Alas! it is even so. While I write, the proud Caucasian, despite his boasted superiority of intellect, despite the whiteness of his skin, may be found by hundreds in the unknown interior, wretchedly toiling, the slave not only of thy oppressors, but the slave of thy slaves!
Let us lift that curtain which shrouds thy great Saara, and look upon some pictures that should teach the son of Shem, while despising his brothers Ham and Japhet, that he is not master of the world.
Dread is that shore between Susa and Senegal, on the western edge of Africa—by mariners most dreaded of any other in the world. The very thought of it causes the sailor to shiver with affright. And no wonder; on that inhospitable seaboard thousands of his fellows have found a watery grave; and thousands of others a doom far more deplorable than death!
There are two great deserts: one of land, the other of water—the Saara and the Atlantic—their contiguity extending through ten degrees of the earth’s latitude—an enormous distance. Nothing separates them, save a line existing only in the imagination. The dreary and dangerous wilderness of water kisses the wilderness of sand—not less dreary or dangerous to those whose misfortune it may be to become castaways on this dreaded shore.
Alas! it has been the misfortune of many—not hundreds, but thousands. Hundreds of ships, rather than hundreds of men, have suffered wreck and ruin between Susa and Senegal. Perhaps were we to include Roman, Phoenician, and Carthaginian, we might say thousands of ships also.
More noted, however, have been the disasters of modern times, during what may be termed the epoch of modern navigation. Within the period of the last three centuries, sailors of almost every maritime nation—at least all whose errand has led them along the eastern edge of the Atlantic—have had reason to regret approximation to those shores, known in ship parlance as the Barbary coast; but which, with a slight alteration in the orthography, might be appropriately styled “Barbarian.”
A chapter might be written in explanation of this peculiarity of expression—a chapter which would comprise many parts of two sciences, both but little understood—ethnology and meteorology.
Of the former we may have a good deal to tell before the ending of this narrative. Of the latter it must suffice to say: that the frequent wrecks occurring on the Barbary coast, or, more properly on that of the Saara south of it, are the result of an Atlantic current setting eastwards against that shore.
The cause of this current is simple enough, though it requires explanation: since it seems to contradict not only the theory of the “trade” winds, but of the centrifugal inclination attributed to the waters of the ocean.