Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 Part 40

Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 Part 40

His Excellency thus to the Targhee:--"You always thought there was a great mountain separating you from us, protecting you from our armies.

You besides always boasted of having an army of 100,000 warriors. But the other day there came to you a bee, and buzzed about your ears, and you all at once fled before the little bee. How is this? Where are your 100,000 unconquerable heroes?"

The Targhee thus to the Bashaw:--"Ah, ah, how amazing! it was just so."

_H. E._--"But are you not ashamed of yourselves?"

_The Targhee._--"Ah, ah, but we shall now go and fight them."

_H. E._--"Well, we shall see your courage."

The Bashaw explained to us, how the Touaricks of Aheer were put to flight by the Weled Suleiman, whom he the Bashaw, and his master at Tripoli, only esteemed as so many troublesome little bees. This was the affair of the capture of the 1000 camels, when the Touaricks were carrying off the spoils of a Tibboo village, before mentioned. These Weled Suleiman have just joined the rest of the refugees under the son of Abd-El-Geleel. The Bashaw is the famous Moorish commander who captured and beheaded Abd-El-Geleel, and who has sworn to extirpate not only the family of this Sheikh, but all the tribes subjected to his son. The Bashaw received the appointment of Bey or Bashaw of Fezzan, for his hatred to this family, and his services in capturing and destroying its chief. Belazee is a fresh-coloured Moor, and rather good-looking, with a dark, piercing, and cruel eye. He is about forty years of age and very stout. Of his courage there can be no question, and his reputation as a military man is very great in all this part of Sahara. Mr. Gagliuffi had instructed me diplomatically to boast of the attentions which I had received from the Touaricks, for observed the Consul, "If you say the Touaricks did not treat you well in every respect, the Bashaw will commiserate you before your face, but laugh at you behind your back, and tell his people how happy he is (and I'm sure he will be happy) you have been well fleeced by the Touaricks, of whom the Turks here are jealous in the extreme." Mr.

Gagliuffi also volunteered a diplomatic hit of another kind on his own account: "My friend, your Excellency, on entering the gates of Mourzuk, and looking up at the Castle, thought he was entering a town of the dead, it looked so horribly dingy and desolate." I said to the Consul afterwards, "Why did you say so?" He replied, "I am trying my utmost to improve the city, and want the Bashaw to whitewash the Castle. He has promised me he will do it." The Bashaw addressed me, "Think yourself lucky you have escaped, but for the future you must be placed in the hands of the Touaricks by us as a sacred deposit, and then if anything wrong happens we shall demand you of all the Touaricks by force." I thanked him for the compliment; I believe he meant what he said at the time. But such an insulting message could not be delivered to the brave, chivalric, and freeborn sons of the Touarghee deserts; they would trample your letter under their feet, or spear it with their spears.

Mr. Gagliuffi and myself then went to see the troops exercised. The commanding officer is trying to reduce them to order and discipline, and succeeds admirably. Before he arrived, great disorder reigned amongst them, and they were constantly found intoxicated in the streets. After the manuvring, we visited the commander and his staff, who were all extremely polite. The Bashaw does not interfere with the discipline of the army. The Turks can well distinguish, if they please, between civil and military affairs. And it is wrong to consider the Turkish Government and people, like Prussia and other military nations of the north, as one great military camp. We afterwards visited the Kady, Haj Mohammed Ben Abd-Deen, an intimate friend of the Consul. He had under his care the Denham and Clapperton caravan, and is well acquainted with us English. I was surprised to find the Kady quite black, although his features were not altogether Negro. Mr. Gagliuffi says Mourzuk is the first Negro country. This statement, however, involves a very difficult question.

Fezzan, Ghat, and other oases, contain many families of free Negroes, some perhaps settled formerly as merchants, and others the descendants of freed slaves. I do not think the real black population begins until we reach the Tibboos, although Ghatroun is mostly inhabited by Negroes.

Certainly, the Negroes have never emigrated farther north in colonies.

Mr. Gagliuffi has just received by the courier from Tripoli, several watches sent there for repair, belonging to the Sheikh of Bornou. They were given to the Sheikh by our Bornou expedition, twenty years ago. It is pleasing to see with what care the watches have been preserved in Central Africa, for they looked as good as new.

_26th._--I must now consider myself recovered from indisposition. At first, people talked so much about Mourzuk fever that I thought I must have it as a matter of course, and felt some disappointment at its not attacking me. Three-fourths of the Europeans who come here invariably have the fever. I speak of the Turks. It attacks them princ.i.p.ally in the beginning of the hot, and cold, weather, or in May and November. Fortunately, I am here in February. Mourzuk is emphatically called, like many places of Africa, _Blad Elhemah_--????? ??????--"country of fever."

Amongst the Christian and European curiosities and antiquities which I have discovered in this Mussulman and Saharan city, is the following poetical sc.r.a.p, published by myself, some four or five years ago, upon that beautiful rock of Malta, or, according to the Maltese, _Fior del Mondo_, "The flower of the world."

SONNET.

"Hail, verdant groves! where joy's extatic power Once gave the sultry noon a charm divine, Excelling all that Phbus or the Nine Have told in glowing verse!--Youth's radiant hour Yet beams upon my soul,--while memory true Retraces all the past, and brings to view The magic pleasures which these groves have known, When Hope and Love, and Life itself, were new, Delights which touch the SOUL OF TASTE alone, Taught by the many and reserved for few!

O! busy _Memory_, thou hast touched a chord Recalling images, beloved,--adored,-- While Fancy keen still wields her knife and fork, O'er roasted turkey and a chine of pork!"

CLEMENTINA.

I found it flying about in one of Mr. Gagliuffi's old lumber rooms, and, being such a precious gem, I must needs reproduce it upon the page of my travels. Who is the author, and how I came by it, I cannot now tell. I only know it once adorned the columns of the "Malta Times," at a period which now seems to me an age ago.

There was a wedding to-day, and the bride was carried on the back of the camel, attended with the high honour of the frequent discharge of musketry. In order that I might likewise partake of these honours, the Arab cavaliers stopped before the Consul's house, and several times discharged their matchlocks. It was a gay, busy, bustling scene. The cavaliers afterwards proceeded to the Castle, and discharged their matchlocks, standing up on the shovel-stirrups, and firing them off at full gallop. But these cavaliers are nothing comparable to the crack hors.e.m.e.n of Morocco. Their horses are in a miserable condition, and they themselves ride badly. The horse does not do well in the Saharan oases.

In Fezzan he is often obliged to be fed on dates, which are both heating and relaxing to the animal. Meanwhile the discharge of musketry was rattling about the city, the lady sat with the most exemplary patience on the camel (covered up, of course), in a sort of triumphal car. A troop of females were at the heels of the animal loo-looing. The ceremony stirred up the phlegm of the Turks, and delighted the Arabs.

In the evening I visited one of the gardens in the suburbs. The corn was in the ear on this, the 26th day of February. In a fortnight more they will cease their irrigation, and it will be reaped quickly afterwards. We gathered some young green peas. The flax plant is here cultivated; the fibres and dried leaves are burnt, and the seed is eaten; no other use is made of it. Two crops of everything are obtained in the year, one now, in the spring, and the other in autumn. The irrigation by which all this cultivation is produced, rain rarely ever falling, cannot be carried on during the intense and absorbing heats of summer. A couple of a.s.ses and a couple of men, or a man and a boy, do all the business of irrigation.

Fezzan water is brackish generally, and the wells are about fifteen of twenty feet deep. These are in the form of great holes or pits. The more distant suburbs present beautiful forests of palms, producing a fine reviving effect upon an eye like mine, long saddened by the ungrateful aspect of a dreary desert. The atmosphere and ambient air is less pleasing to view, presenting always a light dirty red hue, as if encharged with the fine sand rising from the surface. The soil of the Fezzan oases is indeed mostly arenose, and the dates are nearly all impregnated with fine particles of sand, which takes place when they are ripe, and very much lowers their value. But this sandy soil does not sufficiently account for the eternal dirty vermilion hue of the atmosphere of Mourzuk. They say its site is very low, in the shallow of a plain, and to this cause they attribute its fever.

_27th._--Health quite restored, and got up early. There are two or three round holes in the window-shutters of my bed-room; by the a.s.sistance of these, when the shutters are closed, in the way of a camera oscura, all the objects pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing in the streets are most sharply and artistically drawn on the opposite wall. Here beautifully delineated I see the camels pa.s.s slowly along,--the ostriches picking and billing about, which are the scavengers of the street, instead of the pigs at Washington, (see d.i.c.kens,) and the dogs of Constantinople, (see all the tourists,)--the women fetching water,--the lounging soldiers limping by with their black thick shoes pulled on as slippers,--the slaves squatting in circles, playing in the dirt,--groups of merchants, black, yellow, and brown, bargaining and wrangling,--a.s.ses laden with wood,--the coffee-maker carrying about cups of coffee, &c., &c. Wrote letters for to-morrow's post, and very disagreeable to me, as announcing my tour broken up midway.

_28th._--Post-day. The courier leaves every Sat.u.r.day, but it requires nearly forty days to get the answer of a letter from Tripoli. The courier is eighteen days _en route_. A caravan occupies from twenty-four to thirty days. In the route of Sockna there is water nearly every day, but one or two places, the longest s.p.a.ce three and a half, and four days. The Commander visited me again this morning, as also the Greek doctor, who calls every morning. The Major now came in. He is a young Circa.s.sian; by birth a Christian, but kidnapped and sold to the Turks. He is a very amiable young man, and deeply regrets that he was not brought up a Christian. It is high time this infamous practice of selling the Christians of the East to the Turks, was put a stop to. It is to be hoped that Russia will atone for the wrongs which she has inflicted upon Poland, and offer some compensation for the blood which she is still shedding in Circa.s.sia, by abolishing this odious system of Christian slavery through all south-eastern Europe, as in western Asia.

Notwithstanding our hatred to Russia's system, and its iron-souled Grand Council, we Englishmen (I presume to speak for all), are willing and happy to do justice to Russia in the efforts which she made, and the aid she rendered the Servians, in emanc.i.p.ating them from the galling yoke of Mussulman bigotry and Turkish tyranny[110]. Nicholas has a n.o.ble and mighty mission before him, not to subjugate Turkey, or infringe upon the liberties of Europe, but to civilize his vast empire, and the wild countries of Northern Asia. But the Czar does not seem to understand his destiny--or the task, more probably, is beyond his power. It must be left to his successor, or happier times. This Circa.s.sian tells me he has not had the fever in Mourzuk. He thinks the city healthier than formerly, and attributes the fever to people's eating dates, and their bad living.

Dates are not only the princ.i.p.al growth of the Fezzan oases, but the main subsistence of their inhabitants. All live on dates; men, women and children, horses, a.s.ses and camels, and sheep, fowls and dogs.

Mr. Gagliuffi gives the following statistics of the slave-traffic _via_ Mourzuk from Bornou and Soudan:--

In 1843 2,200 In 1844 1,200 In 1845 1,100 ----- Total, 4,500

The two last years shows a diminution, and he thinks the trade to be on the decline. But this evidently arises from the Bornouese caravan being intercepted, or the traffic interrupted by the fugitive Arabs on the route. There has been no large caravan from Bornou for three years. And Mr. Gagliuffi considers the route at the present, so unsafe, as positively to refuse countenancing my going up to Bornou this spring.

However, a couple of small slave-caravans have ventured stealthily down twice a year, conducted by Tibboos. The princ.i.p.al Tripoline slave-dealers who frequent Mourzuk are from Bengazi and Egypt. Slaves are besides brought occasionally from Wadai; and there is a biennial caravan from Wadai to Bengazi direct, leading to the coast a thousand and more slaves at once. Our Consul is frequently employed in administering medicine to the poor slaves, who arrive at Mourzuk from the interior, with their health broken down, and often at death's door. He makes frequent cures, but, alas! it is for the benefit of the ferocious Tibboo slave-dealer.


The Consul naturally laments he cannot buy these miserable slaves, who, in this state of disease, are often offered at the market for five or six dollars each. He has no funds at his disposal, or he would procure them by some means, cure them, and give them their liberty.

This evening I called upon a Moor, an ancient renegade of the name of Yousef, who was well acquainted with all our countrymen of the Bornou expedition. His arm was set, after being broken, by Dr. Oudney, which he still exhibits as an old reminiscence of the doctor. Yousef has lately given great disgust to his good neighbours, by purchasing a new concubine slave, to whom he introduced us, notwithstanding that he has his house full of women and children. This sufficiently proves that Mohammedans discountenance the unbridled licence of filling their houses with women.

One of his old female slaves, by whom Yousef has had several children, said to Mr. Gagliuffi, "I won't speak to you any more, Consul. Don't come more to this house. Why did you give my master money to buy a new slave?"

The Consul protested he did not. Old Yousef laughed, and drily observed:--"When this (pointing to the new slave), is in the family way, I must purchase another wife. If I can't keep my wives myself, I must beg of my neighbours to contribute a portion of the necessary expense." Old Yousef is a thorough-going scamp of a Moor.

_1st March._--Occupied in writing down the stations of the Bornou route from the mouth of one of the Sheikh's couriers. There are now two of these couriers in Mourzuk, natives of Bornou. The Sheikh corresponds with Belazee as well as with Mr. Gagliuffi. Bornouese couriers travel in pairs, lest a single one should fail if sent alone. They are mounted on camels, and it requires them forty days to make the traverse from Mourzuk to Bornou. I tired the courier pretty well with dictating to me the route. It is extremely difficult to get an African to sit down quietly and attentively an hour, and give you information. If ever so well paid, they show the greatest impatience. Afterwards paid a visit to the young Circa.s.sian officer. He related to me how he was captured. It was in the broad day, when he was quite a child, playing by a little brook, and picking up stones to throw in the water. The officer says, that in his dreams, he often sees the silvery bubbles and rings of the water rising after he had thrown the pebble into the brook; and, especially, does he see the ever-flown visions of his green and flowery pastimes of childhood, whilst he is out on duty in the open and thirsty desert, lying dozing under an intense sun, darting its beams of fire on his head. The kidnapper took him to Constantinople. His brother came up after to rescue him. But the master, to whom he was sold, terrified him, by threatening, if he should show the least wish to return, to cut him to pieces. The barbarous threat had its desired effect, and he submitted to his fate.

This Circa.s.sian officer has still a hankering after Christians, and in his heart is no good Mussulman. He tries to adopt as much as possible Christian manners, and boasts of having all things like them. Such forced renegades deserve our most sincere sympathies.

Evening--Mr. Gagliuffi and myself dined with the Greek doctor. It was a carnival day with the doctor, and he prepared a befitting entertainment.

An Albanian Greek dined with us, who had been brought up from Tripoli by Abd-El-Geleel, to make gunpowder for the Arab prince. When the Turks captured Mourzuk they found here the Albanian. He has nearly lost his sight, and is now charitably supported by the Doctor. We were waited upon by the Doctor's servant, an Ionian Greek, and the Maltese servant of the Consul, and so mustered six Christians, a large number for the interior of Africa. The dinner was magnificently sumptuous for this part of Africa. We had a whole lamb roasted. After dinner, its shoulder bones were clean sc.r.a.ped and held up to the light by the Doctor, in order to catch a glimpse of the dark future! This is an ancient superst.i.tion of the Greeks. Besides several Turkish dishes, (for the Doctor lives half Turk, half Christian,) we had salmon and Sardinians. This was the first piece of fish I had seen or eaten for seven months. It was remarked when the large caravan from Bornou comes, expected in this summer, it will certainly bring dried fish from the Lake Tschad. In Central Africa, they dry fish, as meat, without salt, and it keeps well. We had bottled stout, table wines, Malaga, rosatas, and rum. We were all of course very happy, and the Albanian sang several of his wild mountain songs. He was very merry, and, swore he was obliged to keep himself merry, because, not like other people, he had an affair which rankled in his breast. We asked him what it was. The Albanian answered, greatly excited, both with his wine and his subject, "A man killed my brother, and I have not yet been able to kill him. The vengeance of my brother's blood torments me night and day. I pray G.o.d to return to my country to kill the murderer." This Albanian is an enthusiastic Greek, and wishes and prays to see his countrymen plant again the Cross on the dome of St. Sophia. "But many of you have turned Turk," I remarked. "Yes," observed the Albanian, "many of my countrymen have turned Turk, and I, who am less than the least of them all, I have not committed this folly. I can't comprehend how they could so trample on the name of their Saviour." In short, I found the Albanian possessed of all the fire, bigotry, ferocity and vindictiveness, for which his countrymen are so celebrated. I encouraged him, and said, "The Greek kingdom ought to have its bounds a little widened." The Greek jumped up wildly at this remark, and clenching my hand, began screaming one of his patriotic airs, and cursing the Turks, so that we became all at once a seditious dinner-party, under the shade of the pale Crescent.

Had we been in Paris, that pinnacle of liberty and civilization, we should all immediately have been conveyed off, without finishing our dessert and the wine which made us such patriot Greeks, to the sobering apartment of the Conciergerie. Happily we were in The Desert, under the rule of barbarians. Coletti was mentioned, but I forget what was said of him. In Jerbah, a Greek merchant protested to me, that the only way to regenerate Greece was to cut off the head of this Coletti, as well as all the present chiefs of parties. He observed "Another generation alone can regenerate Greece." The merchant added, "I should like also to hang up that Monsieur Piscatory."

It does seem a pity that diplomacy should be reduced to the most detestable intrigues, lying and duplicity, which if any other cla.s.s of men were guilty of, they would be put out of the pale of society. But mankind would care little about these archpriests of falsehood, were it not for the serious consequences resulting from their works. Look at the state of Greece now, the handicraft of diplomatists! Such is the result of the good and friendly offices rendered to an infant state by these sons of the Father of Lies!

At this time there are some nine hundred Albanians in Tripoli, regular troops of the Porte, whose only occupation is lounging, lying and smoking about the streets. There were sixty or seventy Christians amongst them, but for some reason or other unexplained, the Bashaw sent them all back.

The report is, the Sultan does not know what to do with these Albanians, and has sent them to Africa to decimate them. The ma.s.sacreing Janissary days are past, and we have arrived at an age of the more humane policy of letting them die of fever on the burning plains of Africa. Perhaps France has recommended the Porte this policy, having found it answer so well in the experiment made on malcontent regiments in Algeria. How very humane all our European Governments are getting! How kindly they treat their poor troops! Who would not be a soldier, and fight the battles of "glorious war?" But we must return to our host, who is a very different kind of Greek. Doctors are always pacific men. The Doctor observed laconically, "I eat the bread of the Turks, and whilst I do so I must be, and I am a good Ottoman subject." Mr. Gagliuffi speaks Greek and Turkish besides Arabic and Italian, and so he is at home with all these people.

It is happy for the Consul he does, for after all, Mourzuk is but a miserable dirty place, and would kill with ennui, if fever were wanting, some score of English Vice-Consuls.

_2nd._--The Consul received a visit from the Adjutant-Major, Agha Suleman. The Doctor came in and was very merry with the Adjutant, who is always trying to get himself reported sick, in order that he may return to Tripoli. The Adjutant observed to me, whilst he drew himself up, made a wry face, and heaved a deep sigh, as if his last, to persuade the Doctor he was greatly suffering, "I would not go to Bornou if you were to give me 100,000 dollars." But why should he? With what sort of feeling could he go there? The spirit of discovery, which once stirred up the Arabian savans to explore Nigritia, is now totally extinct both in Arabs and Turks. I learnt some items of the pay of Officials in Mourzuk. The Bashaw has 5,000 mahboubs per annum. The Adjutant-Major has 30 dollars per mensem; the Doctor 25 dollars; and so on of the rest, the commanding officer having perhaps 50 dollars per mensem. This amount of pay is considered sufficient for expenses at Mourzuk. The officers have quarters with the Bashaw in the Castle. Mr. Gagliuffi related a characteristic anecdote of the ignorance prevailing amongst the Arabs as gross as that of Negroes. Mohammed Circus (or the Circa.s.sian) was a few years ago Bashaw of Bengazi whilst Mr. G. visited that place. The Bashaw was buying something of an Arab, and gave him but a third of its real value. Mr. G.

took upon himself to say, "Why do you injure this poor man by giving him but a third of the value of his goods?" "Oh!" rejoined the Bashaw, "that is not a man, he is only a dog. Let me call him back and you shall see what he is." Immediately the Bashaw called the man back and asked him, "Who was the better, G.o.d or Mahomet?" The Arab bluntly answered, smiling with conceit, "Why do you ask me such a thing? What harm do I receive from Mahomet or what harm do others receive from our prophet? But G.o.d kills one man with a sword, hangs another, drowns another. All the evil of the world is from G.o.d, but Mahomet does nothing except good for us."

This poor ignorant fellow was filled with ideas of irresistible fate.

Some Arabs and Moors ascribe only the good things to G.o.d, whilst others all things, the evil and the good. When this anecdote was being ended, a Moor came in, and being in a disputing humour, I asked him abruptly,--

"What is truth?"

"The Koran."

"Who told you the Koran is truth?"

"Mahomet."

"And who told Mahomet?"

"G.o.d."

"How do you know this?"

"Mahomet says so."

"What did Mahomet do to make you credit his word?"

"Plenty of things."

"What things?"

"Killed the infidels, sent us the camel into Africa, planted for us the date-palm, and worked many wonders."

"Is that all?"