Part 17 (2/2)
It is needless to cite all the pa.s.sages of Scripture where the people in the towns and villages are represented as bringing out their sick of every kind and description. (Matt. xiv. 14, 35, 36.) So it is in North Africa. Whenever an European visits these countries with any pretensions to medical skill, all the sick of the place are brought out to him. When I see the sick daily brought to me--as also when I was in The Mountains--I cannot help thinking of those affecting pictures of disease and misery which were providentially exhibited to demonstrate the divine skill of the Great Physician of mind and body.
Salt is procured in a few hours' journey beyond _Sidi Mabed_, and is considered superior to that procured at the _Salinae_ of the coast. This Saharan salt is only obtained after there has been some rain, the earth being impregnated with it, and the water was.h.i.+ng away the earthy particles. It is gathered in the dry season.
_19th._--Amuse myself with Arabic reading and philological studies. The mornings continue cool. Administer now little medicine, for I have but little left. Ordered an Arab to be bled by the old Moor, who possesses a good lancet. The big hulking Arab proved a greater coward than a child.
How sickness unnerves a man, the hardiest and strongest of men! I once took a pa.s.sage from Algeria to Ma.r.s.eilles in a French transport of convalescents. There I saw the brave and brilliant French troops cry and whine like children under the influence of fever. When the old Moor had bled the soldier, he said to me, ”Where's the money?” This shows that, though they rarely think of remunerating the services of the Christian Tabeeb, they have a perfectly clear conception of what is due to the labour and skill of a doctor when the case refers to themselves. Some time after, I went to the old Moor again, and asked him to bleed another soldier attacked with fever. He refused to bleed him, alleging that he must be paid. ”He will die,” I said. ”Let him die,” returned the unfeeling old blood-letter; ”why do they bring soldiers here, we don't want them?” This afternoon I visited the barrack, where several Arab soldiers were laid up with the fever, which they had caught at Emjessem.
One was very bad. The Arabs said to me, ”You must give him money to buy some bread, and a little meat to make some broth.” I told them they must go the Rais; it was his business to look after his troops. It is distressing to witness the condition of these wretched Arabs. At different times I have given them a little meat, and bread, and oil; but now my stock of provisions is getting down, and the communication between Tripoli and Ghadames is very precarious. In the evening I saw the _Nather_, and said to him--expecting he would mention it to the Rais, ”See that soldier lying on the stone-bench; he is sick, and has nothing to eat.”
_The Nather._--”Yes, he is ill.”
_I._--”But he has nothing to eat; can't you get him something to eat?”
_The Nather,_--”Pooh, he must die.”
The other Moors present laughed at my simplicity in begging something to eat for a fever-worn, emaciated wretch of a soldier. The matter of fact is, these poor fellows are detested by the inhabitants, and starved to death by the Government. The soldier had caught the fever of Derge, whilst sent there on business, which is a bad tertian fever, prevalent in some oases of The Sahara.
Lately, as my turjeman and Said, with several negroes, were chatting, and saying people would have husbands and wives in the next world, I asked, in the manner of the Sadducees, ”If a woman had three husbands in this world, whose wife would she be in the next?”
They all answered, ”_The wife of the last_.” As some of the group of these theologians and diviners of the future state were negroes, I asked, ”What _colour_ will people be in the next world?” They replied, ”_All white_, and alike; and not only will their skins be white, but all their clothing will be _white_.” White, indeed, is the favourite colour of Mussulmans; and a sooty-black Mohammedan negro will set off his face with a white turban, as our Christian n.i.g.g.e.rs do their _j.a.pan_ with a lily-white neckcloth. But _white_ is the colour of purity, of religion in North Africa and The East, as in _Biblical_ times.--pe??e??????? ??
?at???? ?e?????. (Rev. iv. 4.)
_20th._--Weather continues fine and cool. Less meat to be had; nothing decided about the new levy of money, except that the people will not or cannot pay. The Sheikh Makouran tells me he is greatly in debt to Messrs.
Silva and Laby, and so are all Ghadamsee merchants. The money now employed in commerce is chiefly that of European and other merchants of Tripoli and Tunis. ”We have no money,” says Makouran, ”we cannot pay any new levies. If Rais persists, he must collect our money at the edge of the sword; and this can't last, for we shall all soon die of hunger.”
These continual complaints make me melancholy, and added to my impatience ”to be up and doing,” make me very peevish. O Dio! but such is the lot of man, to suffer always, either in mind or body. Much annoyed at my taleb for eating Said's dinner, even before my face. These Moors, at least some of them, have neither honour nor conscience. I suppose the taleb is pinching his belly to pay his portion of the new contribution. To punish the taleb, I give Said coffee before him, without asking him to take any.
I may observe, the Moors don't like to see me treat the poor blacks and slaves as their equals. I frequently give the negroes tea and coffee before I serve them, to show I despise such distinctions, although, perhaps, against propriety.
The taleb began boasting about Soudan, and he has much reason to boast of it, if we compare what Mohammedans have there done with what Christians have done on the Western Coast of Africa. He said, ”There's no _gomerick_ (Custom-house), no oppression, for the people are Mussulmans.” Such were the reasons for their not being oppressive. It is a great question how far a country may be civilized, and in how short a time, without actual conquest?
Civilization has progressed in Central Africa with the spread of Islamism. When it reaches the point of Mahometan civilization it will stop. The question with us is, ”Whether we shall civilize the Mohammedans, and so work on Central Africa, or reconquer their conquests?” There appears very little chance of civilizing Africa without arms and conquest. Bornou, Soudan, and its numerous cities, Timbuctoo and Jinnee, formerly all governed by the _Kohlan_--???????, or ”blacks,” are now governed by strangers, either Arabs (pure) or Touaricks or Fullans. These are the present most important kingdoms of the ancient Nigritia, and include a population of some millions. I continue to pursue my inquiries respecting the Fullans. All agree in representing them as originally _Arab_, but now greatly mixed, of very dark colour, some being nearly black, others, and most of them, a dark brown and yellow red, and some nearly white. The fortunes of the Fullans, emerging filthily from the dregs and offscouring of The Sahara, have become as great as the old Romans formerly in Europe, but they will always have powerful and vindictive rivals in the Touarghee and pure Arab and Berber races. The Revd. Mr. Schon has given a too unfavourable report of the Fullans, in his Notes and Journal of the Niger Expedition, bia.s.sed against them in his Missionary zeal, simply because they are Mahometans. It is true that the Fullans are great slave-dealers, but so are nearly all the princes of Africa. The mild and equitable administration of the kingdoms of Kanou, Succatou, Kashna, and other immense centres of population, as carried on by the Fullans, is notorious throughout The Great Desert. No people of Nigritian Africa has so profoundly excited my best sympathies as the Fullanee races[55].
The Moors do not fondle and dandle their children on their knees, as parents are accustomed in Europe; and when grown up, the children appear as distant from their parents as strangers. This arises from the absolute authority a.s.sumed by parents over children during their minority. I have often been angry to see some of the lower people here teaching the children to call me _Kafer_ (”infidel”) as a sort of religious duty, lest, I imagine, the children should see at last that there is no very great difference between a _Kafer_ and a Moslemite.
Was much amused this afternoon in seeing physic administered to camels.
The camel is made to lie down, and its knee joints are tied round so that it cannot get up. One person then seizes hold of the skin and cartilage of the nose, and that of the under jaw, and wrests with all his force the mouth wide open, whilst another seizes hold of the tongue and pulls it over one side of the mouth; this done, another pours the medicine down the throat of the animal, and, when the mouth is too full, they shut the jaws and rub and work the medicine down its throat. The disease was the falling off of the hair; and the medicine consisted of the stones of dates split into pieces and mixed with dried herbs, simple hay or gra.s.s herbs, powdered as small as snuff, the mixture being made with water.
People told me it would fatten the camel as well as restore its hair.
Camels frequently have the mange, and then they are tarred over. For unknown incomprehensible diseases, the Moors burn the camel on the head with hot irons, and call this physic. Men are treated in the same way, and the Moors are very fond of these a.n.a.logies between men and brutes.
What is good for a camel is good for a man, and what is good for man is good for a camel. Whilst the camel was being drugged, a Touarick came up and said, ”_Salam aleikom_” to me. They always use this primitive mode of salutation. When they swear oaths they also say, ”_Allah Akbar_,” (G.o.d is Greatest!) the famous war-cry of the Saracennic conquerors of olden times. They are primitive in all their ideas and words; their manners are equally stiff, and slow or courtly, ”stately and dignified;” they fully understand the doctrine that, ”Great bodies move slow.”
A man is said sometimes not to be worth ”a pinch of snuff;” and yet a pinch of snuff will knock a man down, as it knocked me down this evening. My value then does not quite reach to a pinch of snuff standard. To come to explanation: a merchant offered me a pinch of snuff, and to please him, I took a large pinch, pus.h.i.+ng a portion of it up my nostrils. Immediately I fell dizzy and sick, and in a short time, vomited violently. The people stared at me with astonishment, and were terrified out of their wits, and thought I was about to give up the ghost. They never saw snuff before produce such terrible effects. After some time, I got a little better and returned home.
This snuff was that from Souf, and what people call _war_ (”difficult”). I had been warned of it, and therefore richly paid for my folly. Moreover, it was a violation of my usual abstinence from this not very elegant habit. The Souf snuff is extremely powerful; it is constantly imported here, and for the satisfaction of snuff-takers and snuff-taking tourists, I am bound to inform them that they will find snuff much cheaper in Ghadames than in Tripoli.
People call snuff hot and cold, according to its stimulating, irritating, and tickling power. It is prohibited to drink wine and spirits amongst Moslemites, but, nevertheless, many of them do not fail to intoxicate themselves with everything besides which comes in their way: they snuff most horribly all the live-long day. In the season the Arabs drink their _leghma_, and the Mahometan Negroes their _bouza_, the Soudanic merchants chew their _ghour_, nuts, and _kouda_, as our jolly tars their tobacco, and others munch the _trona_. My taleb came to me to see if I were dead. He had heard such a horrible report in the town. I embraced the opportunity of lecturing him upon the absurdity of the prohibition from drinking wine, when he and others intoxicated themselves with snuff. But man will have _his_ stimulant, and the tee-totaller, who protests against all stimulants, seeks his in his tea and coffee. There is no harm in this, and the question only remains to seek as harmless a stimulant, as consistent with health as possible. In justice to the Marabout city of Ghadames, I must mention that some of the more strict Mohammedans consider snuffing, as well as smoking, prohibited by their religion, and opium (???????), and _keef_, an intoxicating herb, sometimes called _takrounee_, ????????, are not smoked in this place. In general, few of the Moors of this place smoke at all.
_21st._--Weather fine, no rain. The merchants begin to bake biscuits for their journey to Ghat, which looks like preparation. My friend Abu Beker called and gave me two letters written to him from Timbuctoo by his brother, who is established there. Since my return, I have given one of these letters to the Royal Asiatic Society, and the other to the British Museum, considering them a great curiosity, so long as this city shall remain separated from us Europeans by such impa.s.sable barriers.
The following is the translation of the letter presented to the Royal Asiatic Society:--
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