FOOTNOTES:
[1]This railway was in charge of Mr. George Wadham Floyer, who died a few months later in his dahabia near Girgeh, aged 26. He was a younger brother of Mr. Ernest Ayscoghe Floyer, chief of the Telegraph Department in Egypt, a distinguished Oriental Scholar, who first explored the Kittar Mountains in 1886, and to whom I am indebted for the foot-notes in the accompanying pages.—F.P.
[2]A French railway contractor, a well-known figure on the Nile.
[3]Ficus Sycamorus—the sycamore fig. The once popular drive in the Shubra is lined for the most part with these trees.
[4]Artemisia.
[5]One of the hydreumata, or watering stations placed by the Ptolemies at frequent intervals along the numerous roads across this desert, which led to the quarries and gold and emerald mines, which were worked as late as the time of Trajan Hadrian, circa 147 A.D. At this period camels were not used but oxen and carts.
[6]Capparis spinosa; Arabic, lussuf.
[7]Small stone shelters are made near watering-places frequented by ibex. In these the Bedawin lie hid, and shoot.
[8]Fifty thousand gallons, an unusually large quantity. Much rain fell in the preceding season. This is the reservoir marked on the War Office map. That at which the party watered was dry when the map was made, and the pool is not marked. Great caution is used before marking “water” on a desert map.
[9]Necessary with a young camel, and not so painful as it seems.
[10]“Yessar” is the Arabic name for the moringa aptera mentioned later on.
[11]These aneroid heights may be taken as correct.
[12]Herr Lepsius, commanding the German Expedition of 1842-45 was the first, in modern days, to cross this pass or “Nojeb.” His party were lost in these mountains, and of this pass in particular he speaks in almost horror. He unloaded the camels, and his men carried the loads to the bottom.
[13]Oïridh, “devils”; Hindustani, latūr; Arabic, sheitan. These are in the desert what waterspouts are in the sea, and might be called sandspouts were not “spout” indescriptive of the appearance in either case.
The phenomenon is produced as follows:—A whirlwind arises at perhaps a height of five hundred feet. Its vortex decreases in diameter downwards until, on the desert surface, it is perhaps two or three feet in diameter, whirling round with great velocity, and with an upward spiral. When it passes over loose sand it carries with it all movable particles. The whole thing, like a whipping top in form, rises and falls and moves about. When it rises, and only the point of the whipping top rests on the surface, the circular motion is harmless. It sometimes goes up into the air and, when the circular motion is interrupted, drops sand and small bushes over a large area. When depressed, and when the diameter of the whirlwind reaches twenty or thirty feet, it has great force, and a camel will lie down, blinded, and fearing to be blown over. These “devils” march or dance about the desert in parties often of ten or twelve, and look like weird giants on a sultry gloomy evening. The effect is heightened by the dead stillness outside the radius of gyration. They have been the subject of highly-coloured description by travellers, and the statement in the text is characteristically simple.
[14]There are three kinds of partridge in this desert. The most interesting, hitherto shot near Assuan only by Colonel Harkness, is the Amnoperdrix Heysii, a richly coloured bird with a tuft or pencil of white feathers behind each ear.
[15]The Imperial porphyry, the Rosso Antico, is quarried here. It was said of the legitimate descendants of the Roman emperors that they were “porphyrogeniti,” or born in the purple, meaning that they were born in a chamber lined with this stone, to which chamber access was permitted only to the Emperor’s rightful wife. The quarries, after lying idle for 1700 years, are now worked by Mr. Brindley of London.
[16]Lycium, sp.?
[17]The seeds were raised at Great Carlton, and some of the young plants transferred to the Royal Gardens, Kew. Among them—Moringa aptera, Cassia obovata (the senna of commerce), Capparis spinosa, Zygophyllum album. Before mineral oils were introduced the oil of Ben, produced from the moringa aptera, was used by watchmakers.
[18]The inscription has not been seen since Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s visit. The text is given, in translation, in a paper on the Eastern Desert Proc. R. G. S., November, 1887. The original Greek is in Proc. R. G. S.
[19]These mountains support several hundred sheep and many half-wild donkeys. The wild ass is still found to the south. The sheep feed on the leaves of the acacias, which are shaken down for them by the shepherds, who use long hooks to shake the branches. The sheep are thus entirely dependent on the shepherd for food, and follow him eagerly the moment they see him take up his hook.
[20]The kurbatch is a long tapering strip cut from the hide of a hippopotamus. It is hard, but flexible, like stiff indiarubber.