Its
inhabitants, who are for the greater part Bedouins, become settlers,
carry on a trade in cattle and fish with Tor and Yembo, and their market
is visited by numerous Bedouins of the interior of the country. It is
the only place on this coast where a regular market is kept, and where
provisions are always to be found, and thus often affords timely relief
to ships detained on their
[p.431] passage by contrary winds. Provisions being very dear in the
Hedjaz, and very cheap in Egypt, ships, on leaving the Hedjaz harbours
for Cosseir or Suez, never lay in more than is absolutely necessary; but
the passage, which is usually calculated by them at twenty days, very
often lasts a month, and sometimes even two months.
From off Moeyleh, the point of the peninsula of Sinai, called Ras Abou
Mohammed, is clearly distinguished. Ships bound from Yembo to Cosseir
generally make this promontory, or one of the islands lying before it,
and thence steer south to Cosseir. They do this, in order to take
advantage of the northerly winds that blow in these parts of the Red Sea
for nine months of the year; and they prefer the tedious, but safer mode
of a coasting voyage, during which they often enjoy a land-breeze, to
the danger and fatigue of beating up, in open sea, against the wind, or
of standing straight across from Djidda or Yembo to the African coast;
with the harbours of which, south of Cosseir, very few Red Sea pilots
are acquainted, and of the Bedouin inhabitants of which they all
entertain great fears.
On reaching Ras Mohammed, they anchor near one of the small islands, or
go into the harbour called Sherm, where they wait till a fair wind
springs up, which usually carries them to Cosseir in one or two days.
As for ourselves, we had not during the whole voyage any sort of
disagreeable occurrence, though the wind, which was seldom fair, obliged
us once to remain three days at the same anchorage; and I often expected
the vessel to be wrecked, on seeing the pilot steer among the shoals in
shore: a practice in which these people have acquired great experience,
and in which they display as much boldness as they do cowardice in the
open sea.
After twenty days' voyage we reached the neighbourhood of Ras Abou
Mohammed, on the 4th of June: the boat was secured for the night with
grapplings to some coral rocks, leeward of a small island ahead of the
promontory; the pilot intending to strike across the next morning.
As I knew that Bedouins were always to be found in the harbour of Sherm,
to transport passengers by land to Tor or Suez, I wished to be set on
shore here.
