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Updated: June 6, 2025
The Touaricks are leaving Ghat to reinforce the new levies of troops. Soon the town will be emptied of Touaricks. The Ghadamsee ghafalah is returning, and a small one to Tripoli viâ Shaty and Misdah. Haj Ibrahim continues to repeat his story about the people of Ghadames having a great deal of money hoarded up.
It is such actions of dishonesty which make one afraid of travelling in Africa, lest we are sacrificed to the designing villany of those who pretend most and exhibit the most officious marks of friendship. In such a way poor Laing was entrapped and murdered. This very Atkee, I considered the first man of the ghafalah.
But some of them had been obliged to go a day's journey to purchase a few things. The ghafalah had, in fact, been scattered all over The Mountains. A few never left Yefran. This was my first taste of delay in Saharan travel. We began our four days' journey in the evening, and continued all night up to two hours before sunrise. The camels then rested but were not unpacked.
Yesterday, a slave of the ghafalah amused us with playing his rude bagpipe through these weary wastes. We are not very merry. There is very little conversation; we move on for hours in the most unbroken silence, nothing being said or whispered, no sound but the dull slow tread of the camel.
"The man and the boy just come in saw twenty-five Shânbah mounted on camels, and the ghafalah cannot go. Rais is going to send out a scout, a Senawanee, to see if it be the Shânbah, and then all the people are to arm and go out against the robbers." A pretty kettle of fish, thought I. The Governor then sent a man down to me, to come and sleep for the night in his house.
The people now told me to place my tent within the circle of the encampment, as we were getting near the inhabited districts. I usually encamped at a short distance from the centre of confusion in the ghafalah, and found it more quiet. As to fear, I had none, and slept more soundly in the open Desert than in any part of the world where I had travelled before. 13th.
Our people catch the lighter and more exhilarating influence, and are more talkative to-day. Descending to grosser matters, they are joking about how much of the camel's meat they are to swallow for supper. A part of the ghafalah left us, as the main body would not start early, thinking to arrive a couple of days before us in Ghat.
Have almost determined to pursue the route of Ghat, and accompany the ghafalah of the Ghadamsee merchants. This route has two advantages for me I shall be safe with my old friends the merchants, and the route has never before been trodden by an European traveller. The routes of Bornou and Timbuctoo have been travelled by Europeans, though some of the parties have never returned.
When a ghafalah passes a well there is the greatest confusion to get all the camels to drink, and the people quarrel and fight about this, as well as for their turn to fill their water-skins. This quarrelling at the wells forcibly reminds the Biblical reader of the contest of Moses in favour of the daughters of Jethro against the ungallant shepherds.
A little by little, till the vitals of this once flourishing oasis are torn out, and it becomes as dead as The Desert around it. 20th. This morning a slave ghafalah arrives from Ghat with forty slaves. Two escaped en route. What could the poor creatures do in The Desert? They must have perished very soon. The ghafalah brings important news.
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