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:
The latter is pursued only by the Arabs Terabein, and other
Syrian Bedouins. The route we took is called Derb el Ankabye [Arabic].
We proceeded on a gentle ascent from Kayt Beg, and passed on the right
several low quarries in the horizontal layers of soft calcareous stone
of which the mountain of Mokattam, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, is
composed; it is with this stone that the splendid Mamelouk tombs of Kayt
Beg are built. At the end of
EL MOGAWA
[p.460] an hour, the limestone terminated, and the road was covered with
flints, petrosilex, and Egyptian pebbles; here are also found specimens
of petrified wood, the largest about a foot in length. We now travelled
eastward, and after a march of three hours halted upon a part of the
plain, called El Mogawa [Arabic], where we rested during the mid-day
heat. Beyond this spot, to the distance of five hours from Cairo, we met
with great quantities of petrified wood. Large pieces of the trunks of
trees, three or four feet in length, and eight or ten inches in
diameter, lay about the plain, and close to the road was an entire trunk
of a tree at least twenty feet in length, half buried in sand.
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