CHAP. XI.
Occurrences at Jidda — Visit of the Vizir — Alarm of the Factory — Great Civility of the English trading from India — Polygamy — Opinion of Dr Arbuthnot ill-founded — Contrary to Reason and Experience—— Leave Jidda.
THE port of Jidda is a very extensive one, consisting of numberless shoals, small islands, and sunken rocks, with channels, however, between them, and deep water. You are very safe in Jidda harbour, whatever wind blows, as there are numberless shoals which prevent the water from ever being put into any general motion; and you may moor head and stern, with twenty anchors out if you please. But the danger of being lost, I conceive, lies in the going in and coming out of the harbour. Indeed the observation is here verified, the more dangerous the port, the abler the pilots, and no accidents ever happen.
There is a draught of the harbour of Jidda handed about among the English for many years, very inaccurately, and very ill laid down, from what authority I know not, often condemned, but never corrected; as also a pretended chart of the upper part of the Gulf, from Jidda to Mocha, full of soundings. As I was some months at Jidda, kindly enter-
