Preparations for Departure from Benghazi. — Leave Benghazi. —
Arab Horses. — Ruins of Kasa Tawileh. — Labiar. — What an
Arab is. — Mode of Travelling. — Retinue. — Silphium. —
Tombs. — Cyrene.
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. I made up my mind,
therefore, to wait till this month was over, and gave orders for
a start on the morrow of the Bairam. This, however, happened to be
Wednesday, and my guide represented to me that Wednesday is the most
unlucky of days to start on a journey, and the argument was too sound
for me to think of opposing it. Thursday afternoon was, therefore,
fixed on, but so little notion have the Arabs of punctuality, and
so little are Arab servants of use in preparing for a journey, that
everything had to be done by my European servant, and it was Saturday
morning before I left the town. An Arab merchant, who was frequently
in the habit of visiting me, gave me, however, some consolation for
the delay, by explaining that the seventh is the luckiest day in
the month, and as Saturday was the seventh, I had only gained by the
change of day. This is, perhaps, the place to describe my equipment
for the journey, and my companions. I bought two wretched horses for
myself and servant, hired a quick stepping camel to carry a light
tent, carpets, and other articles required during the day (which
was ridden by a young Arab servant, who acts as coffee-maker and
pipe-filler), and other camels for carrying the rest of the baggage,
including a larger tent, crowbars and pickaxes for excavations,
with water-skins and barley for six days for the horses. My guide,
an immense man, one Mohammed El Adouly, provided his own horse,
rather a showy white mare, and one of the best I had seen in the
country; mounted upon this, and enveloped in his white barracan,
new yellow and red shoes on his feet, which rested in the broad
shovel-shaped brass stirrups; his long gun slung over his shoulders,
with a blunderbuss at his saddle bow; a pair of pistols slung under
the left arm, and a Koran and a white bundle of talismans under the
right—he presented a very majestic figure, and evidently thought so
himself. He was recommended to me as an indispensable guide for such
a journey, as he is well known to all the Bedawin in the country,
and his last wife was from the neighbourhood of Grennah; he had
accompanied M. de Bourville and one or two English Vice-Consuls in
their excursions through this country. I am, in general, averse to
taking into my service such necessary personages, as they invariably
endeavour to become the masters; but as the written information
concerning the places I was to visit is very scanty, and no trust
can be placed in the oral communication of the natives, I submitted
to the infliction. I was determined, however, to have my own way,
in which I succeeded very well, retrenching myself in my English
coldness, while listening to his reasons why I should not do as I
proposed, and then simply repeating the order; this being somewhat
the Turkish fashion, he soon understood my method, and for some time
obeyed my orders without opposition. In addition to Mohammed and
the pipe-boy, I had with me a tall thin man, who fancied himself a
cook, and an inexpressibly dirty fellow who was to groom the horses,
and also make himself generally useful. The breed of horses in the
Pentapolitan is sadly degenerated from its renown in former times;
they are small and ill made, with no appearance of Arab blood;
but there are a few in the interior which have great powers of
endurance. My servant’s horse, of the Dongola breed, which had
been reduced to a skeleton by a thirty-five days’ journey, during
which his only food was what he could pick up on the road, promises
to turn out a better horse than is usually met with in the country;
he delights me by the very knowing look, which he owes to his ears
being slit at the top—a sign that he was foaled at night.
After much screaming and scolding among the drivers, and the usual
amount of growling on the part of the camels, everything was got
into marching order, and, accompanied by some of my acquaintance,
who escorted me for an hour out of the town, I quitted Benghazi. We
stopped in about an hour and a half to fill the water-skins, at a
deep well of cool and sweet water, as we were to find none till the
next day, at Labiar. Our route was in a south-easterly direction,
across the hills, which bound the plain of Benghazi, and while my
luggage made directly for the spot where we were to spend the night,
I made a long _détour_ to visit a ruin called Kasa Tawileh, through
an uninteresting country, and without finding anything to reward my
exertion. At about six hours and a half from Benghazi we reached the
foot of the hills, and entered a beautiful ravine clothed with bushes
and underwood; here we saw some coveys of partridges, a few hares,
and flights of wood-pigeons; but the Arabs galloping about frightened
them, so that it was impossible to get a shot. They never think of
firing except when the game is on the ground, having never dreamt
of a flying shot; but their flint-locks generally missing fire,
their poaching does not do much harm to the game. We slept in an open
space towards the end of the ravine. The hills around it are called
Bu Miriam, and from them we descended the next morning to the great
plain called Ghat-es-Sultan, which stretches away to the right; we
crossed it in a south-east direction to Labiar. The country to the
edge of the hill, at the foot of which lies the valley of Labiar,
is covered with low underwood, juniper trees occasionally rising
amidst it.
From Benghazi to Labiar is fourteen hours of camel travelling.
Labiar presents a strange appearance; a marābut on a slight eminence
looks down upon a long stony vale, in which are several wells,
but not a trace of vegetation. These were surrounded by Bedawin
busily employed in drawing water in goat-skins, while their flocks
and herds covered the bare rocky sides of the surrounding hills,
patiently waiting their turn to approach the watering-place. From
constant agitation the water in these wells is always muddy, and
even of this the cattle only have a drink once in two or three days,
as many are driven from pasture grounds at a great distance. Here
we were visited by hosts of Bedawin, who formed a circle round
the small daytent in which I was resting until the camels should
come up. Nothing was to be learned from their conversation, but
they left behind them many lively reminiscences of their visit,
and as this was the case every time a Bedawy visited me, I soon
came to the resolution of forbidding their reception. The genuine
Bedawy, of this country at least, is one of the dirtiest animals
on the earth; their dress is often nothing but a brown barracan,
which is a mass of rags, and a dirty, very dirty, skull-cap. There
is one of them in this neighbourhood, who boasts of not having
used water for forty years, and it is only rarely that any of them
make external use of this precious commodity. The sheikh of Labiar
brought me a small skin of milk, and I bought of him a sheep for the
evening’s meal, which he made me pay dear for, though he refused
money for his milk, as to take money for it would be, as he said,
(’aib,) “a shame.”
Beyond Labiar, the country becomes less barren, being covered with
short grass, which, even when quite dry, has a greenish yellow tone;
it is thickly dotted with thorny plants, some of which were just
bursting into fresh leaf, and were most gaily green.
In four and a half hours from Labiar, our route taking a direction
east by north, we reached Sanct Bella Ghür, where we stopped near
a well ill supplied with water. From this vast plain five hours’
travelling over a beautiful range of hills called Jebel Fawaid,
through gorges clothed with the juniper—here almost a stately
tree—brought us to the wells of Elbenish, which presented a
very similar appearance to those of Labiar, though the country
round the Wadi, in which they lie, is less bare. While my tent
was being pitched for the mid-day repose, I rode to a distance of
twenty minutes to the north to see the remains of a ruined castle,
called by the Arabs Kasr Jbilla. It is a square building, with towers
at the corners, built of oblong blocks of wrought stone, of which,
in some parts, several courses still exist, devoid of ornament; it
may belong to Roman, or still earlier times. Placed on the summit
of a conical hill, it commands an extensive view, and may have
been destined to serve as a place of refuge from the attacks of
the nomad tribes. With every care I could discover no trace of the
inscriptions of which Della Cella speaks, and am inclined to think he
mistook for characters the effect of the weather on the worn surface
of the stones. The Arabs of the neighbourhood (they are Anaghir)
bury their dead round the walls, and I saw several recent graves.
From Elbenich we entered the Jebel el Abid, inhabited by Arabs of
the same name, and in four hours reached Zardes, where we slept,
keeping, however, a good watch, as the Abid have a villanous
reputation for thieving, and during the night gave us more than
one _alerte_. Zardes is a valley containing wells, and surrounded
by hills, in the protruding summits of which are many crevices,
wherein grow the juniper and wild thyme, whose perfume fills the
air; the ground around glittering with white flowers. This country,
towards evening, when a pink tinge covers it, reminded me frequently
of a Scotch moor. The next day was a fatiguing one; there being no
suitable place for resting in the middle of the journey, I rode
six hours before I halted my party. I generally left the camels
with my servant, to prevent loitering, and rode on ahead with a
guide and some Arab attendants. 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. They have two unmusical
and strange, which is remarkable, as the music of the countries
on either side—Egypt and Tunis—is very pretty. The leader
sings a couple of lines, which he constantly repeats with slight
variations, while the rest join in a strange howling chorus. The
verse is generally extempore, containing little rhyme and still
less reason, and the best idea I can give of its import and style
is by recalling the nursery ditty,—
Here we go up, up, up,
Now we go down, down.
_Chorus_—How, wow, how.
as like bow wow wow as can be.
In leaving Zardes our road lay for three hours over hills covered
with large junipers and other trees of the cypress tribe. This
species of juniper is indigenous to the Cyrenaica; it is the _Thuya_
of Pliny, and though it now only furnishes the small rough beams
of which the roofing of the Benghazi houses is formed, it was in
ancient times extensively used in upholstery, and furnished the
precious citrian tables to the luxury of Greece and Rome. The wood
has a bright yellow colour, and might, I should think, become again
fashionable if introduced into Europe.[1]
We now came to an extensive plain called El-Hhiah, and further on
to Sharb Tawalun, which was entirely burnt up, though the camels
still found ample amusement, as they stragglingly loitered along,
in plucking on this side and on that the half-dried tufts of thorny
shrubs with which it is overgrown. Merawah, eleven hours distant, was
our next halting-place; near it we started numbers of gazelles, which
I could not get within shot of, though I had murdering intentions,
our stock of provisions being very low. Here the camel drivers
were busy, all the evening, preparing muzzles for the camels, to
prevent them eating the _Driâs_, with which the country between
here and Cyrene is covered. Most authors consider this plant to
be the old _Silphium_, though its medicinal virtues are forgotten,
and it is only known as the dreaded poison which threatens the lives
of camels which are not reared in this tract of country. It is from
no partiality for its flavour that they eat it, for they refuse it
when offered to them. They crop it as they pass along, tempted by
the long stem, which brings it so near their noses. It is at the
present season, when in seed, that it is considered most deadly;
I am told that in spring it is unnecessary to take precautions
against it. If not the real _Silphium_, it certainly answers to the
description given of the plant by Theophrastus, and I cannot think
the objection to its identity urged by the learned M. Duchalais, from
the form of the seed on the medals, is of much weight. I have seen
seeds which nearly enough resemble the _Magydaris_ on the medals,
though they certainly are not heart-shaped, but the plant itself,
as represented on them, is evidently what Mr. Pugin would call a
conventional Silphium, for no plant of this species has the stem
so thick in proportion to its height and flower. The seeds are
highly medicinal, but I was unfortunately too late to ascertain if
it yields a juice corresponding to the ancient Opos.
The next day our travelling from Merawah to Sireh, nine hours,
and thence to Slŭnt, two hours, was very slow, for the camels,
with their mouths tied up, were in a very bad humour, and could
hardly be made to move. The appearance of the country was now varied
by a number of caroub trees, which, contrasted with the duller
juniper, looked of a bright green, and afforded a most grateful
shade. Half-way between Merawah and Sireh is a large reservoir of
ancient construction. It had been supported on six columns, and
in many places the cement still adheres to the walls. There being
no well in this neighbourhood, it was constructed to collect the
rain-water from the hill at whose base it lies; its presence denotes,
I presume, the site of some old town or village; but I observed no
other remains of antiquity in its neighbourhood. It is true that the
morning was very hot, and I, perhaps, gave myself little trouble
in looking for them.[2] At Sireh are remains of a square castle,
like that which I visited at Elbenich, but not so well preserved
nor in so commanding a situation. Many similar remains of castles,
which probably formed a line of defence against the border tribes,
are to be seen on the summits of the hills. In the face of the rocks
at Sireh are many excavations, devoid of ornament, and evidently
intended as sepulchres, though the Arabs, of course, assert that
they were the abodes of the ancient inhabitants. At Slŭnt the rock
is burrowed with such excavations, each with a fore-court cut in
the rock, having one or three entrances to the sepulchral chambers,
some of which are most extensive, and supported by rude columns. I
found one occupied by Arab ladies, who did not welcome my visit;
probably thinking I had sinister intentions on their grain, for which
it served as a magazine. It was certainly from no Oriental idea of
the sacredness of the Hareem that they seemed so relieved when I
turned my horse’s head. The Bedawin women, dirty and tattooed,
have no difficulty in showing their bare faces to strangers; and,
notwithstanding the stories of Herodotus, I think there is no risk in
their doing so. They wear leather leggings up to the knee; in other
respects their dress differs little, except in its darker colour,
from that of the Benghazi women.
The next morning a ride of two hours and a quarter through an
interesting country brought us to the Marābut Sidi Mohammed
el Himary, where there is an ill-supplied well, and a rock,
under which a shade may be obtained without the trouble of
pitching a tent. Barth, I think, gives this as the site of the
ancient Balaerai, whose distance was twelve miles from Cyrene;
but it took my camels seven hours and a half from here to Grennah,
which, at the slowest rate of travelling, must give fifteen miles,
and from the length of time I was on horseback I should judge the
distance nearer eighteen. The ride from here to Grennah is worth
a journey from Europe. About half-way, after passing through a
valley containing many splendid old junipers, under which goats,
flocked together, were enjoying the shade, we came to a spring of
living water, called Menezzah Wad Fairyeh. The rest of the journey
was over a range of low undulating hills, offering, perhaps, the
most lovely sylvan scenery in the world. The country is like a most
beautifully arranged _Jardin Anglais_, covered with pyramidal clumps
of evergreens, variously disposed, as if by the hand of the most
refined taste; while _bosquets_ of junipers and cedars, relieved
by the pale olive and the bright green of the tall arbutus tree,
afford a most grateful shade from the mid-day sun. 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.
“Nunc viridi membra sub arbuto
Stratus, nunc ad aquæ lene caput sacræ.”
Whoever has traversed these fresh groves in the parching heat of an
African July can understand the enthusiastic praises of the older
writers, and why the Arabs, coming from the Desert, called the
country the Green Mountain. As we approached Cyrene, this exuberant
vegetation disappeared, and in its place we passed through long
avenues of tombs, hewn in the rock, or out of it; next we came
in sight of the ruined towers of the old city walls; and then,
through a long line of ruins, we reached the street of Battus,
where a narrow gorge opens upon a magnificent view over plains
and hills to the blue Mediterranean. I rode on to the cave whence
gushes the perennial spring of Cyre, took a draught of its bright,
cool water, and fixed my temporary home beneath the world-famed
fountain, amidst the countless ruins of temples and public buildings.