In conceiving the idea of the expedition to Egypt Dundas apparently thought he had done all that could be expected from him, and took no trouble about details. He failed to comply with Abercromby’s requisitions for stores and _matériel_. He did not even send him the bullion for which Sir Ralph frequently petitioned, and left him so short of actual cash that for three months the army was unpaid, and the only way by which cavalry horses could be bought at Marmorice was with specie produced by well-to-do officers. It is not surprising, therefore, that Abercromby wrote, “We are now on the point of sailing for the coast of Egypt with very slender means for executing the orders we have received. I never went on any service entertaining greater doubt of success, at the same time with more determination to encounter difficulties.... The Dutch expedition was walking on velvet compared to this.”[105] On February 22, he put to sea, and after a stormy passage of eight days reached Aboukir Bay--a wide indentation on the western coast of the delta of the Nile, where in August, 1798, Nelson had destroyed the fleet which had convoyed Napoleon’s army to Egypt. Though for several days the waves were too high to admit of disembarkation, small ships were able to reconnoitre the coast closely, and their reports determined Abercromby to land on a narrow promontory which, running north-east from Alexandria for eight or nine miles, separates the waters of the Mediterranean from those of Lake Aboukir, or Lake Madie as it is sometimes called.[106]