Sufferings in Africa by Captain James Riley

Sufferings in Africa by Captain James Riley

Author:Captain James Riley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781602390423
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2007-05-16T04:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER XVII.

Some fresh fish are procured—they pass several small walled villages, and meet with robbers on horseback

NEAR evening we met and passed a man driving an ass laden with fish, probably of from ten to twelve pounds weight each: they had much the shape and appearance of salmon, and our masters endeavoured to procure one from the owner for me, as 1 gave them to understand I was very fond of fish, and that it would be good for Burns, but the man would not part with one of them on any terms. At evening we found Hassar’s and his family’s tents already pitched on a little hill near the cliffs, and we joined this company. Soon after, Seid, Abdallah, and two of Hassar’s men, went out with their guns:—in about two hours, those with us, namely, Sidi Hamet, Hassar, and two others, hearing footsteps approaching, seized their muskets, and springing forward from their tents, demanded, who came there? It was Seid and his company, who came towards me, and unfolding a blanket turned out four large fish of the same kind we had seen before. “Riley, (said Sidi Hamet,) are these good to eat?” I answered in the affirmative—“take them and eat them, then, (said he) but be careful not to choke yourselves with the bones.” I took three of them, cut them into pieces, and put them into an earthen pot, that belonged to Hassar, (this pot the Arabs call giderah,) added some water, and boiled them directly, and we ate till we were satisfied. We drank the soup, which was extremely grateful and invigorating, and helped to check the dysentery, with which we were all much troubled since eating the honey-comb. We had travelled this day, I think, about forty miles, and slept at night within a circle formed by our masters and their camels, out of which we were not suffered to go, as Sidi Hamet told me there were many robbers in this place, who would seize on us, and carry us off in a minute, without the possibility of my ever being restored to my family.

October 21st, at day break we set forward on our journey, all in company, (except Hassar and the women and children.) The fresh fish we had eaten the night before, had made us very thirsty; and about noon we came to a kind of cistern, or reservoir of water on the pathway side: this reservoir was built of stone and lime; its top was arched like a vault, rising about four feet from the ground, and the cistern was at least eighty feet in length, eight or ten feet in breadth in the inside, and appeared to be twenty feet deep. It was now nearly full of water, which had been led into it by means of gutters, formed and arranged so as to receive and conduct the rain water when it descends from the neighbouring hills, and is collected in a stream in this valley. I understood this



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