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
_3rd._--The morning opens cool and pleasant, and the heat begins
gradually to leave us. People expect rain in ten days.
Another Touarick has come forward to offer to conduct me to Timbuctoo. He
says now is the time to go, when it is hot the banditti do not infest the
routes, for they find no water to drink. He offers to take me for five
hundred dollars, which is to be deposited in the hands of the Sheikh
Makouran, and is not to be paid until our safe return. He will allow me
to stop a month or six weeks in the city of Timbuctoo. The distances of
routes which he gives me, are the same as those on M. Carette's map,
attached to his brochure on the commerce of The Desert. Of all the French
writers who have recently written on Africa, M. Carette is most correct.
Wrote down a vocabulary of Ghadamsee words from my turjeman's dictation.
Whilst I was lamenting the little gratitude, or rather none, which the
people showed for my medicines, an old man, to whose mother-in-law (he
having married a woman forty years younger than himself, frequently the
case here,) I gave some pills, brought me a melon, and said he should
bring also some dates. I was conversing with a group at the time, and I
took the opportunity of observing that doctors were paid amongst us. An
upstart man angrily replied:--"Yes, but we are the chosen people of God!
you Infidels are bound to serve us in every way, and ought to be thankful
that you are so honoured as to be the servants and slaves of The
Moumeneen. You think you are clever, but your talents are not your own;
your knowledge comes from God." These affronting words contain a common
fanatic sentiment of Barbary. I made no reply.
Went at noon to visit the Arab suburb, and was a great curiosity amongst
the women and children. Some of the little girls were frightened out of
their wits, but the boys took up stones to pelt me. The suburb contains
about five hundred souls; the houses are all miserable, and the people
poor. A genuine Ghadamsee would not live here without being degraded: it
is the St. Giles of the city. Went into a house, the walls of which were
completely concealed beneath the covers for dishes and meats, bowls and
calabashes, the greater part brought from Soudan. The people were dealers
in them. Talking with the Rais about Soudan, he displayed the usual
ignorance of Mussulmans, even in The Desert, of this country. It would
take a person five years to travel through that vast country, many parts
of which were populated by cannibals. We read of the Lemlems, Lamlams,
and the Yemyems, as cannibals, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Zegzeg
and Yakobah; but after conversing with several of the merchants who have
scoured Soudan and Bornou, I have not found one who has seen these
terrible cannibals. They have all _heard_ of them. It appears to me to be
an ancient tale of wonder to adorn the narratives of travellers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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