At That Moment The
Thought Flashed Upon My Mind, That It Might Be The Plague:
I attempted,
in vain, to dispel my apprehensions, or at least to drown them in sleep;
but the dreadful cries kept me awake the whole night.
When I descended
early in the morning into the okale, where many Arabs were drinking
their coffee, I communicated to them my apprehensions; but had no sooner
mentioned the word plague, than they called me to order, asking me if I
was ignorant that the Almighty had for ever excluded that disorder from
the holy territory of the Hedjaz? Such an argument admits of no reply
among Moslims; I therefore walked out, in search of some Greek
Christians, several of whom I had seen the day before, in the street,
and from them I received a full confirmation of my fears. The plague had
broken out ten days ago: it had been raging at Cairo with the greatest
fury for several months; and at Suez a large part of the population had
died: from that port two ships laden with cotton stuffs had carried it
to Djidda, and from thence it was communicated to Yembo. No instance of
the plague had ever before been witnessed in the Hedjaz, at least none
within the memory of man; and the inhabitants could with difficulty
persuade themselves that such an event had occurred, especially at a
time when the holy cities had been reconquered from the Wahabys. The
intercourse with Egypt had not at any time been greater than now, and it
was, therefore, no wonder that this scourge should be carried to the
Hedjaz. While ten or fifteen people only died per day, the Arabs of the
town could not believe that the disease was the plague, although the
usual appearance of the biles upon the bodies of the infected, and the
rapid progress of the disorder, which seldom lasted more than three or
four days, might have been convincing proofs. In five or six days after
my arrival the mortality increased; forty or fifty persons died in a
day, which, in a population of five or six thousand, was a terrible
mortality. The inhabitants now felt a panic: little disposed to submit
[p.412] as patiently to the danger as the Turks do in every other part
of the East, the greater part of them fled into the open country, and
the town became deserted; but the disease followed the fugitives, who
had encamped close together; and thus finding no remedy to the evil,
many of them returned. They excused their flight by saying, "God in his
mercy sends this disease, to call us to his presence; but we are
conscious of our unworthiness, and feel that we do not deserve his
grace; therefore, we think it better to decline it, for the present, and
to fly from it:" an argument which I heard frequently repeated. Had I
been myself in full strength, I should, no doubt, have followed their
example and gone into the Desert; but I felt extremely weak, and
incapable of any exertions. I thought also that I might escape the
disease, shut up in my insulated room, and indulged moreover the hope of
a speedy passage to Egypt; in the latter, however, I was deceived. By
making a few presents, and a little bribery, I might perhaps have found
means to embark forthwith; but the vessels now ready to sail were
crowded to excess, and full of diseased soldiers, so that a stay in the
infected town was to be preferred to a departure by such a conveyance.
Some days after, I learnt that a small open boat, free from troops, was
ready to sail for Cosseir, and I immediately agreed for a passage on
board it; but its sailing was delayed from day to day, until the
fifteenth of May, when I finally left Yembo, after a stay of eighteen
days in the midst of the plague.
It was, perhaps, my own bad state of health, and the almost
uninterrupted low fever under which I laboured, that preserved me; for,
notwithstanding all my care, I was many times exposed to infection. The
great street of Yembo was lined with sick, in the very agonies of death,
asking for charity; in the yard of the okale where I lived, an Arab was
dying; the master of the okale lost a sister and a son in his own
family, and related to me, as he sat on my carpet, how his son died the
preceding night in his arms. The imprudence of my slave likewise
counteracted all my measures of precaution. Having missed him for
several days early in the morning, I inquired the cause of his absence,
when he told me that he had gone to assist in washing the dead bodies.
The poor who died during
[p.413] the night were exposed in the morning upon biers, on the sea-
shore, to be washed before the ceremony of praying over them in the
mosque; and my slave thought it meritorious to join in this office,
which had devolved upon several negro pilgrims, who happened to be at
Yembo. I desired him to remain at home, for the future, at that hour, to
prepare my breakfast; but I was as little able to prevent his walking
out at other times, as I could myself dispense with that duty; and one
could scarcely pass the bazar without touching infected people, or at
least those who had been in close contact with them.
The sense of the danger which then threatened me is much greater, now
that I find myself far removed from it, than I felt it at the time.
After the first four or five days, I became tolerably familiarized with
the idea of the plague, and compared the small numbers who died every
day with the mass of the remaining inhabitants. The great many cases of
persons remaining in full health, notwithstanding the closest connexion
with the deceased, considerably removed the apprehensions of the malady
being communicated by infection; and example works so powerfully on the
mind, that when I saw the number of foreigners then in the town quite
unconcerned, I began to be almost ashamed of myself for possessing less
courage than they displayed.
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