and to enumerate the various excellences of the fat sheep and lambs,
of the milk, and the butter, and the water we should find there;
assuring us that he would consider it his greatest pleasure, as well
as duty, to take care that we were well supplied with all these
valuable commodities. He then began to state the great advantage
of his protection, and how impossible it would have been for us to
cross the Syrtis without him. As we suspected that the report
which had been mentioned to us by the Consul was invented by our
worthy friend the Dfibbah, we took this opportunity of relating it to
the Shekh of Mesurata, and of asking his opinion with regard to its
probability. Belc&zi shook his head, and very confidently assured us
that he did not believe there was any foundation for it whatever: it
was true, he confessed, that a few years ago such an interruption
might easily have occurred; but since the Arab tribes had been
reduced by the Bashaw, the communication between Mesurata and
Bengazi might be considered as tolerably certain.
Shekh Mahommed, however (whose large and round eyes had been
during this discourse very attentively fixed upon those of the Shekh
of Mesurata), still insisted upon the existence of this horde of sban-
dut *; and even asserted that he was himself well acquainted with
all their favourite haunts and retreats. Some of his party, he added,
had tracked their horses’ feet from the well which they had recently
visited, and had informed him that their troop was very numerous.
But he knew, he continued, all the wells which they frequented, and
i The term applied, by the Arabs in the regency of Tripoly to marauders of every
description, and which is evidently corrupted from the Italian.
would himself ride before, to reconnoitre the ground when we
arrived in the neighbourhood of those places. He then assumed an
air of amazing importance, and putting one hand upon the head of a
pistol at his side, and stroking with the other his grey bushy beard,
bade us not be alarmed at any danger which might threaten us
while we were under the protection of the D6bbah! We were now
quite convinced that our valiant old friend had himself been the
author of the report, in order, as we then thought,; to enhance the
value of his protection; and we afterwards discovered the reason
why he wished to have an excuse for riding on occasionally in advance
of the party. It was, however, not our wish to hurt the old Shekh’s
feelings by a disclosure of these suspicions, and i t . was certainly not
our policy to do so; we therefore acquiesced in his remarks upon
his own importance, and assured him that it was really our firm belief
that no sbandut would be daring enough to enter into his . presence.
After some little further conversation with the Shekhs, from whom
we obtained all the information we could, we reminded Belc&zi of
his promise to collect the camels, which we told him, we wished to
have ,as speedily as possible, and he soon after rose to take his
leave, and retired with the formidable Diibbah. On the following
morning he sent his son to say that we should have the camels in
three or four days, and we took the opportunity of making the youth
some few presents, with which he was highly delighted. In the
evening we returned Belc&zi’s visit, and were received with a good
deal of that easy politeness, which the better classes of Turks and
Arabs know so well (when they choose it) how to practise We