is? I shall send a servant to the Casheff of Deir tomorrow, who shall bring him down by the beard, if he refuses to come willingly." I said, "Then times were very much changed for the better; it was not always so; there was not always at Cairo a sovereign like Ali Bey, nor at Syene, a man of his prudence, and capacity in commanding; but having no business at Deir and Ibrim, I should not risk finding them in another humour, exercising other powers than those he allowed them to have."

The 26th we embarked at the north end of the town, in the very spot where I again took boat above three years afterwards. We now no longer enjoyed the advantage of our prodigious main-sail; not only our yards were lowered, but our masts were taken out; and we floated down the current, making the figure of a wreck. The current, pushing against one of our sides, the wind directly contrary, pressing us on the other, we went down broad side foremost; but so steadily, as scarcely to be sensible that the vessel was in motion.

In the evening I stopt at Shekh Ammer, and saw my patient Nimmer, Shekh of the Ababdé. I found him a great deal better, and as thankful as ever; I renewed my prescriptions, and he his offers of

service.

I was visited, however, with a pretty smart degree of fever by hunting crocodiles on the Nile as I went down, without any possibility of getting near them.

On the 31st of January we arrived at Negadé, the fourth settlement of the Franciscan friars in Upper Egypt, for the pretended mission of Ethiopia. I found it to be in lat. 25° 53′ 30′′. It is a small neat village, covered with palm-trees, and mostly

inhabited by Cophts, none of whom the friars have yet converted, nor ever will, unless by small pensions, which they give to the poorest of them, to be decoy-ducks to the rest.

Opposite to Negadé, on the other side of the river about three miles, is Cus, a large town, the Apollonis Civitas Parva of the ancients. There are no antiquities at this place; but the caravan, which was to carry the corn for Mecca, across the desert to Cosseir, was to assemble there. I found they were not near ready; and that the Arabs Atouni had threatened they would be in their way, and would not suffer them to pass, at any rate, and that the guard commanded to escort them across the desert, would come from Furshout, and therefore I should have early warning.

It was the 2d of February I returned to Badjoura, and took up my quarters in the house formerly assigned me, greatly to the joy of Shekh Ismael, who, though he was in the main reconciled to his friend, friar Christopher, had not yet forgot the wounding of the five men by his miscalculating Ramadan; and was not without fears that the same inadvertence might, some day or other, be fatal to him, in his pleurisy and asthma, or, what is still more likely, by the operation of the tabange.

As I was now about to enter on that part of my expedition, in which I was to have no further intercourse with Europe I set myself to work to examine all my observations, and put my journal in such forwardness by explanations, where needful, that the labours and pains I had hitherto been at, might not be totally lost to the public, if I should perish in the journey I had undertaken, which, from all information I could procure, every day appeared to be more and more desperate.

Having finished these, at least so far as to make them intelligible to others, I conveyed them to my friends Messrs Julian and Rosa, at Cairo, to remain in their custody till I should return, or news come that I was otherwise disposed of.

CHAP. VIII.

The Author sets out from Kenné-Crosses the Desert of the Thebaid-Visits the Marble Mountains-Arrives at Cosseir, on the Red Sea- Transactions there.

ON Thurday, the 16th of February 1769, we heard the caravan was ready to set out from Kenné, the Cæne Emporium of antiquity. From Kenné our road was first east, for half an hour, to the foot of the hills, which here bounded the cultivated land; then S. E. when, at 11 o'clock in the forenoon, we passed a very dirty small village, called Sheraffa. All the way from Kenné, close on our left, were desert hills, on which not the least verdure grew, but a few plants of a large species of Solanum, called Burrumbuc.

At half past two we came to a well, called Bir Ambar, the well of spices, and a dirty village of the same name, belonging to the Azaizy, a poor inconsiderable tribe of Arabs. They live by letting out their cattle for hire to the caravans that go to Cosseir, and attending themselves, when necessary. It got its name, I suppose, from its having formerly been a station of the caravans from the Red Sea, loaded with this kind of merchandise from India. The houses of the Azaizy are of a very particular construction, if they can be called houses. They are all made of potter-clay, in one piece, in shape of a bee-hive; the largest is not above ten feet high, and the greatest diameter six.

There are no vestiges here of any canal, mentioned to have been cut between the Nile and the Red Sea. The cultivated land here is not above half a mile in extent from the river, but the inundation of the Nile reaches much higher, nor has it left behind it any ap pearance of soil. After passing Bir Ambar, we pitched our tent about four o'clock at Gabba*, a short mile from Cuft, on the borders of the desert-here we passed the night.

On the 17th, at eight o'clock in the morning, having mounted my servants, all on horseback, and taken the charge of our own camels, (for there was a confusion in our caravan not to be described, and our guards we knew were but a set of thieves), we advanced slowly into the desert. There were about two hundred men on horseback, armed with firelocks; all of them lions, if you believe their word or appearance; but we were credibly informed, that fifty of the Arabs, at first sight, would have made these heroes fly without any bloodshed.

I had not gone two miles before I was joined by the Howadat Arab, whom I had brought with me in the boat from Cairo. He offered me his service with great professions of gratitude, and told me, that he hoped I would again take charge of his money, as I had before done from Cairo. It was now for the first time he told me his name, which was Mahomet Abdel Gin," the Slave of the Devil, or the Spirit.” There is a large tribe of that name, many of which come to Cairo from the kingdom of Sennaar; but he had been born among the Howadat, opposite to Metrahenny where I found him.

*It is no town, but some sand and a few bushes, so called.