390 



MODERN EGYPT. 



garden he frequently takes his evening meal of pilau, (boiled rice 

 and fowls,) doubly grateful from the abstinence of the day, and the 

 refreshing shade. The gardens are watered by the Persian wheel 

 from wells filled by the Nile during the inundation. The small 

 wheels are turned round by an ass, the larger by buffaloes. The 

 gardens of Rosetta derive their celebrity from the sudden contrast 

 witnessed by the traveller in exchanging the barren wastes in the 

 vicinity of Alexandria, for a tract of country round Rosetta and in 

 the Delta, abounding in trees, and the most luxuriant vegetation. 



On leaving Rosetta at nine in the morning;, instead of entering the 

 dgerm at that city, I walked to the castle of St. Julian, along the 

 west bank of the river, and through rich fields of clover, the bersim 

 of the Egyptians ; on some parts of my road I observed pools of 

 tagnant water, in one of which a few buffaloes had taken shelter 

 from the mosquitoes, every part of them being covered except the 

 nostrils. At no great distance from St. Julian near a small cottage, 

 some women were sitting in the shade nursing a child, ill with the 

 small-pox ; this is one of the most destructive diseases in Egypt ; it 

 is the Moubarah of the Turks, and Evlogea* of the modern Greeks. 



The castle of St. Julian where the dgerm met me, consists of a 

 tower surrounded by a wall ; from the former, I believe, Poussielgue 

 witnessed the destruction of the French fleet in Aboukir Bay. At 

 eleven in the forenoon we passed over the Nile to a mud-built 

 village, exactly opposite to St Julian's, where the wind being un- 

 favourable, we were detained, until the next morning. As soon as we 

 knew the pilot's determination we sought for a lodging, and at last 

 fixed upon a ruined mosque, the walls of which had been shattered 

 by the fire from St. Julian ; for it appeared, that one of the English 



* Theodorus Prodromus is the earliest writer who uses the word. It is not found in 

 Meursius. Sec Villoison. Not. des MSS. du Roi. torn. vi. 539. The opinion in the text 

 is confirmed by the observations of those who have directed their attention to the maladies 

 of the east. La petite verole, et le carreau enlevent presque la tnoitie des enfans, avant 

 qu'ils aient atteint leur quatrieme annee. — Mem. sur l'Egypte. — In Syria, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Aleppo, the Bedouin Arabs practise inoculation. Russell, ii. 3 J 7- 



