Travels in Arabia

Or Objects of Pious Visitation in the Neighbourhood of Medina

On the day after the pilgrim has performed his first duties at the mosque and the tomb, he usually visits the burial-ground of the town, in memory of the many saints who lie buried there. It is just beyond the town-walls, near the gate of Bab Djoma, and bears the name of El Bekya. A square of several hundred paces is enclosed by a wall which, on the southern side, joins the suburb, and on the others is surrounded with date-groves. Considering the sanctity of the persons whose bodies it contains, it is a very mean place; and perhaps the most dirty and miserable burial-ground in any eastern town of the size of Medina. It does not contain a single good tomb, nor even any large inscribed blocks of stone covering tombs; but instead, mere rude heaps of earth, with low borders of loose stones placed about them. The Wahabys are accused of having defaced the tombs; and in proof of this, the ruins of small domes and buildings are pointed out, which formerly covered the tombs of Othman, Abbas, Setna Fatme, and the aunts of Mohammed, which owed their destruction to those sectaries: but they would certainly not have annihilated every other simple tomb built of stone here, which they did neither at Mekka nor any other place. The miserable state of this cemetery must have existed prior to the Wahaby conquest, and is to be ascribed to the niggardly minds of the towns-people, who are little disposed to incur any expense in honouring the remains of their celebrated countrymen. The whole place is a confused accumulation of heaps of earth, wide pits, rubbish, without a single regular tomb-stone. The pilgrim is made to visit a number of graves, and, while standing before them, to repeat prayers for the dead. Many persons make it their exclusive profession to watch the whole day near each of the principal tombs, with a handkerchief spread out, in expectation of the pilgrims who come to visit them; and this is the exclusive privilege of certain Ferráshyns and their families, who have divided the tombs among themselves, where each takes his post, or sends his servant in his stead.

The most conspicuous personages that lie buried here are Ibrahim, the son of Mohammed, who died in his youth; Fatme, his daughter, according to the opinion of many, who say that she was buried here and not in the mosque; several of the wives of Mohammed; some of his daughters; his foster-mother; Fatme, the daughter of Asad, and mother of Aly; Abbas ibn Abd el Motalleb; Othman ibn Affan, one of the immediate successors of Mohammed, who collected the scattered leaves of the Koran into one volume; the Martyrs, or Shohada, as they are called, who were slain here by the army of the heretics under Yezyd ibn Mawya, whose commander, Moslim, in A.H. 60, (others say 62,) came from Syria and sacked the town, the inhabitants of which had acknowledged the rebel Abdallah ibn Hantala as their chief; Hassan ibn Aly, whose trunk only lies buried here, his head having been sent to Cairo, where it is preserved in the fine mosque called El Hassamya; the Imam Malek ibn Anes, the founder of the sect of the Malekites. Indeed so rich is Medina in the remains of great saints that they have almost lost their individual importance, while the relics of one of the persons just mentioned would be sufficient to render celebrated any other Moslim town. As a formula of the invocation addressed here to the manes of the saint, I shall transcribe that which is said with uplifted hands, after having performed a short prayer of two rikats, over the tomb of Othman ibn Affan: Peace be with thee, O Othman! Peace be with thee, O friend of the chosen! Peace be with thee, O collector of the Koran! Mayest thou deserve the contentment of God! May God ordain Paradise as thy dwelling, thy resting-place, thy habitation, and thy abode! I deposit on this spot, and near thee, O Othman, the profession everlasting, from this day to the day of judgment, that there is no God but God, and that Mohammed is his servant and his prophet.

The inhabitants of Medina bury all their dead on this ground, in the same homely tombs as those of the saints. Branches of palm-trees are stuck upon the graves, and changed once a year, at the feast of Ramadhan, when the family visits the grave of its relations, where it sometimes remains for several days.

VISIT TO DJEBEL OHOD.—One of the principal Zyara or places of sacred visitation of Medina, is Ohod, with the tomb of Hamze, the uncle of Mohammed. The mountain of Ohod forms part of the great chain, branching out from it into the eastern plain, so as to stand almost insulated. It is three quarters of an hours walk from the town. In the fourth year of the Hedjra, when Mohammed had fixed his residence at Medina, the idolatrous Koreysh, headed by Abou Sofyan, invaded these parts, and took post at this mountain. Mohammed issued from the town, and there fought, with great disparity of force, the most arduous battle in which he was ever engaged. His uncle Hamze was killed, together with seventy-five of his followers: he himself was wounded, but he killed with his own lance one of the bravest men of the opposite party, and gained at last a complete victory. The tomb of Hamze and of the seventy-five martyrs, as they are called, form the object of the visit to Djebel Ohod.

I started on foot, with my cicerone, by the Syrian gate, in the company of several other visiters; for it was thought unsafe to go there alone, from fear of Bedouin robbers. The visit is generally performed on Thursdays. We passed the place where the Syrian Hadj encamp, and where several wells and half-ruined tanks, cased with stone, supply the pilgrims with water during their three days stay at this place, in their way to and from Mekka. A little further on is a pretty kiosk, with a dome, now likewise half-ruined, called El Goreyn, where the chief of that caravan usually takes up his temporary abode. The road further on is completely level; date-trees stand here and there, and several spots are seen which the people only cultivate when the rains are copious. About one mile from the town stands a ruined edifice of stones and bricks, where a short prayer is recited in remembrance of Mohammed having here put on his coat of mail, when he went to engage the enemy. Farther on is a large stone, upon which it is said that Mohammed leaned for a few minutes on his way to Ohod; the visiter is enjoined to press his back against this stone, and to recite the Fateha, or opening chapter of the Koran.

In approaching the mountain, we passed a torrent, coming from E. or S.E. with water to the depth of two feet, the remains of the rain that had fallen five days ago. It swells sometimes so high as to become impassable, and inundates the whole surrounding country. To the east of this torrent, the ground leading towards the mountain is barren, stony, with a slight ascent, on the slope of which stands a mosque, surrounded by about a dozen ruined houses, once the pleasure villas of wealthy towns-people; near them is a cistern, filled by the torrent-water. The mosque is a square solid-built edifice of small dimensions. Its dome was thrown down by the Wahabys, but they spared the tomb. The mosque encloses the tomb of Hamze, and those of his principal men who were slain in the battle; namely, Mesab ibn Omeyr, Djafar ibn Shemmas, and Abdallah ibn Djahsh. The tombs are in a small open yard, and, like those of the Bekya, mere heaps of earth, with a few loose stones placed around them. Beside them is a small portico, which serves as a mosque: a short prayer is said here, and the pilgrims then advance to the tombs, where they recite the chapter of Yasein (from the Koran), or the short chapter of El Khalas forty times; after which Hamze and his friends are invoked to intercede with the Almighty, and obtain for the pilgrim and all his family, faith, health, wealth, and the utter destruction of all their enemies. Money is given, as usual, at every corner, to the guardians of the mosque, of the tombs, to the Mueddin, Imám, &c. &c.

A little further on, towards the mountain, which is only at a gun-shot distance, a small cupola marks the place where Mohammed was struck in battle by a stone, which knocked out four of his front teeth, and felled him to the ground. [This story is related here, though the historians of the Prophet do not agree on the subject.] His party thought he was killed; but the angel Gabriel immediately appeared, and exclaimed that he was still alive. At a short distance from this cupola, which like all the rest has been demolished, are the tombs of twelve other partisans of the Prophet, who were killed in the battle. They form together several mounds of rubbish and stones, in which their respective tombs can no longer be distinguished. Prayers are again recited, with that passage of the Koran which says, in speaking of the slain: Do not think that those who were killed in war with the infidels are dead; no, they are living, and their reward is with their Lord: a sentence still used to encourage, even in our days, the Turkish soldiers in their battles with Europeans.

The mountain of Ohod consists of different coloured granite; on its sides I likewise found flint, but no lava. The entire mountain is almost four miles in length, from west to east. Having been the scene of the famous battle, which so much contributed to strengthen the party of Mohammed and his new religion, it is not surprising that Djebel Ohod should be the object of peculiar veneration. The people of Medina believe that on the day of resurrection it will be transported into Paradise; and that when mankind shall appear before the Almighty for judgment, they will be assembled upon it, as the most favoured station. The mountain of Ayra, mentioned above as situated to the S.W. of the town, (about the same distance from it as Ohod is, on the other side,) will on that day experience a much less enviable fate. Having denied water to the Prophet, who once lost his way in its valleys, and became thirsty, it will be punished for inhospitality, by being cast at once into hell.

The people of Medina frequently visit Ohod, pitching their tents in the ruined houses, where they remain a few days, especially convalescents, who during their illness had made a vow to slaughter a sheep in honour of Hamze, if they recovered. Once a year, (in July, I believe,) the inhabitants flock thither in crowds, and remain for three days, as if it were during the feast days of the saint. Regular markets are then kept there: and this visit forms one of the principal public amusements of the town.

KOBA.—In this neighbouring village all the pilgrims visit the spot where Mohammed first alighted on coming from Mekka: it lies to the south of the town, distant about three quarters of an hour. The road to it passes through a plain, overgrown with date-trees, and covered in many spots with white sand. At half an hour from the town begin gardens, which spread over a space of four or five miles in circuit, and form, perhaps, the most fertile and agreeable spot in the Northern Hedjaz. All kinds of fruit-trees (with the exception of apple and pear, none of which I believe grow in Arabia,) are seen in the gardens, which are all enclosed by walls, and irrigated by numerous wells. It is from hence that Medina is supplied with fruits: lemon and orange trees, pomegranates, bananas, vines, peach, apricot, and fig trees, are planted amidst the date and nebek trees, and form as thick groves as in Syria and Egypt, while their shade renders Koba a delightful residence. The kheroa (Ricinus, or Palma Christi,) is likewise very common here. The village is frequently visited by the people of Medina; parties are continually made to spend the day, and many sick people are carried to enjoy the benefits of a cooler atmosphere.

In the midst of these groves stands the Mesdjed of Koba, with about thirty or forty houses. It is a mean building, and much decayed. In the interior of it several holy spots are visited, at each of which a short prayer of two rikats is performed, and some additional invocations recited in honour of the place. We first see here the Mobrak el Naka, the very spot on the floor of the mosque where the she-camel which Mohammed rode, in his flight from Mekka, crouched down, and would not rise again, thus advising her master to stop here, which he did for a few days, previous to his entering Medina. It was to consecrate this spot, that the mosque was founded by Mohammed himself with loose stones, which were changed into a regular building the year after, by Benou Ammer ibn Owf; but the present building is of modern construction. Further on is shown the spot upon which Mohammed once stood, after his prayers, and distinctly saw from thence Mekka, and all that the Koreysh were doing there; and, thirdly, the spot where the Koranic passage relating to the inhabitants of Koba was revealed to Mohammed: A temple, from its first day founded in piety; there thou best standest up to prayers. There men live who like to be purified: and God loves the clean. In this passage an allusion is discovered to the extraordinary personal cleanliness of those who inhabited Koba, more especially in certain acts of ablution.

I saw no inscriptions in this mosque, except those of hadjys who had written their names on the white-washed walls; a practice in which Eastern travellers indulge as frequently as European tourists, adding often to the names some verses of favourite poets, or sentences of the Koran. The mosque forms a narrow colonnade round a small open courtyard, in which the Mobrak el Naka stands, with a small cupola over it, rising to the height of about six feet. On issuing from the mosque, we were assailed by a crowd of beggars. At a short distance from it, among the cluster of houses, stands a small chapel, called Mesdjed Aly, in honour of Aly, the cousin of Mohammed. Close to it, in a garden, a deep well is shown, called Ayn Ezzerka, with a small chapel, built at its mouth. This was a favourite spot with Mohammed, who used often to sit among the trees with his disciples, enjoying the pleasure of seeing the water issuing in a limpid stream; an object which at the present day powerfully attracts the natives of the East, and, with the addition of a shady tree, is perhaps the only feature of landscape which they admire. When he once was sitting here, the Prophets seal-ring dropped into the well, and could never be again found; and the supposition that the ring is still there, renders the well famous. The water is tepid at its source, with a slight sulphureous taste, which it loses in its course. It is collected together with that of several other springs into the canal which supplies Medina, and which is kept constantly flowing by the supply of various channels of well-water. Omar el Khatab first carried the spring to Medina; but the present canal was built at the expense of the Sultan Soleyman, son of Selim I., about A.H. 973: it is a very solid subterranean work.

This canal, and that of Mekka, are the greatest architectural curiosities in the Hedjaz. Near to the mosque of Koba stands a building erected by Sultan Morad, for dervishes. A little beyond the village, on the road towards the town, stands a small chapel, called Mesdjed Djoma, in remembrance of the spot where the people of Medina met Mohammed upon his arrival.

EL KEBLETYN.—Towards the N.W. of the town, about one hour distant, a place is visited bearing this name. It is said to consist of two rude pillars (for I did not see it myself,) and was the spot where Mohammed first changed the Kebly, or the direction in which prayers are said, in the seventeenth month after the Hedjra, or his flight to Medina. Together with the Jewish Bedouins, his own adherents had till then Jerusalem as their Kebly; but Mohammed now turned it towards the Kaaba, to which that fine passage of the Koran alludes: Say, to God belong the east and the west; he directs whomsoever he pleases in the road of piety:—a sentence written to convince the Moslims, that wherever they turned, in their prayers, God stood before them. Near this spot stands a small ruined chapel.

The above are the only places visited by pilgrims. The country round Koba, and towards the S.E. of the town, presents many spots of nearly equal beauty with Koba, which in summer are places of recreation to the people of Medina; but I believe there are no villages any where to be seen, only insulated houses, or small groupes of buildings, scattered amongst the date-trees.

ON THE INHABITANTS OF MEDINA.

LIKE the Mekkans, the people of Medina are for the greater part strangers, whom the Prophets tomb, and the gains which it insures to its neighbours, have drawn to this place. But few original Arabs, descendants of those families who lived at Medina when Mohammed came from Mekka, now remain in the town; on the contrary, we find in it colonies from almost every quarter of the Muselman empire, east and west. I was informed, that of the original Arab residents, to whom the Mohammedan writers apply the name of El Ansar, and who at Mohammeds entrance were principally composed of the tribes of Ows and Khezredj, only about ten families remain who can prove their descent by pedigrees, or well-ascertained traditions: they are poor people, and live as peasants in the suburbs and gardens. The number of Sherifs descended of Hassan, the grandson of Mohammed, is considerable; but most of them are not originally from this place, their ancestors having come hither from Mekka, during the wars waged by the Sherifs for the possession of that town. They almost all belong to the class of olemas, very few military sherifs, like those of Mekka, being found here. Among them is a small tribe of Beni Hosseyn, descended from Hosseyn, the brother of Hassan. They are said to have been formerly very powerful at Medina, and had appropriated to themselves the chief part of the income of the mosque: in the thirteenth century, (according to Samhoudy,) they were the privileged guardians of the Prophets tomb; but at present they are reduced to about a dozen families, who still rank among the grandees of the town and its most wealthy inhabitants. They occupy a quarter by themselves, and obtain very large profits, particularly from the Persian pilgrims who pass here. They are universally stated to be heretics, of the Persian sect of Aly, and to perform secretly the rites of that creed, although they publicly profess the doctrines of the Sunnys. This report is too general, and confirmed by too many people of respectability, to be doubted: but the Beni Hosseyn have powerful influence in the town, in appearance strictly comply with the orthodox principles, and are therefore not molested.

It is publicly said that the remnants of the Ansars, and great numbers of the peasant Arabs who cultivate the gardens and fields in the neighbourhood of the town, are addicted to the same heresy. The latter, called Nowakhele, (a name implying that they live among date-trees,) are numerous, and very warlike. They had offered determined resistance to the Wahabys, and in civil contests have proved always superior to the towns-people. They are said to be descendants of the partisans of Yezid, the son of Mawya, who took and sacked the town sixty years after the Hedjra. They marry only among themselves; and exhibit on all occasions a great esprit de corps. Many of them publicly profess the creed of Aly when in their date-groves, but are Sunnys whenever they come to town. Some of them are established in the suburbs, and they have monopolised the occupation of butchers. In quarrels I have heard individuals among them publicly called sectaries and rowafedh, without their ever denying it. In the Eastern Desert, at three or four days journey from Medina, lives a whole Bedouin tribe, called Beni Aly, who are all of this Persian creed; and it is matter of astonishment to find the two most holy spots of the orthodox Muselman religion surrounded, one by the sectaries of Zeyd, and the other by those of Aly, without an attempt having been made to dislodge them.

Among the ancient families of Medina are likewise reckoned a few descendants of the Abassides, now reduced to great poverty: they go by the name of Khalifye, implying that they are descended from the Khalifes.

Most of the inhabitants are of foreign origin, and present as motley a race as those of Mekka. No year passes without some new settlers being added to their number; and no pilgrim caravan crosses the town without leaving here a few of its travellers, who stop at first with the intention of remaining for a year or two only, but generally continue to reside here permanently. Descendants of people from northern Turkey are very numerous; but the greater part trace their origin to settlers of the southern countries of Arabia, Yemen and Hadramaut, and from Syria, and Egypt, and many also from Barbary. My cicerone was called Sheikh Sad-eddyn el Kurdy, because his grandfather was a Kurd who had settled here: the proprietor of the house in which I lived was Seyd Omar, a Sherif of the Yafáÿ tribe of Yemen, whose ancestors had come hither several hundred years since. Indians are likewise found, but in less number than at Mekka. As there, they are druggists, and petty shopkeepers; but I believe that no Indian wholesale dealers in their native products are to be found at Medina. They adhere to their national dress and manners, forming a small colony, and rarely intermarry or mix with the other inhabitants.

The individuals of different nations settled here have in their second and third generations all become Arabs as to features and character; but are, nevertheless, distinguishable from the Mekkans; they are not nearly so brown as the latter, thus forming an intermediate link between the Hedjaz people and the northern Syrians. Their features are somewhat broader, their beards thicker, and their body stouter, than those of the Mekkans; but the Arab face, the expression, and cast of features are in both places the same.

The Medinans in their dress resemble more the Turkish than their southern neighbours: very few of them wear the beden, or the national Arab cloak without sleeves; but even the poorer people dress in long gowns, with a cloth djobbe, or upper cloak, or, instead of it, an abba, of the same brown and white stripe as is common in Syria and all over the Desert. Red Tunis bonnets and Turkish shoes are more used here than at Mekka, where the lower classes wear white bonnets, and sandals. People in easy circumstances dress well, wearing good cloth cloaks, fine gowns, and, in winter, good pelisses, brought from Constantinople by way of Cairo; which I found a very common article of dress in January and February, a season when it is much colder here than Europeans would expect it to be in Arabian deserts. Generally speaking, we may say that the Medinans dress better than the Mekkans, though with much less cleanliness: but no national costume is observed here; and, particularly in the cold of winter, the lower classes cover themselves with whatever articles of dress they can obtain at low prices in the public auctions; so that it is not uncommon to see a man fitted out in the dress of three or four different countries-like an Arab as high as his waist, and like a Turkish soldier over his breast and shoulders. The richer people make a great display of dress, and vie with each other in finery. I saw more new suits of clothes here, even when the yearly feasts were terminated, than I had seen before in any other part of the East. As at Mekka, the Sherifs wear no green, but simple white muslin turbans, excepting those from the northern part of Turkey, who have recently settled here, and who continue to wear the badge of their noble extraction.

Prior to the Wahaby conquest, when the inhabitants were often exposed to bloody affrays among themselves, they always went armed with the djombye, or crooked Arabian knife: at present few of these are seen; but every body, from the highest to the lowest, carries in his hand a long heavy stick. The rich have their sticks headed with silver; others fix iron spikes to them; and thus make a formidable weapon, which the Arabs handle with much dexterity. The women dress like those of Mekka; blue gowns being worn by the lower classes, and silk mellayes by the higher.

The Bedouins settled in and near the suburbs, use exactly the same costume as those of the Syrian Desert: a shirt, abba, a kessye on the head, a leathern girdle in which the knife is stuck, and sandals on the feet. Even those who have become settlers, form a distinct race, and do not intermix with the rest of the towns-people. They preserve their national dress, language, and customs, and live in their houses as they would under tents in the Desert. Of all Eastern nations, the Arabian Bedouins perhaps are those who abandon their national habits with most reluctance. In Syria, in Egypt, and in the Hedjaz, settlements are seen, the members of which have become cultivators for several centuries back; yet they have adopted only few of the habits of peasants, and still pride themselves on their Bedouin origin and manners.

The Medinans have not the same means of gaining a living, as the Mekkans. Although this town is never free from foreign pilgrims, there is never that immense influx of hadjys which renders Mekka so populous for several months in the year, and which makes it a market for all parts of the East. The hadjys who come to Medina are seldom merchants, or at least do not go there for mercantile pursuits, and therefore leave on the coast their heavy baggage. Even the Syrian merchants who pass with the great caravan seldom engage in trade, unless it be for some camel-loads of tobacco and dried fruits. The Medina trade is therefore merely for home consumption, and to supply the neighbouring Bedouins with articles of dress and provisions. These are received by way of Yembo, and come almost exclusively from Egypt. No great merchants are settled in Medina: the trade is merely retail; and those who possess capital, generally invest it in goods, as usual throughout Syria and Egypt, there not being any public institution like banks, or trading societies, or national funds, from which the capitalist might derive interest for his money. The Turkish law rigorously forbids the taking of interest; and even if it were otherwise, there is not any government nor any class of men to which the people would intrust considerable sums. The investment of capital in landed property is also liable to great risk. [By a decree of Mohammed Aly in 1813, the purchase of land in Egypt is rendered impracticable; for it orders all the Moltezims (or landed proprietors who shared in the possession of villages and grounds, and who formed a class living on their rents in the country towns,) to receive their yearly revenue from the Pashas treasury, where they suffered every kind of humiliation and injustice; and the whole of the soil was declared to be the property of government, or in other words of Mohammed Aly himself, who leaves the cultivation of it to the fellahs on his own terms. It happened lately that the Fellahs, who farmed five thousand acres belonging to the village of Damkour near Cairo, were deprived of their leases on the land being declared public property, because the Pasha wished to sow clover for his cavalry upon the soil that the Fellahs had possessed. Landed property in Syria also subjects the owner to great inconveniences: he is oppressed by every governor of a district, and by every soldier who passes; he suffers in his receipts from the extortions of the Pashas, which generally fall more heavily upon the cultivator than upon the monied man: and if he do not constantly watch his peasants, he is most probably cheated out of all his profits.] The usual method is to enter into partnership with different petty merchants or retail dealers, and obtain a share of their profits; but it is subject to almost as much anxiety as an active trade, from the necessity of keeping a constant account with the partners, and incessantly watching them. Usury is practised, and an annual interest from thirty to fifty per cent is paid at Cairo for money: but few of the Turkish merchants descend to this practice, which is reckoned dishonorable. Usury is wholly in the hands of Jews, and Christians the outcasts of Europe. There is, perhaps, nothing in the present deplorable state of eastern society that has a more baneful effect upon the minds and happiness of the people, than the necessity of continuing during their whole lives in business full of intrigues and chances. The cheering hopes which animate an European, the prospect of enjoying in old age the profits of early exertions, are unknown to the native of the East, whose retirement would bring nothing but danger, by marking him as wealthy in the eyes of his rapacious governor. The double influence of the Turkish government and Muselman religion have produced such an universal hypocrisy, that there is scarcely a Mohammedan (whose tranquil air, as he smokes his pipe reclining on the sofa, gives one an idea of the most perfect contentment and apathy,) that does not suffer under all the agonies of envy, unsatisfied avarice, ambition, or the fear of losing his ill-gotten property.

Travellers who pass rapidly through the East, without a knowledge of the language, and rarely mixing with any but persons interested in misrepresenting their true character, are continually deceived by the dignified deportment of the Turks, their patriarchal manners and solemn speeches,—although they would ridicule a Frenchman who, after a few months residence in England, and ignorant of the English language, should pretend to a competent knowledge of the British character and constitution; not recollecting that it is much easier for a Frenchman to judge of a neighbouring European nation, than for any European to judge of Oriental nations, whose manners, ideas, and notions are so different from his own. For my own part, a long residence among Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians, justifies me in declaring that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice; that they have little true piety, and still less charity or forbearance; and that honesty is only to be found in their paupers or idiots. Like the Athenians of old, a Turk may perhaps know what is right and praiseworthy, but he leaves the practice to others; though, with fine maxims on his lips, he endeavours to persuade himself that he acts as they direct. Thus he believes himself to be a good Muselman, because he does not omit the performance of certain prayers and ablutions, and frequently invokes the forgiveness of God.

At Medina several persons engage in small commercial transactions, chiefly concerning provisions; a lucrative branch of traffic, as the town depends for its support upon the caravans from Yembo, which are seldom regular, and this circumstance causes the prices of provisions continually to fluctuate. The evil consequence of this is, that the richer corn-dealers sometimes succeed in establishing a monopoly, no grain remaining but in their warehouses, the petty traders having been obliged to sell off. Whenever the caravans are delayed for any considerable time, corn rises to an enormous price; and as the chiefs of the town are thus interested, it can scarcely be supposed that the magistrates would interfere.

Next to the provision-trade, that with the neighbouring Bedouins is the most considerable: they provide the town with butter, honey, (a very essential article in Hedjaz cookery,) sheep, and charcoal; for which they take, in return, corn and clothing. Their arrival at Medina is likewise subject to great irregularity; and if two tribes happen to be at war, the town is kept for a month at the mercy of the few substantial merchants who happen to have a stock of those articles in hand. When I first reached Medina, no butter was to be had in the market, and corn was fifty per cent dearer than at Yembo; soon after, it was not to be had at all in the market: at another time salt failed; the same happened with charcoal; and in general the provision-market was very badly regulated. In other eastern towns, as at Mekka and Djidda, a public officer, called Mohteseb, is appointed to watch over the sale of provisions; to take care that they do not rise to immoderate prices, and fix a maximum to all the victualling traders, so that they may have a fair but not exorbitant profit. But this is not the case at Medina, because the Mohteseb is there without any authority. Corn is sold twenty per cent dearer in one part of the town than in another, and the same with every other article, so that foreigners unacquainted with the ways of the place are made to suffer materially. During my stay, the communication with Yembo was kept up by a caravan of about one hundred and fifty camels, which arrived at Medina every fortnight, and by small parties of Bedouin traders with from five to ten camels, which arrived every five or six days. The far greater part of the loads was destined for the army of Tousoun Pasha; the rest consisted of merchandize and provisions; but the latter were very inadequate to the wants of the town. I heard from a well-informed person, that the daily consumption of Medina was from thirty to forty erdebs, or twenty-five to thirty-five Hedjaz camel-loads. The produce of the fields which surround the town, is said to be barely sufficient for four months consumption; for the rest, therefore, it must depend upon Yembo, or imports from Egypt. In time of peace there is plenty: but lately, since the Turkish army has been stationed here, the Bedouins fear to trust their camels in the hands of the Turks, and the supply has fallen much below the wants of the town. The inhabitants were put to great inconvenience on that account, and had greatly reduced their consumption of corn, and eaten up the last of their stock on hand. Tousoun Pasha had very imprudently seized a great number of the Bedouins camels, and obliged them to accompany his army, which had so terrified them, that, previous to Mohammed Alys arrival, famine was apprehended from the want of beasts of transport. The Pasha endeavoured to restore confidence, and some of the Bedouins began to return with their beasts.

In time of peace, corn caravans arrive also from Nedjed, principally from that district of it called Kasym; but these were altogether interrupted. I was informed that the transport trade in provisions from Yembo had been shut up for several years after the conquest of Medina by the Wahabys, whose chief, Saoud, wished to favour his own subjects of Nedjed; and that Medina in the mean time drew all its supplies from Nedjed, and its own fields. Provisions were now excessively dear: the lower class lived almost entirely upon dates, and very coarse barley bread; few could afford a little butter, much fewer meat. The fruit of the lotus, or Nebek, which ripened in the beginning of March, induced them to quit the dates, and became almost their sole nourishment for several months; large heaps of it were seen in the market, and a person might procure enough to satisfy himself for a pennyworth of corn, which was usually taken in exchange instead of money, by the Bedouins, who brought the fruit to the town. The vegetables cultivated in the gardens are chiefly for the use of foreigners, and are of very indifferent flavour. Arabs dislike them, and they are only used by those who have acquired the relish in foreign countries. Fresh onions, leeks, and garlic, are the only vegetables of which the Arabs are fond.

The prime article of food at Medina, as I have already stated, is dates. During the two or three months of the date-harvest, (for this fruit is not all ripe at the same time, each species having its season), from July till September, the lower classes feed on nothing else; and during the rest of the year dried dates continue to be their main nourishment. The date-harvest is here of the same importance as that of wheat in Europe, and its failure causes general distress. What is the price of dates at Mekka or Medina? is always the first question asked by a Bedouin who meets a passenger on the road. Of these dates a considerable part is brought to Medina from distant quarters, and especially from Fera, a fertile valley in the possession of the Beni Aamer tribe, where there are numerous date-groves: it is three or four days journey from Medina, and as many from Rabegh in the mountains. The dates are brought from thence in large baskets, in which they are pressed together into a paste, as I have already mentioned.

Although commercial dealings are pretty universal, yet few of the inhabitants ostensibly follow them. Most of the people are either cultivators, or, in the higher classes, landed proprietors, and servants of the mosque. The possession of fields and gardens is much desired; to be a land-owner is considered honorable; and the rents of the fields, if the date-harvest be good, is very considerable. If I may judge from two instances reported to me, the fields are sold at such a rate, as to leave to the owner, in ordinary years, an income of from twelve to sixteen per cent upon his capital, after giving up, as is generally done, half the produce to the actual cultivators. Last year, however, it was calculated that their money yielded forty per cent. The middling classes cannot afford to lay out their small capital in gardens, because to them sixteen or twenty per cent would be an insufficient return; and, in the Hedjaz, no person who trades with a trifling fund is contented with less than fifty per cent annually; and in general they contrive, by cheating foreigners, to double their capital. Those, therefore, only are land-owners, who by trade, or by their income from the mosque, and from hadjys, have already acquired considerable wealth.

The chief support of Medina is from the mosque and the hadjys. I have already mentioned the Ferrashyn, or servants of the mosque, and their profits; to them must be added a vast number of people attached to the temple, whose offices are mere sinecures, and who share in the income of the Haram; a train of ciceroni or mezowars; and almost every householder, who lets out apartments to the pilgrims Besides the share in the income of the mosque, the servants of every class have their surra or annuity, which is brought from Constantinople and Cairo; and all the inhabitants besides enjoy similar yearly gifts, which also go by the name of surra. These stipends, it is true, are not always regularly distributed, and many of the poorest class, for whom they were originally destined, are now deprived of them; the sums, however, reach the town, and are brought into circulation. [Kayd Beg, Sultan of Egypt, after having, in A.H. 881, rebuilt the mosque, appropriated a yearly income of seven thousand five hundred erdebs for the inhabitants of the town, to be sent from Egypt; and Sultan Soleyman ibn Selim allowed five thousand erdebs for the same purpose. (See Kotobeddyn and Samhoudy.)] Many families are, in this manner, wholly supported by the surra, and receive as much as 100l. and 200l sterling per annum, without performing any duty whatever. The Medinans say, that without these surras the town would soon be abandoned to the land-owners and cultivators; and this consideration was certainly the original motive for establishing them, and the numerous wakfs, or pious foundations, which in all parts of the Turkish empire are annexed to the towns or mosques. At present the surra is misapplied, and serves only to feed a swarm of persons in a state of complete idleness, while the poor are left destitute, and not the smallest encouragement is given to industry. As to want of industry, Medina is still more remarkable than Mekka. It wants even the most indispensable mechanics; and the few that live here are foreigners, and only settle for a time. There is a single upholsterer, and only one locksmith in the town; carpenters and masons are so scarce, that to repair a house, they must be brought from Yembo. Whenever the mosque requires workmen, they are sent from Cairo, or even from Constantinople, as was the case during my stay, when a master-mason from the latter place was occupied in repairing the roof of the building. All the wants of the town, down to the most trifling articles, are supplied by Egypt. When I was here, not even earthen water jars were made. Some years ago a native of Damascus established a manufacture of this most indispensable article; but he had left the town, and the inhabitants were reduced to the necessity of drinking out of the half-broken jars yet left, or of importing others, at a great expense, from Mekka No dying, no woollen manufactures, no looms, no tanneries nor works in leather, no iron-works of any kind are seen; even nails and horse-shoes are brought from Egypt and Yembo. In my account of Mekka, I attributed the general aversion of the people of the Hedjaz from handicrafts, to their indolence and dislike of all manual labour. But the same remark is not applicable to Medina, where the cultivators and gardeners, though not very industrious in improving their land, are nevertheless a hard-working people, and might apply themselves to occupations in town, without undergoing greater bodily labour than they endure in their fields. I am inclined to think that the want of artisans here is to be attributed to the very low estimation in which they are held by the Arabians, whose pride often proves stronger than their cupidity, and prevents a father from educating his sons in any craft. This aversion they probably inherit from the ancient inhabitants, the Bedouins, who, as I have remarked, exclude, to this day, all handicraftsmen from their tribes, and consider those who settle in their encampment as of an inferior cast, with whom they neither associate nor intermarry. They are differently esteemed in other parts of the East, in Syria, and in Egypt, where the corporations of artisans are almost as much respected as they were in France and Germany during the middle ages. A master craftsman is fully equal in rank and consideration to a merchant of the second class; he can intermarry with the respectable families of the town, and is usually a man of more influence in his quarter, than a merchant who possesses three times more wealth than himself. The first Turkish emperors did every thing in their power to favour industry and the arts; and fifty years ago they still flourished in Syria and Egypt: in the former country they are now upon the decline, except, perhaps, at Damascus; in Egypt they are reduced to the lowest state: for, while Mohammed Aly entices English and Italian workmen into his service, who labour on his sole account, and none of whom prosper, he oppresses native industry, by monopolizing its produce, and by employing the greater part of the workmen himself, at a daily salary thirty per cent less than they might get, if they were permitted to work on their own account, or for private individuals.

The only industrious persons found in Medina are the destitute pilgrims, especially those from Syria, who abound here, and who endeavour by hard labour, during a few months, to earn money sufficient for the expenses of their journey homewards. They work only at intervals, and on their departure the town is often without any artisans for a considerable time. Whilst I resided in Medina, there was but one man who washed linen; when he went away, as the Arabian women will rarely condescend to be so employed, the foreign hadjys were all obliged to wash for themselves. Under these circumstances a traveller cannot expect to find here the most trifling comforts; and even money cannot supply his wants. Here is, however, one class of men, to whom I have already referred in describing Mekka, and who render themselves equally useful at Medina. I mean the black pilgrims from Soudan. Few negroes, or Tekayrne, as they are called, come to Mekka, without visiting Medina also, a town even more venerable in their estimation than Mekka. The orthodox sect of Málekites, to which they belong, carry, in general, their respect for Mohammed further than any of the three other sects; and the negroes, little instructed as they usually are, may be said to adore the Prophet, placing him, if not on a level with the Deity, at least very little below him. They approach his tomb with a terrified and appalled conscience, and with more intense feelings than when they visit the Kaaba; and they are fully persuaded, that the prayers which they utter while standing before the window of the Hedjra, will sooner or later obtain their object. A negro hadjy once asked me, after a short conversation with him in the mosque, if I knew what prayers he should recite to make Mohammed appear to him in his sleep, as he wished to ask him a particular question; and when I expressed my ignorance, he told me that the Prophet had here appeared to a great many of his countrymen. These people furnish Medina with fire-wood, which they collect in the neighbouring mountains, and sell to great advantage. If none, or only few of them, happen to be at Medina, no wood can be got even for money. They likewise serve as carriers or porters; and such of them as are not strong enough for hard work, make small mats and baskets of date-leaves. They usually live together in some of the huts of the public place called El Menakh, and remain till they have earned money enough for their journey home. Very few of them are beggars; of forty or fifty whom I saw here, only two or three resorted to mendicity, being unfit for any other vocation. In general beggars are much less numerous at Medina than at Mekka; and most of the foreign beggars, as at Mekka, are Indians. Few hadjys come here without either bringing the necessary funds, or being certain of gaining their livelihood by labour, the distance of Medina from the sea being much greater than that of Mekka, and the road through the Desert being dreaded by absolute paupers. It may be calculated that only one-third of the pilgrims who visit Mekka go also to Medina. The Egyptian caravan of pilgrims seldom passes by the town. [Whenever the Egyptian caravan passes by Medina, it is always on its return from Mekka, and then remains, like the Syrian, for three days only. In going from Cairo to Mekka, this caravan never visits Medina.] Medina has pilgrims during the whole year, there being no prescribed season for visiting the tomb; and they usually stay here about a fortnight or a month. They are in the greatest number during the months following the pilgrimage to Arafat, and likewise during the month of Rabya el Thany, on the 12th of which, the birth-day of Mohammed, or Mouled el Naby, is celebrated.

The Medinans make up for the paucity of beggars in their own town by going elsewhere to beg. It is a custom with those inhabitants of the town who have received some education, and can read and write, to make a mendicant journey in Turkey once or twice in their lives. They generally repair to Constantinople, where, by means of Turkish hadjys, whom they have known in their own town, they introduce themselves among the grandees, plead poverty, and receive considerable presents in clothes and money, being held in esteem as natives of Medina, and neighbours of the Prophets tomb. Some of these mendicants serve as Imáms in the houses of the great. After a residence of a couple of years, they invest the alms they have collected in merchandize, and thus return with a considerable capital. There are very few individuals of the above description at Medina, who have not once made the grand tour of Turkey: I have seen several of them at Cairo, where they quartered themselves upon people with whom their acquaintance at Medina had been very slight, and became extremely disagreeable by their incessant craving and impudence. There are few large cities in Syria, Anatolia, and European Turkey, where some of these people are not to be found. For their travelling purposes, and for the duties incumbent upon them as ciceroni in their own town, many individuals learn a little Turkish; and it is their pride to persuade the Turkish pilgrims, that they are Turks, and not Arabians, however little they may like the former.

The Medinans generally are of a less cheerful and lively disposition than the Mekkans. They display more gravity and austerity in their manners, but much less than the northern Turks. They outwardly appear more religious than their southern neighbours. They are much more rigid in the observance of their sacred rites, and public decorum is much more observed at Medina than at Mekka: the morals, however, of the inhabitants appear to be much upon the same level with those of the Mekkans; all means are adopted to cheat the hadjys. The vices which disgrace the Mekkans are also prevalent here; and their religious austerity has not been able to exclude the use of intoxicating liquors. These are prepared by the negroes, as well as date-wine, which is made by pouring water over dates, and leaving it to ferment. On the whole, I believe the Medinans to be as worthless as the Mekkans, and greater hypocrites. They, however, wish to approach nearer to the northern Turkish character; and, for that reason, abandon the few good qualities for which the Mekkans may be commended. In giving this general character of the Medinans, I do not found it merely on the short experience I had of them in their own town, but upon information acquired from many individuals, natives of Medina, whom I met in every part of the Hedjaz. They appear to be as expensive as the Mekkans. There were only two or three people in Medina reputed to be worth ten or twelve thousand pounds sterling, half of which might be invested in landed property, and the other half in trade. The family of Abd el Shekour was reckoned the richest. The other merchants have generally very small capitals, from four to five hundred pounds only; and most of the people attached to the mosque, or who derive their livelihood from stipends, and from pilgrims, spend, to the last farthing, their yearly income. They outwardly appear much richer than the Mekkans, because they dress better; but, not the slightest comparison can be made between the mass of property in this town and that in Mekka.

In their own houses, the people of Medina are said to live poorly, with regard to food; but their houses are well furnished, and their expense in dress is very considerable. Slaves are not so numerous here as at Mekka; many, however, from Abyssinia are found here, and some females are settled, as married women. The women of the cultivators, and of the inhabitants of the suburbs, serve in the families of the towns-people, as domestics, principally to grind corn in the hand-mills. The Medina women behave with great decency, and have the general reputation of being much more virtuous than those of Mekka and Djidda.

The families that possess gardens go to great expense in entertaining their friends, by turns, at their country houses, where all the members, men and women, of the families invited assemble together. It is said that this fashion is carried to great excess in spring-time, and that the Medinans vie with each other in this respect, so that it becomes a matter of public notoriety, whether such a person has given more or less country parties, during the season, than his neighbours. A few families pass the whole year at their gardens; among these was the large family of a saint, established in a delightful little garden to the south of the town. This man is greatly renowned for his sanctity, so much so, that Tousoun Pasha himself once kissed his hands. I paid him a visit, like many other pilgrims, in the first days of my arrival, and found him seated in an arched recess or large niche adjoining the house, from whence he never moved. He was more polite than any saint I had ever seen, and was not averse to talk of worldly matters. I had heard that he possessed some historical books, which he would perhaps sell; but upon inquiry, I learnt from him that he did not trouble himself with any learning except that of the Law, the Koran, and his language. He gave me a nargyle to smoke, and treated me with a dish of dates, the produce of his own garden; and after I had put, on taking leave, a dollar under the carpet upon which I sat, (an act usual, as it was said, on such an occasion,) he accompanied me to the garden-gate, and begged me to repeat my visit.

Smoking nargyles, or the Persian pipe, is as general here as at Mekka; common pipes are more in use here than in other parts of the Hedjaz, the climate being colder. The use of coffee is immoderate. In the gardens fruit can be bought with coffee-beans as well as with money; and the fondness for tea in England and Holland is not equal to that of the Arabians for coffee.

The people of Medina keep no horses. Except those of the Sheikh el Haram, and a few of his suite, I believe there is not one horse kept in this town. In general, these parts of Arabia are poor in horses, because there is no fine pasture for them: the Bedouins to the N. and E. of the town, in the Desert, have, on the contrary, large breeds. The gardens of Medina might afford pasturage; and formerly, when there were warlike individuals in the town, horses were kept by them, and expeditions planned against Bedouins with whom they happened to be at war. At present the spirit of the Medinans is more pacific; and the few horses yet kept when the Wahabys captured the town, were immediately sold by their owners, to escape the military conscription to which principally the horsemen in the Wahaby dominions were subjected. Some of the richer families kept mules, and also dromedaries. Asses are very common, especially among the cultivators, who bring to town upon them the produce of their fields. They are of a smaller breed than those of Mekka and the Hedjaz. The wants of the Turkish army had caused a great diminution in the number of camels formerly kept by the cultivators, who sold them, under the apprehension of their being placed in requisition. The Bedouins of the eastern Desert, at three or four days journey from the town, are rich in camels; a strolling party of the horsemen of Tousoun Pasha sent in, during my stay, seven hundred of them, which they had taken from a single encampment of the Beni Hetym tribe.

It is not unworthy of remark, that Medina, as far as I know, is the only town in the East from which dogs are excluded: they are never permitted to pass the gate into the interior, but must remain in the suburbs. I was told that the watchmen of the different quarters assemble once a year to drive out any of those animals that might have crept unperceived into the town. The apprehension of a dog entering the mosque, and polluting its sanctity, probably gave rise to their exclusion; they are, however, tolerated at Mekka.

Among the sheep of this neighbourhood, a small species is noticed with a white and brown spotted skin; the same species is likewise known about Mekka. It is of a diminutive size: they are bought up by foreigners, and carried home with them as rarities from the Holy Land. At Cairo they are kept in the houses of the grandees, who cause them to be painted red, with henna, and hang a collar with little bells round their necks, to amuse the children.

I believe the people of Medina have no other times of public rejoicing than the regular feast-days, except the Mouled el Naby or Prophets birth-day, on the twelfth of the month of Rabya el Thany. This is considered a national festival: all the shops are shut during the day, and every one appears in his best dress. Early in the morning the olemas and a number of well-dressed people assemble in the mosque, where one of the Khatybs, after a short sermon, reads an account of Mohammeds actions, from his birth to his death; after which the company, at least the chief people present, are treated with lemonade, or liquorice-water. The zealous Muselmans pass the night preceding this day in prayer. The lady of Mohammed Aly Pasha, who, having performed the pilgrimage to Mekka, came here to visit the tomb, and see her son Tousoun Pasha, passed the greater part of the night in devotion at the mosque: when she returned to a house she had taken for that purpose, close by the gate of the mosque, her son paid her a short visit, and then left her to repose, while he himself ordered a carpet to be spread in the middle of the street, and there slept, at the threshold of his mothers dwelling; offering a testimony of respect and humility which does as much honour to the son, as to the character of the mother who could inspire him with such sentiments. The wife of Mohammed Aly is a highly respectable woman, and very charitable without ostentation. Her son Tousoun I believe to be the only one of the family, whose breast harbours any noble feeling; the rest are corrupted by the numerous vices inseparable from a Turkish grandee: but he has given, in many instances, proofs of elevated sentiment; and even his enemies cannot deny his valour, generosity, filial love, and good-nature. We must regret, that he is as much inferior in intellect to his father and his brother Ibrahim, as he is superior to them in moral character. His mother had appeared here with all the pomp of an eastern queen: from her donations to the temple, and to the poor, she was regarded by the people as an angel sent from heaven. She brought to her son presents to the value of about twenty-five thousand pounds sterling, among which were remarked twelve complete suits, including every article of dress, from the finest Cashmere shawl down to the slippers; a diamond ring worth five thousand pounds; and two beautiful Georgian slaves. In her retinue there was also a Georgian slave of great beauty and rare accomplishments, whom Mohammed Aly had lately married at Mekka; but as she had not yet borne any children, she was considered much inferior in rank to Tousouns mother, who counted three Pashas as her own sons. [Ismayl Pasha is the younger brother of the two mentioned above. It is reported that Ibrahim Pasha is not the son of Mohammed Aly, but was adopted by him when he married his mother, then the widow of an Aga of Karala, on the Hellespont, the native town of the present Pasha of Egypt.] This slave had belonged to the Kadhy of Mekka, who brought her from Constantinople. Mohammed Aly, who had heard his own women praise her beauty and accomplishments, obliged the Kadhy, much against his will, to part with her for the sum of fifty thousand piastres, and soon after presented her with the marriage contract.

I can say little of any customs peculiar to the Medinans, having had so few opportunities of mixing with them. I may, however, mention, that in the honours they pay to the dead, they do not comply with the general rules observed in the Fast. I believe this to be the only town where women do not howl and cry on the death of a member of the family. The contrary practice is too generally known to need repetition here; or that, in other parts of the Levant, a particular class of women is called in, on that occasion, whose sole profession is that of howling, in the most heart-rending accents, for a small sum paid to them by the hour. There is no such practice here, (though it is known in other parts of the Hedjaz) and it is even considered disgraceful. The father of a family died in a house next to that where I lived, and which communicated with it. His death happened at midnight, and his only boy, moved by natural feelings, burst into loud lamentations. I then heard his mother exclaiming, For Gods sake, do not cry: what a shame to cry! You will expose us before the whole neighbourhood; and after some time she contrived to quiet her child. There is also a national custom observed at funerals: the bier, on issuing from the house of the deceased, is carried upon the shoulders of some of his relations or friends, the rest of whom follow behind; but when the procession advances into the street, every by-stander, or passenger, hastens to relieve the bearers for a moment; some giving way to others, who press forward to take in their turn the charge, which is done without stopping. The bier, thus unceasingly passes from shoulders to shoulders, till it is finally deposited near the tomb. If we could suppose for a moment, that this simple and affecting custom was the offspring of true feeling, it would prove much more sensibility than what is displayed in the funeral pomp with which Europeans accompany their dead to the grave. But in the East every thing is done according to ancient custom: it originated, no doubt, in the impulse of feeling, or a sense of duty and piety in those who introduced it; but has become, in these days, a mere matter of form.

The women of Medina never wear mourning; in which respect they differ from those of Egypt. It has been often stated by travellers, that the people of the East have no mourning dresses; but this is erroneous, as to Egypt at least, and part of Syria. The men, it is true, never indulge in this practice, which is prohibited by the spirit of the law; but the women, in the interior of the house, wear mourning in every part of Egypt: for this purpose, they first dye their hands blue, with indigo; they put on a black borko, or face-veil, and thus follow the funeral through the streets; and if they can afford it, they put on a black gown, and. even a black shift. They continue to wear their mourning for seven, or fifteen, or sometimes for forty days.

As to the state of learning, I shall add that the Medinans are regarded as more accomplished olemas than the Mekkans; though, as I have mentioned above, there are few, if any, public schools. Several individuals study the Muselman sciences at Damascus, and Cairo, in both of which cities there are pious foundations for the purpose. As at Mekka there is no public book-market, the only books I saw exposed for sale were in some retail clothes-shops near the Bab es Salam. There are said to be some fine private libraries; I saw one in the house of a Sheikh, where at least three thousand volumes were heaped up; but I could not examine them. As it often happens in the East, these libraries are all wakf, that is, have been presented to some mosque by its founder, or entailed upon some private family, so that the books cannot be alienated. The Wahabys are said to have carried off many loads of books.

Notwithstanding my repeated inquiries here, as well as at Mekka, I could never hear of a single person who had composed, or even made short notes of, the history of his own times, or of the Wahabys. It appeared to me, on the whole, that literature flourished as little at Medina as in other parts of the Hedjaz; and that the sole occupation of all was getting money, and spending it in sensual gratifications.

The language of the Medinans is not so pure as that of the Mekkans; it approaches much nearer to that of Egypt; and the Syrians established here continue for several generations to retain a tinge of their native dialect. It is common to hear natives talk, or at least utter a few words of Turkish. The gardeners and husbandmen in the neighbourhood have a dialect and certain phrases of their own, which often afford subject for ridicule to the inhabitants of the town.

ON THE GOVERNMENT OF MEDINA.

MEDINA, since the commencement of Islam, has always been considered as a separate principality. When the Hedjaz came under subjection to the Khalifes, Medina was governed by persons appointed by them, and independent of the governors of Mekka. When the power of the Khalifes declined, the chiefs of Medina made themselves independent, and exercised the same influence in the northern Hedjaz that those of Mekka did in the southern. Sometimes the chiefs of Mekka succeeded in extending a temporary authority over Medina; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this power seems to have been well established; but it often became dependent on the mighty Sultans of Egypt, whenever they assumed the sovereignty over Mekka. When the family of Othman mounted the Turkish throne, the Emperor Selym I., and his son Soleyman, (who paid, in general, more attention to the welfare of the Hedjaz than any of their predecessors,) thought it necessary to acquire a firmer footing in this town, which is the key of the Hedjaz, and became of so much importance to the great pilgrim caravans. They sent hither a garrison of Turkish soldiers, composed of Janissaries and Spahies, under the command of an Aga, who was to be the military commander of the town; while the civil government was placed in the hands of the Sheikh el Haram, or Aga el Haram, the prefect of the temple, who was to correspond regularly with the capital, and to have the same rank as Pashas in other towns. With the exception of a short period towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Sheikh el Haram and the whole town fell under the jurisdiction of the Sherif of Mekka, this mode of government continued until the period of the Wahaby invasion. An Aga was at the head of a few soldiers, some of whom were in possession of the castle; and the Aga el Haram, who also had a small train of soldiers, was the nominal chief of the town. But great abuses had prevailed for the last century: the military commander was no longer chosen by the Sultans, but by his own people, and there were no longer any Turkish soldiers, but only the descendants of those originally sent hither, who had intermarried with the natives. This Aga had become the real master of the town, and his party was spread over all the first families. He had no other soldiers than the rabble of the town itself, and was chosen by the first officers of the garrison, whose employments were still kept up by their descendants, as they had been settled in former times, although the greater part of them had renounced the military profession. This tribe of soldiers, called Merabetein, had been enlarged to strengthen the Agas party, and its privileges extended to many other inhabitants of the town, and foreigners who settled here. They were entitled to share in the yearly salaries originally fixed by the Sultan, for the pay of the garrison, and regularly transmitted from Constantinople; and had, besides, usurped a share of the surra or stipends sent to the mosque and to the whole town.

The Aga el Haram, together with the Kadhy, who was sent hither annually from Constantinople, to preside over the tribunal of justice, became, under the above circumstances, mere ciphers. The former was usually a eunuch, who knew nothing of Arabic, and who received the appointment rather in the way of exile, than as a preferment. His income, which he received from Constantinople, although handsome, did not enable him to keep up any military guard sufficient to cope with his rival, the Aga of the town; and he soon found himself only left in the charge of the temple, and the command of the eunuchs and Ferráshyn. But the Aga of the town himself was not complete master; several of the chiefs of the different quarters had great authority; the Sherifs settled here had their own chief, called Sheikh-es-Sadat, a man of great power; and thus, much disorder prevailed. The people of the town, and the gardeners and inhabitants of the suburbs, were often contending for months together: in the interior of the town itself bloody affrays often occurred between the inhabitants of the different quarters, on which occasions they sometimes barricadoed the streets, and kept up a firing upon each other from the tops of their houses. Instances are related of people firing even into the mosque upon their enemies, while engaged in prayer.

Within the last twenty years a man named Hassan had been appointed Aga of the castle, which gave him the surname of Hassan el Kalay. Born among the dregs of the people, his great skill and cunning, and determined hardihood, had raised him to this office. He was a man of a very short stature and a limping gait, but notwithstanding of great bodily strength; and his voice, when he was in anger, is said to have terrified even the boldest. After several years hard struggle, this man succeeded in becoming complete master and tyrant of the town: he kept a guard of towns-people, of Bedouins, and Moggrebyns in his service, and had all the rabble on his side. He was guilty of the most flagrant acts of injustice; he oppressed the pilgrims, extorted money from them, confiscated the property of all the hadjys and foreigners who died here, withheld the surra brought from Constantinople by the Hadj, from the people for whom it was destined, and amassed great wealth. Instances are recorded of tyranny and brutality which cover his name with infamy. A rich old widow, with her daughter, having arrived at Medina, from Constantinople, to visit the tomb, he seized on her, and compelled her to marry him; two days after, she was found dead, her property was seized by him; and a short time after he forced the daughter to yield to his embraces. Many complaints were made at Constantinople against this man, but the Sultan had not power enough to dispossess him; and whenever the caravan arrived from Syria, Hassan el Kalay showed so imposing an attitude, that its chiefs could attempt nothing against him. He threw great obstacles in their way; and it is generally ascribed to him, that the last caravan from Damascus, which attempted to perform the journey after the Wahaby conquest, was obliged to return to Syria.

When the Wahabys began to make inroads into the Hedjaz, and to direct their forces against Medina, the conduct of Hassan became still more violent. During the two or three years which preceded the capture of the town, he set no bounds to his oppressions, and was often seen to inflict the severest punishments upon persons who happened to be laughing among themselves when he passed by, pretending that his limping gait was the cause of their mirth. During the night shops were robbed by the Arabs in his service, who patrolled the streets in large parties, and no justice could be obtained against them. When he saw the impossibility of holding the town longer against the Wahabys, after all the surrounding Bedouins, and Mekka itself, had surrendered, he gave up the place to Saoud, on condition that he should be continued in his command; this was promised, and the promise was kept: a Wahaby garrison was then placed in the castle; the Aga el Haram, with all the Turks residing in Medina, were obliged to leave the town, where he had been for several years a mere shadow; and Hassan el Kalay remained governor under the Wahabys. Being now unable to act with the same injustice as he had before done, he affected the greatest zeal for the new religion, and oppressed the inhabitants, by enforcing upon them, with the most scrupulous severity, the precepts of the Wababy creed. Saoud showed much less respect for Medina than he had done for Mekka: the income of the latter town was left, as it was, in the hands of the Sherif, and the inhabitants were exempted from the zekat, or tribute, which the other Wahaby subjects paid to the chief, who here abandoned his right in favour of Ghaleb. The same conciliatory system was not observed at Medina: the inhabitants, who had never before known what imposts were, except the payment of some trifling land-tax, found themselves grievously oppressed; and Hassan el Kalay, with the tax-gatherers of Saoud, enforced the taxes with the utmost rigour.

The Hadj caravans now ceased; few pilgrims arrived by way of Yembo; Saoud, soon after, prohibited the passage to the town to all Turkish pilgrims; and the surra or stipends were of course withheld. Under these circumstances the Medinans felt most heavily the pressure of the times, and became exasperated against the Wahabys. Some further details on the subject will be found in my account of Mohammed Alys campaign.

When Mohammed Aly first prepared an expedition against the Hedjaz, a strong garrison was placed in Medina, consisting principally of warlike Bedouins from Nedjed and the southern provinces, under the command of Medheyan, whom Saoud had named Sheikh of the tribe of Harb. Hassan el Kalay showed great zeal for the common cause; and, after the first defeat of Tousoun Pasha at Djedeyde, was confirmed in his situation at Medina; but when Tousoun returned a second time with a larger force, Hassan, foreseeing his success, entered into secret negotiations with him, and received the promise of being continued in his office, provided he would facilitate the capture of the town by the Osmanlys. On their arrival before its gates, he joined them, and was received by Ahmed Bonaparte, the Turkish commander, with distinguished honours; the town was soon after attacked, and the castle taken by capitulation: but after the Wahaby party was totally suppressed in these parts, both Medheyan, to whom safe-conduct had been promised, and Hassan el Kalay, were seized, put in chains, and sent by way of Cairo to Constantinople, where they experienced the fate which, the latter at least, well merited, though his crimes can never excuse the treachery of those who seized him.

Soon after the above events, the Aga el Haram, a Kislar Agassi of Sultan Selym, returned, and partly recovered his authority; but the real command was now in the hands of the Turkish governor. Towards the end of the year 1814, Tousoun Pasha came here as governor, preparatory to his intended attack upon Nedjed; and here I found him on my arrival. His government was not bad, because his intentions were good, and he was liked by the inhabitants for his generosity and devotion; but his proceedings were foolish enough: he frightened away the Bedouins, by seizing their camels; he thus cut off the supplies from the town, created a general want of every kind of provision, and other necessaries; and his soldiers then soon began to commit excesses, which he neglected to suppress by punishment. After Tousouns departure, his father, Mohammed Aly, arrived here in April, 1815, and with his more experienced judgment immediately took the proper measures for repairing the errors of his son.

Medina now continues under the government of a Turkish commander; a post filled for a few months by the Scotchman, Thomas Keith, or Ibrahim Aga, whom I have mentioned as being the treasurer of Tousoun Pasha. The Aga el Haram keeps about sixty or eighty soldiers, a motley crew of Turks, Arabs, Moggrebyns, and people of Medina; and all ecclesiastical affairs, and the pecuniary business of the mosque, are left in his hands. Next to him in importance stands the Kadhy, who, in the time of the Wahabys, had been obliged to retire. The Sheikh of the Sherifs, or Sadat, continues to enjoy great respect, as well as several other Sheikhs of the town; and I believe, after all, that the Medinans dislike their present masters, the Turks, less than any other class of the people of the Hedjaz, although they certainly have not yet been cordially reconciled to them.

Prior to the Wahaby invasion, the Sherif of Mekka kept an officer here of inferior rank, to receive some trifling duties upon vegetables, flesh, and other provisions brought to market; the only tax of the kind paid by the Medinans, and the last remnant of the jurisdiction once enjoyed by the Sherif of Mekka over Medina, and which, in later times, has been entirely lost. Sherif Ghaleb had no authority here whatever; but I believe, though I am not quite sure, that he still assumed the nominal superiority, or the title of Chief of Medina; and that Medina was supposed by the Porte to form part of the Hedjaz, under the command of the Sherif of Mekka.

Several respectable Arabian writers affirm, that Medina forms a part of Nedjed, and not of the Hedjaz, situated as it is on the eastern side of the great chain; and this opinion seems to be well founded, if the natural boundary be considered; but, in the common acceptation of the word on the coast, and at Mekka and Medina, the latter town is supposed to form part of the Hedjaz, although the Bedouins of the interior give quite a different meaning to this appellation.

CLIMATE AND DISEASES OF MEDINA.

I FOUND the climate at Medina, during the winter months, much colder than that of Mekka. Snow is unknown here, though I heard that some old people remembered to have seen it in the neighbouring mountains. The rains have no fixed period in winter, but fall at intervals, and usually in violent storms, which last for one day, or perhaps two days, only: sometimes a whole winter passes without more than one fall of rain, excepting a few light showers; the consequence of which is a general dearth. The Medinans say, that three or four gushes of rain are necessary to irrigate their soil; the water of the torrents then inundating many parts of the country, especially the pasturing grounds of the Bedouins. Uninterrupted rains for a week, or longer, such as often occur in Syria, are quite unknown here; and after every gush of rain, which lasts for twenty-four hours, the sky clears up, and the finest spring weather prevails for several weeks. The last storms are usually in April, but occasional showers are not unfrequent even in the middle of summer.

The Medinans, and many foreigners, assert, that the summer-heat is greater here than in any other part of the Hedjaz: I was not able to judge myself. I have already stated that the saline nature of the soil and water, the stagnant pools of rain-water round the town, and perhaps the exhalation and vapours produced by the thick date-groves in its neighbourhood, render the air of Medina little favourable to health.

Fevers are the most common disease, to which many of the inhabitants themselves are subject, and from which strangers who remain here any time seldom escape, especially in spring. Yahya Effendi, the physician of Tousoun Pasha, assured me, when I was sick, that he had eighty persons ill of fever under his care; and it appeared that he was more fortunate in their cure than in mine. The fevers are almost all intermittent, and attended after their cure by great languor: relapses are much dreaded. When I went out after my recovery, I found the streets filled with convalescents, whose appearance but too clearly showed how numerous were my fellow-sufferers in the town. If not cured within a certain time, these fevers often occasion hard swellings in the stomach and legs, which are not removed without great difficulty. The Medinans care little about this intermittent fever, to which they are accustomed, and with them it seldom proves fatal; but the case is otherwise with strangers. In some seasons it assumes an epidemic character, when as many as eighty persons are known to have died in one week; instances of this kind, however, seldom happen.

Dysenteries are said to be rare here. Bilious complaints, and jaundice, are very common. There appears to be in general a much greater mortality here than in any other part of the East that I have visited. My lodgings were very near to one of the principal gates of the mosque, through which the corpses were carried when prayers were to be said over them; and I could hear, from my sick bed, the exclamations of La illah il Allah, with which that ceremony was accompanied. During my three months confinement one funeral at least, and often two, passed every day under my window. If we reckon on the average three bodies per day carried into the mosque through this gate, as well as the others, besides the poor Arabs who die in the suburbs, and over whose bodies prayers are said in the mosque situated in the Monakh, we shall have about twelve hundred deaths annually, in this small town, the whole population of which, I believe to be at most from sixteen to twenty thousand; a mortality which cannot be repaired by births, and would long ago have depopulated the place, did not the arrival of foreigners continually supply the loss. Of this population I reckon about ten or twelve thousand for the town itself, and the rest for the suburbs.

JOURNEY FROM MEDINA TO YEMBO.

April 21st. 1815. OUR small caravan assembled in the afternoon near the outer gate of the town, and at five oclock P.M. we passed through the same gate by which I entered, on my arrival, three months ago. Then I was in full health and spirits, and indulging the fond hopes of exploring unknown and interesting parts of the Desert on my return to Egypt; but now, worn down by lingering disease, dejected, and desponding, with no more anxious wish than to reach a friendly and salubrious spot, where I might regain my health. The ground leading to the town on this side is rocky. About three quarters of an hour distant, the road has a steep short descent, hemmed in by rocks, and is paved, to facilitate the passage of caravans. Our direction was S.W. by S. In one hour we came to the bed of a torrent called Wady el Akyk, which during the late rains had received so copious a supply from the neighbouring mountains, that it had become like a deep and broad river, which our camels could not attempt to pass. As the day was fine, we expected to see it considerably diminished the next morning, and therefore encamped on its banks, at a place called El Madderidje. Here is a small ruined village, the houses of which were well built of stone, with a small birket or reservoir, and a ruined well close by. Its inhabitants cultivate some fields on the bank of Wady Akyk, but the incursions of the Bedouins had obliged them to retire.

Wady Akyk is celebrated by the Arabian poets. [Samhoudy says, that this torrent empties itself into the same low ground called El Ghaba, or Zaghaba, to the west of Medina, in the mountains where all the torrents in this neighbourhood discharge themselves. He says also, that on the banks of this torrent, eastward, stood the small Arab fortification called Kasr el Meradjel; and from thence towards Ghaba the torrent crosses a district called El Nakya. About five miles distant from Medina was a station of the Hadj, called Zyl Haleyfe, situated on the banks of Wady Akyk, with a small castle and a birket, which was rebuilt in A.H. 861. Perhaps this Madderidje is meant by it.] On its banks stand a number of ashour trees, which were now in full flower. We were accompanied thus far by a number of people from Medina, in compliment to one of the Muftis of Mekka, who had been on a visit to the town, and was now returning to his home, intending to leave our caravan at Szafra. He had several tents and women with him. My other fellow-travellers were petty merchants of Medina going to await at Djidda the arrival of the Indian ships, and a rich merchant from Maskat, whom I had seen at Mekka, where he was on the pilgrimage: he had ten camels to carry his women, his infant children, his servants, and his baggage; and he spent, at every station, considerable sums in charity. He appeared, in every respect, a liberal and worthy Arab.

April 22nd. The torrent had decreased, and we crossed it in the afternoon. We rode for an hour in a narrow valley, following the torrent upwards. At the end of an hour and half we left the torrent: the plain opened to the east, and is here called Esselsele; our road over it was in the direction W.S.W. The rocks spread over the plain were calcareous. At the end of three hours and a half we again entered the mountain, and continued in its vallies, slowly descending, for the whole night. At the break of day we passed the plain called El Fereysh, where I had encamped the day before I reached Medina; and alighted, after a march of twelve hours and a half, in the upper part of Wady es Shohada. [The distances of this journey do not exactly agree with those given in coming to Medina; but I prefer stating them as I found them noted down in my journal.]

April 23rd. We had no sooner deposited our baggage than a heavy rain set in, accompanied with tremendous peals of thunder and flashes of lightning. The whole Wady was flooded in a moment, and we expected that it would be necessary to pass the whole day here. I found shelter in the tent of the merchant of Maskat. In the afternoon the storm ceased. At two P.M. we started, and at the end of an hour passed the tombs of the Martyrs or Shohada, the followers of Mohammed, forty of whom, it was said, lie buried there. We continued slowly descending in the Wady, mostly in the direction S.S.W. At the top of Wady Shohada, the granite rocks begin, the upper ranges of that chain being calcareous. At the end of five hours we issued from the Wady. In the night we passed the plains of Shab el Hal and Nazye; and, after a march of thirteen hours and a half, encamped in the mountains, in the wide valley called Wady Medyk, which lies in the road from Nazye to Djedeyde, two hours distant from the former, and which we had passed at night in my former journey. I heard that in these mountains between Medina and the sea, all the way northward, mountain-goats are met with, and that leopards are not uncommon.

April 24th. A few Arabs of Beni Salem here sow some fields with durra, which they irrigate by means of a fine spring of running water issuing from a cleft in the mountains, where it forms several small basins and pretty cascades—the best water I had drank since leaving the mountains of Tayf. We started from hence in the afternoon, and encountered more heavy rain from mid-day to sun-set. In the caravan were several sick and convalescents, especially women, who were all complaining. I had had a strong attack of fever during the night, which returned to-day, and lasted till I reached Yembo. It was particularly distressing to me, being accompanied by profuse perspiration during the night, followed by shivering fits towards day-break; and as the caravan could not halt on my account, I had no opportunity to change my linen. We were, moreover, obliged to encamp upon wet ground; and as the number of camel-drivers was very small, considering the quantity of baggage, I could not avoid assisting to load, my own Bedouin being one of the most ill-natured and lazy fellows I ever met with among people of his nation.

We rode in the winding valley for two hours and a half, to El Kheyf, the beginning of Wady Djedeyde, where the chief of the Turkish post stationed there inquired for news from head-quarters: he had been a whole fortnight without hearing what was done at Medina. During the whole Turkish campaign in the Hedjaz, no regular couriers had been any where established. Tousoun Pasha was often left for months at Medina, ignorant of the state of the army under his father; and even the latter usually received his intelligence from Mekka and Djidda by ordinary conveyances of caravans; expresses were seldom despatched, and still less any regular communication established over land between Cairo and Mekka. Not merely in this respect, but in many other details of warfare, the best Turkish commanders show an incredible want of activity or foresight, which causes the surprise even of Bedouins, and must expose their operations to certain failure whenever they encounter a more vigilant enemy with no disparity of force.

The camp of the soldiers at Kheyf was completely inundated, and the whole breadth of the wady covered with a rapid stream of water. Without stopping any where we passed Djedeyde at the end of three hours and a half, and further on Dar el Hamra, where the inhabitants had cultivated several new plantations, since I passed this way in January. The copious rains were a sure prognostic of a plentiful year, and the ever-recurring questions put to our guides by the people they passed on the road were, whether such and such a spot in the upper country was well drenched with rain. In seven hours we came to Szafra. The party from Mekka that was with us, separated here, having hired their camels only thus far, from whence they intended to take others for the journey to Mekka; and those which had carried them thus far, followed our party to Yembo. All those camels which are engaged in the transport and carriage between the coast and Medina, belong to the Beni Harb tribe.

We remained a few minutes only, about midnight, at Szafra, to drink some coffee in one of the shops, and then continued our road to the westward of the route by which I reached Szafra in coming from Mekka. Thick date-plantations form an uninterrupted line on both sides of the narrow valley in which we slowly descended. After nine hours and a half we passed a village called El Waset, built among the date-groves, and having extensive gardens of fruit-trees in its vicinity. At every step water is found in wells or fountains. A little beyond this village we left the valley to the right, and took our way up a steep mountain, this being a nearer road than that through the valley. The route over the mountain was rocky and steep; our guides obliged us to walk, and it was with difficulty that I mustered strength sufficient to reach the summit; from thence we descended by a less rough declivity, and, after twelve hours march, again fell into the road in the valley, near a small village called Djedyd. The mountain we had crossed has the name of Thenyet Waset. The valley we had left to our right takes a western circuitous tour, and includes several other villages, of which I heard the following mentioned: Hosseynye, (nearest to Waset); then, lower down, Fara and Barake, in the vicinity of Djedyd. Below Waset the the valley is considered as belonging to Wady Beder, and above it to Szafra. Djedyd has very few date-trees and fields; it stands upon a plain, through which the torrent passes, after having irrigated the upper plantations of the wady. We continued on this plain for one hour, direction S. 50 W. After a thirteen hours march we entered a chain of mountains, extending westward, the same which I have mentioned in my journey to Medina, as branching out westward from the great chain near Bir-es-Sheikh. Our road lay in a broad sandy valley, with little windings, which brought us, after a very fatiguing march of fourteen hours and a half, to Beder.

April 25th. Beder, or as it is also called, Beder Honeyn, is a small town, the houses of which are built either of stone or mud, and of better appearance, although less numerous, than those of Szafra. It is surrounded by a miserable mud wall, ruined in many places. A copious rivulet flows through the town, which rises in the ridge of mountains we had just passed, and is conducted in a stone channel: it waters extensive date-groves, with gardens and fields on the south-west side of the place; and, although at a distance from its source, is still somewhat tepid. El Assamy, the historian of Mekka, says that El Ghoury, Sultan of Egypt, built a fine reservoir at Beder, for the Hadj; but I did not see it, and am ignorant whether it be yet in existence.

Beder is situated in a plain bounded towards the N. and E. by steep mountains; to the S. by rocky hills, and to the W. by hills of moving sand. The Hadj caravans usually make this a station; and we found the place where they had encamped just by the gate of the town, four months ago, still covered with carcases of camels, rags of clothes, and remains of broken utensils, &c. Beder is famous in Arabian history for the battle fought here by Mohammed, in the second year of the Hedjra, with a superior force of the Koreysh Arabs, who had come in aid of a rich caravan expected from Syria, which Mohammed intended to waylay on this spot. Although very ill, I walked out with the Maskat hadjys, to inspect the field of battle, to which we were guided by a man from Beder. To the south of the town, about one mile distant, at the foot of the hills, are the tombs of the thirteen followers and friends of the Prophet, who fell by his side. They are mere heaps of earth, enclosed by a row of loose stones, and are all close together. The Koreysh, as our guide explained to us, were posted upon the hill behind the tombs, while Mohammed had divided his small force into two parts, with one of which he himself advanced in the plain against the enemy, and the reserve was entrusted to Aly ibn Aby Taleb, with orders to take his post upon the sand-hill on the western side. The battle could not be won without the interposition of heaven; and three thousand angels, with Gabriel at their head, were sent to Mohammeds assistance. The above-mentioned thirteen persons were slain in the first onset. The Prophet, hard pressed, hid himself behind a large rock, which opened miraculously to admit him, and enabled him to reach his reserve; he then made a second attack, and with the heavenly auxiliaries was victorious, not losing another man, although seventy of his adversaries were killed on the spot. A handful of stones, or dust, which he (or according to the Koran, which God) threw towards his enemies, caused them to fly. After he had forced their position, he rested a little upon a stone, which, sensible of the honour, forthwith assumed the form of a seat. The rock and the stone are shown; and, at all events answer one good purpose, which is to excite the visiters charity towards the poor of Beder, who assemble at it whenever a caravan arrives. The position of Alys troop upon the distant hill, that of the party of Mohammed close to the enemy, and the plain beyond that hill, where the caravan from Syria pursued its route during the battle, are made to explain the passage of the Koran, which alludes to it thus; You were on the nearer side of the valley, and they on the further side, and the caravan was below, (Sur. 8.): but I could not well understand that passage, according to the usual interpretation; and rather believe that by the word rukb, which is taken here as synonymous with caravan, the party of horsemen under Aly must be understood, whose position, although upon a hill, was, with relation to Beder, a low one, the ground descending slightly. Several small domes, which had been erected here, were ruined by the Wahabys. In returning to the village, we walked, on its south side, into the mosque called Mesdjed el Ghemáme, built on the spot where Mohammed once sat exposed to the suns rays, and prayed to God for a cloud which might overshadow him; this was immediately granted; and the mosque derives its name from the cloud. It is better built and more spacious than might be expected in such a poor place.

The market of Beder is furnished with the same articles as that of Szafra. Some water-melons, the produce of the gardens, were offered for sale. The Maskat merchant purchased, without my knowledge, five pounds of Mekka balsam, all that remained in the market, which he intended for a present to the Imám of Maskat. It was in the same adulterated state as that I had formerly seen at Szafra. The inhabitants of Beder are chiefly Bedouins of the tribe of Sobh, belonging to Harb, some of whom have become settlers here. Others only have their shops here, and return every evening to the tents of their family in the neighbouring mountains. Beder being a place much frequented by Bedouins and travellers, the houses are in great request, and a small shop in the market pays as much as twenty dollars a year rent. Some Sherif families are also established here, to whom the Hadj pays at passing considerable stipends.

In the evening several hundred camels belonging to Bedouins came to be watered at the rivulet, escorted principally by women, who freely entered into conversation with us. The Beni Harb established at Djedeyde, Szafra, and Beder, give their daughters in marriage to strangers, and even to settlers; and a few Turkish soldiers, attracted by the beauty of some Bedouin girls, had fixed themselves here, and married them: one of them, an Arnaut, who spoke good Arabic, and had been accustomed from his youth to the wild life of warlike mountaineers, intended to follow his young wife to the mountain. In the neighbouring mountains are immense numbers of the eagle (rakham); hundreds of them were constantly hovering about us; and some actually pounced down, and carried off the meat from our dishes.

April 26th. We had remained here the whole of yesterday. Some people of Beder kept watch at night over our caravan, for which they received a small compliment. This place abounds with robbers, and we were encamped outside the gate of the town. We left Beder in the evening, and took a direction N. 45 W. After proceeding for three quarters of an hour, we came to the ridge of sand-hills above mentioned, the highest summit of which is called Goz Aly, in memory of the position occupied there by Aly, during the battle of Beder. We crossed these hills for half an hour with difficulty, the sands being very deep, and then descended into the great western plain, extending as far as the sea, which is reached from Beder in one nights march, at a small harbour, south of Yembo, called Bereyke, much frequented by shipping. The plain, which we entered in the direction W. 1 N. is overgrown with shrubs. During our night-march we saw the fires of different Bedouin encampments. We met two negro pilgrims, who had started from Yembo by themselves, and were in great distress for water: we gave them both meat and drink, and directed them towards the Bedouin encampments. Without a compass, these enterprising travellers find their route across deserts: the direction of the road is shown to them at starting, and they pursue it in a straight line by night and by day, until they arrive at the destined spot. After a ride of ten hours from Beder, we encamped at the break of day in a part of the plain, where low acacia-trees grow, called adheyba.

April 27. I found myself in a very low state this morning. Violent vomiting and profuse sweats had rendered the last night one of the most disagreeable nights I passed in my travels. A quarrel with my guide, about victuals, further increased my fever to-day, to which perhaps the late relaxation of my nerves through illness contributed. To our right, northwards, about six hours distant, a chain of high mountains extends towards the sea. Nearer to us a lower ridge takes the same direction. The plain upon which we encamped is sandy, covered with small pebbles and petrosilex. We set out after mid-day. Four hours and a half, direction N.W. by N., trees and shrubs are no longer seen; a few saline shrubs only indicate the proximity of the sea; and a little further on, the ground becomes covered with a salt crust, while the air is strongly impregnated with sea-vapours. At the end of seven hours and a half, we again found some trees in the plain, interspersed with salt-increased spots. At fourteen hours, having travelled the whole night over bad ground, we saw Yembo at sun-rise; and after a ride of fifteen hours and a half, at a very slow pace, we reached the gate of the town: just before it we crossed an inlet of the harbour, it being then low water, but which extends to a considerable distance inland at high tide.

YEMBO.

IT was with some difficulty that I could find a room in one of the okales or khans of the town, which were filled with soldiers, who had received permission to return to Cairo, after their last expedition against the southern Wahabys, and had come here from Djidda and Mekka; and, besides them, there were many hadjys, who, after their return from Medina, intended to embark for Suez or Cosseir. Among the latter was the lady of Mohammed Aly Pasha, who had arrived from Medina; for the transport of whose escort, suite, and baggage, four ships were in a state of preparation. After having deposited my baggage in an airy room, on the terrace of an okale, I walked towards the harbour, to inquire about a passage to Egypt. This, I soon understood, it was impossible to obtain at present. Positive orders had been given, that none should embark but soldiers, who had already engaged three or four ships, then ready to sail; and of whom upwards of fifteen hundred, including many Turkish hadjys, who passed for soldiers, being armed and dressed like them, were still waiting for conveyances.

While I was sitting in a coffee-house near the harbour, three funerals passed at short intervals; and upon expressing my surprise at this, I learned that many people had died within these few days of feverish complaints. I had heard, when at Beder, that a bad fever prevailed at Yembo, but then paid little attention to the report. During the rest of the day I saw several other funerals, but had not the slightest idea to what so many deaths were to be attributed, till night, when I had retired to my room up-stairs, which overlooked a considerable part of the town; I then heard, in every direction, innumerable voices breaking out in those heart-rending cries which all over the Levant, accompany the parting breath of a friend or relative. At that moment the thought flashed upon my mind, that it might be the plague: I attempted, in vain, to dispel my apprehensions, or at least to drown them in sleep; but the dreadful cries kept me awake the whole night. When I descended early in the morning into the okale, where many Arabs were drinking their coffee, I communicated to them my apprehensions; but had no sooner mentioned the word plague, than they called me to order, asking me if I was ignorant that the Almighty had for ever excluded that disorder from the holy territory of the Hedjaz? Such an argument admits of no reply among Moslims; I therefore walked out, in search of some Greek Christians, several of whom I had seen the day before, in the street, and from them I received a full confirmation of my fears. The plague had broken out ten days ago: it had been raging at Cairo with the greatest fury for several months; and at Suez a large part of the population had died: from that port two ships laden with cotton stuffs had carried it to Djidda, and from thence it was communicated to Yembo. No instance of the plague had ever before been witnessed in the Hedjaz, at least none within the memory of man; and the inhabitants could with difficulty persuade themselves that such an event had occurred, especially at a time when the holy cities had been reconquered from the Wahabys. The intercourse with Egypt had not at any time been greater than now, and it was, therefore, no wonder that this scourge should be carried to the Hedjaz. While ten or fifteen people only died per day, the Arabs of the town could not believe that the disease was the plague, although the usual appearance of the biles upon the bodies of the infected, and the rapid progress of the disorder, which seldom lasted more than three or four days, might have been convincing proofs. In five or six days after my arrival the mortality increased; forty or fifty persons died in a day, which, in a population of five or six thousand, was a terrible mortality. The inhabitants now felt a panic: little disposed to submit as patiently to the danger as the Turks do in every other part of the East, the greater part of them fled into the open country, and the town became deserted; but the disease followed the fugitives, who had encamped close together; and thus finding no remedy to the evil, many of them returned. They excused their flight by saying, God in his mercy sends this disease, to call us to his presence; but we are conscious of our unworthiness, and feel that we do not deserve his grace; therefore, we think it better to decline it, for the present, and to fly from it: an argument which I heard frequently repeated. Had I been myself in full strength, I should, no doubt, have followed their example and gone into the Desert; but I felt extremely weak, and incapable of any exertions. I thought also that I might escape the disease, shut up in my insulated room, and indulged moreover the hope of a speedy passage to Egypt; in the latter, however, I was deceived. By making a few presents, and a little bribery, I might perhaps have found means to embark forthwith; but the vessels now ready to sail were crowded to excess, and full of diseased soldiers, so that a stay in the infected town was to be preferred to a departure by such a conveyance. Some days after, I learnt that a small open boat, free from troops, was ready to sail for Cosseir, and I immediately agreed for a passage on board it; but its sailing was delayed from day to day, until the fifteenth of May, when I finally left Yembo, after a stay of eighteen days in the midst of the plague.

It was, perhaps, my own bad state of health, and the almost uninterrupted low fever under which I laboured, that preserved me; for, notwithstanding all my care, I was many times exposed to infection. The great street of Yembo was lined with sick, in the very agonies of death, asking for charity; in the yard of the okale where I lived, an Arab was dying; the master of the okale lost a sister and a son in his own family, and related to me, as he sat on my carpet, how his son died the preceding night in his arms. The imprudence of my slave likewise counteracted all my measures of precaution. Having missed him for several days early in the morning, I inquired the cause of his absence, when he told me that he had gone to assist in washing the dead bodies. The poor who died during the night were exposed in the morning upon biers, on the sea-shore, to be washed before the ceremony of praying over them in the mosque; and my slave thought it meritorious to join in this office, which had devolved upon several negro pilgrims, who happened to be at Yembo. I desired him to remain at home, for the future, at that hour, to prepare my breakfast; but I was as little able to prevent his walking out at other times, as I could myself dispense with that duty; and one could scarcely pass the bazar without touching infected people, or at least those who had been in close contact with them.

The sense of the danger which then threatened me is much greater, now that I find myself far removed from it, than I felt it at the time. After the first four or five days, I became tolerably familiarized with the idea of the plague, and compared the small numbers who died every day with the mass of the remaining inhabitants. The great many cases of persons remaining in full health, notwithstanding the closest connexion with the deceased, considerably removed the apprehensions of the malady being communicated by infection; and example works so powerfully on the mind, that when I saw the number of foreigners then in the town quite unconcerned, I began to be almost ashamed of myself for possessing less courage than they displayed. The disease seemed, however, to be of the most malignant kind; very few of those who were attacked, escaped, and the same was observed at Djidda. The Arabs used no kind of medicine; I heard of a few people having been bled, and of others having been cured by applying a drawing-plaster to the neck; but these were rare instances, which were not imitated by the great mass. As it is the custom to bury the dead in a very few hours after decease, two instances occurred during my stay at Yembo, of persons supposed dead being buried alive: the stupor into which they fell when the disorder was at a crisis, had been mistaken for death. One of them gave signs of life at the moment they were depositing him in the grave, and was saved: the body of the other, when his tomb was re-opened several days after his burial, to admit the corpse of a near relation, was found with bloody hands and face, and the winding-sheet torn, by the unavailing efforts he had made to rise. On seeing this, the people said, that the devil, being unable to hurt his soul, had thus disfigured his body.

The governor of Yembo took great care that the exact amount of the mortality in the town should not be known; but the solemn exclamations of La illaha ill Allah, which indicate a Moslim funeral, struck the ear from every side and quarter of the town, and I counted myself forty-two in one day. To the poor the plague becomes a real feast; every family that can afford it, kills a sheep on the death of any of its members, and the day after, the men and women of the whole neighbourhood are entertained at the house. The women enter the apartments, embrace and console all the females of the family, and expose themselves every moment to infection. It is to this custom, more than any other cause, that the rapid dissemination of the plague in Mohammedan towns must be ascribed; for when the disease once breaks out in a family, it never fails of being transmitted to the whole neighbourhood.

It is a common belief among Europeans, and even eastern Christians, that the Mohammedan religion forbids any precautionary measures against the plague; but this is erroneous. That religion forbids its followers from avoiding the disease if it has once entered a town or country; but it warns them at the same time, not to enter any place where the plague rages: and it accordingly forbids individuals to shut themselves up in a house, and to cut off all communication with the rest of the infected town, because this is the same as flying from the plague; but it favours measures of quarantine, to prevent the importation of the disease, or its communication to strangers upon their arrival. The belief in predestination, however, is so deeply and universally rooted in the minds of the eastern nations, that not the slightest measures of safety are any where adopted. The numberless extraordinary instances of the disease sparing those who have come into closest contact with it, confirm them in their opinion that it is not epidemic; and their prophet Mohammed has declared to them, that the plague is caused by the demons hostile attack upon mankind, and that those who die of it are martyrs. The universal opinion prevails among Moslims, that an invisible angel of death, armed with a lance, touches the victims he destines for the plague, whom he finds out in the most hidden recesses. The trunk of a palm-tree lay in one of the streets of Yembo, and it had been observed that many people who had stepped over it, had soon after been seized with the plague; it was therefore believed that the demon had there taken his favourite stand, to wound the passer-by; and therefore the Arabs took a circuitous road, to avoid their foe, although they were persuaded that he was light-footed and could overtake them wherever they went.

That the Christians and Franks escape the disease by shutting themselves up in their houses, affords but a feeble proof to the contrary. Imprudence, and the tardy adoption of these measures, always cause a slight mortality even among them; and such cases are afterwards adduced in proof of the folly of attempting to oppose the decrees of Providence. Besides, there are many Christians in the East, who follow Turkish maxims, and, impressed with the same notions of predestination, think it superfluous to take any steps for their safety. Turks trifle with so many of the prescribed duties of their religion, that it might not, perhaps, be difficult, in this instance, to make them adopt rational opinions; and the more so, as the Koran is silent upon this head: but no private measures can be adopted, and rigidly observed, as long as every individual, almost, is convinced in his own mind of their folly and inefficacy. If this were not universally the case, the Turks themselves would, long ago, have found means of resorting to prophylactics, in spite of their religious doctrines; as the Arabs now did in the Hedjaz; and their olemas would have furnished them with fetwas, and quotations from the law, in favour of what their good sense might have led them to adopt. In the Hadyth, or sacred traditions, a saying of Mohammed is recorded: Fly from the leprous, as thou flyest from the lion.

The case is different, respecting the means of preventing the plague from being imported, or to establish regular quarantines. This is a measure depending entirely upon the government. The most fanatic and orthodox Muselmans, those of the Barbary states, have adopted this system; and the laws of quarantine are as strictly enforced in their harbours, as they are in the European ports on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. That a similar system has not been introduced into Turkey is matter of deep concern, and may be attributed rather to motives of interest, than to bigotry. Constantinople, and the ports of the Archipelago, I have not visited myself; but I know that it would be easy for the governors of Syria, and still more for the governor of Egypt, to use their authority in introducing a system of quarantine on the coast, without any dread of opposition from their subjects. The governments of Syria, however, must be guided in such matters by the Porte, and would hardly attempt to establish quarantine, without the authority of their sovereign: but Mohammed Aly has often acted directly contrary to the orders of the Porte, even in matters affecting his sovereigns pecuniary interest; and we may believe that it is not solely the fear of displeasing his master, which has prevented him from listening to the frequent friendly advice and representations made to him on this subject by European powers; and, at the same time, his loose religious principles are too well known, to suppose that bigotry restrains him from yielding to their solicitations.

While for four succeeding years, from 1812 to 1816, the plague has every spring made ravages in Egypt, Mohammed Aly himself, with his family and principal officers, have been shut up in their palaces with scrupulous care; thus offering infinitely more scandal to the people than they would have done by the establishment of quarantine regulations. Wishing, however, to be considered by Europeans as a liberally-thinking man, devoid of any prejudices, he had really given orders, in 1813 and 1814, to establish a quarantine at Alexandria; but the shameful manner in which it was conducted, clearly proved that he had no sincere wish to guard his subjects from the horrors of infection; and the whole scheme was soon after abandoned. My own inquiries, and the opinion of many Turks themselves, who judge of the measures of their own government much better than is generally supposed, have led me to believe, that the Grand Signior, as well as his Pashas, tolerate the plague in their dominions, because the numerous deaths fill their purses: with respect to Egypt, I hold this to be indisputably the secret cause. The commercial towns of Cairo, Alexandria, and Damietta, are crowded with foreign merchants, and other strangers from all quarters of the East are established there: according to the law, the property of all persons who have no near heirs to claim it, falls to the Beit el Mál; a treasury, formerly destined for purposes beneficial to the subjects, but now entirely at the private disposal of the governors. The increased mortality thus causes great sums to fall into their hands. The prefect of every quarter of the town must, under the heaviest penalties, inform the government of any stranger or individual without heirs who dies within his district; and not only is the property of such people seized, but even that of those persons whose heirs, although known, are absent in foreign countries, and to whom no other privilege is granted, in return, than that of addressing their unavailing claims to the same governor, who converts the income of the Beit el Mál to his own use. The most flagrant injustice is committed with respect to the property of deceased persons, as well during the plague as at other times; and the Kadhy, with a whole train of olemas, officers, and people in inferior employments, share in the illegal spoil. In the same manner the property of military officers, and of many soldiers, is sequestrated at their death. Upon a moderate calculation, the plague this year in Egypt, which carried off in the city of Cairo alone from thirty to forty thousand, added twenty thousand purses, or ten millions of piastres, to the coffers of the Pasha, a sum large enough to stifle any feelings of humanity in the breast of a Turk. That the population has diminished, and consequently the regular revenues suffered, is a reflection which a Turkish governor never makes, who calculates merely the immediate consequences of an event; and, provided he be safe himself, and his wealth increasing, cares little for the fate of his subjects. As the plague seldom visits the open country, and therefore does not deprive the soil of its labourers, its effects are less dreaded by the Pasha. He will never be convinced that policy, as well as humanity, dictates a removal of the causes of plague, until he has seen a whole province depopulated, and the fields which yield him his revenues deserted. [The little care taken by the government in Egypt for preserving the lives of the subject is evinced in an equally strange manner, by the neglect with which the small-pox is treated; a disease that makes as great ravages in Upper Egypt as ever the plague could do, which, itself seldom visits those southern provinces. The numerous representations made to Mohammed Aly for the introduction of vaccination have been of no avail, though, if he had chosen to inquire, he might have known that in 1813, in the small town of Esne alone, upwards of two hundred and fifty persons, adults and children, fell victims to the small-pox, the violence of which is much greater in these climates than in Europe.]

It should seem as if Constantinople and Cairo were the great receptacles of plague in the East, communicating it mutually to each other, and to the neighbouring countries. How far the joint and energetic representations of European powers might induce the Grand Signior to adopt measures of safety for his capital, and to insure by that means the safety of the population of European Turkey and Anatolia, I am unable to decide; but I have little doubt, that a firm remonstrance from the English government would induce the Pasha of Egypt to obey the call of humanity, and thus benefit Egypt, as well as Syria and the English possessions in the Mediterranean.

The ravages of the plague were still more deplorable at Djidda than at Yembo; as many as two hundred and fifty persons died there per day. Great numbers of the inhabitants fled to Mekka, thinking to be safe in that sacred asylum; but they carried the disease with them, and a number of Mekkans died, although much less in proportion than at Djidda. Even the Kadhy of Djidda, an Arab, made his escape to Mekka, with all his olemas; but Hassan Pasha, then governor of the holy city, ordered him, under pain of death, to return immediately to his post; and he died on the road. The principal marketstreet of Djidda was quite deserted, and numbers of families were entirely destroyed. As a great many foreign merchants were then in Djidda, their property considerably increased Mohammed Alys treasure; and I heard from eye-witnesses, that the only business then done in the town was the transport of corpses to the burial-ground, and that of the deceaseds valuable property to the house of the commandant. Medina remained free from the plague, as did the open country between Yembo and Djidda.

I shall mention here a particular custom of the Arabs. When the plague had reached its height at Yembo, the Arab inhabitants led in procession through the town a she-camel, thickly covered with all sorts of ornaments, feathers, bells, &c. &c.: when they reached the burialground, they killed it, and threw its flesh to the vultures and the dogs. They hoped that the plague, dispersed over the town, would hasten to take refuge in the body of the camel, and that by slaughtering the victim, they would get rid at once of the disease. Many of the more sensible Arabs laughed at this; but it was so far of some use, that it inspired the lower classes with courage.

The town of Yembo is built on the northern side of a deep bay, which affords good anchorage for ships, and is protected from the violence of the wind by an island at its entrance. The ships lie close in shore, and the harbour is spacious enough to contain the largest fleet. The town is divided by a creek of the bay into two parts; the largest division is called exclusively Yembo; the other, on the western side, bears the name of El Kad, and is principally inhabited by seafaring people. Both divisions have the sea in front, and are enclosed on the other sides by a common wall, of considerable strength, better built than those of Djidda, Tayf, and Medina. It is flanked by many towers and was erected by the joint labour of the inhabitants themselves, as a defence against the Wahabys, the ancient wall being ruined, and enclosing only a part of the town. The new wall comprises an area almost double the space occupied by habitations, leaving between it and the latter, large open squares, which are either used as burial-grounds, encamping-places for caravans, for the exercising of troops, or are abandoned as waste ground. The extent of the wall would require a large garrison to defend it at all points; the whole armed population of Yembo is inadequate to it: but Eastern engineers always estimate the strength of a fortification by its size; and with the same view a thick wall and deep ditch have been lately carried along the outskirts of the old town of Alexandria, which it would require at least twenty-five thousand men to defend.

Yembo has two gates towards the east and north; Bab el Medina, and Bab el Masry. The houses of the town are worse built than those of any other town in the Hedjaz. Their structure is so coarse, that few of the stones with which they are built have their surfaces hewn smooth. The stone is calcareous, full of fossils, and of a glaring white colour, which renders the view of the town particularly distressing to the eyes. Most of the houses have only a ground-floor. Except three or four badly-built mosques, a few half-ruined public khans, and the house of the governor on the sea-side, (also a mean building), there is no large edifice in the place.

Yembo is a complete Arab town; very few foreigners are settled here: of Indians, who have such numerous colonies at Mekka, Djidda, and Medina, two or three individuals only are found as shopkeepers; all the merchants being Arabs, except a few Turks, who occasionally take up a temporary residence. Most of the inhabitants belong to the Bedouin tribe of Djeheyne, in this neighbourhood, (which extends northward along the sea-shore), many of whom have become settlers: several families of Sherifs, originally from Mekka, have mixed with them. The settlers in this town, or, as they are called, the Yembawys, continue to live and dress like Bedouins. They wear the keffie, or green and yellow striped silk handkerchief, on the head, and a white abba on their shoulder, with a gown of blue linen, or coloured cotton, or silk stuff, under it, which they tie close with a leathern girdle. Their eating, and whole mode of living, their manners and customs, are those of Bedouins. The different branches of the Djeheyne tribe established here have each their sheikh: they quarrel with each other as often as they might do if encamping in the open country, and observe the same laws in their hostilities and their blood-revenge as the Bedouins.

The principal occupation of the Yembawys is trade and navigation. The town possesses about forty or fifty ships, engaged in all branches of the Red Sea trade, and navigated by natives of the town, or slaves. The intercourse between Yembo and Egypt is very frequent. Many Yembawys are settled at Suez and Cosseir, and some at Cairo and Kenne in Upper Egypt, from whence they trade with their native place. Others trade with the Bedouins of the Hedjaz, and on the shores of the Red Sea, as far Moeyleh, and exchange in their encampments the provisions brought to Yembo from Egypt, for cattle, butter, and honey, which they sell again at a great profit upon their return to the town.

The people of Yembo are less civil, and of more rude and sometimes wild behaviour, than those of Djidda or Mekka, but, on the other hand, their manners are much more orderly, and they are less addicted to vice than the latter, and enjoy, generally, over the Hedjaz, all the advantages of a respectable name. Although there are no individuals of great wealth in the town, every body seems to enjoy more ease and plenty than even at Mekka. Almost all the respectable families of Yembo have a country-house in the fruitful valley called Yembo el Nakhel, or Gara Yembo, or Yembo el Berr, about six or seven hours distance from. hence, at the foot of the mountains, in a N.E. direction. It is similar to the valleys of Djedeyde [There is a road, of difficult passage, from Yembo el Nakhel to Djedeyde, over the mountains to the north of the great road.] and Szafra, where date-trees grow, and fields are cultivated. It extends about seven hours in length, and contains upwards of a dozen hamlets, scattered on the side of the mountain. The principal of these is Soueyga, the market-place, where the great Sheikh of the Djeheyne resides, who is acknowledged as such by the Bedouins of that tribe, as well as by the people of Yembo.

The valley of Yembo is cultivated exclusively by Djeheyne, who have either become settlers, and remain there the whole year, or keep a few labourers in their plantations, while they themselves remain encamped in the mountain, and reside in the valley only at the time of the date-harvest, when all the Yembawys who possess gardens there, likewise repair for a month to the same place. All kinds of fruits are cultivated there, with which the market of Yembo is supplied. The houses, I heard, are built of stone, and of a better appearance than those of Djedeyde. The Yembawys consider this valley as their original place of abode, to which the town and harbour belong as a colony. The Egyptian Hadj route passes by Yembo el Nakhel, from whence it makes one nights journey to Beder: this caravan, therefore, never touches the harbour of Yembo, although many individuals of it, in returning from Mekka, take from Mastoura the road to Yembo, to transact some business in the town, and rejoin the caravan at one days journey north of Yembo.

The trade of Yembo consists chiefly in provisions: no great warehouses of goods are found here; but, in the shops, some Indian and Egyptian articles of dress are exposed for sale. The ship-owners are not, as at Djidda, merchants, but merely carriers; yet they always invest their profits in some little mercantile speculation. The transport trade to Medina occupies many people, and all the merchants of that town have their agents among the Arabs of Yembo. In time of peace, the caravan for Medina starts every fortnight; lately, from the want of camels, it departed only every month. There are often conveyances by land for Djidda and Mekka, and sometimes for Wodjeh and Moeyleh, the fortified stations of the Egyptian caravan on the Red Sea. The people of Yembo are very daring smugglers, and no ship of theirs enters the harbour without a considerable part of its cargo being sent on shore by stealth, to elude the heavy duties. Parties of twenty or thirty men, well armed, repair to the harbour at night, for this purpose, and if detected, often resist the custom-house officers by open force.

The skirts of the town are entirely barren, no trees or verdure are seen, either within or without the walls. Beyond the salt-ground, next to the sea, the plain is covered with sand, and continues so as far as the mountains. To the N.E. is seen a high mountain, from whence the great chain takes a more western course towards Beder. I believe this to be the mountain of Redoua, which the Arabian geographers often mention. Samhoudy places it at one days journey from Yembo, and four days from Medina. About one hour to the east of the town is a cluster of wells of sweet water, called Aseylya, which are made to irrigate a few melon-fields. Bedouins sometimes encamp there; at this time a corps of Turkish cavalry had pitched their tents near these wells.

In the town are several wells of brackish water, but no cisterns. The supply of water for drinking is obtained from some large cisterns, at about five minutes walk from the Medina gate, where the rainwater is collected. Small canals have been dug across the neighbouring plains, to convey the streams of rain-water to these cisterns. They are spacious, well-cased, subterranean reservoirs, and some of them large enough to supply the whole town for several weeks. They are the property of private families, whose ancestors built them, and who sell the water, at certain prices, fixed by the governor, who also exacts a tax from each of them. The water is excellent, much better than that of any other town of the Hedjaz, where the inhabitants are not industrious enough to form similar cisterns. When the winter-rains fail, the inhabitants of Yembo suffer severely, and are obliged to fill their water-skins at the distant wells of Aseylya.

Yembo was formerly annexed to the government of the Sherif of Mekka, who ought to have divided the receipts at the custom-house with the Turkish Pasha of Djidda. Ghaleb appropriated it entirely to his own treasury, and kept here a vizier, or governor, with a guard of about fifty or sixty men. He appears to have had little other authority than that of collecting the customs, while the Arabs of the town were left to the government of their own Sheikhs, and enjoyed much greater liberty than the people of Mekka and Djidda. The powerful tribe of Djeheyne was not to be trifled with by the Sherif; and whenever a man of Yembo was unjustly persecuted, he flew to his relations in the Desert, who retorted the oppression upon some of the Sherifs people or caravans until the matter was compromised.

When Saoud, the Wahaby chief, attacked the northern parts of the Hedjaz, his first endeavours were to reduce the two great Bedouin tribes Beni Harb and Beni Djeheyne to submission; which was greatly facilitated by the hatred and animosity that had always existed between those tribes, who were frequently at war with each other. After the Djeheyne had surrendered, and Yembo el Nakhel had received a garrison of Wahaby soldiers, Saoud attacked Yembo, for the first time, in 1802, with a considerable force, which remained encamped before it for several weeks, and repeatedly attempted to carry it by assault. After his retreat, the Yembawys built the new strong wall round the town, by order of the Sherif, who made them bear the whole expense of the work. After Sherif Ghaleb himself had submitted to the superior power of Saoud, who took possession of Mekka, Yembo still held out for some months; and it was not till a strong army was preparing to attack it, and the Vizier himself had fled, that the Yembawys sent a messenger to Saoud, and capitulated, adopting at the same time his creed. The Wahabys did not place a garrison in the town; the Sherif continued to keep his governor there: but the Wahaby tax-gatherers came; and the inhabitants, who, except customhouse duties, had never before been subject to any imposts, found the government of the Wahabys press very heavily upon them.

In the autumn of 1811, when the Turkish army under Tousoun Pasha effected its first landing near the town, the Yembawys were very willing to shake off the government both of the Sherif and the Wahabys; and the officers of Ghaleb and Saoud then in the town fled, and, after a trifling show of resistance, the two first days, by Ghalebs commander, who had but a few soldiers with him, and who soon saw that the spirit of the inhabitants was wholly against fighting, the town opened its gates, and experienced some slight injuries from the disorderly Turkish soldiers. Since that time Yembo has been garrisoned by them, and was made the commissariat depot of the Turkish army employed against the enemy in the neighbourhood of Medina. The soldiers, being at a distance from the Pasha, or his son, behaved with much more irregularity than they dared to do either at Djidda or Mekka. Every Bimbashy, or commander of a company, who landed here with his soldiers, assumed, during his stay, the government of the town; while the real governor, Selym Aga, who had but a few soldiers under him, was often reduced to a mere cipher. Several affrays happened during my stay, and the inhabitants were extremely exasperated. A Turkish officer shot, with his pistol, in the open street in mid-day, a young Arab, to whom he had for some time been making infamous proposals; he committed this murder with the greatest composure, in revenge for his refusal, and then took refuge in the quarters of a Bimbashy, whose soldiers were called out to defend him against the fury of the populace. The relations of the Arab hastened to Medina to ask the life of the aggressor from Mohammed Aly Pasha; I left Yembo before the affair was settled.

The Yembawys are all armed, although they seldom appear so in public, and they carry usually a heavy bludgeon in their hand. A few of them keep horses; the Djeheyne established at Yembo el Nakhel have good breeds of Nedjed horses, though in small numbers. Asses are kept by every family, to bring water to the town. The want of servants and day-labourers is felt here still more than in the other towns of the Hedjaz. No Yembawy will engage in any menial labour, if he has the smallest chance of providing for his existence by other means. Egyptian peasants, left on this coast after their pilgrimage, and obliged to earn money for their passage home, engage themselves as porters and labourers, bring wood, water, &c. I have seen a piastre and a half paid to a man for carrying a load the distance of five hundred yards from the shore to a house.

Yembo is the cheapest place in the Hedjaz with regard to provisions; and as it possesses good water, and appears to be in a much more healthy situation than Djidda, a residence in it might be tolerable, were it not for the incredible quantity of flies that haunt this coast. No person walks out without a straw fan in his hand to drive off these vermin; and it is utterly impossible to eat, without swallowing some of them, which enter the mouth the moment it is opened. Clouds of them are seen passing over the town; they settle even upon the ships that sail out of the harbour, and remain on board during the whole voyage.

FROM YEMBO TO CAIRO.

I EMBARKED at Yembo on the morning of the 15th of May, in an open sambouk, or large boat, bound to Cosseir, there to load with corn; the Reys or master was the son of the owner, a native of Yembo. I had agreed for my own and my slaves passage from hence to Cosseir at five dollars, two dollars being the usual charge paid by hadjys, and one dollar by poor people and servants. The government allowed the ship-owners only half a dollar per head for the transport of soldiers. As the partner of the commander of Yembo had a share in this boat, it was allowed to proceed without soldiers, and the Reys had told me that there were only a dozen Arab passengers on board. In making me pay two dollars more than the usual fare, he had agreed to let me have a small place behind the steerage to myself. When I came on board, however, I found that I had been deceived; above thirty passengers, principally Syrians and Egyptians, were crowded together in the boat, with about ten sailors. The Reys, his younger brother, the pilot, and the steward, had established themselves in the place behind the helm for which I had agreed. To revisit Yembo, the abode of death, was not advisable; and as I saw no appearance of plague on board, I submitted to my lot without any unavailing dispute. We immediately set sail, keeping close in shore. In the evening I saw that my situation was much worse than I had suspected it to be when I came on board; in the hold were lying half a dozen sick people, two of whom were in a violent delirium; the Reyss young brother, who had his seat close to me, was paid to attend the sick; one of them died on the following day, and the body was thrown overboard. Little doubt remained of the plague being actually in the ship, though the sailors insisted that it was a different malady. On the third day, the boy, the Reyss brother, felt great pains in his head, and, struck with the idea of the plague, he insisted on being set on shore. We were then in a small bay; the Reys yielded to his entreaties, and agreed with a Bedouin on shore to carry him back on his camel to Yembo. He was landed, and I am ignorant of his fate. The only precaution I could take against infection, was to place my baggage round me, so as to form an insulated spot in which I had just room enough to sit at my ease; but notwithstanding this, I was compelled to come in contact every moment with the ships company. Very luckily the disease did not spread; we had only another death, on the fifth day from our departure, though several of the passengers were seized with the malady, which I cannot possibly affirm to have been the plague, as I did not examine the corpses, but every thing led me to that belief. The continual sea-sickness and vomiting of the passengers were, perhaps, to them a salutary operation of nature. As to myself, I was in a very low state of health the whole of the voyage, and frequently tormented with my ague, which was increased by the utter want of comforts on board. I had taken a disgust to all food, excepting broths: whenever we entered a port, I bought a sheep of the Bedouins, in order to have a dish of soup; and by distributing the meat among the ships people, I obtained their good-will, so that in every instance I was well treated by them; and could command their assistance whenever I stood in need of it, either to raise a temporary awning every morning, or to fill my water-skins on shore.

The navigation is here the same as what I have already described in my voyage from Sowakin to Djidda. We went into a harbour every evening, never sailing during the night, and started again at day-break. If it was known that no small creek or harbour lay before us, near enough to be reached before sun-set with the then existing wind, we sometimes stopped at an anchoring-place soon after mid-day. Unfortunately, the ships boat had been carried away by a heavy sea, in a preceding voyage; we therefore could seldom get on shore, excepting at places where we found other vessels, whose boats we took, as we usually anchored in deep water. The sailors showed as great cowardice here, as those of Sowakin on a former occasion. Whenever it blew fresh, the sails were taken in; the dread of a storm made them take shelter in a harbour, and we never made longer courses than from twenty-five to thirty-five miles per day. A large square cask of water was the only one on board, and contained a supply for three days for the ships crew only. The passengers had each his own water-skin; and whenever we reached a watering-place, the Bedouins came to the beach, and sold us the contents of their full skins. As it sometimes happens that the ships are becalmed in a bay distant from any wells, or prevented from quitting it by adverse winds, the crew is exposed to great sufferings from thirst, for they have never more on board their boats than a supply for three or four days.

For the first three days we steered along a sandy shore, here entirely barren and uninhabited, the mountains continuing at a distance inland. At three days journey by land and by sea from Yembo, as it is generally computed, lies the mountain called Djebel Hassány, reaching close to the shore; and from thence northward the lower range of the mountains are, in the vicinity of the beach, thinly inhabited throughout by Bedouins. The encampments of the tribe of Djeheyne extend as far as these mountains: to the north of it, as far as the station of the Hadj called El Wodjeh, or as it is also pronounced, El Wosh, are the dwelling-places of the Heteym Bedouins. In front of Djebel Hassány are several islands; and the sea is here particularly full of shoals and coral rocks, rising nearly to the surface; from the various colours of which, the water, when viewed from a distance, assumes all the hues of the rainbow. In spring, after the rains, some of these little islands are inhabited by the Bedouins of the coast, who there pasture their cattle as long as food is found: they have small boats, and are all active fishers. They salt the fish, and either carry it in their own boats to Yembo and Cosseir, or sell it to the ships which pass. One of these islands, called El Harra, belongs to the Beni Abs, once a powerful Bedouin tribe, but now reduced to a few families, who live mixed with the Beni Heteym, and, like them, are held in great disrepute by all their neighbours. Upon another island stands the tomb of a saint, called Sheikh Hassan el Merábet, with a few low buildings and huts round it, where a Bedouin family of the Heteym tribe is stationary, to whom the guardianship of the tomb belongs. The course of the Arab ships being usually close by this island, the crews often despatch a boat with a few measures of corn to those people, or some butter, biscuits, and coffee-beans, because they consider Sheikh Hassan to be the patron of these seas. When we sailed by, our Reys made a large loaf of bread, which he baked in ashes, and distributed a morsel of it to every person on board, who eat it in honour of the saint, after which we were treated by him with a cup of coffee.

In general, the Arab sailors are very superstitious; they hold certain passages in great horror; not because they are more dangerous than others, but because they believe that evil spirits dwell among the coral rocks, and might possibly attract the ship towards the shoal, and cause her to founder. For the same reason they observe the constant practice of throwing, at every meal, a handful of dressed victuals into the sea, before they sit down themselves to the repast; saying that the inhabitants of the sea must also have their morsel, otherwise they will impede the vessels course. Our Reys once forgot this tribute; but on recollecting it, he ordered a fresh loaf to be baked, and threw it into the sea.

We met every day, during this voyage, ships coming from Egypt, and often lay in the same bay with three or four of them, in the evening. On such occasions quarrels frequently happen about water; and ships are often obliged to wait one or two days before the Bedouins bring a sufficient supply down to the coast. Butter, milk, honey, sheep, goats, salt fish, firewood, thin branches of the shrub Arak, of which the Arabians make their tooth-brushes, and which the Bedouins collect on this coast, are every where to be had in plenty, and are generally exchanged for corn or tobacco. These Bedouins are daring robbers, and often swim to the ships during the night, to watch for the opportunity of pilfering. The water on the whole coast is bad, except at Wodjeh and at Dhoba. Wodjeh, which is usually reckoned at three days journey northward from Djebel Hassány, is a castle on the Hadj route, about three miles inland. Close by it is excellent spring water; and there are likewise copious wells of tolerable water in the vicinity of the small bay which serves as a harbour to the castle, and is therefore called Mersa el Wodjeh. Some Moggrebyn soldiers garrison the castle, which was said to be well stocked with provisions. Several of them were married to Bedouin women, and carried on a trifling trade in provisions with the ships that pass.

The neighbouring mountains of Wodjeh are inhabited by the Bedouin tribe of Bily. To the north of Wodjeh, and about two days journey south of Moeyleh, lies the anchorage of Dhoba, renowned for its excellent wells. The anchoring-place is in a large bay, one of the best harbours on this coast, and the wells are about half an hours distance inland, under a grove of palm and Doum date-trees. The route of the Egyptian Hadj passes here; and for its convenience, a birket, or reservoir, has been constructed. The ships that sail from Cosseir to Yembo generally make this point, and continue from thence their coasting voyage southwards. North of Dhoba two days, lies the castle and small village of Moeyleh, in the territory of the Howeytat and Omran Bedouins. We passed it at a distance; but I could see considerable plantations of date-trees near the shore. What is called the castle, appears to be a square building, upon the plain close by the water-side. The position of Moeyleh is distinguishable from afar by the high mountain just behind it; three pointed summits of which, overtopping the rest, are visible sixty to eighty miles off: I was told that in clear winter days they could be distinguished, from Cosseir, at the moment of sun-rise. Moeyleh is the principal position on this coast from Akaba down to Yembo. Its inhabitants, who are for the greater part Bedouins, become settlers, carry on a trade in cattle and fish with Tor and Yembo, and their market is visited by numerous Bedouins of the interior of the country. It is the only place on this coast where a regular market is kept, and where provisions are always to be found, and thus often affords timely relief to ships detained on their passage by contrary winds. Provisions being very dear in the Hedjaz, and very cheap in Egypt, ships, on leaving the Hedjaz harbours for Cosseir or Suez, never lay in more than is absolutely necessary; but the passage, which is usually calculated by them at twenty days, very often lasts a month, and sometimes even two months.

From off Moeyleh, the point of the peninsula of Sinai, called Ras Abou Mohammed, is clearly distinguished. Ships bound from Yembo to Cosseir generally make this promontory, or one of the islands lying before it, and thence steer south to Cosseir. They do this, in order to take advantage of the northerly winds that blow in these parts of the Red Sea for nine months of the year; and they prefer the tedious, but safer mode of a coasting voyage, during which they often enjoy a land-breeze, to the danger and fatigue of beating up, in open sea, against the wind, or of standing straight across from Djidda or Yembo to the African coast; with the harbours of which, south of Cosseir, very few Red Sea pilots are acquainted, and of the Bedouin inhabitants of which they all entertain great fears.

On reaching Ras Mohammed, they anchor near one of the small islands, or go into the harbour called Sherm, where they wait till a fair wind springs up, which usually carries them to Cosseir in one or two days.

As for ourselves, we had not during the whole voyage any sort of disagreeable occurrence, though the wind, which was seldom fair, obliged us once to remain three days at the same anchorage; and I often expected the vessel to be wrecked, on seeing the pilot steer among the shoals in shore: a practice in which these people have acquired great experience, and in which they display as much boldness as they do cowardice in the open sea.

After twenty days voyage we reached the neighbourhood of Ras Abou Mohammed, on the 4th of June: the boat was secured for the night with grapplings to some coral rocks, leeward of a small island ahead of the promontory; the pilot intending to strike across the next morning.

As I knew that Bedouins were always to be found in the harbour of Sherm, to transport passengers by land to Tor or Suez, I wished to be set on shore here. The road from hence to Cairo was much shorter than by way of Cosseir; and my low state of health rendered it desirable to leave the vessel where I had not the slightest accommodation, and where the fears of the plague had not yet subsided, though no person had died on board during the last fortnight. For the sum of four dollars given to the Reys, and one to the pilot, they were kind enough to go a little out of their course, and on the following morning, the 5th of June, we entered the harbour of Sherm.

Sherm is about four or five hours distant from the point called Ras Abou Mohammed, and is a good and spacious harbour, with anchorage for large ships; it lies at the entrance of the gulf of Akaba, and is the best harbour on the west side of that gulf. Under the name Sherm, or Sheroum, (the plural,) are included two harbours half a mile distant from each other, both equally good; but the southern is the most frequented. As a copious well is near, these harbours are often visited by ships coming from and going to the Hedjaz; and passengers who wish to save themselves a voyage up the Gulf of Suez, (which during the prevalence of the northerly winds is often of long duration,) land here, and are carried by the Bedouins upon camels to Tor and Suez. These Bedouins, living up in the mountains, see the ships from afar, and on their arrival hasten to the coast to offer their services. In former times, when the Pashas of Egypt exercised but a nominal power over the neighbouring Bedouins, the Arabs of Tor were much dreaded by the crews of ships; they enforced from them regular tributes whenever they entered their harbours, and conducted themselves in a very oppressive manner. At present, Mohammed Aly, through the means of the commander at Suez, has succeeded in overawing these Bedouins; their conduct is now very friendly, and travelling with them is perfectly safe: but if a ship happens to be wrecked on their coasts, or on the islands near them (no unfrequent occurrence), they still assert their ancient right of plundering the cargo.

In the evening a ship came in, laden with soldiers, which left Yembo six days before us; the commander of the soldiers, and four or five of his party, were set on shore, to proceed by land to Cairo, and both vessels continued their voyage the next morning for Cosseir.

There was no difficulty in obtaining camels; more than thirty were ready to be hired; and we started, on the evening of our arrival, in two parties, the one in advance composed of the soldiers, and the other, at about two hours distance behind, composed of myself and slave, and two fellow passengers, men of Damascus, who were glad of this opportunity of shortening their journey home. We rode this evening about one hour and a half in a valley, and then rested for the night.

On the 6th of June we continued our road in barren valleys, among steep rocks, mostly of granite, till we halted, about noon, under a projecting rock that afforded us some shade. The Bedouins went to fetch water from a place up in the western mountains, called El Hamra, which proved to be of excellent quality. A poor woman with two goats lived in the valley quite alone. Among the Bedouins themselves the most perfect security prevails in this district, which is interrupted only by the scandalous behaviour of the Turkish soldiers who pass this way. I knew these men well from repeated experience, and therefore had declined joining their party. When we continued our route towards evening, we met on the road one of the Bedouin boys who served as camel-drivers to the party before us. His camel, upon which one of the soldiers was mounted, had not been able to keep up with the others, and its rider, furious at this delay, had drawn his sabre, and cut the animal to make it move at a quicker pace: when the boy remonstrated and seized the halter, he also received a cut on the shoulder; and as he persisted in keeping his hold, the ruffian discharged his gun at him; the boy then ran off, and waited for our coming up. At a few miles distance we heard from afar the soldiers loud cursing, and found him walking behind the camel. As I expected an affray, I had loaded my gun and pistols. When he saw me riding in front of our people, he immediately ran towards me, and cried out to me in Turkish to descend and to change camels with him. I laughed at him, and told him in Arabic I was no fellah, to be addressed in that manner. In the usual style of those soldiers, who think that every person who is not a soldier must yield to their commands, he then turned towards my slave and ordered him to alight, swearing that he would shoot one of us, if we did not obey. On hearing this I took up my gun, and assured him that it was loaded with good powder, and would send a bullet to his heart better than his would to mine. During this altercation his camel had strayed a little into the valley, and fearing for his baggage, he ran after it, and we rode on. Not being able to follow us in the sands, he discharged his gun at me, from a distance, which I immediately answered, and thus the battle ended. Farther on we came up with his companions, who had alighted. I told them, that their friend behind was embarrassed with his camel, upon which they dispatched one of their Bedouins to fetch him, while I myself rode on, and encamped that night in a side valley out of the road, where the Bedouin boy again joined us, not wishing to be seen by the other soldiers.

We now conducted our journey in such a manner as not to fall in again with the soldiers; but two days after I met the man again at Tor. The governor of Suez was then there, to whom I might have addressed my complaints: this he was afraid of, and therefore walked up to me with a smiling countenance, and said he hoped that no rancour subsisted between us; that as to the shot he fired, it was merely for the purpose of calling his companions to assist him with his camel. In reply, I assured him that my shot had quite a different object, and that I was sorry it had missed; upon which he laughed and went away. There are not on earth more insolent, haughty, and at the same time vile and cowardly beings than Turkish soldiers: wherever they expect to meet with no resistance, they act in the most overbearing, despotic manner, and think nothing of killing an inoffensive person, in the slightest fit of passion; but when they meet with a firm resistance, or apprehend any bad consequences from their conduct, there is no meanness to which they will not immediately submit. During my journey through Egypt from Cairo to Assouan, the whole of which was performed by land, I had several similar rencontres with soldiers; and I must lay it down as a rule for travellers, constantly to treat these fellows with great hauteur, as the most trifling condescension is attributed by them to fear, and their conduct becomes intolerable. We travelled this day about nine hours.

June 7th. We continued our course in valleys for about two hours and a half, when we came to a high mountain, where I was obliged to dismount. It was with great difficulty that I could reach the summit, for my strength was exhausted; and I had been shivering with a fever the whole preceding night. It took us about two hours and a half to pass the mountain, and to descend into the valley on the other side. From the top we had a fine view of the Gulf of Akaba. The upper part of this mountain is granite, and its lower ridges grünstein. In the afternoon we issued from this chain into the western plain, which declines slowly towards the sea of Suez, and encamped in it after a ride of about ten hours.

June 8th. We reached Tor, in about three hours and a half from our resting-place. Here we found every thing in a great bustle. The lady of Mohammed Aly Pasha, whom I had met with at almost every station on this journey, had arrived here from Yembo a few days before, and, as it blew strong from the north, had come on shore, that she might proceed by land to Suez. The governor of Suez and Mustafa Beg, her own brother, one of the Pashas principal officers, had come to meet her, and her tents were pitched close by the little village of Tor. From four to five hundred camels were required to transport her suite and soldiers to Suez, and as that number could not soon be prepared, she had already been waiting here a whole week.

I had intended to stop at Tor a few days, merely to recover sufficient strength for my journey to Cairo; but when I learned that the plague was still at Suez, as well as at Cairo, I changed my plan, and determined to wait here some weeks, till the season for the disease should be passed. I soon found, however, that a residence at Tor was not very agreeable. This little village is built in a sandy plain, close to the beach, without any shelter from the sun; a few date-plantations are at some distance behind it. The houses are miserable, and swarms of flies and mosquitoes choke up the avenues of every dwelling. I remained at Tor for the night; and having heard from the Bedouins that at one hours distance was another small village, in an elevated situation, with abundance of gardens and excellent water, I resolved to take up my quarters there.

It is surrounded by a half-ruined wall: the remains of a small castle are seen, said to have been constructed by Sultan Selym I., who fortified all the outposts of his empire. The French intended to rebuild it, but they left Egypt before the work was begun. Two small villages, about a mile distance, on both sides of Tor, are inhabited by Arabs, while in Tor itself none reside but Greeks, consisting of about twenty families, with a priest, who is under the Archbishop of Mount Sinai. They earn their livelihood by selling provisions to the ships that anchor here to take in water, which abounds in wells, and is of a good quality. Provisions are here twice as dear as at Cairo; and the people of Tor have their own small boats, in which they sail to Suez for those provisions. Were it not for the passage of Turkish soldiers, they would be rich, as they live very parsimoniously; but the rapacity of a few of these men often deprives them, in a single day, of the profits they have earned during a whole year. No garrison is kept here by the Pasha.

June 9th. In the morning I rode over the ascending plain to the above-mentioned village, which is called El Wady, after having laid in a sufficient stock of provisions at Tor. I easily found a lodging, and was glad to see that my expectations of the site of this village were not disappointed: it consists of about thirty houses, built in gardens, and among date-trees, almost every house having its own little garden. I hired a small half-open building, which I had covered with dateleaves, and enjoyed the immediate vicinity of a shady pleasure-ground, where grew palm, nebek, pomegranate, and apricot trees. A large well, in the midst of them, afforded a supply of excellent water, and I had nothing more to wish for at present. The people of the village, who are for the greater part Bedouins become settlers, could not suspect any motive I might have for residing here, as they saw that I was scarcely able to stand upon my legs: they treated me, in consequence, kindly; and little presents of meat and other provision, which I distributed among them, soon insured their good-will, and I had every reason to be satisfied with their conduct. Thus enjoying complete repose, and the good mountain air of this village, which lies so much higher than Tor, my strength soon returned.

For the last four years, since I had left the society of my friends Mr. Barker and Mr. Masseyk, and the delightful gardens of Aleppo, I had not found myself so comfortable as I did here; and even the first day that I passed in this retreat produced a visible improvement in my health. As I thought that slight exercise might be useful, I rode over to the Hammám, a warm bath, round the corner of the mountain, situated to the north of Tor, and about half an hour distant from El Wady. Several warm springs issue from the calcareous mountain, the principal of which has a roof built over it, and is visited by all the surrounding Bedouins. Some half-ruined buildings, probably as old as the demolished castle of Tor, offered, in former times, accommodation to the visiters. The water is of a moderate heat, and appears to be strongly impregnated with nitre. Close by the springs are extensive date-plantations. I have never seen a richer and more luxurious growth of palm-trees than in this place; they form so thick a wood, that it is difficult to find ones way through it. These plantations belong to the Bedouins of the peninsula, who come here with their families at the date-harvest. The largest grove, however, is the property of the Greek priests of Mount Sinai, one of whom lives in an insulated tower in the midst of it, like a hermit, for he is the only constant resident in the place. The fear of the Bedouins keeps him shut up for months in this tower the entrance to which is by a ladder; and a waterman, who provides him every week with a supply of water, is the only individual who approaches him. The priest is placed here as gardener of the convent; but experience shows the inefficacy of all attempts to protect the trees from the pilfering Bedouins, and they have therefore given up the fruit to the first comer: so that this grove, the produce of which often amounts to the value of four or five thousand piastres, becomes public property.

I had some difficulty in providing myself with flesh-meat at Wady: sheep are very scarce in the whole peninsula, and no Arab is inclined to sell what he has. A flock had been sent from Suez to Tor, for the supply of Mohammed Alys lady and her suite. I was obliged to pay twelve piastres here for a small kid.

The second weeks residence at El Wady considerably improved my health. I was not thoroughly recovered, but only wished., at present, to acquire sufficient strength for the journey to Cairo, where the means of a complete cure might be found. I was the more inclined to hasten my departure, as it was said that all the Bedouins who had camels to spare, and had not given them up for the transport of the Pashas women, were soon to leave this neighbourhood, with loads of coals for Cairo, when I should find it difficult to procure beasts of transport. I had been for eighteen months without any letters from Europe, and felt impatient to reach Cairo, where I knew that many awaited me. I knew too, that the plague would have nearly subsided by the time of my arrival, as about the end of June it always yields to the influence of the hot season. I therefore engaged two camels from hence to Cairo, for which I paid twelve dollars.

The Arabs of these parts have established particular transport customs: of those who inhabit this peninsula, the tribe of Sowaleha is entitled to one half of the transport, and the other half is shared by the two tribes of Mezeyne and Aleygat. As I wanted two camels, one was to be furnished to me by a Sowaleha, and the other either by a Mezeyne or Aleygat. If no individuals of those three tribes happen to be present, the business is easily settled with one of them, and the others have no after claim; but if several of them are on the spot, quarrels always arise among them, and he who conducts the traveller is obliged to give to the others a small sum of money, to silence their claims. The same custom or law marks out certain limits, which when the traveller and his guide have once passed, the countrymen of the latter have no more claims for the transport. The limit from Tor, northward, is half way between Tor and Wady. The Bedouin who had carried me from Tor to Wady passed this limit by stealth, none of his friends knowing of it: they pursued when they saw us on the road; but we had passed the limits before they came up with us, and I had thus fallen to the lot of this guide; when, on inquiring at Wady for a new guide to Cairo, I was told that no person could take the transport upon himself, without the knowledge or permission of the Bedouin who had brought me to Wady from Tor, and upon whose camel I had once crossed the limits. The man was therefore sent for, and as his own camels were not present, he ceded his right to another for two dollars; and with the latter I departed. These quarrels about transport are very curious, and sometimes very intricate to decide: in the mean while the traveller remains completely passive, but there is not much danger of imposition, for the amount of the hire is always publicly known, and one dollar is the largest sum he can lose.

I left Wady on the 17th of June. Our road lay upon an elevated plain, bounded on the east by the high summits of the Sinai mountains, and on the west by a low ridge of calcareous hills, which separate the plain from the sea, and run parallel with it for about five or six hours. This plain, which is completely barren, and of a gravelly soil, is called El Kaa, and is in bad repute with the Bedouins, from having no springs, and being extremely hot, from the nature of its position. Thus I found it myself. During this day we suffered much from one of the hottest winds I ever remember to have experienced. We alighted during the mid-day hours in the open plain, without finding any tree to afford shade. A Bedouin cloak, fastened to four poles, was erected as a tent, barely sheltering me from the sun, while my two guides and my slave wrapped themselves in their mantles, and lay down and slept in the sun. Instead of causing perspiration, the hot air of the Semoum chokes up every pore; and in the evening I again had the ague, which continued from hence, in irregular fits, till I arrived at Cairo. We encamped this night in El Kaa.

June 18th. We entered, in the morning, Wady Feiran, followed it down towards the sea, and then continued along shore for the rest of the day, till we reached the neighbourhood of the well called El Merkha, in front of the bay which bears the name of Birket Faraoun.

June 19th. From Merkha we again proceeded along shore, then entered the Wady Taybe, leaving to our left the mountains, which reach close to the shore, and in the midst of which lies the bath, called Hamam Seydna Mousa. Taybe is a valley full of trees, which were now withered for want of rain. Having reached its top, we continued over a high plain, passed Wady Osayt, and slept that night in Wady Gharendel.

June 20th. Passing by the brackish spring of Howara, we crossed a barren plain, reached Wady Wardan at mid-day, and encamped in the evening at Wady Seder. Our days journeys were very long, and we travelled some hours during the night, that we might reach Suez in time to join the caravan, which was preparing there to conduct the Pashas women to Cairo. As I shall speak in detail of this road in the journal of my visit to Mount Sinai, I forbear entering here into any particulars: the remarks I now made were, besides, very superficial.

June 26th. [sic] In the morning we passed Ayoun Mousa, and reached Suez in the afternoon. The caravan was just preparing to depart, and we started with it in the evening. There was a strong guard, and altogether we had about six hundred camels. We travelled the whole night without interruption, and on the morning of June 22nd alighted at the place called El Hamra, the Hadj station between Cairo and Adjeroud. The ladies of the Pasha had brought two carriages with them from the Hedjaz, in which they had travelled all the way from Tor to Suez, the road being every where of easy passage. Two more carriages were sent for them from Cairo to Suez, one of which, an elegant English barouche, was drawn by four horses: they got into these at Suez, and quitted them occasionally for splendid litters or palanquins, carried by mules. We started again in the evening, and, travelling the whole night, reached Birket el Hadj on the morning of the 23rd, having thus made the whole journey from Tor in six days; a forced march which, from the heat of the season, had fatigued me extremely. At the Birket El Hadj the caravan was met by many grandees from Cairo: the ladies of the Pasha intended to encamp there for a few days among the date-groves. Being unable myself, from weakness, to proceed on the same day, (although Cairo is but four hours distant,) I slept here, and entered the city on the morning of the 24th of June, after an absence from thence of nearly two years and a half. I found that two letters, which I sent here from Medina, had not been received, and my acquaintances had supposed me lost. The plague had nearly subsided; some of the Christians had already re-opened their houses; but great gloom seemed to have overspread the town from the mortality that had taken place.

The joy I felt at my safe return to Cairo was considerably increased by flattering and encouraging letters from England; but my state of health was too low to admit of fully indulging in the pleasures of success. The physicians of Cairo are of the same set of European quacks so frequently found in other parts of the Levant: they made me swallow pounds of bark, and thus rendered my disease worse; and it was not till two months after that I regained my perfect health at Alexandria, whither I had gone to pay a visit to Colonel Missett, the British resident in Egypt, who had already laid me under so many obligations, and to whose kind attentions, added to regular exercise on horseback, more than to any thing else, I was indebted for my recovery. A delightful journey, in the winter months, through Lower Egypt, and by the Lake Menzaleh, restored me to my wonted strength, which I am happy to say has never since experienced any abatement.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

Stations of the Pilgrim Caravan, called the Hadj el Kebsy, through the mountainous country between Mekka and Sanaa in Yemen.