6th of Rebi.  Set out very early in the morning, it being dead calm, and the boat in consequence unable to proceed, except by the cordel, to see the strangers, and to be informed of their accommodations, as I feared that they too were obliged to participate in the privations to which we were all exposed.  After about two hours walk at length came up with the boat, on board of which these gentlemen were.  They informed me that they had set out from Cairo a few days after we had quitted Bulac.  They were suffering privations, as were all in the boats, and I regretted that my being in similar circumstances put it out of my power to ameliorate their situation.  As, however, we had now learned to a certainty, that the camp of the Pasha was not far distant, it was in my power to assure them that they would be better off in a day or two.[21] All the way to their boat, and on my return to ours, I observed some hundreds of bodies of men and animals that had perished in the late engagement and during the pursuit, and the stench which filled the air was almost intolerable.  The country, covered with an abundance of grain almost matured, was abandoned; the water-wheels stood still, and the cisterns were frequently infected by a bloody and putrefying carcass.

7th of Rebi.  Passed the last night on board the boat, near the mountain already mentioned in the day before yesterday’s journal.  Two Greeks on board of our boat reported last evening, that they had heard menacing cries from the mountain.  The people on board of the boat supposed that some of the brigands had returned to their haunt and meditated an attack on our boat by night.  We were accordingly on the watch till morning, without, however, being molested.  This morning, about two hours after sunrise, these same Greeks reported that they had seen fifteen or sixteen of the robbers in a body, and armed.  They also told the Mogrebin soldiers in the other boats, which had now come up with ours, that these men had probably massacred one of the soldiers attached to me and two of my servants, as they had not been seen since morning.  I accordingly set out, in company with twenty soldiers, in pursuit of the supposed assassins.  We had not proceeded far when we met the persons supposed killed, on their way to our boat, safe and sound.  They had seen no armed men, though they came from the direction that the Greeks said the robbers had taken.  I therefore returned to the boat, reflecting upon the old proverb, “A Greek and a liar.”  The Mogrebin soldiers were not, however, convinced of the falsehood of the report, and pursued their way to the mountain; they found no robbers there, but repaid themselves for the trouble they had taken, by taking possession of a young and pretty girl, which they carried to their boat as a lawful prize.  After proceeding a few miles by the aid of the cordel, we put to land at sunset, near a village on the left bank of the river.  We found here the ruins of a Christian church, built in the