Volume 1

A series of adventures in the course of a voyage up the Red-Sea, on the coasts of Arabia and Egypt; and of a route through the desarts of Thebais, hitherto unknown to the European traveller, in the year M.DCC.LXXVII. in letters to a lady / by Eyles Irwin, esq. ; illustrated with maps and cuts.

  • Eyles Irwin
Date:
M.DCC.LXXX. [1780]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A series of adventures in the course of a voyage up the Red-Sea, on the coasts of Arabia and Egypt; and of a route through the desarts of Thebais, hitherto unknown to the European traveller, in the year M.DCC.LXXVII. in letters to a lady / by Eyles Irwin, esq. ; illustrated with maps and cuts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [20M The occurrences of our voyage from Madras to Mocha, are fike the generality of fea-affairs, too trivial to become interett- ing, and too unvaried to afford amufement. Since the fables of the ancients have been banifhed our creed, a modern voyager finds it difficult to diverfify or embellifh his journal. Neptune ceafes to affert his empire over the waves, and Amphitrité no longer fkims the furface of the deep, feated in a coral chariot drawn by Mermaids, and furrounded by a choir of mufical Nereids. A ftorm therefore lofes the majefty which a Divinity would give it; and our calms are really dull, for want of the company of fach a beautiful Goddefs.. I queftion whether the voyage of /AEneas, if deprived of thefe fictitious ornaments, would not become equally infipid with thofe publifhed by recent difcoverers, whofe heroes vifited people more ftrange, and feas more remote than A‘neas, and encountered gulphs far more _dangerous than Scylla or Charybdis ! | There was nothing remarkable in our paflage to Mocha, but the length of it. We-were above eight weeks in effecting a paflage, which frequently requires but three, _The latenefs of the feafon made us apprehenfive of delays, but not the continual ones. we met with. At feveral periods we thought of nothing lefs than of getting to Suez by water. My fellow-travellers and myfelf were, however, refolved to profecute our journey by land, fhould the fnow Adventure reach any port in the Red- Sea. But the fight of land prefented us with better pro- fpects. We had been two-and- Fatty days in crofling the wide ocean which divides India from Africa, when on the 31 ft of March we faw indiftinctly the ifland of Socotra, which lies about 35 leagues from the main. On the 2d of April we made Cape Guardafoy, which is. a prodigious mountainous and craggy fhore. From hence we ftood over to the coatt of Arabia, and
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