Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846Richardson, James
History
Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846
Richardson, James
Sahara -- Description and travel
The Sebâah, a freebooting tribe of Tunisian Arabs on the frontier, who
some two months ago plundered a Ghadames caravan near Gharian, have been
made to render up an account of the spoil. The Pasha of Tripoli wrote to
the Bey of Tunis, and the Bey has undertaken to make them surrender their
booty. The value is only about 1000 dollars, and forty camels. People are
very inquisitive about my personal affairs. They ask me repeatedly, why I
don't marry, or where are my wife and children? and add, "for you are
getting old, and have plenty of money." I usually reply, "I can't carry a
wife about with me all over the world." In the Desert and all over North
Africa, it is looked upon as a species of disgrace for a man not to be
married. It perhaps ought to be so everywhere; but our social system of
Europe is become now so bad, that nearly half of the people cannot afford
to marry. And so degraded in their feelings have become the lower classes
of the British Isles, that many of those who do marry, marry with the
clear understood determination of throwing their offspring upon the
public bounty. The Puseyite and Church alms-giving clergy, to their
shame, encourage our miserable population in these most despicable
sentiments, and tell the people it is their right as granted to them by
the founder and apostles of the Christian Church. Tyrants must have
slaves, and priestly tyrants as well as other sorts of tyrants; it is
therefore necessary there should be propagated a race of slaves.
This morning the poor old blind man demands the strong medicine for his
eye. He says, "I feel less pain in my eyes though I see no better." O
Dio! what a precious gift is sight--how persevering is this old man to
see again those sights of desert, palm, and oasis, which he saw in his
youthful days! Perhaps there is a tenth of the population of Ghadames
nearly blind, or quite blind. The Sheikh Makouran has calculated the
expense from Ghadames to Kanou, and back, for me, at two hundred dollars.
The Moors are essentially children in some things. Young men, full grown,
carry about with them in their pockets a little bit of white sugar to
suck, stowed away in needlecases. To-day, a ghafalah of Touaricks,
twenty persons, left for Ghat. They took my letter for the Governor. The
Touaricks are getting used to the sight of a Christian. My opinion is
also undergoing a favourable change towards them. Certainly, the best
informed of the Ghadamsee people give them a good character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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