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
Eastward of Mourzouk, and situated in a district of remarkable
fertility, is the town of Zuéela, in which the remnants of antient
buildings, the number and size of the cisterns, and the construction
of the vaulted caves, intended perhaps as repositories for corn,
exhibit such vestiges of antient splendour, as will probably attract,
and may highly reward the attention of the future Traveller.
To the South of Zuéela, and nearly at the same distance from the
capital, is the town of Jermah, which, like Zuéela, is distinguished
by the numerous herds, especially of sheep and goats, that are seen
around it; by the various and abundant produce of its adjacent fields;
and by numerous and majestic ruins, that exhibit to the ignorant
inhabitants of its clay-built cottages inscriptions of which they
know not the meaning, and vestiges of greatness to which they are
perfectly indifferent.
Tessouwa, a considerable town, is also situated to the Eastward of
the capital; but seems to have no claim to particular attention. Near
this town, a river which the Shereef describes as overwhelmed in
the moving sands, but which he remembers a deep and rapid stream,
had formerly its course.
More remote from Mourzouk, being distant from it in a N.E. direction,
about 120 miles, is the large town of Temmissa. Here the caravan of
Pilgrims from Bornou and Nigritia, which takes its departure from
Mourzouk, and travels by the way of Cairo to Mecca, usually provides
the stores of corn and dates, and dried meat, that are requisite
for its dreary passage.
S.E. from the capital, and distant from it about sixty miles, is the
small town of Kattrón, which seems to be remarkable for nothing
but the quantity which it breeds of the common fowl, and for the
abundant crops of Indian corn which the neighbouring lands afford.
Very differently distinguished is the town, or rather the province,
of Mendrah, for though much of its land is a continued level of hard
and barren soil, the quantity of _Trona_, a species of fossil alkali
that floats on the surface, or settles on the banks of its numerous
smoaking lakes, has given it a higher importance than that of the
most fertile districts.
Of this valuable produce great quantities are annually brought by the
Merchants of Fezzan to Tripoli, from whence it is shipped for Turkey
and Tunis, and the dominions of the Emperor of Morocco. The people of
the latter employ it as an ingredient in the red dye of the leather,
for which they are famous, and in that of the woollen caps that are
worn by the Arabs and the Moors as the basis of their turbans.
The situation of Mendrah is nearly South from the capital, and is
distant from it about sixty miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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