I wentout for a last drive with the British consul toward the oasis of Gergarish, which lies westward of the city, a new direction for me. He was familiar with the Mediterranean; and, the talk falling on the classical background of North Africa, I told him of my search for the lotus at Djerba. He avowed his belief that much of the Greek mythic past had its local habitation on these coasts, and gave me a striking and quite unexpected instance. I had supposed that Lethe was an underground stream and approached only by the ghosts of the dead. He assured me that it was situated not very far from Benghazi, where he had been consul, and made an excellent table water. It is a large fountain or underground lake in a cave; he had been on it in a boat with a friend, and it was said that fumes from the water would oppress the passenger with drowsiness. I heard this with great interest, and like to remember that I can obtain a cup of Lethe, should I desire it, this side the infernal world. My friend added his belief that partial oblivion can be found comparatively widely diffused in North Africa, not being dependent on either Lethe or the lotus. This tradition of drowsiness which attaches to these coasts in old days is to be attributed to the quality of the air, which is soporific. Continued residence causes a loss of memory, not that one forgets his early days, home, and children, like the lotus-eaters, but one grows uncertain about recent events and the mind becomes hazy as to whether one has or has not done this or that; to such a degree is this true that my friend advised a return to the north at least once in two years to allow the memory to recover its normal force. With such talk, which was quite seriously said, though it has its humorous side, and which faithfully reflects the African atmosphere, we whiled away the time, conversing, too, of the American excavations at Benghazi and the bells of Derna that rang the Italian priest to his death—for the Arabs dislike bells—and the thousand and one topics on which a traveller is always prepared to receive information. I had been so long alone that those talks at Tripoli were almost as much of a rarity as the scenes; they are an essential part of my memory of the voyage.
Our destination was not the oasis, but some caverns on a height above it. The day was brilliant and a noble desert view stretched round us from the eminence. The blue sea sparkled not far away, an horizon-stripe up and down the coast as far as one could see; the splendid dark green mass of the oasis lay just below us in the valley, and between us and it the desert plain undulated with the long slopes of a rolling prairie, spotted with cattle and a few Arab groups; inland the sands swept on to the line of mountains low on the far horizon. The mass of rock above us was picturesque and solitary. The gem of the view, however, was Tripoli eastward. It was the first time I had truly seen the city from outside—just such a Moslem city as one dreams of, a white city, small and beautiful, snowy pure in the liquid air. I was surprised at its beauty. We explored the cave. It was of a sort of stratified pumice stone and partly filled up with sand. It had been at some time a troglodyte dwelling, and chambers had been hollowed in it. There are many troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, still living in this primitive manner in rock-hewn chambers in North Africa. There are villages of them in the mountains back of Biskra, and especially in the southeastern corner of Tunisia opposite Djerba, and they are found in the low range of the Djebel-Ghariane that I was looking on in the distance. This cavern that we were exploring was one of their prehistoric haunts, a natural fortress and place of refuge for a small group of families in the wild waste.
The drive back was uncommonly beautiful, very African in color, and increasing in atmospheric charm as we neared the city in the clarity of the sunset light. The coast view was especially lovely. The blue sea made the offing, along which a line of scattered palms, continuous but thin enough to give its full value to each dark green tuft in the blue air, and to many a single columnar stem beneath, ran like a screen, not too far from the roadway; and the strong foreground was that red-brown earth with the sunset light beginning on it. The beautiful white city lay ahead of us. The quality of the atmosphere was remarkable. The trees were very light, and seemed to float in the sky, like goldfish in a globe; and as the sunset grew, the diffused rose through the palms on the other side seemed almost a new sky. It was my last evening in Tripoli.
I hadloitered for the last time in the street of the blueness and lingered in the souks of the Djerba merchants and especially in the little shop of a mild-mannered Soudanese dealer where I gathered up the curious objects that had been slowly collecting there for me to serve as mementos—things of gourd and hide, of skin and straw, a few ostrich plumes. I had photographed the baker’s shop, and stopped at the intersection of the four corners to look once more at the ever-passing figures of the inscrutable and conglomerate crowd, the float of the desert life. I had called on my friend and kind adviser at the French Consulate, and my British host, to both of whom I owed so much of the pleasure and variety of my traveller’s sojourn. In one respect it was unique in my wanderings. I had never seen so many strata of culture, so many diverse kinds and stages of human life, in one place. I had had a last talk with Seyd, the boy from Fezzan, and with the negro guards of the gate and the boys at the door who were eager rivals for my morning favors. Now it was over, and I stood on the deck with Absalom. I was sorry to part with him. What a faithful watch he had kept! No matter at what hour I stepped out into the street, he was there, seated by the wall; wherever I left my consular friends, in some mysterious way he was instantly there in the street at my side. He had tempted me to a longer stay with lures of hunting in the desert where he calmly explained he would watch with a gun while I slept, and then I would watch, though there would be two others with us, but it would be better if one or the other of us were always awake, for one did not know what might be in the desert; and he had planned a voyage to Lebda, the city of Septimius Severus—it might be a rough voyage in a boat none too good, but was not he a pilot? He had brought me one day all his pilot papers; there were hundreds of them, each with the name of the craft and the signature of the captain whose ways he had safely guided on this dangerous coast in the years gone by. But my voyage in North Africa was finished; it was done; the much that I had left unseen, and I realized how much that was—for wherever one goes, new horizons are always rising with their magical drawing of the unknown—all that was for “another time.” So, knowing the end had come, he took both my hands in both his for our warm addio, bent his head, and went slowly down the ship’s side.
I watched the scene as we drew away. The central mass of the fort stood in shadow, and the sunset light streamed over the eastern side of the city, the beach and bluffs; slender minarets islanded the sky; the blue crescent of the bay lay broad beneath; the oasis rose over the banked earth, and stretched inland, and the high horizon line was plumed with tall single palms tufting the long sky. I watched it long, till the beautiful city in the fair evening light lessened and narrowed to a gleam, and at the end it was like the white crest of a wave that sank and was seen no more.
I wenton deck. It was a May night with a fresh, cold wind. There was a bright star over the crescent moon which hung well down the west, and all the heavens were bright, but not too bright. I leaned on the rounds of a rope ladder of the rigging by the ship’s side aft, and was alone; it was cold, and the passengers were few. I noticed on the horizon a dark shadow half-risen from the waters and mounting toward the moon; it rose rapidly, and grew black as it neared the light above. It was like a high arch, or cascade of gloom, broadening its skirts as it fell on the horizon. The moon was its apex, and seemed about to enter it. The scene was fantastic in the extreme, unearthly, a scene of Poe’s imagination; the moon hung as if at the entrance of an unknown region into which it was about to descend. But there was no further change. The moon crested the arch; the single star burned brilliantly directly above and between the horns of the crescent and at some distance aloft. I watched the strange spectacle; the moon and the broad-skirted curtain of black gloom, pouring from it on the waters just in the line of its bright track over the sea, sank slowly down together. The moon reddened as it neared the horizon line, and when the crescent at last rested on the sea, and the shadow had been wholly absorbed in the moon’s track, there was another Poesque effect; the horned moon was like a ship of flame—not a ship on fire, but a ship of flame—sailing on the horizon. That picture, though it could have been but for a few moments, seemed to last long, and sank dying in a red glow slowly. I remember recalling the lines:
“The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set.”
“The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set.”
“The moon of MahometArose, and it shall set.”
“The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set.”
What followed was so singular that it may be best to record it in nearly the exact words of my rough notes, made early the next morning off Malta:
“The strange thing was that the star, still somewhat high in the west, growing brighter, took the track of the moon. I mean the moon’s path of light on the water became the star’s path, as plain but whiter; one passed and the other was there imperceptibly; one became the other. It reminded me of one faith changing into another, from a higher heavenly source. I stayed because the star was so beautiful—the most beautiful star I ever saw, except perhaps the star off Cyprus. It grew larger and more radiant, with many, many points, and became a bunch, as it were, of jackstraw rays, one crossing another, all straight; and then, as I looked, a strange thing happened.
“I saw what might have been spirits in the star, as in a picture. The star lost shape, and became only the setting of these forms of light, perfect human figures. At first there were two, one older and one younger, like an angel with Tobias or Virgin with the young St. John; then there were many others, not at the same time, but successively. Some were constantly repeated; the Byzantine throned figure hieratic, the highwinged angel tall, the young angel seated and writing, the standing figure, prophetic, blessing, with high hands. There were scenes as well as figures: desert scenes as of Arabs—effects of the white and dark, like turbaned and robed figures together; the Magian scene; mixed moving groups, sometimes turned away from me. The figures often moved with regard to each other, and trembled on my own eye singly. When the star approached the horizon, there were figures that seemed to walk toward me on the sea, all white and radiant—single figures always. There were in all three sorts: Byzantine, with the crown or canopy above, and the throne; Italian groups and lines; and Moslem. There was nothing distinctively Greek except seated figures.
“This continued till the star set, perhaps an hour. I would look off from the star to the other stars and to the sea; but as soon as my eyes went back to the star, there were the changing figures still to be seen. One did not see the star, but the figures; not framed in a star or in a round orb, but on a shapeless background; one saw only figures of light as if ‘the heavens were opened.’ And when the star set and was gone, another planet above, also very bright, as I looked, opened in the same way, with similar figures. There I saw a form with Michel-Angelo-like limbs, seated on the orb with loose posture, like the spirit of the star, and then a tall, throned figure with the crown over it. I did not at any time see any features—only forms, very distinct in limbs and modelling of figure, but too distant for features. It was an hour or more, and I still saw them in the new star when I turned away to go below. My eyes were tired. I was not at all excited—quite steady, and observing and experimenting; for I had never known anything similar to this. The visions were constant, without any interval, though changing. It was like looking into a room through a window, or out of a room upon a landscape.
“It was wonderfullyspiritualand beautiful. The figures were all noble and beautiful, especially in line, and occupied with something, like living forms. They werewhite, but not with white clothing, except the Moslem figures, sometimes; but white as of somesubstance of light—the faces sometimes dark, and there were shadows marking relations of the figures, but not shadows thrown by the figures. I made no effort to shape them; they came; they were of themselves.
“I thought this was what Blake saw; what the shepherds saw; what all orientals saw when the heavens were ‘opened’—what Jacob saw, perhaps. What struck me was that the star was no longer a star, but shapeless, and onlya means of seeing. It was a most remarkable experience.”
Africa was always a land of magic; and it seemed to me that night as if the spirit of the land were bidding me, who had so loved it, farewell.