Furshout is in a large and cultivated plain. It is nine miles over to the foot of the mountains, all sown with wheat. There are, likewise, plantations of sugar canes. The town, as they said, contains above 10,000 people, but I have no doubt this computation is rather exaggerated.
We waited upon the Shekh Hamam; who was a big, tall, handsome man; I apprehend not far from sixty. He was dressed in a large fox-skin pelisse over the rest of his cloaths, and had a yellow India shawl wrapt about his head, like a turban. He received me with great politeness and condescension, made me sit down by him, and asked me more about Cairo than about Europe.
The Rais had told him our adventure with the saint, at which he laughed very heartily, saying, I was a wise man and a man of conduct. To me he only said, “they are bad people at Dendera;” to which I answered, “there were very few places in the world in which there were not some bad.” He replied, “Your observation is true, but there they are all bad; rest yourselves however here, it is a quiet place; though there are still some even in this place not quite so good as they _ought_ to be.”
The Shekh was a man of immense riches, and, little by little, had united in his own person, all the separate districts of Upper Egypt, each of which formerly had its particular prince. But his interest was great at Constantinople, where he applied directly for what he wanted, insomuch as to give a jealousy to the Beys of Cairo. He had in farm from the Grand Signior almost the whole country, between Siout and Syene, or Assouan. I believe this is the Shekh of Upper Egypt, whom Mr Irvine speaks of so gratefully. He was betrayed, and murdered some time after, by one of the Beys whom he had protected in his own country.
While we were at Furshout, there happened a very extraordinary phænomenon. It rained the whole night, and till about nine o’clock next morning; and the people began to be very apprehensive least the whole town should be destroyed. It is a perfect prodigy to see rain here; and the prophets said it portended a dissolution of government, which was justly verified soon afterwards, and at that time indeed was extremely probable.
Furshout is in lat 26° 3´30´´; above that, to the southward, on the same plain, is another large village, belonging to Shekh Ismael, a nephew of Shekh Hamam. It is _a large town_, built with clay like Furshout, and surrounded with groves of palm trees, and very large plantations of sugar canes. Here they make sugar.