I have seen lately in the newspapers and geographical journals, that a Frenchman is going to traverse Africa from west to east, and that he is to make hourly observations with scientific instruments. I think the parties who write such paragraphs must be either madmen, or grossly and unpardonably ignorant of the nature of African travelling. If a traveller is in his sober senses, half the time he is en route, he is a happy man. But to proceed.
Our first object was to find the rendezvous of the ghafalah. I said to Mohammed: "Are you sure the ghafalah is on the march to-day?" "The ghafalah is like the sun," he replied, "every body knows it will move to-day." About four hours after looking over the undulating ground, I thought I saw at about six miles distant some black spots moving, and turning to Mohammed, I said, "What's that?" He exclaimed, "The camels! the camels! I told you I was right, and don't you see I have struck into the right path?" I was glad to hear this, for I was not yet sufficiently broken in to desert travelling to be wandering about as we were in search of moving parties of the ghafalah. An hour after I took off the shade from my eyes, for I had still a slight ophthalmia, and looking round, I found we were in the midst of detached parties of the ghafalah, widely apart, but all hurrying in one direction. We were not near enough (indeed some miles off) to have any conversation with them. By noon we had all rendezvoused upon a pleasant plateau of The Mountains. The merchants welcomed my return, and asked me what I had been doing. I said, "We have delayed too long." They smiled:—"Oh, you don't understand; you see we have one day for buying oil, another day for barley, another for skins, another for doing nothing," &c. It appeared to me a bungling way of doing business. But some of them had been obliged to go a day's journey to purchase a few things. The ghafalah had, in fact, been scattered all over The Mountains. A few never left Yefran. This was my first taste of delay in Saharan travel.
We began our four days' journey in the evening, and continued all night up to two hours before sunrise. The camels then rested but were not unpacked. All the people now got a few winks of sleep. At dawn we started again, and halted for the day after two hours and a half of marching. In the afternoon, about half-past four, we then resumed our march, and in this manner we continued for the four days. Our pace was upon an average three miles per hour, sometimes two and a half, and sometimes three and a half. On looking at the camel you think it goes slow, but when you look at the driver, you observe that he is often kept up to a very good walking pace. Our camels were five days without drinking, for they drank the morning before we left.
I was once going to write, "the Arabs pack their camels as badly as possible; make their journeys as long as possible; travel as much in the sun as possible[16];" but these last four days have convinced me that, under the guidance of a good Arab chief, they know what they are about, and can do things with order and dispatch.
I don't know how it was, but it came into my head that, on leaving The Mountains, and proceeding south, we should soon descend again, as if we were to cross some mighty ridge or series of ridges of the Atlas. Every moment I expected to descend into valleys or plains, corresponding to the country which lies between Tripoli and The Mountains. Getting impatient, after nearly a day's march, I asked for the plains. The people turned upon me with surprise, and said:—"Lel Ghadames, koul hathe souwa, souwa, All like this to Gadmes." I found, indeed, that, after getting fairly into The Mountains, and proceeding south, you first entered upon a deep undulating country, with here and there a profound ravine, then a pretty verdant inclosed plateau, and then a bare towering height, all which accidented country dissolved at last into an immeasurable plain. Proceeding south, however, we found a new species of mountains began to raise their long, lone, dull, dreary naked forms; and, asking Mohammed what they were, he replied correctly enough:—"These are Gibel Sahara, (Saharan Mountains)." The plateaus and undulating ground were in places covered with loose stones, with sand and sand-hills scattered or heaped about. Then these stones and sand were partly covered at this season with sun-dried and sun-burnt herbage, mostly very coarse, with here and there a few bushes and shrubs. Many also were the dried beds of rivers, and there were still wider and profounder depressions of land than these waterless wadys. But all is now burnt, scorched, dried up, and the nakedness of the Saharan ridges is responded to with a hideous barrenness from the intervening plains and valleys. Not a single living creature was visible or moving; not a wild or tame animal, not a bird nor an insect, if we except a tiny lizard, which seems to live as a salamander in heat and flames, now and then crossing our path at the camel's foot, and a few flies, which follow the ghafalah, but have no home or habitation in The Dried-up Waste. Nor was there a sound, nor a voice, or a cry, or the faintest murmur in The Desert, save the heavy dull tramp of our caravan: all else was the silence of death! However, my Marabout tells me, in the winter the whole scene is changed. "There is then," he says, "herbage, rain, birds, gazelles, and all things." It is certain that within nine hours' ride from Rujban we passed the stubble of two or three patches of barley, which had been rescued from the dominion of The Desert.
As to myself, personally, in this part of the route, I have suffered most from want of sleep. In the day-time it was too hot to sleep, and in the night I was on the back of the camel, where, of course, for the present, I could not be expected to sleep, though many of the Arabs, nay, merchants slept. I should say all slept on the camel as soundly as in a bed. So that what I saved of suffering from the heat of day-travelling, I lost in want of sleep by night-travelling. Poor human brute! I thought of the fable of the ass and his winter and summer advantages and disadvantages. The hottest day was yesterday, last of the four, when we encamped in a dry bed of a river. I shall never forget that day, forget what I may else! I was first on the point of being suffocated, and seemed at my last gasp. I began to think that the predictions of my friends in Tripoli were about to be verified. I was to succumb to make them prophets! In addition to this my deep distress, I felt the wound of pride. I got some tea made, I can't tell how, and poured some brandy into it. This I drank, and from a fever of delirium found myself conscious again, and swimming in a bath of perspiration. The crisis was now passed, and I was to see Ghadames and Ghat, and return to my fatherland. So fate—rather Providence—would have it. Every day, until I reached Ghadames, there was a sort of point of halting between life and suffocation or death in my poor frame, when the European nature struggled boldly and successfully with the African sun, and all his accumulated force darting down fires and flames upon my devoted head. After this point or crisis was past, I always found myself much better. It is strange that my head never ached, nor was in any way affected during the whole route, except in the one day mentioned. Some and all have vainly invoked sleep upon a bed, in the time of darkness and cold, but those who call for the god in the African Desert, in midday of the hottest season of the year—and to the last moment of starting with a long, long night of travel before them—as they lay rolling on the burning sand, and he disdains to shed his dull influence over the eyelid, know, indeed, something of this kind of human suffering, and how dreadfully long and dreary were those nights! What signified the sight of the ten thousand orbs moving in silent mystic dance, and dressed out in soft bright fires, over the poor traveller's head! Alas! it was a mockery of his woes. . . . Four days and four nights were thus passed, without four hours of sleep. I often wonder if I could go through this again. I had an additional suffering of the eyes. I never took the veil from my face from sunrise to sunset, for had I done so, I should have had the hot sand immediately into them. We had ghiblee or simoon every day. But, thanks to Heaven, now ends the greatest of my sufferings from heat.
We were escorted by sixty Arab troops on foot, like those who escorted us from Tripoli to The Mountains. The Pasha mostly chooses them from districts through which we pass, and in this way secures a guard well acquainted with the route. But how odd, before the Turks, in the good old days of The Bashaws, these very Arabs were the banditti of the route. A Ghadames merchant said to me one day, "Yâkob[17], see these fellows; formerly all were villanous Sbandout (banditti)." The captain of this escort, Sheikh Omer, who will conduct us to Ghadames, was charged by the Commandant of The Mountains, that his men should not be allowed to take water, or anything else by force, "bel kouwee," as the merchants said. The Sheikh was a civil fellow, and found it his interest to cultivate my acquaintance. Every morning I invited him to take coffee and tea in my tent, and he never forgot to come. In acknowledgment, he sent me some liquid butter, which was not excessively bad. The food of the Arabs, and the poorer sort of the merchants, for this journey was, as written by my Mohammed, سُوِيقَ زُمِيته ("Souweekah-Zameetah," that is, two names); but commonly called Zameetah, which is nothing more than barley or wheat burnt or malted, then ground, and afterwards made into paste. On this is sometimes poured a little oil or fat; but many cannot afford this luxury, and must content themselves with a little water to make up the meal into paste. I may safely affirm, there was not a bit of meat eaten, or a drop of tea or coffee drunk, in the whole caravan of merchants, with 200 camels, including, with the Arabs, some 150 persons, during the last four days, except what was eaten and drunk in my tent. I myself had only a little bit of fowl. The Sheikh Shabanee (Makouran) as the Arabs call him, was the most civil to me. His portion of the camels is about forty, and he seems a most respectable old gentleman. He has two sons with him. He gave me last night a guzzle of cool water, a large brass pan full, of the size of a warming-pan, which I drank off in an instant, and found it more like nectar, than our earthy animalculæ water; it was so deliciously cool and sweet. Valuable, indeed, becomes a thing of commonest use, from its scarcity. The old Sheikh has a donkey with him to carry his drinking-water. The skins keep the water cool even in the hottest part of the day, whilst some which I had in bottles became quite hot. I shall here relate an ingenious stratagem, which I recommend to all African travellers. On leaving The Mountains we had three skins of water, one for each. But first, one of the skins cracked, and we lost a good deal of water, before it could be mended. Then Mohammed, the chief thief, was accustomed to drink large draughts when neither myself nor Said was present. This we learnt from the rest of the caravan. Said, himself, poor fellow, as soon as Mohammed had turned his back, was either to beg me to give him extra water, or help himself. Sometimes I chided him, at others I gave him water, or was too much exhausted to see what he was about. Then Said would help his friends amongst the Arabs now and then, and sometimes the Arabs helped themselves, by going behind me, and sucking from the neck of the skin whilst I was riding. To avoid this, Mr. Gagliuffi told me he always put the neck of the skin-bag before and not behind, so that it was impossible for a person to drink, and at the same time to walk backwards with the camel going forwards, or at any rate to do so without being seen. Then, finally, there was the terrible action of the sun on the water, often reducing it by a fifth, and sometimes a third, of our supply. But the consequence of all this was, our three bags were empty before we arrived at Seenawan, and the little water which had remained, the third day, was so shaken in the skins, all being oiled, that for me it was not drinkable. Now for the stratagem. Apprehending this waste of water, I got twelve pint bottles filled with water at Tripoli, which were packed away as wine and spirits, neither Mohammed or Said suspecting the contrary. Accordingly I quietly despatched my couple of bottles of acqua pura per day, as the London lady drinkers are said to take their sly drops from the far corner of the cupboard, without the least suspicion of my fellow travellers. I overheard once, Mohammed speaking of me to Said: "By G—d! these Christians, what lots of rum they drink: that's the reason, Said, the sun does not kill him—he'll never die. These Christians, Said, are the same as the dæmons; they know everything, but God will punish them at last—if not, there's no God, or Prophet of God." I took no notice, but when we got to Ghadames, I took the remaining bottle, and asked him to drink. He jumped up with alarm. I then called him a fool, and proved to him I had been drinking water at the time he thought I had been drinking rum. He laughed, and said, "Ajeeb, ente Yâkob âkel: (Wonderful, you James are wise.)" I then took upon myself to lecture Mohammed, abusing him for his carelessness in not preserving the water, and asking him if he thought that I, on the first time of traversing The Desert, could put up with dirty water like them, and go without for days, or with a very small quantity?
The Sheikh Makouran continues very civil: to-day he gave me a supply of onions for making soup, and promises to give me a house to live in, when I get to Ghadames. I have, in turn, to give him some medicine, on my arrival, for one of his two wives. I rode a little the Sheikh's donkey last night, at his request. It is nothing like the camel, it stumbled a great deal over the loose stones, and I am told the horses stumble as much. I felt the immense superiority of the camel, with its slow regular pace and sure foot, in these stony wastes. The Sheikh's ass is the only animal of the beast-of-burden sort in the whole caravan, besides the camels. I noticed, however, a few extra unladen camels, which take turn with others for carrying, as also several foals following lightly and friskily their dams. En route, during the nights, the Arab soldiers amused themselves by firing off their matchlocks, the most advanced party answering the farthest behind, and vice versâ. The noise of the gun broke through the painful silence of The Desert, and came finely back reverberating from the Saharan hills with double and treble discharges of sound. When their powder began to be exhausted, and they have never more than half-a-dozen charges, they sang their plaintive love ditties, or chatted to the merchants. On the whole, they showed great good temper, and, pennyless and naked, were happier than well-clothed and wealthy merchants.
In the afternoon of yesterday a letter was brought to me, written by Gameo, which had been in the ghafalah nearly all the length of the route, but had been forgotten. This stated that Mr. Macauley, the American Consul, had kindly prepared a small package of American rum for my journey, and had forgotten to send it till too late—in fact, like several persons in Tripoli, he really thought, what from the intrigues of the Pasha, and the obstacles of the season, I should never get off. I may observe, the nearer a person is to an object, it often happens he sees it less:—
"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view."