AND LOWER EGYPT. lO*] 



brackish and warm water, which the thirst, occa- 

 sioned by the heat of the sun and by the dust, 

 makes a man swallow with delight. A small brick 

 tower admonishes you that you must quit the 

 shore* ; other little towers, which you perceive in 

 the same direction, that of east-south-east, serve 

 as a guide into a moving plain, in the midst of 

 which you might easily lose yourself, and so much 

 the more that the city of Rossetta, begirt, toward 

 the west, by accumulated sands, is not discernible 

 till the very instant that you enter the first street. 

 You reckon, before you arrive, eleven of those 

 little towers, some of which having a greater cir- 

 cumference than the others, are not massy, and 

 present, in their interior, a shelter to travellers, 

 and a place of prayer to the Mahometans-}-. 



Here 



* This little tower of brick is probably that which Danville 

 calls Casa Rossa in his chart of' Egypt. 



f Dr. Shaw (vol. ii. of his Travels, p. 22) says, that the ca- 

 ravans are directed from Medea to Rossetta, a space of four 

 leagues, by great stakes driven into the ground, similar to those 

 of Schibkah el- low dea, or lake of the marks in Barbary. But, 

 without mentioning the calculation of the distance, in which 

 there is a small mistake, these marks of Schibkah el-low-dca t ac- 

 cording to the same Dr. Shaw (vol. i. p. 274), are nothing but 

 trunks of the palm-tree, whereas those which indicate the road 

 to Rossetta are towers built of brick. I would not have pointed 

 out this slight inaccuracy in the work of a traveller less esti- 

 mable, and whom I consider as one of the most intelligent and 



tfae 



