But this is not yet all, the money is to be paid. A private Moor, who has nothing to support him but his character, becomes responsible for the payment of these cargoes; his name was Ibrahim Saraf when I was there, _i. e._ Ibrahim the Broker. This man delivers a number of coarse hempen bags, full of what is supposed to be money. He marks the contents upon the bag, and puts his seal upon the string that ties the mouth of it. This is received for what is marked upon it, without any one ever having opened one or the bags, and, in India, it is current for the value marked upon it, as long as the bag lasts.
Jidda is very unwholesome, as is, indeed, all the east coast of the Red Sea. Immediately without the gate of that town, to the eastward, is a desert plain filled with the huts of the Bedowèens, or country Arabs, built of long bundles of spartum, or bent grass, put together like fascines. These Bedowèens supply Jidda with milk and butter. There is no stirring out of town, even for a walk, unless for about half a mile, in the south side by the sea, where there is a number of stinking pools of stagnant water, which contributes to make the town very unwholesome.
Jidda, besides being in the most unwholesome part of Arabia, is, at the same time, in the most barren and desert situation. This, and many other inconveniencies, under which it labours, would, probably, have occasioned its being abandoned altogether, were it not for its vicinity to Mecca, and the great and sudden influx of wealth from the India trade, which, once a-year, arrives in this part, but does not continue, passing on, as through a turnpike, to Mecca; whence it is dispersed all over the east. Very little advantage however accrues to Jidda. The customs are all immediately sent to a needy sovereign, and a hungry set of relations, dependents and ministers at Mecca. The gold is returned in bags and boxes, and passes on as rapidly to the ships as the goods do to the market, and leaves as little profit behind. In the mean time, provisions rise to a prodigious price, and this falls upon the townsmen, while all the profit of the traffic is in the hands of strangers; most of whom, after the market is over, (which does not last six weeks) retire to Yemen, and other neighbouring countries, which abound in every sort of provision.