North Africa and the desert

by George Edward Woodberry

VII

I went out for a last drive with the British consul toward the oasis of Gergarish, which lies westward of the city, a new direction for me. He was familiar with the Mediterranean; and, the talk falling on the classical background of North Africa, I told him of my search for the lotus at Djerba. He avowed his belief that much of the Greek mythic past had its local habitation on these coasts, and gave me a striking and quite unexpected instance. I had supposed that Lethe was an underground stream and approached only by the ghosts of the dead. He assured me that it was situated not very far from Benghazi, where he had been consul, and made an excellent table water. It is a large fountain or underground lake in a cave; he had been on it in a boat with a friend, and it was said that fumes from the water would oppress the passenger with drowsiness. I heard this with great interest, and like to remember that I can obtain a cup of Lethe, should I desire it, this side the infernal world. My friend added his belief that partial oblivion can be found comparatively widely diffused in North Africa, not being dependent on either Lethe or the lotus. This tradition of drowsiness which attaches to these coasts in old days is to be attributed to the quality of the air, which is soporific. Continued residence causes a loss of memory, not that one forgets his early days, home, and children, like the lotus-eaters, but one grows uncertain about recent events and the mind becomes hazy as to whether one has or has not done this or that; to such a degree is this true that my friend advised a return to the north at least once in two years to allow the memory to recover its normal force. With such talk, which was quite seriously said, though it has its humorous side, and which faithfully reflects the African atmosphere, we whiled away the time, conversing, too, of the American excavations at Benghazi and the bells of Derna that rang the Italian priest to his death—for the Arabs dislike bells—and the thousand and one topics on which a traveller is always prepared to receive information. I had been so long alone that those talks at Tripoli were almost as much of a rarity as the scenes; they are an essential part of my memory of the voyage.

Our destination was not the oasis, but some caverns on a height above it. The day was brilliant and a noble desert view stretched round us from the eminence. The blue sea sparkled not far away, an horizon-stripe up and down the coast as far as one could see; the splendid dark green mass of the oasis lay just below us in the valley, and between us and it the desert plain undulated with the long slopes of a rolling prairie, spotted with cattle and a few Arab groups; inland the sands swept on to the line of mountains low on the far horizon. The mass of rock above us was picturesque and solitary. The gem of the view, however, was Tripoli eastward. It was the first time I had truly seen the city from outside—just such a Moslem city as one dreams of, a white city, small and beautiful, snowy pure in the liquid air. I was surprised at its beauty. We explored the cave. It was of a sort of stratified pumice stone and partly filled up with sand. It had been at some time a troglodyte dwelling, and chambers had been hollowed in it. There are many troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, still living in this primitive manner in rock-hewn chambers in North Africa. There are villages of them in the mountains back of Biskra, and especially in the southeastern corner of Tunisia opposite Djerba, and they are found in the low range of the Djebel-Ghariane that I was looking on in the distance. This cavern that we were exploring was one of their prehistoric haunts, a natural fortress and place of refuge for a small group of families in the wild waste.

The drive back was uncommonly beautiful, very African in color, and increasing in atmospheric charm as we neared the city in the clarity of the sunset light. The coast view was especially lovely. The blue sea made the offing, along which a line of scattered palms, continuous but thin enough to give its full value to each dark green tuft in the blue air, and to many a single columnar stem beneath, ran like a screen, not too far from the roadway; and the strong foreground was that red-brown earth with the sunset light beginning on it. The beautiful white city lay ahead of us. The quality of the atmosphere was remarkable. The trees were very light, and seemed to float in the sky, like goldfish in a globe; and as the sunset grew, the diffused rose through the palms on the other side seemed almost a new sky. It was my last evening in Tripoli.