Proceedings of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa [1790]Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa
History
Proceedings of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa [1790]
Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa
Africa -- Description and travel
While Mr. LUCAS tasted of the last, and eat with pleasure of the
first of these dishes, and the Fezzaners, with their usual dispatch,
were devouring the contents of both, the old man and his sons stood
by to supply them with water and buttermilk; for the rules of the
Arab hospitality require, that during their meals the master of the
house should wait upon his guests.
Feb. 4th. The next morning, at seven o’clock, the entertainment
was repeated, with the same marks of a kind and liberal welcome;
for the old man is rich in corn and cattle, and having obtained the
character of a Musselman Saint, or Maraboot, is, on that account,
exempted from the payment of taxes.
After a march of three hours, during which the rout was perplexed,
and the eye fatigued by a continued succession of rocky hills,
the caravan arrived at the entrance of an extensive and beautiful
plain, that every where exhibited a luxuriant growth of olive trees,
intermixed with dates.
The next two hours brought them to the sea coast, and to all that
now exists of the town of Lebida, where, in the ruins of a temple,
and in the much more perfect remains of several triumphal arches, the
Traveller contemplates the magnificence of an antient Roman colony;
and discovers, in the beauty and fertile appearance of the adjoining
plain, the reasons which led them to chuse, for a sea-port town,
a situation that furnishes no natural harbour.
Eastward of the ruins, for about five and twenty miles, the soil,
though entirely unaided by the poor Arabs who inhabit it, exhibits
the same luxuriant vegetation; and the scene is rendered still more
interesting by the remains of a stupendous aqueduct, which formerly
conveyed to Lebida the water of a distant hill.
At half an hour after five, and in the neighbourhood of a miserable
village, the caravan encamped for the night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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