Born 1692—Died 1751.
THIS curious and learned traveller was the son of Mr. Gabriel Shaw, of
Kendal, in Westmoreland, where he was born in the year 1692. The first
rudiments of his education, which appears to have been carefully
conducted, he received at the grammar-school of his native town, from
whence, in 1711, he removed to Queen’s College, Oxford. Here he took the
degree of B.A. in 1716, and that of M.A. three years after. In the
course of the same year he went into orders, and was appointed chaplain
to the English factory at Algiers. As he has left no account of the mode
in which he reached the point of destination, it is uncertain whether he
proceeded to Africa wholly by sea, or performed a portion of the journey
by land; but as it is certain that he was in Italy, where, among other
places, he visited Rome, it is probable that it was upon this occasion
that he traversed the continent of Europe, taking ship at some port of
Italy for Algiers, where he arrived about the end of 1719, or early in
the beginning of the year following. This city, which has long been an
object of considerable curiosity to Europeans, I have already described,
at least as it existed in the sixteenth century, in the life of Leo
Africanus; and therefore shall merely observe upon the present occasion,
that at the period of Shaw’s residence it was a small though populous
city, not exceeding a mile and a half in circumference, but computed to
contain little less than one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants. Of
antiquities, the peculiar objects of our traveller’s researches, it
could boast but few specimens, though his practised eye discerned upon
the tower of the great mosque several broken inscriptions, the letters
of which, however, were either so inverted or filled up with lime and
whitewash, that nothing could be made of them.
The environs are remarkable for their beauty, consisting of a rapid
succession of hills and valleys, sprinkled with gardens and villas, to
which the more wealthy among the citizens retire during the heats of
summer. From these little white houses, perched in picturesque
situations among evergreen woods and groves of fruit-trees, the
inhabitants enjoy a gay and delightful prospect of the sea; while to
those who sail along the shore these woods, villas, and gardens present
a no less cheerful and animated scene. The springs which rise in these
hills, and confer beauty and fertility upon the whole landscape,
likewise furnish the city with an abundance of excellent water, which is
conveyed to the public fountains through a long course of pipes and
conduits.
Having remained about a year at Algiers, in the exercise of his
professional duties, he was enabled, I know not how, to quit his post
for a time, in order to satisfy the desire he felt of visiting Egypt and
Syria. His voyage to Egypt, however, was ill-timed, for he arrived in
the midst of summer, when, for the most part, the heat is excessive, the
sands heated like the ashes of an oven, and the whole vegetation of the
country exceedingly parched and withered. In approaching the low and
level coast, no part of which could be seen from any considerable
distance at sea, the mariners, he observes, conjectured how far they
were from land by the depth of the water, the number of fathoms usually
answering to the same number of leagues. The portion of the shore lying
between Tineh, the ancient Pelusium, and Damietta, was so exceedingly
low and full of lakes and morasses, that, in his opinion, it answered
exactly to the etymology of its names; Tineh, from _tin_ (Heb. טִין),
_clay_ or _mud_, and Pelusium (Gr. πηλούσιον), from _pelus_ πηλός
^{TN}), a word of the same signification! With etymological conjectures
such as these our curious traveller amused himself on drawing near the
shores of Egypt. At length, however, he arrived at Alexandria, where,
regarding every thing modern as so many vain dreams unworthy the
attention of a learned traveller, he discovered nothing striking or
curious but the shattered walls, the cisterns, and other splendid
vestiges of antiquity.
From Alexandria he sailed up the Nile to Cairo, and found travelling
upon this “moving road,” as Pascal beautifully terms a navigable river,
an extremely agreeable diversion. At every winding of the stream, says
he, such a variety of villages, gardens, and plantations present
themselves to our view, that from Rosetta to Cairo, and from thence all
the way down by the other branch, to Damietta, we see nothing but crowds
of people, or continued scenes of plenty and abundance. The many
turnings of the river make the distance from Cairo to each of those
cities near two hundred miles, though in a direct road it will scarce
amount to half that number.
Grand Cairo, notwithstanding the magnificence of its name, he found much
inferior in extent to several European capitals, though as the
inhabitants lived in a close and crowded manner, it was exceedingly
populous. Its principal curiosities, in his estimation, were contained
within the castle situated on Mount Mocattem, and consisted of a
spacious hall, adorned with a double row of vast Thebaic columns, and a
wall about two hundred and sixty feet in depth, with a winding staircase
descending to the bottom, hewn out in the solid rock; both of which
works are attributed by the Mohammedans to the patriarch Joseph. At the
village of Ghizah, directly opposite Cairo, on the Libyan or western
bank of the Nile, he supposed himself to have discovered the site of
ancient Memphis, which Dr. Pococke, Bruce, and others place at
Metraheny, several miles farther southward. From the discussion of this
point, in which, whether right or wrong, our author displays a profusion
of learning and very considerable ingenuity, he proceeds, through a
series of equally learned dissertations, to the origin and destination
of the pyramids. The magnitude, structure, and aspect of these
prodigious edifices, which have withstood the united attacks of
barbarism and the elements through a period of unknown duration, have
frequently been described with picturesque and nervous eloquence, though
it is probable that the impression which the actual contemplation of
them produces upon the imagination is not susceptible of being
represented by language. Satirical or calculating writers have stood at
the foot of these ancient temples, for such, I think, they should be
considered, and laughed at the ambition or folly, as they term it, which
prompted their founders to rear them, because their names and purposes
are now become an enigma. Yet it is probable, that from the day on which
they were erected until the present, few persons have beheld them
towering above the plain of the desert, reflecting back the burning sun
of noon, or throwing their morning or evening shadows over the sand,
without being smitten with a sense of the sublime, and experiencing in
their hearts a secret pride at the boldness and elevation of their
founders’ conception. And this feeling will be heightened into something
of a religious character, if, rejecting, the vulgar notion of their
being nothing but royal tombs, we suppose, what might, I think, be all
but demonstrated, that they were originally temples dedicated to the
passive generative power of nature, the Bhavani of the Hindoos, the
Athor-Isis of the Egyptians, and the Aphrodite and Venus of the Greeks
and Romans. To Dr. Shaw, however, this theory did not present itself. He
was contented with the old idea, suggested by the etymology of the word,
that they might, perhaps, have been fire-temples; but he observes that
the mouth of the pyramids, as well as the end of the mystic chest in the
interior, points to the north, the original _Kiblah_, or
“praying-point,” of the whole human race. Other sacred edifices of
Egypt, as Herodotus observes, had their doors on the northern side; the
table of shew-bread was placed in the same situation in the tabernacle;
and in Hindostan the piety or the superstition of the people points in
the same direction.
Of the animals of Egypt which, from the frequent mention made of them in
classical literature, are regarded as curiosities, the most remarkable,
as the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and the ibis, are now exceedingly
rare. Indeed, though the crocodile is sometimes found above the
cataracts, it is totally unknown to those who live lower down the river,
and the hippopotamus and the ibis, the latter of which was once so
plentiful, may be regarded as extinct in Egypt. To make some amends for
these losses, there is a great abundance of storks, which, as they are
every winter supposed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, are, according to
Lady Montague, regarded as so many hajjîs by the Turks. When about to
migrate from the country, it is observed that they constantly assemble
together from the circumjacent regions in a vast plain, where, in the
opinion of the inhabitants, they daily hold a divan, or council, for
about a fortnight before their departure; after which they rise at once
upon the wing, marshal themselves into close compact bodies of
prodigious dimensions, and then, putting themselves in motion, float
away like dusky clouds of many miles in length upon the wind. The aspic,
one of which opened the voluptuous Cleopatra a way to the court of
Proserpine, is still very numerous in the sandy and mountainous
districts on both sides of the Nile. This reptile, now called the
cerastes, is capable of existing for an incredible length of time
without food; at least if we can rely upon the veracity of Gabrieli, an
Italian gentleman, who showed our traveller a couple of these vipers,
which he had kept, he said, five years in a large crystal vessel,
without any visible sustenance. “They were usually coiled up,” says the
doctor, “in some fine sand, which was placed in the bottom of the
vessel; and when I saw them they had just cast their skins, and were as
brisk and lively as if newly taken. The horns of this viper are white
and shining, in shape like to half a grain of barley, though scarce of
that bigness.” The warral, a gentle and docile species of lizard, which
appeared to be inspired with violent emotions of delight by the sounds
of music, he beheld keeping exact time and motion with the dervishes in
their rotatory dances, running over their heads and arms, turning when
they turned, and stopping when they stopped. These timid practitioners,
however, who thus charm or tame this small and apparently innoxious
creature, are mere children compared with those daring adepts of
Hindostan who, by the force of spells or skill, compel the cobra di
capello, the most deadly and terrible of reptiles, to rear himself in
spiry volumes, and dance, or rather wriggle, like a Nautch girl, for the
amusement of the crowd. But the Egyptian charmers did something better
with serpents and other reptiles than teaching them to dance; they
converted them into articles of food; and Dr. Shaw was assured that in
Cairo and its neighbourhood there were not less than forty thousand
persons who subsisted entirely upon serpents and lizards. Locusts are a
delicacy in Barbary; crickets, fried in sesamum oil, in Siam; and a dish
of human brains is an Apician morsel in New-Zealand. Nay, we are told
that certain Roman epicures, who were very far from regarding themselves
as cannibals, were in the habit of drowning slaves in their fish-ponds,
that by feeding upon their bodies the fish might acquire a superior
flavour and richness. The Abyssinians, who cut beefsteaks from a living
cow, belong to this family of gourmands; and those rebel janizaries of
Tunis who cut their bey into kabobs, and ate him for a relish, as Dr.
Shaw relates, may be said to have pushed this strange, irregular
appetite nearly as far as it can be carried. However, the serpent-eaters
of Cairo, besides the gratification of their preposterous fancy, have a
religious motive, as the being addicted to this curious diet entitles
them, among other religious privileges, to the honour of attending more
immediately upon the hanging of black silk which is annually sent to the
temple of Mecca.
In reiterated endeavours to discern through the mists of three thousand
years the ancient condition of Egypt, physical and moral, our traveller
consumed the time between July and September, in which month he departed
from Cairo on his visit to Mount Sinai and the Red Sea. All travellers
who have journeyed through this wilderness speak with terror of the
dreary desolation and barrenness of the scene. Vegetation is here dead.
Even the dews and showers of heaven fall in vain. They drench the sands
without fertilizing them, and, sinking down into the earth, disappear,
leaving no trace behind. On the skirts of the desert, and upon a few
widely-scattered points, two or three hardy plants, stunted by the
drought, scorched during the day by the intense heat of the sun, and
shrivelled up with piercing cold by night, look like a few miserable
stragglers found in a country depopulated by war and famine. Upon
quitting the valley of the Nile, which is nowhere very broad, the
caravan with which Shaw travelled proceeded directly east through the
desert towards Suez, the atmosphere being perfectly clear and serene; a
fortunate circumstance, as the heavens were every night their only
covering, a carpet spread on the sand their bed, and a bundle of clothes
their pillow. In this situation they were nightly wet to the skin by the
copious dew, though, such is the salubrity of the climate, their health
was not in the least impaired by it. When they had arrived at their
halting-place, and were about to lie down to sleep, the camels were
caused to kneel down in a circle about their resting-place, with their
faces pointing outwards, and their load and saddle piled up behind them,
and being naturally so wakeful as to be roused from sleep by the least
noise, they served their masters instead of a guard.
As in so wild and steril a country the purchasing of provisions as they
might be wanted on the way was of course out of the question, they were
obliged to furnish themselves in Egypt with a stock sufficient for their
consumption during the whole journey. In most countries nature supplies
man wherewith to quench his thirst, without his experiencing the
necessity of exercising his foresight or taxing his ingenuity, by
lavishly scattering about her refreshing springs over the earth, or by
suspending, as in the forests of Brazil, diminutive vegetable reservoirs
in the thicket, where he may always calculate upon finding the requisite
quantity of cool pure water. But in Arabia this rule does not hold. Our
traveller, therefore, upon commencing his journey, took care to provide
himself with a sufficient number of goat-skins, which were replenished
every four or five days, or oftener, if wells were met with. Wine,
likewise, and brandy, together with wheatflour, rice, biscuit, honey,
oil, vinegar, olives, lentils, potted flesh, and such other articles of
food as would keep sweet and wholesome during two months, were laid in;
as well as barley, with a few beans intermixed, which, with balls made
of the flour of the one or both of them, and a little water, constituted
the whole sustenance of the camels. Their kitchen furniture consisted of
a copper pot and wooden bowl, in the former of which they cooked, and
from the latter ate their food, or kneaded therein their unleavened
cakes. When the caravan halted for the purpose of cooking their
breakfast or dinner, the dung left by the camels of preceding travellers
was carefully gathered up, there being no wood; and this, when it had
been a few days exposed to the sun, took fire quickly, and burned like
charcoal. Their food being prepared, whether it was potted flesh boiled
with rice, a lentil-soup, or unleavened cakes, served up with oil or
honey, one of the Arabs belonging to the party, not, as the Scripture
says, “to eat his morsel alone,” placing himself upon the highest spot
of ground in the neighbourhood, called out thrice, with a loud voice to
all his brethren, “the Sons of the Faithful,” to come and partake of it;
though none of them, says the traveller, were in view or perhaps within
a hundred miles of them. The custom, however, is maintained as a mark of
benevolence, and, when an opportunity occurs, of their hospitality.
Upon arriving at the fountain of Elim, two leagues to the west of Suez,
they found it brackish, and though there were several large troughs for
the convenience of watering cattle, it was not considered wholesome, and
the people of the neighbourhood preferred the waters of the Ain el
Mousa, or “Fountain of Moses,” two leagues east of the city, which are
lukewarm and sulphureous, and spout up like an artificial fountain from
the earth,—a circumstance which Dr. Shaw thinks is no other way to be
accounted for than by deducing their origin from the “great abyss!” The
distance between Cairo and Suez is about ninety Roman miles, which the
Israelites, according to Josephus, though the Scriptures are silent on
the subject, traversed in three days, which, considering that they were
encumbered with aged persons and children, Dr. Shaw thinks exceedingly
improbable. The time employed in his own traject he does not mention;
but observes that upon every little eminence on the road, as well as in
the mountains of Libya near Egypt, great quantities of echini, as well
as of bivalve and turbinated shells, were to be found, most of which
corresponded exactly with their respective families still preserved in
the Red Sea. The old walls of Suez, as well as the ruins of the village
of Ain el Mousa, are full of fossil shells, which, as Xenophon remarks
in the Anabasis, was the case with the walls of certain castles on the
confines of Curdistan.
Having turned the point of the Red Sea at Suez, they proceeded towards
the south, having the sea on their right, and the broken plain of the
desert on the left. In the tongue of land improperly called the
“Peninsula of Mount Sinai,” lying between the Sea of Suez and the Gulf
of Akaba, over which they were now moving, the danger, while the whole
caravan kept together, was not great, as opportunities of plunder being
unfrequent, robbers had not sufficient motives for establishing
themselves there. The chances of danger being thus diminished, our
traveller became imboldened to overstep the limits of prudence, and
yielding to his passion for collecting plants and other curiosities,
lagged behind, or wandered from the caravan. Scarcely, however, had he
tasted the sweets of feeling himself alone in the boundless wilderness,
a pleasure more poignant and tumultuous than can be conceived by those
who have never experienced it, than he beheld three robbers start up, as
it were, from the sand, and rush upon him. Resistance was out of the
question. The ruffians immediately seized him, and tearing off his
clothes, mean and ragged as they were, two of them began to fight for
the possession of them. Meanwhile he stood by, naked, a spectator of the
fray, apprehensive that their natural ferocity being aggravated by
strife and contention, they might terminate their quarrel by plunging
their daggers in his heart. Providence, however, had otherwise
determined. The third robber, taking compassion upon his forlorn and
helpless condition, allowed him to escape; and after wandering about
among the naked rocks and burning sands for some time, he fortunately
overtook the caravan.
For several days the sky, as I have already observed, was serene, and
the weather beautiful; but on their arriving at Wady Gharendel, a small
stream which flows into the Red Sea, a few leagues south of Suez, they
observed that the tops of the mountains, which now flanked their road on
both sides, were at intervals capped with clouds, which sometimes
remained stationary during the whole day. This disposition of the
atmosphere was soon after succeeded by a violent tempest. A canopy of
dark clouds extended itself over the earth—the lightning flashed
incessantly—the thunder rolled along the sky—and the rain descended
throughout the night with all the weight and fury of a tropical storm.
Such tempests, however, are exceedingly rare in that part of Arabia,
though they are not, as Burckhardt observes, at all uncommon in the
Hejaz; nor, according to Niebuhr, is Yemen much less liable to them. But
in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai there is usually one uniform course
of weather throughout the year, the winds blowing briskly during the
day, and decreasing with the decrease of light. In the level parts of
the desert, where the plain was as unbroken as a calm sea, our traveller
observed that curious phenomenon called the _mirage_, or mimic lake,
every object within the circumference of which appeared to be magnified
in an extraordinary manner, so that a shrub might be taken for a tree,
and a flock of birds for a caravan of camels. This seeming collection of
waters always advanced about a quarter of a mile before the observers,
while the intermediate space was one continued glow, occasioned by the
quivering undulating motion of that quick succession of vapours and
exhalations which were extracted from the earth by the powerful
influence of the sun. The few real springs of water which occurred on
the road were all of them either brackish or sulphureous; yet the water
they afford is so extremely wholesome, and so provocative of appetite,
that few persons are ever afflicted with sickness in traversing these
wild inhospitable scenes.
Among the curiosities which are scattered by the liberal hand of nature
even over these deserts may be enumerated certain beautiful flints and
pebbles, which are superior to Florentine marble, and, in many
instances, equal to the Mokha stone, in the variety of their figures and
representations. Locusts, hornets, and vipers were numerous; and the
lizards seem to have considerably amused the loitering members of the
caravan by their active movements and spotted skins. Of birds the only
ones seen by Shaw were the percnopterus and the dove, as the graceful
and beautiful antelope was the only animal; but the ostrich, which he
seems to consider neither a bird nor a beast, is the grand ranger, says
he, and ubiquitarian of the deserts, from the Atlantic Ocean to the very
utmost skirts of Arabia, and perhaps far beyond it to the east. Of the
white hares, like those found in the Alps and other cold regions, which
some travellers have observed in this peninsula, Dr. Shaw saw no
specimen; neither did he meet with any badgers, though, from the
frequent mention made of their skins in Exodus, this animal must
formerly have abounded here. Nothing, however, seems to have kindled up
a poetical fervour in the mind of our traveller like the ostrich, and
the magnificent description of its nature and peculiarities which occurs
in the book of Job. “When these birds,” he observes, “are surprised by
coming suddenly upon them, while they are feeding in some valley, or
behind some rocky or sandy eminence in the desert, they will not stay to
be curiously viewed and examined. They afford an opportunity only of
admiring at a distance the extraordinary agility and the stateliness
likewise of their motions, the richness of their plumage, and the great
propriety there was of ascribing to them ‘an expanded, quivering wing.’
Nothing certainly can be more beautiful and entertaining than such a
sight! the wings, by their repeated though unwearied vibrations, equally
serving them for sails and oars; while their feet, no less assisting in
conveying them out of sight, are no less insensible of fatigue.”
It was at Gharendel that he supposed the Israelites to have met with
those “bitter waters,” or “waters of Marah,” mentioned in Exodus; and he
observes that the little rill which is still found in that place has a
brackish taste, unless diluted by the dews and rains. Proceeding thirty
leagues southward from this place, without meeting with any thing
remarkable, they arrived at Elim, upon the northern skirts of the desert
of Sin, where, as the Scriptures relate, the Israelites found twelve
wells of water and seventy palm-trees. Of the wells our traveller could
discern nine only remaining, the other three having been filled up by
the sand; but the seventy palm-trees had multiplied to upwards of two
thousand, and under their shade was the “Hummum, or Bath of Moses,”
which the inhabitants of the neighbouring port of Tor held in great
veneration. Here they enjoyed the first view of Mount Sinai, rearing its
rugged summit above the plain, and overlooking the whole surrounding
country. The traject of the desert of Sin occupied nine hours, and they
were nearly twelve hours more in threading the winding and difficult
ways which divide that desert from the plain of Sinai. At length,
however, they reached the convent of St. Catherine, supposed to be built
over the place where Moses saw the angel of the Lord in the burning
bush, when he was guarding the flocks of Jethro. This convent, or rather
fortress, is nearly three hundred feet square, and upwards of forty in
height, constructed partly with stone, partly with earth and mortar. The
more immediate place of the Shekinah is marked by a little chapel, which
the monks, who are of the order of St. Basil, regard with so remarkable
a degree of veneration, that, in imitation of Moses, they take their
shoes from off their feet whenever they enter it. This, with many other
chapels dedicated to various saints, is included within what is called
the “Church of the Transfiguration,” a spacious and beautiful structure,
covered with lead, and supported by a double row of marble columns.
The door of this convent is opened only when the archbishop, who
commonly resides at Cairo, comes to be installed; and therefore our
travellers, like all other pilgrims, were drawn up by a windlass to a
window, nearly thirty feet from the ground, where they were admitted by
some of the lay brothers. From a notion which prevails but too generally
among mankind, that holiness consists in thrusting aside, as it were,
the gifts which the hand of Providence holds out to us, the poor men who
immure themselves in this wild prison condemn their bodies to
extraordinary privations and hardships, not only abstaining, like
Brahmins, from animal food, but likewise from the less sinful
indulgences of butter, milk, and eggs. With an inconsistency, however,
from which even the Pythagoreans of Hindostan are not altogether free,
shellfish, crabs, and lobsters are not included within the pale of their
superstitious humanity; and of these they accordingly partake as often
as they can obtain a supply from their sister convent at Tor, or from
Menah el Dizahab. Their ordinary food consists of bread, or biscuit,
olives, dates, figs, parched pulse, salads, oil, vinegar, to which, on
stated days, half a pint of date brandy is added.
From this convent to the top of Mount Sinai, a perpendicular height,
according to our traveller, of nearly seven thousand two hundred feet,
there was formerly a stone staircase, built by the Empress Helena; but
in many places the effects of her pious munificence have disappeared,
and the ascent of the mountain is now considered by the monks
sufficiently difficult to be imposed as a severe penance upon their
pilgrims and votaries. Dr. Shaw did not, when he had reached it, find
the summit very spacious, nor does he seem to have greatly enjoyed the
extensive view which it commands over scenes rendered profoundly
interesting and memorable by the wanderings of the children of Israel.
On descending into the desert of Rephidim, on the western side of the
mountain, he was shown the rock of Meribah, from which Moses caused
water to gush forth by the stroke of his wand. It was about six yards
square, lying tottering, as it were, and loose near the middle of the
valley, and seemed to have been formerly a part or cliff of Mount Sinai,
which hangs in a variety of precipices all over this plain. The waters
had now ceased to flow, but the channel they had once occupied remained,
incrustated, to borrow the doctor’s expression, like the inside of a
tea-kettle that has been long used, and covered with several mossy
productions, whose life and verdure were preserved by the dew.
Having terminated his researches in these desert scenes, which seem to
have thrown new light upon numerous points of sacred geography, our
traveller returned to Cairo, descended the Nile, and proceeding by sea
to Syria, arrived in that country about the commencement of December,
1721. Here he seems, for he has left no exact account of his movements,
to have pursued nearly the same route with Maundrell, whose description
he regarded as so accurate in general, that he merely noticed such
places and things as had either been omitted or imperfectly represented
by that traveller. Though it was the middle of winter when he passed
through Syria and Phœnicia, the aspect of the country was verdant and
cheerful, particularly the woods, which chiefly consisted of the
gall-bearing oak, at the roots of which the turf was gemmed with
anemones, ranunculuses, colchicums, and the _dudaim_ or mandrakes. The
air here, as in Barbary, is temperate, and the climate healthy; and, in
like manner, westerly winds bring rain, while the east winds, blowing
over immeasurable tracts of land, are generally dry though hazy and
tempestuous.
The excursions of our traveller in this country appear to have been few
and timid, and he remarks, apparently as an apology for this
circumstance, that it was necessary to be upon all occasions attended by
a numerous escort; for that numerous bands of Arabs, from fifty to five
hundred in number, scoured the plains in every direction in search of
booty. But even the presence of an escort was not always a safeguard;
for the caravan with which Dr. Shaw travelled to Jerusalem, consisting
of at least six thousand pilgrims, protected by three or four hundred
spahis and four bands of Turkish infantry, with the mutsellim, or
general, at their head, was attacked by one of the marauding parties,
and treated with the greatest insult and barbarity. Scarcely was there a
pilgrim out of so great a number who was not robbed of part of his
clothes or of his money; and those who had not much of either to lose
were beaten unmercifully with their pikes or javelins. Our traveller
himself was not allowed to remain a mere spectator of the scene, for
when the banditti had taken possession of the visible wealth of the
party, correctly judging that there still remained a considerable
portion which had been adroitly concealed, he was forcibly carried off
among the hostages, which they seized upon to ensure a ransom, to
Jeremiel or Anashoth. In this desperate position he remained all night,
exposed to barbarities and insults, and it is exceedingly probable that
his captivity would have been of much longer duration, had not the Aga
of Jerusalem, with a numerous body of troops, next morning attacked his
captors and set him at liberty.
Having visited the several holy places in and about Jerusalem,
Bethlehem, Jericho, and the Jordan, he returned, in April, 1722, towards
the seacoast; and in journeying by night through the valleys of Mount
Ephraim, was attended for about an hour by an _ignis fatuus_, which
assumed a variety of extraordinary appearances. Sometimes, says the
traveller, it was globular, or else pointed, like the flame of a candle;
afterward it would spread itself, and involve their whole company in its
pale inoffensive light; then at once contract and suddenly disappear.
But in less than a minute it would begin again to exert itself as
before, running along from one place to another with great swiftness,
like a train of gunpowder set on fire; or else it would spread and
expand itself over two or three acres of the adjacent mountains,
discovering every shrub and tree which grew upon them. The atmosphere
from the beginning of the evening had been remarkably thick and hazy,
and the dew, as they felt upon their bridles, was unusually clammy and
unctuous. This curious meteor our traveller supposes to be of the same
nature with those luminous bodies which skip about the masts and yards
of ships at sea, and known among sailors by the name of _corpo santo_,
as they were by that of Castor and Pollux among the ancients.
While the ship in which he had embarked was lying under Mount Carmel,
about the middle of April, he beheld three extraordinary flights of
storks, proceeding from Egypt towards the north-east, each of which took
up more than three hours in passing, while it was at the same time
upwards of half a mile in breadth![1] During cloudy weather, and when
the winds happen, as they frequently do, to blow from different quarters
at the same time, waterspouts are often seen upon the coast of Syria,
particularly in the neighbourhood of Capes Latikea, Grego, and Carmel.
Those which Dr. Shaw had an opportunity of observing seemed, he says, to
be so many cylinders of water falling down from the clouds, though by
the reflection, as he imagined, of the descending columns, as from the
actual dropping of the water contained in them, they sometimes
_appeared_, especially at a distance, to be sucked up from the sea.
Before we return with our traveller to Barbary, it may be worth the
while to notice a remark which he made upon the economy of silk-worms in
Syria: there being some danger that, owing to the heat of the climate in
the plains, the eggs should be hatched before nature has prepared their
proper food, the inhabitants regularly send them, as soon as they are
laid, to Conobine, or some other place on Mount Libanus, where their
hatching is delayed by the cold until the mulberry buds are ready for
them in the spring. In Europe, on the contrary, the mulberry leaves put
forth before the eggs of the silk-worm feel the influence of the sun;
and at Nice, where many silk-worms are bred, it is the custom, as Dr.
Smollet informs us, in order to hasten the process of hatching, to
enclose the eggs in small linen bags, which are worn by the women in
their bosoms until the worms begin to appear.
Footnote 1:
Catesby, in his account of Carolina, gives a no less extraordinary
description of the flights of pigeons:—“In Virginia I have seen the
pigeons of passage fly in such continued trains, three days
successively, that there was not the least interval in losing sight of
them, but that some where or other in the air they were to be seen
continuing their flight south. When they roost (which they do on one
another’s backs), they often break down the limbs of oaks by their
weight, and leave their dung some inches thick under the trees they
roost upon.”—P. 23.
It should have been remarked, that previously to his visit to Syria he
had sailed to the island of Cyprus, where he seems to have visited
Limesol and the principal places on the coast; but of this part of his
travels no detailed account remains. Setting sail from Acra, he
traversed the Ægean, coasted along Peloponnesus, and passing between
Malta and Sicily, without touching at either, arrived safe at Bona, in
the kingdom of Algiers.
Thenceforward his excursions were confined to the coast of Barbary, and
as these appear to have been undertaken at various intervals by way of
relaxation and amusement, to vary a course of life in itself remarkably
monotonous, he did not judge them worthy of being particularly
described. He observes, however, in general, that in all the maritime
towns of Africa and the Levant where there were British factories he was
received with distinguished hospitality, enjoying, not only the use of
the houses of the English residents, but likewise of their horses,
janizaries, and servants. In the interior of Barbary, where there were
no Europeans, the style of hospitality was different. Here there was a
house set apart for the reception of strangers, in which they were
lodged and entertained for one night at the public expense, having the
attendance and protection of an officer appointed for the purpose.
Occasionally, when neither towns nor villages appeared, they lodged more
romantically in a cavern, beneath the shelf of a rock, under the arches
of ancient cisterns, or in a grove of trees; and at other times threw
themselves upon the bare sand, and made the sky their mantle. When they
happened to fall in with an Arab encampment, or _douar_, as it is termed
in Barbary, they were almost invariably entertained with hospitality,
the master of the tent in which they lodged killing a kid or a goat, a
lamb or a sheep, according to the number of his guests, and causing the
half of it to be immediately seethed by his wife, while the remainder
was cut into _kabobs_, or small pieces, and roasted for the travellers
to take away with them next day. On these occasions, if his hosts were
particularly obliging, and entertained him with “savoury” viands, our
traveller would generally, he says, present the master of the tent with
a knife, a couple of flints, or a small quantity of English gunpowder,
and the _lallah_, or lady, with “a skein of thread, a large needle, or a
pair of scissors.” An ordinary silk handkerchief of two shillings value,
he adds, was a present for a princess.
During his residence at Algiers, but in what year I have been unable to
discover, he seems to have married the widow of Mr. Edward Holden,
formerly consul of that place, who outlived him, and erected a monument
to his memory. In 1723, the year after his return from Syria, a violent
earthquake was felt at Algiers, which threw down a number of houses, and
stopped the course of several fountains; but in the year following a
still more violent shock was felt, which seems to have shaken the whole
coast, while the air was clear and temperate, and the quick-silver
standing at the greatest height. At such times the barometer, he
observes, was not affected with any sudden alterations, nor was there
any remarkable change in the air, which was neither more calm nor windy,
hazy, nor serene, than at other times. During the same year, while
sailing in an Algerine cruiser of fifty guns towards Cape Bona, he felt
an earthquake at sea, which produced so prodigious a concussion in the
ship, that at each shock a weight of twenty or thirty tons appeared to
have fallen from a vast height upon the ballast. At this time they were
five leagues to the south of the Seven Capes, and could not reach ground
with a line of two hundred fathoms.
In the year 1727 he visited the kingdom of Tunis, which was not, he
observes, divided, like Algiers, into provinces, governed each by a
provincial bey, but was wholly under the immediate inspection of the
bey, who annually made the circuit of his dominions with a flying camp,
and collected the tribute. The seacoast, the Zeugitania of the ancients,
was more thickly inhabited, and exhibited more contentment, prosperity,
and other marks of good government than any portion of the neighbouring
kingdom. Upon arriving at Biserta, Utica, and the ruins of Carthage, Dr.
Shaw throws open the floodgates of his learning, in endeavouring to
determine the extent of the encroachments made by the mud of the Bagrada
upon the sea, the site of the little city which Cato rendered
illustrious by his death, and the circumference and topography of Dido’s
capital. Bochart, with a still greater luxuriance of quotation, had, by
comparing the testimony of the ancients, determined its circumference to
have been nearly forty-five miles; but according to Dr. Shaw, the
peninsula upon which it stood does not much exceed thirty miles in
circumference, and the city, he thinks, could never lay claim to above
half that extent. However, as at the beginning of the Punic war the
number of its inhabitants is said to have amounted to seven hundred
thousand, while it was pronounced by Suidas the largest and most
powerful city upon earth, I cannot believe it to have been no more than
fifteen miles in circumference, an extent not at all answerable to the
idea which the ancients have left us of its greatness. It seems
probable, therefore, that our traveller’s survey was hastily and
imperfectly performed.
Quitting these renowned ruins, he proceeded towards Tunis, coasting
along the lake, formerly a deep and extensive port, which stretches out
before the capital, and communicates by a narrow channel with the sea.
The water in this large basin nowhere exceeds seven feet in depth, while
the bottom for nearly a mile round the whole sweep of the shore is
generally dry and noisome, the common sewers of Tunis discharging
themselves into this great receptacle. At a distance, however, the
prospect of the lake is not without beauty, its surface being frequently
enlivened by large flocks of the flamingo, or phœnicopterus, the bird to
which the Hindoo legislator compares a beautiful young woman. It is
likewise celebrated for the number and size of its mullets, which are
reckoned the sweetest in Barbary, and the roes of which, when pressed,
dried, and salted, are called _botargo_, and considered a great
delicacy.
The city of Tunis, situated upon an acclivity on the western shore of
the lake, and commanding a fine view of the ruins of Carthage, and of
the circumambient sea, as Livy expresses it, as far as the island
Ægimurus, the modern Zembra, being surrounded by lakes and marshes,
would be exceedingly insalubrious were not the effects of the miasmata
in a great measure counteracted by the vast quantities of mastic,
myrtle, rosemary, and other gummy and aromatic plants which grow in the
neighbourhood, and being used as firewood to warm their baths and ovens,
communicate a sensible fragrance to the air. Tunis, however, is
absolutely destitute of water, having, as Leo Africanus observes,
neither rivulet, fountain, nor well; and the inhabitants are
consequently reduced to rely upon what they can catch in cisterns when
it rains, or upon what is brought into the city from a brackish well in
the vicinity in leathern bags, and sold about the streets as a precious
article of traffic. The Tunisians, our traveller observes, are the most
civilized people of Barbary, agreeable in their intercourse with
strangers, and coveting rather than shunning, like other Mohammedans,
all occasions of coming into contact with Christians. The population of
the city at this period was said to exceed three hundred thousand; no
doubt an extravagant exaggeration, as the circumference of the place did
not much exceed three miles.
From this city our traveller continued his journey towards the east, and
passing by Rhodes, the ancient Ades, Solyman, and Masourah, arrived at
the sanctuary of Sidi Daoud, situated among the ruins of the ancient
Nishna. Here he was shown the tomb of the saint, which was found upon
examination to be nothing but a Roman prætorium, the pavement of which
was adorned with the most elegant mosaics in the world; the general
design being as bold and free as that of a picture, while the various
figures, which consisted of horses, birds, fishes, and trees, were
executed with the most delicate symmetry, and in a variety of brilliant
colours so judiciously intermingled and contrasted as to produce an
admirable effect. He next fixes at Lowhareah, the site of the ancient
Aquilaria, where, during the civil wars, the troops of Cairo were
landed, and cut to pieces by Sabura. The remaining ruins were
insignificant; but the immense quarries from whence, according to
Strabo, the materials for the building of Carthage, Utica, and other
neighbouring cities were obtained, still remain open, and are supposed
to have furnished Virgil with the original hint of his “Nympharum
Domus,” &c., in the first book of the Æneid, though Addison rather
supposes that the Bay of Naples is entitled to this honour. Be this as
it may, from the sea to the village of Lowhareah, a distance of about
half a mile, the interjacent mountain, from the level of the sea to the
height of twenty or thirty feet, according to the disposition of the
strata, is hollowed out, while enormous pillars are left standing at
regular distances to support the superincumbent mass, through which
small shafts or apertures were bored at intervals for the admission of
fresh air. However, that the reader may perceive the justness of the
doctor’s illustration, I will continue the description in his own words,
and then subjoin the passage of Virgil referred to: “Moreover, as this
mountain is shaded all over with trees, as the arches here described
(the openings to the quarry) lie open to the sea, having a large cliff
on each side, with the island Ægimurus placed over-against them; as
there are likewise some fountains perpetually draining from the rocks,
and seats very convenient for the weary labourer to rest upon: from such
a concurrence of circumstances, so exactly corresponding to the cave
which Virgil places somewhere in this gulf, we have little room to doubt
of the following description being literally true, notwithstanding some
commentators may have thought it fictitious, or applicable to another
place.”
Est in secessu longo locus. Insula portum
Efficit objectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto
Frangitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos.
Hinc atque hinc vastæ rupes, geminique minantur
In Cœlum scopuli: quorum sub vertice latè
Æquora tuta silent. Tum sylvis scœna coruscis
Desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra.
Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum:
Intus aquæ dulces; vivoque sedilia saxo;
Nympharum domus. Hic fessas non vincula naves
Ulla tenent: unco non adligat anchora morsa.
From Cape Bon, the Promontorium Mercurii of the ancients, which projects
into the sea a little to the north of Aquilaria, the inhabitants assured
our traveller that they could, in clear weather, discern the mountains
of Sicily, more than sixty miles distant. Following the bend of the
shore, and passing by the sites or ruins of several ancient places, he
proceeded through a rugged road, delightfully shaded with olive trees,
to Hamamet, or the “City of Wild Pigeons,” so called from the prodigious
number of those birds which breed in the neighbouring cliffs. At
Seloome, a small hemispherical hill, he entered the ancient province of
Bizacium, once renowned for its fertility, probably erroneously, as the
soil is dry, sandy, and of no great depth, though admirably adapted to
the olive tree, which flourishes in great perfection all along the
coast. The interior is not at all more fertile. Our traveller’s whole
employment during this journey was determining the sites of ancient
cities, and illustrating other points of geography; but he observed
nothing very striking or picturesque until he reached the shores of the
Lesser Syrtis, all along which there runs a succession of small flat
islands, banks of sand, and oozy shallows, into which the inhabitants
wade out for a mile or two from the shore, fixing up numerous hurdles of
reeds in various windings and directions as they go, and thus taking
immense quantities of fish. Owing to the violent east wind which blew
during his whole journey along this coast, he was prevented from
observing the flux and reflux of the tide here, from which some authors
have derived its name—(“à σύρω ^{TN}, _traho_, quod in accessu et
recessu arenam et cœnum ad se trahit et congerit.”—_Eustathius_)—though
he was informed that at the island of Jerby, the eastern boundary of the
Syrtis, the sea rises upwards of six feet above its usual height, a
circumstance which has likewise been observed in the Gulf of Venice.
This was the boundary of his travels along the coast, from which he now
turned towards the interior, and arrived upon the shores of the Lake of
Marko, the Palus Tritonis of the ancients. This lake is about sixty
miles in length, and in some places about eighteen in breadth; but it is
not one unbroken sheet of water, being interspersed with numerous
islands, one of which, though uninhabitable, is large, and covered with
date trees. The inhabitants, who have a tradition for every thing, say
that the Egyptians, in one of their expeditions into this country,
encamped some time upon this island, and scattering about the stones of
the dates which they had eaten, thus sowed the palm groves, which at
present abound there; and hence, perhaps, the lake itself acquired the
name of the “Plains of Pharaoh.” To direct the marches of the caravans
across this shallow lake, a number of trunks of palm-trees are fixed up
at certain distances, without which travelling would be extremely
difficult and dangerous, as the opposite shores are nearly as level as
the sea, and even the date trees which grow upon them are too low to be
discovered at more than sixteen miles distance. At Tozer, on the western
bank, a great traffic in dates is carried on with the merchants of the
interior, who bring slaves from the banks of the Niger to be exchanged
for fruit.
Proceeding to the west from the Lake of Marko, our traveller next
traversed a barren and dreary waste, the haunt of robbers and murderers;
and as he passed along he saw upon the ground the blood of a Turkish
gentleman, who, he afterward learned, had been murdered two days before.
Immediately after he had left this ominous spot, five of the assassins,
mounted upon black horses, and closely muffled in their burnooses, or
loose cloaks, suddenly made their appearance; but observing that his
companions were numerous and well armed, they met them peaceably, and
gave them the _salaam_. Continuing his journey westward, without meeting
with any further adventures, he returned to Algiers.
Dr. Shaw seems, after this expedition into Tunis, to have remained quiet
for several years, occasionally making excursions into the interior, and
proceeding westward, in 1730, as far as the river Mulloviah. Having
already travelled over the whole of these provinces, from the sea to the
desert, when following the track of Leo Africanus, it will be
unnecessary to pursue the footsteps of Dr. Shaw. He remarked, however,
during his excursions among the ridges of Mount Atlas, an extraordinary
race of mountaineers, with light complexions and yellow hair, which
seems to have escaped the researches of Leo and all other travellers.
These people he with great probability supposes to be descended from the
Vandals, who, in the time of Procopius, were said to be dispersed among
the native tribes, though it is more probable that they took possession
of these fastnesses, of which the rude inhabitants were never able to
dispossess them. In the city of Kosantina he observed a second Tarpeian
rock, from which, since the foundation of the city, such criminals as
might be condemned to capital punishment have been precipitated into the
river Ampsaga, which dashes along at its base.
In his inquiries into the natural history of these countries, our
traveller bestowed particular attention upon the palm and the
lotus-tree, the latter of which, though greatly celebrated in ancient
authors, is still comparatively little known. From the descriptions of
Herodotus, Theophrastus, and Pliny, he infers the identity of the lotus
of the ancients with the seedra of the Arabs, which is a shrub of common
occurrence in the Jereed, and other parts of Barbary; and has, he
observes, the leaves, prickles, flower, and fruit of the ziziphus or
jubeb; except that in the lotus the fruit is round, smaller, and more
luscious; while the branches, like those of the paliurus, are neither so
crooked nor so much jointed. The lotus fruit, which greatly resembles
gingerbread in taste, is still in great repute, and is sold in all the
markets of the southern provinces of Barbary. Among the beasts of burden
in use at Algiers is the _kumrah_, an animal produced between the ass
and the cow, and having the single hoof of the former, with the tail and
head of the latter, though without horns.
The prodigious clouds of locusts which sometimes infest the southern
shores of the Mediterranean, and the tremendous devastations which they
commit, have been described by many travellers; but by no one, I think,
has a more vigorous picture of their movements and appearance been given
than by Dr. Shaw in the following passage:—“Those,” says he, “which I
saw in 1724 and 1725 were much bigger than our common grasshoppers, and
had brown spotted wings, with legs and bodies of a bright yellow. Their
first appearance was towards the latter end of March, the wind having
been for some time from the south. In the middle of April their numbers
were so vastly increased, that in the heat of the day they formed
themselves into large and numerous swarms, flew in the air like a
succession of clouds; and, as the prophet Joel expresses it, they
darkened the sun. When the wind blew briskly, so that these swarms were
crowded by others, or thrown one upon another, we had a lively idea of
that comparison of the Psalmist, of being tossed up and down as the
locust. In the month of May, when the ovaries of those insects were ripe
and turgid, each of these swarms began gradually to disappear, and
retired into the Metijiah and other adjacent plains, where they
deposited their eggs. These were no sooner hatched in June than each of
the broods collected itself into a compact body, of a furlong or more in
square; and, marching afterward directly forwards towards the sea, they
let nothing escape them, eating up every thing that was green and juicy;
not only the lesser kinds of vegetables, but the vine likewise, the
fig-tree, the pomegranate, the palm, and the apple-tree; even all the
trees of the field; in doing which they kept their ranks like men of
war, climbing over, as they advanced, every tree or wall that was in
their way; nay, they entered into our very houses and bed-chambers, like
so many thieves. The inhabitants, to stop their progress, made a variety
of pits and trenches all over their fields and gardens, which they
filled with water; or else they heaped up therein heath, stubble, and
such-like combustible matter, which were severally set on fire at the
approach of the locusts. But this was all to no purpose; for the
trenches were quickly filled up, and the fires extinguished by infinite
swarms succeeding one another; while the front was regardless of danger;
and the rear pressed on so close that a retreat was altogether
impossible. A day or two after one of these broods was in motion, others
were already hatched to march and glean after them, gnawing off the very
bark and the young branches of such trees as had before escaped with the
loss only of their fruit and foliage. So justly have they been compared
by the prophet Joel to a great army; who further observes, that ‘the
land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate
wilderness.’
“Having lived near a month in this manner, like a sword with ten
thousand edges, to which they have been compared, upon the ruin and
destruction of every vegetable substance that came in their way, they
arrived at their full growth, and threw off their nympha state by
casting their outward skin. To prepare themselves for this change, they
clung by their hinder feet to some bush, twig, or corner of a stone; and
immediately, by using an undulating motion, their heads would first
break out, and then the rest of their bodies. The whole transformation
was performed in seven or eight minutes; after which they lay for some
time in a torpid and seemingly in a languishing condition; but as soon
as the sun and the air had hardened their wings, by drying up the
moisture that remained upon them after casting their sloughs, they
reassumed their former voracity, with an addition both of strength and
agility. Yet they continued not long in this state before they were
entirely dispersed, as their parents were before, after they had laid
their eggs; and as the direction of the marches and flights of them both
was always to the northward, and not having strength, as they sometimes
had, to reach the opposite shores of Italy, France, or Spain, it is
probable they perished in the sea: a grave which, according to these
people, they have in common with other winged creatures. The locust, I
conjecture, was the noisome beast, or the pernicious destructive animal,
as the original words may be interpreted, which, with the sword, the
famine, and the pestilence, made the four sore judgments that were
threatened against Jerusalem. The Jews were allowed to eat them; and,
indeed, when sprinkled with salt and dried, they are not unlike in taste
to our fresh-water crayfish.”
Among the fish on the coast of Barbary the most curious is the penna
marina, or sea-feather, which the fishermen sometimes find entangled in
the meshes of their nets; and which, during the night, is so remarkably
glowing and luminous as to enable the fishermen to discover by their
light the size and quantity of the other fish which may happen to be
enclosed within the same net.
In his remarks upon the moral condition of the inhabitants of Tunis and
Algiers, he informs us that the sciences which were formerly so
assiduously cultivated by the Moors are now neglected or despised: but
they have still, as of old, a passion for poetry and music, and many a
wandering dervish, like the Αοιδοί ^{TN}, or chapsists of antiquity,
excites the admiration and generosity of the Moorish Arabs, by his
enthusiastic improvisatores, accompanied by the rude notes of the
_Arabelbah_, or bladder and string. Wild nations, whose feelings and
passions are allowed a freer play than ours, are far more susceptible
than we are of the delights which nervous poetry and simple melody are
calculated to produce; and the Moors, whose tunes our traveller
describes as merely “lively and pleasant,” are so deeply affected by
music, that, in the warmth of their imagination, they lend their own
sensations to inanimate objects, affirming seriously that the flowers of
mullein and mothwort will droop upon hearing the _mizmoune_ played.
Provisions, in the time of Dr. Shaw, were exceedingly cheap, a large
piece of bread, a bundle of turnips, or a small basket of fruit, being
to be purchased for less than a quarter of a farthing. A fowl might be
bought for a penny or three halfpence; a sheep for three shillings and
sixpence; and a cow and a calf for a guinea. The usual price of a bushel
of the best wheat was fifteen pence. Bruce, whose fate it has been to
have his testimony upon several important points called in question by
ignorant conceited persons, has been ridiculed for asserting that the
flesh of lions is commonly eaten by a tribe of African Arabs. Our
traveller himself, who had been laughed at for making the assertion in
conversation, introduced it timidly into the appendix of his first
edition; but in the second it was restored to its place in the
narrative, where it is said that “the flesh of the lion is in _great
esteem_, having no small affinity with _veal_, both in colour, taste,
and flavour.”
The majority of persons appear to believe, with Shakspeare, that the
Moors are a black, ill-favoured people; but, on the contrary, the
Moorish women would be considered beautiful even in England, and the
children have the finest complexions in the world. The men, from
constant exposure to the sun, are generally swarthy, but never black;
and the fine olive tinge they thus acquire only renders their
complexions the more agreeable to the eye, as Heber observes of the
Hindoos. In these countries, as in Southern Asia, women are nubile at a
very early age, being very frequently mothers at eleven, and
grandmothers at twenty-two. The circumstance which renders the seclusion
of women necessary in such countries is, that the age of puberty
precedes the age of discretion; for the passions reaching their maturity
long before the reason, they stand in need of being directed by the
reason of others until their own is ripened, and when it is they have
lost the habit of consulting it. The ancient custom of hiring old women,
who, as the prophet Amos expresses it, “are skilful in lamentation,” to
perform at funerals, still prevails in Barbary; and so powerful is the
effect of this scenical representation of sorrow, that when they are
ἀλαλάζοντας πολλά, or “wailing greatly,” expressing their mimic grief by
sound, gestures, and contortions of countenance, they seldom fail to
work up the bystanders to an ecstasy of sorrow, so that even the
English, who know it to be artificial, are deeply touched by it.
The superstitious practices of the Mohammedans in general, and
particularly of those inhabiting Northern Africa, are strange and
numerous, many of them being apparently offshoots from pagan practices,
bequeathed to their ancestors by the Grecian or Roman colonists who
subdued and inhabited these coasts. They suspend upon the necks of their
children, as the Romans did their _bulla_, the figure of an open hand,
generally the right, which they likewise paint upon their ships and
houses, to avert the effects of the evil eye. At the same time the
number five is unlucky, and “five in your eyes,” meaning the five
fingers, is their proverb for cursing and defiance. Adults wear small
scrolls, as the Jews did their phylacteries, containing verses from the
Koran, as a charm against fascination, witchcraft, sickness, and
misfortune. In one particular they appear to differ from the
superstitious in Europe, who generally imagine that faith in the force
of the spell is necessary to its efficacy; for their horses and cattle,
which can be supposed to have but little faith in such matters, have
similar scrolls suspended round their necks, no doubt with equal
benefit. Their belief in _jenoune_, or genii, a class of beings between
angels and devils, and which, like the fairies of our ancestors, are
supposed to frequent shades and fountains, is deep-rooted and universal.
These equivocal beings assume, they imagine, the form of toads, worms,
lizards, and other small animals, which, being offensive to man, and
lying frequently in his way, are extremely liable to be injured or
destroyed. Therefore, when any person falls sick, fancying he may have
harmed one of the _jenoune_ lurking in some obscene shape, he
immediately consults with one of those cunning-women who, like the
_veneficæ_ of antiquity, are versed in all expiatory ceremonies of this
nature, and at the direction of the sorceress proceeds on a Wednesday
with frankincense and other perfumes to some neighbouring spring, where
a cock or a hen, a ram or a ewe, according to the sex or rank of the
patient, is sacrificed to these spirits.
Dr. Shaw returned to England in the year 1733. In the course of the next
year he took his degree of doctor of divinity, and was shortly afterward
elected fellow of the Royal Society. Having employed five years in the
composition and correction of his travels, he at length, in 1731,
brought out the first edition, which was attacked by Dr. Pococke in his
Description of the East. The numerous coins, busts, and other
antiquities which he had collected in his travels he bestowed upon the
university. Upon the death of Dr. Felton in 1740, he was nominated by
his college principal of St. Edmund Hall, which he raised from a ruinous
state by his munificence. He was at the same time presented to the
vicarage of Bramley, in Hampshire, and likewise enjoyed during the
remainder of his life the honour of being regius professor of Greek at
Oxford. He died in 1751, in the sixtieth year of his age, and was buried
at Bramley, where a monument was erected to his memory by his widow. The
_Shawia_ in botany received its name in honour of Dr. Shaw.
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