Such is the leaf of holy tradition in The Desert. It is astonishing how all nations love to indulge their gloomy musings with monsters. The extraction of the Russians from Gog and Magog is a curiosity; but the Russians, (Moskou, such is their name here,) are looked upon as a species of monster, whose jaw is capacious enough to swallow up all the Turks, and the Sultan of the East. The Rais has the greatest dread of them, whose native soil they have already gorged, "These Russians," he said to me one day, "are always, always, always advancing, advancing, advancing upon the Sultan." Who will say the patriotic Turk's apprehensions are groundless? With regard to the extraction of the Touaricks, I asked one of these people where his countrymen sprang from. He answered me, that formerly they were demons, (جنون) and came from a country near Kanou, on the banks of The Great River. Another told me, in true Hellenic style, "The Touaricks sprang out from the ground." An opinion has been advanced by some acquainted with ancient Eastern and African geography, that the Touaricks are from Palestine, and are a portion of the tribes of the Philistines expelled by Joshua; that the first rendezvous of the wanderers was the oasis of Oujlah, which is a few days' journey from Siwah, the site of the celebrated Ammonium; and thence they proceeded, wandering at will, to the west and south, peopling all the arid regions of the Sahara. The Sheikh of the slaves visiting me to-day, and describing Timbuctoo, said, "It is several times larger than Tunis; it is as large as Moskou (or Russia)."
I.—"Who told you Moskou was large?"
He.—"The people."
So the Emperor of all the Russians may rejoice in the consciousness, that he and his people constitute as large a kingdom as Timbuctoo, and are celebrated in the gossip of Saharan cities.
The first thing with which people break their fast in the evening is dates. My taleb, when visiting me, takes a few dates in his hands, and goes to a corner of the court-yard, or upon the house-top, about the softening, musing time, when the last solar rays are lingering playfully—and to the emaciated faster, teasingly, on this Saharan world, and there he listens in silence for the first accents of the shrill voice of the Muethan, calling to prayers, from the minaret of a neighbouring mosque. This heard, he commences putting the dates, one by one, slowly into his parched mouth, repeating a short prayer with each as he swallows it with a sort of choking difficulty. After he has eaten a dozen or so, he drinks, and then goes off to mosque prayers. Sometimes he prays in my house, and then comes down to dine with me. Many people, of course, in Ghadames, never saw a Christian before me; but they are quite as much astonished to see a Christian eat and drink in the Ramadan, as to see the Christian himself. This afternoon I was very thirsty, and went to drink a little water from one of the water-skins suspended in a square. A woman, of half-caste, going by at the time, cried out, "Why, why?" I went up to her and said, "Because you are a Mussulman and I'm a Christian." Her astonishment was no way abated; she kept exclaiming, "Why, why?" as if she would raise the whole city. One of my merchant friends seeing there was some prospect of a disturbance, came up to me and said, "Yâkob, that woman is mad; make haste, go home." However, I rarely ever eat and drink before the people, avoiding as much as I can shocking their prejudices; and if asked about fasting, usually evade the question, or say I fast or wait for my dinner till Said can eat his dinner also.
18th.—Weather has now set in cool. This morning a little cold and raw. Now's the time for catching coughs and cold;—people are coughing already. Just before day-break, a thunderbolt was said to be discharged over the city, accompanied with a long, low growling muttering sound, which reverberated from the Saharan hills. The circumstance remarkable, in the falling of this dread bolt of heaven's artillery, at the time the sky was perfectly clear and bright, and there was nothing in the shape of storm. These discharges of sound are rare in the Saharan regions. People asked me to explain to them what it was, and what it prognosticated? I told them, thunderbolts were frequent in Christian countries during storms, and nothing of consequence follow from them. I have reason to believe since, after conversing with several French officers in Algeria on the subject, that this phenomenon of a tremendous discharge of sound was a discharge of electricity from the earth, which sometimes occurs in North Africa.
Went to examine the Great Spring of Ghadames this morning, which is situate on the west side of the city, but conveniently between the two grand divisions of the population, the Ben Wezeet and the Ben Weleed. It was to me a delicium. What a revolution has my opinions undergone respecting water since I have travelled in The Thirsty Desert! Never was such an enthusiastic conversion! But were all conversions so harmless, how happy for mankind! Some thirty swallows are skimming its gaseous-bubble surface, playing off their wing-darting delights. The Spring or Well is perennial, as old as the foundation of the city, and may have ran for ages before the palms were planted around it by the hand of man, or sprung up from a few date-stones left by some chance fugitives who had stopped to taste its waters, and then held their way on in The Desert. Without the Spring the city could have no existence. It runs into a basin made and banked up for it, an oblong square of some twenty yards by fifteen. In its deepest part it is not more than six feet. The water is hot, averaging a temperature of 120 degrees, and upwards, it being too hot to bathe in near the orifices, whence the water gushes with gaseous globules, which continually rise from the bottom. But the orifices are not visible, and hence an air of mystery is thrown over this spring of "Living Water." The people say it was created by God on the same day when the sea near Tripoli was made. The gaseous particles are larger and more numerous in the centre, where is the great force of the Spring. The water is tolerably good, but a little purgative. It is usually allowed twelve, but some give it twenty-four hours to cool before drunk. The form of the basin may be thus rudely represented:—
a. Small bathing-places.
b. Steps where the women descend to fill their jugs with water.