Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and across the desert into Egypt ...

274 TRAVELS IN ASIATIC TURKEY,
nary that he should have received the infection for the first time
at so advanced an age, when it was reasonable to apprehend that,
from the torpor and inactivity which must have been generally in-
duced in the temperament, he would have been least susceptible to
disease.
It was reported at Boulac, on the evening of the 5th, that a se-
rious quarrel had taken place between the Albanians and janissaries.
It proved, however, on enquiry, to have been a dispute between
the former and the Mograbian Arabs, by whom they were
accused of having stolen several of their boys. The interference
of the janissaries was necessary to quell the riot, the animosity of
the parties having been such, that several on each side were killed,
and others wounded in the contest.
I rode on the 8 th to Bassatee, a village distant about five miles,
in a southern direction, from Cairo. In the vicinity of this vil-
lage the grounds
were stiil moistened with the rains which had re-
cently fallen, notwithstanding we had had at Cairo, which was
within so short a distance, an almost constant drought. A party
of sick, seventy in number, belonging to the Indian army, who
had been left at Suez, arrived at Cairo about this time. They as-
sured me that in the course of their march through the desert, .they
had encountered several violent storms, accompanied by very heavy
showers of rain, and that it was with
great difficulty they could
to me
prevent their tents from being blown down. This appeared
the more extraordinary,
as the weather at Cairo, during the whole
of the month of October, and even to the present date of Novem-
ber, had been free from storms, and uncommonly mild and tem-
perate, with a moderate refreshing breeze in the mornings and
evenings.
Colonel Lloyd., of the SGth regiment, arrived at Giza on the
above day, with a detachment of three hundred men, from the en-
campment before Bosetta.
On the morning of the 12th, the thermometer being at 59, I
took equal parts of powdered nitre and sal ammoniac, and threw
them into a vessel containing water, into which I introduced a
phial filled with that liquid, and, finally, the thermometer. In
the course of a few minutes the fell mercury to 32, the
freezing
point, at which it remained, however, a few seconds ; only when
it rose to 38, where it remained for some time. Fearing that I
should not succeed in the production of ice, in the present experiment,
I withdrew the phial which contained the water, with a