TRIPOLI

I

Absalom England, a tall grizzled Arab and sea-pilot, saluted me

on the deck. The combination of names, race, and occupation might

have seemed peculiar to me once, but I was proof against any African

vagary. He was a land-pilot now, and took charge of me and mine. I

did not lose my liberty, but I had unknowingly parted with all

responsibility for myself; thereafter, except in consular guard or

barred in my hotel, I was under his incessant watch and ward. I even

began to have some value in my own eyes, seeing at what a price I

was rated, and could easily have fancied myself a disguised soldan

with an inseparable follower. He treated me as something between a

son and a sheik. But at the moment, to my unforeseeing eyes, he was

only a dark, respectful Arab, with a weather-worn and open-air look,

black with many summers, a strong type of a fine race, and with a

terrible cough that shook him.

We passed the Turkish officials and sank like a bubble in the

variety and vivacity of the land, always so noticeable when one comes

from the sea. It was pleasant to be in a city once more; there was

noise and movement and things to look at; and almost at once the

gray mass of a magnificent ruined arch, half buried in the street,

lifted its dark and heavy stones, bossed with obliterated faces and

grimy sculpture, among the paltry buildings; a grocery shop with

its bright fruits and lettered boxes seemed to have nested like

a swallow in its lower stories. It looked like a worn, old ocean

rock in that incongruous tide of people and trade—once the proud

arch of Marcus Aurelius. A few moments brought us to what elsewhere

would have been an obscure hotel but was here the chief hostelry—a

house with an interior court as usual, a few chambers opening on

dilapidated galleries in a double tier, and rude stairs leading

up. Seyd, a Fezzan negro boy, showed me to a tumbled room. It was an

unpromising outlook even for a brief sojourn. I went at once to the

French consul. The other powers have consuls, except that America

at that time had none; but owing to the old position of France as

the protector of all Catholics, her representative is pre-eminent in

the eyes of the Mohammedans—he is “the consul.” The Consulate

was a very fine old Arab house; a magnificent dragoman with negro

guards received me in the great silent court and led me up the

broad stone stairway to the large and beautiful rooms where I was

to feel myself so pleasantly at home. Then Absalom and I fared forth.

I found myself in a true African street with a new trait. It is

astonishing what originality crops out in the bare and simple things

of this land; one thinks he has seen all, and by some slight shift

of the lights something new emerges and is magically touched—the

real and common made mysterious, the daily and usual made visionary,

the familiar unfamiliar once more. It was a narrow street, vaulted

from side to side, and its fresh atmosphere was bathed in that

cool obscurity which in this land of fierce and burning rays is

like balm to the eyes; and, besides, this street was painted blue,

which was to add a caress to the softness of the light. This was

the slight and magical touch. A stream of passers went down and up

the centre of the blueness; the little shops on either side strung

along their bright and curious merchandise of the museum and the

fair; and the shadowy, azure-toned perspectives framed each figure

as it came near, with flowing robe or dark haik and burdens borne

on head and shoulder. The place had an atmosphere all its own, that

stays in the memory like perfume. I loved to loiter there afterward,

but then we had a goal; and we came at last by flights of steps to

the market on the great space near the sea. I had seen the people

by the beach from the steamer and wondered at their number; and

that was why I had come.

It was by far the greatest market I ever saw. It was truly

metropolitan. I went among the plotted squares of merchandise

and rows of goods spread out in great heaps and little piles,

and along by the small tents islanding their foreign treasures. To

tell and name it all would be to inventory a civilization: cloths

and finery and trinkets; grains in sacks, amid which I wandered

nibbling hard kernels of strange savors, trying unknown nuts and

dried fruits; utensils, strange-cornered knives with curves of

murder, straight, broad blades; slippers and caps; what seemed to

me droves of cows—it was so long since I had seen cows—camels

and donkeys; vegetables—bulbs, pods, and heads; things to eat,

bobbing in pots and kettles; leathers, hides, straws. It was an

improvised exposition—everything that the desert hand produces

or manufactures of the pastoral kind or that the desert heart has

learned to desire of migratory commerce brought from far away. The

grass market especially attracted me with its heaped-up bales of

alfa, where camels were unloading the unwieldy and enormous burdens

balanced across their backs; and so did the Soudanese corner,

with odd straw-work, deep-colored gourds, and skin bottles.

But the stage was the least part of the scene; in this play

the crowd was the thing. There were familiar traits, but in its

wholeness it was a new crowd. I scanned them as an explorer looks

at an unknown tribe from the hills. There was nothing here of

Tunisian softness, mild affability and elegance, not the simple

and peaceful countenances seen in the Zibans, nor the amiable

cheer and brusque energy of the Kabyles, nor the blond beauty of

the Chaouias, nor even the forbidding face of the Moor; here was

a different temper—the spirit of the horde, the _fierté_ of the

desert, the rudeness of nature, borne with an independence of mien,

a freedom of gait, unblenching eyes; true desert dwellers. I think I

never felt the full meaning and flavor of the word, autochthonous,

before. They were the soil made man. There was also, beyond the

tough fibre and wild grace of the free life, another impression,

which owed perhaps as much to the feeling of the stranger there

as to anything explicit in the crowd—a sense of something fierce

and hard, an instinct of hostility, of disdain, the egotism of an

alien faith master on its own fanatic soil.

This crowd, which fascinated me by its vitality and temper of life,

was clad in every variety of burnoose and haik and head-gear; here

and there was a crude outbreak of color, as if some one had spilt,

and soiled, aniline dyes at random, but the general effect was

sober—brown earth colors, mixed blacks and grays, dingy whites, a

work-a-day world. There were many negroes. I had already added much

to my knowledge of negro types, but here I annexed, as it were, new

kingdoms of physiognomy. These men were strange as the tropics: some

amazingly long-waisted, some Herculean in measure or extraordinarily

lean and bulbous in the shoulders—new species of human heads. Arabs

and Berbers, mingled with the mixed blood of half a continent,

made the bulk; and here and there stood some richer personages,

heavily robed, superbly turbaned, merchants from Ghadamès and from

further off, where the desert routes spread fanwise from the Soudan

to Timbuctoo, opening on the whole breadth of equatorial Africa,

Lake Tchad, and the Niger. For Tripoli has been for long centuries a

sea-metropolis—it is now the last sea-metropolis—of the native

desert world; hither still comes the raw wealth of Africa, with

all the old train and concomitants of caravan, traders, and robber

instincts; and here are most variously and numerously gathered the

representatives of the untamed tribes. It is the last Mediterranean

home of the predatory, migratory, old free desert life. This market,

I knew, was the direct descendant of one of the world’s oldest

trading-posts, for the early Phoenician merchants established a

commercial station here, as they coasted along exploring the unknown

world; it was on this beach they landed, no doubt; that was long

ago. This market was the child of that old trading-post. It was

a wonderful scene there, under the crumbling walls in the blazing

sun by the quiet sea.

Late in the afternoon I drove out into the oasis, which is a suburb

on the southeast of the city. We were soon in the midst of it and

passing along by the familiar scene of palm groves, with fruit

trees and vegetables and silent roads. It was a more open country

than usual, and there was an abundance of gardens with houses in

them; it had more the character of suburban villa life, a place of

retirement from the city, than any oasis I had seen. The soil had

much red in it, and this gave a strong ground-color over which the

greens rose darkly on the blue. The tall wells—the _guerbas_—were

a common feature in the gardens, for the oasis is watered in the

old way by means of a pulley arrangement between two high standards

over which runs a rope worked by a mule or camel or other beast of

all work, which tramped to and fro beneath as the goatskin bucket

rose and fell. I visited some of these gardens, picked oranges,

and wandered about and talked with the laborers. We came out on

the desert sharp as the line of a sea beach, cut by the palms;

there was a fort or two on the edge, and the hard, barren waste

swept away with the finality of an ocean toward the far distant

mountain range southward. Two Turkish officers rode up from the

route; they were fine figures, splendidly horsed, and looked very

real. On the way back we saw many Turkish soldiers, sturdy, capable

men, badly clothed but military in every way. I was more interested

in the groups and solitary figures returning from the market to

their homes, the Bedouins with sticks in their hands or over their

shoulders. How they walked! What an erectness in their heads! What

an _élan_ in their stride forward! Strangely enough, they reminded

me of the virgins of the Erechtheum, the caryatides. I have never

elsewhere seen such a pose. How like in color to earth, too, with

their browns and grays on the strong tones of the roads they walked

along! It was the clearness before twilight, and all the lines of

the landscape were lowered and strong in the level rays; the palmy

roads, the soldiers, the Bedouins made a picture fuller of life than

one usually sees in an oasis. One felt the neighborhood of the city.

When I went out at night the streets were dark; lamps here and

there gave a feeble light, stores were open, there were groups

about. The cafés I dropped into were not full, unless small, and

were all very quiet. There were long bubble pipes to be had, and

silent Arabs smoking them; but I contented myself with coffee. It

was not interesting, and I went to the Italian-Greek theatre. This

was a small hall, but of considerable size, and full of Sicilians

and Greeks. They were a hardy looking company, not to say rough. On

the stage a girl was being tied to a tree by some Turks; it was a

pantomime, and the plot went on and the daring rescue was effected

to the satisfaction of the audience. While the stage was being

prepared anew, there was the sound of a row at the door. Instantly

on either side of me there was a movement and thrust of those hard

faces and strong shoulders, like the lift of a dark wave at sea;

it reminded me of a mass-play at football, in the old game, only

it was bigger, darker, tense; it was fighting blood, always keyed

for sudden alarm and instantly ready _en masse_. The little crowd,

serried head over head, paused a moment, as an Arab came forward

and made a short speech, explaining the trouble. The men fell

back to their seats. The play was going on now—it was a variety

performance—with two girls singing songs, and the rescued maiden

of the pantomime came down to collect pennies. It was curious to see

the changing expression on the faces of those men and boys. They

had been hard faces, with Sicilian sombreness in repose, rugged

with life, with something dark and gloomy in them; now they broke

into smiles, their eyes shone and laughed, as she passed among

them, they were glad to have her speak to them—it was sunshine

breaking out over a rough and stormy sea. There was a dance now;

and so the scenes went on till I came away and Absalom piloted

me through the dark and deserted ways to the hotel. It was closed

of course, but I was not prepared for what followed. There was a

great undoing of bars and turning of locks, and I stepped in over

the body of a sleeping negro and waited till his companion did up

the fastenings. They seemed to me sufficient for a fortress; and,

not content with that, these two negroes slept all night on the

floor next the door. It was like a mediæval guard room.