I went out for a last drive with the British consul toward the oasis
of Gergarish, which lies westward of the city, a new direction for
me. He was familiar with the Mediterranean; and, the talk falling
on the classical background of North Africa, I told him of my search
for the lotus at Djerba. He avowed his belief that much of the Greek
mythic past had its local habitation on these coasts, and gave me
a striking and quite unexpected instance. I had supposed that Lethe
was an underground stream and approached only by the ghosts of the
dead. He assured me that it was situated not very far from Benghazi,
where he had been consul, and made an excellent table water. It is
a large fountain or underground lake in a cave; he had been on it
in a boat with a friend, and it was said that fumes from the water
would oppress the passenger with drowsiness. I heard this with great
interest, and like to remember that I can obtain a cup of Lethe,
should I desire it, this side the infernal world. My friend added
his belief that partial oblivion can be found comparatively widely
diffused in North Africa, not being dependent on either Lethe or
the lotus. This tradition of drowsiness which attaches to these
coasts in old days is to be attributed to the quality of the air,
which is soporific. Continued residence causes a loss of memory,
not that one forgets his early days, home, and children, like the
lotus-eaters, but one grows uncertain about recent events and the
mind becomes hazy as to whether one has or has not done this or that;
to such a degree is this true that my friend advised a return to
the north at least once in two years to allow the memory to recover
its normal force. With such talk, which was quite seriously said,
though it has its humorous side, and which faithfully reflects
the African atmosphere, we whiled away the time, conversing, too,
of the American excavations at Benghazi and the bells of Derna
that rang the Italian priest to his death—for the Arabs dislike
bells—and the thousand and one topics on which a traveller is
always prepared to receive information. I had been so long alone
that those talks at Tripoli were almost as much of a rarity as the
scenes; they are an essential part of my memory of the voyage.
Our destination was not the oasis, but some caverns on a height
above it. The day was brilliant and a noble desert view stretched
round us from the eminence. The blue sea sparkled not far away,
an horizon-stripe up and down the coast as far as one could see;
the splendid dark green mass of the oasis lay just below us in
the valley, and between us and it the desert plain undulated
with the long slopes of a rolling prairie, spotted with cattle
and a few Arab groups; inland the sands swept on to the line of
mountains low on the far horizon. The mass of rock above us was
picturesque and solitary. The gem of the view, however, was Tripoli
eastward. It was the first time I had truly seen the city from
outside—just such a Moslem city as one dreams of, a white city,
small and beautiful, snowy pure in the liquid air. I was surprised
at its beauty. We explored the cave. It was of a sort of stratified
pumice stone and partly filled up with sand. It had been at some
time a troglodyte dwelling, and chambers had been hollowed in it.
There are many troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, still living in this
primitive manner in rock-hewn chambers in North Africa. There are
villages of them in the mountains back of Biskra, and especially in
the southeastern corner of Tunisia opposite Djerba, and they are
found in the low range of the Djebel-Ghariane that I was looking
on in the distance. This cavern that we were exploring was one of
their prehistoric haunts, a natural fortress and place of refuge
for a small group of families in the wild waste.
The drive back was uncommonly beautiful, very African in color, and
increasing in atmospheric charm as we neared the city in the clarity
of the sunset light. The coast view was especially lovely. The
blue sea made the offing, along which a line of scattered palms,
continuous but thin enough to give its full value to each dark green
tuft in the blue air, and to many a single columnar stem beneath,
ran like a screen, not too far from the roadway; and the strong
foreground was that red-brown earth with the sunset light beginning
on it. The beautiful white city lay ahead of us. The quality of the
atmosphere was remarkable. The trees were very light, and seemed to
float in the sky, like goldfish in a globe; and as the sunset grew,
the diffused rose through the palms on the other side seemed almost
a new sky. It was my last evening in Tripoli.