He was also the
principal promoter of the erection of new barracks for the troops, and
the appropriation of a large house as a hospital for the poor. His last
improvement is the plantation of a garden of the choice fruit-trees and
vegetables of the coast; and his example has been imitated by the Bim
Bashaw, commandant of the troops, who is now laying out a garden in a
conspicuous part of the city.
Since the departure of Abd-el-Galeel with his Arab followers, the Walad
Suleiman, for the neighbourhood of Bornou, the province of Fezzan has
certainly enjoyed profound tranquillity. But on account of heavy
taxation, high customs' dues, and other clogs to free commerce, the
people are sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and wretchedness, and,
except in the capital, there is a general retrograde movement. The
Ottoman yoke is a peculiarly heavy one; it keeps the people in order,
but it crushes them; and perhaps the Fezzanees may now regret somewhat
the wholesome anarchy that distinguished the Arab chieftain's reign.
As I have said, the entire population of the ten districts of Fezzan is,
according to the last Turkish census, only about twenty-six thousand
souls, of whom about eleven thousand are males, including the children.
The disproportion of the sexes arises in part from the number of female
slaves, in part from the emigration of the men to the commercial
countries of the interior, either for temporary gain, or permanently to
escape from the grinding weight of taxation.
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