There is a draught of the harbour of Jidda handed about among the English for many years, very inaccurately, and very ill laid down, from what authority I know not, often condemned, but never corrected; as also a pretended chart of the upper part of the Gulf, from Jidda to Mocha, full of soundings. As I was some months at Jidda, kindly entertained, and had abundance of time, Captain Thornhill, and some other of the gentlemen trading thither, wished me to make a survey of the harbour, and promised me the assistance of their officers, boats, and crews. I very willingly undertook it to oblige them. Finding afterwards, however, that one of their number, Captain Newland, had undertaken it, and that he would be hurt by my interfering, as he was in some manner advanced in the work, I gave up all further thoughts of the plan. He was a man of real ingenuity and capacity, as well as very humane, well behaved, and one to whom I had been indebted for every sort of attention. God forgive those who have taken upon them, very lately, to ingraft a number of new soundings upon that miserable bundle of errors, that Chart of the upper part of the Gulf from Jidda to Mocha, which has been tossed about the Red Sea these twenty years and upwards. One of these, since my return to Europe, has been sent to me new dressed like a bride, with all its original and mortal sins upon its head. I would beg leave to be understood, that there is not in the world a man more averse than I am to give offence even to a child. It is not in the spirit of criticism I speak this. In any other case, I would not have made any observations at all. But, where the lives and properties of so many are at stake yearly, it is a species of treason to conceal one’s sentiments, if the publishing of them can any way contribute to safety, whatever offence it may give to unreasonable individuals. Of all the vessels in Jidda, two only had their log lines properly divided, and yet all were so fond of their supposed accuracy, as to aver they had kept their course within five leagues, between India and Babelmandeb. Yet they had made no estimation of the currents without the [187]Babs, nor the different very strong ones soon after passing Socotra; their half-minute glasses upon a medium ran 57´´; they had made no observation on the tides or currents in the Red Sea, either in the channel or in the inward passage; yet there is delineated in this map a course of Captain Newland’s, which he kept in the middle of the channel, full of sharp angles and short stretches; you would think every yard was measured and sounded.