Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/355

Rh

of the port in deep water. Yambo, corruptly called Imbo, is an ancient city, now dwindled to a paultry village. Ptolemy calls it Iambia Vicus, or the village Yambia; a proof it was of no great importance in his time. But after the conquest of Egypt under Sultan Selim, it became a valuable station, for supplying their conquests in Arabia, with warlike stores, from Suez, and for the importation of wheat from Egypt to their garrisons, and the holy places of Mecca and Medina. On this account, a large castle was built there by Sinan Basha; for the ancient Yambo of Ptolemy is not that which is called so at this day. It is six miles farther south; and is called Yambo el Nachel, or, Yambo among the palm-trees, a great quantity of ground being there covered with this sort of plantation.

, in the language of the country, signifies a fountain or spring, a very copious one of excellent water being found there among the date trees, and it is one of the stations of the Emir Hadje in going to, and coming from Mecca. The advantage of the port, however, which the other has not, and the protection of the castle, have carried trading vessels to the modern Yambo, where there is no water, but what is brought from pools dug on purpose to receive the rain when it falls.

are two hundred janissaries in the castle, the descendents of those brought thither by Sinan Basha; who have succeeded their fathers, in the way I have observed they did at Syené, and, indeed, in all the conquests in Arabia, and Egypt. The inhabitants of Yambo are deservedly reck-

Rh