travels

108 TRAVELS IN EGYPT, NUBIA,Medinat Aboo, and Goomoo, and the ancient tombs, is leftuncultivated.The Arab village of Medinat Aboo is abandoned.The Troglodites of Goofnoo still inhabit the emptycaverns; and I could not find in what manner they derivedtheir subsistence.Some spots of thicket in the plains containthe sount, a species of thorn, which employed a few ofthem in cutting it into faggots.Formerly the caverns werethe haunts of the robbers who infested the Nile, and weredriven from their holds by' the French; who, after in vainattempting to dislodge them in common pursuit, were, (asrelated by Denon,) obliged to use fumigation, which, afterthe entrances of the caverns that were connected with eachother were stopped up, compelled the people who had takenrefuge to surrender.They have since been kept in order byIbrahim Pasha, whose summary mode of punishment, accompaniedeven with torture, has had great effect in puttinga stop to their piracies on the Nile; though I was verynearly undergoing the mortification of losing my papers andsketches, which were next at hand to many other' thingstaken away unperceived, during the night of the 17th ofJune, from my boat, when moored near Luxor: luckily, Iheard a rustiing, which I supposed to be that of rats; andmade a noise to drive them from my bed, the usual passageof these animals, which caused the robbers to decamp.found out my loss as soon as day-light appeared, and thoughtΚΥΠΡΙΑΚΗ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗI