Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/389

Rh ed one of the bags, and, in India, it is current for the value marked upon it, as long as the bag lasts.

is very unwholesome, as is, indeed, all the east coast of the Red Sea. Immediately without the gate of that town, to the eastward, is a desert plain filled with the huts of the Bedowèens, or country Arabs, built of long bundles of spartum, or bent grass, put together like fascines. These Bedowèens supply Jidda with milk and butter. There is no stirring out of town, even for a walk, unless for about half a mile, in the south fide by the sea, where there is a number of stinking pools of stagnant water, which contributes to make the town very unwholesome.

, besides being in the most unwholesome part of Arabia, is, at the same time, in the most barren and desert situation. This, and many other inconveniencies, under which it labours, would, probably, have occasioned its being abandoned altogether, were it not for its vicinity to Mecca, and the great and sudden influx of wealth from the India trade, which, once a-year, arrives in this part, but does not continue, passing on, as through a turnpike, to Mecca; whence it is dispersed all over the east. Very little advantage however accrues to Jidda. The customs are all immediately sent to a needy sovereign, and a hungry set of relations, dependents and ministers at Mecca. The gold is returned in bags and boxes, and passes on as rapidly to the ships as the goods do to the market, and leaves as little profit behind. In the mean time, provisions rise to a prodigious price, and this falls upon the townsmen, while all the profit of the traffic is in the hands of strangers ; most of whom, after the market is over, (which does not last six