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Updated: June 6, 2025
A ghafalah has arrived from the oases of Fezzan, bringing corn and dates, productions abundant in those countries. 22nd. Weather continues cool. Few more patients. Present of dates from one of them. Very little meat now killed in Ghadames, less and less every day. What will become of this once flourishing city it is hard to tell.
The Arabs report: "That great military preparations are making at Jerbah, where the Bey of Tunis is expected after the Ayed, and whence he will invade Tripoli, all his Arabs being ready to march with him." After this, a caravan of forty slaves arrived from the south, under the conduct of Touaricks. The ghafalah is originally from Bornou, but half left for Fezzan on arriving at Ghat.
One man alone had his arm scratched. Our ghafalah, besides casual travellers going to The Mountains, consisted of some two hundred camels, laden chiefly with merchandize for the interior, Soudan, and Timbuctoo. Thirty or forty merchants, nearly all of Ghadames, to whom the goods belong, accompany these camels.
The camels in the ascent are timid, and besides the evident fatigue which they experience, show great caution, picking slowly their way with the greatest circumspection. Only a portion of the ghafalah got up to-day. Some camels were labouring up the mountain sides, others threw off their burdens and stood still. As our party was always the advanced, we managed to get up soon.
If a traveller is in his sober senses, half the time he is en route, he is a happy man. But to proceed. Our first object was to find the rendezvous of the ghafalah. I said to Mohammed: "Are you sure the ghafalah is on the march to-day?" "The ghafalah is like the sun," he replied, "every body knows it will move to-day."
The whole of the Soudan ghafalah has not yet arrived from Aheer. It comes in by small detached parties. As there is nothing to fear on the road, people prefer travelling in small companies, which facilitates their march, not being detained at the wells waiting for the running of the water. I have cut in a certain way my old friends of the Ghadamsee ghafalah.
I recommend travellers in Sahara to supply themselves with a good stock of very cheap coloured cotton handkerchiefs. My house is thronged all day long with visitors. I am obliged to exhibit myself to the people like the Fat Boy, or the American Giant. It is Richardson's Show at Ghat instead of Greenwich. The rest of the ghafalah, which we left behind, arrived to-day.
Sunset, this evening, a man proclaimed from the housetops the arrival of the ghafalah, long expected from Tripoli: only a courier arrived. By him I received the first letter from Tripoli, and the first newspaper, the Malta Times!
We were roused before daylight. In half an hour after the dawn, we were all on the move, and soon started. The ghafalah presented an interminable line of camels, as it wound its slow way through narrow sandy lanes, hedged on each side with the cactus or prickly-pear. We progressed very irregularly, and the camels kept throwing off their burdens.
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