Here My Arab Companions Left Me, And Proceeded To Belbeis, Where,
They Were Informed, Their Principal Men Were Encamped, Waiting For
Orders To Proceed To Akaba.
I discharged my honest guide, Hamd Ibn
Hamdan, who was not a little astonished to see me take some sequins out
of the skirts of my gown.
As it was too late to enter the town, I went
to some Bedouin tents which I saw at a distance, and entered one of
them, in which, for the first time, I drank of the sweet water of the
Nile. Here I remained all night. A great number of Bedouins were at this
time collected near Cairo, to accompany the troops which were to be sent
into Arabia after the Ramadhan.
CAIRO
[p.456] September 4th.—I entered Cairo before sunrise; and thus
concluded my journey, by the blessing of God, without either loss of
health, or exposure to any imminent danger.
[p.457]
JOURNAL OF A TOUR
IN THE
PENINSULA OF MOUNT SINAI,
IN THE SPRING OF 1816.
ABOUT the beginning of April 1816 Cairo was again visited by the plague.
The Franks and most of the Christians shut themselves up; but as I
neither wished to follow their example nor to expose myself
unnecessarily in the town, I determined to pass my time, during the
prevalence of the disease, among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, to visit
the gulf of Akaba, and, if possible, the castle of Akaba, to which, as
far as I know, no traveller has ever penetrated. Intending to pass some
days at the convent of Mount Sinai, I procured a letter of introduction
to the monks from their brethren at Cairo; for without this passport no
stranger is ever permitted to enter the convent; I was also desirous of
having a letter from the Pasha of Egypt to the principal Sheikh of the
tribes of Tor, over whom, as I knew by former experience, he exercises
more than a nominal authority. With the assistance of this paper, I
hoped to be able to see a good deal of the Bedouins of the peninsula in
safety, and to travel in their company to Akaba. Such letters of
recommendation are in general easily procured in Syria and Egypt, though
they are often useless, as I found on several occasions during my first
journey into Nubia, as well as in my
KAYT BEG
[p.458] travels in Syria, where the orders of the Pasha of Damascus were
much slighted in several of the districts under his dominion.
A fortnight before I set out for Mount Sinai I had applied to the Pasha
through his Dragoman, for a letter to the Bedouin Sheikh; but I was kept
waiting for it day after day, and after thus delaying my departure a
whole week, I was at last obliged to set off without it. The want of it
was the cause of some embarrassment to me, and prevented me from
reaching Akaba. It is not improbable that on being applied to for the
letter, the Pasha gave the same answer as he gave at Tayf, when I asked
him for a Firmahn, namely, that as I was sufficiently acquainted with
the language and manners of the Arabs, I needed no further
recommendation.
The Arabs of Mount Sinai usually alight at Cairo in the quarter called
El Djemelye, where some of them are almost constantly to be found.
Having gone thither, I met with the same Bedouin with whom I had come
last year from Tor to Cairo; I hired two camels from him for myself and
servant, and laid in provisions for about six weeks consumption. We left
Cairo on the evening of the 20th of April, and slept that night among
the ruined tombs of the village called Kayt Beg, a mile from the city.
From this village, at which the Bedouins usually alight, the caravans
for Suez often depart; it is also the resort of smugglers from Suez and
Syria.
April 21st.—We set out from Kayt Beg in the course of the morning, in
the company of a caravan bound for Suez, comprising about twenty camels,
some of which belonged to Moggrebyn pilgrims, who had come by sea from
Tunis to Alexandria; the others to a Hedjaz merchant, and to the
Bedouins of Mount Sinai, who had brought passengers from Suez to Cairo,
and were now returning with corn to their mountains. As I knew the
character of these Bedouins by former experience, and that the road was
perfectly
DERB EL ANKABYE
[p.459] safe, at least as far as the convent, I did not think it
necessary this time to travel in the disguise of a pauper. Some few
comforts may be enjoyed in the desert even by those who do not travel
with tents and servants; and whenever these comforts must be
relinquished, it becomes a very irksome task to cross a desert, as I
fully experienced during several of my preceding journeys.
The Bedouins of Sinai, or, as they are more usually denominated, the
Towara, or Bedouins of Tor, formerly enjoyed the exclusive privilege of
transporting goods, provisions, and passengers, from Cairo to Suez, and
the route was wholly under their protection. Since the increased power
of the Pasha of Egypt, it has been thrown open to camel-drivers of all
descriptions, Egyptian peasants, as well as Syrian and Arabian Bedouins;
and as the Egyptian camels are much stronger, for a short journey, than
those of the desert, the Bedouins of Mount Sinai have lost the greater
part of their custom, and the transport trade in this route is now
almost wholly in the hands of the Egyptian carriers. The hire of a
strong camel, from Cairo to Suez, was at this time about six or eight
Patacks, from one and a half to two Spanish dollars.
The desert from Cairo to Suez is crossed by different routes; we
followed that generally taken by the Towara, which lies mid-way between
the great Hadj route, and the more southern one close along the
mountains:
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