on each side, until one or both are so exhausted that they fall to the ground: another pair then take their place. I now, for the first time, produced Captain Lyon s book in Boo Khaloom’s tent, and on turning over the prints of the natives he swore, and exclaimed, and insisted upon it, that he knew every face:_“ This was such a one’s slave—that was his own—he was right he knew it. Praised be God for the talents he gave the English ! they were shater, clever; wolla shater, very clever !” Of a landscape, however, I found that he had not the least idea; nor could I make him at all understand the intention of the print of the sand-wind in the desert, which is really so well described by Captain Lyon’s drawing; he would look at it upside down; and when I twice reversed it for him, he exclaimed, “ Why! why! it is all the same.” A camel or a human figure was all I could make him understand, and at these he was all agitation and delight— “ Gieb! gieb! Wonderful! .wonderful!” The eyes first took his attention, then the other features: at the sight of the sword, he exclaimed, “ Allah ! Allah !” and on discovering the guns instantly exclaimed, “ Where is the powder ? ” This want of perception, as I imagined, in so intelligent a man, excited at first my surprise; but perhaps just the same would an European have felt under similar circumstances. Were an European to attain manhood without ever casting his eye upon the representation of a landscape on paper, would he immediately feel the particular beauties of the picture, the perspective and the distant objects ? Certainly n o t: it is from our opportunities of contemplating works of art, even in the common walks of fife, as well as to cultivation of mind, and associations of the finer feelings by an intercourse with the enlightened and accomplished, that we owe our quick perception in matters of this kind, rather than from nature. To the south of Bilma are marshes with pools of stagnant water, which our horses could scarcely drink. The town stands in a hollow. and is surrounded by low mud walls, which, with the houses within, are mean and miserable. About two miles north of the town are a few huts, and near them several lakes, in which are great quantities of very pure crystallized salt: some was brought to us for sale in baskets, beautifully white, and of an excellent flavour. On visiting the two most productive lakes, which lay between low sand hills, I expressed my surprise at the difference between that which the Tibboos were carrying away from the heaps by the side of the water, and that which I had seen the day before: I however found that their time for gathering the salt was at the end of the dry season, when it was taken, in large masses, from the borders of the lake. This transparent kind they put into bags, and send to Bornou and Soudan; a coarser sort is also formed into hard pillars, and for which a ready market is found. In Soudan, a single pillar weighing eleven pounds brings four or five dollars. The Tuaricks supply themselves with salt entirely from the wadeys of the Tibboos. Twenty thousand bags of salt were said to have been carried off during the last year by the Tuaricks alone. The Tibboos say, “ I t is hard to rob us, not only for their own consumption, but for the purposes of commerce too; and in consequence of paying nothing for the commodity, undersell us likewise in the Soudan market.” But the Tibboos must be another people before they can keep the Tuaricks from plundering their country: a people who neither plant nor sow ; whose, education consists ib managing a maherhy, and the use of the spear; and who live by plundering those around them, as well as those whom necessity or chance may lead to pass through their own country. About a mile from Bilma is a spring of beautiful clear water, which rises to the surface of the earth, and waters a space of two or three hundred yards in circumference, which is covered with fresh grass: but passing this, the traveller must bid adieu to every appearance of vegetable production, and enter on a desert which e 2
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