Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa : $b Including accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the remarkable kingdom of Bornu, and the countries around Lake ChadBarth, Heinrich
History
Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa : $b Including accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the remarkable kingdom of Bornu, and the countries around Lake Chad
Barth, Heinrich
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, North -- Description and travel
As soon as I had sufficiently examined the ruins and the village, I
hastened to the bottom of the ravine. The contrast between the ruined
hovels of the village, perched on the naked rock, and the green, fresh
plantation, fed by a copious supply of water, is very great. Thick,
luxuriant, and shady clusters are here formed, principally around the
basin filled by the spring, which rushes forth from beneath a rock, and
gives life to the little oasis; its temperature I found, at half-past one
o’clock P.M., 70½° Fahr., while that of the air was 70°. The number of
the date-trees, though small, is nevertheless larger than in Mizda, and
may be nearer to 350 than to 300. The water of the ravine after a heavy
fall of rain joins the Wadi Zemzem, the principal valley of this whole
district, which together with Wady Sófejín and Wady Beï, carries all the
streams collected hereabouts to the sea.
According to our Zintáni, the path leading to Taboníye from the western
village first lies over the hammáda, then crosses a ravine called Wady
Khatab, leads again over the plateau, crosses another wady, and at
length, after about ten miles, as it seems, reaches the ravine of Gharíya
eʾ sherkíya, stretching from west to east, the grove, of about the same
extent as in the other oasis, being formed at the north and west bases of
the rocky height upon which the place stands. At the side of the village
there is, he said, a large Roman castle, far larger than that in the
western one, of about eight or ten feet elevation at present, but without
an arched gateway of that kind, and without inscriptions. On the east
side of the eminence are only a few palms, and on the south side none.
The village is distinguished by a merábet called Bu-Sbaeha. Neither from
the Zintáni nor from anybody else did I hear that the inhabitants of
these two solitary ksúr are called by the peculiar name Warínga; I learnt
it afterwards only from Mr. Richardson’s statement, and I have reason to
think that the name was intended for Urínsa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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