Lettre de Boyer.
P. 475. I doubt whether any one of the towers about Alexandria would contain 700 men.
P. 475. The writer says every Mamlûk is bought; and yet there are Frenchmen among them.—Where are Frenchmen sold? It is probable no Frenchman would be found among them, unless perhaps two or three individuals who might have embraced Mohammedism, but who certainly never were sold. In an engagement, I believe, no one has more than a single piéton with him; for those inconsiderable officers, who are attended on ordinary occasions by numerous followers, when in the field, avoid as much as possible any shew of preeminence, which would only expose their persons to greater danger.
P. 476. A Mamlûk has rarely more than one fusil, which he discharges once, and then gives to his piéton, to reload if he find opportunity.—One pair of pistols is attached to the body, and the second pair is carried in holsters, never about the body.—Of the arrows in a quiver I have no knowlege; occasionally in engaging the Bedouins the Mamlûks use a light spear, about six feet long, or a misdrâk, which is often ten or twelve feet.—The former is thrown, the latter never discharged from the hand. But these are by no means part of their common arms.—One sabre is used most adroitly and with extraordinary effect, by every expert horseman, but never two.—This part of the officer’s account seems taken from the mouth of some Egyptian peasant, who, as usual, exaggerated.
P. 476. From Alexandria to the mouth of the Nile is not twenty leagues, but from twelve to fifteen.—The anecdote of the shech in the same page appears authentic.
P. 479. The Mohammedans in general, and the Egyptians in particular, of whatever order, are very far from being regardless of the children.—On the contrary, they are extremely anxious for their welfare. Perhaps their domestic government may in some degree afford an example of the happy medium between weak indulgence and unnecessary severity; and parents daily experience the benefit of this their moderation. Very few instances of ingratitude are seen in their children. Women offering to sell their children, it remained for Boyer to discover. If reduced to desperation they might have desired rather to see their offspring in slavery than pierced with bayonets; but not the most wretched of Egyptian mothers would ever have consented at any price to sell her child, even to Murad Bey. I rather imagine the writer mistaken as to this fact.
A moitié nuds. Would not men go half naked in Great Britain if the climate permitted it?—La peau dégoûtante. In the populace of no nation are fewer cutaneous diseases found, or the skin more smooth and healthy, than in the Egyptians. Fouillant dans des ruisseaux, &c. Are hedgers and ditchers in any country very polished and delicate?—None are found raking the muddy channels but those whose business it is to keep them clean. The houses of the Alexandrines are neat, and comfortable according to their ideas, though perhaps they would appear gloomy to a French or English man.
P. 480. This is not quite correct. On the West of the W. branch of the Nile, the arable lands are very narrow, but to the East they extend along the road to Bilbeis and Salehich. The villages indeed are ill built; yet a house is here of little use but as a shelter from the sun. One of our neat, snug, brick houses, covered with red tiles, would be absolutely intolerable in Egypt. They are poor because the government is oppressive, not because they are uninclined to labour. The muddy appearance of the Nile water is no motive for any Egyptian to abstain from drinking it; nor is any other circumstance attending it, except its being polluted. Water, according to their law, is not polluted by a camel, a horse, or an ox drinking of it; but it is by a dog’s drinking, or a man washing his hands in it.
481. Boyer seems to have been too hasty in numbering the inhabitants—400,000 seems to me about one-fourth too much.
Ibid. The streets of Kahira are narrow, but inconveniences would attend their being wider. The houses are by no means without order: two long streets, as is seen in Niebuhr’s plan, bisect the city longitudinally and parallel with the river. The streets are often rectilinear, though they are by no means rectangular.