From Medea, or the Passage, our road lay through very dry sand; to avoid which, and seek firmer footing, we were obliged to ride up to the bellies of our horses in the sea. If the wind blows this quantity of dust or sand into the Mediterranean, it is no wonder the mouths of the branches of the Nile are choked up.
All Egypt is like to this part of it, full of deep dust and sand, from the beginning of March till the first of the inundation. It is this fine powder and sand, raised and loosened by the heat of the sun, and want of dew, and not being tied fast, as it were, by any root or vegetation, which the Nile carries off with it, and buries in the sea, and which many ignorantly suppose comes from Abyssinia, where every river runs in a bed of rock.
When you leave the sea, you strike off nearly at right angles, and pursue your journey to the eastward of north. Here heaps of stone and trunks of pillars, are set up to guide you in your road, through moving sands, which stand in hillocks in proper directions, and which conduct you safely to Rosetto, surrounded on one side by these hills of sand, which seem ready to cover it.
Rosetto is upon that branch of the Nile which was called the Bolbuttic Branch, and is about four miles from the sea. It probably obtained its present name from the Venetians, or Genoese, who monopolized the trade of this country, before the Cape of Good Hope was discovered; for it is known to the natives by the name of Rashid, by which is meant the Orthodox.
The reason of this I have already explained, it is some time or other to be a substitute to Mecca, and to be blessed with all that holiness, that the possession of the reliques, of their prophet can give it.
Dr Shaw[72] having always in his mind the strengthening of Herodotus’s hypothesis, that Egypt is created by the Nile, says, that perhaps this was once a Cape, because Rashid has that meaning. But as Dr Shaw understood Arabic perfectly well, he must therefore have known, that Rashid has no such signification in any of the Oriental Languages. Ras, indeed, is a head land, or cape; but Rassit has no such signification, and Rashid a very different one, as I have already mentioned.
Rashid then, or Rosetto, is a large, clean, neat town, or village, upon the eastern side of the Nile. It is about three miles long, much frequented by studious and religious Mahometans; among these too are a considerable number of merchants, it being the entrepot between Cairo and Alexandria, and vice versa; here too the merchants have their factors, who superintend and watch over the merchandise which passes the Bogaz to and from Cairo.
There are many gardens, and much verdure, about Rosetto; the ground is low, and retains long the moisture it imbibes from the overflowing of the Nile. Here also are many curious plants and flowers, brought from different countries, by Fakirs, and merchants. Without this, Egypt, subject to such long inundation, however it may abound in necessaries, could not boast of many beautiful productions of its own gardens, though flowers, trees, and plants, were very much in vogue in this neighbourhood, two hundred years ago, as we find by the observations of Prosper Alpinus.
The study and search after every thing useful or beautiful, which for some time had been declining gradually, fell at last into total contempt and oblivion, under the brutal reign of these last slaves[73], the most infamous reproach to the name of Sovereign.
Rosetto is a favourite halting-place of the Christian travellers entering Egypt, and merchants established there. There they draw their breaths, in an imaginary increase of freedom, between the two great sinks of tyranny, oppression, and injustice, Alexandria and Cairo.