This reminds me of what Colonel Warrington told me of some tourist, who describes himself as killing a camel to procure the water from its stomach, when within a couple days from Tripoli, and on a spot where there was a splendid spring of never-failing water. I often asked the Arabs, if they ever killed the camel to get the water from its stomach? They replied, "They had often heard of such things." A merchant of Ghadames made, however, an apposite observation: "This is our sea, here we travel as you in your sea, bringing our provisions and water with us."
These pits are considered the half-way house or station to Ghat. I'm told the route from Ghat to Aheer is much more easy and agreeable than this. Trust I shall find it so if I go. Begin to feel this irksome, and am in low spirits. People try to amuse me, and I have received many little presents of date-cakes and bazeen from them. Begin to relish this sort of food, and The Desert air sharpens the appetite. Yesterday, a slave of the ghafalah amused us with playing his rude bagpipe through these weary wastes. We are not very merry. There is very little conversation; we move on for hours in the most unbroken silence, nothing being said or whispered, no sound but the dull slow tread of the camel. Sometimes an Arab strikes up one of his plaintive ditties, and thinks of his green olive-clad mountain home in the Atlas. Happily there is little or no quarrelling. I am sure sixty people of all ages and tempers, were they Europeans, travelling in this region of blank monotony, oppressed with sombre reflections and without anything to relieve the senses, would not manage things so smoothly, or without quarrelling, and at times most desperately. For we are a bonâ fide moving city, and at each well every body prepares to start afresh. Some mend their torn clothes, others the broken gear of the camels, others take out the raw materials from their bags and work up a new supply of provisions. Others wash and shave. Our Saharan travellers rarely wash themselves except at the wells. Their religion requires of them to wash their hands at their meals, but this they evade by rubbing their hands with a little sand, a privilege, however, Mahomet has only granted them when they can find no water. We followed the tracks of the few of our party who had preceded us. Here also the footstep is rigidly observed as in the American wilderness, and the people pretend to distinguish the foot-print of the bandit on the sand from that of an honest man. But one night of strong wind usually covers up the track, and though the sand does not move in billows, it flies about, first from one side and then the other, and fills up the foot-prints of men and animals. There is no doubt but it requires the most practised eye of the camel-driver to find his way through these regions, and yet, for my life, I could not see that the people experienced any difficulty. They seemed as much at home in this intricate waste of creation as in their own dark zigzag streets of Ghadames.
As the sun goes down and night comes on, the sand-hills, from shining white, look as dark and drear as earth-hills. But how smooth is all! If they were hills of blown glass they could not be more smooth. In the sketch of Mislah will be seen a date-tree with part of its branches depending, forming with the up-rising a curious shape. The under foliage is dead and dried up, a fit object in the desolate scene. Not a single living creature about the wells. No bird is here. At Maseen and Nather we had seen two or three small birds, hopping about the wells, picking up the crumbs and scattered grain of the passing caravan. Except the little vegetable life, all else here is "a universe of death!"
Footnotes:
[62] A cantar is about an English hundred-weight.
[63] Oudney says:—"The presence of nothing but deep sand-valleys and high sand-hills strikes the mind forcibly. There is something of the sublime mixed with the melancholy. Who cannot contemplate without admiration masses of loose sand fully four hundred feet high, ready to be tossed about by every breeze, and not shudder with horror at the idea of the unfortunate traveller being entombed in a moment by one of these fatal blasts, which sometimes occur?" I agree with the Doctor about the sublime and melancholy mixed in contemplating these regions of sand. But they are by no means dangerous. No people that I heard of had been entombed under these fatal blasts. I am almost sorry now that I did not pass through the region of Mislah in a Saharan hurricane, and then I should have known all.
