by Dean King
Chapter 7: Captured
1. Was the fact that Riley stole from the cook, the only black man, an act of racism, happenstance, or something else? In survival situations, people tend to cluster around, protect, and seek protection from those most like them, whether by family relation, race, religion, or nationality. This was perhaps most profoundly demonstrated in the wreck of the Méduse in 1816, when the 150 men, women, and children set adrift on a makeshift raft factionalized by race, nationality, and even profession as they murdered one another in a desperate struggle to survive. Théodore Géricault portrayed the tragic scene in his epic 1819 painting Le Radeau de la Méduse, now hanging in the Louvre. Riley might have picked Deslisle because he was most conveniently located, or perhaps because Deslisle, being a black man and one of the lowest-ranking in the crew, was the most different from him. Nevertheless, as events progressed, Riley showed that he was above many of the baser instincts, in a way that seemed to transcend both his religious upbringing and his role as captain. He showed moral strength based on common sense and his own fortitude, and for a man of his day, he seemed remarkably free of bigotry. (return to text)
2. While it is common knowledge that a severely malnourished stomach should be filled slowly, it takes more than common restraint for the owner of that stomach to do so. Rescued from a gale-wrecked schooner in the Gulf Stream off Virginia in 1830, Captain Charles Tyng warned his crew that drinking too fast would make them sick. In the cabin of his rescuer, he found a pitcher of water. "I thought I would just take one swallow," he related, "but when I put it to my mouth I could not take it away until I had nearly emptied it of its contents." Tyng paid for it with racking pain and vomiting. (return to text)
3. For further reading on rehydration, see E. F. Adolph and associates' landmark 1947 work, Physiology of Man in the Desert, incorporating much research on the subject from World War II. (return to text)
4. In various parts of the world, the saddle on a dromedary, or one-humped camel, sits in front of, on top of, or behind the hump, each position having its advantages. In front of the hump, the rider has the most control over the camel and can reach farther forward when fighting. Behind the hump, he has more freedom of movement, and the pounding is less severe. On top of the hump, on a platform or raised saddle, the ride is smoother, but the rider has the least control of the camel. (return to text)
Chapter 8: Thirst
1. Lempriere, p. 725. Nigritia, also then known as Soudan, was a large region of sub-Saharan central Africa. (return to text)
2. My experience riding camels while tracing parts of Riley's route and attempting to cover more than twenty miles a day corroborates the sailors' pain. On the first day I rubbed a hole bigger than a plum through the flesh of my backside. At the end of that day, even our guide, a camel-racing instructor, fell off his mount and writhed on the ground with leg cramps. Later in the journey, another guide became so sore while riding that he strapped a Land Rover cushion on top of his saddle and blankets. Fast speeds were untenable for long distances while riding in front of the hump. Behind the hump was only slightly better and required us to cram shoes and empty water bottles beneath the backs of our saddles to keep from being bounced off the camel's rear end. (return to text)
3. In his memoir, Robbins rarely approaches Riley's objectivity. His account is largely bitter and lacks empathy for the Sahrawis, though he does acknowledge Ganus's kindness to him. (return to text)
4. According to The U.S. Army Survival Manual, a man working moderately in the desert in ninety-five-degree heat needs to drink about two and a half gallons a day. (return to text)
5. Robbins's account of this meeting is, as usual, less detailed than Riley's. Among the contradictory details they give, Riley places the meeting on the evening of the second day of their captivity, but according to Robbins, Ganus led him out of camp and on a five-mile march to the council on the morning of the third day, and then they left it around three in the afternoon. They do not agree on which sailors were there, Riley pointing out only that Porter and Burns were not there, while Robbins remembers seeing Burns. Neither mentions Savage by name. Robbins recollects that there were about twenty nomads present, typical of the many tribal gatherings he saw during his captivity, while Riley describes a much larger group. (return to text)
6. Although, like many Westerners of his day, Riley uses the terms Arab and Moor interchangeably, the Moors are generally considered to be specifically the descendants of the Arabs who occupied Spain for eight centuries, beginning in 711, and who then inhabited the cities of the Empire of Morocco. (return to text)
7. Robbins believed that Riley was using the stones to negotiate a ransom price, an easy mistake on his part since neither he nor the other men understood Riley's conversation with the Arabs. (return to text)
Chapter 9: The Sons of the Father of Lions
1. The tribe's name has appeared in numerous forms in the West. Brisson calls them the Labdesseba, placing them on a 1792 map of his and Saugnier's routes to the southeast of Cape Blanco and dubbing them "a ferocious nation." Mungo Park's 1798 map also places the Labdessebas in this vicinity. Riley does not name them, but the map of his route published with his Narrative indicates regions belonging to the "Labdessebahs," near Cape Blanco, and the "Abdoussebahs," to the north, which he apparently did not realize were branches of the same tribe. Robbins calls his captors "Wiled Lebdessebah" and places them near Cape Blanco on his map. He marks an area to the north as belonging to the "Wiled Aboussebah." Joseph Dupuis, who annotated The Narrative of Robert Adams (1817), calls them the "Woled Aboussebah" and notes that "there are various branches of it, who consider themselves wholly independent of each other, yet all calling themselves the 'Woled Aboussebah.' " Some of these names may actually be variations of the more generic term for the peoples of these regions, l'Abd al-Siba, or "those in dissidence." Adding to the confusion are twentieth-century renditions of the tribe's name. In his book Spanish Sahara (1976), John Mercer calls them simply "Sba." One of the most detailed descriptions of the tribe is in Pazzanita and Hodges's Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara (1994). They use the modern French transliteration "Oulad Bou Sbaa," which I have adopted and often shortened to "Bou Sbaa," as is common. (return to text)
2. Riley never actually gives the name of his third master, instead calling him "my old master" to distinguish him from his sons, Riley's "young masters." From Riley's references to Arab names, I have taken "Sideullah," one of the few that did not belong to any of the other sailors' owners, as the name for this third master. (return to text)
Chapter 10: Sidi Hamet's Feast
1. When Muslims accept a gift or a serving of food or drink, they often say "Besmillah"— In the name of Allah. Riley would have picked up on this often-repeated Arabic word and used it as an American would use "Thank you." (return to text)
2. In his seminal 1928 book Le Sahara, the French anthropologist E.-F. Gautier observes that among the Tuareg tribe, bathing in water was almost taboo. He theorizes that it was not due just to the scarcity of water but also for fear of adversely affecting the sweat glands and causing overheating. But, he adds, rather poetically, that for a human body "exposed almost naked to the desert wind for an entire lifetime, the rites of cleanliness are superfluous; the eternal wind, charged with sand, scours the human skin and keeps it as clean as it does the slabs of naked rock on the tops of the plateaus" (p. 16). (return to text)
3. Today a standard English translation of the Shahadah is "I bear witness that there is no God except God. Muhammad is the messenger of God." (return to text)
4. According to Knut Schmidt-Nielsen et al., in "The Question of Water Storage in the Stomach of the Camel" (1956), "the fluid that can be drained from the rumen contents is like a green soup and it seems rather repulsive to the normal person. However, to the desert traveler who is out of water, any fluid is attractive, and he will even drink his own urine. In this situation the rumen fluid would be quite helpful because of its relatively low salt con
tent" (p. 10). (return to text)
5. The details of this argument over Hogan come primarily from an account by Robbins, who heard about it from Hogan. Robbins calls Hogan's master "Mahomet" and does not point out that he was also Riley's first master, who claimed Dick Deslisle and the captain at the outset. Riley calls him "Hamet." To avoid confusion with Hamet, the Bou Sbaa trader from the north, I have used the full name and more standard spelling "Mohammed." (return to text)
6. Robbins actually writes "kellup en-sahrau" (more properly, kelb es-sahrawi), which means "desert dogs." It is used as an insult because the dog is considered one of the lowest forms of animal on the desert. Here and later, he translates it, however, as "Christian dogs"—kelb en-Nasrani— which makes more sense in context. (return to text)
7. Riley recalls in his memoir that they were in the process of departing, already walking up the dune, when Robbins appeared. If the fire was still burning, then Robbins probably smelled either the lingering scent of camel grease, which had saturated the area, or some vestige of a meal the tribesmen were trying to concoct from the stripped carcass. (return to text)
Chapter 11: Is It Sweet?
1. Riley repeats the date September 28, thus throwing his chronology off by a day. He does it again on October 2, putting him two days behind in his account. (return to text)
2. Robbins writes that the Arabs prayed four times a day, but the Quran actually prescribes five daily prayers: at dawn, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and twilight (bedtime). (return to text)
3. Riley's water calculations show that he was not very precise in his math. He guessed that the big pool had "not more than fifty gallons" and that the smaller pool held much less. Yet the large camel alone drank sixty gallons all at once. Three other camels and all the men also drank, and they filled up two skins. Even if the smaller camels drank half as much as the large one, they still would have consumed more than Riley estimated was there, and it is unlikely that the spring would have replenished itself so quickly. (return to text)
Chapter 12: Honor Among Thieves
1. In the manuscript of Riley's narrative, unlike the published book, the word savage is capitalized and underlined, further suggesting that the culprit was the second mate. (return to text)
2. I tried to identify this herb root while I was in Western Sahara. As I described the substance, my trusted guide nodded his head to indicate he knew what I was talking about. He returned from an unseen kiosk in Laayoune with a six-inch sheep-shinbone pipe still adorned with wool and a bag of a sweet-smelling brown substance that he called menajie. Smoking it was like smoking tobacco, and, in fact, I was told by another guide that menajie was a blend of tobacco from Mauritania. (return to text)
3. Riley calls lhasa, the Arabs' semolina or barley mush, "lhash" or "l'hash." Robbins calls it "laish." (return to text)
Chapter 13: Skeletons
1. Roger Key, a senior mapping geologist at the British Geological Survey, who recently completed a remapping project of the area west of Atar, Mauritania, has suggested that what Robbins saw might have been a large reef of vein quartz, which can reach tens of yards high. There is no marble in the area. (return to text)
Chapter 14: Wednoon and the Atlas
1. Riley spells the name "Moolay Solimaan." In the nineteenth century, the state was generally referred to as "the Empire of Morocco." A sultan is the sovereign of a Muslim country; the title "Moulay" is often translated as "king" or "emperor." (Morocco's chief ruler has been officially called king since 1957.) Moulay is the French, and most commonly used, transliteration of the Arabic title, which is also seen as mulay and often today as mawlay. It roughly translates to "lord," and was originally used for the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. In Morocco, most sultans took the title before their name, even if they were Berber and thus unrelated to the Prophet. (return to text)
2. By "dwarf" alder, Riley probably meant the black alder, or alder buckthorn, a berry-bearing European shrub, once believed to be related to the alder tree. (return to text)
3. "Bel Cossim" is the transliteration that Riley and Robbins (as well as S. Cock and Joseph Dupuis, who edited Robert Adams's narrative) use for this surname, a fairly common one in northwestern Africa. Today, it would appear as Belkaçem (the preferred French spelling) or, in English, Belkassem. In a postscript to his narrative, Riley uses "bel Cafshim." (return to text)
4. It is not surprising that two men like Hamet and Hassar, used to traveling and trading in the region, seemed to know people everywhere. In a place where there was little outside news, a man's reputation and that of his family radiated far. Tribal, family, and village ties carried great weight, as did the bond of Islam, with its tradition of hospitality. Naturally expressive and not overburdened with distractions, the people of this region still make friends quickly. As I traveled across a broad stretch of the Sahara with a loquacious guide named Mohammed el Arab to research this book, he seemed to know everyone we met. In one memorable encounter, a man who looked like the grim reaper in his hooded djellaba appeared on the horizon just as we climbed off our camels and sat down for lunch near a remote salt flat. I watched as the walker crossed the ridge in front of us and his path arced like a rolling steel ball diverted by a magnet toward us. This stranger was soon embracing Mohammed like a long-lost brother. He drank tea and shared our meal. They exchanged news and cigarettes, gesticulating warmly and laughing frequently. Afterward, the stranger disappeared over the horizon again. (return to text)
5. This procedure was painful for Riley to recall and seemed almost unbelievably crude even in his day. But cauterization with smoldering wood or heated metal is still practiced as a popular cure-all on the Sahara today, as I discovered from my guide Achmet, who bore scars on his neck and shoulders from a treatment for a recent illness. He told me he had been very ill and that the branding saved his life. He has used the same technique to treat the illnesses of his young children. (return to text)
6. The original Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in Edinburgh in 1771, gives reliable treatments for dysentery on pp. 117-18. Yet more than a century and a half later, in 1930, on the return leg of a grueling journey through Souss and the Saguia el-Hamra to see Smara, the young French adventurer Michel Vieuchange was brought down by the disease. He died at Agadir. (return to text)
7. From this point on, Riley grows increasingly confused about the passage of time. Here in his narrative he telescopes events between October 23 and October 25. (return to text)
8. This physical description of Bo-Mohammed is based on the illustration on page 329 of Sequel to Riley's Narrative, which calls him Bo-Mohammed of Shtuka, though he joined Riley before Shtuka. (return to text)
Chapter 15: Valley of the Locusts
1. Modern Sahrawis share this affinity with their ancestors. Some, now forced to live in cities to earn a living, fill their terraces with sand, on which they pitch tents and prepare tea at various times during the day. In a remote part of the Saguia el-Hamra, where I was camping during my research for this book, I saw other city-dwellers who had ventured out from Laayoune to spread blankets and have tea on the dunes. One of my guides told me that they did this because they missed the sand. (return to text)
Chapter 17: The Captain Has Long Been Dead
1. On page 217 of his narrative Riley writes that Rais bel Cossim told him Willshire "had paid the money to [Sidi Hamet] immediately," but according to this letter from Willshire to Riley, which Riley reproduces (apparently from memory) on page 218, Willshire agreed to pay the sum only upon the safe arrival of Riley and his men in Swearah. (return to text)
2. At one point in his narrative, Riley says that they traveled for about five hours at the rate of five miles an hour. Several pages later, he says they traveled for five hours at about four miles an hour. I have chosen the more conservative estimate.
Robbins placed the village of Widnah just north of the Oued Sehlem, instead of three hours south of it, where Riley positioned it. Both Riley and Robbins seem to have mist
aken Oued Massa, another northwest-flowing river, for Oued Sehlem, which lies farther to the south.(return to text)
3. Riley says they had traveled for ten hours at this point, "from four in the morning till two in the afternoon." Previously, he says they had left Sehlemah "as soon as it dawned" and the gates were opened. Dawn occurred there around 6:30 on October 30, 1815, which was more likely their time of departure. (return to text)
Chapter 18: From the Mouth of a Moor
1. Even today, this intimate sharing of a meal from the same bowl is a common act of friendship and hospitality. Strangers might well do it upon meeting for the first time, but for a Muslim to do it with a Christian is more unusual. While I was on the Sahara tracing Riley's route, it was only after we got caught too far from camp one night and had to set up an impromtu bivouac with our camels that I shared a bowl with three of my guides. Our heads nearly touching as we leaned over the large, flat bowl, we ate using bread and our hands after a long day on the trail. (return to text)
2. Riley says November 4, but he has lost track of the dates. He makes reference to the fourth day after Seid's departure. Even if November 2, the day Seid and Ali left, is counted, that would make this the 5th. Yet he calls the next day the 4th, and the day after that he calls the 4th as well. Later, he makes reference to "October 6," intending "November 6." At this point, he abandons date-keeping altogether, until December 1. (return to text)