cultivated; the villages as most wretched assemblages of poor mud
huts, full of dust, fleas, flies, and all the curses of Moses, and
the people as below the rank of any savages he ever saw, wearing only
a blue shirt and drawers, and tattooed as much as the South Sea
islanders. He recommends his correspondents, if they wish to see
Egyptian women, to look at any group of gypsies behind a hedge in
Essex. He describes the Mohammedans as a trading, enterprising,
superstitious, warlike set of vagabonds, who, wherever they are bent
upon going, will and do go; but he complains that the condition of a
Frank is rendered most humiliating and distressing by the furious
bigotry of the Turks; to him it seemed inconceivable that such enmity
should exist among men, and that beings of the same species should
trick and act in a manner so opposite. By conversing with the Jelabs,
or slave merchants, he learned a good deal respecting the caravan
routes and countries of the interior. Every thing seemed ready for
his departure, and he announced that his next communication would be
from Sennaar, but, on the contrary, the first tidings received were
those of his death. Some delays in the departure of the caravans,
acting upon his impatient spirit, brought on a bilious complaint, to
which he applied rash and violent remedies, and thus reduced himself
to a state, from which the care of Rosetti, the Venetian consul, and
the skill of the best physician of Cairo sought in vain to deliver
him.

The society had, at the time they engaged Ledyard, entered into terms
with Mr. Lucas, a gentleman, who, being captured in his youth by a
Sallee rover, had been three years a slave at the court of Morocco,
and after his deliverance acted as vice-consul in that empire. Having
spent sixteen years there, he had acquired an intimate knowledge of
Africa and its languages. He was sent by way of Tripoli, with