[p.18] months, during which the price continues to rise; so that if they choose to wait till the January or February following, they may calculate with great security upon a gain of from thirty to forty per cent; and if they transport a part of their goods to Mekka for sale to the Hadj, their profits are still greater. It is the nature of this commerce that renders Djidda so crowded during the stay of the fleet. People repair hither from every port on the Red Sea, to purchase at the first hand; and the merchants of Mekka, Yembo, and Djidda, scrape together every dollar they possess, to lay them out in these purchases. [Some time after the Indian fleet had sailed from Djidda, I was present when a merchant of great property and respectability called upon an acquaintance of mine to borrow one hundred dollars, saying, he had laid out every farthing of his money in India goods which he did not wish yet to sell, and had, in the mean while, no money left for his daily expenses. This occurs, I understood, very frequently among them.] Another cause of the India trade with Djidda being more safe and profitable is, the arrival of the merchant-ships but once in the year, at a stated period, and all within a few weeks: there is, therefore, nothing to spoil the market; the price of goods is settled according to the known demand and quantity of imports; and it is never known to fall till the return of the next fleet. In the coffee trade it was the reverse.
In Syria and Egypt it is the work of several days, and the business of three or four brokers, to conclude a bargain between two merchants to the amount of a thousand dollars. At Djidda sales and purchases are made of entire ships cargoes in the course of half an hour, and the next day the money is paid down. The greater part of the merchandize thus bought is shipped for Suez, and sold at Cairo, whence it finds its way into the Mediterranean. The returns are made either in goods, which are disposed of chiefly in the Hedjaz, or in dollars and sequins, large quantities of which are carried off annually by the Indian fleet: this principally causes the scarcity of silver in Egypt. The coffee ships
[p.19] from Yemen take a few articles of Egyptian manufacture in return, as Mellayes, (blue-striped cotton cloths,) linen stuff's for shirts, and glass beads; but their chief sales are mostly for cash.
If Suez were to participate in the direct Indian trade, the present flourishing state of Djidda would, no doubt, be greatly diminished, and the town would become merely what its position renders it, the harbour of the Hedjaz, instead of being, as it now is, the port of Egypt. It was natural that the sherifs of Mekka, who had the customs in their own hands, should endeavour, by every means in their power, to make Djidda an emporium for the Indian trade, the custom-duties on which formed the principle source of their income. Suez, however, is not a place where large capitals are always found ready to make purchases; even Cairo could not, at least immediately, engage in this trade with advantage, were it transferred to Suez; for, according to old customs, from which Orientals seldom like to depart, ready money is almost unknown in the commercial transactions of that city; India goods are in consequence never sold there except at very long credit. Undoubtedly cash might in time have found its way to Suez, as it now does to Djidda; but the channel of trade was such, that a fleet of ships coming direct from India to Suez, would hardly have been able to dispose of their cargoes either with profit or within due time. Another cause also contributed to favour the harbour of Djidda: the India ships, although most of them sail under the English flag, are entirely manned and commanded by the people of the country, Arabs and Lascars; [No English captain had been at Djidda for five years, when, in 1814, the Resoul, Captain Boag, from Bombay, arrived laden with rice. The ships are not navigated by Englishmen, and very few English merchants resident in India have ever speculated in the trade of the Red Sea, which is carried on almost exclusively with the capitals of Muselman merchants of Djidda, Maskat, Bombay, Surat, and Calcutta. The Americans seldom visit any other harbour in this sea than that of Mekka.] and they have adopted the same coasting navigation that is followed in every part of the Red
[p.20] Sea. They never venture out to sea, and must, therefore, necessarily pass Djidda and Yembo, both harbours of the Sherif, who could easily oblige them to anchor in his ports and pay duties, as he is known to have done with many coffee ships bound direct for Suez from Yemen. These causes, however, no longer exist; for Mohammed Aly, Pasha of Egypt, having possession of the harbours and custom-houses of the Hedjaz, might transfer the customs of Djidda to Suez, and thence open a direct communication with India. The chief obstacles to such a change which have hitherto presented themselves, are the jealousy and false representations of the merchants of Djidda, and the Pashas ignorance of his own real interests, added perhaps to the fear of displeasing his sovereign; he has it, notwithstanding, in contemplation to change the system, after the example of a very respectable English house at Alexandria, which had, in concert with its correspondents at Bombay, in 1812, when the Hedjaz was not yet in the Pashas hands, concluded a treaty with him for allowing English ships to come direct to Suez, and for insuring the protection of merchandize across the Desert to Cairo. The reports of the Wahabi war, and of hostile cruisers in the Red Sea, prevented the merchants from taking advantage of the treaty till 1815, when a large ship was despatched from Bombay to Suez. The Pasha, however, who was at Mekka when she touched at Djidda, in direct violation of his engagements, stopped the ship, prohibited her proceeding to Suez, compelled the captain to sell the cargo at a loss, while the plague was raging in the town, and exacted the same duties as are taken on country ships, in contravention of the stipulations existing between Great Britain and the Porte. This affair, which created great disgust amongst the Europeans in Egypt, might easily have been remedied by retaliation upon the Pashas ships trading to Malta, which would have taught him to respect the British flag wherever he might meet it. The British officers, however, from an erroneous conception perhaps of his power and
[p.21] importance, and from a wish to remain upon a friendly footing with him, instead of evincing any displeasure, preferred submitting silently to the outrage; forgetting that the favour of a Turkish ruler can never be bought by conciliation, but can only be obtained by an attitude of defiance. In consequence of all this, the merchants were obliged to make a second treaty with the Pasha, which was formally ratified. His first demand was, that the ships should pay at Suez the joint customs of that port and Djidda, which would have been equivalent to about 12 per cent.; but he contented himself, at last, with a promise of 9 per cent. upon all imports into Suez from India, which was six per cent. more than the usual duty paid by European merchants in the ports of the Grand Signior. This arrangement, it is supposed, will lead to the opening of an active trade. The Pasha himself is disposed to speculate on his own account; and the first adventure he sent to Bombay, in the spring of 1816, was to bring him, in return, a richly caparisoned elephant, destined as a present to his sovereign at Constantinople. Still, however, I am afraid he will as little respect the second treaty as he did the first; for his avarice, if not effectually checked, knows no bounds, and he can at any time exact additional imposts, as far as the profits of this new commercial route can bear them, by threatening the security of the road from Suez to Cairo, the Bedouins of the neighbouring Desert being completely at his command.
The former master of Djidda, Sherif Ghaleb, was actively engaged in the Indian trade; he had two ships, of four hundred tons each, employed in it, besides many smaller vessels in the coffee trade to Yemen; indeed, he was a shrewd speculator in all branches of the Red Sea trade. He oppressed the merchants of Djidda by heavy duties and his own powerful competition; but he was never known to practise extortion upon them. If he borrowed money, he repaid it at the stipulated time, and never ventured to levy extraordinary contributions from individuals, although he did [p.22] it from the whole community, by increasing the duties in an arbitrary manner. It was the well-known security which property enjoyed under his government that induced foreign merchants to visit the port of Djidda, even when Ghaleb was reduced to great distress by the Wahabis. His conduct, however, in this respect, was not caused by any love of justice, for he governed most despotically; but he well knew that, if the merchants should be frightened away, his town would sink into insignificance. Towards the close of his government, the duty upon coffee was increased by him from two and a half to five dollars per quintal, or to about fifteen per cent. The duty upon India goods was from six to ten per cent., according to their quality. If Ghaleb could not immediately sell the coffee or India goods imported on his account, he distributed the cargoes of his ships among the native merchants of the place at the current market-price, in quantities proportioned to the supposed property of each merchant, who was thus forced to become a purchaser for ready money. In this respect Ghaleb was not singular; for in Egypt the present Pasha frequently distributes his coffee among the merchants; with this difference, however, from the practice of Ghaleb, that the price which he exacts is always above the real market-price.
Business in Djidda is conducted through the intervention of brokers, who are for the most part Indians of small property and bad reputations.
The number of ships belonging to Djidda is very great. Taking into account all the small vessels employed in the Red Sea trade, two hundred and fifty perhaps may be calculated as belonging either to merchants of the town, or to owners, who navigate them, and who consider the port as their principal home. The different names given to these ships, as Say, Seume, Merkeb, Sambouk, Dow, denote their size; the latter only, being the largest, perform the voyage to India. The ships are navigated chiefly by people from Yemen, from the Somawly coast (opposite to Aden,
[p.23] between Abyssinia and Cape Guardafui,) and by slaves, of which latter three or four are generally found in every ship. The crew receive a certain sum for the voyage, and every sailor is, at the same time, a petty trader on his own account; this is another cause of the resort of foreigners to Djidda during the trade winds, for persons with the smallest capitals can purchase goods in retail, at the first hand, from the crews of these ships. No vessels of any kind are now constructed at Djidda, so scarce has timber become; indeed, it is with difficulty that means are found to repair a ship. Yembo is subject to the same inconvenience. Suez, Hadeyda, and Mokha, are the only harbours in the Red Sea where ships are built. The timber used at Suez is transported thither overland from Cairo, and comes originally from the coast of Asia Minor: The canvas used all over the Red Sea is of Egyptian manufacture. The cordage is of the date-tree. Ships coming from the East Indies have cordage made of the cocoa-nut tree, of which a quantity is also brought for sale. That employed at Hadeyda and Mokha comes partly from Yemen, and partly from the African coast. Many ships are purchased at Bombay and Maskat; but those built at Suez are most common in the sea north of Yemen. There has been a great want of shipping at Djidda during the last three years, as the Pasha had seized a great number of ships, and obliged their owners to transport provisions, ammunition, and baggage, from Egypt to the Hedjaz, for which he pays a very low freight. During my stay at Djidda, scarcely a day passed without some arrival by sea, chiefly from Yembo and Cosseir; and there were constantly forty or fifty ships in the harbour. An officer, entitled Emir al Bahhr, acts as harbour-master, and takes from each ship a certain sum for anchorage. This was an office of considerable dignity in the time of the sherif, but it has now sunk into insignificance. I was somewhat surprised to find that, in so well-frequented a port as Djidda, there were no pleasure-boats of any kind in the harbour, nor even any regular public boatmen; but I learned that this proceeded from the jealousy