324 TRAVELS IN AFRICA, 
commonly fatal in a late ftage. It is faid that embrocating the 
buboes continually with oil has fometimes wrought a cure ; but 
this remedy is fo difficult and dangerous for the operator, that 
it would appear experiments muft yet be very defedive. The 
natives of Kahira are too fupine to feek for any remedy, and 
too bigoted to avoid the danger. 
The plague which happened in Egypt fo early as the year 
1348, when Conftantinople was yet fubjedt to the Greek em- 
peror, and Egypt in polTeffion of Mohammedans, may be fup- 
pofed to have originated in the latter. But not to mention that 
there were many other places from which it might be brought, 
this fmgle inftance, not given in detail, is infujEicient to over- 
throw the teftimony of the modern inhabitants, who with one 
confent affirm, whether Mohammedans or Chriflians, that the 
plague is not endemial in Egypt, but that all the inflances of 
it which they are able to trace are proved to have been derived 
from abroad. 
The learned Dr. Mead has brought the plague from Ethiopia, 
where famine and the fmall-pox indeed carry off numbers ; but 
where the plague was never known to exifl. It is not remem- 
bered to have penetrated far into the Upper Egypt, except in 
fome few inflances, when it was known to have been carried 
thither by the boats from Kahira. No more is required to 
account for its introdudion into Egypt at this day, than the 
admiffion, that it is never completely extindt at Conftantinople, 
which, it feems, has fcarcely been denied. 
The 
