CHAPTER IX

The journey to Mount Sinai.—Trade in mummy.—The Monastery.—
Tafur proposes to visit India.—Arrival of a caravan.—Nicolo de'*
Conti.—He relates the Story of his life,—The Red Sea.

That day I begged leave of the Sultan to go to
Mount Sinai, and he consented, and ordered that one
of his interpreters should go with me, and he provided
three camels for me and mine, and would accept no
payment, I then took my leave and departed in two
days. In those two days, indeed, there was little
leisure, since there were so many ftrange and remark¬
able things to see, and as the weather was very hot they
brought me each morning a vase of water to drink,
which was specially treated, and in it were certain
seeds like hemp, and of a truth it was a very healthy
drink. It is their cuftom to drink it fafting in the
summer before dinner. The Sultan's interpreter
prepared everything that was necessary, and recom¬
mended me to the interpreter who was to go with me,
and wrote himself to the Patriarch of Alexandria who
lived in Cairo (who selefts the Superior of the mon¬
aftery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai), to recommend
me to him. We departed from Cairo, and crossed the
lifeless desert of Egypt with much labour and in great
peril.^ The heat was such that I was amazed that
any man could withftand it. These deserts, they say,
provide the mummies, which are the bodies of those
who die there. For with the great dryness which is
in those parts, the bodies do not decay, but the radical
moifture is consumed, leaving the bodies entire and
dried, so that they can be ground up. There is no
road in the desert, for the wind effaces it and shifts the
sands from one place to another and makes great hills,

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