Ii. P. 208) Observes,
That Gibbon Seems Not To Have Seen Or Known Anything Of The Little Work
Published By Pitts On His Return Home.
It is entitled “A faithful Account
of the Religion and the Manners of the Mahometans, in which is a
Particular Relation of their Pilgrimage to Mecca, the Place of Mahomet’s
Birth, and Description of Medina, and of his Tomb there,” &c., &c. My
copy is the 4th edition, printed for T. Longman and R. Hett, London,
A.D. 1708. The only remarkable feature in the “getting up” of the little
octavo is, that the engraving headed “the most sacred and antient Temple
of the Mahometans at Mecca,” is the reverse of the impression[.]
[FN#2] Some years afterwards, Mr. Consul Baker, when waited upon by
Pitts, in London, gave him a copy of the letter, with the following
memorandum upon the back of it—“Copy of my letter to Consul Raye at Smyrna,
to favour the escape of Joseph Pitts, an English renegade, from a
squadron of Algier men-of-war. Had my kindness to him been discovered
by the government of Algiers, my legs and arms had first been broken,
and my carcass burnt—a danger hitherto not courted by any.”
[FN#3] The italics in the text are the author’s. This is admirably
characteristic of the man. Asiatic Christendom would not satisfy him.
He seems to hate the “damnable doctrines” of the “Papists,” almost as much as
those of the Moslems.
[FN#4] He must have been accustomed to long days’ journeys.
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