Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/129

Rh successful and so distant, where the officers were less instructed from the cabinet, more ignorant of the countries, more given to useless parade, or more intoxicated with pleasure, than the Russians on the Mediterranean then were.

the defeat, and burning of the Turkish squadron, upon the coast of Asia Minor, there was not a sail appeared that did not do them homage. They were prope lyproperly [sic] and advantageously situated at Paros, or rather, I mean, a squadron of ships of one half their number, would have been properly placed there.

number of Bashas and Governors in Caramania, very seldom in their allegiance to the Port, were then in actual rebellion; great part of Syria was in the same situation, down to Tripoli and Sidon; and thence Shekh Daher, from Acre to the plains of Esdraelon, and to the very frontiers of Egypt.

circumstances so favourable, and a force so triumphant, Egypt and Syria would probably have fallen dismembered from the Ottoman empire. But it was very plain, that the Russian commanders were not provided with instructions, and had no idea how far their victory might have carried them, or how to manage those they had conquered.

They had no confidential correspondence with Ali Bey, though they might have safely trusted him as he would have trusted them; but neither of them were provided with proper negotiators, nor did they ever understand one another till it was too late, and till their enemies, taking ad-