theirs; and this they repeat in perfect time with surprising regularity.
In carrying the materials, making the pots, and conveying
them to market, two thousand men. are said to find employment.
There are several kinds of fish in this river, among which a
large variety of the sprat is very plentiftd, and there are a few that
are not known elsewhere. Of these some are very good eating,
and others are used as food only by the common people, who
scarcely ever taste any other sort of animal diet. The arabs, in deed,
are very fond of locusts, which they brqil; and sometimes
considerable flights of these are brought even to Cairo by the winds
blowing from the desert. When they have large quantities, they
boil them slightly, and dry many of them on the tops of their
houses, to keep; the rest they eat fresh with a little salt. : The
chief food of the common people, however, is a kind of heavy
bread, made of coarse flower of the dourra, a plant of the grass
tribe, which yields an abundant increase, but the seeds are small,
nearly as those of millet. The peasant sows wheat, it is true, but
it is a luxury he does not taste; and the barley, that grows in his
fields, is appropriated to the use of the horse, of which it is the
common food. The date palm, the most common tree in Egypt,
affords another article of diet, which is particularly useful in long
journeys. I t7s fruit, pounded and kneaded together, is formed
into large solid cakes, and dried. Pieces of these, which are so
hard they must be cut with a hatchet, make, when diluted with
water, a refreshing and nutritious beverage. The sugar-cane grows
in Egypt, and sugar is made from it, some of which is of a pretty
good quality; but the greater part of it is eaten green, chiefly by
the common people and women, who are very fond of it; and in
this state it is sold, tied up in little bundles, in all the cities.
A common culinary vegetable in Egypt is the lablab, a leguminous
plant, of which arbours are frequently formed, as it may
be trained in any manner like our scarlet bean. The common
mallow, too, is cultivated for the use of the kitchen, beinm^ more .
usually boiled with meat in lower Egypt than any other vegetable;
and two other plants of a more mucilaginous nature, resembling
the marsh mallow, are equally employed as food.
The gardens of Egypt abound with pleasant fruits. The
banana, custard-apple, pomegranate, orange, lemon, tamarind,
grape, fig, melon, apricot, and olive, are found in them; beside
some fruits peculiar to the country, as the nabeca, which grows
on a species of rhamnus, and resembles a small round apple, pleasant
enough to the taste, when neither green nor too ripe; and the
doum, which is a species of date. They likewise produce a species
of cyperus, the fleshy tubercles among the roots of which,
called abelasis, resemble the chesnut in flavour, and are much
esteemed in some places. Nurses frequently eat them, imagining
they increase the quantity of their milk.
As a substitute for intoxicating liquors, a species of hemp is
cultivated in Egypt, called hashish, or the herb, by way of eminence.
The fruit of this, with it’s capsule, is pounded to a paste,
mixed with honey, pepper, and nutmeg, and swallowed in pieces
about the size of a nut. The poor merely pound the capsules in
water, and swallow the paste, or eat the capsules without any