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.

Henayah is a strong fortress of very early architecture, and by far the most curious construction I had met with in these countries. The squared mass of rock, on which the keep is built, is not higher than the surrounding ground; but it is isolated by a dry moat, fourteen feet wide, and nine deep, cut in the living rock. On the square mass, eighty feet on every side, left in the centre, rose the walls of the keep, of which only a few feet in height now remain. It is approached by means of a wall, hardly fifteen inches broad, which is built across the moat on one side. This wall was, perhaps, once the support of a moveable bridge. The interior of the rock’s base is entirely excavated, forming a centre chamber, now open to the sky, and entered by a flight of steps; round this chamber are cut a number of vaults, communicating with it, and having small openings, to admit light and air, pierced in the sides. This is, however, only the smallest part of the old stronghold, its size being greatly increased by extensive caves, to the number of twenty-eight, cut in the rock, beyond the moat, into which they all open. In no part of these laborious excavations could I discover any inscription, or any evidence of their origin; but, judging from the beautiful execution of the whole—from the form of the lamp niches which are cut in several of the vaults, as well as from the general style, resembling what is found in some of the Greek isles—I have no hesitation in ascribing it to a date coeval with the best monuments in Cyrene.

The water of its wells, being the last sweet water to be met with before reaching Augila, pointed it out as a natural resting-place for the caravans which brought gold, gems, slaves, and ivory, from the interior to Cyrene. I cannot, therefore, doubt, that it must have served as a fortress, and, not improbably, also as a magazine for the caravans trading with the interior and with Carthage. El Ajdabiah replaced it in the Saracenic epoch; and so little have things changed in the long lapse of years, that the wells of the latter place, though its castles and mosques have fallen, are still the favourite halt of the caravans passing between Benghazi and Augila.

The commerce is now insignificant; Augila and Jalo have only dates to send in exchange for corn and the few manufactured articles which the rude life of these people requires. At uncertain and long intervals, however, when the great caravan from Waday arrives, life is given to the commerce of Benghazi. Then the old picture of Cyrenean commerce is for a short time renewed. The desert, for weeks, is alive with long files of camels, which arrive, laden with ivory and gum; and with them, alas! as in old times, hundreds of unhappy creatures—the spoil of war—condemned to slavery, who come halting in, at the end of this first hundred days’ stage of their misery. How many, happier than their fellows, have dropped exhausted on the dreary road! Twenty-one degrees they traverse on foot, exposed to the rays of a tropical sun, when, for twelve days at a time, no water is found; without clothing, and having a handful of meal for their daily food. Fatigue and thirst in vain lessen the numbers of the melancholy caravan; the number of “heads” brought to the market diminish, but the profit of the traffic is still enormous, being more lucrative than that of ivory, which, from Waday, yields at least 500 per cent. I have heard natives describe the appearance of one of these caravans on its arrival, and the sufferings of the slaves, with a simplicity of language, and a reckless thoughtlessness, most heart-rending. And to think that a single word from England could arrest these horrors! In treaties and conventions we have spurned all the old established laws of international right, in our desire to put down the slave trade in the colonies of independent sovereigns; but it would seem as though we dared not put a veto upon a branch of it ten times more cruel than was the slave trade on the Atlantic before we declared it piracy. It may be answered, that we may indeed force Turkey to abolish the slave trade in words, but that we cannot ensure the performance of her promises; that we can send no men-of-war into the deserts to enforce our humane decrees; that slavery is bound up with Islam; and that society in the East is, in fact, founded upon the godless institution. Many will also say (and this I do not deny), that when at length the slaves are brought into the Turkish dominions, they become comparatively happy, are well clothed, well fed, and well cared for; and that, if torn from their country, they are removed from its idolatries and ignorance; and that the first care of a Moslem (in this respect infinitely superior to the more polished savages of the slave-holding States in America) is, to teach his slave a religion which assures him that all men, of all colours, are alike the children of one God, and equal in His eyes. All this is true; but it in no degree lessens the horror of the traffic in human flesh, or the privations to which its victims are exposed.

Whoever knows Turkey, knows that its many provinces are only held together by the shadow of a name, and that a stroke of the diplomatic pen will suffice to sever any part from the remainder. Syria, Egypt, even fanatic Tripoli, would hail with joy a Christian—that is, a European—master. Wherever they rule the Turks are hated, and their subjects are kept in subjection by a superstitious veneration for the old power, which has long departed—as the genii waited in awe round the throne of Solomon, not perceiving that the master spirit had forsaken its tenement of clay. You have paid twenty millions to liberate your slaves in the colonies; and God knows what vast treasures—how many lives of Englishmen—have been sacrificed to stop this trade on the western coasts of Africa! Be consistent still; and if you will not take possession of the lands of Egypt and Tripoli (by whose frontiers the slaves for the whole empire are imported), let your commands go forth to him who is now but the shadow of the shadow of God upon earth. He dare not disobey them if he would. You will be following, in favour of humanity, an example proposed to you in every page of Turkish history—the strong extorting submission from the weak. Increase, if necessary, the number of your functionaries, create an _imperium in imperio_, to watch the execution of your orders; trample, in the cause of freedom, upon every diplomatic form—forms, alas! are all that remain of diplomacy—and extend to the Mediterranean the treaties which you have applied to the Atlantic.[6]

This evening, six of my camels, which had been turned out to feed on the scanty herbage which dotted the plain, wandered away. They were not to be found at their supper-time; so their owners went off in quest of them. The next morning, they had not yet returned; and it seemed a fortunate chance alone which enabled us to start at last about twelve o’clock. They had gone on their way to Augila, probably not a little pleased to have left all their packages behind them; and were met by a caravan of Arabs, coming in the opposite direction, who, understanding the case—no unfrequent one in places where the herbage is scanty—turned their heads backwards. The soil had now become sandy and stony, unfit for cultivation, but covered with dwarf shrubs of three or four varieties, though all having one general character—woody, gnarled stems, and fleshy leaves. The first rains are in the desert immediately succeeded by spring; hence these plants were all green and in full flower; some of them were very beautiful on close inspection; but the pale yellow and pink colours of their blossoms, notwithstanding their abundance, had little effect in tinging the general landscape.

During the two days, after passing El Ajdabiah, we saw immense herds of gazelles; but they were too shy to give one a chance of getting within shot of them; and there was too little cover to stalk them. The greyhound which I had with me was young, and far too frightened to do more than run after them for a short distance; when she thought she was getting dangerously near, she would stop, and look round. There is a race of greyhounds peculiar to this country, generally of a pale fawn colour, with very short hair, and limbs almost as fine as those of the Italian pet greyhound. They are very swift, and, when well trained, will run down a gazelle. They are, however, not often to be met with for sale, the best being in the hands of the Zowaya Arabs, who inhabit El Ijherri, a small oasis to the north-east of Jalo. In winter and spring, they pitch their tents round El Ajdabiah (it was, indeed, a party of them who had so opportunely met our camels), and, in summer, turn southwards to gather the dates in El Kofrah, a range of uninhabited oases, of which the last is marked in our maps as Kebabo. The plain, south of Benghazi, up to the desert which we were approaching, affords excellent sport; abounding in hares, the red-legged partridge, the kattah, or sand grouse with yellowish plumage, quails, and, occasionally, the bustard. There is, besides these, a ground lark, existing in great numbers, which is as large as a quail, and forms no unwelcome addition to a traveller’s fare, in the absence of larger game. I should be ungrateful, were I to omit adding to this list of good things the juicy mushroom, which seemed, for several days, to spring up under our feet, begging to be gathered for supper.

Fourteen hours from El Ajdabiah, we came to the boundary of vegetation; a very long range of low sand hills, rising one above another in almost imperceptible gradations. The sand is of a pale yellow colour, and in some places forms almost an impalpable powder, but in others it is mixed with gravel of finely-rounded, variegated pebbles, such as would be invaluable for the walks of a garden. The Arab name for these hills is El-Towaleh, and they are well called so, for they seem long without end, the gradual rise of the range never affording a view of a mile in any direction. It took nearly thirteen hours to cross this range—the thirteen longest hours I remember; for, until the last two were reached, there was no interruption to the constant up and down, through featureless sand; nor was it possible to tell whether one had reached the summit or not. At length, large masses of petrified wood, scattered over the surface, afforded something to look at. In many places, the surface of the sand is blistered with an incrustation of salt, looking as if frozen. Low, flat ledges of white limestone rise above the general line; and semi-transparent crystals of gypsum are scattered over the sand. A few trees appeared in a hollow, and we had at last reached رسم Rĕsam.

The waters of Rĕsam, mentioned by Bruce, are of a milky colour, and salt, though hardly more so than those of most of the wells which I met with afterwards in the desert; I thought them pleasant enough to drink when cold; but they acquire a peculiarly bitter taste when boiled. Bruce, from forgetfulness, has confounded Rĕsam with the promontory marked as Ros Sam[7] in our maps—a name, by the way, unknown to the natives of the country—and the aluminous water, which he places here, is, in fact, that of a well rather further on; which well I reached the next day in six hours, at Marag, or Marak. The water at Rĕsam rises in great abundance to within a few feet from the surface; and the slight hollow in which it lies, partaking entirely of the nature of an oasis, is diversified by palms and large tamarisks. As a desert scene, it is at once highly characteristic. The slight mounds which collect round the tamarisks, and out of which they grow, break the uniformity of the surface, while their pale, feathery foliage affords a pleasant shade, and the few stately palm trees rise gracefully against the clear blue sky.

Two miles S.S.W. of Rĕsam is a Saracenic ruin, of the same date as El Ajdabiah, called Sheikh Es-saby, evidently a stronghold. A square court, surrounded by four arches, which may once have supported a cupola (though I could see no remains of this), is supposed by the Arabs to contain the tomb of the Sheikh; and, when I was there, a _carmut_, the cradle sort of conveyance in which ladies and children are housed on the camel’s back, was in the saint’s keeping. This custom of leaving furniture, and even provisions, in the keeping of a reputed saint—that is to say, of depositing them on his tomb—to be taken again at the return of the owners with the caravan, is very common; and travellers in several parts of Africa have mentioned it. I have never heard of such deposits being stolen.

We did not stop at Marag; but I tasted the water, which was quite clear and cool, and had a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen. I did not drink of it sufficiently to test the assertion of the Arabs, who boast of its purgative qualities; but, from its taste and smell, I should suspect that it contains sulphate of magnesia. The bottle, in which I had brought away a specimen of it for analysis, was broken on the journey. At several points near the well, the stratified rock rises in isolated masses from the sand; their weather-beaten sides, with the slabs which have fallen, and lie scattered round their base, have, at a slight distance, the appearance of ruins. A few stunted trees in the midst rendered the whole a melancholy scene.

The next morning the sun rose in a thick mist, like a November fog in England. Its pale white orb could be gazed at without wincing; below it was a luminous spot, like a second sun, and again below this a long line of bright light rested on the horizon. At eight the mist began to disperse, and then in the opposite side of the heaven a distinct bow of white was visible, faintly fringed at the lower extremities with the prismatic colours. Twenty hours of travelling during two days, over unmitigated sand, brought us to the skirts of the oasis of Augila. It was near sunset when I rode into the palm-tree plantations to seek a place for the camp. The first appearance presented to the eye by the large plantation rising in the midst of the loose sand, was most singular. The rosy light which coloured the ground when the sun’s rays penetrated the tall stems, gave the part which was in shade a white appearance like snow, which, contrasted with the bright green of the bushy young palms, lent to the whole the appearance of a winter scene, while the air was balmy as summer, and the bright evening sky glowed with orange and purple tints, such as Italy or Greece cannot show. The scene one might liken to a Flemish snow-piece seen in Naples on a summer’s day.