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On reaching Ras Mohammed, they anchor near one of the small islands, or go into the harbour called Sherm, where they wait till a fair wind springs up, which usually carries them to Cosseir in one or two days.
The ships that sail from Cosseir to Yembo generally make this point, and continue from thence their coasting voyage southwards. North of Dhoba two days, lies the castle and small village of Moeyleh, in the territory of the Howeytat and Omran Bedouins. We passed it at a distance; but I could see considerable plantations of date-trees near the shore.
He also built four public inns, or watering-houses, where the caravans might find water for the camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on their twelve days' journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile to this new port. He rebuilt, and at the same time renamed, the old port of Cosseir, or Ænnum as it was before called, and named it Philotera after his younger sister.
If the foreign pilgrims, on their arrival at Cairo, cannot hear of any ships lying in the harbour of Suez, they often pursue their way up the Nile as far as Genne, and from thence cross the Desert to Cosseir, from whence it is but a short voyage to Djidda. In returning from the Hedjaz, this Cosseir route is preferred by the greater part of the Turkish hadjys.
Butter is likewise imported from Cosseir; this comes from Upper Egypt, and is made from buffaloes' milk; the Sowakin and Dahlak ghee is from sheep's milk. The Hedjaz abounds with honey in every part of the mountains. The best comes from those which are inhabited by the Nowaszera Bedouins, to the south of Tayf.
From off Moeyleh, the point of the peninsula of Sinai, called Ras Abou Mohammed, is clearly distinguished. Ships bound from Yembo to Cosseir generally make this promontory, or one of the islands lying before it, and thence steer south to Cosseir.
He says in going in you should make Aden and wait there for a wind. Water can be had there. Avoid Mocha, where the anchorage is dangerous and the water bad, and go to the Island of Cameran, then straight up in mid channel. All the dangers are visible, and in the mid channel there are none. Cosseir a good little harbour, the danger is going up to Suez; but that easy for a steamer.
They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and the Troglodytic Berenicê from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert from the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desert were both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have before learned, from Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build watering and resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Berenicê, to save the voyage between Berenicê and Cosseir.
Provisions being very dear in the Hedjaz, and very cheap in Egypt, ships, on leaving the Hedjaz harbours for Cosseir or Suez, never lay in more than is absolutely necessary; but the passage, which is usually calculated by them at twenty days, very often lasts a month, and sometimes even two months.
During my stay at Djidda, scarcely a day passed without some arrival by sea, chiefly from Yembo and Cosseir; and there were constantly forty or fifty ships in the harbour. An officer, entitled Emir al Bahhr, acts as harbour-master, and takes from each ship a certain sum for anchorage. This was an office of considerable dignity in the time of the sherif, but it has now sunk into insignificance.
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