Niebuhr was exceedingly desirous, soon after his arrival at Cairo, of descending the eastern branch of the Nile to Damietta; but the sky during the whole winter and spring was so overcast with clouds, and the rain fell so frequently, that it was impossible to take astronomical observations. On the 1st of May, however, the weather having cleared up, he left Cairo. The wind blowing from the north, their progress was slow, and he had therefore considerable leisure for observation. The Coptic churches amused him much. In one of these he saw pictures representing Christ, the Virgin, and several saints, on horseback; intended, perhaps, to insinuate to their Mohammedan masters, that the founder of their religion and his followers had not been compelled, as Christians then were in Egypt, to ride upon asses. These churches, moreover, were strewed with so many crutches, that a stranger might conclude, upon observing them, that the whole Coptic community had lost the use of their limbs; however, upon inquiry, our traveller discovered that it was the custom among them to stand in church, which many persons found so wearisome that they resolved to aid their piety with crutches. The floors were covered with mats, which, not being changed very frequently, swarmed with fleas, numbers of which did our traveller the honour to prefer him before any of their ancient patrons. In approaching Damietta he saw about twenty large boats loaded with bees: each of these boats carried two hundred hives; the number, therefore, of the hives here assembled in one spot, was four thousand; and when the inhabitants of this floating city issued forth to visit the flowers of the neighbourhood, they must have appeared like a locust cloud.
His stay at Damietta, which is about four miles above the mouth of the Nile, was short. Europeans are nowhere in the East so much detested, on account, chiefly, of the profligate character of the French formerly settled there, who, having debauched several Mohammedan women, were nearly all massacred by the infuriated populace. Niebuhr’s fancy that they still remember the crusades, and hate the Franks for the evils those insane expeditions inflicted on their ancestors, is just as rational as if the English people were to be supposed to nourish resentment against all the northern nations, because their barbarous ancestors made piratical descents upon our coasts.
While at Cairo he could not, of course, resist the desire of visiting the Pyramids. He therefore hired two Bedouin guides, and proceeded with his friend Forskaal towards the desert, where they were encountered by a young sheïkh, who, by dint of bravado and insolence, succeeded in extorting from them a small sum of money; but had they, when he first offered his services, bestowed upon him half a crown, he would not only have given them no further molestation, but would have constituted himself their protector against all other importunates. Niebuhr afterward returned under more favourable auspices, and completed the measurement of the two great pyramids, the loftier of which he found to be 443 feet, and the second to be 403 feet high. I shall hereafter, perhaps, have occasion to remark upon the strange discrepancies which are found between the measurements of various travellers, which are, in fact, so great, that we must suspect some of them, at least, of having wanted the knowledge required by such an undertaking. From considering the petrifactions and the nature of the rocks in this neighbourhood, Niebuhr was led to infer the prodigious antiquity of Egypt: “Supposing the whole of the rocks in the northern portions of the country to be composed of petrifactions of a certain kind of shell, how many years,” says he, “must have elapsed before a sufficient number of little snails to raise mountains to their present height could have been born and died! How many other years before Egypt could have been drained and become solid, supposing that, in those remote ages, the waters retired from the shore as slowly as they have during the last ten centuries! How many years still, before the country was sufficiently peopled to think of erecting the first pyramid! How many more years, before that vast multitude of pyramids which are still found in the country could have been constructed! Considering that at the present day we are ignorant of when, and by whom, even the most modern of them was built.”
On the 26th of August, 1762, Niebuhr and his companions set out with the caravan going from Cairo to Suez: the rest of the party, in spite of the Mohammedans, mounted on horseback, and Niebuhr himself on a dromedary. By this means he avoided several evils to which the others were liable. Seated on his mattress he could turn his face now on one side, now on another, to avoid the heat of the sun; and, after having travelled all day, was no more fatigued in the evening than if he had been all the while reposing in a chair; while the horsemen, compelled to remain perpetually in the same posture, were well-nigh exhausted. On the 30th they encamped near a well of good water, mentioned by Belin, Pietro Della Valle, and Pococke, close to which the Turks formerly erected a castle, which was now in ruins, and in three hours more arrived at the wells of Suez, which were surrounded by a strong wall, to keep out the Arabs, and entered by a door fastened with enormous clumps of iron. The water here was drawn up with buckets or sacks of leather.
Suez, from its fortunate position on the Red Sea, carried on a considerable trade. Numbers of ships were built there annually, the materials of which were transported thither on the backs of camels from Cairo. The environs consist of naked rocks, or beds of loose sand, in which nothing but brambles and a few dry stunted plants, among others the rose of Jericho, are found to grow. This rose is employed by the women of the East in various superstitious practices, and is therefore to be found for sale in all cities. When pregnant, they gather one of the buds, and putting its stem in water, foretel whether their pains will be severe or slight from the greater or smaller development of the flower.
Niebuhr’s first inquiry on arriving at Suez was concerning the “Mountain of Inscriptions,” about which so much had been said in Europe. The individuals to whom his first questions were put had never even heard of it; others, who were exactly in the same predicament, but desired to possess themselves of a little of their European gold, professed a most accurate knowledge of the spot, but upon inquiry were detected. At length, however, an Arab was discovered, from whose replies it was clear, that whether he had seen the real Gebel el Mokatteb or not, some mountain or another he had beheld, upon which inscriptions in an unknown language were to be found. Under this man’s guidance, therefore, they placed themselves,—that is, Niebuhr and Von Haven, for the rest were, from various causes, detained at Suez; and leaving the Red Sea on their right-hand, they struck off into the desert.
As I have given a description of this part of Arabia in the life of Dr. Shaw, it will not be necessary here to repeat what I then said. Niebuhr found that the Arabs, whose profession it is to serve as guides, were distinguished, like all other persons of that class, for their extravagant cupidity. So long as they could live at the expense of strangers their own provisions and means were assiduously spared; but on other occasions they exhibited various symptoms that the old national virtue of hospitality was not wholly banished from their minds. The women in this part of Arabia are not in the habit of concealing their faces from strangers, as is the fashion in Egypt. Niebuhr, in his solitary rambles through the country, discovered the wife and sister of a sheïkh grinding corn beside their tent; who, instead of flying and concealing themselves at his approach, as he seems to have expected, came forward, according to the good old custom of the East, with a present in their hands.
On arriving at what his guides called the “Mountain of Inscriptions,” a lofty rugged eminence, which it cost them much time and toil to climb, he found—not what he had expected—but a vast Egyptian cemetery, in which were a great number of sepulchral monuments, covered with hieroglyphics. These inscriptions he was not permitted to copy at the time, because the sheïkh of the mountain apprehended he might thereby gain possession of the immense treasures concealed beneath; but one of his guides, who probably had little faith in that point of the sheïkh’s creed, afterward, on his return from Mount Sinai, enabled him to copy whatever he pleased. On his arrival at the convent of St. Catherine the monks politely refused to admit him, alleging, as their excuse, that he had not brought along with him a letter from their bishop. The patriarch’s letter, which he presented to them, they returned unopened. He was, in fact, destined to meet with nothing but disappointment in these celebrated regions; for his Arabs, having conducted him up to a certain height on Mount Sinai, refused to proceed any farther, and he was not possessed of sufficient resolution to ascend the remainder alone.
Niebuhr now hastened back to Suez, and on his return forded the Red Sea on his dromedary, a thing which no European had done before, though the guides, who were on foot, did not find the water above knee deep. Being desirous of surveying the extremity of the Arabian Gulf, he procured a guide soon after his return from Mount Sinai, with whom he set out upon this expedition. They travelled, however, in constant fear; and the sight of a stranger in the distance increased the terrors of the guide to so extraordinary a pitch, that I suspect he had blood upon his hands, and dreaded the hour of retribution.
The constant arrival of pilgrims from Egypt had now rendered Suez, in proportion to its extent, more populous than Cairo. These holy men, being on their way to the city of their prophet, regarded Christians with an evil eye, just as a bigoted Franciscan travelling to Jerusalem would regard a heretic or an unbeliever; and on this account Niebuhr greatly dreaded the voyage he was about to perform in their company from Suez to Jidda. To avoid, as far as possible, all causes of dispute with their fellow-passengers, they embarked several days before the rest, paid their passage, stowed away their luggage, and then amused themselves with observing the strange characters by which they were surrounded, not the least extraordinary of which was a rich black eunuch, who, in imitation of the great Turkish lords, travelled with his harem.