In a letter to Linnæus, within a few days after his return to Smyrna, he observes: “I have been botanizing on the Mount Sipylus of the ancients, which is one of the highest mountains in Asia, and covered all the year round with snow. I have likewise collected several insects, which no person ever disturbed before; among which I was surprised to observe many which are described in the ‘Fauna Suesica.’ I send you a small fly which I found yesterday in a fig. It was enclosed in the germ of a female fig, which it had entirely devoured. I am ignorant whether this be the insect that impregnates the fruit; but shall endeavour, before my departure, to acquire all the information in my power respecting the fig-tree insects. I have a chameleon and several turtle-doves in my apartment, and I have for some time been employed in observing their manners. It would give me great pleasure if I could send you a few of those doves to adorn your gardens at Upsal; and as it is not difficult to preserve them, I shall endeavour to fulfil my desire. I have collected an abundance of the cornucopiæ,[[2]] that rare plant which you so strongly recommended me to search for in the environs of Smyrna. I have completed the description of it, and shall send you a few specimens. When its seeds are ripened, I shall not fail to send you a quantity of them for the garden of the Academy.”
[2]. A singular species of grass.
Hasselquist sailed from Smyrna about the end of April, and on the 13th of May arrived at Alexandria. His first care, of course, was to visit the gardens of the city. The Egyptian Mussulmans, it is well known, imagine that the horse is too noble an animal to be bestrode by any but true believers; and therefore, those honest Mohammedans who cannot afford to indulge that sublime contempt for all those who differ from them in opinion, which is one of the principal luxuries of their betters, pay great attention to the rearing and management of asses, the only coursers which Franks can safely make use of in Egypt. In consequence, the asses of the Delta surpass all other asses in beauty; and many of them, according to the testimony of our traveller, who, however, seems to have been somewhat partial to the race, are even valued at a higher price than horses. It was necessary to make these preliminary remarks upon asses before we could venture to exhibit our physician parading the streets of Alexandria on such a charger, exposed to the smiles of those Nilotic nymphs whose notes of rejoicing he afterward in revenge compared to the croaking of the frogs in the Rosetta canal.
From Alexandria he ascended along the canal to Rosetta. The fields, then under water, had been sown about a week previously with rice, but it was already three inches high; the frogs, which lay in myriads at the bottom of the canal, croaked most hideously; the mosquitoes stung; the buffaloes, offended at his red garments, attempted to gore him. However, by the aid of patience and a janizary, he at length reached Rosetta, from whence he proceeded up the Nile to Cairo. Here, at the house of Mr. Burton, the English consul, he saw a tamarind-tree, the leaves of which closed up in the evening at sunset, and expanded again with the dawn. Among the curious practices of Egypt he noticed, in this city, one of the most extraordinary: that is, that the women sometimes hatch eggs by keeping them perpetually under their armpits, until the desired effect is produced.
Though there are nations whose incivility is proof against the most courteous behaviour, a traveller may almost always conjecture from the character of his own manners the sort of reception he shall meet with in whatever country he may visit. Hasselquist’s manners were gentle and inoffensive, and accordingly he found even the Turks polite. Shortly after his arrival at Cairo he was taken by the English consul to witness a grand feast given by a Turkish gentleman on the occasion of his son’s circumcision. It had already lasted thirty days, during all which time he had kept open house, and accompanied his repasts by fireworks, illuminations, concerts, and dances. The fireworks, though inferior to those sometimes set off in Europe, were extremely fine; and the illumination was brilliant and ingenious. However, the most curious part of the spectacle, in the opinion of Hasselquist, were the spectators themselves, who, seated in a ring on the ground, looked with invincible gravity at the various efforts which were made to amuse them. The Christian guests, immediately on their arrival, were presented with coffee and carpets, and they sat down and imitated the silent manner of the other guests. Hasselquist was assured that the expense of this feast of thirty days would not amount to less than eight thousand ducats; but, in return, the master of the house received presents of immense value on the occasion, not less, it was reported, than thirty camel-loads.
A few days after this circumcision-feast our hakim enjoyed an opportunity of observing one of the inconsistencies of Mohammedan manners. A company of almé, or dancing girls, came to perform before the window of the consul’s house, and, in a country where other women never go out without a veil, exhibited themselves in a state bordering upon that of nature. From the age of Herodotus down to the present day, the Egyptians have always possessed the reputation of being among the most lascivious nations upon earth, and their patronising the performance of these dancing girls, who exhibit themselves with an effrontery which our opera dancers have not hitherto ventured to imitate, is a proof of it. These almé, whose ability is estimated by the greater or less facility with which they inflame the passions of the spectators, are generally country girls, and sometimes married women. They are of a dark complexion. Their dress consists of a single tunic, round the edges of which are suspended a number of small bells and hollow pieces of silver, which, tinkling as they proceed through their voluptuous movements, serve instead of music.
Dr. Southey, a man of universal reading, laments that we have been less curious respecting the modes by which the human body is rendered proof against the poison of venomous serpents, than in learning from savages the modes of preparing their destructive drugs. Hasselquist, who was altogether of the same opinion, assiduously endeavoured, during his residence in Egypt, to extract from the Psylli the secret of their profession, a secret which has been religiously preserved during two thousand years; but, as he could offer these serpent-charmers no equivalent for the danger they would have incurred by imparting it, for they must inevitably have provoked the enmity of their brethren, his efforts were necessarily unsuccessful. It is customary with persons who affect superior wisdom to make short work with all affairs of this kind, by putting on an air of absolute incredulity, by which they would intimate that they have fathomed the secrets of nature, and are perfectly competent to prescribe the limits beyond which her operations cannot pass. These sages, on the subject of the Psylli, at once cut the Gordian knot by asserting that before they take any liberties with venomous serpents, they carefully extract the tooth to which the poison bag is attached, and thus, with all their boasted skill, perform nothing more marvellous than those who handle live eels. This, however, is not the fact. Hasselquist examined the serpents upon which they had exerted the force of their charms, and found that the poison-tooth had not been extracted.
The most favourable time for observing the performances of these singular people is in the month of July, when the violent heat of summer hatches myriads of serpents, scorpions, lizards, and every abominable reptile among the sands of Egypt, and sends them forth rejoicing in the vigour of their youth and the potency of their virgin poisons. About the beginning of this month a female serpent-charmer, understanding his desire to possess specimens of some of the most deadly of the subjects, went forth into the fields, accompanied by an Arab, and took up specimens of four different species, that is, of the common viper, the cerastes of Alpinus, the jaculus, and a kind of sea-serpent, which she brought to our traveller. The French consul, and all the French in Cairo who happened to be present on her arrival, were struck with terror; and crowds of people immediately collected to behold this daring magician, for as such she was regarded, handle with careless impunity reptiles which no other person present would have touched for the wealth of the universe. In thrusting them into a bottle she held them in her hand as she would have held her stay-lace (if she had had one); and when they crept out again, not admiring their close lodgings, and apparently irritated at the attempt to imprison them, she still seized them with the same coolness, and thrust them in as before.
That these Psylli, for they are doubtless the same race with those who exhibited the force of their spells over the serpent tribes in ancient Rome, possess some important secret there seems to be no reasonable ground for doubting, and it seems equally probable that it might be extorted from them by the force of that golden spell which commands all others; but all that Hasselquist was able to learn was, that the serpent-charmers carefully avoided all other venomous reptiles, such as scorpions, lizards, &c., while those whose profession it was to deal with the latter kept aloof with equal solicitude from the contact of serpents; that, previously to their going out in quest of their prey, they never failed to devour a quantity of serpents’ flesh, both boiled and roasted; and that, in addition to all this, they had a number of superstitious practices, among which the most efficacious was the being spitten upon by their sheikh; though Hasselquist seriously opines that this last circumstance could be of no manner of utility! Perhaps, however, the whole secret lies in the using of serpents, or whatever other reptiles they profess to charm, for food; for by this practice they communicate to their perspiration, and, in fact, to their whole body, a snakish odour, which reconciles the reptiles to their touch, and causes them to regard their charmers and destroyers as genuine members of their body politic.
Hasselquist could not, of course, omit while at Cairo to visit the pyramids. The country about Gizeh, to which he proceeded by water, was so fertile and so admirably cultivated, that it was an object of perpetual admiration; and in winter the whole of this part of Egypt appears, when contemplated from an eminence, to be nothing but one vast sea of verdure, extending in every direction farther than the eye can reach. On arriving in the neighbourhood of the pyramids, he was hospitably entertained by an Arab sheikh, who was encamped there with his tribe. Two kids were slain, and reduced to an admirable pilau; and with a rough board for a table, a rush mat for a table-cloth, and their fingers for spoons, the whole party made a frugal but wholesome supper. It is necessary, says our traveller, that in such cases we should accommodate ourselves to the ways of the people, which if we do, there is no nation upon earth among whom we shall find so much friendship, frankness, and benevolence as the Arabs.