We halted at midday at a well in an open plain. Bîr el-Ingliz, as this well is called, and also the names of two Frenchmen, on a rock near by, and dated 1799, vaguely recalled some incidents in the fight between France and England during the Napoleonic wars. Desaix, who commanded the French troops in Upper Egypt 1799, must have sent his men by this route to garrison the still existing fort at Kosseir. We know of no record that the young French general was ever at Kosseir himself; but we know that in January 1800 both Desaix and Kleber signed the convention of el-Arish, six months after Buonaparte had left Egypt. The two Frenchmen, Forcard and Materon, whose names we find near the well, were therefore in all probability returning with a detachment from Kosseir to join Desaix before he went north to el-Arish. The English could not have restored this well till two years later, as it was not till May 1801 that an Anglo-Indian force, under Baird, landed at Kosseir and drove the garrison back into the desert.
Though the well is known as Bîr el-Ingliz, it is probable that the English put an already existing one into working order, and built the well-house as a protection to it. Some of its slightly brackish water may have been the cause of these Frenchmen resting here.
A magnificent range of limestone cliffs, which came into view soon after our rest, shut us off from any glimpse we might have had of the sea. These were the finest mountains I had seen in Egypt; their formation is very similar to that of the Der el-Bahri cliffs, but they were more imposing from their greater altitude.
As we approached the northern extremity of the range, a patch of vivid green had a singular attraction for us, and hastened the trot of our camels. It could not be a mirage, for the form that phenomenon took, as far as our experience went, was that of reflecting, in what appeared water, objects above our horizon. Our Ababdi guide knew it as the Bîr Ambagi. We had been only a few days in the desert; but we felt some of the excitement of pilgrims in the wilderness who, after a prolonged journey, catch their first glimpse of a land of Canaan. Our oasis turned out to be nothing more than a mass of rushes surrounding some pools of water; it was, however, a refreshing sight to our eyes, and possibly more refreshing to the stomachs of our camels—there was not much left of Laura’s hump when I had last taken observations.
A half-dozen goats—sole milk-supply of Kosseir, as we later on found out—grazed peacefully here, while the young goat-herds stared round-eyed at the newcomers.
The air we breathed was different, and though no air is purer than that of the desert, there was something singularly exhilarating in that which was here. The sea, which we could not yet catch a glimpse of, had sent its breezes to welcome us to its shores.
On remounting our camels we followed the dry bed of a river—a wash-out,—and after descending it for a few miles, we turned the corner of some low-lying sand-hills, and the Red Sea was before us. How intensely blue it looked! I had not at that time gone down the Red Sea, or I might have been prepared for its being no redder than a blue band-box. It is just as well that its colour was no other, for no sight could have given us greater pleasure. We kept our camels at the trot, and it looked as if we should be there in half an hour. The low white houses of Kosseir were on our left horizon, with some huge ugly erection over-topping them. In a couple of hours we cleared the sandy waste, and jumped off our camels on the strand.
One of our party threw off his clothes to have a swim, in spite of our warning him that the water might be infested with sharks. ‘I’ll risk it anyhow,’ he called out, and we watched him splashing about with mixed feelings of sour grapes. Weigall sent our guide with a note to the Mudir to tell him of our arrival, and Selim lighted the spirit lamp to prepare our tea. We strolled some way along the beach, when we came on the body of a young shark, with its throat cut, lying on the edge of the water, and our looks at our venturesome companion silenced his boastings of how he had enjoyed his bathe.