The Genootschap, or Academy of Arts and Sciences, has a small library of a few hundred volumes. With the exception of a model of a bridge, a Javanese lion, some half dozen miniature models of Japanese houses, warlike instruments, a few coins, and a few common shells, there is nothing worth naming.
Our kind Batavian friends accompanied us on board, and on the twenty-second of July we sailed for Angier, where we arrived the following day. During our stay the thermometer ranged in the roadstead from 83° to 89°, and the barometer between 29.75 to 29.95. There were only five days on which it rained, and then only light showers. There were some cases of dysentery, diarrhœa, and fevers, but there were no deaths among the crew. There were about two cases of dysentery to one of fever.
Toward midnight, on the twenty-eighth of July, as the moon was gently sinking behind the mountains which overlook the campong of Angier, a light land-breeze suddenly sprung up. Orders were immediately given to weigh anchor. The shrill whistle of the boatswain and his two mates, followed by their deep grum voices, calling all hands, “roused many a heavy sleeper, unwillingly from his hammock,” wishing the boatswain, and his call together, in Davy Jones’s locker. We were under way in a few minutes, in company with the Boxer, proceeding through the straits of Sunda, having once more launched into the Indian ocean. The lofty peak, of Crokatoa, the mountainous island of Tamarind, and the lesser islands of Thwart, the Way, the Button, and the Cap, with part of the coast of Sumatra, were distinctly visible. Before losing sight of Prince’s island, the wind came from the southward and eastward, accompanied with fine weather, which continued to waft us rapidly over the rolling billows to the westward, till the sixteenth of August, having run our westing down mostly between the latitude of 10° 11″ to secure strong breezes; being then in latitude about 2° south and 52″ east longitude, the wind veered to the southwest, but without any diminution of strength, or any alteration of the fine weather we had previously enjoyed. It continued until the evening of the twentieth, when we descried, first, the most easterly land on the continent of Africa, cape Orfui, otherwise called, by the Arabs, Ras Hafoon; then the mountains lying to the northward of this cape, called Gebel Jordafoon; and then cape Guardafui, or the cape of burials; the northeast extremity of Africa, and the southernmost cape of the gulf of Arabia. The land appeared like the outline of a well-defined cloud, high in the heavens. The next morning, we doubled close round this bold promontory, which was so formidable in ancient times to the timid Arabian mariner.
BURNT ISLAND.
“The shrill spirit of the storm sat not dim upon the bluff brow,” “nor enjoyed the death of the mariner,” for the morning was bright, and fair, and joyous. The loud roaring of the sea shamed not the thunder, as it was wont to do, for it was almost unruffled. The tremendous sound of the mysterious bell, which was wont to be heard high above the loud surges of the ocean, warning the mariner of his fate, if he approached too boldly, was hushed; and the bodiless hand, which was seen to give it motion, had disappeared in the lapse of ages. We kept close to the northern shore, as far as Metté, or Burnt island, to take the benefit of a current setting to the westward.
Being so near the land, we suffered severely from the hot, suffocating air of this inhospitable region. Clothes were a burden, sleep fled from us, and the slightest exertion was painful. The whole aspect of the land was most dreary and most desolate. Mountains and plains of sand, only, were presented to our view, looking “like drifted gold in summer’s cloudless beam.” Not a tree, nor a shrub, nor scarcely a blade of grass, to relieve the eye of the extreme aridity of this vast wilderness. Here and there, at great intervals, were a few miserable huts, in a gully, formed by the washing away of the sand; and the great comfort derived from the “shadow of a high rock in a hot and dreary land,” would have been felt here as an inestimable blessing. Now and then, a naked and poverty-stricken fisherman was seen stealing along the shore, propelling, with his double-bladed paddle, a frail catamaran, made of two or three sticks of wood, sitting to his waist in water, having a rush sack to put his fish in, and liable to be made the prey of the voracious blue shark, which abounds in these waters. He was in search of what could not be found on the land, to wit, something edible; something to nourish his own frail body, or satisfy the cravings of a famishing wife, and a brood of naked, starving, helpless children.
We were a few days in accomplishing the short distance of two hundred and forty miles, from the cape to Metté, and then shaped our course for cape Aden in Arabia Felix, which we descried the following morning, presenting a bold, broken outline. We continued coasting along the shore till the twenty-ninth, when we spoke an East India company’s cruiser, the Nautilus, the same brig which the Peacock captured at the termination of the late war with Great Britain. She had under convoy four brigs from Mocha, bound to Surat. They were very much crowded with good mussulmans, from Mecca, who had been on a pilgrimage to the holy city, and were purified of all their sins, past, present, and to come, by the waters of the miraculous well of Zemzen, &c., and were now sure of admission into the sensual paradise of the prophet.
The triple and quadruple mountains of Yemen were distinctly visible, and the sandy coast was interrupted at intervals by high land, till we made the broken hill which forms the celebrated cape of Death, or cape of Tears, Babel Mandeb, better known to the world as Babel Mandel. The passage between this headland and the island of Perim, and Babel Mandeb, is less than a mile and a half wide according to the chart of Sir Home Popham. It is called by modern navigators the lesser Bab, or Gate.
ARRIVAL AT MOCHA.
Head winds and adverse currents obliged us to enter the Red sea through the great channel formed between Perim and the group of islands, called “Souamba,” or the Eight Brothers, lying on the Abyssinian shore. We therefore had on either hand Africa and Asia in full view, both equally steril and lofty in the interior. Although the distance is but forty miles to Mocha, from the straits, yet it occupied the remaining two days of the month to effect it, owing to contrary currents and winds. We anchored in five fathoms water, at the distance of two miles from the shore; immediately on anchoring, a lieutenant (Brent) was sent on shore to the dowlah or governor, to say that a salute of fifteen guns should be given, if an equal number were returned; this was promptly complied with. We found Mocha in possession of a Turkish rebel chieftain, Turkie ben al Mas by name, who it seems has held it for the last seven months; he was an officer in the service of Mehemet Ali the celebrated pacha of Egypt, and being discontented with his situation he thought it best to carve out for himself, with the assistance of his sword, a little good fortune, in the shape of a governor over a few cities; he collected together a number of followers, soldiers of fortune, who are always to be found in Egypt, as well as in Turkey and elsewhere, ready to draw the sword for those who will pay the best and make the largest promises. These troops consisted of Turks, Copts or Egyptians, Bedouin and other Arabs, and Abyssinians. It seems on his march from Grand Cairo, where the expedition was planned, he conquered the principal places, lying on the Arabian side of the Red sea; meeting with some opposition at Judda alias Djidda, the port of disembarkation for pilgrims going to the holy city of Mecca, it was plundered and many of the inhabitants were slain. Here he found seven large East India built ships, armed and equipped, belonging to his late master; of these, he took forcible possession, putting on board some troops, and ordering them to Mocha to co-operate with his army which proceeded by land. He marched on with about three thousand men, capturing on his way Hodeida, Loheia, &c., till he came to Zebid, better known as Waled Zebid: here he met with considerable opposition, but finally it was obliged to submit to the “strong arm.” Exasperated at the resistance made by the dowlah, he ordered him to be put to the most cruel death—such a one as could only enter into the imagination of a fiend of darkness. A copper cap was made, heated red hot, then fitted to his head, and his brains were literally fried out, he dying in the most excruciating tortures. This place (Mocha) capitulated after some slight skirmishing, on condition that the dowlah and the garrison should be suffered to depart unmolested, with their arms, accoutrements and baggage, to the interior; this was faithfully complied with as it regarded the troops; they were suffered to depart without molestation to the mountains of Yemen. The dowlah was promised every indulgence, and the conqueror apparently took a deep interest in his welfare. He was asked, with great seeming kindness, if he had a family, wives and children, in the interior, and if he did not wish to see them speedily. He answered in the affirmative, and expressed himself in very forcible and affectionate terms—such as may be supposed to emanate from a man of ardent temperament, and one whose feelings are centred in the bosom of his family. He was informed that all his fears should be speedily hushed, that he should depart for the mountains, and be allowed a body-guard for his protection. On the second night after their departure, as they drew near the first rise of mountains, and within sight of the hills which overlooked the home of his children, anticipating the delightful pleasure of once more beholding and embracing them, as he was resting on the ground and partaking an humble meal, he was most treacherously and cruelly shot, in two places, through the back, and there left to be a prey for the eagle and jackall of the mountains; while his poor and fatherless children were daily and hourly looking from their tent-doors into the valleys, wondering why he tarried so long, and complaining of his tardiness; but, alas, their eyes were never destined to behold him more.