Said, pride themselves on having but
one word, and performing whatever they promise.
The promised camels not having arrived, they hired two of Mahomet el
Buin, and with these they proceeded on to Gorma, which they found to
be a larger town than any in the wadey, but both walls and houses
have the marks of time. The sheik, Mustapha Ben Ussuf, soon visited
them. He was an old man, a Fezzaner. His ancestors were natives of
the place, and his features might be considered as characteristic of
the natives of Fezzan.
They had many accounts of inscriptions being in this place, which the
people could not read. They were conducted by sheik Mustapha to
examine a building, different, as he stated, from any in the country.
When they arrived, they found to their satisfaction, it was a
structure which had been erected by the Romans.
There were no inscriptions to be found, although they carefully
turned up a number of the stones strewed about, but a few figures and
letters rudely hewn out, and evidently of recent date. They imagined
they could trace some resemblance to the letters of Europe, and
conjectured that they had been hewn out by some European traveller at
no very distant period. Their thoughts naturally went back to
Horneman, but again they had no intelligence of his having been
there, "In short," as Dr. Oudney says, "to confess the truth, we did
not know what to make of them, till we afterwards made the discovery
of the Targee writing."
This building is about twelve feet high, and eight broad.
