His Excellency the Rais questions me on my rumoured Journey to Soudan.—The Devil has in safe keeping all who are not Mahometans.—I am wearing to a Skeleton.—A Caravan of Women.—Predestination.—The Shânbah begin their Foray.—The Gardens and their Products.—Varieties of the Date-Palm.—Locusts.—Brigands spare the Property of the Marabout Merchants of Ghadames.—Agricultural Implements in The Desert.—Violent capture of a Souf Caravan by the Governor.—Uses of the Date-Palm.—The Touarghee Bandit's opinion as to Killing Christians.—Combat between an Ant and a Fly.—Loose Phraseology in The Mediterranean.—Harsh Hospitality of the Souafah, and Usurpation over their Oases by the French.—Money disappearing from Ghadames.—The Affair of Messrs. Silva and Levi, and their connexion with Ghadamsee Slave-Dealers.—Visit, with his Excellency the Governor, the Ruins of Kesar-el-Ensara "the Castle of the Christians."—Antiquity of Ghadames, and Account of it by Leo Africanus.
The 23rd, 24th, and 25th, employed in writing letters. On one of these days the Rais called me to him and asked, "Whether I really intended to go to Soudan, as the people had reported to him?" I told him Yes, and that I was already making preparations. His Excellency affected great amazement, and looked exceedingly mysterious, but did not know what to reply. At last he observed, "I must write to Ahmed Effendi of The Mountains, and if he says you may go, all well, if not, you must not go." I then asked the Rais, what I was to do in Ghadames? His Excellency said anxiously, "Stay with me to keep me company. I am surrounded with barbarians. I am weary of my life here." As the Rais spoke what I knew to be the truth, I pitied him and said nothing, although I could not understand this asking of permission from Ahmed Effendi, whom I knew to be a queer customer to deal with. However, I interpreted the sense of Colonel Warrington's letter to Rais, viz., "If I had friends I might venture further into the interior, if not, stay where I was until I made friends." I believe the sympathy of the Rais sincere, which is a great deal for a Turk, or even any body else in this insincere and lying world. He is a timid man, and is afraid the Touaricks will make an end of me. What the Rais says is reasonable enough: "Bring me a Ghadamsee, or a respectable Arab merchant whom I know, and who will take you with him, and be answerable for your head (safety), and will protect you equally with himself, then I have no fears for your safety." I took my friend Zaleâ to the Rais, who is a native of Seenawan, and much respected by all. The camels of the giant left to-day for Ghat, his giantship himself waits to be conducteur of our caravan.
In replying to an observation about another increase of taxes of which the people bitterly complained, I said, "The Mahometan princes are now the greatest oppressors of the people, whilst the Christian kings are more tolerant, and people enjoyed more security under our Governments." My taleb replied, "Yes, it is the truth, Yâkob, and this is the reason. The Devil knows that all the Christians, and Jews, and black kafers, belong to him. So he troubles them not, they are his safe property and sure possession. But he is always stirring up amongst us Mussulmans evil passions, and leading our sovereigns to oppress the people, and one Mussulman to oppress another." Such is the reasoning of a bigoted Moslemite, and with him and others it has considerable force. Indeed, a Christian stands a very poor chance with these subtle orthodox doctors.
26th.—The mornings grow colder and colder. I feel the change sensitively, more so than the natives; am exceedingly chilly. I perceive the hot weather has dried up or torn off the flesh from my bones, and my feet are very skinny. Attribute this a good deal to the water. Rais is almost worn to a skeleton. This morning he called his servants to attest, how stout he was when he first came here. But as the heat is gone, I shall not now drink so much water. The more malicious, in revenge for Turkish oppression here, hope and pray the Rais will die of the climate, and every Turk who succeeds him.
To-day the Touarick women leave for Ghat. No men go with them, only some of their little sons. About ten women form this caravan. They have camels to carry their water, and ride on occasionally when they are fatigued. I asked a Ghadamsee whether these women were not afraid to go by themselves, particularly now as banditti are reported to be in the routes. He replied, "These Touarick women are a host of witches and she-devils. No men will dare to touch them." This ghafalah of women is a perfectly new idea to me. Some of the women are quite young and pretty, and delicate, and don't appear as if they could bear twenty days' desert-travelling. One said to me, "If you will go with us women, we will take better care of you than the men can do."
27th.—Occupied in writing. Rais paid me a visit in the afternoon. Gave one of the slaves who came with him a pill-box, which highly delighted the boy. I found when I visited Rais again, that his Excellency himself had become so enamoured with the pill-box, as to purchase it from his slave. Said continues bad with ophthalmia. The disease seems to attack mostly people of this country, and not strangers. At any rate it would seem that we require to be acclimated to catch these diseases, as well as acclimated to resist them. Rais took it into his head to preach to me about the decrees of Heaven. "You and I," said his Excellency, "were great fools to come to this country; I to leave Constantinople, you to leave London. But it was the decree of God that we should come to this horrible country." The decrees of Heaven, or the acknowledgment of such, are the bonâ fide religion of Ghadames. "What do the people eat?" I said to a man. He replied, "What is decreed!" Another interposed, "Don't be afraid of the Touaricks; you will not die before the time which is decreed by Heaven for you to die." Such is consolation in man's misery. Are we to believe this? or why not believe it?
28th, 29th, and 30th.—Employed in preparing routes of The Desert. This evening the Governor received a letter from his spies in Souf, which reports that the Shânbah had left their country four days before they wrote, which is now fifteen days. It is not known whether the banditti have taken the route to Ghat or Ghadames. His Excellency has taken precautionary measures, and sent soldiers to look out in the routes near our city. He has also sent to bring back a merchant who started yesterday to Touat, and another to Derge. The freebooters are 100 horse, and 400 camels strong. The Giant Touarick taking the alarm, and mounting his strongest and fleetest Maharee, has gone off to protect his family and country. He was one of the expedition last year, and slew a dozen Shânbah with his own hand. In the meanwhile caravaning to all quarters is to be stopped.
31st.—Purchased an outfit for Said. Afterwards he would put them on, and walked all over the town, and left me to cook the dinner myself. I said nothing to him, humouring his vanity. No people are so fond of new and fine clothes as Negroes.
1st November.—A strong wind blowing from the south-east, or nearly east. Not very cold, clouds thick and dark, and no sun. The music of the wind in the date-palms is very agreeable, and tunes my soul to a quiet sadness. The Ghadamsee merchant who was overtaken on his road to Tourat, refuses to come back, and says he trusts in God against the Shânbah. Some Souf Arabs have come in to-day, giving out that the French wish to assume the sovereignty over their country. The able-bodied men of the united oases are calculated at 2,000.
Visited the gardens with my taleb as cicerone. Was much gratified with the rural ramble, although there is nothing remarkable to be seen. The three principal productions are dates, of which there is a great variety, some thirty or forty different sorts[56]; barley and ghusub[57]. The ghusub is grown in the Autumn and the barley in the Spring; in this way two crops of corn are reaped in the year. A little wheat is now and then grown, but does not thrive. The native date is the madghou (مدغو) which is also common in Seenawan and Derge. It is small and filbert-shaped, of a black colour, very pleasant when fresh, but when dry very indifferent. I saw no black dates in any other parts of The Sahara. The gardens furnish besides a few vegetables and fruits, such as pomegranates, apricots, peaches, almonds, olives, melons, pumpkins, tomatas, onions, and peppers, a few grape-trees and fig-trees in the choicest gardens, but all in small quantities. There is scarcely a flower or fancy tree but the tout. No person of my acquaintance, except my turjeman, showed much fancy for botany. He had brought an aloe from Tripoli, and planted it in his garden. It is the only one. He has another tree or two besides, which nobody else has. The merchants have brought the varieties of the date-palm from the different oases of The Sahara. Nearly every householder has a garden, and some several. Sometimes a date plantation is divided between two or three families, each cultivating and gathering the fruits of his pet choice palm. Herbage is grown in the gardens for fattening the sheep. Pounded date-stones both fatten sheep and camels. In summer the gardens are intolerable, but in winter deliriously pleasant. Sheikh Makouran is the largest landed-proprietor. He has seventeen gardens; "nearly half the country," as a person observed. So Europe is not the only place in the world where there is such an unequal division of the land. The gardens are small, and the whole number is some two hundred and odd, only the half of which are regularly watered from the Great Spring. As the people can never depend upon rain, the whole culture is conducted on irrigation. The Ghadamsee garden-gate, of all the absurdities of inconvenience is the greatest I ever met with. It is scarcely large enough for a small sheep to enter. Every person entering a garden must not only stoop but crawl through the gate. It is fortunate there are no lusty people here, all being bony and wiry like the Arabs. Not being dependant on rain, the gardens only suffer from the locusts, and now and then a blighting wind. In the Spring of this year these insect marauders passed over the oasis and made a pillage of the date blossoms for thirty days, besides doing much damage to the barley. I encountered a flight of the same horde, which emerged from The Desert and then took to sea, and were scattered over to Malta and Sicily by the wind, when I was travelling from Tunis to the isle of Jerbah late in the Spring. From Ghadames they proceeded en masse to Tripoli and Ghabs, inflicting great damage. When they passed near the gardens of Ghabs, the people climbed up the fruit-trees and made a great noise, screaming and shouting, which kept them from settling in masses on the fruit-trees and vegetables. They also kindled a fire and tried to smoke them away. Many of those which did settle were gathered, cooked, and eaten with great gusto by the people. I met them myself on the immense plains of Solyman; they were the first flight of locusts I ever saw. I had seen locusts on the hills near Mogador, where they are bred in great numbers. Millions of small green things were just starting into being. The locust is a somewhat disproportioned insect, the wings are too fine for the bulk and weight of the body, which explains why they are unable to struggle against the wind; as it is said in the Scriptures, "and when it was morning the east wind brought the locusts." (Exod. x. 13.) They do not fly high, and when they settle on the ground they roll over very clumsily. A flight at a distance looks like falling flakes of snow in a snow-storm. They are mostly of a reddish colour, with lead-coloured bodies, and some of a glaring yellow. The yellow ones are said to be the males, and are not so good eating as the others. The locust tastes very much like a dry shrimp when roasted. They are from an inch and a half to two and a half long. The head is large and square, and very formidable. Hence the Scripture allusion: "and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men." (Rev. ix. 7.) But the prophecy gives them a superadded power which they do not possess, "and unto them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power;" (v. 3.) for when you catch the locust it makes little resistance and does not bite. Few of these were eating, and most of them were either flying or lay motionless basking in the sun, grouped in hundreds round tufts of long coarse grass. My Moorish fellow-travellers didn't like their appearance. They said the locusts are bad things, and came from the hot country to devour their harvest. It was indeed, an unpleasant sight, this horde of insect marauders, and soon lost the charm of novelty. But the world is made up of the elements of destruction and reproduction. Such is the eternal order of Providence, and we must bear the evil and the good. I do not think that they come far south or from the inner Desert, for they could not be bred in regions of desolation, where there is no green thing. Yet these flights were from the south of Ghadames, and at any rate they are bred in the Saharan districts, from the banks of the Nile to the shores of the Atlantic. The world is full of impostors. One of these went once upon a time to Morocco, and endeavoured to persuade the people he could destroy all the locusts by some chemical process. I believe he was a French adventurer.
