NARRATIVE

OF

A JOURNEY IN EGYPT

AND THE

COUNTRY

BEYOND THE CATARACTS.

BY THOMAS LEGH, Esq. M. P.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.

1816.

PREFACE.

Ат Ar a period when political circumstances had closed the ordinary route of continental travelling, and when the restless characteristic propensity of the English could only be gratified by exploring the distant countries of the East, an entirely new direction was given to the pursuits of the idle and the curious.

A visit to Athens or Constantinople supplied the place of a gay and dissipated winter passed in Paris, Vienna, or Petersburgh: and the Traveller was left to imagine, and perhaps to regret, the pleasures of the modern cities of civilized Europe, amidst the monuments of the ruined capitals of antiquity. Interviews with the Beys

and Pachas of the empire of Mahomet succeeded to the usual presentations at the courts of the Continent; and the Camel, the Firman, and the Tartar were substituted for the ordinary facilities of the Poste, the Passports, and the Couriers of the beaten roads of Italy or France.

It was during this period of partial exclusion from Europe, that the Author of the following Narrative, having made the tour of Greece and Albania, was induced by the continuance of the unhealthy state of the countries in the Levant, to direct his steps to the shores of Egypt. · That he was afterwards enabled to push his researches beyond the usual boundary of his predecessors was an advantage it was impossible to foresee, and which, on his leaving Cairo, he could scarcely venture to anticipate.

To observe what had previously been described by others, and, guided by their delineations, to