I.—"But do you not continually say, 'God is The Most Merciful.' How can this be?"
The Shereef.—"I don't know, so it is decreed." The Shereef boldly continued, "In this world[35] God has given all the infidels plenty of good things, (this being a sly allusion to the Christians and their possession of great wealth); but, in the next world, the believers only will enjoy good, and the kafer will be miserable." "You, Yâkob," he proceeded, "are near the truth, very near, and near Paradise, because you can read and write Arabic, and understand our holy books."
And so he went on preaching me a very orthodox sermon. I asked him how God would dispose of those who never read or heard of Mahomet or the Koran. He couldn't tell. The same queries and objections are, nevertheless, applicable to our own and to nearly all religions, which make the condition of believing one thing, and one class of doctrines, absolute for salvation. The Touatee gold-merchant, who was close by at the time, interposed, "You are near jinnah (Paradise), Yâkob, one word only, 'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the prophet of God.'" I returned, "If this be not uttered from the heart it is useless and mockery." "By G—d! you are right, Yâkob," exclaimed the Shereef. Like most Mahometans, the Shereef says, "The coming of Jesus is near, when he will destroy all the enemies of God, Jews and Christians, and give the world and its treasures into the hands of the Moslemites." I asked him why he represented all mankind but the Moslemites to be the enemies of God? My mind always recoils from the thought of arranging mankind, and marshalling them forward, so many enemies of God, as if the Eternal and Almighty Being who planned, formed, and sustains the universal frame of nature, could have enemies! Man may be the enemy of his fellow man, but cannot be the enemy of God. The Shereef here did not know what to say, and I think replied very properly, Allah Errahman Errahem, "God is most merciful!" a sentiment which all of us admit in spite of our peculiar dogmas of theology. But this conversation offers nothing new or different from those which I had with my taleb Ben Mousa, at Ghadames.
The Shereef then spoke about slavery, and asked me, why the English forced the Bey of Tunis to abolish the traffic in slaves. I explained the circumstances, adding, the Bey was not forced, but only recommended, by the English Government to abolish the slave traffic. He then began a long story in palliation of the traffic, stating that the slaves knew not God, and that in being enslaved by the Mohammedans they were taught to know God. I soon stopped his mouth, first, by telling him, the Turks not long ago had enslaved the Arabs and sold them for slaves at Constantinople, and then, adding, "Nearly all the princes, whence the Soudanese and Bornouese slaves were brought, are professedly Mahometans, as well as their people." He acknowledged, however, slaves were mostly procured by banditti hunting them, not captured in war. He finished, "The Touaricks of Ghat formerly hunted for slaves in the Tibboo country, twice or thrice in the year, and in these razzia expeditions some would get a booty of three, or five, six, ten, and twenty, according as they were fortunate. Now they have other business on hand, the war with the Shânbah. The Touaricks of Aheer, those who bring the senna, are now the great slave-hunters." The Shereef showed me a Tibboo youth seized by the Aheer people. The Shereef's account of the Touarghee razzias in the Tibboo country is confirmed by the reports of our Bornou expedition, or rather the Shereef confirms the reports of our countrymen. Dr. Oudney says, "It is along these hills (the ranges which go as far as the Tibboo country) the Touaricks make their grassies (razzias) into the Tibboo country. These two nations are almost always at war, and reciprocally annoy each other by predatory warfare, stealing camels, slaves, &c., killing only when resistance is made, and never making prisoners." But, it must be observed, Touaricks are never made slaves; they may be murdered by the Tibboos. Not six months ago the Aheer Touaricks captured a Tibboo village. The few who escaped fled to the Arabs, under the son of Abd-el-Geleel, imploring aid for the restoration of their countrymen and property. These Arabs, who themselves mostly live on freebooting, were glad of the opportunity for a razzia. They recaptured everything, and restored the poor Tibboos to their village, making also a capture of a thousand camels from these Kylouy Touaricks.
Enjoy better health in this journey, than on that from Ghadames to Ghat. Felt myself stronger, and hope yet to undertake the journey to Bornou before the summer heats.
15th.—Course to-day nearly east. Encamped just as the sun dipped down in the ruddy flame of the west. Strong wind, blanching the sooty cheeks of the poor slaves, who were borne down with exhaustion. They were literally whipped along. And the little fellow who refused a ride from me, got a whipping for sitting on the sand to rest himself. I now made him mount my camel, which his master, not a bad-natured man, thanked me for. All day we continued to traverse the vast plain, having on our right the same chain of hills, and, on the left, the sand groups, as far as the eye could see. These broad, now boundless plains, or valleys, are unquestionably the dry beds of former currents. Even now our people called them wadys or rivers. The chain of mountains and the chain of sand-hills are their natural banks. The tholh-tree was most abundant to-day. I never saw it so thickly scattered before. It was spread over all the plain, now in single trees, and now in forest groups, which were also magnified in the distance, and had a grateful and refreshing effect upon the vision, wearied with looking on stones or gravel, or bare desert, or black rocks and glaring sand-hills. Unquestionably these trees of the African are as old as those of the American wilderness. The tholh-trees of the dry thirsty African plain are however but dwarfs compared with the giant trees of the American forest, watered by ocean rivers. The tholh would seem to live without moisture: it is fed by no annual or periodic rain, no springs. And yet it buds, opens its pretty yellow flowers, sheds its fine large drops of translucent gum, flourishes all the year round, and tempts with its prickly leaves as with richest herbage, the hungry camel. Indeed, about this part of the route the camels get nothing else to feed on. We have seen no living creatures these last five days. On one part of our route our people pretended to trace the sand-prints of the wadan, and others affirmed them to be the foot-marks of the wild-ox. I must except the sight of a few small birds, black all over but the tails. Some one or two had white heads, as well as white tails. People say these birds drink no water, as they say many animals of The Sahara drink no water. The little creatures certainly do not drink much water. Two or three dead camels thrown across the route of this day's march. The live camels usually turn off the way from them. Several Saharan mosques, the form of a cross being made in the Keblah on one of them, as seen in the diagrams.
The Shereef's ideas of the Touaricks are not so favourable as those of his uncle, the Governor of Ghat, and in some respects they are more correct. The Shereef says:—"The Touaricks are not of the Arabian race. They are the original inhabitants of Africa (Numidians). Their language is a Berber dialect. They are a race generally of bandits, and, when their food fails them, like famished wolves, they make irruptions into their neighbour's territory, and plunder what is before them. This they do in small bodies, when camel's milk fails them at home. The Aheer Touaricks are of the same race as those of Ghat. Many of those of Aheer have no fear of God, and never pray like the rest of professed Mohammedans. Those of Ghat are perhaps the best of the Touaricks, and the most religious. The Touaricks of Touat encircle those of Ghat, lying across the route of Timbuctoo. Their Sultan's name is Bassa, a giant of The Desert. He eats as much as ten men. He is the terror of all. But Jabour knows him, and enjoys his friendship and confidence. The road from Ghat to Timbuctoo, through Bassa's territory, is extremely short. It is stony, through high mountains, and intensely cold. Springs of water abound there." Such are the ideas and opinions of the Shereef on the Touaricks. The mountains of the route alluded to, are the grand nucleus of the Hagar, which intersect and ramify through all Central Sahara. The Shereef, and some others travelling with us, delight in paradoxes, and maintain, in spite of Haj Ibrahim, who has been to Constantinople and seen the Sultan of the Turks, that there is no Sultan now, the administration at the Turkish capital being in the hands of Christians.
The Shereef now invited me to dine with him from bazeen, and when I sat down, kept addressing me:—"Eat plenty!" But only think of three grown men sitting down to a small paste dumpling, with a little melted butter poured over it, and the host crying out lustily to me:—"Eat plenty!" Such, indeed, was our repast! Of course, returning to my encampment, I ate my supper as if nothing had happened to me. And this little dumpling supper is the only meal in the day which our people eat. Well may they cry out about the cold, and pray for the heat. In a hot day a man is supposed to eat half the quantity which he does in a cold day. I am, therefore, still of the same opinion as before expressed, that the sufferings of these people, who travel in Sahara, are enormously increased from their want of sufficient food and clothing. As to clothing, many of them, in this trying season, go half-naked.
Some of our Arabs, who make bazeen for a large party, have a scientific way for its cooking and preparation. On the Ghat route a young Arab was accustomed to fill up three parts of a large iron pot with water. This water he would boil, throwing into it the meanwhile peppers, sliced onions, and occasionally, as a luxury, very small pieces of dried meat, or scraps from which fat had been strained. The pot having boiled until the onions and peppers were soft, he now brings the meal, mostly barley-meal, but sometimes coarse wheaten flour. This he pours into the pot, forming a sort of pyramid in the boiling water. He then gets a stick, mostly a walking-stick, pretending first to scrape off the dirt, or rubbing it in the sand; with the stick so polished, he makes a hole in the centre of the pyramid of meal, through which the water bubbles up and circulates through the mealy mass, now fast cooking. He now gets two small pieces of stick, and puts them into the ears of the iron pot, which generally are burning hot. He removes with the pieces of stick the pot from off the fire, and places it on the sand. He now squats down over it, putting his two feet, or rather the great toes of the feet, one on each ear of the pot, which gives him a poise, or sort of fulcrum. And then, again, taking the long stick, he stirs it up with all his might, round and round and round again, until all the water is absorbed in the pudding-like meal, and the meal is thus well mixed into a sort of dough. However this dough is not unbaked paste, but a bonâ-fide dumpling, cooked and ready for the sauce. Now comes the wash wherewith to wash it down. My young Arab friend takes the dumpling, or pudding, in a great round mass, and places it within a huge wooden bowl. He then goes off for the oil, or liquid butter, which is usually kept in a large leather bottle, or goat's-skin, with a long neck. He does not pour the oil out, but thrusts one of his hands into the oil, and, taking it out, with his other hand rubs or squeezes off the oil over the mass of dumpling. When he has got enough, he sets to and sucks his fingers, as the great reward of all his labour in preparing the supper of bazeen for his companions. Once he did not sufficiently squeeze off the oil from his hands, and his uncle scolded him for leaving so much on to suck. He protested to his uncle that the bazeen had taken him an unusually long time to prepare[36]. The supper is now ready. The party squat round it on their hams. They dig into the mass with their fingers, after saying aloud, as grace, Bismillah, "In the name of God," before they begin supper. Digging thus into it, they make small or large balls, according to the measure of their jaws, which are generally sufficiently wide, or according to the sharpness or dulness of their appetite. These balls they roll and roll over in the oil or sauce that is often made of a herb called hada, or âseedah, a pleasant bitter, and producing a yellow decoction, (whence the bazeen is sometimes called,) which enables the large boluses to slip quietly and gratefully down the throat. Meanwhile a jug of water is handed round, provided always there is any difficulty in getting down the balls; but mostly the water is handed round after the eating. It is drunk with a bismallah, and then a hamdullah, or "praise to God," the grace after meat, winds up and finishes the repast.
The business of the caravan and its affairs of encampment are always terminated before supper. So the dumpling or pudding-fed travellers now roll themselves up in their barracans, covering their faces entirely, and stretch themselves down on the ground to sleep, frequently not moving from the place where they ate their supper. There is generally a mat or skin under them, and they lie down under the shade of the bales of goods which their camels carry. The first thing on encamping is to look for the direction of the wind, and so to arrange bales of goods, panniers, and camel gear, as to protect the head from the wind. In this way one often lies very snug whilst the tempest howls through The Desert. People like to retain the taste of the pudding in their mouths, particularly if a little fat or oil be poured over it. I once gave an Arab some coffee after his pudding-supper, which he drank with avidity, but afterwards began to abuse me. "Yâkob, what is your coffee? I'm hungry, I'm ravenous. Why, before I drank your coffee, my supper was up to the top of my throat, but now I want to begin my supper again. I'll never drink any more of your coffee, so don't bring it here." A little more cuscasou is eaten on this route than on that of Ghat from Ghadames, the Fezzaneers and Tripolines preferring coarse cuscasou to bazeen if they can get it. The poor Arabs are often obliged to put up with zumeetah, which they eat cold. Haj Ibrahim eats his fine cuscasou, which he brought from Tripoli, but I do not consider him a bonâ-fide Saharan merchant. This is his first trip in The Desert.
