The followers
of the Pacha, hired Arabs, camel-drivers, servants, and vagabonds, made
up their number to about four hundred.
On the 8th of March, 1805, Eaton advanced into the Desert westward,
towards the famous land of Cyrene, like Aryandes the Persian, and Amrou,
general of the Caliph Omar. The little army marched along slowly, "on
sands and shores and desert wildernesses," past ruins of huge
buildings,--relics of three civilizations that had died out,--mostly
mere stones to Eaton, whose mind was too preoccupied by his wild
enterprise to speculate much on what others had done there before him.
Want of water, scarcity of provisions, the lazy dilatoriness of the
Arabs, who had never heard of the American axiom, "Time is money," gave
him enough to think of. But worse than these were the daily outbreaks of
the ill-feeling which always exists between Mussulman and Christian. The
Arabs would not believe that Christians could be true friends to
Mussulmans. They were not satisfied with Eaton's explanations of the
similarity between the doctrines of Islam and of American, but tried
again and again to make him repeat the soul-saving formula, "_Allah
Allah Mohammed ben Allah_", and thus at once prove his sincerity and
escape hell.
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