The boatmen, living either in the Delta, Cairo, or one of the great towns in Upper Egypt, and coming constantly loaded with merchandise, or strangers from these great places, make swift passages by the villages, either down the river with a rapid current, or up with a strong, fair, and steady wind: And, when the season of the Nile’s inundation is over, and the wind turns southward, they repair all to the Delta, the river being no longer navigable above, and there they are employed till the next season. They know little, therefore, and care less about the names or inhabitants of these villages, who have each of them barks of their own to carry on their own trade. There are some indeed employed by the Coptic and Turkish merchants, who are better versed in the names of villages than others; but, if they are not, and find you do not understand the language, they will never confess ignorance; they will tell you the first name that comes uppermost, sometimes very ridiculous, often very indecent, which we see afterwards pass into books, and wonder that such names were ever given to towns. The reader will observe this in comparing Mr Norden’s voyage and mine, where he will seldom see the same village pass by the same name. My Rais, Abou Cuffi, when he did not know a village, sometimes tried this with me. But when he saw me going to write, he used then to tell me the truth, that he did not know the village; but that such was the custom of him, and his brethren, to people that did not understand the language, especially if they were priests, meaning Catholic Monks. We passed with great velocity Nizelet Embarak, Cubabac, Nizelet Omar, Racca Kibeer, then Racca Seguier, and came in sight of Atsia, a large village at some distance from the Nile; all the valley here is green, the palm-groves beautiful, and the Nile deep. Still it is not the prospect that pleases, for the whole ground that is sown to the sandy ascent of the mountains, is but a narrow stripe of three quarters of a mile broad, and the mountains themselves, which here begin to have a moderate degree of elevation, and which bound this narrow valley, are white, gritty, sandy, and uneven, and perfectly destitute of all manner of verdure. At the small village of Racca Seguier there was this remarkable, that it was thick, surrounded with trees of a different nature and figure from palms; what they were I know not, I believe they were pomegranate-trees; I thought, that with my glass I discerned some reddish fruit upon them; and we had passed a village called Rhoda, a name they give in Egypt to pomegranates; Salcah is on the opposite, or east-side of the river. The Nile divides above the village; it fell very calm, and here we passed the night of the fifteenth.