Kahira may still be regarded as the metropolis of the trade of eastern Africa, as Tripoli chiefly possesses that of the west. A few slaves are brought from Habbesh (Abyssinia) by the way of Jidda and Mecca. Caravans pass to and from Sennaar, Dar-Fûr, and Fezzan, bringing slaves, gold-dust, ivory, horns of Rhinoceros, Ostrich feathers, gum, drugs.
There is another uncertain caravan from Morocco, which employs five thousand camels for merchandise; part passes to Mecca, and part remains to transact business, and await the return of the pilgrims. The other caravans are merely for the carriage of goods; and the camels are supplied by the Arabs, who rove through the deserts which form the boundaries of Egypt.
The navigation of the Red Sea cannot be conducted upon worse principles than it is by the Egyptians and Arabs. The ships are constructed on a wrong plan, being sharp, while the shallows and rocks require vessels that draw little water; and they are overcharged with passengers and goods. Hence the passage would be dangerous, even if managed by able navigators; but the mariners here are extremely unskilful, and only pique themselves on avoiding the sunk rocks near the shore, in which it must be confessed they are very dextrous. The ships employed by persons residing in Egypt are thirty-seven in number, so far as I could learn from an agent at Suez, and so many are lost, that the continual building barely supplies the usual number.
European imports in general have been specified under the head Alexandria. From Tunis and Tripoli are brought oil, red caps, of a particular manufacture, for which Tunis is famous, and fine flannel, used for garments by the Bedouins and others. From Syria arrive cotton, silk, crude and manufactured, soap, tobacco, beads of glass. From Constantinople, besides white slaves, male and female, all kinds of brass, copper, and iron manufactures.
Proceeding to exports, those to Europe have been mentioned in treating of Alexandria, and those to Dar-Fûr shall be enumerated when we come to visit that kingdom. To Sennaar and Fezzan, the same with Dar-Fûr. Hedjas, in Arabia, is wholly supplied with grain from Egypt, but the trade to India and Jidda is carried on chiefly by money. To Constantinople, black slaves, chiefly eunuchs, great quantities of coffee, and some Indian goods, though these be for the most part conveyed thither by caravans.
Egypt was formerly the granary of Rome and of Constantinople. The exports of rice remain very great, with considerable quantities of wheat from Upper Egypt, in favourable years. No oats are seen in Egypt; and the barley is consumed by the horses.
To Syria are exported rice, crude leather, flax, and sometimes wheat.
The manufactures at Kahira are not numerous. The sugar cane being cultivated with ease in Egypt, it was manufactured in great quantities at Kahira, so as to supply Constantinople. But a capital being requisite, Government made demands on it which crushed the trade. The sugar, though of less strength than that of the West Indies, was nevertheless well refined, of a close texture, pure and of a light white. It is now extremely bad, and so scarce as to sell for fourteen pence the pound, retail.
The sal ammoniac made at Kahira is of a very good quality. Glass lamps, saltpetre, and gun-powder, red and yellow leather, for home-consumption. There is a great manufacture of linen cloth made of the fine Egyptian flax.
The mode almost peculiar to Kahira, of hatching eggs without incubation, has been very minutely described by former travellers.—The practice is said by the Egyptians to proceed from the experience that, at a certain season, the eggs fostered only by the hens are commonly unprolific. Of those hatched in the ovens, on the contrary, not quite one third is lost.—The ovens where these eggs are placed are of the most simple construction, consisting only of a low arched apartment of clay. Two rows of shelves are formed, and the eggs placed on each in such a manner as not to touch each other. They are slightly moved five or six times in twenty-four hours, and the whole time they are in the oven does not exceed twenty-two days, when the chickens free themselves from the shell. All possible care is taken to diffuse the heat equally throughout, and there is but one small aperture, large enough to admit a man stooping. During the first eight days the heat is rendered great, and, during the last eight is gradually diminished; till at length, when the young brood is ready to come forth, it is reduced almost to the state of the natural atmosphere. At the end of the first eight days, it is known which eggs will not be productive. Those who have eggs to be hatched, bring them to the master of the oven, and contract to pay so much a hundred; and when the chickens appear, he receives his money on delivering them. Those which have not succeeded, are required to be produced. The oven is public property.