on the continent of Europe, accompanied by his old friend and shipmate, Captain James Mangles, R.N.
This journey our travellers were led to extend far beyond their original design. Curiosity at first, and an increasing admiration of antiquities as they advanced, carried them, at length, through several parts of the Levant, which had been but little visited by modern travellers, and gave them more than four years of continued employment. In 1823, they printed, for private distribution, an account of their “Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and Asia Minor, during the years 1817 and 1818.” The volume consists of six letters. The first, dated at Cairo, Sept. 27, 1817, relates to a voyage up the Nile, in company with Messrs. Beechey and Belzoni, for the purpose of opening the great temple at Ebsambal, near the second cataract; and which object they accomplished, after twenty-two days’ hard labour, Aug. 1, 1817. The average height of the thermometer in the shade during the operations was 112° of Fahrenheit; and, for the last five days, their food consisted of only doura and water, the Nubians having cut off their supplies, in order to prevent them from completing their explorations. On the 5th of August, Captain Irby had his hand badly cut in wresting a dagger from one of the native boatmen, who, while foaming with rage, was in the act of stabbing Belzoni; by whom the model of the great temple was afterwards exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. “Mr. Bankes,” says the writer of this letter, “was the first Englishman who ever succeeded in gaining the second cataract: he travelled in 1815. In 1816, Mons. Drovetti, the ci-devant French Consul in Egypt, succeeded in reaching it, with his two agents, Rifaud and Cailliaud; these travellers, together with Sheikh Ibrahim, and ourselves, are all that have reached thus far. Belzoni had his wife with him in man’s clothes.”
The second letter contains the journal of a route across the Desert, from Grand Cairo to El Arish and Gaza; along the sea-coast of Syria to Latachia; and from thence to Antioch and Aleppo, at which latter place they arrived on the 25th of Nov. 1817. During the second portion of this
