What does salutation mean? What words or phrases around it let us know this is the meaning

A salutation is a greeting. In context, Equiano was greeted by the stench.

I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing.