SUEZ, a small city, from which the isthmus that joins Africa with Asia hath its name. It stands about 30 hours east from Cairo, by the road called Tauriche Beni Israel, i. e. the road of the children of Israel, at the bottom of the Heroopolitan Gulph, or western branch of the Red Sea; and has about 200 houses, and an old castle. Here also is a small haven, but so shallow that ships of any burden cannot get into it; however, there is a good road by it, where they can ride safely and at ease. The greatest inconvenience of the place is, that it has no sweet water nearer than four or five miles. We are even told, that there are not above half a dozen wells betwixt Cairo and Mecca, at least in the road the pilgrims go, which lies to the northward.
Suez
Suffolk.
northward of this, and even these are bitterish and brackish. Suez was formerly a place of great trade; but since the way to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope hath been discovered, it hath been upon the decline. The place on the west coast of the gulph, where the children of Israel are supposed to have entered it, is called Badea, about six miles to the north of Cape Korondel, on the other side of the gulph, as we are informed in a letter from the ingenious Edward Wortley Montague, F. R. S. to Dr Watson, containing an account of his journey from Cairo to the Written Mountains in the desert of Sinai. Opposite to Badea is a strong current, which sets to the opposite shore, about south-east, with a whirlpool called Birque Pharaone, the well or pool of Pharaoh, being the place where his host is said to have been destroyed. We are told by the same gentleman, that the Egyptian shore from Suez to Badea is so rocky and steep, that there was no entering upon the gulph but at one of these two places; that it is high water in the gulph always when the moon is at her meridian height; that at Suez it flows six feet; that the spring-tides are nine feet, and in the variable months, from the beginning of November to the end of April, sometimes twelve; that, from the beginning of May to the beginning of October, a northerly wind generally rises and goes down with the sun, which is often very strong; that this wind never fails in these months, unless there be some violent storm; that the rest of the year the winds are variable, and when they blow hard at south south-east, set up the sea through the narrow strait of Babel-Mandel, and up this western branch or gulph, through its mouth, between Gebel El-Zait on the west, and the southernmost point of the Bay of Tor on the east, where it is not above 12 or 14 miles over. This wind, it is probable, hindering the water from going out, is the occasion of the extraordinary increase in the spring-tides. The Egyptian, Western, or Thebaic shore, from Badea southward to opposite Tor on the eastern shore, is all mountainous and steep; and at Elim, the northernmost point of the bay of Tor, ends the ridge of mountains which begin on the eastern shore of this western branch at Korondel.