Campaign of EGYPT. L.A.S. by DABURON, "Du Caire capitale de l'Egypte" 8 thermidor VI (July 26, 1798), to his uncle; 2pages in-4. Interesting testimony from an ambulance driver. After briefly recounting his journey: Malta, then Alexandria: "part of the troops disembarked and after a battle we were masters of this port, nothing more dreadful than the city almost entirely built of earth"; he was nevertheless able to visit Pompey's column and Cleopatra's baths... Chief surgeon Larrey took him under his command. To cross the desert, he had to take "a small pack on my back, having only two camels to carry the effects of the ambulance", a painful 4-day journey under "the extreme heat of the sun, walking in the sand", with "rarely a little rotten and muddy water at the bottom of the cisterns". Before arriving in Cairo, "we encountered around 2,000 Mamluk men (they are all on horseback, perhaps eight thousand in all); there was a fight, they were beaten and put to flight"; the wounded were put in a boat, along with Daburon: "there was a small flotilla of 15 or 20 boats going up the Nile, protected by five gunboats, one chebech and two galleys"; the wind having failed, and the army having advanced, they had to endure attacks from Arabs and peasants: "I took a rifle from our wounded and defended myself, not without fear: all this time we only ate a few pastecks (a kind of pumpkin)"; the chief commissioner having been wounded, Daburon nursed him back to health. "Five days ago there was a general battle 2 kilometers from Cairo, as a result of which our troops took the city. I think we'll be busy cutting off the isthmus of Suès. He has seen the pyramids from afar, and finds the great city of Cairo ugly. "Nothing is more dreadful than the Lower Egipte; I don't know if the Upper Egipte is more beautiful. Everyone wants to go back to France"... Enclosed is an early manuscript copy, Traduction d'une proclamation de Buonaparte, Gal Français, aux Egyptiens, [Alexandrie July 1, 1798] (4p. in-4).