traveler James Hamilton

“ The only variety of general feature is the passing from loose sand to more compact gravel, or from boundless plains, which the wearied eye ranges over without meeting an object on which to fix the gaze, to equally desert hills, whose sandy solitudes are undisturbed even by an echo. Sometimes, more awful still, one comes upon vast tracts covered with small, dark, loose fragments, giving a chocolate colour to the ground, which there seems to absorb the rays of the mid-day sun, but without reposing the eye from its glare. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ On nearing it, two insignificant white-washed marābuts, and the castle—a square building, flanked with round towers, standing on the sea-shore, and conspicuous only from its whiteness—are the first objects which strike the eye. The town itself is not seen until the traveller is close to it; it looks like a large collection of mud huts, unrelieved by a single minaret, or even by the dove-cots, which render many of the mud villages on the Nile so picturesque. ”

“ The growling camels round my tent, the bleating sheep at the fountain above, roused me earlier than usual; and I prepared to set out upon my round, while the cool air invited to exertion, and the first rays of the sun gilded the summits [63] of the hills. To most men such bright mornings are exhilarating; and the pursuit of the red-legged partridge, with dog and gun, would seem more suitable to the hour, than a walk among the tombs. ”

“ To the traveller who has tarried in Egypt till the spring—who is tired of Syria, and unwilling to go to Europe, a more delightful retreat for summer cannot be suggested. The air is far purer than in any part of Italy, the scenery more beautiful and more varied, and fever and dysentery are unknown. From early spring to the middle of October, no rain ever falls, though the sky after the middle of August is almost always cloudy; a heavy night-dew supplies the moisture which, at this season, covers the hills with a fresh coat of verdure. ”

“ Here the rocks of variegated limestone assume a bolder appearance, rising from forty to a hundred feet [232] in fantastic masses, looking in the distance sometimes like noble cities, sometimes like extensive ruins. There is one valley where columns, with their capitals of gigantic proportions, rise from mounds of sand—half buried palaces and temples seemed in the moonlight to make the former the abode of giants. ”

“ The petrified city, with its inhabitants, does not exist; its magnificent castle is only the Saracenic building, now called Sheikh Es-saby; but the ground is to some distance strewed with petrified wood. The dream of the city where “men are conspicuous in different attitudes, some of them exercising their trades and occupations, and women giving suck to their children,” is due, of course, to Arab imagination, and not to those truthful travellers. ”

“ At the leisurely pace of an Arab traveller I gained upon the luggage fifteen or twenty minutes in every hour. I have noted the distances, for convenience’ sake, by the times of the departure and arrival of the camels, (at which I was always present,) their pace being uniform. I rode on or loitered on the road. Mohammed, in all his magnificence, led the way; the servants, equally well armed, being generally with him, and any chance traveller who might have joined the caravan; I usually followed a little in the rear. My guide and the other Arabs from time to time solaced themselves with song. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although the climate of Benghazi is perfectly wholesome, I should not recommend it to any one as a residence: there are few of the necessaries, and none of the luxuries, of life to be found there; above all, there is no kind of society. Its antiquities afford at most two days’ employment. They consist of large squared blocks of stone scattered along the sea-shore, foundations of ancient buildings in the sea, between the reef, which probably formed the old mole, and the shore, with a flight of steps at the extremity of the former. ”

“ I am an Englishman. There is my passport, the English sultan’s firman, better than ’Abd el Mejid’s or any other in the world, more respected by Abbas Pacha and ’Abd el Mejid himself than their own. I ask to enter no man’s house. I shall not run away with your wives, nor eat your children; but I have a right to go by every public path; to see all I want to see of the old ruins in your country; and if you, the sheikhs, prevent me, you must be prepared to take the consequences; and if any one insults or molests me, he has only himself to blame for what may happen to him. ”

“ I ascribe the casualty to the water of the Gara, which, stopping digestion, blew them up like a well-inflated foot-ball, and after a few hours in this state, if injections, fomentations, and bleeding had no effect, they dropped as if shot, with all the appearance of a coup de sang. As ten of his horses had died with the same symptoms on arriving in Siwah, I suggested to Hassan Aga that as short a route might be found leaving the Gara to the east, which would, perhaps, avoid any risk there might be from a recurrence of illness among the horses. ”

“ There are ten vaulted buildings, and a very large rectangle rising only a few feet above the soil, whose purpose cannot even be guessed at; scanty remains of a theatre, the outlines of an amphitheatre, formed in a quarry, having no feature of interest, complete the catalogue of the ruins within the town. The fortifications towards the sea, consisting of a series of forts, are well preserved, though nearly buried in sand; but the most conspicuous object is the gateway I have already mentioned, whose two flank towers are still nearly perfect. ”

“ The country still abounds with fine old olive trees, but its inhabitants have forgotten their use; when the fruit is ripe, they assemble their sheep and cattle round the trees and shake and beat the branches, while the animals greedily devour the precious produce as it falls to the ground. The plain is in this direction covered with the olive mixed with the caroub, now loaded with its long dark pods. When left thus to the hand of nature, the caroub becomes an immense bush, pushing out suckers all round the parent trunk, which in size is hardly to be distinguished among them. ”

“ As one stands in front of the fountain, looking to the sea, this platform, covered with ruins, lies at one’s feet; while beyond, the long lines of the Eastern Necropolis wind round the curves of the hills, and the plain beneath is seen dotted with ruins, or intersected by old roads. To the left, immediately beneath the fountain, are the remains of a very large building, whose massive fragments of marble cornices and columns indicate its importance, as well as its more recent date. ”

“ Passing through groves of palms and olives, we came in an hour and a half to a large mass of shapeless ruins, built of sandstone and salt, called Dāhĭba. An hour further through hills, all of them containing cave-tombs, brought us to Beled er-Roum. We first came upon a collection of small ruins, built of unburnt bricks, in one of which are two well-turned vaults. In the rocks close to them are some well-executed tombs, and I am inclined to ascribe a similar use to these buildings, which may date from about the second century; the people call them the houses of the infidels. ”

“ After leaving Moragah, the loose sand again reappears for about an hour, leading to the lofty rocks of Kamisah, at whose base are the ruins called ’Amu-dein, which consist of two lofty masses of brick [235] work, the façade of a temple, or perhaps of a church, for the style of building betrays a late date. One of the two salt lakes of the oasis lies at the foot of Kamisah, and I stopped for an hour at a well of sweet water which springs at its edge, to rest the last of Othman’s camels, which here threatened to drop. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a Wady some twelve hours further on I found wells of a clear water, in very small quantity, but which, after the first draught had been taken from it, filled again by rapid infiltration from the sand, but this second supply had a strong sulphurous smell and taste, which were not perceptible in the first. The morass, the universal feature of these oases, was here a wide lake of a deep blue, inclosed in a ring of brown crust, overgrown with rushes, and a tall, rank grass, of which the camels eagerly plucked the flowering tops. ”

“ The earth seems boundless as the ocean, not less cheerlessly uniform than a sea becalmed, and not less dangerously wild than it when roused by the strife of elements. The sky is pale in the glare of mid-day, but glows with the brightest tints as evening closes in; after sunset, it is again illuminated by the zodiacal light, which fades to disclose a surface of the deepest purple, spangled with thousands of stars, whose twinkling brightness surpasses anything that our northern climates can show. ”

“ When I speak of wealth, it is in a comparative sense; probably no one, either native or foreigner, has a capital of 4000l.; but there is no absolute poverty among the people, for the cultivation of the land is open to all, on paying a tax of one-tenth of the produce; and, excepting the Morocco or Tunis Hajji, who pass through on their way to Mecca, I have never seen a beggar in Benghazi.
The government of the province is in the hands of a Bey, sometimes sent from Constantinople, sometimes nominated by the Pacha of Tripoli, to whom he is subordinate. ”

“ The Senusi is represented to me as all that an Arab saint should be—exact in the observances of religion, gay, and a capital shot; he rides a horse of the purest breed and of great value, dresses magnificently, paints his eyes with kohl and his beard with henna. He is very hospitable, and if the Gibely may be believed, has a granary which the large daily drafts he makes on it never empty; receiving nothing from any one, he has always money ”

“ The hidden meaning of the myths, with which a patriotic religion was not long in enrolling the obscure origin of a Grecian colony, perpetuates the story of its early struggles, throwing a poetic gauze over facts too humbling for its full-grown pride.
The new city was built on the table-land above the hill, from whose side the fountain issues. The lofty walls which inclosed it, and the temples and palaces which adorned it, arose a landmark for the mariner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In their gossip I sometimes caught a faint echo of old Herodotus. I much enjoyed one of their stories, which they told with the greatest gravity, assuring me that they had heard it from the most respectable natives. In the interior of Africa, beyond the black hills, is a race of people whose men are dogs, their women being like those of other nations. The husbands spend their days in hunting, and at night bring home to their wives the game they have killed; these cook and eat the meat, and give the bones to their dog-husbands. ”

“ In one of these bowers I had my carpet spread for luncheon; some singing birds joined their voices to the lively chirping of the grasshoppers, and around fluttered many a gaily-painted butterfly. The old capital of the Pentapolis was before me, yet I was strongly tempted to pitch my tent for a time in this fairy scene. ”