Our slave caravan stretched across the plain or bed of the Wady of Ghat eastwards, to the black range of Wareerat, and turning round abruptly north by some sand hills, we encamped after three hours. It is from this place the Ghat townspeople fetch their wood. The fire-wood is gathered from the lethel tree. Our caravan consists of eleven camels, five merchants or proprietors, some half dozen servants and about fifty or sixty slaves. I have my nagah and Said, as before. Nearly all the slaves are the property of Haj Ibrahim. They are mostly young women and girls. There are a few boys and three children. The poor things on leaving Ghat, as is their wont on encountering The Desert, got up a song in choruses, to give an impetus to their feelings in starting. For myself, The Desert has become my most familiar friend. I felt happy in again spreading my pallet upon its naked bosom, by a shady bush of the Lethel.
Footnotes:
[24] انكر هيك, the Touarghee language.
[25] As to what has taken place, and is happening by the introduction of what is called French civilization into Africa (Algeria), and how the morals of the people, natives and foreigners, are affected, the things are too horrible to be here related. The annals of Norfolk Island, and the Bagnes of Toulon, would be outraged by their recital.
[26] I should be sorry to apply to a minister of any religion the opprobrious epithet of a "Surpliced Ruffian." It would seem, however, that Archdeacon Laffan aspires to the "bad eminence" of the apologist of assassins. What would my readers say, were I to report the Ministers of Islamism in The Desert to be the abettors of assassination? Or what would they have said, if a priest had been found to be the secret or open instigator of the quasi-bandit Ouweek, in his violent threat to murder me, because I chanced to be a Christian, or rather, a non-believer in Mahomet. We should not have found words sufficiently strong to express our reprobation of such priestly intolerance and wickedness. And yet Ouweek would have only acted out his religious principles in their stern literality,—قتلواهم—"kill them" (the infidels), as frequently written in the inexorable Koran; whilst Archdeacon Laffan's preaching is diametrically opposed to his religion, whose holy and clement command contrariwise is,—"to forgive our enemies, and bless those who curse us."
CHAPTER XXIII.
FROM GHAT TO MOURZUK.
Slaves very sensible to the Cold.—Well of Tasellam.—Saharan Huntsman.—Atmospheric Phenomenon.—My Adventure at the Palace of Demons.—Denham and Oudney's Account of the Kesar Jenoun.—The Genii of Mussulmans.—Desert Pandemonium compared with that of Milton.—Coasting the Range of Wareerat or Taseely.—Soudan Species of Sheep.—Soudan Parrot.—The Lethel Tree.—The Tholh, or Gum-Arabic Tree.—Falling of Rain in The Desert.—Oasis of Serdalas.—My Companions of Travel.—Weather Hot and Sultry.—The Slaves bear up well.—The Ship of The Desert.—Extremes of Cold and Heat.—Mausoleum of Sidi Bou Salah.—Serdalas, a neglected Oasis.—The Sybil of The Sahara.—Death and Burial of two Female Slaves.—Dirge on the Death of one of them, whipped at the point of Death.—Power of the Sun in Sahara.—Desert Mosques.