V.
THE QUARRIES OF MONS CLAUDIANUS.
In the previous chapter an account was given of a journey made to the Imperial porphyry quarries of Gebel Dukhân in the month of March 1907. These quarries are to be found about a score or so of miles from the Red Sea at a point in the Eastern Desert opposite the southern end of the Peninsula of Sinai. From Gebel Dukhân I returned to the Nile by way of the white granite quarries of Um Etgal, the ancient Mons Claudianus, and thence past the old gold workings of Fatireh to Keneh.
My caravan was composed of a riding party consisting of myself, my native assistant, my servant, and a guide; and the baggage-train of a dozen camels and men, and a couple of guards. The guide was a picturesque, ragged old man, whose face was wizen and wrinkled by the glare of the desert. His camel was decked with swinging tassels of black and yellow, and across his saddle there was slung a gun at least seven feet long, while at his side there hung a broad-bladed sword in an old red-leather case. In his belt there were two knives, and in his hand he carried a stout bludgeon, something in the form of a hockey-stick. This latter is the weapon most generally carried by the Ababdeh and other desert peoples, and its antiquity is evidenced by the fact that the earliest hieroglyph for “a soldier” in the script of ancient Egypt represents a figure holding just such a stick.
The old guide was followed by three lean, yellow dogs, who seemed to be much bored by the journey and dejected by the sterility around. He was a man of some dignity, and took considerable pride in riding at the head of the little procession in order to show the way, although, except at the cross-roads, the tracks were perfectly plain and the ancient beacons were generally to be seen. Once or twice I made an attempt to pass him so that I might have an uninterrupted view of the scenery; for the sight of a ragged, huddled back and the hindquarters of a betasseled camel is inclined to pall after a while. But these efforts ended in a short, hard race, in which I was generally the loser; nor had I the heart to order the old man to the rear thereafter.
We set out from the camp at Wady Bileh, the nearest point to Gebel Dukhân on the main road, soon after daybreak, and passed along the wonderful valley leading back to the Roman station of Wady Gatâr, which I have already described, our route branching off towards the south just before reaching that place. The road then led along a fine valley, up which a blustering north wind went whistling, and it was only by donning an overcoat and by trotting at a smart pace that one could pretend to feel comfortably warm. Soon after noon I halted near some thorn-trees, in the shelter of which luncheon was presently spread. A vulture circling overhead watched our party anxiously, in the vain hope that somebody would drop dead, but on seeing us mount again to continue the journey it sailed away disgustedly over the windy hill-top.
It was still cold and stormy when, after trotting altogether for five hours from Wady Bileh, we arrived at the well of Um Disi, where the camp was pitched in order that the camels might drink and graze. The well is the merest puddle in the sand amidst the smooth boulders of a dry watercourse, hidden under the overhanging cliffs of granite. It lies in the corner of a wide amphitheatre of gravel and sand, completely shut in by the mountains. Bushes of different kinds grow in great profusion over this amphitheatre, and from the tent door, when the eye was tired of wandering upon the many-coloured hills, one might stare in a lazy dream at a very garden of vegetation, around which the grey wagtails flitted and the dragon-flies slowly moved. It is an ideal place for a camp, and one but wished that more than a night could have been spent there; for one would have liked to have explored the surrounding hills and valleys, and to have stalked the gazelle which had left their footprints near the well.
The nights up here in this locality, which must be some 1500 or more feet above the sea, were bitterly cold, in spite of the approaching summer. There is perhaps no place where one more keenly feels a low temperature than in the desert; and here at Um Disi, where the air is that of the mountains, a colder night was passed than it has ever been my lot to endure—with the exception, perhaps, of one occasion some years ago when, with another student of archæology, I spent the night upon the flint-covered hill-tops of the Western Desert. Our baggage and bedding had then failed to reach us, and we were obliged to sleep in our clothes and overcoats, dividing a newspaper to act as a cover for the neck and ears. By midnight we were so cold that we were forced to dance a kind of hornpipe in order to set the circulation going again in the veins; and my friend was light-hearted enough to accompany this war-dance with a breathless rendering of the hymn, “We are but little children meek,” which had been dinned into his head, he told me, while staying at a mission school in another part of Egypt. Memory recalls the scene of the dark figure shuffling and swaying in the clear starlight, the biting wind whistling around the rocks in rhythmless accompaniment; and yet it does not seem that so much discomfort was then felt as was experienced in the flapping tent at Um Disi.
The journey was continued early next morning, the road leading out from the amphitheatre through a gauge on the eastern side. There was now some difficulty about the method of travelling, for only the guide knew the way; and as he rode with us, there was danger of our losing the slowly moving baggage camels, which always followed behind, catching us up at our halts for luncheon and other refreshment. I therefore took with me some bags of torn paper, and at every turning of the path, or at the cross-tracks, I threw down a few handfuls in the manner of a paper-chase; and thus, though the path here wound from one valley to another in the most perplexing manner, the caravan reached its destination almost as soon as we.
It was disappointing to find that our camelmen, born and bred in the desert, were unwilling to take the responsibility of following safely in our tracks. One would have thought that the footprints of our camels would have been as easy for them to trace on an unfrequented path as torn paper is to us. The guide, on the other hand, showed a really wonderful knowledge of the intricate paths; for it is not reasonable to suppose that he had travelled between Gebel Dukhân and Um Etgal more than two or three times in his life, this being off the main routes through the desert. He did not once hesitate or look around, although when questioned he declared that many years had passed since last he had been here.
In these valleys we met, for the first time for some days, one or two Bedwin. A ragged figure, carrying a battle-axe and a mediæval sword, sprang up from the rocks, where he was tending a flock of goats, and hurried across to shake hands with our guide. The two entered into earnest conversation in low tones; and the old guide, after pointing with his lean finger to his bag of food, which was every day diminishing in size, and then to the hungry dogs, dismounted from his camel, tied up one of the dogs, and handed it over to his wild friend. A few hours later another ragged figure, this time a Bishari, carrying a long gun, ran forward to greet us, and to him the guide delivered over his second dog, after a similar discussion with regard to his food-bag. For over a mile from this point, after the dog and his new master had diminished to mere specks on the rocks, the wind brought down to us the melancholy howls of the former and the unconcerned song of the latter to his goats.