However hot the days may be in Egypt, the nights never fail to be cool; and the dews are exceedingly pernicious, whenever the body, heated by the sun or by exercise, is too suddenly exposed to a check of perspiration. In the morning, when I awoke, I was surprised to see myself near the foot of a fortress built of brick; it served, or perhaps its time was gone by and it had served, to defend the entrance of the lake, which is narrow and deep. Some ferrymen came soon to carry us over, which, from the smallness of their boat, was a work of some time and difficulty.
Brulos stands close to the sea and the mouth of the lake: it shows marks of having been a much larger town than at present; it has a pretty look at a distance, from two or three white cupolas of mosques, and as many minarets. The old town, or what remained of it, was brick; the bricks of Egypt are of a deep red cast approaching to black. The modern houses were sugarloaf-shaped, of sun-dried bricks. Brulos is celebrated for its melons.
We made no stay there, having a long day’s journey to accomplish. Although the soil was mostly sandy, uncultivated, and barren, still the road was more pleasing than that by the seashore. We saw, soon afterwards, the ruins of a large village. Towards noon, at a turning in the road, a most agreeable and novel sight presented itself; which was no other than a small encampment, probably of some lord of a village come to levy contributions. These lords were formerly the Mameluke beys, and, under the present pasha, some of his officers. The chief’s tent was conspicuous from its treble compartments, connected with each other by small corridors: it was of green, ornamented with stars and flowers. The other tents, though smaller, were coloured. In front of the encampment were tethered the horses, all stallions, whose neighings very pleasingly broke the stillness of mid-day, sometimes as profound in hot climates as that of midnight. None of the horsemen were out; but some were seen lying at full length in the tents, taking their afternoon’s nap.
We proceeded onward; and nothing occurred, excepting that we passed occasionally among ploughed fields. Towards evening, we came upon a large sandy plain, two or three leagues over, where we observed strait rows of reeds, planted on a broad circular base, and narrowing to a point where they were tied. Some of these rows seemed to run for a mile or two, each bundle at ten or fifteen yards’ distance, I was informed that within them there were snares; and that, whenever a cloud passed over the sun, the quails, which at certain seasons of the year frequent the plain, immediately run to hide themselves in these places, where they are caught. I had no time to examine them, that I might ascertain the truth of this story. At sunset we reached the banks of the Damietta branch of the Nile, and were immediately ferried over. I was received very courteously by a native gentleman named Airût, who was already apprized of Lady Hester’s intention of coming to Damietta, and had vacated his house for her reception.
During my absence from Cairo, it appeared that the pasha, anxious to do honour to Lady Hester Stanhope, had reviewed his troops before her, and had presented her with a charger magnificently caparisoned. This horse was afterwards sent to his R.H. the D. of York. Abdhu Bey, who was the flower of the pasha’s court, and was said to be a very aspiring nobleman, likewise gave her a fine horse, which was, at the same time with the other, sent to the Viscount Ebrington. Mr. B. received a handsome sabre from the Pasha, and a fine cashmere shawl from Abdhu Bey.
Damietta is a large town, on an elbow of the Nile, on the eastern bank, about seven or eight miles from the sea. The houses are principally of brick: those upon the river enjoy an agreeable coolness, and command the most amusing prospect of any city in Lower Egypt; since the passage of large vessels over the bar of the river up to the wharfs affords a change of scene not observable elsewhere. The Christian quarter is at the south end of the city, and has the peculiarity, observable at Alexandria, of okels or quadrangular buildings for the Franks. The Franks, however, were few in number at Damietta at the time I speak of; consisting only of a medical practitioner and a dragoman attached to the English consul; although there were several other persons who were denominated agents for different European nations, and, as such, were entitled to many of the privileges of Franks.
Rice mills are the main source of wealth to this city as well as to Rosetta. These mills were formerly the property, and under the direction, of individuals, who enriched themselves greatly by them; but, as the pasha of Egypt meddled with everything whereby money was to be gained, he had also recently monopolized the mills, allowing none but his own to work, by which means he sold the rice at what price he pleased. We must except that of Mr. Surur, the English agent at Damietta, who obtained a licence for one year (as I had heard) by a present of fifteen purses, equal to nearly £400 sterling.
A rice-mill is generally a spacious brick building, divided into a stable for the oxen, granaries for the rice, a room for the mill-wheel, and, lastly, rooms where the hammers beat the husk off the rice. Rice, when brought from the fields, somewhat resembles barley; but the grain is pale and smaller: it may be called an aquatic plant; since, from the moment it is sown until it is harvested, it remains almost continually under water, every irrigation covering the soil to the depth of six inches.
The whole machinery of the rice-mill seemed rough and simple. A pair of oxen turn a wheel, the beam or axis of which passed through a hole in the wall into another room, where it had, at two, three, or four intervals, strong wooden cogs projecting from it, but not in the same line. These cogs, as the beam went round, pressed, one after the other, upon the ends of wooden levers, which were from ten to fifteen feet long, and suspended, not in the middle, but at a third part of their length from where the pressure was made; so that, when that pressure was taken off, they, by their own weight, fell down with great force. To this heavy end, in the manner a hammer is fixed to its handle, were fixed the rice-huskers, which were hollow cylinders of iron with sharpened edges, two and a half or three inches in diameter, much the same in form as a saddler’s punch. Where the hammers fell there were small bins, holding about a bushel of rice; and with the rice was mixed a proportion of salt. Every two hammers, with their bins, were generally so near that a man could sit between them, and, with either hand, reach one and the other.
The cogs then, pressing alternately on the ends of the hammer handles, bore them down, and consequently raised into the air the end to which the cylindrical pestle was attached. At this moment, the man seated by the bin gave the rice a rake with his hand, so as to heap it up just where the pestle would strike, which, losing its pressure at the short end, fell down with great violence on the rice. The second hammer was now up, and the man’s second hand performed the same office for the second bin; and so, alternately, for one and the other. No one, on entering a rice dairy (for so the mills are called in Arabic), could view the situation of the man who plied at the bins without horror. A moment’s forgetfulness, either to remove his hand in time or to hold himself in an upright posture, subjected him to have his arm crushed to atoms; and the noise of the pestles was worse than the din of any engine I ever heard.