Through a similar infatuation, the son of our worthy landlord, Shekh Mahommed, who was in other respects a very sensible man, had nearly fallen a victim to the prejudices of his father. He had, unknown to us, been for many days dangerously ill of a fever; during which time his father kept him shut up in a dark, close room, and almost smothered him with blankets. When we heard of the circumstance, Mr. Campbell immediately offered his advice and assistance; but both were civilly declined, the good Shekh observing, at the same time, that if it were the will of God that his favourite son should die, no exertions of any one could save him, and he himself had only to submit, without repining, to the visitation which heaven had been pleased to bring upon him. We, however, at last succeeded in prevailing upon him to accept of Mr. Campbell’s mediation, and, in the course of a few weeks, we are happy to state, the boy completely recovered. Some other cures which Mr. Campbell was enabled to make at length gained him a great reputation, and some of the operations to which he had recourse at once delighted and astonished the Arabs.
A man much emaciated, who had been long afflicted with the dropsy, was persuaded to submit to the operation of tapping; and when his numerous Arab friends, who had assembled to witness the ceremony, saw the water streaming out from the abdomen, they were unable to restrain the loud expression of their surprise at the sight; and lifting up their hands and eyes to Heaven, called Allah to witness that the tibeeb[12] was a most extraordinary man[13]!
Dysentery and liver complaints were very common in Bengazi, but we did not observe so many cases of ophthalmia as we had found at Tripoly and Mesurata. Cutaneous diseases of the most virulent kind were very prevalent, as well among the people of the town, as among the Bedouin tribes in the neighbourhood; indeed, we found that these disorders prevailed more or less in every part of the northern coast of Africa which we visited. The inhabitants of the Cyrenaica suppose them to be chiefly occasioned by handling their cattle, but it is probable that unwholesome food and water, to which they may be occasionally subjected, and the little use which they make of the latter for external purposes, contribute more effectually to engender and encourage these diseases, than the circumstances to which they attribute them.
Among the numerous instances, which we observed during our stay at Bengazi, illustrative of Arab character and prejudices, we may notice one which occurred in the skeefa (or entrance-hall) of our house, where a select party of the inhabitants of the town usually assembled themselves when the weather permitted. On this occasion, the women of England formed the principal subject of conversation, and the reports of their beauty, which had reached some of our visitors, appeared to have made a great impression in their favour. One of our party then produced a miniature from his pocket, which chanced to be the resemblance of a very pretty girl; and he roundly asserted, as he handed it to the company, that every woman in England was as handsome. We have already observed, that the subject was a very pretty girl; and they who are unacquainted with the force of custom and prejudice, will hardly conceive that an object so pleasing could be the cause of a moment’s alarm. But truth obliges us to add, that the first Arab of our party, who was favoured with a sight of the lady in question, started back in dismay and confusion; and all his worthy countrymen who cast their eyes upon the picture, withdrew them, on the instant, in the greatest alarm, exhibiting the strongest symptoms of astonishment and shame. The fact was, that the young lady who had caused so much confusion, was unluckily painted in a low evening dress; and her face was only shaded by the luxuriant auburn curls, which fell in ringlets over her forehead and temples.
There was nothing, it will be thought, so extremely alarming in this partial exhibition of female beauty; and the favoured inhabitants of less decorous, and more civilized countries, would scarcely dream of being shocked at a similar spectacle. But to men who inhabit those regions of delicacy, where even one eye of a female must never be seen stealing out from the sanctuary of her veil, the sudden apparition of a sparkling pair of those luminaries is not a vision of ordinary occurrence. At the same time, the alarm of the worthy Shekhs assembled, which the bright eyes and naked face (as they termed it) of our fair young countrywoman had so suddenly excited, was in no way diminished by the heinous exposure of a snowy neck and a well-turned pair of shoulders; and had they been placed in the situation of Yusuf, when the lovely Zuleika presented herself in all her charms as a suitor for the young Hebrew’s love[14], or in the more embarrassing dilemma of the Phrygian shepherd-prince, when three immortal beauties stood revealed before his sight, they could scarcely have felt or expressed more confusion. Every Arab, who saw the picture, actually blushed and hid his face with his hands; exclaming—w’Allah harám—(by Heaven ’tis a sin) to look upon such an exposure of female charms!
It is, no doubt, very gratifying, in these ages of assurance, to witness so unequivocal a display of genuine modesty; and we confess that we ought not to have laughed so heartily as we did at this laudable expression of it in our guests: but it certainly did appear to us somewhat ridiculous to see men, with long beards, who had each of them two or three wives, so completely discomfited at the sight of a rosy-faced girl. At the same time, we must allow that we have also our prejudices; and it is probable, that the appearance of a young Arab damsel, with her veiled face and naked legs and feet, in the midst of a party of Englishmen, might occasion no trifling confusion; scarcely less, perhaps, than that which was occasioned by the display of the fair face and neck above mentioned. It was some time before our worthy Arab friends recovered from the serious shock which their modesty had sustained; but as modesty (for what reason we will not pretend to determine) is by no means an unconquerable feeling, we prevailed upon the blushing Shekhs, when the first impression had subsided, to take a second look at the picture; declaring, that there was nothing in so innocent a display at which the most correct of true believers need be shocked. We will not venture to say that they were quite of our opinion; but it is certain that their curiosity (at least we suppose it to have been that) very soon got the better of their scruples; and we even think, that some of them might actually have been persuaded to trust themselves in those sinful regions where a pretty face and figure may be looked at and admired without any very serious breach of decorum. As for Shekh Mahommed, he had so far recovered himself as to put the object of his former confusion into his pocket, though merely to show it (as he said) to his wives; and was hardy enough to keep it three or four days, before he returned it to its owner.
With respect to the Arab women, we will venture to say (though we do not think that modesty is their predominant quality) that no consideration could induce them to dress themselves in the manner which caused such astonishment to our acquaintance: and they would certainly not believe that the ladies of Europe, to whom such costume is familiar, would object to appear in the presence of the other sex without their shoes and stockings. As for dancing with men, and taking them by the hand, it would be looked upon as the last stage of effrontery and indelicacy; yet their own familiar dance is at the same time of such a nature that no modest women of Europe could look at it. It would be a curious experiment in natural history to see which of the ladies would require most persuasion; the Arab to appear in public without any veil, or the Englishwoman without shoes and stockings. There can be no question which of the two is most civilized; yet, we own, we cannot see that it is at all more indecent to appear in public with the legs and feet uncovered, than it is to expose the face, arms, and neck; or that it is really more modest to cover the face than to leave it in its natural state. Of the two, we should certainly think it more modest to cover the face than the feet; yet we know that the practice of going without a veil is adopted by the most refined nations of the globe, and that the habit of wearing it is by no means inconsistent with levity and want of proper feeling.
To return to our description of the town; we have already stated, that Bengazi may be considered as occupying the site of the Berenice of the Ptolemies, and of the Hesperis of earlier times; but very few remains now appear above ground to interest the sculptor, the architect, or the antiquary. Berenice has, in fact, disappeared from the beautiful plain on which it stood, and a miserable, dirty, Arab town has reared itself on its ruins, or rather on the soil which covers its ruins, for all its interest is now under ground.
The erection of Bengazi on the site of the ancient town, rather than the effects of time, or of hostile violence, appears to have been chiefly the cause of the total disappearance of the latter; for the stones of which the buildings were originally composed being too large for the purposes of the Arabs, are broken up into small pieces before they are used in modern structures, and generally before they are removed from the places in which they are dug up. Many a noble frieze and cornice, and many a well-proportioned capital has been crushed under the hammer of these barbarians; so that, even were there not a single house in Bengazi which has not been composed of ancient materials, yet there is nothing of architecture in any of them at present to fix, and scarcely to arrest, the attention. We were ourselves just too late to save from the hammer several portions of a large and well-executed Ionic entablature, which a worthy Arab Shekh had caused to be excavated and brought into his court-yard, to form part of a house which he was building without the town, and which was carefully beat to pieces by his servants and slaves before it was bedded in the mud which received it. Very extensive remains of building are still found about Bengazi, at the depth of a foot or two from the surface of the plain; and whenever a house is intended to be erected, the projector of it has nothing more to do, in order to obtain materials for building it, than to send a few men to excavate in the neighbourhood, and with them a camel, or two or three asses, to transport what is dug up to the spot which has been fixed upon for the house. If the fragments which are found should prove too large for removal (which is generally the case) they are broken into smaller pieces, without the least hesitation or concern, till they are reduced to a convenient size for loading, and are afterwards broken again into still smaller pieces, as occasion may require, on the place where the house is built. Many valuable remains of antiquity must have disappeared in this way, but it is probable, at the same time, that many still exist to reward the expense of excavation; and we have little doubt, that statues and inscriptions, numerous fragments of architecture, and good collections of coins and gems, might still be obtained within the distance of half a mile round Bengazi. On the beach to the northward and to the north-eastward of the town, where a bank of twenty and thirty feet (more or less) is formed of the rubbish of one of the ancient cities, coins and gems are continually washed down in rainy weather; and the inhabitants of Bengazi repair in crowds to the beach, after storms, and sift the earth which falls away from the cliff, disposing of whatever they may find to the few Europeans of the place[15].
When we reflect that Berenice flourished under Justinian, and that its walls underwent a thorough repair in the reign of that Emperor, it will be thought somewhat singular, that both the town and its walls should have disappeared so completely as they have done. We have already mentioned the disappearance of the city, and it may here be observed, that scarcely a vestige of its walls now remains above the surface of the plain, and that it would not be possible to decide its precise limits, without a great deal of previous excavation. It is probable, however, that Berenice did not extend beyond the actual limits of Bengazi; for the salt-water lake to the southward of the town would prevent its going farther in that direction, and the ground to the eastward is in most parts so low as to be frequently overflowed by the sea, which oozes through the sand heaped upon the beach in that direction.