Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1889-04-28
LIFE IN TRIPOLI.
WHERE sHIps OF THE DESERT LIE AT
ANCHOR.
Curious Things in the Market Place
Houses Men Live In-Roads and
Soldiers.

Il
/ might almost date this letter from
the Sahara Desert, for the low, whitish-
yellow sand hills that stretch away in
terminably to the west, south, and east
OF my present quarters virtually form
part OF the great wilderness which l am
now visiting for the third time. Here.
as on the Upper Niger, the boundary
between the rich luxuriance OF the cultl-
vable land and the grim, eternal desols-
ton OF the desert is very sharply out
lined. To my left. as | stand facing
eastward to watch the GLORIOUS African
sunrise, the whole country below me il
one vast unending palm forest, so
thick and close as TO hide the very earth,
and to show one unbroken belt OF dark
green stretching from east to west as far
as the eye can reach. To my right, bare
and dumb and liieless as when the waters
OF the primeval ocean first dried OFF it
ere man had began to exist upon the
earth, lies outspread in all Its vastbess
the DIM and awful solitude OF the ever
! lasting DESERT the abode OF emptl-
ness" as its wild inhabitants POLITICALLY
term (which extends from tue mud
flats of the Nile to the waves OF the At
lantic and from the palm groves OF Bar
barry to the rice-fields of the Niger.
If this village is indeed named after
" Hammet the Valiant, that brave In
politan chief whose courage freed Fri
poll for time from Turkish oppression
in 1903, that national hero has little
cause to feel fattered by the comph-
ment, for n fouler place could hardly be
imagined. An English traveller has
described the peasant log hut OF
Central Russia as a place where lyon
can cut the smell of cabbage-soup
with Ratchet, and at night you can
hear the bedbugs bark" If you substi-
tute for 81 the smell OF cabbage-soup" q
combined fragrance OF decayed fruit,
foul straw, dirty sheepskins, and I'M
washed human beings, supplemented by
the stronger flavor Of those unmention-
able combustbIes OF which a Moorish
fire on the border Of the desert is always
composed, this description would apply
fairly enough to any ordinary house Of
any ordinary village in all Tripoli.
Nor are these dens more agreeable to
the eve than to the nose. When You
come up to one Of these square, blank,
windowless, lfeless blocks of masonry
which are here called by courtesy
"houses," and see creeping out from the
blackness Of tho one low, tunnel-like
aperture that breaks its ghostly white n
eaunt, brown, shrivelled face and skele-
ton figure, shrouded in a trailing white
mantle, the whole proceeding IA 80
startlingly suggestive of a dead man
rising from his grave especially when
Won happen to see it about nightfall) as
to he much more striking than agreea-
BILE.
If You venture to peep into one Of
these living tombs, the chances are that
YOU Will have barely time to make out a
shadowy figure squatting IN one corner
Of the dim interior amid congregated
sheepskns and water jars like OAR
winian Adam in the midst of an eyolu-
tionary creation, when you are greeted
with q fierce yell, and heavy earthen
pot smashes itself 10 pieces against the
wall close to your head, while the hob
goblin springs to his feet like tiger to
demolish the "infidel dog" who has
dared to disturb his evening deyotions.
At times, however, you light upon q
milder barbarian, who greets you with the
traditional "Salaam aleikoum," (peace
be with you,) and invites You to join q
gubterranean lunch OF Moorish coffee,
Barbary dates, and thick, gray, sticky
bread. which looks and tastes very much
like glaciers putty. But if you rashIy
set down all this as true Oriental hos
pitalitv." and propose to avoid wound
ING the feelings Of your host by offering
him any sordid compensation, you will
soon find ont your mistake, for the old
eontleman's Mohammedan preiudices
against Christians do not extend to Chris
tan money, and he will take good care
to sec the color OF yours before you and
he part
Let rs stroll around this harbor in
which the " ships of the desert" lie at
anchor with their long necks out
stretched upon the warm, dry earth IN
lazy enjoyment) and see what IS to be
seen, for it is not often nowadays that
we can meet with such a spectacle. 1t
IS a curious thought that many OF the
Wild figures around US have come hlther
from regions where no white man has
ever set foot since the world began, and
that many secrets which the ablest scien-
fists of Europe are still striving in vain
to penetrate are in the possession Of
these bare limbed, ignorant savages,
who do not even know their
value. This big. fat-nosed, one
eyed negro from the Western Soudan,
with no clothing save q nondescript
garment suggestive OF coal-sack with
the end knocked out, and the sand OF
tho Sahara crusted like brown sugar in
his woolly hair, has seen things OF
which neither Nachtigall nor Schweln-
forth ever dreamed, and which would
considerably astonish Stanley himself.
That tall. lean. hawk-eyed Tuareg, with
his short brass-hilted sword Slung
across his bony shoulders and the fierce,
elastic vitality of the wolf or the tiger
duivering in every sinew OF his long,
Caunt limbs, has sat amid the ruins OF
cities older than Homer, for one glimpse
OF which any archaeological professor of
London or Berlin would gladly peril his
lie.
,Yonder scowling, low-browed fellow,
with his coarse black hair gathered up
into kind of bush upon the crown of his
otherwise shaven head, and the whitish
scar of a fearful wound running slant
wise across his bare, brown, sinewy
chest, broke into Khartoum in the fore
front Of the Mahdi's motley host upon
that fatal February morning four years
ago, and could tell, if he chose, all that
still remains to be known respecting the
fate of brave "Chinese Gordon" This
statelyold Moor from Northern Morocco,
down to whose girdle of crimson silk
hangs beard as white as the
many-folded turban which overshadows
his swarthy face and piercing eyes, has
on the wall of his mouse in Fee huge,
antique, rusty key, which once un-
locked the door of the ancient mansion
in which his ancestor dwelt beneath the
shadow OF King Boabdil-el- Chico's
throne in Grenada. And with that key
were brought over to Africa in 1906,
when the Moors were finally expelled
ii