An Account Of Timbuctoo And Housa Territories In The Interior Of Africa Part 11

[Footnote 122: An _akkaba_ is an acc.u.mulated caravan.]

MoG.o.dor, April 31, 1799.

A violent fever now rages at Fas: some a.s.sert it to be the plague, but that is Moorish report, and little to be depended on; the European consuls at Tangier, and the Spanish amba.s.sador, who, having terminated his emba.s.sy, has lately left Mequinas, mention it as an epidemical disorder.

May 20. The small-pox rages violently throughout this country, and is of a most virulent kind: its origin is ascribed to the famine that has of late pervaded this country, and which was produced by the incredible devastation of the devouring locusts; the dregs of olives, after the oil had been extracted, has been the only food that could be procured by many thousands.

MoG.o.dor, June 14, 1799.

Various reports reach us daily from _the city of Marocco_, respecting the epidemy that prevails there, some say 200 die, some 158 say 100, others limit the daily mortality to 50, in a population, according to the imperial register, of 270,000.

When any _light_ rain falls, as is the case at Marocco at this season of the year, the mortality increases. Mr. Francisco Chiappe, an Italian merchant, is just arrived from Marocco, and is performing quarantine, by his own desire, at the Emperor's garden.[123] This gentleman reports, that the greater portion of the people die of fear, from hunger, or bad food, or from the small-pox, which latter has raged at Marocco the last month or two; but he had not been able to ascertain, so various were the reports, whether it was the plague or not. The emperor's army, a division of which pa.s.sed through this country, and encamped at the river, about two miles south of this port, had the distemper with it. We have been a.s.sured, that the soldiers who died, were immediately buried within the tents, so that, by this stratagem, the mortality was not perceived by the public; it was apprehended that, if the mortality were known, the kabyls, through which the army pa.s.sed from Mequinas to Marocco, would not have supplied the troops with provision. This detachment consisted of 20,000 horse and 10,000 foot. No disorder has yet appeared here, nor in the adjacent provinces of Shedma and Haha.

[Footnote 123: A garden in the province of Haha, five miles from MoG.o.dor, that was presented to the European merchants by the late sultan, Seedy Muhamed ben Abdallah.]

159 July 5. We dispatched the Spanish brig yesterday; but she is still at anchor in the road, waiting for pa.s.sengers, who fly from hence with precipitation, from fear of the fever or plague, which prevails at Fas and at Marocco, and which, it is reported, has made its appearance at the port of Saffy. We have, however, nothing of the kind here yet, though we expect we shall not escape the general scourge.

July 13. The epidemy in the interior provinces has greatly augmented, insomuch, that the demand for linen to bury the dead rapidly increases, and the stock is almost exhausted. This article has risen to an unprecedented price. All the relatives of L'Hage Abdallah have fallen victims to the epidemy. This gentleman is consequently in possession of very considerable property; and (if he be not also carried off) there will be no fear of our recovering the debt he owes you.

We cannot ascertain if the disorder prevails in the outer town, and in the Jews' quarter, or not; it is certain, however, that eight or ten die daily of the small-pox, and as many more of fevers and other disorders, as report proclaims.

July 25. We are so much engaged in making arrangements against the epidemy, which is now confidently reported to us to be the plague, of a most deadly species, that we have only time to refer you to the captain of the Aurora, to whom we have communicated every 160 particular, and who is extremely anxious to be off for England. The deaths in this town, which contained a population of 10,000, according to the imperial register, are from forty to fifty each day.

Aug. 1. As the plague now rages violently here, no one thinks of business or the affairs of this world; but each individual antic.i.p.ates that he will be next called away. I send the inclosed, to be forwarded to Mr. Andrea de Christo, at Amsterdam, to announce to him the sudden death of his partner, Mr. J. Pacifico, who is lately dead of the plague. I paid him a visit a few hours before his death; I met there Don Pedro de Victoria, who was smoking a segar; he offered me one, and urged me to smoke it. I believe that the smoke of tobacco is anti-pestilential; this, added to the precaution of avoiding contact, and inhalation of the breath of the person infected, appears to be quite sufficient to secure a person from infection.

Aug. 1. (Translation of a letter to Mr. Andrea de Christi, merchant at Amsterdam.) We are sorry that the subject of this letter is so melancholy. All our domestics have left us; the plague rages so violently here, that the daily mortality is from sixty to seventy, among which we are sorry to announce the death of your partner, Mr.

J. Pacifico, who died two days since.

August 23. The best gum is selling at Akka for six dollars a quintal: they will not bring it here, fearing the infection. A 161 large Brazil s.h.i.+p has been wrecked off Cape Noon, her cargo, consisting for the most part of silks and linens, is estimated at half a million of dollars. The Arabs of Sahara convert the most beautiful lace into bridles for their horses, by twisting it; and superior silk stockings are selling at Wedinoon at a dollar per dozen pair. The plague is rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng from 100 deaths to 20 or 30 per day. Meeman Corcoes is dead, as well as most of the princ.i.p.al tradesmen of Marocco and Fas; whole families have been swept off, and there is none left to inherit their property.

Immense droves of horses, mules, and cattle of every description stray in the plains without owners.

September 5. The plague continues to decrease; and in another month we expect to be quite free from it. Signor Conton died this morning of the epidemy; yesterday afternoon he was apparently quite well, and paid me a visit. He wished me to shake hands with him, which I declined, alleging as an excuse, that I would dispense with that custom till the plague should pa.s.s over. He drank a gla.s.s of wine, and appeared cheerful and in good health. I have had fixed in my dining room, a table that extends from one end to the other. I walk or sit on one side of the table, my visitors on the other. I am only cautious to avoid personal contact. All the houses of the other merchants are closely barricaded or bolted. A fumigating pot 162 of gum sandrac stands at the entrance of my house, continually burning, which diffuses an agreeable perfume, but is not, as I apprehend, an antidote to the epidemy.

October 1. We have to apprise you of the decease of L'Hage Abdallah El Hareishy, most of whose relations are dead. His brother is the only one of the family besides himself that remains: he has inherited considerable property, and thence will be enabled to pay your bill on him in our favour.

October 29. The plague appears to have ceased in this town. All the merchants have opened their houses; but the disorder continues in the provinces, from whence there is little or no communication with the town. The kabyls seem to be wholly engaged in burying their dead, in arranging the affairs of their respective families, in dividing the property inherited by them, and in administering consolation to the sick.

Nov. 11. The plague having committed incalculable ravages throughout this country, had put a stop to all commerce, which now begins to revive, in proportion as that calamity subsides. Linens are selling to great advantage, a cargo would now render 60 per cent. profit, clear of all charges.

Nov. 29. The deadly epidemy that has lately visited us, and which 163 at one period carried off above 100 each day, has now confined its daily mortality to two or three; some days none. When, however, the Arabs of Shedma, and the Sh.e.l.luhs of Haha come to town, and bring the clothes of their deceased relations for sale, the epidemy increases to three, four, and five a day; then, in three or four days, it declines again to its former number, one, two, or three.

We have reason to expect, that, before the vessels which we expect from London shall arrive, the plague will have subsided entirely.

MoG.o.dor, Dec. 12. 1799. The plague or mortality of this town is now reduced to three or four weekly.

OBSERVATION.

After the plague had subsided, a murrain attacked the cattle, and great numbers of all kinds died; so that they became reduced in the same proportion as the race of man had been reduced before.

_Letter from His Excellency James M. Matra to Mr. Jackson_.

Gibraltar, 28th Oct. 1799.

Dear Jackson;

Within a few days of each other, I received your packets of the 164 21st of September, and 8th instant. Their inclosures are of course taken care of. Your letter about Soke a.s.sa was received, and sent home to government ages ago.

I never could understand the drift of the people either at Tangier or MoG.o.dor, in a.s.serting that my report of the plague was political. G.o.d knows, that our politics in Barbary are never remarkable for refinement: they are, if any thing, rather too much in the John Bull style; and the finesse they gave me such credit for, was absolutely beyond my comprehension, as I never could discover what advantage a genuine well-established plague in Barbary could be to our country. Of its existence I had not the shadow of doubt, for more than eight months before it was talked of; and when Doctor Bell was going that way, I begged of him to be particular in his enquiries, which he, as usual, neglected. When John Salmon[124] was up, he was _very particular_, and _I_ of course was laughed at. _Here_ I saw politics, and told all the gentlemen, that when Salmon[125] arrived at Tariffa, then, and not till then, we should have the plague in Barbary; and just so it turned out.

[Footnote 124: John Salmon was Spanish envoy to the emperor of Marocco, and was at this time up at Fas, _i.e._ on his emba.s.sy.]

[Footnote 125: Arrived at Tariffa, and so secured his admission into Spain on his return from his emba.s.sy.]

165 I am confident, if my advice had been taken, the disease might have been checked in the beginning; for it was almost three quarters of a year confined to _old_ Fas. I wrote in the most pressing manner to Ben Ottoman[126], who never believed me. A few days before he was seized with it, he wrote me a melancholy letter for advice, and pathetically lamented that he had not listened to me in time; and I suppose that even Broussonet[127] believed me when he embarked. I hope your opinion that it diminishes with you will prove well founded; but I fear its ravages are only suspended by the great heats; besides, you should recollect that people cannot die twice, and with a population so diminished, you must not expect so many as formerly on your daily dead-list. Mrs. M., who desires her remembrance to you, is well, but barring plague, would rather be at Tangier than Gibraltar; so would I.

Ever truly thine,

J. MATRA.

[Footnote 126: The emperor's prime-minister, or _talb cadus_ at that time.]

[Footnote 127: Dr. Broussonet, French consul. This gentleman was intendant of the botanical garden at Montpelier: he, with another doctor embarked for Europe just as the plague began to appear at MoG.o.dor in the year 1799.]

166

_Some Account of a peculiar Species of Plague which depopulated West Barbary in 1799 and 1800, and to the Effects of which the Author was an eye-witness._

From various circ.u.mstances and appearances, and from the character of the epidemical distemper which raged lately in the south of Spain, there is every reason to suppose, it was similar to that distemper or plague which depopulated West Barbary; for, whether we call it by the more reconcileable appellation of the epidemy, or yellow fever, it was undoubtedly a plague, and a most destructive one; for wherever it prevailed, it invariably carried off, in a few months, one-half, or one-third, of the population.

It does not appear how the plague originated in Fas in the year 1799.[128] Some persons, who were there at the time it broke out, have confidently ascribed it to infected merchandise imported into that place from the East; whilst others, of equal veracity and judgment, have not scrupled to ascribe it to the locusts which had infested West Barbary during the seven preceding years, the destruction of which was followed by the (_jedrie_) small-pox, 167 which pervaded the country, and was generally fatal. The _jedrie_ is supposed to be the forerunner of this species of epidemy, as appears by an ancient Arabic ma.n.u.script, which gives an account of the same disorder having carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants of West Barbary about four centuries since. But however this destructive epidemy originated, its leading features were novel, and its consequences more dreadful than the common plague of Turkey, or that of Syria, or Egypt. Let every one freely declare his own sentiments about it; let him a.s.sign any credible account of its rise, or the causes that introduced so terrible a scene. I shall relate only what its symptoms were, what it actually was, and how it terminated, having been an eye-witness of its dreadful effects, and having seen and visited many who were afflicted, and who were dying with it.

[Footnote 128: See the Author's observations, in a letter to Mr. Willis, in Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1805.]

In the month of April, 1799, a dreadful plague, of a most destructive nature, manifested itself in the city of Old Fas, which soon after communicated itself to the new city. This unparalleled calamity, carried off one or two the first day, three or four the second day, six or eight the third day, and increasing progressively, until the mortality amounted to two in the hundred of the aggregate population, continuing _with unabating violence_, ten, fifteen, or twenty days; being of longer duration in old than in new towns; then diminis.h.i.+ng in a progressive proportion from one 168 thousand a day to nine hundred, then to eight hundred, and so on until it disappeared. Whatever recourse was had to medicine and to physicians was unavailing; so that such expedients were at length totally relinquished, and the people, overpowered by this terrible scourge, lost all hopes of surviving it.

Whilst it raged in the town of MoG.o.dor, a small village, _Diabet_, situated about two miles south-east of that place, remained uninfected, although the communication was open between them: on the _thirty-fourth day_, however, after its first appearance at MoG.o.dor, this village was discovered to be infected, and the disorder raged with great violence, making dreadful havock among the human species for _twenty-one_ days, carrying off, during that period, one hundred persons out of one hundred and thirty-three, the original population of the village, before the plague visited it; none died after this, and those who were infected, recovered in the course of a month or two, some losing an eye, or the use of a leg or an arm.

Many similar circ.u.mstances might be here adduced relative to the numerous and populous villages dispersed through the extensive Sh.e.l.luh province of Haha, all which shared a similar or a worse fate. Travelling through this province shortly after the plague had exhausted itself, I saw many uninhabited ruins, which I had before witnessed as flouris.h.i.+ng villages; on making enquiry concerning the 169 population of these dismal remains, I was informed that in one village, which contained six hundred inhabitants, four persons only had escaped the ravage. Other villages, which had contained four or five hundred, had only seven or eight survivors left to relate the calamities they had suffered. Families which had retired to the country to avoid the infection, on returning to town, when all infection had apparently ceased, were generally attacked, and died; a singular instance of this kind happened at MoG.o.dor, where, after the mortality had subsided, a corps of troops arrived from the city of Terodant, in the province of Suse, where the plague had been raging, and had subsided; these troops, after remaining three days at MoG.o.dor, were attacked with the disease, and it raged exclusively among them for about a month, during which it carried off two-thirds of their original number, one hundred men; during this interval the other inhabitants of the town were exempt from the disorder, though these troops were not confined to any particular quarter, many of them having had apartments in the houses of the inhabitants of the town.

The destruction of the human species in the province of Suse was considerably greater than elsewhere; Terodant, formerly the metropolis of a kingdom, but now that of Suse, lost, when the infection was at its acme, about eight hundred each day; the 170 ruined, but still extensive city of Marocco[129], lost one thousand each day; the populous cities of Old and New Fas diminished in population twelve or fifteen hundred each day[130], insomuch, that in these extensive cities, the mortality was so great, that the living having not time to bury the dead, the bodies were deposited or thrown altogether into large holes, which, when nearly full, were covered over with earth. All regulations in matters of sepulture before observed were now no longer regarded; things sacred and things prophane had now lost their distinction, and universal despair pervaded mankind. Young, healthy, and robust persons of full stamina, were, for the most part, attacked first, then women and children, and lastly, thin, sickly, emaciated, and old people.

[Footnote 129: I have been informed that there are still at Marocco, apartments wherein the dead were placed; and that after the whole family was swept away the doors were built up, and remain so to this day.]

[Footnote 130: There died, during the whole of the above periods, in the city of Marocco, 50,000; in Fas, 65,000; in MoG.o.dor, 4500; and in Saffy, 5000; in all 124,500 souls!]

After this violent and deadly calamity had subsided, we beheld a general alteration in the fortunes and circ.u.mstances of men; we saw persons who before the plague were common labourers, now in possession of thousands, and keeping horses without knowing how to ride them. Parties of this description were met wherever we went, 171 and the men of family called them in derision _el wuratu_, the inheritors.[131] Provisions also became extremely cheap and abundant; the flocks and herds had been left in the fields, and there was now no one to own them; and the propensity to plunder, so notoriously attached to the character of the Arab, as well as to the Sh.e.l.luh and Moor, was superseded by a conscientious regard to justice, originating from a continual apprehension of dissolution, and that the _el khere_[132], as the plague was now called, was a judgment of the Omnipotent on the disobedience of man, and that it behoved every individual to amend his conduct, as a preparation to his departure for paradise.

[Footnote 131: _Des gens parvenus_, as the French express it; or upstarts.]

[Footnote 132: The good, or benediction.]

The expense of labour at the same time increased enormously[133], and never was equality in the human species more conspicuous than at this time; when corn was to be ground, or bread baked, both were performed in the houses of the affluent, and prepared by themselves, for the very few people whom the plague had spared, were insufficient to administer to the wants of the rich and independent, and they were accordingly compelled to work for themselves, performing personally the menial offices of their respective families.

172 [Footnote 133: At this time I received from Marocco a caravan of many camel-loads of bees-wax, in serrons containing 200 lbs.