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Updated: June 27, 2025
"It is the Paris of our Sahara," he said, "and all the desert men, from Caïds to camel-drivers, look forward to its pleasures." He planned to let the girl see El Aghouat for the first time at sunset. That was to be one of his surprises. By nature he was dramatic; and the birth of the sun and the death of the sun are the great dramas of the desert.
The inhabitants are Saharan Moors, and some five or six hundred in number. Had a very friendly visit from Salah, eldest son of Haj Mansour, of Ghadames. He says justly, Kandarka and other camel-drivers exaggerate the dangers of the routes for their own private ends, to get more money out of me. Of the Touaricks and Ouweek, he says, "They have no knowledge, they are bullocks."
With the exception of a strike among our camel-drivers, which fortunately lasted only a few hours, and a dust-storm encountered a few miles from Sohrab, nothing worthy of mention occurred to break the monotony of the voyage till, on the morning of the 9th of April, we sighted the flat-roofed houses, mud ramparts, and towering citadel of the capital of Baluchistán.
The Sultan could not resist the opportunity of extorting something by a final visit for a goat, killed and eaten by the camel-drivers contrary to Lieutenant Speke's orders, a dollar was demanded. 4th December, 1854. About dawn the caravan was loaded, and then proceeded along a tolerably level pathway through a thick growth of thorn trees towards a bluff hill.
But there was no dancing yet, for the audience was not large enough. The brilliant spiders crouched in their webs, awaiting more flies; for caravans were coming in across that desert sea which poured its yellow billows into the narrow street; and in the market-place, camel-drivers only just arrived were cooking their suppers.
The leader, wrapped in his white mantle, seemed asleep, and the camel-drivers to be dreaming; the dull-colored eagles by the road-side did not stir at their approach.
And all grows dim with time. And the camel-drivers are forgotten; but the cross-roads remain, and the food and the drink and the medicine and the cattle helped each caravan upon the way. Is it not enough?" She placed her hand in his. It lay there for a moment. "God be with thee, friend," he said. The next instant Thomas Tilman Lacey's drawling voice broke the silence.
For at long intervals the hard ground received no impressions of men or camels' feet, and I repeatedly lost the track, going a hundred or more yards before I could get into it again, I continued north, I saw the camels' feet, the sheep's feet, and the prints of the camel-drivers, and sometimes I thought I saw my own foot-marks. But the slaves!
The curses of the camel-drivers beating the animals; the cries of the hawkers who sold amulets against leprosy and the evil eye; the psalmody of the monks reciting verses of the Bible; the shrieking of the women who were prophesying; the shouting of the beggars singing old songs of the harem; the bleating of sheep; the braying of asses; the sailors calling tardy passengers; all these confused noises caused a deafening uproar, over which dominated the strident voices of the little naked negro boys, running about everywhere selling fresh dates.
We saw one or two lizards, but no birds or other signs of life, except two brown-black Fezzanees, trudging over the desert. At four in the afternoon, after a day of hot wind, we encamped in Wady Guber, where there is water two or three feet below the surface; and a small forest of palms belonging to our camel-drivers, having descended to them in small groups from their grandfathers.
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