One of my great regrets on this trek was that I was unable to follow game as I would have liked to. The night marches between Ouenat and Erdi left me too exhausted in the morning to do anything but record the readings of my scientific instruments and try to snatch two or three hours of sleep before it was too hot. Then our food-supply began to get less and less. I could not stay at Agah where there were plenty of gazelles, ostriches, and wild sheep. Besides, the scarcity of water made me lose no time there, where the well had been so fouled by animals.
An old Egyptian army Martini and an Italian cavalry carbine which I was given at Kufra, handy as they would have been for self-defense, were of little use for long-range work on game, especially gazelle. Hunting, therefore, was a diversion which I had to deny myself.
SUDANESE TROOPS AND GIRLS
They are singing in welcome to the explorer’s party
It was very hot, and we could not start until 5 P.M. We followed the lovely valley for an hour and then began to climb the hills. As we got to the top we had a fine view of its beauties, all the various shades of green of the trees and shrubs making picturesque patterns with the rosy sand and the redder rocks of the hills guarding the valley. The soft notes of innumerable doves floated up on the cool evening breeze. A gorgeous red and gold sunset completed an ensemble not easy to forget. I stopped my horse and spent a pleasant half-hour lying on a patch of soft sand drinking in the delights of this little bit of paradise. It soon grew dark. The crescent moon showed herself, and far away I heard the Bedouins of my caravan singing. Reluctantly I rose and took the track again.
We were soon in different country, broken and very undulating, with distant jagged hills surrounding us. The camels were suffering from the foul water of Agah, and so were the men. We camped early, both on this account and because it is dangerous country to travel by the weak moonlight.
We dropped into a soft sand valley about two hundred meters from our route and camped.
We got up with the stars still in the sky on Tuesday, May 23, and made our start with a gorgeous sunrise on our left hand. We moved slowly because of the thick shrubs and scattered stones and also because Mohammed and Herri had not been in this country for ten years and were picking their way cautiously.
“Mohammed is riding, I suppose,” I said to Hamid, the camelman, as I walked in my favorite place behind the caravan, “or we would not be moving so slowly.”