Travels in the footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis

by Sir R. Lambert Playfair

These blacks live within a town enclosed with high mud walls; they are very numerous, but so afraid of fire-arms and horsemen that any surprised without the city are easily taken. There is here a large plantation of dates, and the Arabs of Bengazi, the Jowassi, and Aid Jelleed, who go to buy dates at Ougela, often undertake this journey, which they perform in seven days, carrying water on camels, and make slaves of all the blacks they can surprise without the walls, whom they sell to the Turks to carry to the Levant. After this they encamp near the water among the palm trees, and there wait the ripening of the dates, which they likewise gather without payment, and so return with their booty. These blacks are dressed in sheep or goat skins, and have for arms, bows and arrows—the bow made of wild fennel, the arrows made of the branch of the date tree, about five feet in length, including the head, which is nine inches.

I found at Bengazi a ship bound to Tripoli in Syria. It was out of my way, but it was absolutely necessary to send a part of my baggage, for which I had not occasion, to some place of future rendezvous, safe from such accidents as were to be expected every day in Bengazi.

I had formerly sent my books and most of my arms, and many other articles to Smyrna, and wrote to Mr. Murray, then our Ambassador at Constantinople, to send my firman of the Porte thither; from thence my correspondent was to forward it by another opportunity to Alexandria.

We are obliged in these countries to make use of the first ways that present, however round-about they are, or we might linger long for direct opportunities. I sent a reflector, with some other instruments, and proposed to go myself from Ptolometa to Grenneh, thence to Derna, through the desert of Libya to Alexandria, and the caravan of pilgrims from Morocco would probably have joined me at the latter part of the road.

Ptolometa is placed by the Itinerary forty-six miles from Bengazi, but is in fact Tochara. It is at the point of the mountains which, having run nearly north-west and south-east, now run north-east and south-west. They are of a moderate height, covered to the top with shrubs, chiefly of a plant called jiddāry, a species of thorn.

Tochara is entirely ruined, and is close upon the shore, partly destroyed by the sea, and appears to have had no port; not a piece of marble nor ornament of sculpture or architecture to be found.[290] The earth is reddish clay and very fertile. From hence we continued our way chiefly by the seaside to Ptolometa.[291]

The plain is about two miles broad, the soil the same, covered with a species of whitethorn, but nearer Ptolometa it is gravel. Ptolometa occupies the whole valley, which there is not more than a mile broad, the breadth of the town from south-east to north-west not so much. It seems to have been an oblong square; on the north-east angle is the port, which must have been small, defended by a small island, and much encroached upon by the sea.

The city, though small, seems to have contained a quantity of magnificent public buildings, but the whole is thrown down, and the ornamental parts, except many Corinthian capitals, which lie dispersed about, carried away and applied to the building of two modern castles, one a fort, probably for the defence of the port, the other larger, a little above it. There remain, besides the building here described, only three columns on foot, all of the Doric order, one in front a [true] column, the rest square in the flanks, probably intended as an angular one to a wall which surrounded the portico of the court of the Temple. The other two are about 200 yards higher up, nearer the foot of the mountain.

Near the centre of the city is the fabric delineated[292]; it seems to have been the portico of a temple, but the rest of it is so entirely ruined that no positive account or plan can be given of it. The front is to the mountains; before it was a large court with a colonnade, paved with stones as in causeways, and afterwards covered with rude mosaics. Under these are large cisterns for the reception of rain water. There are likewise wells by the seaside, but a little brackish.

These columns will probably not stand long, two being already undermined by the Arabs in search for lead, which they imagine to bind the joints of the columns. The same search made them, while we were yet there, throw down the small fragments of architrave and cornice yet remaining, and ruin one of the capitals, so that we left the three naked columns standing without any part of the entablature upon them.