1st December.—A fine mild morning, but intensely cold during the past night. Here we took fresh water enough for four days, the time required to arrive at the next well. Started about 11 a.m., and continued only three hours and a half, when we came to another wady, where we stopped in order to let the camels have their fill of the rich fodder with which the wady is covered. The plateau is now apparently disappearing, for it is broken into deep and broad valleys, from the sides of which rise in groups, and at various distances, low ranges of Saharan hills, and on one side, is a range very high, having very wild mountainous features. We have now travelled nearly six days, and have not yet met with fifty yards of sandy route. So much for the sandy Desert! All is either earth, sometimes as hard-baked as stone, or large blocks of stone, but chiefly very small chips of stone covering the entire surface. Our Arabs ask me, "Whether I prefer travelling by land or sea?" They imagine Christians, when they travel, necessarily travel by sea. They are also greatly astonished when I tell them we have no Sahara in England, and cannot credit the idea of a country being full of cultivated fields and gardens. The rest of our ghafalah, consisting of more than a third, is not yet come up, but Haj-el-Besheer and the Touarick Ali have joined us again and report them to be at the well of Nather.
Two or three birds were seen this morning about the wells. They were excessively familiar, and knew instinctively how to estimate the sight of a caravan for the crumbs and grains it might leave behind. They seemed also quite at home at the well. Still one would think they were birds of passage, like ourselves, for there are no trees or bushes for them to build in, and little to eat. Saw also a single lizard. I believe lizards abound in every part of The Sahara, but the cold now keeps them in their holes.
Three or four of our party have left us, mounted on maharees, for Ghat. They say they shall arrive in six or seven days. They will soon see if banditti are before us, and will return to let us know. Thought I should escape the orthodox body-guard. But it seems not. Where every person is obliged to accept of this guard, bon gré, malgré, it seems I must submit. However, I shall do without their services if possible. I offended a Moor by telling him that Christians do not require it, and have not this guard: it is only "peculiar to Mussulmans." A necessary part of the occupation of a ghafalah when it reaches a well is collecting and cracking the vermin. The camels are terrible things for straying. If they are surrounded with immense patches of the most choice herbage, even which is their delicium, they still keep on straying the more over it miles and miles. As to our nagah, we are obliged to tie her fore-feet, which prevents the camel from getting at a very great distance from the encampment. The camels are sly, unimpassioned, and deliberately savage, one to another, more especially the males. At times they go steadily, and even slowly, behind one another, and turning the neck and head sideways, deliberately bite one another's haunches most ferociously. The drivers immediately separate them, for the bite is dangerous to their health, and often attended with serious mischief to the animal bitten. But I have never yet seen a camel kick or attack a man. They invariably grumble and growl, sometimes most piteously, when they are being loaded, as if deprecating the heavy burden about to be placed upon them, and appealing to the mercy of their masters. The merchants pay 13½ Tunisian piastres per cantar for goods now conveyed from Ghadames to Ghat. The Touaricks carry goods cheaper, but they are now gone after the Shânbah. The Arabs asked 25, but the Rais of Ghadames fixed it at 13½. A camel carries from 2 to 3½ cantars[62]. I confess I was sorry to see these apparently so quiet and melancholy creatures ferocious to one another; but I recollected that all animals, even doves, quarrel and fight, and particularly males, where females are concerned.
To-day took out of my trunk Mr. Fletcher's note to me, to read over, which I had received from Malta during the time of my being in The Desert. The advice to travellers which it contains in a very few words, is so good, so excellent, that I shall take the liberty of transcribing it here, for the benefit of all future tourists in The Desert.
1st. "Keep a sharp look out about you, and pick up information."
2nd. "Keep with Sheiks, Religionists, (he means I suppose, Marabouts,) and Chieftains, for these are the only people who can give you protection."
3rd. "Expose yourself to no unnecessary risks and dangers."
4th. "Conciliate!"
Mr. Fletcher adds, "The white man is at the mercy of every tenant of The Desert, and though we would, one cannot be all things to all men." Nevertheless, I do think, poverty is my great protection in travelling in these countries. My fellow-travellers, up to the present time, are civil and assist me. It is necessary to mention here, I have neither compass nor thermometer, nor measure of any kind, nor maps, nor watch, so that I'm afraid my journal will sound ill to scientific ears. This was very bad management. Still we shall see what a man can do without the ordinary and most common scientific instruments of travelling. I have, however, an hour-glass, which embraces four hours in the time of emptying, and which I found useful in Ghadames, but make no use of it en route. I consider the objects of my tour moral, a random effort to maim, or kill, or cripple the Monster Slavery, a small rough stone picked up casually from the burnt and arid face of The Desert, but with dauntless hand thrown at this Titanian fabric of crime and wickedness. However, as my friend Mr. Fletcher advises, it does not prevent me from "picking up information," any how and everywhere, which I trust the reader will have already perceived. As a person who loses one sense acquires more intensity in others, so I, having no artificial means for procuring information with me, must do all by the ordinary senses of observation, common to the civilized man and the savage.
The mirage was very abundant to-day, producing a variety of splendid phenomena, "Castelli in Spagna," running streams, and silvery lakes, and a thousand things of water, and air, and landscape, just types of those pleasures and delights which we seek, and when grasping them, they slip from between our fingers.