A Tebu appeared with a parcel of meat of the waddan or wild sheep. I gave him macaroni and rice, and he went away happy.
After we had eaten I went to see some relics of the presence of men in earlier times. At Arkenu I had got to talking with one of the Gorans, and, having satisfied myself about the present inhabitants of Ouenat, I asked him whether he knew anything about any former inhabitants of the oasis.
He gave me a startling answer: “Many different people have lived round these wells, as far back as any one can remember. Even djinn have dwelt in that place in olden days.”
“Djinn!” I exclaimed. “How do you know that?” “Have they not left their drawings on the rocks?” he answered.
With suppressed excitement I asked him where. He replied that in the valley of Ouenat there were many drawings upon the rocks, but I could not induce him to describe them further than saying that there were “writings and drawings of all the animals living, and nobody knows what sort of pens they used, for they wrote very deeply on the stones, and Time has not been able to efface the writings.” Doing my best not to show anything like excitement, I inquired whether he could tell me just where the drawings were.
“At the end of the valley, where the tail of the valley wags,” he answered.
The whole time I remembered this, and after a little time spent in making sure about the water, which is the most important thing, and having a look round from the top of the hills at the surrounding country, there came the exciting task of going round the oasis. But the most exciting part of it was to find these rock inscriptions, especially as the history that I had been able to collect about the oasis was very scanty. I gathered that Ouenat was the pied-à-terre of Tebus and Goran who were going eastward to attack and despoil the Kababishe. Arkenu and Ouenat, indeed, were very well placed for that purpose, since they provided water for the attacking party and at the same time were too far away for the Kababishe to dare attempt reprisals or try to recover their own belongings.
With these drawings in mind, then, I took Malkenni, who had joined the caravan at Arkenu, and toward sunset he led me straight to them. They were in the valley at the part where it drew in, curving slightly with a suggestion of the wagging tail. We found them on the rock at the ground level. I was told there were other similar inscriptions at half a day’s journey, but as it was growing late and I did not want to excite suspicion, I did not go to them.
There was nothing beyond the drawings of animals, no inscriptions. It seemed to me as though they were drawn by somebody who was trying to compose a scene. Although primitive in character, they betrayed an artistic hand. The man who drew these outline figures of animals had a decorative sense. On their wall of rock these pictures were rudely, but not unskilfully carved. There were lions, giraffes, and ostriches, all kinds of gazelles, and perhaps cows, though many of these figures were effaced by time. The carving is from a quarter to half an inch in depth, and the edges of the lines are weathered until in some parts they can be scraped off easily with the finger.
