NORTH AFRICA

In 1881, Tunisia became a French territory. France’s interest in the region caught William Gill’s attention and he obtained leave of absence to seek detailed knowledge of the provinces between Tunis and Egypt. These were Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which together form modern Libya but were then part of the Ottoman empire, administered from Constantinople.

On 18th October 1881, William Gill set out for North Africa. We join him eight days later in Sicily, where he has a less than competent servant, Louis, in tow.

None of the people at the hotel could make out my nationality, for none could talk anything but Italian, except the youth who showed me about, and his linguistic attainments were confined to about a dozen words of German.

As I got back to the hotel at 5, I found the carriage waiting for me that I had ordered at 6.30. The porter and driver both declared I must start at 6 to catch the 7.15 train. This brought on a lively discussion, for I said the distance was short. Yes, they said but the path is so steep you can only go slowly. But I said it is impossible it can take so long. I am going to dine at the table d’hôte at 6. Very well then, they said, you may if you like start at 6.15.

I told the waiter in the dining room – a most civil fellow – that I wanted to catch the train and hoped that he would serve up dinner punctually and I was just pumping him as regards the visitors at the hotel when they all appeared. There are six people staying here, all English: two old ladies who appear to have been in Sicily wandering about all the year, an English Officer Captain Nicholson and his wife, child and governess from Malta.

I overheard this so I did not want if I could help it, to get into conversation, as the lady is it seems going to Malta by the same steamer that I do and I want to keep out of the way of observation.

I purposely kept quiet at dinner which we got before 6; but Captain N. got champagne which he shared with the rest as they all seemed to know one another.

I got on very well until it came into the head of Captain N. to offer me champagne, as I was the only one at the table not drinking it. But he did not know what language to do it in. So they all whispered together and the old ladies said they had heard me talking Italian, for they had just come in to the hotel from their evening walk when I was engaged in lively discussion with the porter and carriage driver.

The waiter was then sent to offer me champagne. The whole thing was so ludicrous I could hardly keep my countenance, but had it not been that one of them was going to be a fellow passenger, I would have kept up the imposition.

This was civility I don’t think any but an Englishman would have offered. It always amuses me to watch the habits, ways and instincts of people. However, I could no longer refuse to talk English, so I did so and found the party very pleasant.

Taormina is a charming place. I was quite sorry not to stay the night. I would have done so if I had had a brush and comb. But as it is full of these English going to Malta, it is just as well that I get out of their way, as I wish in Malta to lie perdu.

Taormina would make a lovely place for a honeymoon. It certainly would induce spooning.

Left the hotel about 6.35 and though one of the horses came down on the way and delayed us 5 minutes or more, I was in plenty of time to catch the train. Got to Catania at 9, and being tired, went straight to bed.

The next day, William Gill recorded his disappointment with Catania:

Did nothing particular during the day. Catania is a dull place. There is nothing to do, nothing to see. It is not very picturesque. The country around is not very beautiful. There is never any music or amusements of any kind. And yet I remember a lady praising it to me about 10 years ago in such terms that ever since it has been the wish of my life to see it. I have seen it and never want to see it again.

Drove in the afternoon to the gardens of the Marquis San Giuliano – pretty but nothing out of the way. The following day he was equally unimpressed with Syracuse – and its wine.

Went by the 3 o’clock train to Syracuse, arrived at 6. Went to the Albergo del Sole, a wretched place but with some sort of view over the harbour, which is a good one. Here are three English men of war: ‘Alexandria’ (Sir Beauchamp Seymour), ‘Temeraire’ (Captain Nicholson, whom I met at Taormina) and ‘Iris.’

Had a very bad dinner and nasty wine. The Syracuse wine is much vaunted, especially the Morcadetto, which some infatuated people carry off to England. It tastes to me like Marsala [Sicilian fortified wine] and brown sugar.

The next day, 29th October, was a Saturday:

Went out at 9.30 in a carriage with one of the regular guides of the place, a civil fellow, and did all the antiquities. But as they are admirably described by Murray and Baedeker [guidebooks], and as the writers know much more about them than I do, I shall say nothing. Got back to the hotel by 5.30, dined at 7 in company with some English people, a father G. Murray Esq (not of Murray’s guides) and two daughters – rather nice people. I wonder what they thought of me. I look an awful ruffian with a four days growth of beard. I am not going to shave any more.

The next day was Gill’s last in Sicily:

The Murrays went to church on board the Temeraire. I sent off Louis by the 6.30 train to Catania to get the luggage, take tickets for Malta and return here by steamer.

I went with the guide up the River Kyane to its ‘source bleu et poissoneuse’ as Baedeker puts it. On this river a quantity of Papyrus grows. This was brought here by the Arabs some centuries ago. This is the only spot in Europe where any is to be found, at least so they say. It grows here to a height of 12 or 14 feet and is certainly picturesque.

Kyane was a nymph who objected to the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto. Her objections being fruitless, she took to crying to such an extent that the Gods lost patience and turned her into the spring which gives rise to the little river that bears her name. The spring is at the bottom of a pool some 20 feet deep, and this pool certainly is remarkably blue in colour and full of fish. Came here by boat, stood here about an hour and drove away.

In the afternoon got a carriage and drove along the coast to the village of Priolo. The drive is very desolate, the whole country covered with stones and boulders of limestone. As military positions those of the ancient Girgenti and Siracusa are magnificent, especially the latter, which stood upon a plateau about 100 feet high with an almost perpendicular drop on all sides to the plain below. In the present day it is commanded by a range of heights that runs away to the northward, but in those days of short ranges, it was not.

I don’t think Sicily – beyond its antiquities – is much worth seeing. Palermo and Taormina are charming. These excepted, the country generally is far from being picturesque, much less beautiful.

Syracuse of today is a wretched and dismal place without trade life or prosperity, though it has the best harbour in Sicily.

Dined again in company with the Murrays and at 8 o’clock went on board the Florio’s steamer ‘Americo Vespucio’.

Palermo, Sicily (left) and Valletta, Malta (right)

Florio’s was an Italian shipping line. William Gill travelled overnight to Malta, where he met his dragoman, a Syrian Christian:

I had written from England to a man at Beyrut to come and meet me at Malta. I knew he had a high shoulder and spotted him at once in a boat alongside the steamer. His name is Khalil Attik (pronounced Khaleel, the a like a in the English word ‘father’. Kh is a guttural like the ch in the Scottish loch. Attik is pronounced Atteek.). He took me off to an hotel where he had prepared me a sumptuous suite of apartments. It is I fancy rather a second rate hotel. But that is rather a good thing, as I shall not run any risk of meeting anyone I know. Khalil is as sharp as a needle. Driving up from the boat to the hotel, he asked if I was going to Alexandria or Tripoli [Tarabulus], and when I replied the latter, he said he thought so and had already been making all sorts of enquiries about it. I find there is some sort of hotel there, which is a blessing, as it will save me going to the consul. I left Louis to bring my baggage ashore, taking all the small things myself. This afternoon it struck me that there was something missing: the room did not seem as full of things as usual. At first I attributed it to the unusual size of the apartments. At length, however, I missed a large yellow bag and it turns out that Louis has lost it. He swears he brought it ashore. Then his story got incoherent – something about a voiture [carriage], a man belonging to the hotel and going to get it afterwards, and having forgotten it. The stupidity of that man passes all belief.

Then wing thy flight from star to star
From world to luminous world as far
As the universe spreads its flaming wall
Take everything stupid in all the spheres
Multiply each through a thousand years
One minute of Louis would beat them all.

I have travelled over nearly the whole of Europe and Asia. I have never missed a train or a steamer or lost one colis [case] of luggage. Louis, in the space of a few days, has missed his train in an unaccountable manner – I never got a satisfactory explanation of the Turin business. He has lost himself. He would have lost all my luggage at Girgenti station if I had not reminded him. He never once sent my clothes to the wash without forgetting something. Now for no reason that he can produce he left a part of my luggage here on the wharf, knowing that he had so left it, and promptly forgot all about it until I reminded him of it late this evening.

There was a tremendous storm of rain, thunder and lightning this evening.

Tuesday 1st November was spent preparing to cross the Mediterranean to Tripoli:

I gave Khalil a circular note and told him to ask the landlord if he could change it. He brought me back 25 Napoleons. ‘But,’ I said, ‘I must sign it.’ ‘Oh,’ replied Khalil, ‘I’ve done that for you.’ I made him bring back the note and found he had forged my name with the most complete sang-froid – though hardly in a way my bankers would recognise.

Today there is a tremendous gale, with squalls of rain. I shan’t have a pleasant passage to Tripoli in the steamer ‘Italia’, a cockleshell of 600 tons. Lord, what a bucketing we shall get.

It turns out that my bag, having been left ownerless and unclaimed on the wharf, was shunted back on the steamer and has gone to Catania. I have telegraphed for it, but heaven knows when I shall get it.

I send Louis back from here and shall be heartily glad to get rid of him.

Map of the Mediterranean region travelled by Gill

Having crossed by steamer to Tripoli, William Gill spent three months in the city waiting for the authorities in Constantinople to issue a travel permit. His frustration shows in this diary entry from 26th November. He had already been in the city three weeks:

The ‘Times’ correspondent has been here, and spent a week in one of my rooms; he is coming back again next month. I wish I had come out as a special correspondent; I could easily have managed it and then I should have been able to go where I liked; for they would never dare incur the displeasure of the great English newspapers.

A contributory factor to the delays in getting a travel permit was the lack of a telegraph connection from Tripoli to Malta. Telegrams were taken by steamer to Malta, and wired from there by an English company. On 4th February 1882, Gill wrote:

It appears that the Ferik [Turkish general] here has been sending great numbers of telegrams to Constantinople, but as there is a difficulty about prepayment (for the telegraph company have no agent here) the company taking into consideration his high position and the fact that his messages were for his Government, allowed the Ferick to run up a bill. But having run it up he declined to pay it, and as he is to be deposed immediately, he is quite indifferent about the results. The consequence is, that the company now refuse to send any telegrams for the military authorities here, who are thus cut off from all communication with Constantinople.

So the travel permit never arrived and Captain Gill started his explorations without it.

Using Tripoli as his base, he first travelled about 105 miles west, parallel to the coast, through Zuwarah to the Tunisian border. Next he went to Nalut, in the hill country about 160 miles southwest of Tripoli, which was also near the Tunisian border. He returned to Tripoli via Yafran. His third journey took him south into the hills around Wádi Mijinin, then east to Al-Khums on the coast, and back along the 70 miles of coastline to Tripoli.

Here is Captain Gill’s description of a solo afternoon ride from Tripoli, on his horse Masaud, on 24th March 1882:

Out at the gate by the seashore, where the rising westerly wind sends little wavelets even here into the sheltered harbour, to break on the sandy shore skirting the grim old battlemented wall, we pass with difficulty through a busy crowd. Here are dozens of hucksters with little tables selling bread, white, brown and black. An Arab, wrapt up in a barakan so that he can only see right in front of him, like a horse with blinkers, drives a donkey among my horse’s legs. But I know the spot and go cautiously. My horse, fresh with big feeds of barley and little work, puts his ears back and prepares to dance. But I know him too by this time, and I check him just in time to prevent him upsetting half-a-dozen tables. Successfully we thread the intricacies of the crowd, and here, in a wide sandy road between low mud walls that enclose barley-fields, now green and fresh, are hucksters sitting in a row with bundles of lucerne, grass and carrots, their donkeys, camels and horse tethered hard by out of the way, or lying provokingly in the way in the middle of the road. Masaud out of pure joyousness of heart tries to snatch a carrot or a mouthful of corn, and when hindered looks around reproachfully at me. So we pass the throng on to the quiet road, where a quarter of a mile onward a white mosque with a picturesque minaret stands at the beginning of the palms. Through these we ride for a couple of miles, the bare rough stems of the trees rising from fields of green barley, glowing red with poppies; the fig trees and the pomegranates just putting forth their leaves, exulting in the early spring, which here indeed is radiant; almond trees covered with blossoms rest lovingly against the more sombre olives; oranges and lemons laden with their golden fruit would tempt the passer-by to pluck one here and there, were they not so common, and the air is laden with the scent of the orange flowers, etc.

And as the sun sets we again pass through the gates with a fervent prayer that this may be the last time, and that the steamer may come tomorrow. Then to the stables, where we see our horses fed, and sit for half-an-hour with old Taylor, while his tongue runs on continually, as we silently smoke a cigarette, and so home to the solitary dinner!

Captain Gill next hoped to travel by land some 600 miles east to Banghazi but this proved impossible. So on 3rd April 1882, he sent off from Tripoli by steamer. It reached Banghazi three days later, approaching from the wrong direction, having overshot by 50 miles in the night. In a letter to a friend, written two days after his arrival, he wrote of the steamer:

The vessel belongs partly to a company, but I don’t exactly know the ins and outs. She used to be commanded by an Austrian, but recently the government have put Turkish naval officers into her, as part of their policy of exciting all Mussalmans [Muslims] against all Christians. That this is their policy now I am certain; I have no doubt that the Egyptian troubles are a part of it; and it is a fact that the officers of the Turkish army have been ordered to associate as little as possible with Christians. …The officers of the ship were fortunately exceedingly polite and good natured (as Turks always are) and allowed the three first-class passengers to use the bridge. One of them was a young Italian, who belongs to Apsendo geographico-scientifico-meteorologico-commerical Society. This society has a station at Benghazi, and another at Derna; but heaven knows what they do, unless you omit all the other o’s and substitute ‘politico.’

William Gill (seated) with travelling companions. Khalil is on the left.

From Banghazi William Gill hoped to travel through Cyrenaica to Egypt but failed to obtain permission from the Turkish authorities. Believing that the Vali (the Turkish governor) would not object to him setting out without formal permission, he stole away on the night of 21st April. He had already sent most of his things to a garden-house a couple of miles out of town, but a Turkish police officer intercepted the final consignment. A search party was sent after Gill, Khalil and their camel-men. They were caught and sent back, the camel-men being thrown into prison. On 24th April, Gill wrote:

I don’t think I ever received such a blow. It is not only the enormous amount of money thrown away, but is the destruction of hopes, and of a project which after great difficulties seemed on the point of being realized. I can only say with the Arabs, Maktish – ‘it is written’. Of course, all this has caused me deep thought and I see now how grave and foolish an error I committed in stealing away by night. The very thing I blamed Marmulli at Derna for, the very thing I said and wrote he was foolish to do, but I allowed my better judgement to be overruled by Vadala. I had placed my affairs entirely in the hands of Vadala and when I trust anyone at all, I always trust them altogether, and if I entrust an affair to be carried out by another, I leave the decision of questions to him. I believe that this is a right and correct theory but occasions will arise when we must use our own judgement. This was one of them and I went wrong in not following my aim.

We rode today in nearly a straight line NW by W. The country varies but little: it is all a plateau with very gentle modulation. Not very stony but mostly a red clayey soil with tufts of a small shrub, which give the appearance of greenness, and in the hollows some larger bushes and thorns.

Matters become exciting. Here I sit writing and I hear Khalil in the other tent engaged in final negotiations. I can only catch a word or two here and there.

It is a very immoral proceeding this bribery. We hold up our hands in pious horror at him who bribes the ignorant voter, and here I am without shame trying to bribe these men to fail in their duty to their government and to go back and tell a pack of lies. It is immoral, there is no doubt about it.

We say in England that he who bribes is worse than he who is bribed. Then what a wicked man I must be. Alas for morals when they are put to a severe test. The people in Benghazi all say that the government has no hold on the people 10 miles beyond the town. I think that they are woefully mistaken for from what I see I should say that there is a most lively terror of the government: the very sight of a Zaptieh [Turkish policeman] seems to frighten them.

I found a small scorpion this morning in the thing in which I pack my bedding and whilst negotiations were going on, amused myself turning over all the big stones in the neighbourhood, and I found two more which I killed. There are lots of white ants too around here.

Ali Bu Khadema, otherwise called Bash Agha, is the chief among the villains with whom I am dealing. He is a fat man with one eye and looks about as excellent a scoundrel as one can imagine. He is willing to arrange matters but told Khalil that the other Shekhs [Sheikhs] could not agree and that they would return the money I had given them. Then Khalil according to my instructions said that if they offered me 100 Napoleons for each Napoleon I gave them, I would not take it back except from the hands of the Vali in Benghazi. They will be reported by me for having taken money from me. Khalil pointed out that there would be trouble in store for them.

Bash Agha saw the point of this and has gone off to consult his fellow villains. Now Khalil comes and wants to know what I will have for dinner, so I order a roast turkey and sausages. What I shall have will be my own Liebig [meat extract] soup and a sweet omelette, for we still have some eggs. The worst of paying all this money is that it leaves me so little to carry me through, for paper is worthless.

The men sent no answer back tonight and I went to bed without any hopes.

Two days later he was even more depressed:

Alas, alas! Spilt milk, spilt milk, in huge cans full! It’s no use crying over it, but it’s uncommonly hard to help it.

…Though Tripoli is badly governed, this Vilayat [Turkish administrative region] is infinitely worse. The present Vali was at one time Pasha at Tripoli, but D.H. got him kicked out, after a reign of 40 days only, for indulging too openly in the traffic of slaves. Here he can do this with less trouble, for although the people of England may not know it, the slave-trade flourishes exceedingly. … He was once turned out of this place also. He went away with a large retinue of slaves in a steamer, touching at Crete. The Consul here managed to apprize the Consul at Crete of the affair; the latter boarded the ship, but all the slaves were found with passports, and declared themselves free and willing servants of the Pasha, who, partly by threats, and partly by telling them the foreigners would come and make them Christians by force, had made them deny their slavery. Of course, directly they left Crete, the passports were taken away and burnt.

On 8th May 1882, William Gill took a steamer from Banghazi to Malta. A week later he took another back to Catania in Sicily, where he caught a ship to Constantinople. There he was severely ‘wigged’ by the British Ambassador for travelling without a permit in Tripoli. Yet the Ambassador’s private secretary advised Gill to travel without a permit in Turkey itself, to which the Ambassador seems to have turned a blind eye.

William Gill tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to get his men released from jail in Banghazi and left Constantinople by rail on 29th May. We rejoin him on 15th June, passing through Austria, towards the end of his journey home. His attention has now turned to the irritable behaviour of his compatriots when on holiday, and to the vagaries of railway catering:

[We were joined] here by another train in which arrived among others a male and female compatriot of mine looking ridiculous, in outlandish garments and alpenstocks. Why oh why will English people who behave so properly at home put themselves ‘en evidence’ with their alpenstocks? Why cannot they let them go in the luggage van?

At Stuttgart we were supposed to have 20 minutes for breakfast, but it was reduced to 12 or 15 at most on the train. Was late and made up the time during the day and had our full quarter of an hour about 5 at Strasburg. But with a devoured rather than eaten and half digested meal already cumbering one’s mind, it was quite impossible to think of more food, especially as we get half an hour at Avricourt at 8. The strong cold wind which was blowing at Bucharest (though temperate there) which was a bitter winter gale at Vienna, and which was still blowing all the morning, has now subdued, or what is more probable, we have run right out of it, and it is much warmer.

Had something to eat at Avricourt and turned in soon after.

The following morning he was in Paris:

Got up early, shaved and made myself respectable. Had plenty of time at Paris for coffee in the restaurant opposite the Gare du Nord, where I always think that the rolls, butter and café au lait taste better than anywhere else. I suppose it is that I always arrive cold and hungry. Crossed in the ‘Calais Douvres’. I did not know that she was in the line and had telegraphed for a private cabin.

That evening he was back in London, where there was more work for him.

Paris, Place de la Concorde (left) and London, London Bridge (right)