[p.2] Khans in the town, my whole stock of money being two dollars and a
few sequins, sewed up in an amulet which I wore on my arm. I had little
time to make melancholy reflections upon my situation; for on the fourth
day after my arrival, I was attacked by a violent fever, occasioned,
probably, by indulging too freely in the fine fruits which were then in
the Djidda market; an imprudence, which my abstemious diet, for the last
twelve months, rendered, perhaps, less inexcusable, but certainly of
worse consequence. I was for several days delirious; and nature would
probably have been exhausted, had it not been for the aid of a Greek
captain, my fellow passenger from Souakin. He attended me in one of my
lucid intervals, and, at my request, procured a barber, or country
physician, who bled me copiously, though with much reluctance, as he
insisted that a potion, made up of ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon, was the
only remedy adapted to my case. In a fortnight after, I had sufficiently
recovered to be able to walk about; but the weakness and languor which
the fever had occasioned, would not yield to the damp heat of the
atmosphere of the town; and I owed my complete recovery to the temperate
climate of Tayf, situated in the mountains behind Mekka, where I
afterwards proceeded.