MY arrival in the Hedjaz was attended with some unfavourable
circumstances. On entering the town of Djidda, in the morning of the
15th of July, 1814, I went to the house of a person on whom I had a
letter of credit, delivered to me, at my departure from Cairo, in
January, 1813, when I had not yet fully resolved to extend my travels
into Arabia. From this person I met with a very cold reception; the
letter was thought to be of too old a date to deserve notice: indeed, my
ragged appearance might have rendered any one cautious how he committed
himself with his correspondents, in paying me a large sum of money on
their account; bills and letters of credit are, besides, often trifled
with in the mutual dealings of Eastern merchants; and I thus experienced
a flat refusal, accompanied, however, with an offer of lodgings in the
man's house. This I accepted for the first two days, thinking that, by a
more intimate acquaintance I might convince him that I was neither an
adventurer nor impostor; but finding him inflexible, I removed to one of
the numerous public

[p.2] Khans in the town, my whole stock of money being two dollars and a
few sequins, sewed up in an amulet which I wore on my arm. I had little
time to make melancholy reflections upon my situation; for on the fourth
day after my arrival, I was attacked by a violent fever, occasioned,
probably, by indulging too freely in the fine fruits which were then in
the Djidda market; an imprudence, which my abstemious diet, for the last
twelve months, rendered, perhaps, less inexcusable, but certainly of
worse consequence. I was for several days delirious; and nature would
probably have been exhausted, had it not been for the aid of a Greek
captain, my fellow passenger from Souakin. He attended me in one of my
lucid intervals, and, at my request, procured a barber, or country
physician, who bled me copiously, though with much reluctance, as he