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Water you will have first, sweet water. Wood there will be always ready for you to make a fire and cook the cuscasou. You will be my friend, Yâkob, before the Sultan. In our towns, we have cheese, butter, wheat, sheep, bullocks. You Christians have none like them. Make haste back, make haste, and come to Aheer."
Our encampment is at the place called Ghurmeedah. Here are only two or three untenanted huts, where the date-watchers sleep or repose during the season. This small forest of palms belongs to Zeghen. Took a little cuscasou with some Arabs who have joined us, being hired by Essnousee to carry dates for the slaves.
He observed, "No, that must not be; a little sugar I'll take, a little perfume for my wife I'll take, but I must not eat your cuscasou, for you are a stranger. You ought to eat my cuscasou. The Touaricks must not eat the cuscasou of strangers, and so friendly like you." I offered to take him with me to Tripoli. He answered, "No, not now, I must first go and fight the Shânbah.
This is one of the wrinkles of the Great Governor Marabout, who lives in a palace, and reigns as king and priest of Ghat and the Ghateen ! What shall I hear next? I am not surprised, some of the Ghadamsee merchants sneer at the idea of Haj Ahmed being "a Marabout of odour." Essnousee sent me a little present of vermicelli and cuscasou, or hamsa.
Hope is still my consolation in travelling through this thirsty dreary wilderness. Better to feed the mind with these expectations, even should they be illusory, than sighing and groaning over the desolations of Africa. This evening took a little cuscasou with Essnousee. After supper the eternal subject of religion was brought forward by this slave-driver.
My companions pretended to seek out and purchase a kid, but unless you furnish the money, nothing of this luxurious sort is ever obtained in The Desert. I had no money, and we had no kid. Meanwhile our people, who had only brought with them dates, ate up my little stock of cuscasou. I had only laid in a sufficient quantity for some fifteen days, from Ghat to Mourzuk.
I made off quick enough from this unseemly uproar. Saw afterwards the Governor. Called to ask him to allow his servants to make me some cuscasou, which request his Excellency granted immediately. He said: "In travelling to Soudan adopt the dress of the Ghadamsee merchants, and let your beard grow." The Governor refuses to say anything of Kandarka. Probably they have quarrelled.
Immense fig-trees have grown up in some of these holes. I deemed it prudent to wait near the Consular Gardens till dark, having rather a dervish appearance, and being without an European hat, cap, or shoes. Whilst waiting in a neighbouring garden, a Moor came up to me and talked, and then brought me a little cuscasou. I felt sensibly this trifling manifestation of hospitality on my return.
The Touarghee Consul would be obliged to employ an Arabic Secretary. My young and kind Touarghee friend Sidi Omer, called this afternoon. He is more like an English acquaintance of years' standing than a Desert Touarghee whom I saw but yesterday. I asked him to take cuscasou with me.
The chief food of the people is the national Moorish dish of cuscasou, a fine grained paste, cooked by steam, with melted fat, oil, or other liquids poured upon the dish, and sometimes garnished with pieces of fowl and other meat. A good deal of animal food is consumed, but few vegetables. The climate is mild in the winter, but suffocating with heat in the summer.
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