In England one grain of gold is worth 2d.—one penny-weight is worth 4s.—and one ounce is worth 4l. sterling.
Rees’s Edition of Chambers’s Dictionary, Article “Gold.”
[12]Its depth is from ten to twelve peeks, each of which is twenty-seven inches.
The Shereef Imhammed.
[13]The rout which Ben Alli pursued from Fezzan to Bornou is not distinctly described.
His relation is, that on the 26th day from the time of his leaving Fezzan, he arrived at a place which in Arabic is called Wéddan, or the Rivers, for Wéddan is the plural of Wed which signifies a river.
The first part of the country through which he passed is represented as a sandy Desart, in which the Shé (a plant that resembles the Wild Thyme of England) and a few bushes of shrubs and short trees are thinly scattered, and wells of water are extremely rare. Wandering Arabs, of the powerful but hospitable Tribes of Booaish and Duhassin, appear to be its only inhabitants; and Wéddan itself is said to contain but 130 houses, which are built of earth and sand; and to furnish no articles of trade but dates and salt; yet the country around it is called prolific: the rice grounds are described as numerous, and multitudes of sheep and goats, of camels and of horses, swell the list of its possessions.
He represents the Duhassin Arabs, as Merchants journeying to Bornou, who carried with them for sale an assortment of goods; among which he enumerates wheat, barley, dates, salt, tobacco, and alhaiks: and he observes, that he purchased from the Chief the permission of accompanying the Tribe, and the consequent assurance of a safe passage to Bornou.
From Wéddan, by forced marches, they arrived in twenty days at Bornou. A desart of sand, in some places interrupted by woods, and occasionally watered with rivulets of a strong mineral taste, constitutes the general description of the country. But as he entered the kingdom of the Bornoos, the limit of which he represents as seven days distant from the capital, he passed through several poor villages of Blacks, who live upon the charity of Travellers; for though there be no regular marked road, yet the caravans always take the same rout, and pass by those villages both in going and returning.
Ben Alli seems to have travelled from Mourzouk to Bornou by a different rout from that which is usually taken by the Merchants of Fezzan: nor can it be supposed, that the independent and powerful Arabs with whom he journeyed, would either obtain, or solicit the permission of the Sovereign of Fezzan to pass in so large a body through his small and unguarded dominions. And though the corresponding accounts that are given in the narratives of the Shereef and of Ben Alli, of some villages of miserable Blacks, may suggest an idea that the two roads intersected each other on the frontier of Bornou, yet as on that supposition, the different times within which the several parts of the two journeys were respectively performed cannot be easily reconciled, there is reason to believe that the villages described by Ben Alli, though peopled by similar inhabitants, may not be the same with those which attracted the compassionate notice of the Shereef.