Part 11 (2/2)

The entry into Mourzouk, the capital of Sultan Mukni, was attended with the usual ceremonial. On drawing near to the palm groves and gardens, which encompa.s.s the city, a large body of horse and foot was seen approaching with silken flags. When the hors.e.m.e.n had advanced within five hundred yards of the party, they set off at full speed, and, on coming up, threw themselves from their horses, and ran to kiss the sultan's hand. On drawing nearer to the town, the cavalcade was met by the dancers, drummers, and pipers. Two men, bearing fans of ostrich feathers, stationed themselves on each side of the sultan, beating off the flies. Thus preceded by the led horses and silken flags, they made their entry, the hors.e.m.e.n continuing to skirmish till they reached the gate. The soldiers then raced up every broad street, shouting and firing, whilst the women uttered their shrill cry, and on pa.s.sing a large open s.p.a.ce, a salute was fired from two six-pounders. The scene was altogether highly interesting.

Mourzouk is a walled town, containing about 2,500 inhabitants, who are blacks, and who do not, like the Arabs, change their residence.

The walls are of mud, having round b.u.t.tresses, with loopholes for musketry, rudely built, but sufficiently strong to guard against attack; they are about fifteen feet in height, and at the bottom eight feet in thickness, tapering, as all the walls in this country do, towards the top. The town has seven gates, four of which are built up, in order to prevent the people escaping when they are required to pay their duties. A man is appointed by the sultan to attend each of these gates, day and night, lest any slaves or merchandise should be smuggled into the town. The people, in building the walls and houses, fabricate a good subst.i.tute for stones, which are not to be found in those parts, by forming clay into b.a.l.l.s, which they dry in the sun, and use with mud as mortar; the walls are thus made very strong, and as rain is unknown, durable also. The houses, with very few exceptions, are of one story, and those of the poorer sort, receive all their light from the doors. They are so low as to require stooping nearly double to enter them; but the large houses have a capacious outer door, which is sufficiently well contrived, considering the bad quality of the wood, that composes them. Thick palm planks, of four or five inches in breadth, for the size and manner of cutting a tree will not afford more, have a square hole punched through them at the top and bottom, by which they are firmly wedged together with thick palm sticks; wet thongs of camels' hide are then tied tightly over them, which, on drying, draw the planks more strongly and securely together. There are not any hinges to the doors, but they turn on a pivot, formed on the last plank near the wall, which is always the largest on that account. The locks and keys are very large and heavy, and of curious construction. The houses are generally built in little narrow streets, but there are many open places, entirely void of buildings, and covered with sand, on which the camels of the traders rest. Many palms grow in the town, and some houses have small square enclosures, in which are cultivated a few red peppers and onions. The street of entrance is a broad s.p.a.ce, of at least a hundred yards, leading to the wall that surrounds the castle, and is extremely pretty. Here the hors.e.m.e.n have full scope to display their abilities, when they skirmish before the sultan. The castle itself is an immense mud building, rising to the height of eighty or ninety feet, with little battlements on the walls, and at a distance really looks warlike. Like all the other buildings, it has no pretensions to regularity. The lower walls are fifty or sixty feet in thickness, the upper taper off to about four or five feet. In consequence of the immense ma.s.s of wall, the apartments are very small, and few in number. The rooms occupied by the sultan are of the best quality, that is to say, comparatively, for the walls are tolerably smooth and white-washed, and have ornamental daubs of red paint in blotches, by way of effect. His couch is spread on the ground, and his visitors squat down on the sandy floor, at a respectful distance. Captain Lyon and his party were always honoured by having a corner of the carpet offered to them. The best and most airy part of the castle is occupied by the women, who have small rooms round a large court, in which they take exercise, grind corn, cook, and perform other domestic offices. The number of great ladies, called _kibere,_ seldom exceed six. This dignified t.i.tle is generally given to the mothers of the sultan's children, or to those, who having been once great favorites, are appointed governesses to the rest; there are, altogether about fifty women, all black and very comely, and from what stolen glances we could obtain, they appeared extremely well dressed. They are guarded by five eunuchs, who keep up their authority by occasionally beating them.

The sultan has three sons and two daughters, who live with him in this cage, the doors of which are locked at night, and the keys brought to him, so that he remains free from any fear of attack. The castle is entered by a long winding pa.s.sage in the wall, quite dark and very steep. At the door is a large shed, looking on a square place capable of containing three or four hundred men, closely huddled together. Under this shed is a great chair of state, once finely gilt and ornamented, with a patchwork quilt thrown over it, and behind it are the remains of two large looking-gla.s.ses. In this chair the sultan receives homage every Friday, before he ascends the castle, after returning from the mosque. This place is the Mejlees, and was the scene of all the cruelties practised by Mukni, when he first took possession of the country.

The habitation in which Captain Lyon and his party were lodged, was a very good one, and as all the houses are built upon nearly the same plan, the following description will give an idea of all the rest. A large door, sufficiently high to admit a camel, opened into a broad pa.s.sage or _skeefa,_ on one side of which was a tolerable stable for five horses, and close to it, a small room for the slaves, whose duty it might be to attend the house. A door opposite to that of the stable opened into the _kowdi,_ a large square room, the roof of which at the height of eighteen feet, was supported by four palm trees as pillars. In the centre of the roof was a large open s.p.a.ce, about twelve feet by nine, from this, the house and rooms receive light, not to mention dust and excessive heat in the afternoon. At the end of the room facing the door, a large seat of mud was raised about eighteen inches high, and twelve feet in length. Heaps of this description, though higher, are found at the doors of most houses, and are covered with loungers in the cool of the morning and evening.

The large room was fifty feet by thirty-nine. From the sides, doors opened into smaller ones, which might be used as sleeping or store rooms, but were generally preferred for their coolness. Their only light was received from the door. Ascending a few steps, there was a kind of gallery over the side rooms, and in it were two small apartments, but so very hot as to be almost useless. From the large room was a pa.s.sage leading to a yard, having also small houses attached to it in the same manner, and a well of comparatively good water. The floors were of sand, and the walls of mud roughly plastered, and showing every where the marks of the only trowel used in the country--the fingers of the right hand. There are no windows to any of the houses, but some rooms have a small hole in the ceiling, or high up the wall.

Near the house was the princ.i.p.al mosque, to which the sultan and the Christian party went every Friday, as a matter of course, and every other day they found it necessary to appear there once or twice. It is a low building, having a shed projecting over the door, which, being raised on a platform, is entered by a few steps. A small turret, intended to be square and perpendicular, is erected for the Mouadden to call to prayers. One of the great lounges is on the seat in front of the mosque, and every morning and evening they are full of idle people, who converse on the state of the markets, and on their own private affairs, or in a fearful whisper canva.s.s the sultan's conduct.

In Mourzouk there are sixteen mosques, which are covered in, but some of them are very small. Each has an imaum, but the kadi is their head, of which dignity he seems not a little proud. This man had never, been beyond the boundaries of Fezzan, and could form no idea of any thing superior to mud houses and palms; he always fancied the Europeans to be great romancers, when they told him of their country, and described it as being in the midst of the sea.

They had many opportunities of observing the fighi and their scholars sitting on the sand. The children are taught their letters by having them written on a flat board, of a hard wood, brought from Bornou and Soudan, and repeating them after their master. When quite perfect in their alphabet, they are allowed to trace over the letters already made, they then learn to copy sentences, and to write small words dictated to them. The master often repeats verses from the Koran, in a loud voice, which the boys learn by saying them after him, and when they begin to read a little, he sings aloud, and all the scholars follow him from their books, as fast as they can. Practice at length renders them perfect, and in three or four years their education is considered complete. Thus it is, that many who can read the Koran with great rapidity, cannot peruse a line of any other book.

Arithmetic is wholly put of the question. On breaking up for the day, the master and all the scholars recite a prayer. The school-hours are by no means regular, being only when the fighi has nothing else to do. Morning early, or late in the evening, are the general times for study. The punishments are beating with a stick on the hands or feet and whipping, which is not unfrequently practised. Their pens are reeds--their rubber sand. While learning their tasks, and perhaps each boy has a different one, they all read aloud, so that the harmony of even a dozen boys may be easily imagined.

In the time of the native sultans, it was the custom, on a fixed day, annually, for the boys who had completed their education, to a.s.semble on horseback, in as fine clothes as their friends could procure for them, on the sands to the westward of the town. On an eminence stood the fighi, bearing in his hand a little flag rolled on a staff; the boys were stationed at some distance, and on his unfurling the flag and planting it in the ground, all started at full speed. He who first arrived and seized it, was presented by the sultan with a fine suit of clothes, and some money, and rode through the town at the head of the others. These races ceased with the arrival of Mukni, and parents now complain that their sons have no inducement to study.

All the houses are infested with mult.i.tudes of small ants, which destroyed all the animals which the party had preserved, and even penetrated into their boxes. Their bite was very painful, and they were fond of coming into the blankets. One singularity is worthy of remark in Fezzan, which is, that fleas are unknown there, and those of the inhabitants, who have not been on the sea-coast, cannot imagine what they are like. Bugs are very numerous, and it is extraordinary that they are called by the same name as with us. There is a species of them which is found in the sands, where the coffles are in the habit of stopping; they bite very sharply, and fix in numbers round the coronet of a horse; the animals thus tormented, often become so outrageous as to break their tethers.

There are several pools of stagnant salt water in the town, which it is conceived in a great measure promote the advance of the summer fever and agues. The burying places are outside the walls, and are of considerable extent. In lieu of stones, small mud embankments are formed round the graves, which are ornamented with shreds of cloth tied to small sticks, with broken pots, and sometimes ostrich eggs.

One of the burying places is for slaves, who are laid very little below the surface, and in some places the sand has been so carried away by the wind, as to expose their skeletons to view. Owing to the want of wood, no coffins are used. The bodies are merely wrapped in a mat, or linen cloth, and covered with palm branches, over which the earth is thrown. When the branches decay, the earth falls in, and the graves are easily known by being concave, instead of convex. The place where the former sultans were buried, is a plain near the town; their graves are only distinguished from those of other people, by having a larger proportion of broken pots scattered about them. It is a custom for the relations of the deceased to visit, and occasionally to recite a prayer over the grave, or to repeat a verse of the Koran.

Children never pa.s.s within sight of the tombs of their parents, without stopping to pay this grateful tribute of respect to their memory. Animals are never buried, but thrown on mounds outside the walls, and there left. The excessive heat soon dries up all their moisture, and prevents their becoming offensive; the hair remains on them, so that they appear like preserved skins.

The men of Mourzouk of the better sort, dress nearly like the people of Tripoli. The lower orders wear a large s.h.i.+rt of white or blue cotton, with long loose sleeves, trousers of the same, and sandals of camel's hide. The s.h.i.+rts being long, many wear no other covering.

When leaving their houses, and walking to the market or gardens, a _jereed_ or _aba_ is thrown round them, and a red cap, or a neatly quilted cotton white one, completes the dress. On Fridays, they perhaps add a turban, and appear in yellow slippers. In the gardens, men and women wear large broad-brimmed straw hats, to defend their eyes from the sun, and sandals made from the leaves and fibres of the palm trees. Very young children go entirely naked, those who are older have a s.h.i.+rt, many are quite bare-headed, and in that state exposed all day to the sun and flies. The men have but little beard, which they keep closely clipped. The dress of the women here, differs materially from that of the moorish females, and their appearance and smell are far from agreeable. They plait their hair in thick bobbins, which hang over their foreheads, nearly as low down as the eye-brows, and are there joined at the bottom, as far round to each side as the temples. The hair is so profusely covered with oil, that it drops down over the face and clothes. This is dried up, by sprinkling it with plenty of a preparation made of a plant resembling wild lavender, cloves, and one or two more species pounded into powder, and called atria; it forms a brown dirty-looking paste, and combined with perspiration and the flying sand, becomes in a few days far from savoury. The back hair is less disgusting, as it is plaited into a long tress on each side, and is brought to hang over the shoulders; from these tresses, ornaments of silver or of coral are suspended.

Black wool is frequently worked in with their black locks, to make them appear longer. In the centre of the forehead, an ornament of coral or beads is placed, hanging down to the depth of an inch or two. A woollen handkerchief is fastened on the back of the head; it falls over behind, and is tied by a leathern strap under the chin.

Each ear is perforated for as many rings as the woman possesses, some wearing even six on one side. The largest, which is about five inches in diameter, hanging lowest, supported by a string from the head.

Round the neck, a tight flat collar of beads, arranged in fancy patterns, is worn with coral necklaces, and sometimes a broad gold plate immediately in front. A large blue s.h.i.+rt is generally worn, the collar and breast ornamented with needle-work. The women also wear white s.h.i.+rts, and striped silk ones called shami, which are brought from Egypt; a jereed and red slippers complete their dress. They generally have their wrappers of a darker colour than those of the men. Some of the better cla.s.s of women wear trousers, not fuller in the leg than those worn in Europe; they are very prettily embroidered with silk at the bottom of the leg, and form a handsome contrast to the black skin of the wearer. Cornelians or agates, roughly shaped in the form of hearts, are much worn as necklaces, and they have a variety of rings for the thumbs and fingers. A band of silk cord hanging round the body from one shoulder, is generally filled with pendent leather or cloth bags, containing charms. Round the wrists and above the elbows, armlets of silver, gold, gla.s.s, horn or ivory are worn, according to the ability of the wearer to purchase them, and on the ankles they have silver, bra.s.s, copper or iron shackles.

A pair of silver ones were seen, which weighed one hundred and twenty-eight ounces, but these ponderous ornaments produce a callous lump on the leg, and entirely deform the ankle. The poorest people have only the jereed and sandals. Both men and women have a singular custom of stuffing their nostrils with a twisted leaf of onions or clover, which has a very disgusting appearance. The men, not using oil, are much cleaner than the women, but the whole race of them, high and low, apparently clean, are otherwise stocked with vermin, and they make no secret of it. The sultan has been frequently observed, when detecting an interloper, to moisten his thumb to prevent its escape, and then demolish it with great composure and dignity. Some of the neighbours, whom Captain Lyon visited, while reposing on their carpets, would send for a slave to hunt for these tormentors on their s.h.i.+rts, and it is a great recommendation to a female slave on sale to say that she is well skilled in this art, and in that of shampooing.

The natives have a variety of dances, of which two or three are peculiar to the country. The parties a.s.semble on the sands in the dusk of the evening, when a number of young men and women range themselves side by side, and dance to the sound of drums, to which they keep good time. The men have a rude kind of iron cymbal in each hand, which opens and shuts; this they beat in the manner of castanets, both s.e.xes singing at the same time in chorus. The movements consist in stepping forward, the whole line at once, at a particular turn of the tune, as if to catch something with their two hands, which they hold out; they balance themselves a short time on the advanced foot, and then step back, turning half round, first to one side and then to the other, the whole line then moves slowly in a circle round the musicians, who form the centre, and who all join in the dance. There is nothing improper nor immodest in this exhibition, but on the contrary, from its slowness and the regularity of its movements, it is extremely pleasing and elegant. Another dance is performed by women only, who form a circle round the drummers, and occasionally sing a lively chorus; one advances, and with her arms extended, foots it to and from the drummers, two or three times, until a change of tune, when she runs quickly backwards and falls flat down, the women behind are ready to receive her, and by a jerk of their arms throw her again upright, on which she once more turns round and resumes her place, leaving the one next in succession to her, to go through the same movements, all of which are performed in the most just time; the whole party occasionally enlivening the music, by their skill and extraordinary shout of joy. The dancing in the houses is not so pleasing as that in public, and as for decency, it is quite out of the question. The male slaves have many dances, in which great activity and exertion are requisite. One consists in dancing in a circle, each man armed with a stick, they all move, first half and then quite round, striking as they turn, the sticks of those on each side of them, and then jumping off the ground as high as they can. Another is performed by boys, and they have no drum, but keep chorus by singing in a particular manner, _la ilia il alia,_ (there is no G.o.d, but G.o.d.)

The sultan had frequently requested Mr. Ritchie to visit his children, and some of his negresses when they were indisposed, and he had in consequence frequently attended them, but being himself confined by illness, Captain Lyon was allowed to prescribe for them, and had therefore frequent opportunities of observing the interior of his family, which would not otherwise have been afforded him. He was much struck with the appearance of his daughters, one of three, the other of one year and a half old, who were dressed in the highest style of barbarian magnificence, and were absolutely laden with gold.

From their necks were suspended large ornaments of the manufacture of Timbuctoo; and they had ma.s.sive gold armlets and anklets of two inches in breadth, and half an inch in thickness, which, from their immense weight had produced callous rings round the legs and arms of the poor infants. They wore silk s.h.i.+rts composed of ribbons sewed together, in stripes of various colours, which hung down over silk trousers. An embroidered waistcoat and cap completed this overwhelming costume. Their nails, the tips of their fingers, the palms of their hands and soles of their feet were dyed dark-brown with henna. Captain Lyon viewed with amazement and pity the dress of these poor little girls, borne down as they were with finery; but that of the youngest boy, a stupid looking child of four years old, was even more preposterous than that of his sisters. In addition to the ornaments worn by them, he was loaded with a number of charms, enclosed in gold cases, slung round his body, while in his cap were numerous jewels, heavily set in gold, in the form of open hands, to keep off _the evil eye._ These talismans were sewn on the front of his cap, which they entirely covered. His clothes were highly embroidered, and consisted of three waistcoats, a s.h.i.+rt of white silk, the women only wearing coloured ones, and loose cloth, silk, or muslin trousers.

The costume of the sultan's court or hangers-on, is strictly Tripoline, and as fine as lace or presents of cast off-clothes can make them. It is the custom with Mukni, in imitation of the bashaw, to bestow occasionally on his princ.i.p.al people some article of dress.

Those presents are made with much affected dignity, by throwing the garment to the person intended to be honoured, and saying, ”Wear that,” the dress is immediately put on in his presence, and the receiver kneels and kisses his hand in token of grat.i.tude. Captain Lyon once saw the old kadi, who was very corpulent, receive as a gift a kaftan, which was so small for him, that when he had squeezed himself into it, he was unable to move his arms, and was in that condition obliged to walk home.

Each of the sultan's sons has a large troop of slaves, who attend him wherever he goes; they are generally about the same age as their master, and are his playmates, though they are obliged to receive from him many hearty cuffs, without daring to complain. The suite of the youngest boy in particular, formed a very amusing groupe, few of them exceeding five years of age. One bears his master's _bornouse,_ another holds one shoe, walking next to the boy who carries its fellow. Some are in fine cast-off clothes, with tarnished embroidery, whilst others are quite or nearly naked, without even a cap on their heads, and the procession is closed by a boy, tottering under the weight of his master's state gun, which is never allowed to be fired off.

In Mourzouk, the luxuries of life are very limited, the people princ.i.p.ally subsisting on dates. Many do not, for months together, taste corn; when obtained, they make it into a paste called _asooda,_ which is a softer kind of _bazeen._ Fowls have now almost disappeared in the country, owing to the sultan having appropriated all he could find for the consumption of his own family. The sheep and goats are driven from the mountains near Benioleed, a distance of four hundred miles; they pa.s.s over one desert, which, at their rate of travelling, occupies five days, without food or water. Numbers therefore die, which in course raises the price of the survivors, They are valued at three or four dollars each, when they arrive, being quite skeletons, and are as high as ten and twelve, when fatted. Bread is badly made, and is baked in ovens formed of clay in holes in the earth, and heated by burning wood; the loaves, or rather flat cakes are struck into the side, and are thus baked by the heat which rises from the embers. b.u.t.ter is brought in goat-skins from the Syrtis, and is very dear. Tobacco is very generally chewed by the women, as well as by the men. They use it with the _trona_ (soda). Smoking is the amus.e.m.e.nt of a great man, rather than of the lower cla.s.s, the mild tobacco being very dear, and pipes not easily procured.

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