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Asking our people how long a simoum or ghiblee would blow in The Desert, they replied, "Never violently more than a couple of days." I do not recollect it once to have continued a whole day, but light south winds have prevailed for several days.
It is a round, squatting, wide-spreading tree, not nailed up to the walls, but the size of its girth of boughs is enormous. I must take the liberty of leaving off daily dates here. I detest daily note-writing, although the reader may find for his peculiar infliction so long a journal as these pages. 19th. A ghiblee day. The wind from The Desert is coming with a vengeance.
Where are we going? Where are we going? Where are we going, Rubee? Hear us! Save us! Make us free; Send our Atka down from thee! Here the Ghiblee wind is blowing, Strange and large the world is growing! Tell us, Rubee, where are we going? Where are we going, Rubee? Bornou! Bornou! Where is Bornou? Where are we going, Rubee?
I had always thought the Negro, being naturally a chilly creature, could not be affected with a hot wind. We all drank plentifully today, ten times as much as on other days. But this being a ghiblee day, it was necessary to drive on the slaves quick, and with violence, the camels not carrying a sufficiency of water for a couple of days of this sort.
Our route was still south-west, and south, and the prevailing wind ghiblee, or from about the same quarter. On leaving Emjessem, we were met in the afternoon by several friends and relatives of the merchants, who had come from Ghadames in answer or invitation to our letters written at Seenawan.
They proceeded on their last journey, the Tuscan riding the horse, the poor Arab boy going on foot, as guide to the well. The caravan weathers out the ghiblee the men covering up their faces and mouths from the scorching blast, afraid to breathe the killing air of the simoum the camels moaning in death-like tones, prophetic of the fate of those who had just gone!
I never took the veil from my face from sunrise to sunset, for had I done so, I should have had the hot sand immediately into them. We had ghiblee or simoon every day. But, thanks to Heaven, now ends the greatest of my sufferings from heat. We were escorted by sixty Arab troops on foot, like those who escorted us from Tripoli to The Mountains.
At the dawn of day the wind is so strong, one cannot enjoy an hour of the morning's freshness; and, in the evening, the sultry ghiblee is equally disagreeable. I scarcely go out of my room the whole day. Begin to recover my Arabic. Many times I have begun and re-begun this difficult language. But there is no remedy.
However, with care and due preparation, this route, and all Saharan routes, can be and are travelled in every season of the year; as is sufficiently proved by my own journey to Ghadames. Two days after the Tuscan left Sockna, came on a terrible ghiblee, but infinitely more intense and stifling than any south wind could be in this season.
Rose at Fidger, a little before day-break, or at the point of day, in fright of another ghiblee. Necessity has, indeed, in such a case, no law, and no compassion on the unfortunate. But, to-day, God sent the poor slaves a little fresh north wind, for "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." The north wind increased towards the evening, we journeying on very well.
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