Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/260

 *bilities of escape, twenty Turks from Caramania, mounted on camels, and well armed, arrived at the camp, and learning that the principal tent belonged to an Englishman, entered it without ceremony. They informed our traveller they were hajjis, going on pilgrimage to Mecca, and had been robbed upon the Nile by those swimming banditti, who, like the Decoits of the Ganges, are indescribably dexterous in entering vessels by night, and plundering in silence. By the people of the country they had, in fact, been ill-treated, they said, ever since their landing at Alexandria; but that having now found an Englishman, whom they regarded as their countryman, since the English, according to their historical hypothesis, came originally from Caz Dangli in Asia Minor, they hoped, by uniting themselves with him, to be able to protect themselves against their enemies. This preference was flattering, and "I cannot conceal," says Bruce, "the secret pleasure I had in finding the character so firmly established among nations so distant, enemies to our religion, and strangers to our government. Turks from Mount Taurus, and Arabs from the desert of Libya, thought themselves unsafe among their own countrymen, but trusted their lives and their little fortunes implicitly to the direction and word of an Englishman whom they had never before seen!"

On the 19th they continued their journey over the desert between mountains of granite, porphyry, marble, and jasper, and pitched their tents at ''Mesag el Terfowy'', in the neighbourhood of the Arab encampment. This, under most circumstances, is a position of considerable danger; for, as there are generally thieves in all caravans, as well as in all camps, marauders from one side or the other commonly endeavour to exercise their profession in the night, and embroil their companions. Such was the case on the present occasion. The thieves from the Arab camp crept unseen into Bruce's tent, where