Sonnini de Manoncourt, Charles Nicolas Sigisbert: Travels in upper and lower Egypt (Band 3) (London, 1807)

AND LOWER EGYPT. 149

watch to two of my companions, but they too had
sunk into slumber. The kanja, badly fastened
against the shore, broke loose, and the current car-
ried it away with the utmost rapidity. We were
all asleep; not one of us, not even the boatmen,
stretched upon the sand, perceived our manner of
sailing down at the mercy of the current. After
having floated with the stream for the space of a
good league, the boat, hurried along with violence,
struck with a terrible crash against the shore, pre-
cisely a little below the place from whence the
greatest part of the loosened earth fell down.

Awakened by this furious shock, we were not
slow in perceiving the critical situation into which
we were thrown. The kanja, repelled by the land,
which was cut perpendicularly, and driven to-
wards it again by the violence of the current,
turned round in every direction, and dashed
against the shore in such a manner as excited an
apprehension that it would be broken to pieces.
The darkness of the night, the frightful noise
which the masses separated from the shore spread
far and wide as they fell into a deep water; the
bubbling which they excited, the agitation of
which communicated itself to the boat, rendered
our awakening a very melancholy one.

There