Frederick William Beechey

“ After repassing a part of the road, by which we had formerly travelled, we began to ascend a most romantic valley, a little to the westward of the town of Ptolemeta and leading up from the coast towards Merge. As we wound along the steep and narrow pathway which skirted the bed of the torrent below us, we found the place much more remarkable for its wildness and beauty than it was for the goodness of its roads; and had not our camels been accustomed to the mountains they would probably have given us a good deal of trouble. ”

“ A formidable line of well-armed black soldiers were ranged along the walls of the room, who stood exactly like so many statues, each with a loaded blunderbuss, held with the muzzle pointed downwards; and close to the Bashaw’s person was a trusty black slave, who held in readiness His Highness’s pistols. The introduction of armed soldiers into the presence-chamber of a Sovereign was rather a novel sight to Europeans, and may be taken as an example of the extremely barbarous state in which the Regency of Tripoly, with all its recent improvements, must still be admitted to remain. ”

“ It is besides of so fine a texture as to partake more of the nature of dust than of desert sand, which is neither so red nor so light. It is not raised up in large heaps like the sand on the beach, but scattered over the surface in little hillocks, on which a scanty vegetation is occasionally observable. In fact this substance has no resemblance whatever either to the sand on the beach or to that of the desert, and it ceases altogether with the soil which occasions it. How Signor Della Cella could have confounded it with the sand heaps thrown up on the beach we are at a loss to imagine ”

“ With regard to the present inhabitants of the district of Barca (we mean the part of it comprehended in the Syrtis and Cyrenaica) , we should certainly call them a healthy and good-looking race; and not at all the ugly, meagre, grim-visaged people, which they have been described to be in some of our best received accounts of them. We allude in particular to the Bedouin (or wandering) tribes, which are those more immediately in question; and who are generally a finer people, both in character and appearance, than what are termed the more civilized inhabitants of Arab cities. ”

“ Our time, though we passed it as agreeably as we could, nevertheless often hung very heavy on our hands; and we soon found that Bengazi was a residence which we should quit with very little regret. There is not a single place of public resort or amusement in any part of this gloomy abode: its inhabitants idle or sleep away the greater part of their time, without appearing to entertain the slightest desire of improving their comfortless and miserable condition, or of enlivening the monotony of their pursuits. ”

“ The tombs appear to have remained uninjured by the action of either the sun or the atmosphere, excepting only a deep fallow tint they have imbibed;—the sculpture therefore, as we must call it, remains nearly perfect. As these edifices are near the Fezzan road, people from the interior have occasionally tarried to examine them, and being the only specimens of the art they ever saw, yet representing familiar objects, they have described them on their arrival at the coast in glowing colours. ”

“ We were unable to discover any remains of antiquity at Mesurata; but its remarkable position between the fertile regions of the Cinyphus, and the barren dreary wastes of the Greater Syrtis, cannot fail to make it an object of more than common interest to those who witness the singular contrast.
From the high range of sand-hills, which we have mentioned above, between the town and the sea, an excellent idea may be formed of this striking peculiarity of situation; and we often toiled up their steep and yielding sides to enjoy the singularity of the prospect. ”

“ The changes which a lapse of nearly two thousand years may be supposed to have occasioned on the northern coast of Africa, are fully sufficient to have reduced the river Lathon to the spring which now flows into the Lake of Bengazi.
The lake itself is salt, and in the summer is nearly dry; while the small stream in question takes its rise within a few yards of the lake, and running along a channel of inconsiderable breadth, bordered with reeds and rushes, might be mistaken by a common observer for an inroad of the lake into the sandy soil which bounds it. ”

“ But imagination easily creates them in that dim boundary which separates the known from the unknown world. In the first discoverers of any such region, novelty usually produces an exalted state of the imagination and passions; under the influence of which every object is painted in higher colours than those of nature. Nor does the illusion cease, when a fuller examination proves that, in the place thus assigned, no such beings or objects exist. The human heart, while it remains possible, still clings to its fond chimeras: it quickly transfers them to the yet unknown region beyond ”

“ The sand which encounters a body in motion, would pass it, we should imagine, without accumulation; and the quantity which might even be heaped upon sleepers could scarcely be more than they might easily shake off in waking. We shudder at the dreadful accounts which have been recorded of whole caravans, and whole armies, destroyed by these formidable waves of the desert ”

“ As there is no other part of the gulf in which it could, at any time, be absolutely necessary to pass over the sand-hills at all, we are at a loss to imagine why the army of the Bey, and that of his Roman predecessor, should have given themselves so much trouble in crossing them. Immediately after the marsh commences pasture land, and after five hours’ journey from Sachreen, we arrived at a place called Gartubbah, where we found some Arab tents, and established ourselves for the night. ”

“ Near Muktahr is a remarkable table-hill called Jebbel Allah, and an extensive salt lake (Esubbah Muktahr) , along the edge of which we passed for a few miles, and then crossing a ridge called Jerīa, proceeded on a few miles further to Sachrīn, where we pitched the tents for the night.
We had now arrived at the most southern point of the Gulf of Syrtis, and few parts of the world will be found to present so truly desolate and wretched an appearance as its shores in this neighbourhood exhibit. Marsh, sand, and barren rocks, alone meet the eye ”

“ Of the indraught in question there can be no doubt; indeed, we may remark that a rise of this nature is more or less observable in gulfs in general; and when we consider that an unbroken sweep of level ground, very slightly raised above the surface of the sea, will be found extending itself on the western coast of the Greater Syrtis for the space of a hundred miles in length, and occasionally as much as fifteen in breadth, we may easily allow that the reflux of the water, driven over a tract of such dimensions, may well be considered as formidable. ”

“ Truth is so little regarded by an Arab, that when his interest or his comfort will be promoted by a breach of it, he is always prepared with a falsehood; and it is difficult, even for those who are well acquainted with his character, to tell when he is sincere in his assertions. One of two things must necessarily result from this want of proper feeling: they who place too much confidence in Arab sincerity will continually be deceived and imposed upon, or they who distrust it too far will on some occasions be liable to wish that they had been less obstinate in their disbelief. ”

“ As the whole property of a wandering Arab consists in his flocks and cattle, and the few little articles contained in his tent, he has very little trouble in moving, and half an hour after he has determined to leave the place of his residence, no traces will remain of his late habitation, but the ashes scattered about the hole in the earth which served his whole family for a fire-place. ”

“ As these masses of rubbish also serve at the same time as general receptacles for the superfluities of the city, groups of half-famished dogs and myriads of flies are invariably collected about them; in the midst of which are seen lying very contentedly, or rolling about for diversion, swarms of little naked children, regardless of either, which one might almost fancy were actually produced by the fertilizing qualities of these heaps of putrid matter, as the monsters of old are asserted to have been from the slime and the mud of the Nile. ”

“ This want of discernment, however, is chiefly confined to Europeans; for the greater part of the Mahometan inhabitants of Tripoly are strongly convinced of its beauty and importance; while the wandering Arab who enters its gates, and looks up to the high and whitewashed walls of the Bashaw’s castle, expresses strongly in his countenance the astonishment which he feels how human hands and ingenuity could have accomplished such a structure. ”

“ The town of Mesurata is built with tolerable regularity; its streets cross each other at right angles, and near the centre stands the market-place, which, like most others in this country, is half occupied by a pool of green and stinking water. The houses are only one story high, and are built with rough stones and mud; the roofs are flat, and formed with slight rafters, covered with mats and a quantity of sea-weed, over which is laid a thick coat of mud, smoothed and beat down very carefully. They are fortunate who can mix a little lime with the mud which forms the outer part of their roof ”

“ It may readily be imagined that natives of Africa complain little of any inconvenience which fresh water may chance to occasion them; and we doubt even whether the inhabitants of Derna would not rather run the risk of losing a part of their town every winter, [473] than be deprived of the pleasure of seeing and admiring so large a portion of this valuable fluid, and of enjoying the consciousness that, at least once a year, they have more of it than they know what to do with. ”

“ On the morning of the 15th we left the ruins of Lebida, and passing between the gardens which are scattered over its plain, proceeded on our road to Zeliten. About nine miles to the eastward of Lebida is the stream called Wad’ el Kháhan, which we found to possess more pretensions to the title of river than any which we had hitherto seen. It appears to have its rise in the mountains to the southward; and after spreading itself in shallows over a rocky bed, it falls about twenty feet, and continues its course, though very slowly, to the sea. ”

“ It will be seen by the plan of the town of Apollonia, that a part of this theatre is built against the wall of the citadel, and the other part against the high ground behind the subsellia. The seats appear in consequence to have been approached from above, we mean, from the ground on a level with the uppermost range; and as the greater number of the ranges are still very perfect, the effect of the whole building is that of a stupendous flight of steps leading down from the elevated ground against which they lean to the beach on a level with the orchestra. ”

“ There was nothing, it will be thought, so extremely alarming in this partial exhibition of female beauty; and the favoured inhabitants of less decorous, and more civilized countries, would scarcely dream of being shocked at a similar spectacle. But to men who inhabit those regions of delicacy, where even one eye of a female must never be seen stealing out from the sanctuary of her veil, the sudden apparition of a sparkling pair of those luminaries is not a vision of ordinary occurrence. ”

“ As the religion and the laziness of an Arab equally prompt him to depend more upon the interference of Providence, than upon any exertions of his own, this precaution is often neglected; and after having borne, with exemplary patience, all the dirt and inconvenience occasioned by the passage of the rain through the mud over his head, he is roused from his lethargy by the screams of his wife and children, alarmed, or badly wounded by the fall of the roof, or by some serious accident from a similar cause, by which he is a sufferer himself. ”

“ The mosques and baths of Tripoly, with its coffee-houses, bazars, &c., as well as the manners and customs, dresses, prejudices, and other peculiarities, of the people who are in the habit of frequenting them, have been so amply, and so well described in other publications, that we need not here attempt any account of them [5] .
We may, however, be allowed a few words on the peculiarities of soil, at present observable in the neighbourhood of Tripoly, as contrasted with those which appear to have existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ”

“ Comme toutes les pensées de ces gens là n’étoient occupées que de l’objet unique de leurs vœux, et de la seule chose qui eût des charmes pour leurs cœurs, je veux dire de l’or et de l’argent, ils ont éprouvé ce qu’un poëte a dit d’un buveur:”
“Tout ce qu’il aperçoit lui paroît un gobelet; quand il voit quelqu’un, il croit toujours voir celui qui verse à boire.” ”

“ Here we have evidently the description of an ancient city, with its buildings and statues, converted by the fertile imagination of the Arabs, and other ignorant spectators of its remains, into the fancied semblances mentioned. It is probable that one of the cities of the Pentapolis, Cyrene perhaps, as having most statues, was the petrified city in question; and we may venture to say that there is scarcely an individual who has travelled in Mahometan countries who has not been induced to take journies of inquiry on the authority of similar fictions. ”

“ Six miles beyond Birsis (in a north-easterly direction) are remains of a much more imposing nature than any which we had hitherto beheld. They are those of an ancient city, completely inclosed within walls of uncommon strength and thickness, which are connected at intervals by quadrangular towers, and entered by two strongly-built gateways, placed opposite to each other on the east and west sides of the city. The town of Teuchira (for it is that to which we allude) is situated close to the sea, which, in this part of the plain, is distant about four miles from the foot of the mountains. ”