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Updated: June 20, 2025
In the last chapter we read that the Arab merchants crossed the desert to buy ivory and goat-skins from the people who lived farther south. In these next two chapters we shall read about these people south of the desert. Their land lies in the very middle of Africa, and so is called Central Africa. It is a beautiful country, with many rivers and great lakes and mountains.
For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon. "They have begun to fight!" I cried. "Follow me!" And I began to run toward the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten; while, close at my side, the marooned man in his goat-skins trotted easily and lightly.
Joe Lake began picking over stacks of goat-skins and bags of wool that were piled against the hogan. "Reckon we'll have one grand job packing out this load," he growled. "It's not so heavy, but awkward to pack."
Their tins, lotahs and goat-skins were filled, bags of rice, bread and flour were lowered to them; a box of sugar and a packet of biscuit were added; and a gentle little rain of coins fell as though from Heaven.
"Everything powder, shot, and balls; tea, salt; ten knives, and eight axes; beads, four goat-skins, looking-glasses, tobacco, and flour;" and one by one he handed the articles as he named them into the boat. "How much flour is there, Luka?" "Two hundred pounds. I have got more trinkets than we said. They were very cheap. They look like gold and silver, and only cost ten kopecks apiece.
When these huts were finished, we gave them some dry goat-skins for bedding and covering; & upon their giving us fuller assurances of their good behaviour for the future, we gave them some pease, barley, and rice for sowing and whatever tools we could spare.
From our elevated position we could look down into a sea of bamboo huts, the habitations of the pearl-fishers: neat enough abodes, with courtyards paved with helix shells. In these courtyards stood quaint, large water-jars, which women filled from goat-skins carried on their shoulders from the wells, wobbling when full like live headless animals; and cradles, like hencoops, for their babies.
The journeys of the traders take many months, because often they have to go by a long road in order to find water. So they travel from oasis to oasis seeking shade and water. Sometimes they have to ride three or four days to reach the next drinking-place. Then they have to carry water for themselves in goat-skins. The camels can live for a few days without water, though they get very weak.
The Kaisariyah lingers in the memory, and on hot days in the plains, when shade is far to seek, one recalls a fine fountain with the legend "drink and admire," where the water-carriers fill their goat-skins and all beggars congregate during the hours of fire. The Mellah, in which the town Jews live, is reached by way of the Olive Garden.
And with looks downcast they gathered near, and hard by where the ship lay he made them sit down in their grief and the women with them, and addressed them and told them everything: "Listen, friends; as I lay in my grief, three goddesses girded with goat-skins from the neck downwards round the back and waist, like maidens, stood over my head nigh at hand; and they uncovered me, drawing my cloak away with light hand, and they bade me rise up myself and go and rouse you, and pay to our mother a bounteous recompense for all her travail when she bare us so long in her womb, when Amphitrite shall have loosed Poseidon's swift-wheeled car.
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