SONNET.
"Hail, verdant groves! where joy's extatic power Once gave the sultry noon a charm divine, Excelling all that Phœbus or the Nine Have told in glowing verse!—Youth's radiant hour Yet beams upon my soul,—while memory true Retraces all the past, and brings to view The magic pleasures which these groves have known, When Hope and Love, and Life itself, were new, Delights which touch the SOUL OF TASTE alone, Taught by the many and reserved for few! O! busy Memory, thou hast touched a chord Recalling images, beloved,—adored,— While Fancy keen still wields her knife and fork, O'er roasted turkey and a chine of pork!" CLEMENTINA.
I found it flying about in one of Mr. Gagliuffi's old lumber rooms, and, being such a precious gem, I must needs reproduce it upon the page of my travels. Who is the author, and how I came by it, I cannot now tell. I only know it once adorned the columns of the "Malta Times," at a period which now seems to me an age ago.
There was a wedding to-day, and the bride was carried on the back of the camel, attended with the high honour of the frequent discharge of musketry. In order that I might likewise partake of these honours, the Arab cavaliers stopped before the Consul's house, and several times discharged their matchlocks. It was a gay, busy, bustling scene. The cavaliers afterwards proceeded to the Castle, and discharged their matchlocks, standing up on the shovel-stirrups, and firing them off at full gallop. But these cavaliers are nothing comparable to the crack horsemen of Morocco. Their horses are in a miserable condition, and they themselves ride badly. The horse does not do well in the Saharan oases. In Fezzan he is often obliged to be fed on dates, which are both heating and relaxing to the animal. Meanwhile the discharge of musketry was rattling about the city, the lady sat with the most exemplary patience on the camel (covered up, of course), in a sort of triumphal car. A troop of females were at the heels of the animal loo-looing. The ceremony stirred up the phlegm of the Turks, and delighted the Arabs.
In the evening I visited one of the gardens in the suburbs. The corn was in the ear on this, the 26th day of February. In a fortnight more they will cease their irrigation, and it will be reaped quickly afterwards. We gathered some young green peas. The flax plant is here cultivated; the fibres and dried leaves are burnt, and the seed is eaten; no other use is made of it. Two crops of everything are obtained in the year, one now, in the spring, and the other in autumn. The irrigation by which all this cultivation is produced, rain rarely ever falling, cannot be carried on during the intense and absorbing heats of summer. A couple of asses and a couple of men, or a man and a boy, do all the business of irrigation. Fezzan water is brackish generally, and the wells are about fifteen of twenty feet deep. These are in the form of great holes or pits. The more distant suburbs present beautiful forests of palms, producing a fine reviving effect upon an eye like mine, long saddened by the ungrateful aspect of a dreary desert. The atmosphere and ambient air is less pleasing to view, presenting always a light dirty red hue, as if encharged with the fine sand rising from the surface. The soil of the Fezzan oases is indeed mostly arenose, and the dates are nearly all impregnated with fine particles of sand, which takes place when they are ripe, and very much lowers their value. But this sandy soil does not sufficiently account for the eternal dirty vermilion hue of the atmosphere of Mourzuk. They say its site is very low, in the shallow of a plain, and to this cause they attribute its fever.
27th.—Health quite restored, and got up early. There are two or three round holes in the window-shutters of my bed-room; by the assistance of these, when the shutters are closed, in the way of a camera oscura, all the objects passing and repassing in the streets are most sharply and artistically drawn on the opposite wall. Here beautifully delineated I see the camels pass slowly along,—the ostriches picking and billing about, which are the scavengers of the street, instead of the pigs at Washington, (see Dickens,) and the dogs of Constantinople, (see all the tourists,)—the women fetching water,—the lounging soldiers limping by with their black thick shoes pulled on as slippers,—the slaves squatting in circles, playing in the dirt,—groups of merchants, black, yellow, and brown, bargaining and wrangling,—asses laden with wood,—the coffee-maker carrying about cups of coffee, &c., &c. Wrote letters for to-morrow's post, and very disagreeable to me, as announcing my tour broken up midway.
28th.—Post-day. The courier leaves every Saturday, but it requires nearly forty days to get the answer of a letter from Tripoli. The courier is eighteen days en route. A caravan occupies from twenty-four to thirty days. In the route of Sockna there is water nearly every day, but one or two places, the longest space three and a half, and four days. The Commander visited me again this morning, as also the Greek doctor, who calls every morning. The Major now came in. He is a young Circassian; by birth a Christian, but kidnapped and sold to the Turks. He is a very amiable young man, and deeply regrets that he was not brought up a Christian. It is high time this infamous practice of selling the Christians of the East to the Turks, was put a stop to. It is to be hoped that Russia will atone for the wrongs which she has inflicted upon Poland, and offer some compensation for the blood which she is still shedding in Circassia, by abolishing this odious system of Christian slavery through all south-eastern Europe, as in western Asia. Notwithstanding our hatred to Russia's system, and its iron-souled Grand Council, we Englishmen (I presume to speak for all), are willing and happy to do justice to Russia in the efforts which she made, and the aid she rendered the Servians, in emancipating them from the galling yoke of Mussulman bigotry and Turkish tyranny[41]. Nicholas has a noble and mighty mission before him, not to subjugate Turkey, or infringe upon the liberties of Europe, but to civilize his vast empire, and the wild countries of Northern Asia. But the Czar does not seem to understand his destiny—or the task, more probably, is beyond his power. It must be left to his successor, or happier times. This Circassian tells me he has not had the fever in Mourzuk. He thinks the city healthier than formerly, and attributes the fever to people's eating dates, and their bad living. Dates are not only the principal growth of the Fezzan oases, but the main subsistence of their inhabitants. All live on dates; men, women and children, horses, asses and camels, and sheep, fowls and dogs.
Mr. Gagliuffi gives the following statistics of the slave-traffic viâ Mourzuk from Bornou and Soudan:—
| In 1843 | 2,200 |
| In 1844 | 1,200 |
| In 1845 | 1,100 |
| ——— | |
| Total, | 4,500 |
The two last years shows a diminution, and he thinks the trade to be on the decline. But this evidently arises from the Bornouese caravan being intercepted, or the traffic interrupted by the fugitive Arabs on the route. There has been no large caravan from Bornou for three years. And Mr. Gagliuffi considers the route at the present, so unsafe, as positively to refuse countenancing my going up to Bornou this spring. However, a couple of small slave-caravans have ventured stealthily down twice a year, conducted by Tibboos. The principal Tripoline slave-dealers who frequent Mourzuk are from Bengazi and Egypt. Slaves are besides brought occasionally from Wadai; and there is a biennial caravan from Wadai to Bengazi direct, leading to the coast a thousand and more slaves at once. Our Consul is frequently employed in administering medicine to the poor slaves, who arrive at Mourzuk from the interior, with their health broken down, and often at death's door. He makes frequent cures, but, alas! it is for the benefit of the ferocious Tibboo slave-dealer. The Consul naturally laments he cannot buy these miserable slaves, who, in this state of disease, are often offered at the market for five or six dollars each. He has no funds at his disposal, or he would procure them by some means, cure them, and give them their liberty.
