James Richardson

“ The people of Bambara are the finest in the world. They are brave—they fear none. Now, hear me: I know all the names of the slaves in Ghadames: I watch over all their conduct, to punish them when they behave badly, to praise them when they do well. They all fear me. For my trouble I receive nothing. I am a slave myself. I rarely punish the slaves. We have always here more than two hundred. If you wait, plenty of slaves will soon come from Soudan!"
Late to-night, Mohammed the Marabout of Rujban, left for his country and Tripoli. ”

“ In The Desert, though armed, they have no courage to fight. Their arms are their mysterious playthings. Their genius is pacific and to make peace—they are the peacemakers of The Desert—and they always travel under the intrepid escort of their warlike Touarick friends and neighbours. Intelligent, instructed and industrious, they are the greatest friends of civilization in North Africa and the Great Desert. But upon such a people, falls as a blast of lightning, rending and shivering the fairest palm of the oasis, the curse of Turkish rule. ”

“ Old Sahara looks absolutely pretty with the dark shrubs bespotting and besprinkling his white shining sand-hills. The heavens are strewn with soft flaky light clouds; the blue above is clear and profound, and what other colours there are, look fresh and fair. Our people catch the lighter and more exhilarating influence, and are more talkative to-day. Descending to grosser matters, they are joking about how much of the camel's meat they are to swallow for supper. A part of the ghafalah left us, as the main body would not start [427] early, thinking to arrive a couple of days before us in Ghat. ”

“ The golden harvest is nodding over Afric's sunny plains. Fields of ripe barley are waving in the wind, overshadowed with splendid palms of young and vigorous growth. Besides there are most beautiful olive plantations all around us. Essnousee, who now became a little more familiar, kept crying out to me with spontaneous admiration, "This is the new world (Dunyah Jedeed) !" The slave-driver had heard me praise the vast fields of fertility in America. Sahel, in fact, is a country of most vigorous and teeming fertility. But, to-day, from the camel's back, I saw the sea. ”

“ As soon as I arrived in Tripoli, the first caravan took the wonderful intelligence of the appointment of an English Consul at Ghadames. A couple of score of boys followed hard at the heels of my camel, and some running before, to look at my face; the men gaped with wide open mouths; and the women started up eagerly to the tops of the houses of the Arab suburb, clapping their hands and loolooing. It is perhaps characteristic of the more gentle and unsophisticated nature of womankind, that women of The Desert give you a more lively reception than men. ”

“ His parting blessing spoke the native goodness of his heart: "Day cool, route wide, route Fezzan, ghafalah large, Shânbah there are none—God bless you, farewell!"
I began to breathe at once the free air of the open Desert. As is my wont, I now committed my spirit to the care of God Almighty, leaving my body to the care of the wild tribes of these inhospitable wastes. And why not? Why distrust them? Have not the people hitherto treated me with great and unexpected kindness? And is it not the first step to make strangers your enemies, to distrust them? ”

“ If they have extirpated Christianity from the soil of North Africa, and planted, instead of this tree of fair and pure fruit, the more glaring and showy plant of Islamism, they have, at the same time, endeavoured to raise Africa to their own level of demi-civilization. Whilst we condemn their slave-traffic as we condemn our own, we must do justice to the efforts which they have made, by the spread of their creed and the diffusion of their commerce, during a series of ten or twelve centuries, for promoting the civilization of Africa. ”

“ The Free Kirk has cut its connexion with the State, because it says the State wishes to enslave its ministers. Yet it has no objection to receive monies from the slave-holders in America. The Free Kirk will build up its boasted freedom on the wasting blood and bones of the unhappy children of Africa! Why, indeed, should these Scottish divines, headed by the Presbyters Candlish and Cunningham, seek or advocate the freedom of the slaves held by their fellow Presbyters of the United States? Is it not enough that they seek and maintain their own freedom, and at whatsoever cost? ”

“ It is hard to forget the ship which carries one safely over the ocean, whose plank intervenes between our life and a bottomless grave of waters: so we tourists of The Desert acquire a peculiar affection for the melancholy animal, whose slow but faithful step carries us through the hideous wastes of sand and stone, where all life is extinct, and where, if left a moment behind the camel's track, certain death follows. ”

“ They proceeded on their last journey, the Tuscan riding the horse, the poor Arab boy going on foot, as guide to the well. The caravan weathers out the ghiblee—the men covering up their faces and mouths from the scorching blast, afraid to breathe the killing air of the simoum—the camels moaning in death-like tones, prophetic of the fate of those who had just gone! But night comes, and brings some relief to the wasting, if not dying animals. Then the morning breaks with a refreshing breeze, and the exhausted caravan has enough strength left to seek the well. ”

“ This Saharan villain was thoroughly imbued with the principle of an English duke, "That he (Haj Essnousee) had a right to do what he liked with his own," and did not scruple to mutilate a slave to satisfy his demoniac caprice, in spite of its losing half of its price or value in the market. Poor miserables are those pro-slavery writers, who argue that a man will take care of his slaves because they are his own property! Why did not the imperial tyrants of Rome defend the liberties of their people, because they were their own people? ”

“ Happy beings were they;—better to die so in The Desert, in the morning of their bondage, than live to minister to the corrupt appetites of the unfeeling sensualist! Seeing others, free people, with pieces of stone raised up at their heads, and wishing the slave and the free to have equal rights in the grave, I fetched two pieces of stone and placed them at their heads likewise. If it be permitted to pray for the dead, God save, in mercy, these two youthful, frail, but almost sinless souls! ”

“ I wonder what the people of Europe will say when I tell them, that The Desert—pictured in such frightful colours by the ancients, as teeming with monsters and wild beasts, and every unearthly and uncouth thing and being, not forgetting the dragons, salamanders, vampyres, cockatrices, and fiery-flying serpents, and as such believed in these our enlightened days—is a very harmless place, its menagerie being reduced to a few small crows, and now and then a stray butterfly, and a few common house and cheese-and-bacon and fruit flies! ”

“ The Moorish cemetery close by, is a most melancholy, nay, frightfully grotesque picture. No white-shining tombs and dome-topped mausoleums, no dark cypresses waving over them and contrasting shade with light, which mournfully adorn the cemeteries of the north coast. All is the grotesque refuse of misery! Here we see sticks of palm-branches driven down at the head of the graves, which sticks are driven through old bottles, pitchers, jugs, ostrich eggs, &c., so that at a distance the burying-ground has the appearance of a dull, dirty, desolate field of household rubbish, and old crockery-ware. ”

“ Like myself he never undressed himself at night. When he wished to confer a favour upon any of his negro countrymen, or the poor slaves, he would take them and roll them up with him in this canvass. He would have sometimes half a dozen at once with him, the confined air of their united breathings keeping them mutually warm. The poor Arab camel-drivers had nothing but their barracans which they wore in the day to cover themselves up at night, whilst the bare earth was their couch of down, and a heap of stones their luxurious pillow. All these Arabs were wandering wayfaring Jacobs of The Desert. ”

“ El-Aïshi, describing the sandy Sahara, says, "There is neither tree, nor bush, nor herb. The eye sees only clouds of sand, raised by continual winds, which by their violence efface the marks of the caravan as fast as men and animals imprint them with their feet. The aspect of this immensity of sand reminds me of the words, 'Bless our Lord Mahomet as much as the sand is extended,' and I understood now their full import." ”

“ From this garden we shall ascend to that of paradise, where we shall have dates always ripe and ready for eating, for every tree is large and fruitful there. And no man dare touch these trees without our permission, not even the Rais or the Bashaw. We pay nothing to any man; all cast before us their offerings. But we have little because we want little. Such is the will of God." Here then is the abode of inviolate sanctity! here sits the protecting genius of Ghadames, like a pelican in the wilderness! I observed again to-day the burnt volcanic stones scattered over The Desert. ”

“ But the Koran surpasses all these books, in wire-drawn and elaborately wrought descriptions, the most mournful, the most disgusting, the most terrible, of the torments of the damned. Is it because, men generally can only be moved by fear, and not by love, to the practice of virtue and religious observances? But in Sahara the principle of fear is carried into the minutest relations of social life. The child fears and venerates, not loves, his father; he approaches his parent with awe, not with the confidence of love. The wife always fears, rarely loves, her husband. ”

“ Now, heap upon heap, and pile upon pile of the ruins of nature deform the dreadful landscape, one feature being more hideous to look upon than the other: and the whole is a mass of blank existence, having no apparent object but to daunt and terrify the hapless wayfarer, who with his faithful camel, slowly and mournfully winds his weary way through the scene of wasteful destruction. ”

“ All our animals, as well as our people, had a thick coating of sand round their eyes, the cold and wind making their eyes run, and the water collecting the sand. Unable to proceed farther, we were obliged to encamp about 2 p.m., close by the sea-shore, under the shadow of a great cliff, the spray of the waves washing our feet and resting-place, and the noise of their chafing and roaring stunning our ears, whilst the sand-storm worked its way of desolation over our heads. ”

“ The Sheikh's factotum is a noisy, roguish-looking Arab, with several bullet-marks about him received in the late wars. As he does all his master's dirty work, he is universally detested. Master and man swear the country is ruined. There certainly is nothing in these villages to render life tolerable. No rustic plays; no moon-lit dance to the sound of the rude calabash drum and squeaking pipe; no cheerful family circle—all is poverty and loneliness! Such a life is really not worth living. ”

“ People try to amuse me, and I have received many little presents of date-cakes and bazeen from them. Begin to relish this sort of food, and The Desert air sharpens the appetite. Yesterday, a slave of the ghafalah amused us with playing his rude bagpipe through these weary wastes. We are not very merry. There is very little conversation; we move on for hours in the most unbroken silence, nothing being said or whispered, no sound but the dull slow tread of the camel. Sometimes an Arab strikes up one of his plaintive ditties, and thinks of his green olive-clad mountain home in the Atlas. ”

“ It rejoices my heart to contemplate the future—if perchance that future come—when this Saharan region shall fall into the hands of another Government, be invaded, circumscribed, and reduced on every side, and such a conquest over The Desert made by the hand of industry, as to render it a garden of the Hesperides, and to blossom as the rose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lady herself is not quite a Desert maiden, skipping like a young roe over the mountains, in untutored innocence or coyish bashfulness. She is young, it is true, but full-blown and bloated, very big about, and excessively dirty and nasty. The favourite of the Mudeer is besides almost as black as a Negress, with a pock-marked face. After dodging about with the Negro clown some ten minutes, her eye catches the shape of a huge ill-looking Turkish fellow, walking heavily into our apartment, or hall of audience, and the Moorish damsel immediately retires to her private boudoir. ”