Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

by Dean King

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.

  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.

  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.

  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.”

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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 mistaken Oued Massa, another northwest-flowing river, for Oued Sehlem, which lies farther to the south.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  3. Riley goes on to observe that he found this belief that the camel was a sacred beast to be prevalent throughout the region. My experience as I traced Riley’s route in 2001 substantiated this observation. On my first day on a camel, as we were running on the beach, my saddle began sliding to the side, eventually dumping me on the sand—not far, I might add, from a long stretch of rocks that could well have “dashed out” my brains. The first thing Mohammed el Arab, a camel-racing instructor and my guide, said to me was “That was your fault. Why didn’t you jump?” Shaken and incredulous, I did not respond at first. He then quipped, good-naturedly, “It doesn’t matter. Those who fall from camels never get hurt.”

  Chapter 19: The Road to Swearah

  1. Writing earlier than Jackson and Riley, Lempriere explains that the coastal path was through “one continued expanse of wild, mountainous, and rocky country. . . . Our progress indeed could be compared to nothing but the continual ascending and descending of a series of rough and uneven stone steps. At one place in particular the descent was so steep, and the road so choaked [sic] up with large pieces of stone, that we were all obliged to dismount and walk a full mile and a half with the utmost caution and difficulty, before we could mount again” (pp. 713-14).

  2. Salt pans can still be found today in the hills between Agadir and Essaouira (Swearah). Techniques and conditions have changed little in two hundred years. Families live in windowless earthen huts on the perimeter of the pans; men, women, and children all work in some part of the salt extraction process.

  Epilogue: Homecomings

  1. In an October 1817 review of Riley’s Narrative,
the London literary journal Monthly Review states that “we do not see any reason to discredit the general story: it containing nothing to impeach its own veracity, but much to corroborate it; and it is externally supported by the printed correspondence of those individuals who procured the author’s redemption,” but the critic notes that the “description of their sufferings, indeed, exceeds any thing of a similar nature which we recollect to have read; and they seem to be more than any human beings could inflict or any endure.” The drastic loss of weight Riley reported, the writer adds, “makes us almost doubt the author’s accuracy, though we do not suspect an intentional error.” Modern physicians would agree that while it is possible for a 240-pound man to lose 150 pounds over time, to have done it in less than three months is improbable. Riley was convinced of it, however, and willing to risk his credibility on it.

  2. Riley mistakenly reports that Porter was owned by bel Cossim in Wednoon; Robbins says Porter was owned by a different wealthy man.

  3. William Riley’s claim that “more than a million” Americans had read Riley’s narrative (Sequel, p. iv) has often been misconstrued to mean that one million copies were published. The error can be traced at least as far back as Gerald McMurtry’s article “The Influence of Riley’s Narrative Upon Abraham Lincoln” (Indiana Magazine of History, 1934). Even if William Riley’s bold estimate of a million readers was accurate, the number of copies purchased would have been far smaller, especially when library copies are taken into account. In trying to accurately assess the numbers printed as well as to determine the impact of Riley’s book, historian Donald Ratcliffe cites nineteenth-century library records showing a high rate of readership for the title in certain regions, anecdotal evidence of Riley’s fame, and the great extent to which his narrative saturated the public. Ratcliffe concludes that even the claim of a million readers was overstated, though that many people may have read some version of Riley’s story either in his book or in various periodicals.

  In the only biography authorized by Abraham Lincoln, John L. Scripps’s Life of Abraham Lincoln, Scripps wrote that after the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, and Pilgrims’s Progress in Lincoln’s early reading “came the Life of Franklin, Weems’s Washington, and Riley’s Narrative” (p. 3).

  Selected Bibliography

  Adams, Charles Collard. Middletown Upper Houses: A History of the North Society of Middletown, Connecticut, from 1650 to 1800, with Genealogical and Biographical Chapters on Early Families and a Full Genealogy of the Ranney Family. Facsimile of 1908 ed. Canaan, N.H.: Phoenix Publishing (for the Ranney Genealogical Fund), 1983.

  Adams, Robert. The Narrative of Robert Adams, An American Sailor, Who Was Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Year 1810, Was Detained Three Years in Slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, and Resided Several Months in the City of Tombuctoo. Edited by S. Cock and Joseph Dupuis. Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1817.

  Adams, Sherman W. The History of Ancient Wethersfield. Edited by Henry R. Stiles. Vol 1. Facsimile of 1904 ed. Camden, Me.: Picton Press, 1974.

  Adolph, E. F., and associates. Physiology of Man in the Desert. New York: Interscience, 1947.

  Africa Pilot: Volume 1, Comprising the Arquipélago da Madeira, Islas Canarias, etc. 13th ed. Taunton, England: Hydrographer of the Navy, 1856.

  Al-Bukhari, Sahih. The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Al-Bukhari, 9 vols. Translated by Muhammad Muhsin Khan. Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1979.

  Alig, Joyce. Ohio’s Last Frontiersman: Connecticut Mariner Captain James Riley. Celina, Ohio: Mercer County Historical Society, 1997.

  Allen, Gardner W. Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965.

  Allison, Robert J. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

  American Mercury. May 24, 1815.

  Baepler, Paul. “The Barbary Captivity Narrative in Early America.” Early American Literature 30 (1995): 95-120.

  ———, ed. White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

  Brett, Michael, and Elizabeth Fentress. The Berbers. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1996.

  Briggs, Lloyd Cabot. Tribes of the Sahara. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960.

  Brisson, Pierre Raymond de. An Account of the Shipwreck and Captivity of Mr. de Brisson; Containing a Description of the Deserts of Africa, from Senegal to Morocco. Translated from the French. London: J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1789. See Saugnier for a better translation of this work. All Brisson quotations have been taken from that book.

  Bulliet, Richard W. The Camel and the Wheel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.

  Cochelet, Charles. Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Sophia on the 30th of May, 1819, on the Western Coast of Africa, and of the Captivity of a Part of the Crew in the Desert of Sahara. Translated from the French. London: Sir R. Phillips and Co., 1822.

  Cooper, J. Fenimore. The History of the Navy of the United States of America. Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1839.

  Decker, Robert Owen, with Margaret A. Harris. Cromwell, Connecticut, 1650-1990: The History of a River Port Town. West Kennebunk, Me.: Phoenix Publishing (for the Cromwell Historical Society), 1991.

  De Villiers, Marq, and Sheila Hirtle. Sahara: A Natural History. New York: Walker, 2002.

  Duncan, T. Bentley. Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

  Edholm, O. G., and A. L. Bacharach, eds. The Physiology of Human Survival. London: Academic Press, 1965.

  Elting, John R. Amateurs, To Arms!: A Military History of the War of 1812. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1991.

  Fabian, Ann. The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

  Gautier, E.-F. Sahara, The Great Desert. 1928. Reprint. Translated by Dorothy Ford Mayhew. New York: Octagon, 1970.

  Grant, Ellsworth S. Thar She Goes!: Shipbuilding on the Connecticut River. Lyme, Conn.: Greenwich Publishing Group, 2000.

  Hodges, Tony. Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1983.

  Huntress, Keith, ed. Narratives of Shipwrecks and Disasters, 1586-1860. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1974.

  Jackson, James Grey. An Account of the Empire of Morocco, and the District of Suse: Compiled from Miscellaneous Observations Made During a Long Residence In, and Various Journeys Through, Those Countries; to Which Is Added, an Account of Timbuctoo, the Great Emporium of Central Africa. Philadelphia: Published by Francis Nichols. Fry and Kammerer, printers. 1810.

  Jewitt, John R. A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings, of John R. Jewitt, Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years Among the Savages of Nootka Sound: With an Account of the Manners, Modes of Living, and Religious Opinions of the Natives. Facsimile of 1815 ed. Fairfield, Wash.: Ye Galleon Press, 1967.

  Johnson, Judith E., and William H. Tabor. The History and Architecture of Cromwell. Middletown, Conn.: Greater Middletown Preservation Trust, 1980.

  Jones, Noah. Journals of Two Cruises Aboard the American Privateer Yankee by a Wanderer. Reprint: New York: Macmillan, 1967.

  King, Dean, and John Hattendorf. Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O’Brian. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, 2000.

  Lawrence, T. E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. 1926. Reprint. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.

  Lempriere, William. “A Tour from Gibraltar to Tangier, Sallee, Mogadore, Santa Cruz, and Tarudant, and Thence Over Mount Atlas to Morocco.” 1793. In A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World. 17 vols. Africa. Edited by John Pinkerton. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808-14.

  “Loss of the Brig Commerce.” Monthly
Review, or, Literary Journal 84 (October 1817): 127-39. London: R. Griffiths.

  McKee, Alexander. Wreck of the Medusa: The Tragic Story of the Death Raft. New York: Signet, 2000. Originally published as Death Raft: The Human Drama of the Medusa Shipwreck, 1975.

  Mackenzie, Donald. The Flooding of the Sahara: An Account of the Proposed Plan for Opening Central Africa to Commerce and Civilization from the North-West Coast . . . London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1877.

  Maclay, Edgar Stanton, with technical revisions by Roy Campbell Smith, U.S.N. A History of the United States Navy from 1775 to 1901. New and enlarged ed. in 3 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1904.

  McMurtry, Gerald R. “The Influence of Riley’s Narrative upon Abraham Lincoln.” Indiana Magazine of History 30 (1934): 133-38.

  Mansour, Mohamed el. Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman. Outwell, England: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1990.

  Martin, Margaret E. Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley, 1750-1820. Northampton, Mass.: Department of History of Smith College, 1939.

  Mercer, John. Spanish Sahara. London: Allen & Unwin, 1976.

  Ming’s New-York Price-Current. Various dates, 1815.

  Ohio State Teachers Association Centennial Committee. A History of Education in the State of Ohio: A Centennial Volume. Columbus: Gazette Printing House, 1876.

  Paddock, Judah. A Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Ship Oswego, on the Coast of South Barbary, and of the Sufferings of the Master and the Crew While in Bondage Among the Arabs; Interspersed with Numerous Remarks Upon the Country and Its Inhabitants, and Concerning the Peculiar Perils of That Coast. New York: Published by Captain James Riley. J. Seymour, printer, 1818.

  Pazzanita, Anthony G., and Tony Hodges. Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara. 2nd ed. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994.

  Purdy, John, ed. The Colombian Navigator, or, Sailing Directory for the American Coasts and the West-Indies. London: Whittle and Laurie, 1819.

  Ratcliffe, Donald J. “ ‘Captain Riley’s Narrative’: A Forgotten Antebellum Bestseller?” Paper delivered at the American Antiquarian Society, December 14, 1998, revised and expanded.