The modern costume of the Benghazini is simple, but not ungraceful, and, like that of all countries which have not yet adopted the tight-fitting fashions of Europe, is admirably adapted to the climate. The red cap (tarboush or takyeh), with which a cotton skull-cap (ma’raka) is generally worn, without the turban. The under-garment consists of blue or white cotton drawers (serwàl), generally reaching to the ankles, and rather tight from the knee, exactly like those which one sees on the Roman statues of barbarian prisoners; a shirt, with wide sleeves (sourieh), and a waistcoat without sleeves (fermleh), or with sleeves (reboun), but this is not always worn. A long, narrow, woollen sash (hhezàm) is wound several times round the body, and the whole is covered by the barracan (jerd), the simplest and most graceful, as it probably was the earliest, article of dress ever invented. It is of white or gray, sometimes of red wool, heavy or light, according to the season; very like the Scotch plaid, though rather longer, but differently worn. One corner is looped to the edge, about a yard and a half from the end; the right arm and head are passed through the aperture thus formed, the loop resting on the left shoulder; the long end is next passed under the left elbow, and is then thrown across the right arm and shoulder. This is the usual way of wearing it in the town; but in the country, or where exposed to the sun, a part of the breadth is passed over the head, and the end is brought over the left shoulder in front. Thus worn, it is exactly the costume of the antique statue of the sacrificator, which one sees in many museums. The apparent cleanliness of this costume, entirely white in summer, and its graceful folds, render it one of the most elegant I have ever seen. These barracans are, for the most part, the manufacture of Jerbel, in the regency of Tunis, and the finer have stripes of silk interwoven in the breadth. Socks or stockings (to complete my fashions of Benghazi) are seldom seen; the yellow under-shoe (mest) more frequently. There are three kinds of slippers worn: the red Egyptian (markoub); a yellow slipper, with no heel, and a red shoe, which leaves the instep quite uncovered, both called sebàt.
The barracan forms, also, the principal dress of the women; but they wear it in a different way, making a petticoat of it, and a bag behind, in which they carry their children, or any other impedimenta they may have; and they bring it in such a way over the face as to form a very effectual veil. I have seen none on whom this dress sat gracefully, and all seem frightfully dirty. Some of the children whom one sees rolling naked in the sand of the street would, if washed, be pretty, but the filth in which they are reared soon destroys all vestige of good looks. Both women and children wear immense hoop ear-rings, three and four inches in diameter, and sometimes four or five in each ear, inserted one above the other in the cartilage. The silver bracelets and anklets which complete their adornment are sometimes of great weight. A Jewess in Benghazi wears a pair of anklets which weigh five pounds.
The flies form a remarkable feature, which must not be omitted in describing Benghazi. None of the plagues of Egypt could exceed them, and they often during the day render writing, or any occupation which does not leave one hand free for the fan, utterly impossible. They exist in myriads; hence, the Turks call Benghazi the fly kingdom; and the flies by their pertinacity and voracity evidently show that this is their own opinion. Nothing but continual fanning can keep them off; even the musquitoe-net being unavailing against plagues which creep as well as fly. When very thirsty they draw blood, even through one’s stockings, their bite resembling the sharp pricking of a leech; and wafers left upon a table entirely disappear under their attacks in a very short time. In the evening, if disturbed on the curtains, they rise in hundreds, making a rushing noise like pheasants when a well-stocked cover is beaten. In addition to the plague of flies, the shrill trumpet of musquitoes keeps one constantly on the qui vive, but their bite is not venomous like that of the musquitoes of Syria, Egypt, or even Italy; and it is rather the association of ideas which renders them harassing, than any actual injury they inflict. Other insects, though not unknown, are seldom seen, or with a little care may be entirely avoided. The first day I was in Benghazi my servant killed a tarantula, a hideous, rough-backed, flat-headed lizard, in the room I was put up in; but I have not seen a second. Nor have I met with any scorpions, though they are sometimes found; their bite is hardly to be called venomous. So insensible is the Arab epidermis to pain, that a native hardly takes the trouble to apply even a little butter or honey to the wound.
Scarcely any trades, beyond those of the most necessary description, are exercised at Benghazi. The French Consul, during my stay there, was unable to have a pane of glass put into a window; the Tunisian who formerly performed such feats having allowed himself to die. The glass was there, but no one could cut it to the size of the window. There are Jews here, into whose hands most of the less laborious trades have fallen, as is usual in all countries, especially in the East. They can sew a covering for your divan, or make up the cushions; they will repair, in a certain fashion, any article of silver or gold, or make you a saddle-cloth, or a sabre belt. They are ready to turn their hands to anything; but after showing themselves serviceable as may be, ask prices equal to about ten times what would be demanded in Bond Street. A few days before starting for the interior, I wished to have some balls cast, and I soon saw the same Jews at work who a few days before had come to repair a silver nargilih, which had passed through an Arab servant’s hands. They worked in the court of my house; the casting of balls being a highly prohibited operation. I was amused at the way in which they set to work. Two commenced, but before the end of the performance a third came to their aid, and then two more, apparently to lighten the labour by the charms of their conversation. My Jews sat down opposite to each other, and scraped a hole in the ground between them. In this they placed some lead, and covered it with charcoal, which they soon blew into a bright heat by means of a pair of bellows made of an entire goat’s skin, one end of which was fitted with a nozzle, while the edges of the other extremity were sewed to two flat sticks, so as to open or close by the pressure of the hand. The lead was now melted, and to extract it from its primitive crucible a little bit of tin, which was lying on the ground, the lining of an old packing-case, was slipped and fashioned into something like the bowl of a ladle, and this, held by a pair of pincers, was all the apparatus required. It was highly simple, but the quantity of wood and charcoal consumed was enormous, and it took nearly five hours to cast little more than a hundred balls. It must be confessed, in favour of the Jews, that if their filth and ignorance equal those of their brethren in all these countries, they are not behind them in industry. They are the only hard workers in the place: other tradesmen, whether Moslem or Maltese, seeming utterly indifferent to obtaining custom. I required a framework for a divan, and the Maltese carpenter whom I had sent for, after keeping me two days waiting, send word on the Monday that he would come next week. I therefore found a couple of Jews, who knocked together a very creditable divan in two hours. One of the community, who by a series of most ingenious manœuvres has contrived to obtain English protection, and is now broker to the Vice-Consulate, was hardly ever out of my house during my stay in Benghazi. His voice was generally the first I heard in full exercise about sunrise, and from time to time during the entire day, his tongue seemed never to tire of discharging bad Arabic and worse Italian. Such cleverness, such industry, never were employed for smaller ends, for his profits must be inconsiderable. He knows, I believe, every article in every house in the town, as well as if he had taken an inventory of their contents, and when he pronounces some longed-for object unattainable, it is certain that neither money, diplomacy, nor address have been able to discover its existence.
There is nothing to be said of the domestic habits of the Moslem inhabitants. Their life is less luxurious, their feasts are less frequent and less gay than those of richer places; they have few or no amusements, and there is no bath in the town, excepting in the castle, where there is one capable of containing a single person. I have nowhere seen Moslemin so dirty in person.
CHAPTER II.
Preparations for Departure from Benghazi. — Leave Benghazi. — Arab Horses. — Ruins of Kasa Tawileh. — Labiar. — What an Arab is. — Mode of Travelling. — Retinue. — Silphium. — Tombs. — Cyrene.
I was detained in Benghazi much longer than I could have wished by the non-arrival of a vessel containing a part of my luggage, and by the beginning of Ramadhan, during which time it is next to impossible to travel.
Servants who are fasting all day cannot be expected to be much inclined for exertion, and as at night they sit up to gossip, or to sing, waiting till it is time to take the last meal before the dawn, it is hopeless in a tent to look for sleep. I made up my mind, therefore, to wait till this month was over, and gave orders for a start on the morrow of the Bairam. This, however, happened to be Wednesday, and my guide represented to me that Wednesday is the most unlucky of days to start on a journey, and the argument was too sound for me to think of opposing it. Thursday afternoon was, therefore, fixed on, but so little notion have the Arabs of punctuality, and so little are Arab servants of use in preparing for a journey, that everything had to be done by my European servant, and it was Saturday morning before I left the town. An Arab merchant, who was frequently in the habit of visiting me, gave me, however, some consolation for the delay, by explaining that the seventh is the luckiest day in the month, and as Saturday was the seventh, I had only gained by the change of day. This is, perhaps, the place to describe my equipment for the journey, and my companions. I bought two wretched horses for myself and servant, hired a quick stepping camel to carry a light tent, carpets, and other articles required during the day (which was ridden by a young Arab servant, who acts as coffee-maker and pipe-filler), and other camels for carrying the rest of the baggage, including a larger tent, crowbars and pickaxes for excavations, with water-skins and barley for six days for the horses. My guide, an immense man, one Mohammed El Adouly, provided his own horse, rather a showy white mare, and one of the best I had seen in the country; mounted upon this, and enveloped in his white barracan, new yellow and red shoes on his feet, which rested in the broad shovel-shaped brass stirrups; his long gun slung over his shoulders, with a blunderbuss at his saddle bow; a pair of pistols slung under the left arm, and a Koran and a white bundle of talismans under the right—he presented a very majestic figure, and evidently thought so himself. He was recommended to me as an indispensable guide for such a journey, as he is well known to all the Bedawin in the country, and his last wife was from the neighbourhood of Grennah; he had accompanied M. de Bourville and one or two English Vice-Consuls in their excursions through this country. I am, in general, averse to taking into my service such necessary personages, as they invariably endeavour to become the masters; but as the written information concerning the places I was to visit is very scanty, and no trust can be placed in the oral communication of the natives, I submitted to the infliction. I was determined, however, to have my own way, in which I succeeded very well, retrenching myself in my English coldness, while listening to his reasons why I should not do as I proposed, and then simply repeating the order; this being somewhat the Turkish fashion, he soon understood my method, and for some time obeyed my orders without opposition. In addition to Mohammed and the pipe-boy, I had with me a tall thin man, who fancied himself a cook, and an inexpressibly dirty fellow who was to groom the horses, and also make himself generally useful. The breed of horses in the Pentapolitan is sadly degenerated from its renown in former times; they are small and ill made, with no appearance of Arab blood; but there are a few in the interior which have great powers of endurance. My servant’s horse, of the Dongola breed, which had been reduced to a skeleton by a thirty-five days’ journey, during which his only food was what he could pick up on the road, promises to turn out a better horse than is usually met with in the country; he delights me by the very knowing look, which he owes to his ears being slit at the top—a sign that he was foaled at night.