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TRAVELS

THE GREAT DESERT OF SAHARA,

IN THE YEARS OF 1845 AND 1846.

CONTAINING

A NARRATIVE OF PERSONAL ADVENTURES, DURING A TOUR OF NINE MONTHS THROUGH THE DESERT, AMONGST THE TOUARICKS AND OTHER TRIBES OF SAHARAN PEOPLE;

INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF

THE OASES AND CITIES OF GHAT, GHADAMES, AND MOURZUK.

BY JAMES RICHARDSON.

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IN TWO VOLUMES.

LONDON HARRISON AND CO., PRINTERS, ST. MARTIN'S LANE.

INTRODUCTION.

THE sentiment of Antiquity--that "The life of no man is pleasing to the gods which is not useful to his fellows,"--has been my guiding principle of action during the last twelve years of my life. To live for my own simple and sole gratification, to have no other object in view but my own personal profit and renown, would be to me an intolerable existence. To be useful, or to attempt to be useful, in my day and generation, was the predominant motive which led me into The Desert, and sustained me there, alone and unprotected, during a long and perilous journey.

With regard to these supplementary and fragmentary extracts from my journal, I have also to state, they consist only of about two-thirds of the journal. For the present, I deemed it prudent to suppress the rest. But this likewise may disturb the harmony and mar the completeness of the work. However, if these portions of the journal are favourably received, other extracts may yet be published.

On entering The Desert, my principal object was to ascertain how and to what extent the Saharan Slave-Trade was carried on; although but a comparatively small portion of the following pages is devoted to this subject. I have already reported fully on this traffic, and it was unnecessary to go over the ground again, which might defeat, by disagreeable repetitions and endless details, the object which I have in view,--that of exciting an abhorrence of the Slave-Trade in the hearts of my fellow countrymen and countrywomen.

In these published extracts from my journal, I have endeavoured to give a truthful and faithful picture of the Saharan Tribes; their ideas, thoughts, words, and actions; and, where convenient, I have allowed them to speak and act for themselves. This is the main object which I have undertaken to accomplish in this Narrative of my Personal Adventures in The Sahara. The public must, and will, I doubt not, judge how far I have succeeded, and award me praise or blame, as may be my desert. If I have failed, I shall not abandon myself to despair, but shall console myself with the thought that I have done the best I was able to do under actual circumstances, and in my then state of health. It would, indeed, ill become me to shrink from public criticism, after having braved the terrors and hardships of The Desert. However, the publication of this journal may induce others to penetrate The Desert,--persons better qualified, and more ably and perfectly equipped than myself, and who may so accomplish something more permanently advantageous than what I have been able to compass. Acting, then, as pioneer to others, my Saharan labours will not be fruitless.

In the following pages, I have encroached upon my Reports, to describe several of the Oases of The Desert, besides giving as much of the routes as was necessary to render the Narrative of my journey intelligible. But this is all I could conscientiously do. For the rest of the geographical information, the public must wait.

I return for a moment to the traffic in slaves. Born with an innate hatred of oppression, whatever form, or shape, or name it may take, and under what modes soever it may be developed, mentally or bodily, in chaining men down under a political despotism, or in forging for them a creed and forcing it on their consciences,--I have, since I could exercise the power of reflection, always looked upon the traffic in human flesh and blood as the most gigantic system of wickedness the world ever saw; and which I most deplore, in this our late, more humane and enlightened age, stands forth and raises its horrid head, impiously defying Heaven! In very truth, it is a system of crime, which dares

"Defy the Omnipotent to arms!"

The reader must, therefore, excuse the language with which I have execrated this traffic in the pages of my Journal. There may be some men who think it no crime to buy and sell their fellow-men; I have seen many such amongst the Moslems. But he who thinks the traffic in slaves to be a crime against the human race, has a right to denounce it accordingly. I must therefore make a few preliminary observations, though painful to my feelings.

As to Cobden, his Cobdenites, and Satellites, they would sell their own souls, and the whole human race into bondage, to have a free trade in slaves and sugar. This new generation of impostors--who teach that all virtue and happiness consist in buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest markets--are now dogging at the heels of Government, in combination with the West India agents, to get them to re-establish a species of mitigated Slave-Trade, because, forsooth, there should be right and liberty to buy and sell a man, as there is right and liberty to buy and sell a beast.

I am not an enemy to Free Trade. I have duly noticed and praised the free-trade mart of Ghat, and shown how it prospers in comparison with the restricted system of the Turks, prevalent at Mourzuk. But this I do say, the case of Slavery was an exceptional case, as the Ten Hours' Factory Bill was an exceptional case in the regulation and restriction of labour. I fear, however, there are some of the Leaguers so outrageous in their advocacy of abstract principles, that they would have a free-trade in vice--a free-trade in consigning people to perdition! They are of the calibre of the men who wielded that dread engine of the "Reign of Terror," the "Committee of Public Safety," and made it death to speak a word against the "One Indivisible Republic." These Leaguers are bent upon establishing an equal, although differently-formed, tyranny amongst us, and we cannot too soon and too energetically resist their odious and intolerable pretensions.

But I know not, whether these civil tyrants be so bad as the spiritual tyrants who have just set up for themselves what they call a "Free Kirk." These reverend gentlemen have received the fruits of the blood of the slaves, employed on the laborious fields of the Southern States of America, to build up their new Free Church, pretending they have a Divine right to receive the value of the forced-labour of slaves, and quoting Scripture like the Devil himself. When called upon to refund they refuse, and make the contributions of the Presbyterian slave-dealers of the United States a sort of corner-stone of their Free Kirk. Why these priests of religion out-O'Connell-O'Connell, who point-blank refused, for the support of his sham Repeal, and sent back contemptuously, the dollars spotted and tainted with the blood of the slaves! . . . . . . . . It is the old story, the old trick of our good friends, the Scottish divines, and their old leaven of Scottish fanaticism. We know them of ancient date. We have read a line of Milton, who in his time so admirably resisted their bigotry. It is immortal like all that our divine bard wrote. Here is the line--

"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."

The Free Kirk has cut its connexion with the State, because it says the State wishes to enslave its ministers. Yet it has no objection to receive monies from the slave-holders in America. The Free Kirk will build up its boasted freedom on the wasting blood and bones of the unhappy children of Africa! Why, indeed, should these Scottish divines, headed by the Presbyters Candlish and Cunningham, seek or advocate the freedom of the slaves held by their fellow Presbyters of the United States? Is it not enough that they seek and maintain their own freedom, and at whatsoever cost? Have they not received the pro-slavery mantle of the late venerated Dr. Chalmers, and can they, poor pigmies, possibly shake it off? Would it not be impious to do so? No, they cannot,--dare not do this. For, as it was said by Lord George Bentinck, of a quondam champion of the people, in the last Session of Parliament, "Liberty is on their tongues, but despotism is in their hearts."

What can be more humiliating to a generous and tolerant mind, than to see a body of Christian ministers struggling to obtain by a Parliamentary enactment, the cession of plots of land for building of churches for the worship of God in liberty and truth, from the tyrannical holders of the soil; and, at the same time, this very body of priests does not scruple to receive the money of American slave-holders, to build and endow these self-same churches? Such incredible inconsistency makes one sick at heart, and inclined to question the existence of Christian feelings in the professors and teachers of Christianity!

Here I cannot restrain myself from giving a word of caution to the working-classes of our country, to those more especially who head the new "National Society," and form other and similar leagues. You say the politicians of the Anti-Corn Law League are your men; you adore your Humes, and Duncombes, and Wakleys. You, English democrats, or reformers, as you may call yourselves, admire the self-government and cheap government of the Transatlantic Model Republic. You do well. But now read some of their latest handiworks, without note or comment on my part. The violent impulse given to the Slave-Trade in Cuba and the Brazils--the advocacy of a free trade in Slaves by the Leaguers in and out the British Parliament--the invasion and subjugation of Mexico, on the joint principles of lust of conquest and the extension of Slavery. Deny these facts if you can. Learn, then, to think, there may be democracy and republicanism without liberty or freedom.

I pray God, that the protests and public appeals and remonstrances to Government of the Anti-Slavery Society may not end in barren results. But if the Leaguers and Democrats have their own way, its voice, though just and righteous, will be at length reduced to a faint cry, a last shriek of despair--overwhelmed by the loud laughs and jeers of the fiends, which possess the dealers in human flesh and blood, and surround unhappy and doomed Africa with a cordon of rapine and murder, of blood and flames!

"Where the vultures and vampires of Mammon resort, Where Columbia exulting drains Her life-blood from Africa's veins, Where the image of God is accounted as base, And the image of Caesar set up in its place."

If I were asked, "What can be done for Africa?" I should reply with no new thing, no nostrums of my own concocting, but what has been reiterated again and again. Teach her children to till the soil--to cultivate available exports by which they may obtain in exchange, through the medium of a legitimate commerce, the European products and manufactures necessary for their use and enjoyment. Until this be done, nothing effectual will be done. In vain you send missionaries of religion, or agents of abolition; in vain you contract treaties with the Princes of Africa. It is humiliating to think, equally a disgrace to our religion as to our civilization, that our connexion with Africa has only served to plunge her into deeper misery and profounder degradation. With truth we here may apply the strong censure of a Chinese Emperor, "That the march of Christians is whitened with human bones." Wherever we have touched her western shores there our footsteps have been marked with blood and devastation. We have fostered and encouraged within the heart of Africa the most odious and unnatural passions. We have stimulated the prince to sell his subjects, the father to sell his child, the brother to sell the sister, the husband the wife, into thrice-accursed and again accursed slavery! We have done all and more than this, whilst we have convulsed every state and kingdom of Africa with war, for the supply of cargoes of human beings. And for what? To cultivate our miserable cotton and sugar plantations! These are the doctrines of mercy and charity which we have taught the poor untutored children of Africa. Happy for poor forlorn, dusky, naked Africa, had she never seen the pale visage or met the Satanic brow of the European Christian! Does any man in his senses, who believes in God and Providence, think that the wrongs of Africa will go on for ever unavenged? Already, has not Providence avenged the wrongs of Africa upon Spain and Portugal, by reducing their national character and consideration to the lowest in the European family of nations? And as to the United States of America, has not the boasted liberty of our Republican countrymen, who colonized America, become a by-word, a hissing, and a scorn, amongst the nations of the earth? Have not these slave-holding Americans committed acts, nationally, within the last few years, which the most absolute Governments of Europe would blush to be guilty of? And what is one of their last acts, on a smaller scale, but not less decisively indicative of their national morality? The New York Bible Society has declared that it will not give the Bible to slaves, even when they are able to read the Bible! Would the Czar of Russia permit such an impious rule as this to be made by his nobles for their slaves or serfs? Such an action would render the liberties of a thousand republics a mockery, a snare, and a delusion, and their names infamous throughout the world.

And the time of us Englishmen will come next--our day of infamy! unless we show ourselves worthy that transcendant position in which Providence has placed us, at the pinnacle of the empires of Earth, as the leaders and champions of universal freedom.

In noticing the efforts made for raising Africa from her immemorial degradation, we are bound to confess our obligations to the Mahometans for what they have done. If they have extirpated Christianity from the soil of North Africa, and planted, instead of this tree of fair and pure fruit, the more glaring and showy plant of Islamism, they have, at the same time, endeavoured to raise Africa to their own level of demi-civilization. Whilst we condemn their slave-traffic as we condemn our own, we must do justice to the efforts which they have made, by the spread of their creed and the diffusion of their commerce, during a series of ten or twelve centuries, for promoting the civilization of Africa. They have succeeded, they have done infinitely more for Africa than we ourselves. They have organized and established regular governments through all Central Africa, and inculcated a taste for the occupation and the principles of commerce. A great portion of this internal trade is untainted by slavery. Bornou, Soudan, Timbuctoo, and Jinnee, exhibit to us groups of immense and populous cities, all regularly governed and trading with one another. They have abolished human sacrifice, which lingers in our East India possessions to this day. They have regulated marriage and restrained polygamy. They have made honour and reverence to be paid to grey hairs, superseding the diabolical custom of exposing or destroying the aged. They have introduced a knowledge of reading and writing. The oases of Ghat and Ghadames furnish more children, in proportion, who can read and write, than any of our English towns. The Koran is transcribed in beautiful characters by Negro Talebs on the banks of the Niger. The Moors have likewise introduced many common useful trades into Central Africa. But above all, the Mohammedans have introduced the knowledge of the one true God! and destroyed the fetisch idols. Let us then take care how we arrogate to ourselves the right and fact of civilizing the world. Nay, there cannot be a question, if we would abandon Africa to the Mohammedans, and leave off our man-stealing trade and practices on the Western Coast, the dusky children of the torrid zones would gradually advance in civilization. But is not the bare idea of such an alternative an indelible disgrace to Christendom?

Mr. Cooley, in his learned work, entitled "The Negroland of the Arabs," seems to doubt if the Slave-Trade can be abolished or civilization advanced, in Central Africa, because of the neighbourhood of The Desert. This, however, is transferring the guilt of slavery and of voluntary barbarism, if barbarism can be crime, from the volition of responsible man to a great natural fact, or circumstance of creation--The Desert; and is a style of observation perfectly indefensible, as well as contrary to philosophy and facts. First, we cannot limit the stretch or progress of the Negro mind any more than that of the European intellect. Mr. Cooley himself admits that the Nigritian people have advanced in civilization. And if they have advanced, why not continue to advance? But so far contrary are facts to Mr. Cooley's theory, that The Desert, instead of being an obstacle to civilization, is favourable to it, whilst the Nigritian countries beyond the influence of The Desert are plunged into deeper barbarism. The reader will only have to compare my account of the Touaricks, with the recently published account of the social state of the kingdom of Dahomy, to convince himself how completely fallacious in application is Mr. Cooley's theory. Slaves, too, abound in thickly populated countries as well as desert countries: witness China and India. The Sahara, also, has its paradisical spots, or oases of enjoyment, as well as its wastes and hardships. It is likewise, not true, that the Saharan tribes depend for their happiness on the possession of slaves, or that life in The Desert is galling and insupportable. Many a happy oasis is without a slave. However this may be, it is always an extremely dangerous line of argument, to represent moral depravity as springing necessarily from certain physical and unalterable circumstances of creation. Finally, to represent The Great Desert as the buttress of the Slave-Trade, is contrary to all our experience. In deserts and mountains we find always the free-men: in soft and luxurious countries we find the slaves. It is not the free-born Touarick who is the slave-dealer, or the stimulator of the slave-traffic, but the Moorish merchant, and the voluptuary on the coast who sends him. All that the Saharan tribes do, is to escort the merchants over The Desert; and they would still escort them over The Desert did they not deal in slaves, carrying on only legitimate commerce.

I may conclude by a word on Discoveries in The Sahara. It is now twenty years or more since The Sahara was explored, or before my present hap-hazard tour. From what I have seen since my return, and the little encouragement given to this sort of enterprise,--the public of Great Britain being so much occupied with railways, free-trade, and currency questions, educational schemes, and State endowed, or voluntary ecclesiastical establishments,--it is difficult to foresee how and when another tour may be undertaken, or how a tourist will have the heart to make another experiment. Unhappily, the spirit of discovery, like Virtue's self, is difficult to be satisfied with its own reward. Something, however, may in time be expected from the French, who will get restless in their Algerian limits, and make a bold effort to disenthral themselves, by leaping the bounds of the mysterious Sahara. Evidently the French Government have prohibited all isolated attempts. But should their colony succeed, and they must make it succeed, then a grand stroke of policy and action will be struck upon the lines of the Saharan routes, for diverting The Desert trade, if possible, into Algerian channels. We must wait patiently this time for further researches. Necessity propels nations in the march of discovery. England has some considerable stake likewise in the commerce of The Great Desert. But our governmental affairs are so vast, and ramify over so large a space of the world, that it is extremely difficult to get a Minister to strike out a new path, unless he has the sympathies and hearty support of the public with him. And certainly the last thing in the imagination of the British public is the undertaking Discoveries in The Great Desert.

A remark may be made respecting the English spelling of Arabic words and names. I have not adopted the new system, as very few people understand it. I have endeavoured to represent the sounds of the original words in the ordinary way, giving sometimes the Arabic letters for those who prefer greater correctness. The spelling of Oriental and African names is also occasionally varied for the sake of variety, and sometimes I have written the words in various ways, according to the style of pronunciation amongst different Saharan tribes. I have also omitted accents and italics as much as possible, to avoid confusion and trouble to the printer. With respect to the contents at the head of the chapters, numberless little things and circumstances are besides unavoidably omitted in the enumeration.

I have few acknowledgments to make to those who rendered me assistance in the prosecution of my Saharan tour and researches. I have rather complaints to prefer against professed friends. I was unable to get up in The Desert a single thing, the most trifling, to aid me in my observations, when I had determined to penetrate farther into the interior; whilst, somehow or other, a Memorandum was obtained from the Porte to recal me instead of a Firman to help me on my way. Fortunately I was beyond its power when it arrived at Tripoli, from Constantinople. But if I feel the bitterness of this want of sympathy, and these acts of hostility, I have the pleasure of being triumphant over all the obstacles thrown in my way. I felt freer in The Desert, unloaded by obligations. Indeed, the fewer of these a traveller has, the better. He always supports his trials and privations with lighter spirits and a more cheerful heart. His success is his own, if his failure is his own also. Nevertheless I have not forgotten, nor can I ever forget, to the latest day of my life, the acts of kindness shown to me by the rude and simple-minded people of The Desert, and I have duly and most scrupulously chronicled them all.

JAMES RICHARDSON.

POSTSCRIPT.--It is hoped, for the honour and humanity of our Government, that they will resist the clamour to withdraw the Cruisers from the Western Coast of Africa, and that they will NOT WITHDRAW the British Cruisers. If a blow is to be struck, let it be struck at Cuba, or the Brazils, and not on the defenceless Africans, because they are defenceless. If a burglar prowls about, a whole neighbourhood is on the alert to protect itself against his depredations. If a band of pirates swarm in a sea or infest our coasts, a fleet is fitted out to capture them. But it is attempted to let loose upon weak, defenceless Africa a legion of pirates and murderers--for such will be the result if the British Cruisers are withdrawn from the Western Coast.

FOOTNOTES:

See the newspapers for the correspondence between some of the Bishops of our Church and the Premier. As the question is, Whether Dr. Hampden be a Heretic or a Christian? I may here observe that the term "Christian" is used in the following pages for "European." To the epithet "Christian," in the strict sense of the term, I have no other pretensions than that of being a conscientious reader of the New Testament.

"Une et indivisible."

Lord Brougham, in his Life of Pitt, very properly takes off some discount from the Anti-Slavery zeal of this great Statesman, for being so tardy in the work of Abolition, and allowing his Under Secretaries and subordinate Ministers to support the Slave-Trade against himself, and whilst he was advocating its extinction.

"It is impossible to deny the advancement of civilization in that zone of the African continent which has formed the field of our inquiry. Yet barbarism is there supported by natural circumstances with which it is vain to think of coping. It may be doubted whether, if mankind had inhabited the earth only in populous and adjoining communities, slavery would have ever existed. The Desert, if it be not absolutely the root of the evil, has, at least, been from the earliest times the great nursery of slave hunters. The demoralization of the towns on the Southern borders of The Desert has been pointed out; and if the vast extent be considered of the region in which man has no riches but slaves, no enjoyment but slaves, no article of trade but slaves, and where the hearts of wandering thousands are closed against pity by the galling misery of life, it will be difficult to resist the conviction that the solid buttress on which slavery rests in Africa, is--The Desert."

PLATES. Portrait of the Author Map of the Desert Slave Caravan

WOOD-CUTS. Arab Tents Facsimile Specimen of the Writing of a Young Taleb Manner of drawing Water from Wells Great Spring of Ghadames Bas-Relief Square of Fountains City of Ghadames Cistern of an Ancient Tower Negro's Head Ancient Ruins of Ghadames Region of Sands Rocking Rock

TRAVELS

THE GREAT DESERT.

On leaving Algiers, in January, 1845, I carried the idea of Ghadames with me to Tunis; and thence, after agitating an exploration to The Desert amongst my friends, some of whom plainly told me, if I went I should never return, I should be consumed with the sun and fever, or murdered by the natives, and to attempt such a thing was altogether madness, I journeyed on to Tripoli, where I entered with all my soul and might into the undertaking. But as in Tunis so in Tripoli, I heard the birds of evil-omen uttering the same mournful notes of discouragement:--"I should never reach Ghadames, no one else had done so, or no one else had gone and returned. I should perish by the hand of banditti, or sink under the burning heat. I was not the man; it required a frame of iron. Enthusiasm was very well in its way, but it required a man who was expert in arms, and who could fight his way through The Desert." And such is the absurd character of men, and some people pretending to be friends of African discovery, that, on hearing of my safe return after nine months' absence, they felt chagrined their sagacious vaticinations were not verified. Like a man who writes a book, and ever so bad a book, he cannot afterwards adopt a right sentiment, or course of action, because he has written his book. It is true, the fate of Davidson, in Western Barbary, and the late disastrous mishap of the young Tuscan on his return from Mourzuk, favoured the pretensions of these Barbary-coast prophets, who cannot comprehend a deviation from what had happened before, but it is equally true that the violent deaths of these individuals, so far as we can gather from the details, were brought about by the greatest possible imprudence on their part. However, I may say without hesitation, no people dread The Desert so much, and have in them so little of the spirit of enterprise and African discovery, as the naturalized Europeans of Tunis and Tripoli, and other parts of Barbary. To purchase the co-operation of a volunteer in these countries would require more money than defraying the expense of an expedition, and after all, from the love of intrigue and double-dealing which Europeans long resident in Barbary acquire, as well as other drawbacks, you would be very badly served.

I shall begin the narrative of my personal adventures in The Sahara with my departure from the island of Jerbah to Tripoli.

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