We made a very early start on Saturday, June 2, to make sure of reaching Furawia that day. At 5 A.M. we passed on our right the landmark of Hagar Kamra-ra, ten kilometers away, and an hour later passed another, Hagar Urdru, a hill about eighty meters high and two hundred meters long. Hagar is the Sudanese word for gara, or small hill. Then we started dropping into the valley of Furawia. It was the largest valley and the most inhabited that we had come across. Its people are Zaghawa and a few Bidiyat.
We camped at nine near a Bidiyat camp and soon heard the distressing news that no food was to be obtained at Furawia. This was contrary to my expectation. I made haste to find a messenger to take a letter to the governor of Darfur at El Fasher, asking him to send me provisions and cloth to clothe my men, who were in rags. After much hesitation, caused apparently by fear of my men, the Zaghawa sheikh of a camp near-by came, driven by curiosity, to visit us. He was under the Sudanese Government, and I pounced on him and offered him three pounds to take a letter from me to Saville Pasha, Governor of Darfur. It was liberal pay, and in addition I threatened him with much unpleasantness should he hesitate or refuse. I told him he must start at dawn the next day. After murmuring something about having no animal to carry him, he went away and soon returned to say that he would take my letter to El Fasher. He intended to go on horseback. This was good news, for we had had no sugar for three weeks and had been obliged to sweeten our tea as best we could with pounded-up dates. Flour and rice had also given out, and a scanty diet of macaroni prepared with bad water is very monotonous.
I moved the camp near to one of the wells in the valley and tried to buy a sheep to cheer up my men. But it was getting dark, and none of the inhabitants came near our camp. We watered the camels and settled down for the night, not very well satisfied with life.
I was suddenly surprised to hear my men singing and apparently as cheerful as though they had had a good meal. I called Zerwali and Bukara over and asked them what was the singing about when there was no sugar and little food and things were generally disagreeable.
“We can breathe now,” answered Zerwali. “We have entered the Sudan and feel ourselves at last in safety.”
“Were you so fearful, then, of this journey we have made?” I asked.
“At Kufra all our relations said that we were ‘walking for our fate’ when we took this road,” explained Bukara. “‘Your fates are written,’ they said to us, ‘but may God protect you.’ We wondered if perhaps they might not be right.”
“You heard at Kufra,” said Zerwali, “how some people offered you encouragement to take this route, while many advised against it. Those who favored it were malicious men who simply hoped that they would never see you again.”
It was then also that Zerwali—who, now that we were nearing the end of the trip, felt himself more free to talk—told me that the houses of Sadaida and Jehilat of the Zwaya tribe at Hawari and Kufra had strongly resented my second visit and held a meeting to discuss the best means of either destroying the caravan or preventing me from coming back.
Then I realized what pluck it had taken for these men to come with me by the strange and unknown way without a murmur of protest. I was proud of them.