Sixteen Years Ago It Was Supposed To Be Under
3,000.
After that time it rapidly increased till 1850, when a fatal
attack of cholera reduced it to about half its previous number.
The
average mortality is about twelve a month.[FN#33] The endemic diseases
are fevers of typhoid and intermittent types in spring, when strong
northerly winds cause the waters of the bay to recede,[FN#34] and leave
a miasma-breeding swamp exposed to the rays of the sun. In the months
of October and November febrile attacks are violent; ophthalmia more
so. The eye-disease is not so general here as at Cairo, but the
symptoms are more acute; in some years it becomes a virulent epidemic,
which ends either in total blindness or in a partial opacity of the
cornea, inducing dimness of vision, and a permanent weakness of the
eyes. In one month three of my acquaintances lost their sight.
Dysenteries are also common, and so are bad boils, or rather ulcers.
The cold season is not unwholesome, and at this period the
[p.182] pure air of the Desert restores and invigorates the heat-wasted
frame."
"The walls, gates, and defences of Suez are in a ruinous state, being
no longer wanted to keep out the Sinaitic Badawin. The houses are about
500 in number, but many of the natives prefer occupying the upper
stories of the Wakalahs, the rooms on the ground floor serving for
stores to certain merchandise, wood, dates, cotton, &c. The Suezians
live well, and their bazar is abundantly stocked with meat and
clarified butter brought from Sinai, and fowls, corn, and vegetables
from the Sharkiyah province; fruit is supplied by Cairo as well as by
the Sharkiyah, and wheat conveyed down the Nile in flood to the capital
is carried on camel-back across the Desert. At sunrise they eat the
Fatur, or breakfast, which in summer consists of a ‘fatirah,' a kind of
muffin, or of bread and treacle. In winter it is more substantial,
being generally a mixture of lentils and rice,[FN#35] with clarified
butter poured over it, and a ‘kitchen' of pickled lime or stewed
onions. At this season they greatly enjoy the ‘ful mudammas' (boiled
horse-beans),[FN#36] eaten with an abundance of linseed oil, into which
they steep bits of bread. The beans form, with carbon-generating
matter, a highly nutritive diet, which, if the stomach can digest
it,-the pulse is never shelled,-gives great strength. About the middle
of the day comes ‘Al-Ghada,' a light dinner of wheaten bread, with
dates, onions or cheese: in the hot season melons and cooling
[p.183] fruits are preferred, especially by those who have to face the
sun. ‘Al-Asha,' or supper, is served about half an hour after sunset;
at this meal all but the poorest classes eat meat. Their favourite
flesh, as usual in this part of the world, is mutton; beef and goat are
little prized.[FN#37]"
The people of Suez are a finer and fairer race than the Cairenes.
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