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Serdalas belongs to the Touaricks, who let it out to the Fezzaneers, but will not permit them to plant date-palms, lest the oasis should flourish and rival Ghat, and so injure that mart of commerce. Be it as it may, man always fails of his work, and if he does so in the more genial climes of Europe, what can come of his idleness and his improvidence in The Vast African Desert?
My Affray with the Egyptian. Route to Tripoli, viâ Shaty and Mizdah. Features and Colour of Fezzaneers. My Journey from The Wady to Mourzuk, on leaving the Slave-Caravans. Tombs of former Inhabitants, and Legends about them. Bleak and Black Plateau. The Targhee Scout. Have a Bilious Attack. Desert Arcadians, and lone Shepherdesses. Oasis of Agath, and its want of Hospitality. 12th.
According to the report of the Fezzaneers, there is fever in every oasis during the summer, and considerable mortality. Eating dates continually in the summer must create a great deal of heat in the system, and thus it is not surprising that fever prevails. Evening, just at sunset, the Mandara slave came near to my encampment and mumbled something to my Negro servant.
It may, indeed, have been colonized previously to the arrival of the Arabs in Africa by the ancient Berbers, or Numidians, but the castle itself is of Moorish modern construction. The present miserable population does not exceed ten persons, Fezzaneers and one or two Touaricks, who cultivate a little wheat and ghusub. The houses are huts of sticks, date-leaves, and dried grass.
The Atlas Mountains then succeed with their bubbling fountains and green valleys, and olive-clad peaks. Mizdah in The Mountains consists of two large villages. Saw several of the inhabitants of The Wady, and made acquaintance with the Fezzaneers, as they have been called.
Some of them are as black as negroes, others as white as the Moors of the coast, others olive, yellow, brown, &c., and their features are various as the colour of their complexions. The Fezzaneers must be considered Moors and townspeople, rather than Arabs or nomades.
The Maraboutess, as well as the few Fezzaneers in Serdalas, are of short stature, of a very dark-brown complexion, approaching nearly to black, and some have the broad distended nostrils of the negro. The Shereef said to me this afternoon, "I'm going to pray at the Marabout shrine; I go happily, I return happily." Our Shereef is a little self-righteous. Evening, died a young female slave.
A little more cuscasou is eaten on this route than on that of Ghat from Ghadames, the Fezzaneers and Tripolines preferring coarse cuscasou to bazeen if they can get it. The poor Arabs are often obliged to put up with zumeetah, which they eat cold. Haj Ibrahim eats his fine cuscasou, which he brought from Tripoli, but I do not consider him a bonâ-fide Saharan merchant.
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