Travels in Arabia Author:Bayard Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. NIEBUHR'S TRAVELS IN YEMEN IN 1760 the Danish government decided to send an expedition to Arabia and India, for the purpose of geographical ex... more »ploration. The command was given to Carsten Niebuhr, a native of Hanover, and a civil engineer. Four other gentlemen, an artist, a botanist, a physician, and an astronomer, were associated with him in the undertaking; yet, "" a singular fatality, all died during the journey, and Niebuhr returned alone, after an absence of nearly seven years, to publish the first narrative of travel based on scientific observation. The party sailed from Copenhagen for Smyrna in January, 1761, visited Constantinople, and then proceeded to Egypt, where they remained nearly a year. After a journey to Sinai, they finally succeeded in engaging passage on board a vessel carrying pilgrims from Suez to Jedda, and sailed from the former port in October, 1762. They took the precaution of adopting the Oriental dress, and conformed, as far as possible, to the customs of the Mussulman passengers ; thus the voyage, although very tedious and uncomfortable, was not accompanied with any other danger than that from the coral reefs along the Arabian shore. The vessel touched at Yambo, theport of Medina, and finally reached Jedda, after a vo)7age of nineteen days. The travellers entered Jedda under strong apprehensions of ill-treatment from the inhabitants, bnt were favorably disappointed. The people, it seemed, were already accustomed to the sight of Christian merchants in their town, and took no particular notice of the strangers, who went freely to the coffee-houses and markets, and felt themselves safe so long as they did not attempt to pass through the gate leading to Mecca. The Turkish Pasha of the city received them kindly, and they were allowed t...« less