SUEZ. 
345 
not by accepting his little friend s bargain, but by taking each pil- 
grim at from five to ten dollars per head ; for so short a passage he 
could have stowed from four to five hundred. 
On the beach between Attake and the town, we procured some 
very fine specimens of bivalve shells, and on the spit of sand, a va- 
riety of marine productions. I also greatly increased my collection 
of sea weed, with which the Red Sea abounds more than any other. 
Yet Mr. Bruce asserts, in his Dissertation on the origin of the He- 
brew name Yam Suph, that he never saw a weed of any sort in it ; 
and adds, " indeed, upon the slightest consideration, it will occur 
to any one, that a narrow gulf, under the immediate influence of 
monsoons, blowing from contrary points six months each year, 
would have too much agitation to produce such vegetables, seldom 
found but in stagnant waters, and seldomer, if ever, found in salt 
ones." ! ! ! The ignorance displayed in the comment, is equal to the 
falsity of the original assertion. My friend, Mr. Dawson Turner, in 
his beautiful work on the Fuci, has given drawings of many of the 
specimens which I brought home, and Forskal confirms the fact of 
their being the production of the Red Sea. 
February 9. — Early in the morning I received a letter from Mr. 
Aziz, informing me that brandy was to be procured, but that he 
feared wine was not. He notified to me that the caravan had actu- 
ally set off, under the escort of an Arab chief, Nasr Chedid, who, by 
the orders of Mohammed Ali Pacha, had undertaken to conduct me 
in safety to Cairo. 1 determined to go immediately on shore, and 
superintend the necessary arrangements for my journey, in which 
Captain Court was so obliging as to permit Mr. Macgie to accom- 
pany me, to bring back my dispatches, and those of Major Missett, 
