ment might prove useful. He then enquired respecting our intentions with regard to Persia, observing, that he understood we had taken possession of Cush, the country of the Banians, bordering on the Sind (Indus.) I answered that I had received no such intelligence; but that I believed it was true, that we had an army stationed on the borders of the Indus, to guard against the proceedings of the French in that quarter.
I afterwards adverted to the order of blockade recently issued by Admiral Bertie against the Isles of France, which at that time greatly occupied the attention of the Arabs. He acknowledged that it had made a great impression at Jidda, and expressed his surprise that such a measure had not been resorted to at an earlier period; adding with a strong emphasis—"how can it have happened, that you so long have permitted the Arabs to buy under your very nose (taakt el' amph,) the ships which the French have captured from you: and by this means to become masters of a trade which was before exclusively your own? Formerly, all Arabia, Egypt, and the countries of Africa were furnished by your ships with Indian commodities; they are now supplied by vessels belonging to Arabian merchants!" The truth of the first remark, and the justice of the censure were too palpable to admit of a reply; for had the measures ultimately adopted against the Isles of France been carried into effect at the commencement of the war, how many human lives, and how much treasure might have been saved!
On the following morning I received the unpleasant intelligence from Arkeeko, that one of Mr. Pearce's servants, named Tekeli, an Abyssinian, who had been stationed there to take care of the mules, was at the point of death. As I happened to be particularly engaged at the time, I requested Mr. Pearce, and our surgeon, to go down to Arkeeko to enquire into the affair, and if he were dead, to see him decently interred. On their arrival (as Mr. Smith informed me) they found him still alive, though suffering under the violent delirium which commonly attends the last stage of a putrid fever. He had been most injudiciously treated, and was chained, with his face downwards on a couch, so that his body
