5/11/2023 0 Comments A tale in the desert store![]() Through the worst times, the beatings, thirst and hunger no person should ever have to imagine let alone experience, the captain kept hope alive. He encouraged the weak, was kind to the frightened and forgiving to those who wavered. In persuasive understated prose, King draws a portrait of a most uncommon man. None was tougher, more skilled and certainly none more imaginative than their captain Riley. They were tough and competent, and most were experienced sailors. The sailors and their captain were from the densely industrialized Connecticut River area. (The Zahara of the title is an old English spelling of Sahara.) For Thoreau, evidently, as for many Americans so long ago, desert places were all more or less Arabia, but it was actually another sand-swept place, the shores of North Africa’s vast Sahara Desert where the Commerce wrecked and the starving, sun-bitten crew members were dragged through its desolate places. Dean does not grab you by the throat and proclaim, “See what I have.” With the subtlety of a master writer he simply shows you, until it dawns that this is not a routine resurrection of an ancient tale but a re-creation that demands attention on its own.įirst, the scene. The result is an adventure, a palpable lesson in ethnography and geography and a delicate study in psychology. With his careful reading of Riley’s original account, his study of other relevant literature, and most of all his adventurous and hair-raising retracing of Riley’s travels by camel and on foot, King brings vividly to life the original power of Riley’s story and places it in the context of modern knowledge. King wrote, among other things, the definitive biography of Patrick O’Brian, the British author of the “Master and Commander” series of sea stories. It was the wondrous account by Connecticut sea captain James Riley of the shipwrecking of his brig Commerce on the northwestern coast of Africa in 1815 his capture and that of his crew by desert Arab nomads the enslavement of these Americans, and, for some, their eventual release.ĭean King retells this narrative with great skill in “Skeletons on the Zahara,” which will fascinate the modern reader no less than those of a hundred and more years ago. He was referring to a tale well known to literate Americans in the 19th century. ![]() “This desert,” Thoreau wrote, “extends from the extremity of the Cape, through Provincetown into Truro, and many a time as we were traversing it we were reminded of ‘Riley’s Narrative’ of his captivity in the sands of Arabia. ![]() WRITING about a trip he took to Cape Cod in October 1849, Henry David Thoreau said that while exploring the Cape’s upper reaches he and his companion faced “a cutting wind as cold as January.” You may have to pinch yourself to convince yourself that the Desert of Maine is not a strange mirage hidden among Maine’s robust greenery.Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival A mini desert in an unlikely locale is a mysterious and magical road trip destination. It is a wonderful destination if you’re a desert dweller at heart and you crave a small taste of your favorite environment. The Desert of Maine is both a fun oddity and an important testament to the lasting impact that human beings can have on the environment. Thankfully, most farmers have learned better crop rotating techniques from the painful lessons of the past. Then, blinding black dust blizzards plagued much of American prairie. The conditions that led to the Desert of Maine are the same conditions that created the catastrophic Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The Desert of Maine is one of the most surreal patches of desert in the United States because it receives steady rainfall, and is surrounded on all sides by lush forests and healthy green plants. The rolling sand dunes look as though they belong in the Sahara. The Desert of Maine features tours, a gift shop that sells bottled sand, and a few stately fiber glass camels. Massive soil erosion led to a total depletion of fertile topsoil that resulted in a swiftly growing “desert.” A savvy entrepreneur who saw a golden money making opportunity snapped up the former Tuttle family farm in 1925, and crafted a tourist destination known as The Desert of Maine – which remains popular to this day. ![]() The Tuttle family failed to rotate their potato crops and allowed their sheep to graze unchecked. The Desert of Maine was once a successful farm owned by the Tuttle family in the late 1800s. Maine’s lone 40-acre patch of desert is a cautionary tale.
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