I replied, "It was always so that ignorance and pride went together, and it always will be so."
His Highness.—"Are your people so?"
"Of course, all the world is so."
The Bashaw now came to the Touaricks. "The Touaricks detest cities. When they visit us, we cannot make them sleep within the walls." I observed, they have not confidence in the people of the towns they visit. The Bashaw thought that was a hit at him, and so it was, for the Touaricks sleep within the walls of their own cities, and even inside Ghadames. I occupied a house which they had tenanted just before my arrival. Therefore His Highness jumped from the Touaricks to the Ghadamseeah:—"The Ghadamsee people are a nation of Jews. I once had to escort them. One morning when I got up I found them all in separate groups, for they detest each other's society. (The Bashaw might have observed the separation of the two hereditary factions.) They were all in disorder. I got a whip and laid it on them one after another, as they whip their slaves. The next morning they were all ready to start before I was. This is the way to treat these Jews. The curse of God is upon them. When they die nothing is found in their houses, nor gold, silver, money, or goods, not even victuals. God punishes them thus because they are a nation of Jews and slave-dealers." Belazee forgets that his government is partly supported by the slave-traffic. But the Bashaw is a man of great audacity, takes large views of things, assumes the air of lavish and magnificent pretensions, and hates the quiet, thrifty, and money-making character of the merchants of Ghadames. The Bashaw concluded his long string of anecdotes by asking me, on my return, to bring him a watch, but not to bring it if I did not intend to charge him for it, for he could not accept presents from me, since he had a fixed salary from the Sultan. He added, "I'm sorry you have not brought a letter from the Bashaw of Tripoli, for I can't show you the attention I would wish. But bring a letter when you return, and I'll write to all the princes of Africa for you." I answered, "Oh, I'll bring you a firman from the Porte, if that will do for you." At which His Highness laughed heartily.
Whatever ferocity of disposition Hasan Belazee may have shown in the decapitation of Abd-El-Geleeh, he certainly knows how to be polite and show hospitality to strangers. The British Consul-General tried to get him removed from Mourzuk, with the tyrant, Asker Ali, from Tripoli, but Belazee was the only man who could keep this province tranquil, and the trade with the coast uninterrupted. Mr. Gagliuffi tells me, as a proof of the Bashaw's influence in the interior, that His Highness wrote to the Touaricks of Aheer and Ghat to allow liberated slaves to return unmolested to their country, as an act acceptable to God, seeing the poor slaves had been liberated by their pious Mussulman masters, who invoked upon them the blessing of the Almighty on the day of their liberation. And it is said, that, in no case, when a freed slave took a letter from the Bashaw, did the slave fail to reach his native country. How different this Desert morality to that of the villanous Americans, who glory in recapturing freed slaves, or hanging them up by Lynch Law—and those poor men have bought their freedom by the sweat of their brow! The Bashaw is also strong amongst the Tibboos, who are generally an immoral race of Africans. These Tibboos attacked a merchant of Tripoli and plundered him near their country. His Highness immediately clapped all the Tibboos then at Mourzuk in prison, until the merchant's goods were restored, and he himself brought safe to Mourzuk. Since this strong measure, the Tibboos have plundered no more Tripoline merchants.
Mr. Gagliuffi pointed out several Tibboos to me in the town, and amongst the rest one who called himself a Sultan. This chief came the other day to the Consul and thus addressed him:—
"My wife is coming here. I'm so glad. She is such a good wife. Oh, so good!"
"Why is she a good wife?" inquired the Consul.
"Oh, she has killed two women; first the daughter, then the mother; wretches who wanted to kill her. Isn't that a good wife?"
The Tibboo women secrete knives about them, as the Italian and Spanish ladies conceal the stiletto in their garters. It does not come within my province to describe the Tibboos, but I may say briefly of the social condition of those tribes, in that country it is "Man and his Mistress," and not "Woman and her Master." The Tibboo ladies do not even allow a husband to enter his own home without sending word previously to announce himself. A Tibboo lady once explained this matter in Mourzuk. "Why," said the Tibbooess, "should I not have two or three husbands, as well as my husband two or three wives? Are not we women as good as men? Of course, I don't wish my husband to surprise me enjoying myself with my lovers." It is a notorious fact, that when the salt caravans go from Aheer to Bilma, the whole villages are cleared of the men, the Tibboo men escaping to the neighbouring mountains with provisions for a month. In the meanwhile, the Tibboo women and the strangers are left to themselves. The women transact all the trade of salt, and manage alone their household affairs. The Tibboo women, indeed, are everything, and their men nothing—idling and lounging away their time, and kicked about by their wives as so many useless drones of society. The women maintain the men as a race of stallions, and not from any love for them; but to preserve the Tibboo nation from extinction.
