Footnote
[12] Plin., lib. v., cap. 9.
[13] Plin., lib. xxxvi., cap. 12.
[14] Diod. Sic., p. 45, § 50.
[15] Shaw's Travels, chap. 4, p. 298.
[16] Lib. ii., p. 141, 168, 105, 103.
[17] Strabo, lib. vii., p. 944.
[18] Things not existing and those not appearing to exist we may account the same.
[19] The part of Egypt which is cultivated.
[20] Cairo.
CHAPTER V.
Bruce crosses the Desert to the Red Sea.—Meets with the Arabs Ababdé at Cosseir.—His Adventures in the Red Sea.—Arrives at Massuah, the ancient Harbour of Abyssinia.
It was on Thursday, the 16th of February,[21] 1769, that Bruce joined the caravan which was setting out from Kenné, the Cœne Emporium of antiquity. They passed through a few dirty villages of the Azaizy, a poor, inconsiderable tribe of Arabs, who live by furnishing cattle for the caravans, and by attending on them. The huts of these poor people, which are made of clay in one piece, in the shape of a beehive, are seldom above ten feet high and six feet in diameter. After travelling nearly the whole day, Bruce pitched his tent at Gabba, about a mile from the borders of the desert, and here he passed the night.
On the 17th, at eight o'clock in the morning, he ordered his servants to mount their horses, in order to take charge of their camels, for there was an indescribable confusion in the caravan, which was to be guarded by two hundred lawless, cowardly fellows, armed with firelocks, and on horseback. When all was ready, the whole party, at a funereal pace, slowly advanced into the gloomy region of the desert. There was nothing in the prospect to excite the mind or arouse the feelings. Men, camels, and horses, drooping as they went, seemed to be alike aware that the courage they had now to exert was wholly of a passive character; that all that was required of them was—to suffer! Anger, hatred, and the other vengeful passions, which, like intoxicating draughts, often make men thoughtless and insensible to danger, afforded no excitement here. They had not the savage pleasure even of contending with human enemies; and the burning sand and burning sun it was out of their power to injure.
"Our road," says Bruce, "was all the way in an open plain, bounded by hillocks of sand and fine gravel, perfectly hard, and not perceptibly above the level of the plain country of Egypt. About twelve miles distant there is a ridge of mountains, of no considerable height, perhaps the most barren in the world. Between these our road lay through plains never three miles broad, but without trees, shrubs, or herbs. There are not even the traces of any living creature; neither serpent nor lizard, antelope nor ostrich, the usual inhabitants of the most dreary deserts. There is no sort of water on the surface, brackish or sweet. Even the birds seem to avoid the place as pestilential, not having seen one of any kind so much as flying over. The sun was burning hot, and, upon rubbing two sticks together, in half a minute they both took fire and flamed; a mark how near the country was reduced to a general conflagration."
In the evening the caravan was joined by twenty Turks from Caramania, in Asia Minor. They were mounted on camels, and armed with swords, a short gun, and a brace of pistols in their girdles. Having been informed that the large tent belonged to an Englishman, they came to it without ceremony. They told Bruce that they were pilgrims going to Mecca; that they had been very badly treated in travelling from Alexandria; that one of the swimming thieves of the Nile had boarded their vessel, and carried off a portmanteau containing about two hundred sequins in gold; that the Bey of Girge had given them no redress; and, therefore, hearing that an Englishman was in the caravan, they had come to him to propose they should join in defending each other against all common enemies. "I cannot conceal," says Bruce, "the secret pleasure I had in finding the character of my country so firmly established among nations so distant, enemies to our religion, and strangers to our government. Turks from Mount Taurus, and Arabs from the desert of Libya, thought themselves unsafe among their own countrymen, but trusted their lives and their little fortunes implicitly to the direction and word of an Englishman whom they had never before seen!"
The caravan was detained at Legeta the whole of the 18th by the arrival of these Turks; but early in the morning of the 19th they proceeded along a narrow plain, hemmed in by barren hills, of a brown, calcined colour, like the cinders on the sides of Vesuvius. Passing some mountains of green and red marble, they came into a plain called Hamra, where they first observed the red sand; and on the morning of the 20th, after having mounted some hills of porphyry, they began to descend. At noon they came to a few single acacia-trees, which, after rain, form a station for the Atouni Arabs, and at night they encamped on a small barren plain. On the 21st, in passing some defiles, they were alarmed by a false report that the Arabs were approaching. At noon they encamped at Mesag el Terfowey, where they obtained the first fresh water which they had tasted since they left the Nile. Next morning, before daybreak, the caravan was again in motion, having learned that, only two days before, three hundred of the Atouni had watered at Terfowey.
"It has been a wonder," says Bruce, "among all travellers, and with myself among the rest, where the ancients procured that prodigious quantity of fine marble with which all their buildings abound. That wonder, however, among many others, now ceases, after having passed, in four days, more granite, porphyry, marble, and jasper than would build Rome, Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, Memphis, Alexandria, and half a dozen more such cities. About ten o'clock, descending very rapidly, with green marble and jasper on each side of us, but no other green thing whatever, we had the first prospect of the Red Sea."
To the eye which has for a length of time viewed nothing but fertile land, the sight of the sea is always delightful: it roams with pleasure over the wide expanse of moving waters, revelling in the freedom and freshness of a new element. But to the parched, thirsting, and weary traveller, who has journeyed over the scorched, arid, lifeless desert of Africa, in whose imagination water is wealth, the sudden view of the great ocean creates ecstatic feelings which it is utterly impossible to describe.
Cosseir is a small mud-walled village, built on the shore of the Red Sea. It is defended by a square fort, containing a few pieces of cannon, just sufficient to terrify the Arabs from plundering the town, which is often filled with corn going to Mecca. Bruce had an order from Sheikh Haman to lodge in the castle; but, a few hours before he arrived, Hussein Bey, landing from Mecca and Jidda, had taken possession of the apartments. This bey, however, hearing that the English traveller had the firman of the grand seignior, with letters from the Bey of Cairo, and that he had, moreover, furnished the stranger Turks with water in the desert, of his own accord made himself acquainted with Bruce, treating him with attention and respect; and