29th.—Called early to visit the "Grand Turk" of the Castle, and administered to his Excellency a full dose of genuine Epsom. In turn, he gave me a basin of coffee with milk,—quite a novelty in The Desert,—which I thought a splendid exchange. I had a good deal to do to get him to swallow the Epsom. On calling to see him in the afternoon, I found his Excellency racing about like a real jockey of Epsom, running out at times very abruptly, to the great amusement of his Sultana, who admired the effects of the Epsom. Called again in the evening to see my patient, and found his Excellency suffering from what he called dysentery, and administered a couple of small opium pills. The Turk observed, with something of a grin, that Christian doctors knew more of the inside than the outside of a man.
30th.—Another Turk arrived this morning with another convoy of provisions from Tripoli. He is twenty days from that city. He complains of the camels. Certainly I never saw worse camels than these of the Tripoline Arabs. The Turk brings good news. Rain has fallen copiously in The Mountains. It is the "latter rain" in the Scriptural phrase, ὑετον οψιμον. The "early rain," ὑετον πρωϊμον, falls in North Africa about September and October. The "latter rain" continues to April, and sometimes falls in May. In December and January there is often dry weather, and the finest season in the year for Europeans. Want of rain in Fezzan and Sockna is compensated for by the abundance of springs. These rains in The Mountains will establish the rule of the Turks. It is only a question of provisions. The want of rain for several years has brought Tripoli to the verge of ruin, and the Sultan is tired of supporting this Regency. If a few good harvests come, Tripoli will support itself. Wrote to Mr. Gagliuffi by this caravan, to tell him where I was on the 30th of March! He expects me by this time to be at Tripoli. We are to leave this evening.
Amused myself again by noticing several parallel ideas between The East and Africa, as found in our Scriptures.
In these countries there is always some one great river; for this reason, Moors will always have the Nile and the Niger to be "one great river." Mr. Cooley, in his "Negroland of the Arabs," proposes, for the various names given by ancient and modern geographers to the Niger, the simple epithet of "The Great River." In The East, we have, τὸν ποταμὸν τὸν μεγαν τὸν Εὐφράτην (Rev. xvi. 12), "The Great River Euphrates." It is not to be supposed the prophets and evangelists were instructed in geography beyond their age. The vial of wrath is not poured upon Ganges, or Mississippi, or Amazon, but on Euphrates, the great river of that age and time, although not of our age and times.
Καλαμον χρυσοῦν (Rev. xxi. 15), "a golden reed." The term καλαμον, the root of which are the three consonants κλμ, is the same as قلم, "a reed" first, and afterwards, "a pen made of a reed." It is difficult sometimes to get reeds in The Desert, and they are carried about from oasis to oasis. On the salt plains of Emjessem, near Ghadames, there is a fine lagoon of reeds, of which pens are made. It is probable the angel wrote the measurement of the "Holy Jerusalem" with a reed pen, and not measured it with a reed, as represented in our version.
Και ἡ γυνη εφυγεν εις την ερημον (Rev. xii. 6), "and the woman fled to the Wilderness." The Wilderness, or Desert, in ancient times, as now, in this part of the world, was always a place of refuge; but, as the world becomes civilized, the Wilderness will offer no resource to the fugitive, and the back-woods of the new colonies will no longer shelter the runaway, or outlaw of society, or the innocent patriot fleeing from the pursuit of his country's tyrants. Gibbon gives an affecting description of the fugitive Roman, who found Rome's omnipresent tyrant in every clime whither he fled, on every soil paced by his trembling foot. Before this time arrives, let us hope liberty will have settled down, with its outspread eagle wings sheltering every country of the habitable globe.
Εὰν ὁ Κύριος θελήσῃ, καὶ ζήσωμεν, καὶ ποιήσωμεν τοῦτο ἢ εκεῖνο. (James iv. 15.) Mahomet and his disciples have made enough of this divine injunction, which, indeed, ought to be more practised by Christians. By the Moslems, however, it is carried to a superstitious excess, and the En shallah—ان شاء الله—"Deo Volente," is continually in their mouths. They cannot even say, "Yes," to anything, although la, la, "no, no," is heard frequently enough. The aywah, ايوه, "yes," means rather "well done," than "yes." But it is a pity they have not adopted, with the same superstitious strictness, the ομνὑετε, "swear not," of the same writer; for no people in the world swear so much, and by such sacred names, as the Arabs and Moors.
Φόβος ὀυκ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ, ἀλλ' ἡ τελεία ἀγάπη ἔξω βάλλει τὸν φόβον, ὅτι ὁ φόβος κόλασιν ἔχει. (1 John iv. 18.) "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment." I have never yet heard the Arabs or Moors speak of "loving God." They say either, "He knows God," or, "He fears God." Nevertheless, such phrases agree with our expression of religious sentiment. Besides knowing and fearing God, our religion requires that we love God. This the Saharan Mussulman does not well understand. All his religious system is: "To know that there is a God, to be feared and dreaded as an earthly Prince or Sultan, who at times rules them with a rod of iron." So all their actions, motives, impulses, whether religions or secular, spring the rather from fear than love. And so it is, that whenever they speak to a Christian about religion, their first and last argument is, "The torments of the Lost," as I have already so often mentioned; and the fear of the fire of perdition, it may be added, is their continual "torment." The Koran helps them out, in their dread of corporal torments. I need not refer to the celebrated passage, which represents the wicked in the regions of the lost as "gnawing their fingers and knuckles in the rage and agonies of their pain." But in Rev. xvi. 10, we also have—εμασσωντο τας γλωσσας αὑτων εκ του πονου "they gnawed their tongues for pain." In both cases the picture is too terrible to be calmly contemplated. It is a true observation of philosophy, that the pictures of the future state of man, as delineated in the sacred books of different religions, are, the greater part of them of a painful and horrible character. But the Koran surpasses all these books, in wire-drawn and elaborately wrought descriptions, the most mournful, the most disgusting, the most terrible, of the torments of the damned. Is it because, men generally can only be moved by fear, and not by love, to the practice of virtue and religious observances? But in Sahara the principle of fear is carried into the minutest relations of social life. The child fears and venerates, not loves, his father; he approaches his parent with awe, not with the confidence of love. The wife always fears, rarely loves, her husband. Connubial pleasures are not the embraces of love and confidence, but of lust and rule; and the woman slavishly submits to the caprices of the man, as bound by an absolute and resistless contract, and not from affection or any inclination. So it was in earliest times,—the weaker went to the wall, and the stronger was the master; might was right. Peter ungallantly reminds the women of his age of κύριον αὐτον καλοῦσα, "(the wife), calling him (the husband) lord," as the practice of the women of a still remoter age. Nothing flatters an African husband so much as to hear his wife call him "lord," and "master." But it was not the intention of the first propagators of our religion to disturb the social customs and (Oriental habits of) society. Besides, the apostles, being Jews and Asiatics, would naturally introduce into their new doctrine the old despotic notions of the East regarding women. When Christianity spread west and north, these notions of despotism over women were resisted in Greece[55] and Rome, and by the Germanic tribes, amongst whom especially women were treated as dignified and responsible agents, enjoying equal rights with men. Nevertheless, the condition of women has improved everywhere with the spread of the pure morality of Christianity.
Near Sockna, or one and a half hour east, is Houn; and two hours north-east, is Wadan. The water of these two towns is brackish.