"Here’s his memory in Malaga, though I would rather drink it in Islay or Glenlivet. We did give them the bayonet, and the pike too, in a style that would have done your hearts good to have seen. It was a glorious victory,—Vimiera, the other day, was nothing to it,—and well worth losing blood for. That night we hoisted the union on the old Arab towers of Aboukir, and Lord Hutchinson took command of the army. On the 18th September, 1801, we placed Alexandria in the power of the Turks. Our wounded we stowed away in the mosques and empty houses; our troops were quartered on the inhabitants, or placed under canvas without the city walls, and we found ourselves while there tolerably comfortable, excepting the annoyance we suffered from insects and the enervating heat, which was like that of a furnace; but the _kamsin_, or ’hot wind of the desert,’ one must experience to know what it really is. "When it begins to blow, the air feels perpetually like a blast rushing from a hot fire, and the atmosphere undergoes a change sufficient to strike even the heart of a lion with terror. The louring-sky becomes dark with clouds of a bloody hue, and the sun, shorn of its rays and its glory, seems to float among them like a round ball of glowing purple, while the whole air becomes dense and dusty, rendering respiration out of doors almost an impossibility. Although during the reign of the terrible _kamsin_ the sun was scarcely visible, the water in the public fountains grew hot; our musquet barrels and steel weapons, the wood, marble, iron, and every thing, felt warm and burning. When the awful blast is discovered afar off, coming sweeping from the arid deserts of Lybia and Arabia, the inhabitants of cities fly to their dwellings for refuge, and shut themselves up closely; the wandering Arab in the silent wilderness hollows a pit in the sand wherein to hide himself; and the unfortunate traveller, when surprised on the way-side, throws himself on the earth, with his face towards Mecca, while he covers his mouth and nostrils with the lawn of his turban, or the skirt of his robe: the very camel buries its head in the sand till the fearful blast is over. Hand me the sherry, Kennedy; the very remembrance of the _kamsin_ makes me thirsty. "Cameron—I mean Fassifern—and I lived together in the same tent, which was pitched without the city, in a spot where enormous ruins incrusted with saltpetre were piled on every side. I well remember drawing back the triangular door of the tent, and looking cautiously forth when the wind had passed. Here and there I saw the prostrate corpses of some Turks and Egyptians, who had been suffocated by inhaling the hot sandy air. They presented a terrible spectacle, certainly. They were swelled enormously, turned to a pale blue colour; and there they lay, rapidly festering and decomposing in the heat of the sun, although they had been alive and well that morning.