Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

antient Thebes; once the magnificent capital of Egypt, and situated, according to D'Anville's map, in 26°. 30 north latitude. This peregrination the author completed in somewhat more than five months, having left Boulac (the port of Cairo) on the 21st of March 1778, and arrived there in returning on the 4th of September following. We shall not accompany him regularly from village to village, in his long and weary course through this inhospitable and barbarous country; because, in fact, the detail of his journey offers much less amusement and interest than perhaps the majority of readers would expect. Compelled by the dread of those numerous hordes of robbers who infest, or rather indeed who inhabit, this long extended and narrow tract of country, to confine himself to his boat; or at best to make but short and infrequent excursions from the Nile, to view the interesting remains of antiquity which lie scattered near its banks; M. Sonnini's recital is necessarily in many parts mere dry enumeration; a detail of petty dangers from which he escaped by his courage or his prudence; or of ordinary incidents, which must have occurred in a journey through any country. This is not so much the fault of the author, whose manner of writing, when his subject admits, is calculated to interest and embellish, as it is owing to circumstances which were inseparable from his situation; and to the paucity of the materials which those circumstances permitted him to collect, Though, however, this volume does not present such a quantity of instructive and amusing matter, as an inconsiderate reader might expect from a journey of such length and such hazard, in a country so little known as Egypt is, and so interesting as it is thought to be, yet much certainly occurs which cannot fail to gratify curiosity.

In this tour, M. Sonnini assumed and travelled in the character of a physician; which, though it exposed him to many inconveniences, and to some danger, yet procured for him several opportunities of knowlege which he would not otherwise have enjoyed. That inconvenience and danger must have been connected with the practice of physic in Egypt, the reader will believe, when he learns that the physician is there obliged to prescribe without any other knowlege of the patient's disease than what he can collect from the pulse, unconnected with any information of symptoms, or of the stage of the disorder; that to interrogate the patient would be deemed a convincing proof of the ignorance of the physician; and that to prescribe remedies which must be introduced otherwise than through the mouth would be considered as an insult to the patient, which would be punished by the bastinado, or perhaps by death: in a word, that to prescribe without effecting a cure would be

in

in many cases a miscarriage fatal to the prescriber. To M. Sonnini, however, the assumption of this character produced many advantages. When successful in his practice, as in many instances he was, it obtained for him the protection and favour of those to whom he had rendered benefit; and in general it procured him a knowlege of the diseases which prevail in the country, and of the mode by which the natives attempt their

cure.

Among the disorders of which he here gives an account, the most disgusting and horrible is a species of leprosy; which our countryman Hillary, in his tract on the epidemical diseases of Barbadoes, terms the Leprosy of the Joints. The patient who solicited the aid of M. Sonnini had lost, by this disease, the greater part of the joints of his fingers and toes, which had successively dropt off. It is called by the Arabs madsjourdam, and commences by a swelling and redness of the fingers and the ears. The leprosy here is not considered as either loathsome or contagious. The leper of whom the author speaks continued to eat with his family, and, according to their custom, to dip his fingers, already dropping off with the disease, into the dish of which they all ate. Though not less than sixty years of age, he enjoyed a good appetite, slept well, and seemed to feel no inconvenience from the disorder, except an itching in the articulation of his fingers and toes. None of his family had caught the disease; and his wife continued to sleep with him as usual,

Of the monks established in several places in Upper Egypt, the author gives an account not much more favourable than his description of those at Zaidi el Baramous. Devoted to a life of sloth, ignorance, and superstitious fraud, they solicitously shun all commerce with Europeans, who are likely to observe and expose them. To these men, the traveller's letters of recommendation were generally useless; and it was to the Arabs, or to the Mameluks, that he owed all the hospitality and kindness which he found in Upper Egypt. One honourable exception, indeed, occurred in a Catholic curate, an Egyptian who had studied at Rome; who bestowed on M. Sonnini all the attentions and services which were within the limits of his scanty means. The great body of the Cophts in this country are of the Greek Church; and, ignorant as their Monks are, the laymen comprize within themselves all the literature of Upper Egypt. Most of them can read and write; and, in consequence of these rare acquisitions, they become the intendants, registers, and secretaries, of the men of wealth:situations of which they do not fail fully to avail themselves. Their manner of taking their repasts differs in nothing from

that

that of the Turks and Arabs; of which M. Sonnini gives the following description:

They are seated, with their legs crossed, around a table with one foot, in form of a large circular tea-board, on which dishes are placed, without either table-cloth, plates, knives or forks. They make, with the right hand, the circle of the dishes, from whence they take successively, and according to their taste, little morsels with their fingers. The left hand, destined for ablutions, is unclean, and must not touch provisions. They sometimes transfer what they have taken from one dish to another, to form a mixture of it; of this they make a large ball, which they convey to a widely extended mouth. The poultry and the boiled meats are divided into pieces, and torn with the hands and nails. The roast meats are served up in little pieces, cut before they are put to the spit, and no where can you eat better roasted meat than in the countries of Turkey. The table does not afford an opportunity for conversation. They only scat themselves to eat very rapidly; they make quick dispatch, and swallow with precipitation. They are not men whom the pleasure of society assembles together; they are brutes whom want and voraciousness collect around their pasture. The grease distils from each side of their mouths. The stomach sends forth frequent fumes, which they lengthen out and render as noisy as they can. He whose hunger is soonest appeased riscs from table first. It is not regarded as a want of politeness to remain alone at the board, if your appetite is not per fectly satisfied.'

Intoxicating liquors are forbidden to the disciples of Mohammed: but, in Upper Egypt, the Arabs and Egyptians substitute for those liquors several preparations, by which they ob tain, instead of violent intoxication, a kind of pleasant reverie which inspires gaiety, and occupies the imagination with an agreeable delusion. This kind of annihilation of the thinking faculty, according to M. Sonnini, has no resemblance to the drunkenness occasioned by our wines and strong liquors, but is a feeling for which no European language has a name. By the Arabs, this delicious stupor is called Keif.

Courtezans abound in Egypt: but, instead of those disinte rested, beauteous, and seducing beings whom some former travellers have taught us to expect in this country of love, they are represented by the present writer as the most loathsome, impure, impudent, and avaricious of women :-creatures, in a word, in comparison with whom the lowest order of the same class in Europe would by an European be regarded as divi

nities.

We have already observed that M. Sonnini is minute and attentive to the animal productions of this country; and we find much of the third volume occupied by topics of this kind, some of which are interesting even to readers who are not naturalists. Of its insects, he says:

• The

The insects there, which are the most numerous and troublesome, are the flies. Both man and beast are cruelly tormented by them. No idea can be formed of their obstinate rapacity, when they wish to fix on some part of the body. It is in vain to drive them away, they return again the self same moment, and their perseverance wearies out the most patient spirit. They like to fasten themselves in preference on the corners of the eye, and on the edge of the eyelid, tender parts towards which a gentle moisture attracts them. I have observed a species, or rather a variety of flies, streaked with gray and dark brown, and resembling the common fly, only much smaller. Their habits also differ, for I did not perceive that they were often on the wing, nor that they incommoded men or animals. They were almost constantly found in houses, fastened on the walls, and, from preference, on the whitest.

The flies are not the only troublesome insects; the houses are filled with a vast quantity of bugs, whose bites are cruelly painful. Notwithstanding this, the Egyptians, covered over with these vile insects, sleep profoundly; their skin, hard and thick, renders them impene. trable, whilst the European undergoes, in the same places, a real pu nishment. The bite of these bugs always occasioned on my body hard swellings, and as big as the end of my finger.

'An insect still more disgusting annoyed us during the whole of our journey through Upper Egypt. The inhabitants, even of the better order, and who appear the most cleanly, are covered with lice, in spite of their frequent bathing and religious ablutions; the bey, the kiaschef, are not free from them. When they feel themselves bitten by any of these insects, they seize it carefully, and put it, without hurting it, on the same sopha where they are sitting, from whence it is not long of [in] crawling on some other person. Whatever precau tion I could take to avoid being tormented by them, I was obliged to submit to it, and to endure the envenomed bitings of these insects, which are of an uncommon size and voracity in Egypt. When my companions were employed in clearing themselves from them, they used jocularly to call their search hunting à la Turque.'

M. Sonnini was considerably advanced in his passage up the Nile before he saw a crocodile. These hideous animals are here suffered to repose in peace, and are in consequence extremely numerous. They are seen basking in the sun, with their heads above water, their bodies floating down with the current, and enjoying the heat, in which they delight. It is easy to approach them, but very difficult to kill them. The author shot at several but, whether they were impenetrable by a bullet, or when wounded they retired to the bottom to die, they plunged into the water and disappeared. As he sailed upwards in the neighbourhood of Thebes, his boat was often surrounded by these animals floating on the surface, and shewing neither any signs of fear nor any symptoms of hostility. In fact, they

<* Musca domestica. LIN.'

never

never venture to assail any thing which is raised above the surface in which they swim.

After having returned to Alexandria, M. Sonnini concludes his work by informing us that he departed thence for Greece and Turkey: the details of which expedition we are taught to expect at a future period.

Of those cities of antient Egypt, of which history has laboured to immortalize the names, the reader will naturally look for some account in such a work as the present; and he will expect that the traveller should trace their site and describe their ruins. In some instances, the author has gratified this curiosity; in others, the danger of the undertaking has obliged him to disappoint it. Thus we are told that, in the neighbourhood of Gizah, near Cairo, is the site of the antient Memphis: but we find no account of the remains of its former grandeur; nor do we learn, indeed, whether any remains of that celebrated city are yet extant. Near to this place, also, stand those monuments of the former magnificence and power of Egypt, which the world has so long agreed or been compelled to admirethe pyramids :-but even of these M. Sonnini gives no description, nor any details; either because he deemed the subject trite, or because he had not time to examine them, or could not safely effect the investigation.

At Scheick Abade, on the eastern bank of the Nile, are yet ́seen the ruins of the celebrated town of Antinous, built by the Emperor Adrian in honour of the memory of his favourite of that name. The remains of this city speak favourably of the taste of its former inhabitants. Unlike the monuments of Egyptian architecture, which astonish only by the immensity of their size, the ruins of Antinous bear the marks of elegance of design and justness of proportion. It was here that Mr. Bruce was attacked by some of the innumerable robbers, who render these and the other monuments of antiquity in Egypt almost inaccessible.-M. Sonnini, however, and his draftsman, landed here, with an intention of taking some views; and the latter had actually completed a drawing of one of the columns (which is given in the plates) of a triumphal arch, when a shot fired by a person who had been placed as centinel warned them of approaching danger. They were obliged to fly to their boat, and happily arrived in time to escape a band of barbarians who pursued them.

In the vicinity of the modern Echmimm, is the site of the antient Panopolis. Some remains of this city also are yet visible. Among them, M. Sonnini observed one stone seventeen feet long, eight and an half in breadth, and four tick; on one side of which was a Greek inscription, of which the word.

TIBERIO

« ForrigeFortsæt »