I Was For Several Days Delirious; And Nature Would
Probably Have Been Exhausted, Had It Not Been For The Aid Of A Greek
Captain, My Fellow Passenger From Souakin.
He attended me in one of my
lucid intervals, and, at my request, procured a barber, or country
physician, who bled me copiously, though with much reluctance, as he
insisted that a potion, made up of ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon, was the
only remedy adapted to my case.
In a fortnight after, I had sufficiently
recovered to be able to walk about; but the weakness and languor which
the fever had occasioned, would not yield to the damp heat of the
atmosphere of the town; and I owed my complete recovery to the temperate
climate of Tayf, situated in the mountains behind Mekka, where I
afterwards proceeded.
The Djidda market little resembled those Negro markets, where a single
dollar would purchase two or three weeks' provision of dhourra and
butter. The price of every thing had risen here to an unusual height,
the imports from the interior of Arabia having entirely ceased, while
the whole population of the Hedjaz, now increased by a Turkish army and
its numerous followers, and a host of pilgrims who were daily coming in,
wholly depended for its supply upon the imports from Egypt. My little
stock of money was therefore spent during my illness, and before I was
sufficiently recovered to walk out. The Greek captain, though he had
shown himself ready to afford me the common services of humanity, was
not disposed to trust to the
[p.3] honour or respectability of a man whom he knew to be entirely
destitute of money. I was in immediate want of a sum sufficient to
defray my daily expenses, and, no other means being left to procure it,
I was compelled to sell my slave: I regretted much the necessity for
parting with him, as I knew he had some affection for me, and he was
very desirous to remain with me. During my preceding journey he had
proved himself a faithful and useful companion; and although I have
since had several other slaves in my possession, I never found one equal
to him. The Greek captain sold him for me, in the slave-market of
Djidda, for forty-eight dollars. [This slave cost me sixteen dollars at
Shendy; thus, the profits of sale on one slave defrayed almost the whole
expense of the four months' journey through Nubia, which I had performed
in the spring.]
The present state of the Hedjaz rendered travelling through it, in the
disguise of a beggar, or at least for a person of my outward appearance,
impracticable; and the slow progress of my recovery made me desirous of
obtaining comforts: I therefore equipped myself anew, in the dress of a
reduced Egyptian gentleman, and immediately wrote to Cairo for a supply
of money; but this I could hardly receive in less than three or four
months. Being determined, however, to remain in the Hedjaz until the
time of the pilgrimage in the following November, it became necessary
for me to find the means of procuring subsistence until my funds should
arrive.
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