The Fevers Are Almost All
Intermittent, And Attended After Their Cure By Great Languor:
Relapses
are much dreaded.
When I went out after my recovery, I found the streets
filled with convalescents, whose appearance but too clearly showed how
numerous were my fellow-sufferers in the town. If not cured within a
certain time, these fevers often occasion hard swellings in the stomach
and legs, which are not removed without great difficulty. The Medinans
care little about this intermittent fever, to which they are accustomed,
and with them it seldom proves fatal; but the case is otherwise with
strangers. In some seasons it assumes an epidemic character, when as
many as eighty persons are known to have died in one week; instances of
this kind, however, seldom happen.
Dysenteries are said to be rare here. Bilious complaints, and jaundice,
are very common. There appears to be in general a much greater mortality
here than in any other part of the East that I have visited. My lodgings
were very near to one of the principal gates of the mosque, through
which the corpses were carried when prayers were to be said over them;
and I could hear, from my sick bed, the exclamations of "La illah il
Allah," with which that ceremony was accompanied. During my three
months' confinement one funeral at least, and often two, passed every
day under my window. If we reckon on the average three bodies per day
carried into the mosque through this gate, as well as the others,
besides the poor Arabs who die in the suburbs, and over whose bodies
prayers are said in the mosque situated in the Monakh, we shall have
about twelve hundred deaths annually, in this small town, the whole
population of which, I believe
[p.400] to be at most from sixteen to twenty thousand; a mortality which
cannot be repaired by births, and would long ago have depopulated the
place, did not the arrival of foreigners continually supply the loss. Of
this population I reckon about ten or twelve thousand for the town
itself, and the rest for the suburbs.
[p.401] JOURNEY FROM MEDINA TO YEMBO.
April 21st. 1815. OUR small caravan assembled in the afternoon near the
outer gate of the town, and at five o'clock P.M. we passed through the
same gate by which I entered, on my arrival, three months ago. Then I
was in full health and spirits, and indulging the fond hopes of
exploring unknown and interesting parts of the Desert on my return to
Egypt; but now, worn down by lingering disease, dejected, and
desponding, with no more anxious wish than to reach a friendly and
salubrious spot, where I might regain my health. The ground leading to
the town on this side is rocky. About three quarters of an hour distant,
the road has a steep short descent, hemmed in by rocks, and is paved, to
facilitate the passage of caravans. Our direction was S.W. by S. In one
hour we came to the bed of a torrent called Wady el Akyk, which during
the late rains had received so copious a supply from the neighbouring
mountains, that it had become like a deep and broad river, which our
camels could not attempt to pass. As the day was fine, we expected to
see it considerably diminished the next morning, and therefore encamped
on its banks, at a place called El Madderidje. Here is a small ruined
village, the houses of which were well built of stone, with a small
birket or reservoir, and a ruined well close by. Its inhabitants
cultivate some fields on the bank of Wady Akyk, but the incursions of
the Bedouins had obliged them to retire.
[p.402] Wady Akyk is celebrated by the Arabian poets. [Samhoudy says,
that this torrent empties itself into the same low ground called El
Ghaba, or Zaghaba, to the west of Medina, in the mountains where all the
torrents in this neighbourhood discharge themselves. He says also, that
on the banks of this torrent, eastward, stood the small Arab
fortification called Kasr el Meradjel; and from thence towards Ghaba the
torrent crosses a district called El Nakya. About five miles distant
from Medina was a station of the Hadj, called Zy'l Haleyfe, situated on
the banks of Wady Akyk, with a small castle and a birket, which was
rebuilt in A.H. 861. Perhaps this Madderidje is meant by it.] On its
banks stand a number of ashour trees, which were now in full flower. We
were accompanied thus far by a number of people from Medina, in
compliment to one of the Muftis of Mekka, who had been on a visit to the
town, and was now returning to his home, intending to leave our caravan
at Szafra. He had several tents and women with him. My other fellow-
travellers were petty merchants of Medina going to await at Djidda the
arrival of the Indian ships, and a rich merchant from Maskat, whom I had
seen at Mekka, where he was on the pilgrimage: he had ten camels to
carry his women, his infant children, his servants, and his baggage; and
he spent, at every station, considerable sums in charity. He appeared,
in every respect, a liberal and worthy Arab.
April 22nd. The torrent had decreased, and we crossed it in the
afternoon. We rode for an hour in a narrow valley, following the torrent
upwards. At the end of an hour and half we left the torrent: the plain
opened to the east, and is here called Esselsele; our road over it was
in the direction W.S.W. The rocks spread over the plain were calcareous.
At the end of three hours and a half we again entered the mountain, and
continued in its vallies, slowly descending, for the whole night. At the
break of day we passed the plain called El Fereysh, where I had encamped
the day before I reached Medina; and alighted, after a march of twelve
hours and a half, in the upper part of Wady es Shohada.
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