184 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



from Cairo, where it was impossible to protect him 

 from the insults and persecution of the Mamelucs, 

 and fixed him at Alexandria. It is easy to judge 

 that here he was not much more secure. The 

 French flag waved on the terrace of the factory ; 

 it would have been better, perhaps, not to display 

 it at all, as it was impossible to procure respect for 

 it from those barbarians. 



Among the few Frenchmen who resided there, 

 and whose generous and obliging character can 

 never be obliterated from my memory, I must dis- 

 tinguish a name dear to the sciences, that of Adan- 

 son. The brother of the Academician of Paris, de- 

 voted, from his youth up, to the study of the orU 

 ental languages, had for a long time fulfilled the 

 delicate functions of an interpreter in the Levant. 

 He had undergone, in Syria, one of those cruel in- 

 flictions which are equally the reproach of the go- 

 vernment which orders them, and of that which 

 suffers them to pass unrevenged. The victim of 

 . his duty, he was likewise so of the detestable bar- 

 barity of a Pacha. Enjoined, in concert with his 

 colleague, and in the name of the French nation, 

 to present well founded remonstrances, they were 

 both doomed, by order of the ferocious Mussul- 

 man, to the horrid punishment of the bastinado on 

 the soles of the feet. The other interpreter ex- 

 pired under the hands of the executioner, and 



Adanson, 



