ABSTRACT
NOTHING is more common than that, after long delay and various negotiations, in waiting and preparing for a journey, everything at last is hurried with a most reckless dispatch; this, at least, was the case with me. I was to have been escorted out of Tripoli by the Consular corps, with the British Consul at their head, in the wonted style of Europeans setting out for the interior. But on the morning of the 2nd August, before I could finish my letters for England, or get my luggage together, came my camel-driver Mohammed, who, at the sight of my papers all spread out, began whining and blubbering, protesting, "The ghafalah* is gone; we can't overtake it-we shall be murdered, if we delay behind/' Without saying a word in reply, I amassed and bundled
up everything together, and gave him the baggage; then went off to the Souk, or market-place, to buy some fresh bread,—and found myself on the way to Ghadames, before I was conscious of having left Tripoli. Such is the excitement and vagaries of human feeling! Not being accustomed to mount the camel, I determined to hire some donkeys to ride to the first station; Gameo and one of his brothers accompanied me. When I could breathe freely, as I rode on my unknown way, with a boundless prospect before me, I felt my heart rebound with joy, and commended myself humbly to the care of a good God, not knowing what was to happen to me. I had consumed three months of most suffering patience in Tripoli before I could start on this journey, and was otherwise schooled for what was about to take place. But I must not begin too early the record of my complaints.
