[6]Since these lines were written (in 1853), a decree is said to have been published, abolishing the trade in slaves throughout the Ottoman Empire. In Cairo, in Alexandria, it is at this moment as active as ever.—Cairo, 15th July, 1855.
[7]On referring to Beechey’s Narrative, since these pages were written, I find that he speaks of Ras Sem as a name unknown to the Arabs to designate the promontory marked thus in our maps. The coast, from a few miles west of Apollonia, has a very gradual inclination southwards, but so slight that it is impossible to designate even the place from which it begins to turn as a headland. Shaw and Bruce’s account of the well five or six days south of Benghazi agrees perfectly with the place called by the Arabs R’sam; and although the very bitter well is eight hours further on, there can be no doubt it is to this place that they allude. The petrified city, with its inhabitants, does not exist; its magnificent castle is only the Saracenic building, now called Sheikh Es-saby; but the ground is to some distance strewed with petrified wood. The dream of the city where “men are conspicuous in different attitudes, some of them exercising their trades and occupations, and women giving suck to their children,” is due, of course, to Arab imagination, and not to those truthful travellers.
[8]A description of Waday has been published in French, translated from a MS. of the Shiekh Mohammed El Tounsy, who was there about 1814, and who still lives in Cairo attached to one of the mosques.
[9]How to make the Djin descend.
Write in the right palm of a boy or girl, below the age of puberty, the seal which is here given, and fumigate with coriander seed, which among the Djin are counted apples, and conjure them with the Surah “and the Sun” to the end, until they come down. Then ask them what you desire to know, and they will answer you with the permission of God (be he exalted!); and this is what you write on the forehead of the child:—
فكشفنا عنك عطاك
فبصرك اليوم صحچ
And then you write the seal, and in the midst of it make a spot of ink; and when you wish to dismiss the kings, conjure them with the verse of the throne, and they will depart by permission of God. This is the seal as you see it here, and there is no power and no strength but in God.
[10]I am inclined to suppose that after the dead had undergone the process of mummifying, and had been wrapped in their casements, they were covered with a coating of stucco: I have a piece of fine white plaster which I picked in one of the tombs, one-third of an inch thick, in which are the impression of a limb and fragments of cloth.