The Explorer

Selim  was born in1735 in Algier of wealthy and respectable parents who  sent him  while a small boy to Constantinople  to have him liberally educated.  After several years he returned to Africa to see his parents with a view to return to Constantinople to finish his education. While crossing the mediterranean his ship was taken by a Spanish man-of-war which  at this time was in alliance with France against England. The Algerines as well as other nations of Barbary were at this time great pirates.  They made slaves of their captives and were themselves treated with scant consideration whenever they fell into the hands of any of the Europeans.

At Gibraltar he was transferred to  a French ship bound for New Orleans.  After living some time as a slave to a Louisiana planter at New Orleans he was sent  up the rivers Mississippi and Ohio to the Shawnee town of Sciotto and left as a prisoner of war with the Indians who lived near the Ohio.  There was a woman prisoner who had been taken from the frontiers of Virginia.  Selim inquired of her by signs whence she came. The woman answered by pointing directly toward the sun rising. He was so far acquainted with the geography of America as to know that there were English settlements on the Eastern shore of this continent and he rightly supposed the woman had been taken prisoner from one of them.

With this imperfect information, he resolved to escape from the Indians to these settlements. This was a daring attempt, for be was an entire stranger to the distance he would have to travel and the dangers which lay in his way.  He had no pilot but the sun nor any valuables,  provisions, gun or ammunition for his journey.  He did not speak French, Spanish, English, or any indian language.

Badly provided for, and under all these discouraging circumstances, he set out on his arduous journey through an unknown mountainous wilderness. Not knowing the extent of the settlements he worried of missing them should he turn much to the north or south, and therefore resolved to keep as directly to the sun rising as he possibly could, even when rivers or mountains might obstruct his path. Through all these difficulties Selim traveled on until the few clothes he had were torn to pieces by bushes, thorns, and briers. Fit for no other service, he wrapped and tied the last rags about his feet to defend them from injuries. Selim was the first non-native explorer of this part of the continent.  He passed up the Kanawha river valley and then the greenbriar, naked until his skin was torn to pieces with briers and thorns, his body emaciated, his strength exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and his spirits sunk.  All he had to strengthen and cheer him was a few nuts and berries he gathered by the way, and the distant prospect of once more seeing his native land. But this pleasing prospect could animate him no longer, nor could these scanty provisions support him. His strength failed, and he sank into despair of everything and  ending a miserable life in a howling wilderness, surrounded by wild beasts!  Finding he could travel no farther, he fixed upon the top of the tree  as the spot where his sorrows and his life must end together.

About 1756, at the close of Braddock's War between France and England, Mr. Samuel Givens, of Augusta was hunting on the Greenbriar.  He had at least one extra horse for carrying home the game he hoped to secure. In the top of a fallen tree he espied an object which he at first took to be a wild animal, and he came very near firing into it. A more deliberate glance satisfied him that what he saw was a human being, but not an Indian.

Approaching nearer, he found a man in the most wretched and pitiable condition, his person naked, except his feet, about which a few rags were tied, and covered with scabs and sores, his body emaciated, and the man nearly famished to death. As the man could not speak English or any language ever heard,  Givens could hold no conversation with him, but brought him to his house, supplied his wants, and by tender care, restored him to health and strength.  In giving him something to eat, he prudently allowed very little at first, and increased the amount as the digestive organs of the famished man began to recover their normal tone. After a few days the patient had gained enough strength to be able to ride the second horse. He was now taken to the home of Captain John Dickenson near Windy Cave and made welcome in the open hearted manner of the frontier. He remained with Dickenson several months, meanwhile recovering his strength.

The poor man  had no way to make himself and his complicated distresses known, without the help of language so he resolved to make himself acquainted with the English tongue as soon as possible. He procured pen, ink, and paper, and spent much of his time in writing down remarkable and important words, pronouncing them, and getting whoever was present to correct his pronunciation. By his indefatigable application, and the kind assistance of Colonel Dickerson's family, he in a few months was so far a master of English as to speak it with considerable propriety.

The Colonel was so much moved by his tale of woe, that he supplied his every want, made him his companion, and introduced him to his friends and neighbors. Taking him to Staunton on court-day, Selim there saw Rev. John Craig, who attracted his particular attention and asked to accompany him home. Mr. C. gave him a warm welcome. He afterwards asked Selim the cause of his wish to live with him. Selim replied,

"When I was in my distress, I once, in my sleep, dreamed that I was in my own country, and saw the largest assembly of men my eyes ever beheld, collected in a vast plain, dressed in uniform, and drawn up in military order. At the further side of the plain, and at an immense distance, I saw a person, whom I understood to be a person of great distinction; but the distance prevented my discerning what sort of a person he was. I only knew him to be a person of distinction. I saw every now and again, one or two of this large assembly attempting to cross the plain to this distinguished personage; but when they got about half over, they suddenly dropped into a hole in the earth, and I saw them no more.

I also imagined I saw an old man standing by himself at a distance from this assemblage, and one or two of the multitude applied to him for direction how to cross the plain, and all who received and followed his advice, got safely over.

“As soon as I saw you,” added Selim, “I knew you to be the man who gave these directions, and this has convinced me that it is in the mind of God that I should apply to you for instruction in religion. It is for this reason I desire to go home with you. When I was among the French, they endeavored to prevail on me to embrace the Christian religion but as I observed they made use of images, I looked on Christianity with abhorrence, such worship being, in my opinion, idolatrous.”

Mr. Craig cheerfully undertook the agreeable work and soon found Selim understood the Greek language.  He gave him a Greek testament and in his leisure hours explained the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In a fortnight he obtained what Mr. C. considered a competent knowledge of the Christian religion, and was baptized in Mr. C.’s church.

Some time after this, Selim expressed a wish to return and see his parents. Mr. C. suggested that he might be ill-used by his friends and countrymen, now that he was no longer a Mohammedan, and asked if it would not be better to remain in Virginia.

Selim replied that his father was a man of good estate, and he was his heir.  That he had never been brought up to labor and knew no possible way in which he could obtain a subsistence. He could not bear the thought of living a life of dependence.  He was sensible of the strong prejudices of his friends against Christianity yet could not think that, after all the calamities he had undergone, his father’s religious prejudices would so far get the better of his humanity as to cause him to ill use his son on that account.  At all events, he desired to make the experiment.  Mr. Craig warned of temptations to return to Mohammedanism but Selim said he would never deny Jesus.

Mr. C. and his friends supplied him with money and a letter of recommendation from Hon. Robert Carter, of Williamsburg.

Selim  sailed for England with the flattering prospect of once more seeing his parents and native land.On his arrival, he found his parents still alive but he could not long conceal  from them that he had renounced Mohammedanism and embraced the Christian religion,  His father immediately disowned him as a child and turned him out of his house. Affection for his parents and  grief for their religious prejudices and his own temporal ruin tormented his young heart.

He was now turned out into the world, without money,  a friend, or any means by which he could obtain a subsistence. He left his own country and  the estate on which he expected to spend his life.He left all his natural connections without the most distant prospect of ever seeing or enjoying them more. He went to England  in hopes of  finding some way to live . But having no friend to introduce him to the pious and benevolent, he found no way to subsist in that country . He resolved to return to America  being a new country  where the poor could more easily find support. In his passage to Virginia, he sunk under the weight of his complicated calamities, into a state of insanity.  For a while he was an inmate of the hospital for the insane at Williamsburg.

He wandered from Williamsburg to Staunton,  to Col. Dickerson’s, then to  Warm Springs, where he met a young clergyman, Rev. Mr. Templeton, who, hearing something of his history, asked him if he was acquainted with the Greek language, to which he modestly replied that he understood a little of it. Mr. T. handed him a Greek testament, and asked him to construe some of it. He opened the book, and when he saw what it was, in a transport of joy he pressed it to his heart.   He left the Warm Springs, and returned to Mr. Carter’s, who was now in Westmoreland,.

John Page, when governor of Virginia, took him to Philadelphia and had his portrait painted by Charles Wilson Peale, the celebrated artist.   He was painted Indian fashion, with a blanket round his shoulders and   a straw hat on his head, tied on with a check handkerchief. 

From that city he accompanied a man of South Carolina to his home. He returned to Virginia, and in Prince Edward County learned to sing the hymns by Watts.

He was often still in a state of derangement. They say he was commonly inoffensive in his behaviour, grateful for favors received and manifested a veneration for religion.  He was frequently  in prayer that was commonly though not always pretty sensible and tolerably well connected.  He appeared to have the temper and behaviour of a gentleman though he was in ruins.  He went roving from place to place, sometimes almost naked for want of sense to keep on the clothes he had received from the hand of charity.  

About 1789 he was taken with a sickness that restored his reason to his last moments.

The family where he lay sick and died treated him with great tenderness for which he expressed the utmost gratitude, and  at his request no persons sat up with him on the night in which he died.

It appears that he died with great composure for he placed himself, his hands, his feet, and his whole body, in a proper posture to be laid in his coffin, and so expired.