COAST OF EGYPT. 29' 
his voyage, without waiting for the other ships. 
The scene which ensued on board the Braakel, 
upon the arrival of the French prisoners, baffles ■^'•^"c/t 
' ... Prisoners. 
every effort of description. Strolling players, 
collected in a barn, never exhibited more 
ludicrous dresses, or a better burlesque of the 
military character. J^ollaire, dressed in his 
pasteboard helmet, with his laced coat and long 
dirty ruffles, to represent, in one of his own 
plays, the person of Alexander the Great, was a 
hero, compared with some of the soldiers of the 
French army. There were many who made 
their appearance with the most ghastly visages, 
beneath helmets of all colours, covered with 
horses' tails pending over their wrinkled cheeks 
and shrugged-up shoulders. Every one ima- 
gined he should testify a proper degree of spirit, 
and perhaps ingratiate himself with a British 
crew, by the ejaculation of some English oath, 
as soon as he set his foot upon the quarter-deck. 
When they were all drawn up, in three lines, to 
be reviewed, and their respective births were 
assigned to them, some of the new comers were 
found to be abandoned women, wretchedly 
dressed in the tattered habits of French soldiers. 
Other females, more pitiable, came also in men's 
clothes; but these were Georgian and Circassian 
girls, once the secluded pride oi Turkish Chararis, 
