At This
Place The Ships Are Built Which Are Designed For India.
All the timber
of which they are built, with the iron work, and every kind of tackle,
are brought
From Satalia and Constantinople to Alexandria; whence they
are carried on the Nile in jerbs or barks to Cairo, and thence on the
backs of camels to Suez, where Pharaoh was drowned. On the road from
Cairo to Suez, which is eighty miles, there is not a single habitation,
and no water or any thing whatever for eating is to be found, so that
the caravans before setting out must supply themselves with water from
the Nile. In former times, Suez was a great city well supplied with
cisterns for holding water, and had a Kalij or canal cut all the way
from the Nile, by which these cisterns were annually filled at the
overflow of the river, which served them with water all the rest of the
year. Being afterwards destroyed by the Mahometans, the canal was filled
up, and all the water that is drank at Suez is brought upon camels from
certain ponds or wells six miles distant; which water, though very
brackish, they are obliged to drink; every fifty men being allowed as
much water as a camel can carry. All the timber, iron, rigging,
ammunition, and provisions for the fleet were brought from Cairo. Suez
stands on a bay of the Red Sea, and has a small fort with mud walls,
thirty paces square, which is guarded by twenty Turks.
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