There was nothing so much we desired as to be at some distance from Cairo on our voyage. Bad affairs and extortions always overtake you in this detestable country, at the very time when you are about to leave it.
The wind was contrary, so we were obliged to advance against the stream, by having the boat drawn with a rope.
We were surprised to see the alacrity with which two young Moors bestirred themselves in the boat, they supplied the place of masters, companions, pilots, and seamen to us.
Our Rais had not appeared, and I did not augur much good, from the alacrity of these Moors, so willing to proceed without him.
However, as it was conformable to our own wishes, we encouraged and cajoled them all we could. We advanced a few miles to two convents of Cophts, called Deireteen[78].
Here we stopped to pass the night, having had a fine view of the Pyramids of Geeza and Saccara, and being then in sight of a prodigious number of others built of white clay, and stretching far into the desert to the south-west.
Two of these seemed full as large as those that are called the Pyramids of Geeza. One of them was of a very extraordinary form, it seemed as if it had been intended at first to be a very large one, but that the builder’s heart or means had failed him, and that he had brought it to a very mis-shapen disproportioned head at last.
We were not a little displeased to find, that, in the first promise of punctuality our Rais had made, he had disappointed us by absenting himself from the boat. The fear of a complaint, if we remained near the town, was the reason why his servants had hurried us away; but being now out of reach, as they thought, their behaviour was entirely changed; they scarce deigned to speak to us, but smoked their pipes, and kept up a conversation bordering upon ridicule and insolence.
On the side of the Nile, opposite to our boat, a little farther to the south, was a tribe of Arabs encamped.
These are subject to Cairo, or were then at peace with its government. They are called Howadat, being a part of the Atouni, a large tribe that possesses the Isthmus of Suez, and from that go up between the Red Sea and the mountains that bound the east part of the Valley of Egypt. They reach to the length of Cosseir, where they border upon another large tribe called Ababdé, which extends from thence up into Nubia.