October 1.—I returned to Ain-esh-Shehad nearly by the same route which I had followed in coming to Derna, and there I spent ten days in revisiting some of the most beautiful spots in its neighbourhood, and in the enjoyment of the pure light air of its hills. I had left a part of my baggage in the charge of one of the Arabs of the place; and though the eatables must have been tempting, I had not to complain of any great indiscretion in his visits to my sacks. Though my neighbours were fanatical, I had, on the whole, no reason to be dissatisfied with them; with the exception of the Marābut and his pupils, they gave me very little trouble, and their thefts were confined to articles of trifling value. I had got rid of my friend Mohammed at Derna, with the servants, children, and horses which he had quartered upon me, so that there was no longer a daily fair held round my tents; and thus the last days I spent at Grennah were among the most agreeable of my residence there.
The advancing autumn, the threatening clouds which now overshadowed the sky, and the increasing cold of the nights, warned me not to prolong my stay; and with regret I tore myself from a place where I had spent two quiet months so pleasantly, and, as far as health at least was concerned, so profitably. I find among my notes of these last days mention made of a curious bargain, which was struck in my presence; it was the sale of half a mare. The price of the entire animal was fixed at a certain sum, half of which was paid down by the purchaser, who took possession of the mare, which he was bound to keep in good condition. The foals were to be joint property, and the original proprietor could at any time have the use of the mare, or, by repaying the purchase-money, again become her sole proprietor. This is a common transaction; and as a fourth, or even a smaller fraction of a mare may be thus sold, some have many masters, and serious quarrels often arise from such joint possession.
It was not without many a long look that I rode away from the fountain towards the western gate of the town and the street of Tombs, which I have described as the old road to Barca. I was now on my return to Benghazi, not by the road I had taken in July, but with the intention, after visiting Nurdj, of following the coast by Dolmeita and Tokra.
CHAPTER X.
Convent Agriculture. — A Roman Stronghold. — Splendid Olive Groves. — Water runs short. — The Mirage. — Dine with the Governor. — The Site of Ancient Barca. — Quit the plain of Merdj.
October 10th.—The old road, with its deep-worn ruts, from time to time reappears among the underwood, and its course is marked for a great distance from the city by groups of broken sarcophagi and excavated tombs. In four hours and a half, pursuing a W.S.W. direction, we reached a beautiful hilly country, with fine old caroub trees and numerous ruins. Here is the chief Zavia, or convent of the Senoosy Marābuts, called Sidi Rafa’a; it is still in course of erection, and is a stately building for the country. The neighbouring ruins supply the materials for the building; and, by good luck, I arrived while the extensive foundations of a very large temple, which they were digging up to employ in building the convent chapel, were still traceable. The masonry of the substructures, consisting of passages or underground chambers, was formed of very large stones, squared and cemented with remarkably white lime. The lintel of a doorway, of very good chiselling, and a part of a fluted pilaster, were all I could discover of the architecture. Its situation, in respect of its distance from Cyrene, and the extent of its ruins, leave no doubt in my mind that here was the site of Balaerai and its great Temple of Æsculapius. Its position on the summit of a slight elevation is lovely; the remains of many other buildings, some of them not insignificant, cover the ground all around. I should have expected to find a fountain of medicinal waters near a Temple of Æsculapius (no trace of which is to be found here), yet none such is mentioned by old writers, nor could I hear of any place in this direction, or elsewhere at a similar distance from Cyrene, where such waters exist.
On either side, the country here exhibited signs of more laborious agriculture than I had yet seen in any other part; the underwood had been in great part cleared away, and the fields were black with ashes of burned weeds and brushwood, spread over the ground as manure, preparatory to sowing. The secret of this unwonted industry is the possession of the country by a religious order who, here as elsewhere, spare no effort to turn the property which they have acquired (partly by purchase, but more largely by donations) to good account. In this way they may exercise here the same beneficial influence over husbandry which, during the middle ages, the religious orders exerted in Europe; they are also active in giving a sort of Bible-Society education (instruction in reading the Koran) to the children in the neighbourhood of their dwellings. Unfortunately, however, it is only in these points that they emulate the Christian institution to which I have compared them; for with the elements of learning they instil into the youthful minds of their pupils feelings of hatred and contempt for the professors of every creed which differs from their own—a creed very alien from the practice of Christian charity.
Two hours further on is a fountain with ruins around it, and on a hill opposite many tombs. The place is called Belandsh, and its waters fertilise some gardens which are cultivated by Arabs, who live in the numerous excavations of the neighbourhood. When I left Derna the grape season was long over; in Grennah, on my return, not a cluster remained on the few vines grown by the Bedawin: here, I bought white grapes, with which the trellises were loaded, and which were not yet ripe. Herodotus speaks of the three climates of the Cyrenaica, in consequence of which the harvest is carried on during eight months of the year; and it was interesting to meet with this practical confirmation of his remark.
From Belandsh the road runs for many hours through a country thickly strewed with shapeless ruins and sarcophagi, the hill-sides being almost everywhere burrowed by excavations. Just before reaching a spring called Maten Ma’as, two hours from the last, is a ruined castle, to which the people of the neighbourhood have given the name of Kasr Djemal. It seems to have been originally a Roman stronghold, added to or repaired in Saracenic times. Riding in a N.W. direction from this place, along an ancient road, I reached in an hour and ten minutes (horse-pace), a fine old castle on a hill to the left. On a square base of rock, formed by an excavated ditch fourteen feet wide, rises a square tower, which, with the exception of one vaulted chamber, still entire, is filled with fallen rubbish. In addition to the ditch, very extensive outworks, which are still to be traced on all sides, formed its defences: it is now called Sirt Nawara. That it must have been a place of some importance may be conjectured, not only from its position, but also from the many tombs in its neighbourhood, and the carefully-chiselled decorations of many of their façades. I here found that I had missed the road, which takes a turn more to the south, and, consequently, had to ride back to Maten Ma’as, and thence over a range of low hills, which afforded little shade, and were very hot, being screened, by a higher range to the north, from the sea-breezes. This road, however, led, after two hours’ travelling, to a succession of the most beautiful scenes I ever beheld, even in this beautiful country. A steep ravine forms the descent from the high ground which we had now reached, surrounded on either side by lofty rocks, in some places perpendicular, while in others they slant sufficiently to allow an accumulation of mould on their slope. Down this the path winds over fallen rocks, among venerable olive trees and gigantic cypresses, which grow up among the débris in the bottom of the valleys, while the receding hills are thickly covered with junipers and olives. This valley, if cultivated, might produce annually an almost unlimited quantity of oil: it took me nearly three hours to ride through it. The trees are probably self-planted, and, doubtless, the descendants of those which supplied the old Cyrenian commerce with the oil for which it was so famous: they were covered with an abundance of fruit. No care is bestowed upon them; many are rather immense bushes than trees, and their valuable produce serves only as food for the goats, which eat the fruit greedily as it falls. In the hands of a speculator possessing capital, an enormous profit might no doubt be obtained in the course of three or four years, by the cultivation of these trees; all they require is pruning, and to have the earth collected round their roots, in order to give a splendid harvest. The trees are not the wild olive species, though their fruit is small. Not even in Italy have I seen a country apparently so well adapted to the cultivation of the olive; but the uncertainty of tenure of property, the deplorable weakness of the Government, and the untamed savageness of the Arabs of the neighbourhood, would certainly render the speculation a hazardous one.