Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/356

245 oned * the most barbarous of any upon the Red Sea, and the janissaries keep pace with them, in every kind of malice and violence. We did not go ashore all that day, because we had heard a number of shots, and had received intelligence from shore, that the janissaries and town's people, for a week, had been fighting together; I was very unwilling to interfere, wishing that they might have all leisure to extirpate one another, if possible; and my Rais seemed most heartily to join .me in my wishes.

the evening, the captain of the port came on board, and brought two janissaries with him, whom, with some difficulty, I suffered to enter the vessel. Their first demand was gun-powder, which I positively refused. I then asked them how many were killed in the eight days they had been engaged? They answered, with some indifference, not many, about a hundred every day, or a few less or more, chiefly Arabs. We heard afterwards, when we came on shore, one only had been wounded, and that a soldier, by a fall from his horse. They insisted upon bringing the vessel into the port; but I told them, on the contrary, that having no business at Yambo, and being by no means under the guns of their castle, I was at liberty to put to sea without coming ashore at all; therefore, if they did not leave us, as the wind was favourable, I would sail, and, by force, carry them to Jidda. The janissaries began to talk, as their custom is, in a very blustering and warlike tone; but I, who knew my interest at Jidda, and the force in my own hand; that my


 * Vide Irvine's letters.