Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/250

 famine, and going to Greece to get bread. Other questions followed, and the Arabs being at length satisfied that he was not one of their mortal enemies, a ragged garment was thrown over him, and he was conducted to the sheikh's tent. Here he was hospitably received, and, together with his servants, who had all escaped, entertained with a plentiful supper. Medical consultations then followed; and he remained with the sheikh two days, during which every exertion was made on the part of the Arabs to recover his astronomical instruments, but in vain. Every thing which had been taken from them was then restored, and they proceeded on camels furnished by the Arabs to Bengazi.

At this port he embarked on board of a small French sloop, the master of which had formerly received some small favours from Bruce at Algiers, which he now gratefully remembered, and sailed for Canea, in Crete; from whence he proceeded to Rhodes, where he found his books, to Casttrosso, on the coast of Caramania, and thence to Cyprus and Sidon. His excursions in Syria were numerous, and extended as far as Palmyra; but I omit to detail them, as of minor importance, and hasten to follow him into Egypt and Abyssinia.

On Saturday, the 15th of June, 1768, he set sail from Sidon, and touching by the way at Cyprus, his imagination, which was on fire with the ardour of enterprise, beheld on the high white clouds which floated northward above the opposite current of the Etesian winds messengers, as it were, from the mountains of Abyssinia, come to hail him to their summits. Early in the morning of the fifth day he had a distant prospect of Alexandria rising from the sea; and, upon landing, one of the first objects of his search was the tomb of Alexander, which Marmol pretended to have seen in 1546; but although his inquiries were numerous, they were perfectly fruitless.