| Southport : Original Sources in Exploration | | |
Travels to discover the source of the Nile, in the Years 1768-1773 James Bruce | | | | |
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TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771 1772, and 1773. in Five Volumes. By James Bruce (published in 1790 by G.G.J. and J. Robinson, London)
BOOK I: The author's Travels in Egypt and Voyage in the Red Sea Till his Arrival at Masuah.
CHAPTER I.
Tbe
Author sails from Sidon-—Touches at Cyprus—Arrives at Alexandria —Sets
out for Rosetto—Embarks an the Nile—and arrives al 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 (p.2)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 distemper [1].
We observed a number of thin, white clouds, moving with great
rapidity from south to north, in direct opposition to the course of the
Etefian winds; these were immensely high. It was evident they came from
the mountains of Abysinia, 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 mould be a spectator first, afterwards historian, of this
phenomenon, hitherto a mystery through all ages. I exulted in the
measures I had taken, which I flattered myself, from having been
digested with greater consideration than those adopted by others,
would secure (p.3) 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 Strabo [2] I took for Mount Olympus
f. 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 cafe
with Damascus, so that you cannot, till close to it, distinguish
the houses from the earth they Hand upon.
It is
very remarkable that Cyprus was so long undiscovered; 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 eafier than to have brought it down from the
top of Mount Libanus.
(p.4) That there was great
abundance in it, we know from Eratosthenes [3], 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 cafe.
At f
Cacamo (Acamas) on the west fide of the island, the wood remains thick
and impervious as at the first discovery. Large flags, 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.
(p.5)
In parting, 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 sailer, 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 sailer, a feaman of experience upon that coast, ran
before it to the westward with all the sails he could set. Trotting 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. (p.6) 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 sailers of
vessels pretend to know their approach to the coast is by a black mud,
which they find upon the plummet [5] 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 faid, did not agree with
what he inferred from his foundings.
As I was exceedingly
vexed at being so disappointed of making the best of our favourable
wind, 1 rectified my quadrant, and found by the passages of two stars
over the meridian, that we were in lat. 32 i' 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 oppofite to the
desert of Barca, and had no communication whatever with the Nile.
(p.7)
On the contrary, the Etefian 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 veftiges of old Tyre are
defaced; the ports of Sidon, [6] Berout, Tripoli, and fLatikea, are all
filled up by the accretion of sand; and, not many days before my
leaving Sidon, Mr de Clerambaut, conful of France, shewed me the
pavements of the old city of Sidon, y\ seet lower than the ground upon
which the present city stands, and confiderably 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, mult 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 Herodotus [7] has vainly supposed.
The
20th of June, early in the morning, we had a distant prospect of
Alexandria rifing from the sea. Was not the state of (p.8) 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 fleeples, raife our
expectations of the confequence 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 Strabo [8].
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 ashore 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.
(p.9) 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 sailers 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 seeble and more unfortunate brethren, whose ships were wrecked
and lay scattered on the shore.
(p.10) The other port is the
Eunodus [9] 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 mould be still fashionable) call this as they have done the rest
of Egypt, the Gift of the Nile.
Christian vessels [10] are not
suffered to enter this port; the only reason is, lealt the Moorish
women mould 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 a
property, and men.,
Alexander [11], returning to Egypt from
the Libyan side, was struck with the beauty and situation of these two
ports, Dinochares [12], an architect who accompanied, him, traced out
the plan, and Ptolemy I built the city.
The healthy, though
defolate 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 [12] 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.
(p.11)
This circumftance, 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.
(p.12) 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 shaft 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 metal [13] of better workmanship; for the
capital itself is near nine feet high, and the work, in proportionable
leaves of slone, 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 (p.13) 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, or 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. Marmol [14] 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 sailers 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
Strabo's [15] 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 hiftory of these places than the Copts, 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 (p.14) different nations I
could induce to walk with me; and, as I constantly spoke Arabic, was
taken for a Bedowe [16] 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 Caesar. 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, Periere minis, 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 Dinoshares; 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
defrayed, (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 fan&ified
reliques are to be transported to Cairouan, in the kingdom of Tunis:
lastly,from Cairouan they are to come to Rofetto, and there to remain
till the contamination of all things, which is not then to be at a
great diftance.
Ptolemy.places his Alexandria in lat, 30 31'
and in round ' numbers in his almageft, 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 caufe or other, to
have failed in it, for though he had a brass fextant 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 fettled 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 (p.16) situation, that can
account for this variance, as in the cafe 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° 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° 16’ 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 buiiness 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 (p.17) 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 Rofetto, called the Bogaz [17], 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 Rofetto. 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 confequence, going to Alexandria.
(p.18) 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 falute, Salam Alkum; to
which the leader of the troop gave no answcr, but said to one of his
servants, as in contempt, Bcdowe! they are peafants, 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 Aboukcer, 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, notwithftanding 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 [18] supposed the Delta,
or Egypt, begins.
Dr. Shaw [19] 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.
(p.19)
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 visible 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 onc, at several
times, in nothing differing from the species of that animal, in the
desert of Barca and Cyrenaicum; and the jerboa [20], 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 Abfinthium,
we were very certain its companion, the Cerastes [21], or horned viper,
was an inhabitant of that country also.
(p.20) 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, railed 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 Gcnoefe, 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.
(p.21) The reason of
this I have already explained, it is some time or other to be a
substitute to Mecca, and to be blcssed with all that holiness, that the
possesion of the reliqucs, of their prophet can give it.
Dr Shaw
[22] having always in his mind the strengthening of Hcrodotus's
hypothesis, that Egypt is created by the Nile, fays,. that perhaps this
was once a Cape, because Rashid has that meaning. But as Dr Shaw
understood Arabic persectly 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 (p.22) 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 slaves [23], 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 (p.23) 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 oT 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 circumftances 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, Fue, or Alexandria, wherever they were
first caught, they would infallibly be hanged.
Footnotes:
1. The nufla, 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.
2. Strabo, ft. xiv, p. 78* f 'It is called Mamilhc,
3. Newton's Chronol. p. , Bj.
4. Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 684, f Strabo, lib. .\iv. p. 780.
5. This is an old prejudice. See Herodotus, lib. ii. p. 90. sett. 5.
6. Berj tus.Laodicea ad mare.
7. Herod, lib. ii. p. 90.
8. Strabo j lib. xvii. j> 922.
9. Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.
10. Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 920.
11. LCurt. lib. iv. cap. 8.
12. Ptol.lib. v. cap. 10. p. 273.
13. We see many examples of such leaves both at Palmyra and Baalbec.
14. Marmol, lib. xi. cap. 14. p. 276. torn. 3.
15. Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.
16. A peasant Arab.
17. Means a narrow or shallow entrance of a river from the ocean.
18. Herod, p. 108.
19. Shaw's Travels p. 293.
20. See a figure of this animal in the Appendix.
21. See Appendix.
22. Shaw's Travels, p.294.
23. The Marmaluke Beys
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