I cannot close my notes of the Cyrenaica without adding that I spent there (occasional annoyances excepted) some most pleasant months; I came to the country an invalid, and was exceedingly unwell when I started for Grennah; but its pure air and lovely scenery restored me to perfect health. For those who seek summer quarters in the Mediterranean, I again repeat to them my former advice, to choose the pleasant solitudes of Cyrene in preference to the Syrian hills, where so much sickness and mortality prevail. I have been many times in the Lebanon, and the rich beauty of Damascus has greater charms for me than that of any city I have seen; but, still, I have never been there without witnessing or feeling the effects of the pestilential air, which, every autumn, produces fatal fevers and dysenteries. Even in quitting its shores the evil spirit seems to pursue its victims; and I have seen more than one friend seized with the deadly Syrian fever weeks after he had reached a healthier climate.
CHAPTER XIII.
Benghazi to Augila. — Corn Stores. — Cachettes. — Ruins near El-Farsy. — Remarkable Fortress. — Horrors of the Slave Trade. — England should forbid it. — Herds of Gazelles. — Bruce. — Rĕsam. — Oasis of Augila.
November 4th.—After many pour parlers with a caravan of Majabra (inhabitants of Jalo), who had come to Benghazi to sell their dates, and after making one or two false starts, I at length got under weigh for Augila. I was desirous of taking with me some hawks, as the country I was to pass through for the first days of the journey was represented to be full of game; and the trained hawks of this place are said to be the best in Africa; but I was unable to purchase any. Some of my friends assured me that I should find no difficulty in obtaining the birds from the Arabs; but I eventually found that my informants were mistaken. Both in Benghazi and in its neighbourhood, I often met horsemen with a hawk, either perched on the right hand or seated on the crupper of the horse; but I never found any one willing to part with this favourite companion. Yet there are seasons of the year when they are to be had at a small price; in spring, many young hawks are brought to the market, and the proprietors of trained birds will then willingly dispose of theirs, at a price for which they can buy a dozen young ones, whose education they find both amusing and profitable.
Stopping to rearrange the luggage half a dozen times while the town was still in sight, our progress the first day was very slow, and we pitched the tents for the night at a distance of about eight miles from Benghazi, having traversed a country unmarked by any feature but the shapeless ruins of what may once have been an extensive villa, or a very small village. The next day, we reached, in three hours, extensive ruins, called by the Arabs Idirsa, which cover much ground, but nowhere offer extensive débris, nor even a plan of any large building. The sea, though still in sight, lay considerably to the right. Avoiding the promontory of Bozium, and the site of the old Jewish colony (which presents nothing remarkable), I followed the road which runs through the middle of the wide plain lying between the hills which I crossed in going to Cyrene, and the sea, which here trends gradually to the west. Two hours further on, we came to a place, Ourm Sofah, marked by very deep wells hewn in the rock, beside which was a pool formed by the recent rains. At this moment, the country is dotted far and near with such sheets of water, formed wherever a clay bottom, or a depression in the rocks, presents a surface favourable for the collection of the rain. Herds of cattle render these pools muddy and uninviting to the eye; but when they have just been formed, there is probably no risk in drinking their water. For greater precaution, however, as well as to accustom my servants to the trouble, I had the water boiled before we drank it; this process, of course, gave it an unpalatable flatness, but it is thought necessary, in order to avoid the risk of fevers, so often caused by drinking stagnant water. During this day’s journey and the two succeeding ones, we saw in every direction groups of Arab tents, inhabited by people from Benghazi, who had come to sow the extensive plain we were passing through. The soil is a rich loam, yielding, without any sort of tilling, abundant harvests of wheat and barley. It seems probable that, if a moderate amount of labour were expended in the husbandry of this country, its ample crops would vie with those of Egypt or Sicily. As it is, nature is left to herself; when the winter is rainy, the crops are very large, but if the rains are scanty, the harvest fails. In autumn, after the first rains, the seed is scattered broadcast on the ground, and over this a light plough of wood, shod with iron, is drawn, turning up, or rather scratching, the ground, to a depth of about two inches. By this process the seed is covered. The husbandman returns to Benghazi, and no other care is bestowed upon the crop until the sower returns in spring to reap it. The land is open to the first comer, the Government receiving a tenth of the produce as rent; but this rent is very arbitrarily fixed, and thereby ample room is given to the ingenuity of the Turkish employés. The result is that the taxation is often most exorbitant, as I have mentioned in a former page. This year the early rains gave an impulse to speculation. About one-third of the Benghazini were now squatting on the plain; every animal—horse, ass, ox, cow, or camel—that could be made to drag the light ploughshare having been laid under contribution. The prices of these animals had, consequently, increased greatly in the market. If the winter proved as rainy as it threatened, sundry little fortunes would no doubt be made. Many of the Europeans and wealthier Arabs, who do not themselves go to the country, employ a man to sow seed for them, they providing the seed and cattle; the man receives half the profit, besides 160 piastres—about thirty shillings—for sowing and reaping.
Eight hours from Ourm Sofah are the ruins of a large castle of the same character and epoch as those of Benigdun, called Tell-i-mout. The walls are, in the lower part, formed by four courses of large masonry; and above, to an equal, or rather greater height (probably a later construction), they are built of small stones. There remain two sides of an oblong rectangle, with a square tower at the north-east corner, whose entrance is by a well-turned arch from the interior. The large stones of the lower courses are literally covered with Tawarick characters—most probably merely indicating the passage by them of the Arab tribes, which use one or other of these signs as their distinctive marks; but the number, size, and regularity of these characters in this place are truly astonishing. During the remainder of this day’s journey the character of the country remained unchanged, and nothing marked our course except a solitary marābut, Sidi Keilani, on the right, three hours and a half from Tell-i-mout; from hence proceeding as far again, we reached the first Bedawin tents we had seen since we left Benghazi, pitched in a place called Keif-i-djil. Here there are large stores of grain, formed on the same principle as the cachettes or silos of the Algerian tribes, which resemble the grain stores at Leghorn. A conical hole, dug in the ground, is lined with straw, and after being filled with grain, is thatched over with straw and mud. The people assured me that neither ants nor vermin ever attack these stores, and at Leghorn I have heard it asserted that in the similar receptacles there, built of stone and plastered, the grain can be preserved good for fifty years. Two hours further on are ponds and a well, in a place called Sa’aity. Here the ground is covered with large fragments of stone, and seemed a favourite resort of scorpions, which the Arabs, who were with me, amused themselves in hunting. They brought me one of a greenish yellow colour, fully five inches long. The gerboas also abound in this place; they are about the size of a rat, and one sees them towards evening in great numbers, jumping along like the kangaroo, their long, elegant tail, tipped with white, trailing on the ground; the plain is riddled with their holes, which makes quick riding very unsafe.
At Sa’aity I remained half a day, while the camel-drivers bought food for their beasts from some grain stores on a slight hill above the well. These Majabra were in many respects the worst people I had yet had to deal with; the only good quality I discovered in them was the rapidity with which they loaded in the morning. The time gained in this way, however, was lost in another; their object in such quick loading being merely to get off, and to leave as much of their load as they could behind them. The consequence of this was, that as much as two camels could conveniently carry, fell to the share of the last-loaded camels, over and above their fair allowance. On such occasions I had to make the whole caravan return, which cost quick riding and loud words; and then at length each received his fair proportion of the articles that had been left. Day after day the same scene was renewed, until I at last resorted to the expedient of having my carpet spread for breakfast on the road they were to take—a scheme which, united with constant watchfulness, I found tolerably successful. They have another accomplishment, hardly less agreeable to the traveller who is at their mercy. They must have learned, that if eloquence be silver, silence is gold; and therefore they show themselves most unwilling to afford the smallest particle of information, silencing questions with a prolonged nasal grunt, which seems to play the same part in their conversation as the “So-o-o!” of the Germans. On the journey they sing their unmelodious chaunts nearly all day long, one relieving the other; their song being at rare intervals interrupted by an occasional admonition to a camel to make a little more way. They never swear at their beasts, however, as European, and especially Italian, postilions are in the habit of doing; the ear is not, therefore, shocked with the obscene blasphemies which are so offensive on a journey in the Roman or Neapolitan States. Here the driver apostrophises his camel with one invariable expression of abuse, which seems quite as efficacious as a volley of oaths—“Oh, you Jew!” and the camel mends its pace. It is true that this is usually accompanied with an admonition from a full-grown stick, which may perhaps have some effect in quickening its step; but I am persuaded, nevertheless, that the insult to its feelings has more to do in rousing it to exertion, than the application of the bâton to its hide. The food of the Majabra is basina, like that of the Barca Arabs, a mess prepared with flour, water, and salt, kneaded into a tough paste, then boiled, and eaten with a little oil or butter; it is a tough, and must be a most indigestible composition. They eat enormous quantities of it, re-kneading it with the fingers of the right hand into large balls, and dipping in oil, so as to enable them to bolt it; to see them devour it is one among the most wonderful things in this country.
There are wells, for which I could obtain no name, ten hours from Sa’aity. After this, the country becomes somewhat less level than it has hitherto been, swelling in slight hills, the soil more stony and sandy, less capable of producing grain, and covered with low, thorny, and fleshy-leaved shrubs. Five and a half hours further on, are wells, called El Farsy. These, like the preceding ones, are pierced in the rock, and to obtain the water from them, it is necessary for some one to be lowered into the well, as the water does not lie immediately under the upper orifice. There is a large chamber hollowed in the rock, in one corner of which the well is sunk; I did not descend into it, and it was not till I was far past it, that one of the men told me there were inscriptions on its sides. This is as likely to be false as true, as I have twenty times gone, on the strength of Arab information, to look for inscriptions in places where nothing of the sort was to be seen; but this would have been no reason for neglecting to examine this well-chamber, had I known of it in time. It was now too late in the evening to return that day, and the next I was not inclined for an expedition whose result was so uncertain, while I had before me the more promising ruins of El-Ajdabiah.
These old Saracenic ruins are four hours and a half from El Farsy; they present groups of buildings situated on two low hills, about a quarter of a mile apart. The centre of the intervening space is a flat bare rock, in which several wells are pierced. The first group which the traveller, coming from Benghazi, meets, contains the remains of a castle of excellent architecture, which cannot be later than the third century of the Hejirah. It is a rectangular structure, terminating in three vaulted chambers, the extremity of the centre one of which has an octagonal niche, on which the plaster still remains. This end is flanked by round, dome-covered towers, whose sides are perforated with loopholes for arrows; but neither within nor without, neither above nor below, could I discover ornament or inscription. Failing here, I now turned to the opposite group of ruins, the débris of a very large mosque, in which I had no doubt that I should find something to reward me for having chosen this route rather than the shorter one, which, from Sa’aity, takes more to the eastward. The mosque is in even a more ruinous condition than the castle, but is of equally good construction; in one corner are still standing about fifteen feet of the light-sided minaret; towards the other, three light and lofty arches, and beyond them the Kibleh niche, or minbar. Round its arch may be traced remains of a zigzag ornament, and on the capital of one of the two pillars which support it, I persuaded myself that I could trace the first three letters of the profession of faith. Believing implicitly the accounts I had somewhere read of the ornamental inscriptions of Ajdabiah, I had bargained with my camel-men to stay here two or three days if I required it, in order to examine them; but no exertion of eyesight or imagination could enable me to discover more than these three letters, if they were really such; for, after all, they might have been mere accidental scratches in the stone. Whatever may have been the case when the buildings were less ruinous, I can safely affirm that there is in no part of them now a trace of an inscription in any character, excepting those Arab marks to which I have already several times alluded. I was greatly disappointed; and as soon as the water-skins were filled (an operation which was protracted during four hours), I saw the caravan depart. I took myself a S.S.W. direction, though with little hope of any satisfactory result; and rode to Henayah, a distance of about seven miles.