His Letters of Recommendation to the British Consul secured him from the embarrassments that the want of inns would otherwise have occasioned; and procured for him the necessary instructions for assuming the dress, and adopting the manners that are requisite for an Egyptian Traveller.
Forcibly impressed by the objects which he saw, and naturally led to compare them with those which other Regions of the Globe had presented to his view, he describes with the energy of an original Observer, and exhibits in his Narrative the varied effect of similarity and contrast: but as the travellers who preceded him, have obtained and transmitted to Europe whatever knowledge, either ancient or modern, the Lower Egypt affords, and as the examination of that country was no part of the business which was given him in charge, his descriptions, generally speaking, would add but little to the instruction which other Narratives convey.
The following Extracts from different parts of his Journal are given in his own words.
“A traveller, who should, by just comparisons between things here and in Europe, tell his tale; who, by a mind unbewitched by antecedent descriptions, too strong, too bold, too determined, too honest, to be capable of lying, should speak just as he thought, would, no doubt, be esteemed an arrant fool, and a stupid coxcomb.—For example, an Englishman who had never seen Egypt, would ask me what sort of a woman an Egyptian woman was? If I meant to do the question as much justice by the answer, as I could in my way, I should ask him to take notice of the first company of Gypsies he saw behind a hedge in Essex; and I suppose he would be fool enough to think me a fool.
“August 14th. I left Alexandria at midnight, with a pleasant breeze North; and was, at sun-rise next morning, at the mouth of the Nile, which has a bar of sand across it, and soundings as irregular as the sea, which is raised upon it by the contentions of counter currents and winds.
“The view in sailing up the Nile is very confined, unless from the top of the mast, or some other eminence, and then it is an unbounded plain of excellent land, miserably cultivated, and yet interspersed with a great number of villages, both on its banks and as far along the meadows as one can see in any direction: the river is also filled with boats passing and repassing—boats all of one kind, and navigated in one manner; nearly also of one size, the largest carrying ten or fifteen tons. On board of these boats are seen onions, water-melons, dates, sometimes a horse, a camel, (which lies down in the boat) and sheep and goats, dogs, men and women.—Towards evening and morning they have music.
“Whenever we stopped at a village, I used to walk into it with my Conductor, who, being a Musselman, and a descendant from Mahommed, wore a green turban, and was therefore respected, and I was sure of safety:—but in truth, dressed as I was in a common Turkish habit, I believe I should have walked as safely without him. I saw no propensity among the inhabitants to incivility. The villages are most miserable assemblages of poor little mud huts, flung very close together without any kind of order, full of dust, lice, fleas, bed-bugs, flies, and all the curses of Moses: people poorly clad, the youths naked; in such respects, they rank infinitely below any Savages I ever saw.
“The common people wear nothing but a shirt and drawers, and they are always blue. Green is the royal or holy colour; none but the descendants of Mahommed, if I am rightly informed, being permitted to wear it.
“August 19th. From the little town where we landed, the distance to Cairo is about a mile and a half, which we rode on asses; for the ass in this country is the Christian’s horse, as he is allowed no other animal to ride upon. Indeed I find the situation of a Christian, or what they more commonly call here a Frank, to be very, very humiliating, ignominious, and distressing: no one, by a combination of any causes, can reason down to such effects as experience teaches us do exist here: it being impossible to conceive, that the enmity I have alluded to could exist between men;—or, in fact, that the same species of beings, from any causes whatever, should ever think and act so differently as the Egyptians and the English do.
“I arrived at Cairo early in the morning, on the 19th of August, and went to the house of the Venetian Consul, Mr. Rosetti, Chargé d’Affaires for the English Consul here.