We Immediately Set Sail, Keeping Close In Shore. In The Evening I Saw That My Situation Was Much Worse Than I Had Suspected It To Be When I Came On Board; In The Hold Were Lying Half A Dozen

[P.427] sick people, two of whom were in a violent delirium; the Reys's young brother, who had his seat close to me, was paid to attend the sick; one of them died on the following day, and the body was thrown overboard.

Little doubt remained of the plague being actually in the ship, though the sailors insisted that it was a different malady. On the third day, the boy, the Reys's brother, felt great pains in his head, and, struck with the idea of the plague, he insisted on being set on shore. We were then in a small bay; the Reys yielded to his entreaties, and agreed with a Bedouin on shore to carry him back on his camel to Yembo. He was landed, and I am ignorant of his fate. The only precaution I could take against infection, was to place my baggage round me, so as to form an insulated spot in which I had just room enough to sit at my ease; but notwithstanding this, I was compelled to come in contact every moment with the ship's company. Very luckily the disease did not spread; we had only another death, on the fifth day from our departure, though several of the passengers were seized with the malady, which I cannot possibly affirm to have been the plague, as I did not examine the corpses, but every thing led me to that belief. The continual sea- sickness and vomiting of the passengers were, perhaps, to them a salutary operation of nature. As to myself, I was in a very low state of health the whole of the voyage, and frequently tormented with my ague, which was increased by the utter want of comforts on board. I had taken a disgust to all food, excepting broths: whenever we entered a port, I bought a sheep of the Bedouins, in order to have a dish of soup; and by distributing the meat among the ship's people, I obtained their good- will, so that in every instance I was well treated by them; and could command their assistance whenever I stood in need of it, either to raise a temporary awning every morning, or to fill my water-skins on shore.

The navigation is here the same as what I have already described in my voyage from Sowakin to Djidda. We went into a harbour every evening, never sailing during the night, and started again at day-break. If it was known that no small creek or harbour lay before us, near enough to be reached before sun-set with the then existing wind, we sometimes stopped at an anchoring-place soon after mid-day. Unfortunately,

[p.428] the ship's boat had been carried away by a heavy sea, in a preceding voyage; we therefore could seldom get on shore, excepting at places where we found other vessels, whose boats we took, as we usually anchored in deep water. The sailors showed as great cowardice here, as those of Sowakin on a former occasion. Whenever it blew fresh, the sails were taken in; the dread of a storm made them take shelter in a harbour, and we never made longer courses than from twenty-five to thirty-five miles per day. A large square cask of water was the only one on board, and contained a supply for three days for the ship's crew only. The passengers had each his own water-skin; and whenever we reached a watering-place, the Bedouins came to the beach, and sold us the contents of their full skins. As it sometimes happens that the ships are becalmed in a bay distant from any wells, or prevented from quitting it by adverse winds, the crew is exposed to great sufferings from thirst, for they have never more on board their boats than a supply for three or four days.

For the first three days we steered along a sandy shore, here entirely barren and uninhabited, the mountains continuing at a distance inland. At three days' journey by land and by sea from Yembo, as it is generally computed, lies the mountain called Djebel Hassany, reaching close to the shore; and from thence northward the lower range of the mountains are, in the vicinity of the beach, thinly inhabited throughout by Bedouins. The encampments of the tribe of Djeheyne extend as far as these mountains: to the north of it, as far as the station of the Hadj called El Wodjeh, or as it is also pronounced, El Wosh, are the dwelling-places of the Heteym Bedouins. In front of Djebel Hassany are several islands; and the sea is here particularly full of shoals and coral rocks, rising nearly to the surface; from the various colours of which, the water, when viewed from a distance, assumes all the hues of the rainbow. In spring, after the rains, some of these little islands are inhabited by the Bedouins of the coast, who there pasture their cattle as long as food is found: they have small boats, and are all active fishers. They salt the fish, and either carry it in their own boats to Yembo and Cosseir, or sell it to the ships which pass. One of these islands, called El Harra, belongs to

[p.429] the Beni Abs, once a powerful Bedouin tribe, but now reduced to a few families, who live mixed with the Beni Heteym, and, like them, are held in great disrepute by all their neighbours. Upon another island stands the tomb of a saint, called Sheikh Hassan el Merabet, with a few low buildings and huts round it, where a Bedouin family of the Heteym tribe is stationary, to whom the guardianship of the tomb belongs. The course of the Arab ships being usually close by this island, the crews often despatch a boat with a few measures of corn to those people, or some butter, biscuits, and coffee-beans, because they consider Sheikh Hassan to be the patron of these seas.

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