Whilst I was in Augila two marriages took place, one of them that of the Sheikh (only his thirteenth) with the daughter of my friend Yunes. She was old and a widow; the only attraction I could discover seemed to be the relation in which their respective fathers had stood to each other, of which I have already spoken. The festivities were commenced, some evenings before the marriage, with the loud shrill cries of women, accompanied by occasional musket shots. On inquiry, I was told that all the female friends of the bridegroom were assembled in his house, each bringing her mill to help in grinding wheat to make bread for the marriage feast. The usual quantity ground is from six to eight hundredweight, but sometimes, if the Sheikh might be believed, as much as eighty hundredweight is consumed on such occasions. This bread is partly sent to the houses of the principal people, like our old-fashioned wedding-cake, and partly eaten at the feast, which consists chiefly of dates and large supplies of lagby.
The evening before the wedding, the young men and boys of the village assembled with all the donkeys which they could procure, and, loading them with fine sand from the hill where I was encamped, brought it to the bridal house, and strewed it in the rooms. In the intervals between the departure and return of the donkeys, the boys who remained danced to the sound of their own voices and the beating of a drum; this drum is made of a circle of wood about the size of a tambourine, on each side of which a gazelle-skin is stretched; it is beaten with a knotted rope. The first marriage was that of a young girl, a relation of Othman’s, but as she belonged to the town, there was nothing remarkable in the bridal procession: it was, as usual, accompanied by the Zaghaghit and firing of guns. The arrival of the Sheikh’s bride with a cortège, including all the men in the place, but none of her own relations, was a much more solemn affair. She was carried in state in a closely-veiled carmout, covered with white cotton hangings, round which an old red silk scarf was tied; a man on horseback preceded her, carrying a white flag. When the cortège arrived in sight of the town, several halts were made, during which there were rude dancing, firing of muskets, and evolutions of the three or four horsemen whom the place furnished. While the lady was thus being brought in procession to her new home, the gallant bridegroom was quietly seated in my tent looking on, and it was not until the cortège entered the town that he betook himself to his house.
Here, when the camel knelt at the door, before the howdah containing its precious burthen was removed from its back, a sheep’s throat was cut over its right knee, in manner of sacrifice. The Sheikh, after many ineffectual hints which I would not understand, at last boldly begged of me a sash woven with gold which he had one day see me wear; this he wished to form part of the corbeil, and in letting him have it I took the opportunity of inspecting the ornaments destined for the bride. They consisted of two pairs of broad silver bands to be worn as bracelets, weighing respectively ten and fourteen ounces, and a pair of very curious silver earrings of Tunis make. They were in shape like the young moon, two inches and a half in diameter, two-thirds of the circumference being covered with filigree bosses, from which five pear-shaped filigree pendents hung, each earring weighing 160 grammes. I felt a great curiosity to see the cartilage capable of supporting such a weight. The marriage feast was diversified by dancing to the sound of the drum, and a curious double clarionet, formed of the leg bones of the eagle or vulture, which discoursed sweet music in the tone of a very broken-winded bagpipe. The dancing, like that of the Egyptian Alnach (in whom youth, good looks, and sex hardly excuse the peculiar style), was here performed by a hideous man, and was utterly disgusting. When the bride had entered the house, the festivities were terminated by a discharge of fire-arms, and the company retired, to meet again the next evening, and to renew the eating and dancing.
It is no uncommon thing to find men in these countries who have married twenty or thirty times, the sum given for a wife rarely exceeding six or eight dollars. When tired of a spouse, or if she do not prove fruitful, a divorce follows as a matter of course, and the lady does not suffer in general estimation; having borne children seems to be no protection against the caprice of the men. This licence is utterly opposed to Turkish habits, for divorce is more disreputable to a man among the Osmanli than with us, but the assertors of the rights of women in Europe would find this régime very congenial to their theories, for a woman can always force her husband to a divorce, even without laying her slipper at the Cadi’s feet.
CHAPTER XVI.
Vexatious delay. — Lose the track. — Short commons in the Desert. — Genuine Arab hospitality. — En route for Siwah. — Sand valleys. — Scene of desolation. — Signs of volcanic action. — Approach Siwah. — Sepulchral caves. — Arrive at Siwah.
January 13.—My messenger returned several days ago from Benghazi; and Sheikh Othman had a fortnight before assured me that the camels were ready to start with me at a moment’s warning; and then again, after several days’ delay, had promised them for this morning, but I saw nothing of them. At length, on Saturday morning, Othman, accompanied by several other persons, came to see the baggage tied up and weighed—a long operation, which I hastened as much as I could, being anxious to get away from a place of which I was heartily tired. Where were the camels all this time? They were at the other end of the town, and would be brought up immediately; but as soon as all seemed in order for starting, my friend Othman went off, saying, that we should start with the dawn next morning. I was completely in his power, and had nothing for it but to take patience, and the more so, since I now found that the camel owners—with whom I had only communicated through my trusty friend, and to whom he, in his anxiety to serve me, had promised an exorbitant hire on my part—were, in fact, himself and one of his friends. I consoled myself with the idea of taking it out of him by suppressing the backshish I had intended to give him; but this was poor consolation for the previous days thus lost.
Sunday, Jan. 16.—The sun had been up for more than three hours before the camels came, and then there were only six instead of nine. These I had loaded and dispatched by a little after midday, having been promised that the others should be sent to me in half an hour. Hour after hour went by, and I sat fretting among the remains of my baggage; at length the day wearing on, I determined to follow the camels which had already started, leaving a servant to come on with the rest as soon as they arrived. I had found out from the people of the place, that the men with whom the original bargain was made had been sent away, as the Sheikh, finding he could make so profitable an investment, had determined to supply the greater number of camels himself; he had not, however, yet purchased them all—and hence the delay.
Half an hour before sunset, no camels appearing, I mounted my horse and rode off alone, to seek for my caravan, and—what I was beginning to feel a great want of—my dinner. The road was over gravelly sand, and as long as daylight lasted it was easy enough to follow the tracks of the camels; but as night closed in, and the sky became overcast with fleecy clouds, which obscured the moon and stars, the track gradually grew invisible, and I could only guess at the right path; so keeping my horse’s head as straight as possible, I rode on. There was no appearance of fire in any direction, and after four hours I found myself among palm-trees, which I recognised as those of Jalo. It would have been folly to attempt to return to find the road I had deviated from, in the darkness, and it was too late to ask for hospitality in Jalo; I, therefore, tied my horse to a tree, and lay down supperless and hungry under a palm-bush near him. I was soon asleep; but, tormented with thirst, I dreamed of the gurgling streams of Damascus, and the water-sellers in the streets of Cairo, with their leaf-crowned jars of cool water. Their cry, “God’s fountain for the thirsty,” awoke me, and the first sound I heard was the rumbling of water in a vase. “Oh, man,” I cried, “bring water.” There was no answer, as my voice fell echoless in the still night, and I turned again to sleep, thinking I had dreamed; but in another moment I again heard the sound, and this time I was sure I was awake. I sat up and listened; presently the noise was repeated, and then I heard the pawing of my horse, and felt the branches of the bush I was lying under shaken. I rose, and found that my horse, thirsty as his master, and more sagacious than he, had nosed out a vase of lagby among the branches; the booming noise which had awoke me being caused by his ineffectual attempts to get his head into a jar which had an orifice of about an inch. My thirst in the meantime had increased with my dream, and setting aside all sense of the impropriety of theft. I took a draught of the cool palm-juice, which, for the first time, seemed to me a pleasant beverage, and again lay down, after replacing the jar and tying my horse in a position to prevent his repeating his vain addresses to the bottle.