We saw two or three gazels, or antelopes, walking one by one, at several times, in nothing differing from the species of that animal, in the desert of Barca and Cyrenaicum; and the [70]jerboa, another inhabitant of these deserts; but from the multitude of holes in the ground, which we saw at the root of almost every plant of Absinthium, we were very certain its companion, the [71]Cerastes, or horned viper, was an inhabitant of that country also.
From Medea, or the Passage, our road lay through very dry sand; to avoid which, and seek firmer footing, we were obliged to ride up to the bellies of our horses in the sea. If the wind blows this quantity of dust or sand into the Mediterranean, it is no wonder the mouths of the branches of the Nile are choked up.
All Egypt is like to this part of it, full of deep dust and sand, from the beginning of March till the first of the inundation. It is this fine powder and sand, raised and loosened by the heat of the sun, and want of dew, and not being tied fast, as it were, by any root or vegetation, which the Nile carries off with it, and buries in the sea, and which many ignorantly suppose comes from Abyssinia, where every river runs in a bed of rock.
When you leave the sea, you strike off nearly at right angles, and pursue your journey to the eastward of north. Here heaps of stone and trunks of pillars, are set up to guide you in your road, through moving sands, which stand in hillocks in proper directions, and which conduct you safely to Rosetto, surrounded on one side by these hills of sand, which seem ready to cover it.
Rosetto is upon that branch of the Nile which was called the Bolbuttic Branch, and is about four miles from the sea. It probably obtained its present name from the Venetians, or Genoese, who monopolized the trade of this country, before the Cape of Good Hope was discovered; for it is known to the natives by the name of Rashid, by which is meant the Orthodox.
The reason of this I have already explained, it is some time or other to be a substitute to Mecca, and to be blessed with all that holiness, that the possession of the reliques, of their prophet can give it.
Dr Shaw[72] having always in his mind the strengthening of Herodotus’s hypothesis, _that Egypt is created by the Nile_, says, that perhaps this was once a Cape, because Rashid has that meaning. But as Dr Shaw understood Arabic perfectly well, he must therefore have known, that Rashid has no such signification in any of the Oriental Languages. Ras, indeed, is a head land, or cape; but Rassit has no such signification, and Rashid a very different one, as I have already mentioned.