After The First Month, There Was An Interval Of A
Week's Repose, Of Which Had I Been Able To Profit
By taking bark, my
disorder would, no doubt, have been overcome; but it had abated only to
return with greater
Violence, and now became a tertian fever, while the
vomiting still continued, accompanied by occasional faintings, and ended
in a total prostration of strength. I was now unable to rise from my
carpet, without the assistance of my slave, a poor fellow, who by habit
[p.319] and nature was more fitted to take care of a camel, than to
nurse his drooping master.
I had by this time lost all hope of returning to Egypt, and had prepared
myself for dying here. Despondency had seized me, from an apprehension
that, if the news of my death should arrive in England, my whole Hedjaz
journey would, perhaps, be condemned as the unauthorised act of an
imprudent, or at least over-zealous missionary; and I had neither books,
nor any society, to divert my mind from such reflections: one book only
was in my possession, a pocket edition of Milton, which Captain Boag, at
Djidda, had kindly permitted me to take from his cabin-library, and this
I must admit was now worth a whole shelf full of others. The mistress of
my lodgings, an old infirm woman, by birth an Egyptian, who during my
stay took up her quarters in an upper story, from which she could speak
to me without being seen, as it opened into my own room below, used to
converse with me for half an hour every evening; and my cicerone, or
Mezowar, paid me occasional visits, in order, as I strongly suspected,
to seize upon part of my baggage in case of my death.
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