The repeated notices I have transmitted concerning the Bedouins of Arabia, will show how much I am interested about them. I believe that very little of their real state is known in Europe, either because travellers have not sufficiently distinguished Bedouins from Arabs in general, or because they have attempted to describe them without having had the advantage of seeing them at leisure in their own tents, in the interior of the desert. Their nation is the original stock, from which Syria, Egypt, and Barbary derive their present population, and for this reason alone they deserve to be enquired into; but they acquire a still greater interest when we consider, that amidst the utter depravity of manners and morals, and the decline of laws and civil institutions throughout the Mohammedan world, the Bedouins are the only Eastern nation who have preserved unchanged their ancient customs, and the manners of their forefathers and who still continue to be what they were twelve hundred years ago, when their emigrating tribes conquered part of Asia, Africa, and Europe. I am aware that my description of the Bedouins is not calculated to be acceptable to the public in general, as it contains nothing but dry facts: my only object has been to fill up a vacuity in our knowledge of the East, and I flatter myself that those who are interested in obtaining a knowledge of this part of the world will not be displeased at what I have done.
You will forgive my having forwarded the papers in so imperfect a state. Although my general health is at present very good, my eyes are far from being as I wish them to be; and since my severe ophthalmic attacks in Upper Egypt, I have repeatedly suffered from them, and have lately had again a severe inflammation.
I see that Aly Bey el Abbasi has got the start of me in his description of Mekka, but I hope to be able to give some information in addition to his. I have lately had an opportunity of perusing his work; little as I like the style in which it is written and the pretensions of its author, yet I find it incumbent upon me to state, that after a minute examination of it, I find no reason to doubt the general veracity of Aly Bey; what he says of himself in Syria, Egypt, and the Hedjaz, I know to be true, although he has not always thought proper to state the whole truth. I could tell you many anecdotes to prove how little he imposed, with his almost utter ignorance of Arabic, upon the sharp-sighted natives of these countries; but he was perhaps to be excused in fancying that he did, as those who partook of his bounty would be the last to hint to him their real thoughts on this subject, and whether Bey or not, he was a Mussulman, and that was sufficient. His method of travelling was very injudicious; surrounded with so much pomp, it was almost impossible for him to make many interesting observations, for a Turkish grandee is never left alone, and his numerous dependents are spies upon all his actions. The plan which he gives of the mosque at Mekka is very correct; that of the town is much less so, as you will see by comparing it with that which accompanies my description of the city. All his views of Hedjaz and Syria are drawn from memory; that of Wady Muna is the only one slightly resembling the reality. He has made one very curious mistake, which is, that he persuades himself that he was at Mekka, when the Wahabi took possession of that town, an event which happened three years before his arrival there. I am indignant at his daring to question the veracity of Mr. Browne, (by whose side he is a mere pigmy,) upon so trivial a fact as that of the existence of carpets in one of the mosques of Cairo, where I actually saw carpets spread not longer ago than yesterday.
To advert to another more humble African adventurer,—I have lately seen the Quarterly Review of the Travels of Adams to Tombuctou, (which the Africans call Timbuctou,) but not the work itself. From what I have heard related in Egypt, and the Hedjaz, by several Felata Bedouins coming as Hadjis, from the neighbourhood of Timbuctou, by the way of Tunis, I believe that Adams’s description of that town is correct. One of them told me it was half as large as Cairo, and built of low mud houses, such I believe as are common all over Soudan. As to his river, I likewise heard that the Timbuctou river flows westward. The old story, that it is the same river with the Egyptian Nile was also repeated, which of course is in direct contradiction to the former supposition. The truth seems to be, that the ignorant Africans finding the two rivers to resemble each other, in size, in productions, and in the regularity of their inundation, conclude them to be the same. The name of La Mar Zarah, which he ascribes to the river of Timbuctou, I believe to be misspelt for Bahr El Ahmar El Sahára; (بحر الاحمر الصحرا) or the Red River of the Desert.i[10] This epithet is perhaps applied to it in the same manner, as Abiadh, Azrak, Akhdar, “white, blue, green,” are given to the different branches of the Nile. La Mar Zarah is said to be of a muddy colour, and the Egyptians describe the Nile by the word Ahmar, at the time when it first begins to rise and to become muddy.
The names of the King and Queen of Timbuctou seem to shew that they are Mohammedans. Woolo seems to be Wouli, which in Arabic, means Governor or Ruler (والي), and is given to all their governors, and Fatima is evidently a Moslim name. That Adams did not see them pray, is no proof to the contrary; he might reside for months at Berber or Shendy without witnessing any sort of public worship. There are however some of his statements which struck me as quite impossible, and convinced me of his want of veracity, at least with regard to them. I can never believe that twenty-three persons travelling on foot, with women and children, can cross a waterless desert of thirty days journey, without any other supply of water than what was loaded upon four camels; nor again, that twenty eight persons could travel in the same manner, for twenty-nine days, with four camels only partly loaded with water. Such powers of abstinence, neither Arabs nor Nubians, nor their camels possess; every person who has travelled in a caravan of camels, will disbelieve such assertions. After eight days the water kept in the best Soudan water skins is partly evaporated, and the remainder, from the continual shaking, is reduced to a thick black mud, which extreme necessity alone can make one swallow. The best camels for transport, known in the countries which I have visited, are the Darfour breed. They are never longer than ten or twelve days on their road to Egypt, without water, and even in that journey many of them perish of thirst. The daily supply of one quart would afford little relief to an animal which when thirsty swallows fifty or sixty, and after several days thirst, one hundred pounds of water. Four camel loads of water would in North-eastern Africa, even among the Nubian merchants, who carefully reckon every pound weight to be loaded upon their camels, be thought a scanty allowance for twenty-eight persons, even if they were mounted on camels, for a journey of five or six days. It is not by a daily allowance of half a pint mixed with urine, that a pedestrian traveller in the sands of Africa can hope to support his strength, through the continued exertions of such a journey; nor shall I ever believe that the Moors are so much superior to the Nubians, although they may be rather stronger than Aly Bey el Abbassi, who was perishing with thirst in a desert of Barbary, of one day’s journey across, fainting at four P. M. after having drank at noon a large draught. Stories of long journeys without water are to be placed in the same class with those of hot winds, overwhelming sands, and the miraculous swiftness of camels, &c. &c. They all originate in the fancy of Bedouins, who at the expense of truth, thus indulge the curiosity of the inhabitants of the towns, gaping at the wonders of the desert. They can be contradicted only by the few who have actually crossed the deserts, while they will be constantly corroborated by those who draw their information only from bragging Arabians or Moors.
I am certain that you take a lively interest in the travels of the unfortunate Seetzen, who was poisoned five years ago in Yemen. His labours, I can assure you, have been very extensive, and conducted in a most enlightened manner. His intimate acquaintance with all branches of natural history was applied with indefatigable zeal to countries the most difficult of access, and he had many times nearly become a martyr to those pursuits, before he met with his ultimate fate. It has fallen to my lot to trace his footsteps, in many hitherto unknown parts of Syria and Arabia Petrӕa, and again in the Hedjaz; these, together with what I heard from the Europeans who knew him at Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, as well as from many Arabs on the road, have inspired me with as great a respect for his private character, as the dispersed memoirs of his researches already published, must give every reader for his literary acquirements. Although endowed with a lively fancy, and even with considerable poetical talents, he was a man of plain truth. If sometimes over fond of speculating upon the facts which he had collected, yet I am certain that in stating those facts, he observed the strictest adherence to truth, and I have not the smallest doubt, that if he had lived to publish the mass of knowledge which he had acquired during his travels, he would have far excelled all travellers, who ever wrote on the same countries. Mr. Salt has lately shewn me a letter which he received in 1811, from Mr. Rutland, then factor at Mokha, acquainting him with the death of Seetzen, which had just taken place, and making mention, at the same time, of several papers which he had left as a present to Mr. Rutland, who adds that as they are in German he cannot read them. As Mr. Seetzen would hardly have thought it worth while to make such a present to a person who could so little appreciate its value, I am much inclined to suspect they were only left in his hands as a deposit. Exact designs and descriptions of Mekka and other places, vocabularies of eighteen African languages, &c. are stated to be among the number. Seetzen’s friends at Cairo, according to the common practice of Levantines, amongst whom most of the pseudo Franks established in these parts must be classed, entirely forgot him as soon as he was beyond their threshold, and it thus happened that although his death took place as far back as September, 1811, in the vicinity of Mokha, where it was of public notoriety, and that although since the beginning of 1811, no news whatever had been heard of him at Cairo, yet nobody thought proper to write to Mokha, for further enquiry, and as late as July 1815, nothing was known here of his fate. I then received a letter from Mokha, giving some details of the death of Mr. Seetzen, which I forwarded immediately to Vienna, accompanying it with a letter of my own to Mr. Hammer, which he, without being authorized to it, abridged and published, together with the other paper.
An Italian physician of the name of Cervelli, now established as a merchant at Alexandria, made four years ago some interesting travels in the North of Africa; he was attached to the son of Yousef Pasha of Tripoli, in the capacity of physician, and his patron being sent by his father to reduce Fezzan, the chief of which had been dilatory in the payment of the tribute, Cervelli accompanied the Pasha’s son upon that expedition; they first went from Tripoli by land to Derne, near to which Mr. Cervelli saw the splendid ruins of Cyrene, at least what he supposed to be the remains of that town; they went from Derne to Augila, and from thence to Fezzan, where they remained about six weeks, and then returned over a chain of mountains, where he found snow, (for it was in winter,) by Sokhne to Tripoli.
He heard of two English travellers having been at Fezzan, of whom one died, and the other was never heard of after his departure for Soudan; the name of Hornemann was unknown to Mr. Cervelli. This gentleman, although not a man of letters, possesses natural talents, and a good deal of vivacity and good nature; he told me that he took many notes, that he has not yet drawn up a journal, but that he has some intention of publishing his travels: I never could get him to shew me any of his papers, but I know that he possesses some, together with a few sketches of drawings; as his time is now totally occupied by commercial pursuits, I doubt, whether he will ever have leisure to work up his journal, and therefore, being well persuaded of the interest which his tour would excite, I have done my best to get possession of his papers, and offered him a thousand piastres for them, under the formal promise that if ever they should be published, it should be under his own name. Since his departure for Alexandria, I have charged Mr. Thurburn, formerly secretary to Colonel Missett, and now a partner in the house of Briggs and Co. a gentleman of much information, to renew the negociation with Mr. Cervelli. He has lately informed me, that Mr. Cervelli refuses to part with his papers; but has promised to employ his evenings in arranging them, as he wishes to publish them himself.
I feel the greatest regret, in being obliged to inform you, in closing this letter, that I have no well founded hopes of being able to leave Egypt before next spring. It would be tedious to enter into all the disappointments I have experienced, by the non-arrival of the western caravan. If the Committee believes that I am not a trifler in my duty, they will not doubt that nothing but imperious circumstances could so long detain me at Cairo. If, on the contrary, my prolonged stay in this city should give rise to any doubts of the sincerity of my intentions, I feel that nothing that I could say on the subject could possibly remove them.
Cairo, 20th February, 1817.