"Stop, Signore Inglese," he rejoined abruptly, "I am the first man here. You are a learned man, and have travelled all over the world, and you know Latin; 'Aut Cæsar, aut nullus,' that's my motto. I only want the flag here. Get me appointed British Consul. I don't want a salary. Then shall I be a greater man than the Bey of Misratah."
I promised, as in duty bound, after this sally of modest ambition, to mention his wish to the Consul-General. The fact is, Regini is a very deserving man, and could he hoist the Union Jack, might benefit British subjects and promote British interests at the same time that he gratified his own Cæsar-like ambition.
This afternoon we left Misratah for Tripoli, our last stage. We found the gardens of Misratah very agreeable, getting clear of them by night, and encamping in a hilly country, covered with the delicious green of spring, with nibbling snowy flocks scattered and feeding, and Arabs' tents pitched, "black, but comely." But I was surprised to see so few Arabs' tents and douwars in this Regency. In fact, the Arabs of Tripoli are nearly all located and confined to The Mountains.
14th.—Afternoon, arrived at Zeitin, a small village. The palm is abundant as usual, and the gardens are full of olive and other Barbary fruit-trees. On encamping, I purchased some Leghma—لقمة—according to some philologists, "tears" of the palms, and others "foam," from the fermenting quality of the sap. At this season many trees are tapped, being, indeed, the tapping season. When a tree is tapped, a small hut of palm-branches, cut from off the tapped palm, is set up close to it, which is turned into a sort of tap-room, or boozing-place, for drinking the leghma, and half a dozen Moorish louting fellows are always seen idling and skulking about the hut, or sweltering with intoxication inside, as long as the tree yields the spirituous juice. A tree, if a good one, will yield its sap for two months, and sometimes a few days more. You can purchase a tree, tap it and drink of its sap at your pleasure, for only a couple of dollars. And for this trifle, people will often destroy their best palms. The leghma is pleasant when quite new or fresh; when a few days old it becomes very strong and acrid drinking, continually fermenting. Moors do not understand drinking leghma, wine or spirits, for their health, considering the object of drinking fermented liquor is not attained until they become intoxicated. In these palm-booths, or huts, the Moors occasionally bring their provisions, and here they will pass night and day for weeks together in dreamy drunken musings, each sot, shut up in himself, making himself by a drunken and delirious imagination, Kady, or Sheikh, or Sultan, or some mighty warrior, and all mankind his slaves and ardent worshippers, as the bent of mind wildly leads him. Moderation Moors cannot comprehend, they can neither drink moderately, nor eat moderately; they must either abstain altogether or eat or drink like beasts. Of course I speak of their general character. But such is the case with too many amongst us, as well as these semi-barbarians.
We encamped amidst palms and barley-fields. High wind from the east. The barley was getting ripe very fast, in some places being reaped. All these crops of grain are thin, the stalk of the barley short, the ears small—not the barley or wheat of England certainly. No part of North Africa furnishes such fine and heavy corn-fields as my own native county, Lincolnshire; I might, perhaps, add, no place in the world. The plains of Morocco furnish thousands of acres of barley[58], but all straggling and thinly growing. The wheat is the same. Add to which, you will find a North African corn-field full of weeds, herbs, and wild flowers.
15th.—Helping up my little Negro to a ride this morning, as the camel ascended a hillock he was pitched off in a summerset. A slave immediately got hold of him and began to stretch his neck for fear it was broken, and otherwise pull and manipulate him, holding him up by the head and neck. Manipulation and pulling and stretching are favourite appliances of remedy in all this part of Africa. Manipulation is frequently used at the baths, and is attended with surprising cures. Every muscle of the body is stretched, and rubbed, and coaxed. To burning, bleeding, and charms, some Moorish doctors add manipulation, as the fourth sovereign remedy. Early, we reached Sahel (Salhin?). These cultivated lands are a continuation of Zeiten; but Sahel is in a much higher state of cultivation. The golden harvest is nodding over Afric's sunny plains. Fields of ripe barley are waving in the wind, overshadowed with splendid palms of young and vigorous growth. Besides there are most beautiful olive plantations all around us. Essnousee, who now became a little more familiar, kept crying out to me with spontaneous admiration, "This is the new world (Dunyah Jedeed)!" The slave-driver had heard me praise the vast fields of fertility in America. Sahel, in fact, is a country of most vigorous and teeming fertility. But, to-day, from the camel's back, I saw the sea. How rejoiced I was, after nine months Ocean Desert-travelling, over sands and rocks, and naked sultry plains, suffering all sorts of privations and hardships, to see once more the world of waters! And this, notwithstanding it had been so often unfriendly to me in my various travellings by land and water. I kept straining (and pumping) my lungs to breathe its pure cool air. Sahel is of considerable extent, but has no nucleus of houses in the shape of a town, consisting merely of a series of small villages and detached houses, like our cottage groups and farms, but, of course, in Moorish style. Extremely warm to-day, though near the sea. Cleared the Sahel the afternoon, and, at night, encamped amidst the last groups of the Atlas, spreading and stretching eastwards. I had observed we were about to enter these terminus groups and links of the eastern Atlas chain, whilst at some distance, and easily distinguished them from those of the Saharan groups and ridges. Their appearance is strikingly different, being wooded and bristling on the sides, shooting up in craggy heights, hoary and white on the uppermost peaks and ridges, as if bitten by the cold and frost, and bared by the bleak winds of the sea. The Great Desert ranges, on the contrary, are naked as nakedness can be, dull, dreary, and dead, smoothed over as velvet, of black and purple hues, and look more like mountains which children might paint than the sterile realities of Old Sahara. Here, amidst the mountainous scenery of the coast, I could recognise many of the features of Virgil's description. (Æneidos b. iv.)
"Jamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit Atlantis duri, cœlum qui vertice fulcit: Atlantis, cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris Piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri; Nix humeros infusa tegit; tum flumina mento Præcipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba."
But this grand portrait of Old Atlas, whose brawny shoulders support our various globe, can only be realized (during winter) in the Morocco chain of the Atlas, whose highest peak is Miltsin, in Jibel Thelge, or "Mountain of Snow." This peak, some 15,000 feet in height, is near the city of Morocco itself. Dr. Shaw, who never visited Morocco, was puzzled to apply this classic description to the Algerian chains of Atlas. The Atlas Chain, which here terminates eastward, strikes out into the ocean just below Santa Cruz, in Morocco, being its western termination; but, in Tunis, at many places, it is interrupted in its connecting links. I was delighted to find a number of beautiful fruit-gardens, so many Hesperian spots, in the small valleys of these Atlas groups, observing for the first time the vine cultivated in vineyards. Several pleasant fields of the vine adorned the valleys. But the date-palm disappears in these mountains, whilst the olive increases, crowning the lower groups of Atlas, or spreading in large fields in the valleys. Patches of wheat and barley are also cultivated on the mountain sides. Arab stone-built villages are seen scattered through the rising groups and valleys. I am told these gardens belong to people in Tripoli. They are the sweetest, prettiest, loveliest little things which I have seen in all my nine months' tour. Oh, that these valleys were full of them!
At noon, we passed the ruins of Lebida (or Lebdah) on our right, situate on the sea-shore, several miles out of the line of route. What nonsense to believe Cicerones in these parts. Regini told me I should be sure to see Lebida, for it was in the road—that is to say, five or six miles off, behind sand-hills. The whole of the ground, from Sahel to these first groups of Eastern Atlas, is scattered over with Roman and Greek ruins, and, as it happens, there is a huge piece of an ancient building in the road itself, apparently a temple. I was too weak, however, to descend from the camel, to look closely at it. Many of these mountain-ridges are crowned with ancient forts, and farther on, when we arrived close by the sea-shore, we observed the remains of a Roman road,—a firm broad layer of cement and small stones embedded in the shifting sands. This was making a road in a business-like, dominion-like style, and worthy of those once mighty masters of the world. In our traverse of the mountains we met the Bey of Misratah returning from Tripoli, full of the confidence of his Turkish master the Pasha, and very splendidly attired though en route, with some dozen mounted Moors, all very gay, showing themselves off on their prancing barbs. Essnousee, with all our people, descended from their camels to pay their respects to these big-wigs, and made them a present of some crushed Sockna dates, called Krum. Here new cavalry horses were feeding, attended by the Nitham, or new troops. The Turks in Tripoli have but one small troop of horse.
The old Moor with one slave, and I frequently had some serious talk together, but I could seldom draw him out. I spoke to him about Said to-day.