We were marched along the dam that separates Lake Mœris from Lake Madiah, upon which there is a block-house, built, I believe, by the French: we were led into it, and told that we were prisoners. It was with difficulty that we could learn why we had been stopped, until, at last, we comprehended that there was an existing order that the passports of all persons were to be examined before embarking, for some reasons of government, and that we were accused of having endeavoured to evade the order. The soldiers treated us very roughly. At last, a circumstantial conversation having convinced the officer that he was detaining persons who might get him into trouble, he began by ordering us coffee, and softened his expressions. But we had been too much insulted (as we thought) to be reconciled so easily; and we threatened him with punishment.
It was now about eight o’clock at night; and I proposed to the Albanian captain to let me go up to Alexandria, leaving Mr. Pearce as a hostage, to which, either from fear, or else because he thought people might advise us to give him a present and let the matter drop, he consented. Taking the janissary with me, I set off, and arrived, about eleven o’clock, at Alexandria, where my return created no small surprise. Colonel Misset, being made acquainted with our detention, immediately sent his dragoman to the Governor; and, although he had retired to his harým, a place where great Turks are never interrupted, the dragoman, by the Colonel’s order, insisted on his being called up. When the business was heard, a proper officer was sent back with me, with orders to the Albanian to set us at liberty immediately. I returned to the dam, and there I found Mr. Pearce asleep in the boat, exposed to the dew, which in Egypt falls profusely, and passing a supperless night. No sooner was the Albanian taken to task for what he had done, by the officer who had accompanied me, than he became very humble; but we accepted none of his apologies or proffers of service, and waited impatiently for morning, to be gone.
This is one of three or four disagreeable adventures that happened to me from contemptuous behaviour towards government officers in Turkey. Had we quietly returned to the shore, when first hailed, there could have been no plea whatever for detaining us; but our apparent wish to get away naturally irritated the guard, and brought on us the treatment we experienced, and which, perhaps, we deserved.
When it was day, we quitted the block-house and re-embarked; and, the wind blowing fresh, we soon came to an outlet, which was once the Canopic branch of the Nile, by which we got into Abukir bay; and, after coasting the shore a mile or two, entered Lake Edko, the mouth of which is, like that of Lake Madiah, a narrow opening into the sea, with little or no current. The bars of these bogàzes are not free from danger, though less so than the mouths of the Nile, where a large stream of water makes, with the opposing wind and sea, most dangerous breakers. We sailed up the lake, until we came to the village of Edko. As the water grows quite shallow near the shore, the boats generally ground as far off as one hundred yards, when immediately the porters come and take the luggage and the passengers on their shoulders, and carry them to dry ground. There cannot be a more robust race of people than those who work on the lakes of Egypt; they are often very tall and muscular: they have no other clothing than a blue smock frock, which is generally tucked up with little regard to decency.
At Edko a second bargain was to be made for the hire of our asses to Rosetta; which being effected without entering the dirty village, where all these boatmen and porters resided, we proceeded towards Rosetta. The mirage, which we saw on the sands between Edko and Rosetta, was indeed a deception most striking: for nothing but the conviction, which arose from going over the ground where the mirage appeared, could have convinced us that it was not a sheet of water. About half way, the road passed through a forest of palm-trees, where the sands were exceedingly heavy, and might be supposed to be very moveable, since numbers of these palms were buried up to their very branches.
As we entered between the brick walls of the city of Rosetta, their appearance was not calculated to excuse the defeat which the English arms met with, before that place, in 1805. We wound through several narrow but well-built streets, and arrived at last at the Frank quarter on the banks of the Nile, where our mule-driver brought us to the house allotted for us: it faced the river, commanding a prospect of the country on the opposite side, which, being entirely flat, is very little diversified. But the Nile itself is a never-ceasing source of amusement; being at all times covered with barges, crowded with men, cattle, and goods, and with pleasure-boats, not much inferior to those on the Thames. The house which we were to occupy belonged to M. Petrucci, a gentleman who had been long in the service of the English: it had not been inhabited for some time, and was so full of fleas that all the pains which were taken could not effect a clearance.
And it may not be out of place to observe, that, to a European, or at least to an Englishman, neither deliciousness of climate, nor the fertility of soil, nor the brilliancy of costumes, nor, finally, even the splendid remains of antiquity, which present themselves in that country, can counterbalance the distressing sensations which the fleas and musquitoes give rise to. Whatever pains he may take to keep his body free from fleas he tries in vain; in vain he repeatedly changes his linen, has his room swept, and resorts to all the measures he can think of to rid himself of these troublesome creatures. The first native who pays him a visit undoes all his labour, and he finds himself and his room filled anew. No remedy is then left him but to forego all society; which, if he resolves on, he necessarily foregoes, likewise, part of the advantages he must have proposed to himself in his travels—the study of the manners and customs of the people he is among. With respect to musquitoes, a net will certainly save a person from their sting during the night; but, in the evenings, when he would be anxious to pass an hour in reading or writing, he has the mortification to find himself assailed by a score of almost invisible enemies, whose bite does not fail to be the poison of his comfort, and obliges him to leave his studies in despair. It may seem to some persons that all this is unworthy of the consideration of a traveller; but let them know that many a one has gone from Europe to Egypt to visit its antiquities, and has perhaps never, when at Cairo, summoned courage to finish the few remaining miles to the Pyramids, because the sun was too hot: such is the effect of trifles on the success of all enterprises.
Lady Hester arrived the next day, accompanied by Mr. B. and Captain Hope. The few days we spent at Rosetta were agreeably occupied in visiting the town and its environs. Rosetta is well built, and, in the private streets, has several fine, lofty houses. It is spacious, and not to be judged of by a mere superficial view of the street facing the Nile and of the markets. The Mahometan inhabitants were not courteous to Franks; nor are they generally so, wherever I have been, excepting when, from some motive of interest, they affect a civility which is not real. Rosetta, being the thoroughfare for trade from Alexandria to Cairo, is a place of great business, as the crowded warehouses and barges loading and unloading testified; for barges alone, owing to the shallow water over the bar at the mouth of the river, enter the port. The environs of Rosetta are celebrated for their beautiful gardens, which we should rather call orchards, as containing chiefly fruit trees, with ploughed ground beneath them, which is intersected with trenches made for irrigation. Parterres of flowers, green turf, winding or strait walks, are unknown there, and the so-called gardens present to an Englishman an appearance totally foreign to what the name imports in his own language. But the native of Egypt asks for nothing but shade and running water; where, spreading his carpet, he lights his pipe, and reclines at his ease. If you sit down and converse with him, and contrast his indolence with the pleasure of strolling through serpentine walks with an agreeable female companion, or of straying through woods with a philosophical friend, he replies that conversation can never be so pleasurable as when held without fatigue, and that the beauties of nature are as striking to the tranquil spectator as to him who hurries hastily over them. He styles the restlessness and bustle of the Franks but a fever of the mind, from which he thanks God he is free.
We visited the town of Abu Mandûr, to the south of the town, where were the head-quarters of the English army in 1805. The facility with which Rosetta was taken, and the neglect by which it was immediately lost again, were talked of very frequently by the natives, who knew not how to reconcile the failure of the latter invasion with the complete success of the former, when the successful one was against the French, the conquerors of Egypt, and the latter against the Turks, so often beaten by them.
We visited the public bath, near the Frank quarter, which exceeds in elegance the baths of Alexandria and the greater part of those of Cairo. The fertility of Egypt was well exemplified by the vast heaps of corn of all kinds that were lying on the wharfs, ready to be shipped for Alexandria, but particularly of wheat, the exportation of which, by English transports, formed, at this time, no small part of the revenue of the viceroy: and there is no better proof of it, than the vast fortunes that were amassed by individuals from agency and brokerage only.