“The view in sailing up the Nile is very confined, unless from the top of the mast, or some other eminence, and then it is an unbounded plain of excellent land, miserably cultivated, and yet interspersed with a great number of villages, both on its banks and as far along the meadows as one can see in any direction: the river is also filled with boats passing and repassing—boats all of one kind, and navigated in one manner; nearly also of one size, the largest carrying ten or fifteen tons. On board of these boats are seen onions, water-melons, dates, sometimes a horse, a camel, (which lies down in the boat) and sheep and goats, dogs, men and women.—Towards evening and morning they have music. “Whenever we stopped at a village, I used to walk into it with my Conductor, who, being a Musselman, and a descendant from Mahommed, wore a green turban, and was therefore respected, and I was sure of safety:—but in truth, dressed as I was in a common Turkish habit, I believe I should have walked as safely without him. I saw no propensity among the inhabitants to incivility. The villages are most miserable assemblages of poor little mud huts, flung very close together without any kind of order, full of dust, lice, fleas, bed-bugs, flies, and all the curses of Moses: people poorly clad, the youths naked; in such respects, they rank infinitely below any Savages I ever saw. “The common people wear nothing but a shirt and drawers, and they are always blue. Green is the royal or holy colour; none but the descendants of Mahommed, if I am rightly informed, being permitted to wear it. “August 19th. From the little town where we landed, the distance to Cairo is about a mile and a half, which we rode on asses; for the ass in this country is the Christian’s horse, as he is allowed no other animal to ride upon. Indeed I find the situation of a Christian, or what they more commonly call here a Frank, to be very, very humiliating, ignominious, and distressing: no one, by a combination of any causes, can reason down to such effects as experience teaches us do exist here: it being impossible to conceive, that the enmity I have alluded to could exist between men;—or, in fact, that the same species of beings, from any causes whatever, should ever think and act so differently as the Egyptians and the English do. “I arrived at Cairo early in the morning, on the 19th of August, and went to the house of the Venetian Consul, Mr. Rosetti, Chargé d’Affaires for the English Consul here. “After dinner, not being able to find any other lodging, and receiving no very pressing invitation from Mr. Rosetti, to lodge with him, I went to a convent. This convent consists of Missionaries sent by the Pope to propagate the Christian Faith, or at least to give shelter to Christians. The Christians here are principally from Damascus: the convent is governed by the Order of Recollets: a number of English, as well as other European travellers, have lodged there.