those times, that it was made a crime for any artist to engrave upon an emerald159.

It is very natural to suppose, that some people of the East had a communication and trade with the new world, before we attempted to share it with them; and that the emeralds, they had brought from that quarter, were those which came afterwards into Europe, and were called the Oriental, till they were confounded with the 160Peruvian, by the quantity of that kind brought into the East Indies, by the Jews and Moors, after the discovery of the new Continent.

But what invincibly proves, that the ancients and we are not agreed as to the same stone, is, that 161Theophrastus says, that in the Egyptian commentaries he saw mention made of an emerald four cubits, (six feet long,) which was sent as a present to one of their kings; and in one of the temples of Jupiter in Egypt he saw an obelisk 60 feet high, made of four emeralds: and Roderick of Toledo informs us, that, when the Saracens took that city, Tarik, their chief, had a table of an emerald 365 cubits, or 547½ feet long. The Moorish histories of the invasion of Spain are full of such emeralds.

Having satisfied my curiosity as to these mountains, without having seen a living creature, I returned to my boat, where I found all well, and an excellent dinner of fish prepared. These were of three kinds, called Bisser, Surrumbac, and Nhoude el Benaat. The first of these seems to be of the Oyster-kind, but the shells are both equally curved and hollow, and open with a hinge on the side like a mussel. It has a large beard, like an oyster, which is not eatable, but which should be stript off. We found some of these two feet long, but the largest I believe ever seen composes the baptismal font in the church of Notre Dame in Paris162. The second is the Concha Veneris, with large projecting points like fingers. The third, called the Breasts of the Virgin, is a beautiful shell, perfectly pyramidal, generally about four inches in height, and beautifully variegated with mother-of-pearl, and green. All these fishes have a peppery taste, but are not therefore reckoned the less wholesome, and they are so much the more convenient, that they carry that ingredient of spice along with them for sauce, with which travellers, like me, very seldom burden themselves.

Besides a number of very fine shells, we picked up several branches of coral, coralines, yusser163, and many other articles of natural history. We were abundantly provided with every thing; the weather was fair; and we never doubted it was to continue, so we were in great spirits, and only regreted that we had not, once for all, taken leave of Cosseir, and stood over for Jidda.

In this disposition we sailed about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the wind flattered us so much, that next day, the 17th, about eleven o’clock, we found ourselves about two leagues a-stern of a small island, known to the Pilot by the name of Jibbel Macouar. This island is at least four miles from the shore, and is a high land, so that it may be seen, I suppose, eight leagues at sea, but is generally confounded with the Continent. I computed myself to be about 4´ of the meridian distant when I made the observation, and take its latitude to be about 24° 2´ on the centre of the island.

The land here, after running from Jibbel Siberget to Macouar, in a direction nearly N. W. and S. E. turns round in shape of a large promontory, and changes its direction to N. E. and S. W. and ends in a small bay or inlet; so that, by fanciful people, it has been thought to resemble the nose of a man, and is called by the Arabs, Ras el Anf, the Cape of the Nose. The mountains, within land, are of a dusky burnt colour; broken into points, as if intersected by torrents.

The coasting vessels from Masuah and Suakem which are bound to Jidda, in the strength of the Summer monsoon, stand close in shore down the coast of Abyssinia, where they find a gentle steady east wind blowing all night, and a west wind very often during the day, if they are near enough the shore, for which purpose their vessels are built.

Besides this, the violent North-East monsoon raking in the direction of the Gulf, blows the water out of the Straits of Babelmandeb into the Indian Ocean, where, being accumulated, it presses itself backwards; and, unable to find way in the middle of the Channel, creeps up among the shallows on each coast of the Red Sea. However long the voyage from Masuah to Jibbel Macouar may seem, yet these gentle winds and favourable currents, if I may so call those in the sea, soon ran us down the length of that mountain.

A large vessel, however, does not dare to try this, whilst constantly among shoals, and close on a lee-shore; but those sewed together, and yielding without damage to the stress, slide over the banks of white coral, and even sometimes the rocks. Arrived at this island, they set their prow towards the opposite shore, and cross the Channel in one night, to the coast of Arabia, being nearly before the wind. The track of this extraordinary navigation is marked upon164 the map, and it is so well verified, that no ship-master need doubt it.

About three o’clock in the afternoon, with a favourable wind and fine weather, we continued along the coast, with an easy sail. We saw no appearance of any inhabitants; the mountains were broken and pointed, as before taking the direction of the coast; advancing and receding as the shore itself did. This coast is a very bold one, nor was there in any of the islands we had seen, shoals or anchoring places, unless upon the rock itself; so that, when we landed, we could run our boltsprit home over the land.

This island, Jibbel Macouar, has breakers running off from it at all points; but, though we hauled close to these, we had no soundings. We then went betwixt it and the small island, that lies S. S. E. from it about three miles, and tried for soundings to the leeward, but we had none, although almost touching the land. About sun-set, I saw a small sandy island, which we left about a league to the westward of us. It had no shrubs, nor trees, nor height, that could distinguish it. My design was to push on to the river Frat, which is represented in the charts as very large and deep, coming from the Continent; though, considering by its latitude that it is above the tropical rains, (for it is laid down about lat. 21° 25´), I never did believe that any such river existed.

In fact, we know no river, north of the sources of the Nile, that does not fall into the Nile. Nay, I may say, that not one river, in all Abyssinia, empties itself into the Red Sea. The tropical rains are bounded, and finish, in lat. 16°, and there is no river, from the mountains, that falls into the desert of Nubia; nor do we know of any river which is tributary to the Nile, but what has its rise under the tropical rains. It would be a very singular circumstance, then, that the Frat should rise in one of the dryest places in the globe, that it should be a river at least equal to the Nile; and should maintain itself full in all seasons, which the Nile does not; last of all, in a country where water is so scarce and precious, that it should not have a town or settlement upon it, either ancient or modern, nor that it should be resorted to by any encampment of Arabs, who might cross over and traffic with Jidda, which place is immediately opposite.

On the 18th, at day-break, I was alarmed at seeing no land, as I had no sort of confidence in the skill of my pilot, however sure I was of my latitude. About an hour after sun-set, I observed a high rugged rock, which the pilot told me, upon inquiry, was Jibbel, (viz. a Rock), and this was all the satisfaction I could get. We bore down upon it with a wind, scant enough; and, about four, we came to an anchor. As we had no name for that island, and I did not know that any traveller had been there before me, I used the privilege by giving it my own, in memory of having been there. The south of this island seems to be high and rocky, the north is low and ends in a tail, or sloping bank, but is exceedingly steep to, and at the length of your bark any way from it, you have no soundings.

All this morning since before day, our pilot had begged us to go no farther. He said the wind had changed; that, by infallible signs he had seen to the southward, he was confident (without any chance of being mistaken) that in twenty-four hours we should have a storm, which would put us in danger of shipwreck; that Frat, which I wanted to see, was immediately opposite to Jidda, so that either a country, or English boat would run me over in a night and a day, when I might procure people who had connections in the country, so as to be under no apprehension of any accident; but that, in the present track I was going, every man that I should meet was my enemy. Although not very susceptible of fear, my ears were never shut against reason, and to what the pilot stated, I added in my own breast, that we might be blown out to sea, and want both water and provision. We, therefore, dined as quickly as possible, and encouraged one another all we could. A little after six the wind came easterly, and changeable, with a thick haze over the land. This cleared about nine in the evening, and one of the finest and steadiest gales that ever blew, carried us swiftly on, directly for Cosseir. The sky was full of dappled clouds, so that, though I, several times, tried to catch a star in the meridian, I was always frustrated. The wind became fresher, but still very fair.

The 19th, at day-break, we saw the land stretching all the way northward, and, soon after, distinctly discerned Jibbel Siberget upon our lee-bow. We had seen it indeed before, but had taken it for the main-land.

After passing such an agreeable night, we could not be quiet, and laughed at our pilot about his perfect knowledge of the weather. The fellow shook his head, and said, he had been mistaken before now, and was always glad when it happened so; but still we were not arrived at Cosseir, though he hoped and believed we should get there in safety. In a very little time the vane on the mast-head began to turn, first north, then east, then south, and back again to all the points in the compass; the sky was quite dark, with thick rain to the southward of us; then followed a most violent clap of thunder, but no lightning; and back again came the wind fair at south-east. We all looked rather downcast at each other, and a general silence followed. This, however, I saw availed us nothing, we were in the scrape, and were to endeavour to get out of it the best way we could. The vessel went at a prodigious rate. The sail that was made of mat happened to be new, and, filled with a strong wind, weighed prodigiously. What made this worse, was, the sails were placed a little forward. The first thing I asked, was, if the pilot could not lower his main-sail? But that we found impossible, the yard being fixed to the mast-head. The next step was to reef it, by hauling it in part up like a curtain: this our pilot desired us not to attempt; for it would endanger our foundering. Notwithstanding which, I desired my servant to help me with the haulyards; and to hold them in his hand, only giving them a turn round the bench. This increasing the vessel’s weight above and before, as she already had too much pressure, made her give two pitches, the one after the other, so that I thought she was buried under the waves, and a considerable deal of water came in upon us. I am fully satisfied, had she not been in good order, very buoyant, and in her trim, she would have gone to the bottom, as the wind continued to blow a hurricane.

I began now to throw off my upper coat and trowsers, that I might endeavour to make shore, if the vessel should founder, whilst the servants seemed to have given themselves up, and made no preparation. The pilot kept in close by the land, to see if no bight, or inlet, offered to bring up in; but we were going with such violence, that I was satisfied we should overset if we attempted this. Every ten minutes we ran over the white coral banks, which we broke in pieces with the grating of a file, upon iron, and, what was the most terrible of all, a large wave followed higher than our stern, curling over it, and seemed to be the instrument destined by Providence to bury us in the abyss.

Our pilot began apparently to lose his understanding with fright. I begged him to be steady, persuading him to take a glass of spirits, and desired him not to dispute or doubt any thing that I should do or order, for that I had seen much more terrible nights in the ocean; I assured him, that all harm done to his vessel should be repaired when we should get to Cosseir, or even a new one bought for him, if his own was much damaged. He answered me nothing, but that Mahomet was the prophet of God.—Let him prophecy, said I, as long as he pleases, but what I order you is to keep steady to the helm; mind the vane on the top of the mast, and steer straight before the wind, for I am resolved to cut that main-sail to pieces, and prevent the mast from going away, and your vessel from sinking to the bottom. I got no answer to this which I could hear, the wind was so high, except something about the mercy and the merit of Sidi Ali el Genowi. I now became violently angry. “D—n Sidi Ali el Genowi, said I, you beast, cannot you give me a rational answer? Stand to your helm, look at the vane; keep the vessel straight before the wind, or, by the great G—d who sits in heaven, (another kind of oath than by Sidi Ali el Genowi), I will shoot you dead the first yaw the ship gives, or the first time that you leave the steerage where you are standing.” He answered only, Maloom, i. e. very well.—All this was sooner done than said; I got the main-sail in my arms, and, with a large knife, cut it all to shreds, which eased the vessel greatly, though we were still going at a prodigious rate.

About two o’clock the wind seemed to fail, but, half an hour after, was more violent than ever. At three, it fell calm. I then encouraged my pilot, who had been very attentive, and, I believe, had pretty well got through the whole list of saints in his calendar, and I assured him that he should receive ample reparation for the loss of his main-sail. We now saw distinctly the white cliffs of the two mountains above Old Cosseir, and on the 19th, a little before sun set, we arrived safely at the New.

We, afterwards, heard how much more fortunate we had been than some of our fellow-sailors that same night; three of the vessels belonging to Cosseir, loaded with wheat for Yambo, perished, with all on board of them, in the gale; among these was the vessel that first had the Turks on board. This account was brought by Sidi Ali el Meymoum el Shehrie, which signifies ‘Ali, the ape or monkey, from Sheher.’ For though he was a saint, yet being in figure liker to a monkey, they thought it proper to distinguish him by that to which he bore the greatest resemblance.

We were all heartily sick of Cosseir embarkations, but the vessel of Sidi Ali el Meymoum, tho’ small, was tight and well-rigged; had sails of canvas, and had navigated in the Indian Ocean; the Rais had four stout men on board, apparently good sailors; he himself, though near sixty, was a very active, vigorous little man, and to the full as good a sailor as he was a saint. It was on the 5th of April, after having made my last observation of longitude at Cosseir, that I embarked on board this vessel, and sailed from that port. It was necessary to conceal from some of my servants our intention of proceeding to the bottom of the Gulf, least, finding themselves among Christians so near Cairo, they might desert a voyage of which they were sick, before it was well begun.

For the first two days we had hazy weather, with little wind. In the evening, the wind fell calm. We saw a high land to the south-west of us, very rugged and broken, which seemed parallel to the coast, and higher in the middle than at either end. This, we conceived, was the mountain that divides the coast of the Red Sea from the eastern part of the Valley of Egypt, corresponding to Monfalout and Siout. We brought to, in the night, behind a small low Cape, tho’ the wind was fair, our Rais being afraid of the Jassateen Islands, which we knew were not far a-head.

We caught a great quantity of fine fish this night with a line, some of them weighing 14 pounds. The best were blue in the back, like a salmon, but their belly red, and marked with blue round spots. They resembled a salmon in shape, but the fish was white, and not so firm.

In the morning of the 6th we made the Jaffateen Islands. They are four in number, joined by shoals and sunken rocks. They are crooked, or bent, like half a bow, and are dangerous for ships sailing in the night, because there seems to be a passage between them, to which, when pilots are attending, they neglect two small dangerous sunk rocks, that lie almost in the middle of the entrance, in deep water.

I understood, afterwards, from the Rais, that, had it not been from some marks he saw of blowing weather, he would not have come in to the Jaffateen Islands, but stood directly for Tor, running between the island Sheduan, and a rock which is in the middle of the channel, after you pass Ras Mahomet. But we lay so perfectly quiet, the whole night, that we could not but be grateful to the Rais for his care, although we had seen no apparent reason for it.

Next morning, the 7th, we left our very quiet birth in the bay, and stood close, nearly south-east, along-side of the two southermost Jaffateen Islands, our head upon the center of Sheduan, till we had cleared the eastermost of those islands about three miles. We then passed Sheduan, leaving it to the eastward about three leagues, and keeping nearly a N. N. W. course, to range the west side of Jibbel Zeit. This is a large desert island, or rock, that is about four miles from the main.

The passage between them is practicable by small craft only, whose planks are sewed together, and are not affected by a stroke upon hard ground; for it is not for want of water that this navigation is dangerous. All the west coast is very bold, and has more depth of water than the east; but on this side there is no anchoring ground, nor shoals. It is a rocky shore, and there is depth of water every where, yet that part is full of sunken rocks; which, though not visible, are near enough the surface to take up a large ship, whose destruction thereupon becomes inevitable. This I presume arises from one cause. The mountains on the side of Egypt and Abyssinia are all (as we have stated) hard stone, Porphyry, Granite, Alabaster, Basaltes, and many sorts of Marble. These are all therefore fixed, and even to the northward of lat. 16°, where there is no rain, very small quantities of dust or sand can ever be blown from them into the sea. On the opposite, or Arabian side, the sea-coast of the Hejaz, and that of the Tehama, are all moving sands; and the dry winter-monsoon from the south-east blows a large quantity from the deserts, which is lodged among the rocks on the Arabian side of the Gulf, and confined there by the north-east or summer-monsoon, which is in a contrary direction, and hinders them from coming over, or circulating towards the Egyptian side.

From this it happens, that the west, or Abyssinian side, is full of deep water, interspersed with sunken rocks, unmasked, or uncovered with sand, with which they would otherwise become islands. These are naked and bare all round, and sharp like points of spears; while on the east-side there are rocks, indeed, as in the other, but being between the south-east monsoon, which drives the sand into its coast, and the north-west monsoon which repels it, and keeps it in there, every rock on the Arabian shore becomes an Iland, and every two or three islands become a harbour.

Upon the ends of the principal of these harbours large heaps of stones have been piled up, to serve as signals, or marks, how to enter; and it is in these that the large vessels from Cairo to Jidda, equal in size to our 74 gun ships, (but from the cisterns of mason-work built within for holding water, I suppose double their weight) after navigating their portion of the channel in the day, come safely and quietly to, at four o’clock in the afternoon, and in these little harbours pass the night, to sail into the channel again, next morning at sun-rise.

Therefore, though in the track of my voyage to Tor, I am seen running from the west side of Jibbel Zeit a W. N. W. course (for I had no place for a compass) into the harbour of Tor, I do not mean to do so bad a service to humanity as to persuade large ships to follow my track. There are two ways of instructing men usefully, in things absolutely unknown to them. The first is, to teach them what they can do safely. The next is, to teach them what they cannot do at all, or, warranted by a pressing occasion, attempt with more or less danger, which should be explained and placed before their eyes, for without this last no man knows the extent of his own powers. With this view, I will venture, without fear of contradiction, to say, that my course from Cosseir, or even from Jibbel Siberget, to Tor, is impossible to a great ship. My voyage, painful, full of care, and dangerous as it was, is not to be accounted a surety for the lives of thousands. It may be regarded as a foundation for surveys hereafter to be made by persons more capable, and better protected; and in this case will, I hope, be found a valuable fragment, because, whatever have been my conscientious fears of running servants, who work for pay, into danger of losing their lives by peril of the sea, yet I can safely say, that never did the face of man, or fear of danger to myself, deter me from verifying with my eyes, what my own hands have put upon paper.

In the days of the Ptolemies, and, as I shall shew, long before, the west coast of the Red Sea, where the deepest water, and most dangerous rocks are, was the track which the Indian and African ships chose, when loaded with the richest merchandise that ever vessels since carried. The Ptolemies built a number of large cities on this coast; nor do we hear that ships were obliged to abandon that track, from the disasters that befel them in the navigation. On the contrary, they avoided the coast of Arabia; and one reason, among others, is plain why they should;—they were loaded with the most valuable commodities, gold, ivory, gums, and precious stones; room for stowage on board therefore was very valuable.

Part of this trade, when at its greatest perfection, was carried on in vessels with oars. We know from the prophet Ezekiel165, 700 years before Christ, or 300 after Solomon had finished his trade with Africa and India, that they did not always make use of sails in the track of the monsoons; and consequently a great number of men must have been necessary for so tedious a voyage. A number of men being necessary, a quantity of water was equally so; and this must have taken up a great deal of stowage. Now, no where on the coast of Abyssinia could they want water two days; and scarce any where, on the coast of Arabia, could they be sure of it once in fifteen, and from this the western coast was called Ber el Ajam166, corruptly Azamia, the country of water, in opposition to the eastern shore, called Ber el Arab, where there was none.

A deliberate survey became absolutely necessary, and as in proportion to the danger of the coast pilots became more skilful, when once they had obtained more complete knowledge of the rocks and dangers, they preferred the boldest shore, because they could stand on all night, and provide themselves with water every day. Whereas, on the Arabian side, they could not sail but half the day, would be obliged to lie to all night, and to load themselves with water, equal to half their cargo.

I now shall undertake to point out to large ships, the way by which they can safely enter the Gulf of Suez, so as that they may be competent judges of their own course, in case of accident, without implicitly surrendering themselves, and property, into the hands of pilots.

In the first place, then, I am very confident, that, taking their departure from Jibbel el Ourée, ships may safely stand on all night mid-channel, until they are in the latitude of Yambo.

The Red Sea maybe divided into four parts, of which the Channel occupies two, till about lat. 26°, or nearly that of Cosseir. On the west side it is deep water, with many rocks, as I have already said. On the east side, that quarter is occupied by islands, that is, sand gathered about the rocks, the causes whereof I have before mentioned; between which there are channels of very deep water, and harbours, that protect the largest ships in any winds. But among these, from Mocha down to Suez, you must sail with a pilot, and during part of the day only.

To a person used to more civilized countries, it appears no great hardship to sail with a pilot, if you can get one, and in the Red Sea there are plenty; but these are creatures without any sort of science, who decide upon a manœuvre in a moment, without forethought, or any warning given. Such pilots often, in a large ship deeply loaded, with every sail out which she can carry, in a very instant cry out to let go your anchors, and bring you to, all standing, in the face of a rock, or sand. Were not our seamen’s vigour, and celerity in execution, infinitely beyond the skill and foresight of those pilots, I believe very few ships, coming the inward passage among the islands, would ever reach the port in safety.

If you are, however, going to Suez, without the consent of the Sherriffe of Mecca, that is, not intending to sell your cargo at Jidda, or pay your custom there, then you should take in your water at Mocha; or, if any reason should hinder you from touching that shore, a few hours will carry you to Azab, or Saba, on the Abyssinian coast, whose latitude I found to be 13° 5´ north. It is not a port, but a very tolerable road, where you have very safe riding, under the shelter of a low desert island called Crab Island, with a few rocks at the end of it. But it must be remembered, the people are Galla, the most treacherous and villanous wretches upon the earth. They are Shepherds, who sometimes are on the coast in great numbers, or in the back of the hills that run close along the shore, or in miserable villages composed of huts, that run nearly in an east and west direction from Azab to Raheeta, the largest of all their villages. You will there, at Azab, get plenty of water, sheep, and goats, as also some myrrh and incense, if you are in the proper season, or will stay for it.

I again repeat it, that no confidence is to be had in the people. Those of Mocha, who even are absolutely necessary to them in their commercial transactions, cannot trust them without surety or hostages. And it was but a few years before I was there, the surgeon and mate of the Elgin East-India man, with several other sailors, were cut off, going on shore with a letter of safe conduct from their Shekh to purchase myrrh. Those that were in the boat escaped, but most of them were wounded. A ship, on its guard, does not fear banditti like these, and you will get plenty of water and provision, though I am only speaking of it as a station of necessity.

If you are not afraid of being known, there is a low black island on the Arabian coast called Camaran, it is in lat. 15° 39´, and is distinguished by a white house, or fortress, on the west end of it, where you will procure excellent water, in greater plenty than at Azab; but no provisions, or only such as are very bad. If you should not wish to be seen, however, on the coast at all, among the chain of islands that reaches almost across the Gulf from Loheia to Masuah, there is one called Foosht, where there is good anchorage; it is laid down in my map in lat. 15° 59´ 43´´ N. and long. 42° 27´ E. from actual observation taken upon the island. There is here a quantity of excellent water, with a saint or monk to take care of it, and keep the wells clean. This poor creature was so terrified at seeing us come ashore with fire-arms, that he lay down upon his face on the sand; nor would he rise, or lift up his head, till the Rais had explained to me the cause of his fear, and till, knowing I was not in any danger of surprise, I had sent my guns on board.

From this to Yambo there is no safe watering place. Indeed if the river Frat were to be found, there is no need of any other watering place in the Gulf; but it is absolutely necessary to have a pilot on board before you make Ras Mahomet; because, over the mountains of Auche, the Elanitic Gulf, and the Cape itself, there is often a great haze, which lasts for many days together, and many ships are constantly lost, by mistaking the Eastern Bay, or Elanitic Gulf, for the entrance of the Gulf of Suez; the former has a reef of rocks nearly across it.

After you have made Sheduan, a large island three leagues farther, in a direction nearly north and by west, is a bare rock, which, according to their usual carelessness and indifference, they are not at the pains to call by any other name but Jibbel, the rock, island, or mountain, in general. You should not come within three full leagues of that rock, but leave it at a distance to the westward. You will then see shoals, which form a pretty broad channel, where you have soundings from fifteen to thirty fathoms. And again, standing on directly upon Tor, you have two other oval sands with sunken rocks, in the channel, between which you are to steer. All your danger is here in sight, for you might go in the inside, or to the eastward, of the many small islands you see toward the shore; and there are the anchoring places of the Cairo vessels, which are marked with the black anchor in the draught. This is the course best known and practised by pilots for ships of all sizes. But by a draught of Mr Niebuhr, who went from Suez with Mahomet Rais Tobal, his track with that large ship was through the channels, till he arrived at the point, where Tor bore a little to the northward of east of him.

Tor may be known at a distance by two hills that stand near the water side, which, in clear weather, may be seen six leagues off. Just to the south-east of these is the town and harbour, where there are some palm-trees about the houses, the more remarkable, that they are the first you see on the coast. There is no danger in going into Tor harbour, the soundings in the way are clean and regular; and by giving the beacon a small birth on the larboard hand, you may haul in a little to the northward, and anchor in five or six fathom. The bottom of the bay is not a mile from the beacon, and about the same distance from the opposite shore. There is no sensible tide in the middle of the Gulf, but, by the sides, it runs full two knots an hour. At springs, it is high water at Tor nearly at twelve o’clock.

On the 9th we arrived at Tor, a small straggling village, with a convent of Greek Monks, belonging to Mount Sinai. Don John de Castro167 took this town when it was walled, and fortified, soon after the discovery of the Indies by the Portuguese; it has never since been of any consideration. It serves now, only as a watering-place for ships going to, and from Suez. From this we have a distinct view of the points of the mountains Horeb and Sinai, which appear behind and above the others, their tops being often covered with snow in winter.

There are three things, (now I am at the north end of the Arabian Gulf,) of which the reader will expect some account, and I am heartily sorry to say, that I fear I shall be obliged to disappoint him in all, by the unsatisfactory relation I am forced to give.

The first is, Whether the Red Sea is not higher than the Mediterranean, by several feet or inches? To this I answer, That the fact has been supposed to be so by antiquity, and alledged as a reason why Ptolemy’s canal was made from the bottom of the Heroopolitic Gulf, rather than brought due north across the Isthmus of Suez; in which last case, it was feared it would submerge a great part of Asia Minor. But who has ever attempted to verify this by experiment? or who is capable of settling the difference of levels, amounting, as supposed, to some feet and inches, between two points 120 miles distant from each other, over a desert that has no settled surface, but is changing its height every day? Besides, since all seas are, in fact, but one, what is it that hinders the Indian Ocean to flow to its level? What is it that keeps the Indian Ocean up?

Till this last branch of the question is resolved, I shall take it for granted that no such difference of level exists, whatever Ptolemy’s engineers might have pretended to him; because, to suppose it fact, is to suppose the violation of one very material law of nature.

The next thing I have to take notice of, for the satisfaction of my reader, is, the way by which the children of Israel passed the Red Sea at the time of their deliverance from the land of Egypt.

As scripture teaches us, that this passage, wherever it might be, was under the influence of a miraculous power, no particular circumstance of breadth, or depth, makes one place likelier than another. It is a matter of mere curiosity, and can only promote an illustration of the scripture, for which reason, I do not decline the consideration of it.

I shall suppose, that my reader has been sufficiently convinced, by other authors, that the land of Goshen, where the Israelites dwelt in Egypt, was that country lying east of the Nile, and not overflowed by it, bounded by the mountains of the Thebaid on the south, by the Nile and Mediterranean on the west and north, and the Red Sea and desert of Arabia on the east. It was the Heliopolitan nome, its capital was On; from predilection of the letter O, common to the Hebrews, they called it Goshen; but its proper name was Geshen, the country of Grass, or Pasturage; or of the Shepherds; in opposition to the rest of the land which was sown, after having been overflowed by the Nile.

There were three ways by which the children of Israel, flying from Pharaoh, could have entered Palestine. The first was by the sea-coast by Gaza, Askelon, and Joppa. This was the plainest and nearest way; and, therefore, fittest for people incumbered with kneading troughs, dough, cattle, and children. The sea-coast was full of rich commercial cities, the mid-land was cultivated and sown with grain. The eastern part, nearest the mountains, was full of cattle and shepherds, as rich a country, and more powerful than the cities themselves.

This narrow valley, between the mountains and the sea, ran all along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, from Gaza northward, comprehending the low part of Palestine and Syria. Now, here a small number of men might have passed, under the laws of hospitality; nay, they did constantly pass, it being the high road between Egypt, and Tyre, and Sidon. But the case was different with a multitude, such as six hundred thousand men having their cattle along with them. These must have occupied the whole land of the Philistines, destroyed all private property, and undoubtedly have occasioned some revolution; and as they were not now intended to be put in possession of the land of promise, the measure of the iniquity of the nations being not yet full, God turned them aside from going that way, though the nearest, least they “should see war168,” that is, least the people should rise against them, and destroy them.

There was another way which led south-west, upon Beersheba and Hebron, in the middle, between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. This was the direction in which Abraham, Lot, and Jacob, are supposed to have reached Egypt. But there was neither food nor water there to sustain the Israelites. When Abraham and Lot returned out of Egypt, they were obliged to separate by consent, because Abraham said to his brother, “The land will not bear us both169.”

The third way was straight east into Arabia, pretty much the road by which the Pilgrims go at this day to Mecca, and the caravans from Suez to Cairo. In this track they would have gone round by the mountains of Moab, east of the Dead Sea, and passed Jordan in the plain opposite to Jericho, as they did forty years afterwards. But it is plain from scripture, that God’s counsels were to make Pharaoh and his Egyptians an example of his vengeance; and, as none of these roads led to the sea, they did not answer the Divine intention.

About twelve leagues from the sea, there was a narrow road which turned to the right, between the mountains, through a valley called Badeab, where their course was nearly south-east; this valley ended in a pass, between two considerable mountains, called Gewoube on the south; and Jibbel Attakah on the north, and opened into the low stripe of country which runs all along the Red Sea; and the Israelites were ordered to encamp at Pihahiroth, opposite to Baal-zephon, between Migdol and that sea.

It will be necessary to explain these names. Badeah, Dr Shaw interprets, the Valley of the Miracle, but this is forcing an etymology, for there was yet no miracle wrought, nor was there ever any in the valley. But Badeah, means barren, bare, and uninhabited; such as we may imagine a valley between stony mountains, a desert valley. Jibbel Attakah, he translates also, the Mountain of Deliverance. But so far were the Israelites from being delivered on their arrival at this mountain, that they were then in the greatest distress and danger. Attakah, means, however, to arrive or come up with, either because there they arrived within sight of the Red Sea; or, as I am rather inclined to think, this place took its name from the arrival of Pharaoh, or his coming in sight of the Israelites, when encamped between Migdol and the Red Sea.

Pihahiroth is the mouth of the valley, opening to the flat country and the sea, as I have already said, such are called Mouths; in the Arabic, Fum; as I have observed in my journey to Cosseir, where the opening of the valley is called Fum el Beder, the mouth of Beder; Fum el Terfowey, the mouth of Terfowey. Hhoreth, the flat country along the Red Sea, is so called from Hhor, a narrow valley where torrents run, occasioned by sudden irregular showers. Such we have already described on the east side of the mountains, bordering upon that narrow flat country along the Red Sea, where temporary showers fall in great abundance, while none of them touch the west side of the mountains or valley of Egypt. Pihahiroth then is the mouth of the valley Badeah; which opens to Hhoreth, the narrow stripe of land where showers fall.

Baal-Zephon, the God of the watch-tower, was, probably, some idol’s temple, which served for a signal-house upon the Cape which forms the north entrance of the bay opposite to Jibbel Attakah, where there is still a mosque, or saint’s tomb. It was probably a light-house, for the direction of ships going to the bottom of the Gulf, to prevent mistaking it for another foul bay, under the high land, where there is also a tomb of a saint called Abou Derage.

The last rebuke God gave to Pharaoh, by slaying all the first-born, seems to have made a strong impression upon the Egyptians. Scripture says, that the people were now urgent with the Israelites to be gone, for they said, “We be all dead men170.” And we need not doubt, it was in order to keep up in their hearts a motive of resentment, strong enough to make them pursue the Israelites, that God caused the Israelites to borrow, and take away the jewels of the Egyptians; without some new cause of anger, the late terrible chastisement might have deterred them. While, therefore, they journeyed eastward towards the desert, the Egyptians had no motive to attack them, because they went with permission there to sacrifice, and were on their return to restore them their moveables. But when the Israelites were observed turning to the south, among the mountains, they were then supposed to flee without a view of returning, because they had left the way of the desert; and therefore Pharaoh, that he might induce the Egyptians to follow them, tells them that the Israelites were now entangled among the mountains, and the wilderness behind them, which was really the case, when they encamped at Pihahiroth, before, or south of Baal-Zephon, between Migdol and the sea. Here, then, before Migdol, the sea was divided, and they passed over dry shod to the wilderness of Shur, which was immediately opposite to them; a space something less than four leagues, and so easily accomplished in one night, without any miraculous interposition.

Three days they were without water, which would bring them to Korondel, where is a spring of brackish, or bitter water, to this day, which probably were the waters of Marah171.

The natives still call this part of the sea Bahar Kolzum, or the Sea of Destruction; and just opposite to Pihahiroth is a bay, where the North Cape is called Ras Musa, or the Cape of Moses, even now. These are the reasons why I believe the passage of the Israelites to have been in this direction. There is about fourteen fathom of water in the channel, and about nine in the sides, and good anchorage every where; the farthest side is a low sandy coast, and a very easy landing-place. The draught of the bottom of the Gulf given by Doctor Pococke is very erroneous, in every part of it.

It was proposed to Mr Niebuhr, when in Egypt, to inquire, upon the spot, Whether there were not some ridges of rocks, where the water was shallow, so that an army at particular times might pass over? Secondly, Whether the Etesian winds, which blow strongly all Summer from the north west, could not blow so violently against the sea, as to keep it back on a heap, so that the Israelites might have passed without a miracle? And a copy of these queries was left for me, to join my inquiries likewise.

But I must confess, however learned the gentlemen were who proposed these doubts, I did not think they merited any attention to solve them. This passage is told us, by scripture, to be a miraculous one; and, if so, we have nothing to do with natural causes. If we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the transaction at all, seeing that it is from his authority alone we derive it. If we believe in God that he made the sea, we must believe he could divide it when he sees proper reason, and of that he must be the only judge. It is no greater miracle to divide the Red Sea, than to divide the river of Jordan.

If the Etesian wind blowing from the north-west in summer, could heap up the sea as a wall, on the right, or to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain, of building the wall on the left hand, or to the north. Besides, water standing in that position for a day, must have lost the nature of fluid. Whence came that cohesion of particles, that hindered that wall to escape at the sides? This is as great a miracle as that of Moses. If the Etesian winds had done this once, they must have repeated it many a time before and since, from the same causes. Yet, 172Diodorus Siculus says, the Troglodytes, the indigenous inhabitants of that very spot, had a tradition from father to son, from their very earliest and remotest ages, that once this division of the sea did happen there, and that after leaving its bottom sometimes dry, the sea again came back, and covered it with great fury. The words of this author are of the most remarkable kind. We cannot think this heathen is writing in favour of revelation. He knew not Moses, nor says a word about Pharaoh, and his host; but records the miracle of the division of the sea, in words nearly as strong as those of Moses, from the mouths of unbiassed, undesigning Pagans.

Were all these difficulties surmounted, what could we do with the pillar of fire? The answer is, We should not believe it. Why then believe the passage at all? We have no authority for the one, but what is for the other; it is altogether contrary to the ordinary nature of things, and if not a miracle, it must be a fable.

The cause of the several names of the Red Sea, is a subject of more liberal inquiry. I am of opinion, that it certainly derived its name from Edom, long and early its powerful master, that word signifying Red in Hebrew. It formerly went by the name of Sea of Edom, or Idumea; since, by that of the Red Sea.

It has been observed, indeed, that not only the Arabian Gulf, but part of the Indian Ocean173, went by this name, though far distant from Idumea. This is true, but when we consider, as we shall do in the course of this history, that the masters of that sea were still the Edomites, who went from the one sea directly in the same voyage to the other, we shall not dispute the propriety of extending the name to part of the Indian Ocean also. As for what fanciful people174 have said of any redness in the sea itself, or colour in the bottom, the reader may assure himself all this is fiction, the Red Sea being in colour nothing different from the Indian, or any other Ocean.

There is greater difficulty in assigning a reason for the Hebrew name, Yam Suph; properly so called, say learned authors, from the quantity of weeds in it. But I must confess, in contradiction to this, that I never in my life, (and I have seen the whole extent of it) saw a weed of any sort in it; and, indeed, upon the slightest consideration, it will occur to any one, that a narrow gulf, under the immediate influence of monsoons, blowing from contrary points six months each year, would have too much agitation to produce such vegetables, seldom found, but in stagnant waters, and seldomer, if ever, found in salt ones. My opinion then is, that it is from the175 large trees, or plants of white coral, spread every where over the bottom of the Red Sea, perfectly in imitation of plants on land, that the sea has obtained this name. If not, I fairly confess I have not any other conjecture to make.

No sea, or shores, I believe, in the world, abound more in subjects of Natural History than the Red Sea. I suppose I have drawings and subjects of this kind, equal in bulk to the journal of the whole voyage itself. But the vast expence in engraving, as well as other considerations, will probably hinder for ever the perfection of this work in this particular.

CHAP. X.

Sail from Tor—Pass the Elanitic Gulf—See Raddua—Arrive at Yambo—Incidents there—Arrive at Jidda.

Our Rais, having dispatched his business, was eager to depart; and, accordingly, on the 11th of April, at day-break, we stood out of the harbour of Tor. At first, we were becalmed in, at the point of the Bay south of Tor town, but the wind freshening about eight o’clock, we stood through the channels of the first four shoals, and then between a smaller one. We made the mouth of a small Bay, formed by Cape Mahomet, and a low sandy point to the eastward of it. Our vessel seemed to be a capital one for sailing, and I did every thing in my power to keep our Rais in good humour.

About half a mile from the sandy point, we struck upon a coral bank, which, though it was not of any great consistence or solidity, did not fail to make our mast nod. As I was looking out forward when the vessel touched, and the Rais by me, I cried out in Arabic, “Get out of the way you dog!” the Rais, thinking my discourse directed to him, seemed very much surprised, and asked, “what I meant?” “Why did you not tell me, said I, when I hired you, that all the rocks in the sea would get out of the way of your vessel? This ill-mannered fellow here did not know his duty; he was sleeping I suppose, and has given us a hearty jolt, and I was abusing him for it, till you should chastise him some other way.” He shook his head, and said, “Well! you do not believe, but God knows the truth; well now where is the rock? Why he is gone.” However, very prudently, he anchored soon afterwards, though we had received no damage.

At night, by an observation of two stars in the meridian, I concluded the latitude of Cape Mahomet to be 27° 54´, N. It must be understood of the mountain, or high land, which forms the Cape, not the low point. The ridge of rocks that run along behind Tor, bound that low sandy country, called the Desert of Sin, to the eastward, and end in this Cape, which is the high land observed at sea; but the lower part, or southermost extreme of the Cape, runs about three leagues off from the high land, and is so low, that it cannot be seen from deck above three leagues. It was called, by the ancients, Pharan Promontorium; not because there was a light-house176 upon the end of it, (though this may have perhaps been the case, and a very necessary and proper situation it is) but from the Egyptian and Arabic word Farek177, which signifies to divide, as being the point, or high land that divides the Gulf of Suez from the Elanitic Gulf.

I went ashore here to gather shells, and shot a small animal among the rocks, called Daman Israel, or Israel’s Lamb; I do not know why, for it has no resemblance to the sheep kind. I take it to be the saphan of the Hebrew Scripture, which we translate by the coney. I have given a drawing, and description of it, in its proper place178. I shot, likewise, several dozens of gooto, the least beautiful of the kind I had seen, being very small, and coloured like the back of a partridge, but very indifferent food.

The 12th, we sailed from Cape Mahomet, just as the sun appeared. We passed the island of Tyrone, in the mouth of the Elanitic Gulf, which divides it near equally into two; or, rather the north-west side is narrowest. The direction of the Gulf is nearly north and south. I judge it to be about six leagues over. Many of the Cairo ships are lost in mistaking the entry of the Elanitic for that of the Heroopolitic Gulf, or Gulf of Suez; for, from the island of Tyrone, which is not above two leagues from the Main, there runs a string of islands, which seem to make a semicircular bar across the entry from the point, where a ship, going with a south wind, would take its departure; and this range of islands ends in a shoal with sunken rocks, which reaches near five leagues from the Main. It is probable, that, upon these islands, the fleet of Rehoboam perished, when sailing for the expedition of Ophir179.

I take Tyrone to be the island of Saspirene of Ptolemy, though this geographer has erred a little, both in its latitude and longitude.

We passed the second of these islands, called Senasser, about three leagues to the northward, steering with a fresh gale at south-east, upon a triangular island that has three pointed eminences upon its south-side. We passed another small island which has no name, about the same distance as the former; and ranged along three black rocks, the south-west of the island, called Susange el Bahar, or the Sea-Spunge. As our vessel made some water, and the wind had been very strong all the afternoon, the Rais wanted to bring up to the leeward of this island, or between this, and a cape of land called Ras Selah; but, not being able to find soundings here, he set sail again, doubled the point, and came to anchor under the south cape of a fine bay, which is a station of the Emir Hadje, called Kalaat el Moilah, the Castle, or Station of Water.

We had sailed this day about twenty-one leagues; and, as we had very fair and fine weather, and were under no sort of concern whatever, I could not neglect attending to the disposition of these islands, in a very splendid map lately published. They are carried too far into the Gulf.

The 13th, the Rais having, in the night, remedied what was faulty in his vessel, set sail about seven o’clock in the morning. We passed a conical hill on the land, called Abou Jubbé, where is the sepulchre of a saint of that name. The mountains here are at a considerable distance; and nothing can be more desolate and bare than the coast. In the afternoon, we came to an anchor at a place called Kella Clarega, after having passed an island called Jibbel Numan, about a league from the shore. By the side of this shoal we caught a quantity of good fish, and a great number also very beautiful, and perfectly unknown, but which, when roasted, shrank away to nothing except skin, and when boiled, dissolved into a kind of blueish glue.

On the 14th, the wind was variable till near ten o’clock, after which it became a little fair. At twelve it was as favourable as we could wish; it blew however but faintly. We passed first by one island surrounded by breakers, and then by three more, and anchored close to the shore, at a place called Jibbel Shekh, or the Mountain of the Saint. Here I resolved to take a walk on shore to stretch my limbs, and see if I could procure any game, to afford us some variety of food. I had my gun loaded with ball, when a vast flock of gooto got up before me, not five hundred yards from the shore. As they lighted very near me, I lay down among the bent grass, to draw the charge, and load with small shot. While I was doing this, I saw two antelopes, which, by their manner of walking and feeding, did not seem to be frightened. I returned my balls into the gun, and resolved to be close among the bent, till they should appear before me.

I had been quiet for some minutes, when I heard behind me something like a person breathing, on which I turned about, and, not without great surprise, and some little fear, saw a man, standing just over me. I started up, while the man, who had a little stick only in his hand, ran two or three steps backwards, and then stood. He was almost perfectly naked: he had half a yard of coarse rag only wrapt round his middle, and a crooked knife stuck in it, I asked him who he was? He said he was an Arab, belonging to Shekh Abd el Macaber. I then desired to know where his master was? He replied, he was at the hill a little above, with camels that were going to Yambo. He then, in his turn, asked who I was? I told him I was an Abyssinian slave of the Sherriffe of Mecca, was going to Cairo by sea, but wished much to speak to his master, if he would go and bring him. The savage went away with great willingness, and he no sooner disappeared, than I set out as quickly as possible to the boat, and we got her hauled out beyond the shoals, where we passed the night. We saw afterwards distinctly about fifty men, and three or four camels; the men made several signs to us, but we were perfectly content with the distance that was between us, and sought no more to kill antelopes in the neighbourhood of Sidi Abd el Macaber.

I would not have it imagined, that my case was absolutely desperate, even if I had been known as a Christian, and fallen into the hands of these Arabs, of Arabia Deserta, or Arabia Petrea, supposed to be the most barbarous people in the world, as indeed they probably are. Hospitality, and attention to one’s word, seem in these countries to be in proportion to the degree in which the people are savage. A very easy method is known, and followed with constant success, by all the Christians trading to the Red Sea from Suez to Jidda, to save themselves if thrown on the coast of Arabia. Any man of consideration from any tribe among the Arabs, comes to Cairo, gives his name and designation to the Christian sailor, and receives a very small present, which is repeated annually if he performs so often the voyage. And for this the Arab promises the Christian his protection, should he ever be so unfortunate as to be shipwrecked on their coast.

The Turks are very bad seamen, and lose many ships,· the greatest part of the crew are therefore Christians; when a vessel strikes, or is ashore, the Turks are all massacred if they cannot make their way good by force; but the Christians present themselves to the Arab, crying Fiarduc, which means, ‘we are under immediate protection.’ If they are asked, who is their Gaffeer, or Arab, with whom they are in friendship? They answer, Mahomet Abdelcader is our Gaffeer, or any other. If he is not there, you are told he is absent so many days journey off, or any distance. This acquaintance or neighbour, then helps you, to save what you have from the wreck, and one of them with his lance draws a circle, large enough to hold you and yours. He then sticks his lance in the sand, bids you abide within that circle, and goes and brings your Gaffeer, with what camels you want, and this Gaffeer is obliged, by rules known only to themselves, to carry you for nothing, or very little, where-ever you go, and to furnish you with provisions all the way. Within that circle you are as safe on the desert coast of Arabia, as in a citadel; there is no example or exception to the contrary that has ever yet been known. There are many Arabs, who, from situation, near dangerous shoals or places, where ships often perish (as between Ras Mahomet and Ras Selah,180Dar el Hamra, and some others) have perhaps fifty or a hundred Christians, who have been so protected: So that when this Arab marries a daughter, he gives perhaps his revenue from four or five protected Christians, as part of his daughter’s portion. I had, at that very time, a Gaffeer, called Ibn Talil, an Arab of Harb tribe, and I should have been detained perhaps three days till he came from near Medina, and carried me (had I been shipwrecked) to Yambo, where I was going.

On the 15th we came to an anchor at El Har181, where we saw high, craggy, and broken mountains, called the Mountains of Ruddua. These abound with springs of water; all sort of Arabian and African fruits grow here in perfection, and every kind of vegetable that they will take the pains to cultivate. It is the paradise of the people of Yambo; those of any substance have country houses there; but, strange to tell, they stay there but for a short time, and prefer the bare, dry, and burning sands about Yambo, to one of the finest climates, and most verdant pleasant countries, that exists in the world. The people of the place have told me, that water freezes there in winter, and that there are some of the inhabitants who have red hair, and blue eyes, a thing scarcely ever seen but in the coldest mountains in the East.

The 16th, about ten o’clock, we passed a mosque, or Shekh’s tomb on the main land, on our left hand, called Kubbet Yambo, and before eleven we anchored in the mouth of the port in deep water. Yambo, corruptly called Imbo, is an ancient city, now dwindled to a paultry village. Ptolemy calls it Iambia Vicus, or the village Yambia; a proof it was of no great importance in his time. But after the conquest of Egypt under Sultan Selim, it became a valuable station, for supplying their conquests in Arabia, with warlike stores, from Suez, and for the importation of wheat from Egypt to their garrisons, and the holy places of Mecca and Medina. On this account, a large castle was built there by Sinan Basha; for the ancient Yambo of Ptolemy is not that which is called so at this day. It is six miles farther south; and is called Yambo el Nachel, or, ‘Yambo among the palm-trees,’ a great quantity of ground being there covered with this sort of plantation.

Yambo, in the language of the country, signifies a fountain or spring, a very copious one of excellent water being found there among the date trees, and it is one of the stations of the Emir Hadje in going to, and coming from Mecca. The advantage of the port, however, which the other has not, and the protection of the castle, have carried trading vessels to the modern Yambo, where there is no water, but what is brought from pools dug on purpose to receive the rain when it falls.

There are two hundred janissaries in the castle, the descendents of those brought thither by Sinan Basha; who have succeeded their fathers, in the way I have observed they did at Syené, and, indeed, in all the conquests in Arabia, and Egypt, The inhabitants of Yambo are deservedly reckoned182 the moist barbarous of any upon the Red Sea, and the janissaries keep pace with them, in every kind of malice and violence. We did not go ashore all that day, because we had heard a number of shots, and had received intelligence from shore, that the janissaries and town’s people, for a week, had been fighting together; I was very unwilling to interfere, wishing that they might have all leisure to extirpate one another, if possible; and my Rais seemed most heartily to join me in my wishes.

In the evening, the captain of the port came on board, and brought two janissaries with him, whom, with some difficulty, I suffered to enter the vessel. Their first demand was gun-powder, which I positively refused. I then asked them how many were killed in the eight days they had been engaged? They answered, with some indifference, not many, about a hundred every day, or a few less or more, chiefly Arabs. We heard afterwards, when we came on shore, one only had been wounded, and that a soldier, by a fall from his horse. They insisted upon bringing the vessel into the port; but I told them, on the contrary, that having no business at Yambo, and being by no means under the guns of their castle, I was at liberty to put to sea without coming ashore at all; therefore, if they did not leave us, as the wind was favourable, I would sail, and, by force, carry them to Jidda. The janissaries began to talk, as their custom is, in a very blustering and warlike tone; but I, who knew my interest at Jidda, and the force in my own hand; that my vessel was afloat, and could be under weigh in an instant, never was less disposed to be bullied, than at that moment. They asked me a thousand questions, whether I was a Mamaluke, whether I was a Turk, or whether I was an Arab, and why I did not give them spirits and tobacco? To all which I answered, only, that they should know to-morrow who I was; then I ordered the Emir Bahar, the captain of the port, to carry them ashore at his peril, or I would take their arms from them, and confine them on board all night.

The Rais gave the captain of the port a private hint, to take care what they did, for they might lose their lives; and that private caution, understood in a different way perhaps than was meant, had effect upon the soldiers, to make them withdraw immediately. When they went away, I begged the Emir Bahar to make my compliments to his masters, Hassan and Hussein, Agas, to know what time I should wait upon them to-morrow; and desired him, in the mean time, to keep his soldiers ashore, as I was not disposed to be troubled with their insolence.

Soon after they went, we heard a great firing, and saw lights all over the town; and the Rais proposed to me to slip immediately, and set sail, from which measure I was not at all averse. But, as he said, we had a better anchoring place under the mosque of the Shekh, and, besides, that there we would be in a place of safety, by reason of the holiness of the saint, and that at our own choice might even put to sea in a moment, or stay till to-morrow, as we were in no sort of doubt of being able to repel, force by force, if attacked, we got under weigh for a few hundred yards, and dropt our anchor under the shrine of one of the greatest saints in the world.

At night the firing had abated, the lights diminished, and the captain of the port again came on board. He was surprised at missing us at our former anchoring place, and still more so, when, on our hearing the noise of his oars, we hailed, and forbade him to advance any nearer, till he should tell us how many he had on board, or whether he had soldiers or not, otherwise we should fire upon them: to this he answered, that there were only himself, his boy, and three officers, servants to the Aga. I replied, that three strangers were too many at that time of the night, but, since they were come from the Aga, they might advance.

All our people were sitting together armed on the forepart of the vessel; I soon divined they intended us no harm, for they gave us the salute Salam Alicum! before they were within ten yards of us. I answered with great complacency; we handed them on board, and set them down upon deck. The three officers were genteel young men, of a sickly appearance, dressed in the fashion of the country, in long burnooses loosely hanging about them, striped with red and white; they wore a turban of red, green, and white, with ten thousand tassels and fringes hanging down to the small of their backs. They had in their hand, each, a short javelin, the shaft not above four feet and a half long, with an iron head about nine inches, and two or three iron hooks below the shaft, which was bound round with brass-wire, in several places, and shod with iron at the farther end.

They asked me where I came from? I said, from Constantinople, last from Cairo; but begged they would put no more questions to me, as I was not at liberty to answer them. They said they had orders from their masters to bid me welcome, if I was the person that had been recommended to them by the Sherriffe, and was Ali Bey’s physician at Cairo. I said, if Metical Aga had advised them of that, then I was the man. They replied he had, and were come to bid me welcome, and attend me on shore to their masters, whenever I pleased. I begged them to carry my humble respects to their masters; and told them, though I did not doubt of their protection in any shape, yet I could not think it consistent with ordinary prudence, to risk myself at ten o’clock at night, in a town so full of disorder as Yambo appeared to have been for some time, and where so little regard was paid to discipline or command, as to fight with one another. They said that was true, and I might do as I pleased; but the firing that I had heard did not proceed from fighting, but from their rejoicing upon making peace.

In short, we found, that, upon some discussion, the garrison and townsmen had been fighting for several days, in which disorders the greatest part of the ammunition in the town had been expended, but it had since been agreed on by the old men of both parties, that no body had been to blame on either side, but the whole wrong was the work of a Camel. A camel, therefore, was seized, and brought without the town, and there a number on both sides having met, they upbraided the camel with every thing that had been either said or done. The camel had killed men, he had threatened to set the town on fire; the camel had threatened to burn the Aga’s house, and the castle; he had cursed the Grand Signior, and the Sherriffe of Mecca, the sovereigns of the two parties; and, the only thing the poor animal was interested in, he had threatened to destroy the wheat that was going to Mecca. After having spent great part of the afternoon in upbraiding the camel, whose measure of iniquity, it seems, was near full, each man thrust him through with a lance, devoting him Diis manibus & Diris, by a kind of prayer, and with a thousand curses upon his head. After which, every man retired, fully satisfied as to the wrongs he had received from the camel.

The reader will easily observe in this, some traces of the 183azazel, or scape-goat of the Jews, which was turned out into the wilderness, loaded with the sins of the people.

Next morning I went to the palace, as we call it, in which were some very handsome apartments. There was a guard of janissaries at the door, who, being warriors, lately come from the bloody battle with the camel, did not fail to shew marks of insolence, which they wished to be mistaken for courage.

The two Agas were sitting on a high bench upon Persian carpets; and about forty well-dressed and well-looking men, (many of them old) sitting on carpets upon the floor, in a semi-circle round them. They behaved with great politeness and attention, and asked no questions but general ones; as, How the sea agreed with me? If there was plenty at Cairo? till I was going away, when the youngest of the Agas inquired, with a seeming degree of diffidence, Whether Mahomet Bey Abou Dahab, was ready to march? As I knew well what this question meant, I answered, I know not if he is ready, he has made great preparations. The other Aga said, I hope you will be a messenger of peace? I answered, I intreat you to ask me no questions; I hope, by the grace of God, all will go well. Every person present applauded the speech; agreed to respect my secret, as they supposed I had one, and they all were inclined to believe, that I was a man in the confidence of Ali Bey, and that his hostile designs against Mecca were laid aside: this was just what I wished them to suppose; for it secured me against ill-usage all the time I chose to stay there; and of this I had a proof in the instant, for a very good house was provided for me by the Aga, and a man of his sent to shew me to it.

I wondered the Rais had not come home with me; who, in about half an hour after I had got into my house, came and told me, that, when the captain of the boat came on board the first time with the two soldiers, he had put a note, which they call tiskera, into his hand, pressing him into the Sherriffe’s service, to carry wheat to Jidda, and, with the wheat, a number of poor pilgrims that were going to Mecca at the Sherriffe’s expence. Finding us, however, out of the harbour, and, suspecting from our manners and carriage towards the janissaries, that we were people who knew what we had to trust to, he had taken the two soldiers a-shore with him, who were by no means fond of their reception, or inclined to stay in such company; and, indeed, our dresses and appearances in the boat were fully as likely to make strangers believe we should rob them, as theirs were to impress us with an apprehension that they would rob us. The Rais said also, that, after my audience, the Aga had called upon him, and taken away the tiskera, telling him he was free, and to obey nobody but me; and sent me one of his servants to sit at the door, with orders to admit nobody but whom I pleased, and that I might not be troubled with the people of Yambo.

Hitherto all was well; but it had been with me an observation, which had constantly held good, that too prosperous beginnings in these countries always ended in ill at the last. I was therefore resolved to use my prosperity with great temperance and caution, make myself as strong, and use my strength as little, as it was possible for me to do.

There was a man of considerable weight in Aleppo, named 184Sidi Ali Taraboloussi, who was a great friend of Dr Russel, our physician, through whom I became acquainted with him. He was an intimate friend and acquaintance of the cadi of Medina, and had given me a letter to him, recommending me, in a very particular manner, to his protection and services. I inquired about this person, and was told he was in town, directing the distribution of the corn to be sent to his capital. Upon my inquiry, the news were carried to him as soon almost as his name was uttered; on which, being desirous of knowing what sort of man I was, about eight o’clock in the evening he sent me a message, and, immediately after, I received a visit from him.

I was putting my telescopes and time-keeper in order, and had forbid admittance to any one; but this was so holy and so dignified a person, that all doors were open to him. He observed me working about the great telescope and quadrant in my shirt, for it was hot beyond conception upon the smallest exertion. Without making any apology for the intrusion at all, he broke out into exclamation, how lucky he was! and, without regarding me, he went from telescope to clock, from clock to quadrant, and from that to the thermometer, crying, Ah tibe, ah tibe! This is fine, this is fine! He scarcely looked upon me, or seemed to think I was worth his attention, but touched every thing so carefully, and handled so properly the brass cover of the alidade, which inclosed the horse-hair with the plummet, that he seemed to be a man more than ordinarily versed in the use of astronomical instruments. In short, not to repeat useless matter to the reader, I found he had studied at Constantinople, understood the principles of geometry very tolerably, was master of Euclid so far as it regarded plain trigonometry; the demonstrations of which he rattled off so rapidly, that it was impossible to follow, or to understand him. He knew nothing of spherics, and all his astronomy resolved itself at last into maxims of judicial astrology, first and second houses of the planets and ascendancies, very much in the style of common almanacks.

He desired that my door might be open to him at all times, especially when I made observations; he also knew perfectly the division of our clocks, and begged he might count time for me. All this was easily granted, and I had from him, what was most useful, a history of the situation of the government of the place, by which I learned, that the two young men (the governors) were slaves of the Sherriffe of Mecca; that it was impossible for any one, the most intimate with them, to tell which of the two was most base or profligate; that they would have robbed us all of the last farthing, if they had not been restrained by fear; and that there was a foreigner, or a frank, very lately going to India, who had disappeared, but, as he believed, had been privately put to death in prison, for he had never after been heard of.

Though I cannot say I relished this account, yet I put on the very best face possible, “Here, in a garrison town, said I, with very worthless soldiers, they might do what they pleased with six or seven strangers, but I do not fear them; I now tell them, and the people of Yambo, all and each of them, they had better be in their bed sick of the plague, than touch a hair of my dog, if I had one.” “And so, says he they know, therefore rest and rejoice, and stay as long with us as you can.” “As short time as possible, said I, Sidi Mahomet; although I do not fear wicked people, I don’t love them so much as to stay long with them.”

He then asked me a favour, that I would allow my Rais to carry a quantity of wheat for him to Jidda; which I willingly permitted, upon condition, that he would order but one man to go along with it; on which he declared solemnly, that none but one should go, and that I might throw him even into the sea, if he behaved improperly. However, afterwards he sent three; and one who deserved often to be thrown into the sea, as he had permitted. “Now friend, said I, I have done every thing that you have desired, though favours should have begun with you upon your own principle, as I am the stranger. Now, what I have to ask you is this,—Do you know the Shekh of Beder Hunein? Know him! says he, I am married to his sister, a daughter of Harb; he is of the tribe of Harb.” “Harb be it then (said I) your trouble will be the less; then you are to send a camel to your brother-in-law, who will procure me the largest, and most perfect plant possible of the Balsam of Mecca. He is not to break the stem, nor even the branches, but to pack it entire, with fruit and flower, if possible, and wrap it in a mat.” He looked cunning, shrugged up his shoulders, drew up his mouth, and putting his finger to his nose, said, “Enough, I know all about this, you shall find what sort of a man I am, I am no fool, as you shall see.”

I received this the third day at dinner, but the flower (if there had been any) was rubbed off. The fruit was in several stages, and in great perfection. The drawing, and description from this 185plant, will, I hope, for ever obviate all difficulty about its history. He sent me, likewise, a quart bottle of the pure balsam, as it had flowed that year from the tree, with which I have verified what the old botanists in their writings have said of it, in its several stages. He told me also the circumstances I have related in my description of the balsam, as to the gathering and preparing of the several kinds of it, and a curious anecdote as to its origin. He said the plant was no part of the creation of God in the six days, but that, in the last of three very bloody battles, which Mahomet fought with the noble Arabs of Harb, and his kinsmen the Beni Koreish, then Pagans at Beder Hunein, that Mahomet prayed to God, and a grove of balsam-trees grew up from the blood of the slain upon the field of battle; and, that with the balsam that flowed from them he touched the wounds even of those that were dead, and all those predestined to be good Mussulmen afterwards, immediately came to life. “I hope, said I, friend, that the other things you told me of it, are fully as true as this, for they will otherwise laugh at me in England.” “No, no, says he, not half so true, nor a quarter so true, there is nothing in the world so certain as this.” But his looks, and his laughing very heartily, shewed me plainly he knew better, as indeed most of them do.

In the evening, before we departed, about nine o’clock, I had an unexpected visit from the youngest of the two Agas; who, after many pretended complaints of sickness, and injunctions of secrecy, at last modestly requested me to give him some slow poison, that might kill his brother, without suspicion, and after some time should elapse. I told him, such proposals were not to be made to a man like me; that all the gold, and all the silver in the world, would not engage me to poison the poorest vagrant in the street, supposing it never was to be suspected, or known but to my own heart. All he said, was, “Then your manners are not the same as ours.”—I answered, dryly, “Mine, I thank God, are not,” and so we parted.

Yambo, or at least the present town of that name, I found, by many observations of the sun and stars, to be in latitude 24° 3´ 35´´ north, and in long. 38° 16´ 3´´ east from the meridian of Greenwich. The barometer, at its highest, on the 23d of April, was 27° 8´, and, the lowest on the 27th, was 26° 11´. The thermometer, on the 24th of April, at two o’clock in the afternoon, stood at 91°, and the lowest was 66° in the morning of the 26th of same month. Yambo is reputed very unwholesome, but there were no epidemical diseases when I was there.

The many delays of loading the wheat, the desire of doubling the quantity I had permitted, in which both the Rais and my friend the cadi conspired for their mutual interest, detained me at Yambo all the 27th of April, very much against my inclination. For I was not a little uneasy at thinking among what banditti I lived, whose daily wish was to rob and murder me, from which they were restrained by fear only; and this, a fit of drunkenness, or a piece of bad news, such as a report of Ali Bey’s death, might remove in a moment. Indeed we were allowed to want nothing. A sheep, some bad beer, and some very good wheat-bread, were delivered to us every day from the Aga, which, with dates and honey, and a variety of presents from those that I attended as a physician, made us pass our time comfortably enough; we went frequently in the boats to fish at sea, and, as I had brought with me three fizgigs of different sizes, with the proper lines, I seldom returned without killing four or five dolphins. The sport with the line was likewise excellent. We caught a number of beautiful fish from the very house where we lodged, and some few good ones. We had vinegar in plenty at Yambo; onions, and several other greens, from Raddua; and, being all cooks, we lived well.

On the 28th of April, in the morning, I sailed with a cargo of wheat that did not belong to me, and three passengers, instead of one, for whom only I had undertaken. The wind was fair, and I saw one advantage of allowing the Rais to load, was, that he was determined to carry sail to make amends for the delay. There was a tumbling, disagreeable swell, and the wind seemed dying away. One of our passengers was very sick. At his request we anchored at Djar, a round small port, whose entrance is at the north-east. It is about three fathoms deep throughout, unless just upon the south side, and perfectly sheltered from every wind. We saw here, for the first time, several plants of rack tree, growing considerably within the sea-mark, in some places with two feet of water upon the trunk. I found the latitude of Djar to be 23° 36´ 9´´ north. The mountains of Beder Hunein were S. S. W. of us.

The 29th, at five o’clock in the morning, we sailed from Djar. At eight, we passed a small cape called 186Ras el Himma; and the wind turning still more fresh, we passed a kind of harbour called Maibeed, where there is an anchoring place named El Horma. The sun was in the meridian when we passed this; and I found, by observation, El Horma was in lat. 23° 0´ 30´´ north. At ten we passed a mountain on land called Soub; at two, the small port of Muftura, under a mountain whose name is Hajoub; at half past four we came to an anchor at a place called Harar. The wind had been contrary all the night, being south-east, and rather fresh; we thought, too, we perceived a current setting strongly to the westward.

On the 30th we sailed at eight in the morning, but the wind was unfavourable, and we made little way. We were surrounded with a great many sharks, some of which seemed to be large. Though I had no line but upon the small fizgigs for dolphins, I could not refrain from attempting one of the largest, for they were so bold, that some of them, we thought, intended to leap on board. I struck one of the most forward of them, just at the joining of the neck; but as we were not practised enough in laying our line, so as to run out without hitching, he leaped above two feet out of the water, then plunged down with prodigious violence, and our line taking hold of something standing in the way, the cord snapped asunder, and away went the shark. All the others disappeared in an instant; but the Rais said, as soon as they smelled the blood, they would not leave the wounded one, till they had torn him to pieces. I was truly sorry for the loss of my tackle, as the two others were really like harpoons, and not so manageable. But the Rais, whom I had studied to keep in very good humour, and had befriended in every thing, was an old harpooner in the Indian Ocean, and he pulled out from his hold a compleat apparatus. He not only had a small harpoon like my first, but better constructed. He had, likewise, several hooks with long chains and lines, and a wheel with a long hair line to it, like a small windlass, to which he equally fixed the line of the harpoon, and those of the hooks. This was a compliment he saw I took very kindly, and did not doubt it would be rewarded in the proper time.

The wind freshening and turning fairer, at noon we brought to, within sight of Rabac, and at one o’clock anchored there. Rabac is a small port in lat. 22° 35´ 30´´ north. The entry is E. N. E. and is about a quarter of a mile broad. The port extends itself to the east, and is about two miles long. The mountains are about three leagues to the north, and the town of Rabac about four miles north by east from the entrance to the harbour. We remained all day, the first of May, in the port, making a drawing of the harbour. The night of our anchoring there, the Emir Hadje of the pilgrims from Mecca encamped about three miles off. We heard his evening gun.

The passengers that had been sick, now insisted upon going to see the Hadje; but as I knew the consequence would be, that a number of fanatic wild people would be down upon us, I told him plainly, if he went from the boat, he should not again be received; and that we would haul out of the port, and anchor in the offing; this kept him with us. But all next day he was in very bad humour, repeating frequently, to himself, that he deserved all this for embarking with infidels.

The people came down to us from Rabac with water melons, and skins full of water. All ships may be supplied here plentifully from wells near the town; the water is not bad.

The country is level, and seemingly uncultivated, but has not so desert a look as about Yambo. I should suspect by its appearance, and the freshness of its water, that it rained at times in the mountains here, for we were now considerably within the tropic, which passes very near Ras el Himma, whereas Rabac is half a degree to the southward.

On the 2d, at five o’clock in the morning, we sailed from Rabac, with a very little wind, scarcely making two knots an hour.

At half past nine, Deneb bore east and by south from us. This place is known by a few palm-trees. The port is small, and very indifferent, at least for six months of the year, because it lies open to the south, and there is a prodigious swell here.

At one o’clock we passed an island called Hammel, about a mile off; at the same time, another island, El Memisk, bore east of us, about three miles, where there is good anchorage.

At three and three quarters, we passed an island called Gawad, a mile and a quarter south-east of us. The main bore likewise south-east, distant something more than a league. We here changed our course from south to W. S. W. and at four o’clock came to an anchor at the small island of Lajack.

The 3d, we sailed at half past four in the morning, our course W. S. W. but it fell calm; after having made about a league, we found ourselves off Ras Hateba, or the Woody Cape, which bore due east of us. After doubling the cape, the wind freshening, at four o’clock in the afternoon we anchored in the port of Jidda, close upon the key, where the officers of the custom-house immediately took possession of our baggage.

Arab Shekh; Tribe Beni Koreish.

Heath Sc:

London Publish’d Decr. 1st. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

CHAP. XI.

Occurrences at Jidda—Visit of the Vizir—Alarm of the Factory—Great Civility of the English trading from India—Polygamy—Opinion of Dr Arbuthnot ill-founded—Contrary to Reason and Experience—Leave Jidda.

The port of Jidda is a very extensive one, consisting of numberless shoals, small islands, and sunken rocks, with channels, however, between them, and deep water. You are very safe in Jidda harbour, whatever wind blows, as there are numberless shoals which prevent the water from ever being put into any general motion; and you may moor head and stern, with twenty anchors out if you please. But the danger of being lost, I conceive, lies in the going in and coming out of the harbour. Indeed the observation is here verified, the more dangerous the port, the abler the pilots, and no accidents ever happen.

There is a draught of the harbour of Jidda handed about among the English for many years, very inaccurately, and very ill laid down, from what authority I know not, often condemned, but never corrected; as also a pretended chart of the upper part of the Gulf, from Jidda to Mocha, full of soundings. As I was some months at Jidda, kindly entertained, and had abundance of time, Captain Thornhill, and some other of the gentlemen trading thither, wished me to make a survey of the harbour, and promised me the assistance of their officers, boats, and crews. I very willingly undertook it to oblige them. Finding afterwards, however, that one of their number, Captain Newland, had undertaken it, and that he would be hurt by my interfering, as he was in some manner advanced in the work, I gave up all further thoughts of the plan. He was a man of real ingenuity and capacity, as well as very humane, well behaved, and one to whom I had been indebted for every sort of attention.

God forgive those who have taken upon them, very lately, to ingraft a number of new soundings upon that miserable bundle of errors, that Chart of the upper part of the Gulf from Jidda to Mocha, which has been tossed about the Red Sea these twenty years and upwards. One of these, since my return to Europe, has been sent to me new dressed like a bride, with all its original and mortal sins upon its head. I would beg leave to be understood, that there is not in the world a man more averse than I am to give offence even to a child. It is not in the spirit of criticism I speak this. In any other case, I would not have made any observations at all. But, where the lives and properties of so many are at stake yearly, it is a species of treason to conceal one’s sentiments, if the publishing of them can any way contribute to safety, whatever offence it may give to unreasonable individuals.

Of all the vessels in Jidda, two only had their log lines properly divided, and yet all were so fond of their supposed accuracy, as to aver they had kept their course within five leagues, between India and Babelmandeb. Yet they had made no estimation of the currents without the 187Babs, nor the different very strong ones soon after passing Socotra; their half-minute glasses upon a medium ran 57´´; they had made no observation on the tides or currents in the Red Sea, either in the channel or in the inward passage; yet there is delineated in this map a course of Captain Newland’s, which he kept in the middle of the channel, full of sharp angles and short stretches; you would think every yard was measured and sounded.

To the spurious catalogue of soundings found in the old chart above mentioned, there is added a double proportion of new, from what authority is not known; so that from Mocha, to lat. 17° you have as it were soundings every mile, or even less. No one can cast his eyes on the upper part of the map, but must think the Red Sea one of the most frequented places in the world. Yet I will aver, without fear of being contradicted, that it is a characteristic of the Red Sea, scarce to have soundings in any part of the channel, and often on both sides, whilst ashore soundings are hardly found a boat-length from the main. To this I will add, that there is scarce one island upon which I ever was, where the boltsprit was not over the land, while there were no soundings by a line heaved over the stern. I must then protect against making these old most erroneous maps a foundation for new ones, as they can be of no use, but must be of detriment. Many good seamen of knowledge and enterprise have been in that sea, within these few years. Let them say, candidly, what were their instruments, what their difficulties were, where they had doubts, where they succeeded, and where they were disappointed? Were these acknowledged by one, they would be speedily taken up by others, and rectified by the help of mathematicians and good observers on shore.

Mr Niebuhr has contributed much, but we should reform the map on both sides; though there is a great deal done, yet much remains still to do. I hope that my friend Mr Dalrymple, when he can afford time, will give us a foundation more proper to build upon, than that old rotten one, however changed in form, and supposed to have been improved, if he really has a number of observations by him that can be relied on, otherwise it is but continuing the delusion and the danger.

If ships of war afterwards, that keep the channel, shall come, manned with stout and able seamen, and expert young officers, provided with lines, glasses, good compasses, and a number of boats, then we shall know these soundings, at least in part. And then also we shall know the truth of what I now advance, viz. that ships like those employed hitherto in trading from India (manned and provided as the best of them are) were incapable, amidst unknown tides and currents, and going before a monsoon, whether southern or northern, of knowing within three leagues where any one of them had ever dropt his sounding line, unless he was close on board some island, shoal, remarkable point, or in a harbour.

Till that time, I would advise every man sailing in the Red Sea, especially in the channel, where the pilots know no more than he, to trust to his own hands for safety in the minute of danger, to heave the lead at least every hour, keep a good look-out, and shorten sail in a fresh wind, or in the night-time, and to consider all maps of the channel of the Arabian Gulf, yet made, as matters of mere curiosity, and not fit to trust a man’s life to. Any captain in the India service, who had run over from Jidda into the mouth of the river Frat, and the neighbouring port Kilfit, which might every year be done for L. 10 Sterling extra expences, would do more meritorious service to the navigation of that sea, than all the soundings that were ever yet made from Jibbel Zekir to the island of Sheduan.

From Yambo to Jidda I had slept little, making my memoranda as full upon the spot as possible. I had, besides, an aguish disorder, which very much troubled me, and in dress and cleanliness was so like a Galiongy (or Turkish seaman) that the 188Emir Bahar was astonished at hearing my servants say I was an Englishman, at the time they carried away all my baggage and instruments to the custom-house. He sent his servant, however, with me to the Bengal-house, who promised me, in broken English, all the way, a very magnificent reception from my countrymen. Upon his naming all the captains for my choice, I desired to be carried to a Scotchman, a relation of my own, who was then accidentally leaning over the rail of the stair-case, leading up to his apartment. I saluted him by his name; he fell into a violent rage, calling me villain, thief, cheat, and renegado rascal; and declared, if I offered to proceed a step further, he would throw me over stairs. I went away without reply, his curses and abuse followed me long afterwards. The servant, my conductor, screwed his mouth, and shrugged up his shoulders. “Never fear, says he, I will carry you to the best of them all.” We went up an opposite stair-case, which I thought within myself, if those are their India manners, I shall keep my name and situation to myself while I am at Jidda. I stood in no need of them, as I had credit for 1000 sequins and more, if I should want it, upon Yousef Cabil, Vizir or Governor of Jidda.

I was conducted into a large room, where Captain Thornhill was sitting, in a white callico waistcoat, a very high-pointed white cotton night-cap, with a large tumbler of water before him, seemingly very deep in thought. The Emir Bahar’s servant brought me forward by the hand, a little within the door; but I was not desirous of advancing much farther, for fear of the salutation of being thrown down stairs again. He looked very steadily, but not sternly, at me; and desired the servant to go away and shut the door. “Sir, says he, are you an Englishman?”—I bowed.—“You surely are sick, you should be in your bed, have you been long sick?”—I said, “long Sir,” and bowed.—“Are you wanting a passage to India?”—I again bowed.—“Well, says he, you look to be a man in distress; if you have a secret, I shall respect it till you please to tell it me, but if you want a passage to India, apply to no one but Thornhill of the Bengal merchant. Perhaps you are afraid of somebody, if so, ask for Mr Greig, my lieutenant, he will carry you on board my ship directly, where you will be safe.”—“Sir, said I, I hope you will find me an honest man, I have no enemy that I know, either in Jidda or elsewhere, nor do I owe any man any thing.”—“I am sure, says he, I am doing wrong, in keeping a poor man standing, who ought to be in his bed. Here! Philip! Philip!”—Philip appeared. “Boy,” says he, in Portuguese, which, as I imagine, he supposed I did not understand, “here is a poor Englishman, that should be either in his bed or his grave; carry him to the cook, tell him to give him as much broth and mutton as he can eat; the fellow seems to have been starved, but I would rather have the feeding of ten to India, than the burying of one at Jidda.”

Philip de la Cruz was the son of a Portuguese lady, whom Captain Thornhill had married; a boy of great talents, and excellent disposition, who carried me with great willingness to the cook. I made as aukward a bow as I could to Capt. Thornhill, and said, “God will return this to your honour some day.” Philip carried me into a court-yard, where they used to expose the samples of their India goods in large bales. It had a portico along the left-hand side of it, which seemed designed for a stable. To this place I was introduced, and thither the cook brought me my dinner. Several of the English from the vessels, lascars, and others, came in to look at me; and I heard it, in general, agreed among them, that I was a very thief-like fellow, and certainly a Turk, and d——n them if they should like to fall into my hands.

I fell fast asleep upon the mat, while Philip was ordering me another apartment. In the mean time, some of my people had followed the baggage to the Custom-house, and some of them staid on board the boat, to prevent the pilfering of what was left. The keys had remained with me, and the Vizir had gone to sleep, as is usual, about mid-day. As soon as he awaked, being greedy of his prey, he fell immediately to my baggage, wondering that such a quantity of it, and that boxes in such a curious form, should belong to a mean man like me; he was therefore full of hopes, that a fine opportunity for pillage was now at hand. He asked for the keys of the trunks, my servant said, they were with me, but he would go instantly and bring them. That, however, was too long to stay; no delay could possibly be granted. Accustomed to pilfer, they did not force the locks, but, very artist like, took off the hinges at the back, and in that manner opened the lids, without opening the locks.

The first thing that presented itself to the Vizir’s sight, was the firman of the Grand Signior, magnificently written and titled, and the inscription powdered with gold dust, and wrapped in green taffeta. After this was a white sattin bag, addressed to the Khan of Tartary, with which Mr Peyssonel, French consul of Smyrna, had favoured me, and which I had not delivered, as the Khan was then prisoner at Rhodes. The next was a green and gold silk bag, with letters directed to the Sherriffe of Mecca; and then came a plain crimson-sattin bag, with letters addressed to Metical Aga, sword bearer (or Seiictar, as it is called) of the Sherriffe, or his great minister and favourite. He then found a letter from Ali Bey to himself, written with all the superiority of a Prince to a slave.

In this letter the Bey told him plainly, that he heard the governments of Jidda, Mecca, and other States of the Sherriffe, were disorderly, and that merchants, coming about their lawful business, were plundered, terrified, and detained. He therefore intimated to him, that if any such thing happened to me, he should not write or complain, but he would send and punish the affront at the very gates of Mecca. This was very unpleasant language to the Vizir, because it was now publicly known, that Mahomet Bey Abou Dahab was preparing next year to march against Mecca, for some offence the Bey had taken at the Sherriffe. There was also another letter to him from Ibrahim Sikakeen, chief of the merchants at Cairo, ordering him to furnish me with a thousand sequins for my present use, and, if more were needed, to take my bill.

These contents of the trunk were so unexpected, that Cabil the Vizir thought he had gone too far, and called my servant in a violent hurry, upbraiding him, for not telling who I was. The servant defended himself, by saying, that neither he, nor his people about him, would so much as regard a word that he spoke; and the cadi of Medina’s principal servant, who had come with the wheat, told the Vizir plainly to his face, that he had given him warning enough, if his pride would have suffered him to hear it.

All was now wrong, my servant was ordered to nail up the hinges, but he declared it would be the last action of his life; that nobody opened baggage that way, but with intention of stealing, when the keys could be got; and, as there were many rich things in the trunk, intended as presents to the Sherriffe, and Metical Aga, which might have been taken out, by the hinges being forced off before he came, he washed his hands of the whole procedure, but knew his master would complain, and loudly too, and would be heard both at Cairo and Jidda. The Vizir took his resolution in a moment like a man. He nailed up the baggage, ordered his horse to be brought, and attended by a number of naked blackguards (whom they call soldiers) he came down to the Bengal house, on which the whole factory took alarm.

About twenty-six years before, the English traders from India to Jidda, fourteen in number, were all murdered, sitting at dinner, by a mutiny of these wild people. The house has, ever since, lain in ruins, having been pulled down and forbidden to be rebuilt.

Great inquiry was made after the English nobleman, whom nobody had seen; but it was said that one of his servants was there in the Bengal house; I was sitting drinking coffee on the mat, when the Vizir’s horse came, and the whole court was filled. One of the clerks of the custom-house asked me where my master was? I said, “In heaven.” The Emir Bahar’s servant now brought forward the Vizir to me, who had not dismounted himself. He repeated the same question, where my master was?—I told him, I did not know the purport of his question, that I was the person to whom the baggage belonged, which he had taken to the custom-house, and that it was in my favour the Grand Signior and Bey had written. He seemed very much surprised, and asked me how I could appear in such a dress?—“You cannot ask that seriously, said I; I believe no prudent man would dress better, considering the voyage I have made. But, besides, you did not leave it in my power, as every article, but what I have on me, has been these four hours at the custom-house, waiting your pleasure.”

We then went all up to our kind landlord, Captain Thornhill, to whom I made my excuse, on account of the ill usage I had first met with from my own relation. He laughed very heartily at the narrative, and from that time we lived in the greatest friendship and confidence. All was made up, even with Yousef Cabil; and all heads were employed to get the strongest letters possible to the Naybe of Masuah, the king of Abyssinia, Michael Suhul the minister, and the king of Sennaar.

Metical Aga, great friend and protector of the English at Jidda, and in effect, we may say, sold to them, for the great presents and profits he received, was himself originally an Abyssinian slave, was the man of confidence, and directed the sale of the king’s, and Michael’s gold, ivory, civet, and such precious commodities, that are paid to them in kind; he furnished Michael, like wise, with returns in fire-arms; and this had enabled Michael to subdue Abyssinia, murder the king his master, and seat another on his throne.

On the other hand, the Naybe of Masuah, whose island belonged to the Grand Signior, and was an appendage of the government of the Basha of Jidda, had endeavoured to withdraw himself from his allegiance, and set up for independency. He paid no tribute, nor could the Basha, who had no troops, force him, as he was on the Abyssinian side of the Red Sea. Metical Aga, however, and the Basha, at last agreed; the latter ceded to the former the island and territory of Masuah, for a fixed sum annually; and Metical Aga appointed Michael, governor of Tigré, receiver of his rents. The Naybe no sooner found that he was to account to Michael, than he was glad to pay his tribute, and give presents to the bargain; for Tigré was the province from which he drew his sustenance, and Michael could have over-run his whole territory in eight days, which once, as we shall see hereafter, belonged to Abyssinia. Metical’s power being then universally acknowledged and known, the next thing was to get him to make use of it in my favour.

We knew of how little avail the ordinary futile recommendations of letters were. We were veteran travellers, and knew the style of the East too well, to be duped by letters of mere civility. There is no people on the earth more perfectly polite in their correspondence with one another, than are those of the East; but their civility means little more than the same sort of expressions do in Europe, to shew you that the writer is a well-bred man. But this would by no means do in a journey so long, so dangerous, and so serious as mine.

We, therefore, set about procuring effective letters, letters of business and engagement, between man and man; and we all endeavoured to make Metical Aga a very good man, but no great head-piece, comprehend this perfectly. My letters from Ali Bey opened the affair to him, and first commanded his attention. A very handsome present of pistols, which I brought him, inclined him in my favour, because, as I was bearer of letters from his superior, I might have declined bestowing any present upon him.

The English gentlemen joined their influence, powerful enough, to have accomplished a much greater end, as everyone of these have separate friends for their own affairs, and all of them were desirous to befriend me. Added to these was a friend of mine, whom I had known at Aleppo, Ali Zimzimiah, i. e. ‘keeper of the holy well at Mecca,’ a post of great dignity and honour. This man was a mathematician, and an astronomer, according to their degree of knowledge in that science.

All the letters were written in a style such as I could have desired, but this did not suffice in the mind of a very friendly and worthy man, who had taken an attachment to me since my first arrival. This was Captain Thomas Price, of the Lion of Bombay. He first proposed to Metical Aga, to send a man of his own with me, together with the letters, and I do firmly believe, under Providence, it was to this last measure I owed my life. With this Captain Thornhill heartily concurred, and an Abyssinian, called Mahomet Gibberti, was appointed to go with particular letters besides those I carried myself, and to be an eye-witness of my reception there.

There was some time necessary for this man to make ready, and a considerable part of the Arabian Gulf still remained for me to explore. I prepared, therefore, to set out from Jidda, after having made a considerable stay in it.

Of all the new things I yet had seen, what most astonished me was the manner in which trade was carried on at this place. Nine ships were there from India; some of them worth, I suppose, L. 200,000. One merchant, a Turk, living at Mecca, thirty hours journey off, where no Christian dares go, whilst the whole Continent is open to the Turk for escape, offers to purchase the cargoes of four out of nine of these ships himself; another, of the same cast, comes and says, he will buy none, unless he has them all. The samples are shewn, and the cargoes of the whole nine ships are carried into the wildest part of Arabia, by men with whom one would not wish to trust himself alone in the field. This is not all, two India brokers come into the room to settle the price. One on the part of the India captain, the other on that of the buyer the Turk. They are neither Mahometans nor Christians, but have credit with both. They sit down on the carpet, and take an India shawl, which they carry on their shoulder, like a napkin, and spread it over their hands. They talk, in the mean time, indifferent conversation, of the arrival of ships from India, or of the news of the day, as if they were employed in no serious business whatever. After about twenty minutes spent in handling each others fingers below the shawl, the bargain is concluded, say for nine ships, without one word ever having been spoken on the subject, or pen or ink used in any shape whatever. There never was one instance of a dispute happening in these sales.

But this is not yet all, the money is to be paid. A private Moor, who has nothing to support him but his character, becomes responsible for the payment of these cargoes; his name was Ibrahim Saraf when I was there, i. e. Ibrahim the Broker. This man delivers a number of coarse hempen bags, full of what is supposed to be money. He marks the contents upon the bag, and puts his seal upon the string that ties the mouth of it. This is received for what is marked upon it, without any one ever having opened one or the bags, and, in India, it is current for the value marked upon it, as long as the bag lasts.

Jidda is very unwholesome, as is, indeed, all the east coast of the Red Sea. Immediately without the gate of that town, to the eastward, is a desert plain filled with the huts of the Bedowèens, or country Arabs, built of long bundles of spartum, or bent grass, put together like fascines. These Bedowèens supply Jidda with milk and butter. There is no stirring out of town, even for a walk, unless for about half a mile, in the south side by the sea, where there is a number of stinking pools of stagnant water, which contributes to make the town very unwholesome.

Jidda, besides being in the most unwholesome part of Arabia, is, at the same time, in the most barren and desert situation. This, and many other inconveniencies, under which it labours, would, probably, have occasioned its being abandoned altogether, were it not for its vicinity to Mecca, and the great and sudden influx of wealth from the India trade, which, once a-year, arrives in this part, but does not continue, passing on, as through a turnpike, to Mecca; whence it is dispersed all over the east. Very little advantage however accrues to Jidda. The customs are all immediately sent to a needy sovereign, and a hungry set of relations, dependents and ministers at Mecca. The gold is returned in bags and boxes, and passes on as rapidly to the ships as the goods do to the market, and leaves as little profit behind. In the mean time, provisions rise to a prodigious price, and this falls upon the townsmen, while all the profit of the traffic is in the hands of strangers; most of whom, after the market is over, (which does not last six weeks) retire to Yemen, and other neighbouring countries, which abound in every sort of provision.

Upon this is founded the observation, that of all Mahometan countries none are so monogam as those of Jidda, and no where are there so many unmarried women, altho’ this is the country of their prophet, and the permission of marrying four wives was allowed in this district in the first instance, and afterwards communicated to all the tribes.

But Mahomet, in his permission of plurality of wives, seems constantly to have been on his guard, against suffering that, which was intended for the welfare of his people, from operating in a different manner. He did not permit a man to marry two, three, or four wives, unless he could maintain them. He was interested for the rights and rank of these women; and the man so marrying was obliged to shew before the Cadi, or some equivalent officer, or judge, that it was in his power to support them, according to their birth. It was not so with concubines, with women who were purchased, or who were taken in war. Every man enjoyed these at his pleasure, and their peril, that is, whether he was able to maintain them or not.

From this great scarcity of provisions, which is the result of an extraordinary concourse to a place almost destitute of the necessaries of life, few inhabitants of Jidda can avail themselves of the privilege granted him by Mahomet. He therefore cannot marry more than one wife, because he cannot maintain more, and from this cause arises the want of people, and the large number of unmarried women.

When in Arabia Felix, where every sort of provision is exceedingly cheap, where the fruits of the ground, the general food for man, are produced spontaneously, the supporting of a number of wives costs no more than so many slaves or servants; their food is the same, and a blue cotton shirt, a habit common to them all, is not more chargeable for the one than the other. The consequence is, that celibacy in women is prevented, and the number of people is increased in a fourfold ratio by polygamy, to what it is in those that are monogamous.

I know there are authors fond of system, enemies to free inquiry, and blinded by prejudice, who contend that polygamy, without distinction of circumstances, is detrimental to the population of a country. The learned Dr Arbuthnot, in a paper addressed to the Royal Society189, has maintained this strange doctrine, in a still stranger manner. He lays it down, as his first position, that in semine masculino of our first parent Adam, there was impressed an original necessity of procreating, ever after, an equal number of males and females. The manner he proves this, has received great incense from the vulgar, as containing an unanswerable argument. He shews, by the casting of three dice, that the chances are almost infinite, that an equal number of males and females should not be born in any year; and he pretends to prove, that every year in twenty, as taken from the bills of mortality, the same number of males and females have constantly been produced, or at least a greater proportion of men than of women, to make up for the havock occasioned by war, murder, drunkenness, and all species of violence to which women are not subject.

I need not say, that this, at least, sufficiently shews the weakness of the argument. For, if the equal proportion had been in semine masculino of our first parent, the consequence must have been, that male and female would have been invariably born, from the creation to the end of all things. And it is a supposition very unworthy of the wisdom of God, that, at the creation of man, he could make an allowance for any deviation that was to happen, from crimes, against the commission of which his positive precepts ran. Weak as this is, it is not the weakest part of this artificial argument, which, like the web of a spider too finely woven, whatever part you touch it on, the whole falls to pieces.

After taking it for granted, that he has proved the equality of the two sexes in number, from the bills of mortality in London, he next supposes, as a consequence, that all the world is in the same predicament; that is, that an equal number of males and females is produced every where. Why Dr Arbuthnot, an eminent physician (which surely implies an informed naturalist) should imagine that this inference would hold, is what I am not able to account for. He should know, let us say, in the countries of the east, that fruits, flowers, trees, birds, fish, every blade of grass, is commonly different, and that man, in his appearance, diet, exercise, pleasure, government, and religion, is as widely different; why he should found the issue of an Asiatic, however, upon the bills of mortality in London, is to the full as absurd as to assert, that they do not wear either beard or whiskers in Syria, because that is not the case in London.

I am well aware, that it maybe urged by those who permit themselves to say every thing, because they are not at pains to consider any thing, that the course of my argument will lead to a defence of polygamy in general, the supposed doctrine of the Thelypthora190. Such reflections as these, unless introduced for merriment, are below my animadversion; all I shall say on that topic is, that they who find encouragement to polygamy in Mr Madan’s book, the Thelypthora, have read it with a much more acute perception than perhaps I have done; and I shall be very much mistaken, if polygamy increases in England upon the principles laid down in the Thelypthora.

England, says Dr Arbuthnot, enjoys an equality of both sexes, and, if it is not so, the inequality is so imperceptible, that no inconvenience has yet followed. What we have now to inquire is, Whether other nations, or the majority of them, are in the same situation? For, if we are to decide by this, and if we should happen to find, that, in other countries, there are invariably born three women to one man, the conclusion, in regard to that country, must be, that three women to one man was the proportion of one sex to the other, impressed at the creation in semine of our first parent.

I confess I am not fond of meddling with the globe before the deluge. But as learned men seem inclined to think that Ararat and Euphrates are the mountain and river of antediluvian times, and that Mesopotamia, or Diarbekir, is the ancient situation of the terrestrial paradise, I cannot give Dr Arbuthnot’s argument fairer play191, than to transport myself thither; and, in the same spot where the necessity was imposed of male and female being produced in equal numbers, inquire how that case stands now. The pretence that climates and times may have changed, the proportion cannot be admitted, since it has been taken for granted, that it exists in the bills of mortality in London, and governs them to this day; and, since it was founded on necessity, which must be eternal.

Now, from a diligent inquiry into the south, and scripture-part of Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, from Mousul (or Nineveh) to Aleppo and Antioch, I find the proportion to be fully two women born to one man. There is indeed a fraction over, but not a considerable one. From Latikea, Laodicea ad mare, down the coast of Syria to Sidon, the number is very nearly three, or two and three-fourths to one man. Through the Holy Land, the country called Horan, in the Isthmus of Suez, and the parts of the Delta, unfrequented by strangers, it is something less than three. But, from Suez to the straits of Babelmandeb, which contains the three Arabias, the portion is fully four women to one man, which, I have reason to believe, holds as far as the Line, and 30° beyond it.

The Imam of Sana191 was not an old man when I was in Arabia Felix in 1769; but he had 88 children then alive, of whom 14 only were sons.—The priest of the Nile had 70 and odd children; of whom, as I remember, above 50 were daughters.

It may be objected, that Dr Arbuthnot, in quoting the bills of mortality for twenty years, gave most unexceptionable grounds for his opinion, and that my single assertion of what happens in a foreign country, without further foundation, cannot be admitted as equivalent testimony; and I am ready to admit this objection, as bills of mortality there are none in any of these countries. I shall therefore say in what manner I attained the knowledge which I have just mentioned. Whenever I went into a town, village, or inhabited place, dwelt long in a mountain, or travelled journies with any set of people, I always made it my business to inquire how many children they had, or their fathers, their next neighbours, or acquaintance. This not being a captious question, or what any one would scruple to answer, there was no interest to deceive; and if it had been possible, that two or three had been so wrong-headed among the whole, it would have been of little consequence.

I then asked my landlord at Sidon, (suppose him a weaver,) how many children he has had? He tells me how many sons, and how many daughters. The next I ask is a smith, a tailor, a silk-gatherer, the Cadi of the place, a cowherd, a hunter, a fisher, in short every man that is not a stranger, from whom I can get proper information. I say, therefore, that a medium of both sexes arising from three or four hundred families indiscriminately taken, shall be the proportion in which one differs from the other; and this, I am confident, will give the result to be three women to one man in 50° out of the 90° under every meridian of the globe.

Without giving Mahomet all the credit for abilities that some have done, we may surely suppose him to know what happened in his own family, where he must have seen this great disproportion of four women born to one man; and from the obvious consequences, we are not to wonder that one of his first cares, when a legislator, was to rectify it, as it struck at the very root of his empire, power, and religion. With this view, he enacted, or rather revived, the law which gave liberty to every individual to marry four wives, each of whom was to be equal in rank and honour, without any preference but what the predilection of the husband gave her. By this he secured civil rights to each woman, and procured a means of doing away that reproach, of dying without issue, to which the minds of the whole sex have always been sensible, whatever their religion was, or from whatever part of the world they came.

Many, who are not conversant with Arabian history, have imagined, that this permission of a plurality of wives was given in favour of men, and have taxed one of the most political, necessary measures, of that legislator, arising from motives merely civil, with a tendency to encourage lewdness, from which it was very far distant. But, if they had considered that the Mahometan law allows divorce without any cause assigned, and that, every day at the pleasure of the man; besides, that it permits him as many concubines as he can maintain, buy with money, take in war, or gain by the ordinary means of address and solicitations,—they will think such a man was before sufficiently provided, and that there was not the least reason for allowing him to marry four wives at a time, when he was already at liberty to marry a new one every day.

Dr Arbuthnot lays it down as a self-evident position, that four women will have more children by four men, than the same four women would have by one. This assertion may very well be disputed, but still it is not in point. For the question with regard to Arabia, and to a great part of the world besides, is, Whether or not four women and one man, married, or cohabiting at discretion, shall produce more children, than four women and one man who is debarred from cohabiting with any but one of the four, the others dying unmarried without the knowledge of man? or, in other words, Which shall have most children, one man and one woman, or one man and four women? This question I think needs no discussion.

Let us now consider, if there is any further reason why England should not be brought as an example, which Arabia, or the East in general, are to follow.

Women in England are commonly capable of child-bearing at fourteen, let the other term be forty-eight, when they bear no more; thirty-four years, therefore, an English woman bears children. At the age of fourteen or fifteen they are objects of our love; they are endeared by bearing us children after that time, and none I hope will pretend, that, at forty-eight and fifty, an English woman is not an agreeable companion. Perhaps the last years, to thinking minds, are fully more agreeable than the first. We grow old together, we have a near prospect of dying together; nothing can present a more agreeable picture of social life, than monogamy in England.

The Arab, on the other hand, if she begins to bear children at eleven, seldom or never has a child after twenty. The time then of her child-bearing is nine years, and four women, taken altogether, have then the term of thirty-six. So that the English woman that bears children for thirty-four years, has only two years less than the term enjoyed by the four wives whom Mahomet has allowed; and if it be granted an English wife may bear at fifty, the terms are equal.

But there are other grievous differences. An Arabian girl, at eleven years old, by her youth and beauty, is the object of man’s desire; being an infant, however, in understanding, she is not a rational companion for him. A man marries there, say at twenty, and before he is thirty, his wife, improved as a companion, ceases to be an object of his desires, and a mother of children; so that all the best, and most vigorous of his days, are spent with a woman he cannot love, and with her he would be destined to live forty, or forty-five years, without comfort to himself by increase of family, or utility to the public.

The reasons, then, against polygamy, which subsist in England, do not by any means subsist in Arabia; and that being the case, it would be unworthy of the wisdom of God, and an unevenness in his ways, which we shall never see, to subject two nations, under such different circumstances, absolutely to the same observances.

I consider the prophecy concerning Ishmael, and his descendants the Arabs, as one of the most extraordinary that we meet with in the Old Testament. It was also one of the earliest made, and proceeded upon grounds of private reparation. Hagar had not sinned, though she had fled from Sarah with Ishmael her son into the wilderness. In that desert there were then no inhabitants, and though Ishmael’s192 succession was incompatible with God’s promise to Abraham and his son Isaac, yet neither Hagar nor he having sinned, justice required a reparation for the heritage which he had lost. God gave him that very wilderness which before was the property of no man, in which Ishmael was to erect a kingdom under the most improbable circumstances possible to be imagined. His 193hand was to be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. By his sword he was to live, and pitch his tent in the face of his brethren.

Never has prophecy been so completely fulfilled. It subsisted from the earliest ages; it was verified before the time of Moses; in the time of David and Solomon; it subsisted in the time of Alexander and that of Augustus Cæsar; it subsisted in the time of Justinian,—all very distant, unconnected periods; and I appeal to the evidence of mankind, if, without apparent support or necessity, but what it has derived from God’s promise only, it is not in full vigour at this very day. This prophecy alone, in the truth of which all sorts of religions agree, is therefore of itself a sufficient proof, without other, of the Divine authority of the scripture.

Mahomet prohibited all pork and wine; two articles which must have been, before, very little used in Arabia. Grapes, here, grow in the mountains of Yemen, but never arrive at maturity enough for wine. They bring them down for this purpose to Loheia, and there the heat of the climate turns the wine sour before they can clear it of its fæces so as to make it drinkable; and we know that, before the appearance of Mahomet, Arabia was never a wine country. As for swine, I never heard of them in the peninsula, of Arabia, (unless perhaps wild in the woods about Sana,) and it was from early times inhabited by Jews before the coming of Mahomet. The only people therefore that ate swine’s flesh must have been Christians, and they were a sect of little account. Many of these, however, do not eat pork yet, but all of them were, oppressed and despised every-where, and there was no inducement for any other people to imitate them.

Mahomet then prohibiting only what was merely neutral, or indifferent to the Arabs, indulged them in that to which he knew they were prone.

At the several conversations I had with the English merchants at Jidda, they complained grievously of the manner in which they were oppressed by the sherriffe of Mecca and his officers. The duties and fees were increased every voyage; their privileges all taken away, and a most destructive measure introduced of forcing them to give presents, which was only an inducement to oppress, that the gift might be the greater. I asked them if I should obtain from the Bey of Cairo permission for their ships to come down to Suez, whither there were merchants in India who would venture to undertake that voyage? Captain Thornhill promised, for his part, that the very season after such permission should arrive in India, he would dispatch his ship the Bengal Merchant, under command of his mate Captain Greig, to whose capacity and worth all his countrymen bore very ready testimony, and of which I myself had formed a very good opinion, from the several conversations we had together. This scheme was concerted between me and Captain Thornhill only; and tho’ it must be confessed it had the appearance of an airy one, (since it was not to be attempted, till I had returned through Abyssinia and Nubia, against which there were many thousand chances,) it was executed, notwithstanding, in the very manner in which it had been planned, as will be after stated.

The kindness and attention of my countrymen did not leave me as long as I was on shore. They all did me the honour to attend me to the water edge. If others have experienced pride and presumption, from gentlemen of the East-Indies, I was most happily exempted from even the appearance of it at Jidda. Happy it would have been for me, if I had been more neglected.

All the quay of Jidda was lined with people to see the English salute, and along with my vessel there parted, at the same time, one bound to Masuah, which carried Mahomet Abd el cader, Governor of Dahalac, over to his government. Dahalac194 is a large island, depending upon Masuah, but which has a separate firman, or commission, renewed every two years. This man was a Moor, a servant of the Naybe of Masuah, and he had been at Jidda to procure his firman from Metical Aga, while Mahomet Gibberti was to come with me, and was to bring it to the Naybe. This Abd el cader no sooner was arrived at Masuah, than, following the turn or his country for lying, he spread a report, that a great man, or prince, whom he left at Jidda, was coming speedily to Masuah; that he had brought great presents to the Sherriffe and Metical Aga; that, in return, he had received a large sum in gold from the Sherriffe’s Vizir, Yousef Cabil; besides as much as he pleased from the English, who had done nothing but feast and regale him for the several months he had been at Jidda; and that, when he departed, as this great man was now going to visit the Imam in Arabia Felix, all the English ships hoisted their colours, and fired their cannon from morning to night, for three days successively, which was two days after he had sailed, and therefore what he could not possibly have seen. The consequence of all this was, the Naybe of Masuah expected that a man with immense treasures was coming to put himself into his hands. I look therefore upon the danger I escaped there as superior to all those put together, that I have ever been exposed to: of such material and bad consequence is the most contemptible of all weapons, the tongue of a liar and a fool!

Jidda is in lat. 28° 0´ 1´´ north, and in long. 39° 16´ 45´´ east of the meridian of Greenwich. Our weather there had few changes. The general wind was north-west, or more northerly. This blowing along the direction of the Gulf brought a great deal of damp along with it; and this damp increases as the season advances. Once in twelve or fourteen days, perhaps, we had a south wind, which was always dry. The highest degree of the barometer at Jidda, on the 5th of June, wind north, was 26° 6´, and the lowest on the 18th of same month, wind north-west, was 25° 7´. The highest degree of the thermometer was 97° on the 12th of July, wind north, the lowest was 78° wind north.

CHAP. XII.

Sails from Jidda—Konfodah—Ras Heli boundary of Arabia Felix—Arrives at Loheia—Proceeds to the Straits of the Indian Ocean—Arrives there—Returns by Azab to Loheia.

It was on the 8th of July 1769 I sailed from the harbour of Jidda on board the same vessel as before, and I suffered the Rais to take a small loading for his own account, upon condition that he was to carry no passengers. The wind was fair, and we sailed through the English fleet at their anchors. As they had all honoured me with their regret at parting, and accompanied me to the shore, the Rais was surprised to see the respect paid to his little vessel as it passed under their huge sterns, every one hoisting his colours, and saluting it with eleven guns, except the ship belonging to my Scotch friend, who shewed his colours, indeed, but did not fire a gun, only standing upon deck, cried with the trumpet, “Captain —— wishes Mr Bruce a good voyage.” I stood upon deck, took my trumpet, and answered, “Mr Bruce wishes Captain —— a speedy and perfect return of his understanding;” a wish, poor man, that has not yet been accomplished, and very much to my regret, it does not appear probable that ever it will. That night having passed a cluster of shoals, called the Shoals of Safia, we anchored in a small bay, Mersa Gedan, about twelve leagues from the harbour of Jidda.

The 9th of July, we passed another small road called Goofs, and at a quarter past nine, Raghwan, east north-east two miles, and, at a quarter past ten, the small Port of Sodi, bearing east north-east, at the same distance. At one and three quarters we passed Markat, two miles distant north-east by east; and a rock called Numan, two miles distant to the south-west. After this the mountain of Somma, and, at a quarter past six, we anchored in a small unsafe harbour, called Mersa Brahim, of which we had seen a very rough and incorrect design in the hands of the gentlemen at Jidda. I have endeavoured, with that draught before me, to correct it so far that it may now be depended upon.

The 10th, we sailed, at five o’clock in the morning, with little wind, our course south and by west; I suppose we were then going something less than two knots an hour. At half after seven we passed the island Abeled, and two other small mountains that bore about a league south-west and by west of us. The wind freshened as it approached mid-day, so that at one o’clock we went full three knots an hour, being obliged to change our course according to the lying of the islands. It came to be about south south-east in the end of the day.

At a quarter after one, we passed Ras el Askar, meaning the Cape of the Soldiers, or of the Army. Here we saw some trees, and, at a considerable distance within the Main, mountains to the north-east of us. At two o’clock we passed in the middle channel, between five sandy islands, all covered with kelp, three on the east or right hand, and two on the west. They are called Ginnan el Abiad, or the White Gardens, I suppose from the green herb growing upon the white sand. At half after two, with the same wind, we passed an island bearing east from us, the Main about a league distant. At three we passed close to an island bearing south-west of us, about a mile off. It is of a moderate height, and is called Jibbel Surreine. At half past four our course was south-east and by south; we passed two islands to the south-east of us, at two miles, and a smaller, west south-west a quarter of a mile distant. From this to the Main will be about five miles, or something more. At fifty minutes after four, came up to an island which reached to Konfodah. We saw to the west, and west south-west of us, different small islands, not more than half a mile distant. We heaved the line, and had no soundings at thirty-two fathom, yet, if any where, I thought there we were to find shoal water. At five o’clock, our course being south-east and by south, we passed an island a quarter of a mile to the west of us, and afterwards a number of others in a row; and, at half past eight, we arrived at an anchoring-place, but which cannot be called a harbour, named Mersa Hadou.

The 11th, we left Mersa Hadou at four o’clock in the morning. Being calm, we made little way; our course was south south-east, which changed to a little more easterly. At six, we tacked to stand in for Konfodah harbour, which is very remarkable for a high mountain behind it, whose top is terminated by a pyramid or cone of very regular proportion. There was no wind to carry us in; we hoisted out the boat which I had bought at Jidda for my pleasure and safety, intending it to be a present to my Rais at parting, as he very well knew. At a quarter past eight, we were towed to our anchorage in the harbour of Konfodah.

Konfodah means the town of the hedge-hog195. It is a small village, consisting of about two hundred miserable houses, built with green wood, and covered with mats, made of the doom, or palm-tree; lying on a bay, or rather a shallow bason, in a desert waste or plain. Behind the town are small hillocks of white sand. Nothing grows on shore excepting kelp, but it is exceedingly beautiful, and very luxuriant; farther in, there are gardens. Fish is in perfect plenty; butter and milk in great abundance; even the desert looks fresher than other deserts, which made me imagine that rain fell sometimes here, and this the Emir told me was the case.

Although I made a draught of the port, it is not worth the publishing. For though in all probability it was once deep, safe, and convenient, yet there is nothing now but a kind of road, under shelter of a point, or ridge of land, which rounds out into the sea, and ends in a Cape, called Ras Mozeffa. Behind the town there is another small Cape, upon which there are three guns mounted, but with what intention it was not possible to guess.

The Emir Ferhan, governor of the town, was an Abyssinian slave, who invited me on shore, and we dined together on very excellent provision, dressed according to their custom. He said the country near the shore was desert, but a little within land, or where the roots and gravel had fixed the sand, the soil produced every thing, especially if they had any showers of rain. It was so long since I had heard mention of a shower of rain, that I could not help laughing, and he seemed to think that he had said something wrong, and begged so politely to know what I laughed at, that I was obliged to confess. “The reason, said I, Sir, is an absurd one. What passed in my mind at that time was, that I had travelled about two thousand miles, and above twelve months, and had neither seen nor heard of a shower of rain till now, and though you will perceive by my conversation that I understand your language well, for a stranger, yet I declare to you, the moment you spoke it, had you asked, what was the Arabic for a shower of rain, I could not have told you. I declare to you, upon my word, it was that which I laughed at, and upon no other account whatever.” “You are going, says he, to countries where you will have rain and wind, sufficiently cold, and where the water in the mountains is harder than the dry land, and people stand upon it196. We have only the remnant of their showers, and it is to that we owe our greatest happiness.”

I was very much pleased with his conversation. He seemed to be near fifty years of age, was exceedingly well dressed, had neither gun nor pistol about him, not even a knife, nor an Arab servant armed, though they were all well dressed; but he had in his court-yard about threescore of the finest horses I had for a long time seen. We dined just opposite to them, in a small saloon strowed with India carpets; the walls were covered with white tiles, which I suppose he had got from India; yet his house, without, was a very common one, distinguished only from the rest in the village by its size.

He seemed to have a more rational knowledge of things, and spoke more elegantly than any man I had conversed with in Arabia. He said he had lost the only seven sons he had, in one month, by the small-pox: And when I attempted to go away, he wished I would stay with him some time, and said, that I had better take up my lodgings in his house, than go on board the boat that night, where I was not perfectly in safety. On my seeming surprised at this, he told me, that last year, a vessel from Mascatte, on the Indian Ocean, had quarrelled with his people; that they had fought on the shore, and several of the crew had been killed; that they had obstinately cruized in the neighbourhood, in hopes of reprisals, till, by the change of the monsoon, they had lost their passage home, and so were necessarily confined to the Red Sea for six months afterwards; he added, they had four guns, which they called patareroes, and that they would certainly cut us off, as they could not miss to fall in with us. This was the very worst news that I had ever heard, as to what might happen at sea. Before this, we thought all strangers were our friends, and only feared the natives of the coast for enemies; now, upon a bare defenceless shore, we found ourselves likely to be a prey to both natives and strangers.

Our Rais, above all, was seized with a panic; his country was just adjoining to Mascatte upon the Indian Ocean, and they were generally at war. He said he knew well who they were, that there was no country kept in better order than Mascatte; but that these were a set of pirates, belonging to the Bahareen; that their vessels were stout, full of men, who carried incense to Jidda, and up as far as Madagascar; that they feared no man, and loved no man, only were true to their employers for the time. He imagined (I suppose it was but imagination,) that he had seen a vessel in the morning, (a lug-sail vessel, as the pirate was described to be,) and it was with difficulty we could prevail on the Rais not to sail back to Jidda. I took my leave of the Emir to return to my tent, to hold a consultation what was to be done.

Konfodah is in the lat. 19° 7´ North. It is one of the most unwholesome parts on the Red Sea, provision is very dear and bad, and the water, (contrary to what the Emir had told me) execrable. Goats flesh is the only meat, and that very dear and lean. The anchorage, from the castle, bears north-west a quarter of a mile distant, from ten to seven fathoms, in sand and mud.

On the 14th, our Rais, more afraid of dying by a fever than by the hands of the pirates, consented willingly to put to sea. The Emir’s good dinners had not extended to the boat’s crew, and they had been upon short commons. The Rais’s fever had returned since he left Jidda, and I gave him some doses of bark, after which he soon recovered. But he was always complaining of hunger, which the black flesh of an old goat, the Emir had given us, did not satisfy.

We sailed at six o’clock in the morning, having first, by way of precaution, thrown all our ballast over-board, that we might run into shoal water upon the appearance of the enemy. We kept a good look-out toward the horizon all around us, especially when we sailed in the morning. I observed we became all fearless, and bold, about noon; but towards night the panic again seized us, like children that are afraid of ghosts; though at that time we might have been sure that all stranger vessels were at anchor.

We had little wind, and passed between various rocks to the westward, continuing our course S. S. E. nearly, somewhat more easterly, and about three miles distant from the shore. At four o’clock, noon, we passed Jibbel Sabeia, a sandy island, larger than the others, but no higher. To this island the Arabs of Ras Heli send their wives and children in time of war; none of the rest are inhabited. At five we passed Ras Heli, which is the boundary between Yemen, or Arabia Felix, and the 197Hejaz, or province of Mecca, the first belonging to the Imam, or king of Sana, the other to the Sherriffe lately spoken of.

I desired my Rais to anchor this night close under the Cape, as it was perfectly calm and clear, and, by taking a mean of five observations of the passage of so many stars, the most proper for the purpose, over the meridian, I determined the latitude of Ras Heli, and consequently the boundary of the two states, Hejaz and Yemen, or Arabia Felix and Arabia Deserta, to be 18° 36´ north.

The mountains reach here nearer to the sea. We anchored a mile from the shore in 15 fathoms, the banks were sand and coral; from this the coast is better inhabited. The principal Arabs to which the country belongs are Cotrushi, Sebahi, Helali, Mauchlota, and Menjahi. These are not Arabs by origin, but came from the opposite coast near Azab, and were Shepherds, who were stubborn enemies to Mahomet, but at last converted; they are black, and woolly-headed. The mountains and small islands on the coast, farther inland to the eastward, are in possession of the Habib. These are white in colour, rebellious, or independent Arabs, who pay no sort of obedience to the Imam, or the Sherriffe of Mecca, but occasionally plunder the towns on the coast.

All the sandy desert at the foot of the mountains is called Tehama, which extends to Mocha. But in the maps it is marked as a separate country from Arabia Felix, whereas it is but the low part, or sea-coast of it, and is not a separate jurisdiction. It is called Tema in scripture, and derives its name from Taami in Arabic, which signifies the sea-coast. There is little water here, as it never rains; there is also no animal but the gazel or antelope, and but a few of them. There are few birds, and those which may be found are generally mute.

The 15th, we sailed with little wind, coasting along the shore, sometimes at two miles distance, and often less. The mountains now seemed high. I sounded several times, and found no ground at thirty fathoms, within a mile of the shore. We passed several ports or harbours; first Mersa Amec, where there is good anchorage in eleven fathom of water, a mile and a half from the shore; at eight o’clock, Nohoude, with an island of the same name; at ten, a harbour and village called Dahaban. As the sky was quite overcast, I could get no observation, though I watched very attentively. Dahaban is a large village, where there is both water and provision, but I did not see its harbour. It bore E. N. E. of us about three miles distant. At three quarters past eleven we came up to a high rock, called Kotumbal, and I lay to, for observation. It is of a dark-brown, approaching to red; is about two miles from the Arabian shore, and produces nothing. I found its latitude to be 17° 57´ north. A small rock stands up at one end of the base of the mountain.

We came to an anchor in the port of Sibt, where I went ashore under pretence of seeking provisions, but in reality to see the country, and observe what sort of people the inhabitants were. The mountains from Kotumbal ran in an even chain along the coast, at no great distance, but of such a height, that as yet we had seen nothing like them. Sibt is too mean, and too small to be called a village, even in Arabia. It consists of about fifteen or twenty miserable huts, built of straw; around it there is a plantation of doom-trees, of the leaves of which they make mats and sails, which is the whole manufacture of the place.

Our Rais made many purchases here. The Cotrushi, the inhabitants of this village, seem to be as brutish a people as any in the world. They are perfectly lean, but muscular, and apparently strong; they wear all their own hair, which they divide upon the crown of their head. It is black and bushy, and, although sufficiently long, seems to partake of the woolly quality of the Negro. Their head is bound round with a cord or fillet of the doom leaf, like the ancient diadem. The women are generally ill-favoured, and go naked like the men. Those that are married have, for the most part, a rag about their middle, some of them not that. Girls of all ages go quite naked, but seem not to be conscious of any impropriety in their appearance. Their lips, eye-brows, and foreheads above the eye-brow, are all marked with stibium, or antimony, the common ornament of savages throughout the world. They seemed to be perfectly on an equality with the men, walked, sat, and smoked with them, contrary to the practice of all women among the Turks and Arabs.

We found no provisions at Sibt, and the water very bad. We returned on board our vessel at sun-set, and anchored in eleven fathom, little less than a mile from the shore. About eight o’clock, two girls, not fifteen, swam off from the shore, and came on board. They wanted stibium for their eye-brows. As they had laboured so hard for it, I gave them a small quantity, which they tied in a rag about their neck. I had killed three sharks this day; one of them, very large, was lying on deck. I asked them if they were not afraid of that fish? They said, they knew it, but it would not hurt them, and desired us to eat it, for it was good, and made men strong. There appeared no symptoms of jealousy among them. The harbour of Sibt is of a semi-circular form, screened between N. N. E. and S. S. W. but to the south, and south west, it is exposed, and therefore is good only in summer.

The 16th, at five in the morning, we sailed from the port of Sibt, but, the wind being contrary, were obliged to steer to the W. S. W. and it was not till nine o’clock we could resume our true course, which was south-east. At half past four in the afternoon the main bore seven miles east, when we passed an island a quarter of a mile in length, called Jibbel Foran, the Mountain of Mice. It is of a rocky quality, with some trees on the south end, thence it rises insensibly, and ends in a precipice on the north. At six, we passed the island 198Deregé, low and covered with grass, but round like a shield, which is the reason of its name. At half past six Ras Tarfa bore E. S. E. of us, distant about two miles; and at three quarters after six we passed several other islands, the largest of which is called Saraffer. It is covered with grass, has small trees upon it, and, probably, therefore water, but is uninhabited. At nine in the evening we anchored before Djezan.

Djezan is in lat. 16° 45´ north, situated on a cape, which forms one side of a large bay. It is built, as are all the towns on the coast, with straw and mud. It was once a very considerable place for trade, but since coffee hath been so much in demand, of which they have none, that commerce is moved to Loheia and Hodeida. It is an usurpation from the territory of the Imam, by a Sherriffe of the family of Beni Hassan, called Booarish. The inhabitants are all Sherriffes, in other terms, troublesome, ignorant fanatics. Djezan is one of the towns most subject to fevers. The Farenteit199, or worm, is very frequent here. They have great abundance of excellent fish, and fruit in plenty, which is brought from the mountains, whence also they are supplied with very good water.

The 17th, in the evening, we sailed from Djezan; in the night we passed several small villages called Dueime, which I found to be in lat. 16° 12´ 5´´ north. In the morning, being three miles distant from the shore, we passed Cape Cosserah, which forms the north side of a large Gulf. The mountains here are at no great distance, but they are not high. The whole country seems perfectly bare and desert, without inhabitants. It is reported to be the most unwholesome part of Arabia Felix.

On the 18th, at seven in the morning, we first discovered the mountains, under which lies the town of Loheia. These mountains bore north north-east of us, when anchored in three-fathom water, about five miles from the shore. The bay is so shallow, and the tide being at ebb, we could get no nearer; the town bore east north-east of us. Loheia is built upon the south-west side of a peninsula, surrounded every where, but on the east, by the sea. In the middle of this neck there is a small mountain which serves for a fortress, and there are towers with cannon, which reach across on each side of the hill to the shore. Beyond this is a plain, where the Arabs intending to attack the town, generally assemble. The ground upon which Loheia stands is black earth, and seems to have been formed by the retiring of the sea. At Loheia we had a very uneasy sensation, a kind of prickling came into our legs, which were bare, occasioned by the salt effluvia, or steams, from the earth, which all about the town, and further to the south, is strongly impregnated with that mineral.

Fish, and butcher meat, and indeed all sorts of provision, are plentiful and reasonable at Loheia, but the water is bad. It is found in the sand at the foot of the mountains, down the sides of which it has fallen in the time of the rain, and is brought to the town in skins upon camels. There is also plenty of fruit brought from the mountains by the Bedowé, who live in the skirts of the town, and supply it with milk, firewood, and fruit, chiefly grapes and bananas.

The government of the Imam is much more gentle than any Moorish government in Arabia or Africa; the people too are of gentler manners, the men, from early ages, being accustomed to trade. The women at Loheia are as solicitous to please as those of the most polished nations in Europe; and, though very retired, whether married or unmarried, they are not less careful of their dress and persons. At home they wear nothing but a long shift of fine cotton-cloth, suitable to their quality. They dye their feet and hands with 200henna, not only for ornament, but as an astringent, to keep them dry from sweat: they wear their own hair, which is plaited, and falls in long tails behind.

The Arabians consider long and straight hair as beautiful. The Abyssinians prefer the short and curled. The Arabians perfume themselves and their shifts with a composition of musk, ambergrease, incense, and benjoin, which they mix with the sharp horny nails that are at the extremity of the fish surrumbac; but why this ingredient is added I know not, as the smell of it, when burnt, does not at all differ from that of horn. They put all these ingredients into a kind of censer on charcoal, and stand over the smoke of it. The smell is very agreeable; but, in Europe, it would be a very expensive article of luxury.

The Arab women are not black, there are even some exceedingly fair. They are more corpulent than the men, but are not much esteemed.—The Abyssinian girls, who are bought for money, are greatly preferred; among other reasons, because their time of bearing children is longer; few Arabian women have children after the age of twenty.

At Loheia we received a letter from Mahomet Gibberti, telling us, that it would yet be ten days before he could join us, and desiring us to be ready by that time. This hurried us extremely, for we were much afraid we should not have time to see the remaining part of the Arabian Gulf, to where it joins with the Indian Ocean.

On the 27th, in the evening, we parted from Loheia, but were obliged to tow the boat out. About nine, we anchored between an island called Ormook, and the land; about eleven we set sail with a wind at north-east, and passed a cluster of islands on our left.

Arab of Lohein, Tribe Beni Koreish.

Heath Sc:

London Publish’d Decr. 1st. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

The 28th, at five o’clock in the morning, we saw the small island of Rasab; at a quarter after six we passed between it and a large island called Camaran, where there is a Turkish garrison and town, and plenty of good water. At twelve we passed a low round island, which seemed to consist of white sand. The weather being cloudy, I could get no observation. At one o’clock we were off Cape Israel.

As the weather was fair, and the wind due north and steady, though little of it, my Rais said that we had better stretch over to Azab, than run along the coast in the direction we were now going, because, somewhere between Hodeida and Cape Nummel, there was foul ground, with which he should not like to engage in the night. Nothing could be more agreeable to me. For, though I knew the people of Azab were not to be trusted, yet there were two things I thought I might accomplish, by being on my guard. The one was, to learn what those ruins were that I had heard so much spoken of in Egypt and at Jidda, and which are supposed to have been works of the Queen of Sheba, whose country this was. The other was, to obtain the myrrh and frankincense-tree, which grow upon that coast only, but neither of which had as yet been described by any author.

At four o’clock we passed a dangerous shoal, which is the one I suppose our Rais was afraid of. If so, he could not have adopted a worse measure, than by stretching over from Cape Israel to Azab in the night; for, had the wind come westerly, as it soon after did, we should have probably been on the bank; as it was, we passed it something less than a mile, the wind was north, and we were going at a great rate. At sun-set we saw Jibbel Zekir, with three small islands, on the north side of it. At twelve at night the wind failing, we found ourselves about a league from the west end of Jibbel Zekir, but it then began to blow fresh from the west; so that the Rais begged liberty to abandon the voyage to Azab, and to keep our first intended one to Mocha. For my part, I had no desire at all to land at Mocha. Mr Niebuhr had already been there before us; and I was sure every useful observation had been made as to the country, for he had staid there a very considerable time, and was ill used. We kept our course, however, upon Mocha town.

The 29th, about two o’clock in the morning, we passed six islands, called Jibbel el Ourèe; and having but indifferent wind, we anchored about nine off the point of the shoal, which lies immediately east of the north fort of Mocha.

The town of Mocha makes an agreeable appearance from the sea. Behind it there is a grove of palm-trees, that do not seem to have the beauty of those in Egypt, probably owing to their being exposed to the violent south-westers that blow here, and make it very uneasy riding for vessels; there is, however, very seldom any damage done. The port is formed by two points of land, which make a semi-circle. Upon each of the points is a small fort; the town is in the middle, and if attacked by an enemy, these two forts are so detached that they might be made of more use to annoy the town, than they could ever be to defend the harbour. The ground for anchorage is of the very best kind, sand without coral, which last chafes the cables all over the Red Sea.

On the 30th, at seven o’clock in the morning, with a gentle but steady wind at west, we sailed for the mouth of the Indian Ocean. Our Rais became more lively and bolder as he approached his own coast, and offered to carry me for nothing, if I would go home with him to Sheher, but I had already enough upon my hand. It is, however, a voyage some man of knowledge and enterprise should attempt, as the country and the manners of the people are very little known. But this far is certain, that there all the precious gums grow; all the drugs of the galenical school, the frankincense, myrrh, benjoin, dragons-blood, and a multitude of others, the natural history of which no one has yet given us.

The coast of Arabia, all along from Mocha to the Straits, is a bold coast, close to which you may run without danger night or day. We continued our course within a mile of the shore, where in some places there appeared to be small woods, in others a flat bare country, bounded with mountains at a considerable distance. Our wind freshened as we advanced. About four in the afternoon we saw the mountain which forms one of the Capes of the Straits of Babelmandeb, in shape resembling a gunner’s quoin. About six o’clock, for what reason I did not know, our Rais insisted upon anchoring for the night behind a small point. I thought, at first, it had been for pilots.

The 31st, at nine in the morning, we came to an anchor above Jibbel Raban, or Pilots Island, just under the Cape which, on the Arabian side, forms the north entrance of the Straits. We now saw a small vessel enter a round harbour, divided from us by the Cape. The Rais said he had a design to have anchored there last night; but as it was troublesome to get out in the morning by the westerly wind, he intended to run over to Perim island to pass the night, and give us an opportunity to make what observations we pleased in quiet.

We caught here a prodigious quantity of the finest fish that I had ever before seen, but the silly Rais greatly troubled our enjoyment, by telling us, that many of the fish in that part were poisonous. Several of our people took the alarm, and abstained; the rule I made use of in choosing mine, was to take all those that were likest the fish of our own northern seas, nor had I ever any reason to complain.

At noon, I made an observation of the sun, just under the Cape of the Arabian shore, with a Hadley’s quadrant, and found it to be in lat. 12° 38´ 30´´, but by many passages of the stars, observed by my large astronomical quadrant in the island of Perim, all deductions made, I found the true latitude of the Cape should be rather 12° 39´ 20´´ north.

Perim is a low island, its harbour good, fronting the Abyssinian shore. It is a barren, bare rock, producing, on some parts of it, plants of absynthium, or rue, in others kelp, that did not seem to thrive; it was at this time perfectly scorched by the heat of the sun, and had only a very faint appearance of having ever vegetated. The island itself is about five miles in length, perhaps more, and about two miles in breadth. It becomes narrower at both ends. Ever since we anchored at the Cape, it had begun to blow strongly from the west, which gave our Rais great apprehension, as, he said, the wind sometimes continued in that point for fifteen days together. This alarmed me not a little, least, by missing Mahomet Gibberti, we should lose our voyage. We had rice and butter, honey and flour. The sea afforded us plenty of fish, and I had no doubt but hunger would get the better of our fears of being poisoned: with water we were likewise pretty well supplied, but all this was rendered useless by our being deprived of fire. In short, though we could have killed twenty turtles a-day, all we could get to make fire of, were the rotten dry roots of the rue that we pulled from the clefts of the rock, which, with much ado, served to make fire for boiling our coffee.

The 1st of August we ate drammock, made with cold water and raw flour, mixed with butter and honey, but we soon found this would not do, though I never was hungry, in my life, with so much good provision about me; for, besides the articles already spoken of, we had two skins of wine from Loheia, and a small jar of brandy, which I had kept expressly for a feast, to drink the King’s health on arriving in his dominions, the Indian Ocean. I therefore proposed, that, leaving the Rais on board, myself and two men should cross over to the south side, to try if we could get any wood in the kingdom of Adel. This, however, did not please my companions. We were much nearer the Arabian shore, and the Rais had observed several people on land, who seemed to be fishers.

If the Abyssinian shore was bad by its being desert, the danger of the Arabian side was, that we should fall into the hands of thieves. But the fear of wanting, even coffee, was so prevalent, and the repetition of the drammock dose so disgusting, that we resolved to take a boat in the evening, with two men armed, and speak to the people we had seen. Here again the Rais’s heart failed him. He said the inhabitants on that coast had fire-arms as well as we, and they could bring a million together, if they wanted them, in a moment; therefore we should forsake Perim island for the time, and, without hoisting in the boat, till we saw further, run with the vessel close to the Arabian shore. There, it was conceived, armed as we were, with ammunition in plenty, we should be able to defend ourselves, if those we had seen were pirates, of which I had not any suspicion, as they had been eight hours in our sight, without having made one movement nearer us; but I was the only person on board that was of that opinion.

Upon attempting to get our vessel out, we found the wind strong against us; so that we were obliged, with great difficulty and danger, to tow her round the west point, at the expence of many hard knocks, which she got by the way. During this operation, the wind had calmed considerably; my quadrant, and every thing was on board; all our arms, new charged and primed, were laid, covered with a cloth, in the cabbin, when we found happily that the wind became due east, and with the wind our resolution changed. We were but twenty leagues to Mocha, and not above twenty-six from Azab, and we thought it better, rather to get on our return to Loheia, than to stay and live upon drammock, or fight with the pirates for firewood. About six o’clock, we were under weigh. The wind being perfectly fair, we carried as much sail as our vessel would bear, indeed, till her masts nodded again. But before we begin the account of our return, it will be necessary to say something of these famous Straits, the communication between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

This entrance begins to shew itself, or take a shape between two capes; the one on the continent of Africa, the other on the peninsula of Arabia. That on the African side is a high land, or cape, formed by a chain of mountains, which run out in a point far into the sea. The Portuguese, or Venetians, the first Christian traders in those parts, have called it Gardefui, which has no signification in any language. But, in that of the country where it is situated, it is called Gardefan, and means the Straits of Burial, the reason of which will be seen afterwards. The opposite cape is Fartack, on the east coast of Arabia Felix, and the distance between them, in a line drawn across from one to another, not above fifty leagues. The breadth between these two lands diminishes gradually for about 150 leagues, till at last it ends in the Straits, whose breadth does not seem to me to be above six leagues.

After getting within the Straits, the channel is divided into two, by the island of Perim, otherwise called Mehun. The inmost and northern channel, or that towards the Arabian shore, is two leagues broad at most, and from twelve to seventeen fathom of water. The other entry is three leagues broad, with deep water, from twenty to thirty fathom. From this, the coast on both sides runs nearly in a north-west direction, widening as it advances, and the Indian Ocean grows straiter. The coast upon the left hand is part of the kingdom of Adel, and, on the right, that of Arabia Felix. The passage on the Arabian shore, though the narrowest and shallowest of the two, is that most frequently sailed through, and especially in the night; because, if you do not round the south-point of the island, as near as possible, in attempting to enter the broad one, but are going large with the wind favourable, you fall in with a great number of low small islands, where there is danger. At ten o’clock, with the wind fair, our course almost north-east, we passed three rocky islands about a mile on our left.

On the 2d, at sun-rise, we saw land a-head, which we took to be the Main, but, upon nearer approach, and the day becoming clearer, we found two low islands to the leeward; one of which we fetched with great difficulty. We found there the stock of an old acacia-tree, and two or three bundles of wreck, or rotten sticks, which we gathered with great care; and all of us agreed, we would eat breakfast, dinner, and supper hot, instead of the cold repast we had made upon the drammock in the Straits. We now made several large fires; one took the charge of the coffee, another boiled the rice; we killed four turtles, made ready a dolphin; got beer, wine, and brandy, and drank the King’s health in earnest, which our regimen would not allow us to do in the Straits of Babelmandeb. While this good chear was preparing, I saw with my glass, first one man running along the coast westward, who did not stop; about a quarter of an hour after, another upon a camel, walking at the ordinary pace, who dismounted just opposite to us, and, as I thought, kneeled down to say his prayers upon the sand. We had launched our boat immediately upon seeing the trunk of the tree on the island; so we were ready, and I ordered two of the men to row me on shore, which they did.

It is a bay of but ordinary depth, with straggling trees, and some flat ground along the coast. Immediately behind is a row of mountains of a brownish or black colour. The man remained motionless, sitting on the ground, till the boat was ashore, when I jumped out upon the sand, being armed with a short double-barrelled gun, a pair of pistols, and a crooked knife. As soon as the savage saw me ashore, he made the best of his way to his camel, and got upon his back, but did not offer to go away.

I sat down on the ground, after taking the white turban off my head, and waving it several times in token of peace, and seeing that he did not stir, I advanced to him about a hundred yards. Still he stood, and after again waving to him with my hands, as inviting him to approach, I made a sign as if I was returning to the shore. Upon seeing this, he advanced several paces, and stopt. I then laid my gun down upon the land, thinking that had frightened him, and walked up as near him as he would suffer me; that is, till I saw he was preparing to go away. I then waved my turban, and cried, Salam, Salam. He staid till I was within ten yards of him. He was quite naked, was black, and had a fillet upon his head, either of a black or blue rag, and bracelets of white beads upon both his arms. He appeared as undetermined what to do. I spoke as distinctly to him as I could, Salam Alicum.—He answered something like Salam, but what it was I know not. I am, said I, a stranger from India, who came last from Tajoura in the bay of Zeyla, in the kingdom of Adel. He nodded his head, and said something in an unknown language, in which I heard the repetition of Tajoura and Adel. I told him I wanted water, and made a sign of drinking. He pointed up the coast to the eastward, and said, Raheeda, then made a sign of drinking, and said Tybe. I now found that he understood me, and asked him where Azab was? he pointed to a mountain just before him, and said, Eh owah Azab Tybe, still with a representation of drinking.

I debated with myself, whether I should not take this savage prisoner. He had three short javelins in his hand, and was mounted upon a camel. I was on foot, and above the ancles in sand, with only two pistols, which, whether they would terrify him to surrender or not, I did not know; I should, otherwise, have been obliged to have shot him, and this I did not intend. After having invited him as courteously as I could, to the boat, I walked towards it myself, and, in the way, took up my firelock, which was lying hid among the sand. I saw he did not follow me a step, but when I had taken the gun from the ground, he set off at a trot as fast as he could, to the westward, and we presently lost him among the trees.

I returned to the boat, and then to dinner on the island, which we named Traitor’s Island, from the suspicious behaviour of that only man we had seen near it. This excursion lost me the time of making my observation; all the use I made of it was to gather some sticks and camel’s dung, which I heaped up, and made the men carry to the boat, to serve us for firing, if we should be detained. The wind was very fair, and we got under weigh by two o’clock.

About four we passed a rocky island with breakers on its south end, we left it about a mile to the windward of us. The Rais called it Crab-island. About five o’clock we came to an anchor close to a cape of no height, in a small bay, in three fathom of water, and leaving a small island just on our stern. We had not anchored here above ten minutes, before an old man and a boy came down to us. As they had no arms, I went ashore, and bought a skin of water. The old man had a very thievish appearance, was quite naked, and laughed or smiled at every word he said. He spoke Arabic, but very badly; told me there was great plenty of every thing in the country whither he would carry me. He said, moreover, that there was a king there, and a people that, loved strangers.

The murder of the boat’s crew of the Elgin East-Indiaman, in that very spot where he was then sitting and praising his countrymen, came presently into my mind. I found my hand involuntarily take hold of my pistol, and I was, for the only time in my life, strongly tempted to commit murder. I thought I saw in the looks of that old vagrant, one of those who had butchered so many Englishmen in cold blood.

From his readiness to come down, and being so near the place, it was next to impossible that he was not one of the party. A little reflection, however, saved his life; and I asked him if he could sell us a sheep, when he said they were coming. These words put me on my guard, as I did not know how many people might accompany them. I therefore desired him to bring me the water to the boat, which the boy accordingly did, and we paid him, in cohol, or stibium, to his wishes.

Immediately upon this I ordered them to put the boat afloat, demanding, all the time, where were the sheep? A few minutes afterwards, four stout young men came down, dragging after them two lean goats, which the old man maintained to me were sheep. Each man had three light javelins in his hand, and they began to wrangle exceedingly about the animals, whether they were sheep or goats, though they did not seem to understand one word of our language, but the words sheep and goat in Arabic. In five minutes after, their number increased to eleven, and I thought it was then full time for me to go on board, for every one of them seemed, by his discourse and gestures, to be violently agitated, but what they said I could not comprehend. I drew to the shore, and then put myself on board as soon as possible. They seemed to keep at a certain distance, crying out Belled, belled! and pointing to the land, invited me to come ashore; the old hypocrite alone seemed to have no fear, but followed me close to the boat. I then resolved to have a free discourse with him. “There is no need, said I to the old man, to send for thirteen men to bring two goats. We bought the water from people that had no lances, and we can do without the sheep, though we could not want the water, therefore, every man that has a lance in his hand let him go away from me, or I will fire upon him.”

They seemed to take no sort of notice of this, and came rather nearer. “You old-grey headed traitor, said I, do you think I don’t know what you want, by inviting me on shore; let all those about you with arms go home about their business, or I will in a minute blow them all off the face of the earth.” He then jumped up, with rather more agility than his age seemed to promise, and went to where the others were sitting in a cluster, and after a little conversation the whole of them retired.

The old fellow and the boy now came down without fear to the boat, when I gave them tobacco, some beads, and antimony, and did every thing to gain the father’s confidence. But he still smiled and laughed, and I saw clearly he had taken his resolution. The whole burden of his song was, to persuade me to come on shore, and he mentioned every inducement, and all the kindness that he would shew me. “It is fit, you old rogue, said I, that, now your life is in my hands, you should know how much better men there are in the world than you. They were my countrymen, eleven or twelve of whom you murdered about three years ago, in the very place where you are now sitting, and though I could have killed the same number to-day, without any danger to myself, I have not only let them go away, but have bought and sold with you, and given you presents, when, according to your own law, I should have killed both you and your son. Now do not imagine, knowing what I know, that ever you shall decoy me ashore; but if you will bring me a branch of the myrrh tree, and of the incense tree to-morrow, I will give you two fonduclis for each of them.” He said, he would do it that night. “The sooner the better, said I, for it is now becoming dark.” Upon this he sent away his boy, who in less than a quarter of an hour came back with a branch in his hand.

I could not contain my joy, I ordered the boat to be drawn upon the shore, and went out to receive it; but, to my great disappointment, I found that it was a branch of Acacia, or Sunt, which we had every where met with in Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. I told him, this was of no use, repeating the word Gerar, Saiél, Sunt. He answered Eh owah Saiél; but being asked for the myrrh (mour), he said it was far up in the mountains, but would bring it to me if I would go to the town. Providence, however, had dealt more kindly with us in the moment than we expected. For, upon going ashore out of eagerness to get the myrrh, I saw, not a quarter of a mile from us, sitting among the trees, at least thirty men, armed with javelins, who all got up the moment they saw me landed. I called to the boatmen to set the boat afloat, which they immediately did, and I got quickly on board, near up to the middle in water; but as I went by the old man, I gave him so violent a blow upon the face with the thorny branch in my hand, that it felled him to the ground. The boy fled, and we rowed off; but before we took leave of these traitors, we gave them a discharge of three blunderbusses loaded with pistol-shot, in the direction where, in all probability, they were lying to see the boat go off.

I directed the Rais to stand out towards Crab-island, and there being a gentle breeze from the shore, carrying an easy sail, we stood over upon Mocha town, to avoid some rocks or islands, which he said were to the westward. While lying at Crab-island, I observed two stars pass the meridian, and by them I concluded the latitude of that island to be 13° 2´ 45´´ North.

The wind continuing moderate, but more to the southward, at three o’clock in the morning of the 3d, we passed Jibbel el Ourèe, then Jibbel Zekir; and having a steady gale, with fair and moderate weather, passing to the westward of the island Rasab, between that and some other islands to the north-east, where the wind turned contrary, we arrived at Loheia, the 6th, in the morning, being the third day from the time we quitted Azab. We found every thing well on our arrival at Loheia; but no word of Mahomet Gibberti, and I began now to be uneasy. The rains in Abyssinia were to cease the 6th of next month, September, and then was the proper time for our journey to Gondar.

The only money in the country of the 201Imam, is a small piece less than a sixpence, and by this the value of all the different denominations of foreign coin is ascertained. It has four names, Commesh, Loubia, Muchsota, and Harf, but the first two of these are most commonly used.

This money is very base adulterated silver, if indeed there is any in it. It has the appearance of pewter; on the one side is written Olmass, the name of the Imam; on the other, Emir el Moumeneen, Prince of the Faithful, or True Believers; a title, first taken by Omar after the death of Abou Becr; and since, borne by all the legitimate Caliphs. There are likewise Half-commeshes, and these are the smallest specie current in Yemen.

1 VENETIAN SEQUIN, | 90 } | COMMESHES.
1 FONDUCLI, | 80 }
1 BARBARY SEQUIN, | 80 }
1 PATAKA, or IMPERIAL DOLLAR, | 40 }

When the Indian merchants or vessels are here, the fonducli is raised three commeshes more, though all specie is scarce in the Imam’s country, notwithstanding the quantity continually brought hither for coffee, in silver patakas, that is, dollars, which is the coin in which purchases of any amount are paid. When they are to be changed into commeshes, the changer or broker gives you but 39 instead of 40, so he gains 2½ per cent. for all money he changes, that is, by giving bad coin for good.

The long measure in Yemen is the peek of Stamboul, as they call it; but, upon measuring it with a standard of a Stamboul peek, upon a brass rod made on purpose, I found it 26⅝ inches, which is neither the Stambouline peek, the Hendaizy peek, nor the el Belledy peek. The peek of Stamboul is 23⅗ inches, so this of Loheia is a distinct peek, which may be called 202Yemani.

The weights of Loheia are the rotolo, which are of two sorts, one of 140 drachms, and used in selling fine, the other 160 drachms, for ordinary and coarser goods. This last is divided into 16 ounces, each ounce into 10 drachms; 100 of these rotolos are a kantar, or quintal. The quintal of Yemen, carried to Cairo or Jidda, is 113 rotolo, because the rotolo of these places is 144 drachms. Their weights appear to be of Italian origin, and were probably brought hither when the Venetians carried on this trade. There is another weight, called faranzala, which I take to be the native one of the country. It is equal to 20 rotolo, of 160 drachms each.

The customs, which at Mocha are three per cent. upon India goods, are five here, when brought directly from India; but all goods whatever, brought from Jidda by merchants, whether Turks or natives, pay seven per cent. at Loheia.

Loheia is in lat. 15° 40´ 52´´ north, and in long. 42° 58´ 15´´ east of the meridian of Greenwich.—The barometer, at its highest on the 7th day of August, was 26° 9´, and its lowest 26° 1´, on the 30th of July.—The thermometer, when at its highest, was 99° on the 30th of the same month, wind north-east; and its lowest was 81° on the 9th of August, wind south by east.

On the 31st of August, at four o’clock in the morning, I saw a comet for the first time. The head of it was scarcely visible in the telescope, that is, its precise form, which was a pale indistinct luminous body, whose edges were not at all defined. Its tail extended full 20°. It seemed to be a very thin vapour, for through it I distinguished several stars of the fifth magnitude, which seemed to be increased in size. The end of its tail had lost all its fiery colour, and was very thin and white. I could distinguish no nucleus, nor any part that seemed redder or deeper than the rest; for all was a dim-ill-defined spot. At 4hrs. 1´ 24´´, on the morning of the 31st, it was distant 20° 40´ from Rigel; its tail extended to three stars in Eridanus.

The 1st of September Mahomet Gibberti arrived, bringing with him the firman for the Naybe of Masuah, and letters from Metical Aga to 203Ras Michael. He also brought a letter to me, and another to Achmet, the Naybe’s nephew, and future successor, from Sidi Ali Zimzimia, that is, ‘the keeper of Ishmael’s well at Mecca, called Zimzim.’ In this letter, Sidi Ali desires me to put little trust in the Naybe, but to keep no secret from Achmet his nephew, who would certainly be my friend.

CHAP. XIII.

Sails for Masuah—Passes a Volcano—Comes to Dahalac—Troubled with a Ghost—Arrives at Masuah.

All being prepared for our departure, we sailed from Loheia on the 3d of September 1769, but the wind failing, we were obliged to warp the vessel out upon her anchors. The harbour of Loheia, which is by much the largest in the Red Sea, is now so shallow, and choked up, that, unless by a narrow canal through which we enter and go out, there is no where three fathom of water, and in many places not half that depth. This is the case with all the harbours on the east-coast of the Red Sea, while those on the west are deep, without any banks or bars before them, which is probably owing, as I have already said, to the violence of the north-west winds, the only constant strong winds to be met with in this Gulf. These occasion strong currents to set in upon the east-coast, and heap up the land and gravel which is blown in from Arabia.

All next day, the 4th, we were employed at warping out our vessel against a contrary wind. The 5th, at three quarters past five in the morning, we got under sail with little wind. At half past nine, Loheia bore east north-east about four leagues distant; and here we came in sight of several small, barren, and uninhabited islands. Booarish bore south-west two miles off; Zebid one mile and a half distant, east and by north; Amar, the smallest of all, one mile south; and Ormook, south-east by east two miles.

The Arabs of the mountain, who had attempted to surprise Loheia in the spring, now prepared for another attack against it, and had advanced within three days journey. This obliged the Emir to draw together all his troops from the neighbourhood; all the camels were employed to lay in an extraordinary stock of water.

Our Rais, who was a stranger, and without connections in this place, found himself under great difficulties to provide water enough for the voyage, for we had but a scanty provision left, and though our boat was no more than sixty feet long, we had about forty people on board of her. I had indeed hired the vessel for myself, but gave the Rais leave to take some known people passengers on board, as it was very dangerous to make enemies in the place to which I was going, by frustrating any person of his voyage home, even though I paid for the boat, and still as dangerous to take a person unknown, whose end in the voyage might be to defeat my designs. We were resolved, therefore, to bear away for an island to the northward, where they said the water was both good, and in plenty.

In the course of this day, we passed several small islands, and, in the evening, anchored in seven fathom and a half of water, near a shoal distant four leagues from Loheia. We there observed the bearings and distances of several islands, with which we were engaged; Foosht, W.b.N.¼ north, four leagues; Baccalan N.W.b.W. three leagues; Baida, a large high rock above the water, with white steep cliffs, and a great quantity of sea-fowl; Djund, and Mufracken, two large rocks off the west point off Baccalan, W.N.W.¼ west, eleven miles; they appear, at a distance, like a large heap of ruins: Umsegger, a very small island, nearly level with the water, W.N.W.¼ west four miles distant; Nachel, S.E.¼E. one league off; Ajerb S.E.b.E.½ south, two leagues; Surbat, an island S.E.b.E.¾ south, distant ten miles; it has a marabout or Shekh’s tomb upon it: Dahu and Dee, two small islands, close together, N.W.¼ west, about eleven miles distant; Djua S.E.½ south; it is a small white island four leagues and a half off: Sahar, W.¼ north, nine miles off.

On the 6th, we got under sail at five o’clock in the morning. Our water had failed us as we foresaw, but in the evening we anchored at Foosht, in two fathoms water east of the town, and here staid the following day, our sailors being employed in filling our skins with water, for they make no use of casks in this sea.

Foosht is an island of irregular form. It is about five miles from south to north, and about nine in circumference. It abounds in good fish. We did not use our net, as our lines more than supplied us. There were many kinds, painted with the most beautiful colours in the world, but I always observed, the more beautiful they were, the worse for eating. There were indeed none good but those that resembled the fish of the north in their form, and plainness of their colours. Foosht is low and sandy on the south, and on the north is a black hill or cape of no considerable height, that may be seen at four leagues off. It has two watering-places; one on the east of the island, where we now were, the other on the west. The water there is bitter, but it had been troubled by a number of little barks, that had been taking in water just before us. The manner of filling their goat skins being a very slovenly one, they take up much of the mud along with it, but we found the water excellent, after it had settled two or three days; when it came on board, it was as black as ink. It was incomparably the best water we had drank since that of the Nile.

This island is covered with a kind of bent grass, which want of rain, and the constant feeding of the few goats that are kept here, prevent from growing to any height. The end of the island, near the north cape, sounds very hollow, underneath, like Solfaterra, near Naples; and as quantities of pumice stones are found here, there is great appearance that the black hill was once a volcano. Several large shells from the fish called Bisser, some of them twenty inches long, are seen turned upon their faces, on the surface of large stones, of ten or twelve ton weight. These shells are sunk into the stones, as if they were into paste, and the stone raised round about, so as to conceal the edge of the shell; a proof that this stone has, some time lately, been soft or liquified. For, had it been long ago, the weather and sun would have worn the surface of the shell, but it seems perfectly entire, and is set in that hard brown rock, as the stone of a ring is in a golden chasing.

The inhabitants of Foosht are poor fishermen, of the same degree of blackness as those between Heli and Djezan; like them too, they were naked, or had only a rag about their waist. Their faces are neither stained nor painted. They catch a quantity of fish called Seajan, which they carry to Loheia, and exchange for Dora and Indian corn, for they have no bread, but what is procured this way. They also have a flat fish, with a long tail to it, whose skin is a species of shagreen, with which the handles of knives and swords are made. Pearls too are found here, but neither large nor of a good water, on the other hand, they are not dear; they are the produce of various species of shells, all Bivalves204.

The town consists of about thirty huts, built with faggots of bent grass or spartum, and these are supported within with a few sticks, and thatched with the grass, of which they are built. The inhabitants seemed to be much terrified at seeing us come a-shore all armed; this was not done out of fear of them, but, as we intended to stay on shore all night, we wished to be in a situation to defend ourselves against boats of strollers from the main. The saint, or Marabout, upon seeing me pass near him, fell flat upon his face, where he lay for a quarter of an hour; nor would he get up till the guns, which I was told had occasioned his fears, were ordered by me to be immediately sent on board.

On the 7th, by an observation of the meridian altitude of the sun, I found the latitude of Foosht to be 15° 59´ 43´´ north. There are here many beautiful shell-fish; the concha veneris, of several sizes and colours, as also sea urchins, or sea-eggs. I found, particularly, one of the pentaphylloid kind, of a very particular form. Spunges of the common sort are likewise found all along this coast. The bearings and distances of the principal islands from Foosht are:

Baccalan, and the two rocks Djund and Mufracken, | E. N. E. | 4 miles.
Baida rock, | E. by N. | 4 miles.
Sahar, - - | S. E. | 3 do.
Ardaina, - | W.N.W. | 8 do.
Aideen, - - | N.½E. | 9 do.

Baccalan is an island, low, long, and as broad as Foosht, inhabited by fishermen; without water in summer, which is then brought from Foosht, but in winter they preserve the rain-water in cisterns. These were built in ancient times, when this was a place of importance for the fishing of pearls, and they are in perfect repair to this day; neither the cement of the work, nor the stucco within, having at all suffered. Very violent showers fall here from the end of October to the beginning of March, but at certain intervals.

All the islands on this east-side of the channel belong to the Sherriffe Djezan Booarish, but none are inhabited except Baccalan and Foosht. This last island is the most convenient watering-place for ships, bound up the channel from Jibbel Teir, from which it bears N. E. by E. ¾ E. by the compass, nineteen leagues distant. It should be remembered, however, that the western watering-place is most eligible, because, in that case, navigators need not engage themselves among the islands to the eastward, where they will have uneven soundings two leagues from the land; but, though they should fall to the eastward of this island, they will have good anchorage, from nine to eighteen fathoms water; the bottom being good sand, between the town and the white rock Baida.

Having supplied our great and material want of water, we all repaired on board in the evening of the 7th; we then found ourselves unprovided with another necessary, namely fire; and my people began to remember how cold our stomachs were from the drammock at Babelmandeb. Firewood is a very scarce article in the Red Sea. It is, nevertheless, to be found in small quantities, and in such only it is used. Zimmer, an island to the northward, was known to afford some; but, from the time I had landed at Foosht, on the 6th, a trouble of a very particular kind had fallen upon our vessel, of which I had no account till I had returned on board.

An Abyssinian, who had died on board, and who had been buried upon our coming out from Loheia bay, had been seen upon the boltsprit for two nights, and had terrified the sailors very much; even the Rais had been not a little alarmed; and, though he could not directly say that he had seen him, yet, after I was in bed on the 7th, he complained seriously to me of the bad consequences it would produce if a gale of wind was to rise, and the ghost was to keep his place there, and desired me to come forward and speak to him. “My good Rais,” said I, “I am exceedingly tired, and my head achs much with the sun, which hath been violent to-day. You know the Abyssinian paid for his passage, and, if he does not overload the ship, (and I apprehend he should be lighter than when we took him on board) I do not think, that in justice or equity, either you or I can hinder the ghost from continuing his voyage to Abyssinia, as we cannot judge what serious business he may have there.” The Rais began to bless himself that he did not know any thing of his affairs.—“Then,” said I, “if you do not find he makes the vessel too heavy before, do not molest him; because, certainly if he was to come into any other part of the ship, or if he was to insist to sit in the middle of you (in the disposition that you all are) he would be a greater inconvenience to you than in his present post.” The Rais began again to bless himself, repeating a verse of the Koran; “bismilla sheitan rejem,” in the name of God keep the devil far from me. “Now, Rais,” said I, “if he does us no harm, you will let him ride upon the boltsprit till he is tired, or till he comes to Masuah, for I swear to you, unless he hurts or troubles us, I do not think I have any obligation to get out of my bed to molest him, only see that he carries nothing off with him.”

The Rais now seemed to be exceedingly offended, and said, for his part he did not care for his life more than any other man on board; if it was not from fear of a gale of wind, he might ride on the boltsprit and be d——n’d; but that he had always heard learned people could speak to ghosts. Will you be so good, Rais, said I, to step forward, and tell him, that I am going to drink coffee, and should be glad if he would walk into the cabbin, and say any thing he has to communicate to me, if he is a Christian, and if not, to Mahomet Gibberti. The Rais went out, but, as my servant told me, he would neither go himself, nor could get any person to go to the ghost for him. He came back, however, to drink coffee with me. I was very ill, and apprehensive of what the French call a Coup de soleil. “Go, said I to the Rais, to Mahomet Gibberti, who was lying just before us, tell him that I am a Christian, and have no jurisdiction over ghosts in these seas.”

A moor called Yasine, well known to me afterwards, now came forward, and told me, that Mahomet Gibberti had been very bad ever since we failed, with sea-sickness, and begged that I would not laugh at the spirit, or speak so familiarly of him, because it might very possibly be the devil, who often appeared in these parts. The Moor also desired I would send Gibberti some coffee, and order my servant to boil him some rice with fresh water from Foosht; for hitherto our fish and our rice had been boiled in sea water, which I constantly preferred. This bad news of my friend Mahomet banished all merriment, I gave therefore the necessary orders to my servant to wait upon him, and at the same time recommended to Yasine to go forward with the Koran in his hand, and read all night, or till we should get to Zimmer, and then, or in the morning, bring me an account of what he had seen.

The 8th, early in the morning, we sailed from Foosht, but the wind being contrary, we did not arrive at our destination till near mid-day, when we anchored in an open road about half a mile from the island, for there is no harbour in Baccalan, Foosht, nor Zimmer. I then took my quadrant, and went with the boat ashore, to gather wood. Zimmer is a much smaller island than Foosht, without inhabitants, and without water; though, by the cisterns which still remain, and are sixty yards square, hewed out of the solid rock, we may imagine this was once a place of consequence: rain in abundance, at certain seasons, still falls there. It is covered with young plants of rack tree, whose property it is, as I have already said, to vegetate in salt water. The old trees had been cut down, but there was a considerable number of Saiel, or Acacia trees, and of these we were in want.

Although Zimmer is said to be without water, yet there are antelopes upon it, as also hyænas in number, and it is therefore probable that there is water in some subterraneous caves or clefts of the rocks, unknown to the Arabs or fishermen, without which these animals could not subsist. It is probable the antelopes were brought over from Arabia for the Sherriffe’s pleasure, or those of his friends, if they did not swim from the main, and an enemy afterwards brought the hyæna to disappoint that amusement. Be that as it will, though I did not myself see the animals, yet I observed the dung of each of them upon the sand, and in the cisterns; so the fact does not rest wholly upon the veracity of the boatman. We found at Zimmer plenty of the large shell fish called Bisser and Surrumbac, but no other. I found Zimmer, by an observation of the sun at noon, to be in lat. 16° 7´ North, and from it we observed the following bearings and distances.

Sahaanah, | dist. | 9 | miles, | S. by W.
Foosht, | do. | 8 | do. | N. W. by N.¼ W.
Aideen, | do. | 7 | do. | E.
Ardaina, | do. | 2 | do. | E. by S.
Rahha, | do. | 6 | do. | N. W.¼ N.
Doohaarab, | do. | 21 | do. | W. N. W.¼ W.

We sailed in the night from Zimmer. When we came nearer the channel, the islands were fewer, and we had never less than twenty-five fathom water. The wind was constantly to the north and west, and, during all the heat of the day, N. N. W. At the same time we had visibly a strong current to the northward.

The 9th, at six o’clock in the morning, the island Rapha bore N. E. by east, distant about two leagues, and in the same direction we saw the tops of very high mountains in Arabia Felix, which we imagined to be those above Djezan; and though these could not be less than twenty-six leagues distance, yet I distinguished their tops plainly, some minutes before sun-rise. At noon I observed our latitude to be 16° 10´ 3´´ north, so we had made very little way this day, it being for the most part calm. Rapha then bore E. ¾ north, distant thirteen miles, and Doohaarab N. N. W. five miles off. We continued under sail all the evening, but made little way, and still less during the night.

On the 10th, at seven in the morning, I first saw Jibbel Teir, till then it had been covered with a mist. I ordered the pilot to bear down directly upon it. All this forenoon our vessel had been surrounded with a prodigious number of sharks. They were of the hammer-headed kind, and two large ones seemed to vie with each other which should come nearest our vessel. The Rais had fitted a large harpoon with a long line for the large fish in the channel, and I went to the boltsprit to wait for one of the sharks, after having begged the Rais, first to examine if all was tight there, and if the ghost had done it no harm by sitting so many nights upon it. He shook his head, laughing, and said, “The sharks seek something more substantial than ghosts.” “If I am not mistaken, Rais, said I, this ghost seeks something more substantial too, and you shall see the end of it.”

I struck the largest shark about a foot from the head with such force, that the whole iron was buried in his body. He shuddered, as a person does when cold, and shook the shaft of the harpoon out of the socket, the weapon being made so on purpose; the shaft fell across, kept fixt to the line, and served as a float to bring him up when he dived, and impeded him when he swam. No salmon fisher ever saw finer sport with a fish and a rod. He had thirty fathom of line out, and we had thirty fathom more ready to give him. He never dived, but sailed round the vessel like a ship, always keeping part of his back above water. The Rais, who directed us, begged we would not pull him, but give him as much more line as he wanted; and indeed we saw it was the weight of the line that galled him, for he went round the vessel without seeking to go farther from us. At last he came nearer, upon our gathering up the line, and upon gently pulling it after, we brought him along-side, till we fastened a strong boat-hook in his throat: a man swung upon a cord was now let down to cut his tail, while hanging on the ship’s side, but he was, if not absolutely dead, without the power of doing harm. He was eleven feet seven inches from his snout to his tail, and nearly four feet round in the thickest part of him. He had in him a dolphin very lately swallowed, and about half a yard of blue cloth. He was the largest, the Rais said, he had ever seen, either in the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean.

About twenty minutes before twelve o’clock we were about four leagues distant from the island, as near as I could judge upon a parallel. Having there taken my observation, and all deductions made, I concluded the latitude of the north end of Jibbel Teir to be 15° 38´ north; thirty-two leagues west longitude from Loheia, fifty-three east longitude from Masuah, and forty-six leagues east of the meridian of Jidda. Jibbel Teir, or the Mountain of the Bird, is called by others, Jibbel Douhan, or the Mountain of Smoke. I imagine that the fame was the origin of our name of205Gibraltar, rather than from Tarik, who first landed in Spain; and one of my reasons is, that so conspicuous a mountain, near, and immediately in the face of the moors of Barbary, must have been known by some name, long before Tarik with his Arabs made his descent into Spain.

The reason of its being called Jibbel Douhan, the Mountain of Smoke, is, that though, in the middle of the sea, it is a volcano, which throws out fire, and though nearly extinguished, smokes to this day. It probably has been the occasion of the creation of great part of the neighbouring islands. Did it burn now, it would be of great use to shipping in the night, but in the earliest history of the trade of that sea, no mention is made of it, as in a state of conflagration. It was called Orneón in Ptolemy, the Bird-Island, the name as Jibbel Teir. It is likewise called Sheban, from the white spot at the top of it, which seems to be sulphur, and a part seems to have fallen in, and to have enlarged the crater on this side. The island is four miles from south to north, has a peek in form of a pyramid in the middle of it, and is about a quarter of a mile high. It descends, equally, on both sides, to the sea; has four openings at the top, which vent smoke, and sometimes, in strong southerly winds it is said to throw out fire. There was no such appearance when we passed it. The island is perfectly desert, being covered with sulphur and pumice stones.

Some journals that I have seen are full of indraughts, whirlpools, and unfathomable depths, all around this island. I must however take the liberty of saying to these gentlemen, who are otherwise so very fond of soundings as to distribute them all over the channel, that they have been unfortunate in placing their unfathomable depths here, and even soundings. It is probable these are occasioned by the convulsions in the earth made by this volcano; but the only indraught we saw was a strong current setting northward, and there are soundings as far as three leagues east of it, in 33 fathom water, with a sandy bottom. Between this and the island Rafab you have soundings from 20 to 35 fathom, with sand and rocks; and on the north-east side you have good anchoring, from a league’s distance, till within a cable’s length of the shore, and there is anchorage five leagues S. W. by W. in twenty-five fathoms, and I believe also, in the line from Loheia to Dahalac, the effects of the convulsions of this volcano. Such, at least, is the information I procured at Masuah from the pilots used to this navigation in search of sulphur; such was the information also of my Rais, who went twice loaded with that commodity to his own country at Mascatte; no other people go there. Both Abyssinians and Arabians believe that this is the entry or passage by which the devil comes up to this world.

Six leagues E. by S. of this island there is a dangerous shoal with great overfalls, on which a French ship struck in the year 1751, and was saved with very great difficulty. Jibbel Teir is the point from which all our ships, going to Jidda, take their departure, after sailing from Mocha, and passing the islands to the southward.

We left Jibbel Teir on the 11th with little wind at west, but towards mid-day it freshened as usual, and turned northward to N. N. east. We were now in mid-channel, so that we stood on straight for Dahalac till half past four, when a boy, who went aloft, saw four islands in a direction N. W. by W.¼ west. We were standing on with a fresh breeze, and all our sails full, when I saw, a little before sun-set, a white-fringed wave of the well-known figure of a breaker. I cried to the Rais for God’s sake to shorten sail, for I saw a breaker a-head, straight in our way. He said there was no such thing; that I had mistaken it, for it was a sea-gull. About seven in the evening we struck upon a reef of coral rocks. Arabs are cowards in all sudden dangers, which they consider as particular directions or mandates of providence, and therefore not to be avoided. Few uncultivated minds indeed have any calmness, or immediate resource in themselves when in unexpected danger. The Arab sailors were immediately for taking the boat, and sailing to the islands the boy had seen. The Abyssinians were for cutting up the planks and wood of the inside of the vessel, and making her a raft.

A violent dispute ensued, and after that a battle, when night overtook us, still fast upon the rock. The Rais and Yasine, however, calmed the riot, when I begged the passengers would hear me. I told them, “You all know, or should know, that the boat is mine, as I bought it with my money, for the safety and accommodation of myself and servants; you know, likewise, that I and my men are all well armed, while you are naked; therefore do not imagine that we will suffer any of you to enter that boat, and save your lives at the expence of ours. On this vessel of the Rais is your dependence, in it you are to be saved or to perish; therefore all hands to work, and get the vessel off, while it is calm; if she had been materially damaged, she had been sunk before now.” They all seemed on this to take courage, and said, they hoped I would not leave them. I told them, if they would be men, I would not leave them while there was a bit of the vessel together.

The boat was immediately launched, and one of my servants, the Rais, and two sailors, were put on board. They were soon upon the bank, where the two sailors got out, who cut their feet at first upon the white coral, but afterwards got firmer footing. They attempted to push the ship backwards, but she would not move. Poles and handspikes were tried in order to stir her, but these were not long enough. In a word, there was no appearance of getting her off before morning, when we knew the wind would rise, and it was to be feared she would then be dashed to pieces. Mahomet Gibberti, and Yasine, had been reading the Koran aloud ever since the vessel struck. I said to them in passing, “Sirs, would it not be as wise for you to leave your books till you get a-shore, and lend a hand to the people?” Mahomet answered, “that he was so weak and sick, that he could not stand.” But Yasine did not slight the rebuke, he stripped himself naked, went forward on the vessel, and then threw himself into the sea. He, first, very judiciously, felt what room there was for standing, and found the bank was of considerable breadth, and that we were stuck upon the point of it; that it rounded, slanting away afterwards, and seemed very deep at the sides, so the people, standing on the right of it, could not reach the vessel to push it, only those upon the point. The Rais and Yasine now cried for poles and handspikes, which were given them; two more men let themselves down by the side, and stood upon the bank. I then desired the Rais to get out a line, come a-stern with the boat, and draw her in the same direction that they pushed.

As soon as the boat could be towed a-stern, a great cry was set up, that she began to move. A little after, a gentle wind just made itself felt from the east, and the cry from the Rais was, Hoist the fore-sail and put it a-back. This being immediately done, and a gentle breeze filling the fore-sail at the time, they all pushed, and the vessel slid gently off, free from the shoal. I cannot say I partook of the joy so suddenly as the others did. I had always some fears a plank might have been started; but we saw the advantage of a vessel being sewed, rather than nailed together, as she not only was unhurt, but made very little water. The people were all exceedingly tired, and nobody thought they could enough praise the courage and readiness of Yasine. From that day he grew into consideration with me, which increased ever after, till my departure from Abyssinia.

The latitude of our place, at noon, had been 15° 32´ 12´´. I rectified my quadrant, and hung it up. Seeing the clear of the Lyre not far from the meridian, I was willing to be certain of that dangerous place we had fallen upon. By two observations of Lucida Lyræ, and Lucida Aquilæ, and by a mean of both, I found the bank to be in lat. 15° 28´ 15´´ north.

There was a circumstance, during the hurry of this transaction, that gave us all reason to be surprised. The ghost was supposed to be again seen on the boltsprit, as if pushing the vessel ashore; and as this was breaking covenant with me, as a passenger, I thought it was time some notice should be taken of him, since the Rais had referred it entirely to me. I inquired who the persons were that had seen him. Two moors of Hamazen were the first that perceived him, and afterwards a great part of the crew had been brought to believe the reality of this vision. I called them forward to examine them before the Rais, and Mahomet Gibberti, and they declared that, during the night, they had seen him go and come several times; once, he was pushing against the boltsprit, another time he was pulling upon the rope, as if he had an anchor ashore; after this he had a very long pole, or stick, in his hand, but it seemed heavy and stiff, as if it had been made of iron, and when the vessel began to move, he turned into a small blue flame, ran along the gunnel on the larboard side of the ship, and, upon the vessel going off, he disappeared. “Now,” said I, “it is plain by this change of shape, that he has left us for ever, let us therefore see whether he has done us any harm or not. Hath any of you any baggage stowed forwards?” The strangers answered, “Yes, it is all there.” Then said I, go forward, and see if every man has got his own. They all did this without loss of time, when a great noise and confusion ensued; every one was plundered of something, stibium, nails, brass wire, incense and beads; in short, all the precious part of their little stores was stolen.

All the passengers were now in the utmost despair, and began to charge the sailors. “I appeal to you, Yasine and Mahomet Gibberti, said I, whether these two moors who saw him oftenest, and were most intimate with him, have not a chance of knowing where the things are hid; for in my country, where ghosts are very frequent, they are always assisted in the thefts they are guilty of, by those that see and converse with them. I suppose therefore it is the same with Mahometan ghosts.” “The very same, said Mahomet Gibberti and Yasine, as far as ever we heard.” “Then go, Yasine, with the Rais, and examine that part of the ship where the moors slept, while I keep them here; and take two sailors with you, that know the secret places.” Before the search began, however, one of them told Yasine where every thing was, and accordingly all was found and restored. I would not have the reader imagine, that I here mean to value myself, either upon any supernatural knowledge, or extreme sagacity, in supposing that it was a piece of roguery from the beginning, of which I never doubted. But while Yasine and the sailors were busy pushing off the vessel, and I a-stern at an observation, Mahomet Gibberti’s servant, sitting by his master, saw one of the moors go to the repository of the baggage, and, after staying a little, come out with a box and package in his hand. This he told his master, who informed me, and the ghost finding his associates discovered, never was seen any more.

The 12th, in the morning, we found that this shoal was a sand bank, with a ridge of coral rocks upon it, which stretches hither from Selma, and ends a little farther to the northward in deep water. At sun-rise the islands bore as follow:—

Wowcan, | distant | 5 | miles, | S. S. E. ¼ E.
Selma, | do. | 3 | do. | S.
Megaida, | do. | 4 | do. | S. W.½ S.
Zober, | do. | 4 | do. | W. by S.¼ S.
Racka, | do. | 5 | do. | N. N. W.
Fursh, | do. | 4 | do. | N. W. by N.¼ N.

These islands lie in a semi-circle round this shoal. There were no breakers upon it, the sea being so perfectly calm. I suppose if there had been wind, it would have broken upon it, as I certainly saw it do before we struck; between Megaida and Zober is a small sharp rock above the surface of the sea.

We got under sail at six in the morning, but the wind was very fast decaying, and soon after fell dead-calm. Towards eleven, as usual, it freshened, and almost at due north. At noon I found our lat. to be 15° 29´ 33´´ north, from which we had the following bearings:—

Selma, | distant | 5 | miles, | S. E.½S.
Megaida, | do. | 4 | do. | S. S. E.
Zober, | do. | 2 | do. | S.
Dubia, | do. | 5 | do. | W. by S.¼S.
Racka, | do. | 1 | do. | N. W.
Beyoume, | do. | 5 | do. | N. W. by N.
Cigala, | do. | 6 | do. | N.
Fursh, | do. | 3 | do. | N. E. by N.¼N.

—and the rocks upon which we struck, E. by S.½S. something less than five miles off.

At four o’clock in the afternoon we saw land, which our pilot told us was the south end of Dahalac. It bore west by south, and was distant about nine leagues. As our course was then west by north, I found that we were going whither I had no intention to land, as my agreement was to touch at Dahalac el Kibeer, which is the principal port, and on the south end of the island, where the India ships formerly used to resort, as there is deep water, and plenty of sea-room between that and the main. But the freight of four sacks of dora, which did not amount to ten shillings, was sufficient to make the Rais break his word, and run a risk of cancelling all the meritorious services he had so long performed for me. So certain is it, that none of these people can ever do what is right, where the smallest trifle is thrown into the scale to bias them from their duty.

At six in the evening we anchored near a small island called Racka Garbia, or West Racka, in four fathom of stony-ground. By a meridian altitude of Lucida Aquilæ, I concluded the lat. to be 15° 31´ 30´´ north, and our bearings as follow:—

Dallacken, | distant | 3 | miles, | N. E.¾E.
Dalgrousht, | do. | 5 | do. | S. E. by E.½S.
Dellesheb, | do. | 6 | do. | E. N. E.¾E.
Dubia, | do. | 11 | do. | E. by S.½S.
Racka Garbia, | do. | 2 | do. | S. W. by W.¼S.

On the 13th, a little after sun-rise, we continued our course west, and a very little southerly, with little wind. At eight o’clock we passed Dalgrousht, north by east about a league distance, and a new island, Germ Malco west by north. At noon, I observed our latitude to be 15° 33´ 13´´ north; and our bearings as follow:—

Dallacken, | distant | 6 | miles, | E. by S.
Racka, | do. | 6 | do. | S. E. by S.
Germ Malco, | do. | 6 | do. | S. S. W.
Dalgrousht, | do. | 4 | do. | E. N. E.
Dennifarek, | do. | 7 | do. | N. N. W.
Seide el Arabi, | do. | 4 | do. | W. by S.
Dahal Couss, | do. | 9 | do. | N. W. by N.

The south cape of the island of Dahalac is called Ras Shouke, which, in Arabic, means the Cape of Thorns, because upon it are a quantity of sunt, or acacia, the thorny-tree which bears the gum-arabic. We continued our course along the east side of Dahalac, and, at four o’clock in the afternoon, saw Irwée, which is said to answer to the centre of the island. It bore then south-west of us four miles. We also saw two small islands, Tarza and Siah el Sezan; the first, north by west three miles; the second, north-east by east, but something farther. After having again violently struck on the coral rocks in the entry, at sun-set we anchored in the harbour of Dobelew.

This harbour is in form circular, and sufficiently defended from all winds, but its entrance is too narrow, and within, it is full of rocks. The bottom of the whole port is covered with large ramifications of white coral, with huge black stones; and I could no where observe there were above three fathom water, when it was full sea. The pilot indeed said there were seven, or twelve at the mouth; but so violent a tide rushed in through the entrance, that no vessel could escape being driven upon the rocks, therefore I made no draught of it.

Dobelew is a village three miles south-west of the harbour. It consists of about eighty houses, built of stone drawn from the sea; these calcine like shells, and make good enough morter, as well as materials for building before burning. All the houses are covered with bent-grass, like those of Arabia. The 17th, I got my large quadrant a-shore, and observed the sun in the meridian in that village, and determined the lat. of its south-west extremity, to be 15° 42´ 22´´ north.

Irwee is a village still smaller than Dobelew, about four miles distant. From this observation, compared with our account, we computed the southern cape of Dahalac, called Ras Shouke, to be in lat. 15° 27´ 30´´; and Ras Antalou, or the north cape, to be in lat. 15° 54´ 30´´ north.

The whole length of the island, whose direction is from north-west to south-east is thirty-seven miles, and its greatest breadth eighteen, which did within a very little agree with the account the inhabitants gave us, who made its length indeed something more.

Dahalac is by far the largest island in the Red Sea, as none, that we had hitherto seen, exceeded five miles in length. It is low and even, the soil fixed gravel and white sand, mixed with shells and other marine productions. It is destitute of all sorts of herbage, at least in summer, unless a small quantity of bent grass, just sufficient to feed the few antelopes and goats that are on the island. There is a very beautiful species of this last animal found here, small, short-haired, with thin black sharp horns, having rings upon them, and they are very swift of foot.

This island is, in many places, covered with large plantations of Acacia trees, which grow to no height, seldom above eight feet, but spread wide, and turn flat at top, probably by the influence of the wind from the sea. Though in the neighbourhood of Abyssinia, Dahalac does not partake of its seasons: no rain falls here, from the end of March to the beginning of October; but, in the intermediate months, especially December, January, and February, there are violent showers for twelve hours at a time, which deluge the island, and fill the cisterns so as to serve all next summer; for there are no hills nor mountains in Dahalac, and consequently no springs. These cisterns alone preserve the water, and of them there yet remain three hundred and seventy, all hewn out of the solid rock. They say these were the works of the Persians; it is more probable they were those of the first Ptolemies. But whoever were the constructors of these magnificent reservoirs, they were a very different people from those that now possess them, who have not industry enough to keep one of the three hundred and seventy clear for the use of man. All of them are open to every sort of animal, and half full of the filth they leave there, after drinking and washing in them. The water of Dobelew, and Irwée, tasted strong of musk, from the dung of the goats and antelopes, and the smell before you drink it is more nauseous than the taste; yet one of these cisterns, cleaned and shut up with a door, might afford them wholesome sweet water all the year over.

After the rains fall, a prodigious quantity of grass immediately springs up; and the goats give the inhabitants milk, which in winter is the principal part of their subsistence, for they neither plow nor sow. All their employment is to work the vessels which trade to the different parts of the coast. One half of the inhabitants is constantly on the Arabian side, and by their labour is enabled to furnish with 206dora, and other provisions, the other half who stay at home; and when their time is expired, they are relieved by the other half, and supplied with necessaries in their turn. But the sustenance of the poorer sort is entirely shell and other fish. Their wives and daughters are very bold, and expert fisher-women. Several of them, entirely naked, swam off to our vessel before we came to an anchor, begging handfuls of wheat, rice, or dora. They are very importunate and sturdy beggars, and not easily put off with denials. These miserable people, who live in the villages not frequented by barks from Arabia, are sometimes a whole year without tasting bread. Yet such is the attachment to the place of their nativity, they prefer living in this bare, barren, parched spot, almost in want of necessaries of every kind, especially of these essential ones, bread and water, to those pleasant and plentiful countries on both sides of them. This preference we must not call strange, for it is universal: A strong attachment to our native country, whatever is its condition, has been impressed by Providence, for wise ends, in the breasts of all nations; from Lapland to the Line, you find it written precisely in the same character.

There are twelve villages, or towns, in Dahalac, little different in size from Dobelew; each has a plantation of doom-trees round it, which furnish the only manufacture in the island. The leaves of this tree, when dried, are of a glossy white, which might very easily be mistaken for sattin; of these they make baskets of surprising beauty and neatness, staining part of the leaves with red or black, and working them into figures very artificially. I have known some of these, resembling straw-baskets, continue full of water for twenty-four hours, without one drop coming through. They sell these at Loheia and Jidda, the largest of them for four commesh, or sixpence. This is the employment, or rather amusement of the men who stay at home; for they work but very moderately at it, and all of them indeed take special care, not to prejudice their health by any kind of fatigue from industry.

People of the better sort, such as the Shekh and his relations, men privileged to be idle, and never exposed to the sun, are of a brown complexion, not darker than the inhabitants of Loheia. But the common sort employed in fishing, and those who go constantly to sea, are not indeed black, but red, and little darker than the colour of new mahogany. There are, besides, blacks among them, who come from Arkeeko and the Main, but even these, upon marrying, grow less black in a generation.

The inhabitants of Dahalac seemed to be a simple, fearful, and inoffensive people. It is the only part of Africa, or Arabia, (call it which you please) where you see no one carry arms of any kind; neither gun, knife, nor sword, is to be seen in the hands of any one. Whereas, at Loheia, and on all the coast of Arabia, and more particularly at Yambo, every person goes armed; even the porters, naked, and groaning under the weight of their burden, and heat of the day, have yet a leather belt, in which they carry a crooked knife, so monstrously long, that it needs a particular motion and address in walking, not to lame the bearer. This was not always the case at Dahalac; several of the Portuguese, on their first arrival here, were murdered, and the island often treated ill, in revenge, by the armaments of that nation. The men seem healthy. They told me they had no diseases among them, unless sometimes in Spring, when the boats of Yemen and Jidda bring the small-pox among them, and very few escape with life that are infected. I could not observe a man among them that seemed to be sixty years old, from which I infer, they are not long livers, though the air should be healthy, as being near the channel, and as they have the north wind all summer, which moderates the heat.

Of all the islands we had passed on this side the channel, Dahalac alone is inhabited. It depends, as do all the rest, upon Masuah, and is conferred by a firman from the Grand Signior, on the Basha of Jidda; and, from him, on Metical Aga, then on the Naybe and his servants. The present governor’s name was Hagi Mahomet Abdel cader, of whom I have before spoken, as having sailed from Jidda to Masuah before me, where he did me all the dis-service in his power, and nearly procured my assassination. The revenue of this governor consists in a goat brought to him monthly by each of the twelve villages. Every vessel, that puts in there for Masuah, pays him also a pound of coffee, and every one from Arabia, a dollar or pataka. No sort of small money is current at Dahalac, excepting Venetian glass-beads, old and new, of all sizes and colours, broken and whole.

Although this is the miserable state of Dahalac at present, matters were widely different in former times. The pearl fishery flourished greatly here, under the Ptolemies; and even long after, in the time of the Caliphs, it produced a great revenue, and, till the sovereigns of Cairo, of the present miserable race of slaves, began to withdraw themselves from their dependency on the port (for even after the reign of Selim, and the conquests of Arabia, under Sinan Basha, the Turkish gallies were still kept up at Suez, whilst Masuah and Suakem had Bashas) Dahalac was the principal island that furnished the pearl fishers, or divers. It was, indeed, the chief port for the fishery on the southern part of the Red Sea, as Suakem was on the north; and the Basha of Masuah passed part of every summer here, to avoid the heat at his place of residence on the Continent.

The fishery extended from Dahalac and its islands nearly to lat. 20°. The inhabited islands furnished each a bark, and so many divers, and they were paid in wheat, flour, &c. such a portion to each bark, for their use, and so much to leave with their family, for their subsistence; so that a few months employment furnished them with every thing necessary for the rest of the year. The fishery was rented, in latter times, to the Basha of Suakem, but there was a place between Suakem, and the supposed river Frat, in lat. 21° 28´ north, called Gungunnah, which was reserved to the Grand Signior in particular, and a special officer was appointed to receive the pearls on the spot, and send them to Constantinople. The pearls found there were of the largest size, and inferior to none in water, or roundness. Tradition says, that this was, exclusively, the property of the Pharaohs, by which is meant, in Arabian manuscrip’s, the old kings of Egypt before Mahomet.

In the same extent, between Dahalac and Suakem, was another very valuable fishery, that of207 tortoises, from which the finest shells of that kind were produced, and a great trade was carried on with the East Indies, (China especially) at little expence, and with very considerable profits. The animal itself (the turtle) was in great plenty, between lat. 18° and 20°, in the neighbourhood of those low sandy islands, laid down in my chart.

The India trade flourished exceedingly at Suakem and Masuah, as it had done in the prosperous time of the Caliphs. The Banians, (then the only traders from the East Indies) being prohibited by the Mahometans to enter the Holy Land of the Hejaz, carried all their vessels to Konfodah in Yemen, and from these two ports had, in return, at the first hand, pearls, tortoise-shell, which sold for its weight of gold, in China; Tibbar, or pure gold of Sennaar, (that from Abyssinia being less so) elephant’s teeth, rhinoceros horns for turning, plenty of gum Arabic, cassia, myrrh, frankincense, and many other precious articles; these were all bartered, at Masuah and Suakem, for India goods. But nothing which violence and injustice can ruin, ever can subsist under Turkish government. The Bashas paying dearly for their confirmation at Constantinople, and uncertain if they should hold this office long enough to make reimbursements for the money they had already advanced, had not patience to stay till the course of trade gradually indemnified them, but proceeding from extortion to extortion, they at last became downright robbers, seizing the cargo of the ships wherever they could find them, and exercising the most shocking cruelties on the person they belonged to, slaying the factors alive, and impaling those that remained in their hands, to obtain, by terror, remittances from India. The trade was thus abandoned, and the revenue ceased. There were no bidders at Constantinople for the farm, nobody had trade in their heads when their lives were every hour in danger. Dahalac became therefore dependent on the Basha of Jidda, and he appointed an208 Aga, who paid him a moderate sum, and appropriated to himself the provisions and salary allowed for the pearl fishery, or the greatest part of them.

The Aga at Suakem endeavoured, in vain, to make the Arabs and people near him work without salary, so they abandoned an employment which produced nothing but punishment; and, in time, they grew ignorant of the fishery in which they once were so well skilled and had been educated. This great nursery of seamen therefore was lost, and the gallies, being no longer properly manned, were either given up to rot, or turned into merchant-ships for carrying the coffee between Yemen and Suez, these vessels were unarmed, and indeed incapable of armament, and unserviceable by their construction; besides, they were ill-manned, and so carelessly and ignorantly navigated, that there was not a year, that one or more did not founder, not from stress of weather, (for they were sailing in a pond) or from any thing, but ignorance, or inattention.

Trade took again its ancient course towards Jidda. The Sherriffe of Mecca, and all the Arabs, were interested to get it back to Arabia, and with it the government of their own countries. That the pearl fishing might, moreover, no longer be an allurement for the Turkish power to maintain itself here, and oppress them, they discouraged the practice of diving, till it grew into desuetude; this brought insensibly all the people of the islands to the continent, where they were employed in coasting vessels, which continues their only occupation to this day. This policy succeeded; the princes of Arabia became again free from the Turkish power, now but a shadow, and Dahalac, Masuah, and Suakem, returned to their ancient masters, to which they are subject at this instant, governed indeed by Shekhs of their own country, and preserving only the name of Turkish government, each being under the command of a robber and assassin.

The immense treasures in the bottom of the Red Sea, have thus been abandoned for near two hundred years, though they never were richer in all probability than at present. No nation can now turn them to any profit, but the English East India Company, more intent on multiplying the number of their enemies, and weakening themselves by spreading their inconsiderable force over new conquests, than creating additional profit by engaging in new articles of commerce. A settlement upon the river Frat, which never yet has belonged to any one but wandering Arabs, would open them a market both for coarse and fine goods from the southern frontiers of Morocco, to Congo and Angola, and set the commerce of pearls and tortoise shell on foot again. All this section of the Gulf from Suez, as I am told, is in their charter, and twenty ships might be employed on the Red Sea, without any violation of territorial claims. The myrrh, the frankincense, some cinnamon, and variety of drugs, are all in the possession of the weak king of Adel, an usurper, tyrant, and Pagan, without protection, and willing to trade with any superior power, that only would secure him a miserable livelihood.

If this does not take place, I am persuaded the time is not far off, when these countries shall, in some shape or other, be subjects of a new master. Were another Peter, another Elizabeth, or, better than either, another Catharine to succeed the present, in an empire already extended to China;—were such a sovereign, unfettered by European politics, to prosecute that easy task of pushing those mountebanks of sovereigns and statesmen, these stage-players of government, the Turks, into Asia, the inhabitants of the whole country, who in their hearts look upon her already as their sovereign, because she is the head of their religion, would, I am persuaded, submit without a blow that instant the Turks were removed on the other side of the Hellespont.

There are neither horses, dogs, sheep, cows, nor any sort of quadruped, but goats, asses, a few half-starved camels and antelopes at Dahalac, which last are very numerous. The inhabitants have no knowledge of fire-arms, and there are no dogs, nor beasts of prey in the island to kill them; they catch indeed some few of them in traps.

On our arrival at Dahalac, on the 14th, we saw swallows there, and, on the 16th, they were all gone. On our landing at Masuah, on the 19th, we saw a few; the 21st and 22d they were in great flocks; on the 2d of October they were all gone. It was the blue long-tailed swallow, with the flat head; but there was, likewise, the English martin, black, and darkish grey in the body, with a white breast.

The language at Dahalac is that of the Shepherds; Arabic too is spoken by most of them. From this island we see the high mountains of Habesh, running in an even ridge like a wall, parallel to the coast, and down to Suakem.

Before I leave Dahalac, I must observe, that, in a wretched chart, in the hands of some of the English gentlemen at Jidda, there were soundings marked all along the east-coast of Dahalac, from thirteen to thirty fathoms, within two leagues of the shore. Now, the islands I have mentioned occupy a much larger space than that; yet none of them are set down in the chart; and, where the soundings are marked thirty, forty, and even ninety fathom, all is full of shoals under water, with islands and sunken coral rocks, some of them near the surface, though the breakers do not appear upon them, partly owing to the waves being steadied by the violence of the current, and somewhat kept off by the island. This dangerous error is, probably, owing to the draughts being composed from different journals, where the pilot has had different ways of measuring his distance; some using forty-two feet to a thirty-second glass, and some twenty-eight, both of them being considered as one competent division of a degree; the distances are all too short, and the soundings, and every thing else, consequently out of their places.

Whoever has to navigate in the Abyssinian side of the channel, will do well to pass the island Dahalac on the east side, or, at least, not approach the outmost island, Wowcan, nearer than ten leagues; but, keeping about twelve leagues meridian distance west of Jibbel Teir, or near mid-channel between that and the island, they will then be out of danger; being between lat. 15° 20´ and 15° 40´, which last is the latitude, as I observed, of Saiel Noora, and which is the northern island, we saw, three leagues off Ras Antalou, the northmost cape of Dahalac.

Both at our entering into the port of Dobelew on the 14th, and our going out of it on the 17th, we found a tide running like a sluice, which we apprehended, in spite of our sails being full, would force us out of our course upon the rocks. I imagine it was then at its greatest strength, it now being near the equinoctial full moon. The channel between Terra Firma and the island being very narrow, and the influence of the sun and moon then nearly in the equator, had occasioned this unusual violence of the tide, by forcing a large column of water through so narrow a space.

On the 17th, after we had examined our vessel, and found she had received no damage, and provided water (bad as it was) for the remainder of our voyage, we sailed from Dobelew, but, the wind being contrary, we were obliged to come to an anchor, at three quarters past four o’clock, in ten fathom water, about three leagues from that port, which was to the south-west of us; the bearings and distances are as follow:—

Derghiman Kibeer, | distan | 10 | miles, | W. S. W.
Deleda, | do. | 7 | do. | W. by N.
Saiel Sezan, | do. | 4 | do. | S. E.
Zeteban, | do. | 5 | do. | N. E.
Dahalac, | do. | 12 | do. | S. S. W.
Dahalhalem, | do. | 12 | do. | N. W. by N.

On the 18th, we sailed, standing off and on, with a contrary wind at north-west, and a strong current in the same direction. At half past four in the morning we were forced to come to an anchor. There is here a very shallow and narrow passage, which I sounded myself in the boat, barely one and a half fathom, or nine feet of water, and we were obliged to wait the filling of the tide. This is called the Bogaz, which signifies, as I have before observed, the narrow and shallow passage. It is between the island Dahalac and the south point of the island of Noora, about forty fathom broad, and, on each side full of dangerous rocks. The islands then bore,

Derghiman Seguier, | distant | 3 | miles, | S. W.
Derghiman Kibeer, | do. | 5 | do. | S.
Dahalhalem, | do. | 4 | do. | E. N. E.
Noora, | do. | 2 | do. | N. E. by N.

The tide now entered with an unusual force, and ran more like the Nile, or a torrent, or stream conducted to turn a mill, than the sea, or the effects of a tide. At half past one o’clock, there was water enough to pass, and we soon were hurried through it by the violence of the current, driving us in a manner truly tremendous.

At half after three, we passed between Ras Antalou, the North Cape of Dahalac, and the small island Dahalottom, which has some trees upon it. On this island is the tomb of Shekh209 Abou Gafar, mentioned by Poncet, in his voyage, who mistakes the name of the saint for that of the island. The strait between the Cape and the island is a mile and a half broad. At four in the afternoon, we anchored near a small island called Surat. All between this and Dahalac, there is no water exceeding seven fathom, till you are near Dahalac Kibeer, whose port has water for large vessels, but is open to every point, from south-west to north-west, and has a great swell.

All ships coming to the westward of Dahalac had better keep within the island Drugerut, between that and the main, where there is plenty of water, and room enough to work, tho’, even here, there are islands a-head; and clear weather, as well as a good look-out, will always be necessary.

On the 19th of September, at three quarters past six in the morning, we sailed from our anchorage near Surat. At a quarter past nine, Dargeli, an island with trees upon it, bore N. W. by W. two miles and a half distant; and Drugerut three leagues and a half north and by east, when it fell calm.

At eleven o’clock, we passed the island of Dergaiham, bearing N. by East, three miles distant, and at five in the afternoon we came to an anchor in the harbour of Masuah, having been210 seventeen days on our passage, including the day we first went on board, though this voyage, with a favourable wind, is generally made in three days; it often has, indeed, been sailed in less.

The reader will observe, that many of the islands begin with Dahal, and some with Del, which last is only an abbreviation of the former, and both of them signify island in the language of Beja, otherwise called Geez, or the language of the shepherds. Massowa, too, though generally spelled in the manner I have here expressed it, should properly be written Masuah, which is the harbour or water of the Shepherds. Of this nation, so often mentioned already in this work, as well as the many other people less powerful and numerous than they that inhabit the countries between the tropics, or frontiers of Egypt and the Line, it will be necessary now to speak in some detail, although the connection they all have with the trade of the Red Sea, and with each other, will oblige me to go back to very early times, to the invention of letters, and all the useful arts, which had their beginning here, were carefully nourished, and came probably to as great a perfection as they did ever since arrive at any other period.

TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
BOOK II.
ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST AGES OF THE INDIAN AND AFRICAN TRADE—THE FIRST PEOPLING OF ABYSSINIA AND ATBARA—SOME CONJECTURES CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE THERE.

CHAP. I.

Of the India trade in its earliest ages—Settlement of Ethiopia—Troglodytes—Building of the first Cities.

The farther back we go into the history of Eastern nations, the more reason we have to be surprised at the accounts of their immense riches and magnificence. One who reads the history of Egypt is like a traveller walking through its ancient, ruined, and deserted towns, where all are palaces and temples, without any trace of private or ordinary habitation. So in the earliest though now mutilated, accounts which we have of them, all is power, splendour, and riches, attended by the luxury which was the necessary consequence, without any clue or thread left us by which we can remount, or be conducted, to the source or fountain whence this variety of wealth had flowed; without ever being able to arrive at a period, when these people were poor and mean, or even in a state of mediocrity, or upon a footing with European nations.

The sacred scriptures, the most ancient, as well as the most credible of all histories, represent Palestine, of which they particularly treat, in the earliest ages, as not only full of polished, powerful, and orderly states, but abounding also in silver and gold211, in a greater proportion than is to be found this day in any state in Europe, though immensely rich dominions in a new world have been added to the possession of that territory, which furnished the greatest quantity of gold and silver to the old. Palestine, however, is a poor country, left to its own resources and produce merely. It must have been always a poor country, without some extraordinary connection with foreign nations. It never contained either mines of gold or silver, and though, at most periods of its history, it appears to have been but thinly inhabited, it never of itself produced wherewithal to support and maintain the few that dwelt in it.

Mr de Montesquieu212, speaking of the wealth of Semiramis, imagines that the great riches of the Assyrian empire in her reign, arose from this queen’s having plundered some more ancient and richer nation, as they, in their turn, fell afterwards a prey to a poorer, but more warlike enemy. But however true this fact may be with regard to Semiramis, it does not solve the general difficulty, as still the same question recurs, concerning the wealth of that prior nation, which the Assyrians plundered, and from which they received their treasure. I believe the example is rare, that a large kingdom has been enriched by war. Alexander conquered all Asia, part of Africa, and a considerable portion of Europe; he plundered Semiramis’s kingdom, and all those that were tributary to her; he went farther into the Indies than ever she did, though her territories bordered upon the river Indus itself; yet neither Macedon, nor any of the neighbouring provinces of Greece, could ever compare with the small districts of Tyre and Sidon for riches.

War disperses wealth in the very instant it acquires it; but commerce, well regulated, constantly and honestly supported, carried on with œconomy and punctuality, is the only thing that ever did enrich extensive kingdoms; and one hundred hands employed at the loom will bring to a country more riches and abundance, than ten thousand bearing spears and shields. We need not go far to produce an example that will confirm this. The subjects and neighbours of Semiramis had brought spices by land into Assyria. The Ishmaelites and Midianites, the merchants and carriers of gold from Ethiopia, and more immediately from Palestine, met in her dominions; and there was, for a time, the mart of the East India trade. But, by an absurd expedition with an army into India, in hopes to enrich herself all at once, she effectually ruined that commerce, and her kingdom fell immediately afterwards.

Whoever reads the history of the most ancient nations, will find the origin of wealth and power to have risen in the east; then to have gradually advanced westward, spreading itself at the same time north and south. They will find the riches and population of those nations decay in proportion as this trade forsakes them; which cannot but suggest to a good understanding, this truth constantly to be found in the disposition of all things in this universe, that God makes use of the smallest means and causes to operate the greatest and most powerful effects. In his hand a pepper-corn is the foundation of the power, glory, and riches of India; he makes an acorn, and by it communicates power and riches to nations divided from India by thousands of leagues of sea.

Let us pursue our consideration of Egypt. Sesostris, before the time we have been just speaking of, passed with a fleet of large ships from the Arabian Gulf into the Indian Ocean; he conquered part of India, and opened to Egypt the commerce of that country by sea. I enter not into the credibility of the number of his fleet, as there is scarce any thing credible left us about the shipping and navigation of the ancients, or, at least, that is not full of difficulties and contradictions; my business is with the expedition, not with the number of the ships. It would appear he revived, rather than first discovered, this way of carrying on the trade to the East Indies, which, though it was at times intermitted, (perhaps forgot by the Princes who were contending for the Sovereignty of the continent of Asia), was, nevertheless, perpetually kept up by the trading nations themselves, from the ports of India and Africa, and on the Red Sea from Edom.

The pilots from these ports alone, of all the world, had a secret confined to their own knowledge, upon which the success of these voyages depended. This was the phænomena of the trade-winds213 and monsoons, which the pilots of Sesostris knew; and which those of Nearchus seem to have taught him only in part, in his voyage afterwards, and of which we are to speak in the sequel. History says further of Sesostris, that the Egyptians considered him as their greatest benefactor, for having laid open to them the trade both of India and Arabia, for having overturned the dominion of the Shepherd kings; and, lastly, for having restored to the Egyptian individuals each their own lands, which had been wrested from them by the violent hands of the Ethiopian Shepherds, during the first usurpation of these princes.

In memory of his having happily accomplished these events, Sesostris is said to have built a ship of cedar of a hundred and twenty yards in length, the outside of which he covered with plates of gold, and the inside with plates of silver, and this he dedicated in the temple of Isis. I will not enter into the defence of the probability of his reasons for having built a ship of this size, and for such a purpose, as one of ten yards would have sufficiently answered. The use it was made for, was apparently to serve for a hieroglyphic, of what he had accomplished, viz. that he had laid open the gold and silver trade from the mines in Ethiopia, and had navigated the ocean in ships made of wood, which were the only ones, he thereby insinuated, that could be employed in that trade. The Egyptian ships, at that time, were all made of the reed papyrus214, covered with skins or leather, a construction which no people could venture to present to the ocean.

There is much to be learned from a proper understanding of these last benefits conferred by Sesostris upon his Egyptian subjects. When we understand these, which is very easy to any that have travelled in the countries we are speaking of, (for nations and causes have changed very little in these countries to this day), it will not be difficult to find a solution of this problem, What was the commerce that, progressively, laid the foundation of all that immense grandeur of the east; what polished them, and cloathed them with silk, scarlet, and gold; and what carried the arts and sciences among them, to a pitch, perhaps, never yet surpassed, and this some thousands of years before the nations in Europe had any other habitation than their native woods, or cloathing than the skins of beasts, wild and domestic, or government, but that first, innate one, which nature had given to the strongest?

Let us inquire what was the connection Sesostris brought about between Egypt and India; what was that commerce of Ethiopia and Arabia, by which he enriched Egypt, and what was their connection with the peninsula of India; who were those kings who bore so opposite an office, as to be at the same time Shepherds; and who were those Shepherds, near, and powerful enough to wrest the property of their lands from four million of inhabitants.

To explain this, it will be necessary to enter into some detail, without which no person dipping into the ancient or modern history of this part of Africa, can have any precise idea of it, nor of the different nations inhabiting the peninsula, the source of whose wealth consisted entirely in the early, but well-established commerce between Africa and India. What will make this subject of more easy explanation is, that the ancient employment and occupations of these people in the first ages, were still the same that subsist at this day. The people have altered a little by colonies of strangers being introduced among them, but their manners and employments are the same as they originally were. What does not relate to the ancient history of these people, I shall only mention in the course of my travels when passing through, or sojourning amongst them.

Providence had created the inhabitants of the peninsula of India under many disadvantages in point of climate. The high and wholesome part of the country was covered with barren and rugged mountains; and, at different times of the year, violent rains fell in large currents down the sides of these, which overflowed all the fertile land below; and these rains were no sooner over, than they were succeeded by a scorching sun, the effect of which upon the human body, was to render it feeble, enervated, and incapable of the efforts necessary for agriculture. In this flat country, large rivers, that scarce had declivity enough to run, crept slowly along, through meadows of fat black earth, stagnating in many places as they went, rolling an abundance of decayed vegetables, and filling the whole air with exhalations of the most corrupt and putrid kind. Even rice, the general food of man, the safest and most friendly to the inhabitants of that country, could not grow but by laying under water the places where it was sown, and thereby rendering them, for several months, absolutely improper for man’s dwelling. Providence had done this, but, never failing in its wisdom, had made to the natives a great deal more than a sufficient amends.

Their bodies were unfit for the fatigues of agriculture, nor was the land proper for common cultivation. But this country produced spices of great variety, especially a small berry called Pepper, supposed, of all others, and with reason, to be the greatest friend to the health of man. This grew spontaneously, and was gathered without toil. It was, at once, a perfect remedy for the inclemencies and diseases of the country, as well as the source of its riches, from the demand of foreigners. This species of spice is no where known but in India, though equally useful in every putrid region, where, unhappily, these diseases reign. Providence has not, as in India, placed remedies so near them, thus wisely providing for the welfare of mankind in general, by the dependency it has forced one man to have upon another. In India, and similar climates, this spice is not used in small quantities, but in such, as to be nearly equal to that of bread.

In cloathing, Providence had not been less kind to India. The silk worm, with little fatigue and trouble to man, almost without his interference, provided for him a stuff, at once the softest, the most light and brilliant, and consequently the best adapted to warm countries; and cotton, a vegetable production, growing every where in great abundance, without care, which may be considered as almost equal to silk, in many of its qualities, and superior to it in some, afforded a variety still cheaper for more general use. Every tree without culture produced them fruit of the most excellent kind; every tree afforded them shade, under which, with a very light and portable loom of cane, they could pass their lives delightfully in a calm and rational enjoyment, by the gentle exercise of weaving, at once providing for the health of their bodies, the necessities of their families, and the riches of their country.

But however plentifully their spices grew, in whatever quantity the Indians consumed them, and however generally they wore their own manufactures, the superabundance of both was such, as naturally led them to look out for articles against which they might barter their superfluities. This became necessary to supply the wants of those things that had been with-held from them, for wise ends, or which, from wantonness, luxury, or slender necessity, they had created in their own imaginations.

Far to the westward of them, but part of the same continent, connected by a long desert, and dangerous coast, was the peninsula of Arabia, which produced no spices, tho’ the necessities of its climate subjected its inhabitants to the same diseases as those in India. In fact, the country and climate were exactly similar, and, consequently, the plentiful use of these warm productions was as necessary there, as in India, the country where they grew.

It is true, Arabia was not abandoned wholly to the inclemency of its climate, as it produced myrrh and frankincense, which, when used as perfumes or fumigations, were powerful antiseptics of their kind, but administered rather as preventatives, than to remove the disorder when it once prevailed. These were kept up at a price, of which, at this day, we have no conception, but which never diminished from any circumstance, under which the country where they grew, laboured.

The silk and cotton of India were white and colourless, liable to soil, and without any variety; but Arabia produced gum and dyes of various colours, which were highly agreeable to the taste of the Asiatics. We find the sacred scriptures speak of the party-coloured garment as the mark of the greatest honour215. Solomon, in his proverbs, too, says, that he decked his bed with coverings of tapestry of Egypt216. But Egypt had neither silk nor cotton manufactory, no, nor even wool. Solomon’s coverings, though he had them from Egypt, were therefore an article of barter with India.

Balm, or Balsam217, was a commodity produced in Arabia, sold at a very high price, which it kept up till within these few centuries in the east; when the Venetians carried on the India trade by Alexandria, this Balsam then sold for its weight in gold; it grows in the same place, and, I believe, nearly in the same quantity as ever, but, for very obvious reasons218, it is now of little value.

The basis of trade, or a connection between these two countries, was laid, then, from the beginning, by the hand of Providence. The wants and necessities of the one found a supply, or balance from the other. Heaven had placed them not far distant, could the passage be made by sea; but violent, steady, and unconquerable winds presented themselves to make that passage of the ocean impossible, and we are not to doubt, but, for a very considerable time, this was the reason why the commerce of India was diffused through the continent, by land only, and from this arose the riches of Semiramis.

But, however precious the merchandise of Arabia was, it was neither in quantity, nor quality, capable of balancing the imports from India. Perhaps they might have paid for as much as was used in the peninsula of Arabia itself, but, beyond this there was a vast continent called Africa, capable of consuming many hundred fold more than Arabia; which lying under the same parallel with India, part of it still farther south, the diseases of the climate, and the wants of its numerous inhabitants, were, in many parts of it, the same as those of Arabia and India; besides which there was the Red Sea, and divers communications to the northward.

Neither their luxuries nor necessaries were the same as those of Europe. And indeed Europe, at this time, was probably inhabited by shepherds, hunters, and fishers, who had no luxury at all, or such as could not be supplied from India; they lived in woods and marshes, with the animals which made their sport, food, and cloathing.

The inhabitants of Africa then, this vast Continent, were to be supplied with the necessaries, as well as the luxuries of life, but they had neither the articles Arabia wanted, nor those required in India, at least, for a time they thought so; and so long they were not a trading people.

It is a tradition among the Abyssinians, which they say they have had from time immemorial, and which is equally received among the Jews and Christians, that almost immediately after the flood, Cush, grandson of Noah, with his family, passing through Atbara from the low country of Egypt, then without inhabitants, came to the ridge of mountains which still separates the flat country of Atbara from the more mountainous high-land of Abyssinia.

By casting his eye upon the map, the reader will see a chain of mountains, beginning at the Isthmus of Suez, that runs all along like a wall, about forty miles from the Red Sea, till it divides in lat. 13°, into two branches. The one goes along the northern frontiers of Abyssinia, crosses the Nile, and then proceeds westward, through Africa towards the Atlantic Ocean. The other branch goes southward, and then east, taking the form of the Arabian Gulf; after which, it continues southward all along the Indian Ocean, in the same manner as it did in the beginning all along, the Red Sea, that is parallel to the coast.

Their tradition says, that, terrified with the late dreadful event the flood, still recent in their minds, and apprehensive of being again involved in a similar calamity, they chose for their habitation caves in the sides of these mountains, rather than trust themselves again on the plain. It is more than probable, that, soon after their arrival, meeting here with the tropical rains, which, for duration, still exceed the days that occasioned the flood, and observing, that going through Atbara, that part of Nubia between the Nile and Astaboras, afterwards called Meroë, from a dry climate at first, they had after fallen in with rains, and as those rains increased in proportion to their advancing southward, they chose to stop at the first mountains, where the country was fertile and pleasant, rather than proceed farther at the risk of involving themselves, perhaps in a land of floods, that might prove as fatal to their posterity as that of Noah had been to their ancestors.

This is a conjecture from probability, only mentioned for illustration, for the motives that guided them cannot certainly be known; but it is an undoubted fact, that here the Cushites, with unparalleled industry, and with instruments utterly unknown to us, formed for themselves commodious, yet wonderful habitations in the heart of mountains of granite and marble, which remain entire in great numbers to this day, and promise to do so till the consummation of all things. This original kind of dwellings soon extended themselves through the neighbouring mountains. As the Cushites grew populous, they occupied those that were next them, spreading the industry and arts which they cultivated, as well to the eastern as to the western ocean, but, content with their first choice, they never descended from their caves, nor chose to reside at a distance on the plain.

It is very singular that St Jerome does not know where to look for this family, or descendents of Cush; though they are as plainly pointed out, and as often alluded to by scripture, as any nation in the Old Testament. They are described, moreover, by the particular circumstances of their country, which have never varied, to be in the very place where I now fix them, and where, ever since, they have remained, and still do to this present hour, in the same mountains, and the same houses of stone they formed for themselves in the beginning. And yet Bochart219, professedly treating this subject, as it were industriously, involves it in more than Egyptian darkness. I rather refer the reader to his work, to judge for himself, than, quoting it by extracts, communicate the confusion of his ideas to my narrative.

The Abyssinian tradition further says, they built the city of Axum some time early in the days of Abraham. Soon after this, they pushed their colony down to Atbara, where we know from Herodotus220, they early and successfully pursued their studies, from which, Josephus says221, they were called Meroëtes, or inhabitants of the island of Meroë.

The prodigious fragments of colossal statues of the dog-star, still to be seen at Axum, sufficiently shew what a material object of their attention they considered him to be; and Seir, which in the language of the Troglodytes, and in that of the low country of Meroë, exactly corresponding to it, signifies a dog, instructs us in the reason why this province was called Sirè, and the large river which bounds it, Siris.

I apprehend the reason why, without forsaking their ancient domiciles in the mountains, they chose this situation for another city, Meroë, was owing to an imperfection they had discovered (both in Sirè and in their caves below it) to result from their climate. They were within the tropical rains; and, consequently, were impeded and interrupted in the necessary observations of the heavenly bodies, and the progress of astronomy which they so warmly cultivated. They must have seen, likewise, a necessity of building Meroë farther from them than perhaps they wished, for the same reason they built Axum in the high country of Abyssinia in order to avoid the fly (a phænomenon of which I shall afterwards speak) which pursued them everywhere within the limits of the rains, and which must have given an absolute law in those first times to the regulations of the Cushite settlements. They therefore went the length of lat. 16°, where I saw the ruins supposed to be those of Meroë222, and caves in the mountains immediately above that situation, which I cannot doubt were the temporary habitation of the builders of that first seminary of learning.

It is probable that, immediately upon their success at Meroë, they lost no time in stretching on to Thebes. We know that it was a colony of Ethiopians, and probably from Meroë, but whether directly, or not, we are not certain. A very short time might have passed between the two establishments, for we find above Thebes, as there are above Meroë, a vast number of caves, which the colony made provisionally, upon its first arrival, and which are very near the top of the mountain, all inhabited to this day.

Hence we may infer, that their ancient apprehensions of a deluge had not left them whilst, they saw the whole land of Egypt could be overflowed every year without rain falling upon it; that they did not absolutely, as yet, trust to the liability of towns like those of Sirè and Meroë, placed upon columns or stones, one laid upon the other, or otherwise, that they found their excavations in the mountains were finished with less trouble, and more comfortable when complete, than the houses that were built. It was not long before they assumed a greater degree of courage.

CHAP. II.

Saba and the South of Africa peopled—Shepherds, their particular Employment and Circumstances—Abyssinia occupied by seven stranger Nations—Specimens of their several Languages—Conjectures concerning them.

While these improvements were going on so prosperously in the central and northern territory of the descendents of Cush, their brethren to the south were not idle, they had extended themselves along the mountains that run parallel to the Arabian Gulf; which was in all times called Saba, or Azabo, both which signify South, not because Saba was south of Jerusalem, but because it was on the south coast of the Arabian Gulf, and, from Arabia and Egypt, was the first land to the southward which bounded the African Continent, then richer, more important, and better known, than the rest of the world. By that acquisition, they enjoyed all the perfumes and aromatics in the east, myrrh, and frankincense, and cassia; all which grow spontaneously in that stripe of ground, from the Bay of Bilur west of Azab, to Cape Gardefan, and then southward up in the Indian Ocean, to near the coast of Melinda, where there is cinnamon, but of an inferior kind.

Arabia probably had not then set itself up as a rival to this side of the Red Sea, nor had it introduced from Abyssinia the myrrh and frankincense, as it did afterwards, for there is no doubt that the principal mart, and growth of these gums, were always near Saba. Upon the consumption increasing, they, however, were transplanted thence into Arabia, where the myrrh has not succeeded.

The Troglodyte extended himself still farther south. As an astronomer, he was to disengage himself from the tropical rains and cloudy skies that hindered his correspondent observations with his countrymen at Meroë and Thebes. As he advanced within the southern tropic, he, however, still found rains, and made his houses such as the fears of a deluge had instructed him to do. He found there solid and high mountains, in a fine climate; but, luckier than his countrymen to the northward, he found gold and silver in large quantities, which determined his occupation, and made the riches and consequence of his country. In these mountains, called the Mountains of Sofala, large quantities of both metals were discovered in their pure unmixed state, lying in globules without alloy, or any necessity of preparation or separation.

The balance of trade, so long against the Arabian and African continents, turned now in their favour from the immense influx of these precious metals, found in the mountains of Sofala, just on the verge of the southern tropical rains.

Gold and silver had been fixed upon in India as proper returns for their manufactures and produce. It is impossible to say whether it was from their hardness or beauty, or what other reason governed the mind of man in making this standard of barter. The history of the particular transactions of those times is lost, if, indeed, there ever was such history, and, therefore, all further inquiries are in vain. The choice, it seems, was a proper one, since it has continued unaltered so many ages in India, and has been universally adopted by all nations pretty much in the proportion or value as in India, into which continent gold and silver, from this very early period, began to flow, have continued so to do to this day, and in all probability will do to the end of time. What has become of that immense quantity of bullion, how it is consumed, or where it is deposited, and which way, if ever it returns, are doubts which I never yet found a person that could satisfactorily solve.

The Cushite then inhabited the mountains, whilst the northern colonies advanced from Meroë to Thebes, busy and intent upon the improvement of architecture, and building of towns, which they began to substitute for their caves; they thus became traders, farmers, artificers of all kinds, and even practical astronomers, from having a meridian night and day free from clouds, for such was that of the Thebaid. As this was impossible to their brethren, and six months continual rain confined them to these caves, we cannot doubt but that their sedentary life made them useful in reducing the many observations daily made by those of their countrymen who lived under a purer sky. Letters too, at least one sort of them, and arithmetical characters, we are told, were invented by this middle part of the Cushites, while trade and astronomy, the natural history of the winds and seasons, were what necessarily employed the part of the colony established at Sofala most to the southward.

The very nature of the Cushites commerce, the collecting of gold, the gathering and preparing his spices, necessarily fixed him perpetually at home; but his profit lay in the dispersing of these spices through the continent, otherwise his mines, and the trade produced by the possession of them, were to him of little avail.

A carrier was absolutely necessary to the Cushite, and Providence had provided him one in a nation which were his neighbours. These were in most respects different, as they had long hair, European features, very dusky and dark complexion, but nothing like the black-moor or negro; they lived in plains, having moveable huts or habitations, attended their numerous cattle, and wandered from the necessities and particular circumstances of their country. These people were in the Hebrew called Phut, and, in all other languages, Shepherds; they are so still, for they still exist; they subsist by the same occupation, never had another, and therefore cannot be mistaken; they are called Balous, Bagla, Belowee, Berberi, Barabra, Zilla and Habab223, which all signify but one thing, namely that of Shepherd. From their place of habitation, the territory has been called Barbaria by the Greeks and Romans, from Berber, in the original signifying shepherd. The authors that speak of the Shepherds seem to know little of those of the Thebaid, and still less of those of Ethiopia, whilst they fall immediately upon the shepherds of the Delta, that they may get the sooner rid of them, and thrust them into Assyria, Palestine, and Arabia. They never say what their origin was; how they came to be so powerful; what was their occupation; or, properly, the land they inhabited; or what is become of them now, though they seem inclined to think the race extinct.

The whole employment of the shepherds had been the dispersing of the Arabian and African goods all over the continent; they had, by that employment, risen to be a great people: as that trade increased, their quantity of cattle increased also, and consequently their numbers, and the extent of their territory.

Upon looking at the map, the reader will see a chain of mountains which I have described, and which run in a high ridge nearly straight north, along the Indian Ocean, in a direction parallel to the coast, where they end at Cape Gardefan. They then take the direction of the coast, and run west from Cape Gardefan to the Straits of Babelmandeb, inclosing the frankincense and myrrh country, which extends considerably to the west of Azab. From Babelmandeb they run northward, parallel to the Red Sea, till they end in the sandy plain at the Isthmus of Suez, a name probably derived from Suah, Shepherds.

Although this stripe of land along the Indian Ocean, and afterwards along the Red Sea, was necessary to the shepherds, because they carried their merchandise to the ports there, and thence to Thebes and Memphis upon the Nile, yet the principal seat of their residence and power was that flat part of Africa between the northern tropic and the mountains of Abyssinia. This is divided into various districts; it reaches from Masuah along the sea-coast to Suakem, then turns westward, and continues in that direction, having the Nile on the south, the tropic on the north, to the deserts of Selima, and the confines of Libya on the west. This large extent of country is called Beja. The next is that district224 in form of a shield, as Meroë is said to have been; this name was given it by Cambyses. It is between the Nile and Astaboras, and is now called Atbara. Between the river Mareb, the ancient Astusaspes on the east, and Atbara on the west, is the small plain territory of Derkin, another district of the shepherds. All that range of mountains running east and west, inclosing Derkin and Atbara on the south, and which begins the mountainous country of Abyssinia, is inhabited by the negro woolly-headed Cushite, or Shangalla, living as formerly in caves, who, from having been the most cultivated and instructed people in the world, have, by a strange reverse of fortune, relapsed into brutal ignorance, and are hunted by their neighbours like wild beasts in those forests, where they used to reign in the utmost luxury, liberty, and splendour. But the noblest, and most warlike of all the shepherds, were those that inhabited the mountains of the Habab, a considerable ridge reaching from the neighbourhood of Masuah to Suakem, and who, still dwell there.

In the ancient language of this country, So, or Suah, signified shepherd, or shepherds; though we do not know any particular rank or degrees among them, yet we may suppose these called simply shepherds were the common sort that attended the flocks. Another denomination, part of them bore, was Hycsos, sounded by us Agsos, which signifies armed shepherds, or such as wore harness, which may be supposed the soldiers, or armed force of that nation. The third we see mentioned is Ag-ag, which is thought to be the nobles or chiefs of those armed shepherds, whence came their title King of Kings225. The plural of this is Agagi, or, as it is written in the Ethiopic, Agaazi.

This term has very much puzzled both Scaliger and Ludolf; for, finding in the Abyssinian books that they are called Agaazi, they torment themselves about finding the etymology of that word. They imagine them to be Arabs from near the Red Sea, and Mr Ludolf226 thinks the term signifies banished men. Scaliger, too, has various guesses about them nearly to the same import. All this, however, is without foundation; the people assert themselves at this day to be Agaazi, that is, a race of Shepherds inhabiting the mountains of the Habab, and have by degrees extended themselves through the whole province of Tigré, whose capital is called Axum, from Ag and Suah, the metropolis, or principal city of the shepherds that wore arms.

Nothing was more opposite than the manners and life of the Cushite, and his carrier the shepherd. The first, though he had forsaken his caves, and now lived in cities which he had built, was necessarily confined at home by his commerce, amassing gold, arranging the invoices of his spices, hunting in the season to provide himself with ivory, and food throughout the winter. His mountains, and the cities he built afterwards, were situated upon a loomy, black earth, so that as soon as the tropical rains began to fall, a wonderful phænomenon deprived him of his cattle. Large swarms of flies appeared wherever that loomy earth was, which made him absolutely dependent in this respect upon the shepherd, but this affected the shepherd also.

This insect is called Zimb; it has not been described by any naturalist. It is in size very little larger than a bee, of a thicker proportion, and his wings, which are broader than those of a bee, placed separate like those of a fly; they are of pure gauze, without colour or spot upon them; the head is large, the upper jaw or lip is sharp, and has at the end of it a strong-pointed hair of about a quarter of an inch long; the lower jaw has two of these pointed hairs, and this pencil of hairs, when joined together, makes a resistance to the finger nearly equal to that of a strong hog’s bristle. Its legs are serrated in the inside, and the whole covered with brown hair or down. As soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their food, and run wildly about the plain, till they die, worn out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains, but to leave the black earth, and hasten down to the sands of Atbara, and there they remain while the rains last, this cruel enemy never daring to pursue them farther.

What enables the shepherd to perform the long and toilsome journies across Africa is the camel, emphatically called by the Arabs, the ship of the desert. He seems to have been created for this very trade, endued with parts and qualities adapted to the office he is employed to discharge. The driest thistle, and the barest thorn, is all the food this useful quadruped requires, and even these, to save time, he eats while advancing on his journey, without stopping, or occasioning a moment of delay. As it is his lot to cross immense deserts, where no water is found, and countries not even moistened by the dew of heaven, he is endued with the power at one watering-place to lay in a store, with which he supplies himself for thirty days to come. To contain this enormous quantity of fluid, Nature has formed large cisterns within him, from which, once filled, he draws at pleasure the quantity he wants, and pours it into his stomach with the same effect as if he then drew it from a spring, and with this he travels, patiently and vigorously, all day long, carrying a prodigious load upon him, through countries infected with poisonous winds, and glowing with parching and never-cooling sands. Though his size is immense, as is his strength, and his body covered with a thick skin, defended with strong hair, yet still he is not capable to sustain the violent punctures the fly makes with his pointed proboscis. He must lose no time in removing to the sands of Atbara; for, when once attacked by this fly, his body, head, and legs break out into large bosses, which swell, break, and putrify, to the certain destruction of the creature.

Even the elephant and rhinoceros, who, by reason of their enormous bulk, and the vast quantity of food and water they daily need, cannot shift to desert and dry places as the season may require, are obliged to roll themselves in mud and mire, which, when dry, coats them over like armour, and enables them to stand their ground against this winged assassin; yet I have found some of these tubercles upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute them to this cause.

All the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda, down to Cape Gardefan, to Saba, and the south coast of the Red Sea, are obliged to put themselves in motion, and remove to the next sand in the beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is not a partial emigration; the inhabitants of all the countries from the mountains of Abyssinia northward, to the confluence of the Nile and Astaboras, are once a-year obliged to change their abode, and seek protection in the sands of Beja; nor is there any alternative, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band was in their way, capable of spoiling them of half their substance; and this is now actually the case, as we shall see when we come to speak of Sennaar.

Of all those that have written upon these countries, the prophet Isaiah alone has given an account of this animal, and the manner of its operation. Isa. vii. ch. 18. and 19. ver. “And it shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt,”—“And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate vallies227, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.”

The mountains that I have already spoken of, as running through the country of the Shepherds, divide the seasons by a line drawn along their summit, so exactly, that, while the eastern side, towards the Red Sea, is deluged with rain for the six months that constitute our winter in Europe, the western side toward Atbara enjoys a perpetual sun, and active vegetation. Again, the six months, when it is our summer in Europe, Atbara, or the western side of these mountains, is constantly covered with clouds and rain, while, for the same time, the shepherd on the eastern side, towards the Red Sea, feeds his flocks in the most exuberant foliage and luxuriant verdure, enjoying the fair weather, free from the fly or any other molestation. These great advantages have very naturally occasioned these countries of Atbara and Beja to be the principal residence of the shepherd and his cattle, and have entailed upon him the necessity of a perpetual change of places. Yet so little is this inconvenience, so short the peregrination, that, from the rain on the west side, a man, in the space of four hours, will change to the opposite season, and find himself in sun-shine to the eastward.

When Carthage was built, the carriage of this commercial city fell into the hands of Lehabim, or Lubim, the Libyan peasants, and became a great accession to the trade, power, and number of the shepherds. In countries to which there was no access by shipping, the end of navigation was nearly answered by the immense increase of camels; and this trade, we find, was carried on in the very earliest ages on the Arabian side, by the Ishmaelite merchants trading to Palestine and Syria, from the south end of the peninsula, with camels. This we learn particularly from Genesis, they brought myrrh and spices, or pepper, and sold them for silver; they had also balm, or balsam, but this it seems, in those days, they brought from Gilead.

We are sorry, in reading this curious anecdote preserved to us in scripture, to find, in those early ages of the India trade, that another species of commerce was closely connected with it, which modern philanthropy has branded as the disgrace of human nature. It is plain, from the passage, the commerce of selling men was then universally established. Joseph228 is bought as readily, and sold as currently immediately after, as any ox or camel could be at this day. Three nations, Javan, Tubal, and Meshech229, are mentioned as having their principal trade at Tyre in the selling of men; and, as late as St John’s time230, this is mentioned as a principal part of the trade of Babylon; notwithstanding which, no prohibition from God, or censure from the prophets, have ever stigmatized it either as irreligious or immoral; on the contrary, it is always spoken of as favourably as any species of commerce whatever. For this, and many other reasons which I could mention, I cannot think, that purchasing slaves is, in itself, either cruel or unnatural. To purchase any living creature to abuse it afterwards, is certainly both base and criminal; and the crime becomes still of a deeper dye, when our fellow-creatures come to be the sufferers. But, although this is an abuse which accidentally follow the trade, it is no necessary part of the trade itself; and, it is against this abuse the wisdom of the legislature should be directed, not against the trade itself.

On the eastern side of the peninsula of Africa, many thousand slaves are sold to Asia, perfectly in the same manner as those on the west side are sent to the West Indies; but no one, that ever I heard, has as yet opened his mouth against the sale of Africans to the East Indies; and yet there is an aggravation in this last sale of slaves that should touch us much more than the other, where no such additional grievance can be pretended. The slaves sold into Asia are most of them Christians; they are sold to Mahometans, and, with their liberty, they are certainly deprived of their religion likewise. But the treatment of the Asiatics being much more humane than what the Africans, sold to the West Indies, meet with, no clamour has yet been raised against this commerce in Asia, because its only bad consequence is apostacy; a proof to me that religion has no part in the present dispute, or, as I have said, it is the abuse that accidentally follows the purchasing of slaves, not the trade itself, that should be considered as the grievance.

It is plain from all history, that two abominable practices, the one the eating of men, the other of sacrificing them to the devil, prevailed all over Africa. The India trade, as we have seen in very early ages, first established the buying and selling of slaves; since that time, the eating of men, or sacrificing them, has so greatly decreased on the eastern side of the peninsula, that now we scarcely hear of an instance of either of these that can be properly vouched. On the western part, towards the Atlantic Ocean, where the sale of slaves began a considerable time later, after the discovery of America and the West Indies, both of these horrid practices are, as it were, general, though, I am told, less so to the northward since that event.

There is still alive a man of the name of Matthews, who was present at one of those bloody banquets on the west of Africa, to the northward of Senega. It is probable the continuation of the slave-trade would have abolished these, in time, on the west side also. Many other reasons could be alledged, did my plan permit it. But I shall content myself at present, with saying, that I very much fear that a relaxation and effeminacy of manners, rather than genuine tenderness of heart, has been the cause of this violent paroxysm of philanthropy, and of some other measures adopted of late to the discouragement of discipline, which I do not doubt will soon be felt to contribute their mite to the decay both of trade and navigation that will necessarily follow.

The Ethiopian shepherds at first carried on the trade on their own side of the Red Sea; they carried their India commodities to Thebes, likewise to the different black nations to the south-west; in return, they brought back gold, probably at a cheaper rate, because certainly by a shorter carriage than by that from Ophir.

Thebes became exceedingly rich and proud, though, by the most extensive area that ever was assigned to it, it never could be either large or populous. Thebes is not mentioned in scripture by that name; it was destroyed before the days of Moses by Salatis prince of the Agaazi, or Ethiopian shepherds; at this day it has assumed a name very like the ancient one. The first signification of its name, Medinet Tabu, I thought was the Town of our Father. This, history says, was given it by Sesostris in honour of his father; in the ancient language, its name was Ammon No. The next that presented itself was Theba, which was the Hebrew name for the Ark when Noah was ordered to build it—Thou shalt “make thee an Ark (Theba) of gopher-wood231.”

The figure of the temples in Thebes do not seem to be far removed from the idea given us of the Ark. The third conjecture is, that being the first city built and supported on pillars, and, on different and separate pieces of stone, it got its name from the architects first expression of approbation or surprise, Tabu, that it stood insulated and alone, and this seems to me to be the most conformable both to the Hebrew and Ethiopic.

The shepherds, for the most part, friends and allies of the Egyptians, or Cushite, at times were enemies to them. We need not, at this time of day, seek the cause; there are many very apparent, from opposite manners, and, above all, the difference in the dietetique regimen. The Egyptians worshipped the cow, the Shepherds killed and ate her. The Shepherds were Sabeans, worshipping the host of heaven—the sun, moon, and stars. Immediately upon the building of Thebes and the perfection of sculpture, idolatry and the grossest materialism greatly corrupted the more pure and speculative religion of the Sabeans. Soon after the building of Thebes, we see that Rachel, Abraham’s wife, had idols232; we need seek no other probable cause of the devastation that followed, than difference of religion.

Thebes was destroyed by Salatis, who overturned the first Dynasty of Cushite, or Egyptian kings, begun by Menes, in what is called the second age of the world, and founded the first Dynasty of the Shepherds, who behaved very cruelly, and wrested the lands from their first owners; and it was this Dynasty that Sesostris destroyed, after calling Thebes by his father’s name, Ammon No, making those decorations that we have seen of the harp in the sepulchres on the west, and building Diospolis on the opposite side of the river. The second conquest of Egypt by the Shepherds was that under Sabaco, by whom it has been imagined Thebes was destroyed, in the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah, who is said to have made peace with So233 king of Egypt, as the translator has called him, mistaking So for the name of the king, whereas it only denoted his quality of shepherd.

From this it is plain, all that the scripture mentions about Ammon No, applies to Diospolis on the other side of the river. Ammon No and Diospolis, though they were on different sides of the river, were considered as one city, thro’ which the Nile flowed, dividing it into two parts. This is plain from profane history, as well as from the prophet Nahum234, who describes it very exactly, if in place of the word sea was substituted river, as it ought to be.

There was a third invasion of the Shepherds after the building of Memphis, where a 235king of Egypt236 is said to have inclosed two hundred and forty thousand of them in a city called Abaris; they surrendered upon capitulation, and were banished the country into the land of Canaan. That two hundred and forty thousand men should be inclosed in one city, so as to bear a siege, seems to me extremely improbable; but be it so, all that it can mean is, that Memphis, built in Lower Egypt near the Delta, had war with the Shepherds of the Isthmus of Suez, or the districts near them, as those of Thebes had before with the Shepherds of the Thebaid. But, however much has been written upon the subject, the total expulsion of the Shepherds at any one time by any King of Egypt, or at any one place, must be fabulous, as they have remained in their ancient seats, and do remain to this day; perhaps in not so great a number as when the India trade was carried on by the Arabian Gulf, yet still in greater numbers than any other nation of the Continent.

The mountains which the Agaazi inhabit, are called Habab, from which it comes, that they themselves have got that name. Habab, in their language, and in Arabic likewise, signifies a serpent, and this I suppose explains that historical fable in the book of Axum, which says, a serpent conquered the province of Tigré, and reigned there.

It may be asked, Is there no other people that inhabit Abyssinia, but these two nations, the Cushites and the Shepherds? Are there no other nations, whiter or fairer than them, living to the southward of the Agaazi? Whence did these come? At what time, and by what name are they called? To this I answer, That there are various nations which agree with this description, who have each a particular name, and who are all known by that of Habesh, in Latin Convenæ, signifying a number of distinct people meeting accidentally in one place. The word has been greatly misunderstood, and misapplied, both by Scaliger and Ludolf, and a number of others; but nothing is more consonant to the history of the country than the translation I have given it, nor will the word itself bear any other.

The Chronicle of Axum, the most ancient repository of the antiquities of that country, a book esteemed, I shall not say how properly, as the first in authority after the holy scriptures, says, that between the creation of the world and the birth of our Saviour there were 5500 years237; that Abyssinia had never been inhabited till 1808 years before Christ237; and 200 years after that, which was in the 1600, it was laid waste by a flood, the face of the country much changed and deformed, so that it was denominated at that time Ourè Midre, or, the country laid waste, or, as it is called in scripture itself, a land which the waters or floods had spoiled238; that about the 1400 year before Christ it was taken possession of by a variety of people speaking different languages, who, as they were in friendship with the Agaazi, or Shepherds, possessing the high country of Tigrè, came and sat down beside them in a peaceable manner, each occupying the lands that were before him. This settlement is what the Chronicle of Axum calls Angaba, the entry and establishment of these nations, which finished the peopling of Abyssinia.

Tradition further says, that they came from Palestine. All this seems to me to wear the face of truth. Some time after the year 1500, we know there happened a flood which occasioned great devastation. Pausanius says, that this flood happened in Ethiopia in the reign of Cecrops; and, about the 1490 before Christ, the Israelites entered the land of promise, under Caleb and Joshua. We are not to wonder at the great impression that invasion made upon the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. We see by the history of the harlot, that the different nations had been long informed by prophecies, current and credited among themselves, that they were to be extirpated before the face of the Israelites, who for some time had been hovering about their frontiers. But now when Joshua had passed the Jordan, after having miraculously dried up the river239 before his army had invaded Canaan, and had taken and destroyed Jericho, a panic seized the whole people of Syria and Palestine.

These petty states, many in number, and who had all different languages, seeing a conqueror with an immense army already in possession of part of their country, and who did not conduct himself according to the laws of other conquerors, but put the vanquished under saws and harrows of iron, and destroyed the men, women, and children; and sometimes even the cattle, by the sword, no longer could think of waiting the arrival of such an enemy, but sought for safety by speedy flight or emigration. The Shepherds in Abyssinia and Atbara were the most natural refuge these fugitives could seek; commerce must have long made them acquainted with each others manners, and they must have been already entitled to the rights of hospitality by having often passed through each other’s country.

Procopius240 mentions that two pillars were standing in his time on the coast of Mauritania, opposite to Gibraltar, upon which were inscriptions in the Phœnician tongue: “We are Canaanites, flying from the face of Joshua, the son of Nun, the robber:” A character they naturally gave him from the ferocity and violence of his manners. Now, if what these inscriptions contain is true, it is much more credible, that the different nations, emigrating at that time, should seek their safety near hand among their friends, rather than go to an immense distance to Mauritania, to risk a precarious reception among strangers, and perhaps that country not yet inhabited.

Upon viewing the several countries in which these nations have their settlements, it seems evident they were made by mutual consent, and in peace; they are not separated from each other by chains of mountains, or large and rapid rivers, but generally by small brooks, dry the greatest part of the year; by hillocks, or small mounds of earth, or imaginary lines traced to the top of some mountain at a distance; these boundaries have never been disputed or altered, but remain upon the old tradition to this day. These have all different languages, as we see from scripture all the petty states of Palestine had, but they have no letters, or written character, but the Geez, the character of the Cushite shepherd by whom they were first invented and used, as we shall see hereafter. I may add in further proof of their origin, that the curse241 of Canaan seems to have followed them, they have obtained no principality, but served the kings of the Agaazi or Shepherds, have been hewers of wood and drawers of water, and so they still continue.

Geez

Amhara

Falasha

Damot Agow

Tcheratz Agow

Gafat

Galla

The first and most considerable of these nations settled in a province called Amhara; it was, at first coming, as little known as the others; but, upon a revolution in the country, the king fled to that province, and there the court staid many years, so that the Geez, or language of the Shepherds, was dropt, and retained only in writing, and as a dead language; the sacred scriptures being in that language only, saved the Geez from going totally into disuse. The second were the Agows of Damot, one of the southern provinces of Abyssinia, where they are settled immediately upon the sources of the Nile. The third are the Agows of Lasta, or Tcheratz Agow, from Tchera, their principal habitation; theirs too is a separate language; they are Troglodytes that live in caverns, and seem to pay nearly the same worship to the Siris, or Tacazzè, that those of Damot pay to the Nile.

I take the old names of these two last-mentioned nations, to be sunk in the circumstances of this their new settlement, and to be a compound of two words Ag-oha, the Shepherds of the River, and I also imagine, that the idolatry they introduced in the worship of the Nile, is a further, proof that they came from Canaan, where they imbibed materialism in place of the pure Sabean worship of the Shepherds, then the only religion of this part of Africa.

The fourth is a nation bordering upon the southern banks of the Nile near Damot. It calls itself Gafat, which signifies oppressed by violence, torn, expelled, or chaced away by force. If we were to follow the idea arising merely from this name, we might be led to imagine, that these were part of the tribes torn from Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam. This, however, we cannot do confident with the faith to be kept by a historian with his reader. The evidence of the people themselves, and the tradition of the country, deny they ever were Jews, or ever concerned with that colony, brought with Menilek and the queen of Saba, which established the Jewish hierarchy. They declare, that they are now Pagans, and ever were so; that they are partakers with their neighbours the Agows in the worship of the river Nile, the extent or particulars of which I cannot pretend to explain.—The fifth is a tribe, which, if we were to pay any attention to similarity of names, we should be apt to imagine we had found here in Africa a part of that great Gaulish nation so widely extended in Europe and Asia. A comparison of their languages, with what we know exists of the former, cannot but be very curious.—These are the Galla, the most considerable of these nations, specimens of whose language I have cited. This word, in their own language, signifies Shepherd242; they say that formerly they lived on the borders of the southern rains, within the southern tropic; and that, like these in Atbara, they were carriers between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and supplied the interior part of the peninsula with Indian commodities.

The history of this trade is unknown; it must have been little less ancient, and nearly as extensive, as the trade to Egypt and Arabia. It probably suffered diminution, when the mines of Sofala were given up, soon after the discovery of the new world. The Portuguese found it still flourishing, when they made their first conquests upon that coast; and they carry it on still in an obscure manner, but in the same tract to their settlements near Cape Negro on the western ocean. From these settlements would be the proper place to begin to explore the interior parts of the peninsula, on both sides of the southern tropic, as protection and assistance could probably be got through the whole course of it, and very little skill in language would be necessary.

When no employment was found for this multitude of men and cattle, they left their homes, and proceeding northward, they found themselves involved near the Line, in rainy, cold, and cloudy weather, where they scarcely ever saw the sun. Impatient of such a climate, they advanced still farther, till about the year 1537, they appeared in great numbers in the province of Bali, abandoning the care of camels for the breeding of horses. At present they are all cavalry. I avoid to say more of them in this place, as I shall be obliged to make frequent mention of them in the course of my narrative.

The Falasha, too, are a people of Abyssinia, having a particular language of their own; a specimen of which I have also published, as the history of the people seems to be curious. I do not, however, mean to say of them, more than of the Galla, that this was any part of those nations who fled from Palestine on the invasion of Joshua. For they are now, and ever were, Jews, and have traditions of their own as to their origin, and what reduced them to the present state of separation, as we shall see hereafter, when I come to speak of the translation of the holy scripture.

In order to gratify such as are curious in the study and history of language, I, with great pains and difficulty, got the whole book of the Canticles translated into each of these languages, by priests esteemed the most versant in the language of each nation. As this barbarous polyglot is of too large a size to print, I have contented myself with copying six verses of the first chapter in each language; but the whole book is at the service of any person of learning that will bestow his time in studying it, and, for this purpose, I left it in the British Museum, under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks, and the Bishop of Carlisle.

These Convenæ, as we have observed, were called Habesh, a number of distinct nations meeting in one place. Scripture has given them a name, which, though it has been ill translated, is precisely Convenæ, both in the Ethiopic and Hebrew. Our English translation calls them the mingled people243, whereas it should be the separate nations, who, though met and settled together, did not mingle, which is strictly Convenæ. The inhabitants then who possessed Abyssinia, from its southern boundary to the tropic of Cancer, or frontiers of Egypt, were the Cushites, or polished people, living in towns, first Troglodytes, having their habitations in caves. The next were the Shepherds; after these were the nations who, as we apprehend, came from Palestine—Amhara, Agow of Damot, Agow of Tchera, and Gafat.

Interpreters, much less acquainted with the historical circumstances of these countries than the prophets, have, either from ignorance or inattention, occasioned an obscurity which otherwise did not arise from the text. All these people are alluded to in scripture by descriptions that cannot be mistaken. If they have occasioned doubts or difficulties, they are all to be laid at the door of the translators, chiefly the Septuagint. When Moses returned with his wife Zipporah, daughter of the sovereign of the Shepherds of Midian, carriers of the India trade from Saba into Palestine, and established near their principal mart Edom, in Idumea or Arabia, Aaron, and Miriam his sister, quarrelled with Moses, because he had married one who was, as the translator says, an Ethiopian244. There is no sense in this cause; Moses was a fugitive when he married Zipporah; she was a noble-woman, daughter of the priest of Midian, head of a people. She likewise, as it would seem, was a Jewess245, and more attentive, at that time, to the preservation of the precepts of the law, than Moses was himself; no exception, then, could lie against Zipporah, as she was surely, in every view, Moses’s superior. But if the translator had rendered it, that Aaron and Miriam had quarrelled with Moses, because he had married a negro, or black-moor, the reproach was evident; whatever intrinsic merit Zipporah might have been found to have possessed afterwards, she must have appeared before the people, at first sight, as a strange woman, or Gentile, whom it was prohibited to marry. Besides, the innate deformity of the complexion, negroes were, at all times, rather coveted for companions of men of luxury or pleasure, than sought after for wives of sober legislators, and governors of a people.

The next instance I shall give is, Zerah of Gerar246, who came out to fight Asa king of Israel with an army of a million of men, and three hundred chariots, whilst both the quarrel and the decision are represented as immediate.

Gerar was a small district, producing only the Acacia or gum-arabic trees, from which it had its name; it had no water but what came from a few wells, part of which had been dug by Abraham247, after much strife with the people of the country, who sought to deprive him of them, as of a treasure.

Abraham and his brother Lot returning from Egypt, though poor shepherds, could not subsist there for want of food, and water, and they separated accordingly, by consent248. Now it must be confessed, as it is not pretended there was any miracle here, that there is not a more unlikely tale in all Herodotus, than this must be allowed to be upon the footing of the translation. The translator calls Zerah an Ethiopian, which should either mean he dwelt in Arabia, as he really did, and this gave him no advantage, or else that he was a stranger, who originally came from the country above Egypt; and, either way, it would have been impossible, during his whole life-time, to have collected a million of men, one of the greatest armies that ever stood upon the face of the earth, nor could he have fed them though they had ate the whole trees that grew in his country, nor could he have given every hundredth man one drink of water in a day from all the wells he had in his country.

Here, then, is an obvious triumph for infidelity, because, as I have said, no supernatural means are pretended. But had it been translated, that Zerah was a black-moor, a Cushite-negro, and prince of the Cushites, that were carriers in the Isthmus, an Ethiopian shepherd, then the wonder ceased. Twenty camels, employed to carry couriers upon them, might have procured that number of men to meet in a short space of time, and, as Zerah was the aggressor, he had time to choose when he should attack his enemy; every one of these shepherds carrying with them their provision of flour and water, as is their invariable custom, might have fought with Asa at Gerar, without eating a loaf of Zerah’s bread, or drinking a pint of his water.

The next passage I shall mention is the following: “The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia, and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine249.” Here the several nations are distinctly and separately mentioned in their places, but the whole meaning of the passage would have been lost, had not the situation of these nations been perfectly known; or, had not the Sabeans been mentioned separately, for both the Sabeans and the Cushite were certainly Ethiopians. Now, the meaning of the verse is, that the fruit of the agriculture of Egypt, which is wheat, the commodities of the negro, gold, silver, ivory, and perfumes, would be brought by the Sabean shepherds, their carriers, a nation of great power, which should join themselves with you.

Again, Ezekiel says,250 “And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have set a fire in Egypt, and when all her helpers shall be destroyed.”—“In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships, to make the careless Ethiopians afraid.” Now, Nebuchadnezzar was to destroy Egypt251, from the frontiers of Palestine, to the mountains above Atbara, where the Cushite dwelt. Between this and Egypt is a great desert; the country beyond it, and on both sides, was possessed by half a million of men. The Cushite, or negro merchant, was secure under these circumstances from any insult by land, but they were open to the sea, and had no defender, and messengers, therefore, in ships or a fleet had easy access to them, to alarm and keep them at home, that they did not fall into danger by marching into Egypt against Nebuchadnezzar, or interrupting the service upon which God had sent him. But this does not appear from translating Cush, Ethiopian; the nearest Ethiopian to Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful and capable of opposing him, were the Ethiopian shepherds of the Thebaid, and these were not accessible to ships; and the shepherds, so posted near to the scene of destruction to be committed by Nebuchadnezzar, were enemies to the Cushites living in towns, and they had repeatedly themselves destroyed them, and therefore had no temptation to be other than spectators.

In several other places, the same prophet speaks of Cush as the commercial nation, sympathising with their countrymen dwelling in the towns in Egypt, independent of the shepherds, who were really their enemies, both in civil and religious matters. “And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt252.” Now Ethiopia, as I have before said, that is, the low country of the shepherds, nearest Egypt, had no common cause with the Cushites that lived in towns there; it was their countrymen, the Cushites in Ethiopia, who mourned for those that fell in Egypt, who were merchants, traders, and dwelt in cities like themselves.

I shall mention but one instance more: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?253” Here Cush is rendered Ethiopian, and many Ethiopians being white, it does not appear why they should be fixed upon, or chosen for the question more than other people. But had Cush been translated Negro, or Black-moor, the question would have been very easily understood, Can the negro change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

Jeremiah254 speaks of the chiefs of the mingled people that dwell in the deserts. And Ezekiel255 also mentions them independent of all the others, whether Shepherds, or Cushites, or Libyans their neighbours, by the name of the Mingled People. Isaiah256 calls them “a nation scattered and peeled; a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled:” which is a sufficient description of them, as having been expelled their own country, and settled in one that had suffered greatly by a deluge a short time before.

CHAP. III.

Origin of Characters or Letters—Ethiopic the first Language—How and why the Hebrew Letter was formed.

The reader will observe what I have already said concerning the language of Habesh, or the Mingled Nations, that they have not characters of their own; but when written, which is very seldom, it must be by using the Geez alphabet. Kircher, however, says, there are two characters to be found in Abyssinia; one he calls the Sacred Old Syrian, the other the Vulgar, or Common Geez character, of which we are now speaking. But this is certainly a mistake; there never was, that I know, but two original characters which obtained in Egypt. The first was the Geez, the second the Saitic, and both these were the oldest characters in the world, and both derived from hieroglyphics.

Although it is impossible to avoid saying something here of the origin of languages, the reader must not expect that I should go very deep into the fashionable opinions concerning them, or believe that all the old deities of the Pagan nations were the patriarchs of the Old Testament. With all respect to Sanchoniatho and his followers, I can no more believe that Osiris, the first king of Egypt, was a real personage, and that Tot was his secretary, than I can believe Saturn to be the patriarch Abraham, and Rachel and Leah, Venus and Minerva. I will not fatigue the reader with a detail of useless reasons; if Osiris is a real personage, if he was king of Egypt, and Tot his secretary, they surely travelled to very good purpose, as all the people of Europe and Asia seem to be agreed, that in person they first communicated letters and the art of writing to them, but at very different, and very distant periods.

Thebes was built by a colony of Ethiopians from Sirè, the city of Seir, or the Dog Star. Diodorus Siculus says, that the Greeks, by putting O before Siris, had made the word unintelligible to the Egyptians: Siris, then, was Osiris; but he was not the Sun, no more than he was Abraham, nor was he a real personage. He was Syrius, or the dog-star, designed under the figure of a dog, because of the warning he gave to Atbara, where the first observations were made at his heliacal rising, or his disengaging himself from the rays of the sun, so as to be visible to the naked eye. He was the Latrator Anubis, and his first appearance was figuratively compared to the barking of a dog, by the warning it gave to prepare for the approaching inundation. I believe, therefore, this was the first hieroglyphic; and that Isis, Osiris, and Tot, were all after inventions relating to it; and, in saying this, I am so far warranted, because there is not in Axum (once a large city) any other hieroglyphic but of the dog-star, as far as I can judge from the huge fragments of figures of this animal, remains of which, in differrent postures, are still distinctly to be seen upon the pedestals everywhere among the ruins.

It is not to be doubted, that hieroglyphics then, but not astronomy, were invented at Thebes, where the theory of the dog-star was particularly investigated, because connected with their rural year. Ptolemy257 has preserved us an observation of an helaical rising of Sirius on the 4th day after the summer solstice, which answers to the 2250 year before Christ; and there are great reasons to believe the Thebans were good practical astronomers long before that period258; early, as it may be thought, this gives to Thebes a much greater antiquity than does the chronicle of Axum just cited.

As such observations were to be of service for ever, they became more valuable and useful in proportion to their priority. The most ancient of them would be of use to the astronomers of this day, for Sir Isaac Newton appeals to these of Chiron the Centaur. Equations may indeed be discovered in a number of centuries, which, by reason of the smallness of their quantities, may very probably have escaped the most attentive and scrupulous care of two or three generations; and many alterations in the starry firmament, old stars being nearly extinguished, and new emerging, would appear from a comparative slate of the heavens made for a series of ages. And a Theban Herschel259 would have given us the history of planets he then observed, which, after appearing for ages, are now visible no more, or have taken a different form.

The dial, or gold circle of Osimandyas, shews what an immense progress they had made in astronomy in so little time. This, too, is a proof of an early fall and revival of the arts in Egypt, for the knowledge and use of Armillæ had been lost with the destruction of Thebes, and were not again discovered, that is, revived, till the reign of Ptolemy Soter, 300 years before the Christian æra. I consider that immense quantity of hieroglyphics, with which the walls of the temples, and faces of the obelisks, are covered, as containing so many astronomical observations.

I look upon these as the ephemerides of some thousand years, and that sufficiently accounts for their number. Their date and accuracy were indisputable; they were exhibited in the most public places, to be consulted as occasion required; and, by the deepness of the engraving, and hardness of the materials, and the thickness and solidity of the block itself upon which they were carved, they bade defiance at once to violence and time.

I know that most of the learned writers are of sentiments very different from mine in these respects. They look for mysteries and hidden meanings, moral and philosophical treatises, as the subjects of these hieroglyphics. A sceptre, they say, is the hieroglyphic of a king. But where do we meet a sceptre upon an antique Egyptian monument? or who told us this was an emblem of royalty among the Egyptians at the time of the first invention of this figurative writing? Again, the serpent with the tail in its mouth denotes the eternity of God, that he is without beginning and without end. This is a Christian truth, and a Christian belief, but no where to be found in the polytheism of the inventors of hieroglyphics. Was Cronos or Ouranus without beginning and without end? Was this the case with Osiris and Tot, whose fathers and mothers births and marriages are known? If this was a truth, independent of revelation, and imprinted from the beginning in the minds of men; if it was destined to be an eternal truth, which must have appeared by every man finding it in his own breast, from the beginning, how unnecessary must the trouble have been to write a common known truth like this, at the expence of six weeks labour, upon a table of porphyry or granite.

It is not with philosophy as with astronomy; the older the observations, the more use they are of to posterity. A lecture of an Egyptian priest upon divinity, morality, or natural history, would not pay the trouble, at this day, of engraving it upon stone; and one of the reasons that I think no such subjects were ever treated in hieroglyphics is, that in all those I ever had an opportunity of seeing, and very few people have seen more, I have constantly found the same figures repeated, which obviously, and without dispute, allude to the history of the Nile, and its different periods of increase; the mode of measuring it, the Etesian winds; in short, such observations as we every day see in an almanack, in which we cannot suppose, that forsaking the obvious import, where the good they did was evident, they should ascribe different meanings to the hieroglyphic, to which no key has been left, and therefore their future inutility must have been foreseen.

I shall content myself in this wide field, to fix upon one famous hieroglyphical personage, which is Tot, the secretary of Osiris, whose function I shall endeavour to explain; if I fail, I am in good company; I give it only as my opinion, and submit it chearfully to the correction of others. The word Tot is Ethiopic, and there can be little doubt it means the dog-star. It was the name given to the first month of the Egyptian year. The meaning of the name, in the language of the province of Siré, is an idol, composed of different heterogeneous pieces; it is found having this signification in many of their books. Thus a naked man is not a Tot, but the body of a naked man, with a dog’s head, an ass’s head, or a serpent instead of a head, is a Tot. According to the import of that word, it is, I suppose, an almanack, or section of the phænomena in the heavens which are to happen in the limited time it is made to comprehend, when exposed for the information of the public; and the more extensive its use is intended to be, the greater number of emblems, or signs of observation, it is charged with.

Besides many other emblems or figures, the common Tot, I think, has in his hand a cross with a handle, as it is called Crux Ansata, which has occasioned great speculation among the decypherers. This cross, fixed to a circle, is supposed to denote the four elements, and to be the symbol of the influence the sun has over them. Jamblichus260 records, that this cross, in the hand of Tot, is the name of the divine Being that travels through the world. Sozomen261 thinks it means the life to come, the same with the ineffable image of eternity. Others, strange difference! say it is the phallus, or human genitals, while a later262 writer maintains it to be the mariner’s compass. My opinion, on the contrary is, that, as this figure was exposed to the public for the reason I have mentioned, the Crux Ansata in his hand was nothing else but a monogram of his own name TO, and

O T T signifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon a collection published for the same purpose.

London Published December 1st. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co

The changing of these emblems, and the multitude of them, produced the necessity of contrasting their size, and this again a consequential alteration in the original forms; and a stile, or small portable instrument, became all that was necessary for finishing these small Tots, instead of a large graver or carving tool, employed in making the large ones. But men, at last, were so much used to the alteration, as to know it better than under its primitive form, and the engraving became what we may call the first elements, or root, in preference to the original.

The reader will see, that, in my history of the civil wars in Abyssinia, the king, forced by rebellion to retire to the province of Tigré, and being at Axum, found a stone covered with hieroglyphics, which, by the many inquiries I made after inscriptions, and some conversations I had had with him, he guessed was of the kind which I wanted. Full of that princely goodness and condescension that he ever honoured me with, throughout my whole stay, he brought it with him when he returned from Tigré, and was restored to his throne at Gondar.

It seems to me to be one of those private Tots, or portable almanacks, of the most curious kind. The length of the whole stone is fourteen inches, and six inches broad, upon, a base three inches high, projecting from the block itself, and covered with hieroglyphics. A naked figure of a man, near six inches, stands upon two crocodiles, their heads turned different ways. In each of his hands he holds two serpents, and a scorpion, all by the tail, and in the right hand hangs a noose, in which is suspended a ram or goat. On the left hand he holds a lion by the tail. The figure is in great relief; and the head of it with that kind of cap or ornament which is generally painted upon the head of the figure called Isis, but this figure is that of a man. On each side of the whole-length figure, and above it, upon the face of the stone where it projects, are marked a number of hieroglyphics of all kinds. Over this is a very remarkable representation; it is an old head, with very strong features, and a large bushy beard, and upon it a high cap ribbed or striped. This I take to be the Cnuph, or Animus Mundi, though Apuleus, with very little probability, says this was made in the likeness of no creature whatever. The back of the stone is divided into eight compartments263, from the top to the bottom, and these are filled with hieroglyphics in the last stage, before they took the entire resemblance of letters. Many are perfectly formed; the Crux Ansata appears in one of the compartments, and Tot in another. Upon the edge, just above where it is broken, is 1119, so fair and perfect in form, that it might serve as an example of caligraphy, even in the present times; 45 and 19, and some other arithmetical figures, are found up and down among the hieroglyphics.

No. 2
A Table of hieroglyphics, found at axum 1771.

London Publish’d Decr. 1. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

This I suppose was what formerly the Egyptians called a book, or almanack; a collection of these was probably hung up in some conspicuous place, to inform the public of the state of the heavens, and seasons, and diseases, to be expected in the course of them, as is the case in the English almanacks at this day. Hermes is said to have composed 36,535 books, probably of this sort, or they might contain the correspondent astronomical observations made in a certain time at Meroë, Ophir, Axum, or Thebes, communicated to be hung up for the use of the neighbouring cities. Porphyry264 gives a particular account of the Egyptian almanacks. “What is comprised in the Egyptian almanacks, says he, contains but a small part of the Hermaic institutions; all that relates to the rising and setting of the moon and planets, and of the stars and their influence, and also some advice upon diseases.”

It is very remarkable, that, besides my Tot here described, there are five or six, precisely the same in all respects, already in the British Museum; one of them, the largest of the whole, is made of sycamore, the others are of metal. There is another, I am told, in Lord Shelburn’s collection; this I never had an opportunity of seeing; but a very principal attention seems to have been paid to make all of them light and portable, and it would seem that by these having been formed so exactly similar, they were the Tots intended to be exposed in different cities or places, and were neither more nor less than Egyptian almanacks.

Whether letters were known to Noah before the flood, is no where said from any authority, and the inquiry into it is therefore useless. It is difficult, in my opinion, to imagine, that any society, engaged in different occupations, could subsist long without them. There seems to be less doubt, that they were invented, soon after the dispersion, long before Moses, and in common use among the Gentiles of his time.

It seems also probable, that the first alphabet was Ethiopic, first founded on hieroglyphics, and afterwards modelled into more current, and less laborious figures, for the sake of applying them to the expedition of business. Mr Fourmont is so much of this opinion, that he says it is evident the three first letters of the Ethiopic alphabet are hieroglyphics yet, and that the Beta resembles the door of a house or temple. But, with great submission, the doors of houses and temples, when first built, were square at the top, for arches were not known. The Beta was taken from the doors of the first Troglodytes in the mountains, which were rounded, and gave the hint for turning the arch, when architecture advanced nearer to perfection.

Others are for giving to letters a divine original: they say they were taught to Abraham by God himself; but this is no where vouched; though it cannot be denied, that it appears from scripture there were two sorts of characters known to Moses, when God spoke to him on Mount Sinai. The first two tables, we are told, were wrote by the finger of God, in what character is not said, but Moses received them to read to the people, so he surely understood them. But, when he had broken these two tables, and had another meeting with God on the mount on the subject of the law, God directs him specially not to write in the Egyptian character or hieroglyphics, but in the current hand used by the Ethiopian merchants, like the letters upon a signet; that is, he should not write in hieroglyphics by a picture, representing the thing, for that the law forbids; and the bad consequences of this were evident; but he should write the law in the current hand, by characters representing sounds, (though nothing else in heaven or on earth,) or by the letters that the Ishmaelites, Cushites, and India trading nations had long used in business for signing their invoices, engagements, &c. and this was the meaning of being like the letters of a signet.

Hence, it is very clear, God did not invent letters, nor did Moses, who understood both characters before the promulgation of the law upon Mount Sinai, having learned them in Egypt, and during his long stay among the Cushites, and Shepherds in Arabia Petrea. Hence it should appear also, that the sacred character of the Egyptian was considered as profane, and forbid to the Hebrews, and that the common Ethiopic was the Hebrew sacred character, in which the copy of the law was first wrote. The text is very clear and explicit: “And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of signet; every one with his name, shall they be according to the twelve tribes265.” Which is plainly, You shall not write in the way used till this day, for it leads the people into idolatry; you shall not type Judah by a lion, Zebulun by ship, Issachar by an ass couching between two burdens; but, instead of writing by pictures, you shall take the other known hand, the merchants writing, which signifies sounds, not things; write the names Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, in the letters, such as the merchants use upon their signets. And, on Aaron’s breast-plate of pure gold, was to be written, in the same alphabet, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD266.

These signets, of the remotest antiquity in the East, are worn still upon every man’s hand to this day, having the name of the person that wears them, or some sentence upon it always religious. The Greeks, after the Egyptians, continued the other method, and described figures upon their signet; the use of both has been always common in Britain.

We find afterwards, that, in place of stone or gold, for greater convenience Moses wrote in a book, “And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished;267”—

Although, then, Moses certainly did not invent either, or any character, it is probable that he made two, perhaps more, alterations in the Ethiopic alphabet as it then stood, with a view to increase the difference still more between the writing then in use among the nations, and what he intended to be peculiar to the Jews. The first was altering the direction, and writing from right to left, whereas, the Ethiopian was, and is to this day, written from left to right, as was the hieroglyphical alphabet268. The second was taking away the points, which, from all times, must have existed and been, as it were, a part of the Ethiopic letters invented with them, and I do not see how it is possible it ever could have been read without them; so that, which way soever the dispute may turn concerning the antiquity of the application of the Masoretic points, the invention was no new one, but did exist as early as language was written. And I apprehend, that these alterations were very rapidly adopted after the writing of the law, and applied to the new character as it then stood; because, not long after, Moses was ordered to submit the law itself to the people, which would have been perfectly useless, had not reading and the character been familiar to them at that time.

It appears to me also, that the Ethiopic words were always separated, and could not run together, or be joined as the Hebrew, and that the running the words together into one must have been matter of choice in the Hebrew, to increase the difference in writing the two languages, as the contrary had been practised in the Ethiopian language. Though there is really little resemblance between the Ethiopic and the Hebrew letters, and not much more between that and the Samaritan, yet I have a very great suspicion the languages were once much nearer a-kin than this disagreement of their alphabet promises, and, for this reason, that a very great number of words are found throughout the Old Testament that have really no root, nor can be derived from any Hebrew origin, and yet all have, in the Ethiopic, a plain, clear, unequivocal origin, to and from which they can be traced without force or difficulty.

I shall now finish what I have to say upon this subject, by observing, that the Ethiopic alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, each of these, by a virgula, or point annexed, varying in sound, so as to become, in effect, forty-two distinct letters. But I must further add, that at first they had but twenty-five of these original letters, the Latin P being wanting, so that they were obliged to substitute another letter in the place of it. Paulus, for example, they called Taulus, Oulus, or Caulus. Petros they pronounced Ketros. At last they substituted T, and added this to the end of their alphabet, giving it the force of P, though it was really a repetition of a character, rather than invention. Besides these there are twenty others of the nature of diphthongs, but I should suppose some of these are not of the same antiquity with the letters of the alphabet, but have been invented in later times by the scribes for convenience.

The reader will understand, that, speaking of the Ethiopic at present, I mean only the Geez language, the language of the Shepherds, and of the books. None of the other many languages spoken in Abyssinia have characters for writing. But when the Amharic became substituted, in common use and conversation, to the Geez, after the restoration of the Royal family, from their long banishment in Shoa, seven new characters were necessarily added to answer the pronunciation of this new language, but no book was ever yet written in any other language except Geez. On the contrary, there is an old law in this country, handed down by tradition only, that whoever should attempt to translate the holy scripture into Amharic, or any other language, his throat should be cut after the manner in which they kill sheep, his family sold to slavery, and his house razed to the ground; and, whether the fear of this law was true or feigned, it was a great obstacle to me in getting those translations of the Song of Solomon made which I intend for specimens of the different languages of those distinct nations.

The Geez is exceedingly harsh and unharmonious. It is full of these two letters, D and T, on which an accent is put that nearly resembles stammering. Considering the small extent of sea that divides this country from Arabia, we are not to wonder that it has great affinity to the Arabic. It is not difficult to be acquired by those who understand any other of the oriental languages; and, for a reason I have given some time ago, that the roots of many Hebrew words are only to be found here, I think it absolutely necessary to all those that would obtain a critical skill in that language.

Wemmers, a Carmelite, has wrote a small Ethiopic dictionary in thin quarto, which, as far as it goes, has considerable merit; and I am told there are others of the same kind extant, written chiefly by Catholic priests. But by far the most copious, distinct, and best-digested work, is that of Job Ludolf, a German of great learning in the Eastern languages, and who has published a grammar and dictionary of the Geez in folio. This read with attention is more than sufficient to make any person of very moderate genius a great proficient in the Ethiopic language. He has likewise written a short essay towards a dictionary and grammar of the Amharic, which, considering the very small help he had, shews his surprising talents and capacity. Much, however, remains still to do; and it is indeed scarcely possible to bring this to any tolerable degree of forwardness for want of books, unless a man of genius, while in the country itself, were to give his time and application to it: It is not much more difficult than the former, and less connected with the Hebrew or Arabic, but has a more harmonious pronunciation.

CHAP. IV.

Some Account of the Trade Winds and Monsoons—Application of this to the Voyage to Ophir and Tarshish.

It is a matter of real affliction, which shews the vanity of all human attainments, that the preceding pages have been employed in describing, and, as it were, drawing from oblivion, the history of those very nations that first conveyed to the world, not the elements of literature only, but all sorts of learning, arts, and sciences in their full detail and perfection. We see that these had taken deep root, and were not easily extirpated. The first great and fatal blow they received was from the destruction of Thebes, and its monarchy, by the first invasion of the Shepherds under Salatis, which shook them to the very foundation. The next was in the conquest of the Thebaid under Sabaco and his Shepherds. The third was when the empire of Lower Egypt (I do not think of the Thebaid) was transferred to Memphis, and that city taken, as writers say, by the Shepherds of Abaris only, or of the Delta, though it is scarcely probable, that, in so favourite a cause as the destruction of cities, the whole Shepherds did not lend their assistance.

These were the calamities, we may suppose, under which the arts in Egypt fell; for, as to the foreign conquests of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonians, they affected cities and the persons of individuals only. They were temporary, never intended to have lasting consequences; their beginning and end were prophesied at the same time. That of the Assyrians was a plundering expedition only, as we are told by scripture itself, intended to last but forty years269, half the life of man, given, for a particular purpose, for the indemnification of the king Nebuchadnezzar, for the hardships he sustained at the siege of Tyre, where the obstinacy of the inhabitants, in destroying their wealth, deprived the conqueror of his expected booty. The Babylonians were a people the most polished after the Egyptians. Egypt under them suffered by rapacity, but not by ignorance, as it did in all the conquests of the Shepherds.

After Thebes was destroyed by the first Shepherds, commerce, and it is probable the arts with it, fled for a time from Egypt, and centered in Edom, a city and territory, tho’ we know little of its history, at that period the richest in the world. David, in the very neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon, calls Edom the strong city; “Who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom270?” David, from an old quarrel, and probably from the recent instigations of the Tyrians his friends, invaded Edom271, destroyed the city, and dispersed the people. He was the great military power then upon the continent; Tyre and Edom were rivals; and his conquest of that last great and trading state, which he united to his empire, would yet have lost him the trade he sought to cultivate, by the very means he used to obtain it, had not Tyre been in a capacity to succeed to Edom, and to collect its mariners and artificers, scattered abroad by the conquest.

David took possession of two ports, Eloth and Ezion-gaber272, from which he carried on the trade to Ophir and Tarshish, to a very great extent, to the day of his death. We are struck with astonishment when we reflect upon the sum that Prince received in so short a time from these mines of Ophir. For what is said to be given by King David273 and his Princes for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, exceeds in value eight hundred millions of our money, if the talent there spoken of is a Hebrew talent274, and not a weight of the same denomination, the value of which was less, and peculiarly reserved for and used in the traffic of these precious metals, gold and silver. It was, probably, an African or Indian weight, proper to the same mines, whence was gotten the gold appropriated to fine commodities only, as is the case with our ounce Troy different from the Averdupoise.

Solomon, who succeeded David in his kingdom, was his successor likewise in the friendship of Hiram king of Tyre. Solomon visited Eloth and Ezion-gaber275 in person, and fortified them. He collected a number of pilots, shipwrights, and mariners, dispersed by his father’s conquest of Edom, most of whom had taken refuge in Tyre and Sidon, the commercial states in the Mediterranean. Hiram supplied him with sailors in abundance; but the sailors so furnished from Tyre were not capable of performing the service which Solomon required, without the direction of pilots and mariners used to the navigation of the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Such were those mariners who formerly lived in Edom, whom Solomon had now collected in Eloth and Ezion-gaber.

This last-mentioned navigation was very different in all respects from that of the Mediterranean, which, in respect to the former, might be compared to a pond, every side being confined with shores little distant the one from the other; even that small extent of sea was so full of islands, that there was much greater art required in the pilot to avoid land than to reach it. It was, besides, subject to variable winds, being to the northward of 30° of latitude, the limits to which Providence hath confined those winds all over the globe; whereas the navigation of the Indian Ocean was governed by laws more convenient and regular, though altogether different from those that obtained in the Mediterranean. Before I proceed, it will be necessary to explain this phænomenon.

It is known to all those who are ever so little versant in the history of Egypt, that the wind from the north prevails in that valley all the summer months, and is called the Etesian winds; it sweeps the valley from north to south, that being the direction of Egypt, and of the Nile, which runs through the midst of it. The two chains of mountains, which confine Egypt on the east and on the west, constrain the wind to take this precise direction.

It is natural to suppose the same would be the case in the Arabian Gulf, had that narrow sea been in a direction parallel to the land of Egypt, or due north and south. The Arabian Gulf, however, or what we call the Red Sea, lies from nearly north-west to south-east, from Suez to Mocha. It then turns nearly east and west till it joins the Indian Ocean at the Straits of Babelmandeb, as we have already said, and may be further seen by consulting the map. Now, the Etesian winds, which are due north in Egypt, here take the direction of the Gulf, and blow in that direction steadily all the season, while it continues north in the valley of Egypt; that is, from April to October the wind blows north-west up the Arabian Gulf towards the Straits; and, from November till March, directly contrary, down the Arabian Gulf, from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Suez and the isthmus.

These winds are by some corruptly called the trade-winds; but this name given to them is a very erroneous one, and apt to confound narratives, and make them unintelligible. A trade-wind is a wind which, all the year through, blows, and has ever blown, from the same point of the horizon; such is the south-west, south of the Line, in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. On the contrary, these winds, of which we have now spoken, are called monsoons; each year they blow six months from the northward, and the other six months from the southward, in the Arabian Gulf: While in the Indian Ocean, without the Straits of Babelmandeb, they blow just the contrary at the same seasons; that is, in summer from the southward, and in winter from the northward, subject to a small inflexion to the east and to the west.

The reader will observe, then, that, a vessel sailing from Suez or the Elanitic Gulf, in any of the summer months, will find a steady wind at north-west, which will carry it in the direction of the Gulf to Mocha. At Mocha, the coast is east and west to the Straits of Babelmandeb, so that the vessel from Mocha will have variable winds for a short space, but mostly westerly, and these will carry her on to the Straits. She is then done with the monsoon in the Gulf, which was from the north, and, being in the Indian Ocean, is taken up by the monsoon which blows in the summer months there, and is directly contrary to what obtains in the Gulf. This is a south-wester, which carries the vessel with a flowing sail to any part in India, without delay or impediment.

The same happens upon her return home. She sails in the winter months by the monsoon proper to that sea, that is, with a north-east, which carries her through the Straits of Babelmandeb. She finds, within the Gulf, a wind at south-east, directly contrary to what was in the ocean; but then her course is contrary likewise, so that a south-easter, answering to the direction of the Gulf, carries her directly to Suez, or the Elanitic Gulf, to whichever way she proposes going. Hitherto all is plain, simple, and easy to be understood; and this was the reason why, in the earliest ages, the India trade was carried on without difficulty.

Many doubts, however, have arisen about a port called Ophir, whence the immense quantities of gold and silver came, which were necessary at this time, when provision was making for building the Temple of Jerusalem. In what part of the world this Ophir was has not been yet agreed. Connected with this voyage, too, was one to Tarshish, which suffers the same difficulties; one and the same fleet performed them both in the same season.

In order to come to a certainty where this Ophir was, it will be necessary to examine what scripture says of it, and to keep precisely to every thing like description which we can find there, without indulging our fancy farther. First, then, the trade to Ophir was carried on from the Elanitic Gulf through the Indian Ocean. Secondly, The returns were gold, silver, and ivory, but especially silver276. Thirdly, The time of the going and coming of the fleet was precisely three years277, at no period more nor less.

Now, if Solomon’s fleet sailed from the Elanitic Gulf to the Indian Ocean, this voyage of necessity must have been made by monsoons, for no other winds reign in that ocean. And, what certainly shews this was the case, is the precise term of three years, in which the fleet went and came between Ophir and Ezion-gaber. For it is plain, so as to supersede the necessity of proof or argument, that, had this voyage been made with variable winds, no limited term of years ever could have been observed in its going and returning. The fleet might have returned from Ophir in two years, in three, four, or five years; but, with variable winds, the return precisely in three years was not possible, whatever part of the globe Ophir might be situated in.

Neither Spain nor Peru could be Ophir; part of these voyages must have been made by variable winds, and the return consequently uncertain. The island of Ceylon, in the East Indies, could not be Ophir; the voyage thither is indeed made by monsoons, but we have shewed that a year is all that can be spent in a voyage to the East Indies; besides, Ceylon has neither gold nor silver, though it has ivory. St. Domingo has neither gold, nor silver, nor ivory. When the Tyrians discovered Spain, they found a profusion of silver in huge masses, but this they brought to Tyre by the Mediterranean, and then sent it to the Red Sea over land to answer the returns from India. Tarshish, too, is not found to be a port in any of these voyages, so that part of the description fails, nor were there ever elephants bred in Spain.

These mines of Ophir were probably what furnished the East with gold in the earliest times; great traces of excavation must, therefore, have appeared; yet in none of the places just mentioned are there great remains of any mines that have been wrought. The ancient traces of silver-mines in Spain are not to be found, and there never were any of gold. John Dos Santos278, a Dominican friar, says, that on the coast of Africa, in the kingdom of Sofala, the main-land opposite to Madagascar, there are mines of gold and silver, than which none can be more abundant, especially in silver. They bear the traces of having been wrought from the earliest ages. They were actually open and working when the Portuguese conquered that part of the peninsula, and were probably given up since the discovery of the new world, rather from political than any other reasons.

John Dos Santos says, that he landed at Sofala in the year 1586; that he sailed up the great river Cuama as far as Tetè, where, always desirous to be in the neighbourhood of gold, his Order had placed their convent. Thence he penetrated for above two hundred leagues into the country, and saw the gold mines then working, at a mountain called Afura279. At a considerable distance from these are the silver mines of Chicoua; at both places there is great appearance of ancient excavations; and at both places the houses of the kings are built with mud and straw, whilst there are large remains of massy buildings of stone and lime.

It is a tradition which generally obtains in that country, that these works belonged to the Queen of Saba, and were built at the time, and for the purpose of the trade on the Red Sea: this tradition is common to all the Cafrs in that country. Eupolemus, an ancient author quoted by Eusebius280, speaking of David, says, that he built ships at calls them, metal-men, to Orphi, or Ophir, an island in the Red Sea. Now, by the Red Sea, he understands the Indian Ocean281; and by Orphi, he probably meant the island of Madagascar; or Orphi (or Ophir) might have been the name of the Continent, instead of Sofala, that is, Sofala where the mines are might have been the main-land of Orphi.

The kings of the isles are often mentioned in this voyage; Socotra, Madagascar, the Commorras, and many other small islands thereabout, are probably those the scripture calls the Isles. All, then, at last reduces itself to the finding a place, either Sofala, or any other place adjoining to it, which avowedly can furnish gold, silver, and ivory in quantity, has large tokens of ancient excavations, and is at the same time under such restrictions from monsoons, that three years are absolutely necessary to perform the voyage, that it needs no more, and cannot be done in less, and this is Ophir.

Let us now try these mines of Dos Santos by the laws of the monsoons, which we have already laid down in describing the voyage to India. The fleet, or ship, for Sofala, parting in June from Ezion-gaber, would run down before the northern monsoon to Mocha. Here, not the monsoon, but the direction of the Gulf changes, and the violence of the south-westers, which then reign in the Indian Ocean, make themselves at times felt even in Mocha Roads. The vessel therefore comes to an anchor in the harbour of Mocha, and here she waits for moderate weather and a fair wind, which carries her out of the Straits of Babelmandeb, through the few leagues where the wind is variable. If her course was now to the East Indies, that is east-north-east, or north-east and by north, she would find a strong south-west wind that would carry her to any part of India, as soon as she cleared Cape Gardefan, to which she was bound.

But matters are widely different if she is bound for Sofala; her course is nearly south-west, and she meets at Cape Gardefan a strong south-wester that blows directly in her teeth. Being obliged to return into the gulf, she mistakes this for a trade-wind, because she is not able to make her voyage to Mocha but by the summer monsoon, which carries her no farther than the Straits of Babelmandeb, and then leaves her in the face of a contrary wind, a strong current to the northward, and violent swell.

The attempting this voyage with sails, in these circumstances, was absolutely impossible, as their vessels went only before the wind: if it was performed at all, it must have been by oars282, and great havock and loss of men must have been the consequence of the several trials. This is not conjecture only; the prophet Ezekiel describes the very fact. Speaking of the Tyrian voyages probably of this very one he says, “Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters (the ocean): the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas283.” In short, the east, that is the north-east wind, was the very monsoon that was to carry them to Sofala, yet having no sails, being upon a lee-shore, a very bold coast, and great swell, it was absolutely impossible with oars to save themselves from destruction.

At last philosophy and observation, together with the unwearied perseverance of man bent upon his own views and interest, removed these difficulties, and shewed the mariners of the Arabian Gulf, that these periodical winds, which, in the beginning, they looked upon as invincible barriers to the trading to Sofala, when once understood, were the very means of performing this voyage safely and expeditiously.

The vessel trading to Sofala sailed, as I have said, from the bottom of the Arabian Gulf in summer, with the monsoon at north, which carried her to Mocha. There the monsoon failed her by the change of the direction of the Gulf. The south-west winds, which blow without Cape Gardefan in the Indian Ocean, forced themselves round the Cape so as to be felt in the road of Mocha, and make it uneasy riding there. But these soon changed, the weather became moderate, and the vessel, I suppose in the month of August, was safe at anchor under Cape Gardefan, where was the port which, many years afterwards, was called Promontorium Aromatum. Here the ship was obliged to stay all November, because all these summer months the wind south of the Cape was a strong south-wester, as hath been before said, directly in the teeth of the voyage to Sofala. But this time was not lost; part of the goods bought to be ready for the return was ivory, frankincense, and myrrh; and the ship was then at the principal mart for these.

I suppose in November the vessel sailed with the wind at north-east, with which she would soon have made her voyage: But off the coast of Melinda, in the beginning of December, she there met an anomalous monsoon at south-west, in our days first observed by Dr Halley, which cut off her voyage to Sofala, and obliged her to put in to the small harbour of Mocha, near Melinda, but nearer still to Tarshish, which we find here by accident, and which we think a strong corroboration that we are right as to the rest of the voyage. In the Annals of Abyssinia, we see that Amda Sion, making war upon that coast in the 14th century, in a list of the rebellious Moorish vassals, mentions the Chief of Tarshish as one of them, in the very situation where we have now placed him.

Solomon’s vessel, then, was obliged to stay at Tarshish till the month of April of the second year. In May, the wind set in at north-east, and probably carried her that same month to Sofala. All the time she spent at Tarshish was not lost, for part of her cargo was to be brought from that place, and she probably bought, bespoke, or left it there. From May of the second year, to the end of that monsoon in October, the vessel could not stir; the wind was north-east. But this time, far from being lost, was necessary to the traders for getting in their cargo, which we shall suppose was ready for them.

The ship sails, on her return, in the month of November of the second year, with the monsoon south-west, which in a very few weeks would have carried her into the Arabian Gulf. But off Mocha, near Melinda and Tarshish, she met the north-east monsoon, and was obliged to go into that port and stay there till the end of that monsoon; after which a south-wester came to her relief in May of the third year. With the May monsoon she ran to Mocha within the Straits, and was there confined by the summer monsoon blowing up the Arabian Gulf from Suez, and meeting her. Here she lay till that monsoon, which in summer blows northerly from Suez, changed to a south-east one in October or November, and that very easily brought her up into the Elanitic Gulf, the middle or end of December of the third year. She had no need of more time to complete her voyage, and it was not possible she could do it in less. In short, she changed the monsoon six times, which is thirty-six months, or three years exactly; and there is not another combination of monsoons over the globe, as far as I know, capable to effect the same. The reader will please to consult the map, and keep it before him, which will remove any difficulties he may have. It is for his instruction this map has been made, not for that of the learned prelate284 to whom it is inscribed, much more capable of giving additional lights, than in need of receiving any information I can give, even on this subject.

The celebrated Montesquieu conjectures, that Ophir was really on the coast of Africa; and the conjecture of that great man merits more attention than the assertions of ordinary people. He is too sagacious, and too enlightened, either to doubt of the reality of the voyage itself, or to seek for Ophir and Tarshish in China. Uninformed, however, of the particular direction of the monsoons upon the coast, first very slightly spoken of by Eudoxus, and lately observed and delineated by Dr Halley, he was staggered upon considering that the whole distance, which employed a vessel in Solomon’s time for three years, was a thousand leagues, scarcely more than the work of a month. He, therefore, supposes, that the reason of delay was owing to the imperfection of the vessels, and goes into very ingenious calculations, reasonings, and conclusions thereupon. He conjectures, therefore, that the ships employed by Solomon were what he calls junks285 of the Red Sea, made of papyrus, and covered with hides or leather.

Pliny286 had said, that one of these junks of the Red Sea was twenty days on a voyage, which a Greek or Roman vessel would have performed in seven; and Strabo287 had said the same thing before him.

This relative slowness, or swiftness, will not solve the difficulty. For, if these junks288 were the vessels employed to Ophir, the long voyage, much more they would have been employed on the short one, to and from India; now they performed this within a year, which was all a Roman or Greek vessel could do, therefore this was not the cause. Those employed by Solomon were Tyrian and Idumean vessels, the best ships and sailers of their age. Whoever has seen the prodigious swell, the violent currents, and strong south-westers beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb, will not need any argument to persuade him, that no vessel made of papyrus, or leather, could live an hour upon that sea. The junks, indeed, were light and convenient boats, made to cross the narrow gulf between the Sabeans and Homerites, or Cushites, at Azab upon the Red Sea, and carry provisions from Arabia Felix to the more desert coast of Azab. I have hinted, that the names of places sufficiently demonstrate the great loss of men that happened to the traders to Sofala before the knowledge of the monsoons, and the introduction of the use of sails.

I shall now consider how far the thing is confirmed by the names of places in the language of the country, such as they have retained among them to the present day.

There are three Mochas mentioned in this voyage, situated in countries very dissimilar to, and distant from, each other. The first is in Arabia Deserta, in lat. 30° nearly, not far from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez. The second is in lat. 13°, a small distance from the Straits of Babelmandeb. The third Mocha is in lat. 3° south, near Tarshish, on the coast of Melinda. Now, the meaning of Mocha, in the Ethiopic, is prison; and is particularly given to these three places, because, in any of them, a ship is forced to stay or be detained for months, till the changing of the monsoon sets her at liberty to pursue her voyage. At Mocha, near the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, a vessel, wanting to proceed southward to Babelmandeb, is kept here in prison all winter, till the summer monsoon sets her at liberty. At Mocha, in Arabia Felix, the same happens to any vessel wanting to proceed to Suez in the summer months; she may come up from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Mocha Road by the accidental direction of the head of the Gulf; but, in the month of May, the north-west wind obliges her to put into Mocha, and there to stay till the south-easter relieves her in November. After you double Gardefan, the summer monsoon, at north-east, is carrying your vessel full sail to Sofala, when the anomalous monsoon takes her off the coast of Melinda, and forces her into Tarshish, where she is imprisoned for six months in the Mocha there. So that this word is very emphatically applied to those places where ships are necessarily detained by the change of monsoons, and proves the truth of what I have said.

The last Cape on the Abyssinian shore, before you run into the Straits, is Cape Defan, called by the Portuguese, Cape Dafui. This has no meaning in any language; the Abyssinians, on whose side it is, call it Cape Defan, the Cape of Burial. It was probably there where the east wind drove ashore the bodies of such as had been shipwrecked in the voyage. The point of the same coast, which, stretches out into the Gulf, before you arrive at Babelmandeb, was, by the Romans, called Promontorium Aromatum, and since, by the Portuguese, Cape Gardesui. But the name given it by the Abyssinians and sailors on the Gulf is, Cape Gardesan, the Straits of Burial.

Still nearer the Straits is a small port in the kingdom of Adel, called Mete, i. e. Death, or, he or they are dead. And more to the westward, in the same kingdom, is Mount Felix, corruptly so called by the Portuguese. The Latins call it Elephas Mons, the Mountain of the Elephant; and the natives, Jibbel Feel, which has the same signification. The Portuguese, who did not know that Jibbel Feel was Elephas Mons, being misled by the sound, have called it Jibbel Felix, the Happy Mountain, a name to which it has no sort of title.

The Straits by which we enter the Arabian Gulf are by the Portuguese called Babelmandeb, which is nonsense. The name by which it goes among the natives is Babelmandeb, the Gate or Port of Affliction. And near it Ptolemy289 places a town he calls, in the Greek, Mandaeth, which appears to me to be only a corruption of Mandeb. The Promontory that makes the south side of the Straits, and the city thereupon, is Diræ, which means the Hades, or Hell, by Ptolemy290 called Δηρη. This, too, is a translation of the ancient name, because Δηρη (or Diræ) has no signification in the Greek. A cluster of islands you meet in the canal, after passing Mocha, is called Jibbel Zekir, or, the Islands of Prayer for the remembrance of the dead. And still, in the same course up the Gulf, others are called Sebaat Gzier, Praise or Glory be to God, as we may suppose, for the return from this dangerous navigation.

All the coast to the eastward, to where Gardefan stretches out into the ocean, is the territory of Saba, which immemorially has been the mart of frankincense, myrrh, and balsam. Behind Saba, upon the Indian Ocean, is the Regio Cinnamonifera, where a considerable quantity of that wild cinnamon grows, which the Italian druggists call canella.

Inland near to Azab, as I have before observed, are large ruins, some of them of small stones and lime adhering strongly together. There is especially an aqueduct, which brought formerly a large quantity of water from a fountain in the mountains, which must have greatly contributed to the beauty, health, and pleasure of Saba. This is built with large massy blocks of marble, brought from the neighbouring mountains, placed upon one another without lime or cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brass. There are likewise a number of wells, not six feet wide, composed of pieces of marble hewn to parts of a circle, and joined with the same bars of brass also. This is exceedingly surprising, for Agatharcides291 tells us, that the Alileans and Cassandrins, in the southern parts of Arabia, (just opposite to Azab), had among them gold in such plenty, that they would give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight for brass, and ten times its weight for silver; that, in digging the earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive-stones, but others much larger.

This seems to me extraordinary, if brass was at such a price in Arabia, that it could be here employed in the meanest and most common uses. However this be, the inhabitants of the Continent, and of the peninsula of Arabia opposite to it, of all denominations agree, that this was the royal seat of the Queen of Saba, famous in ecclesiastical history for her journey to Jerusalem; that these works belonged to her, and were erected at the place of her residence; that all the gold, silver, and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala, which was Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the borders of the Red Sea, along the coast of the Indian Ocean.

It will very possibly be thought, that this is the place in which I should mention the journey that the Queen of Saba made into Palestine; but as the dignity of the expedition itself, and the place it holds in Jewish antiquities, merits that it should be treated in a place by itself, so the connection that it is supposed to have with the foundation of the monarchy of Abyssinia, the country whose history I am going to write, makes this particularly proper for the sake of connection; and I shall, therefore, continue the history of the trade of the Arabian Gulf to a period in which I can resume the narrative of this expedition without occasioning any interruption to either.

CHAP. V.

Fluctuating State of the India Trade—Hurt by Military Expeditions of the Persians—Revives under the Ptolemies—Falls to Decay under the Romans.

The prosperous days of the commerce with the Elanitic Gulf seemed to be at this time nearly past; yet, after the revolt of the ten tribes, Edom remaining to the house of David, they still carried on a sort of trade from the Elanitic Gulf, though attended with many difficulties. This continued till the reign of Jehosaphat292; but, on Jehoram’s succeeding that prince, the Edomites293 revolted and chose a king of their own, and were never after subject to the kings of Judah till the reign of Uzziah294, who conquered Eloth, fortified it, and having peopled it with a colony of his own, revived the old traffic. This subsisted till the reign of Ahaz, when Rezin king of Damascus took Eloth295, and expelled the Jews, planting in their stead a colony of Syrians. But he did not long enjoy this good fortune, for the year after, Rezin296 was conquered by Tilgath-pileser; and one of the fruits of this victory was the taking of Eloth, which never after returned to the Jews, or was of any profit to Jerusalem.

The repeated wars and conquest to which the cities on the Elanitic Gulf had been subject, the extirpation of the Edomites, all the great events that immediately followed one another, of course disturbed the usual channel of trade by the Red Sea, whose ports were now consequently become unsafe by being in possession of strangers, robbers, and soldiers; it changed, therefore, to a place nearer the center of police and good government, than fortified and frontier towns could be supposed to be. The Indian and African merchants, by convention, met in Assyria, as they had done in Semiramis’s time; the one by the Persian Gulf and Euphrates, the other through Arabia. Assyria, therefore, became the mart of the India trade in the East.

The conquests of Nabopollaser, and his son Nebuchadnezzar, had brought a prodigious quantity of bullion, both silver and gold, to Babylon his capital. For he had plundered Tyre297, and robbed Solomon’s Temple298 of all the gold that had been brought from Ophir; and he had, besides, conquered Egypt and laid it waste, and cut off the communication of trade in all these places, by almost extirpating the people. Immense riches flowed to him, therefore, on all sides, and it was a circumstance particularly favourable to merchants in that country, that it was governed by written laws that screened their properties from any remarkable violence or injustice.

I suppose the phrase in scripture, “The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not299,” must mean only written laws, by which those countries were governed, without being left to the discretion of the judge, as all the East was, and as it actually now is.

In this situation the country was at the birth of Cyrus, who, having taken Babylon300 and slain Belshazzer301, became master of the whole trade and riches of the East. Whatever character writers give of this great Prince, his conduct, with regard to the commerce of the country, shews him to have been a weak one: For, not content with the prodigious prosperity to which his dominions had arrived, by the misfortune of other nations, and perhaps by the good faith kept by his subjects to merchants, enforced by those written laws, he undertook the most absurd and disastrous project of molesting the traders themselves, and invading India, that all at once he might render himself master of their riches. He executed this scheme just as absurdly as he formed it; for, knowing that large caravans of merchants came into Persia and Assyria from India, through the Ariana, (the desert coast that runs all along the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf, almost entirely destitute of water, and very nearly as much so of provisions, both which caravans always carry with them), he attempted to enter India by the very same road with a large army, the very same way his predecessor Semiramis had projected 1300 years before; and as her army had perished, so did his to a man, without having ever had it in his power to take one pepper-corn by force from any part of India.

The same fortune attended his son and successor Cambyses, who, observing the quantity of gold brought from Ethiopia into Egypt, resolved to march to the source, and at once make himself master of those treasures by rapine, which he thought came too slowly through the medium of commerce.

Cambyses’s expedition into Africa is too well known for me to dwell upon it in this place. It hath obtained a celebrity by the absurdity of the project, by the enormous cruelty and havock that attended the course of it, and by the great and very just punishment that closed it in the end. It was one of those many monstrous extravagancies which made up the life of the greatest madman that ever disgraced the annals of antiquity. The basest mind is perhaps the most capable of avarice; and when this passion has taken possession of the human heart, it is strong enough to excite us to undertakings as great as any of those dictated by the noblest of our virtues.

Cambyses, amidst the commission of the most horrid excesses during the conquest of Egypt, was informed that, from the south of that country, there was constantly brought a quantity of pure gold, independent of what came from the top of the Arabic Gulf, which was now carried into Assyria, and circulated in the trade of his country. This supply of gold belonged properly and exclusively to Egypt; and a very lucrative, though not very extensive commerce, was, by its means, carried on with India. He found out that the people, possessing these treasures, were called Macrobii, which signifies long livers; and that they possessed a country divided from him by lakes, mountains, and deserts. But what still affected him most was, that in his way were a multitude of warlike Shepherds, with whom the reader is already sufficiently acquainted.

Cambyses, to flatter, and make peace with them, fell furiously upon all the gods and temples in Egypt; he murdered the sacred ox, the apis, destroyed Memphis, and all the public buildings wherever he went. This was a gratification to the Shepherds, being equally enemies to those that worshipped beasts, or lived in cities. After this introduction, he concluded peace with them in the most solemn manner, each nation vowing eternal amity with the other. Notwithstanding which, no sooner was he arrived at Thebes (in Egypt) than he detached a large army to plunder the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, the greatest object of the worship of these shepherds; which army utterly perished without a man remaining, covered, as I suppose, by the moving sands. He then began his march against the Macrobii, keeping close to the Nile. The country there being too high to receive any benefit from the inundation of the river, produced no corn, so that part of his army died for want of provision.

Another detachment of his army proceeded to the country of the Shepherds, who, indeed, furnished him with food; but, exasperated at the sacrilege he had committed against their god, they conduced his troops through places where they could procure no water. After suffering all this loss, he was not yet arrived beyond 24°, the parallel of Syené. From hence he dispatched ambassadors, or spies, to discover the country before him, finding he could no longer rely upon the Shepherds. These found it full of black warlike people, of great size, and prodigious strength of body; active, and continually exercised in hunting the lion, the elephant, and other monstrous beasts which live in these forests.

The inhabitants so abounded with gold, that the most common utensils and instruments were made of that metal; whilst, at the same time, they were utter strangers to bread of any kind whatever; and, not only so, but their country was, by its nature, incapable of producing any sort of grain from which bread could be made. They subsisted upon raw flesh alone, dried in the sun, especially that of the rhinoceros, the elephant, and giraffa, which they had slain in hunting. On such food they have ever since lived, and live to this day, and on such food I myself have lived with them; yet still it appears strange, that people confined to this diet, without variety or change, should have it for their characteristic that they were long livers.

They were not at all alarmed at the arrival of Cambyses’s ambassadors. On the contrary, they treated them as an inferior species of men. Upon asking them about their diet, and hearing it was upon bread, they called it dung, I suppose as having the appearance of that bread which I have seen the miserable Agows, their neighbours, make from seeds of bastard rye, which they collect in their fields under the burning rays of the sun. They laughed at Cambyses’s requisition of submitting to him, and did not conceal their contempt of his idea of bringing an army thither.

They treated ironically his hopes of conquest, even supporting all difficulties of the desert overcome, and his army ready to enter their country, and counseled him to return while he was well, at least for a time, till he should produce a man of his army that could bend the bow that they then sent him; in which case, he might continue to advance, and have hope of conquest.—The reason of their reference to the bow will be seen afterwards. I mention these circumstances of the quantity of gold, the hunting of elephants, their living upon the raw flesh, and, above all, the circumstances of the bow, as things which I myself can testify to have met with among this very people. It is, indeed, highly satisfactory in travelling, to be able to explain truths which, from a want of knowledge of the country alone, have been treated as falsehoods, and placed to the discredit of historians.

The Persians were all famous archers. The mortification, therefore, they experienced, by receiving the bow they could not bend, was a very sensible one, though the narrative of the quantity of gold the messengers had seen made a much greater impression upon Cambyses. To procure this treasure was, however, impracticable, as he had no provision, nor was there any in the way of his march. His army, therefore, wasted daily by death and dispersion; and he had the mortification to be obliged to retreat into Egypt, after part of his troops had been reduced to the necessity of eating each other302.

Darius, king of Persia, attempted to open this trade in a much more worthy and liberal manner, as he sent ships down the river Indus into the ocean, whence they entered the Red Sea. It is probable, in this voyage, he acquired all the knowledge necessary for establishing this trade in Persia; for he must have passed through the Persian Gulf, and along the whole eastern coast of Arabia; he must have seen the marts of perfumes and spices that were at the mouth of the Red Sea, and the manner of bartering for gold and silver, as he was necessarily in those trading places which were upon the very same coast from which the bullion was brought. I do not know, then, why M. de Montesquieu303 has treated this expedition of Darius so contemptuously, as it appears to have been executed without great trouble or expence, and terminated without loss or hardship; the strongest proof that it was at first wisely planed. The prince himself was famous for his love of learning, which we find by his anxiety to be admitted among the Magi, and the sense he had of that honour, in causing it to be engraved upon his tomb.

The expedition of Alexander into India was, of all events, that which most threatened the destruction of the commerce of the Continent, or the dispersing it into different channels throughout the East: First, by the destruction of Tyre, which must have, for a time, annihilated the trade by the Arabian Gulf; then by his march through Egypt into the country of the Shepherds, and his intended further progress into Ethiopia to the head of the Nile. If we may judge of what we hear of him in that part of his expedition, we should be apt not to believe, as others are fond of doing, that he had schemes of commerce mingled with those of conquests. His anxiety about his own birth at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, this first question that he asked of the priest, “Where the Nile had its source,” seemed to denote a mind busied about other objects; for else he was then in the very place for information, being in the temple of that horned god304, the deity of the Shepherds, the African carriers of the Indian produce; a temple which, though in the midst of sand, and destitute of gold or silver, possessed more and better information concerning the trade of India and Africa, than could be found in any other place on the Continent. Yet we do not hear of one question being made, or one arrangement taken, relative to opening the India trade with Thebes, or with Alexandria, which he built afterwards.

After having viewed the main ocean to the south, he ordered Nearchus with his fleet to coast along the Persian Gulf, accompanied by part of the army on land for their mutual assistance, as there were a great many hardships which followed the march of the army by land, and much difficulty and danger attended the shipping as they were sailing in unknown seas against the monsoons. Nearchus himself informed the king at Babylon of his successful voyage, who gave him orders to continue it into the Red Sea, which he happily accomplished to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf.

We are told it was his intention to carry on the India trade by the Gulf of Persia, for which reason he broke down all the cataracts and dams which the Persians had built over the rivers communicating with the Euphrates. No use, however, seems to have been made of his knowledge of Arabia and Ethiopia, which makes me imagine this expedition of Alexander’s fleet was not an idea of his own. It is, indeed, said, that when Alexander came into India, the southern or Indian Ocean was perfectly unknown; but I am rather inclined to believe from this circumstance, that this voyage was made from some memorials remaining concerning the voyage of Darius. The fact and circumstances of Darius’s voyage are come down to us, and, by these very same means, it must be probable they reached Alexander, who I do not believe ever intended to carry on the India trade at Babylon.

To render it impossible, indeed, he could not have done three things more effectual than he did, when he destroyed Tyre, and dispersed its inhabitants, persecuted the Orites, or land-carriers, in the Ariana, and built Alexandria upon the Mediterranean; which last step fixed the Indian trade in that city, and would have kept it there eternally, had the Cape of Good Hope never been discovered.

The Ptolemies, the wisest princes that ever sat upon the throne of Egypt, applied with the utmost care and attention to cultivate the trade of India, to keep up perfect and friendly understanding with every country that supplied any branch of it, and, instead of disturbing it either in Asia, Arabia, or Ethiopia, as their predecessors had done, they used their utmost efforts to encourage it in all quarters.

Ptolemy I. was then reigning in Alexandria, the foundation of whose greatness he not only laid, but lived to see it arrive at the greatest perfection. It was his constant saying, that the true glory of a king was not in being rich himself, but making his subjects so. He, therefore, opened his ports to all trading nations, encouraged strangers of every language, protected caravans, and a free navigation by sea, by which, in a few years, he made Alexandria the great store-house of merchandize, from India, Arabia, and Ethiopia. He did still further to insure the duration of his kingdom, at the same time that he shewed the utmost disinterestedness for the future happiness of his people. He educated his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the utmost care, and the happy genius of that prince had answered his father’s utmost expectations; and, when he arrived at the age of governing, the father, worn out by the fatigue of long wars, surrendered the kingdom to his son.

Ptolemy had been a soldier from his infancy, and consequently kept up a proper military force, that made him every where respected in these warlike and unsettled times. He had a fleet of two hundred ships of war constantly ready in the port of Alexandria, the only part for which he had apprehensions. All behind him was wisely governed, whilst it enjoyed a most flourishing trade, to the prosperity of which peace is necessary. He died in peace and old age, after having merited the glorious name of Soter, or Saviour of the kingdom, which he himself had founded, the greatest part of which differed from him in language, colour, habit, and religion.

It is with astonishment we see how thoroughly he had established the trade of India, Ethiopia, and Arabia, and what progress he had already made towards uniting it with that of Europe, by a passage in Athenæus305, who mentions a festival and entertainment given by his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, to the people of Alexandria at his accession, while his father was alive, but had just given up his crown.

There was in this procession a great number of Indian women, besides of other countries; and by Indians we may understand, not only the Asiatic Indians, but the Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of the higher part of Africa, as all these countries were comprehended under the common appellation of India. These were in the habit of slaves, and each led, or was followed by, a camel loaded with incense of Sheher, and cinnamon, besides other aromatics. After these came a number of Ethiopian blacks carrying the teeth of 600 elephants. Another troop had a prodigious quantity of ebony; and again others loaded with that finest gold, which is not dug from the mine, but washed from the mountains by the tropical rains in small pieces, or pellets, which the natives and traders at this day call Tibbar. Next came a pack of 24,000 Indian dogs, all Asiatics, from the peninsula of India, followed by a prodigious number of foreign animals, both beasts and birds, paroquets, and other birds of Ethiopia, carried in cages; 130 Ethiopian sheep, 300 Arabian, and 20 from the Isle Nubia306; 26 Indian buffaloes, white as snow, and eight from Ethiopia; three brown bears, and a white one, which last must have been from the north of Europe; 14 leopards, 16 panthers, four lynxes, one giraffa, and a rhinoceros of Ethiopia.

When we reflect upon this prodigious mixture of animals, all so easily procured at one time, without preparation, we may imagine, that the quantity of merchandises, for common demand, which accompanied them, must have been in the proper proportion.

The current of trade ran towards Alexandria with the greatest impetuosity, all the articles of luxury of the East were to be found there. Gold and silver, which were sent formerly to Tyre, came now down to the Isthmus (for Tyre was no more) by a much shorter carriage, thence to Memphis, whence it was sent down the Nile to Alexandria. The gold from the west and south parts of the Continent reached the same port with much less time and risk, as there was now no Red Sea to pass; and here was found the merchandise of Arabia and India in the greatest profusion.

To facilitate the communication with Arabia, Ptolemy built a town on the coast of the Red Sea, in the country of the Shepherds, and called it Berenice307, after his mother. This was intended as a place of necessary refreshment for all the traders up and down the Gulf, whether of India or Ethiopia; hence the cargoes of merchants, who were afraid of losing the monsoons, or had lost them, were carried by the inhabitants of the country, in three days, to the Nile, and there embarked for Alexandria. To make the communication between the Nile and the Red Sea still more commodious, this prince tried an attempt (which had twice before miscarried with very great loss) to bring a canal308 from the Red Sea to the Nile, which he actually accomplished, joining it to the Pelusiac, or Eastern branch of the Nile. Locks and sluices moreover are mentioned as having been employed even in those early days by Ptolemy, but very trifling ones could be needed, for the difference of level is there but very small.

This noble canal, one hundred yards broad, was not of that use to trade which was expected; merchants were weary of the length of time consumed in going to the very bottom of the Gulf, and afterwards with this inland navigation of the canal, and that of the Nile, to Alexandria. It was therefore much more expeditious to unload at Berenice, and, after three days journey, send their merchandise directly down to Alexandria. Thus the canal was disused, the goods passed from Berenice to the Nile by land, and that road continues open for the same purpose to this day.

It should appear, that Ptolemy had employed the vessels of India and the Red Sea, to carry on his commerce with the peninsula, and that the manner of trading directly to India with his own ships, was either not known or forgotten. He therefore sent two ambassadors, or messengers, Megasthenes and Denis, to observe and report what was the state of India since the death of Alexander. These two performed their voyage safely and speedily. The account they gave of India, if it was strictly a true one, was, in all respects, perfectly calculated to animate people to the further prosecution of that trade. In the mean time, in order to procure more convenience for vessels trading on the Red Sea, he resolved to attempt the penetrating into that part of Ethiopia which lies on that sea, and, as historians imagine, with an intention to plunder the inhabitants of their riches.

It must not, however, be supposed, that Ptolemy was not enough acquainted with the productions of a country so near to Egypt, as to know this part of it had neither gold nor silver, whilst it was full of forests likewise; for it was that part of Ethiopia called Barbaria, at this day Barabra, inhabited by shepherds wandering with their cattle about the neighbouring mountains according as the rains fall. Another more probable conjecture was, that he wanted, by bringing about a change of manners in these people, to make them useful to him in a matter that was of the highest importance.

Ptolemy, like his father, had a very powerful fleet and army, he but was inferior to many of the princes, his rivals, in elephants, of which great use was then made in war. These Ethiopians were hunters, and killed them for their subsistence. Ptolemy, however, wished to have them taken alive, being numerous, and hoped both to furnish himself, and dispose of them as an article of trade, to his neighbours.

There is something indeed ridiculous in the manner in which he executed this expedition. Aware of the difficulty of subsisting in that country, he chose only a hundred Greek horsemen, whom he covered with coats of monstrous appearance and size, which left nothing visible but the eyes of the rider. Their horses too were disguised by huge trappings, which took from them all proportion and shape. In this manner they entered this part of Ethiopia, spreading terror every where by their appearance, to which their strength and courage bore a strict proportion whenever they came to action. But neither force nor intreaty could gain any thing upon these Shepherds, or ever make them change or forsake the food they had been so long accustomed to; and all the fruit Ptolemy reaped from this expedition, was to build a city, by the sea-side, in the south-east corner of this country, which he called Ptolemais Theron, or Ptolemais in the country of wild beasts.

I have already observed, but shall again repeat it, that the reason why ships, in going up and down the Red Sea, kept always upon the Ethiopian shore, and why the greatest number of cities were always built upon that side is, that water is much more abundant on the Ethiopian side than the Arabian, and it was therefore of the greatest consequence to trade to have that coast fully discovered and civilized. Indeed it is more than probable, that nothing further was intended by the expedition of the hundred Greeks, just now mentioned, than to gain sufficient intelligence how this might be done most perfectly.

Ptolemy Evergetes, son and successor of Ptolemy Philadelphus, availed himself of this discovery. Having provided himself amply with necessaries for his army, and ordered a fleet to coast along beside him, up the Red Sea, he penetrated quite through the country of the Shepherds into that of the Ethiopian Troglodytes, who are black and woolly-headed, and inhabit the low country quite to the mountains of Abyssinia. Nay309, he even ascended those mountains, forced the inhabitants to submission, built a large temple at Axum, the capital of Sirè, and raised a great many obelisks, several of which are standing to this day. Afterwards proceeding to the south-east, he descended into the cinnamon and myrrh country, behind Cape Gardefan, (the Cape that terminates the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean) from this crossed over to Arabia, to the Homerites, being the same people with the Abyssinians, only on the Arabian shore. He then conquered several of the Arabian princes, who first resisted him, and had it in his power to have put an end to the trade of India there, had he not been as great a politician as he was a warrior. He used his victory, therefore, in no other manner, than to exhort and oblige these princes to protect trade, encourage strangers, and, by every means, provide for the surety of neutral intercourse, by making rigorous examples of robbers by sea and land.

The reigns of the latter Ptolemies were calculated to bring this commerce to a decline, had it not been for two great events, the fall of Carthage, destroyed by Scipio, and that of Corinth, by the consul Mummius. The importance of these events to Alexandria seems to have sustained the prosperity of Egypt, even against the ravages committed in the war between Ptolemy the VI. and VII. Alexandria was then besieged, and not only deprived of its riches, but reduced to the utmost want of necessaries, and the horrid behaviour of Ptolemy VII. (had it continued) would have soon rendered that city desolate. The consequence of such a conduct, however, made a strong impression on the prince himself, who, at once recalling his unjust edicts, by which he had banished all foreign merchants from Alexandria, became on a sudden wholly addicted to commerce, the encourager of arts and sciences, and the protector of strangers.

The impolitic conduct in the beginning of his reign, however, had affected trade even in India. For the story preserved by Posidonius, and very improperly criticised by Strabo, seems to import little less. One day, the troops posted on the Arabian Gulf found a ship abandoned to the waves, on board of which was one Indian only, half dead with hunger and thirst, whom they brought to the king. This Indian declared he sailed from his own country, and, having lost his course and spent all his provisions, he was carried to the place where he was found, without knowing where he was, and after having survived the rest of his companions: he concluded an imperfect narrative, by offering to be a guide to any person his majesty would send to India. His proposals were accordingly accepted, and Eudoxus was named by the king to accompany him. Strabo310 indeed laughs at this story. However, we must say, he has not seized the most ridiculous parts of it.

We are told that the king ordered the Indian to be taught Greek, and waited with patience till he had learned that language. Surely, before any person could thus instruct him, the master must have had some language in common with his scholar, or he had better have taught Eudoxus the Indian language, as it would have been as easy, and of much more use in the voyage he was to undertake. Besides, is it possible to believe, after the many years the Egyptians traded backwards and forwards to India, that there was not a man in Alexandria who could interpret for him to the king, when such a number of Egyptians went every year to India to trade, and stayed there for months each time? Could Ptolemy Philadelphus, at his father’s festival, find 600 Indian female slaves, all at once, in Alexandria; and, after the trade had lasted so much longer, were the people from India decreased, or would their language be less understood? The king’s wisdom, moreover, did not shew itself greatly, when he was going to trust a ship with his subjects to so skilful a pilot as this Indian, who, in the first voyage, had lost himself and all his companions.

India, however, and the Indian seas, were as well known in Egypt as they are now; and the magnificence and shew which attended Eudoxus’s embassy seems to prove, that whatever truth there is in the Indian being found, Eudoxus’ errand must have been to remove the bad effects that the king’s extortions and robberies, committed upon all strangers in the beginning of his reign, had made upon the trading nations. Eudoxus returned, but after the death of Ptolemy. The necessity, however, of this voyage appeared still great enough to make Cleopatra his widow project a second to the same place, and greater preparations were made than for the former one.

But Eudoxus, trying experiments probably about the courses of the trade-winds, lost his passage, and was thrown upon the coast of Ethiopia; where, having landed, and made himself agreeable to the natives, he brought home to Egypt a particular description of that country and its produce, which furnished all the discovery necessary to instruct the Ptolemies in every thing that related to the ancient trade of Arabia. In the course of the voyage, Eudoxus discovered the part of the prow of a vessel which had been broken off by a storm. The figure of a horse made it an object of inquiry; and some of the sailors on board, who had been employed in European voyages, immediately knew this wreck to be part of one of those vessels used to trade on the western ocean. Eudoxus311 instantly perceived all the importance of the discovery, which amounted to nothing less, than that there was a passage round Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean. Full of this thought, he returned to Egypt, and, having shewn the prow of his vessel to European shipmasters, they all declared that this had been part of a vessel which had belonged to Cadiz, in Spain.

This discovery, great as it was, was to none of more importance than to Eudoxus; for, some time after, falling under the displeasure of Ptolemy Lathyrus, VIIIth of that name, and being in danger of his life, he fled and embarked on the Red Sea, sailed round the peninsula of Africa, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and came safely to Cadiz.

The spirit of inquiry, and desire of travelling, spread itself instantly through Egypt, upon this voyage of Eudoxus; and different travellers pushed their discoveries into the heart of the country, where some of the nations are reported to have been so ignorant as not to know the use of fire: ignorance almost incredible, had we not an instance of it in our own times. It was in the reign of Ptolemy IX. that Agatharcides312 drew up his description of the Red Sea.

The reigns of the other Ptolemies ending in the XIIIth of that name, though full of great events, have nothing material to our present subject. Their constant expence and profusion must have occasioned a great consumption of trading articles, and very little else was wanting; or, if there had, it must have arrived at its height in the reign of the celebrated Cleopatra; whose magnificence, beauty, and great talents, made her a wonder, greater than any in her capital. In her time, all nations flocked, as well for curiosity as trade, to Alexandria; Arabs, Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Jews, and Medes; and all were received and protected by this princess, who spoke to each of them in his own language313.

The discovery of Spain, and the possession of the mines of Attica from which they drew their silver, and the revolution that happened in Egypt itself, seemed to have superseded the communication with the coast of Africa; for, in Strabo’s time, few of the ports of the Indian Ocean, even those nearest the Red Sea, were known. I should, indeed, suppose, that the trade to India by Egypt decreased from the very time of the conquest by Cæsar. The mines the Romans had at the source of the river Betis314, in Spain, did not produce them above L.15,000 a-year; this was not a sufficient capital for carrying on the trade to India, and therefore the immense riches of the Romans seem to have been derived from the greatness of the prices, not from the extent of the trade. In fact315, we are told that 100 per cent. was a profit in common trade upon the Indian commodities. Egypt now, and all its neighbourhood, began to wear a face of war, to which it had been a stranger for so many ages. The north of Africa was in constant troubles, after the first ruin of Carthage; so that we may imagine the trade to India began again, on that side, to be carried on pretty much in the same manner it had been before the days of Alexander. But it had enlarged itself very much on the Persian side, and found an easy, short inlet, into the north of Europe, which then furnished them a market and consumption of spices.

I must confess, notwithstanding, if it is true what Strabo says he heard himself in Egypt, that the Romans employed one hundred and twenty vessels in the Indian trade316, it must at that time have lost very little of its vigour. We must, however, imagine, that great part of this was for the account, and with the funds of foreign merchants. The Jews in Alexandria, until the reign of Ptolemy Phiscon, had carried on a very extensive part of the India trade. All Syria was mercantile; and lead, iron, and copper, supplied, in some manner, the deficiency of gold and silver, which never again was in such abundance till after the discovery of America.

But the ancient trade to India, by the Arabian Gulf and Africa, carried on by the medium of these two metals, remained at home undiminished with the Ethiopians, defended by large extensive deserts, and happy with the enjoyment of riches and security, till a fresh discovery again introduced to them both partners and masters in their trade.

One of the reasons that makes me imagine the Indian trade was not flourishing, or in great esteem, immediately upon the Roman conquest of Egypt, is, that Augustus, very soon after, attempted to conquer Arabia. He sent Elius Gallus, with an army from Egypt into Arabia, who found there a number of effeminate, timid people, scarcely to be driven to self-defence by violence, and ignorant of every thing that related to war. Elius, however, found that they overmatched him in cunning, and the perfect knowledge of the country, which their constant employment as carriers had taught them. His guides led him round from hardship to hardship, till his army almost perished with hunger and thirst, without seeing any of those riches his master had sent him to take possession of.

Thus was the Arabian expedition of Augustus conceived with the same views as those of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Cambyses, deservedly as unhappy in its issue as these first had been.

That the African trade, moreover, was lost, appears from Strabo317, and his reasoning upon the voyage of Eudoxus, which he treats as a fable. But his reasoning proves just the contrary, and this voyage was one foundation for opening this trade again, and making this coast more perfectly known. This likewise appears clear from Ptolemy318, who, speaking of a promontory or cape opposite to Madagascar, on the coast of Africa, says it was inhabited by anthropophagi, or man-eaters, and that all beyond 8° south was unknown, and that this cape extended to and joined the continent of India319.

CHAP. VI.

Queen of Saba visits Jerusalem—Abyssinian Tradition concerning Her—Supposed Founder of that Monarchy—Abyssinia embraces the Jewish Religion—Jewish Hierarchy still retained by the Falasha—Some Conjectures concerning their Copy of the Old Testament.

It is now that I am to fulfil my promise to the reader, of giving him some account of the visit made by the Queen of Sheba320, as we erroneously call her, and the consequences of that visit; the foundation of an Ethiopian monarchy, and the continuation of the sceptre in the tribe of Judah, down to this day. If I am obliged to go back in point of time, it is, that I may preserve both the account of the trade of the Arabian Gulf, and of this Jewish kingdom, distinct and unbroken.

We are not to wonder, if the prodigious hurry and flow of business, and the immensely valuable transactions they had with each other, had greatly familiarized the Tyrians and Jews, with their correspondents the Cushites and Shepherds on the coast of Africa. This had gone so far, as very naturally to have created a desire in the queen of Azab, the sovereign of that country, to go herself and see the application of such immense treasures that had been exported from her country for a series of years, and the prince who so magnificently employed them. There can be no doubt of this expedition, as Pagan, Arab, Moor, Abyssinian, and all the countries round, vouch it pretty much in the terms of scripture.

Many321 have thought this queen was an Arab. But Saba was a separate state, and the Sabeans a distinct people from the Ethiopians and the Arabs, and have continued so till very lately. We know, from history, that it was a custom among these Sabeans, to have women for their sovereigns in preference to men, a custom which still subsists among their descendents.

---- Medis levibusque Sabæis,
Imperat hie sexus Reginarumque sub armis,
Barbariæ322, pars magna jacet.
Claudian.

Her name, the Arabs say, was Belkis; the Abyssìnians, Maqueda. Our Saviour calls her Queen of the South, without mentioning any other name, but gives his sanction to the truth of the voyage. “The Queen of the South (or Saba, or Azab) shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here323.” No other particulars, however, are mentioned about her in scripture; and it is not probable our Saviour would say she came from the uttermost parts of the earth, if she had been an Arab, and had near 50° of the Continent behind her. The gold, the myrrh, cassia, and frankincense, were all the produce of her own country; and the many reasons Pineda324 gives to shew she was an Arab, more than convince me that she was an Ethiopian or Cushite shepherd.

A strong objection to her being an Arab, is, that the Sabean Arabs, or Homerites, the people that lived opposite to Azab on the Arabian shore, had kings instead of queens, which latter the Shepherds had, and still have. Moreover, the kings of the Homerites were never seen abroad, and were stoned to death if they appeared in public; subjects of this stamp would not very readily suffer their queen to go to Jerusalem, even supposing they had a queen, which they had not.

Whether she was a Jewess or a Pagan is uncertain; Sabaism was the religion of all the East. It was the constant attendant and stumbling-block of the Jews; but considering the multitude of that people then trading from Jerusalem, and the long time it continued, it is not improbable she was a Jewess. “And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions325.” Our Saviour, moreover, speaks of her with praise, pointing her out as an example to the Jews326. And, in her thanksgiving before Solomon, she alludes to God’s blessing on the seed of Israel for ever327, which is by no means the language of a Pagan, but of a person skilled in the ancient history of the Jews.

She likewise appears to have been a person of learning, and that sort of learning which was then almost peculiar to Palestine, not to Ethiopia. For we see that one of the reasons of her coming, was to examine whether Solomon was really the learned man he was said to be. She came to try him in allegories, or parables, in which Nathan had instructed Solomon.

The learning of the East, and of the neighbouring kings that corresponded with each other, especially in Palestine and Syria, consisted chiefly in these: “And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the Cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.”—“Thou sayest, Lo, thou hast smitten the Edomites, and thine heart lifteth thee up to boast: abide now at home, why shouldest thou meddle to thine hurt, that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee328?”

The annals of Abyssinia, being very full upon this point, have taken a middle opinion, and by no means an improbable one. They say she was a Pagan when she left Azab, but being full of admiration at the sight of Solomon’s works, she was converted to Judaism in Jerusalem, and bore him a son, whom she called Menilek, and who was their first king. However strongly they assert this, and however dangerous it would be to doubt it in Abyssinia, I will not here aver it for truth, nor much less still will I positively contradict it, as scripture has said nothing about it. I suppose, whether true or not, in the circumstances she was, whilst Solomon also, so far from being very nice in his choice, was particularly addicted to Idumeans329, and other strange women, he could not more naturally engage himself in any amour than in one with the queen of Saba, with whom he had so long entertained the most lucrative connections, and most perfect friendship, and who, on her part, by so long a journey, had surely made sufficient advances.

The Abyssinians, both Jews and Christians, believe the xlvth psalm to be a prophecy of this queen’s voyage to Jerusalem; that she was attended by a daughter of Hiram’s from Tyre to Jerusalem, and that the last part contains a declaration of her having a son by Solomon, who was to be king over a nation of Gentiles.

To Saba, or Azab, then, she returned with her son Menilek, whom, after keeping him some years, she sent back to his father to be instructed. Solomon did not neglect his charge, and he was anointed and crowned king of Ethiopia, in the temple of Jerusalem, and at his inauguration took the name of David. After this he returned to Azab, and brought with him a colony of Jews, among whom were many doctors of the law of Moses, particularly one of each tribe, to make judges in his kingdom, from whom the present Umbares (or Supreme Judges, three of whom always attend the king) are said and believed to be descended. With these came also Azarias, the son of Zadok the priest, and brought with him a Hebrew transcript of the law, which was delivered into his custody, as he bore the title of Nebrit, or High Priest; and this charge, though the book itself was burnt with the church of Axum in the Moorish war of Adel, is still continued, as it is said, in the lineage of Azarias, who are Nebrits, or keepers of the church of Axum, at this day. All Abyssinia was thereupon converted, and the government of the church and state modelled according to what was then in use at Jerusalem.

By the last act of the queen of Saba’s reign, she settled the mode of succession in her country for the future. First, she enacted, that the crown should be hereditary in the family of Solomon for ever. Secondly, that, after her, no woman should be capable of wearing that crown or being queen, but that it should descend to the heir male, however distant, in exclusion of all heirs female whatever, however near; and that these two articles should be considered as the fundamental laws of the kingdom, never to be altered or abolished. And, lastly, That the heirs male of the royal house, should always be sent prisoners to a high mountain, where they were to continue till their death, or till the succession should open to them.

What was the reason of this last regulation is not known, it being peculiar to Abyssinia, but the custom of having women for sovereigns, which was a very old one, prevailed among the neighbouring shepherds in the last century, as we shall see in the course of this history, and, for what we know, prevails to this day. It obtained in Nubia till Augustus’s time, when Petreius, his lieutenant in Egypt, subdued her country, and took the queen Candace prisoner. It endured also after Tiberius, as we learn from St Philip’s baptising the eunuch330 servant of queen Candace, who must have been successor to the former; for she, when taken prisoner by Petreius, is represented as an infirm woman, having but one eye331. Candace indeed was the name of all the sovereigns, in the same manner Cæsar was of the Roman emperors. As for the last severe part, the punishment of the princes, it was probably intended to prevent some disorders among the princes of her house, that she had observed frequently to happen in the house of David332 at Jerusalem.

The queen of Saba having made these laws irrevocable to all her posterity, died, after a long reign of forty years, in 986 before Christ, placing her son Menilek upon the throne, whose posterity, the annals of Abyssinia would teach us to believe, have ever since reigned. So far we must indeed bear witness to them, that this is no new doctrine, but has been stedfastly and uniformly maintained from their earliest account of time; first, when Jews, then in later days after they had embraced christianity. We may further add, that the testimony of all the neighbouring nations is with them upon this subject, whether they be friends or enemies. They only differ in name of the queen, or in giving her two names.

This difference, at such a distance of time, should not break scores, especially as we shall see that the queens in the present day have sometimes three or four names, and all the kings three, whence has arisen a very great confusion in their history. And as for her being an Arab, the objection is still easier got over. For all the inhabitants of Arabia Felix, especially those of the coast opposite to Saba, were reputed Abyssins, and their country part of Abyssinia, from the earliest ages, to the Mahometan conquest and after. They were her subjects; first, Sabean Pagans like herself, then converted (as the tradition says) to Judaism, during the time of the building of the temple, and continuing Jews from that time to the year 622 after Christ, when they became Mahometans.

I shall therefore now give a list of their kings of the race of Solomon, descended from the queen of Saba, whose device is a lion passant, proper upon a field gules, and their motto, “Mo Anbasa am Nizilet Solomon am Negadè Jude;” which signifies, ‘the lion of the race of Solomon and tribe of Judah hath overcome.’ The Portuguese missionaries, in place of a lion passant, which is really the king’s bearing, have given him, in some of their publications, a lion rampant, purposely, as is supposed, to put a cross into the paw of this Jewish lion; but he is now returned to the lion passant, that he was in the time of Solomon, without any symbol either of religion or peace in his paws.

LIST of the KINGS of ABYSSINIA,
FROM
MAQUEDA, QUEEN OF SABA, TO THE NATIVITY.

| Years.
Menilek, or David I. reigned | 4
Hendedya, or Zagdur, | 1
Awida, | 11
Ausyi, | 3
Sawé, | 31
Gesaya, | 15
Katar, | 15
Mouta, | 20
Bahas, | 9
Kawida, | 2
Kanaza, | 10
Katzina, | 9
Wazeha, | 1
Hazer, | 2
Kalas, | 6
Solaya, | 16
Falaya, | 26
Aglebu, | 3
Asisena, | 1
Brus, | 29
Mohesa, | 1
Bazen, | 16

Menilek succeeded to the throne in the 986th year before Christ; and this number of years must be exhausted in the reign of these twenty-two kings, when each reign, in that case, will amount to more than forty-four years, which is impossible. The reign of the twenty-one kings of Israel, at a medium, is a little more than twenty-two years at an average, and that is thought abundantly high. And, even upon that footing of comparison, there will be wanting a great deal more than half the number of years between Menilek and Bazen, so that this account is apparently false. But I have another very material objection to it, as well as the preceding one, which is, that there is not one name in the whole list that has an Ethiopic root or derivation.

The reader will give what credit he pleases to this very ancient list. For my part, I content myself with disproving nothing but what is impossible, or contrary to the authority of scripture, or my own private knowledge. There are other lists still, which I have seen, all of no better authority than this. I shall only observe, upon this last, that there is a king in it, about nine years before our Saviour’s nativity, that did me the honour of using my name two thousand years before it came into Britain, spelled in the same manner that name anciently was, before folly, and the love of novelty, wantonly corrupted it.

The Greeks, to divert the king, had told him this circumstance, and he was exceedingly entertained at it. Sometimes, when he had seen either Michael, or Fasil333, or any of the great ones do me any favour, or speak handsomely of me, he would say gravely, that he was to summon the council to inquire into my pedigree, whether I was descended of the heirs-male of that Brus who was king nine years before the nativity; that I was likely to be a dangerous person, and it was time I should be sent to Wechné, unless I chose to lose my leg or arm, if I was found, by the judges, related to him by the heirs-male. To which I answered, that however he made a jest of this, one of my predecessors was certainly a king, though not of Abyssinia, not nine years before, but 1200 after our redemption; that the arms of my family were a lion like his; but, however creditable his majesty’s apprehensions as to Abyssinia might be to me, I could venture to assure him, the only connections I had the honour ever to have had with him, were by the heirs-female.

At other times, when I was exceedingly low-spirited, and despairing of ever again seeing Britain, he, who well knew the cause, used to say to the Serach Massery, “Prepare the Sendick and Nagareet; let the judges be called, and the household troops appear under arms, for Brus is to be buried: he is an Ozoro of the line of Solomon, and, for any thing I know, may be heir to the crown. Bring likewise plenty of brandy, for they all get drunk at burials in his country.” These were days of sun-shine, when such jests passed; there were cloudy ones enough that followed, which much more than compensated the very transitory enjoyment of these.

Although the years laid down in the book of Axum do not precisely agree with our account, yet they are so near, that we cannot doubt that the revolt of the ten tribes, and destruction of Rehoboam’s fleet which followed, occasioned the removal of Menilek’s capital to Tigré334. But, whatever was the cause, Menilek did remove his court from Azab to a place near Axum, at this day called Adega Daid, the House of David; and, at no great distance, is another called Azabo, from his ancient metropolis, where there are old remains of building of stone and lime, a certain proof that Axum was then fallen, else he would have naturally gone thither immediately upon forsaking his mother’s capital of Azab.

That country, round by Cape Gardefan, and south towards Sofala, along the Indian Ocean, was long governed by an officer called Baharnagash, the meaning of which is, King of the Sea, or Sea Coast. Another officer of the same title was governor of Yemen, or Arabia Felix, which, from the earliest times, belonged to Abyssinia, down to the Mahometan conquest. The king himself was called Nagash, or Najashi, so were the governors of several provinces, especially Gojam; and great confusion has risen from the multitude of these kings. We find, for example, sometimes three upon the throne at one time, which is exceedingly improbable in any country. We are, therefore, to suppose, that one of these only is king, and two of them are the Najashi, or Nagash, we have just described; for, as the regulation of the queen of Saba banished the heirs-male to the mountain, we cannot conceive how three brothers could be upon the throne at the same time, as this law subsists to the present day. This, although it is one, is not the only reason of the confusion, as I shall mention another in the sequel.

As we are about to take our leave of the Jewish religion and government in the line of Solomon, it is here the proper place that I should add what we have to say of the Falasha, of whom we have already had occasion to speak, when we gave a specimen of their language, among those of the stranger nations, whom we imagine to have come originally from Palestine. I did not spare my utmost pains in inquiring into the history of this curious people, and lived in friendship with several esteemed the most knowing and learned among them, and I am persuaded, as far as they knew, they told me the truth.

The account they give of themselves, which is supported only by tradition among them, is, that they came with Menilek from Jerusalem, so that they agree perfectly with the Abyssinians in the story of the queen of Saba, who, they say,· was a Jewess, and her nation Jews before the time of Solomon; that she lived at Saba, or Azaba, the myrrh and frankincense country upon the Arabian Gulf. They say further, that she went to Jerusalem, under protection of Hiram king of Tyre, whose daughter is said in the xlvth Psalm to have attended her thither; that she went not in ships, nor through Arabia, for fear or the Ishmaelites, but from Azab round by Masuah and Suakem, and was escorted by the Shepherds, her own subjects, to Jerusalem, and back again, making use of her own country vehicle, the camel, and that hers was a white one, of prodigious size and exquisite beauty.

They agree also, in every particular, with the Abyssinians, about the remaining part of the story, the birth and inauguration of Menilek, who was their first king; also the coming of Azarias, and twelve elders from the twelve tribes, and other doctors of the law, whose posterity they deny to have ever apostatised to Christianity, as the Abyssinians pretend they did at the conversion. They say, that, when the trade of the Red Sea fell into the hands of strangers, and all communication was shut up between them and Jerusalem, the cities were abandoned, and the inhabitants relinquished the coast; that they were the inhabitants of these cities, by trade mostly brick and tile-makers, potters, thatchers of houses, and such like mechanics, employed in them; and finding the low country of Dembea afforded materials for exercising these trades, they carried the article of pottery in that province to a degree of perfection scarcely to be imagined.

Being very industrious, these people multiplied exceedingly, and were very powerful at the time of the conversion to Christianity, or, as they term it, the Apostacy under Abreha and Atzbeha. At this time they declared a prince of the tribe of Judah, and of the race of Solomon and Menilek, to be their sovereign. The name of this prince was Phineas, who refused to abandon the religion of his forefathers, and from him their sovereigns are lineally descended; so they have still a prince of the house of Judah, although the Abyssinians, by way of reproach, have called this family Bet Israel, intimating that they were rebels, and revolted from the family of Solomon and tribe of Judah, and there is little doubt, but that some of the successors of Azarias adhered to their ancient faith also. Although there was no bloodshed upon difference of religion, yet, each having a distinct king with the same pretensions, many battles were fought from motives of ambition, and rivalship of sovereign power.

About the year 960, an attempt was made by this family to mount the throne of Abyssinia, as we shall see hereafter; when the princes of the house of Solomon were nearly extirpated upon the rock Damo. This, it is probable, produced more animosity and bloodshed. At last the power of the Falasha was so much weakened, that they were obliged to leave the flat country of Dembea, having no cavalry to maintain themselves there, and to take possession of the rugged, and almost inaccessible rocks, in that high ridge called the Mountains of Samen. One of these, which nature seems to have formed for a fortress, they chose for their metropolis, and it was ever after called the Jews Rock.

A great overthrow, which they received in the year 1600, brought them to the very brink of ruin. In that battle Gideon and Judith, their king and queen, were slain. They have since adopted a more peaceable and dutiful behaviour, pay taxes, and are suffered to enjoy their own government. Their king and queen’s name was again Gideon and Judith, when I was in Abyssinia, and these names seem to be preferred for those of the Royal family. At that time they were supposed to amount to 100,000 effective men. Something like this, the sober and most knowing Abyssinians are obliged to allow to be truth; but the circumstances of the conversion from Judaism are probably not all before us.

The only copy of the Old Testament, which they have, is in Geez, the same made use of by the Abyssinian Christians, who are the only scribes, and sell these copies to the Jews; and, it is very singular that no controversy, or dispute about the text, has ever yet arisen between the professors of the two religions. They have no keriketib, or various readings; they never heard of talmud, targum, or cabala: Neither have they any fringes335 or ribband upon their garments, nor is there, as far as I could learn, one scribe among them.

I asked them, being from Judea, whence they got that language which they spoke, whether it was one of the languages of the nations which they had learned on the coast of the Red Sea. They apprehended, but it was mere conjecture, that the language which they spoke was that of those nations they had found on the Red Sea, after their leaving Judea and settling there; and the reason they gave was certainly a pertinent one; that they came into Abyssinia, speaking Hebrew, with the advantage of having books in that language; but they had now forgot their Hebrew336, and it was therefore not probable they should retain any other language in which they had no books, and which they never had learned to express by letters.

I asked them, since they came from Jerusalem, how it happened they had not Hebrew, or Samaritan copies of the law, at least the Pentateuch or Octateuch. They said they were in possession of both when they came from Jerusalem; but their fleet being destroyed, in the reign of Rehoboam, and communication becoming very uncertain by the Syrian wars, they were, from necessity, obliged to have the scriptures translated, or make use of the copies in the hands of the Shepherds, who, according to them, before Solomon’s time, were all Jews.

I asked them where the Shepherds got their copy, because, notwithstanding the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, who was the foreign obstacle the longest in their way, the Ishmaelite Arabs had access through Arabia to Jerusalem and Syria, and carried on a great trade thither by land. They professed very candidly they could not give a satisfactory answer to that, as the time was very distant, and war had destroyed all the memorials of these transactions. I asked if they really ever had any memorials of their own country, or history of any other. They answered, with some hesitation, they had no reason to say they ever had any; if they had, they were all destroyed in the war with Gragné. This is all that I could ever learn from this people, and it required great patience and prudence in making the interrogations, and separating truth from falsehood; for many of them, (as is invariably the case with barbarians) if they once divine the reason of your inquiry, will say whatever they think will please you.

They deny the sceptre has ever departed from Judah, as they have a prince of that house reigning, and understand the prophecy of the gathering of the Gentiles at the coming of Shiloh, is to be fulfilled on the appearance of the Messiah, who is not yet come, when all the inhabitants of the world are to be Jews. But I must confess they did not give an explanation of this either clearly or readily, or seem to have ever considered it before. They were not at all heated by the subject, nor interested, as far as I could discern, in the difference between us, nor fond of talking upon their religion at all, though very ready at all quotations, when a person was present who spoke Amharic, with the barbarous accent that they do; and this makes me conceive that their ancestors were not in Palestine, or present in those disputes or transactions that attended the death of our Saviour, and have subsisted ever after. They pretend that the book of Enoch was the first book of scripture they ever received. They knew nothing of that of Seth, but place Job immediately after Enoch, so that they have no idea of the time in which Job lived, but said they believed it to be soon after the flood; and they look upon the book bearing his name to be the performance of that prophet.

Many difficulties occur from this account of the Falasha; for, though they say they came from Jerusalem in the time of Solomon, and from different tribes, yet there is but one language amongst them all, and that is not Hebrew or Samaritan, neither of which they read or understand; nor is their answer to this objection satisfactory, for very obvious reasons.

Ludolf, the most learned man that has writ upon the subject, says, that it is apparent the Ethiopic Old Testament, at least the Pentateuch, was copied from the Septuagint, because of the many Grecisms to be found in it; and the names of birds and precious stones, and some other passages that appear literally to be translated from the Greek. He imagines also, that the present Abyssinian version is the work of Frumentius their first bishop, when Abyssinia was converted to Christianity under Abreha and Atzbeha, about the year 333 after Christ, or a few years later.

Although I brought with me all the Abyssinian books of the Old Testament, (if it is a translation) I have not yet had time to make the comparison here alluded to, but have left them, for the curiosity of the public, deposited in the British Museum, hoping that some man of learning or curiosity would do this for me. In the mean time I must observe, that it is much more natural to suppose that the Greeks, comparing the copies together, expunged the words or passages they found differing from the Septuagint, and replaced them from thence, as this would not offend the Jews, who very well knew that those who translated the Septuagint version were all Jews themselves.

Now, as the Abyssinian copy of the Holy Scriptures, in Mr Ludolf’s opinion, was translated by Frumentius above 330 after Christ, and the Septuagint version, in the days of Philadelphus, or Ptolemy II. above 160 years before Christ, it will follow, that, if the present Jews use the copy translated by Frumentius, and, if that was taken from the Septuagint, the Jews must have been above 400 years without any books whatsoever at the time of the conversion by Frumentius: So they must have had all the Jewish law, which is in perfect vigour and force among them, all their Levitical observances, their purifications, atonements, abstinences, and sacrifices, all depending upon their memory, without writing, at least for that long space of 400 years.

This, though not absolutely impossible, is surely very nearly so. We know, that, at Jerusalem itself, the seat of Jewish law and learning, idolatry happening to prevail, during the short reigns of only four kings, the law, in that interval, became so perfectly forgotten and unknown, that a copy of it being accidentally found and read by Josiah, that prince, upon his first learning its contents, was so astonished at the deviations from it, that he apprehended the immediate destruction of the whole city and people. To this I shall only add, that whoever considers the stiff-neckedness, stubbornness, and obstinacy, which were ever the characters of this Jewish nation, they will not easily believe that they did ever willingly “receive the Old Testament from a people who were the avowed champions of the New.”

They have, indeed, no knowledge of the New Testament but from conversation; and do not curse it, but treat it as a folly where it supposes the Messiah come, who, they seem to think, is to be a temporal prince, prophet, priest, and conqueror.

Still, it is not probable that a Jew would receive the law and the prophets from a Christian, without absolute necessity, though they might very well receive such a copy from a brother Jew, which all the Abyssinians were, when this translation was made. Nor would this, as I say, hinder them from following a copy really made by Jews from the text itself, such as the Septuagint actually was. But, I confess, great difficulties occur on every side, and I despair of having them solved, unless by an able, deliberate analysis of the specimen of the Falasha language which I have preserved, in which I earnestly request the concurrence of the learned. A book of the length of the Canticles contains words enough to judge upon the question, Whence the Falasha came, and what is the probable cause they had not a translation in their own tongue, since a version became necessary?

I have less doubt that Frumentius translated the New Testament, as he must have had assistance from those of his own communion in Egypt; and this is a further reason why I believe that, at his coming, he found the Old Testament already translated into the Ethiopic language and character, because Bagla, or Geez, was an unknown letter, and the language unknown, not only to him, but likewise to every province in Abyssinia, except Tigré; so that it would have cost him no more pains to teach the nation the Greek character and Greek language, than to have translated the New Testament into Ethiopic, using the Geez character, which was equally unknown, unless in Tigré. The saving of time and labour would have been very material to him; he would have used the whole scriptures, as received in his own church, and the Greek letter and language would have been just as easily attained in Amhara as the Geez; and those people, even of the province of Tigré, that had not yet learned to read, would have written the Greek character as easily as their own. I do not know that so early there was any Arabic translation of the Old Testament; if there was, the same reasons would have militated for his preferring this; and still he had but the New Testament to undertake. But having found the books of the Old Testament already translated into Geez, this altered the case; and he, very properly, continued the gospel in that language and letter also, that it might be a testimony for the Christians, and against the Jews, as it was intended.

CHAP. VII.

Books in Use in Abyssinia—Enoch—Abyssinia not converted by the Apostles—Conversion from Judaism to Christianity by Frumentius.

The Abyssinians have the whole scriptures entire as we have, and count the same number of books; but they divide them in another manner, at least in private hands, few of them, from extreme poverty, being able to purchase the whole, either of the historical or prophetical books of the Old Testament. The same may be said of the New, for copies containing the whole of it are very scarce. Indeed no where, unless in churches, do you see more than the Gospels, or the Acts of the Apostles, in one person’s possession, and it must not be an ordinary man that possesses even these.

Many books of the Old Testament are forgot, so that it is the same trouble to procure them, even in churches, for the purpose of copying, as to consult old records long covered with dust and rubbish. The Revelation of St John is a piece of favourite reading among them. Its title is, the Vision of John Abou Kalamsis, which seems to me to be a corruption of Apocalypsis. At the same time, we can hardly imagine that Frumentius, a Greek and a man of letters, should make so strange a mistake. There is no such thing as distinctions between canonical and apocryphal books. Bell and the Dragon, and the Acts of the Apostles, are read with equal devotion, and, for the most part, I am afraid, with equal edification; and it is in the spirit of truth, and not of ridicule, that I say St George and his Dragon, from idle legends only, are objects of veneration, nearly as great as any of the heroes in the Old Testament, or saints in the New. The Song of Solomon is a favourite piece of reading among the old priests, but forbidden to the young ones, to the deacons, laymen, and women. The Abyssinians believe, that this song was made by Solomon in praise of Pharaoh’s daughter; and do not think, as some of our divines are disposed to do, that there is in it any mystery or allegory respecting Christ and the church. It may be asked, Why did I choose to have this book translated, seeing that it was to be attended with this particular difficulty? To this I answer, The choice was not mine, nor did I at once know all the difficulty. The first I pitched upon was the book of Ruth, as being the shortest; but the subject did not please the scribes and priests who were to copy for me, and I found it would not do. They then chose the Song of Solomon, and engaged to go through with it; and I recommended it to two or three young scribes, who completed the copy by themselves and their friends. I was obliged to procure licence for these scribes whom I employed in translating it into the different languages; but it was a permission of course, and met with no real, though some pretended difficulty.

A nephew of Abba Salama337, the Acab Saat, a young man of no common genius, asked leave from his uncle before he began the translation; to which Salama answered, alluding to an old law, That, if he attempted such a thing, he should be killed as they do sheep; but, if I would give him the money, he would permit it. I should not have taken any notice of this; but some of the young men having told it to Ras Michael338, who perfectly guessed the matter, he called upon the scribe, and asked what his uncle had said to him, who told him very plainly, that, if he began the translation, his throat should be cut like that of a sheep. One day Michael asked Abba Salama, whether that was true; he answered in the affirmative, and seemed disposed to be talkative. “Then,” said the Ras to the young man, “your uncle declares, if you write the book for Yagoube, he shall cut your throat like a sheep; and I say to you, I swear by St Michael, I will put you to death like an ass if you don’t write it; consider with yourself which of the risks you’ll run, and come to me in eight days, and make your choice.” But, before the eighth day, he brought me the book, very well pleased at having an excuse for receiving the price of the copy. Abba Salama complained of this at another time when I was present, and the name of frank was invidiously mentioned; but he only got a stern look and word from the Ras: “Hold your tongue, Sir, you don’t know what you say; you don’t know that you are a fool, Sir, but I do; if you talk much you will publish it to all the world.”

After the New Testament they place the constitutions of the Apostles, which they call Synnodos, which, as far as the cases or doctrines apply, we may say is the written law of the country. These were translated out of the Arabic. They have next a general liturgy, or book of common prayer, besides several others peculiar to certain festivals, under whose names they go. The next is a very large voluminous book, called Haimanout Abou, chiefly a collection from the works of different Greek fathers, treating of, or explaining several heresies, or disputed points of faith, in the ancient Greek Church. Translations of the works of St Athanasius, St Bazil, St John Chrysostome, and St Cyril, are likewise current among them. The two last I never saw; and only fragments of St Athanasius; but they are certainly extant.

The next is the Synaxar, or the Flos Sanctorum, in which the miracles and lives, or lies of their saints, are at large recorded, in four monstrous volumes in folio, stuffed full of fables of the most incredible kind. They have a saint that wrestled with the devil in shape of a serpent nine miles long, threw him from a mountain, and killed him. Another saint who converted the devil, who turned monk, and lived in great holiness for forty years after his conversion, doing penance for having tempted our Saviour upon the mountain: what became of him after they do not say. Again, another saint, that never ate nor drank from his mother’s womb, went to Jerusalem, and said mass every day at the holy sepulchre, and came home at night in the shape of a stork. The last I shall mention was a saint, who, being very sick, and his stomach in disorder, took a longing for partridges; he called upon a brace of them to come to him, and immediately two roasted partridges came flying, and rested upon his plate, to be devoured. These stories are circumstantially told and vouched by unexceptionable people, and were a grievous stumbling-block to the Jesuits, who could not pretend their own miracles were either better established, or more worthy of belief.

There are other books of less size and consequence, particularly the Organon Denghel, or the Virgin Mary’s Musical Instrument, composed by Abba George about the year 1440, much valued for the purity of its language, though he himself was an Armenian. The last of this Ethiopic library is the book of Enoch339. Upon hearing this book first mentioned, many literati in Europe had a wonderful desire to see it, thinking that, no doubt, many secrets and unknown histories might be drawn from it. Upon this some impostor, getting an Ethiopic book into his hands, wrote for the title, The Prophecies of Enoch, upon the front page of it. M. Pierisc340 no sooner heard of it than he purchased it of the impostor for a considerable sum of money: being placed afterwards in Cardinal Mazarine’s library, where Mr Ludolf had access to it, he found it was a Gnostic book upon mysteries in heaven and earth, but which mentioned not a word of Enoch, or his prophecy, from beginning to end; and, from this disappointment, he takes upon him to deny the existence of any such book any where else. This, however, is a mistake; for, as a public return for the many obligations I had received from every rank of that most humane, polite, and scientific nation, and more especially from the sovereign Louis XV. I gave to his cabinet a part of every thing curious I had collected abroad; which was received with that degree of consideration and attention that cannot fail to determine every traveller of a liberal mind to follow my example.

Amongst the articles I consigned to the library at Paris, was a very beautiful and magnificent copy of the prophecies of Enoch, in large quarto; another is amongst the books of scripture which I brought home, standing immediately before the book of Job, which is its proper place in the Abyssinian canon; and a third copy I have presented to the Bodleian library at Oxford, by the hands of Dr Douglas the Bishop of Carlisle. The more ancient history of that book is well known. The church at first looked upon it as apocryphal; and as it was quoted in the book of Jude, the same suspicion fell upon that book also. For this reason, the council of Nice threw the epistle of Jude out of the canon, but the council of Trent arguing better, replaced the apostle in the canon as before.

Here we may observe by the way, that Jude’s appealing to the apocryphal books did by no means import, that either he believed or warranted the truth of them. But it was an argument, a fortiori, which our Saviour himself often makes use of, and amounts to no more than this, You, says he to the Jews, deny certain facts, which must be from prejudice, because you have them allowed in your own books, and believe them there. And a very strong and fair way of arguing it is, but this is by no means any allowance that they are true. In the same manner, You, says Jude, do not believe the coming of Christ and a latter judgment; yet your ancient Enoch, whom you suppose was the seventh from Adam, tells you this plainly, and in so many words, long ago. And indeed the quotation is, word for word the same, in the second chapter of the book.

All that is material to say further concerning the book of Enoch is, that it is a Gnostic book, containing the age of the Emims, Anakims, and Egregores, supposed descendents of the sons of God, when they fell in love with the daughters of men, and had sons who were giants. These giants do not seem to have been so charitable to the sons and daughters of men, as their fathers had been. For, first, they began to eat all the beasts of the earth, they then fell upon the birds and fishes, and ate them also; their hunger being not yet satisfied, they ate all the corn, all men’s labour, all the trees and bushes, and, not content yet, they fell to eating the men themselves. The men (like our modern sailors with the savages) were not afraid of dying, but very much so of being eaten after death. At length they cry to God against the wrongs the giants had done them, and God sends a flood which drowns both them and the giants.

Such is the reparation which this ingenious author has thought proper to attribute to Providence, in answer to the first, and the best-founded complaints that were made to him by man. I think this exhausts about four or five of the first chapters. It is not the fourth part of the book; but my curiosity led me no further. The catastrophe of the giants, and the justice of the catastrophe, had fully satisfied me.

I cannot but recollect, that when it was known in England that I had presented this book to the library of the King of France, without staying a few days, to give me time to reach London, when our learned countrymen might have had an opportunity of perusing at leisure another copy of this book, Doctor Woide set out for Paris, with letters from the Secretary of State to Lord Stormont, Ambassador at that court, desiring him to assist the doctor in procuring access to my present, by permission from his Most Christian Majesty. This he accordingly obtained, and a translation of the work was brought over; but, I know not why, it has no where appeared. I fancy Dr Woide was not much more pleased with the conduct of the giants than I was.

I shall conclude with one particular, which is a curious one: The Synaxar (what the Catholics call their Flos Sanctorum, or the lives and miracles of their saints), giving the history of the Abyssinian conversion to Christianity in the year 333, says, that when Frumentius and Œdesius were introduced to the king, who was a minor, they found him reading the Psalms of David.

This book, or that of Enoch, does by no means prove that they were at that time Jews. For these two were in as great authority among the Pagans, who professed Sabaism, the first religion of the East, and especially of the Shepherds, as among the Jews. These being continued also in the same letter and character among the Abyssinians from the beginning, convinces me that there has not been any other writing in this country, or the south of Arabia, since that which rose from the Hieroglyphics.

The Abyssinian history begins now to rid itself of part of that confusion which is almost a constant attendant upon the very few annals yet preserved of barbarous nations in very ancient times. It is certain, from their history, that Bazen was contemporary with Augustus, that he reigned sixteen years, and that the birth of our Saviour fell on the 8th year of that prince, so that the 8th year of Bazen was the first of Christ.

Amha Yasous, prince of Shoa, a province to which the small remains of the line of Solomon fled upon a catastrophe, I shall have occasion to mention, gave me the following list of the kings of Abyssinia since the time of which we are now speaking. From him I procured all the books, of the Annals of Abyssinia, which have served me to compose this history, excepting two, one given me by the King, the other the Chronicle of Axum, by Ras Michael Governor of Tigré.

SHOA LIST OF PRINCES.

Bazen,
Tzenaf Segued,
Garima Asferi,
Saraada,
Tzion,
Sargai,
Bagamai,
Jan Segued,
Tzion Heges,
Moal Genha,
Saif Araad,
Agedar,
Abreha and Atzbeha, 333,
Asfeha,
Arphad and Amzi,
Araad,
Saladoba,
Alamida,
Tezhana,
Caleb, 522,
Guebra Mascal,
Constantine,
Bazzer,
Azbeha,
Armaha,
Jan Asfeha,
Jan Segued,
Fere Sanai,
Aderaaz,
Aizor,
Del Naad, 960341.

This list is kept in the monastery of Debra Libanos in Shoa; the Abyssinians receive it without any sort of doubt, though to me it seems very exceptionable: If it were genuine, it would put this monarchy in a very respectable light in point of antiquity.

Great confusion has arisen in these old lists, from their kings having always two, and sometimes three names. The first is their christened name, their second a nick, or bye-name, and the third they take upon their inauguration. There is, likewise, another cause of mistake, which is, when two names occur, one of a king, the other the quality of a king only, these are set down as two brothers. For example, Atzbeha is the blessed, or the saint; and I very much suspect, therefore, that Atzbeha and Abreha, said to be two brothers, only mean Abraham the blessed, or the saint; because, in that prince’s time, the country was converted to Christianity; Caleb342 and Elesbaas, were long thought to be contemporary princes, till it was found out, by inspecting the ancient authors of those times, that this was only the name or quality of blessed, or saint, given to Caleb, in consequence of his expedition into Arabia against Phineas king of the Jews, and persecutor of the Christians.

There are four very interesting events, in the course of the reign of these princes. The first and greatest we have already mentioned, the birth of Christ in the 8th year of Bazen. The second is the conversion of Abyssinia to Christianity, in the reign of Abreha and Atzbeha, in the year of Christ 333, according to our account. The third the war with the Jews under Caleb. The fourth, the massacre of the princes on the mountain of Damo. The time and circumstances of all these are well known, and I shall relate them in their turn with the brevity becoming a historian.

Some ecclesiastical343 writers, rather from attachment to particular systems, than from any conviction that the opinion they espouse is truth, would persuade us, that the conversion of Abyssinia to Christianity happened at the beginning of this period, that is, soon after the reign of Bazen; others, that Saint Matthias, or Saint Bartholomew, or some others of the Apostles, after their mission to teach the nations, first preached here the faith of Christ, and converted this people to it. It is also said, that the eunuch baptized by Philip, upon his return to Candace, became the Apostle of that nation, which, from his preaching, believed in Christ and his gospel. All these might pass for dreams not worthy of examination, if they were not invented for particular purposes.

Till the death of Christ, who lived several years after Bazen, very few Jews had been converted even in Judea. We have no account in scripture that induces us to believe, that the Apostles went to any great distance from each other immediately after the crucifixion. Nay, we know positively, they did not, but lived in community together for a considerable time. Besides, it is not probable, if the Abyssinians were converted by any of the Apostles, that, for the space of 300 years, they should remain without bishops, and without church-government, in the neighbourhood of many states, where churches were already formed, without calling to their assistance some members of these churches, who might, at least, inform them of the purport of the councils held, and canons made by them, during that space of 300 years; for this was absolutely necessary to preserve orthodoxy, and the communion between this, and the churches of that time. And it should be observed, that if, in Philip’s time, the Christian religion had not penetrated (as we see in effect it had not) into the court of Candace, so much nearer Egypt, it did not surely reach so early into the more distant mountainous country of Abyssinia; and if the Ethiopia, where Candace reigned, was the same as Abyssinia, the story of the queen of Saba must be given up as a falsehood; for, in that case, there would be a woman sitting upon the throne of that country 500 years after she was excluded by a solemn deliberate fundamental law of the land.

But it is known, from credible writers, engaged in no controversy, that this Candace reigned upon the Nile in Atbara, much nearer Egypt. Her capital also was taken in the time of Augustus, a few years before the Conversion, by Philip; and we shall have occasion often to mention her successors and her kingdom, as existing in the reign of the Abyssinian kings, long after the Mahometan conquest; they existed when I passed through Atbara, and do undoubtedly exist there to this day. What puts an end to all this argument is a matter of fact, which is, that the Abyssinians continued Jews and Pagans, and were found to be so above 300 years after the time of the Apostles. Instead, therefore, of taking the first of this list (Bazen) for the prince under whom Abyssinia was converted from Judaism, as authors have advanced, in conformity to the Abyssinian annals, we shall fix upon the 13th (Abreha and Atzbeha, whom we believe to be but one prince) and, before we enter into the narrative of that remarkable event, we shall observe, that, from Bazen to Abreha, being 341 years inclusive, the eighth of Bazen being the first of Christ, by this account of the conversion, which happened under Abreha and Atzbeha, it must have been about 333 years after Christ, or 341 after Bazen.

But we certainly know, that the first bishop, ordained for the conversion of Abyssinia, was sent from Alexandria by St Athanasius, who was himself ordained to that See about the year 326. Therefore, any account, prior to this ordination and conversion, must be false, and this conversion and ordination must have therefore happened about the year 330, or possibly some few years later; for Socrates344 says, that St Athanasius himself was then but newly elected to the See of Alexandria.

In order to clear our way of difficulties, before we begin the narrative of the conversion, we shall observe, in this place, the reason I just hinted at, why some ecclesiastical writers had attributed the conversion of Abyssinia to the Apostles. There was found, or pretended to be found in Alexandria, a canon, of a council said to be that of Nice, and this canon had never before been known, nor ever seen in any other place, or in any language, except the Arabic; and, from inspection, I may add, that it is such Arabic that scarce will convey the meaning it was intended. Indeed, if it be construed according to the strict rule of grammar, it will not convey any sense at all. This canon regulated the precedency of the Abuna of Ethiopia in all after councils, and it places him immediately after the prelate of Seleucia. This most honourable antiquity was looked upon and boasted of for their own purposes by the Jesuits, as a discovery of infinite value to the church of Ethiopia.

I shall only make one other observation to obviate a difficulty which will occur in reading what is to follow. The Abyssinian history plainly and positively says, that when Frumentius (the apostle of the Abyssinians) came first into that country, a queen reigned, which is an absolute contradiction to what we have already stated, and would seem to favour the story of queen Candace. To this I answer, That though it be true that all women are excluded from the Abyssinian throne, yet it is as true that there is a law, or custom, as strictly observed as the other, that the queen upon whose head the king shall have put the crown in his life-time, it matters not whether it be her husband or son, or any other relation, that woman is regent of the kingdom, and guardian of every minor king, as long as she shall live. Supposing, therefore, a queen to be crowned by her husband, which husband should die and leave a son, all the brothers and uncles of that son would be banished, and confined prisoners to the mountain, and the queen would have the care of the kingdom, and of the king, during his minority. If her son, moreover, was to die, and a minor succeed who was a collateral, or no relation to her, brought, perhaps, from the mountain, she would still be regent; nor does her office cease but by the king’s coming of age, whose education, cloathing, and maintenance, she, in the mean time, absolutely directs, according to her own will; nor can there be another regent during her life-time. This regent, for life, is called Iteghè; and this was probably the situation of the kingdom at the time we mention, as history informs us the king was then a minor, and consequently his education, as well as the government of his kingdom and household, were, as they appear to have been, in the queen, or Iteghè’s hands; of this office I shall speak more in its proper place.

Meropius, a philosopher at Tyre, a Greek by nation and by religion, had taken a passage in a ship on the Red Sea to India, and had with him two young men, Frumentius and Œdesius, whom he intended to bring up to trade, after having given them a very liberal education. It happened their vessel was cast away on a rock upon the coast of Abyssinia. Meropius, defending himself, was slain by the natives, and the two boys carried to Axum, the capital of Abyssinia, where the Court then resided. Though young, they soon began to shew the advantages attending a liberal education. They acquired the language very speedily; and, as that country is naturally inclined to admire strangers, these were soon looked upon as two prodigies. Œdesius, probably the dullest of the two, was set over the king’s household and wardrobe, a place that has been filled constantly by a stranger of that nation to this very day. Frumentius was judged worthy by the queen to have the care of the young prince’s education, to which he dedicated, himself entirely.

After having instructed his pupil in all sorts of learning, he strongly impressed him with a love and veneration for the Christian religion; after which he himself set out for Alexandria, where, as has been already said, he found St. Athanasius345 newly elected to that See.

He related to him briefly what had passed in Ethiopia, and the great hopes of the conversion of that nation, if proper pastors were sent to instruct them. Athanasius embraced that opportunity with all the earnestness that became his station and profession. He ordained Frumentius bishop of that country, who instantly returned and found the young king his pupil in the same good disposition as formerly; he embraced Christianity; the greatest part of Abyssinia followed his example, and the church of Ethiopia continued with this bishop in perfect unity and friendship till his death; and though great troubles arose from heresies being propagated in the East, that church, and the fountain whence it derived its faith (Alexandria,) remained uncontaminated by any false doctrine.

But it was not long after this, that Arianism broke out under Constantius the Emperor, and was strongly favoured by him. We have indeed a letter of St Athanasius to that Emperor, who had applied to him to depose Frumentius from his See for refusing to embrace that heresy, or admit it into his diocese.

It should seem, that this conversion of Abyssinia was quietly conducted, and without blood; and this is the more remarkable, that it was the second radical change of religion, effected in the same manner, and with the same facility and moderation. No fanatic preachers, no warm saints or madmen, ambitious to make or to be made martyrs, disturbed either of these happy events, in this wise, though barbarous nation, so as to involve them in bloodshed: no persecution was the consequence of this difference of tenets, and if wars did follow, it was from matters merely temporal.

CHAP. VIII.

War of the Elephant—First Appearance of the Small-Pox—Jews persecute the Christians in Arabia—Defeated by the Abyssinians—Mahomet pretends a divine Mission—Opinion concerning the Koran—Revolution under Judith—Restoration of the Line of Solomon from Shoa.

In the reigns of the princes Abreha and Atzbeha, the Abyssinian annals mention an expedition to have happened into the farthest part of Arabia Felix, which the Arabian authors, and indeed Mahomet himself in the Koran calls by the name of the War of the Elephant, and the cause of it was this. There was a temple nearly in the middle of the peninsula of Arabia, that had been held in the greatest veneration for about 1400 years. The Arabs say, that Adam, when shut out of paradise, pitched his tent on this spot; while Eve, from some accident or other I am not acquainted with, died and was buried on the shore of the Red Sea, at Jidda. Two days journey east from this place, her grave, of green sods about fifty yards in length, is shewn to this day. In this temple also was a black stone, upon which Jacob saw the vision mentioned in scripture, of the angels descending, and ascending into Heaven. It is likewise said, with more appearance of probability, that this temple was built by Sesostris, in his voyage to Arabia Felix, and that he was worshipped there under the name of Osiris, as he then was in every part of Egypt.

The great veneration the neighbouring nations paid to this tower, and idol, suggested the very natural thought of making the temple the market for the trade from Africa and India; the liberty of which, we may suppose, had been in some measure restrained, by the settlements which foreign nations had made on both coasts of the Red Sea. To remedy which, they chose this town in the heart of the country, accessible on all sides, and commanded on none, calling it Becca, which signifies the House; though Mahomet, after breaking the idol and dedicating the temple to the true God, named it Mecca, under which name it has continued, the centre or great mart of the India trade to this day.

In order to divert this trade into a channel more convenient for his present dominions, Abreha built a very large church or temple, in the country of the Homerites, and nearer the Indian Ocean. To encourage also the resort to this place, he extended to it all the privileges, protection, and emoluments, that belonged to the Pagan temple of Mecca.

One particular tribe of Arabs, called Beni Koreish, had the care of the Caba, for so the round tower of Mecca was called. These people were exceedingly alarmed at the prospect of their temple being at once deserted, both by its votaries and merchants, to prevent which, a party of them, in the night, entered Abreha’s temple, and having first burned what part of it could be consumed, they polluted the part that remained, by besmearing it over with human excrements.

This violent sacrilege and affront was soon reported to Abreha, who, mounted upon a white elephant at the head of a considerable army, resolved, in return, to destroy the temple of Mecca. With this intent, he marched through that stripe of low country along the sea, called Tehama, where he met with no opposition, nor suffered any distress but from want of water; after which, at the head of his army, he sat down before Mecca, as he supposed.

Abou Thaleb (Mahomet’s grandfather, as it is thought) was then keeper of the Caba, who had interest with his countrymen the Beni Koreish to prevail upon them to make no resistance, nor shew any signs of wishing to make a defence. He had presented himself early to Abreha upon his march. There was a temple of Osiris at Taief, which, as a rival to that of Mecca, was looked upon by the Beni Koreish with a jealous eye. Abreha was so far misled by the intelligence given him by Abou Thaleb, that he mistook the Temple of Taief for that of Mecca, and razed it to the foundation, after which he prepared to return home.

He was soon after informed of his mistake, and not repenting of what he had already done, resolved to destroy Mecca also. Abou Thaleb, however, had never left his side; by his great hospitality, and the plenty he procured to the Emperor’s army, he so gained Abreha, that hearing, on inquiry, he was no mean man, but a prince of the tribe of Beni Koreish, noble Arabs, he obliged him to sit in his presence, and kept him constantly with him as a companion. At last, not knowing how to reward him sufficiently, Abreha desired him to ask any thing in his power to grant, and he would satisfy him. Abou Thaleb, taking him at his word, wished to be provided with a man, that should bring back forty oxen, the soldiers had stolen from him.

Abreha, who expected that the favour he was to ask, was to spare the Temple, which he had in that case resolved in his mind to do, could not conceal his astonishment at so silly a request, and he could not help testifying this to Abou Thaleb, in a manner that shewed it had lowered him in his esteem. Abou Thaleb, smiling, replied very calmly, If that before you is the Temple of God, as I believe it is, you shall never destroy it, if it is his will that it should stand: If it is not the Temple of God, or (which is the same thing) if he has ordained that you should destroy it, I shall not only assist you in demolishing it, but shall help you in carrying away the last stone of it upon my shoulders: But as for me, I am a shepherd, and the care of cattle is my profession; twenty of the oxen which are stolen are not my own, and I shall be put in prison for them to-morrow; for neither you nor I can believe that this is an affair God will interfere in; and therefore I apply to you for a soldier who will seek the thief, and bring back my oxen, that my liberty be not taken from me.

Abreha had now refreshed his army, and, from regard to his guest, had not touched the Temple; when, says the Arabian author, there appeared, coming from the sea, a flock of birds called Ababil, having faces like lions, and each of them in his claws, holding a small stone like a pea, which he let fall upon Abreha’s army, so that they all were destroyed. The author of the manuscript346 from which I have taken this fable, and which is also related by several other historians, and mentioned by Mahomet in the Koran, does not seem to swallow the story implicitly. For he says, that there is no bird that has a face like a lion, that Abou Thaleb was a Pagan, Mahomet being not then come, and that the Christians were worshippers of the true God, the God of Mahomet; and, therefore, if any miracle was wrought here, it was a miracle of the devil, a victory in favour of Paganism, and destructive of the belief of the true God. In, conclusion, he says, that it was at this time that the small-pox and measles first broke out in Arabia, and almost totally destroyed the army of Abreha. But if the stone, as big as a pea, thrown by the Ababil, had killed Abreha’s army to the last man, it does not appear how any of them could die afterwards, either by the small-pox or measles.

All that is material, however, to us, in this fact, is, that the time of the siege of Mecca will be the æra of the first appearance of that terrible disease, the small-pox, which we shall set down about the year 356; and it is highly probable, from other circumstances, that the Abyssinian army was the first victim to it.

As for the church Abreha built near the Indian Ocean, it continued free from any further insult till the Mahometan conquest of Arabia Felix, when it was finally destroyed in the Khalifat347 of Omar. This is the Abyssinian account, and this the Arabian history of the War of the Elephant, which I have stated as found in the books of the most credible writers of those times.

But it is my duty to put the reader upon his guard, against adopting literally what is here set down, without being satisfied of the validity of the objection that may be made against the narrative in general. Abreha reigned 27 years; he was converted to Christianity in 333, and died in 360; now, it is scarcely possible, in the short space of 27 years, that all Abyssinia and Arabia could be converted to Christianity. The conversion of the Abyssinians is represented to be a work of little time, but the Arab author, Hameesy, says, that even Arabia Felix was full of churches when this expedition took place, which is very improbable. And, what adds still more to the improbability, is, that part of the story which states that Abreha conversed with Mahomet’s father, or grandfather. For, supposing the expedition in 356, Mahomet’s birth was in 558, so there will remain 202 years, by much too long a period for two lives. I do believe we must bring this expedition down much lower than the reign of Abreha and Atzbeha, the reason of which we shall see afterwards.

As early as the commencement of the African trade with Palestine, the Jewish religion had spread itself far into Arabia, but, after the destruction of the temple by Titus, a great increase both of number and wealth had made that people absolute masters in many parts of that peninsula. In the Neged, and as far up as Medina, petty princes, calling themselves kings, were established; who, being trained in the wars of Palestine, became very formidable among the pacific commercial nations of Arabia, deeply sunk into Greek degeneracy.

Phineas, a prince of that nation from Medina, having beat St Aretas, the Governor of Najiran, began to persecute the Christians by a new species of cruelty, by ordering certain furnaces, or pits full of fire, to be prepared, into which he threw as many of the inhabitants of Najiran as refused to renounce Christianity. Among these was Aretas, so called by the Greeks, Aryat by the Arabs, and Hawaryat, which signifies the evangelical, by the Abyssinians, together with ninety of his companions. Mahomet, in his Koran, mentions, this tyrant by the name of the Master of the fiery pits, without either condemning or praising the execution; only saying, ‘the sufferers shall be witness against him at the last day.’

Justin, the Greek Emperor, was then employed in an unsuccessful war with the Persians, so that he could not give any assistance to the afflicted Christians in Arabia, but in the year 522 he sent an embassy to Caleb, or Elesbaas, king of Abyssinia, intreating him to interfere in favour of the Christians of Najiran, as he too was of the Greek church. On the Emperor’s first request, Caleb sent orders to Abreha, Governor of Yemen, to march to the assistance of Aretas, the son of him who was burnt, and who was then collecting troops. Strengthened by this reinforcement, the young soldier did not think proper to delay the revenging his father’s death, till the arrival of the Emperor; but having come up with Phineas, who was ferrying his troops over an arm of the sea, he entirely routed them, and obliged their prince, for fear of being taken, to swim with his horse to the nearest shore. It was not long before the Emperor had crossed the Red Sea with his army; nor had Phineas lost any time in collecting his scattered forces to oppose him. A battle was the consequence, in which the fortune of Caleb again prevailed.

It would appear that the part of Arabia, near Najiran, which was the scene of Caleb’s victory, belonged to the Grecian Emperor Justin, because Aretas applied directly to him at Constantinople for succour; and it was at Justin’s request only, that Caleb marched to the assistance of Aretas, as a friend, but not as a sovereign; and as such also, Abreha, Governor of Yemen, marched to assist Aretas, with the Abyssinian troops, from the south of Arabia, against the stranger Jews, who were invaders from Palestine, and who had no connection with the Abyssinian Jewish Homerites, natives of the south coast of Arabia, opposite to Saba.

But neither of the Jewish kingdoms were destroyed by the victories of Caleb, or Abreha, nor the subsequent conquest of the Persians. In the Neged, or north part of Arabia, they continued not only after the appearance of Mahomet, but till after the Hegira. For it was in the 8th year of that æra that Hybar, the Jew, was besieged in his own castle in Neged, and slain by Ali, Mahomet’s son-in-law, from that time called Hydar Ali, or Ali the Lion.

Now the Arabian manuscripts says positively that this Abreha, who assisted Aretas, was Governor of Arabia Felix, or Yemen; for, by this last name, I shall hereafter call the part of the peninsula of Arabia belonging to the Abyssinians; so that he might very well have been the prince who conversed with Mahomet’s father, and lost his army before Mecca, which will bring down the introduction of the small-pox to the year 522, just 100 years before the Hegira, and both Arabian and Abyssinian accounts might be then true.

The two officers who governed Yemen, and the opposite coast Azab, which, as we have above mentioned, belonged to Abyssinia, were stiled Najashi, as was the king also, and both of them were crowned with gold. I am, therefore, persuaded, this is the reason of the confusion of names we meet in Arabian manuscripts, that treat of the sovereigns of Yemen. This, moreover, is the foundation of the story found in Arabic manuscripts, that Jaffar, Mahomet’s brother, fled to the Najashi, who was governor of Yemen, and was kindly treated by him, and kept there till he joined his brother at the campaign of Hybarea. Soon after his great victory over the Beni Koreish, at the last battle of Beder Hunein, Mahomet is said to have written to the same Najashi a letter of thanks, for his kind entertainment of his brother, inviting him (as a reward) to embrace his religion, which the Najashi is supposed to have immediately complied with. Now, all this is in the Arabic books, and all this is true, as far as we can conjecture from the accounts of those times, very partially writ by a set of warm-headed bigotted zealots; such as all Arabic authors (historians of the time) undoubtedly are. The error only lies in the application of this story to the Najashi, or king of Abyssinia, situated far from the scene of these actions, on high cold mountains, very unfavourable to those rites, which, in low flat and warm countries, have been temptations to slothful and inactive men to embrace the Mahometan religion.

A most shameful prostitution of manners prevailed in the Greek church, as also innumerable heresies, which were first received as true tenets of their religion, but were soon after persecuted in a most uncharitable manner, as being erroneous. Their lies, their legends, their saints and miracles, and, above all, the abandoned behaviour of the priesthood, had brought their characters in Arabia almost as low as that of the detested Jew, and, had they been considered in their true light, they had been still lower.

The dictates of nature in the heart of the honest Pagan, constantly employed in long, lonely, and dangerous voyages, awakened him often to reflect who that Providence was that invisibly governed him, supplied his wants, and often mercifully saved him from the destruction into which his own ignorance or rashness were leading him. Poisoned by no system, perverted by no prejudice, he wished to know and adore his Benefactor, with purity and simplicity of heart, free from these fopperies and follies with which ignorant priests and monks had disguised his worship. Possessed of charity, steady in his duty to his parents, full of veneration for his superiors, attentive and merciful even to his beasts; in a word, containing in his heart the principles of the first religion, which God had inculcated in the heart of Noah, the Arab was already prepared to embrace a much more perfect one than what Christianity, at that time, disfigured by folly and superstition, appeared to him to be.

Mahomet, of the tribe of Beni Koreish (at whose instigation is uncertain) took upon himself to be the apostle of a new religion, pretending to have, for his only object, the worship of the true God. Ostensibly full of the morality of the Arab, of patience and self-denial, superior even to what is made necessary to salvation by the gospel, his religion, at the bottom, was but a system of blasphemy and falsehood, corruption and injustice. Mahomet and his tribe were most profoundly ignorant. There was not among them but one man that could write, and it was not doubted he was to be Mahomet’s secretary, but unfortunately Mahomet could not read his writing. The story of the angel who brought him leaves of the Koran is well known, and so is all the rest of the fable. The wiser part of his own relations, indeed, laughed at the impudence of his pretending to have a communication with angels. Having, however, gained, as his apostles, some of the best soldiers of the tribe of Beni Koreish, and persisting with great uniformity in all his measures, he established a new religion upon the ruins of idolatry and Sabaism, in the very temple of Mecca.

Nothing severe was injoined by Mahomet, and the frequent prayers and washings with water which he directed, were gratifications to a sedentary people in a very hot country. The lightness of this yoke, therefore, recommended it rapidly to those who were disgusted with long fasting, penances, and pilgrimages. The poison of this false, yet not severe religion, spread itself from that fountain to all the trading nations: India, Ethiopia, Africa, all Asia, suddenly embraced it; and every caravan carried into the bosom of its country people not more attached to trade, than zealous to preach and propagate their new faith. The Temple of Mecca (the old rendezvous of the Indian trade) perhaps was never more frequented than it is at this day, and the motives of the journey are equally trade and religion, as they were formerly.

I shall here mention, that the Arabs begun very soon to study letters, and came to be very partial to their own language; Mahomet himself so much so, that he held out his Koran, for its elegance alone, as a greater miracle than that of raising the dead. This was not universally allowed at that time; as there were even then compositions supposed to equal, if not to surpass it. In my time, I have seen in Britain a spirit of enthusiasm for this book in preference to all others, not inferior to that which possessed Mahomet’s followers. Modern unbelievers (Sale and his disciples) have gone every length, but to say directly that it was dictated by the Spirit of God. Excepting the command in Genesis chap. i. ver. 3. “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light;” they defy us to shew in scripture a passage equal in sublimity to many in the Koran. Following, without inquiring, what has been handed down from one to the other, they would cram us with absurdities, which no man of sense can swallow. They say the Koran is composed in a style the most pure, and chaste, and that the tribe of Beni Koreish was the most polite, learned, and noble of all the Arabs.

But to this I answer—The Beni Koreish were from the earliest days, according to their own348 account, part established at Mecca, and part as robbers on the sea-coast, and they were all children of Ishmael. Whence then came their learning, or their superior nobility? Was it found in the desert, in the temple, or did the robbers bring it from the sea? Soiouthy, one of those most famous then for knowledge in the Arabic, has quoted from the Koran many hundred words, either Abyssinian, Indian, Persian, Ethiopic, Syrian, Hebrew, or Chaldaic, which he brings back to the root, and ascribes them to the nation they came from. Indeed it could not be otherwise; these caravans, continually crowding with their trade to Mecca, must have vitiated the original tongue by an introduction of new terms and new idioms, into a language labouring under a penury of vocabules. But shall any one for this persuade me, that a book is a model of pure, elegant, chaste English, in which there shall be a thousand words of Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, French, Spanish, Malabar Mexican, and Laponian? What would be thought of such a medley? or, at least, could it be recommended as a pattern for writing pure English?

What I say of the Koran may be applied to the language of Arabia in general: when it is called a copious language, and professors wisely tell you, that there are six hundred words for a sword, two hundred for honey, and three hundred that signify a lion, still I must observe, that this is not a copious language, but a confusion of languages: these, instead of distinct names, are only different epithets. For example, a lion in English may be called a young lion, a white lion, a small lion, a big lion: I style him moreover the fierce, the cruel, the enemy to man, the beast of the desert, the king of beasts, the lover of blood. Thus it is in Arabic; and yet it is said that all these are words for a lion. Take another example in a sword; the cutter, the divider, the friend of man, the master of towns, the maker of widows, the sharp, the straight, the crooked; which may be said in English as well as in Arabic.

The Arabs were a people who lived in a country, for the most part, desert; their dwellings were tents, and their principal occupation feeding and breeding cattle, and they married with their own family. The language therefore of such a people should be very poor; there is no variety of images in their whole country. They were always bad poets, as their works will testify; and if, contrary to the general rule, the language of Arabia Deserta became a copious one, it must have been by the mixture of so many nations meeting and trading at Mecca. It must, at the same time, have been the most corrupt, where there was the greatest concourse of strangers, and this was certainly among the Beni Koreish at the Caba. When, therefore, I hear people praising the Koran for the purity of its style, it puts me in mind of the old man in the comedy, whose reason for loving his nephew was, that he could read Greek; and being asked if he understood the Greek so read, he answered, Not a word of it, but the rumbling of the sound pleased him.

The war that had distracted all Arabia, first between the Greeks and Persians, then between Mahomet and the Arabs, in support of his divine mission, had very much hurt the trade carried on by universal consent at the Temple of Mecca. Caravans, when they dared venture out, were surprised upon every road, by the partizans of one side or the other. Both merchants and trade had taken their departure to the southward, and established themselves south of the Arabian Gulf, in places which (in ancient times) had been the markets for commerce, and the rendezvous of merchants. Azab, or Saba, was rebuilt; also Raheeta, Zeyla, Tajoura, Soomaal, in the Arabian Gulf, and a number of other towns on the Indian Ocean. The conquest of the Abyssinian territories in Arabia forced all those that yet remained to take refuge on the African side, in the little districts which now grew into consideration. Adel, Mara, Hadea, Aussa, Wypo, Tarshish, and a number of other states, now assumed the name of kingdoms, and soon obtained power and wealth superior to many older ones.

The Governor of Yemen (or Najashi) converted now to the faith of Mahomet, retired to the African side of the Gulf. His government, long ago, having been shaken to the very foundation by the Arabian war, was at last totally destroyed. But the Indian trade at Adel wore a face of prosperity, that had the features of ancient times.

Without taking notice of every objection, and answering it, which has too polemical an appearance for a work of this kind, I hope I have removed the greatest part of the reader’s difficulties, which have, for a long time, lain in the way, towards his understanding this part of the history. There is one, however, remains, which the Arabian historians have mentioned, viz. that this Najashi, who embraced the faith of Mahomet, was avowedly of the royal family of Abyssinia. To this I answer, he certainly was a person of that rank, and was undoubtedly a nobleman, as there is no nobility in that country but from relationship to the king, and no person can be related to the king by the male line. But the females, even the daughters of those princes who are banished to the mountain, marry whom they please; and all the descendents of that marriage become noble, because they must be allied to the king. So far then they may truly assert, that the Mahometan Governor of Yemen, and his posterity, were this way related to the king of Abyssinia. But the supposition that any heirs male of this family became mussulmen, is, beyond any sort of doubt, without foundation or probability.

Omar, after subduing Egypt, destroyed the valuable library at Alexandria, but his successors thought very differently from him in the article of profane learning. Greek books of all kinds (especially those of Geometry, Astronomy, and Medicine,) were searched for every where and translated. Sciences flourished and were encouraged. Trade at the same time kept pace, and increased with knowledge. Geography and astronomy were every where diligently studied and solidly applied to make the voyages of men from place to place safe and expeditious. The Jews (constant servants of the Arabs) imbibed a considerable share of their taste for earning.

They had, at this time, increased very much in number. By the violence of the Mahometan conquests in Arabia and Egypt, where their sect did principally prevail, they became very powerful in Abyssinia. Arianism, and all the various heresies that distracted the Greek church, were received there in their turn from Egypt; the bonds of Christianity were dissolved, and people in general were much more willing to favour a new religion, than to agree with, or countenance any particular one of their own, if it differed from that which they adopted in the merest trifle. This had destroyed their metropolis in Egypt, just now delivered up to the Saracens; and the disposition of the Abyssinians seemed so very much to resemble their brethren the Cophts, that a revolution in favour of Judaism was thought full as feasible in the country, as it had been in Egypt in favour of the newly-preached, but unequivocal religion of Mahomet.

An independent sovereignty, in one family of Jews, had always been preserved on the mountain of Samen, and the royal residence was upon a high-pointed rock, called the Jews Rock: Several other inaccessible mountains served as natural fortresses for this people, now grown very considerable by frequent accessions of strength from Palestine and Arabia, whence the Jews had been expelled. Gideon and Judith were then king and queen of the Jews, and their daughter Judith (whom in Amhara they call Esther, and sometimes Saat, i. e. fire349,) was a woman of great beauty, and talents for intrigue; had been married to the governor of a small district called Bugna, in the neighbourhood of Lasta, both which countries were likewise much infected with Judaism.

Judith had made so strong a party, that she resolved to attempt the subversion of the Christian religion, and, with it, the succession in the line of Solomon. The children of the royal family were at this time, in virtue of the old law, confined on the almost inaccessible mountain of Damo in Tigrè. The short reign, sudden and unexpected death of the late king Aizor, and the desolation and contagion which an epidemical disease had spread both in court and capital, the weak state of Del Naad who was to succeed Aizor and was an infant; all these circumstances together, impressed Judith with an idea that now was the time to place her family upon the throne, and establish her religion by the extirpation of the race of Solomon. Accordingly she surprised the rock Damo, and slew the whole princes there, to the number, it is said, of about 400.

Some nobles of Amhara, upon the first news of the catastrophe at Damo, conveyed the infant king Del Naad, now the only remaining prince of his race, into the powerful and loyal province of Shoa, and by this means the royal family was preserved to be again restored. Judith took possession of the throne in defiance of the law of the queen of Saba, by this the first interruption of the succession in the line of Solomon, and, contrary to what might have been expected from the violent means she had used to acquire the crown, she not only enjoyed it herself during a long reign of 40 years, but transmitted it also to five of her posterity, all of them barbarous names, originating probably in Lasta: These are said to be,

Totadem,
Jan Shum,
Garima Shum,
Harbai,
Marari.

Authors, as well Abyssinian as European, have differed widely about the duration of these reigns. All that the Abyssinians are agreed upon is, that this whole period was one scene of murder, violence, and oppression.

Judith and her descendents were succeeded by relations of their own, a noble family of Lasta. The history of this revolution, or cause of it, are lost and unknown in the country, and therefore vainly fought after elsewhere. What we know is, that with them the court returned to the Christian religion, and that they were still as different from their predecessors in manners as in religion. Though usurpers, as were the others, their names are preserved with every mark of respect and veneration. They are,

Tecla Haimanout,
Kedus Harbé,
Itibarek,
Lalibala,
Imeranha Christos,
Naacueto Laab.

Not being kings of the line of Solomon, no part of their history is recorded in the annals, unless that of Lalibala, who lived in the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century, and was a saint. The whole period of the usurpation, comprehending the long reign of Judith, will by this account be a little more than 300 years, in which time eleven princes are said to have sat upon the throne of Solomon, so that, supposing her death to have been in the year 1000, each of these princes, at an average, will have been a little more than twenty-four years, and this is too much. But all this period is involved in darkness. We might guess, but since we are not able to do more, it answers no good purpose to do so much. I have followed the histories and traditions which are thought the most authentic in the country, the subject of which they treat, and where I found them; and though they may differ from other accounts given by European authors, this does not influence me, as I know that none of these authors could have any other authorities than those I have seen, and the difference only must be the fruit of idle imagination, and ill-founded conjectures of their own.

In the reign of Lalibala, near about the 1200, there was a great persecution in Egypt against the Christians, after the Saracen conquest, and especially against the masons, builders, and hewers of stone, who were looked upon by the Arabs as the greatest of abominations; this prince opened an asylum in his dominions to all fugitives of that kind, of whom he collected a prodigious number. Having before him as specimens the ancient works of the Troglodytes, he directed a number of churches to be hewn out of the solid rock in his native country of Lasta, where they remain untouched to this day, and where they will probably continue till the latest posterity. Large columns within are formed out of the solid rock, and every species of ornament preserved, that would have been executed in buildings of separate and detached stones, above ground.

This prince undertook to realize the favourite pretensions of the Abyssinians, to the power of turning the Nile out of its course, so that it should no longer be the cause of the fertility of Egypt, now in possession of the enemies of his religion. We may imagine, if it was in the power of man to accomplish this undertaking, it could have fallen into no better hands than those to whom Lalibala gave the execution of it; people driven from their native country by those Saracens who now were reaping the benefits of the river, in the places of those they had forced to seek habitations far from the benefit and pleasure afforded by its stream.

This prince did not adopt the wild idea of turning the course of the Nile out of its present channel; upon the possibility or impossibility of which, the argument (so warmly and so long agitated) always most improperly turns. His idea was to famish Egypt: and, as the fertility of that country depends not upon the ordinary stream, but the extraordinary increase of it by the tropical rains, he is said to have found, by an exact survey and calculation, that there ran on the summit, or highest part of the country, several rivers which could be intercepted by mines, and their stream directed into the low country southward, instead of joining the Nile, augmenting it and running northward. By this he found he should be able so to disappoint its increase, that it never would rise to a height proper to fit Egypt for cultivation. And thus far he was warranted in his ideas of succeeding (as I have been informed by the people of that country), that he did intersect and carry into the Indian Ocean, two very large rivers, which have ever since flowed that way, and he was carrying a level to the lake Zawaia, where many rivers empty themselves in the beginning of the rains, which would have effectually diverted the course of them all, and could not but in some degree diminish the current below.

Death, the ordinary enemy of all these stupendous Herculean undertakings, interposed too here, and put a stop to this enterprize of Lalibala. But Amha Yasous, prince of Shoa (in whose country part of these immense works were) a young man of great understanding, and with whom I lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, assured me that they were visible to this day; and that they were of a kind whose use could not be mistaken; that he himself had often visited them, and was convinced the undertaking was very possible with such hands, and in the circumstances things then were. He told me likewise, that, in a written account which he had seen in Shoa, it was said that this prince was not interrupted by death in his undertaking, but persuaded by the monks, that if a greater quantity of water was let down into the dry kingdoms of Hadea, Mara, and Adel, increasing in population every day, and, even now, almost equal in power to Abyssinia itself, these barren kingdoms would become the garden of the world; and such a number of Saracens, dislodged from Egypt by the first appearance of the Nile’s failing, would fly thither: that they would not only withdraw those countries from their obedience, but be strong enough to over-run the whole kingdom of Abyssinia. Upon this, as Amha Yasous informed me, Lalibala gave over his first scheme, which was the famishing of Egypt; and that his next was employing the men in subterraneous churches; a useless expence, but more level to the understanding of common men than the former.

Don Roderigo de Lima, ambassador from the king of Portugal, in 1522 saw the remains of these vast works, and travelled in them several days, as we learn from Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of that embassy350, which we shall take notice of in its proper place.

Lalibala was distinguished both as a poet and an orator. The old fable, of a swarm of bees hanging to his lips in the cradle, is revived and applied to him as foretelling the sweetness of his elocution.

To Lalibala succeeded Imeranha Christos, remarkable for nothing but being son of such a father as Lalibala, and father to such a son as Naacueto Laab; both of them distinguished for works very extraordinary, though very different in their kind. The first, that is those of the father we have already hinted at, consisting in great mechanical undertakings. The other was an operation of the mind, of still more difficult nature, a victory over ambition, the voluntary abdication of a crown to which he succeeded without imputation of any crime.

Tecla Haimanout, a monk and native of Abyssinia, had been ordained Abuna, and had founded the famous monastery of Debra Libanos in Shoa. He was a man at once celebrated for the sanctity of his life, the goodness of his understanding, and love to his country; and, by an extraordinary influence, obtained over the reigning king Naacueto Laab, he persuaded him, for conscience sake, to resign a crown, which (however it might be said with truth, that he received it from his father) could never be purged from the stain and crime of usurpation.

In all this time, the line of Solomon had been continued from Del Naad, who, we have seen, had escaped from the massacre of Damo, under Judith. Content with possessing the loyal province of Shoa, they continued their royal residence there, without having made one attempt, as far as history tells us, towards recovering their ancient kingdom.

RACE of SOLOMON banished, but reigning in SHOA.

Del Naad,
Mahaber Wedem,
Igba Sion,
Tzenaf Araad,
Nagash Zaré,
Asfeha,
Jacob,
Bahar Segued,
Adamas Segued,
Icon Amlac.

Naacueto Laab, of the house of Zaguè, was, it seems, a just and peaceable prince.

Under the mediation of Abuna Tecla Haimanout, a treaty was made between him and Icon Amlac consisting of four articles, all very extraordinary in their kind.

The first was, that Naacueto Laab, prince of the house of Zaguè, should forthwith resign the kingdom of Abyssinia to Icon Amlac, reigning prince of the line of Solomon then in Shoa.

The second, that a portion of lands in Lasta should be given to Naacueto Laab and his heirs in absolute property, irrevocably and irredeemably; that he should preserve, as marks of sovereignty, two silver kettle-drums, or nagareets; that the points of the spears of his guard, the globes that surmounted his sendeck, (that is the pole upon which the colours are carried), should be silver, and that he should sit upon a gold stool, or chair, in form of that used by the kings of Abyssinia; and that both he and his descendents should be absolutely free from all homage, services, taxes, or public burdens for ever, and stiled Kings of Zaguè, or the Lasta king.

The third article was, That one third of the kingdom should be appropriated and ceded absolutely to the Abuna himself, for the maintenance of his own state, and support of the clergy, convents, and churches in the kingdom; and this became afterwards an æra, or epoch, in Abyssinian history, called the æra of partition.

The fourth, and last article, provided, that no native Abyssinian could thereafter be chosen Abuna, and this even tho’ he was ordained at, and sent from Cairo. In virtue of this treaty, concluded and solemnly sworn to, Icon Amlac took possession of his throne, and the other contracting parties of the provisions respectively allotted them.

The part of the treaty that should appear most liable to be broken was that which erected a kingdom within a kingdom. However, it is one of the remarkable facts in the annals of this country, that the article between Icon Amlac and the house of Zaguè was observed for near 500 years; for it was made before the year 1300, and never was broken, but by the treacherous murder of the Zaguean prince by Allo Fasil in the unfortunate war of Begemder, in the reign of Joas 1768, the year before I arrived in Abyssinia; neither has any Abuna native of Abyssinia ever been known since that period. As for the exorbitant grant of one third of the kingdom to the Abuna, it has been in great measure resumed, as we may naturally suppose, upon different pretences of misbehaviour, true or alledged, by the king or his ministers, the first great invasion of it being in the subsequent reign of king Theodorus, who, far from losing popularity by this infraction, has been ever reckoned a model for sovereigns.

END OF VOLUME FIRST.

FOOTNOTES:

1 This epithet given to the springs from which the Nile rises, was borrowed from a very elegant English poem that appeared in Dr Maty’s Review for May 1786. It was sent to me by my friend Mr Barrington, to whom it was attributed, although from modesty he disclaims it. From whatever hand it comes, the poet is desired to accept of my humble thanks. It was received with universal applause wherever it was circulated, and a considerable number of copies was printed at the desire of the public. Accident seemed to have placed it in Dr Maty’s book with peculiar propriety, by having joined it to a fragment of Ariosto, then first published, in the same Review. It has since been attributed to Mr Mason.

2 He was long a slave to the Bey of Constantina, and appears to have been a man of capacity.

3 This will be explained afterwards.

4 Ludolf, lib. i. cap. 15.

5 This is a running figure cut through the middle like the check of a bank note.

6 Hippo. Reg. from Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 109.

7 Hippo. Reg. id. ib.

8 Aphrodisium. id. ib.

9 Thabarca, id. ib.

10 Plin. Ep. xxxiii. l. 9.

11 Liv. Epit. xxx. l. 9.

12 Strabo lib xvii. p. 1189. It signifies the river of Cows, or Kine. P. Mela lib. i. cap. 7. Sil. It. lib. vi. l. 140.

13 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. Procop. lib. vi. cap. 5. de Ædif.

14 Val. Max. lib. ii. cap. 6. § 15.

15 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv.

16 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 106.

17 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 111.

18 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 108.

19 Vide Itin. Anton.

20 Procop. Bell. Vand. lib. ii. cap. 13.

21 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 111.

22 Shaw’s Travels, chap. viii. p. 57.

23 Shaw’s Travels, cap. v. p. 119.

24 Sal. Bel. Jug. § 94. L. Flor. lib. iii. cap. 1.

25 Shaw’s Travels, chap. v. p. 118.

26 Itin. Anton. p. 3.

27 Itin. Anton, p. 3.

28 Shaw’s Travels, cap. v. p. 115.

29 Cel. Geog. Antique, lib. iv. cap. 4. and cap. 5. p. 118.

30 Itin. Anton. p. 2.

31 Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 110.

32 This fountain is called El Tarmid. Nub. Geog. p. 86.

33 Sal. Bell. § 94.

34 Itin. Anton, p. 4.

35 Shaw’s Travels, cap. v. p. 126.

36 Itin. Anton. p. 4.

37 Id. Ibid.

38 Shaw’s Travels, p. 117. cap. 5.

39 Boch. Chan. lib. i. cap. 25. Shaw’s Travels, cap. iv. p. 115.

40 Itin. Anton. p. 104.

41 Ptol. Geog. p. 4.

42 Shaw’s Travels, sect. vi. p. 156.

43 Jerboa, see a figure of it in the Appendix.

44 Itin. Anton. p. 4.

45 The north boundary of the Holy Land.

46 It is a post where a party of men are kept to receive a contribution, for maintaining the security of the roads, from all passengers.

47 Ezek. chap. xxvi. ver. 5.

48 Mrs Bruce died in 1784.

49 The nucta, or dew, that falls on St John’s night, is supposed to have the virtue to stop the plague. I have considered this in the sequel.

50 Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 781.

51 It is called Mamilho.

52 Newton’s Chronol. p. 183.

53 Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 684.

54 Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 780.

55 This is an old prejudice. See Herodotus, lib. ii. p. 90. sect. 5.

56 Berytus.

57 Laodicea ad mare.

58 Herod. lib. ii. p. 90.

59 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.

60 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.

61 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 920. Q. Curt. lib. iv. cap. 8.

62 Plin. lib. v. cap. 10. p. 273.

63 We see many examples of such leaves both at Palmyra and Baalbec.

64 Marmol, lib. xi. cap. 14. p. 276. tom. 3.

65 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.

66 A peasant Arab.

67 Means a narrow or shallow entrance of a river from the ocean.

68 Herod, p. 108.

69 Shaw’s Travels, p. 293.

70 See a figure of this animal in the Appendix.

71 See Appendix.

72 Shaw’s Travels, p. 294.

73 The Mamaluke Beys.

74 Vid. Introduction.

75 Ptol. Geograph. lib. 4 Cap. 5.

76 Shaw’s travels p. 294.

77 Herod. lib. 2. cap. 8.

78 This has been thought to mean the Convent of Figs, but it only signifies the Two Convents.

79 See Mr Irvine’s Letters.

80 Herod. lib. ii. p. 99.

81 Herod. lib. ii. cap. 8.

82 See the Chart of the Nile.

83 Pococke, vol. I. cap. v. p. 39.

84 Plin. lib. 5. cap. 9.

85 Plin. lib. 36. cap. 12.

86 Diod. Sic. p. 45. § 50.

87 Shaw’s Travels, p. 296. in the latitude quoted.

88 Shaw’s Travels, cap. 4. p. 298.

89 Id. ibid. 299.

90 Id. ibid.

91 Id. ibid.

92 Ptol. Geograph. lib. iv. cap. 5.

93 Herod. lib. ii. p. 141. Ibid. p. 168. Ibid. p. 105. Ibid. p. 103. Edit. Steph.

94 Herod. lib. ii. § 97. p. 123.

95 Shaw’s Travels, cap. 4.

96 Strabo. lib. vii. p. 914.

97 Id. ibid.

98 Id. ibid.

99 Strabo, ibid.

100 Id. ibid.

101 Named Binny. See Appendix.

102 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 936.

103 Norden’s travels, vol. ii. p. 19.

104 Herod. lib. ii, cap. 19.

105 Dagjour.

106 Norden’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 17.

107 I cannot here omit to rectify another small mistake of the translator, which involves him in a difference with this Author which he did not mean.—

Mr Norden, in the French, says, that the master of his vessel being much frightened, “avoit perdu la tramontane;” the true meaning of which is, That he had lost his judgment, not lost the north wind, as it is translated, which is really nonsense.

Norden’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 59.

108 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 936.

109 Signifies the Narrow Passage, and is meant what Phylæ is in Latin.

110 Messoudi

111 Itin. Anton. p. 14.

112 It is called Hamseen, because it is expected to blow all Pentecost.

113 Theophrast. Hist. Plan. lib. iii. cap. 8—lib. iv. cap. 2.

114 Strabo lib. vii. p. 941.

115 A poor saint.

116 Diod. Sic. lib. I.

117 Plin. lib. 26. cap. 14.

118 See Norden’s views of the Temples at Esné and Edfu. Vol. ii. plate 6. p. 80.

119 This inclined figure of the sides, is frequently found in the small boxes within the mummy-chests.

120 Diod. Sic. lib. 1.

121 See the figure of this Insect in Paul Lucas.

122 Gen. xxxi. 27, Isa. chap. xxx. ver. 32.

123 Eccles. chap. i. ver. 10.

124 Ezek. chap. xxviii. ver. 13.

125 Nay, prior to this, the harp is mentioned as a common instrument in Abraham’s time 1370 years before Christ, Gen. chap. xxxii. ver. 27.

126 Diod. Sic. Bib. lib. i. p. 42. § d.

127 Strabo, lib. 17. p. 943.

128 Nah. ch. 3. ver. 8, & 9.

129 A similar instrument, erected by Eratosthenes at Alexandria, cut of copper, was used by Hipparchus and Ptolemy.—Alm. lib. I. cap. II. 3. cap. 2. Vide his remarks on Mr Greave’s Pyramidographia, p. 134.

130 Signior Donati.

131 Diod. Sic. Bib. lib. I. p. 45. § c.

132 Vide Norden’s map of the Nile.

133 Juven. Sat. 15. ver. 76.

134 Idris Welled Hamran, our guide through the great desert, dwelt in this village.

135 The ancient Adei.

136 The Bishareen are the Arabs who live in the frontier between the two nations. They are the nominal subjects of Sennaar, but, in fact, indiscreet banditti, at least as to strangers.

137 They were Shepherds Indigenæ, not Arabs.

138 Qui Ludit in Hospite fixo—Was a character long ago given to the Moors.

Horace Ode.

139 This kind of oath was in use among the Arabs, or Shepherds, early as the time of Abraham, Gen. xxi. 22, 23. xxvi. 28.

140 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 944.

141 This word, improperly used and spelled by M. de Volney, has nothing to do with these Ansaris.

142 Cicero de Somnio Scipronis.

143 Pliny, lib. ii. cap. 73.

144 Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 944.

145 Strabo, lib. ii. p. 133.

146 Spectacle de la Nature.

147 Strabo, lib. 17. p. 944.

148 L’histoire d’astronomie, de M. de la Lande, vol. i. lib. 2.

149 Vide Mr Norden’s Voyage up the Nile.

150 It is no town, but some sand and a few bushes, so called.

151 Ptol. Almag. lib. 4. Geograph. pag. 104.

152 The Arabs call these narrow passes in the mountains Fum, as the Hebrews did Pi, the mouth. Fum el Beder, is the mouth of Beder; Fum el Terfowey, the mouth or passage of Terfowey; Piha Hhiroth, the mouth of the valley cut through with ravines.

153 Ptolem. Geograph. lib. 4. p. 103.

154 That is, I am under your protection.

155 On the east coast of Arabia Felix, Syagrum Promontorium.

156 Itin. Anton. a Carth. p. 4.

157 So the next stage from Syené is called Hiera Sycaminos, a sycamore-tree, Ptol. lib. 4. p. 108.

158 Plin. lib. xxxvii. cap. 5.

159 Ditto.

160 Tavernier vol. II. Voyag.

161 Theophrastus Περιλιθων.

162 Clamps.

163 It is a Keratophyte, growing at the bottom of the sea.

164 Vide the track of this Navigation laid down on the Chart.

165 Ezek. chap. xxvii. 6th and 29th verses.

166 Ajam, in the language of Shepherds, signifies rain-water.

167 Vide his Journal published by Abbé Vertot.

168 Gen. chap. xiii. ver. 17th.

169 Gen. chap. xiii. ver. 6th. Exod. chap. xiii. ver. 17th.

170 Exod. ch. xii. 33.

171 Such is the tradition among the Natives.

172 Diod. Sic. Lib. 3. p. 122.

173 Dionysii Periegesis, v. 38. et Comment. Eustathii in eundem. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 765. Agathemeri Geographia, lib. ii. cap. 11.

174 Jerome Lobo, the greatest liar of the Jesuits, ch. iv. p. 46. English translation.

175 I saw one of these, which, from a root nearly central, threw out ramifications in a nearly circular form, measuring twenty-six feet diameter every way.

176 Anciently called Pharos.

177 The Koran is, therefore, called El Farkan, or the Divider, or Distinguisher between true faith and heresy.

178 See the article Ashkoko in the Appendix.

179 2 Chron. chap. xx. ver. 37th.

180 See the Map.

181 El Har signifies extreme heat.

182 Vide Irvine’s letters.

183 Levit. chap. xvi. ver. 5.

184 Native of Tripoli; it is Turkish.

185 See the article Balessan in the Appendix.

186 Cape Fever.

187 This is a common sailor’s phrase for the Straits of Babelmandeb.

188 Captain of the port.

189 Philosoph. Transact. Vol. 27. p. 186.

190 A late publication of Dr Madan’s, little understood, as it would seem.

191 Sovereign of Arabia Felix, whose capital is Sana.

192 Gen. xv. 18.

193 Gen. xvi. 12.

194 The island of the Shepherds.

195 Or Porcupine.

196 Yemen, or the high land of Arabia Felix, where water freezes.

197 Arabia Deserta.

198 Deregé, from that word in Hebrew.

199 It signifies Pharaoh’s worm.

200 Ligustrum Ægyptiacum Latifolium.

201 Arabia Felix, or Yemen.

202 That is, the Peek of Arabia Felix, or Yemen.

203 Governor of the Province of Tigré in Abyssinia.

204 See the article Pearl in the Appendix.

205 Jibbel Teir, the Mountain of the Bird; corruptly, Gibraltar.

206 Millet, or Indian corn.

207 See the article Tortoise in the Appendix.

208 A Subaltern Governor.

209 Poncet’s Voyage, translated into English, printed for W. Lewis in 1709, in 12mo, page 121.

210 This must not be attributed wholly to the weather. We spent much time in surveying the islands, and in observation.

211 Exod. xxxviii 39.

212 Lib. 21. cap. 6.

213 These are far from being synonymous terms, as we shall see afterwards.

214 See the article papyrus in the Appendix.

215 Gen. xxxvii. 3 and 2 Sam. xiii. 18.

216 Prov. vii. 16.

217 Vide Appendix, where this tree is described.

218 The quantity of similar drugs brought from the New World.

219 Boch. lib. 4. cap. 3.

220 Herod. lib. 2. cap. 29.

221 Joseph. antiquit. Jud.

222 At Gerri in my return through the desert.

223 It is very probable, some of these words signified different degrees among them, as we shall see in the sequel.

224 Diod. Sic. lib. 1. cap.

225 This was the name of the king of Amalek; he was an Arab shepherd, slain by Samuel, 1 Sam. xv. 33.

226 Ludolf lib. 1 cap. 4.

227 That is, they shall cut off from the cattle their usual retreat to the desert, by taking possession of those places, and meeting them there where ordinarily they never come, and which therefore are the refuge of the cattle.

228 Gen. chap. xxxvii. ver. 25. 28.

229 Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 13.

230 Rev. chap. xviii. ver. 13.

231 Gen. vi. 14.

232 Gen. xxxv. 4.

233 2 Kings, xvii. 4.

234 Nahum, chap. iii. 8.

235 Misphragmuthosis.

236 Manethon, Apud. Josephum Apion. lib. 1. p. 460.

237 Eight years less than the Greeks and other followers of the Septuagint.

238 Isaiah, chap. xviii. ver. 2.

239 Joshua, iii. 16.

240 Procop. de bello vind. lib. 2. cap. 10.

A Moorish author, Ibn el Raquique, says, this inscription was on a stone on a mountain at Carthage. Marmol. lib. 1. cap. 25.

241 Gen. ix. 25, 26, and 27. verses.

242 These people likewise call themselves Agaazi, or Agagi, they have over-run the kingdom of Congo south of the Line, and on the Atlantic Ocean, as the Galla have done that part of the kingdom of Adel and Abyssinia, on the Eastern, or Indian Ocean. Purch. lib. ii. chap. 4. Sect. 8.

243 Jerem. chap. xiii. ver. 23.—id. xxv. 24.—Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 5.

244 Numb. chap. xii. ver. 1.

245 Exod. chap. iv. ver. 25.

246 2 Chron. chap. xiv. ver. 9.

247 Gen. chap. 21. ver. 30.

248 Gen. chap. 13. ver. 6. and 9.

249 Isa. chap. xlv. ver. 14.

250 Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 8. and 9.

251 Ezek. chap. xxix. ver. 10.

252 Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 4.

253 Jerem. chap. xiii. ver. 23.

254 Jerem. chap. xxv. ver. 24.

255 Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 5.

256 Isa. chap. xviii. ver. 2.

257 Uranologion. P. Petau.

258 Banbridge, Ann. canicul.

259 An astronomer greatly above my praise.

260 Jamblich. de Myst. sect. 8. cap. 5.

261 Sozomen, Eccles. Hist. lib. 7. cap. 15.

262 Herw. theolog. Ethnica, p. 11.

263 I apprehend this is owing to the circumstances of the climate, in the four months, the time of the inundation, the heavens were so covered as to afford no observations to be recorded.

264 Porpyhry Epist. ad Anebonem.

265 Exod. chap. xxviii. ver. 21.

266 Exod. chap. xxviii. ver. 36.

267 Deut. chap. xxxi. ver. 24.

268 Vide the hieroglyphics on the drawing of the stone.

269 Ezek. chap. xxix. ver. 11.

270 Psalm. chap. lx. ver. 9. and Psal. cviii. ver. 10.

271 2 Sam. chap. viii. ver. 14. 1 Kings chap. xi. ver. 15, 16.

272 1 Kings, chap. ix. ver. 26. 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver. 17.

273 1 Chron. chap. xxii. ver. 14, 15, 16. Chap. xxix. ver. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,—Three thousand Hebrew talents of gold, reduced to our money, amount to twenty-one millions and six hundred thousand pounds Sterling.

274 The value of a Hebrew talent appears from Exodus, chap. xxxviii. ver. 25, 26. For 603,550 persons being taxed at half a shekel each, they must have paid in the whole 301,775; now that sum is said to amount to 100 talents, 1775 shekels only; deduct the two latter sums, and there will remain 300,000, which, divided by 108, will leave 3000 shekels for each of these talents.

275 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver. 17.

276 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 22.

277 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver. 21.

278 Vid. Voyage of Dos Santos, published by Le Grande.

279 See the map of this voyage.

280 Apud Euseb. Prœp. Evang. lib. 9.

281 Dionysii Periegesis, ver. 38. and Comment. Eustathii in eundem. Strabo, lib. 16. p. 765. Agathemeri Geographia, lib. 2. cap. 11.

282 Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 6.

283 Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 26.

284 Dr Douglas, Bishop of Carlisle.

285 Vide L’Esprit des Loix, liv. xxi. cap. 6. p. 476.

286 Plin. lib. vi. cap. 22.

287 Strabo, lib. xv.

288 I know there are contrary opinions, and the junks might have been various. Vide Salm.

289 Pto. Geog. lib. 4. cap. 7.

290 id. ibid.

291 Agath. p. 60.

292 1 Kings, chap. xxii. ver. 48. 2 Chron. chap. xx. ver. 36.

293 2 Kings, chap. viii. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. xxi. ver. 10.

294 2 Kings, chap. xiv. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. 26. ver. ii.

295 2 Kings, chap. xvi. ver. 6.

296 2 Kings, chap. xvi. ver. 6.

297 Ezek. chap. xxvi. ver. 7.

298 2 Kings, chap. xxiv ver. 13. and 2 Chron. chap. xxxvi. ver. 7.

299 Dan. chap. vi. ver. 8. and Esther, chap. i. ver. 19.

300 Ezra, chap. v. ver. 14 and chap. vi. ver. 5.

301 Dan. chap. v. ver. 30.

302 Lucan lib. x. ver. 280.

303 Vide Montesq. liv. 21. chap 8.

304 Lucan, lib. 9. ver. 515.

305 Athen. lib. 5.

306 This is probably from Atbara, or the old name of the island of Meroë, which had received that last name only as late as Cambyses.

307 Plin. lib. 6. cap. 23.

308 Strabo, lib. 17. p. 932.

309 Mon. Aduli.

310 Strabo, lib. ii. p. 98.

311 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 2. cap. 67.

312 Dodwell’s Dissertat. vol. I. Scrip. Græc. Min. ld. Ox. 1698. 8vo.

313 Plut. Vita. Ant. p. 913. tom. 1. part 2. Lubec. 1624. fol.

314 Strabo, lib. 3.

315 Plin. lib. vi. cap. 23.

316 Strabo, lib. 2. p. 81.

317 Strabo, lib. ii. p. 98.

318 Ptol. lib. iv. cap. 9. p. 115.

319 Ptol. lib. vii. cap. 3.

320 It should properly be Saba, Azab, or Azaba, all signifying South.

321 Such as Justin, Cyprian, Epiphanius, Cyril.

322 By this is meant the country between the tropic and mountains of Abyssinia, the country of Shepherds, from Berber, Shepherd.

323 Matth. chap. xii. ver. 42. Luke xi. 31.

324 Pin. de reb. Solomon, lib. iv. cap. 14th.—Josephus thinks she was an Ethiopian, so do Origen, Augustin, and St Anselmo.

325 1 Kings, chap. x. ver 1. and 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver. 1.

326 Matt. chap. xii. ver. 43. and Luke, chap xi. ver. 31.

327 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 9. and 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver 8.

328 2 Chron. chap. xxv. ver. 18. 19.

329 1 Kings, chap. xi. ver. 1.

330 Acts, chap. viii. ver. 27 and 38.

331 This shews the falsehood of the remark Strabo makes, that it was a custom in Meroë, if their sovereign was any way mutilated, for the subjects to imitate the imperfection. In this case, Candace’s subjects would have all lost an eye. Strabo, lib. 17. p. 777, 778.

332 2 Sam. chap. xvi. ver. 22. 1 Kings, chap. ii. ver. 13.

333 What immediately follows will be hereafter explained in the Narrative.

334 The temple which the Queen of Saba had seen built, and so richly ornamented, was plundered the 5th year of Rehoboam, by Sesac, which is 13 years before Menilek died. So this could not but have disgusted him with the trade of his ancient habitation at Saba.

335 Numb. chap. xv. ver. 38, 39. Deut. chap. 22. ver. 12.

336 We see this happened to them in a much shorter time during the captivity, when they forgot their Hebrew, and spoke Chaldaec ever after.

337 I shall have occasion to speak much of this priest in the sequel. He was a most inveterate and dangerous enemy to all Europeans, the principal ecclesiastical officer in the king’s house.

338 Then Prime Minister, concerning whom much is to be said hereafter.

339 Vid. Origen contra Celsum, lib. 5. Tertull. de Idolol. c. 4. Drus in suo Enoch. Bangius in Cœlo Orientis Exercit. 1. quæst. 5. and 6.

340 Gassend in vita Pierisc, lib. 5.

341 The length of these princes reigns are so great as to become incredible; but, as we have nothing further of their history but their names, we have no data upon which to reform them.

342 Caleb el Atsbeha, which has been made Elesbaas throwing away the t.

343 Surius Tom. 5. d. 24. Oct. Card. Baronius. Tom. 7. Annal. A. C. 522. N. 23.

344 Ludolf, vol. 2 lib. iii. cap. 2.

345 Vid. Baron, tom. 4. p. 331. et alibi passim.

346 El Hameesy’s Siege of Mecca.

347 Fetaat el Yemen.

348 El Hameesy.

349 She is also called by Victor, Tredda Gahez.

350 See Alvarez, his relation of this Embassy.

Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent double quotes and capitalization are as in the original.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.

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Table of Contents

- TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773. IN FIVE VOLUMES. BY JAMES BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, ESQ. F. R. S. VOL. I.

- INTRODUCTION.

- CHAP. I.

- CHAP. II.

- CHAP. III.

- CHAP. IV.

- CHAP. V.

- CHAP. VI.

- CHAP. VII.

- CHAP. VIII.

- CHAP. IX.

- CHAP. X.

- CHAP. XI.

- CHAP. XII.

- CHAP. XIII.

- CHAP. I.

- CHAP. II.

- CHAP. III.

- CHAP. IV.

- CHAP. V.

- CHAP. VI.

- LIST of the KINGS of ABYSSINIA, FROM MAQUEDA, QUEEN OF SABA, TO THE NATIVITY.

- CHAP. VII.

- CHAP. VIII.

- RACE of SOLOMON banished, but reigning in SHOA.

- END OF VOLUME FIRST.

- FOOTNOTES:

- Transcriber's Note:

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE