Tomb of a Ptolemy. — Unequal Taxation. — What a Wife costs. —
Ruins of Tolmeta. — Wall around Tancra. — Good State of the
Ruins. — The Rains. — Arab Tents. — Return to Benghazi.
_October 16th._—Right glad to escape the furnace-like blasts
which swept, stifling, over the plain of Merdj, I started, though
late in the afternoon, on the way to Tolmeta. The camel drivers,
who had been furnished to me at Grennah by Abou Bekr, in addition to
their ignorance of the road, proved themselves the most unmanageable
beings I had yet met with; having complained of them to the Kehia,
he gave them an admonition, and also provided me with an Arab of
the country, a soi-disant relation, to conduct me on my way.
It took three hours in a north-east direction to reach the edge of
the plain, when, night coming on, I encamped, and continued the
journey the following morning. There are two ravines which lead
towards Tolmeta, of which we took the one to the west, called Wady
Shebbah; this route is rather the longer of the two, but affords an
easy descent, which, to travellers with heavily-laden camels, is a
consideration of no little moment. The other descent was called by my
conductor Wady Hambes, or Hambesh. It is described by Beechey as very
beautiful, and, being more difficult, its scenery is probably grander
than that of the route followed by me, which is rather a pass than a
ravine, running over long low hills until it gradually reaches the
level of the sea. On the shore, nearly opposite its _débouché_,
is a group of rocks, and among them a well with brackish water,
where we found many goats, with their attendants. From this,
riding eastward, we came to another well, and then to a third in
the ruins of a fortalice, which contains the only sweet water in
the neighbourhood. Having filled our water-bottles, we went on to
a large square monument, supposed to be the tomb of one of the
Ptolemies who reigned in this country; the monument is visible
to a great distance out at sea. Built on a square base of rock,
it presents a noble mass, and has kindled the enthusiasm of former
visitors; but, to my eye, excepting for its greater dimensions,
it seemed in architectural beauty inferior to many I have seen
elsewhere in this country. The triangular entrance, on the side
opposite to the hills, is remarkable from its resemblance to that
of the Great Pyramid. Near this are many large excavated tombs,
one of which is remarkable, from the fact that the rock out of which
it is fashioned has been cut away all round, and thus a monolithic
monument, in the truest sense, produced. It took seven and a half
hours in all from Merdj to this point, where I stayed for upwards
of an hour, in the useful, or at least necessary, employment of
bargaining for sheep, a flock of which was drinking at a pool in
front of the large tower. All bargains are difficult negotiations
in this country, the Arabs often refusing to sell at a price less
than double the market value of their merchandise: they are well
acquainted with the laudable custom of making strangers pay their
way. The price of sheep appeared to have gradually risen since I came
into the country; the first I bought cost me about five shillings,
and those I bought here more than double that sum. For a party of six
people I found that, with economy, a sheep would last three days,
if eked out with a not inconsiderable supply of rice and biscuits
for the Arabs, who eat voraciously.
With my new friend, Abd-el-Kader Waled Ali, I had much curious
conversation, as I found him more communicative than the greater
part of his countrymen. He is of the wealthier class, and lives
in the country beyond Labiar. He complained, and I believe with
justice (for every one I have spoken with on the subject confirmed
what he said), of the unequal manner in which the taxes are levied,
the miri for each naga varying in different tribes from five to six
hundred piastres. The naga, like the pound sterling, is an imaginary
unit, consisting of ten camels, or twenty oxen, or a hundred sheep
or goats. Each tribe pays tribute for a certain number of nagas,
according to a census made some 150 years ago; the Sheikh being
responsible for its partition among the members of his tribe, and
its collection. It is easy to understand that with such a system
the tax falls very heavily on those tribes which from war or other
causes have sunk in importance in this lapse of time; whilst, on the
other hand, those which have grown wealthy pay an insignificant sum:
thus a tribe rated at a hundred nagas, and which has now only twenty,
pays for each naga five times the sum it was originally taxed at;
while those whose wealth has increased from a hundred to a thousand,
pay for each only a fiftieth part of what their less fortunate
neighbours are charged. Ignorant in book learning, the Arabs, aided
by their rosaries, are no mean proficients in arithmetic; and their
applications for redress are as incessant as fruitless. From what I
have seen of the country a spirit of discontent is universal—the
Arabs regret their old independent pasha; and I think the arrival
of any Government, Moslem or even Christian—so only not the
Sultan’s—would be hailed with general satisfaction.
Abd-el-Kader is married, and I took down his account of the price
he paid for his wife. To her father he gave thirteen sheep, valued
at two dollars and a half each, with a hundred dollars in cash; and
to the lady herself, a pair of silver bracelets (souar or debalg),
weighing thirty-five dollars, dress-stuffs to the same amount,
furniture, carpets, &c., to the value of fifty dollars; these, with
some other expenses, made the cost of his wedding amount in all
to three hundred dollars. He confirmed to me the truth of an Arab
custom, which I had before heard of from others, that of giving to
the mother, of the bride a sum varying from a hundred to five hundred
piastres, as the price of the milk with which she had suckled her
daughter. The sheep and the money are not returned in any shape,
as, on her father’s death, his wife’s brother succeeds to them,
and on his death the next male heir. “Well,” I said, “you
will acknowledge that here you literally buy your wife?”—to
which he retorted, “Of course we do; while in Europe it is the
wife who buys her husband; we are up to that;” and he chuckled,
and seemed to think he had paid me off with interest.
After passing the pools, where I had stayed so long, we came in
sight of the line of the fortifications, which are now almost
buried in sand, and of one of the city gates, still an imposing
mass. The plain where Tolmeta stood did not become visible until
we had crossed the low ridge formed by the fallen walls. Great
was the disappointment I experienced on my first view of the city,
and greater became my disappointment the more I saw of it. Three
columns standing over large covered cisterns, and two smaller ones
not far distant, the ruined apse of a Christian church (probably of
the fourth century), catch the eye; but the general impression of
the entire surface is that of a huge piece of new macadamisation, so
thickly is the ground strewed with small fragments. The celebrated
barracks have been lately despoiled, by truly Vandalic hands, of
the curious inscription which rendered the building so interesting,
and to obtain which the greater part of the front facing the sea
has been overthrown. The destruction of it seems to have been as
wanton as the labour of it must have been great, the architecture
being of the most solid description. I was told that in attempting
their removal one of the slabs was so broken that the author of
this devastation left it lying on the ground; and that after an
interval of two or three years, when he had learnt in Paris that
an inscription, of which a third part is wanting, is worthless, he
sent for the remaining fragments, which were already illegible. If
those employed were incapable of taking an accurate copy of the
inscription, one would suppose that they might at least have made
a cast of it, and at less expense, and thus have left the only
monument worth visiting in Ptolemais still retaining its external
form, and the disposition of its interior still traceable, and
unchoked by newly-made ruins. The three Ionic columns, which have
been described as dating from the earliest times and of remarkable
purity, seemed to me of a late epoch, when not a tradition of true
beauty remained; they are clumsy, and badly chiselled, nor did I
see in the whole space any fragments of sculpture or architecture
in a good style of art. 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. On the stones of
which these are built are many inscriptions, whose irregularity
would lead one to the idea that they are of very recent date, or
even to fancy them the work of industrious idlers, bent upon thus
immortalising their names. Fox’s and many other names, carved
with a knife on the old walls at Eton, are far better specimens
of caligraphy. More interesting than these are the quarry-marks,
many of them in Barbary characters, which are found here, as well
as on one of the forts on the sea-wall.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF IONIC BUILDING AT PTOLEMAIS.]
On the second day of my stay here the clouds gathered thick towards
sunset, whereupon soon followed a storm of lightning and rain,
such as I have seldom witnessed. The autumnal rains had commenced,
and it was evident that my proper course was a speedy return to
Benghazi, as when it does rain here it continues, almost without
intermission, for many days, and with a frantic violence which
no tents can withstand. I had been too much disappointed with the
remains of Tolmeta to regret having to shorten my stay here; and
when the rain ceased the next morning, or only continued in fitful
showers, I had the wet tents and baggage placed on the camels,
and took my departure for Tancra, the ancient Tenchira. It was,
however, so late before a start could be made, that at sunset we
were still at no great distance from the ruins, and finding a good
place for encamping near some wells, and fields sown with _izra_,
I stopped there. The route is along the sea-shore, through a wide
plain covered with briars and baturne bushes, showing only in very
few places slight marks of cultivation. A soft warm wind, like
that of a spring morning, made the ride through the clean-washed
underwood delightful, and I fancied I could already see signs of
fresh vegetation in the briars. It took, in all, nine hours and
a half to reach Tancra from Dolmeita. Near the old town are many
patches of cultivated ground, producing vegetables and fruit, the
property of Arab families, who inhabit many of the excavated tombs
in the quarries on either side of the town.
The first view of Tancra rather disappointed me. So much has been
written about the perfect state of the walls, that I arrived there
with the expectation of finding them more perfect than the walls
of either Rome or Constantinople; and what, indeed, have these
cities, amidst all their remains of bygone days, to offer of more
interest than their venerable walls, which, after withstanding
unnumbered hostile attacks, still retain so much of their historical
significance? The circuit of the walls of Tenchira is on three
sides entire; the disposition of the towers is well marked, and the
places of the gates may be conjectured: in many parts the wall is
not more than two or three feet high, in some it is reduced to a
mere heap of stones, and in none does it exceed fourteen or fifteen
feet. At the eastern extremity, a quarry has been taken advantage
of, to add strength to the wall by being made to serve as a ditch;
on the ground above there are remains of a strong fortalice. Within
these is another quarry, which serves to isolate the fortress—a
narrow ledge of rock, along which the wall ran, alone affording
access to it; this, with a third parallel to the sea, seems to have
completed this curious defensive structure, for such I suppose it
may be considered. The walls are, doubtless, interesting to the
military antiquarian, exhibiting, as they do very perfectly, the
system of fortification used at the time of their reconstruction
or repair by order of Justinian; but they disappoint the traveller
in search of the artistic or the picturesque, who had hoped to find
in Greek or Roman style what Alatri presents in the Cyclopean. The
ill-carved inscriptions with which they are covered—mere records
of names which have evidently belonged to other buildings, and
many of them now turned upside down—possess no kind of interest;
and I am inclined to think that the walls of Apollonia, if cleared
of their rubbish, would be found more perfect, as well as more
picturesque. But if disappointed with the exterior of the town,
I was equally surprised by finding the contents of the interior
more interesting than anything I had met with in the Cyrenaica;
and then I had to regret that I had allowed myself to be so long
enchained by the delightful climate of the hills, as to render a
long stay in Tancra impossible on account of the rains, which this
year set in nearly a month earlier than usual. The town, indeed,
contains no monuments of any great elevation, which accounts for
the little attention which seems to have been bestowed on Tancra by
previous travellers; at the season when they visited it everything
must have been hidden by the long grass; but when the ground is
bare of vegetation, as at my visit, many lines of streets become as
distinctly traceable as those of Pompeii, and even the ground plans
of the houses which bordered them. Among the larger buildings, are
to be remarked the ruins of a church in the west of the city, and
those of a large quadrangle, with a well-preserved reservoir within
its precincts, which, from its similarity to the hapless barracks
at Dolmeita, must have had a similar purpose. Further eastward,
is a striking edifice bearing inscriptions, which may have been
a temple or a basilica, but its interior is so completely filled
with rubbish, that its plan cannot be distinguished. No trace of a
theatre, amphitheatre, or stadium is visible; so that the inhabitants
of Tenchira must, in all probability, have had the misfortune to
be destitute of any place of public amusement. I have remarked
with surprise in other parts of the Pentapolis, as well as here,
the absence of any well-defined ruins of public baths; though I
cannot suppose that any town, even of small size, was in Roman times
destitute of so necessary and favourite a luxury. The only hypothesis
which presents itself to me as explanatory of this, is the fact, that
these towns, as we see them at the present day, belong to the later
empire, during whose existence the opposition shown by the bishops
and clergy to the delicacy of the bath (_balneorum deliciæ_) may,
in some places, have succeeded in suppressing its use. No place in
this country promises a more abundant harvest to the excavator than
this: medals must be buried in great quantities, and perhaps other
articles of value, among its ruins; and the tombs sunk in the rocks
all around are, with those of Benghazi, the only ones in the country
that seem to have escaped desecration. All those which were excavated
in the quarries have been long since rifled; and even those have not
escaped which are now sanded up, as was recently proved, to his great
disappointment, by an Arab antiquarian, who, no doubt, having read,
adopted Beechey’s suggestion, and employed money, men, and much
time, in clearing one of those nearest to the town, on the west
side. Beechey, judging from their situation, had conjectured that
these tombs were the most ancient; and that, as they had probably
been early sanded up, they would offer a good chance of rewarding
researches. The event proved that his opinion was incorrect, as
the tomb, a large square cavern, was empty of everything but sand;
above the door of it is a cross in a circle, with the letters I C
. X C. There are tombs cut like troughs on the summits of the rocks
on which the quarries are sunk, which yield great numbers of vases,
but all that were found, whilst I was there, were of very coarse
manufacture. I saw in the hands of an Arab a small fragment of a
large and very finely-painted urn of the latest style, and although
such are not, of course, common, I believe they are occasionally
found. I had intended to spend some days here, and to open a large
number of tombs, whose position I had conjectured from the hollow
sound the ground above gave out when struck; but the rains had now
set in, descending every night in torrents, and frequently lasting
all day; so that no working was possible, and in the small tents a
dry spot could not be preserved. The discomfort produced by the rain,
however, was even exceeded by the destruction it brought to books
and instruments; I therefore left Tancra, and firmly resolved that
my first purchase in Benghazi should be one of the hair tents of
the Arabs, which, though not quite impervious to rain, are yet the
best protection one can have against it. As used in this country,
they are generally about eighteen feet long, by fifteen broad,
the roof formed of long stripes of coarse hair-cloth woven by the
women. The roof is sometimes made in white for winter use; but
more generally it is of a brown, earthy colour, with stripes of
black and white. No cutting out or other fashioning is necessary,
for the cloth, being sufficiently elastic, accommodates itself to
the slope of the roof. Two poles, three feet apart, support the
tent, giving in the centre a height of about seven feet, while the
corners and edges are stretched by cords, and supported by slender
spars, at about half this height from the ground. Three sides are
closed by stripes of the same stuff, rudely attached to the roof
by wooden pins, the fourth—that turned to leeward—being left
open. In summer, the sides are removed, and branches are used to
replace them, while, in general, an older roof is substituted for
the better one used in winter. With a little management, they might
be made comfortable enough, and, with the exception of the great
weight of the hair-cloth of which they are formed, they would be very
convenient for travelling, as they are easily set up, are exposed
to no accidents which could not be remedied on the spot, and are
less liable than cotton tents to rot when packed up wet. Against
this evil I have found M‘Gregor’s anti-dry-rot preparation of
no use. I have one tent of prepared, and one of unprepared canvas,
and have yet found no difference in the condition of their materials.
On the third day after my arrival in Tancra, I reluctantly pursued
my journey to Benghazi. In an hour and a quarter we reached Bou
Jera’a, which has many gardens and wells. An hour and a half
further on lies Birsis, with its few insignificant ruins and its
many wells; it afforded one of the pleasantest autumnal scenes I had
beheld for a long time: whole villages of tents in quick succession,
fields everywhere separated by well-made inclosures, and the whole
landscape animated by a busy industry, in which all ages and sexes
seemed equally to join. This is the only part of the Pentapolis which
has the appearance of being inhabited. The damp, warm air of the
morning communicated a sensation of enjoyment to the frame; and the
unwonted life of the scene recalled more civilised lands to my mind.
The appearance of the country soon, however, changed; and we entered
upon a tract most dreary and desolate. The path winds further inland,
being separated from the sea by an extensive marsh, along the edge of
which it runs at the foot of low rocks; the dark, stunted vegetation
interspersed among the stony wastes gave an air of indescribable
melancholy to the landscape. A journey of six hours and a half
through this dull flat brought us to Sidi Suaiken, a marābut on
an eminence; beyond this the country becomes more wooded, and green
meadows appear, in one of which I encamped. There is a place of the
name of Handouleh, consisting of a few gardens and rich pastures,
which lies about an hour and a half from the marābut; further on to
the right is the large salt lake of Ez-zajana, a favourite resort of
the Benghazini in their excursions. Near here are extensive ruins,
showing only the ground plan of many buildings, which, from the
name, are supposed to mark the site of Adrianopolis. Soon after
this the road enters the dried sandy bed of the salt lake, which,
filled by the winter gales from the sea, gradually evaporates in
the course of the summer. At length, we again reached Benghazi,
after an absence of rather more than three months.