Travels In Arabia | Page 5

HEDJAZ OF ARABIA
DJIDDA
MY arrival in the Hedjaz was attended with some unfavourable
circumstances. On entering the town of Djidda, in the morning of the
15th of July, 1814, I went to the house of a person on whom I had a
letter of credit, delivered to me, at my departure from Cairo, in January,
1813, when I had not yet fully resolved to extend my travels into
Arabia. From this person I met with a very cold reception; the letter
was thought to be of too old a date to deserve notice: indeed, my
ragged appearance might have rendered any one cautious how he
committed himself with his correspondents, in paying me a large sum
of money on their account; bills and letters of credit are, besides, often
trifled with in the mutual dealings of Eastern merchants; and I thus
experienced a flat refusal, accompanied, however, with an offer of
lodgings in the man's house. This I accepted for the first two days,
thinking that, by a more intimate acquaintance I might convince him
that I was neither an adventurer nor impostor; but finding him
inflexible, I removed to one of the numerous public
[p.2] Khans in the town, my whole stock of money being two dollars
and a few sequins, sewed up in an amulet which I wore on my arm. I
had little time to make melancholy reflections upon my situation; for
on the fourth day after my arrival, I was attacked by a violent fever,
occasioned, probably, by indulging too freely in the fine fruits which
were then in the Djidda market; an imprudence, which my abstemious
diet, for the last twelve months, rendered, perhaps, less inexcusable, but
certainly of worse consequence. I was for several days delirious; and

nature would probably have been exhausted, had it not been for the aid
of a Greek captain, my fellow passenger from Souakin. He attended me
in one of my lucid intervals, and, at my request, procured a barber, or
country physician, who bled me copiously, though with much
reluctance, as he insisted that a potion, made up of ginger, nutmeg, and
cinnamon, was the only remedy adapted to my case. In a fortnight after,
I had sufficiently recovered to be able to walk about; but the weakness
and languor which the fever had occasioned, would not yield to the
damp heat of the atmosphere of the town; and I owed my complete
recovery to the temperate climate of Tayf, situated in the mountains
behind Mekka, where I afterwards proceeded.
The Djidda market little resembled those Negro markets, where a single
dollar would purchase two or three weeks’ provision of dhourra and
butter. The price of every thing had risen here to an unusual height, the
imports from the interior of Arabia having entirely ceased, while the
whole population of the Hedjaz, now increased by a Turkish army and
its numerous followers, and a host of pilgrims who were daily coming
in, wholly depended for its supply upon the imports from Egypt. My
little stock of money was therefore spent during my illness, and before
I was sufficiently recovered to walk out. The Greek captain, though he
had shown himself ready to afford me the common services of
humanity, was not disposed to trust to the
[p.3] honour or respectability of a man whom he knew to be entirely
destitute of money. I was in immediate want of a sum sufficient to
defray my daily expenses, and, no other means being left to procure it, I
was compelled to sell my slave: I regretted much the necessity for
parting with him, as I knew he had some affection for me, and he was
very desirous to remain with me. During my preceding journey he had
proved himself a faithful and useful companion; and although I have
since had several other slaves in my possession, I never found one
equal to him. The Greek captain sold him for me, in the slave-market of
Djidda, for forty-eight dollars. [This slave cost me sixteen dollars at
Shendy; thus, the profits of sale on one slave defrayed almost the whole
expense of the four months’ journey through Nubia, which I had
performed in the spring.]
The present state of the Hedjaz rendered travelling through it, in the
disguise of a beggar, or at least for a person of my outward appearance,

impracticable; and the slow progress of my recovery made me desirous
of obtaining comforts: I therefore equipped myself anew, in the dress of
a reduced Egyptian gentleman, and immediately wrote to Cairo for a
supply of money; but this I could hardly receive in less than three or
four months. Being determined, however, to remain in the Hedjaz until
the time of the pilgrimage in the following November, it became
necessary for