One wonders whether there will come a time when some millionaire, fresh from the museums of Italy, will express a wish to pave his bathroom with the purple stone of the Emperors; and whether the Hills of Smoke will again ring with the sound of the hammer and chisel, in response to the demands of a new fashion.
It may be that some day the tourist will awake to the advantages and attractions of the Eastern Desert as a motoring country, will rush through the wadys, will visit the ancient centres of activity, will see these quarries, and will desire the porphyry. With a little preparation the road from Keneh to Gebel Dukhân could be made practicable for automobiles; and when once the land ceases to be but the territory of the explorer and the prospector, one may expect its mineral products to be seen, to be talked of, and finally to be exploited.
In the late afternoon we left the valley, and climbed slowly up the Roman road to the summit of the pass, halting here to drink deeply from our water-bottles. The descent down the dry watercourse was accomplished in a long series of jumps from boulder to boulder, at imminent peril of a sprained ankle. The grey rocks were smooth and slippery, and between them there grew a yellow-flowered weed which, when trodden upon, was as orange-peel. The rapid rush down the hillside, the setting sun, and the bracing wind, caused our return to camp to take its place amongst the most delightful memories of the whole expedition. Once we halted, and borrowing the carbines of the native police, we shot a match of half a dozen rounds apiece, with a spur of stone as target. The noise echoed amongst the rocks; and a thousand feet below we saw the ant-like figures of our retainers anxiously hurrying into the open to ascertain the cause of the disturbance.
As we neared the bottom of the hill the sun set, and once more this wonderful valley was lit with the crimson afterglow, and once more the mountains of Sinai stood out for a moment from the gathering mists above the vivid line of the Red Sea. Darkness had fallen when at last, footsore and weary, we reached the camp; and one was almost too tired to enjoy the sponge-down in the half-basin of water which is all that can be allowed in this waterless region, and the meal of tinned food which followed. As one fell to sleep that night, one’s dreams were all of strenuous labours: of straining oxen and sweating men; of weary marches and unsuspected ambushes; of the sand-banks of the Nile and the tempests of the sea. But ever in the far distance one seemed to be conscious of thoughtless, implacable men, dipping their bejewelled fingers into the basins of purple porphyry as they reclined in the halls of Imperial Rome.
On the following morning our party divided, Mr Wells and the greater part of the caravan going north-east to the petroleum wells of Gebel Zeit on the sea-coast, and I to Um Etgal, the Mons Claudianus of the ancients, where the white granite, also so much admired by the Romans, was quarried from the hillside.
The ruins of the town of Gebel Dukhân. The upright pillars of granite supported a roof.—Page [106].
The Roman town of Mons Claudianus, looking south from the causeway leading to the main quarry. The round piles of stone in the foreground are built at intervals along the causeway.—Page [124].
Pl. xix.