CHAPTER XXXIII.
BRUCE’S ROUTE TO DJERBA, TRIPOLI, AND BACK TO TUNIS.
After some weeks’ excursion of no moment about Tunis, I again set out the eastern circuit by Gemme, or Tisdrus, towards Gabbs or Tacapæ, and continued along that coast till opposite the island of Gerba.
It is situated about half a mile from the land; it is the Meninx Insula, or island of the Lotophagi, and is a sandy island with several small villages, producing a few dates which are not good; labouring under a great scarcity of water; even that which it has is but indifferent. It has a small castle, not capable of any defence, subject to the Bey of Tunis.
Dr. Shaw says the fruit he calls the lotus is very common all along that coast. I wish he had said what was this lotus; to say it is the fruit most common along that coast is no description, for there is no sort of fruit whatever, no bush, no tree, nor verdure of any kind excepting the short grass that borders these countries before you enter the moving sands of the desert. Dr. Shaw never was at Gerba, and had taken this particular from some unfaithful storyteller.[279]
In this island there is a very considerable manufacture of woollen shawls; the generality of these are coarse and cheap, for common use, but there are others where the best wool is employed, and these are of great price and fineness.
They are all sent to Alexandria to be dyed, then returned, and are the head-dress of the soldiery of the State of Tunis, and indeed of most other people, unless those who profess law or religion, who wear them white, and not dyed.
This wool, though employed here in Gerba exclusively, is not the produce of the island itself. In the mainland, immediately south of the island, the very numerous clans of noble Arabs, the Wargummah and Noile inhabit, and pay only a nominal obedience to the Bey, passing the frontiers as their occasions require. They have factors in the island entirely at their devotion, and to them they send the wool, which is dressed, woven, dyed and accounted for to the proprietors through the hands of these factors.
Here we found that the Bey of Tunis had prepared a house for us, and sent from his own palace every sort of refreshment that he could devise, with orders to receive us with every possible honour, and furnish us with what we required at his expense. Here I stayed a month with an intention to proceed to Tripoli through the desert, making fair copies of my minutes[280] and designs, and having sent back to Tunis two of my spahis who had been wounded, and one that was afraid to go further.
I sent a letter to Mr. Fraser, the consul at Tripoli, desiring an escort, as I was now reduced to nine men in all, seven of whom, though indeed resolute people and well armed, were encumbered with the mules and camels which carried our tents and provisions; the other two were an English servant, and a renegado, my dragoman, who, with myself, were the only three mounted on horses and at liberty.