Although our voyage was filled with incident that in another place
would be interesting enough to relate, yet here I must omit all mention
of it, and, passing over three years, resume my narrative at
Alexandria, where I left the vessel, and finally broke away from
mercantile life.
From Alexandria I travelled to Cairo, where I intended to hire a
servant and a boat, for I wished to try the water-passage in preference
to the land. The cheapness of labor and food rendered it no difficult
matter to obtain my boat and provision it for a long voyage,--for how
long I did not tell the Egyptian servant whom I hired to attend me. A
certain feeling of fatality caused me to make no attempt at disguise,
although disguise was then much more necessary than it has been since:
I openly avowed my purpose of travelling on the Nile for pleasure, as a
private European. My accoutrements were simple and few. Arms, of
course, I carried, and the actual necessaries for subsistence; but I
entirely forgot to prepare for sketching, scientific surveys, etc. My
whole mind was possessed with one idea: to see, to discover;--plans for
turning my discoveries to account were totally foreign to my thoughts.
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