MEMOIR OF BURCKHARDT. 307 



out bringing the Moggrebeyn or Western caravan, 

 although the usual period of its yearly arrival had 

 then passed by. This disappointment was not a 

 little tantalizing ; and as the capital of Egypt was 

 then in a very disturbed state, owing to the attempts 

 of the Pasha to drill his troops according to the 

 European tactics ; and was, moreover, assailed with 

 another visitation of the plague, which had raged 

 there for three successive years, Burckhardt con- 

 sidered it prudent to quit the infected banks of the 

 Nile for a time, and seek for refuge among the 

 Bedouins of Mount Sinai. This tour, besides avoid- 

 ing the pestilence, he expected would give him an 

 opportunity of pushing on as far as Akaba, and 

 tracing the direction of the eastern branch of the 

 Red Sea, which he believed had never been seen by 

 European travellers. 



On the 20th of April he left Cairo, in company 

 with some Bedouins, who were returning to their 

 mountains with corn which they had purchased in 

 Egypt. In crossing the desert to Suez (between 

 seventy and eighty miles), they found the road in 

 many places covered with flints, petrosilex, pebbles, 

 petrified wood, and large trunks of trees half-buried 

 in the sand. From these appearances, Burckhardt 

 conjectured, that before Pharaoh Necho dug the 

 canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, the com- 

 munication between Arsinoe, or Clysma (near Suez), 

 and Memphis, may have been carried on this way ; 

 and that stations may have been established on the 

 spots covered with these petrifactions. 



