This Was Probably In Revenge
For The Exactions Of The Bey Of The Camp On The Tribes.
On our return to Ghafsa, we had rain, hail, and high wind, and
exceedingly cold - a Siberian winter's day on the verge of the scorching
desert.
The ground, where there was clay, very slippery; the camels
reeled about as if intoxicated. The consequence was, it was long before
the tents came up, and we endured much from this sudden change of the
weather. Our sufferings were, however, nothing as compared to others,
for during the day, ten men were brought in dead, from the cold (three
died four days before from heat), principally Turks; and, had there been
no change in the temperature, we cannot tell how many would have shared
the same fate. Many of the camels, struggling against the clayey soil,
could not come up.
Eight more men were shortly buried, and three were missing. The sudden
transition from the intense heat of the one day to the freezing cold of
the next, probably gave the latter a treble power, producing these
disastrous effects, the poor people being sadly ill-clad, and quite
unprepared for such extreme rigour. Besides, on our arrival at the camp,
all the money in Europe could not have purchased us the required
comforts, or rather necessaries, to preserve our health. Cold makes
everybody very selfish. We were exceedingly touched on hearing of the
death of a little girl, whom we saw driven out of a kitchen, in which
the poor helpless little thing had taken refuge from the inclemency of
the weather.
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